First Destroy All Giant Monsters (The World Wide Witches Research Association)

by Carter, D. L.

She pointed her fan one at a time at each of the four candles and let out a sigh of relief when the candle wicks ignited and settled down to a steady flame.

  Three of her cousins sat in a neat row on the couch and did not move or make a sound. Smoke sat cross-legged on a cushion on the floor nearest to the white candle. While she was distracted, he’d changed his clothing. Instead of his blue jeans, flannel shirt, and work boots he wore homemade buckskins, a string of aged bone pieces around his neck, and his feet were bare. He handled the delicate chime as if it were of great ritual significance, which today it was. Most of the time her cousins made light of the story that there was some Arapahoe in their background. Today Amber could believe it was true.

  She settled herself on her back on the stone floor and wiggled a bit until the irregular edges of the flagstones weren’t underneath the back of her skull. She might be here for a while and didn’t want to wake up with a hole dug into her skull. She pressed the flat of her hand onto the cool stones and closed her eyes. She hadn’t been joking when she told Smoke that she was feeling loose from her body. Usually when she tried to meditate she ended up staring at the ceiling, bored and frustrated. Today all it took was for her to close her eyes and breathe out and she could feel herself lifting.

  She stiffened, resisting the sensation, and fell back into her body. Witches did nothing in Circle without intention. Smoke, seated just a few feet from her head continued to beat out the soft insistent rhythm. She glanced around the room again, fixing it in her memory, taking comfort from the solid stone beneath her, the weight of all that knowledge above her head. Then she closed her eyes and sank down into herself. If the attack had the side effect of making it possible for her to go into soul-flight without the tedious chanting and meditation then she’d take advantage of it.

  And if she didn’t lift off, no problem. There had to be an alternative Smoke hadn’t considered yet.

  There had to be.

  Chapter Four

  She slowed her breathing, concentrating on the sensation of air passing down her throat, the stretch and resistance of her diaphragm. Her muscles obeyed her command to relax, yielding to the support of the floor and the earth beneath.

  Her fingers twitched and unclenched and her eyelids fluttered. The chime echoed in her mind, the vibrations reaching to soothe her trembling nerves. She drew in air on one chime and released it on the next and …

  Opened her eyes.

  The starlit night sky was above her. Directly above her. Not separated from her by such inconsequential things as roofs and air and atmosphere, but near enough to touch. Warm enough to bathe in. Sweet enough to drink.

  The universe shimmered before her, above her, below her. Not dark, never dark, but lit from some distant place with an opalescent glow. She smiled at the vision. It was awesome in the same manner as the Grand Canyon. Huge, unknowable, eternal, and … she shivered as she rose from her body.

  Wow. Wow. Wow. She was out. Free.

  She was out on the Ethereal. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy! It … was amazing, beautiful. When she concentrated she could sense the worlds dancing their paths around distant suns. It was … finally she understood the word “awe.” If she experienced nothing else in this life she would end it filled with joy having reached the Ethereal Planes.

  It was … she held out her naked ephemeral hands, then opened her mouth to try and scream. She was … she was dying.

  There was something here with her. Something within her. She ran the memory of her hands over her soul. There was a wound. A hemorrhage. Her life was draining away.

  A hunger, a clawing hunger was consuming her. Not her hunger. There was something out here with her.

  She fought to return to her body against a pull stronger, no, strong but not as strong as her. A hunger for her. For the heat of her living body, for the spirit that floated free. For her. All of her.

  She flailed about in the emptiness. There was nothing to hold onto. Nothing to push against. There should be something to hold onto. A security, a starting place. She … had forgotten something vitally important.

  She spun in the void and found herself hovering over the inert form of her own body. Stretched out within a circle of protection with Smoke at her feet patiently striking a meditation chime. The same body that had carried her through an intentionally mundane, uneventful life; and with hope, would continue to do so for many years to come. Smoke continued striking the bell, but there was only silence in the void. Rust, Manny, and Lightning sat watching, their faces rigid with worry.

  No, with fear.

  Lightning leaned forward as if about to rise and step toward her, but Manny and Rust held him back.

  She tried to call to them, demand, beg for help. She was lost, losing herself. They had to help her back to her body. They had to do something before the whatever-it-was drained her completely away.

  She reached out and her incorporeal hand passed through her own body and she knew.

  Fool.

  She thrust both hands into her body and pulled. She couldn’t return, it wasn’t time to return to her body but she … there! Her body drew a shuddering breath. Yes, with that breath came the urge to rejoin her body and the awareness that when her journey was done her body would be there waiting for her. The sensation of hunger faded a little as the protections of the circle settled about her. Fool that she was she’d forgotten to remind her body to breathe while her soul was away.

  And suddenly she could hear the chimes. Yes, they had been sounding all along, but she hadn’t understood. Now she remembered. She allowed her resting body to connect to the chimes so that her heart would beat and her lungs breathe until she returned again. Now she was aware of a heavy silver cord joining her spirit form to her inert body at her umbilicus. A starting place. A home. The link that bound her to life, to the real world. She was not loose, helpless in the void. She was just visiting. She sighed; that is, her discorporate body wanted to sigh with relief and below her, in the circle, her body filled its lungs and let out the air slowly.

  Good. Now she was anchored and no random thing could attach … Amber glanced down her astral body. Too late for that.

  Attached to her life cord was a sticky black strand of … something odd. She tugged at it and it stretched and bent like overheated bubblegum, then straightened with a twang that she could hear above the music of the void.

  She studied the strand as she hovered in the twilight world. It was this thing that had tried to consume her. It still was trying. She could feel little tugs as pieces of her life’s strength were pulled out of her to go … away. But it wasn’t out of control anymore. Now that she was attached to the real world she had a source for renewal. It wouldn’t last forever, but she had time now. Time to investigate.

  She tried to slide her fingers under the sticky black thread where it bonded to her life cord, but the linkage was strong.

  This was going to be difficult to shift. Also difficult to hide. If she was lucky enough to find the Elementals would they talk to her while she carried this … this … this evidence that she’d fucked up?

  No way to know unless she tried.

  She turned away from her body and looked out across … everything. The Ethereal Planes stretched out in both directions, glowing, glorious – and without convenient signposts.

  Hmm.

  That was something that hadn’t been covered in her training. How did she go about finding eternal entities with a history of desiring privacy in an endless universe?

  Especially when she hadn’t made the trip before.

  What she could see, reaching across the Ethereal Planes, throbbing, pulsing as it pulled out a little of her spirit’s strength with each beat of her heart was the damned black, sticky spider’s web. The thing was huge. How could it exist on the Ethereal and not be seen by the witches who engaged in soul-flight? Surely someone would have posted a warning, a question on the website. She should have seen a comment. Something.

  Her aunt had seen somethin
g. Known something. That was why she’d bought the book. That was why she was missing.

  And if this was what had taken, hurt, captured her aunt and uncle – as powerful as they were – it was no surprise that it had torn straight through her pitiable protections as if they weren’t even there.

  It was strong. Unbelievably strong and powerful. And huge. She could see it clearly now, the source of the hunger she’d sensed, black and ugly outlined against the glowing backdrop of the Ethereal Planes.

  And she was supposed to fight this thing. Defeat this huge hunger!

  Amber curled around her violated spirit, hugging herself tight.

  Don’t panic! Don’t panic!

  After a moment Amber uncurled. The expected terror was not tearing her mind apart. This was bad; in fact, she was certain of it. She should be on the ground trembling in fright but she wasn’t. Amber floated down to rest beside her body. Perhaps she needed adrenal glands to feel fright. Maybe this odd sensation of separation, distance, was what the other witches had written as the advantage of thinking about problems when on the Ethereal Planes. Because when she wasn’t in her body her chemical driven feelings didn’t get in the way.

  So she’d save her energy for now and have the panic attack when she was back inside.

  A plan.

  Ta da!

  She didn’t need to travel to change her point of view. She wished she could see the extent of the web and suddenly she did. It was huge, stretching away into the distance with the filament that was bound to her first going off into so many different directions that she didn’t know what to do first. Seek the Elementals – likely hiding off at the other end of the universe or try to find the center of the web.

  Well, maybe not the center. That was likely where the monster lived. The other edges – that might give her some information.

  She wasn’t aware of moving away from Five Corners and her body; suddenly, she was in flight traveling through the void, traveling alongside one of the fibers of the web. She didn’t know how far she had traveled before she found him.

  Karl Benn.

  For a moment she considered being surprised then she shrugged. She’d already suspected that he was involved and … boo … there he was.

  She “fell” through the Ethereal and entered a small, square house. One of a long line of similar houses. She could see Karl seated in the middle of a group of people, all of them tired and … grieving.

  The weight of their combined pain pulled at her. The house throbbed with it. Karl was seated not too far from the woman who had to be the mother of the departed. No one else wept like that.

  Amber permitted herself to come closer to Karl. He didn’t show as evil from the point of view of the Ethereal, neither was he the terminus of the web nor the center. He was bound to her, and a great many other people, by thin filaments that were drinking his personal energy as well as hers.

  If he was the cause of all this he’d fucked up just as badly as she had. Maybe this was a spell that had gotten out of his control. Then again, this could be an old spell. The Elementals themselves knew that books were dangerous. He might have read an old book, a secondhand book that just happened to be in his store, not realizing the words were more than ink on a page. It had happened before. Just look at what happened on the Marie Celeste.

  Either way, his aura as seen from the Ethereal was that of a seriously depleted, ill person. Who was she kidding? He looked near to death. She’d never, ever seen an aura that looked like it was drowning. The filament that was latched onto her life cord like a leach was wrapped around him like a burial shroud.

  Amber would have shuddered if she’d had a body. Instead she contented herself with thinking, Yeck.

  The thin filament was drinking her personal energy at a rate that left her living body shivering, but the mess that bound Karl Benn was a great gulping thing. Heavy. Old and ravenous. It amazed her that he was still capable of standing up unaided. What? Feeding an evil spider bent on destroying, no … eating the world?

  No. Not just the world. The whole of the Ethereal Planes throbbed and groaned under the weight of this web.

  What was it? What could possibly be drinking the universe? Not the universe but people. This was unbelievable. Obscene.

  Not comforted by the thought she lifted up through the opalescent light.

  When she had the time, and a body, she’d be terrified.

  Beneath her now, she could see the web stretching out over most of the United States. One or two strands traveled away from the continent, but mostly the stain arched over the northern landmass.

  Okay, not the whole universe. Not yet, anyway.

  This was more than just Laurenville Books being the site of an evil spell. The web united and broke again and again. Hundreds of focus points over the U.S. Damn. What was this thing?

  What sort of monster was she dealing with?

  The previously gentle shimmering light of the Planes deepened and the universe rang as if a gong had been struck. A multicolored streak descended through the opalescent glow toward her. The streak separated and for a moment she was bathed in a rainbow. The colors consolidated into four areas of brilliant light. Amber’s spirit bowed as the Elemental entities – Earth, Air, Fire, and Water consolidated around her. Their flickering forms were too bright for her to look upon for more than seconds. She bowed her head.

  As she’d told Smoke, if she met them she would be afraid.

  Her aunt told her over and over again that there were Five Elementals, not four Elements. That the universe might be made up of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, but nothing changed, nothing happened unless acted upon by Spirit. Even if it was as little a thing as her own personal opinion. Her own small spirit could create ripples through the world.

  How odd to be disappointed that her aunt was wrong. There were only four Elementals here.

  Except. Except there was a warmth behind her.

  Amber ducked her head, cringed, then turned just a little. Behind her, just a hair’s breadth behind her was the bright white glow of Spirit.

  There was no face, so she couldn’t avoid its eyes. There was only the incredible weight of Presence. She didn’t know what to say, what to do faced with one part of the Universe’s perception of itself.

  “You’re late,” echoed in her mind.

  They weren’t words or sounds, not as she understood them, but she knew she’d been addressed by the Spirit.

  Late? Late? They’d been expecting her? The Elementals – the Elementals expected her? Her soul shivered, and as she’d told Smoke, she was terrified.

  An answer seemed to be expected.

  “I made a mistake,” she forced out.

  “Apparently,” was the reply. “Now, what do you intend to do about it?”

  “Uh, I don’t know.”

  The Elementals vanished, pushing her back, off of the Ethereal Planes to thud back into her body. She came upright, struggling with the pain of old injuries, the shuddering, slithering weight of the web entering her body, her soul filling her mouth with bile. She lay back down on her side, whimpering, struggling to keep from disgracing herself on her aunt’s floor.

  Smoke came to his feet, the chime held tight, but stayed carefully on the outside of the circle.

  “What happened? Did you see them?”

  “Uh,” said Amber.

  “What did they say?”

  She curled into a ball, letting the solidity of the world comfort her. “Fix it.”

  “What?”

  It hadn’t been words, but she’d returned with the solid understanding of the Elementals’ message.

  “They want me to fix it, but they didn’t say how.”

  “Too much to expect, kid,” said Smoke as if they were discussing the incomprehensible assembly instructions for a birthday present instead of a giant monster. “We are supposed to be grown-ups and solve our own problems. I was just hoping for a little guidance. Oh, well.”

  His calm acceptance was annoying. If she�
��d been physically capable of movement she would have strangled him. Instead Amber groaned and rubbed at her eyes. She still hadn’t been able to gather enough strength to rise from the floor, dismiss the circle. Instead she lay where she’d fallen, shivering with bone deep, soul deep fatigue.

  “But it doesn’t help and I’m still tired. This, thing, that’s in me. The web. They didn’t say anything about what it is or what I’m supposed to do next. Or how to get it out. Nothing useful.”

  “Kid, what did they say? Exactly?”

  “First they said I was late. Then I … I didn’t hear the actual words. I just have this feeling that they want me to fix it.”

  “That’s the way it usually is,” said Smoke. “They don’t have actual mouths, and you don’t have air or ears on the Ethereal.”

  “They met with you,” said Rust. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Then they’re not mad at you,” added Manny. “You were afraid of that.”

  “Maybe,” whispered Amber. “Yes. No. Yes, they are very angry with me.”

  “If they met with you,” said Rust, surprising everyone. “Then they will let you reach out to them.”

  “I tried.” Amber cast a narrow-eyed glare in his direction.

  “No. Not like that. In this world.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They’ll give you strength, actual strength,” said Rust.

  “That’s not a good idea,” said Smoke sharply.

  “Sure it is,” said Rust. “Amber’s wiped out. Despite sleeping she’s exhausted. She’s too tired to sleep, too tired to work. If she can’t stand up she can’t fix this. Of course they’ll let her borrow some strength.”

  “Okay, then it isn’t a safe idea.” Smoke folded his arms across his chest.

  “Safe is not the issue here,” said Amber. “I have to fix this, whatever this is; therefore, I need to have enough energy to walk from one side of the room to the other. How the heck am I supposed to fight a giant monster feeling like I do right now?”

  “Okay,” said Smoke. “Reach out to the Elementals and ask for physical strength.”