Bump (A Witchlight Novel)

by Jaime Munn

  “You should go no further as human,” I decided, surveying the werewolves. They were more vulnerable to the demons in their current forms. All eyes turned to Cleo.

  “You heard,” she said shortly. The werewolves began stripping off their clothes. I tried not to look flustered by it.

  “There’s no full moon,” Sofia whispered in my ear providing a distraction I eagerly embraced.

  I didn’t want her wolfing out on us anyway. She could remain herself or become pure wolf. A wild animal trapped here would do us no good. The last thing I wanted was for something else to go wrong and throw more chaos into my life.

  “You stick close to me for now,” I told her. She squeezed me tighter. It was a silly small thing to take so much comfort in, but even supernatural people are like that. Love is that which we all crave most. Even looking into the maw of death itself, love is still our drug of choice.

  Cleo didn’t have her spelled pelt with her. I could only imagine that she still didn’t trust me not to meddle with its magic. The rest of the werewolves joined Bella in wolf form. It was easy to tell Boytjie from the rest. He was large and impressive. The other wolves were clearly drawn to his authority. I wondered how Cleo felt about that.

  As wolves they were still no match for demons of the deep, deep dark, but their speed and flexibility had given them an edge over their human form. I could go one better for them, I thought, and it wouldn’t require much. The only weakness of a demon was its susceptibility to light. I cast a spell that gave the werewolves glowing claws and shiny teeth, like they’d painted them with glow-in-the-dark nail polish and neon toothpaste. The effect was eerie, but it would make their attacks more meaningful when their jaws snapped at the oily black flesh of the beings of this dark netherworld.

  Cleo traded glances with Bella and then looked to me.

  “I hope that comes off.”

  I sighed.

  “It will fade, but believe me they’ll be thankful for having it before this night is up.”

  I hated saying ominous things like that. It made me feel like a crone in a theatre production of Macbeth. Ironically it was a role that had actually been thrust on me one year in a school play. I pushed the memory aside focusing on a much grimmer present and turned to face the pathway ahead. F.C. seemed to sense my purpose. He left me and I felt the crushing weight of fear flood back into me.

  I took a deep, shaky breath and squeezed the terror into a tiny pocket of my mind where it could gibber and shriek and leave me mostly sane, at least for now. F.C. began leading us again. This dark place had been his birthing ground. The black magic here was deep set in his bones. I only hoped that being home and walking towards mummy dearest wasn’t bringing his black origins back to the surface. I swallowed that fear too. There was nothing I could do about it.

  My pet peeve might be heroines made of stone and steel, but I still devoured books in the genres that specialised in this badass kind of woman. Surrounded by werewolves and demons and being drawn deeper into a trap made me think I’d stepped into the pages of one of them. I’d scoffed at the idea of willingly walking into a trap before—who in their right minds did that anyway?

  Yet here I was, little miss doesn’t know how to kick ass without breaking an ankle, doing exactly that. Part of me had already decided that I’d lost my marbles. Which by the dictates of common quackery meant that I couldn’t be insane because I worried that I was. It didn’t really make me feel any better.

  I was walking straight into Grace St John’s little trap with demons at my back. We were in the deep, deep dark of the veiled world where evil wasn’t just a thought or a figment of the imagination but came with tooth and claw substantial enough to carve you up and eat you for dinner. With or without favah beans. I didn’t think they cared about Chianti either.

  It didn’t really matter how they wanted to set the table though, because being the main course was really the only thing that pissed me off. Etiquette be screwed. I embraced the anger because it was better than being terrified. I literally felt my backbone turning to steel and wondered if maybe I’d judged those heroes too harshly. I still wanted to run away, to cower in fear or shriek my little mortal head off, but right now those weren’t the options I had decided to act on. The night was still young though. I wasn’t going to fool myself into believing I’d gone all Xena on myself.

  The Stone Age passageway was becoming more shadowed and difficult to see, the light retreating until it was more a honey-hued nimbus around our bodies like auras burning feebly against the dark. I tried to pump up the light spell, but the energy I poured into it did nothing to brighten up the place. I gave up the effort to spare my energies for the upcoming confrontation. We walked through the darkness relying on F.C. to guide us. Without the stone walls at our sides, I felt more vulnerable to the demons that trailed us. Now they seemed to surround us. In my imagination their big, wide maws were already closing on our tender flesh.

  Sofia must have thought the same thing because she clung to me so tightly that I almost couldn’t breathe. I didn’t ask her to loosen her grip; somehow being her support made me feel a little stronger in the face of my own fear.

  I glanced back to count the wolves and make sure none of the party had been separated from us. Cleo met my eyes easily. She seemed unperturbed by it all, like she’d walked a thousand times into the depths of hell and come away with barely a stain on her soul or a scar on her body. I knew it was all lies and beneath her hard exterior, her heart was pounding out a beat of steady fear. I gave her a smile and wondered if it looked bright in the darkness or like a grimace. All the wolves were accounted for; Bella looking brightest with her white coat glowing in the honey sunlight that clung to her.

  Sofia’s grip tightened again. I inhaled sharply with some difficulty as I turned to face whatever new terror had come upon us. It was rather dull by comparison to the demons behind us, but I understood her fear. It was a door.

  F.C. had stopped in front of it. His light aura brushed up against the ancient oak like a dying flashlight shining a smoky half light before shattering into shards of twilight and darkness. I had little doubt that we had reached Grace’s spell room. Beyond the door she waited on us, the demon witch. I guessed that Hadrian’s pack had it right after all. Grace was a warlock through and through.

  I wondered if we should knock.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  I did knock. It wasn’t out of politeness though. It was purely to make a statement. I know you’re there, Grace, it said in three short raps. Each rap sounded harsh in the silence. Hallow like Grace St John’s empty black heart. My own heart beat a loud pulse in my throat. I wondered if the demons could hear it as easily as the wolves. I wasn’t going to win any points with either contingency, I decided, for being a hard as nails bitch, but at least on the outside I was still managing to fake it.

  The oak door swung open. There was darkness beyond and even F.C. hesitated on the threshold. I cast a light spell into the darkness that would have turned my apartment into a sun blasted view from Mercury. Here it only rouged the black to make suggestive shadows that were probably far creepier now that they were overly suggestive naked canvases borrowed from a late night horror flick. My imagination went into overdrive.

  Despite seeing wide open maws and sharp edges I followed through on my fake bad ass-ness and stepped into the darkness hoping that the shadowed figure with the pointy stick was a vampire hunter bobble head in a display case. At least my knees weren’t knocking.

  F.C. was right at my side, suddenly more panther sized than kitty and pressing up against my thigh, which was probably helping to keep my legs from bowing out beneath me. Still, my dark, dangerous and furry familiar had to add brownie points, I thought.

  Sofia had my back, if in more of a human shield kind of way. I had to remind myself that my werewolf girlfriend was an artist and probably about as deadly as a pistol carved from a bar of soap. I felt really bad about wishing it was Cleo getting all snugly with my rear, but if
you were stepping into a pitch black death trap I’d bet you’d be pulling the nearest ice cold killing machine close enough to spoon with too.

  Sex and death, by the way, totally overrated. I had no desire to push Sofia to the floor and make out. Maybe I’m just not wired that way, or maybe I figured the warlock’s floor was bound to be a little more icky than I like my dirty roll abouts. I’d wait for a barn full of hay thank you very much, even if looked like it stood a little further than this side of death. A person has to draw the line somewhere.

  I didn’t know what F.C. could do with a jaw full of demon, so I extended him the same courtesy I’d given the werewolves and made his claws and teeth glow. In F.C.’s case they lit up red like the fire blooms in Satan’s garden. Tempting, pretty, deadly; or in modern shop parlance, beautiful to look at, deadly to hold. I hoped he wouldn’t break Grace St John.

  Wolves crowded in behind us. The darkness didn’t so much lift as turn into a completely non erotic fifty shades of black. I figured even Grace, mistress of all we surveyed, albeit only in silhouetted glory, couldn’t bring light into a darkness that was woven into the very fabric of the world we had stepped into.

  “Hello, Nilla. I did try and explain the whole concept of a surprise party, but I don’t think the demons really got it,” the Grace silhouette said.

  It was weird seeing her black lips move and her black eyes lock on me, while black wicked laughter lines crinkled the skin around her black mouth. It was kind of like a rave where everyone was sporting neon black under the black lights. It made me glad that the glow sticks I’d brought along with me came in familiar red and werewolf silver.

  “Demon’s don’t hide their darkness under a bushel,” I chided the wicked witch, noting that her exterior at least matched her interior here in her spell room. “I figured a warlock would know that better than most.”

  Huh, I thought, so you can be snarky in the face of certain death. Who would have figured? Those Hollywood writers and genre authors obviously. I hated that they’d been right about that.

  “They really don’t,” Grace agreed without rancour.

  I had the feeling that pretty much nothing I could say would alter her giddy high at the moment. I’d fallen right into the deep, deep dark maw of her trap. I supposed that she had every right to be crowing at her success.

  “I see you brought party favours,” Grace continued, her eyes drifting over the wolves, Sofia at my back and Cleo, before landing lastly on F.C. to linger there a moment as though she still wasn’t entirely certain about what to make of the familiar homunculus.

  I wondered what she saw when she looked at my non traditional cat. I didn’t think she felt very comfortable about what her creature had become. I wondered if that was because we had made him together. The fruits of a violent assault, I thought, but I couldn’t blame F.C. for that. Or was it because my magic had taken her foul thing and made it something less malevolent? I couldn’t call F.C. virtuous or good, but then there wasn’t a cat in the world that could live up to such a moniker.

  “I brought friends,” I corrected her. “You know the people who have your back when it’s exposed to vindictive bitches.” I made a point of glancing around. “I don’t see any of yours. Or did your demon masters eat them?”

  “There’s absolutely nothing you can say to ruin my happy day,” Grace said with a wide smile. “Don’t doubt that I am the mistress here.”

  She pointed at a demon and it approached her, its ebony skin glistening in the black light of Grace’s spell room, showing its terrible form. It would haunt my nightmares forever; the teeth, the claws, the eyes, and vile deformities that mocked the human form and twisted it to a hideous horror. It inclined its vile head to Grace. She gave it the barest nod of her own before waving it back into the deep dark.

  “I bet of all of us here that thing would most love to drag you into the deep, deep dark,” I said with a shudder, not bothering to hide my revulsion. “You take one wrong step and it will drag you into the ever night. You’ll wish you’d never been mistress here.”

  Grace flinched.

  There, I’d said something that had rippled through her glee, but it didn’t make me feel less vulnerable. There was something else I was certain would disturb the wicked witch, but strangely it was as though a powerful spell had been stitched into my tongue preventing me from speaking of it.

  Telling Grace that a woman of the veiled world had an interest in her would have deeply unsettled her, but revealing Asbelia’s part in the course of events seemed forbidden to me. I hated that Asbelia had put sneaky spells on me. I hated more that I had only realised this now.

  Grace pulled herself together. Her pitch black lips formed a steely smile. She looked hard as stone in the darkness, glowing like some evil obsidian goddess. It was hard to see any humanity left in Grace St John.

  “You see only black and white,” she said. “You’re hardly different from anyone else, Nilla. You’re almost boring. I wouldn’t have bothered myself with you if it weren’t for your meddling where you shouldn’t.”

  Her voice had risen steadily till it was high pitched like a soprano. She took a calming breath and smiled a sinister smile that got under my skin. It made me think I wasn’t seeing even a portion of the whole picture.

  “It all changes tonight. Things go on from this night as they were meant to.”

  It was chillingly final. Instinct made me tap into Asbelia’s broach. The raw, pure magical energy that roared through me needed no shaping before it burst forth like a lance of light reaching high into the deep dark of ever night. If the spell chamber had once had a ceiling it didn’t now. The light didn’t seem to reach an end.

  “What is this?” Grace asked. There was surprise and concern in her voice.

  The light spilled from the lance in golden waves. It banished the shadows like they were dust. My heart leapt at the hope that rose swiftly in its wake, but then the darkness pressed back against the light. It resisted, but it couldn’t hold out forever. There weren’t enough jewels in Asbelia’s broach to keep the demons away for long. Still I hoped that the lance of light in the ever night had done what I was now almost certain the woman of the veiled world had intended.

  A beacon, a flare, a summons that would bring her to us, or more particularly that would bring her to Grace St John, the wicked witch she had some unnatural interests in. I was counting on this as my ace in the hole, only since Asbelia hadn’t said anything of the kind, I wasn’t sure it didn’t count as a foolish gambit.

  F.C. had used Grace’s surprise to get close to her. I saw his crimson teeth as he opened his enlarged jaws.

  “Frankie Cat!” I exclaimed but he wasn’t cowed by the vehemence of my voice. He bit into Grace’s leg and I thought all was lost. Game over. Asbelia had warned me.

  Grace screamed. The demons in the dark wailed with her, though I didn’t know if it was a battle cry, laughter, rage or the demonic version of whispered sweet nothings. F.C. unlocked his jaws and danced away from a well aimed kick. He jumped up onto a desk and began licking himself as though proximity to Grace had fouled his fur. I stared at him feeling betrayed. After a moment he glanced up at me, innocence in his pitch black eyes, then he licked his furry cheeks.

  I saw that his crimson teeth had paled to a weak and watery rose colour. I wondered if it had happened before or after he’d bitten Grace. Had my familiar just given Grace a non lethal dose of whatever poisons the warlock had crafted into his making?

  I turned my attention back to Grace who was busy putting teeth and homunculus together and coming up with deadly poison too. At least that was how I read the expressions drifting across her features.

  The lance of golden light was dissolving in the dark, so it was harder to tell if her eyes were filling with fear as she turned them to a shelf full of bottles and jars. I guessed that somewhere she had an antidote, but I was certain that whatever she’d put into F.C. when first she’d conjured him up hadn’t been slow acting. She swayed on her legs
as the poison worked through her system, her face going pale, but she didn’t fall. I had hope that F.C. had delivered a mild dose to merely disorient the warlock, not kill her. Grace didn’t seem to think that she would live.

  “I’m not ready yet,” Grace said, which was a surprising choice for a witch’s potential last words. It made me think once again that I’d missed something vitally important. I didn’t have time to consider what it might be.

  Darkness unravelled quickly as a golden figure stepped into the spell room like the ever night was merely a curtain and she’d pushed it aside.

  “Still, it is time,” Asbelia said.

  The demons wailed and this time I thought it was despair in their voices.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  The woman of the veiled world was not alone. She’d come with a small gathering of women who were cloaked and veiled from us like their identities were meant to be a secret. I didn’t know about Cleo, Sofia or the rest of the pack, but I wasn’t really up on the who’s who of the veiled world so it might have been for the demons’ benefit.

  I wondered how Asbelia had dared enter the ever night so lightly armoured and so very nearly alone. Even she couldn’t be that powerful that she could brazenly walk into the deep, deep dark and not fear it. I had expected her to come with an army of golden folk, not a handful of women who didn’t seem to be carrying weapons of any kind.

  “No,” Grace said. Her voice was churlish, like a child’s.

  “Yes,” Asbelia said patiently, like a mother. “Not even we are immune to time.”

  It was a telling comment. I wondered just what or rather who Grace St John was. It had never occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t dealing with a simple, albeit dark witch. It should have. Beings from the veiled world rarely took an interest in mortals, whatever their flavour.