The Problem With Witches: An Arcane Shot Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  That was when he remembered what he’d forgotten, because only a female could pull off that ‘you’re not all that’ vibe with just a crease of her brow, the purse of her mouth. The flash of her eyes, all seven and half pairs of them.

  She wasn’t an it. Bonnie. She was Bonnie.

  He couldn’t say he blamed her for her lackluster opinion of him. But as he chose the most central of the eyes to stare into, he was hit by another wave of energy.

  This energy wasn’t summoned or concocted magic like Ruby and Ramona had used to charge the book. Or what Elagra devised in her dark lair. This was deeper, innate. A magic created by things far beyond human abilities, but which touched the deepest part of human understanding.

  He looked into her eyes and saw…himself. He saw the darkness Elagra had talked about. She’d reminded him of all the things he’d done with it to survive, no noble purpose. What she had commanded from him the night he killed Amy was the violence, the visceral, primal things in the darkest corners of himself.

  But as he stared into Bonnie’s face, he knew that darkness wasn’t evil. It was simply part of who he was. In its pure, original form, it was part of the natural order. He could use it for evil, or to defend or fight for his family, for himself, the kid he’d been.

  “I love you across the river and over the hills,” he said. He was soaked, just as Ramona had warned. And the water kept coming as Bonnie hovered over him. The book was getting wet.

  She made that noise which reminded him of a mix of whales and thunder. Then she reached out to him, with a clawed hand bigger than a dump truck.

  She could easily kill him if she grabbed him too enthusiastically, but recoil was the wrong idea. He looked down at the rabbits and remembered. Rabbits hop. His best tactic was going to be to jump when the claw drew close enough, land in the cup of the leathery palm.

  Fuck it. He stuffed the book back in his waistband and got ready to jump.

  Instead, he was forced to duck.

  The air exploded with fire and heat, perilously close to Bonnie’s head. The concussion took it further, slamming against her skull, tearing into sleek brown flesh and taking out one of the emerald green eyes.

  Blood the color of gunmetal showered down on him, mixed with the water. Bonnie screeched in pain.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  As she cried out in pain, his sea creature threw herself backward, her mass hitting the river with maximum force. He saw her tail for the first time, a brief glimpse of the scaled length. It was thick as a redwood.

  The Aquarium shuddered, like a table rattling from a slammed door. But it didn’t stop. An ominous growl, the rumble of the earth, joined the sounds of wind and battle, and started to overtake both.

  Shit.

  He’d done what he was told, shut everything else out, but now everyone else’s reality hit him from all directions.

  He’d been in alley fights, but he’d never been in combat, not in firefights like Peter or Dana. But their descriptions leaped to mind. Dark, swirling shadows, explosions of fire, flashes of light. Mikhael and Derek were right in the heart of it, fighting with sword and staff, in the air, on the roof, turning, twisting, sometimes buried in the swarm for a harrowing moment before fire and electricity incinerated or threw their attackers back. The sky had become something right out of an Armageddon scenario.

  They were hellishly good fighters, but no way they were able to keep all of that off of him. A glance right showed him he had Ruby and Ramona to thank for the shielding. The women were twenty feet apart on the mall roof, planted like willow trees with arms lifted. Their bodies vibrated, swayed, mouths moving, whatever was needed to keep a net of silver energy domed over him. The threads glimmered like a spider web.

  But with Bonnie’s violent reaction, the ground shifted in a way that had him stumbling. That net wavered, broke free like the snapped lines holding a ship to the dock. The sound of glass shattering told him they’d lost more windows in the Aquarium’s cylinder roof feature, but he didn’t turn to look. What was in front of him captured his attention and wouldn’t let go.

  Bonnie had disappeared from view. Not because she’d ducked back under the water. It had swallowed her. He was staring at an absolute darkness that wasn’t darkness at all. It was a wall of water, rearing up from the river, building high enough to reach the roof of the Aquarium where he stood.

  He understood violent situations, having been in more than he cared to remember. He knew how fast and how slow things happened. The reality was so incredibly fast, while the things you tried to stop from happening seemed to take forever.

  He dove for the rooftop utilities and wrapped his arms around a pipe. If there’d been time, he would have pulled his belt loose and wrapped it around the fixed structure, adding to the reinforcement. As Marcie could attest, he knew how to do that pretty damn quick. But the water was quicker.

  The force of the impact, if it didn’t land on him with the power to crush him into a bag of bone shards, would probably yank him loose, send him spinning. He’d be pitched off the roof, dashed into something unyielding, and end up a crumpled heap anyway.

  But that wasn’t his primary concern. He was on a tall building with a slim chance of avoiding that fate. Marcie was on the docks with none.

  He had time to do one more thing. Maybe it was a prayer, maybe a demand. Let Marcie be safe. Fuck, let her be safe.

  Even though it was the one thing his brat never was. She had the courage of an army. Braver than anyone he knew, really. And considering the company he kept, that was saying something.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When they’d left the men on the roof, they took the stairs down to a side exit which put them close to the street side. Marcie didn’t know who had given them access to the empty building, but Matt had connections all through the city. If they didn’t have bigger priorities, she would have been tempted to dash through to see the penguins, her favorite part of the Aquarium. Another day. She hoped.

  “Stay watchful,” Raina said. “And always stay behind me or to the side, but don’t cut in front of me.”

  “Same goes,” Marcie answered.

  Raina shot her an amused look. “You really are like Ruby.”

  As they emerged from the shadow of the Aquarium and headed down the dock, they saw Ramona. The chaos witch was on the waterfront railing, and she was dancing. Turning, twisting, her arms out and head tipped back. She pranced and dipped like a ballerina, seemingly oblivious to all of them. She never looked down, and yet she never misstepped.

  “Don’t try to talk to her right now,” Raina said. “She’s getting a feel for the different energies, what’s gathering. Dancing helps her get in tune with those rhythms. Once she knows what she needs to know, she’ll go up on the rooftop there.” She nodded to a section of the shopping center, the corner closest to the Aquarium. “With Ruby, so they can be in the best position to help Ben.”

  They passed not far from a bench where Silas sat, eating beignets. Marcie felt strangely loathe to meet his glance, remembering that odd, probing feel when he’d first looked at her, but she chided herself for that. He seemed okay, even if his appraisal had made her feel uncomfortable. So she made herself look directly his way.

  A flicker passed through his gaze, as if her regard surprised him, but he nodded politely. Then lifted the bag, a wordless offer.

  Hanging around these guys was a surreal experience. Sure, why not have a beignet before fighting a crazy battle against paranormal forces to save New Orleans? She imagined him waiting in line at Café du Monde, taking out his wallet to pay. Freaky.

  She shook her head. “No, but thank you.”

  He nodded with a faint smile, and went back to watching Ramona.

  “She couldn’t pick a shopkeeper,” Raina muttered. “Or an accountant. That’s what she really needs.”

  “Well, he’s a little odd, but he seems…nice,” Marcie ventured. “He’s not human, is he?”

  “No, he’s not.” Raina
didn’t elaborate, passing between Silas and Ramona, giving Silas only a quick nod of acknowledgement before she continued onward.

  Up on the Aquarium roof, they’d been able to see Elagra, but on the ground, the warehouse where she’d appeared was around a curve, not visible to them at this angle. Marcie didn’t expect she’d remained in that spot, anyway. She wondered that Ramona didn’t seem as concerned as they were about immediate threats, but then she thought again about Silas. As relaxed as he had looked, his eyes hadn’t been. They’d been moving pretty constantly. Which explained maybe why Raina also didn’t appear worried about Ramona’s possible proximity to the dark witch.

  What was he? Marcie hoped there’d be time to ask at some point.

  Down on the ground, there was no chill wind like that strange one they’d felt on the roof. But the sky was still unnaturally dark. The energy in the air was likewise getting denser, making it harder to breathe. It had a quality that raised the hair on the back of Marcie’s neck and made her once again search the rooftop, reassure herself that Ben was still standing there. Though he was way too uncomfortably close to those menacing winged shapes.

  “Marcie.”

  Marcie snapped her attention back down at Raina’s sharp tone. There. Elagra stood between two buildings. She’d even stepped up on a cluster of crates, the better to be noticed. It made Marcie even more wary, and she saw Raina was the same, sweeping her glance around them, looking for traps. As they drew closer, Elagra’s focus remained on the darkened sky and the suddenly much choppier river. Even now the cat’s paws slapped against the bulkheads, sending up spray behind them.

  Marcie wasn’t fooled by Elagra’s apparent lack of attention. The witch was every bit as aware of them as they were of her. She proved it a heartbeat later, when she spoke.

  “I am here to make sure what should be born will be born,” she said. “Without interference from you who do not understand.”

  Her voice, pitched above the rising wind, was flat, no inflection. It crawled over Marcie’s skin, but Raina shot her a look Marcie read easily enough.

  Steady. She’s going to fuck with your head.

  Well, she’d been mindfucked by the best, for far better reasons. She could hold her own when it was for worse ones.

  “We understand just fine,” Raina said. “You want to kill everybody. It gets you off in a way sex never has. But your twisted fuckery affects more than you. An’ it harm none, do as you will. So this shit isn’t happening.”

  Elagra’s gaze turned to them. It took an act of will for Marcie to hold her ground, not start back. Her eyes were red. Like blood-red marbles, unnaturally glossy. Disturbingly enough, it reminded Marcie of the nail polish commercials where they coated a ball with one of their cheerful colors, just to prove how resistant the polish was to chipping. Elagra’s lips peeled back from those eerie sharp teeth.

  “You don’t know me, witch,” she rasped.

  Raina pulled the band loose from her thick hair so it tumbled free, whipping out around her like a glossy cloak. A shimmer of wind currents around her, and she changed. She still had her lush human body, but now there was that otherness to it. Her fingers had transformed into wicked talons, and when she bared her teeth, the canines were sharp, curved. The real thing, not filed like Elagra’s. Raina’s eyes had also morphed, the exotic gold and green expanding, the pupils narrowed to slits like a serpent’s.

  A mist swirled around the half-succubus, reminding Marcie of the powder thrown out at the Holi Festival of Color in India. This was a pale crimson color. The wind picked it up and twisted it outward. Some of it touched Marcie, a sex demon’s ensnaring power.

  She remembered that from the bedroom, only this time it was fully unleashed, summoning one horrible reaction. Helpless terror. Because with this intent behind it, Raina’s sexual compulsion wouldn’t be resisted. It had one end goal. Death. A pleasurable death, but death all the same.

  It was the most disturbing duality she’d ever felt, and fortunately only for a heartbeat. It rushed toward Marcie, looped around her in a whirl and then left her, headed for its true target. Trembling in the aftermath, she wondered if Elagra could see it. The witch didn’t seem to be mounting any defense, though her appearance was scary enough, hinting at a weapon cocked and ready to be fired.

  Raina stepped forward. Her voice had changed as well, deepened, yet was as female as the Earth itself. “Destruction won’t fill your emptiness, Elagra. You have too many holes in your soul. I’m here to put you out of your misery.”

  The power wound around Elagra, and with one flick of Raina’s fingers, cinched tight. The other witch stiffened and howled, and flung her hands out, unleashing a disruptive energy of her own. The explosion of power held the reds of flame and blood, and the smell of death.

  Marcie drew her gun, aimed and fired. Elagra was gone in a flash. Marcie felt the rush of air, heard the shout of warning from Raina that saved her life. She took the knife blade on a defensive raised arm and kicked out, using nothing but instinct, but she connected.

  Elagra dropped out of the air and rolled, and Marcie was on her. She landed one solid punch in the witch’s face, across the sculpted cheekbone. Then Marcie screamed, choking on the sound as electricity rocketed through her. The witch broke free and whipped around. Marcie had no control of her muscles, no control of anything. Her vocal cords were seized by the same power, unable to give voice to the intense pain.

  Then it let go, leaving Marcie gasping in relief. Elagra had been knocked backward, ass over end. Hit by nothing more than a solid fist of air. Raina stood over Marcie. Marcie still held the gun in her nerveless fingers, and she staggered up from the ground to stand at Raina’s side.

  Elagra spread her hands out to either side, the curved nails rippling in a calculated wave of sinister movement. She was in a half crouch, the posture and her painted body enhancing the impression of a deadly, primitive force of nature.

  “You wish to play, sisters,” she hissed. “Then we will play. It has started. Your actions will stop nothing.”

  “Except you talking,” Marcie retorted. Her voice wasn’t steady, but that was physical. Her mind was as fixed on her goal as a sniper on her target. “That’s a win in my book.”

  The witch’s attention slid past them. Raina and Marcie braced together, Marcie ready to back up Raina’s play. But Elagra’s next strike wasn’t aimed at them.

  Raina snarled a curse, her body whipping forward to follow the lunge of Elagra’s as the dark witch fired an arrow of jagged silver lightning past them. Raina intercepted it with a stream of fire and a mass of energy that seemed to bend the air, but the arrow cut through it, flew true.

  Marcie spun with the half-succubus and saw what Elagra had seen. Ramona.

  The chaos witch was no longer on the rail. She was wandering aimlessly along the docks, picking up random shell shards, left there by seagulls dropping and cracking open the shellfish they’d fished out of the river.

  Despite Ramona’s unassuming presence, Elagra had reacted to it with an immediate, scorched earth attack. Elagra’s crackling electrical current was headed toward the chaos witch like a locked-on missile.

  “Ramona.” Raina’s shout echoed over the docks.

  Ramona picked up another shell piece and straightened. She examined it as if she were on an isolated beach somewhere, her skirt fluttering around her bare calves. That was when that bolt of magical energy reached her.

  Or would have. Silas stepped in front of it. Jagged white-blue fire turned to fluttering ash, whirled away on the wind.

  Silas didn’t look like Silas anymore. His grey eyes had become the color of lightning, with the vibrant light of the same behind them. Instead of jeans and crisp, ironed shirt, he wore a gray robe that billowed around him, the hood up. In his hands, held up before him, was what had stopped the projectile. A scythe, just like the stereotype, only the reality was something far different. The curved blade gleamed with blue and orange flame, the fires of Heaven and Hell together. T
he shaft was threaded with a red color that moved, like running blood.

  There was a blurriness to the edges of him, as if he was something not defined by matter. When Elagra saw what had stopped her attack, she went noticeably pale, even under her dark-skinned coloring. But Marcie couldn’t fault her courage—or maybe it was stupidity—because she confronted Silas, though her voice had the sense to shake.

  “You cannot interfere with how things unfold, Grim Reaper. You overstep yourself.”

  “You do not know enough of my role to instruct me, witch,” Silas said. His voice reminded Marcie of the granite of an old cemetery’s wall, worn smooth by decades of elements. “I see two paths to your death,” he said. “One later. One now. You try a direct strike against the chaos witch again, and you will make that choice. Do we have an understanding?”

  His voice changed when he posed the question. The expression “cold as a grave” came to mind. It crept into Marcie’s subconscious like skeletal fingers and incited a hard shiver, bone and muscle deep. Marcie could taste the dirt of her own grave.

  “Silas.” Ramona had extended her hand. “Look. It’s a pearl. One of the gulls must have dropped a mollusk.”

  Elagra’s lip curled, but she didn’t move as Silas dipped his head briefly, looked at what Ramona had in her open hand. He lifted the knuckles of his free hand, sketching a brief caress along the curve of her face. “It is lovely,” he said. His voice was back to that cultured, smooth tone. Warmly courteous to Ramona, as if she hadn’t just stepped into the middle of a potentially deadly fight. Marcie kept her attention jumping between all the players, watching for cues.

  Ramona nodded, then glanced at Marcie and Raina, as if seeing them for the first time. She gave them an absent smile, and then her lavender eyes went to Elagra. “Do you know how pearls are formed?” the chaos witch asked. She turned to face Elagra fully, began to move toward her. It said a lot about what Silas was that Elagra didn’t attempt another attack, even with such a clear shot presented to her.