To the Grave

by Monica Corwin

  “You are saving lives,” I told myself. If I hadn’t created this beast, then so many wouldn’t be dead right now. I wouldn’t have been.

  I hit the few keystrokes needed to turn it off and then frowned at my screen. It hurt as much as I thought it would. But no one else would die because of me.

  I shut the laptop and went to my bed to curl up on top of the folded over covers. The pillow still smelled like Sam. He always smelled like a curious mix of engine oil and citrus. I’d asked him about it once, and he told me it originated from the soap and lotion he put on his hands. A special cleaner for oil and grease. I didn’t elaborate on why I asked, nor did I tell him it always made me feel safe when I smelled it.

  I inhaled and closed my eyes. Shutting down the app probably wouldn’t be the end of whatever was happening out there, but for now, it would put a kink in some bastard’s plan, and I was alright by that.

  I let myself wallow a moment. Did he kill me himself, or did he have someone do it for him? Did he kill the coven too? It would take someone strong and pretty fast to take down an entire coven before they could punch a hole through you with magic. They were white witches, but I knew for a fact white magic can kill just as easily as black magic.

  The sound of the front door broke my musing as the noise reverberated through the entire house. Obviously, someone was home, but who? I didn’t have the mental energy at the moment to get up just to check on who came in. And Sam saved me time by coming in my room a few minutes later.

  “Hey, have you seen Angel?”

  I shook my head, my hair making a scuffing sound against the pillowcase.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I just took down my app. I’m throwing myself a pity party.”

  His jaw clenched. “The one which got a lot of people killed?”

  I pushed out a breath and shook off the tears which threatened to fall at his sharp tone. “I know it needed to be done. That’s why it happened. I don’t need censure from you, too, okay?”

  His brows were still drawn down as if he were angry, but he didn’t press it further. Instead, he tossed a small cardboard box on the bed. “This was on the mat by the door. It has your name on it, but no mailing address or anything. I think someone left it.”

  I sat up and rolled it off my lap toward the end of the bed. “You do realize I’m on someone’s hit list right now. What if it’s a bomb?”

  He gave me another look. This one said you-are-an-idiot. I knew it well since I was often the one levelling it toward his goofy face.

  “If it were a bomb, I would be able to hear the mechanisms through the lid.”

  I shrugged and shifted the covers around my lap now that I sat up. “I don’t know. They could have magic-ed it to only start when I open it or something. These people are ruthless bastards. I’m not taking any risks. I can’t afford to lose another dress to the grave.”

  He handed me the box and crossed his arms over his chest while he waited for me to open it. I gently pulled the tied black and white stripped string that kept the lid and bottom together. It was a simple bow that fell apart easily. Once it released, I pried the lid up at the corner and peaked in quick.

  Sam reached in, and I flinched away. He pulled out a piece of hair tied with a red ribbon. I took it and turned it over in my hands. It was soft with a slight curl on the end. Almost white blond… “Sam,” I whispered and held it out to him.

  He took it and sniffed it carefully. “It’s Angel’s hair.”

  We stared at each other a moment, each trying to process the information in our own way. I grabbed the box and stared down into it. At the bottom sat a white slip of paper no bigger than my palm. On the front in handwriting I didn’t recognize and could barely read, it said:

  We have your friend. Bring the laptop and the code, and we trade.

  Underneath, it gave me an address to the warehouse district.

  Sam scratched behind his ear. The black stain of grease ran down his forearm. He must have not scrubbed up as well as he thought he did when he left the shop. I couldn’t think while flashes of Angel’s face in pain ran through my head. He was an innocent, a child in my eyes, and the fact they had him because of me had definitely screwed with my A-game.

  I got up and pushed past Sam to grab some jeans off the chair. Just as fast, I shucked my stretchy sweat pants and pulled the jeans on, buttoning them with a bounce. Then I grabbed a sweatshirt off the table nearby and approached my laptop set up.

  I didn’t have any more working computers. If they took this one, and they likely would, I’d be dead in the water if I needed to do anything else.

  “Can I point something out?” Sam spoke up.

  I glanced back and began pulling together the computer and the thumb drive. “What?”

  “You’re a bad ass centuries old witch. Can’t you put the fear of God into these people and get them locked up?”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Sam. I have power and experience, sure, but everyone has their own skills that are learned just like humans and Weres I suspect. My skills lie in technology. Computers, phones, tablets, wiring, and tangible things I can manipulate with magic and a good pair of wire strippers.”

  “So in all the years you’ve been practicing dark magic, you didn’t learn anything that can help Angel right now? Nothing from before technology? Maybe we can find him and then bust him out.”

  I spun back, my anger and fear starting to overtake my sense. “This isn’t the movies, Sam. I can’t orchestrate a jail break, and then everyone heads off into the sunset. This whole ordeal will likely end with me dead, and Angel dead, and then both of us rotting in a grave somewhere in limbo for the rest of the Earth’s existence.”

  “That seems extreme.”

  “Well, when you are cursed with immortality under certain conditions, then shit like that happens.”

  He watched me pack the laptop in a bag and then the note and fragment of Angel’s hair. I can’t believe they cut his beautiful hair. That made me the angriest of all of it. For some reason, that part of it seemed the most sacrilegious.

  “I’m coming with you,” Sam said, his tone holding a note of defiance.

  I shrugged and slipped the sweatshirt over my head. “Fine, just don’t die please.”

  He laughed. “I’ll do my best.”

  A witch and a werewolf walk into a warehouse. It had to be the start of an awful joke.

  Chapter 10

  The warehouse sat almost falling off the last dock near the river. This place was more than forgotten. It should be put in the quarantined category.

  “Is this it?” Sam asked as he climbed out of the car and quietly closed the doors. Likely the perpetrators knew we were there, but if I could buy any time by being quiet, it was worth it.

  “Have you ever seen a more sinister place? It was as if these bad guys plucked the building from a villain’s lair order form.”

  He chuckled, but it was forced and uneasy. It hurt me that Sam had to be dragged into this. The man was bigger and could take a hit from someone or something. But, he might not recover from that strike, unlike me.

  Sam cared about Angel, and for some unknown reason, me, and I couldn’t make him stay home because of those two very important reasons. He clutched the laptop I handed him in the cab just in case it was an ambush. He might be able to make it out with the information, or save Angel, and run.

  I told him repeatedly, if I go down, to leave me. He only gave me that you-are-kidding-right look.

  The building did not seem safe to go inside. Part of it hung to the left, some off the edge of the dock into the water. Night was closing in fast, and I wanted to be in and out if I could, before I had to face whatever big bad was putting up this fight surrounded by darkness.

  We didn’t need to open any doors as the entryway was leaning sideways and open as we carefully picked over the rocks and debris littering the ground. The building lay dormant and empty inside. Not even the echo of our footsteps broke the silence in t
he air, which should have been my first red flag.

  I spotted Angel lying on a blanket at the other end of the building. He wasn’t restrained at all, and oddly, his blue flannel button down lay spread open around him. Weird. His jeans, belt, and shoes were all present, though, so I didn’t linger.

  “Sam,” I whispered as loud as I dared. “Come help me with him. He is a little bastard, but I’m sure he is heavy.”

  When Sam didn’t come around to help grab Angel’s other arm, I turned around to find him standing with the laptop and Tiffani.

  “Uh…Tiffani. This is probably not a good time.”

  She smiled, and I knew. All I could manage was, “fu…” before the lights went out.

  I couldn’t have been out very long. The darkness hadn’t fully settled yet when I opened my eyes slowly. I lay with my head on Angel’s blanket, his warmth keeping that part of me from freezing at least. He was still out cold.

  I looked around and spied Sam across the room talking to Tiffani. No, his hands were up in the air, and he had that narrow-eyed look he got when I pissed him off. They were arguing. But most importantly, he wasn’t knocked out or tied up. Plus, he gave the bitch my code.

  As if he knew I woke up, his head jerked over, and he locked eyes with me. In that moment, I wished I was some predatory creature that could growl and rip a man’s throat out. He deserved that and more if he and the witch bitches were the ones behind this.

  “Oh look, she’s awake,” Tiffani said in a sing-song voice before traipsing over in her ridiculously high heeled shoes. Only Tiffani-with-an-i would go on a killing spree in four-inch sky scrapers.

  I didn’t respond to her taunting, knowing that’s what she wanted from me. “Give me my code and give me Angel, or I’ll…”

  She leaned down and held her hand up to stop me talking. “Or you’ll what?”

  “Slap the shit out of you, that’s what.”

  With a soft laugh, she stood up again and crossed her arms under her breasts. The peach blouse she wore matched her navy blue pencil skirt. “You’re tied up. There is no getting out of here until I tell you that you can leave.”

  You’re a damn powerful witch. Do something.

  I took a deep breath and reached into myself to access my magic while I dug a fingernail into my wrist. It should have been more than enough to get out of the ropes and save Angel. Except, the wellspring where my power lived inside me didn’t budge at my prompting. It was like I’d been cut off. I tried again, this time releasing blood so it trailed down my wrist in a warm current.

  Nothing at all.

  Now it was officially time to freak out.

  Tiffani sauntered closer, and I resisted the urge to kick her in the shin. “Do you know why my sisters and I lived in that pathetic little dump you call a house?”

  “Free Wi-Fi?” I supplied.

  “Obviously not. It was for your firewall. You have the stronger magical firewall in existence. No doubt from years and years of tinkering to build it up. My sister’s and I have been studying it from the time we moved in until we learned how to use it for our own purposes.”

  I shifted, still trying to loosen the ropes. “Is this where you start laying out all your dastardly plans to tempt me to thwart you? Because I’m not interested. You do you. All I want is Angel.”

  Tiffani skirted around me and knelt to move a lock of Angel’s hair from his face. A sound I’d never heard before ripped from my chest. Not a growl, but it wasn’t exactly human either.

  “Don’t touch him.”

  She lifted her hands in mock surrender and stood up again, perfectly balanced in her heels. I bet she did her planks in those things.

  “What do you want, Tiffani? Tell me so we can settle this, and I can go home.”

  She circled Sam being sure to touch every sculpted muscle. I met his eyes. “You let her kill your family? Or did you not realize that was going to happen?”

  He cleared his throat. “She only killed the dark ones.”

  “So the crying. That was an act? To get my sympathy and help.”

  No response needed there. Now he glanced away.

  “Spineless bastard,” I whispered.

  “What’s your end game?” I said to Tiffani, now ignoring Sam.

  She gestured at me lying on the floor. “To get rid of you, the darklings, so that those of us shining in the light can come out of hiding in the human world.”

  I laughed out loud. “You’re insane. The last time this happened, it was called something…what was it…oh, The Witch Trials.” I shook my head. “This is why we learn history people.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me now and stalked forward. I scooted closer to Angel, but she didn’t go near him only close to me so she could tower over me and look down her nose to the floor. It made so much sense now. Why she took a job with the senator. Why I went to the hotel and didn’t remember it. The connection was Tiffani.

  “You think the humans are going to accept you because you claim to be light. Which, from where I’m sitting, seems ambiguous at the moment. Humans hate anything that is different from them. You could claim to be angels sent down from heaven, and they would still turn on you the second you stopped giving them something they wanted.”

  The door on the far end of the warehouse opened, and Melanie came inside. She had my laptop now and shoved it at Sam. “Get her to open it.”

  “That wasn’t the deal,” he whispered urgently.

  Melanie crowded closer, pressing the computer into his sternum with force. “I don’t care what deal you made, you mangy mutt. Get her to fix it, or you go down too.”

  I laughed. “See what you got yourself into, Sammy Boy. When they say ‘we,’ they mean witches like them. Doesn’t matter if you’re light or dark. If you don’t fit their mold, then you don’t count.”

  He met my eyes for a flash of a second, but I didn’t spare him. “I hope at least one of them put out for this.”

  Something passed across his features, and he locked his jaw. Melanie stepped back and he shuffled over and crouched down beside me. “Stop fighting. It will go easier for you.”

  “Is that what she told you when she screwed you from behind?” I called at Sam.

  Another tick, this time in his neck. I knew I was pissing him off, but maybe I could get him to crack and let loose on me. I may not have access to my magic, but my magic had access to me. And when flight or fight kicks in, there are no rules.

  He leaned down and whispered, “I know what you are trying to do, and it won’t work.”

  “Oh, yeah? You think you know me? The girl you slept in the same bed with a few times, made out with twice. You absolutely know me.” I stared him down, showing him exactly what I thought of him right now.

  I could see the hurt in his eyes. On at least some level, he really did care about me. Maybe it was all real except the betrayal parts. But neither of us would ever know.

  “You’re not going to fix this, are you?”

  I smiled. “Aw, he’s smarter than he looks, folks.”

  A clench of the jaw. As he moved to stand up, I reared my legs and caught him right in the balls. He doubled over, the laptop falling to the floor. It took five seconds to smash the drive with the heel of my boot.

  “What the hell did you do?” Melanie screamed, coming over and lifting me off the floor by the hair now. I got to standing and tried to reach out and grab her. We could fight the old fashioned way. My size didn’t mean I wasn’t scrappy when necessary.

  She had a foot of height and about forty pounds on me though, and I landed right back on my butt next to Angel. Melanie stalked back over to Tiffani with the remnants of the laptop, and I couldn’t help smiling. At least they wouldn’t be able to find any more people to slaughter.

  On the note of slaughter. “What was with the coven of witches you murdered. Girls, children even? How is that good and right?”

  Tiffani pushed her sister toward the other end of the room and came over. She put on her best school teac
her face. “The greater good always requires noble sacrifice.”

  I let out a long sigh. Great. The witch bitches had a noble mission. Those were the kind people died to protect. The kind that left trails of blood in their wake. The kind who could wipe out entire civilizations.

  How many people had already died for noble causes? Too many of mine, that’s for sure. Instead of arguing with her, I let her think I’d calmed down until she wandered back over to her sisters. In her absence, I felt around on the concrete to see if any of the pieces from the computer remained. Something sharp I could use to get out of my ties or maybe use as a weapon. Nothing.

  I pressed my fist to the ground and fought the urge to slam it.

  A figure came through the dark and crouched around Angel toward me. Sam’s face loomed over mine, and he whispered. “I’m sorry. Look, I’ll get Angel out. They don’t want him; they only want you.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  The click of Tiffani’s heels stalled Sam as he was about to untie me. “Shit,” he whispered. When he looked to me for help, I shoved him over with my boot.

  Tiffani gestured at Sam, and Melanie circled him and then reached out. I couldn’t see what was happening in the darkness, but Sam slid down until he lay flat, and Melanie dragged him away.

  It shouldn’t have hurt to watch, but it did. I hated him and cared for him. And damn it, there went my plan to guilt him into making a dashing rescue attempt later.

  “We have something very special planned for you,” Tiffani said with a smile more predatory than friendly now. The darkness cast shadows as she lit candles in a circle.

  Candles in a circle around witches were never a good thing.

  “Are you going to fill me in?” I asked, testing my rope’s give again. These women had to be sailors in another life or something. Not a millimeter.

  Tiffani finished lighting her ring of candles and stood to face me again. “Oh, yes, we’re going to make your dreams come true. We are finally going to kill you for good.

  Chapter 11