Gypsy Witch: A Paragon Society Novel (Book 2)

by David Delaney

  Lucy approached the side door; she tried the handle with no luck. She glanced back at me, shook her head, and then pointed toward the restaurant.

  I checked on the ogres: they were still waiting on their order. They must have ordered a crap-ton of food. I looked back at Lucy and nodded. I watched her check out the parking lot one last time for any witnesses. The coast was clear.

  Lucy wrapped her hand around the door handle. I was watching in the magic spectrum, so I was able to discern the arc of blue light that shot from her hand into the metal and heard the hiss as the internal locking mechanism fried. Lucy opened the door and quickly disappeared inside. I checked the ogres: they were still waiting. One of them was playing with the soda machine, drawing a frown from one of the workers behind the counter.

  A frenzied roar shattered the peaceful afternoon. The Winnebago rocked violently back and forth, almost tipping onto its side. A brilliant flash of orange light blazed from all the windows.

  Crap.

  I zoomed across the parking lot, reaching the motorhome just as the door was blasted from its hinges. I swiped at the flying door, smashing it to the ground. A second later, Lucy dove out of the opening, somersaulting in the air. I reached out and caught her before she hit the pavement.

  "They've got a freaking troll!" Lucy screamed.

  Ogres and now trolls. What's next? Hobbits?

  "A troll? Is that bad?" My question was answered when a mottled, blue-skinned creature crashed into the opening where the door had been. Its head was shaped like an inverted pear. The smaller end had just enough room for its squishy looking eyes; the larger end was all snout and teeth. Its long spindly legs, which bent in funny directions, indicated to me that the troll was probably more comfortable on all fours than moving around on two legs. It seemed more like a predatory animal than the fairytale or even the video game versions of trolls that I was familiar with.

  Luckily, the troll's forward progress was being impeded by its wide body. Its shoulders couldn't fit through the narrow doorway and apparently it wasn't smart enough to figure out that if it just twisted a bit, it could slip out easily. Nope, it kept smashing itself against the doorframe which was slowly buckling outward.

  "That door's not going to hold for very long," I said, pointing out the obvious.

  "What the hell are a bunch of ogres doing in a motorhome with a troll?" Lucy asked, her tone conveying more shock than curiosity. "At least now we know why they were buying burgers." She looked at me for confirmation.

  I shrugged my shoulders, completely ignorant as to ogre burger-buying habits.

  Lucy snorted in disgust. "Trolls don't eat humans. Of course, they will happily rip humans to pieces, but when it comes time to eat, they prefer cow."

  Angry grunts from behind us signaled that the ogres had joined the party. I spun on my heel. Yep, three pissed-off–looking, smelly ogres, clenching several bags of In-N-Out in their meaty fists, were staring at their trashed Winnebago.

  "Orson, I'm going to need you to keep those three busy while I take care of this troll," Lucy said, quietly. "Ogres can be nasty, but a troll is pure mayhem, a killing machine. It can't leave this parking lot alive."

  The troll roared again in frustration, wildly snapping at the doorframe.

  I glanced at Lucy. She was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt – comfortable road-trip clothes. "You don't have your daggers," I responded.

  "Nope. I'm going to have to do this the old-fashioned way," she said, cracking her knuckles.

  The troll's thrashing and roaring was starting to draw attention. Several people were now staring through the windows of the restaurant, and a few brave souls had stepped outside behind the ogres. "We've got a crowd of looky-loos with a bunch of cellphones pointed in our direction," I said.

  "I'll take care of that first, but then you're on your own," said Lucy, tossing me her cellphone. "Are you good?"

  "I'm good." I shoved both our cellphones into my backpack and after a quick deliberation I pulled off my shirt, balled it up, and crammed it into the backpack as well. Hey, it was a vintage Star Wars print. I didn't want to shred it. I made a precision throw toward the back of the parking lot, landing the backpack against the back bumper of Lucy's car.

  I could feel Lucy powering up, and the magic energy swirling around us intensified. Lucy turned at the waist and let loose a kinetic spell, blasting the pavement in front of the gathering crowd. The onlookers dove for cover, most racing back inside the restaurant. The moment Lucy let go with the spell, I ran straight for the three ogres, shifting on the fly. I chose my bear form, thinking that I could intimidate them with my size.

  Silly Orson.

  I felt, rather than saw, Lucy let loose another whammy, knowing that all the cellphones pointed in our direction – actually all the electronics in a several hundred foot swath – had just been fried by her magic.

  I hit the three ogres like a bowling ball hitting a grouping of pins. I knocked the middle ogre off his feet, his two buddies were spun sideways, with cheeseburgers and French fries flying through the air like fast-food shrapnel. I roared – one of my favorite go-to moves, as it usually scared the crap out of my opponent. The ogres simply roared back. Their roars, even combined, were weak compared to mine, but the challenge contained within the roars was loud and clear: the ogres wanted to rumble.

  The battle is joined.

  Are you happy now?

  Only after we have drawn first blood, will I rejoice.

  You're such a drama queen.

  The middle ogre had regained his feet and, on a signal I missed entirely, he and his ugly brothers dropped their glamour. The three things standing in front of me were huge – well over nine or ten feet in height – and their bodies were massive – not necessarily muscular, just thick, like some crazed lumberjack had pieced together a pile of tree trunks to create giant, stomping, monster-men.

  The ogres must have been unfamiliar with every action movie ever made, because instead attacking me one by one in a choreographed dance of fisticuffs, they blitzed me. I was pummeled from three sides simultaneously. I received multiple punches to my head and several bone jarring kicks to my ribs. I was able to get one good swipe in, expecting my large claw to mangle the ogre who was repeatedly smashing his fists into my skull. I was disappointed. My strike ripped the ogre's arm open, but the wound didn't seem to slow him down.

  Playtime was over.

  I shifted into beast-form and bellowed in rage.

  My beast-form's sonic weapon roar didn't disappoint. The three ogres stumbled back, shaking their massive heads in pain. I didn't hesitate but rushed the lead ogre, whose arm hung useless at its side. Even in my beast-form, the ogres towered over me by a couple of feet, so I leapt toward my first adversary. Using its bulging gut as a step, I dug my clawed feet into the ogre's abdomen and launched myself like a missile into its ugly face. My hands clamped around the ogre's head like a vice, my thumbs spearing both its eyes.

  The ogre roared again, but this time in pain. My momentum carried me over the top of the ogre's head, where I twisted in the air, wrenching with all my strength. The ogre's head came off with bone-cracking snap. I landed in a skidding stop, leaving deep grooves in the asphalt. I held the ogre's head in one hand and grinned wickedly at the two remaining behemoths. They looked confused, their eyes darting from the body of their fallen comrade to the bloody head dangling from my hand.

  A flying Ford truck ended the ogre's confusion, when it landed on top of them. My head snapped in the direction the truck had come from, as a second car, a Prius, came sailing by me. Lucy was using a spell I'd never seen before: some kind of Jedi-looking wizardry. She was lifting and flinging vehicles at the troll with nothing but a wave of her hands. The troll was holding its own though – slapping the damn things out of the air and sending them flying in all directions.

  Lucy was bleeding from a cut on her forehead. I checked her out in the magic spectrum: her energy was starting to lag, her aura was getting the scattered l
ook I was starting to associate with magic fatigue. The grating screech of metal being torn apart pulled my attention back to the ogres under the truck. The passenger side door was being pushed slowly outward, straining against the bent frame. The door finally tore loose and was tossed aside as one of the ogres dragged itself from the wreckage. The thing was bleeding and dazed from having a half-ton of steel and glass dropped on its head. Unfortunately, it was a bad day to be an ogre at the In-N-Out. I strode over and slashed at the ogre's neck. Surprisingly, it took a left and a right slash to finish the thing off – turns out, ogre skin is pretty damn thick.

  Not wasting anytime, I turned my focus to the troll. Lucy was preparing another mid-size family sedan for troll-smashing purposes. I let her send the car hurtling at the troll and the moment it snapped out its creepy arm to push the car aside, I jumped onto its back, sinking the claws on both my hands and feet into its side.

  The troll screamed.

  The scream sounded so human, I almost lost my hold on the thing.

  Almost.

  Instead, still screaming, the troll began to buck like a bull at the rodeo. I dug my claws in deeper so as not to be thrown off, and I rode the creature like a cowboy – a giant, fur-covered, monster-cowboy. The troll, unsuccessfully, tried every spinning, jerking move it could manage to get me off its back. I tried to get my fingers around something, anything vital inside the troll's body, to kill it, but I had no luck. However, the longer I stayed on the thing's back, the slower it was moving. It was getting tired – finally.

  With the troll moving sluggishly, Lucy moved in. "Try to keep its head steady," she ordered.

  I grunted, wondering how the hell I was supposed to keep a rampaging troll's head steady. As Lucy got closer, I could see flames starting to encircle her hands.

  She was going to burn the troll.

  Awesome.

  I had to time it just right. In one swift motion, I pulled my claws free from the side of the troll and sunk them into its ugly pear-shaped head. Just as the troll opened its mouth to scream, Lucy sent a jet of fire down its throat. The troll jerked to a stop.

  "Orson, get clear!" Lucy shouted.

  I flipped off the troll's back, landing in a crouch and ready to re-engage if necessary.

  It wasn't necessary.

  The troll began to shake violently and then – poof! The thing went up like a roman candle. The heat was intense, the fire too bright to look at, and within seconds, all that was left of the troll was a pile of ash.

  I surveyed the parking lot one more time to make sure all the bad guys were dead, and then I shifted. "Wow. What kind of fire spell was that?"

  "Doesn't really have an official name," Lucy said, kicking at the pile of ash. "I just call it the 'burn and churn.' And, dude, your junk's hanging out again," she added, averting her eyes.

  "Nothing I can really do about that right now," I said, but I covered myself up with my hands.

  During the fight, everyone in the restaurant had exited the building on the street side and run for their lives. It was a sad commentary on our world that terrorist attacks and mass shootings were such a regular thing that people knew instinctively to run when things started going bang, but it helped in situations like this, when we needed to cover-up a magic throw down. Sirens announced the imminent arrival of police and other first responders. We didn't have much time for cleanup.

  "You need to grab some clothes. I'm going to dust the ogre bodies," Lucy said. "I hate to do it, as I'm sure the Society would love to run some tests on the remains . . ."

  I could tell she was waffling, trying to figure out another option.

  "Burn the bastards. We're out of time," I said, agreeing with her first assessment. "If the Society wants to study ogres, they can get their own sample."

  Lucy nodded and lit up the headless corpse.

  I ran for Lucy's Mini. Luckily for us, the full parking lot had saved her car from the damage done during the fight. I pulled my t-shirt from the backpack and rummaged through my duffel for a pair of jeans.

  Lucy joined me just as the first police cruiser slid to a stop in the driveway of the restaurant. Lucy had set fire to the smashed truck to cover the piles of ash from the ogre and troll corpses. We had no choice but to hunker down near the car and pretend to be innocent bystanders. The cut in Lucy's head, even though it was healing quickly, helped us sell our story.

  As the other customers trickled back toward the restaurant, I could hear people excitably sharing their eyewitness accounts with the officers. These accounts included bears, other unnamed wild animals, and explosions – oh, and the occasional flying car. The only thing the police could make sense of were the reports of animals, so they sent out a countywide warning that one or more wild animals might be on the loose.

  The ogre's RV became the focus of the investigation. The crime scene unit found clear evidence that a large animal had been kept inside and immediately began searching for the owners of the vehicle. Yeah, good luck with that.

  What the police were most confused by was the fact that every cellphone had not only stopped working but had its insides melted. Consequently, there was no footage of what had happened in the parking lot. Lucy and I were able to keep the fact that our cellphones were in perfect working order a secret. Lucy had been able to send a quick text to the Society hotline for emergency services, with an address and the need for a cleaning crew. That would include experts in memory modification, to make sure anyone who witnessed too much didn't cause the Society any problems.

  After several hours, the police finally agreed that we could leave. They insisted that one of their crime techs move Lucy's car out of the lot, so as not to disturb any evidence.

  "Can you drive?" Lucy asked.

  "What?" I was shocked. "You're going to let me drive your car?"

  "Don't be butt about it," Lucy said, sliding into the passenger seat. "I need to finish healing this cut on my head and call Cynthia."

  I sandwiched myself into the driver seat, moving the seat back as far as I could, and adjusted the mirrors. "Cynthia? Why?"

  "Like I said before: ogres on a road trip is . . . odd. But ogres on a road trip with a pet troll? There's just no way there isn't something bigger going down." Lucy gave me a worried look that got my spidey-senses tingling.

  "Are we still going to Stanford?" I asked.

  "Yeah. We need to check out that situation, but there's a chance that we may take a detour on the way home."

  "Okay." I tried to sound more confident than I felt. This was supposed to be a quick recruiting run: no muss, no fuss.

  As if reading my thoughts, Lucy said, "Orson, you did an awesome job in that parking lot. You squared off against some heavy hitters, without blinking an eye. You adapted and you overcame. Thanks for having my back."

  I smiled. "Thanks for the assist with that truck. I had no idea you could toss cars around like Luke Skywalker."

  Lucy snorted at my use of yet another movie reference, but then totally surprised me when she answered in a perfect Yoda impersonation, "Size matters not. Judge me by my size, do you?"

  My mouth dropped open.

  "Don't look so shocked," Lucy chided. "I'm the only person in this car who actually saw Empire during its original theatrical release. Now, please focus on your driving while I make my phone call."

  CHAPTER 6

  Jimmy kept glancing over at the box on the passenger seat of his car. The top of the box folded together to create handles for easy carrying and, just below the handles, a grouping of holes dotted either side of the box. The holes insured airflow. The airflow was needed to keep the chicken inside the box alive.

  Jimmy giggled to himself. He was driving across town with a chicken in a box that was constructed to keep the chicken alive, and Jimmy needed the chicken to remain alive until Tinkerbelle bled it dry for the love spell he'd paid for. Jimmy giggled again. How had he ended up here? He was about to let some crazy lady, who claimed to be a witch, gut a chicken so that he could get a
date.

  She levitated me off the ground, Jimmy reminded himself.

  But had she really? Jimmy was starting to doubt the events of their first meeting. He was thinking more and more that she had hypnotized him somehow. Maybe the cloud of incense hanging in her living room was some kind of psychedelic drug? Hypnosis had a long history in psychiatry; it was a real thing – unlike witchcraft.

  Even though Jimmy had almost convinced himself that hypnosis was the most likely scenario, he had still purchased the chicken and was now driving to Tinkerbelle's house. Because there was a very quiet, tiny voice in the back of his head that was whispering to him that it was true – that witchcraft was real and that by the end of the night he would be armed with a spell that would help him get the date with Maddie that he dreamt about.

  Jimmy parked in front of Tinkerbelle's house and spent a moment psyching himself out for the experience that awaited him the next hour or so. When he felt sufficiently prepared, he grabbed the box, which caused the chicken to squawk. He ignored the bird and walked up the cracked pathway to the front door.

  Once again the door swung open before Jimmy could knock. He was startled to see Dahlia standing in the open doorway, grinning.

  "Hey ya, Jimbo. How's it hanging?" Dahlia asked, with a twinkle in her eye.

  "What are you doing here?" Jimmy demanded.

  "Did you think I was going to miss this?" Dahlia asked, with incredulity. "After you called me on my date the other night crying about chickens? No way."

  "I didn't cry," Jimmy said, his face turning red.

  "Oh, I'm sorry. How about 'whined like a little bitch?' Is that better? Dahlia teased. "I see you actually brought the chicken. I owe Tink a lunch. I didn't think you'd show, and if you did, you wouldn't have a chicken. Come on in, Jimbo. The night's just getting started."

  Jimmy wasn't happy that Dahlia was there, but he couldn't do anything about it. If he asked her to leave, she would just laugh at him.