Spellbent

by Lucy A. Snyder

  I heard a car pull into the other end of the alley. Doors opened, and I looked over my shoulder to see another pair of men in Suits emerge from a maroon Ford Taurus. They checked their watches, smoothed their shirts, hitched up their Sansabelt slacks, taking their time. The rat bastards had probably been lurking near the bar all this time, just waiting for me to come out with the Warlock.

  A small granite pebble lay near my hand. Acting on sudden instinct, I set my hand down on the pebble to unobtrusively palm it between my index and middle fingers. I picked up the truck and stood up slowly. Clutching the Rover to my chest, I turned to fully face Cold and Fear.

  “Put your hands up where I can see them, Warlock,” said the man I assumed was Cold. “You, girlie, set down that toy.”

  His partner Fear was hanging back, giving me a look midway between discomfort and pity. Pity. Like I wasn’t really a threat to them… and never could have been, because I was just a girl and a cripple and I wasn’t ever going to find that boyfriend of mine anyhow and wasn’t this a big waste of everybody’s time? That kind of pity.

  “Aw, fuck,” muttered the Warlock, slowly raising his hands in the air.

  “You’ve got no place to go,” Cold continued. “Come quietly, and you won’t get hurt. Mr. Jordan is prepared to forgive your crimes against the community if you’ll just end this nonsense.”

  I stared at Cold and Fear, at their suits and CIA wannabe haircuts. Something about Cold reminded me of my stepfather. I remembered every time he’d treated me like a loser freak, every time he’d acted like I was a worthless burden he couldn’t wait to unload. I felt the blood rise in my face.

  Damn Cold and his supercilious smirk. Damn Fear and his gun-toting pity Damn the jerks strolling up the alley behind me. Damn them all. The stone eye hummed in my skull. A cold, hard rage crackled adrenaline through my body.

  “We totally give up!” I said loudly, then tossed the Range Rover wheels-down at Cold and Fear in a flat underhand pitch. “It’s all yours! Catch!”

  The men stared at the little truck, momentarily baffled. I whispered a dead word for “big and heavy” as I let the palmed pebble fall to the ground.

  The Rover expanded midair and the three-ton vehicle slammed down Onto Cold and Fear. I didn’t wait to see what happened to them; I whirled on the two other men, pointed at them and whispered a word for “fire.” They shouted in surprise as their clothing burst into flame.

  “Stop, drop, and roll, jackass!” I hollered as I snatched up my knapsack and started running for the Land Rover. Pal held on to my jacket for dear life, and the Warlock was quick behind me.

  I yanked the passenger-side door open, my foot slipping slightly in something that had spilled from beneath the vehicle. I didn’t look down as I threw my knapsack in the back and hopped in.

  The Warlock jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed his door shut, and cranked on the ignition. His face was white. “Jesus H. Christ, Jessie. You totally pulped those two guys.”

  “Get us the hell out of here,” I replied as I heaved my own door closed. The Warlock did as I asked, slamming the Rover into gear and stepping on the accelerator.

  As we sped out of the alley, I looked back through the rear window at the men I’d set on fire. They’d managed to extinguish themselves; one was running back to the Taurus and the other was hurrying to tend to the two men I’d crushed. The crushed men were hard to look at, but their arms and legs were still twitching.

  “Jesus,” the Warlock repeated. “That’s a murder charge if those guys die. That’s the death.penalty for sure. Jesus.”

  “They’re still alive. The other guys can put them in stasis, and Jordan can get them healed up. Right, Pal?” I asked.

  “Perhaps,” Pal replied. “I didn’t get a good look at what you did to them. They surely have broken spines and legs and probably massive internal injuries. That’s a challenge for even a very skilled healer. Best to hope they don’t have too much brain and skull damage.

  “Well, that’s just too fucking bad for them,” I said, trying to keep myself angry so I wouldn’t get sick. The image of the twitching, broken men wasn’t leaving my mind easily. “That’s what they get for being thugs. They should have left us alone.”

  “Even if they survive, it’s attempted murder for sure,” the Warlock said tightly, shaking his head. “We’re gonna get prison for this.”

  I realized my own hand was trembling in my lap; I smacked the dashboard with my palm. “Don’t fucking pussy out on me now, Warlock. You knew shit like this was gonna happen.”

  “I’m driving, aren’t I?” he shouted back, the tires screeching as he turned onto Summit Street. “If I was pussying out, I’d have stopped the truck and left you here by yourself!”

  “Then stop with the ‘oh no, you crushed them!’ ‘oh no, we’re going to prison!’ crap, okay?”

  “It’s not crap, it’s a real problem—”

  I kicked the side of the box at my feet with my booted heel. “No. Stop right there. This box does not contain party favors. You had your girlfriend pack us guns and grenades. Those two guys would be just as mangled if I’d had to use one of these on them. And we’d both be leaking brains right now if they’d had the chance to take us someplace nice and quiet and plug us like they’d planned.”

  “You can’t be sure—” the Warlock began.

  “Yes. I can. They have not given Shit One about our lives since this whole thing started. They were gonna squish us like bugs.It’s just their bad luck I got to do the squishing first.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look, I’m not happy I probably just killed two guys. Believe me, I’m not. But they should have left us alone.”

  “Unfortunately,” Pal said, “they most certainly won’t leave you alone after this. More to the point, they’re not going to leave me alone. You’re likely to find yourself without my services before nightfall.”

  “What? Why?” I asked.

  “They just obtained positive eyewitness proof I’ve been helping you break the law. They can go to my overseers with their complaint. The overseers will demand a memory scan from one of Jordan’s witnesses, which will take only a little time. And then I will be forcibly withdrawn from this body. The shock will probably kill the ferret, but the little creature hasn’t had its own life for quite some time.”

  “What will happen to you?” I asked.

  “My overseer promised a punishment that is ‘most severe,’ but he was not forthcoming with details.”

  I was mortified. “Is—is there anything we can do?”

  “Sadly, no,” he replied. “Helping you was a gamble I took of my own free will, and I’ve lost. Please make sure my help has not been in vain, all right? Find Cooper. Bring him back.”

  “Okay,” I said. “How much time do you think you might have?”

  “Two hours if I’m fortunate. An hour if I’m not,,’ he replied.

  “What’s going on?” the Warlock asked, signaling and speeding up to merge onto I-71.

  “Pal’s busted. He’s gonna get yanked back to prison in an hour or two. How fast can you get to the farmhouse?”

  “It’ll take me a little less than an hour, if I speed and we don’t run into any trouble.” The Warlock dodged between two semi trailers to make it onto the 1-70 eastbound exit ramp. “Jordan’s people Wouldn’t dare do anything while we’re on the interstate; there’d be way too many mundane witnesses. but he might call the police and have them try to stop us.”

  “Joy.” I stared bleakly at the traffic, then glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was seven fifteen. I shifted my gaze to the box at my feet. “So which of these should I use to stop a cop car?”

  The Warlock gave me a quick, pained glance. “We’re in enough trouble already—I really wouldn’t point a gun at a police car. Just.. . blow up his front tire or something. That’s nice and surreptitious. You Babblers can do that, can’t you?”

  “I expect I can try,” I replied, then reached down and picked an antique pi
stol out of the box.

  “What are you doing with that?” the Warlock asked.

  “This.” I pointed the pistol at the side of his head. “I demand that you drive me to the farmhouse without stopping, and I will kill you if you don’t. There.” I primly set the pistol back in the box. “If they ask, you can in complete honesty tell them I held a gun to your head and threatened to kill you if you didn’t obey me. So maybe now you’ll get parole instead of prison.”

  “You realize you’re seriously starting to lose it, don’t you?” the Warlock asked, looking irritated and nervous.

  “I think I’m handling the situation with sangfroid and joie de vivre and je ne sais quoi and all other kinds of Frenchy cool,” I replied, rolling down my window to get some fresh air on my face and neck. The dragonskin suit was making me sweat like crazy, and the warm, damp leather was giving off a musty stink that made my nose itch. “It’s not like they cover this kind of stuff in charm school, you know.”

  “You never fucking went to charm school,” the Warlock replied. “And don’t ever ever point a gun at me again unless you want to eat it for dinner.”

  Suddenly the cars in front of us were slowing down; the highway was a sea of red brake lights. Ahead, I saw flashing blue-and-red visibar lights across both lanes.

  The Warlock touched the brake, craning his neck at the police cars. “Dammit, it’s a roadblock.”

  “Screw this noise,” I said, hunting the floorboards for a piece of fluff or a feather or a foldable piece of paper. I found something better: a little toy airplane from one of the kid’s meals the Warlock had started consuming in his effort to eat less at drive-throughs.

  I held the plastic plane in front of me, closed my eyes, and started chanting ancient words for “flight.” The Rover lurched once, twice, then hurtled up in the air with all the grace of a dead elephant flung from a catapult.

  “Whoa Jesus!” the Warlock exclaimed as the vehicle listed alarmingly from side to side. “Keep ‘er straight! The drinks may be tied down but my lunch sure isn’t!”

  I steadied the grenade box between my feet, still chanting. We were sailing over the roadblock, the white-shirted police below shouting, some pointing as others drew revolvers—

  —I was flung back against the seat, the inside of my head seeming to explode in a bright firework of agony. My tongue twitched in my mouth. I only half sensed that we were falling.

  “Jessie, wake up!” Pal squeaked.

  “Keep it together, keep it together!” the Warlock hollered.

  I fought past the stunning pain and got my chant going again, barely in time. The Rover bounced down hard on the pavement fifty yards past the police cars. The engine had died from the force of whatever invisible magic barrier we’d passed through.

  The Warlock cranked the key in the ignition as seven cops ran toward their cars. Nothing.

  I desperately tried to think of a chant to save us, but my mind was blank. I reached into the box at my feet, grabbed a grenade at random—the yellow tin bomb body was made to look like a fat bee—- pulled the pin with my teeth, and flung it as hard as I could at the pursuing policemen.

  The grenade skipped across the pavement. The cops scattered, backpedaling. The little tin bee popped in a huge explosion of sticky honey goo. Five cops were slimed, slipping at first and then sticking fast like insects bogged in thick amber tree sap.

  The two nimbler cops skirted the goo and advanced on the Rover more carefully, shouting orders as they trained their guns on the Warlock and me.

  The Warlock cranked the key again, and the engine coughed awake. He slammed it into gear and stepped on the gas. “Throw a red one!” he yelled.

  I grabbed one of the red copper grenades, yanked the pin, and pitched it behind the speeding Rover. The grenade went up with a loud bang that rattled my teeth and made my ears ring. When the purple mushroom cloud cleared, I saw an enormous, yards-deep crater in the highway across both lanes. The two quick officers had been knocked off their feet and were struggling to get up.

  The Warlock and I drove on in silence. I stared glumly in the rearview mirror, watching for police cars screaming up in pursuit. But none came. The Warlock passed Buckeye Lake and took Exit 132 Onto Johnsontown Road. I half expected another magical barrier to crash down on us the moment we were off the highway… but once again, none came.

  Just south of Fleatown, the Warlock turned right onto an unmarked gravel farm road that wound east and lost its stones past Hog Run. The rutted road dove down into a thicketed ravine for several miles until it reached a crossroads with a narrow, weed-choked dirt road that had probably looked exactly the same for the past fifty years.

  The Warlock slowed to turn left onto the road. The thick, knitted branches of the yellow and black birches looming over the trail made it seem like nightfall.

  I was about to ask how much farther he thought the farmhouse would be when the road took a left-ward bend and suddenly the blighted field spread in front of us like a carcinoma on the skin of the world. The only char that remained was on the limestone rocks lining the pit of what must have been the farmhouse’s basement and the jagged fang of the shattered chimney. A full half acre around the basement was nothing but bare dirt and mottled bits of rusted metal. Sickly-looking poison ivy and a few desiccated toadstools grew on the border of the dead land.

  The Warlock pulled the Land Rover up to the edge of the dead field and killed the engine.

  “Well, this is it,” he said, his jaw set in a grim line. He nodded toward the ruins of the house. “We better get to it—might not have much time before the cops or Jordan’s people find us here. I think that opening the portal will be easiest down in the basement.”

  I shivered despite the heat.

  The Warlock fingered the bronze sword-and-shield pendant at his neck, then took off the necklace and held it out to me. “Here. I think you should wear this.”

  “Why? What is it?” I asked.

  He squinted at me. “It’s a necklace.”

  “Duh. What else is it?”

  “It’s… I don’t know. I think I… got it from my mother.” His eyes seemed to go out of focus for a moment, but he quickly recovered and smiled at me. “Call it a good-luck charm.”

  I hesitated, staring at the gleaming pendant. “Did your dream tell you I should wear this?”

  “Yes.”

  Should I take it? I thought to Pal.

  “As far as I can tell it’s just a necklace,” my familiar replied. “It has an odd magical residue, but I can’t sense an actual enchantment.”

  I took the chain from the Warlock’s outstretched hand and slipped it over my head.

  “You should wait in here while we go to the basement,” I said aloud to Pal.

  “I really think I ought to come with you and help as long as I can,” he protested.

  “The girl’s right,” the Warlock said. “There are probably lots of copperheads slithering around in the weeds Out there, and you’re just the right size for a snack.”

  Pal reluctantly climbed off my shoulder and sat on the top of the headrest. I fetched my helmet from the backseat, put it on, and buckled the strap in place under my chin.

  “Hey,” I said to Pal as I rolled down the passenger window for him. “Thanks for everything you’ve done. I’m really sorry that You’re in trouble for this.”

  “I’m glad I could help,” Pal replied. “It was the right thing to do, and this has been a far more worthwhile cause than the error I Committed that got me indentured in the first place.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “That’s a long, embarrassing story,” Pal replied. “if we meet again, I’ll tell you.”

  “You don’t have long before they come for you, do you?”

  “No, not more than half an hour, I expect.”

  “I hope things go as well for you as they can. I hope—”

  “Please don’t Worry about me—focus on getting Cooper and yourself back here safely. That is what�
��s Important now.”

  “Okay.” I paused, then reached out and scratched Pal between his ears. “You might really be a spider, but I love ya just the same. Thanks again. I don’t think I can say that enough. Good-bye and I hope I have the chance to hear that story someday.”

  I turned to the Warlock. “Let’s do this thing.” The Warlock opened the driver’s-side rear door and nodded down toward the untouched Cooler. “Want a drink for the road? Not to be negative, but it might be your last chance.”

  I shook my head. “I’d rather go to hell thirsty than have to pee when I get there.”

  The Warlock pulled the bungee cords off the cooler, opened the lid, and pulled out a root beer in a dark glass bottle. “Hope you don’t mind if I have one.”

  “Nope.”

  We left Pal gazing at us sadly from his perch on the headrest and stepped toward the dead field. As we reached the graying edge, the Warlock stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, then moved around behind me to stand at my right.

  “Take my hand,” he said. “Just in case. If you haven’t felt this before, it can be pretty bad, better hold on to me.”

  He gripped my gloved hand; I took a deep breath and stepped onto the dead earth.

  It felt as though lightning ran up my leg and out the top of my head. My mind flashed on darkness, pain, and a sudden panic jerked through my core, an orgasm of abject fear. My breath caught in my throat, and I thought I’d go down on my knees.

  “Steady,” the Warlock said through gritted teeth, holding me up. “Keep moving. It’ll go away. I hope.”

  He marched me forward toward the basement, my knees rubbery but the terror slowly ebbing, leaving behind a foreboding that made my stomach clench into a cold acidic knot. The basement was a big L-shaped depression, thirty or forty feet on a side. The house that once sat above it must have been huge. A set of crumbling concrete steps led down into the basement, and as they reached the basement’s edge, I saw that in the middle was a fieldstone pit or well, about ten feet in diameter, the round walls maybe a yard higher than the concrete floor. The pit was topped by rectangular rusted metal doors, the kind you usually see on old-fashioned storm cellars.