Witches (12 page)

Amanda collapsed to the earth and dried leaves under a scarlet moon, Amadeus clutched in her arms. Rachel’s resistance had weakened her.

After a while, as exhausted as she was, she roused herself. She had to get up. Had to move. Had to get inside and take care of her friend, Amadeus, before it was too late. Get free from whatever lethargy Rachel had left her with.

She fought her way to her feet.

The last remnant of Rachel’s power slammed her to the ground, with Amadeus awakening and meowing pitifully as her weight fell on him.

When she’d caught her breath, Amanda got to her knees, and with the aid of a nearby tree, to a standing position; she dragged herself through the gloomy wooded spaces until she spied her open door, and threw herself through it, falling into a heap inside. Shaking with exhaustion, she shoved it shut with her foot, reciting another spell to keep Rachel out.

Hardly able to move, she hadn’t enough energy left to scream when all the windows imploded, the flying glass slashing through her clothes, tearing her skin and lodging in her eyes. Blood and glass slivers all over her. A thousand tiny cuts along her arms and probably on her face.

Then...silence. Rachel was finally gone.

Amanda gazed at the shattered glass and wood across the floor and shook her head tiredly. A shambles. She’d clean everything tomorrow. She’d used herself up for tonight, and she needed to take care of Amadeus.

Dazed, she stumbled to the table and lit candles to have a good look at him. “You’re a bloody mess, worse than me,” she told him, as he opened his eyes and meowed pathetically up at
her, laying a bloody paw trustingly on her hand. He was so hurt he couldn’t even think human.

Wiping tears from her face, and staring at his beaten furry body, she doctored him the best she could, as well as the worst of her cuts, with a salve she prepared herself with magic.

The ear was gone, and might not grow back. Since black magic had taken it, there might not be magic that could return it. Time would tell.

She gently bandaged his other wounds and wearily said some words over him so he’d sleep, and start healing. She’d done the best she could. No vet could have done more.

She laid him in her bed. With her last bit of strength, she wove a final enchantment and mended the broken windows to keep the cold air out. Now, she had to rest.

Climbing into bed, she tucked the cat gently into the crook of her arm, burrowed into the covers, and fell into a deep sleep.

She dreamt of Jake.

“Mandy,” he warned in a loving voice that made her weep in her dreams. “Be careful, my love. There’s much danger here for you now. You don’t know...”

“What must I do, Jake?” She reached out for him. “What danger? Rachel?”

“Yes. You must find the strength to resist her. Seek help. Damn your pride,” Jake told her. “Prepare yourself.”

“What does she want with me?” Amanda pleaded. “Why is she here?”

“For the coven. For your power...so she can find a way to live again. Beware.”

“Of what?” He was already fading away.

“Help me,” she begged the emptiness he’d left behind. She cried out for him and tried to follow, but she couldn’t—he was gone. She was alone again. The ache so overpowering at his going, she felt her heart would burst.

* * * *

She woke up. It was barely dawn. Too early to get up, but Amadeus’s body snuggled next to her and her pain, vividly reminded her of the events of the night before.

Rachel. Her threats.

The strange dream she’d had with Jake in it. Something about Rachel and the coven. Had Jake meant the cult that was torturing and butchering people in the area?

Was there a connection between the two?

Amadeus was a warm bundle of fur that slept peacefully in her arms, but looked like a war veteran. At least, she consoled herself, he’s alive. He’ll make it.

She got up, witched a bone-warming fire in both the kitchen and the living room, and cleaned up the broken glass on the floor; Amadeus continued to sleep. Poor creature.

She glanced in the mirror at herself. The salve had helped most of her cuts, but she was still a sight. She put on more.

She’d just finished when it happened. One moment she was fine and the next...her world was plunged into blackness. She couldn’t see.

Groping her way to the rocker she sat down, her heart climbing up in her chest. Intoning in a trembling whisper every spell to heal it she could recall until she was weary all over again.

It took three hours to regain her sight.

It took much longer to regain her serenity.

She had an enemy she mustn’t underestimate again.

This was war.

She’d gone back to bed, nestled in with the cat, and was already half asleep when the knocking came at the rear door.

“Damn,” she mumbled, dragging herself from under the covers, trying not to disturb Amadeus. Throwing on a robe, she answered it.

It was Ernie, of all people. He wasn’t in uniform.

There was such a look of distress in his eyes, she gestured him to come in. “Ernie, it’s awfully early for a social call, isn’t it? And on a Sunday morning. There’s no mail today.” She exhaled, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The pain told her that her face was probably a mass of cuts and she instinctively lowered it so her hair covered her features.

“I know. And I’m sorry, Amanda, for disturbing you at such an ungodly hour but...my news can’t wait.”

“Want coffee?”

“That sounds good. Please.”

“What’s wrong? And what news?” she asked. She could tell by the way he was acting that something had really rattled him.

Her back toward him, she fixed a pot of coffee, muttering, “It looks like we both need it.”

Something in Ernie’s silence made her stop before she was done. She peeked over her shoulder at his face.

“Ernie? What is it?”

“Amanda, last night something happened in town. Something...monstrous. The trees lining Main Street were pulled out by the roots and set back upside down, and the houses along those streets were shattered and destroyed as if a cyclone had ripped through them.”

“There wasn’t any storm last night,” Amanda exclaimed. “How could such a thing—” Her voice fell off
abruptly and her eyes widened.
Rachel?

The damage done to her own house was still fresh in her mind. She remembered
Amadeus.

“I know that. The town knows that,” Ernie groaned and wiped his face with his fingers as if he was weary. Sweat shone on his face and the morning was freezing.

“One of the houses was Jane’s but it wasn’t damaged too badly.”

“Oh, no,” Amanda moaned. “Is she all right? Are the kids all right?” Amanda walked over to the table where Ernie had slumped into a chair. He looked as if someone had beaten him up. His face gray around the beard, his eyes brooding.

“Yes, she and her kids are fine. They weren’t hurt.”

“But others were?”

“Yes. They found more dead bodies in some of the houses, Amanda,” he murmured, tensely. “But they hadn’t died by walls collapsing on them or anything. They were murdered. Butchered like the others found over the last couple of weeks. All of the Fergusons—they had a couple of small kids, too. The seven Sladers. Three adults, two teenagers, and two children under five years old. All dead.”

Amanda stared at him, her face a mask of ice. “Oh, no.”

“More cult killings. I can’t even tell you what happened to them, it’s so horrid. Inhuman.” Ernie looked like he could have thrown up. He rubbed unsteady hands over his face.

“The townspeople are scared as hell.” Hesitating as if he didn’t want to say what he had to say, he looked down at his hands folded on the table.

“As if that’s not bad enough...there were messages left beside the bodies, in blood...to you. In both houses. It’s the only lead the police have so far, except,” he swallowed as if he didn’t believe what he was saying, “for these strange animal prints in the blood spilled over the floor. Kinda like hoof marks, I overheard Deputy Henson say. No other evidence. No fingerprints or shoe prints. As if human hands had never committed the crimes at all.”

Fear settled in her mouth, dry and bitter like dirt.

Hoof marks like demons left.
“And the messages?”

“According to Henson, they said about the same things in slightly different variations:
‘Amanda, come to us,’
or something similar to that. And you’re the only Amanda around here.”

What did the cult, or whoever or whatever they were, who’d called up those demons want with her? To join them? Was it a challenge? She could take the message either way. She wondered if Rachel had anything to do with any of it.

“I’m pretty sure you’re gonna be their scapegoat.”

“You’re kidding? They can’t truly believe I had anything to do with any of the killings, can they?” Her earlier conversation with Jane came back to haunt her.

“I stayed around only long enough to gather that they do think you had something to do with it. They just don’t know what.”

He nodded his head. “The townspeople are having a meeting right now about it and they’re riled up. Got the makings of an angry mob. They’re scared and they don’t know what to do. It’s only human nature to want to strike out at someone. Somebody’s going to pay.”

Yes, Amanda thought, and I’m the most likely candidate.

What’s new?

She turned and walked to the perking coffeepot.

“Coffee’s done,” she said in a flat voice. Picking the pot up, and grabbing a couple of mugs on the way from the counter, she moved back to the table.

“Maybe, there’s some place you could go for a while until this blows over?” Ernie suggested carefully.

Amanda laughed, a gallows laugh, as she set the mugs down and poured the coffee in them. “You want me to run away as if I were guilty of something?”

“I know none of it’s your doing, Amanda, but just to be safe. For now.”

Run away again.
Like Boston when it got too hot for her.

She sat down, put sugar and cream in her coffee, and handed the spoon to Ernie so he could do the same, tilting her face up. He contemplated her with sad eyes, unable to reassure her.

“Amanda?” he blurted out, seeing her face clearly for the first time. “What happened to you? You’re all cut up. Your face?”

She self-consciously put her hands up to cover the cuts. “Oh, it’s nothing. I had an accident on the scooter yesterday coming home from Jane’s.” She hated lying, but there was no way she could tell him the truth.

“An accident?” he repeated stupidly.

She waved her hand at nothing. “It was dark. A car came by going too fast for that last curve on Quarry’s Hill—you know the place—shoved me over and I hit some loose rocks on the side of the road. The scooter went down. I landed in some thorn bushes, that’s all. It wasn’t bad. The scooter’s okay,” she added.

“Must have been some big thorns,” he commented suspiciously, studying her face. “Ought to have a doctor look at those.”

“Naw,” she responded lightly. “I’ve taken care of them already. Put medicine on them. They’ll heal. I’ll be fine.”

Amanda’s tone said she wanted the subject dropped. She swung her head and stared at the fire in the kitchen stove. Her heart heavy from what Ernie had told her.

“You really think it would help if I ran away?”

“It couldn’t hurt.”

“Oh, Ernie,” she replied hopelessly. “And do they—do you—really believe witches are evil and should still be burned at the stake in 2010?” The damning words had snuck out, she hadn’t been able to stop them.

He recoiled visibly at that, a glimmer of confusion in his eyes. “Amanda, it isn’t me you have to worry about. I know
you
wouldn’t ever hurt anyone. I know there are no such things as real witches. Evil witches with magical powers who hurt innocent people but if there were, Jake always said—”

Amanda’s eyebrows lifted, her eyes seething.

He shut up, probably recalling their last exchange on the issue.

Jake and his big mouth again. Ernie believed what Jake had let slip about her, or some of it, no matter what he’d said before. “Jake said
what?”

She had to wait a minute or two before he answered, “When he talked about you being a witch, he said modern-day witchcraft wasn’t like what people usually thought. It was your religion. A way of thinking, believing, and living. That most witches were into white magic, not black. He swore there was a big difference.” Ernie’s brow furrowed as if he’d given all of it a lot of thought.

“I’m sorry, Amanda, for bringing it up again.” He apologized. “I always thought he was teasing me, knowing how skeptical I was, but now with all this weird stuff going on...I’m not so sure. The way those people were murdered, the destruction done in town last night. None of it’s natural.”

Amanda smiled bitterly and looked away. So now the townsfolk—and Ernie
—
were believers? That was all she needed, as
if she didn’t have enough
trouble already.