09 - Return Of The Witch

by Dana E. Donovan

  “I know.”

  “If you see her take human form, you can’t hesitate just because she’s my mother. You don’t need to wait for her to demonstrate hostility. Her intentions are clear. If you have the shot, you need to take it.”

  “Lilith, I’ve had to shoot people before.” He hiked his thumb up over his shoulder. “So has Dominic. We’re professionals. When it comes down to it, we know what to do.”

  I patted his jacked again. “Of course you do.”

  I turned to Ursula, took her hands and cupped them in mine. “Urs, listen. This isn’t your battle.”

  “Oh?” She batted her eyes in childlike innocence.

  I shook my head. “See, this is what I mean. Things could get messy here. I know you’re a fine witch in your own right. You can make zip balls and what have you, but Gypsy’s powers are great. Yours are no match for hers. You have to remember, this is my fight. Her beef is with me, not you. No matter what happens, I want you to promise me you’ll keep out of it. Just stay in that office and keep your head down. You got that?”

  “Sister, by thine own words thou should listen. What better day lest we discover to get thee gone and live another?”

  “Run? No, I don’t think so.”

  “Thou hast time to walk.”

  “Urs, I’m not spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. This ends here and now.”

  I let go of her hands, turned her around by the shoulders and started her off with a gentle push. “Now go. All of you. Gypsy will be here any minute.”

  As the three of them worked their way toward the supervisor’s office, I meandered through lanes of rusted conveyors and settled in behind a stack of wooden crates at the southernmost corner of the building.

  After just a few minutes, and way sooner than I expected, Gypsy made her presence known by causing a rumble in the earth so great, it rattled the walls and shook blankets of dust down from the rafters.

  Barn bats and water rats took their cue from that, the former taking flight out the broken windows, the latter diving through holes in the floorboards.

  It occurred to me then that maybe she had been there all along. If so, she knew about Carlos and Dominic hiding up on the observation deck and Ursula in the office. It also meant she knew where I was hiding.

  I crouched and duck-walked around the crates to a less conspicuous spot behind a wooden trough once used to deliver fish to the conveyor lines. There, the floor had sustained considerable damage from the weight of the trough and the constant water leaks it presented. My sneakers were quiet enough on wood, but the rotted boards cracking under foot threatened to give my position away just the same.

  I decided I had better stop and play my cards right there, lest my movements give me away and rob me of any element of surprise I might have had.

  Something near the weigh station moved. A sound like metal-on-metal pinged in one corner. In another, the flutter of wings gave a nesting pigeon’s hiding place away. I wondered if that hiding place was now free for me to take.

  Things grew suddenly quiet after that. A caped shadow swept silently across the wall. Was it a cloud passing over the skylight? My brain told me it was. My gut disagreed.

  I took a deep breath and held it a moment. The patter of footsteps echoed behind me. I removed the witch’s key from my pocket and slipped it over my head.

  “Lilith?”

  It was Gypsy. Her voice sounded distant as if uttered through a tunnel.

  “Lilith, you might as well come out and face me like a witch.”

  My heart hammered in staggered beats. I gasped and covered my mouth for fear that my very breath would give me away. Then I thought of Tony, what he would do if he had come here with a plan. He would not second-guess it. He’d just do it.

  I poked my head up above the trough. She stood in a most conspicuous light, not caring that I could see her. Yet I knew she didn’t see me, for she was looking toward the crates. Perhaps she had seen me take refuge there earlier.

  I positioned myself in a narrow beam of sunlight streaming through a hole in the galvanized sheet metal. With the witch’s key to my lips, I whispered this spell.

  “What light is dark and dark is light, a mirror image cast I might. Be one to all and hide no more, that she may see me on that floor.”

  I blew across the face of the key and cast a life-sized, 3-D image of myself out into the room. I knew it wouldn’t fool her for long, but I only needed to distract her for a couple of seconds, long enough to come out from behind the trough and whip up a zip ball without her seeing me.

  Gypsy confronted the hologram, though seemingly startled that I had appeared before her so suddenly. Without hesitating, I slipped under the elevated trough and stepped out into the open. I spun up a compact but powerful zip ball and called her name.

  “Gypsy!”

  She turned on her heels to face me, but I had already let it go. The zip ball tore across the room, slicing through Gypsy as if she were a mirage. It hit the wall behind her and exploded in a spider web of electrical discharge. The static energy traveled every inch of the sheet metal wall, along the ceiling and down the other side where it terminated in a white-hot arc that blew the lock and chains clear off the front doors.

  I stood there dumbfounded, unable to move. I couldn’t imagine how she survived a direct hit like that. A compact zip ball should have drilled a hole right through her.

  She saw me looking at her in wonder, shaking my head and disbelieving my eyes. Then she smiled that serpent’s grin, the one Tony used to think was mine alone. It wasn’t, of course. I may have gotten it from Gypsy, but she owned it, and I knew what it meant. She had gotten one over on me.

  I realized then, something peculiar about her stance. She appeared disproportionate to her surroundings. What’s more, although she stood in sunlight spilling in through the bayside window, she cast absolutely no shadow on the floor at all.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “You’re a hologram!”

  The bitch had stolen my idea. Worse, she beat me at my own game and managed to flush me out of hiding.

  I turned around and there she was only fifteen feet behind me. I staggered back to gain some distance. She pointed at me, releasing a steady stream of fire from the tip of her finger as if it were a blowtorch. I held the witch’s key up instinctively, bending the incoming flame and redirecting it skyward.

  The deflected flare hit one of the sprinkler heads in the rafters, setting off the entire sprinkler system, including the alarm. I was surprise that either of them were still in operation, let alone both. I used that diversion to slip back under the trough and make a break for cover.

  Carlos and Spinelli seized the opportunity to open fire on Gypsy from their position above the office. At first, Gypsy seemed too disoriented by the deluge pouring down from the sprinklers to know where the shots came from. But her quick action rendered that point moot.

  With a wave of her hand, she harnessed control over the elements of wind and water, redirecting every drop of sprinkler water to form a swirling barrel-like shield around her. When Carlos and Dominic ran out of bullets, she funneled that water into a torpedo sized tube and blasted the two of them clear off the observation deck.

  By then, I had circled around Gypsy and come up with another plan. Using the witch’s key, I invested nearly every ounce of energy I had to create an instrument for trans-molecular diversion. I positioned the key between two of the tallest stacks of crates I could find and triggered the dissipation of stagnant resistance between them. Through matter deflection, I was able to lift one of the stacks with a single finger and hurl it across the room at Gypsy.

  Oh, what a beautiful thing, I thought. To see that tower of wooden crates flying through the air gave me such a feeling of joy. I imagined it would hit Gypsy so hard, she wouldn’t even feel it. The only question left was where to bury her? Certainly, no one in Essex County would want her. I thought perhaps a nice burial at sea. That seemed fitting. I could drop her r
ight next to Osama bin Laden.

  Of course, Gypsy had other ideas.

  As if she had eyes in the back of her head, Gypsy spun on a dime, put her hand out and delivered a shockwave that blasted the entire stack of crates to smithereens. Splintered wood flew like buckshot. Jagged pieces as large as tree limbs and as small as drumsticks scattered in a semi-circular pattern. The fragmented debris impaled everything in its path. If not for the second stack of crates shielding my position, they’d have skewered me as well.

  I thought my luck had run out. The only thing left was to try to reach Carlos and Spinelli, get my hands on one of their backup pieces and cap Gypsy’s ass.

  I kept my head down and made a dash for the office. I knew she would see me, but I thought I was quick enough. Then it happened. She hit me with a second shockwave so powerful it lifted me off my feet and sent me flying through the air. I crashed through the plate-glass window fronting the supervisor’s office.

  As I struggled to get up, I noticed Ursula crouched under the desk, covering her head with her hands. She peaked out from a space between her arms and waved.

  “Art thou kicking ass now?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m kicking ass. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

  I got up and brushed the bits of tempered glass off my shoulders and out of my wet hair. As I stepped over the sill and back onto the cannery floor, I heard Gypsy say, “I’m surprised at you, Lilith. I’d thought you’d have more fight in you than this.”

  “I ain’t done fighting yet, Gypsy.”

  I couldn’t see her, but I knew she was close. Her voice no longer sounded as though it was coming through a tunnel. I walked out onto the open floor, more so to protect Ursula than to exercise any advantage it might offer me.

  “Why don’t you just use the power of the quintessential?” she asked me, though it came out more as a sarcastic dare.

  I answered back though gritted teeth, “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. I don’t have the quintessential.”

  “Hmm,” she said, and it sounded as though it came from all around me. “In that case, there’s no reason to spare you.”

  “What? Have you been going easy on me up until now?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Well, just so you know. I’ve been going easy on you. Ha! What do you say to that?”

  She didn’t have to say anything, but then action speaks louder than words. I heard a click like that from a solenoid switch, and then a mechanical clunk. The rattle of heavy chains on block and tackle followed.

  I looked up at the ceiling and let the sprinkler water splash my face. It felt cold and refreshing, and reminded me of the salty spray that greets me out on the jetty at Gloucester Beach. Oh, if I were only out on Gloucester Beach right now, I thought, instead of pissing around with Gypsy, fighting about something I didn’t really understand.

  As I squinted into the falling drops, I noticed an overhead bridge crane, its trolley rolling along double steel girders. Attached to its block and hook was a cable; hanging from that, a Dumpster-like container the size of a minivan.

  I think I actually laughed aloud, thinking how crazy Gypsy was if she thought I wouldn’t simply step out from under the load once it centered over me. But the laugh was on me.

  As I tried to step back, I found that my feet wouldn’t oblige. Further attempts to initiate muscle movement with any part of my body proved equally fruitless. I had lost all command between brain and muscle from the neck down.

  “What the hell did you do, Gypsy? Why can’t I move?”

  My head was tilted back, my eyes blinking into sprinkler drops. Yet in my periphery, I could see her. She had formed a sort of air dome over her head that deflected the falling water like an umbrella. It moved as she moved; stopped when she stopped. Damn, she was good at that.

  “You don’t know what I’ve done?” she said to me. That sarcastic tone was in her voice again.

  “Nooo. That’s why I asked.”

  “You see, Lilith, this is exactly why you’re in the predicament you’re in now. You’ve not kept up with your studies. Your witchcraft is lacking. I’ve got you in a simple check-bind spell. Same as with your little friends over there.”

  “Of course. A check-bind spell. I’ve played with that one a bit. I thought it didn’t work on witches.”

  She laughed. “You think a lot of things don’t work on witches. The truth is that the best spells work on witches because witches inadvertently channel their energy to the source of the spell’s hold.”

  I saw the trolley make a track correction and then continue its glide path toward me.

  “Huh, I never knew that. Guess that explains why the asshole spell someone put on you stuck so well.”

  She was not amused. She stepped out into the open just ten feet from me. The steel container came to a stop directly overhead.

  “Last chance to show me what you got before I squish you like a bug,” she said.

  I shrugged, or tried to. Couldn’t. “Damn. Guess shape shifting into a bug wouldn’t be such a good idea right now then, eh?”

  She shook her head at me. “You’re pathetic. How did I ever spawn such an embarrassment?”

  “Me? You’re the pathetic one. Look at you. You’re a disgrace to the coven. You know there hasn’t been a dark witch in our lineage for over five hundred years.”

  “Five hundred and fifty-two,” she said.

  “Yeah, whatever. But you know the sad thing is that you could have been one of the greats, Gypsy.”

  She laughed, and the malefic resonance in the tone of it shrouded the room in the imminence of death. “I am one of the greats.”

  She snapped her fingers and produced the oddest little zip ball I had ever seen. Unlike a traditional zip, all sparkly and dancing inside with nervous electric blue veins, this one was a solid ball of intense white light. A White Dwarf, which until then, I thought only a product of the cosmos. It must have burned like the sun, for surely I felt its heat from ten feet away.

  I watched Gypsy’s eyes roll toward the ceiling and settle on, I assumed, the cable suspending the container over my head. She hadn’t noticed Ursula stepping through the broken window of the supervisor’s office. I wanted to shout to her to get back inside and hide, but I knew that would give her away for sure.

  Gypsy eased back another six feet, whether to gain a better line of sight of the cable or to remove herself from the fallout zone, I couldn’t know. Maybe both.

  I used those few seconds to look at Ursula one last time. I hoped our eyes would meet and share a final goodbye. Sadly, I didn’t even know if she could see me. She appeared to be in a zone all her own, caring little if Gypsy saw her or not. Shock and fear had paralyzed her. Tears welled in her eyes. A simple blink gave them life.

  I watched her steeple her hands below her parted lips and draw a staggered breath. My heart was breaking for her. Hers, I feared, was already broken.

  Then something strange happened. Her expression changed. Her brow furrowed. Her lips drew tight. Her chest swelled. I had never seen it in her before, but I knew instinctively what it was.

  Anger.

  No, I thought, or maybe I said it. Don’t try something stupid, Ursula.

  I looked at Gypsy again. She had finished assessing her angle of attack. I watched her put the witch’s key to her lips and blow. At the same time, she flicked her fingers, firing the little white ball directly at the cable.

  What happened next happened so fast I can hardly keep the sequence straight in my mind. My eyes followed the comet-like trail of light upward until the container blocked my view of the eventual impact. The sound of the ball hitting the cable surprised me, though, not because it was loud; it wasn’t. It sounded more like a snap than a bang, but it echoed among the rafters and along the tin roof.

  I tried one last time to move out of the way but couldn’t. The check-bind spell had me frozen stiff. The container jerked slightly after the cable blew and then quietly, almost in sl
ow motion, began its freefall.

  At that moment, I saw Ursula through the corner of my eye. Her steepled hands parted abruptly. A quick shudder wracked my bones. The deafening sound of cracking wood filled my ears as the floorboards beneath my feet splintered like toothpicks. The floor opened up. I felt my body move with a forceful tug as the building suddenly split in two.

  The container dropped in front of me and kept going, crushing into the pilings below and splashing into the bay. Only then did I realize that I was no longer on my feet, but on my ass. I could move again.

  I looked across the gaping hole, past the conveyors, half of which were still bolted to the floor, the other half sticking out of the water. I was on one side. Gypsy was on the other. I knew from the surprised look on her face that whatever happened, she had nothing to do with it.

  Ursula withdrew from the shadows, her eyes seething with hate and burning with anger. Her movements seemed effortless, for indeed they were. She came to me not on foot, but floating on a cushion of air. She lifted me up with a mere thought and guided me away from the hole on a wish.

  I looked again at Gypsy. She had already figured out what I was still processing in my mind.

  Ursula possessed the quintessential.

  Gypsy twirled her wrist over her head and transformed into a funnel-shaped spout of water and wind. She started across the floor towards the door when Ursula gestured a swipe of her hand and sliced the funnel in half. The two sections collapsed into separate puddles, migrated back into one and then reformed into a human again. Ursula wound her hand back for a second swipe, but before she could deliver, Gypsy snapped her fingers and was gone.

  I ran to Ursula and grabbed her by the arm. “What the hell just happened?”

  She turned with a jerk and pulled away as if startled. I fell back, splaying my hands to show her I was friendly. She blinked and smiled as if only just then recognizing me. A wave of relief seemed to wash over her then. I approached and took her arm again.

  “Ursula.” I pointed at the gaping hole in the floor. “Do you see what you just did there?”