Blood and Magick

by James R. Tuck

  Her lips pursed. “Oh, I don’t think so.” She turned to the wild child witch beside her. “Athame, it’s your turn.”

  Athame licked her lips, bright scarlet tongue slickening them in an obscene circle. Inky black magic began to pool from the corners of her eyes until they filled like liquid midnight. Her teeth lengthened into jagged enameled knives. Black horns broke the skin of her brow, curling off like those on a ram. She gave a shudder, and wide black wings opened from her back with a wet thwap! Her legs crooked, jointing backward as her feet transformed into black cloven hooves. A spaded tail drooped low behind her and swished between them.

  Her voice was a sibilant hiss. “Oh, goody. I love to play.”

  Oh, shit.

  5

  Tiff moved around, coming toward me and the transformed witch. Her gun was up, tracking the horned head. I threw my hand up and she stopped.

  “Silver bullets don’t work.” I knelt down and jerked up my pants leg. My hand closed around the wire-wrapped handle of the knife clipped inside the top of my boot. It was a silver-coated blade, but the edges were surgical stainless steel and razor sharp. It was a commando-style dagger with a slim seven-inch blade, made for slitting throats or puncturing organs. I came up with it loose in my hand.

  “That’s right, your bullets don’t work.” Witchy lips hissed at me. Cloven hooves clomped on the floor. Her lip snarled as she looked at the knife in my hand. “You want to play with sharp things? I can make that happen.”

  Her mouth formed a series of hisses and clicks that crawled along my nerves. Mangled words spilled from between lips gone black. “Kcigam wollof ym dnammoc. Drowsluos emoc ot ym dnah!”

  Her magick was hot against my power, sizzling inside my skin. Black talons curled in the air. The spell rolled down her arm in waves of crimson and ebony. Her palm split open, a gaping and bloody wound. An onyx blade slid out, pulling free with a squelch and a shower of blood that was no longer red. Instead, it was thick and shiny, multicolored like an oil slick.

  The ebony blade spilled into her hand and began to morph, growing into a full-fledged sword. Three feet of magickal midnight-black crystal, sharp on one edge, toothed on the other. The pommel sprouted wicked thorns that curled over her hand in a shiny, chitinous carapace.

  “What the hell is that?”

  She held the blade up in front of her face. “This is my soulsword.” Her face split into a grin. “And it’s going to hurt.”

  The demon-witch clomped toward me. She wasn’t swinging her soulsword wildly through the air. No, she held it slightly out to the side, low and back. Ready to rip up and gut somebody. Somebody like me. Which meant she knew how to use the damn thing.

  Great.

  I started shuffling back. All I had was the knife, which meant I would have to get close. I could throw it, but that would be stupid. My eyes cast around, searching the room, looking for a better weapon.

  Which is how I tripped.

  My foot caught a piece of debris. I don’t even know what it was—broken chair, loose brick, body part; it doesn’t matter. It went under my heel and I went straight to the ground on my ass. The impact jarred through my whole body, driving air from my lungs.

  I tried to bounce up, get back to my feet.

  That’s when Athame struck.

  She drove that midnight blade deep through the center of my chest. It slid in slick and sharp. The witch behind it rushed in, pressing close, leaning her weight into it. Her eyes were wild, spinning like loose marbles of basalt. This close I could see things rippling through the inky surface, maggots under the thin skein of a cornea. Her breath was hot on my face, carrion sweet and rotten vegetable musk like compost.

  Why doesn’t it hurt more to have a three-foot hunk of magick blade stuck through me?

  She spoke, jagged teeth clicking around the words. “Eht tsepeed niap ouy laecnoc. Ruoy yrev luos laever!”

  I had no time to wonder what the hell she said before her spell kicked in and a jagged bolt of pain tore me in two.

  6

  “Hello?”

  “Daddy, come home! Help us!”

  “Whoa, buddy. Slow down, what’s wrong?”

  “There’s a scary man here!” Heavy breathing from little lungs. “He’s hurting Mommy!”

  My heart locks up. I start running, ignoring the customer I leave half-finished.

  “I’m coming. Where are you?”

  “Me and Sissy are under your bed. Hurry! Mommy isn’t screaming anymore, but I can hear stuff. Bad stuff.” I can’t breathe. I have to run, crashing through the door. “Hang up and call 911! I’m coming. I’m coming.” In the car. Sliding around corner, overshooting the curb, driving too fast.

  “I hear him. He’s on the stairs. Daddy, I’m scared.”

  “Call 911 now! I’m coming! Hold on, buddy!” A noise. A scream. Another noise. More screams that rise and fall, sounding hollow the farther from the phone they get. I drive faster.

  * * *

  Blood. Everything has blood on it. The air is thick with it, like a humidifier has been running. Pennies laid on the fillings in your molars.

  A uniformed cop runs through the door. He crashes into me, bouncing off and spinning away. Above the sounds of everyone talking I hear him throwing up over the rail of my front porch. He’s splattering the azaleas. The sickly sweet smell of vomit cuts the iron tang of the blood.

  A man I didn’t know, Homicide Detective John Longyard, stops me in the doorway. Past him the walls have been swept clear of all the family photos. The light blue paint is smeared with designs turning a dark, rusty red.

  Just behind the coffee table that was a wedding present, I see my wife’s hand. The hand I had held for the last nine years. We always laughed at the difference: mine, large and rough; hers, small and delicate. On her third finger sparkles the ring that had been worn by five generations of Chalk women.

  Her hand isn’t attached to her arm.

  The scream claws its way up my throat, chased by a flood of stomach acid.

  7

  I pounded my fist into my head to clear it. Broken glass littered the floor under my fingers, tiny shards glittering in the puddle of vomit beside my hand. My ears rang like a telephone from hell, filled with a shrill sound that rolled between hot gobs of pain. The sick on the floor was spreading, moving around my hand and toward my knees.

  My hands flashed to my chest, fingers looking for the hole that should have been there. My sternum felt like it had tenpenny nails driven into it but it was whole and solid. My shirt wasn’t even torn. Other than the pain there was no sign I had been stabbed with a witch-sword. Sonnuvabitchin’ magick. I didn’t have time to think about it any more, shit was happening.

  The shrill sound was someone shrieking.

  “You one-eyed whore! That hurt!”

  “Not charmed against an ax, are you? There’s more where that came from, bitch. Just come a little closer.” Pushing off the floor shot pain through my left shoulder.

  Oh yeah, that piece of glass was still there, grinding inside the joint, shredding tendons and cartilage. Ignoring it, I looked up. Athame was in front of me, back turned. Wide, black wings flapped madly, and the tail that came off the base of her spine whipped in a frenzy. There was a large gash in her side that ran with oil-slick gore.

  Just past her stood Tiff, holding a fire ax that dripped the same strangely colored blood.

  I looked around. Selene stood where she had. She watched her witch daughter with a small smile of amusement on her lips. Ahriman stood beside her, staring wild-eyed at Tiff.

  Bladed fingers clicked and clacked as they flexed into and out of fists.

  Searching, I found Larson and Kat. They were on the far side of the room. Larson held Kat by the arm, keeping her close. He was talking to her. I could see his mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear what was being said. It didn’t matter, he was keeping her out of the way.

  The demon-witch in front of me took a swing at Tiff, ebony blade swishing through the air.
Tiff did a quickstep back, holding the ax in front of her. The witch swiped at her three more times, driving her even farther back. Tiff swung the ax up, missing the sword that was cutting toward her.

  The weight of the ax slung her too far forward, just slightly off balance. It was a sign of weakness in her defense. I had to get up.

  I needed a weapon.

  My hand found an unopened bottle of champagne on the floor beside the body of a young woman. The skin on one side of her body had been shredded raw from the blast. The undamaged half of her face had a smile on it, frozen in death. I picked up the bottle. It was heavy in my hand. I rose. Shaking the bottle settled its weight in my palm, the glass cold and damp in my grip. Two big strides took me behind the witch. Her arm was up, raising her sword to strike at Tiff.

  My left hand clamped on the thick edge of a wing. The glass shard screamed pain from inside my shoulder. I told it to shut the hell up.

  Swinging overhand, I smashed the thick base of the champagne bottle into the thick base of the witch’s skull. Athame howled like a captured raccoon. I held tight to her wing as she thrashed. The other wing flapped against me, stinging as it slapped my skin. Swinging back, she tried to stab me with her soulsword. I dodged to the left. The blade sang through the air where my head had been. The tip sliced into my shoulder. My head spun for a split second as memory and despair crashed into me. I was pushed back toward that night, that horrible fucking night, for just a bare moment.

  The blade moved away.

  Something broke inside me.

  The only way I make it through a day is to keep the memory of that night pushed down. Locked away in the deepest, darkest parts of me. I hold it in a tiny cage inside of me, keeping it from breaking out and consuming my sanity. If it gets free, it will gnaw and chew away the rest of my soul.

  I’ve spent the last five years building scar tissue over that pain, trying to deaden it, ignoring it as much as possible.

  This witch had come along and torn that wound open, putting me right back there again. Pulling all of that pain back to the surface.

  But it’s not just painful memories that live inside me now. No, I hold those memories, the pain of my wife and children dying at the hands of a monster, above a sea of rage. It bubbles and seethes deep inside me, held together by the thinnest, flimsiest dam.

  That dam had smashed into a million pieces. The bottle rose over my head. I drove it down with all my strength, clubbing it into the side of the witch’s skull. The thinnest part of the skull. The killing part.

  Athame jerked. Her wing burned my palm as it slid through. I swung again, and the bottle smashed against the black horn that curled around her cheek. The glass shattered, exploding in a shower of foamy alcohol and tiny glass shards. She fell to her knees, wing slipping from my fingers. Stepping on her tail, I snatched a handful of her hair, wrapping the long red strands around my fingers.

  She howled a long, piercing wail. My knee drove into her back. I yanked on her hair, pulling it tight in my fist. Black talons scraped the back of my hand, but I didn’t care. I leaned in, mouth by her ear. “Quit fighting. Change back.”

  Her black eye rolled back to look at me. This close I could see my reflection in its squirmy, inky surface. Her voice was a hiss through clenched fangs. “Fuck you.”

  “No thanks.”

  Tiff stepped up. Her dress was ripped and filthy, hair swirled in a gnarled tangle.

  The ax lifted in the air.

  “He’s taken.” She swung the ax down, blade striking the pentagram in the center of Athame’s chest. Sparks shot out as the heavy steel edge banged off it and sheared right. The cutting edge bit deep, splitting the leather bands that held it to the witch’s chest. It fell away, thunking to the floor. Athame screamed. The magick that had pressed against me snuffed out in one heartbeat. It ripped from Athame in the next. The horns on her head slipped, pulling away like they had come unglued. Thin tendrils of skin trailed as they came away. The wings shriveled like a hair in a candle flame, becoming small charcoal briquets that crumbled down her back. The tail flopped wetly onto the floor under my boot. It twitched in a widening puddle of ichor. Her feet re-formed, bones cracking and snapping loudly. Strands of long red hair stuck to my hand as she fell away from me. Her skin was porcelain pale again before she hit the ground.

  Tiff stepped around her. We both watched as the witch crawled toward Selene, human once more. Tiff stepped over to stand beside me.

  “Where the hell did you get an ax from?”

  A grin cracked her face. “It was by the kitchen. It said, ‘IN

  CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS.’ I figured this counted.”

  She held it out. “You want this? Damn thing weighs a ton.” Pain flexed in my shoulder, cramping the muscles of my chest and back, turning them into weak knots of pain. I couldn’t feel the fingers of my left hand. Little flashes of pain cut through the exhaustion that pressed in on me. I was hurting.

  Bad.

  I still took the ax.

  “Move back.”

  Tiff did what I said, stepping behind me far enough to be out of the way if I needed to swing. Athame had finished crawling to her mother. Her fingers clutched the green hem of those full skirts.

  Selene looked down at her daughter. Her voice was an arctic wind. “Get up.”

  Athame struggled to stand, the fine muscles in her back trembling along a spine that jutted out. Crawling to her feet, she huddled over, thin arms crossing her bare chest. Her hair hung lank, covering her face. She shook like she was freezing.

  Or coming off a meth addiction.

  Magick will leave you like that. Burned down, hollowed out, used up.

  I shook the ax at Selene and tried not to sway. “Two down. One left. You should hit the road before I make it a perfect trifecta.”

  The wail of sirens crawled into the restaurant, coming in from outside through the giant hole in the wall. “You hear that? That’s the cops. You don’t want to be here when they show.” I pointed at Selene. “Ten dollars says your little girl there ain’t charmed against shit without her talisman. So go on. Get the fuck out of here.”

  “We will not leave without the blood.”

  I took a step forward. “You want blood, lady? I’ll gladly spill some of yours.”

  Those poison green eyes closed. She took a deep breath, holding it for a long second. The air thickened in the room.

  It curdled, becoming hard to draw in.

  My mind screamed at me. It wanted me to turn out of the way.

  Get down!

  My body was too slow, too hurt, to move that quick. I turned, trying to put my body between the witch and Tiff.

  Selene’s eyes flew open, blazing with satanic power, and she spat her spell at me with a single, guttural word. The world went black.

  8

  I came back in a snap. One second I was out, the next I was wide awake.

  And strapped to a stretcher.

  I jerked against the straps, yanking at them. The metal gurney rattled and thumped against the inside of the ambulance. I hate waking up and finding myself tied down.

  “Easy there, big fella. Easy.”

  Rolling my head around, I found myself face-to-face with a young man. He was a good-looking young man, thin but built. Almond-shaped brown eyes looked at me from a face carved in angles and flat planes. A razor-thin mustache sat above full lips. Most people would look silly in a mustache that narrow, but it fit the face I was looking at. He put one wide hand on my arm, it was warm through the thin latex glove.

  He spun around to face me, sitting on the low bench next to the stretcher. “It’s cool, man. Relax, I got you. I was just about to take out this big hunk of glass you’ve got stuck in your shoulder.”

  “Why am I strapped down?”

  He looked sheepish. “That isn’t my fault. I was just following orders.”

  “Who the hell ordered me to be strapped down?”

  A monotone voice came from outside the ambulance.
r />   “I did.”

  The man that stepped into my line of sight was normal. Completely and totally normal. Close-cropped sandy brown hair gelled close to his scalp. His face was unmarked; plain, but edging toward interesting. Completely clean-shaven, not one whisker to be seen. His eyes were wrapped in dark sunglasses. He was just shy of six foot, just shy of 200 pounds, and packaged in a black suit that didn’t quite fit right, complete with a skinny black tie.

  “And who the hell do you think you are?”

  His hand whipped up, slapping open a black wallet. Inside it flashed a gold badge and a small card with the man’s picture and some writing. “Special Agent Silas Heck, O.C.I.D.” He whipped the badge back into his jacket just slow enough for me to see the black semiautomatic holstered at his hip.

  “You got something to tell me, Special Agent Heck? Like where the hell my friends are, and why the hell you have me strapped to this damn gurney?”

  He pointed to the straps and then waved to the EMT. The young man began unbuckling me.

  Special Agent Heck leaned against the open doors. “Your friends are fine. They’re finishing up questioning now. I had you strapped down because I didn’t want you disappearing before we had a chance to chat.” His voice had a hard tone to it, not quite an accent, but almost. Not so much the sound as the way he used his words.

  The EMT finished unbuckling me and I sat up. My head brushed the roof of the ambulance. It took a second to realize that I felt pretty good. I still ached, but it was distant, one step removed from me. “Did you give me something?”

  The EMT nodded. “Just a small shot of Demerol. It’ll wear off in a few hours. You might want to be in bed before that happens.”

  Yeah right.

  Turning to Special Agent Heck, I started to push off the gurney to leave. The EMT put his hand on my chest. He nodded toward my shoulder. “I still need to get that out.”

  The piece of glass was sticking out of my skin. It jutted up about three quarters of an inch and was coated in thick, tacky blood. Looking at it brought the hurt to the front of my mind. The painkiller kept it from being too bad, wrapping it in a fuzzy warm blanket, softening the edges to something almost abstract.