The Bewitching Hour

by Mallory Crowe

  Sam held her breath as the one behind him fell on the ground and he pushed the one in front of him back into the wall hard enough for the pounding of his head to echo through the hallway.

  Was he actually going to get—

  Claudia stepped behind him and set a hand on his shoulder. Within a second, he was crumbling to the ground, his hands gripping his head so tight... it was as though he thought it was about to explode.

  “No!” Sam struggled against the man holding her, but he didn’t budge. She tried the shin kicking thing, but all the guy did was tighten his grip until her shoulders felt as if they were about to rip apart. She grunted as she tried once more to pull free. “What are you doing to him?”

  “I heard someone stole your charm. I didn’t think he was quite so... attached to it.” Claudia looked over her shoulder, eyes connecting with Sam. “Good thing my own magic can’t work against me.”

  “Please! He didn’t do anything, I promise! He’s one of the good guys.”

  Derek’s mouth opened in a silent scream as he fell to the ground.

  “He killed one of us,” said Claudia simply. “Thomas will not go unavenged. No matter who he has managed to corrupt.”

  “What? No! I killed Tommy. Just listen to me. Tommy was working against you. He was planning something and if it weren’t for Derek, you could be in—”

  “Stop lying to me!” screamed Claudia in a powerful voice that shook the entire house hard enough to make the paintings on the wall shake.

  Sam glanced around, looking for any help she could get, but her mother and sister stood back, heads obediently looking down. This couldn’t be happening.... “I can prove it. There’s a girl. One of us! A witch Tommy was going to kill. Let me bring her to you and—”

  “There is nothing more to prove. Once the sun goes down, the man who worked against us will be our offering to the energies to help us continue on. Poetic, don’t you think?”

  “For the love of— Stop this! He’s a good person and he’s done nothing but help me. If you would just listen—”

  “I’m done listening. I’m done letting you run around and make a fool of us. This ends right now.”

  “Grandma, please.” She tried to sound strong and steady and sure but she felt a tear run down her face. “Show mercy.”

  Claudia’s lips pressed together and she tilted her head as she regarded her granddaughter. “Oh, Samantha.” She stepped away from Derek, who was still writhing in pain, and ran her fingers along the side of Sam’s face. “If I weren’t showing mercy, you would already be dead. Be grateful I haven’t killed you already.”

  And then they were gone. Derek, Claudia, and all the sentries gone in the blink of an eye. Sam fell to the ground in a limp, defeated heap. She looked around her at the hallway—just her, Abigail, Heather and at some point Garrett had run in.

  But no one had helped. Who would? No one was strong enough to take on Claudia. No one was stupid enough.

  And now the most powerful witch on the planet was going to kill Derek.

  Derek pulled at the ropes around his wrists again, but the action only served to make his shoulders hurt even more. He’d be more worried about the possible permanent damage from hanging suspended, but considering he’d heard the woman say he was going to die tonight, he had more pressing concerns.

  Whatever that woman had done to him, it had fucked him over royally. The entire thing had happened so fast.

  The image of Sam was burned into his mind. Restrained. Furious. And then the woman had walked up to her, and Derek had been so sure that she was about to die. She was going to die and there was nothing he could do about it. All of his skills, all of his training. All he could do was lie uselessly on the ground while Sam died trying to save him.

  He screamed and pulled against the ropes holding him up by his wrists once more. He was just low enough for the balls of his feet to take his weight, but not high enough to get any sort of leverage.

  He looked around him. They were in a building. Judging from the sounds outside, they were probably back in the city. Personally, if he were going to kill someone, he’d go out in the middle of nowhere, but no one had asked his advice. Though if he had the kind of power this chick did, he supposed it wouldn’t matter.

  The spot he was tied in was in the middle of the room, so there were no walls or beams he could get purchase on. And there were two guys inside the room with him; who knew how many were outside.

  As though he’d called to them, a third guy opened the door and called the other two toward him. “When is Claudia going to be here?” asked the one who’d been keeping guard.

  “After sunset. How has he been?” asked the newcomer.

  All three of the men, sentries they’d called themselves, looked over to him. “Claudia said she’d deactivated the protection charm temporarily. We can do what we need to do.”

  The newcomer took out his phone and looked at the time. “Magic or not, just make sure he can’t talk when Claudia comes for him. She can’t know the truth about Tommy.”

  The other two nodded and one turned to walk to the pile of trash and scrap in the corner. After rummaging around for a few minutes, he pulled out a two-by-four. “This should work.”

  Then all three looked right at Derek.

  Sam pushed the map off the table and screamed. This had to work. Something had to work. She needed to try again. She’d try a hundred fucking times if that was what it took.

  “Whoa,” said a voice from the doorway.

  Sam looked up from the spot at the table where she was seething with rage to see Claire staring at her questioningly from the doorway. “Go away,” she ordered.

  “You look like you’re about to have a mental breakdown.”

  “You think?” screamed Sam. She went back to Derek’s computer and hit the print button again, once again printing out a map of the world onto a tiny eight-by-eleven piece of paper. As soon as it finished printing, she snatched it off the printer and turned back to the small table in Derek’s kitchen.

  “Hold on,” said Claire. “What happened?”

  “They took Derek. They took him and I don’t know where he is.”

  “They took him? Took him where? Who took him?”

  Sam shook her head. “I don’t have time. Just go back to my apartment, Claire. I talked to my mother about you this morning. You should be in the clear soon.”

  Claire didn’t leave, but she did step to the corner of the room while Sam set the paper on the table. She took a few deep breaths and tried to focus. Tried to focus her magic. For once in her stupid life, let this work. She grabbed the knife that was still on the table and made a quick incision down the inside of her palm. The fifth one in a row. She gritted her teeth at the pain and squeezed her hand into a fist, letting the blood fall onto the map and stared expectantly at the red drops.

  Nothing. No movement. Nothing. “God damn it!” She pushed the paper off the table and started to throw the knife, but a hand caught her wrist.

  “Let me try,” said Claire.

  Sam turned to face her. “You don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “You’re trying to find Derek, printing out maps and bleeding on them. I don’t know much right now, but I know that you’re trying to do a spell. You can barely function right now. I’m more removed. Let me try.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Then teach me.”

  Sam pulled her wrist free from Claire and looked around at the mess of blood and papers around her. Hell, maybe this wasn’t a bad idea. Better than fumbling around like she’d been doing for the past hour. Every second she spent looking for Derek, the closer he was to dying. “I’ll print out another map.”

  Claire bent down to look at the blood-covered pages on the ground. “Shouldn’t we use something a bit more... localized?”

  “Claudia has the power to go anywhere she wants in the world. Once we get a better idea of where he’s being kept, we’ll get a new map.”

/>   “And you think he’s still alive because—”

  “Because nighttime makes the energies more powerful. Claudia doesn’t do anything for no reason. She strategizes. She’s killing Derek to prove a point, but she’s also going to kill him when it can most benefit her. After he’s dead, she’s going to feed off the energy of his death to make herself stronger. If she’s going to kill him, she’ll wait until the moon is just right. The bewitching hour.”

  “Whoa. Like human sacrifice? Does that mean she kills people all the time?”

  Sam shook her head as the map finally finished printing. “She only does this for people she thinks have broken our rules to a degree that cannot be rehabilitated.” Sam slammed the paper down and looked up, meeting Claire’s eyes. “Most of the time, Claudia is a sane, rational person.”

  “But not now?”

  “People, her own people, are lying to her. They told her Derek killed Tommy, and she’s had enough issues with humans in the past. It’s easier for her to believe that a cop hates us than to consider that Tommy was corrupted.”

  “Then let me go to her. I can tell her what happened to me, right?”

  “That would entail getting to her apartment, making sure she’s actually at her apartment, getting past the sentries at the apartment and, even if the sentries there aren’t corrupt, they have no idea who you are so they probably wouldn’t let you up. Which means I would have to go with you and we don’t have time!”

  Claire nodded. “Got it. This first.” She took the paper and set it on the center of the table. “So just cut myself and see what happens?”

  “No. We’re in Derek’s apartment. Take a breath. This is what he smells like. Feels like. Concentrate on his essence. When you make the cut, that is the only thought in your head. Then the blood will do the rest.”

  “I don’t need to read off an incantation or anything?”

  “Incantations focus magic. This is primal. Use your body and your blood to focus. Got it?”

  Claire swallowed and nodded. Sam figured the girl was nowhere near ready, but that was as much training as she could offer right now. Claire glanced around the apartment before she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. While she was concentrating, Sam grabbed a different knife from the set on Derek’s counter and reached across the table to press it into Claire’s hand. She wanted to give the girl some last words of advice but didn’t want to distract her. Instead, she stayed silent as the seconds ticked by. Then, in a flash of movement, Claire brought the knife up and sliced into her palm. She gasped at the sting, but she’d cut deep enough for a few drops to trickle onto the paper.

  Sam held her breath, but as much as she stared, the blood just stayed there, soaking into the paper. Damn i—wait. It was moving. Stretching across the Atlantic Ocean closer and closer to—

  “New York,” said Claire.

  “Stay there!” Sam twisted around to run to the computer. “I’m getting another map.”

  She tapped out a frantic pattern on the table with her thumb as she waited for Derek’s slow as hell printer to finish. When she turned back to the table, Claire was staring at the map with a look of shock.

  “Ready to do it again?” Sam set the new map down.

  Claire shook her head even as she picked up the knife and raised her hand over the New York map. “I can’t believe that worked.”

  “It worked because you’re a badass witch. Now do it again.”

  “You suck at pep talks.”

  Sam cracked half a smile but didn’t respond. She bit her lip and closed her eyes, praying that the first location spell hadn’t been a fluke. This would work. This had to work. She heard Claire’s sharp intake of breath and looked at the blood. This time there was hardly any wait before it trailed its way from the middle of the state to Brooklyn.

  “Okay. One more and we’ll have him. Hold on.”

  As soon as the printer was done, they were back at it. Claire looked skeptically at her cut-up hand and Sam held up her own bloodied palms. “I feel your pain. Trust me. But you can do this, no problem.”

  “For the handsome detective, then.”

  “Really handsome.”

  Claire nodded, and once again, she cut her palm deep enough to bleed. This time, the blood went straight to an intersection.

  “We got it. Come on.” Sam ran from Derek’s apartment and down the stairs until she reached her own. Claire had left the door unlocked, but at this point Claire could’ve robbed the entire place and Sam wouldn’t care.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We go get Derek.” Sam picked up her gun and racked it back to confirm that one was still in the chamber. Once she determined there was, she looked at the magazine to check it was full before she grabbed her holster that clipped onto the side of her belt and holstered the gun.

  Claire leaned against the open doorway to the apartment. “You have a plan, right?’

  “Yeah. Go in and get Derek.” Sam made sure Derek’s gun was loaded too. Yep. Except she had nowhere to put this one. Damn it.

  “So if there are people there, we can just use our magic on them?”

  “If there are people there, they’re probably sentries and they’re trained personally by Claudia, so they’re way too powerful for me.” She grabbed an older jacket from her closet that had pockets big enough for the Glock 17.

  “So you can fight them off?”

  “God no. I’m a horrible fighter.” Knife. She should have a knife too. She pulled her pocket knife out of a junk drawer and put it in the other pocket.

  “What’s the plan again?”

  “Go in and get Derek.”

  Claire blinked a few times and Sam tried not to focus on how stupid she knew she sounded. But she was going to at least try. She needed to try.

  “And you’re going to be wearing that?”

  Sam stopped in her tracks and looked down. Claire was right. The mini skirt would restrict movement, and if she needed to run, she couldn’t have anything holding her back. “Hold on.”

  While she was in her room throwing on a pair of lightweight leggings that would allow her to move freely, Claire called out, “Can’t you at least think of some form of strategy?”

  Strategy.... Sam came out of the room, loaded up, wearing good clothes and ready to do stupid things. “Derek can fight. And he has that protection charm. If I can get him out, he can do the rest.”

  “Assuming you can get in.”

  “You know what? I’m assuming a lot of things here. Now I’m going to go, so do you want to come with me or stay here?”

  Claire was silent and Sam readied herself for the refusals. Lord knew that staying behind was the smart move. Not to mention she barely knew Claire. The girl had no reason to help her. She was going to have to do this alone and—

  “I think you both should stay here.”

  Both girls twisted to see Abigail in the doorway. Sam tensed and prepared herself for one more fight. “I don’t have time for this, Abigail.”

  “You have all the time in the world. Just stay here. I’ll order us dinner. We can go shopping. Anything you want.”

  “Don’t patronize me. You know I’m not going to—”

  “If you’d just listen to—”

  “Get out!” Sam screamed. The entire building shook and one of her plates crashed to the floor, where it smashed into pieces.

  Abigail’s eyes widened and she stepped back. “You always were stubborn.” She unhooked her necklace and held it out. “At least take this. But I expect it back, Samantha. I expect it back soon.”

  Sam stepped forward and took the necklace. Her mother’s protection charm. Also a gift from Claudia, and Claudia was the only one with the power to beat it. “Mom, than—”

  “Don’t thank me. If I’m helping you die, I don’t want to hear your thanks.”

  Before Sam could even think of a response, her mother turned and walked away. She clenched the charm tightly into her hand until the metal bit into the palm. Maybe... maybe with this
she’d actually stand a chance. If Derek was in fighting condition, they could get out.

  She turned around to look Claire in the eye. “This isn’t a suicide mission. I believe one hundred percent that I can get Derek and myself out alive. So are you coming or not?”

  “So are you and the hot detective like, together?”

  Sam tightened her grip on the steering wheel. It had been easy enough to avoid Claire’s questions while at the apartment and trying to get through a series of spells. But now that they were in the car, staring at the building Derek was supposedly in, there was no hiding. “We’re not together.”

  “But you’re something.”

  Something. They sure as hell were something. “He asked me.”

  Claire adjusted herself in her seat. “Asked you what?”

  “If I wanted to be something more. I turned him down.”

  “You obviously like him.”

  “I obviously got him almost dead. Everything is just so complicated. I have so many questions, and every time I think I’m getting close to the answers, something blows up in my face. If I could just get Claudia alone, just show her you and explain what really happened, I think—”

  “Did you see that?”

  Both women leaned forward in their seats as a man in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie stepped out of the building and walked down the street. “That looks like the guy who came into my room.”

  “He’s a sentry. Claudia’s personal protection force.”

  “I thought she doesn’t know about me.”

  “She doesn’t. Which means the guys who came after you weren’t working for Claudia.”

  Claire frowned. “Wait a second. I thought Claudia was going to sacrifice Derek during the bewitching hour, right? Which is after sunset.”

  Sam looked out at the growing shadows in the city. They still had a few hours before sundown. “Yep.”

  “But if Derek knows the truth and the guys in there don’t want her to know what Tommy was doing, wouldn’t they have a vested interest in making sure that she doesn’t know the truth?”