The mother nodded. She looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes, but there was no masking her relief. “Well, we were on the second floor,” she explained, “and my son had a seizure. He has epilepsy. I couldn’t leave him, and I could barely carry him when he was like that.”
Her relief had vanished. As she relived those moments of terror, she seemed on the verge of bursting into tears, and her son piped up with other details.
Mia crouched to hold the microphone to his mouth. People loved footage of little kids, and this story had almost everything else: danger, mystery, and a happy conclusion.
The kid described how once the seizure was over, he’d panicked, thinking that he and his mom were both going to die. Then, according to him, a “guy with a big chest” came in and pulled them both to safety, jumping out the window and laying them in the grass while they coughed up the smoke residue.
The mysterious rescuer was gone before anyone could figure out who he was.
Mia glanced at the survivors. “Did anyone see him leave?”
“Not really,” said Mrs. Ramirez’s son. “Someone thought they saw him run off between the buildings, but a couple other guys were sure he went back into the apartment. We don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”
The reporters thanked the group for their eyewitness testimony, then slowly wandered off.
“Well,” Doug breathed, “this is shaping up to be more interesting than ever.”
Mia had no choice but to concur. “To put it mildly, yeah.”
“Dude.” Ted was waving for Chris to come over and see something. “Check this out.” He sounded both amused and excited.
Christian forced himself not to frown in annoyance. He’d gone to get coffee and come back to find Ted in his cubicle. He knew from experience that when Ted touched his computer, the results were rarely good. He only hoped that whatever his friend insisted on showing him, it wouldn’t get him flagged by IT.
“Okay,” Chris said, “what is it? I have to get back to work shortly.”
Ted gave a dismissive shrug. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Look, someone set up a website specifically to track that Motorcycle Man guy! Ha, ha. This is great. It’s all user-submitted content, like people are trying to narrow down the facts to discover his identity and report random sightings that they think might be him. Mostly in ‘Greater LA,’ natch, but a handful from the Coachella Valley, San Diego, Bakersfield, Santa Barbara... Oh, man, this is fantastic. Listen to this one: ‘I saw a man in black leather and a black helmet on a black motorcycle. He was watching me and the other motorists very carefully as he cruised down the 210. Something about the way he rode and the way he looked at us, it wasn’t normal. It was like being watched over by a grim but benevolent angel. I know it was him.’ Then she goes on how she’s going to ask her granny, who I guess is terminally ill, if she’s had any visions of spectral bikers. Fuck, it’s like a Netflix Original Movie waiting to happen.”
“I’d guess most of them are false sightings.” Chris slurped a bit of his coffee.
“Why are you taking this away from me, man?”
Chris laughed. “I’m just saying, how do we know there isn’t a whole secret society of bikers who have taken on the Lawful Good alignment and are now acting as modern paladins? It would explain how there have been so many sightings all over Southern California.” He paused. “I just said that out loud, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Ted confirmed, “and I’ll never let you or anyone else forget.”
“If you do, you’ll have to admit to them how you know what ‘Lawful Good’ and ‘Paladin’ mean,” Christian said wickedly.
Ted spun in the chair to give him a long look. “You play dirty, you know that?”
“Yes.” Christian grinned at him.
“Mmm. So…” Ted considered as he stood up. “Isn’t your date with the blonde tomorrow?”
Chris sat down and semi-politely forced Ted away from his computer, clicking the “x” in the upper right corner of the Motorcycle Man page so he could return to his work. “Yes, it is,” he replied.
“Great.” Ted sipped his own coffee. “I’m sure you’re not even slightly nervous. Right?”
Chris gave him a look. “It’s just going to be a quiet Korean dinner and maybe some random riding around.”
He wasn’t particularly keen to admit that he was being evaluated by friends of Kera’s family, but that wasn’t the part Ted latched onto.
Instead, Ted cocked an eyebrow. “Riding around in what?”
There was a pause.
“Oh, shit,” Chris breathed.
“Exactly.” Ted was looking at him with something like pity. “You don’t have a car, so…”
“I’m an idiot.” Chris stared into the distance in blank horror. He disliked traffic and parking enough that he’d decided to live close to work and sell his car a couple of weeks ago after not using it much. Almost everyone in LA did have a car, however. He rubbed his forehead, then snapped his fingers. “Wait, Kera has a motorcycle. She can drive if…wait, that might not be good.”
Ted frowned at him. “Why not? Hell, that might be the best possible scenario. Think about it: you’re sitting there, directly behind and pretty much pressing against one of the sexiest women in town, and she’s probably wearing a bunch of tight leather. If you’re lucky, uh...” He blinked and coughed. “Oh. I see where you were going. That could be bad.”
Chris rubbed his blazing ears. “Awkward. Yeah.”
“Well, you know what the answer is. Get your car back.”
“First of all, they’re definitely not giving it back. Second of all, that car was a piece of shit and is probably a worse idea than showing up without one.”
“Hmm.” Ted considered. “Then you need to get a new one.”
“What? No. They’re too expensive. I don’t want to drive in this city. Ted…”
“Dude, you’ve finally scored a date with her. Do you really want to mess that up by showing up like a man-boy with no car?”
Christian winced. “Okay. Fine. We’ll go look at…I don’t know.” He sighed.
As if he hadn’t been nervous enough.
Mariani sat at his desk. He was not in the mood to deal with the politics of minor street gangs, but he knew full well it was part of the job. He glanced at George, his bodyguard and valet, now ever-present since the failure of the guards in the last meeting.
“Bring the guy in,” Mariani ordered.
George walked through the office door, spoke to someone, and returned a moment later. With him was a young punk, the erstwhile leader of a penny-ante gang who had provided Mariani’s organization with stolen goods, tips, and other low-level but appreciable merchandise and services. The guy was of average height and above-average weight, though he wasn’t as broad as George was.
Mariani gestured at a chair. “Come in, my friend. Sit down. Ben Six, is it?” In truth, he couldn’t remember everyone’s names, but his underlings briefed him before meetings.
The young guy glanced around as though he expected someone to jump out at him. Mariani found this rude and stupid since hospitality rules were one of the sacrosanct rules of their kind, but bad manners had come to be predictable from the younger thuggish types.
He would wait to see if the kid’s politeness improved.
“Ben Six,” his guest stated. “Yeah.”
Mariani extended his hand. “Vincent Mariani.” He spoke brusquely to stave off the likely explanation of the man’s name. He didn’t care what the “Six” stood for; his time was too valuable to listen to every guy’s war story about how he got his street name, but most of them wanted to tell him.
Ben shook the offered hand and sat down. He had stopped looking around nervously, which was good.
“So, tell me about your supposed run-in with a witch,” Mariani suggested. He could not believe he was having this discussion, but every once in a while, cultish stupidity of one type or another spread through the local gangs.
“Yeah,”
Ben Six said eagerly. “Me and two of my boys were working on this car when this bitch pulls up on her motorcycle. Along with her posse.”
“What part of town?”
“By Hobart and Wyvernwood, kinda between them. Anyway, this girl comes up–”
The boss cut him off. “Just one girl?”
Ben grimaced and glanced to each side again. “No, man. Sir. Like I said, it was her and her posse.”
“How many?” Mariani figured he might have been inflating the numbers, but not too much since if a small army had jumped Ben and his two dumbass friends, they would have been in far worse shape than they were.
Ben answered the inquiry with a hasty “Two guys. You don’t think just one chica took us down, do you? She was tough, yeah, but I get the impression there was more of them, like she and her boys were just the messengers for this LA Witches gang.”
He went on to offer a rudimentary description of the woman. Describing the two guys with her proved strangely difficult, though, and Ben Six sweated whenever Mariani asked specific questions about them.
George escorted the man out a few minutes later and came back, closing the door behind him. “Do you believe that crap, boss?”
“Most of it,” Mariani said slowly. “He’s puffing it all up. My guess? She just said she had some people ready to jump out, and they didn’t have the balls to call her on it, but obviously, something went down. And Hobart and Wyvernwood...not too far from us, right? But if you connect the two, that’s too much territory for some gang nobody’s heard of to control. They run the Arts District and Skid Row too all of a sudden? I think we got some upstarts on our hands that need to be taken down a peg. Put out the word to keep an eye out for those assholes. Get some people on the street to look for them. At least this bitch with the motorcycle. She’s the only one we know is real.”
George nodded. “Will do.”
After he left, Mariani picked up his phone and entered the number Torrez had given him.
“Hello,” he said when the man answered. “I have a recent sighting of the LA Witches.”
Johnny jotted down details as Vincent Mariani talked. The leader of the Union was straightforward, the sort of man Johnny had grown up knowing. Mariani might be Sicilian, the kind of guy Johnny’s friends would have sneered at, but Johnny had grown up enough to know that the gangs had more in common with each other than they claimed.
Strangely, it made him feel a little guilty about working Mariani over to get to the LA Witches.
He told himself it didn’t matter what he did. If Mariani was stupid enough to take this bait, get in over his head, and put his own people in danger, he deserved to be taken down. When Pauline took over, there wasn’t going to be a place for a man like Mariani in her organization.
Johnny suspected she wouldn’t have any time for the macho boys’ club attitude of the old guard. Like it or not, things were changing. People would adapt, or they would be pushed out.
In the meantime, Mariani would help them take down those fucking upstarts.
Johnny was sure of only one thing, and it was that he wanted to see someone else get attacked so he could watch and see how the bitches pulled off those tricks. From what Mariani had said on the phone, it sounded like they’d tried the same thing with the would-be carjackers.
How did they do it? Johnny had made sure he sounded confident when he told Mariani that it was all flash-bangs and hidden speakers, but he had no idea how they could have set that up without him knowing about it.
It wasn’t like he believed in magic. It was just that when people showed up in the dark and did crazy tricks that made you doubt your eyes and ears, you got a little freaked out.
He forced himself to focus. One person. It was always one person.
One person he was going to make sure Mariani’s people found before he did. Then Johnny would watch, learn the witch’s tricks, and take them the fuck out.
Chapter Seven
Kera’s foot met the bag with a loud thwack, and more importantly, it didn’t slide. She was practicing her high roundhouse today, and the bag was proving to be an invaluable partner. She had to hit it perfectly, or her foot would slide over the surface.
The first time, it hadn’t been an issue. More errors, however, would result in her taking the skin off the top of her feet. Consequently, she was getting the hang of it back more quickly than she had feared she would; the speed and power she’d had at her peak was returning. Not bad, considering she hadn’t augmented herself with magic so far today.
The TV was on. It faced away from her workout area, but she could hear the audio loud and clear, which was good enough.
The news lady spoke. “Once again, we have an incredible story of heroism by an anonymous member of the community. Whether or not this is a follow-up is still to be determined since some local residents suspect that the hero in question may be the same man who was spotted pulling three siblings out of a wrecked car on the I-10 last week.”
“This ought to be good.” Kera flexed her hands and arms and started working on her feints and punches. Her right foot had had enough for the day.
The newscaster went on to report that the individual known only as “Motorcycle Man” had been involved in the foiling of a purse snatching, and more importantly, had rescued three persons trapped in a burning apartment building, none of which was news to Kera.
The next part was more interesting, though.
“Having adopted Motorcycle Man as a local superhero of sorts, multiple residents have now expressed regret at the prospect that he may have perished in the fire. However, no remains have been recovered from the building as of yet. Still, some of the rescued inhabitants claim to have seen the man ducking back into the structure shortly before it collapsed.”
Kera scowled at her punching bag and struck it with a flurry of high jabs followed by low, powerful body blows.
“Bullshit,” she protested. “He’s not dead. He’s right here. And if you blind-ass fools hadn’t noticed, he’s a she.” She patted her chest and spent a split-second considering implants. Then she dismissed the notion in scorn. “Though I might need them if I keep losing weight,” she muttered to herself.
She mopped sweat from her face, drank some cold water from the fridge, and sat down in front of the TV to watch the last minute or so of the epic saga of Motorcycle Man. While the elusive rescuer was occasionally referred to as “the individual” or “the person,” no one seemed to have considered the prospect that they were dealing with a woman.
Kera frowned. “What does a girl have to do to get some recognition and not have people, uh, assume her gender or whatever? Flash the ta-tas every time?”
It occurred to her that people presuming she was a man helped to disguise her identity and made it less likely that she’d be found out. Still, it irked her.
No wonder the heroines in the old sword and sorcery stories wore those goofy chainmail bikinis; otherwise, they’d look like guys. She had never considered that angle.
Though there were other karate techniques she could have worked on, Kera felt she’d given herself a sufficient workout for the time being.
She wolfed down half a fattening, calorie-laden macaroni and cheese casserole, hoping she’d put a little weight back on, then spent some time on a quick clean-through. Her regular cleaning schedule had gone out of the window as soon as she’d added physical training and studying magic. She did a quick scrub-down of dishes and wiped off her counter, along with some sweeping and a half-hearted attempt to get the scorch mark off the wall behind Zee.
She made some progress, but not enough to matter. She sighed and decided to get some artwork.
Then, satisfied with the condition of her living space, she took a shower and put on clean clothes. She was getting down to clothing she hadn’t worn in a while, and she desperately needed to do a laundromat run.
Not today, though. Today, she had gotten up early to work on her research about the publishing company that had released the grimoire
she was using. She had seen only the name Thaumaturgy Publishing, LLC, which was not registered as far as she could see. There should be records in the state where it had been registered, but no such records existed.
A few days ago, that would have been enough for her to drop the matter, but Mr. Kim’s words had influenced her to take a second look.
Whoever had published this, they had to know the spells worked.
Kera refused to believe they didn’t have an endgame of some sort. She started by bringing up the online sales page for the book. Might there be a way to figure out where the books were being shipped from? Some detail, any detail she had missed?
To her surprise, she saw that the book was no longer available for sale. There were not even any used copies available anymore, and the ebook page was missing.
As Kera stared at the screen, something prickled on the back of her neck. If it weren’t for the fact that she could see a record of the paperback, she would think the book had never existed. Whoever put this out, they had distributed it, made themselves hard to find…
And then taken it down.
Kera looked at the paperback copy on the table. She would have to be careful with it.
She would also have to see if she could find out anything more, now that these people had erased their tracks. She searched for the name of the book and was surprised to see copies popping up on download sites of dubious origin.
Not wanting to risk her laptop to whatever viruses these copies came loaded with, she kept poking through results, then went back to the sales page to look through the reviews. There were very few, though several mentioned the book connecting them to the universe and giving them strong powers.
Judging by the nested comments under the reviews, most people thought those claims were pure bunk.
Kera had to admit she would be one of those people if she hadn’t seen irrefutable evidence of magic with her own two eyes—and some burned skin. And hair. Also, her pants that no longer fit.
Searching usernames led her down the rabbit hole of internet message boards. Certain social media sites now had posts or subforums dedicated to discussing the book, with various people mentioning certain spells by name. Kera, having registered with an IP-masker, scrolled through but did not comment on any of the posts.
How To Be A Badass Witch: Book Two Page 6