Chapter 23
There was an old witch saying. In fact, it was a saying germane to all magical races. Find a way to give back to the universe, and the universe will find a way to give you double.
Spiraling reciprocal exchange. That’s what Ebony’s mother called it. You gave to the universe, it gave you more, then you gave it more in exchange, then it doubled the offer – and so on.
It was how reality evolved. It was how it created more out of itself. And it was the truth behind magic.
It had only taken Ebony her whole life to figure it out, but now it was a lesson well learned.
“Nate,” she turned to him, the shine of her realization starting to wear off, but not truly departing her. “We have to end this.”
“You keep saying that, but how?”
Ebony glanced to the side, thinking. “Find the man from the crypt, find Cecilia. Question them till they squeal?” She shrugged. “We could give it a go. Threaten them with an eternity in damnation until they tell us who has been helping them.”
Nate crossed his arms. “That’s a terrible plan. You think if it was that easy, I wouldn’t have dragged them both down to the station already? I’m immune to their charms, Ebony, I can see through their spell. But I’m not stupid enough to think I can just walk up to them and ask them to tell me who they have working for them.”
“Then we find another wa—” she began.
The door opened, and not with a gentle creak, but with a bang.
Nate piled into her, knocking her to the ground as the door handle came whizzing by her ear.
Several figures walked in, footsteps heavy.
Nate grabbed her, pulling her to her feet.
He stood before her, sword outstretched. His back was stiff, his posture strong, and he held his sword with such determination, a titan wouldn’t be able to wrestle it from his grip.
In short, he looked like a knight.
Three figures stood in the doorway. The man from the crypt, Cecilia Grimshore, and….
“A dragon?” Nate hissed. “Are you serious? You have a dragon working for you?”
The man… no, the thing, standing in front of Cecilia was incredible. It had the form of a large human male, but that was it. It was even crammed into clothes, but that wouldn’t fool anyone into thinking it was a person. Its skin crackled and erupted with fire, as if it were the surface of some planet being swallowed by the sun. Its eyes were two dents in its flesh – two holes that stared out with dead, black stones.
And its mouth, its mouth was enormous – far beyond anything human, far beyond anything natural. It was grotesque, its jaw jutting out a good half-a-meter, its lips blackened skin. A bright white fire burnt from deep within its throat, the light appearing to burst through its skin like blood seeping from a wound.
Ebony swallowed. She’d never seen a dragon, but she’d thought they’d be more, well, lizard-like.
Nate readied his sword.
Cecilia laughed. “Oh, that won’t do, Detective. That simply won’t do.” She cocked her head, her hair touching her long neck. “I would put that sword down and save yourself the trouble,” she finished with a smile.
Ebony kept her eyes on the man from the crypt. “Who are you?” she asked, jaw clenched. “I mean, I still don’t even know your name!”
Cecilia laughed easily, and the man joined in. “At a time like this, you worry that you haven’t been properly introduced?” Cecilia pressed her lips together. “Aren’t you a strange one, Ebony Bell. How delicious that you’ll be the one to complete our spell. How is it working, by the way? Are you beginning to feel lighter yet? Is the weight of your life simply lifting from your shoulders?” She clasped her hands together, taking a sudden breath. “Are you giving over to Death? Are you letting your impotent little life be rewritten for the purposes of something grander, something far greater?”
“Wow,” Ebony tucked her wrists behind her back, “You are just as mad as your friend. I mean, I guess you would be, considering you were dumb enough to get played.”
“Get played?” the gaunt man said carefully. “You are foolish, witch. We are the ones in charge, we are the ones—”
“Who don’t have a clue about what’s after you,” Nate supplied, keeping his eyes on the dragon.
Cecilia shook her head. “No one is after us. We are the Grimshores. Our family has been at the center of Vale for almost a century. We own this silly town, and very soon we’ll own that silly witch.” She smiled at Ebony. “Very soon.”
“Shut up.” Nate re-gripped his sword. “You don’t have the book, so you can’t consummate the spell yet. You have nothing but a trumped up dragon and a lifetime full of mistakes.”
“Tell me.” Ebony pressed her fingers together, welling the magic into the tips of her skin. She was ready to fight. “Who was helping you? Was it a wizard, was it a witch? Did you pay them off? Did you promise to make them rich if only they helped you continue your hold on Vale?”
Cecilia narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have a clue—”
“A clue? You want a clue? Here’s a clue, dear Miss Grimshore. If I hadn’t interrupted your little Death-Summoning, you would have been the one dying. You were set up and set up well. Neither of you must know much about magic because everything – from trying to summon Death, to what you were wearing – was bringing things toward you.”
“Things?” Cecilia asked, voice incredulous. Though there was a hint of uncertainty about her gaze.
“Things. Of the horrible and terribly powerful variety. Whoever you thought was working for you, they weren’t. They were setting you up, like a magical buffet. Just waiting for a creature to come your way and gobble you down.”
Cecilia shot a quick glance at the gaunt man. Then she returned her gaze to Ebony. “I don’t believe you,” her voice was high. “The Treasure wouldn’t have lied. The Treasure has kept my family safe and powerful for decades.”
“The Treasure?” Nate asked quickly. “What’s the Treasure—”
Cecilia laughed, and it wasn’t pleasant. It was the kind of laugh that can only be associated with the criminally insane or the astoundingly vicious. “I’m done here. Dragon,” her voice was commanding, “Kill the man and seize the witch.”
The dragon didn’t need to be told twice and instantly leaped toward Nate. Although it had the form of a human, it moved like a beast. It crouched down until its hands were on the ground and then used its legs to spring forward.
Nate tracked back. He threw an arm out to Ebony, knocking her to the floor and out of the path of the dragon.
The thing let out a ball of flame. It shot toward Nate, and he barely had time to put his sword up to block the flow.
Despite the fact it was simply metal against flame, the broadsword managed to stem the flow. The flame dispersed along the blade as if the metal was a vacuum, sucking the fire inside itself.
As Nate fought the dragon, the gaunt man shifted. He reached inside a sleeve, pulling out a knife. It wasn’t just any knife. It was the same sacred knife he’d used in the crypt. The same knife he’d used to slash Ebony, the same knife that had drawn her blood and that had set their spell in motion.
It was still tinged red.
The man pointed her way. “Your blood,” he mouthed.
A cold shiver passed over her skin.
For just a second it seemed Ebony and the man were alone in the room. Cecilia, Nate, the dragon – they all disappeared from her awareness as she focused in on the knife.
Blood is a powerful thing. You can’t live without blood. Blood is what carries the oxygen, the life around your body. It is movement, and without movement, you stop. Stop too long and you’ll die.
The man ran a finger across the blade, collecting some of the crusted blood underneath a yellowed fingernail.
What was he going to do with it?
“You think I don’t know about magic, witch? You think I don’t know about you, about your knight, about the creatures waiting on the Other Sid
e?” He sighed. “Unfortunately for you, you are dead wrong.”
Ebony became very cold.
Very cold.
He brought the blood-caked finger up to his mouth and blew.
The dried blood moved to the left. It moved to the right. It moved up. It moved down. It moved everywhere.
Ebony doubled over. Within her, she could feel her blood reverse, shift, agitate.
She lost force, lost momentum. Where once there was order, where once there was directed flow, there was now chaos.
She pulled in on herself. Fell to the floor. Fell to her knees. Fell to her hands. Fell to her face.
Her cheek was cold against the rug, though from within she melted from a ferocious, unyielding blaze.
“Power feeds power, child,” he said, his voice by her ear, even though he wasn’t standing near her. “And you are just the offering I need. Succumb, or be overcome.”
Ebony gaped, mouth opening, unable to control her voice, unable to control her muscles.
Unable to control anything.
“That which is more powerful has more power, child, it is a tautology of universal importance. It maintains the Order,” the voice still echoed by her ear. “That which is above is higher than that which is below. You cannot fight the order. You cannot fight that which is above, you can only succumb.”
Fight?
Order?
Power?
Snippets of thoughts, cuttings of memories, slices of feelings. Ebony’s reality, her life, all swirled before her, like a choppy sea under the work of a ferocious gale.
Nothing to hold onto. Nothing to grab to stop from sinking under.
Nothing but the movement itself.
When left with nothing clear, nothing solid, you are left only with movement. And movement is all there is, anyway.
Ebony managed to close her eyes. She managed to close her mouth. She managed to close her mind.
And all she found there was movement. So she latched onto it and followed.
“Don’t fight it. You can’t fight it,” he warned.
She wasn’t fighting it, she was following it. She tracked through her mind, through every memory she had. She clutched at the thread that bound them all – the silver thread of soul.
She wrapped herself around it and pulled.
….
Ebony Bell took a breath and opened her eyes. Saw what was outside.
He hissed. “Don’t fight it!” his voice pitched high.
She pushed into her hands, pushed to her feet. She hung there, like a puppet loose on its strings.
Then she moved. She pulled her hands in front of her, pulled at the magic in her mind.
“Submit,” the man demanded, jaw locked.
“No. No, I won’t. You can’t have my magic, you can’t have my life, and you can’t have my story.”
The man’s eyes widened, his yellowed skin growing pale.
“You need me to give up, but I won’t,” she said. “You need me to stop writing my own story, in order for you to rewrite it. You need me to give up my power, in order for you to take it. I refuse.”
Then the man, his teeth grating, flared his nostrils. “You will not succeed—”
“I don’t have to. I just have to not give up.” Ebony brought her hands in front of her, felt the magic pooling in her body.
You don’t have to get what you want – you just have to want it. And she didn’t want to give up.
Ebony clutched her fingers together, calling fire, calling water, calling earth, and calling air.
She unfurled her hands at the man, pushing them outwards as if she were trying to push at the space between them.
The floor moved beneath him, the air descended from above.
He stumbled forward, face compressing with anger. He slashed at her with the dagger, bringing it around in a wide arc.
Ebony stood her ground and pushed again. She furled her fingers back into fists and then pushed them out. The dressing table behind the man fell toward him, the chandelier fell from above.
He dodged both, slashing at her again.
She didn’t move. She just pushed.
The blade came up, close to her face, close to her eyes. She could make out her own blood still crusted on the metal.
It didn’t move her.
She pushed one last time.
The man fell back.
Did the sky give way? Did the ground fall away from beneath him? Did fire consume him? Did he drown in an ocean appearing from nowhere?
No, he simply fell back.
Magic didn’t have to be showy. It just had to be effective.
Around Ebony, reality returned. There was Nate, with the dragon defeated by his feet. There was Cecilia, cowering by the door.
And there was the man, with the blade still in his hand.
Ebony walked forward, knelt down, and picked up the blade.
She wiped the old blood against her skirt.
What had remained of the spell was now spent.
Ebony’s story, for now, was safe.
Epilogue
“You just disappeared,” Nate said, smiling at her from over the top of his coffee. The steam played against his face.
Ebony shifted in her chair, taking the chance to stare out of Nate’s kitchen windows at the mountains beyond. Clouds were receding on the horizon, allowing the sun to flow back into the valley.
“One minute you were standing there, facing off against that man,” Nate continued, taking a sip of his coffee, “The next you were just gone. It didn’t take me long to deal with the dragon. But I had no idea where you’d gotten to. Then you just popped back. Where on Earth did you get to?”
Ebony smiled back at him. “I’m not even sure it was on Earth.” She chewed her lip, holding her cup of tea close to her chest. “It felt like I was in a pocket of… some other reality. Like it was a world occupied by just that man and me.”
Nate shrugged his shoulders and took a breath. Then he looked up above Ebony, at the sizable hole in his ceiling. “It’s been a wild couple of days.”
She laughed gently. “Yeah. Wild.”
“Harry really managed to go-to-town on my house.” Nate sighed, scratching his scalp. “Lucky it’s still standing, mostly.”
“Now, you listen to me,” Harry said from somewhere on the floor, the traveling case giving an ominous rattle, “I had to fight off a horde of wizards. A horde, mind you.”
Nate’s eyes continued to survey the damage. “And I’m going to have to fight off a horde of bills before I get this place back to normal.”
“Won’t your Round Table pay for the repairs?” Ebony tapped her finger against the rim of her mug. “Or at least give you a noble loan?”
Nate raised an eyebrow and frowned. “They’re too busy saving the planet. Plus, I kind of feel you should help out – considering you caused this whole mess.”
Ebony faked a shocked expression. “I caused all of this? You were the one who used me as bait, Mr Knight, which is hardly very chivalrous I’d like to point out.”
Nate put his hands up, pretending to surrender. “You make a fair point, my lady,” he offered her a devilish grin.
“Now don’t you go getting any ideas. I,” she said haughtily, “Am not a damsel.”
“Nothing would have given me that idea. I know you, Ebony.”
“Not as well as you’d like to think. There’s a lot you need to learn about me.” She pointed at him and shook her finger.
“Well, I might just have the time to learn it. We have a lead, but I certainly haven’t solved the Portal case yet.”
Ebony clutched her mug tighter. “So it wasn’t the man, then? He was powerful, Nate, really powerful. All this time he was playing us….”
“No, Eb, I checked with the Round Table. It wasn’t him. I mean, I’d definitely say he was involved.”
“It certainly seemed as if he wanted me to surrender to some force,” Ebony shivered, “Or some creature.”
Nate nodded
. “It’s over now. The Knights have him. He’s not going to bother you anymore. And we have our lead.”
“The Treasure? What does that even mean?” Ebony blinked at him.
“I don’t know.” Nate ran a hand over his face. “But I think we should find out.”
“We?”
“What do you say? The spell over you has been completely reversed. Your life should return to normal, which means you are still the witch consultant to the Vale Police. I’m on the police force.” Nate patted at his chest. “And you are obligated to help me solve magical crime. And this, Ebony,” he smiled as he said her name, “Is a magical crime.”
Ebony pushed her hair behind her ears and thought for a moment. “Fine. I’ll help you find out who’s manipulating the Portal, Nathan Wall.”
“At what cost?” He laughed.
“Oh, I think we can negotiate that later.”
Thank you for reading Witch’s Bell Book One
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Read on for Chapter One from Angel: Private Eye
Right and wrong will cost you….
Lizzie Luck is magical. Apparently. The DNA test came back proving she’s from the otherworld.
She’s unemployed, has 24 dollars in her account, and is so out of luck it’s killing her.
Things couldn’t get worse, right?
Wrong.
When she winds up in the police station and comes to the attention of the city’s richest, most charming and most powerful vampire, her fortunes take a turn for the worse. Soon she finds herself under contract to him. She has to agree to his terms, and in return, he’ll find out who she is….
From magical murders to dangerously attractive vampires, Lizzie is thrust headfirst into a world of intrigue, mystery, and fantasy.
….
With plenty of action, adventure, wit, and romance, Angel: Private Eye is sure to please fans of Witch’s Bell. A seven-book series, the first two books are currently available.
Witch's Bell Book One Page 23