Blood of Retribution

by Bonnie Lamer

  I was afraid of that. “Great,” I mutter. “A lot of help you guys are.” That last part I didn’t mean to say. Especially since I sneered as I said it.

  “Let us hope you will be able to reverse the spell before the darkness within you alienates all those who care for you,” Isla says dryly.

  Point taken. “Sorry,” I say. I clamp my lips together tightly because the words ‘you would probably be the first to go’ want to slip out of my mouth so badly I’m starting to sweat.

  “Perhaps we should allow her rest,” Dagda says. His hard stare makes me believe he knows I’m trying to hold things back. I give him a half smile in thank you. He gives me a curt nod in return, his warm, fuzzy feelings for me from earlier obviously on furlough now.

  They file out of the room, but before the door closes after Dagda, I call out. “Where is Kallen?”

  Dagda stops and it takes him a few seconds to turn around. When he does, grim is the only way to describe his face. “He is with Kegan and Alita.” Warning bells are going off in my head. Please, please don’t say it, I silently plead. “She has fallen into what seems to be a coma as her mind and body are overwhelmed by the darkness.” He said it. Damn him.

  “Should I go to her?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

  Dagda doesn’t even bother to respond. He knows he doesn’t have to. He just leaves the room and closes the door behind him. I’m all alone with nothing but the darkness inside of me to keep me company. And it’s not very good company.

  Chapter 9

  My neurons are snapping at a million miles per hour, but they aren’t accomplishing anything. Not one useful thought has popped into my head. A lot of useless ones have. Thoughts like how much I hate the pink walls of this room and would like to set them on fire to escape their ugliness. And things like how I would like to take my frustration out on every person in the palace by dipping them upside down in warm honey and then use them as bear treats. These types of ideas, thanks to the darkness inside of me, flow freely in my brain. So far I have successfully avoided acting on any of them. So far. I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to keep them in check, though, especially if I keep absorbing more darkness. Sure wish I could think of a spell to reverse the stupid one I cast on myself.

  Angry enough to hit something, or someone, I need to get out of here before I actually do one or the other or both. I feel the darkness clawing at my chest and chiseling its way into every corner of my mind. There’s so much of it. For everyone’s sake, I should make myself scarce for a while until I figure this out. Closing my eyes, I teleport. When I open them again, I am standing in the middle of the forest.

  “I was napping,” a voice snaps from the vicinity of my shin.

  Startled, I jump back. “How did you get here?”

  Stretching his mouth in a wide yawn before answering, my familiar says, “I haven’t read the familiar handbook, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that where you go, I go.”

  An urge to kick him deeper into the forest strikes me, but I choke it back. “I want to be alone,” I growl down at him.

  “Yeah, well, join the club. You think this is a picnic for me? I’m basically nocturnal. I hate being out during the day. I want nothing more than to find a hole in the ground to cool off in until the sun sets. Then I want to go searching for a dead mouse or opossum for dinner. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll come across a dead wallaby. That would really make my night.”

  “Gross, you eat dead animals you find lying around?” I ask, sickened at the thought.

  The beast looks up at me. “Do you know how hard it is for someone my size to take down a wallaby? Why should I do all that work if nature or some other carnivore wants to do it for me?”

  “So, what you’re saying is that you’re so lazy, you would rather eat a decaying carcass than hunt for food yourself.” I have a picture of a maggot filled carcass lying on the ground and the Tasmanian devil pulling up to it in a chair with a knife and fork in its paws and a napkin tied around its neck. Disturbing.

  “Listen to you, Miss High and Mighty. Didn’t you just let loose a crap load of evil into this realm? Are you really in a position to criticize others?”

  The stupid thing has a point. I still want to kick him into the forest, though. Sensing that, he takes a couple of steps back. I glare down at him and he makes a strange sound in his throat that I think is a laugh.

  Changing the subject, he asks, “What are we doing out here anyway?”

  I shrug. “I just wanted to get away from everyone for a little bit.” I leave out the part of being scared the darkness I absorbed may cause me to do things I don’t want to do. Like take a torch to all these trees just to watch them burn. Yeah, things like that.

  “Scared you aren’t strong enough to control yourself, huh?”

  I glare down at him. “Do you have a death wish?”

  He snorts. “I still don’t have a manual, but I’m pretty sure Witches can’t kill their familiars.”

  I raise a brow. “What about familiars killing Witches?”

  His little shoulders move up and down. “Not sure. Should we give it a try?”

  “Go away.”

  “Fine.” Turning on his four paws, he ambles away into some brush and burrows inside it. He’s asleep almost instantly.

  I’ve always wondered how bullies could do and say things just to hurt others. But right now, I’m pretty sure I could knock an ice cream cone out of a preschoolers hand and laugh when it hits the ground. I feel like I could take a skinny kid’s milk money and spend it on booze and cigarettes. I feel like my conscience is packing up for a long sabbatical in the Himalayas and will be unreachable for the next hundred years or so. So, how do I stop myself from doing the awful things the darkness inside me wants me to do?

  A teeny, tiny thought is breaking through the darkness. It’s like a pin prick in my mind. Something about my familiar. Something about other people’s magic not affecting him. The pin prick gets bigger until there’s enough room for the thought to bloom. If he’s not affected, he’s not having these awful, evil thoughts. Right?

  “Hey, you,” I call to the brush where the beast went to sleep. “Come here.” Nothing. “I said, come here!” I growl.

  A tiny face pokes out of the brush. “Are you talking to me?”

  I tilt my head and give him a look that should wilt him. It doesn’t. He just stares at me. Getting angrier by the second, I lasso him with my magic and drag him out of the brush.

  “What are you doing, you crazy Witch freak!” he snarls, fighting helplessly against my magic. “Have you gone mad?”

  I purse my lips in thought, then say, “I don’t think I have yet, but I’m pretty sure I’m heading there.”

  “So you plan to take it out on me?” the beast says breathlessly because he’s still fighting my magic.

  “Tempting,” I say, “but no, I’m not. I need you to do something for me.”

  His beady little eyes look up at me as his body gives in to being dragged across the forest floor. “If this has anything to do with massaging your feet or bathing you, I’m out.”

  I close my eyes as I concentrate on not letting my foot connect with his small body as it so wants to do. “No, I don’t want you to bathe me.” The foot massage thing doesn’t sound half bad, though. “I want you to be my conscience.”

  The Tasmanian devil stills. “Your conscience?”

  I nod. “That’s what I said.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? Bite you on the ankle whenever you’re doing something stupid? Because if that’s the case, I’m going to dull my teeth down to nubs in no time.”

  My foot lashes out, but the damn thing is too fast for me. He jumps out of the way with a screech that has me covering my ears. “Will you stop that?” I say when the screech goes on and on.

  He does finally, but not without comment. “You almost break my ribs and you tell me to stop?”

  I roll my eyes. “I did not almost break your ribs.”
<
br />   “Why do you need a conscience anyway? What’s wrong with yours?”

  “It’s at war with all the darkness I’ve absorbed.”

  The beast backs up. “Is it contagious?”

  I shake my head. “You know, for an animal that has the word ‘devil’ in its name, you sure are cowardly.”

  If it could stand up on its hind legs and put its paws on its hips, I’m pretty sure it would. “And you have the sense of a tsetse fly. You go off and act like an amateur and then do this whole ‘woe is me’ routine when the only one who can fix your problem is you. You act like you’re afraid of your own magic.”

  That’s because I am. Sort of. “What if I just make it worse?”

  “What if that dead tree behind you falls on top of you?”

  I look over my shoulder with a frown. “What dead tree?”

  The Tasmanian devil sighs deeply. “You are missing my point. You could list a thousand what if’s. Instead of wasting time worrying about what could happen, do something. Anything. Just as long as you quit whining about it like a little bitch.”

  Wow. I think whoever made him for me got my personality mixed up with Adriel’s. She’s the only one who talks to me like that. But, he’s right. I do need to do something. “What’s your name?” I ask him.

  He sighs again. “Is this another stall tactic?”

  Yes. “No, I just want to call you something besides ‘hey you’.”

  Puffing out his chest, he says, “My name is…” He pauses. “My name is impossible to say in your language.”

  I guess that makes sense. “How about if I call you Taz?”

  “Fine. Now, do something about this blasted spell so I can get back to my nap.”

  My foot is itching to kick at him again, but I hold it back. Instead, I perch my butt on a tree stump to think things through. The answer lies somewhere in my brain, I just have to figure out where.

  Taz shakes his head again. “While you try to get your brain cells to snap, I’m going back to the brush.” He turns and walks back to the little nest he had burrowed into before and curls up. Some help he is.

  Or…maybe he is. Aren’t familiars supposed to be protectors of some sort? An idea is seeping through the darkness again, but it’s not clear yet. Okay, I need to think this through. It probably wouldn’t work for Taz to act like my conscience because the more darkness I absorb, the less likely he could do anything to stop me, so that was a stupid idea. But, familiars do a Witch’s bidding and protect her from outside forces, right? Meaning they’re like the front line soldiers who serve as cannon fodder. Okay, that was a little harsh, but the idea is taking root. What if I take myself out of the equation? Well, sort of out of the equation. I could pass the darkness through me into Taz. Since other people’s magic doesn’t affect him, he shouldn’t get hurt. I hope. I guess there’s only one way to find out.

  Standing up, I close my eyes and let the spell come to me. It takes a little longer than I care for, but it eventually comes. Fighting off the darkness that wants to stay within me, I say my spell. “A gift given from the dark, I call upon you as tetrarch. From magic of old, a newly made soul, draw from me the mark of dark to light, light to dark, create with me a perfect arc. Absorb from me what should be mine, without pain or gain, my darkness shall be thine.”

  “Is thine even a word?” Taz asks, narrowing his eyes in my direction.

  I shrug. “Not sure, but it rhymed.” For some reason, spells have to rhyme. Don’t know why, they just do. “Come here, I want to see if it worked.”

  Taz burrows deeper into the brush. “No.”

  “I can pull you out.”

  With a groan, he drags himself over to me like I’m a guillotine about to take his head. “Go ahead,” he says, “torture me with your magic.”

  I roll my eyes. “And you say I whine.” Okay, I do, but still.

  When he’s close enough to me, I stick my hand out and touch him tentatively. As soon as I do, I feel a great rush and a lightening of my soul. As Taz takes the darkness inside him, he rises about three feet off the ground and every hair on his body stands straight up like someone just rubbed him all over with a balloon. He is a floating ball of black fur. He’s actually kind of cute like this. Except that nasty snarling he’s doing.

  “That hurt!” he bellows.

  “Oh, please. It was a little shock. I felt it too and I think we’ll both survive it without scarring.” It was the equivalent of a static zap and it only lasted a second.

  “Will you put me down now?” Taz asks, still dangling in the air; his short little legs flailing.

  “Sure.” I reach out to him and push him down. He floats right back up as soon as I draw my hand back. I try again. Same thing. As soon as I let go, he floats back up. “Um, let me try magic.”

  Pulling magic from beneath, I send it out to Taz. When it hits him, he sails about twenty feet away from me until he hits a tree. Face first. Ouch. That had to hurt. I try again. This time, I use my magic to pull him towards me. Unfortunately, it’s like his body has become weightless, and he comes zooming at me so fast, I have to duck. He hits another tree. It’s kind of like I’m playing pinball and he’s the ball. An angry, screeching ball that will soon have a flat face if I keep this up.

  Okay, I have to be a bit gentler with my magic. As carefully as I can, I reach out to him again. This time when my magic hits him, he only floats a couple of feet away. He doesn’t float downwards at all, though. I guess magic isn’t the answer here.

  Walking over to him, I put my hand on his back away from his snarling mouth and gnashing teeth and push down. I can get him almost to the ground but not all the way. I push with two hands and use all my strength. Nope, his legs that are flailing around so much they could be used as an outboard motor on a boat are still dangling six inches from the ground. Too bad Eliana’s not here, with her strength she could probably do it.

  “What is going on? Put me down!” Taz screams in that irritatingly high pitch he gets when he’s upset.

  I scowl at him. “What do you think I’m trying to do?”

  “I think you are trying to kill me slowly and painfully. First you fill me with dark magic and now you are going to float me away, doomed to starvation since I cannot scavenge for food from up here!”

  “Quit being so dramatic. Just give me a minute to figure this out.” Where had the spell gone wrong? Usually when spells pop into my head, they do the right thing. Not today obviously.

  “Oy, I don’t feel well,” Taz says.

  He doesn’t look well. If I could see his skin under all that black fur I bet it would be green. He’s foaming at the mouth and his eyes are kind of cross-eyed. He starts a hacking cough like a cat with a hair ball and I back up a couple feet, not wanting him to throw up on me. “Are you going to be sick?” I ask.

  He doesn’t even bother to look at me. His cough intensifies to a crescendo and then a horrid smelling black smoke comes out of his mouth. A lot of it. I take a couple more steps back, not wanting to get the smell or the smoke on me. I’m assuming that’s the smoke is the darkness I gave him.

  After a final hack, Taz falls to the ground with a thud. He’s so exhausted from his coughing fit, he doesn’t even complain about the three foot drop to the ground. He just lays there panting.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  His eyes roll in my direction. “You…” he rasps, “are a horrible Witch.”

  I’m not sure how to take that. Does he mean that I’m a Witch with the w replaced with a b, or does he mean my Witch magic sucks? Eh, I don’t really care. I’d probably think I was horrible too if I was in his place. I watch his chest heave for a minute and a curious feeling washes over me. A need to comfort him seeps into me even though I still think he’s a pain in the ass. I bend down and pick him up.

  “I am not a pansy,” he mutters. “I do not need to be carried.” Despite his words, he burrows himself into my arms and closes his eyes. Yeah, he’s a little tough guy alright.

  “C
ome on, Taz,” I say softly, “let’s go home.” Before we go, I watch the black smoke float downward and disappear into the earth, rendered harmless once again. With a blink, I teleport us back to the house.

  Chapter 10

  I pop into our bedroom and I’m startled to find Kallen on the bed. “Hey,” I say, laying Taz on one of the chairs on the other side of the room. He curls up into a ball and his eyes close. He’s asleep immediately. “How’s Alita?”

  “Fine, no thanks to you,” comes a snarky voice from the bed.

  I turn around to find my husband propped up on the pillows with his hands behind his head, malevolent mask on his face. Uh oh. “Um, are you okay?”

  Kallen’s eyes narrow. “Just fine.”