Outside, Pulania is looking at the runes and sigils on the side of the building. I’m a little worried about what it looks like, with us covered in blood out here in broad daylight. But in this part of town it might almost be an everyday occurrence. Well, maybe not, but I doubt anyone is going to say anything anyway. Not that there’s anyone nearby, it’s a pretty run down part of town.
As I’m about to give Pulania the hurry up. She welds a great arc of flame, burning away the symbols on the side of the building.
“This is ours now.” She’s placing a spell on the wall. “Anyone who tries to tag this wall is going to have the spray can blow up in their hand.”
She slashes the tip of one of her fingers and writes something in blood on the wall. I can tell it’s a rune, but the blood doesn’t show up against the burnt black background.
“This signifies that it is ours, the blood of the Daughter of Dust will mark this spot, it’s sacred blood, no demon will come anywhere near it.”
I nod my head, but I have something to add myself. There’s not a blade of grass anywhere near here. The club is down an old gravel alleyway, set back with a brick lined parking lot at the front. I put my hand to the ground, and from the parking lot, two willow trees begin to rise up pushing out the brick. They rise up to the height of the building. They remind me of the willows that had been near my house. At the base of the wall Pulania has burned black, I raise rose bushes, with thorns to protect the wall even more from would be taggers. Black roses.
When we’re done, we stand back to admire our work. Awesome.
Chapter 37: Little tests
Afterwards, the weight of the world was not so heavy. We’d struck back, in our own way. It was something we could do as dark witches. Hmm, even though I guess we’re not really ‘witches’ we’ve lived like we were for about a hundred years, and old habits die hard. Pulania is leading the way back along the magikal path and I think she’s leading me home… well, to her place. But no! This was all some clever ploy to get me to a pharmacist.
“What the feck, Pulania? We’re both covered in blood, we look like we’ve been at a mass murderers convention or something. I can’t buy those now.”
But she’s just looking at me with this smirk on her face. “Sure we can, besides I want to know if I’m going to be a grandmother.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“No, I’m not. I almost regret taking you for that little adventure, although I suspected you were going to do much better than either of us could know.”
“I’m not going in there.”
“Yes, you are.” She’s pulling me along with her into the shop. Where ever we are it’s late at night. It’s probably somewhere in the UK. There’s not many people in here, but we’re definitely turning heads.
Inside there’s a young girl with her arms folded blocking our way. “I hope that paint is dry.”
Paint. Right. Sure. We ignore her and brush past. She might notice fairly soon that it isn’t actually paint, though most of it is dry.
“It’s dry,” Pulania calls back to her. A second later Pulania explains it to me.
“We’re near a paint ball course.” She winks at me as we check the aisles. “Ah, you may need some of these.” She’s just handed me a pack of condoms. How embarrassing.
After another aisle or two we come across the pee and see. “I’m not sure which are the best for witches,” Pulania says. “There are three types, how about we take one of each.”
“Fine.” Like whatever.
I’m red as a beetroot…well, beneath all the dried blood. We take our load to the front till. Pulania is ready to pay the teenage girl at the front, but I’m not! Bugger that, I don’t need judgement from some teenager. I compulse the girl into not seeing me as I rush out the front . Pulania can pay if she wants to, but I don’t care, I just want to get out of here.
“What was that about? Are you embarrassed, being with your mum?”
I’m out the front, and it’s started to rain. “Nooo…. yessss… I don’t know. Can we just go home now?”
Oh, listening to myself, I so sound so like a sixteen year old, but I can’t help that. I feel like a sixteen year old, a possibly pregnant one.
“You know,” Pulania says “we grow so slowly, I’m probably going to be a grandmother in my twenties if you are actually pregnant.”
“Yuck. Like I really needed to know that? Now I feel like the victim of some sort of angel paedophilia or something.”
Pulania replies, “it’s nice to have this moment with you.”
Oh my gosh, I think she’s serious.
“Home,” is all I say in reply to that.
***
When we do get back ‘home’ there’s a big black dude in the living room.
Gil, Susan and Ardan are all at one end of the room. I think they’re huddled in fear. Pulania and I come into the room and freeze. I know it’s Teddy, but… he’s different. I wonder if what they say is true?
I might be smiling as Gil comes over to me and asks, “it’s Master, right?”
“Yeah, it is.”
Pulania is smirking. “Yeah, we need rules about this… like no appearing to everyone in unfamiliar bodies that only Amura is going to drool over.”
“That’s a bit harsh,” I reply, swinging my head to Pulania.
She crosses her arms, and looks down her nose at me, “but necessary.”
Hmmm, maybe. “What the ficketty feck are you doing here, Master? How did you find us.”
He reaches into his pocket and proffers a card to me, Theodore Master, Angel extraordinaire, in charge of wayward daughters of Gaea, Furies and their familiars… remember?
I can’t help it, I break out in laughter when I read the card.
“Gaea gave me directions,” Teddy affirms, “apparently, I’m here to help.”
“Brilliant,” I reply, and there’s an evil glint in my eye.
Pulania kicks me in the shin. “What’s he really doing here?” she whispers from the side of her mouth.
Oh yeah, “what are you doing here, Teddy, really?”
“I was sent,” he shrugs. “I was told to spend all my time here from now on.” And he smiles at me as he says that… aaahhhh.
But hang on! I’m still pissed off at the bugger. My demeanor immediately changes, I’m crossing my arms, and I can see in his face that he’s got the message: no forgiveness here, laddy.
“We need to talk, Amura.”
“So talk,” I swing my head at him, my eyes are cold as ice, and I’m sure my dark aura is billowing.
He’s looking at everyone in the room, but let the little bastard sweat. I want a public proclamation of apology and undying love, nothing else is going to do here… unless he’s brought plenty of chocolate, lots of flowers, and plenty of alcohol, and I don’t see any of that.
“Umm, do you know why you can always recognise me?”
“Dark witch shit,” I answer.
But Pulania turns to me, “nnnoooo.”
“What do you mean, no? We know stuff, this is dark witch shizz.”
She’s shaking her head at me, and that look? It’s almost a look of pity. “No, Amura. I can sense a presence when Master is near, but that’s not a dark witch power, that’s a daughter of Gaea power, a dark witch isn’t going to know an angel is near unless he appears right in front of her.”
“I tried to tell you once before, Amura, some of your powers… they aren’t natural,” Teddy tells me. “You shouldn’t be able to find me the way you do. Those aren’t dark witch powers. I can’t marry you, Amura, because angels can’t marry, but you’ve bonded to me, or maybe I’ve bonded to you. Whatever this is, it’s close. Scary close.”
I can see the pleading in his eyes. My arms are still folded and I look down at the ground. This is a bit much to take in. “I have to think about that for a bit.”
And with that, I go off to my room.
Chapter 38: The big one
My eyes pop open. It’s the mi
ddle of the night, but something has just occurred to me. The demon’s phone number. Teddy can tell me who the number belongs to, and where to find him.
Of course, I’m naked. I toy with the idea of just finding him as I am, but no, he’s not forgiven yet. Clothes. I quickly throw a few clothes on and run out to where he is in the living room. He doesn’t sleep, angels don’t need to, he’s just there watching an old time movie. Apparently we still get free to air television wherever the heck Gaea has put the house.
“It’s East of Eden,” he says when I sit down on the couch opposite him. “And, I can’t tell you about the number.”
“Oh. Well, that kills that. You know, we can find out about the number from other ways, it just would have been quicker from you.”
He just shrugs in that annoying, “I’m an angel, what can I do?” kind of way.
“You two up.” It’s Gil, at the living room entrance.
“Yeah, apparently we’re watching East of Eden,” I answer.
“That’s very angel appropriate.” Teddy just rolls his eyes at Gil’s comment, he actually hasn’t taken his eyes off the television yet.
A minute or more later and we’re joined by Pulania, Susan and Ardan.
“What, are you guys doing up?” I ask.
“I called them,” Teddy answers.
Ardan just plunks himself down on the floor and switches the television to one of his video games.
“Hey, I was watching that.” Teddy, playfully clips the top of Ardan’s head, and Ardan just ignores him, though he turns around after a second and there’s a big grin on his face. Like when did this bromance start?
“You didn’t call them.” I draw Master back to the here and now.
“I woke their minds. Might have done the same to you. It’s an angel thing.”
“Well, we were asleep, dude.”
“Not Ardan, he’s been awake all night. He can’t sleep,” Master replies.
We all look down at Ardan, who turns off the television (saving his game) and turns around.
“So what’s been keeping you up?” Pulania asks Ardan.
He looks off to the side for a moment, then back at Susan. “The demon that took me, he had… other girls.”
“They’d have the clap, too,” Teddy finishes for him.
“How many?” Pulania asks.
“Twelve.”
“That figures,” I continue, “with Susan that would make thirteen. It was probably some sort of demon ritual thing.”
“Possibly,” Teddy comments, “but that aside, there are twelve girls out there dying from the clap.”
Pulania and I look at each other. We’re sorta mentally shrugging here. Other people’s evil doing isn’t really our business.
Teddy rolls his eyes at us. “If you give them the antidote you’ve developed, you can study the effects on their gametes. It might help with Susan.”
“He’s got a point there,” Pulania agrees.
“Hatchesput wouldn’t agree, but what she doesn’t know…”
“…she can’t kill us for.” Pulania finishes my thought.
***
A few days later, and, as it turned out, three of the girls had already died. Like any good bacterial infection, people react differently, some go down like a house of cards, while others linger. Whatever coven or demon lab had developed the original bacteria, it might have been a good weapon to take out Susan with, but it was a bust in terms of fatalities. It was acting too quickly. There wasn’t time for the bacteria to be passed around like there was with AIDS. The victims weren’t surviving long enough to transmit it. Only one of the girls had been with another boy.
We had tracked the nine surviving girls down, and that one boy, and under the auspices of the UK disease control unit, for which Pulania had forged documents, we applied the phage antidote. They all reacted well to it, and would survive. The boy was definitely sterile now, and we’d have to get the girls tested. The funny thing was that they all still carried both the original bacteria and the phage at low levels. They were contagious.
Pulania and I are looking at the results in my lab.
“I don’t think we should tell Teddy about this.”
“Sweetie, I’m sure he already knows,” Pulania replies.
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure that so long as we don’t say anything to him, he can’t bring it up.”
“Ooo, now that’s evil.”
I smile at that, it kinda is. “This is our big bullet point. We can take credit for this one with the coven. This is still a communicable disease and we’ve created it, it doesn’t kill, but it sterilises.”
“That’s a whole world of misery unto itself.” Pulania is nodding her head in agreement. “And there’s no cure.”
It’s brilliant, sometimes some of the biggest steps in evality occur by accident. It was just a matter of recognising the potential.
“This thing could affect millions,” I observe.
“Yes, we’ll be able to hold our heads high with the coven now. Hatchesput will be pleased.”
We look at each other for a minute. “Are we still dark, Pulania?”
“We’ll always be a little bit dark, sweetie. I’m the Daughter of Dust, remember. My corruption by Samael made me dark, and you’re our daughter, his blood makes you dark as well. It’s what we are.”
“So we go with this to the coven?”
“Damn right, we need to face Hexabus, and having a big success like this is going to give us pretty good street cred in terms of getting support from the rest of the coven.”
“You know, the Imbolc celebration and the witch of the year do are only a couple of days off. Did you get the email? This could make us contenders.”
I’d never even contemplated witch of the year before. It was a big thing, you needed to do major evil doing to be a contender for that. Every year at Imbolc, the celebration of the first stirrings of spring, the coven held the witch of the year award ceremony. I’d always hoped to one day just make witch of the month, but this year we had a real shot at the big prize. I’m a little bit excited at the prospect.
“Yeah, we’re going there in style, but we’re going to need back up,” Pulania adds.
“Teddy?” I ask.
“No, he won’t be allowed to help in that way, but I have an idea of where we might get some major support.”
Chapter 39: Cat’s out of the bag
“Gil!” Pulania calls when we get home that evening.
We’d pretty much buried ourselves in the lab for a few days while we worked on the clap kids, as we called them. We’d set the girls up for sterility testing, there was nothing much more we could do until the results came back from that. We’d made an appointment for Susan too, but it would all take time. The clap kids had all gone home.
Pulania and I had told them they were cured, but quite possibly sterile, well, in the boy’s case it was definite. Our hope is that they’ll all be at it like rabbits if they are sterile. After all, no chance of the girls getting pregnant if they are, so no bars there. The bacteria and phage combination would slowly spread through the population, it would probably take years before the authorities even knew there was a problem. It could quite literally affect millions of people.
“Gil!” she calls again.
A black cat skirts down the stairs to the entrance way and transforms back into Gil at the bottom of the steps. I’m still getting used to that.
“Yep,” Gil answers.
“How are things going with that Raven of yours?”
Gil is going all sorts of red. Ooooo, they’re a thing!
“Can Ravens and cats even get together? I mean what would their children be like?” I needle poor Gil.
“Don’t know, all feathers and fur, I expect,” Pulania plays along.
“Hey, do you guys have a serious reason for wanting me, or was this just about needling me because I have a boyfriend.”
Well, there it was, cat’s out of the bag now. “Our little girl is growing
up.” I give Gil a big hug. After all, I may look 16, but I’ve been around for a long time, Gil really is only 17 years old.
“Hey, how old is that Raven anyway?” Pulania asks.
“Ahh, he might be 26.”
“Cradle snatcher,” Pulania and I say in unison. It’s scary sometimes how closely knit our thinking is.
“Snap.” We high five.
And then after a moment, “Gil, if he gives you any heartache, you just let Pulania or I know, and we’ll sort it.”
Gil’s eyes go very wide. She knows what I mean. If he steps out of line he’s one dead Raven.
“We’ve got your back, Gil,” Pulania adds.
I keep thinking about those scars on Gil’s wrists and how those came about. I’m not going to let there be a repeat. Neither is Pulania.
“It’s good guys, he’s a really nice fellow, really. Just really into his job – protecting Royals. Anyway, what do you want me for?”
“We need you to see your boyfriend, and set up a meet with the Royals,” Pulania answers. “They’ve been isolated from the rest of the Fae community for so long I think we can count on them as being pretty neutral in regards our issues, and they may not want to die if Susan is killed.”
“Just because they’ve been isolated from the Fae, doesn’t mean they haven’t got demonic ties of some sort,” I object.
“Yeah, there’s a small possibility of that,” Pulania allows, “but there’s no agreement with the devil that’s going to save their whole clan from the end of the world. Besides, they’ve been doing pretty well by themselves for the last few hundred years, there really hasn’t been any advantage for them in forming an alliance with anyone.”
“Hmm, then why would they help now?” I ask, but that’s a stupid question. “Oh yeah, end of the world. I keep forgetting about that.”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty sobering question. Do you want to live or not? We may not be able to count on a straight answer from everyone in our coven, but I think we can count on the Royals for this one.”
I’m nodding my head at Pulania’s logic. She’s right, we should be able to get some help from them. “So you’re hoping they’ll be our backup?”
The Dark Witch Page 15