“Sagemistress! This is the priest to Hecate. What should we do with this one and his followers?”
“Bind him or leave him, I care not, as long as he doesn’t bleed. Give Hecate no blood. Gather the coven members that remain loyal,” said the Sagemistress. “Travel east. I will meet you along the way.”
The witch beside her started. “But Sagemistress…we do not wish to leave you in the midst of battle.”
“If Hecate rises tonight, I won’t be able to protect you all. Besides, our work here is done. I am only staying to know what actions will need to be taken next. Now go.”
Her witches exchanged glances before nodding. They dropped Dunwick indifferently and fled the room like shadows.
The Sagemistress picked up the mirror, looking between it and the window. In one she could see Charlie Sullivan and his young werewolf friend, both unconscious, in the other a handful of Hunters either too old or too young facing impossible odds. But this was not the first time the Monster Hunters had proven odds wrong.
Behind the Sagemistress, Dunwick stood, a knife in his hand. Silently he crept across the dingy floor somewhere between the human world and the Otherworld, knife at the level of the sitting witch’s neck. Just as he was about to snake the knife forward, the Sagemistress turned in her chair. Her old hand, talons and all, wrapped around Dunwick’s head as she whispered a dark spell, one that would not let a drop of his blood fall to the earth.
“You can’t stop Hecate!” Dunwick cried, his voice dripping with fear. “Praise the Goddess.”
“Shut up, human. Your master hates you just as much as I.”
Dunwick fell to the earth, skin blackened and wrinkled. Dead.
The Sagemistress turned back to the window, holding up Hecate’s mirror, watching both. “Now, young Hunters, what will you do?”
A young witch giggled as her blade sliced through Priest’s calf muscles. He cried out in pain and fell to the ground, leg crippled, as she raised her blade above his head and brought it down.
“Priest!” cried Darcy, raising her crossbow. But she was too late. She watched with the other young Hunters helplessly as the witch’s dagger came closer to piercing Priest’s skull.
From across the street, Chen’s silver dart flew in, hitting the witch in the abdomen and sending her crashing back into a doorway.
Two more witches were already there with daggers, ready to take advantage of Priest’s predicament. One screamed something in Gaelic and made a motion with her hand, turning the rope of Chen’s rope-dart to rotted mush, and then they both were on Priest.
Two thwips announced the firing of crossbows. One of the witches fell, pinned to the ground by an arrow that Aisling shot from above, while Darcy’s arrow knocked back the witch who had muttered the spell. She screamed and thrust herself forward again. Priest, with barely the mobility left to twist his body, swung his sword across the witch’s shoulders just as her blade found the front of his left shoulder.
And then it was madness. The coven ran forward like a pack of wild dogs closing in for the kill. Darcy and Lisa rushed to grab Priest by the shoulders and drag him back, Nash and Chen desperately trying to hold some kind of line. Nash stomped his foot down, the magic of the Otherworld once again lending itself to his gift. A storm of pure energy thundered to life, crashing into the foremost witches.
Nash smiled, but it slipped quickly from his face. The closest witches had held their hands or arms up, strange runes carved into the flesh of their palms, glowing red. An invisible veil crackled once as Nash’s electric energy dispersed through it.
With a rotten smile, one of the witches switched hands, runes carved from her shoulder to her wrist glowing red and black as she pointed at Nash.
“Get out of way!” Chen shouted, tackling him. Nash did not see, but felt the evil magic flying overhead. Jarred as he hit the ground, he looked at where the magic had struck. A sickly, off-color fire burned the dirt there, unnatural and surely deadly.
“Thanks,” said Nash as Chen pulled him back up. Then, “Chen, your arm!”
Chen frowned at him meaningfully, holding his left elbow where the shirt had been burned away. The skin was mottled red and black. “It is fine. Focus on the enemy.”
Nash nodded. He and Chen backed up, regrouping with the others.
The witches stood waiting, their flesh-carved runes of protection still glowing. The coven parted in the middle as Carman walked out.
“Hello again,” she said, smiling sickly sweet. “This is the part where the Sagemistress would tell you to go home and she would spare your lives. But I’m running the show here. I’ll offer you another chance: Give up now and I’ll make sure you die quick.”
Darcy’s breath quickened. She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Nash smiling reassuringly.
“Where the heck is Charlie?” growled Lisa.
Aisling closed her eyes and thought of her grandmother’s face, finally at peace. She stepped forward, raising her bow and loading a special arrow that Lisa had helped her make.
“How about, no!?”
Aisling pulled the trigger, felt the satisfying click as the crossbow bolt shot forward like a bullet. Carman caught it, sneering, and threw it to the ground at her feet.
“You witches do that too much!” said Lisa. “You should stop showing off.”
The words Lisa had carved along the shaft glowed as the arrow hit the ground, and fire sprouted from each letter. As Carman frowned and moved to stamp it out, Lisa jumped in front of her fellow Hunters and threw up a shield of black energy.
The explosions from the magical traps and bombs they all had planted still rocked them inside Lisa’s shield. Bits of knife and arrow and other makeshift shrapnel as well as fire threatened to break through.
When it had stopped, Lisa let the shield down.
Two witches lay dead in the street, killed by the explosions. The rest stood, grinning, behind a curtain of flames.
“At least the fire is separating us for now,” said Darcy.
Carman spoke in a loud whisper and waved her hand over the nearest flames. The tongues of flame seemed to fold and crumple into the ground, leaving only smatterings of the hot element scattered in front of the houses. The street remained smoking and empty between the Monster Hunters and the witch coven.
“That was a good one,” said Carman, her eyes alight with bloodlust. “My turn.”
Charlie woke with fear, something tugging at his gut, telling him that someone was in danger.
“Shhh,” said the Curse Eater. “Too fast and you might collapse again.”
“What happened?”
“You don’t remember? You tried using the Sight. I warned you not to and you did it anyway. It knocked you out immediately.”
Charlie rubbed his head, which hurt. “No,” he said. “No, I got through. I saw who was watching.”
He lifted his head and stood up, trying to look threatening, although he stumbled while he stood.
“Why was the Sagemistress watching? I thought she didn’t get along with your witch friend?”
“She doesn’t,” said a voice. Charlie whipped around to see the witch standing there, her red scarf wrapped around her shoulders, hair and hood framing her face in darkness. She was in her middle-aged form, looking wise and regal.
“I invited her to watch the curse eating ritual,” said the witch.
“Why?”
“The Sagemistress and I have had our disagreements for millennia. A mortal child could not understand. In the meantime, know the Sagemistress and I share no love for each other. My invitation to her was no betrayal of the deal between us. If anything, it was a warning.”
A warning. Charlie frowned. The Sagemistress had given him a warning. This goddess, this strange witch, had to be Hecate. The Sagemistress had said Hecate was not an ally, but between these two ageless monsters,
who could he trust?
Neither, but he didn’t really have a choice. The best he could do right now was get Liev the help he needed and get out of this place.
“So what does the Curse Eater need to do?” he asked, trying to speed things along.
The witch raised her eyebrows at him and smiled, then gestured to the Curse Eater.
The younger woman nodded and stepped aside, and Charlie felt his stomach grow uneasy again. Behind her lay Liev, very close to being full wolf. He was chained to the floor by his biceps, amidst the bloodstains, and restlessly unconscious.
“Your friend does not have one curse, Charlie Sullivan. He has two.”
He stared at her, dumbfounded.
“I mean that he has a curse to become a monster, a faoladh, and that there is another curse that was there before. A curse to die—”
“Die a thrice death,” said Charlie.
“You knew already?”
“He’s already died a thrice death. Stung by a manticore, bit by a wolf, and drowned. Shouldn’t the curse have gone away?”
“No. The curse failed to kill him. It will keep coming back until he is dead.”
“Alright. Then take them both out.”
The Curse Eater stared at Charlie intently. “I cannot.”
He looked between her and Hecate, both grim-faced. “What do you mean you can’t?”
“I mean it’s impossible. I can only eat one of the curses. You must choose which one it is.”
“But…he can’t have either.”
“He must,” said Hecate. “Choose for him, Charlie. To live as a monster, or to die as a human.”
Lisa let out a pained yell as she impaled three witches with her black tendrils, then cut through the raised stick and neck of another with her gift-enhanced rapier. She was overworking her magic ability, even in the Otherworld, but she didn’t care. A muttered spell caused a tall witch with sharpened teeth to burst into flames—draining Lisa even further. She buckled from the exhaustion and found herself fighting on her knees.
It was a losing battle from where she knelt as four of the wild women swarmed her. She managed to block two and felt the dirty nails of a third scrape bloody lines across her cheek. The fourth hit her with a cudgel, knocking her to the ground.
She was dizzy. A thick line of blood already poured from above her ear, where she had been struck. It felt comfortable there on the ground, but Lisa knew from the crowd of dirty feet and legs around her that she was about to die. Why bother getting up? her fuzzy mind asked.
Suddenly two of the pairs of feet stumbled backwards, their owners falling to the ground and scrambling to right themselves. A pair of knees sank to the ground and fell over, the torso attached being headless.
A pair of hands grabbed Lisa and dragged her backwards. From the new angle, she saw Nash and Chen backing up, holding off five attackers.
“You need to slow down,” a voice yelled harshly in Lisa’s ear, causing her to flinch. The hands pulled her up to her feet. She felt nauseous and tired. When she started to sink back to the ground again, a hand slapped across her face, another one kept her up.
“What was that for?” Lisa slurred, the sleepy feeling slowly diminishing.
“To make sure you’re with us, sister,” Darcy said. She let go of Lisa. “Slow down. You were about to get yourself killed out there.”
Lisa shook her head to clear it and wobbled forward, raising her blades again. Darcy stayed next to her, just in case.
From the crowd of the coven, Carman laughed maniacally, reveling in the battle and death and chaos. She shoved the nearest of her followers out of her way. With a sweep of her hand, the wreckage of the earlier explosion—doors and windows and dirt and what fire remained—flew forward. Lisa protected her friends with another shield, but she couldn’t withstand it all. The top of what once had been a living room table broke through her shield, bowling through Nash and Chen. Darcy phased through it. The table crashed against the Old House next to where Aisling was trying to tend to Priest, shattering against the unnatural building without leaving a scratch.
Darcy looked over her shoulder. “Nash, Chen! Can you hear me?”
Chen stood shakily.
Nash didn’t answer. Getting in a fight made him angry. Getting hit by a coffee table ticked him off. He marched in front of Darcy and Lisa and threw his last S.W.I.S. grenade at the coven, then stomped a salvo of electricity.
“Stop wasting your stuff!” said Darcy as the witches’ magical shields absorbed it all.
“Not wasting,” said Nash, raising his rifle. “Wearing ‘em down.”
He fired once at the rune-imprinted palm of one witch, loading and cocking and firing again at the same target. The second bullet hit the first, pushing through the magic barrier and through the runes carved into the witch’s hand, straight through the witch herself. She fell to the ground, already dissolving. The barrier flickered and shriveled to a smaller area where the other witch stood.
“Good job, lad,” said Priest, leaning against the Old House. He gasped as Aisling smeared a green ointment over the deep gashes in his shoulders.
Nash nodded proudly.
“Now be ready,” the old Hunter continued through gritted teeth. “Witches tend to retaliate.”
“Kill the humans!” cried Carman. “Let their blood flow in front of the Old House and raise our goddess!”
The witches cheered like wild crows and hounds and rushed forward much the same, brandishing blade and nail and cudgel savagely.
Nash dropped his rifle and pulled out his short ax. “Well, crap.”
I refuse, thought Charlie. I refuse to believe this is it. So you better live on, Liev, until we can find some way to bring you back again. Because I’m not letting that curse stick to you any longer. Not like I did last time.
“You’ve decided?” asked Hecate, seeing the boy’s face change with determination.
“Take the death curse out of him.”
She smiled, her teeth monstrous. “You are sure?”
“Yes.”
“He will be a faoladh.”
“Just do it.”
Hecate nodded to her servant, and the Curse Eater stepped forward.
“I will need your help,” she told Charlie. “I will eat the curse, but someone who is close to him has to bear the weight of the ritual. Do you accept this role?”
Charlie nodded.
“Be warned. With a curse like this, it will not be pleasant. You will be changed by it.”
“I don’t care.”
“Then sit here, and hold his left hand. That is where the curse entered his body.”
He sat and did as he was told, so that the Curse Eater and Liev sat on either side of Charlie. Hecate stepped back into the shadows, watching them.
“Are you ready?” asked the Curse Eater.
Charlie wondered if it would hurt. “I’m ready.”
She smiled sadly, and Charlie wondered why until she opened her mouth. As the Curse Eater’s mouth opened wider and wider—until finally her jaw unhinged—Charlie felt something he could only describe inadequately as pain course through him. It was pain and sickness, dark magic and the worst of intentions. Sweat beaded upon Charlie’s brow. He didn’t realize it until it ran into his eyes, burning.
Something sharp and angry entered his fingers from Liev’s left hand. Charlie could see it even without his Sight; a squirming, wriggling black thread. It pierced his skin like a jagged sewing needle with a need for revenge. The Exsecrifer’s curse.
There was a calm, almost forced, exhaling, and something latched on to the tip of that hateful magic. Four or five or six strands—always changing, Charlie couldn’t tell how many there were—of gold and pink and blue. He turned to follow their point of origin and was surprised to see they came from the Curse Eater’s open mouth. They snaked and
floated out like jellyfish tentacles, wrapping themselves around the single line of the black curse and through Charlie’s skin. Although they did not feel like pure hate, they were just as painful and intrusive as Liev’s curse. These tentacles began to tug at the black strand, pulling from the left and then the right, back and forth, pulling it loose. There was a screeching sound any time that the black thread was pulled farther out of Liev’s hand, like his skin and the magic were metal scraping against each other. It was the sound of magic being ripped from the very fabric of flesh.
Then another sound began, like the inhaling of some mighty beast. At that same time Charlie felt like the life was being sucked out of him. Indeed, he turned and saw flits of magic being sucked into the Curse Eater’s ghastly maw, both from him and the surrounding air.
His attention was drawn back to Liev as his friend cried out in pain. Charlie couldn’t tell if Liev was conscious or not as his eyes flew open, tinged with silver, and a long, bestial scream sounded from him. The Curse Eater inhaled deeper, and her strange magic pulled harder on the Exsecrifer’s black curse, pulling it centimeter by centimeter from his hand—Charlie caught in between.
And then something gave. Like a bone being pulled slowly out of place, Charlie could feel the black thread lose some hold within Liev. The multiple tentacles coming from the Curse Eater yanked the strand out, revealing a shape attached to it. Feeling a little nauseous, Charlie recognized it as a hand. A black hand, made of magic, the long and angry thread of black just one of its distorted fingers. The Curse Eater’s magic wrapped around it tighter as the hand clawed and dove through Charlie’s skin, dragging it all the way up to his elbow. He gritted his teeth, refusing to let loose the scream that sat ready in his throat.
The black hand stopped there. It grabbed hold of the Curse Eater’s magic and twisted the tendrils around its fingers, balling them slowly, unnaturally, into a fist and pulling back. The Curse Eater stumbled forward, making a choking noise.
Charlie Sullivan and the Monster Hunters: Witch Moon Page 22