A Witch’s Revenge (Chronicles of an Urban Druid Book 4)

by Auburn Tempest

  As anxious as Patty is to remove them, he agrees.

  When we get close, we go silent.

  It was a boring trudge before, and now, without having Emmet’s chatter or Patty’s whistling to entertain us, it’s an all-out yawnfest.

  Hold up, Red. I smell something.

  I stop walking at Bruin’s request, and Sloan smacks into me and knocks me stumbling forward. “Dude.”

  Sloan rolls his eyes. “Yer seriously blaming me for that?”

  I wave that away. “Bruin wants us to hold up. He says he smells something.”

  Emmet scowls. “If he smelt it he dealt it and man, seriously? We’re all trapped in here.”

  I roll my eyes and release my spirit bear from our physical bond. He pops out of my chest in a swirl of bear breeze and does a quick lap around the group.

  Give me one minute.

  “You got it, buddy.” I scan the tunnel we’re in and wonder what he smells. “Does anyone smell anything alarming?”

  The members of the group lift their noses, but no one seems to share my bear’s olfactory concern.

  Emmet shrugs off his backpack and unzips the top pocket. “Anyone want a Gran-wich? They’re cut in those cute triangles, so we have time to pop a few in and fuel up.”

  I take ham and swiss, and true to Emmet’s theory, it’s gone in a flash. “It’s strange,” I say while reaching for the next one. “For an all-Wiccan event, you’d think these corridors would be crawling with witches working to secure their big find.”

  Dillan shoves a triangle in his mouth whole and starts chewing. “You sound disappointed. Considering how long we’ve plodded along in here, I’m glad we don’t have witches up our asses every fifty feet.”

  I reach for another sandwich triangle and catch a glimpse of Dora’s brow knit with worry. “What is it?”

  She places a hand against the stone wall and scowls.

  My stomach twists around my snack as my shield starts to tingle. “Put the sandwiches away, Em. We need to be locked and loaded.”

  “Why?” Sloan searches the rocky cavern. “What do ye sense?”

  The cavern we’re in is wider than a tunnel but narrower than a cave. It’s about the size of our family room.

  “I don’t know yet. It’s faint but unmistakable.” On a hunch, I slide my hand into my pocket and find the smooth green stone Patty gave me.

  Next, I take Sloan’s hand in mine and run my thumb over his bone ring. It’s the enchanted ring from the Fianna fortress that allows him to see the unseen. He gets the gist of things instantly and laces his fingers with mine.

  I close my fist around my gemstone and call to the natural enchantment on Sloan’s ring. Something is blocking its sight, and I have a sinking feeling I know what it is.

  Sloan’s back stiffens the moment I feel the magical block. Good, he feels it too.

  I tighten my fist around my gemstone as his magical signature tingles in the air. As he casts a spell, the deception lifts like a thick drape raised at the beginning of a musical.

  Our vision is no longer clouded by the illusion the witches are projecting on us—the witches wearing black fatigues and lining the rocky walls of this cavern like unwelcome wallpaper.

  “Shit. We’re surrounded.”

  The force of a magic bolt hits me squarely in the chest and knocks me stumbling back toward the waiting arms of the enemy. I grit my teeth, but it’s all fury and no pain.

  Tough as Bark wins again.

  What the hell is happening? With their ambush discovered the glamor drops, and our group gets all caught up on the status of things. The little cavern explodes into the blinding pyrotechnics of witch magic, the sounds of close-quarters combat, and the smell of burning hair.

  That last one makes me turn and yep, Dora is shooting fireballs out of the end of her torch.

  “You go, girl!” Emmet dances around, boosting Sloan’s casting and Dillan’s accuracy.

  A spinning green clover flies past my head and catches a witch in the throat. Nasty. I evade being struck by an electric blue witch ball and dive behind one of her teammates.

  Friendly fire. Sorry, not sorry.

  I scramble back to my feet and call Birga and rise to face the bitch. It’s the redhead, Genevieve, from the shrine cellar.

  Her face splits into a wide grin. “We meet again.”

  “Too bad for you.”

  She thrusts her hands forward and another energy ball forms between her palms. When she throws this one, I choke up on Birga. “Batter, batter, swing batter.”

  Right before I connect, I push her energy orb with a counterspell of Protection from Energy. The incoming danger is now an outgoing attack.

  While she scrambles to defend, I harpoon-throw Birga and catch her at the same moment her spell boomerangs home. Unable to defend on two fronts, her cocky grin shifts to a look of horror.

  Birga impales her chest, and her body explodes in a burst of power. I shield my face with my arm as rock explodes and the cavern wall crumbles behind where she stood.

  I call Birga back as a vibrant pink glow fills the room.

  Crap on a cracker.

  Will the ley line spill into here? No. Thankfully, the surface of the distributary lays below the remaining wall.

  “We’ve got open access to a ley line, people. Be careful.”

  I duck the next incoming hit and press my hands against the stone floor. Shape Stone. Focused on the feet of the foes in the cavern, one-by-one, I command the stone at their feet to swallow their legs and harden.

  The distraction is effective, and the witches are sitting ducks. Two more are ended and explode the same way as the redhead. Twice, the explosion releases more power than I can brace for. The blast of energy knocks me off my feet and sends me flying backward.

  Emmet’s thrown too.

  My pulse thunders in my ears as I track my brother’s trajectory. He’s flying straight at the breach in the stone wall. I reach, but momentum is carrying me in the wrong direction.

  “Sloan! Catch him…”

  It’s too late.

  Emmet is hurled through the gaping hole in the cavern wall and drops out of sight.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Emmet!”

  Nikon is the closest to get to him and leans over the crumbled wall into the darkness. “Dora! We need your torch. I can’t see a thing.”

  Dora backhands her opponent and knocks the woman spinning into a spear of stone jutting up from the ground. When she hits the jagged peak, she’s impaled and collapses in a limp heap.

  Oh, my heart. “Do you see him?” I finish my opponent and leave the last three to Dillan, Patty, and Sloan. “Emmet!”

  “There.” Dora points her staff out over the swirling pink river, and the light catches on the current flowing beneath the surface. “He’s on that jut of rock. Do you see him?”

  I’m the third man in so no, I can’t see him. Still, I’m not the one who needs to see him. “Nikon, can you get him?”

  “I don’t think so. My gift doesn’t turn around on a dime. I’m liable to get caught in the current and pull us both in.”

  “Sloan? Can you see him? If you see him, you can get him, right? Your gift is fast.”

  “I see him…I’m just not sure I can get him without—”

  “Please try,” I beg, tears stinging my eyes. I know it’s unfair to ask him to put himself in danger, but this is Emmet. He’s my partner in crime—my purest joy.

  And, I know without a shadow of a doubt, Emmet wouldn’t hesitate to try to save anyone in distress.

  “Please try,” I say again, my words clogged in my throat.

  Sloan flashes out, and my bowels practically liquify.

  What did I do? What if I lose both of them—

  Before my mental tailspin gets its groove on, Sloan is back, and Emmet is coughing and sputtering.

  Dillan and I are on the ground with him in a flash, and I’m gripping his hand. “Are you okay? Did you swallow?”

  Emm
et’s choking takes on another wild round of coughing, and he shakes his head. “How am I supposed to answer that with a straight face?”

  The stress of the moment is too much, and the three of us crack up. I fall forward and hug my brother, and Dillan folds over me and the terror of the moment subsides.

  After I calm a little, I pull back to check him over. ”Are you okay? Are you tingly like Nikon’s granda? Do you feel like you’re transforming?”

  He studies the scrapes on his hand. “Yeah. I feel something. I’m sure it’s okay, though. Despite me being a smartass, I tried not to swallow. I went under and got caught in the flow right after. When I broke back to the surface, I saw the rock and scrambled out.”

  Shifting his attention, Emmet holds up his fist to bump Sloan. “Thanks for fishing me out of the river, bro.”

  “My pleasure. I’m glad it worked.”

  My mind catches up with my emotions and my tears return. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have begged you to do that. It was selfish and… I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you either. I hope you don’t think—”

  Sloan presses a finger over my lips. “Breathe, Cumhaill. I didn’t risk it because ye asked me. I risked it because it was Emmet and the right thing to do.”

  I swipe my cheeks and hold out my hand. He helps me off the hard ground, and I hug him tight. “Thanks for being your wonderful, heroic self, surly.”

  “It’s weird that you’re not even wet.” Dillan helps Emmet to his feet.

  Emmet shakes his head. “Yeah, it looks and acts like water, but it’s not. When I pushed up and broke the surface, it felt more like an energy cloud—an intelligent energy cloud. Does that make any sense?”

  Dillan pats him on the chest. “Not much, bro, but it’s you talking, so we’re used to it. Did you at least make your wish?”

  Emmet frowns and stares at the pink glow. “Dammit! I was too busy trying to escape the water before I turned into a fae beast that it totes slipped my mind.”

  I smile. We tease Emmet about being a goof, but he’s the most loveable, dependable goof ever. “Well, since you’re not sprouting antennae, horns, or wings just yet, I take it we can continue?”

  Emmet brushes himself off, grabs a triangle sandwich out of the backpack, and shrugs. “Yeah, s’all good. No harm done, right?”

  Nikon rolls his eyes.

  Sloan grunts. “Yeah, they’re all cut from the same cloth. No harm done.”

  Nikon frowns and mimics, “I just took a flying leap into a pool of untold power. No harm done.”

  Glancing back at the glowing pink river of intelligent energy, I wonder about that.

  I hope he’s right.

  We leave the fallen witches in the small cavern, and Patty leads the way toward the magnetic pull of the dragon claw dagger. At the edge of a turn, he raises his hand to stop our procession. He nods and points to indicate around the corner.

  When we stop, I notice the scuffle and shuffle of movement in the distance. There’s also the distinct sound of grunting. What the heck is around there?

  Patty unsheathes his hatchet from his weapons belt.

  I call Birga. Bruin, would you mind taking a quick recon run so we know what we’re dealing with?

  Happy to, Red. BRB.

  BRB? I chuckle. My brothers have to stop influencing my ancient warrior bear. I’m still thinking about that when Bruin returns and lifts my hair to tickle my face.

  We hit the motherload on this one, Fi. The door is unlocked and open, the witches are inside the lake area, and the two guards aren’t paying any attention. The only questionable foes are the three fae mutant monsters between them and us.

  Awesomesauce. Somebody sipped the water, I take it.

  Looks like it.

  I relay that to the others in a whisper, and Bruin, Sloan, and Nikon lead the offensive to take out the guards. After the three of them flash off, I signal for Dillan and Dora to round the corner and assess the mutant witches.

  The two of them possess the best stealth abilities, and I’d rather not alert the witches to our presence yet. Dillan flashes me a cocky smile, adjusts his hood, and strides off like the badass he is in battle now.

  I shake myself inwardly at that. When did I start admiring my brother for being a lethal assassin? Life is cray-cray.

  All set, Red.

  I nod when Bruin gives me the all-clear, and Patty, Emmet, and I move around the corner.

  This cavern is double the last one's size and has lit torches affixed to the stone wall at regular intervals. The door, if you can call it that, is a gaping opening beside a carved circle housing the key made out of the base of the chalice, Morgana’s brooch, and the dragon-claw dagger.

  Two downed witches lay unconscious on the ground beside the opening into the Cistern of The Source.

  Obvi, I didn’t give Dillan enough credit for his restraint.

  “Druidssss,” a lizard creature hisses.

  The three mutants move to block our access to the pool of power. It’s unnecessary. Having one of us take a dip directly in the ley line current is quite enough. We have no intention of rushing them to claim the prana for our own.

  The fae-mutated witches scramble to attack. Eight against three is hardly worth our time. Bruin, Dillan, and Dora face off to put them out of their misery while the rest of us move in on the door to the cavern of the cistern.

  Unfortunately, the battle alerts the others.

  A brunette witch I recognize as one of the women from the shrine cellar sees Sloan, and her gaze tightens. “How did you get free? You should be curled up in a ball by now. How did you exhume my festerbug?”

  On a list of things not to say in front of the darkness-possessed, pissed-off girlfriend, those sentences get the highest possible marks. I harpoon-throw Birga, and my spear is as ferocious and blood-thirsty as I am at that moment.

  The witch bitch’s expression morphs from arrogance to surprise to horror in the span of a fleeting heartbeat. The force of Birga’s momentum pins the witch to the stone wall and the dark film coating me rejoices.

  “Anything else you’d like to say about my boyfriend’s suffering, bitch?” I move in close, adrenaline pumping hard in my veins. I grip Birga’s staff and pull her free. “Yeah no, I didn’t think so.”

  “Well then,” Emmet says, his emerald green eyes blown wide. “In case anyone’s wondering how Fi is dealing with the stress of the past few days. I think it’s fair to say she’s working through a few personal issues.”

  “Moira should’ve killed ye from the start as we all wanted,” another witch says while coming out of the cavern.

  “Then why didn’t she?” Sloan snaps. By the storms shadowing his gaze, he recognizes this one. “Why the games?”

  “Ye embarrassed her. Had ye traded the chalice for our help protecting the groves as ye negotiated, none of this would be an issue. Instead, ye made her look bad.”

  “Boo-freaking-hoo. She was lying about her motives, and we saw through it. No deal. The end.”

  The witch tips back her head and laughs. “If ye thought that was the end of it, ye don’t know Moira. She wanted to watch ye suffer. She wanted to compromise Cumhaill’s morals and bring him down a peg.”

  Dillan barks a laugh. “If she thought that would work, she doesn’t know our Granda.”

  “Yeah,” Emmet says, his voice tight. “Moira wouldn’t know honor if it punched her in the witch’s tit.”

  Something in the timbre of Emmet’s voice catches my attention. He’s got the same pale complexion as I do, so the mottled patches climbing his neck and spreading across his jaw are both noticeable and worrisome.

  He swipes a hand across his forehead and blinks. “FYI, your thieving pissed off some very powerful fae.”

  Nikon points at the silver casks stacked near the door. “Going to a magic kegger?”

  “That’s none of your business, little man. Run home before mommy realizes you’re out after dark.”

  Nikon doesn’t seem amused. �
�My family vowed to keep the secrets of this cistern a secret millennia ago. There’s no way I step aside and watch you carry these out of here.”

  “Then don’t watch,” a crone with straggly silver hair and jaundiced yellow eyes says. “Problem solved.”

  Something about the old witch brings forward a surge of dark yearning. I stretch out my neck and adjust my grip on Birga’s staff. “What? You’re banking on those waters being a fountain of youth? Have you been drinking it?”

  “Chugging it, I’d guess,” Nikon says.

  “That won’t end well for you, oul girl. Sad face.”

  Red. Something’s wrong with Emmet. He’s lookin’ a little green himself.

  Emmet is standing with a hand propped against the stone of the cavern wall. When this fight starts, keep him safe, Bear.

  Like he’s my cub.

  This mission has suddenly become a whole lot less interesting. I want to end this and have Wallace check Emmet over. “All right, moving along. Bad guys stall and overshare. Good guys won’t stand for it. Now we’re at the part where the fight breaks out.”

  The old hag shoots me with ocular daggers.

  “Sorry. We’re on a bit of a time-crunch here.”

  “I’ll start things off, Fi.” Patty fires a few lucky charms across the cavern and catches the two witches in the forehead. “That’s for the suffering of my queen and the kids.”

  Yep…that certainly kicks off the battle in a big way.

  Wands appear at an amazing speed, and I take a step forward to position myself closer to Emmet. Dillan does the same thing from the other side of our group.

  I’m busy focusing on the group's front-runners when a massive white wolf barrels through the crowd. Snout open, teeth exposed, it charges at me with a snarl.

  Where the hell did White Fang come from?

  I poise Birga and brace for the impact. Before the weight of the wolf strike hits, Bruin takes form, looses a wild roar, and guts the beast. Its momentum carries its body into a collision course with him, but Bruin barely shifts.