The Problem With Witches: An Arcane Shot Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  “Like him.” Ben nodded down toward the wide concrete dock in front of the Aquarium.

  On his earlier review of the emptiness of the waterfront, he hadn’t counted the one freaking tourist still there. Or rather, a guy acting like one.

  Silas was sitting on one of the benches. He appeared unconcerned by the odd cloud behavior, the rising wind or building sea level, already creating cat paws across the choppy river. He was eating beignets out of a bag, likely getting the powdered sugar on the long lanky legs of his jeans.

  “Remind me again what he’s supposed to do here?” Ben asked.

  “Nothing,” Derek said. “He does not get involved in such matters. It is forbidden because of what he is, his power over life and death, and how that can disrupt the determinations of Fate.”

  “And he is…what?” Ben prompted. When Mikhael and Derek exchanged a look, including Ruby in the sweep, Ben raised a brow. “Really? After all this other stuff, you can’t tell me that it’s a secret.”

  “He’s a Grim Reaper,” Ruby said. “He collects the souls of the dead, but that’s only one responsibility he has related to the threshold between life and death.”

  “Yet that responsibility is the one that makes a Grim Reaper’s life a very isolated one,” Derek added.

  Ben took a second look at the male calmly indulging in baked goods. Definitely not what he’d expected the Grim Reaper to look like. “Though I can probably guess, why does that make his life isolated?”

  “When a Grim Reaper looks at you,” Derek said, “he knows the moment of your death, and how it’s going to happen.”

  Ramona was down there as well. She’d periodically appeared and disappeared among the various buildings, wandering with what Ben was sure was a misleading aimlessness. Each time she appeared, Silas’s attention immediately moved from contemplation of his surroundings to her.

  “So what is it about her that’s holding his attention?” Ben asked. His gut tightened the moment he spoke the question. Shit. He didn’t want to see the benevolent witch in harm’s way.

  “She is what Grim Reapers call a blind spot,” Mikhael said. “He doesn’t know her fate. Grim Reapers meet only one blind spot in their immortal lives. The person destined to be his soulmate, if she or he will have him.”

  “So if the individual in question doesn’t want to be with him, he’s lost his one and only shot at finding his better half.”

  “Yes. The irony, at least in this case, is that Grim Reapers are known to be incredibly organized,” Derek said. “They always have a plan.”

  “So Silas has fallen for a chaos witch, who may or may not want him.” Ben shook his head. “The universe has a messed-up sense of humor. Somebody should smack the crap out of it sometime.”

  “True, but a topic for another time,” Mikhael said. “Returning to the original question, I suspect he has two purposes for being here. One, to collect the souls we are about to kill.”

  Ramona had reappeared by a giant whale statue, on loan from another museum, some place out in California, if Ben remembered correctly. She appeared enchanted by it, putting both palms on the broad base and leaning in. Her mouth was moving as if talking to it.

  The chaos witch had decided on an entirely different look from the rest of the women. Ruby had worn another version of what Marcie had. Even Raina had paired her jeans with a short-sleeved black cotton shirt with a triquetra painted on the front in a slash of bold red color. Her long hair had been braided into a thick tail down her back. Marcie had told Ben why Raina didn’t wear shoes that often, but it had still been startling, to see the witch walk across the rough, uneven rooftop with no apparent discomfort, her toes pressing firmly into the surface.

  In contrast, Ramona looked as if she’d fit right into a misty-looking romantic medieval painting. Her glossy red hair was streaming back, loose. Her close-fitting, long-sleeved black dress, which seemed to have a lot of lacy bits on the hem line with sparkles that danced in the wind, emphasized the thinness of her torso. The woman needed a sandwich.

  She turned and looked at Silas with an indulgent smile, coming toward him to take his outstretched hand. He pulled her gently to him, offered a beignet. When she took it from his fingers, closing her own over his wrist, what was in his eyes became a lot less gentle. Ben knew that look pretty well.

  “Two,” Mikhael said. “To watch after her. I expect if anything tries to hurt her, he’ll be in the middle of it. No matter who he pisses off with it.”

  “Which would go a long way toward putting him on our approved suitor list for Ramona,” added Ruby.

  “Let’s make sure we don’t give him a third task.” Derek said. “To escort our souls off to the afterlife.”

  Suddenly, the dense feeling that Ruby had earlier described as the focus of childbirth became so thick, it felt as if Ben were in an illegal backroom poker game, closed up in a humid space with no windows and way too little air. His gaze snapped back up toward the heavens. That army of sinister psychotherapy inkblots was starting to churn like a whirlwind about to cut loose.

  “The birth has begun,” Ruby said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The river bucked, heaved. Ben had seen pictures of the Katrina storm surge, but he hadn’t been in its path. Now he saw the water starting to rise in a very non-river-like way, and recalled those pictures. As the clouds descended like an endless rolling surf, he wondered if the clouds and the water would slam together somewhere in the middle, forming a complete line of advancing elements to overtake New Orleans. He really wasn’t liking the look of those clouds, the way the winged shapes separated like bees in a hive, then came back together.

  “I’ll be with Ramona, wherever it’s best for us to be,” Ruby said to Derek. “We’ll be ready.”

  The Light Guardian bent and brushed his mouth over hers, touching her face. “I’ll be close.”

  “Close as here,” she said with a soft smile, placing his hand briefly on her heart before she gripped it, dipped her head to kiss his knuckles. Then she glanced toward Ben, and her voice took on a snap of urgency.

  “When things start breaking loose, make sure you’re over on that roof edge,” she said, nodding to it. “You need to be in the right place at the right moment.”

  Bossy woman. She reminded him of Marcie’s sister, Cass. A woman he was exceedingly fond of. “Got it, General.”

  Ruby grimaced at him and headed for the stairs at a trot, the alert set of her toned, athletic body looking ready for whatever was coming.

  Derek obviously had confidence in that, but Ben saw the same brief flash in his gaze that he harbored in his own heart whenever Marcie left his side. You couldn’t give into it, because you’d end up chaining your woman to a pole in your basement and becoming an episode of a crime show. It was tough as hell sometimes, letting them be as fucking amazing as they were.

  As she passed Mikhael, she touched his arm, said something to him. When she disappeared down the stairs, Derek tossed Mikhael an arch look. “She asked you to watch after me?”

  “Of course. Just as I assume Raina asked you.”

  Even as they spoke, the men were starting to fan out. Ben took comfort in the easy exchange, evidence that they’d faced stuff like this before. But then, men in combat bantered, too, and still got blown away seconds later.

  “Good fortune to you, Ben,” Derek told him. “We’ll keep this force occupied so you can get the job done.”

  “Just see that you do. Else the customer satisfaction rating I turn into Guardian headquarters will be zero stars.”

  Derek flashed him an unexpected grin. It made him look more like a guy in his forties, instead of a centuries-old wizard. That is, if Ben didn’t focus on his eerie-ass ancient eyes.

  He moved back to his corner. Since it was practically on the opposite end of the roof from them, he figured not only was it the best vantage point for the birth, it would keep him out of the line of the fire they’d purposefully be drawing toward them.

  Though he
knew Mikhael was correct, that he didn’t have the magic arsenal to face their kind of threat, Ben still wished he had a task as straightforward as theirs. A vs B, A’s purpose to kick B’s ass.

  He knew how to fight, lethally enough to have a better than average chance of walking away the winner, no matter the odds. He could walk through the darkest alleys of New Orleans, even in his most expensive suit and shoes, because the predators smart enough to meet his gaze would recognize he wasn’t a mark. He’d put a lot of polish on it and grown into more, and knew that. But there was a place inside of him that was still one of them, and he’d call it up when needed.

  He also knew how to combat an opponent in more civilized ways, with his sharp mind and even sharper tongue. He knew how to bring business rivals and allies alike to the decision Matt wanted from them.

  He wasn’t sure where on the spectrum of his dual arsenal this task would fall. They’d given him an important job, but they couldn’t tell him how to do it. Every bit of information they’d deduced could be somewhere between an educated hypothesis and a wild-ass guess.

  He just hoped it happened soon, because if the battle engaged the others first, it was going to be hard as hell to sit here and twiddle his thumbs, waiting to do his thing. He also didn’t see Marcie and Raina, or Elagra, which bugged the shit out of him. Had they disappeared into the warehouse area? Were they already engaged with her? It was too damn dark down there.

  Mikhael lifted both hands, speaking in a sonorous voice. Ben didn’t catch the words, but felt the shimmer of power. Whatever Mikhael did slowed the descending things, like they were plowing through snow or molasses. Derek was watching, but on alert, probably waiting to jump into the fray as soon as the first one broke through.

  Hell, Ben guessed he could always go sit with Silas and eat beignets until his number was called. A glance down below showed the guy had finished his snack, tidily handled the trash somehow. Ramona had disappeared, likely joining Ruby wherever they were setting up.

  He envied Silas his calm, but he wondered if it was a front. It was unsettling, how still the guy was sitting, his arm stretched out along the back of the bench, his ankle balanced on his knee. The rising wind that was whipping flags against flag poles with a rhythmic clang didn’t seem to be doing more than rippling his hair lightly across his forehead. Just a guy enjoying the waterfront in the deadass of night, as the denizens from hell came screaming from the sky.

  He didn’t want to play poker with this guy, ever.

  Ben thought of the more challenging projects Matt had thrown his way with little guidance. Yeah, it might seem stupid to compare what happened in the venues of courtroom or board room to this, but he expected some of the principles were the same. He could also go back even further, to situations on the street that would seem fucking unimaginable, to put it mildly. But he had figured it out. Mostly it had been base survival strategies, a lot of luck, and more than a little violence. Everything riding close to that edge.

  In his gut, he knew this was going to be way different. What the hell was he doing?

  He started. “Jesus.”

  Ramona was at his side, as if she’d materialized from thin air.

  “It would be easier to fight,” she said. “It’s always easier to fight. But this is a situation where you listen. Think of it like the way you are with her. How you use all your senses to detect the things she needs. There’s a place you go inside you, isn’t there? A state of being, where everything becomes that one focus?”

  Yeah, there was. Reluctantly, he stopped looking for Marcie and made himself listen to what she was saying to him.

  “And yet,” she continued, “You’re hyper-alert to all external stimuli as well, to everything that comes your way, to make the outcome what’s best for her. It’s very much the same in this situation, Ben.”

  He hadn’t thought of going there. Maybe because they kept referring to whatever was going to erupt out of the river as a baby, he hadn’t automatically gravitated toward a solution he usually associated with sex and his deepest cravings to dominate the woman he loved.

  “You are the oddest mix,” he commented.

  “I am chaos,” she said. “Chaos is never one thing. I am the mother, the maiden and the crone, and the spaces in between, the shadows.”

  “I bet you had it tough as a kid. Nothing predictable.”

  Her attention was back on the sky, the water, Silas. Never stopping, no pattern to it, and then it rolled back to him, her gaze stopping and holding. “As you well know, there is no better sculptor for a child than the sharp knife of their reality,” she said. “Instead of watching Derek, Mikhael or Marcie, and I know that last is the hardest, you need to watch the water. Close your eyes to watch it, listen to it, feel it. Feel the energies that are going to unfold there. Whether you believe it or not, you have a connection to what’s going to come out of there. You will feel it, but she will feel it, too, the female that will come forth. Birth is a terrifying and wondrous process.”

  She touched his arm. “I mean it. Close your eyes. That way you won’t be distracted by what the others are doing. Raina will protect Marcie. I swear it to you. Be open and still. The time is close.”

  Ben sighed. Maybe it was good he didn’t see Marcie or Elagra now, because no way he could close his eyes if they were about to engage.

  Double fuck. He was going to have to trust. Not the easiest thing for him, even under the best of circumstances.

  He closed his eyes.

  “Good.” Ramona’s voice seemed to come from inside his mind, a quiet sound. “What is coming forth, she is your child.”

  He automatically recoiled from the thought, dismissed it as persuasive psychobabble to get his head right, but then her tone became more pointed. “You need to say it to yourself, understand the full weight of what it means. You're her father, the closest thing she has to one. Before you dismiss that, the alternative is Elagra as her mother. It doesn't have to make sense. Nothing in the world that matters does. The most important thing in the world to any of us quite often doesn't make sense. Love. That's why it only makes sense in the way we feel it, not in the way we think about it.”

  Ramona’s voice had fallen to little more than a murmur, as natural as the wind, not even really all that human. The words surrounded him, holding him in a non-binding manner. More like a support, like when he leaned against a tree.

  “Think of those moments when you and your soulmate are perfectly in sync. No words are needed. It is all energy, and that energy is in the stillness. Reach for that stillness, Ben. Focus on nothing, know that it contains your objective.”

  Fuck, he actually understood that. What Ramona was talking about was being guided by your gut, and he had a pretty lucky gut.

  Unconsciously, because he’d done it so often he didn’t have to think about it, he let himself level out, his breathing, his center, his focus. Probably what Jon would consider the Zen state during his yoga. Ben had always found it when Mastering a sub, sometimes even when doing nothing more than planning out a session. As much as he ever planned it. He was just guided by what he knew he wanted, what she wanted…what the energy said was needed to make all of it work.

  Ramona had fallen silent, but the words lingered, drifting in the quiet, surrounding him. At first, there was nothing. Just sounds, scents, everything he expected. Then that icy wind came back, started to swirl. It also started to heat.

  With a start, he realized he wasn’t really standing on the roof of the Aquarium anymore. His body was, but his mind, his consciousness, wasn’t. It was on the move.

  Before that could startle him into a full-scale slam back into his physical body, an incorporeal hand tightened on his incorporeal shoulder. He told himself he had to be imagining that to give himself some context. Or Ramona was helping him make this first vital step, the push-off at the starting line.

  The rest disappeared. If the fight with the clouds had started, he didn’t know it. He dropped, descending, into the Mississippi Rive
r, drifting down, down, down. There was darkness, but that darkness felt full of life, so it wasn’t claustrophobic. He could move his arms and legs. What was above, below and to the sides was so vast, a deep well.

  Creation magic, they’d called it. Something about to be born, so it was all concentrated here, getting ready for it. Because suddenly…

  Christ on a biscuit. Holy fucking hell. He felt it.

  He felt her.

  He reached with an arm that wasn’t an arm, reached out toward the center, and felt the shape of it.

  It closed around him.

  He almost pulled back, because something he couldn’t see had latched onto him. But somehow he overrode the involuntary reaction and made himself wait, see what was happening.

  It was like…something had coiled around his mental idea of his arm, was checking him out. He put his other hand out to it. It twitched, not sure, but when he laid his hand there, it didn’t withdraw. There was darkness, water, energy, and now this. It felt like skin, warm skin. That first mutual contact told him he’d found what they were seeking. The tendrils wrapping around his virtual self, for lack of a better term, were living. As they coiled, he was given a far more intimate feel for that energy.

  Though it was holding him, when he put his palms in that current, he was reaching out, holding her.

  He’d freaking connected, just as they’d said he would. It was so unexpected and overwhelming, that for a blink he almost forgot the import of what he was there to do. He was like a fucking idiot, marveling at a field of flowers.

  He always gave Jon such a hard time about the crunchy granola shit because, as he’d told Raina, his exposure to magic had only been to the horrible side of it, easily attached to the evil of human nature, which was more real to him. He didn’t really believe in all that good energy stuff, but in this case, he couldn’t deny he actually felt the being.

  And yes, she was a child. A motherfucking Godzilla-times-ten sized tot, but a child all the same.