The Witch Cave

by Sara Clancy

  A bitter smile twitched the corner of her mouth. “Et tu, Cadwyn? Et tu?”

  “You’re comparing yourself to Caesar now?” Jeremiah scoffed.

  “I’m the most competent one in the room, and my death would lead to all ya’ll’s destruction, so… yeah?”

  Cadwyn reached out, wordlessly requesting her hand back so he could finish bandaging it. She seemed confused to realize that she had taken it from him in the first place. As an afterthought, she switched the knife between her hands again and offered the wounded limb up. Inching closer, he gently resumed his work, glad to have something practical to focus on. It steadied him somewhat.

  “In your scenario, I’m more Mark Anthony than Brutus.” He kept his voice light, gently luring her into the conversation that loomed before them.

  “It’s going to be so weird when you hook up with my widow,” Basheba noted absently.

  A slight chuckle escaped Cadwyn as he carefully cleaned the pristine cut. Scalpel-sharp, the blade hadn’t met any resistance when cleaving through her flesh.

  “Seriously, though.” He caught her eyes before continuing. “We all need to be on the same page.”

  She snorted.

  “I need to know what you did.”

  “I panicked, okay?” she yelled, flying one arm out so fast that her knife created a silver streak through the air. “I got a little concerned and may or may not have acted somewhat impulsively.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “You panicked?”

  “What? I’m not allowed?”

  “It’s just hard to picture.”

  “I couldn’t find you or Buck.”

  The ‘casualness’ of her shrug was destroyed when she jarred her arm in his grasp and hissed.

  “You made a deal with a demon for him?” Jeremiah exclaimed.

  “And Buck.” She pulled her dog closer, letting him nuzzle her shoulder. “It was mostly about Buck.”

  Cadwyn lowered his gaze to her arm. “Of course it was.”

  “Don’t look so pleased,” Basheba whispered sharply at him.

  “No, I think I will.”

  “It’s just, well, people annoy me. It’s nice to have one person I can share a bemused look with before I roll my eyes.”

  There were so many things wrong with this situation that he couldn’t even begin to list them all. But there was some dark, twisted part of him that took particular delight in the idea that she would go so far to safeguard him.

  “What is wrong with you?” Jeremiah shouted in exasperated fury.

  Cadwyn schooled his features before he turned his gaze to the petulant young man.

  “Every time you open your mouth, we get a little further away from the answers you apparently want. Perhaps silence would be the best course of action?”

  “I do like him a whole lot better when he’s quiet,” Basheba said almost wistfully.

  Fastening the bandage into place, Cadwyn rechecked the wounds on her leg, reassuring himself that nothing had slipped his attention.

  “Basheba—”

  “Cad, it’s irritating when you take that tone,” Basheba cut him off.

  He threw her a disapproving look through his lashes. She avoided it by fussing with Buck.

  “You only use that tone when you fixate,” she said.

  “There is something on my mind,” he replied.

  She huffed. “Look, all you need to know is that I’ve got this. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You made a deal with a demon!”

  “Jerry,” Ozzie hissed. “Shut up.”

  “Fine. You guys want to have this conversation, we’ll have this conversation. Nothing like brewing some panic while in a dangerous situation.” Basheba clapped her hands together and grinned. “Crash course kiddos. Any supernatural creature that’s willing to make a deal with you will try to screw you over in one of two ways. Either they’ll go all jinn on you, or they’ll get you into their pyramid scheme.”

  “What?” Mina spoke so softly she more mouthed the word than said it.

  Cadwyn’s brow furrowed in thought. “Jinn are supernatural creatures in Arabian mythology. Think evil genies if it helps. In some stories, they’ll offer a wish, but you never get what you bargain for. There’s always some unforeseen consequence. Like a cautionary tale for greed.”

  “Or, the Jinn was just super bored and messing with humans is fun,” Basheba offered.

  Cadwyn contemplated that with a loose shrug. “In any case, the most common example I know of is that story of the man that wished for wealth. It’s granted when his parents die and he gets their life insurance. Although that’s a pretty modern adaptation and probably strays pretty far from the source material.”

  “Are you generally a fan of Arabian mythology?” Jeremiah asked.

  “There’s a woman on my ward blames her actions on a deal she made with a Jinn.” Cadwyn skirted his gaze over to Jeremiah, not wanting to take his attention off of Basheba for long. “She did some things in a nursing home that I’m not going to elaborate on.”

  “The goal is to prey on people’s egos,” Basheba picked up again. “Everyone likes to think that they’re smarter than evil things. They get stuck in this loop of trying to find the right wording and win it all. But no one ever wins.”

  “And the pyramid scheme?” Ozzie asked.

  “The only way to get anything out of a pyramid scheme is to drag people down under you. That’s what Katrina’s done. Most of her power comes from her subordinates, not herself, or her benefactor. Without the cult and their sacrifices, it all falls apart.”

  “You think,” Jeremiah stressed. He glared around in the darkness. “Why is everyone taking her speculations as fact? She hasn’t got any evidence.”

  “But she has experience,” Mina countered.

  There was something in her tone that spiked Cadwyn’s concern. A strangled bitterness that brought her just shy of defending the blonde. He wasn’t the only one who noticed and, with a reluctant sigh, Mina admitted, “I’ve recently heard rumors that one of Basheba’s relatives might have been a witch.”

  Startled murmuring raced through their small group. Not quite forming into questions but creating enough tension that the air thickened.

  Basheba’s mouth twisted into a scowl. “That damned tour guide.”

  “You’re a witch?” Jeremiah demanded.

  “No, I’m not. My ancestor was a couple of hundred years ago—before even Katrina was born—and the information died out after only a few generations.”

  Jeremiah’s eyes narrowed. He rocked forward and jabbed a finger toward her as he seethed, “But you know how they work.”

  Basheba cocked her head to the side. “Oh, yeah. We fill out the same 401k.”

  “Can you do spells?” Ozzie asked timidly.

  A real smile lightened the gloom on Basheba’s face. “Yeah, I can do magic and have access to an army of the damned, but I’ve decided, meh, I’ll just let my entire family die.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you.” Jeremiah’s mumbled words instantly grabbed Basheba’s attention.

  Cadwyn lunged forward, latching onto Basheba’s wrist and pulling her back before she could get to her feet. It didn’t matter how careful he was to avoid her wound. The short scuffle was enough to reopen some wounds. She flopped down, letting Cadwyn hold her in place while she restlessly spun her knife with nimble fingers.

  “Are you threatening me now?” Jeremiah laughed the words, trying to sound brave. It fell a bit flat as he coiled behind his sister.

  “I want you to know that I mean this literally.” Basheba’s words were slow but carried all the heat of a blazing inferno. “If you mention my family again, I will gut you like a deer and eat your still-beating heart.”

  Rushing water broke the chilled silence that followed. No one dared to move, as if the slightest flinch would have Basheba follow through on her threat. Cadwyn blinked away the water spray that gathered against his skin. It left him cold as it seeped into the non-existen
t space between him and Basheba, slickening his grip on her arm.

  Ozzie was the first to clear his throat. “I feel like we’re just going in circles, so, why don’t we let Cadwyn ask all the questions for a while?”

  The Crane siblings twisted around to stare at him in the haze of the glowsticks. The youngest boy lowered his voice, but there was no missing his whispered explanation.

  “We know that she won’t hurt him.”

  Cadwyn bit the inside of his cheek to stifle his smile. The comment threw his frazzled mind back in time. Back before Abraham was taken from him. Before the year of torment had carved him into something that he never thought he could be. Almost two decades had passed since he last thought on some of the things his mind conjured up now. The abrupt shift made him chuckle. Sharp glares fixed upon him, anchoring him to the present, and he refocused on the task before him.

  “Basheba, you ruined my work. Let me check you over again.”

  “What exactly about this do you find funny?” Jeremiah asked.

  Ozzie instantly elbowed him in the ribs and shushed him.

  “Nothing,” Cadwyn dismissed, his mind shifting through the past while he surveyed the damage Basheba had done to herself. “This thing you,” he couldn’t force the words out so skipped them altogether. “Is it connected to fire?”

  Basheba studied him for a long moment.

  Cadwyn huffed another short laugh. “I remember the day I met you.”

  Basheba’s face scrunched up. “I don’t.”

  “Yes, well, you never existed without me in the world. I had a good ten years before you came along.” He decided that the bandage on her hand wasn’t up to his standards anymore and started to rework it. “You were a hideous baby.”

  She nudged him in a way that could almost be seen as a playful kick.

  “Like if E.T. and a prune had a love child,” he elaborated, only to make her smile. “And you shrieked.”

  “Lies.”

  “From the moment you woke up to the second you fell asleep. Just a constant, ear-splitting screech. It got to the point where everyone just wanted to shake you. So, you were often left in a playpen by yourself. We could still hear you over the noise of the party.”

  Basheba was caught between being insulted and finding it amusing. Her hesitation gave him the moment he needed to organize his thoughts. He might only get one chance to ask this, one chance to know, one chance to slip through her defenses and get an actual answer. Mess this up, and she’ll shut you out. A dangerous prospect given their current situation.

  “You know how kids in the families go through their rebellious stages early? I decided to take up smoking when I was ten. You were the perfect cover.” He threw her a quick smile. “You cleared out a room for hours so there was no chance of me getting caught.”

  She opened her mouth, but her comment halted as she flinched.

  “Sorry,” he soothed, taking greater care with where he put the bandage.

  Color was coming back to her fingertips. It wouldn’t be long until she thawed enough to feel the pain. In the back of his mind, he started calculating what exactly he could give her that wouldn’t react poorly with her local anesthetic.

  “Before you start, I’m not proud of exposing a newborn to secondhand smoke. It clearly stunted your growth.”

  She nudged him again, and he chuckled.

  “I remember staring down at you. This shriveled little bit of nothing with the lungs of an air horn. I went to light my cigarette—and then there was silence.”

  Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched confusion shift across Basheba’s face.

  “It was the lighter,” he explained. “That little flame transfixed you. The second it went out, you started screaming again.”

  “Okay, now I know you’re messing with me.”

  Cadwyn ignored the comment to continue his story, the memory playing out in his mind’s eye. “I took you into the Witch’s Brew kitchen, turned on the gas burner stove, and we just sat there together, for hours, watching the flames. Somehow, that earned me the title of ‘Basheba Whisperer,’ and I was stuck with babysitting duties every year after that.”

  “Claudia was right,” Jeremiah muttered.

  Mina and Ozzie both shushed him, but he protested, leaning toward his sister.

  “What? He recalls a time when he babysat his wife. That’s sick.”

  “It was mostly carrying her around, actually. Every time her podgy little feet hit the ground, she’d be waddling her way into the nearest bonfire,” Cadwyn fastened the rearranged bandage into place, looking only at Basheba. “It didn’t matter when you singed your hair. Or when you burned your hand. Not even when you got near enough to the coals that your baby skin melted.”

  Basheba squirmed. “You were a horrible babysitter.”

  Cadwyn decided that it was time to ask the question he had been skirting around.

  “You never had any fear. Your mother was terrified of anything bigger than a campfire, but you, you wanted to be in the flames. I sometimes thought that maybe you saw something in them. Heard something.” He swallowed thickly. “Is that where you see it?”

  Basheba chewed on the inside of her cheek as she weighed her options. Eventually, she pulled Buck a little tighter against her chest. The dog melted into the touch rather than protested it.

  “No. I don’t think so, anyway.” She rubbed Buck behind his ears and continued more meekly than Cadwyn had ever heard her. “It’s in the water.”

  Cadwyn’s first impulse was to latch onto the fragment of a confession and tug hard, hoping to bring everything else out with it. But that’s not how Basheba worked. She’d rather destroy something than have it taken against her will.

  “Is that why you’re afraid of the water?” he asked gently.

  “It doesn’t help that my namesake drowned in a puddle,” Basheba reminded him dryly. Once more, she chewed softly on her inner cheek, calculating. “I’ve never seen it. Not all of it. I saw its eye once when I was little. We were swimming in a dam. My siblings and I were jumping off a ledge into the deep freshwater. I don’t remember how long we had been doing it, but I know it wasn’t my first jump. All I remember of that day is opening my eyes to see that everything had turned red.”

  “What?” Ozzie squeaked before he could stop himself.

  She shrugged one shoulder, trying to look casual. “It was an eye.”

  “An eye?” Cadwyn pressed, drawing her attention back to him.

  Sheepishly, she fluttered her left hand in his field of vision, brandishing her wedding band.

  “It was an octopus’ eye?” Cadwyn asked.

  “A brilliant, blinding red, with a bar of ebony right in the middle. It was so bright that I could see it right to the edges of the dam.” She sucked in a sharp breath and forced a smile. “There’s no way a creature that big could fit in that space.”

  “What did it do?” Mina asked.

  Cadwyn tossed her a sharp look, and the brunette offered an apologetic wince.

  “Nothing,” Basheba said, returning to her default smartass setting. “Or at least, I didn’t wait around to find out. I got up on a pontoon, sat right down in the middle of it, and refused to move an inch until my dad came out with a canoe. Huh, I must have been around five. I remember mom saying that we normally do the family history lesson on our sixth birthdays.”

  “Did she teach you any witchcraft?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Oh, my God, Jerry! Do you ever shut up?” Basheba bellowed to the stalactites.

  Cadwyn regained her attention again by patting Buck.

  “The Allaway line is rather… colorful. Yes, way back when, a couple of people dabbled in the dark arts, but there was really only one witch. She was the one who made deals with it.”

  “The Leviathan,” Mina offered.

  A smile tipped Basheba’s lips. “It’s had a lot of names to a lot of people. Leviathan. Kraken. The Abyss. Most recently, The Bloop, which is kind of my favorite.”

 
; “The Bloop?” Ozzie mouthed.

  “These scientists recorded It in, um,” Basheba spun her knife casually, “I want to say 1997. You can listen to it on YouTube. I like to think It was bored and wanted to mess with people.” She chuckled and muttered to herself, “So many conspiracy theories.”

  Since Mina was nearly vibrating with the need to ask the question, Cadwyn decided to get it out of the way. “What is it, exactly?”

  “How would I know? A monster? A demon? A god? A creature from another world? It just… is.”

  “And your ancestor made a contract with it?” he asked.

  “It took generations to get out of it. Mostly, we’ve whittled it down to paying to be left alone. It still checks in from time to time. I suppose to see if we changed our minds.”

  “Oh God,” Mina gasped.

  Cadwyn’s annoyance at yet another interruption dwindled when he looked at the teen. All of her pretty features were distorted, doing their best to display the sheer horror she was feeling.

  “The Leviathan,” Mina whispered.

  Jeremiah nudged her, the gesture somehow worried. “She mentioned that.”

  “No, the opera house built by an Allaway.” Mina shook her head and refocused on Basheba. “What was behind the door?”

  “Nothing that concerns you.”

  “You ‘pay it off’? You’re talking about human sacrifices, aren’t you? Did you murder someone in that room?”

  Basheba snorted. “Damn, you’re dramatic.” She twiddled her fingers. “Murder.”

  “What would you call it?” Mina shot back.

  The response came without hesitation and with a small smile. “A hunt.”

  “He was a human being.”

  Jeremiah’s outburst only made Basheba’s brow furrow. “Why do you automatically assume it was a man?”

  “You’re as bad as the cult,” Jeremiah said.

  Basheba snorted.

  “How can you think of yourself as any different?” Jeremiah seethed.

  “Well, I’m not actively trying to kill you. So, there’s that,” she replied. “And we don’t use human souls as currency. It’s not like we just head off into the night with a knife and a bad attitude. Everyone is carefully selected. They ask for it, really. You could even call it a mutually beneficial relationship.”