MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries

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MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 26

by Rebecca Vassy


  “Sure do. But, I mean, starting your own business, that’s a big deal.”

  “Is it?” She drained her mug and set it down on the table. I did the same. “People start businesses all the time. And lose them all the time too. I just keep wondering, is this it? Is this as great as life is ever going to get? Because that’s fucking depressing. What am I even doing with my life? What’s even more ironic is that I came here to figure that out. My partner would fire me if she could for taking even more time off, but my stepmom suggested that going someplace fun to kick back and play for a few days might help me figure out what I want out of life.” Her laugh was more of a huh. “I guess I did, if you count ‘not starving to death or being carted off by a demon’.”

  “It’s a start, right? Let’s get through the weekend and then maybe we can help each other work out what’s next.”

  She returned my smile; hers was rueful. “Yeah, I guess.”

  I was sitting sideways in my chair by this point, listening to her and watching her face in the faint moonlight. “I’m really glad I met you,” I said in a rush of warmth. “I hate the circumstances, but--I wouldn’t trade this part, right now.”

  “Me neither,” she said after a moment, looking back at me. “I’m still afraid. But for once I’m not lonely.”

  “Me neither.” It was the first time in a long time that I could have said it.

  “Hey,” came a voice from a little distance off. We both jumped and sat up, looking back to the path that led into camp. A silhouetted figure was emerging from the shadows and approaching us. “Anyone out here?”

  “Nobody but us chickens,” I said. “Who’s there?”

  “Officer Friendly.” The voice turned out to belong to a sturdy-looking woman with frizzy hair tucked up under a ranger’s hat, who turned on a lantern as she approached. She smiled at us. “Overnight volunteers, god I love you guys.”

  I wondered if she was going to hug us.

  She didn’t. “You need a light out here? I could leave the lantern. It’s awfully dark.”

  “Thanks, but we have a flashlight,” said Vivi. “We’re just enjoying the stars and the fireflies.”

  “It’s a good night for it,” said Officer Friendly. “Everything going okay out here?”

  “Peachy,” I said.

  “Cool. You guys want a shot of rum?” She held up a bottle of what looked like it might be halfway decent stuff, gleaming richly amber in the light of the lantern.

  I glanced at Vivi. “No, I think it’ll make us sleepy.”

  “Fair. Well, the rangers are on duty all night if you run into any trouble. Thanks again for volunteering.” She wandered back off into camp.

  “If only she knew why we’re so dedicated.” Vivi’s smile was wry.

  “Right? But hey, we’re still helping.”

  After the interruption, our conversation faded out into comfortable silence. Vivi passed me the bag of pretzels, and between us we ate them all. I relaxed and enjoyed the coolness of the night air. We could still hear music and the buzz of people, and feel more than hear the thrumming pulse of bass, coming from camp; out here, the soundtrack was all rustling leaves and cicadas and crickets and tree frogs.

  Vivi dropped the empty pretzel bag between us and opened a fresh bag of chips. “So, a fae war, huh? Do you think you’ll pull it off? Protecting all these people from it? Or stopping it from happening?”

  “I have to try. And honestly? All I care about right now is delaying things for a couple of days. If a bunch of supernatural beings want to go to war over this spit of land once we’ve left it, I can’t stop them. I just want to do whatever it takes to get all the human beings out of here before that happens.”

  “You could, you know.” She sounded grim. “If that’s the only goal, then call in a bomb threat or something. Get the place evacuated.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. To be honest, I think I had become less willing to deal with law enforcement than with supernatural armies after a couple of years on the streets. But she had a point. I thought about it. “I could do that. Not an elegant solution, but you’re right, it’d do the job for that part. But that wouldn’t take care of the hungry grass, which means it wouldn’t fix you.”

  “Yeah, there’s that detail. But listen, keep it in your back pocket, okay? If things are about to go south, even if I’m--even if we haven’t figured out what to do about me, then it’s better to take a drastic action like that than to let everything go to hell. Literally.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” I promised, although for me it was such a last resort I might as well have refused. Not if it meant giving up on Vivi.

  When we fell silent once more, the late hour weighed on me. The noise from camp, though not gone, was diminishing. Sitting for so long was making my muscles stiff, aching with weariness. I longed to put my head back in the chair and take a nap, and I fought to stay alert, snapping awake each time my heavy eyelids drooped. I wished Tamar’s buddy would hurry up.

  I half-registered the figure walking toward us up the path from camp, paying only enough attention to stretch a little and try to shake off drowsiness so I wouldn’t seem like I was falling asleep on the job.

  “Do you smell something weird?” murmured Vivi sleepily.

  It wasn’t a ranger.

  The figure was almost at our little shelter and I saw the glint of razor teeth and the absence of any light where eyes should be.

  This time, the demon wasn’t smiling.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Vivi shot upright in her chair with a choked shout. I groped for a weapon and my hand closed on my coffee mug, as if that was going to do me any good.

  He was glaring at me. “You’re becoming a problem.” His voice was a warning shot, crackling and deep.

  I trembled, but gathered every bit of defiance I had in me. “Good.”

  “Keep interfering and you will become responsible for anything that happens as a result.” He loomed over us, and the air was thick with his displeasure.

  “I wouldn’t dream of stealing credit from you.” I ignored the better angels in my head that were kicking my brain and yelling at me that now would be a good time to stop smarting off.

  Vivi gripped the edge of the table, her gaunt face desperate. “What do you want with me? Please, I’m begging you, I’m nobody. Just let me go, okay? Take this curse off of me.”

  He flicked a glance in her direction and gestured toward me with that black-gloved hand. “Simple enough. Dispose of this one for me, and you can go free.”

  She went gray. “Dispose--you mean kill? You want me to kill Mari for you to take the curse off?”

  “He’s lying,” I said. “He won’t let you go.”

  “How badly do you want to live?” His voice was angry, impatient, ominous.

  She looked down at her lap. She was shaking. “Not that badly.”

  “Then shut up,” he growled.

  “You’re a liar,” I said. “I don’t think you know how to break the curse or you wouldn’t have needed help laying it in the first place. And even if she did it, you couldn’t have me anyway.”

  “I no longer care about that.” That part didn’t sound like a lie.

  My mind was racing, trying to get ahead of him. “Whatever you think you’re doing, don’t bother,” I said with far more boldness than I felt. “Your problems are bigger than me at this point. A lot bigger.”

  He studied my face in silence. I don’t know how it happened, with neither of us moving or saying anything, but the power shifted between us. I sensed his fury subsiding. I felt my shoulders going rigid with tension, my whole body braced against my chair. He crouched down in front of us, folding his arms on the flimsy card table between him and us, putting himself at our eye level. I sucked in a tiny panicked breath. His expression smoothed out, an empty death mask over a nonexistent face.

/>   “I know you.” He meant it as a threat. I heard it as one.

  “You used to.” My bravado faltered.

  He seemed amused. “You’ve learned a few tricks, I’ll grant you. But you’ve gotten in over your head. I can see that you know it. You’ve wandered too far and gone where you don’t belong, and now...” His voice grew soft, even gentle. “Now, you’re wishing you could go home, or wake up, or find your way out. But that’s no longer possible. It’s too late.”

  Vivi quaked in silence beside me. For all I knew, her mind could have snapped. I prayed she could keep it together long enough for us to get through this. I slipped my hand down under the armrest of my chair, acting on half a thought.

  The demon rested his chin on his folded hands and tipped his head to one side. “I regret that things had to happen this way. I would have much preferred to be able to take you with me afterward. To take piece after piece at my leisure. It’s unfortunate. I suppose I will have to be content with hearing about the experience instead.”

  “Hearing about what?” I was still pinned by that unblinking stare.

  He smiled. A horrible expression, when there are no eyes for the smile to reach.

  That’s when I became aware of the movement. At first it was a hint of motion out of the corner of one eye. Then I saw a shadowy shape behind him.

  There were others with him. And they were coming closer.

  And none of them were forbidden to do anything to me.

  Could we run fast enough? I closed my hand. Would it make a difference? I had to try. I pulled my hand out of the pretzel bag beside my chair and gambled.

  It would have been more effective if I’d known his name to invoke it against him, but instead I thought of the ways I recognized him, and in that instant shouted, “I banish you!” And threw a sizable pinch of pretzel salt into his face, going for the voids of his eyes.

  With every bit of my will, I pushed my desire to drive him away, far away, into that bit of salt. He shrieked in pain and rage, a horrid sound, and fell back clutching his face. I grabbed Vivi’s hand. “Run! Go!” She was still dazed, but let me drag her along as I made a break for the path back to camp.

  Tamar had said, “Salt goes where you tell it to.” Turns out, in a pinch, it doesn’t matter too much whether it’s special extra-refined Dead Sea salt charged on an altar under the full moon or cheap kosher salt from an empty snack bag.

  Shadows melted off of the figure approaching us from that path. It was tall and thin and feminine, a drowned face with sorrowful eyes and long hair rippling in a mantle over her shoulders, wrapped in a long pale cloak that faded out to nothingness along the hem. Its frayed threads floated in the night air as she drifted closer, cloudy eyes fixed upon us.

  I skidded to a halt and hung there for half a second as sheer animal panic detonated through my body. I pivoted, almost falling, as she began to open her cloak. A new rush of terror flooded my limbs at what might be under it. I raced in the other direction in blind fear, still hanging on to Vivi, my only thought that I must, must, must get away and somehow hide.

  The demon was laughing as we passed him.

  Across from him, stumbling toward us from our other side, was a trio of short, dark-clad figures with the proportions of children and lumpy, uneven white faces with tiny dark eyes. They held hands. I circled wide around them and ran out into the parking lot.

  A primly-dressed, slight figure with its head covered by a veil or a sack stood up in the bed of a pickup truck. It carried a broken doll’s face cradled in one arm, and the doll’s glass eyes rolled, watching us pass, as the figure climbed out of the truck. I had no idea where I was going, carried along by the wild hope that if I could outrun these horrors, some safe place would present itself to me.

  Up ahead, I saw twin lights rounding a corner and turning toward us. My heart pounded with hope. Headlights! They were still far off, but if we could reach them--what? I didn’t care. Light seemed safe. The heavy doors of a car seemed safe.

  I raced toward them, waving my arm and yelling with the last of my breath, Vivi stumbling at the end of my grip trying to keep up. I was babbling and my cheeks were wet, my skin cold as the night air rushed over my face, desperate relief throbbing in my overtaxed heart.

  I slammed into something that wasn’t fully solid and staggered back, crashing against Vivi as both of us went down. For a moment I was so disoriented that I wasn’t sure where I was, or which direction was up, and I couldn’t focus my eyes. Insect-like, I flipped over onto my hands and knees.

  It wasn’t headlights far off. It was another monster right in front of us, whose features I couldn’t see because twin beams of cold yellow light streamed from its wide-set eyes and dazzled me. Spots of color bloomed and floated in my vision and I scuttled back in the dirt, holding up a hand to shield my eyes.

  Vivi hid her face against me and sobbed. A noose of them were closing in on us, but I couldn’t see more than the faintest outlines as my pupils shrank. Instinct made me reach for my key, thinking somehow I could pull the two of us into some adjoining realm out of sheer force of will, but it was gone. I scrabbled around in the grass to find it and my fingers closed on weeds and twigs.

  There were cold fingers in my hair, wrenching my head back. I struggled and kicked and tried to cover Vivi with my body, feeling her clutching at my clothes. I pulled out all the drawers of my brain, dumping them out in the hopes of finding some tiny fragment of knowledge that would help me, but there was nothing there. The doll face was in front of me, and the glass eyes looked into mine as the kewpie mouth puckered open and slowly began to inhale my breath.

  I gasped and sucked at the night, struggling to take in air, but my lungs weren’t strong enough to fight the vacuum and my limbs flailed with panic, my body bucking to get free. The doll face closed its eyes and mouth and I pulled in a whoosh of breath, painful for its suddenness. I felt something burning around my shoulder, an acid fire spreading, and the wetness of thick cold tongues on my hands. They were dissolving me, I thought, digesting me right there where I lay. The doll face took my breath again.

  Stars exploded behind my eyes. Maybe I would get the mercy of passing out before the horrible pain got even worse. This is it. I failed. He wins. Now it’s just feeling myself fade away until there’s nothing but blackness, until I never have a thought again. I hope.

  Someone was shouting. I couldn’t make out any words. Everything hurt. I felt like there was an icy stream running through me, and little pieces of identity and memory and consciousness were being washed away one by one.

  And then I was released, and I dropped like a sack of rocks, collapsing onto Vivi’s rigid, trembling frame. A vast cold wind whipped over us, drowning out sound except for a rasping, furious chorus of screams that pierced my soul, and then a slam and a tremor that rocked the ground beneath me.

  I just lay there.

  I couldn’t make sense of what had happened, or where the pain had gone. I still ached in a dull, leftover sort of way, and my ears rang and my eyes were bleary and my throat and lungs were raw. But I no longer felt like my flesh was melting off my bones.

  “You okay? Could you say something? Do you know where you are?” The voice was rough with hard living, but concerned, anxious. Human. “You able to move?”

  Beneath me, Vivi moaned. I remembered in a fuzzy way that I was bigger than she was, and shifted until I could roll off of her. Above me was the night sky, dark and soft and scattered with the silver glitter of galaxies.

  A head moved into my line of sight. I registered a face. Dark skin. Moonlight tracing short frizzy hair. Sharp eyes, looking me over. I rolled my head to each side. I saw the fenders and dark underbellies of cars, trampled grass beginning to straighten. There was dew on the ground. Chilly. I pressed my cheek into it and breathed long and deep, letting it cool my adrenaline-flushed face.

  “They’re gone.” A hand, hel
d out to me.

  Vivi’s face joined the woman’s looking down at me. She was pale and shaking, but didn’t look hurt. “Mari? Are you okay? Mari?”

  I decided to try to sit up, and grasped the hand. It was callused and strong. Despite the protest of my many aches, I managed to get upright. My head throbbed where my hair had been pulled, and I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand.

  The woman squatted beside us. She was big and solid. Like a tank, I thought, an impression helped by her army surplus pants and sleeveless t-shirt that revealed numerous tattoos on her burly arms. There was a lumpy canvas duffel bag on the ground beside her.

  Thoughts were beginning to re-order themselves in my brain again. “You’re Tamar’s friend.”

  “Colleague, at best. And you lucky I didn’t nap at the rest stop like I thought about.” Her lopsided grin was big enough to reveal a missing molar. She shook the hand that still grasped hers. “I’m Dionne.”

  We straggled back to the chairs we’d abandoned. Vivi found her phone in the grass and texted the others.

  “Tell them we’ll meet them at Free Radicals.” I wanted nothing more than to be out of here.

  Vivi hesitated, looking at her screen. “But there’s a half hour left in our shift.”

  “Oh my gods.” I groaned. “Who cares?”

  “I just don’t want us to get in trouble.”

  “Y’all, I’m sneaking in as it is. I can’t hang around out here.” Dionne shifted her duffel on her shoulder.

  I held out a hand. “See? We’ll just say one of us got sick and we had to bail, if anyone even notices. You really want to stick around right here?”

 

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