by Keith Keffer
Pinned against the garage door, the Crone wasn't moving.
Alisha jumped out of the driver's seat with a hacksaw in her hand. "It's the best I could find."
CH 19 - Time for a Change
Behind Alisha, the two remaining cultists emerged from the back room. One held a cross and a clear bottle that Morgan assumed contained Holy Water. They were cultists after all. What other type of clear liquid would they have?
The other one had the leg of a chair gripped in both hands. He was holding it like a club.
"Stay back," said the one with the cross. He held it before himself protectively.
"Idiot," said Morgan. "I'm not a vampire, and we're not the immediate threat." She pointed to the back of their SUV where the Crone was pinned to the garage door. The hag’s clothes were smoldering from Bob's fire attack, and her skin had blackened beneath the flames. "We need to deal with that thing, and you need to check on your friends before they bleed out."
The one with the cross hesitated, then he lowered it. "Alright," he said. "Give me the hacksaw. I know what to do."
"Are you kidding me," said the one with the club. "This is all her fault. We can't let her get away."
"The two of us aren't going to stop her, " said the one with the cross. "See to the others. Check for survivors."
The guy with the club cursed but didn't object any further. He moved away with his club held high. The fact that Alisha had drawn her pistol and was aiming right at him probably did more to convince the cultist to cooperate than the words of his companion.
Morgan said, "Give him the saw. If he wants to cut off the Crone's head, that's fine by me. Keep him covered, and if he tries anything, shoot him in the ass."
"Will do," said Alisha. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to find Bob," answered Morgan.
"I'm over here." Bob waved his hand in the air as he limped out of the shadows. "I'm really getting tired of being kicked across the room."
Morgan laughed and ran over to give the little demon a hug. She froze right before she reached him.
"Bob," she gasped. "What happened?"
Bob smiled with his crooked smile. "What happened? I've had my nose broken and my teeth knocked out as part of a healing spell, then I was banished, then kidnapped, then banished again, and to top it all off I got in a fight with a Candy Crone. I may have broken my leg again being bounced off a wall." His smile kept getting bigger as he talked. "But overall, this has been one of the best days of my life. You came for me."
He stepped forward and hugged Morgan around the waist, and then his eyes bulged open as he realized what he had just done. He had hugged her around the waist, not the knees. He was taller, easily a foot taller than he had been this morning, although the clothes he had taken from the teddy bear still fit. They had stretched to match his size just like they did when he first put them on. He stepped back and ran his hands over his body.
"What the..." He stammered, at a loss for words. "I grew? How did that happen?
It wasn't just his height that had changed. Bob's eyes were no longer soulless black orbs. They were green, not solid green like a marble, but normal green, like normal eyes.
"Your eyes," said Morgan. "They changed."
Bob let go of Morgan and ran over to the SUV. His limp already gone. Whatever change his body had gone through, he hadn't lost his healing ability. He jumped into the front seat and looked in the rear-view mirror.
"I don't understand," he said. "How could this have happened?" The red glow of the taillights against the wall behind the car created an eerie backdrop to his reflection, but there was no mistaking that his eyes had changed.
"Oh, shit." Bob spun in the driver's seat and stared at the wall behind the car. Figuring out what had happened to him would have to wait. They had bigger problems right now. "Where's the Crone?"
With Bob's arrival, everyone's attention had been on him. Even the cultist who had taken the hacksaw had been staring in awe at the changes in the demon. He jumped into action now, running toward the back of the car holding the saw in front of him like a magic sword. "Oh, shit," he said, echoing Bob's words. "It couldn't have gone far."
Morgan was right beside him, and she spotted it before the others. The circle scratched into the wall next to the SUV. Morgan had always assumed that the spell circles didn't need to be exact, that they were mainly a way to focus the mind as it harnessed the power of the spell. Looking at the circle the Crone had created confirmed it. Morgan had seen better drawings done by toddlers using finger paints, but it must have worked. The Crone was gone.
"She's gone back to her cottage," said Morgan. Even as crude as the circle was, Morgan could still recognize the symbols used to designate the anchor point. Unlike the rest of the circle, they had been drawn carefully, and looked exactly as Morgan remembered them. Apparently, precision was important in some part of the spell casting process.
"Help," shouted the other cultists. "I'm losing him. Help!"
As much as Morgan wanted to go after the Crone, she knew it would be suicide. The only thing that stopped the Crone from killing them all was parking a five-thousand-pound SUV on her. They weren't ready for round two.
"Morgan," said Bob. "Hurry. We can save him." Bob was sprinting toward the shout, and this time Morgan had to struggle to keep up.
They reached the cultists at the same time. He was kneeling over a bloody body, doing chest compressions. He paused to breath into the dying man's mouth, then went back to pressing on his chest. "He just stopped breathing."
Morgan grabbed Bob's wrist in one hand and the dying man's wrist in the other. She looked at Bob, and he nodded. "Do it."
They didn't have any string to bind them. There was no symbol drawn on their hands. There was nothing connecting the three of them except for Morgan's grip, and she'd have to keep it tight while enduring the pain of the man's injuries.
Her magical strength was returning, but it hadn't completely recovered. Whatever energy she had left would have to be enough. It was like siphoning gas. All she needed to do was get the flow started, and as long as she could maintain the connection, it should continue on its own. If she severed the link, the flow would stop, and the magic would fail.
"This is going to hurt," said Morgan, mostly to herself. She took a deep breath, gritted her teeth and started to chant. As she did, a glowing symbol appeared on Bob's arm. A different one appeared on the cultist's hand. They were the exact same symbols that Morgan had used when she healed Jimmy.
She was doing it.
Morgan concentrated and triggered the healing spell. The pain rushed over her. She fought back the scream and didn't let go. Morgan kept chanting through closed teeth. All she needed to do was keep the flow going.
The Crone had punched the cultist in the stomach with her claws, and it felt like Morgan's insides were on fire as she absorbed the injury and transferred it to Bob. There was no sensation of time as the spell did its work. Ten seconds or ten minutes or even ten hours all felt the same as Morgan's nerve endings reacted to wounds that didn't physically exist.
Then it was over. The worst of the pain was gone. Every muscle in her body ached. Her jaw hurt, and she was grateful she hadn't crack a tooth from clenching her teeth together.
The man at her side was breathing on his own.
Bob's stomach and chest were covered in blood, and he was lying on his back. When he saw Morgan looking at him, he raised his right hand and gave her a thumbs up. "Are you alright?" he asked.
Morgan nodded. "And you?"
Bob lifted his shirt and showed off his belly. It was bloody, but there weren't any open wounds. Bob's supernatural healing had kicked into gear. She had felt the pain, but so had Bob. He had to take on the wound in order to heal someone else, and even with his super-fast healing he would have still felt it. Morgan was glad that she had kept her eyes closed during the spell. As bad as the pain was for her, she didn't think she could have watched Bob go through it.
"Holy
crap," whispered Alisha. "What the hell just happened?"
"Magic," said Morgan.
"Witchcraft," spat the cultist with the club. "What have we done?"
"We saved his life," said Bob.
"What about the others," asked Alisha. She stood off to the side, her gun raised, but no longer pointing at the cultist.
Morgan scanned the warehouse. The others were lying still, and there was blood everywhere. She looked at the cultist who had been performing CPR for answers.
"They are gone," he said, once more raising his club defensively. "This is all your fault."
"Don't be stupid," said Morgan. "The Crone did this. All I wanted was to get Bob away from you."
"And you brought the monster with you," said the Cultist. "Our friends are dead because you couldn't leave us alone."
"Leave you alone," snapped Morgan. "You broke into my house and kidnapped my friend. If this is anyone's fault, it's yours." She got to her feet and squared off against the cultist. She didn't think she had the strength left to cast the push spell, but she could definitely kick him in the balls if he didn't shut his mouth.
Bob placed his hand on her arm. It was a light touch, not enough to hold her back, but enough to remind her he was alright. Whatever the cultists had intended, they had failed.
"You've doomed us all," said the cultist.
"Enough!" The voice was barely above a whisper, but it had an air of authority about it. The man she had healed was propped up on one arm. It was the leader, the one who lead the spell to banish Bob. Morgan hoped healing him hadn't been a mistake.
"We were wrong," said the cult leader. "Look at him." He pointed to Bob with his free hand. "Look at his eyes. It's not her fault that our spell failed. It's not his. It's ours. We made a mistake. He's not the one we seek." As he talked his voice got stronger, and by the time he was finished he had managed to push himself to his feet. He wobbled for a second but didn't fall down.
"What," said the other cultist. The disbelief clear in his tone.
"Are you serious?" said Morgan turning her attention to the leader. When she healed him, her attention had been on his wounds, but now that he was standing she realized that his hood was down. She could see his face. His dark hair was streaked with gray and the skin around his brown eyes was covered with red splotches, probably the result of getting hit in the face with pepper spray. He was clean shaven. Except for the redness around his eyes, he wasn't scarred or disfigured. There wasn't a crazy glint in his eye. He looked like a normal guy, someone who could be a teacher or a pharmacist or a bank teller.
She glared at him and asked, "Who the hell are you guys?"
The leader met her gaze without flinching. "I am Timothy Randolph, but I don't think that is what you're really asking. We are brothers of The Adrestian Order, sworn to preserve the balance between the light and the dark."
"You mean like the Force?" asked Alisha.
"More like Heaven and Hell," answered Morgan.
"Close," said Timothy in reply to Morgan. "Some might say it is the balance between gods and men. There are powerful beings beyond our world who fight a war so ancient no one can recall the origins."
"And you thought Bob was one of them?" asked Morgan.
"No," said Timothy. "Something broke through the barrier between realms. It entered our world in violation of the accords, and if it is not stopped, the treaty keeping our world safe for millennial is at risk. Should it fail, Earth would become a battleground."
"You are so full of shit," said Morgan. "Do you really expect me to believe there is some scrap of paper locked up somewhere, signed by a bunch of gods that is the only thing keeping our world safe?"
"Treaty isn't the right word," said Timothy, "but it's the closest I could think of. It's some sort of magical barrier between the two sides that prevent them from acting directly against each other."
Bob stepped forward and put his hand in the air. "Woah. I don't know where you get your information, but that's just wrong. I've been to the underworld. It wasn't fire and brimstone like you read about in the Bible, but it was bad. If you weren't trying to reach the top of some special mound of shit, you were doing your best not to be noticed, or you were looking for a way out."
"That's a middle ground between our world and the barrier," said Timothy, "Your beliefs control the form that you perceive, but it's their power that shapes it. Something got through from their world, through your version of Hell and into ours. The duty of The Adrestian Order is to find it and send it back."
"You thought it was me," said Bob. "Why don't you now?"
Timothy pointed to Morgan. "Her," he said. "Your bond to her prevents us from banishing you. Creatures from the Other Side can't form such bonds. They are too foreign to our world to connect with a mortal."
"Why did you change me?" asked Bob. He waved his hand next to his eyes as he spoke.
"We didn't," said Timothy. "Well, I don't think we did. I'm not sure what happened to you. I've never heard of a demon with normal eyes before. You're something different now."
"That's because he's from the Other Side," said the cultist who had been arguing with Morgan earlier. "We need to stop him, and if that means we have to break that bond, then that is what we need to do." He lifted his club and pointed it at Morgan.
She looked at the cultist. He did have that crazy glint in his eye. The one she expected to see in a dangerous fanatic. No matter what Timothy said, that one wasn't going to stop. She stuck out her hand and cast the push spell. The cultist screamed as he lifted into the air and slammed against the wall behind him. He dropped his stick and slid to the ground. The cultist with the hacksaw ran to his side and caught him before he fell forward onto his face.
"We're done," snapped Morgan. "I don't care who you guys are or what your brand of crazy is. I'm tired of being hunted and threatened. If I see you near any of us again, I'll make you wish that Crone had killed you today."
"Don't worry, bitch," spat the cultist that Morgan had just thrown into the wall. "You won't see us coming."
"Donald," shouted Timothy. "Stop that. Miss Morgan is right. We have no further reason to trouble her. Our work is elsewhere."
"Bah," said the cultist named Donald as his friend with the hacksaw helped him to his feet. "She didn't just heal you. She turned you to their side. Hell, maybe you aren't even Timothy anymore."
With the help of his companion, he limped his way to the SUV and hit the button on the remote attached to the sun visor. The garage door shook, rising only a few feet before making a grinding noise and coming to a halt.
The dents banged into the garage door when the SUV crushed the Crone against it were too much. The door wouldn't go all the way up.
"Donald, Jackson," said Timothy. "Don't go. There is still a threat out there. Together we will overcome it."
Donald slipped under the garage door and stepped outside. "You're almost right. There is still a threat, but it's in there with you, and if we have to go through you to stop it, then that's what we'll do. You might not think so now, but that's the type of sacrifice that Timothy would have willingly made."
The other cultist, the one that Timothy had called Jackson, dropped the hacksaw and ducked under the garage door after Donald. Before he stood up and vanished from view he said, "Don't get in our way Timothy."
Timothy sighed deeply as he watched them walk away. "Miss Morgan, you should go too," he said. "I'll talk to them and make this right. In the struggles to come, we should be allies. They'll see that. Don't worry."
Morgan stepped forward and poked him in the chest with her finger. "I'm not worried. You. Them. I don't care. Stay away from me and my friends, or you'll be the one who should be worrying."
She didn't wait for him to answer before walking toward the small room where Bob had been kept in a cage. Bob and Alisha fell into step behind her while Timothy watched them go. As soon as they entered the room, Morgan dug out her Christmas paper scroll and unrolled it onto the ground.
&nb
sp; Bob looked at it approvingly. "Great thinking," he said. "All you need to do is finish the symbols, and poof we are on the way home."
"Yeah," said Morgan as she drew in the last symbols and completed the spell. A blue glow filled the room as the portal opened. Through it she could see her backyard. It would be good to get home.
Standing up, she said, "Let's go. I want to get away from this mess."
CH 20 - Can We Keep Her
They crashed as soon as they got home. Alisha curled up on the couch while Bob took the loveseat. Morgan went up to her room, but it was a mess, so she crawled into Henry's bed and fell asleep on top of the blanket. Even the ticking of the clock at the bottom of the stairs didn't bother her. In fact, for once it was reassuring, a sense of normalcy after all the craziness that she had been through.
Morgan woke to bright sunlight filtering through the curtains and the smell of bacon wafting up the stairs. For a moment, she was willing to push her entire weekend off as a crazy, vivid dream.
Except there was blood on Henry's bed.
Not hers. She had slept in the clothes she wore to the warehouse. The blood was most likely Timothy's. She grabbed the blanket and balled it up. She'd need to wash that before Aunt Helen got home. Then turning she saw the wreck that was her room through the open doorway. She had no idea how she'd fix that before her aunt saw it.
"Ahem," said Bob. He was no longer wearing the lifeguard outfit that she had scrounged from the teddy bear. He had on navy blue sweatpants that hid his tail and a plain black t-shirt. He wore a matching black beanie that was pulled down over the tips of his ears. He looked a lot more normal in regular clothing. His nose was still big and bulbous, and his teeth were yellowed and crooked, but his eyes were clear. He was smiling as he held out the stack of clothes in his hands.
"We were beginning to wonder if you would ever wake up. Alisha picked out clothes for us and is in the kitchen making breakfast. I know she's a stray that followed us home, but I like her. Can we keep her?"
