Blood Ties

by Gina Whitney

  All I could think was, James. Without any hesitation I ran toward the house. The first thing I saw was the screen door lying busted up on the porch. The main door was off its hinges too.

  Shit… This is bad.

  I dropped my bag and pulled out my wand, but I never let that plant go. I cautiously peeked inside both the minivan and James’s car, hoping like hell no one was dead inside. Though nothing was amiss with the vehicles, the house was a very different story. I slowly climbed the steps and got a closer look at the screen door. It was punched up with holes, and the mesh was torn away at the corners. As I made my way to the front door, large chunks of broken glass crunched under my feet. It had been busted out from inside the house. Because the front door was diagonally leaning across where it should have been standing, I had to crawl into the house through a gap at the bottom.

  All I could hear was the unnerving drone of the refrigerator. I didn’t have to go too far before I saw a blood-scrawled taunt on the wall: “COME AND GET HIM.” The letters were tall and uneven, as if written by a madman in an insane asylum. Holding the plant and the wand was a hindrance to me, so I had to make a choice between the two. I chose my wand. I secured the plant in a desk drawer, knowing that if I became endangered, I could make my way back to it. And then I went deeper into the house.

  There was blood, so much blood, as if the house itself were bleeding out. No piece of furniture was left unturned, and body-sized holes peppered every wall. Bookshelves were broken like they’d been karate chopped in half. Fluff billowed out of scored slices in the sofas and couches. I skimmed the wall like an undercover cop going into a raid. At every door I made a sudden roll into its framework, with my wand ready to go. I went through every room on the first level and found no one. I swung open the door leading to the basement. A slight yellow undertone from Addison’s grief tendrils still inhabited it. I went down anyway, braving the possibility of being stung again. But there was no one down there either. It looked exactly the same as the last time I’d seen it.

  I started toward the upper level of the house. I had to be extra careful because the posts and banister had had been ripped off the staircase. The creaking steps under my feet prevented me from launching a sneak attack, so I had to be ready for anything. I made it to the top floor and headed down the hall.

  I peeked into Aunt Evelyn’s room. Her bed, covered in a flowery duvet, was neatly made, with an open book pyramiding on the pillow. I stepped out and closed the door behind me, figuring I wasn’t going to let something run out of there at full speed.

  Julie’s bedroom was next. I pushed the door open with my wand. I saw her sitting on the side of the bed, keeping watch over Aunt Evelyn. Julie was all messed up. Deep cuts and contusions were spread over her exhausted body. Her dislocated shoulder was set in a homemade sling, and her face looked like it had been gnawed on.

  However, Aunt Evelyn’s condition was worse. She was in a semi-coma, and almost unrecognizable from a blow to the head. Her entire face was swollen like a balloon, and her eyes were totally blacked out. She probably needed a ventilator for the staggered breaths that clicked out of her mouth. Someone else’s blood and flesh were still wedged under her nails, and her wrist bore multiple abrasions from defending herself.

  I rushed over and dropped to my knees, holding Aunt Evelyn’s ice-cold hand. “What happened?”

  Julie was in so much pain, it hurt to even speak. “Catherine’s protégés ambushed us. They had some mighty powerful magic on them that made them invisible. Grace, those protégés are wicked strong. I don’t know what kind of magic Catherine is using, but they’re almost unbeatable.”

  I knew what kind magic Catherine was using. She was using my magical power that she’d hijacked from my blood, which she’d obtained during our last confrontation.

  Julie’s eyes were fighting sleep. She hadn’t had a decent night’s rest since she’d started keeping vigil over Aunt Evelyn. I could see that one of her cuts was bleeding. It was obvious she needed stitches. I didn’t care if she still resented me; I was going to care for her.

  “Julie, let me fix that for you.”

  I found a tiny, plastic sewing kit in a dresser drawer and picked out some beige thread and a needle. I then searched the room for alcohol. Instead I came across some antiseptic Aunt Evelyn had been given when she’d had her ears pierced at Claire’s Boutique. I held the needle over a tissue and poured the antiseptic right on it.

  “This might hurt a bit,” I said. I expected Julie to knock my hand away from her face in anger, but she calmly sat there and let me close her wound. She stared at me as if she was thinking about everything that had gone down between us.

  “Thank you,” she said humbly.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For putting up with my bullshit. I know I’ve been tough.”

  Was this an actually apology? With Julie it was hard to tell. My stitching started to zigzag as I tried to figure it out, but that didn’t stop me from agreeing with her. “Yeah, you have.”

  We both chuckled, and then Julie put her hand on my lap.

  “Grace, I’m sorry for all I put you through. I was jealous of your relationship with James. I thought he was taking my best friend away from me, and I was fucking pissed about that. And then when I lost Hari, I took it out on you. Can you forgive me?”

  “I already did.” I didn’t want to disrupt this profoundly sentimental moment, but I did need to know something.

  “Where’s James? I haven’t seen him yet.”

  Julie looked at me so sincerely, preparing me for bad news. “They took him. Catherine has been waiting for more than twenty years for a showdown with you. She’s taking every opportunity to savor it. She wants you to suffer as much as possible.”

  “So that’s what that scribble-scrabble message was about. Alright, if that’s the way she wants it, that’s the way she’ll have it. I’m going to go get James and bring him home safe. That’s not a problem for me, but a humongous one for her.”

  I finished the stitches with a crude knot on Julie’s face. I got up ready for battle, as if I already knew where Catherine was.

  “What do you think you’re doing? You don’t even know where to go,” Julie said.

  “Logically James has to be in the vicinity if Catherine is goading me to come and get him,” I said with my muscles flexing.

  “Despite what you might think, Grace Valois, you are not invincible. You need help. I’m not going to let you deal with that old hag by yourself. Give me a chance to rest up and get stronger, and we can roll out together.”

  “Plus we’ll have Addison for backup,” I said.

  Julie’s head dropped. “Addison is dead.”

  “What?”

  “They killed her.”

  I lost my balance and plopped down on the bed, not wanting to believe we had lost another member of our team. “Where is she?”

  “Do you really want to do this right now?”

  “Why not? It’s going to hurt no matter if it’s now or later.”

  Julie wobbled to her feet and I followed her to the back porch. Addison’s body was wrapped in a blue bed sheet that had turned purple from all the blood. I put my hand over my mouth as the awful smell of decay triggered my gag reflex.

  “I was going to bury her, but I was too tired and sad to do it,” Julie said.

  “We’ll do it together.”

  We went back inside and found handkerchiefs to tie around our faces in an attempt to block out the putrefaction. Then we both grabbed an end and took Addison to the clearing where James and I had almost made love for the first time. I dug while Julie took a much-needed break.

  It took me an hour to dig that six-foot hole. I jumped into it, and Julie gently and respectfully lowered Addison into the ground. I took a quick squat and used my new strength to jump out of the hole. We held hands, said a prayer, and covered the body with dirt. It seemed like such a mundane, anticlimactic ending for such a dramatic life.

  “Goo
dbye, Addison,” I said to the mound of dirt. Julie and I turned back toward the house. As soon as we got there, I ran her a steamy bath and took the liberty of washing her hair and back for her. As I took the washcloth and squeezed water onto her skin, I was appalled to see how her back looked like she had been whipped. After I cleaned her up, I helped her into her favorite shorts and T-shirt, and got her into bed.

  “I missed you,” Julie said through a yawn. We kissed, and I pulled the covers over her. Before her head hit the pillow, she was sound asleep.

  To alleviate my anxiety, I decided to clean. I swept up the broken glass, ripped-up sheetrock, and tiny bits of tchotchkes. I mopped the floor with pine-scented cleaner to take the edge off the funk of rotten blood and soured sweat. I wiped the walls down to remove the massive amount of blood smear, but ended up just making them turn a repulsive pinkish brown. What furniture I could salvage, I put right-side up and back in place.

  I dragged a full trash bag to the kitchen. Of course there was cleaning to be done in there too, but I was thankful for it. I went right to washing the dishes in the sink, scrubbing hard to remove dried-up, soft-boiled yolk from breakfast some days ago. Wiping my dishpan hands on my shirt, I went to the refrigerator and started throwing away food that had gone bad. I came across a Styrofoam container with “Addison” written daintily across the top. I couldn’t even cry; I had no more tears left in me. I tossed her leftovers into the trash without a second thought. All I knew was that I was going to get my man and kill Catherine once and for all.

  But how was I going to locate her? It wasn’t like I could ask random people, “Hey, do you know this witch bitch named Catherine?” I thought about just driving around Massapequa, but seriously, it wasn’t not like Catherine was hanging out at Duane Reade. Maybe I could simply lie low and wait for another attack.

  As I weighed my options, I tossed the trash bag into the refuse container behind the house. I went back inside and saw I had not dumped the contents of the dustpan into trash. I put another bag into the can and started to dump the dustpan’s contents into it. However, I noticed some yellowish, Chicletlooking thing falling in. I dug it out. It was a tooth, and I sensed it belonged to Tamara. I figured Julie must have knocked it out in the scuffle.

  This was the boon I needed to help me locate Catherine’s lair. I took the tooth to the parlor and sat on the couch. I closed my fist around it and concentrated. Cloudy visions of a cul-de-sac drifted through my mind. The images became more detailed. I saw a house with a realtor lockbox on the door. There was a murky basement that felt like much death had occurred there. And then I saw James, tortured and near death. My psychic tour ended with a glimpse of a street sign: Tunglemans Court.

  I finally knew where James was.

  Julie and I were in the living room going through Hari’s clothes. We pushed aside all the shorts, Hawaiian shirts, and flip-flops to get to the BDUs.

  “Grace, do you think it’s necessary for us to dress up in soldier clothes?” Julie asked.

  “What would combat specialist Hari do? We would honor him by wearing these,” I said.

  Julie nodded in agreement. “Hari wouldn’t allow us to wear anything else. BDUs it is then.”

  We both grabbed some camouflage pants and T-shirts. Julie found some grease paint—green and brown. She smeared it on her cheek with a determined stroke.

  “Really?” I said, smiling.

  “Hey, if we’re going to soldier up, we might as well go all the way.”

  I followed suit. When Julie and I looked in the mirror, we saw a couple of tough chicks. We fist bumped, slapped hands, and snapped our fingers.

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  We jumped into the minivan, remarking how hilarious it must have looked for two supernatural fighters to hop out of a Dodge Caravan. But the superficial lightheartedness didn’t last long. Following the minivan’s navigation system, we found Tunglemans Court. We did a drive-by creep and opted to park one street over. Covertly, Julie and I made our way on foot back over to Tunglemans. We stayed at the entrance of the culde-sac, doing surveillance with the newly fallen night acting as our cover. We were on our bellies, lying low under a bloom of tree limbs that were writhing in the wind.

  There were only two houses on the street, and a woman dressed in scrubs came out of one. She looked frazzled and was in a hurry. Some older, power-walking woman was trying to talk to the younger one as she got into the car. The scrubbedecked woman furiously backed out and took off, getting as far away from the old woman as fast as she could. Meanwhile Julie and I hid our eyes so the driver couldn’t see the whites as she passed. The older woman was oblivious to the fact that she had just gotten checked, and left the cul-de-sac with a speedwalking stride.

  I whispered, “Unless Catherine has aged forty years and taken an interest in aerobics, she must be in the other house.”

  Julie and I skulked over to the foreclosed home. I cringed with every cracked twig I accidently stepped on.

  We crouched outside the house, near a hibiscus bush. “Okay, we need to find weak spots and points of easy entry. You go that way. I’ll go this way,” I said. We briefly clutched hands in a sign of solidarity.

  I walked around the house, waving my hand to softly light up weak spots on the house. I could tell Catherine had covered it with a protection spell at some point. But she must have lifted the veil in anticipation of my arrival. I continued to survey the front, and bent down to look into a dirty basement window. As I tried to survey the dark room, I could see the specter reflection of someone coming up behind me. In a nanosecond Nick swept me up from behind.

  “What are you doing, little girl?” Nick said. As he turned me around, I quickly used charisma. When he saw my face, I looked like the subject of his favorite wet dream. He put my feet back on the ground while keeping his arms firmly wrapped around me. I could sense his predatory sexuality rising up. The more aroused he became, the tighter he held me. I noticed he had actually gotten stronger since the attack at the reservation.

  I could see Nick was thoroughly entranced. This gave me the chance to dig into my pocket and grab a handful of pixie dust. I flung my hand out, though my arms were still pinned down at my sides.

  Slowly the dust rose from the grass and started taking shape. Nick’s attention was divided between the pixie dust and me. Growing, growing, the dust manifested as a hyperdemonic version of Catherine. Nick let go of me and fell to his knees.

  “I’m sorry. It’s not what it looks like. I didn’t want the girl. I was only keeping her for you. I love only you,” Nick said. He looked back at me. The charisma had worn off, and my true identity was revealed. He looked back at “Catherine” as she disintegrated. Nick yelled, and swiftly came after me with a profound vengeance.

  Oh, shit.

  I held up my hand and screamed the first thing that came to my mind: “Freeze!” Nick abruptly stopped, and all of his movements ceased. He then turned into an ice statue of himself. I looked at my hand in amazement.

  “Not what I intended, but it’ll do,” I said. I found a tree branch, picked it up, and positioned myself behind Nick like a player going up to bat. “Here goes nothing.”

  I swung back wide, and struck him as hard as I could. Nick broke up into thousands of ice cubes. I had a sense of relief, a feeling that maybe it would not be so hard killing Catherine after all.

  Now, unbeknownst to me, Julie—being brave and hardheaded as usual—had somehow made her way inside the house. She knew we were not to go in separately, but she felt confident that she’d be okay. And her guilty conscience compelled her to clear the path for me as penance for how she had treated me.

  The house was filled with a strange hum, like the resonating frequency right after a gong has been hit. Catherine’s maniacal energy was thick in there. Moreover, the house’s musty odor was accented by something that smelled like an overcharged battery.

  Julie edged forward on noisy floorboards. The fur started growing on her skin as she sensed someon
e was there with her. Covering herself, she turned in a circle as she walked. What she didn’t know was that Tamara was watching her from the infinite blackness. Julie stopped turning and walked forward into the unknown.

  Tamara, however, scaled the wall and crawled stealthily behind her. Tamara smiled; she enjoyed stalking Julie as a hunter does its prey. She wanted to take her time and play. Tamara blew lightly in Julie’s direction. Julie felt it and jumped into a defensive posture, and then decided to move on to a side room.

  The streetlight streaming into the tiny window illuminated the room with a grayish light. Julie stepped in with Tamara following. Julie looked around, but she failed to look up at the ceiling. Not seeing anything of interest, she started out of the room, but Tamara jumped down on her. Julie reeled around and transformed into the shape-shifter.

  Tamara piggybacked Julie, choking her. Whirling around, Julie futilely grabbed at Tamara. Julie’s ever-increasing momentum sent both of them crashing into a hallway wall. As Julie continued to try to get Tamara’s strong arms from around her, they crashed into the walls and floor. They moved erratically down the hall and dove into the dining room. They fell to the floor, with Tamara rolling off Julie. They both turned their heads and looked at each other. Julie now recognized her assailant as the woman who had killed Hari. She sprung to her feet, as did Tamara.

  “What a treat. I get to kill you like I killed your brother,” Tamara gloated.

  Julie didn’t take the bait, and kept a cool head. They both sized each other up as they circled.

  “Oh, you look like you want to cry,” said Tamara. She lunged at Julie in a game of chicken. But Julie was focused, strategizing.

  “Even though I prefer lobster, your brother was delicious. Mighty fine dining,” Tamara went on.

  That was it. Julie lost it. She charged with brutal animal instinct. She delivered a high kick to Tamara’s head. Julie didn’t give her anytime to recover, and jerked her up by the neck. She raised Tamara up overhead and slammed her back to the floor. Then Julie crouched down and delivered blows to her kidneys. Every punch broke one of Tamara’s ribs. One went straight though her body. Julie flipped her over.