Netherworld II: Blood Potion No. 9

by Tracy St. John

  Bane hadn’t been sitting still waiting for Princess Charming to save his butt. Battered and bitten all to heck, he still somehow got his legs under himself and launched at the surprised C.K. The men hit the gravel-strewn ground hard, C.K. taking the worst of it as Bane landed on top. A ring of keys, a multi-tool, and some change spilled out of the werehog’s pockets.

  Bane’s hands were still cuffed behind him, but he was on his feet in an instant, kicking the living crap out of C.K. while he was down. C.K. rolled away, managing to get clear long enough to stand.

  The two shifters glared at each other. C.K. grimaced a smile. “I see your ghost girl deserted you. Just you and me now.”

  Oh. He was right, I could feel the energy I’d sucked down dissipating from all the effort I’d put out. I was invisible to the living again.

  As I thought about this, C.K. gloated, “Okay, let’s see how you like this, mutt.”

  With that, he started to shift. His face elongated, wiry tufts of orange-ish fur shoving out of every pore. His tusks grew, and he fell to all fours as his bipedal body stretched out, turning him into a quadruped. His clothes split all down their seams and fell from his body.

  Oh man, this was not good. For anyone who has never tangled with a feral hog, you have no idea how much damage they can do to a person. They are built like tanks, and as short as C.K. was as a man, he more than made up for it as a hog. He swelled like a feeding tick until he would have come to chest height on me.

  Bane was cuffed. There was a collar with silver around his neck. He was so screwed.

  I looked at the ring of keys that had fallen from C.K.’s pocket and was on them faster than you could holler soo-ey. At this point, my love for BDSM turned out to be a huge bonus. I recognized both the key for handcuffs as well as the one that would fit the collar.

  Who says being kinky is a bad thing?

  I grabbed for the keys and my fingers passed right through them. Panic wormed its way into my head. C.K. was almost done with his shift, and Bane was awkwardly trying to climb on top of the car in an effort to find some way to protect himself. I fought the terror aside and pushed all my power into my right hand. I grabbed the keys and transported them and myself to Bane’s side.

  He made a strange yelping sound when I shook the keyring in front of his face. It must have looked darn surprising, a jangling collection of metal floating in midair. Fortunately, he recovered. “Hurry, Brandilynn! The collar first!”

  I was shaking as I got behind him, locating the lock imbedded in the back of the collar. It took me two or three stabs to get the key in. A quick turn, and the collar separated into two half circles and fell away.

  The next instant Bane’s body started to go snap, crackle, and pop like a certain brand of tasty cereal. I’d been going for the cuffs around his wrists, but with a squall of metal, he yanked them apart, breaking the chain that held them together. There’s a very good reason law enforcement doesn’t use standard cuffs on weres. Those puppies – pun intended – are strong.

  There was a furious shrieking squeal, and C.K. in full feral hog mode barreled into the still shifting Bane. The werewolf was knocked several feet past me, and the fight was on.

  The din of pig squeals and roaring growls rang in my ears. Bane had a nice mouthful of fangs, which he used with some success, but he was still more man than wolf at this point. C.K. was charging and trampling for all he was worth, intent on killing his enemy before he could attain full animal form. The werehog was merciless, keeping Bane off balance and at a disadvantage while dealing out lots of damage. Bane couldn’t shift fast enough to defend himself.

  I went to C.K.’s gun, pulling it out of the weeds with an ephemeral grip. Yeah, I’m a Southern girl who believes in the constitutional right to bear arms, but I’ve never owned a gun. Heck, I’ve never held a gun before. The one time I got a clear shot at C.K., the bullet went wild, and I lost my hold when the darn thing kicked.

  The two shifters were too tangled up after that for me to try again. I was likely to shoot Bane, and he had more than enough problems on his paws. So I settled for running up to the bloody, struggling pair and thumping C.K.’s skull with the gun butt.

  I at least distracted him for a moment. C.K. turned on me with an outraged shriek and charged. It was hard to stand my ground with a few hundred pounds of feral hog coming at me, but I knew he couldn’t hurt me. The trouble was, he knew it too. He leveled his attack on the very solid gun, knocking it from my tenuous grip.

  With a dismissive snort, C.K. wheeled around for another run at Bane. The couple of seconds that I’d taken his attention away, Bane had finished shifting. And let me tell you; a pony-sized, ticked off wolf is a far cry from a weaponless, injured human being.

  Despite his greater bulk, low center of gravity, and general pure meanness, in the end C.K. was no match for Bane. He got a few good hits in, including a brutal goring that put a nasty hole in the wolf’s shoulder before Bane tore his throat out. My stomach heaved with the momentary memory of nausea as Bane savaged the twitching werehog.

  It was with obvious effort that he made himself back off. Still snapping and growling at the dead and shifting back to human C.K., the agent trotted away a few paces before returning to his manlier aspect. His clothes were mere rags fluttering on the ground, casualties of his shift. Except for the shiny bracelets he’d made of the handcuffs, Bane was naked, all his injuries healed. Well, at least the view of this street was vastly improved, so long as you didn’t look at the remains of the Beasts’ dead leader.

  Bane shook himself all over, as if he was still a wolf. “Brandilynn? You still here, honey?”

  Yeah, I was here getting an eyeful. Darn my cheating gaze. I made my way to Bane and used my dwindled power to stroke his cheek. The one on his face. Hot bod or not, I was done playing hanky-panky with this one.

  He smiled at thin air. “Thanks, sweetheart. You saved my furry ass. I owe you big time.”

  Then he was back to work, nudeness notwithstanding. He checked on Bottle, who remained out of commission. Not a good sign for someone to be out for so long.

  “I gotta find a phone,” Bane muttered, and searched her pockets until he came up with her cell. He dialed. As he waited for someone to pick up the other end, he said, “I saw you, Brandilynn. I gotta tell you, you’re beautiful. I wish I had known you before you died.”

  Then a voice came from the phone and he was busy being a cop. “Yeah, this is Agent Levi Ward with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. I need an ambulance and police backup on Highway 341 near the water treatment plant.”

  I was coming down from the battle high, feeling pleased as punch with myself when I realized there was still a major baddie out there. And he had a hostage.

  “Fizz!” I yelled and left Bane talking to the 911 operator.

  Chapter 14

  I couldn’t transport directly to Hazel’s house. Though I knew he lived on Whistle Lane, I’d never been there before, wasn’t even quite sure where it was located. I was forced to go to the Beasts Club and start from there.

  The motorcycle club was right off Blount Highway, and Whistle Lane also branched from Blount. From the clubhouse I teleported from street to street, looking for the right road. The sun was bright, the air was crisp and humidity-free with the dry crackly smell of autumn, and all in all, it was a beautiful day to be out and about. Too bad such a pleasant day was turning into anything but. I was terrified I was going to be too late to help Fizz.

  Heading north on Blount Highway turned up nothing. Once I’d reached the interstate overpass, I knew I’d gone the wrong direction. I’d wasted two minutes going this way, two minutes that might get Fizz dead if she wasn’t already. I materialized back at the Beasts club and went south.

  Whistle Lane was only two streets away. Mad at myself for choosing the wrong way initially, I took myself to the first mailbox on the street to get my bearings.

  Hazel lived at 689. I was at 103. I started skipping from block to block, doubl
e checking mailboxes as I went, barely noticing the houses and mobile homes along the way. I had a sense it was a nice, if unremarkable neighborhood, the yards neatly trimmed and dotted with children’s toys. That Hazel lived on such a respectable road ticked me off for some reason.

  The last mailbox I found before the neighborhood ended and wooded lots began was 516. I peered down the shaded road and spotted a mailbox all by its lonesome. Hopeful, I materialized next to it. Nailed to the wooden post supporting the mailbox were the numbers 689. I’d found him.

  Well, I’d found the long driveway at any rate, winding through the thick stand of pine trees that blocked my view of any buildings that might lie on the property. I had to hop down the long trail, transporting three different times before I finally found Hazel’s house right off the marsh.

  The instant I hit the clearing where the dilapidated two-story colonial stood, I felt the thick electricity of magic in the air. I stopped short, realizing that if Hazel had detection wards for ghosts around his place, I would get no closer without alerting him to my presence. That would be really bad for me and no help to Fizz.

  I looked around, noting the silver Toyota I’d seen earlier at the storage place. Somehow the car didn’t look right, and though I could feel the seconds ticking by way too fast, I made myself look at it hard. It took a moment before I got what was different. Slightly dented and dinged, dirty with the paint faded, this was not the nearly new vehicle I’d fleetingly admired back at Simply Storage.

  I studied the car as hard as I could, making my eyes focus on one particular ding on the drivers’ side door. After a moment it disappeared, confirming my suspicions. I then looked over the house, seeing how the chipped paint became whole in places, how one shutter that hung haphazardly suddenly was straight and flush to its accompanying window. The warped boards of the wrap-around porch with the splintered railings were also a lie. Now that I was looking, I could see the haze enveloping everything here, making it look not well maintained.

  I’d seen spells marketed to make an ugly house look nice, a cheap alternative to remodeling, but this was the first time I’d seen the reverse. It made me think Hazel might be hiding some unclaimed income, pretending to live poor.

  A high, thin scream floated on the air, and at first I thought it was a seagull’s cry. Then it repeated; a woman’s shriek of extreme pain. Fizz.

  I had to hope the all the magic in the air was only Hazel’s remodel spell, because Fizz needed help now. I had to get into the house. I teleported to the front porch, which now that I was on it was really, really nice to look at with perfectly straight gray painted floorboards and blinding white rails. The door was one of those high-end affairs with a beveled glass insert. A couple of rocking chairs, only needing a sweet little old grandma and grandpa to sit and knit or whittle in them, waited to my right. It was bizarre to think Hazel’s dark heart possessed a yearning for such a homey entryway.

  Another scream cut through the shaded yard. Readying myself for the worst, I rushed through the door.

  I ran through the house towards the screams, barely taking in the rooms I passed through in my rush to find Fizz. Before each shriek came the well-known crack of a whip. And those cries … if the pure force of sound could shred vocal chords, Fizz would never speak normally again. Something more than a whipping was going on to produce those horrific peals.

  Uncaring about caution in my haste, I pushed through the closed door at the end of the hall, behind which the sounds where coming from. Hazel was too intent on what he was doing to notice my entrance, which is probably all that saved me from capture by the witch.

  The smell hit me first: fresh urine and feces. In her terror and pain, Fizz had lost control of everything.

  The room in this lovely old colonial was set up dungeon-style with restraints and heaven knows what else. I was focused on what Hazel was doing to Fizz and didn’t take much time to look around. The stripper was hung by her wrists in chains from an exposed beam in the middle of the room’s ceiling. Her face was a wide-mouthed rictus of agony. Hazel had already marked her pretty good with the whip that he sent swirling through the air to line her body with vicious cuts and welts.

  I will not tell you what else I saw except to say Fizz was bloody, screaming, and had battery cables connected to her, the stiff clamps embedded deep in her flesh. It was monstrous what Hazel was doing. I was happy I no longer slept because if I did, I’d

  have nightmares forever. I wanted to scream along with Fizz. He was killing her slowly, and I wasn’t sure which sickened me more; what he was doing to her or that he was naked and sexually excited as he did it.

  I’ve never been so furious, not even with the monster that killed me. If I could have murdered Hazel in cold blood at that moment, I would have done it with a smile on my face.

  I had to stop this. I needed more power. I turned and ran from the room as he continued to beat the poor woman, his high-pitched giggles more profane than any sound I’d ever heard before.

  I ran down the hall until I found the great room, tastefully furnished and with the requisite over-the-top home theater system desired by any man carting around testosterone in his body. As sunlight lazily drifted through the picture window I sucked power, begging myself to hurry, hurry as the terrible sounds of the whip cracking and Fizz’s screaming continued. It had never seemed to take this long to absorb power, not even when I’d been reduced to a wraith seven months before and fought for every little erg to salvage my existence. I guess when you’re trying to save another and you have to listen to their agony, it screws with your head that much worse.

  As soon as I got those telltale tingles in my fingers and toes, I materialized back in Hazel’s dungeon behind the creep. I grabbed the first thing that looked like it might do as a weapon; a thick wooden rod darkened with old, dried blood. Not thinking about who he might have used this thing on and how much damage he would have inflicted, I wound up like a major league baseball player and swung, smacking the witch right on the back of the head. It made a marvelous thud, and he fell to his hands and knees, the whip dropping from his fingers.

  “Get off her, you sadistic monster!” I yelled and let him have it again between the shoulder blades. He hit the floor with his face, the sound a thick thud. I laughed. When you’re loaded on power, the strangest things seem funny.

  Fizz stopped screaming, sagging in her chains as blessed unconsciousness claimed her. Hazel rolled over on his back and blinked slowly at me.

  “So you’re Fizz’s friend. I thought she was lying about that possession shit, but I should have known she didn’t have enough brains to make something like that up.” His voice sounded slow and thick. He seemed dazed. I was only sorry I hadn’t hit him harder, making him as out of it as his victim.

  I thought about telling him C.K. was dead and the cops were on the way, but good sense stopped me. If Hazel knew he had nothing to lose anyway, he might just haul off and kill Fizz simply because. Besides, I didn’t know that Bane had remembered Hazel carting off the stripper. He might not have asked for a rescue when he called for help. He’d been in a pretty bad way at that time.

  Instead, I tried appealing to Hazel’s humanity and sense of right. Silly Brandilynn. “So now you know she’s innocent. She didn’t do anything wrong. Let her go!”

  He grinned at me, as if his nose wasn’t swelling from its intense introduction to the floor. “I’m having too much fun. I bet I can have even more.”

  He started to mutter incomprehensibly, and the air around me grew thick and electric, sapping the energy I’d gained. The wooden rod dropped from my hands, and I knew I had to leave or suffer just as bad as Fizz. I sure couldn’t help her if I was trapped by Hazel.

  It was still hard to abandon her here with this monster. Praying I could get help back here in time, I escaped to Bane.

  The scene around Bottle’s car was a mishmash of yellow tape, cops crawling around, and police cars and two ambulances swirling colored lights. Someone had found Bane a
blanket to conceal his nudity since the shift had destroyed his clothes. He stood nearby with a couple of shifter cops, watching as paramedics tended the now conscious Bottle who peered around with dazed eyes. They checked her blood pressure and shined a light in her eyes. She still seemed pretty out of it, answering the medics’ questions with unintelligible mutterings.

  I hurried to Bane as one cop, a rattlesnake to judge from the black and gold scales that crept from his neck to his cheeks, said, “Dispatch says your field office is sending a couple of agents.” He rolled his slitted eyes. “Humans.”

  Bane gave him a crooked smile. “I’ll take what I can get.”

  Snake Man and his weregator partner exchanged grins, the kinds when one race of person is mentally shaking its collective head at another. While they shared a moment of resigned contempt for the norms, I went to a nearby cop car and drew some power. Escaping Hazel’s spell had managed to drain me a bit, and I needed Bane to see me.

  I materialized in front of him and concentrated on putting in an appearance. The three shifters jumped satisfyingly. I would have enjoyed it but for the thought of Fizz still under Hazel’s tender mercies.