“What trick would that be?” Charlie wanted to know from the right side of her.
“Hush.” Tillie warned him—before she said in her witch’s voice: “Summon thee o’ spirit of darkness. Imbue this fragment of fluted metal with your wisdom, guidance, and power. Grant unto me its totality of strength and will—I command you.”
Her eyes took on a peculiar glow as did the metal and something animate emerged from the palm of her hand—just beneath the cut piece of rebar itself.
Roz squeaked in solid disbelief as she saw a demon sprite dance around the girl’s palm and then tap the piece of rebar with the point of its wooden eshir.
The thing vanished in an explosion of light and particles which zipped around the teen girl’s body before being absorbed by it completely.
Then the demon sprite vanished like a puff of black smoke soon afterwards.
Charlie’s jaw dropped after that—as Tillie reached down for another piece of cut rebar from the pile; winked at him in passing and then held it between both hands.
Then she bent it like it was a piece of soft candy—the sound of squealing and tortured metal clear as a bell.
Then she straightened back up and put it back onto the pile like nothing happened.
Tillie took a much needed breath after that—a smile on her face.
“That certainly did the trick,” she remarked gaily—before glancing at Roz first and then Charlie; both of which looked astonished by her little magic trick.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like that before,” Roz managed to get out. “Was that magic absorption or metal?”
“Magic.” The girl confirmed. “That spell converts any metal object I have in my hands into a strength incantation and the charged particles are then absorbed into my body—granting me…?”
“Strength.” Charlie said with pursed lips. “But I wished you hadn’t done that with my dwindling stockpile of cut rebar, Tillamook. It’s a pain in the ass to get on such short notice—especially considering what I need for my ongoing projects.”
“—which multiply just about every other day.” Roz threw out teasingly—earning her a dirty look from the older boy in passing.
“They keep me busy.” He answered tight-lipped.
Tillie looked at Charlie for a second. “I could solve your problem—if you like—by giving you a small boon?” She proposed then.
“Unless you can whip up more cut rebar, I would suggest keeping your little magic tricks to a minimum.” The boy told her unhappily—before he bent down on one knee and started doing another rough count of his wares.
“Hand me a couple pieces of that and I’ll show you something cool that will give you twice the number of cut rebar you currently have right now.” The girl offered openly.
Charlie paused in his count. “Seriously.”
“Most definitely…unless you want to run out before the month is out? And I know you don’t have enough work credits to go get more—seeing how you spent a fortune feeding the two of us back at the restaurant.”
“True.” The older boy conceded easily enough before handing her two pieces.
Tillie set the first one on the floor in front of her—spaced about six inches apart from the second—and then whipped up a different type of magical incantation in the blink of an eye and said in one solemn voice:
“Multiply.”
The sound of clinking and clanging metal erupted in front of the other girl as she moved out of the way so that she wouldn’t become buried by the sudden onslaught of cut rebar.
Then the girl extinguished her spell incantation and the light died in the next second to reveal about six inches worth of cut rebar—times two—right in front of the bed.
“Whoa.” Roz whispered in quiet amazement. “Think you can whip me up a spiced latte energy drink from the barista shop down the street?”
It was supposed to be intended as a joke, but Tillie took her suggestion seriously and in that split second, she magically made one appear in the other girl’s hands with a royal purple incantation.
The other girl sagged back onto her seat in a rush of exhaustion—her head spinning from having to do too many spells at once.
Charlie looked at her with lingering concern in his eyes.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Just takes a lot out of me. Usually, all I need is to do one specific spell incantation for brief periods of time, but doing too many at once…?”
“And here you said you were all powerful…?” Roz chucked out between enthusiastic slurps of her spiced latte.
“It’s been…a long day,” the girl admitted to both of them. “And I’m beat.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? I should be fine. Right as rain in fact.”
Charlie bent down to collect the first pile of cut rebar and added it to his other dwindling pile with solemn gratitude.
“Is the spell permanent? Or does it disappear after awhile?” He wanted to know—while dropping the first batch.
“Oh, it’s permanent. Believe me. While I can also do illusionary magic as well, what I showed both you is a trans-positional type of magic.”
“The law of equivalent exchange?”
Tillie closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head.
“No. It’s not like the classic 20th century anime Full Metal Alchemist or the new Sum Zero One anime series.”
“Don’t think I’ve seen that one,” Charlie said in visible disappointment in his voice. “Heard about it, but haven’t had the chance to see it yet.”
“It was on satellite cable TV.” The girl revealed to him then. “I was finally catching up with Season 2 before the whole city had gone to hell.”
Charlie pointed out the rest of his modestly sized room.
“Sorry. Don’t have the room for a video screen monitor anywhere’s. But I do have this cool surround sound setup. Ever hear of Bachman-Turner Overdrive?”
Tillie nodded eagerly. “Have I? It was one of my dad’s favorite classic rock groups of the 1970s! Well, back in those days anyways. Do you have the remastered laser mini disc compilation of their last three albums done by Faith Jumper?”
Charlie nodded. “Go look. It’s in my growing music sleeve collection.”
The teen girl squealed with delight before jumping off her seat and hugging Charlie to beat the band. Then she kissed him quickly on the cheek before he or Roz could do anything.
“There was a reason why I liked you from the start, man! You have the same awesome tastes in music as my dad did when he was alive!” She said excitedly before moving like lightning over to his small—but modest—entertainment center.
It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for and dumped the first mini-disc into the player and the sounds of ambient electronica started wailing like a universal dirge in the space between them.
“Is it always like that?” Roz called out to her best friend then while she watched Tillie rock out to the music with her own impromptu dance routine—her witch’s cloak flowing back and forth like quicksilver.
“The first album is always loud.” Charlie said over the noise—before going over to his stereo system and adjusting the volume controls a bit.
Tillie held out both her hands towards him afterwards.
“Dance with me!” The girl shouted uncharacteristically—before she repeated her request at a more normal tone of voice.
“I don’t think so. I don’t dance.” The older boy informed her.
Tillie made a grab for both his hands and pulled him towards her in a flurry of energy and girlish excitement—not too mention youthful enthusiasm.
“See? Like this: Two feet in front, then one foot in back, do a half spin in a counter-clockwise fashion and then repeat.”
“That’s something only old people would know about,” the boy said with clear distaste—even though he didn’t pull away from her in that second.
Not that he could.
“Nope. Just my dad.” Ti
llie confirmed.
“But it sounded to me like he wasn’t alive anymore.”
Tillie sighed heavily while she held onto him as they danced this little number on the music track.
“He isn’t.” She muttered softly—but loud enough for him to hear. “But his music is all I have to remember him by nowadays. Not so much on the memories front.”
It was at that time that Roz decided that she had enough of the girl’s unintentional fawning of her best friend and moved to step in to end things before another misunderstanding popped up.
“Okay, you two. That’s enough.” She said in an authoritative tone of voice.
Tillie looked at her for a second and scoffed.
“You’re not ruining my fun, elf girl. Be gone before I turn you into a frog.” She said—sticking her tongue out at her.
Roz glared at her in that instant, her face going through a whole wide range of emotions. None of them pleasant.
“Don’t make me drop kick your ass, witch.” She warned on no uncertain terms.
“You couldn’t touch me, half pint.” The other girl fired off—before looking up into Charlie’s questioning stubble covered face.
“What?” She wanted to know.
He let go of her in that instant.
“Roz is right. We’ve spent enough time fooling around.” He said implacably.
“Oh bull—loney.” Tillie ground out with visible disappointment at having such a good thing being ruined on the account of would be jealousy from the other girl.
“I wanted to teach you how to do the tango!”
Charlie laughed. “With Faith Jumper playing? Doesn’t work that way I’m afraid.”
Tillie stood there, fuming a bit at lost chances. But she wasn’t going to drag out the argument any further in front of Roz—who appeared ready to do some serious damage if the matter was pressed any further.
“Happy now, elf girl? You made me lose my one and only chance at having a dance with the guy I like a lot!” She accused openly.
“I wouldn’t go that far, witch. I was here long before you. And besides…I saw him first.”
Tillie’s jaw dropped then. But she managed to pull a quick recovery just the same.
“Oh, really? Well, girlfriend, two can play that game.”
“Please don’t.” Charlie interjected smoothly. “I don’t want to be the source of anyone’s angst these days. I have enough on my plate to deal with as is.”
Tillie stared at him in disbelief. “But I like you!” She snarled with heated passion.
“I know.” The older boy said. “But Roz is right in a way. And I can’t discount her feelings on the matter either.”
Tillie sulked. “Great. Outmaneuvered on two fronts.” She said with a cloudy expression on her face.
Then she looked up at Roz who wore a silent—but triumphant—look on her hers.
That just pissed her off even more.
Bitch.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Political Discourse
Jake retired to the couch while his girlfriend elected to do the dishes for the evening while he checked out what was playing on the video screen.
“Do you mind if I change it to something else?” He called out.
“What’s showing?”
“Right now? State media channel. I think I saw Board member Poulson for a brief second talking about…yeah. The bombing of a Witch’s Guild in Topeka.”
“Was it by one of ours?”
“No. The media announcer is saying it was the work of the Scarlet Dragons again.”
“The human vigilante group out of Broken Bow, Oklahoma?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t look like there will be any arrests being made. The local cops are treating it as a Third Watch operation.”
“Well, considering what Iron Hammer was supposed to do—? Then yes. But I don‘t think we went that far in. Just along the coastline and the mid-Atlantic states as a convenient test run of our new capabilities.”
“Like what?”
“Shadow Strike bombs. Ten megatons. A little more powerful than the standard Hyperion class MOAB’s.”
“Weren’t those strictly off the books and out of the public eye?” Jake wanted to know, while coming into the kitchen to grab himself a glass of water from the tap.
“Which ones, baby?”
“The Hyperion class.”
Kara nodded while she was busy scrubbing out one of the pots they used the night before for the hamburger meat.
“They were only used a few times over the past twenty years because of the massive collateral damage caused. Such weapons didn’t have a local displacement wave like the older arsenals did during the Great War—which made them far more effective than the weapons we have today.”
Jake leaned over to kiss her on the back of the neck. “So why not use them again during the recent conflict with the Witch’s Guild?”
Kara paused at that moment and looked at him.
“Because as much as it irritates me to say so, we are trying to send a message. Not start a protracted conflict. This time around, we are doing things much differently than we did in the run up to the Great War.”
“I would hope so. That was just messed up—believing that the public would soften up a bit with government offers of amnesty amongst their relocation programs.”
“It didn’t work because the feds back in those days didn’t foresee how much grief and anger was boiling under the surface because they didn’t take the situation with either magical kinsfolk or magical familiars seriously enough. They felt betrayed by the government’s sincere peace overtures in the end.”
“Which was one of the many catalysts in the forthcoming war. People started taking sides before too long and then there was a visible split in the military—the formation of a new government in Baltimore and another in Richmond and echoes of the previous Civil War could be clearly heard in the halls of Congress and elsewhere for a time.
“People had had enough of the killings and everything else. It was time to take a stand.”
“Which led to the bombing of Knoxville. Then Little Rock. Dayton, Ohio—where the heaviest concentrations of magical kinsfolk resided.” Kara schooled gently.
“But now instead of bombing them, we’re going to remove them from the equation entirely through less than auspicious means—by taking out their defenders of the realm first. Bring order to chaos and throw everyone off balance in the interim.”
“But we have to go through so many Witch’s Guilds, Kay. There has to be tens of thousands by now—in every city, every town, every county in the New Republic.”
“The heaviest concentrations went first. The rest have been scattered—which left the magical kinsfolk at the mercies of the Three Armies of the Regency Council. But as you know…some have been rounded up. Others…arrested on state charges.”
“And a great number have gone into hiding—thanks in part to the Resistance and the Underground.” Jake pointed out with worry. “What about them?”
“They will be dealt with—soon.” His girlfriend told him flatly—putting one of the now clean dishes into the dishwasher. “We have plans within plans. But for any of them to succeed, we must first have the girl in our possession. She is the key to the whole thing.”
“—of whom you mentioned a couple times before,” her boyfriend said in quiet support. “But you never told me why?”
But Kara resisted his question with ease. “Sorry. That’s classified,” she countered.
“Because…?”
“Because if I told you, I would have to turn you in and then have you brutally interrogated by my hands. And I don’t think you want me to do that.” She said in all seriousness.
Jake laughed. “I don’t think I would mind if it was you doing the interrogating.”
“You haven’t seen me when I’ve gone full military, lover boy. I’ve been mostly holding back those dark impulses for your sake as well as mine.”
“You have…dark im
pulses?” He echoed in wonder. “Since when?”
Kara leaned over the sink for a moment to collect her breath.
“Since I’ve been with you,” she admitted with some difficulty.
“What? Why? What did I ever do to deserve that?”
Kara giggled. “Baby…it has nothing to do with you personally. I’m just a natural born sadist. You’re just my personal fuck toy to play with.”
“Oh really?” He purred with both interest and delight. “What if I told you that I liked being tormented and tortured by you? That pain turns me on?”
His girlfriend exploded into laughter then.
“Blessed Be,” she whispered before turning around to face him. Looking at him intently, she said: “I already figured that out. You like being dominated by me for some reason.”
“Maybe because I wasn’t breast-fed a whole lot?” Jake hazarded a guess on his part.
“I very much doubt that,” the woman said with a mischievous glint in her eye. “You came into this relationship with such high hopes. But I’m here to tell you that your days of pleasure are over.”
Jake didn’t shy away from her personal challenge. “Oh, really? Then I guess I can catch the red eye flight home then.”
Kara grabbed him then and started kissing him passionately for the longest time imaginable—feeling very much empowered by the moment of when she would have the opportunity to dominate him again. And soon.
“You sure dog boy?” She said with a heavy pant as she wiped the drool from the corners of her mouth. “Because I’m not through with you yet.”
“Going to go all draggo on me again, eh?”
“Not this time.”
“No?”
Kara speared him with an calculating look. “I’m going to give you a special going away present for tomorrow morning before you leave.”
“I may not have enough energy to make it back if you do that.” Jake was kind enough to point out for her.
“Don’t worry, I have something for that in case you crash early or you end up doing body shots on me again—which I love by the way.”
“You do?”
Kara rolled her eyes slightly in his general direction. “Blessed Be, Jake. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t let you have your way with me in the end.”
Generation Witch Year One Page 34
