She will die, I realize. She will die if I let her fight this battle for me.
And all around me continues that unearthly scream, loud, twirling and spinning. But I cannot determine its source.
I put Crystal on the ground, and I charge.
Lightning is not a good mix with hunters. We have no protection for it like witches do. But Crystal holds the black-haired woman’s own lightning at bay because the woman knows that if she lets go now, she’ll be fried.
I see the woman’s eyes go wide when she realizes where my sword is about to land.
But she’s too quick. In desperation, she turns her lightning force over to me—
Something hits me. And as I’m flying across the room, time moving slowly, understanding it is actual lightning sending me in this long arc, I see something that makes me blink.
The woman who flung the lightning...melts.
~ Crystal ~
-29-
The SCREECH of anger from Shira kept filling the air as I held Karolyna’s lightning power at bay.
I saw it all, as if I had left my body and looked down upon the whole scene:
A ghost, or Shira’s essence, or her mind in this world, flowed out of her body like thick mist. The white essence had fangs and claws and anger inside it. It spiraled outwards and made a wide and deafening curve toward Karolyna.
Karolyna saw Luke coming for her, turned her lightning toward him. I put a wall around him, so he wouldn’t be burned. But the force of her blow still sent him back.
I was exhausted, without any more power. I had just enough strength to put a cushion before the wall Luke was about to hit.
And then Karolyna...melted.
The wraith which was Shira’s essence surrounded Karolyna and her skin started to boil and pop. She turned into oatmeal in front of us.
Run, Crystal. Run, I heard in my mind. Shira’s voice. Take the hunters and go. Take them and run. You cannot save me. RUN!
The splattered spray which had once been Jack...began to reform. It was like that scene from Terminator II, only less...aesthetic. Instead of shiny particles of fancy metal reforming, this was chunks of meat, bone marrow, veins. His blood on my face and body flowed away from my skin as if I were taking a shower.
I heard a battle scream. “AAAAAAHHHH.” And an axe spun around and lopped Jack’s head off newly. Before his body could hit the ground, Luke bolted from the wall and dived with his sword into Jack’s stomach, ripped sideways in a long gash. The demon convulsed and shivered.
Jack didn’t die.
His head laughed from the corner of the room.
Luke swung the massive blade again, into the man’s heart, tore left. Luke was a monster of strength, his inked up muscles bulging as he stabbed and stabbed and stabbed the demon on the ground.
Jack still didn’t die.
The blond woman with the axe flung it at the decapitated head and cleaved it in two.
He didn’t die.
Outside, the sounds of war were violent. Screaming and clanging and metal hitting metal.
Run, Crystal. Please. You cannot save me. You cannot. You are the key. You!
I looked up at her body on the crucifix. I struggled upwards, walked on my hands and knees to her to try and reach the cross, to try and pull her down.
Run, child. RUN!
“I won’t run!” I screamed. “I’m getting you out of here.”
The body’s mouth was saying, “Oh, mmmm, oh, mmmm, oh, mmmm.” But I knew she was alive. Deep, deep down, she was alive.
I tried moving the cross with my mind.
But I was dead, weaker than even a human.
Luke and the Axe Woman kept on going postal on Jack’s body which had only a few moments ago turned to goo in front of my eyes. He’s not going to die, I realized.
I tried to tell Luke this, but all I managed to do was fall.
The world began to spin. My eyes started closing.
So weak, so weak, so weak...
I heard, “Uuuuuurrrghhh. Goddamn, that’s fuckin painful. You...goddamn...witches.”
The wraith of Shira howled, spun wide and smothered Jack—
Jack?
No, it wasn’t Jack. It was a mummy, no skin, partly clothed. But he had all his body parts together again. Luke and the Axe Woman slammed their weapons into him, digging deep and spraying gallons of his regenerated blood over the floor.
He’s not going to die, I tried to say.
No strength.
And then the essence which was Shira surrounded him like a white curtain.
“Hey—hey—hey! What—”
She fought him, confused him.
“I can’t hold him for much longer. Trust me, Crystal. Trust me. You MUST leave,” the goddess howled.
“GODDAMN MOTHERFUCK!” Jack’s voice roared, and with it came a lethal energy.
The room began to rock, the floor shaking.
And that’s when the flames began.
They licked up the walls in a sudden conflagration of terror. Heat swallowed up the last remnants of air in the warehouse. Windows smashed.
“YOU GODDAMN WITCHES! YOU GODDAMN— AAAAAAARGHHHH!”
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
More fire. Explosions. Earthquake.
“I’ll chase you down, you hag,” Jack bellowed. “I’ll chase you down until there’s nowhere else to go but home to the big witch circle in the ground!”
Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab!
Luke stepped back, realizing the truth finally himself. This demon wasn’t going to die. He put his hand out to the blond woman on his left, blood all over both of their bodies. She stopped, spittle dropping from her mouth. Fell to her knees exhausted.
Jack laughed.
“I am the GOD of demons! I am invincible!”
Jack stumbled in my direction, his knee joint skew.
A crack erupted under my body. I looked up at the crucifix, and it began to shake, to tremble.
KARAAAAAAACKKKK. The earth parted in a deep fissure below me, each of my legs on either side of it. I was going to fall—
Run, baby. Run, please. Just run. This is not your fault. I promise you. I keep my promises to you. This is not your fault!
Powerful arms snatched me and prevented me from falling into the abyss.
You must save her, I thought at Luke. Please, save her!
The earth split into a chasm under Luke’s feet as well and he fought for balance. A large hole appeared under the crucifix, a gaping maw of black hunger that started sucking in all the earth around it. Gravel poured down like a waterfall into it and Luke stepped backwards toward the door, me in his arms limply, watching the ground caving in. We bumped into Jack, and his feeble zombie hands clutched at me once lamely. Luke kicked him back and the man only laughed. “What a blast,” he cried out. “What a fuckin rush!”
The walls began to crumble, flames flickering and roaring around us.
“DON’T YOU FUCKING LEAVE ME!” Jack was looking up at the crucifix. It swayed and creaked and rocked from its hinges in the ceiling—
KA-PLACKER!
—and the roof above it cracked.
The crucifix fell into the hole, Shira’s body still nailed to it, down, down, down into the center of the earth. To a world below.
Jack dived in after her, his tattered body looking like a medical diagram of the internal muscles and tendons.
Karolyna’s body had reformed as well, a monstrosity of puss and welts that might have once been human—scarred, haggardly. She was surrounded by flames, and screaming. “HELP ME. HELP ME. OH, CRYSTAL—HELP ME. HUNTERS. HELP ME!”
The blond girl in the mask raced to the witch who had betrayed us. Duty, I remembered.
It took all the power I had left inside me to speak. “N—no. N—no. Don’t...help. Don’t...help. Don’t—” I was done.
Luke looked up at his fellow huntress. Paused.
Don’t help the witch. Don’t help.
“Dania!” he roared. “Dania!”
The woman in the mask turned to face him.
“HELP ME, YOU BITCH! HELP ME. HELP ME! I AM A WITCH, IT IS YOUR DUTY!”
Luke looked down at me.
No, please no.
There was an internal war in his eyes. A conflict I understood only partly. It is their duty. He clenched his jaw, looked up at his compatriot.
“Dania—leave her.”
Dania stood with battleaxe in her hand, the floor disappearing in front of her. She’d fall into the hole soon if she didn’t come with us. She looked to Luke, to me, to the oatmeal witch.
“HELP ME, YOU COWARD!”
“No, Dania,” Luke said. “No.”
The blonde looked one more time at the lightning witch, said something I didn’t understand. And then stormed back to us in anger. “You’ll be the death of us, Luke Dresner. Of all of us!”
Luke carried me out.
He had to put me on his back because the alley was too narrow with me dangling off his arms. Dania grabbed an animal-hide coat from a dead hunter and put it around my naked body. She tied my wrists around Luke’s neck and my ankles around his waist with a leather thong. I was too weak to hold on myself. She had soft and graceful hands for a hunter.
We ran.
We raced past the rat with maggots and the shattered windows of the inner city, ran past the stink of sewage and the eviscerated man in the wheelchair, still breathing, still alive, begging all the passers-by to help him, help him, help him. All around us hunters fought and died and were clawed at by screeching dark animals with wings. Thousands of them. And hundreds of hunters dead, bloody on the ground and torn to shreds.
What’s happening? What’s happening?
“They want you,” Luke said, as if he had heard me.
Several winged creatures tried to take us, but either Luke shoved a blade deep into their necks, or Dania swung her axe at them.
I was starting to like her.
And then we were surrounded by hunters, all of them in a circle around me, maybe forty or fifty of them. All of them slashing away at the flying demons that seemed so determined to capture me. “Save the witch!” one cried. “Save the witch! Save the witch!” More hunters around me, slashing and gashing and fighting. Dying.
I was humbled.
Luckily these winged creatures did die, and often with only one slash.
“This is how it’s supposed to be,” Luke said as I bounced crazily on his back. “I’ve never seen that shit before. Never seen a demon reform. Gods!” He was part-stunned, part-awed.
There was a boom behind us, strong enough to make Luke almost stumble. A few hunters fell to the ground.
I looked back, the warehouse had exploded, and a tower of flames shot up into the sky.
“OUT. OUT. OUT!” The tall woman I understood to be Aasiyah led the way. “OUT NOW!”
Jack’s laugh was in the air, constant and echoing, filling the sky.
Shira.
Was she alive?
Was she dead?
I can’t remember a divisible instant between the moment of bouncing on Luke’s back for what felt like years, and the moment of me waking up in a strange bed...
-30-
...The sheets were drenched in my blood. My back and leg burned like acid rain. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
Sunlight streamed in from a window in front of the bed, a painting of a starfish and beach chairs on its right. An AC unit whir-whir-whirred in the room next door. Where am I?
I felt the body next to me, hot and massive and strong.
“L—Luke?” I groaned. The pain in me was maddening.
He sat up suddenly.
“Oh, my fuck!” he cried. And then he jumped off the bed as if he had been thrown from springs. Stood there looking at me.
He was as magnificent in real life as he had been in the dreams. Better.
He was looking at my left leg, three massive lashes bleeding profusely. “We have to get you to a hospital,” he said.
“No,” I croaked. “No.”
“Crystal—you are Crystal, aren’t you?”
I laughed, despite the pain. “Yes.”
“And you’re in my bedroom. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“Seems like it.” I actually smiled.
Luke smiled as well, his eyes glowing and the gentlest of dimples forming on either side of his lips.
“What will we tell the hospital?” I said to him.
He argued with himself about this for a second, then agreed reluctantly it would be best to keep me here.
“Do you have some water?” I asked.
“Uh—sure—sure.” He ran to the kitchen and then came back with a cold glass of water. I was burning up.
When we took my temperature, I had a fever of a hundred and two.
Only thirty seconds had passed in the real world.
~ Luke ~
-31-
We sat in Aasiyah’s tent. Dania was clothed this time, wearing a simple one-piece dress light enough for the desert. She sat on the chaise again, but nothing compared to how she had been before.
Crystal sat at my side in one of the plush red chairs facing Aasiyah.
Aasiyah looked at us as if we were specimens under a microscope. “A hunter doing magic? A demon which doesn’t die? Demons with wings? A witch who wasn’t saved despite pleading for help?” She glared at Dania. “You’ve brought the Hunter Order to tatters, Lucien.”
I said nothing.
To Crystal she said, “You know you are the first witch we’ve ever had in here, don’t you?”
“I gathered as much.”
“Grapes?” Aasiyah stretched out a platter of green grapes to her.
Crystal took a few.
I held Crystal’s hand on her knee.
Aasiyah looked down at the bond disapprovingly. Rolled her eyes. “A witch and a hunter, in love. Fucking I’ve heard of. But love? These damn witches screw anything with legs. No offense, but it’s true. Sluts. Sluts. No offense. Not you, of course.” She looked at our united hands. “No, not you. Gods—love.”
Aasiyah was direct with Crystal, told her the truth about the reason for hunters protecting witches. “Your kind is a buffer,” she said. “And it’s all you have been. We’re driven by an innate sense of duty—except for...Lucien here. He’s driven by...” She looked at my crotch. “Well, never mind. Anyway, I hate to say that it is out of...duty...that I ask you...” She huffed. “Gods. Best get it done quickly. It is out of duty and obligation that I ask you, Crystal Loradeen, to assist us in the war. Why? I don’t know. I don’t question the gods. I only do as I’m told, unlike some of us in here.” Another glare at me, and a short one at Dania. “And I sense that we need you. A witch. I can’t believe it myself. But, fine. Whatever. You will have no official position. But Luke here will be second in command of the hunters. Dania will share that position with him. Duty and obligation is one thing, leadership is quite another.
“You would hold a sort of...advisory position. No authority! But...advisory. What do you say, Crystal?”
Crystal had taught me to create this inner channel where we could communicate to each other via impressions, like she had done with her friend Shira. I had been able to read her mind in the dreamworld before, but that had all changed since my two worlds had merged into one.
She was finding this entire thing very amusing.
Picking up another grape, she said, “I’d love that.”
Aasiyah stayed still for a moment, as if she had expected Crystal to decline. Then: “Fine. Fine. Good. Fine.”
Aasiyah looked at Dania, then at me again. I suddenly remembered Dania’s naked body, and how Aasiyah had wanted me to sleep with the poor girl.
Unfortunately, I didn’t protect that thought.
Crystal frowned, looked over at Dania, then at me.
I was going to have a lot of explaining to do when we got back to my bedroom.
Or maybe I wouldn’t explain.
Maybe I would just
kiss her, lick the beautiful scars on her back that glowed every time we made love. Maybe I would just slide my hand under her breasts and push her on her side, press up against her from behind. Maybe I would slide my hand down her stomach and feel the heat between her legs, the slick touch of her arousal on my fingertips. Maybe I would press into her slowly with a finger, hear her moan, hear her calling me with her whimpers and her breaths and her mind.
Next to me, Crystal blushed.
I hadn’t protected any of those thoughts either.
EPILOGUE
~ Crystal ~
-32-
It’s a mystery I have to live with now, not knowing if Shira is alive or dead. It is my promise to keep looking for her.
I haven’t heard from her in this world or the other ever since Luke and I made it out of that warehouse barely alive. I’ve tried to reach her endlessly, tried to reach out mentally and otherwise.
She’s gone.
I reached out to Roxy in Marfa. Luke and I went past there to see if Jack was still alive in this world. If he is, we don’t know. His house was abandoned, no sign of him or Sirvana. And when we asked the locals about him...
Well, no one remembers him leaving. No one hardly even remembers him as such. Just as he had been a mystery in his arrival, he remained one in his exit.
Except for Roxy.
As soon as he left, her powers started to return. She told me everything he had done to her. Everything.
It was not a pretty tale.
She is a powerful witch, a powerful one. And she remembers now. And there are others like her in Marfa, a small coven of friends she had formed over time and who also never remembered what they were, but who are remembering now. Not even the hunters knew they existed. Maybe witches can unite.
Other hunters have gained the ability to remember the dreams as well, not only Luke. Slowly, the battle transmutes from one we have fought inside our minds, to one being fought right now in the real world.
Two hunters stand guard with Roxy in Marfa now, two hunters waiting for the man who calls himself Jack to return. If he returns.
I met Luke’s friends. Eddie, Nancy. And I met many of his...achievements...over the years. He’s been a busy man. He never introduced me to any of the girls, of course, especially not the blonde who flaunts her tits at the Tiki-Licious and gives me the evil eye when she thinks I’m not looking. But there’s little he can hide from me, it’s the drawback he suffers at having a girlfriend who can read minds.
Her Mind Games: A Dark and Erotic Paranormal Romance Page 13
