09 - Return Of The Witch

by Dana E. Donovan

  I woke up in my own bed; still dressed in the clothes I had fallen asleep in the night before. Ursula was there, sitting on the edge of the mattress and brushing my cheek with the back of her hand. I pushed her away and sat up against a pillow.

  “Ursula?” I looked around to see if Carlos and Dominic were there, too. They weren’t. “How did you get here?”

  “I drove,” she said, turning up a guilty grin.

  “You drove Dominic’s car? Does he know that?”

  “I did not tell him.”

  “Huh, good for you then.”

  “Good for thee,” she said. “How art thou?”

  “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

  “Thou wert crying.”

  “Me? Crying?”

  “Aye.”

  I eased my head against the headboard and allowed my gaze to wander the room as I recalled the dream I had that night. “Yeah, I guess I was.”

  “Doth thou wish to give talk of it?”

  “No.” I shook my head and took a deep breath. “It was just a silly dream.”

  “A dream, no doubt, but a scary one the same.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” I smiled, recalling the comfort I found in Tony’s arms. “It was actually rather beautiful.”

  “For thee, mayhaps, yet not for me.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Thee had for the better of a minute and one half, stopped breathing.”

  “You mean I died?”

  “Methinks, for a light so bright did leave thee and so returned upon my plea.”

  “Your plea?”

  “Aye, so loud I begged thee not to go, I might think the whole world did hear.”

  “No, not the world, but he heard you.”

  “Who?”

  “Tony. I think he…. Whoa!”

  I put my hands out to stop the room from spinning. Ursula grabbed my leg, perhaps thinking I’d roll out of bed if she didn’t anchor me down. Maybe I would have.

  “You know, Urs, I’m not feeling so hot. I think I could use some coffee.”

  “Breakfast,” she said. “I shall cook thee some.”

  “No, I have a better idea. You say Dominic doesn’t know you’re here?”

  She shook her head. “My Dominic is at work. He believes I am home making as a housewife makes.”

  “Good. What do you say we go on a little road trip to see Ms. Turner?”

  “The old witch?”

  “Yeah, there’s something I need to ask her.” I sat up on the edge of the bed next to Ursula and began pulling off my shoes.

  “Be it the Pendle Prophecy?”

  “Yes, although I’m not saying I believe in it completely, but if it’s true, I have to know what side of it I’m on.”

  I took my shirt off and began unbuttoning my jeans. “Would you mind putting some coffee on while I grab a quick shower? I’ll explain more once we hit the road.”

  “Aye, and should I call my Dominic to let him know?”

  “No, you shouldn’t call your Dominic. Damn, girl, I thought you were getting the hang of this thing called marriage?”

  “What if he calls me?”

  “He won’t. Besides, we’ll be back before lunch. He’ll never know we left.”

  Chapter 15

  After my shower, I went into the kitchen and found that Ursula had cooked me a huge breakfast: eggs, bacon, toast, juice, coffee; the works.

  “What’s this?” I pointed at my wrist where my watch would be if I wore one. “We don’t have time to eat. We have to go.”

  She pulled a chair out from the table and directed me to sit. “Thou art but bones and skin too weak to walk. Be it fight or flight, thou shalt need thy strength either way.”

  “No, that’s okay. Just a cup of coffee is all I—”

  “SIT!” She crossed her arms at her chest and leaned back against the counter. Then, with a smile that said we weren’t going anywhere, she added, “Please.”

  I sat, and in the course of five minutes, managed to polish off the entire breakfast. Neither of us said a word the whole time. Though I thoroughly enjoyed my first meal in days, the look on Ursula’s face told me she enjoyed it more.

  “Okay.” I slid my chair out from the table while patting my mouth with a napkin. “Now can we go?”

  She uncrossed her arms and jingled her keys in front of my face. “I shall drive.”

  I snatched the keys from her hands as she blinked. “No. I’ll drive. The last time you drove, we ended up at the bottom of a ravine. Remember?”

  “`Twas no fault of mine.”

  “Still, you almost killed us.”

  She gave me a pout, a rather killer one I might add, greatly perfected since marrying Dominic. Though it works well on him, it does little to garner sympathy from me. After all, I’m the one that taught her how to do it.

  On the way out to see Paige Turner, I told Ursula that I understood more of what was going on now.

  “You remember that passage Paige read to us from her Grimoire, the part about the guardians?”

  “Aye. ‘Be thee warned thy Guardians of Four, lest her cunning ways shalt reap what essences thou doth squander.’”

  “Exactly. We know that the four missing witches had each adopted one of the prime essentials. I imagine it’s likely they spent their entire lives mastering the singular expertise associated with their respective elements and incorporated it in their witchcraft.”

  “How so?”

  “Take me, for instance. I practice all branches of the energy tree. I scry using water. I create portal conditions using the power of the vortex. I can generate fire with the point of a finger and I brew potions using herbs plucked from Mother Earth. That’s utilizing all four of the prime essentials. And the kicker, my specialty, is my zip ball, the harnessing of pure energy in the palm of my hand.”

  “`Tis the fifth essential.”

  “Well, technically it’s just a form of electrostatic manipulation. Harnessing small amounts of energy is nothing like mastering the quintessential. My point is that it’s taken me several lifetimes to acquire the knowledge and skill set to demonstrate these attributes. Imagine if I dedicated all that time to mastering just one essential. That’s what these women have done. They were experts in their respective element.”

  “Guardians by default.”

  “Yes, but not only guardians, I believe those women possessed the very essential their element represented.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Look, it’s not so far-fetched. Terri Cotta for instance, you saw how the ground opened up out back of her house and nearly swallowed us. And is it any coincidence that the fireplace spontaneously ignited at Amber Burns’ house the moment we walked in? A mini cyclone pushed us down the hall in Wendy’s apartment and the water fountain at April’s house flowed up the rocks instead of down? When those women disappeared, their residual energy lingered in their wake.”

  “Doth thou give credence to the prophecy now?”

  “Well I don’t know about that. The prophecy predicts a battle between good and evil, a battle for control over the collective powers of the elements, including the quintessential. That part still seems a bit too far-fetched for me.”

  “Be there a part not so far-fetched?”

  “Sure. What’s not so hard to believe is that someone is trying to make it look as if the prophecy is coming true. At least from the visions I’ve had, though I still can’t say whether or not I hold some culpability in the matter.”

  “Methinks it is Paige Turner, for she seems to know more than any one of us.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Paige may be the town crier, but she’s not the wolf. She’s too old for such games.”

  “`Tis no game that someone ran us off the road last night.”

  “You’re right about that. I think if it weren’t for—” Ursula’s phone chirped out a familiar ringtone, freezing my words in mid sentence. The look on her face confirmed my suspicions. “Dominic?”


  She nodded.

  “Don’t answer it.”

  She answered it. “Hello?”

  I could hear Dominic on the other end, his voice synced to a teakettle’s pitch. “Ursula, where are you?”

  “I am with Lilith.”

  I waved my hand to get her attention. “Don’t tell him where we’re going.”

  “You took the car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you going?”

  I waved my hand again, this time more frantically so she couldn’t possibly mistake my intentions. “DO NOT TELL HIM WHERE WE ARE GOING.”

  “We are going to see Paige Turner,” she said.

  “Ursula!”

  “WHAT?” Dominic’s voiced boomed through the phone.

  “We are going to—”

  I grabbed the phone from her and turned it off. “He heard you the first time. Why did you do that? I told you not to tell him where we were going.”

  “He sounded worried.”

  “He sounded controlling. You have a life. He needs to stop trying to live it for you.”

  “I am sorry, Sister, but he is my husband.”

  “That’s right, your husband, not your keeper. This isn’t 1692, Ursula. He doesn’t own you.”

  She thinned her lips and turned her eyes away.

  “What? Are you mad at me now?”

  She shook her head faintly. “I am sad.”

  “Sad for yourself?”

  “Nay, not for me, but for thee.”

  “Why me?”

  She rolled her eyes back up at me. I alternated glances between her and the road, favoring her mostly. “I have my Dominic,” she said. Her voice sounded strangely hollow. “For good or bad he adores me, I know. It matters not what deeds I do, what promises I break. He holds no ill will no matter my intentions.”

  “Well of course he loves you, Ursula, but why does that make you feel sad for me?”

  She seemed surprised at that. “`Twas all thee had and more with Master Tony. `Twixt thy spite and thy mischief he did love thee still with no conditions upon thee. Methinks what thou hath lost and thy wounded heart, and imagine my own in thy place. `Tis then my heart doth break a million times for thee.”

  I returned my gaze to the road, though I admit I don’t remember seeing a thing in front of me. All I could picture was the grief I caused Tony in the few short years we were together. Spite and mischief, Ursula called it, though sometimes the way I treated him went beyond cruel and unusual. Yet through it all, he loved me unconditionally. He adored me as Dominic adores Ursula. Did he know how much I adored him? I saw then how I seldom showed it.

  I looked at Ursula. She turned her head and her eyes away. “I’m sorry, Urs. I shouldn’t tell you how to live your life with Dominic. It’s none of my business.” I handed the phone back to her. “Here, call him back if you like.”

  She took the phone and held it on her lap.

  “Aren’t you going to call him?”

  I watched her steal a glimpse at me through the corner of her eye. “Nah,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “It is good that he waits.”

  We arrived at Paige Turner’s apartment complex a short while later. I claimed a parking space beneath a sprawling elm that promised shade for at least another hour. Not that I thought we would need that much time with the old witch, but I knew how fastidious Dominic was about his car, and I was hoping I could pick up a righteous bird dropping or two. I think Ursula figured out my intentions after catching me looking up expectantly into the tree’s canopy.

  “What?” I said, denouncing the sour look she gave me. “The sun can be hard on a car’s paint job.”

  I had just come around the back bumper to join her, when a black Escalade came tearing through the parking lot, tires smoking, engine screaming. It was heading straight at us.

  “He’s back!” I yelled. “Duck!”

  I pressed my palms to the small of her back and shoved Ursula one way as I dove the other. The car’s battering ram smashed into the back of Dominic’s car and drove it into the shade tree.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, reaching Ursula on hands and knees and pushing her to the grass to keep her down.

  “Aye, but for a scratch or two is all.”

  I looked at my hands. “Yeah, me too.”

  I stood, pulling Ursula up with me. We scurried to an old pick-up truck for cover before poking our heads up like a couple of gofers to see if the coast was clear. The Escalade laid down a patch of rubber in reverse and swung around for another charge.

  “That’s it,” I said. “This guy is toast. Can you spin up a zip?”

  “Aye, as good as any, I should think.”

  “Okay then, we’ll aim—”

  The driver gunned the engine again, arresting the words from my lips. We had no time for zips. I grabbed Ursula by the hand and jerked her out of the way just as the Escalade’s battering ram found the broadside of the pickup truck. It plowed the truck several feet sideways before flipping it up over the curb.

  As Ursula and I ran for cover behind another elm, I spotted a delivery truck loaded with home heating oil lumbering into the lot.

  “That’s it!” I said. “Wait here. I have an idea.”

  I shot across the parking lot, waving my arms and yelling for the driver of the fuel truck to stop. The Escalade, meanwhile, had turned around after flipping the pickup and retrained its sights on me.

  The truck driver stopped his rig in the middle of the parking lot. I came around the cab and began banging on his door.

  “Please. You have to get out. You’re in danger!”

  He rolled his window down and stuck his head out. “What’s going on here? You all right, little lady?”

  “No!” I pointed at the Escalade across the lot, its engine revving, its back end hunched and ready to charge. “That man is a terrorist. That’s a car bomb.”

  “A terrorist?”

  “Yes! He’s been waiting for you. He wants to blow up your truck! You have to get out now. Run!”

  I didn’t have to tell the old goat twice. He jumped from his rig and ran for cover down the block. I stepped up onto the running board, hopped into the driver’s seat and shut the door.

  “All right you sonofabitch.” I drew a bead down on the Escalade, though I still could not see the driver. “Let’s see what you got now?”

  I dropped the truck into gear and moved it a couple of feet.

  The Escalade did the same.

  “Really?” I said, under my breath. “You want to play that game?” I grabbed the seatbelt and buckled it around my waist. “All right, buster. I’ll play.”

  I stomped on the gas and popped the clutch. The truck lurched forward, sputtered, and then a powerful force attempted to pull it back. I let off the gas and depressed the clutch. The truck slowed and then surged forward again as if shoved from behind.

  My head snapped back in whiplash several times before I realized what had happened. The fuel in the big tank behind me sloshed back and forth, pushing and pulling on the truck like a giant wave machine.

  I understood then why the driver ran so far from the area to get away. His truck was carrying a lot of damn fuel. What made things worse was that folks from the apartment complex were already gathering in large numbers around the perimeter of the parking lot. A game of chicken with the black Escalade no longer seemed like such a good idea. I couldn’t take the chance.

  I shifted the truck into neutral and engaged the emergency brake. The Escalade inched closer. As I opened the door and prepared to make a run for it, I heard a man say, “That’s right, little lady. Out of the truck.”

  The driver of the rig had returned and drawn a gun on me. I held my hands in surrender and smiled. “Hey there. Nice day we’re having, ain’t it?”

  “Get down `fore I shoot you where you stand.”

  “All right, I hear you. I’m getting down. But just for the record, technically I’m sitting, not standing.”

  “You think you can
hijack my truck, do ya?”

  “Hijack? No! I wasn’t trying to hijack your truck.” I pointed back at the Escalade. “I was trying to protect it from that terrorist.”

  “Terrorist? Ha! You’re the only terrorist I see.” He directed me toward the sidewalk at the point of his gun. “I called the police, missy. We’ll just let them sort this whole mess out.”

  We were only three steps from the truck when I heard the squeal of rubber on pavement. The Escalade was in motion. The truck driver was still going on about how clever I thought I was, and how clever he was for foiling my plans, when I knocked him to the ground with just inches to spare between him and the Escalade’s polished chrome battering ram.

  The SUV overshot the parking lot and ran up onto the sidewalk, smashing into a line of garbage cans and sending them hurling across the miniature green lawns.

  “See!” I yelled at the truck driver. “I told you he was a terrorist.”

  I reached down and picked up his gun, a 9MM semi-auto Taurus PT 92. It felt good in my hand, and I felt good about delivering some righteous karma to the driver of that Escalade.

  I started walking toward the car, my arms out straight, my aim leveled and tight. I popped off several rounds, taking out his back window and drilling a couple of holes into the tailgate.

  He kicked the car into reverse and gunned it. Still, I kept walking, firing in rapid succession until the last second when I had to leap sideways to avoid getting run over.

  He rocketed past me, hit the brake and skidded to a stop. I picked myself off the pavement and took aim at him again, supporting my right hand with my left, my knees slightly bent. He revved his engine. I smiled and nodded. “That’s right, come to momma.”

  I counted ten rounds on the first volley of shots I fired. A Taurus PT 92 holds seventeen. The gun still felt heavy. I felt lucky. I pointed at the windshield and gestured come hither with my finger.

  The driver obliged.

  Smoke rolled in thick columns from his back tires when he punched the gas. I squeezed off a round, punching a hole in the windshield just below the visor. He kept coming. I squeezed off another and another, drilling two new holes below and to the right of the first. Still, he plowed on.