by Clare Kauter
“Yes, I gathered that from the bloodied knife of your colleague there,” I answered.
“What, that? That was just a rabbit we killed for our lunch, nothing for you to worry –”
He was thrown backwards as Daisy hit him with a stunning spell. I guessed she was a vegetarian too.
As the ringleader lay on the ground stunned, the other two moved towards us.
“You made a mistake there, you little elf bitch!” said the one with the bloody knife. Hecate threw a stun spell at him, too, but it glanced off his shoulder, barely knocking him back.
Grabber three turned to Hecate. “Too slow, grandma. Or is it grandpa?”
A rock bounced off his skull and I looked to Ed, who was frantically picking up objects from the forest floor to throw at our assailants. I’ll admit, I was a little impressed. Henry leapt at the front one, teeth bared, but was blasted backwards by some sort of spell that left his nose bleeding.
The ringleader was back up, this time holding a whip – not just a regular whip, although that would have been terrifying enough. This was a whip with a beam of grabber energy as its tail. He cracked the whip. An intimidation tactic. Yes, we outnumbered the grabbers, but that didn’t worry them. Grabbers were notoriously powerful.
That’s the thing about dark magic – it just works better than light magic. An inherent flaw. (Or an advantage, depending what side you were on.) Sure, I could cast a ward or a stunning spell, but they didn’t really do any damage. Dark spells hurt people – they could even kill them. People willing to resort to that kind of action weren’t going to be deterred by a group of creatures of the light drawing their energy from nature. Dark magic came from something a little stronger than a bond with the trees.
I needed to fight back. I was the only one doing nothing, and the grabbers had noticed.
“What’s the matter, sweetie?” one mocked as he threw a stunning spell at Ed (who managed to turn into his less corporeal self just in time for the spell to pass right through him. So the grabbers could see Ed. Interesting.) “Why don’t you show us what you’re made of?”
“Come on, precious.” This time it was the ringleader. He was coming closer and closer. The rest of the group was engaged in fighting the other two, so he stepped right into the circle. “I know you’ve got some fancy little tricks you’re just itching to show us.”
He must have sensed my energy and been curious to find out what ‘other’ meant. His face was too close to mine. I could smell his breath, an odour of decaying flesh probably both from what he’d been eating and from his own rotting mouth. Grabbers weren’t big on dental hygiene. Or any hygiene, really.
But he was too close…
… if he didn’t back off soon it would…
… it would happen…
… again…
His hand made contact with my shoulder.
Chapter 12
A purple tendril shot out of my hand and I brought it up between us. It threw him back into a tree, hard. I pinned him there with my energy and pressed harder. I felt something crack, though whether it was the grabber or the tree I wasn’t sure. Whichever it was, the grabber had lost consciousness. Whether it was a temporary or permanent thing I didn’t know, nor care.
I let him drop to the forest floor and turned my attention on the other two, who had stopped trying to attack the rest of my group and had focused their attention on me. In fact, everyone was watching me. I didn’t care. I was not totally in control of my actions right at that moment. I shot energy from each hand and took the remaining grabbers by their throats, winding my tendrils around their necks and lifting them off the ground. They both grabbed the purple nooses and tried to pry them away, but I was not letting go. They struggled, their feet kicking, desperately trying to get free.
Then, finally, they stopped moving.
I dropped them instantly. The purple energy disappeared and I was me again, feeling numb, looking around at the three bodies on the ground.
Daisy ran towards the closest – the one who’d held the bloodied knife, which now sat a few feet from the body. Apparently he’d dropped it when he’d been trying to get free.
Daisy was only a few feet in front of the body when Death appeared in front of her.
Fuck. If he’s here…
“I’ll take it from here,” said Death, stopping Daisy in her tracks.
“But –” said Daisy. But what? ‘I have to write up a police report’?
“Stand down, officer. I’ve got this.” He looked dead (heh) into Daisy’s eyes and she took a step back. Whether he was controlling her or she was just intimidated, I wasn’t sure.
Death turned to inspect the corpse behind him. He didn’t bother feeling for a pulse. The grabber was dead – we all knew it. Death stood.
“Looks like I came here unnecessarily,” he said. “They’re all unconscious, but still alive. I guess someone had better get them to a prison. They are grabbers, yes?”
“Yes,” I answered quietly.
“We can take them,” Hecate said. “There’s a prison not far from here.”
Death turned to her and said, “They’ve already overpowered you once and attacked a civilian. I think it’s best if I take them, wouldn’t you agree?”
Hecate nodded, embarrassed. I hoped she didn’t feel too bad. I was pretty sure she hadn’t had a lot of contact with grabbers, so she might not know just how well she’d done. Not many people got away. She’d put up a good fight.
“They’re all… they’re all still alive?” said Henry.
“Yes,” said Death with such authority that no one dared question it again. “I’ll take them. I have something of an advantage over them.”
Apparently he wasn’t the only one.
“Right,” said Ed. “I guess we’d better keep going, then. Come on guys. Let’s go. Everyone OK? No one injured?”
Not for the first time today, I was glad Ed was around.
The others turned and began walking back in the direction of the path. I made my way towards Death.
“So what’s my body count up to now?” I asked him.
“Still in single digits, darling,” he said. “You’ve got nothing on me.” I smiled wryly at his joke, but I couldn’t sustain the happy façade. “They were grabbers. They attacked you.”
“I know,” I said. “Just like last time.”
“Five deaths is hardly something to get melancholy about. Especially five grabbers. Imagine how many people you saved.”
“What do you mean? It’s not like I’m some sort of crusader. I just lost my temper and crushed three people to death.”
“Yeah, but you crushed the right people. Don’t lose any sleep over it.”
“You see, when you say a thing like that it makes me very aware that you’re not human.”
“And you are?”
What?
I frowned. “I –”
“Ness!” Ed called out from the edge of the clearing. “We found a way out of the forest. You coming?”
That boy had a terrible sense of timing.
“Go,” said Death. “I’ll get rid of the bodies. And the souls. No one needs to know about this. Not that anyone would arrest you for it, but it’ll save paperwork.”
Somehow, I suspected that the Reaper was not being entirely honest about the fact that no one would charge me for this.
That purple energy that seemed to have taken over me was not something I had ever encountered in a reference book, and I had only used it once before. I wondered idly if it had something to do with the Doomstone, then shook my head at my own stupidity. It wasn’t like I’d robbed the bank. They were just two weird, entirely unrelated events.
I said goodbye to Death, who clearly had decided he was not going to tell me anything more, and ran over to meet Ed, leaving the Reaper behind to dispose of the evidence of my triple homicide.
Good thing I’d been discreet about it and hadn’t done it in front of two cops and my quest supervisor or anything.
&n
bsp; “The others are acting really weird,” Ed whispered to me as we walked through the forest. “Like they don’t remember what just happened.”
So Reaper had done his hypno-thing to them again. I guessed that was good. Why he’d bothered lying about the grabbers still being alive in the first place if he was just going to erase their memories later, I did not know. But he probably had his reasons.
“OK,” I said, not sure what else to say. It struck me as strange that he hadn’t erased Ed’s memory as well.
“Don’t worry,” said Ed, sensing my unease. “I’m not going to say anything to them. If you can use that crazy purple magic to help me out, I’m hardly going to try to stop you.”
“Ed,” I said, “why did you guys form a circle around me before?”
“I don’t know,” said Ed. “I just did it because the others were, and I figured the grabbies weren’t going to be able to hurt me, given that I’m already dead and all.”
I didn’t bother to correct him. He probably wasn’t going to run into more grabbers any time soon, and I didn’t want to freak him out by detailing just what they were capable of.
“Why did the others not let me help with the circle?” I asked, sounding a little whiny. “I could have made the ward about a billion times stronger.”
Ed snorted. “I reckon you could’ve. I don’t know – I figured it was because you were a civilian or something. Protocol, you know. Whatever. If you’d helped them put up a proper ward, I wouldn’t have seen you kill those guys with your purple tentacle magic.”
I turned to him sharply. He knew that I’d killed them?
“I’m not an idiot,” he said. “I’m not going to report you. As far as I’m concerned, they deserved it. What were they going to do to you? The grabbies?”
“Grabbers,” I corrected. “They… they kidnap magicals. Usually kids, but not always. If they can corner adults in a place like this, they’ll do it. Sell us.”
“Sell you?” Ed asked, quietly.
“Yeah. Shifters become exotic pets for sick rich people. Faeries and witches tend to become slaves, casting spells for their owners, helping make them more money. You know. I think fae are usually worth more than witches though, because generally their powers are stronger and they live longer.”
“And what about people like you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Even the grabbers didn’t know what I was.”
“Have you been attacked before?” he asked.
I nodded. “A few times.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” he said. “I don’t have the balls to be on the wrong side of you.”
I contemplated the wisdom of telling him more, and then figured that he’d already seen me kill three people. What more could he really find out about me? “That’s how I met Satan. I got adopted by a couple of grabbers.”
“Adopted?”
“Yes. I grew up in an orphanage. All very bleak. I didn’t tell anyone there about my abilities, but the grabbers sensed me and adopted me. The matron was happy to get rid of me, I think. I was already 13. No one adopts teenagers,” I explained. “I could tell they had some kind of magic about them, and I figured that was why they’d chosen me. I was right, I guess. But they didn’t want to keep me. They were going to sell me. They kept talking about a king and how I was going to make them so much money.”
“In front of you?”
“Yeah, well, they chained me up the second we got home. Left me in the bathroom cuffed to the S-bend. They used to use the toilet in front of me.”
“That’s sick.”
“Yep. Anyway, one day the guy – there were two grabbers, a man and woman – the guy came into the bathroom reeking of alcohol. I didn’t think they could smell any worse than they normally did, but with that extra layer of moonshine? Yeesh. I think he was coming in for a vom – they’d been drinking all day. They did that a lot. He staggered towards the toilet and kicked me out of his way like I was a dirty towel someone had left on the floor. And, well… I cracked.
“I felt this anger welling up inside me and then suddenly I’d broken my cuffs off. Just completely in half. There was this weird purple energy in the room, and I realised it was coming from me and I shot it at the man. But it – it wasn’t like today. It didn’t grab him. It went through him. Not like normal magic – it didn’t just pass through. It was like it was like it was solid. It looked like I’d shot him. There was blood everywhere, and there was this huge hole in his chest. It was like his heart had exploded.
“The woman, she must have heard the noise – that’s when she came in and saw him and tried to stun me, but I blocked her spell without even trying. Then I shot back at her and knocked her to the ground. Then I grabbed her with the – the tentacles, as you call them – I grabbed her and slammed her head into the corner of the bathtub over and over. Her skull caved in and her brain fluid and big chunks were slopping out –”
I noticed Ed was looking a little pale. He was staring at me, open-mouthed. Perhaps I was going into too much detail.
“Anyway, she died too. So I dragged the bodies outside and got a shovel from the garden shed and started trying to dig up the back yard. It was night, and we were in the middle of nowhere anyway, so I figured no one was going to see me.
“Suddenly there was this voice… ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’ And I had a massive panic attack. That was when Satan appeared, introduced herself and offered to help me. I thought she was going to take my soul or something, but she just laughed when I said that.
“She suggested that I reanimate them and have them sign all their money over to me, and then make them fall off a cliff somewhere far away from me so no one would think I’d killed them. It seemed like a good plan really, so she started to teach me some, well, dark magic.
“Reaper showed up at some point, and took their souls off to somewhere they wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what had happened. That’s what he’s doing now, too.”
“Nice of him,” said Ed, sounding a little strangled.
“Yeah,” I said. “Anyway, Satan kept looking after me, teaching me, until I was old enough to not need it. That’s when I started my ghost-contacting business.”
“How’s that going?” asked Ed, obviously struggling for conversational points.
“Well, I’ve taken the past couple of days off and no one seems to have noticed, so…”
“Right.”
“I’m mostly self-sufficient, though, so it’s not a big deal. I’ve got a vegetable garden, and I use magic to power things instead of electricity.”
“Right, yeah.”
Apparently admitting to two violent murders kills the conversation. Just FYI, if you have trouble in social situations, keep that in mind. No murders.
At that moment, we came out of the forest and found the rest of the group talking about how they’d just scared the grabbers away.
“I guess there’s safety in numbers,” Henry said.
“Absolutely,” said Daisy. “We were lucky, though. We’re more experienced magicians than many, and Henry, your wolf attack was very impressive. I don’t think they expected that.”
Henry noticed us approaching. “Ah, you two took your time. Let’s not dawdle. We scared them off for now, but they could be back.”
I doubted it.
“Right, of course,” I said.
“I’m sorry if that scared you,” said Hecate. “You don’t need to worry, though. You’ve got us here to look after you.”
I suppressed a smile. “Of course. I’m very safe in your hands.”
“Ed’s rock throwing was very impressive, too,” said Daisy, looking meaningfully to an empty patch of land to the opposite side of me from Ed. “I bet those guys thought those rocks were coming out of nowhere. That’s probably part of the reason they ran away.”
Well done, Death. No one here was going to be reporting me. Their memories were well and truly clouded.
We set out again on our way to the morgue, Ed looki
ng a little morose. Whether that was because of where we were going or where we had just been, I was not sure. Perhaps both.
I tried to cheer him up.
“I saw you helping Hecate through the forest before,” I said. “I was impressed. I wouldn’t have imagined you’d help anybody but yourself in a situation like that.”
He smiled a little. “She’s an old lady. I wouldn’t just leave her behind. I’m not a total arsehole.”
“Apparently not.” I, on the other hand, had completely forgotten about her and had 100% just been trying to save myself.
Best not to dwell on these things.
The others up ahead were still high on the euphoria of having beaten the grabbers. Next time I saw Death, I was going to ask him to hit me with some of what he gave to them.
When we were about a kilometre away from the forest, I became aware of the scent of smoke in the air. “Do you smell that?” I asked Ed.
“Yeah,” he said.
We turned back to face the trees. A huge plume of smoke was coming from where we’d just been.
So that’s what Death was doing with the bodies. Now that the grabbers were gone, there would probably be some wiccans dancing around that bonfire and chanting tonight.
We continued walking and eventually found ourselves back in town. We stopped in at Witch’s Brew (the café/occult bookshop/police station Hecate ran) for a coffee before heading to the morgue.
None of us were in a hurry to leave the café. We sat at an outside table enjoying the morning sun. I lingered over my soy latte, wondering what the hell everyone was lying to me about and why I had been born with a terrifying inner purple magical maniac.
Ed was sitting next to me staring down at his hands, lost in thought. Probably wondering who had murdered him and why he’d had to partner up with me and my crazy purple magic.
The others were still gloating loudly about their victory over the grabbers, making sure everyone else in the café heard. There were several other coven members here who I recognised from the ordeal at the abandoned church the other night, along with one or two that I knew because they had shown up at my house trying to recruit me. I wondered how many of them were magical law enforcement. Was the whole ‘coven’ thing just a cover? Why didn’t I know any of this stuff? As an outlaw, this kind of information would have been very helpful. I wanted to know who was going to arrest me.