The Problem With Witches: An Arcane Shot Series Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  The first time he’d touched Angelica, Matt and Savannah’s daughter, she’d done the expected thing, latched onto one of his fingers with a tiny fist. Apparently, every baby had their version of that, because that was what the coil of energy felt like. A child wrapping around his offer of touch.

  She might be big and strong enough to destroy the entire city, but she was a baby, being born. Whatever cocoon Ruby and Raina could put her in to get her to a safer spot for all of them, that was good. A world with more room for her, they had said. Where she could spread her wings and fly…

  They had assured him that they would be doing that. Now Ben wanted to revisit that and be absolutely sure.

  She is my daughter.

  She is my daughter.

  Perhaps Raina and Ruby had known this moment would come. He remembered Ruby placing a hand on his on the table, meeting his gaze and saying, “Unless she leaves us no other choice, we will get her somewhere where she can live how she was intended to live, in an environment that is welcoming.”

  They hadn’t said she could fly. He had said that, thought that, just now. He knew she could fly. That was part of what she was.

  Marcie’s words came to him now, the ones that she hadn’t been sure made any sense. He smiled, because they couldn’t be more perfect for this moment. He couldn’t wait to tell her.

  “Hello, Bonnie,” he murmured. You could speak when you were a spirit, even if you were underwater, and not get your lungs full. Who knew? “Hello, baby girl.”

  You must come back to your body now. She will look for you when she emerges. I am bringing you back. Do not be alarmed. Much is going on right now. Hold fast.

  A sudden shudder went through those energy tendrils, and he was jolted back into his body on the roof. As his eyes opened, he realized why Ramona had shot him the warning.

  Holy fuck. A solid front line of winged creatures with empty eyes, rotting mouths and clawed hands were swooping toward the rooftop, less than a hundred feet away and closing. He was directly in their path.

  They looked like creatures put together in the wrong way, with the maximum capacity for violence. Huge talons, long teeth, broad, muscular arms and upper torsos. Gorillas crossed with werewolves crossed with every nightmare a kid could have.

  Hold fast.

  Ramona wasn’t standing by him anymore, and it wasn’t her voice in his head. It was Derek’s, the sharp tone of a battle commander.

  Only the fighting experience of a lifetime, which had taught Ben to keep a portion of his mind calm even in the most terrifying situations, kept him there. Though self-preservation had him bracing and wondering if he should have brought a weapon with him. Derek and Mikhael had advised against it and he’d listened. What an idiot he was.

  Derek brought up his staff at the same moment Mikhael lifted his right hand. The first line of flying death was a pebble’s toss from the roof. Ben was breathing fast, fists clenched. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He had those fists up and ready when the creatures slammed into an invisible wall only a few feet in front of him, just beyond the roof’s edge. The ones behind crashed into their brethren, unable to pull up in time. Derek spun that staff in a wide arc, and blue lightning illuminated the cluster of their attackers. As the electricity jolted through them, screams and burning flesh filled the air. Mikhael snared most of the rest in a rope of flame that expanded and engulfed them in the blink of an eye. The flame became ash, whipped away by the wind.

  Ben had to admit; it was freaking awesome. He looked for Marcie. And now at last, he found her.

  She and Raina had gotten past the mall and were headed purposefully down the docks. He thought of the two of them in the car, racing the wind. They’d established a rapport from the first moment, and he told himself that would help. They already had trust, the best advantage for anyone working with a partner in a tricky situation.

  They’d come to a halt when Mikhael and Derek started their light show. He suspected Raina’s heart had accelerated like a freight train, seeing all that coming at her mate. Marcie had probably been the same.

  Yet his brat, always on the same wavelength as him in moments like this, turned her face toward his. She’d seen what the Guardians had done, and he couldn’t help the grin her mouthed words gave him.

  Holy fuck.

  The two Guardians didn’t have the luxury of marveling at the results of their work. They were already engaging again, Derek with his staff and Mikhael with an honest-to-God sword charged with light. No longer in an expensive suit, he wore some kind of battle gear, a short half tunic, his bare chest crossed with a harness for daggers, his dark wings fully out. It was like seeing one of the computer games that Nate, Cass’s little brother, played, now come to life in full vivid color.

  But some things were horribly different.

  Ben started forward with a shout as a trio of those things broke through. They were on Mikhael in a heartbeat, taking him down to the rooftop so hard they practically bounced together, a tangle of arms, legs, wings. Then the whole slashing, snarling cluster of them were in the air. A second later, they came back down on the slanted glass roof. A trio of panels, built to withstand 130mph high winds and random projectiles that could be carried by them, shattered as the combatants crashed through.

  “Hell…”

  Derek was on it. He made a sharp movement with the white wood staff. A wall of shimmering silver energy hit the next line of attackers, held them. Once again, electricity crackled, making them scream and filling the air with a foul stench. His expression concentrated, grim, he extended his other hand toward the jagged hole where Mikhael had disappeared and made a fist. Derek shouted a harsh command, and the crackling blue-white energy that appeared in his grasp shot from it, gaining size and velocity as it headed toward its target. By the time it reached the opening of broken glass, it was the size of a Humvee.

  Which was the same moment that Mikhael came up out of that hole, propelling the creatures before him in a tangled mass of claws and teeth and rage. Mikhael thrust them into the ball of crackling light with a snarl. They shrieked and shuddered, and tumbled down along the slanted face of the cylinder, landing heavily on the flat part of the roof. One struggled away from the pack, the others inert. Mikhael landed on the moving one, slamming him back down, and thrust his sword through the shoulder blades, giving the pommel a decisive twist. Then he was back up again, but Ben noticed he had blood running down his neck and chest.

  Ben jumped as electricity zapped his flank. He spun toward the direction from which it had come, sure that one of those demon-minion things had circled behind him. Instead, over on the mall rooftop, Ruby gestured to the water with fierce purpose. The gun store witch had zapped him in the fucking ass. He scowled at her, but guessed it was better than Ramona slinging an arrow of chaotic magic at him that might have done far worse, like turning him into a rabbit. Or a stuffed rabbit.

  Ramona was waving her arms for extra emphasis. Focus there. Now.

  While he’d been distracted by the light show, he’d missed his cue. The heaving and bucking Mississippi erupted. In the time it took to draw a breath, a wave came up and over the dock. It slapped down onto the concrete, rapidly flowing over the area. Nearby day-cruise boats slammed against the bulkheads, pitching the craft against the pilings. The hull of the Algiers ferry had a sizeable dent in it, fiberglass falling away. One or two hits more, and it would be on the bottom.

  More waves were coming up behind the first one, getting bigger. Something was pushing the water up. He remembered what the witches had warned. If that ley line got disrupted too badly, New Orleans could literally crack down the middle, fall into the sea.

  He didn’t dare look for Marcie now, because if she was in trouble, he wouldn’t be able to focus. Everything depended on him doing this right. How had he, the least heroic member of this cast, gotten the hero’s gig? Christ.

  Taking a breath, he closed his eyes again, opened his mind. Shut everything out. The next ticking seconds were
the longest moments of his life, getting to that still place without Ramona’s help, but she’d been right. He knew how to do it. When he locked into it, there was that thread of energy, just waiting for him once more.

  He grasped it, hauled himself to it, and it to him, hand over fist, mentally, bringing it up taut, but not too taut. Like fishing. Easy. Easy. It’s all right.

  Make it a calm birth. That’s what they said they needed. But even calm, what was about to rise out of the Mississippi was going to cause a hell of a storm surge. He’d been right to tell Matt to get everyone ready and out of harm’s way.

  He let her feel him, feel his presence the way he’d felt hers, below water. There you are. Come on, baby.

  Water was dripping off his brow. It brought back to him the drip, drip, drip of Elagra’s lair, how nothing good ever came out of that place. The color of blood in the pipes. The rotting smell of it all.

  He shut that out, cursing as the pressure on the energy line increased and he had to let it out some, start over from a lower point.

  It’s okay. It’s okay, little one. Calm.

  On Disney flicks, they waved their wand and the pumpkin turned into a coach, the fairy godmother not even breaking a sweat. Mikhael was bleeding, and at last glimpse Derek had the look on his face of a guy being pushed hard, carrying a lot of weight. Now Ben knew why they ate thousands of calories at one sitting.

  He got it. He’d done two-hundred-pound presses with Peter in the gym that were featherlike in comparison to the mental and physical energy this was taking.

  There, she’d eased off, was coming back to him again. He reeled in the slack, putting everything reassuring in that contact he could.

  Complete focus. Nothing but her, but keeping her safe, watching and feeling her every reaction. Just like Marcie, under his control.

  You’re good. Come on. You can do this. Up. Slow and easy.

  The building shuddered. Waves smacked against the side of it like a gunshot, the spray hitting him in the face. He thought of all the sea creatures inside the Aquarium, imagined a shark or manatee, a giant loggerhead, swimming in a baffled sort of way down Canal Street. Not happening. Not going to happen.

  A long, low wail vibrated through the soles of his feet and up through every nerve ending of his body. Like a whale call. No, more like a freighter foghorn, with a much wider vocal range. More water showered down on him, and the significance of that hit him. He was on top of the Aquarium. Something was dropping water down upon him.

  Opening his eyes, he lifted his face to what loomed over him.

  He’d gone over all sorts of visual scenarios for this, and had come up with an amalgamation of all the monster movies he’d ever seen. He’d thought maybe she’d be like a mythical beast of old. A dragon would be pretty damn cool.

  It was all of that and none of it. What it was left him astounded, unnerved. And catapulted into the past.

  He sat on Elagra’s floor, in her main underground chamber. She didn’t need anything from him right now, but she’d said he could stay while she worked with her potion stuff. It was quiet down here, safe for the moment. Without much to do, Ben had found himself a section of the tunnels where the floor had broken and left dirt. A trickling line of water coming from somewhere above was mixed with the clay. He used it, sticks, random rocks, and some approved leavings from Elagra’s stores, to create a mud monster.

  After a time, Elagra came to see what he was doing. As she squatted by him, she ran her fingers over it. The mud dried, hardened beneath her touch. When she lifted it by the midsection, it had become a finished figurine instead a blob of sand and clay. He liked it. Elagra smiled at him. But the way she studied it, so hard, was as if it was giving her an idea. An idea he wasn’t sure he liked. He wondered if the discarded leavings she’d given him permission to use had really been discards at all.

  “Can I keep this?” she asked him, in that warm honeyed voice she used to make a kid think she cared. That if he’d do enough for her, she’d love him. So he said yes, just like any of them would.

  Until they knew better. But by then, it was usually too late.

  Elagra had put it on one of her shelves. For a really brief time Ben had liked that, thinking it was like a mom putting up her kid’s picture on her fridge.

  This being, the one before him now, had drawn on the riverbed, all the debris beneath that, and turned into the creature he’d made all that time ago. Long before the terrible night with Amy.

  Ben lifted his gaze, slowly. And kept lifting it as what his seed and Elagra’s twisted magic had created tilted its head, a new shower of river water sluicing off its appendages.

  He’d seen pictures of magical creatures. He’d watched a few sci-fi/fantasy movies when he was younger. He actually kind of liked that Harry Potter offshoot movie, the one featuring the guy with all the creatures. What he was looking at reminded him of the teapot thing that got way big in a bigger space. Only it was mixed up with a dragon, because it had wings that he suspected would almost span the river if stretched out.

  The teeth were about fifteen feet long. There was a smattering of bat in there. As well as cat, snake, and medieval church gargoyle. The creature looked as big as several city blocks, so in comparison, he was…an ant. There was no way an ant could catch a human’s attention. But an ant wasn’t carrying what he was. A freaking magic-charged storybook with bunnies on the front.

  “So…not so little, you.”

  The curved skull was crowned with more horns than he could count, and they were squiggly, like a bovine who’d butted heads with Medusa and gotten the snakes stuck and petrified on its skull. The head was also as wide as a trolley car squared. The neck wasn’t excessively long, but it set upon wide, powerful shoulders. The clawed hands could rip open the front of the Aquarium like a Tupperware lid. If he could see the creature all the way out of the water, he knew it would look a lot like a T-Rex who could sit back on its haunches, because like all kids he’d liked dinosaurs.

  There were fifteen eyes. The fifteen he’d put on the mud-and-stick creature had come from the rhinestones of a beaded purse he’d snatched. Which meant the beast that had risen out of the river before him, whose body had a mix of slick brown and dark black coloring, also had eyes in various sparkling shades of royal purple, emerald green and sapphire blue.

  He was supposed to be doing something. Maybe he’d forgotten because, in the face of something this size, the idea seemed even more outlandish than it had when it was first proposed in the hotel room. But since he didn’t have anything better in mind, he yanked the book out of the back waistband of his jeans, where it had been resting in the small of his back.

  “Hold out both of your hands,” Ramona had said. “Palms up.” When she’d laid the small book in them, she’d placed hers over it, on the edges, so her fingers overlapped his and tightened. She’d lifted her head, and her lavender-grey eyes had fastened upon his. As if she’d found something in his gaze she’d hoped to find, a light smile had crossed her face. “When the time comes, you will hold it up above you, in both hands like this. Like a knight holding up a sword to swear an oath to the heavens.”

  Now that that moment had come, he felt foolish, a fly trying to catch the attention of a 747. But he did it. Lifting the book in both hands, the cover facing toward the creature, he raised it to the full reach of his arms. He tilted his head back to ensure that he had it angled in the right direction for the creature to see it, if it deigned to notice him.

  He understood in a blink why Ramona had wanted him in that pose. His body was an arrow, stretched upward, a straight conduit for the rush of energy that came through him and made the book feel as if it had become a living thing in his hands. In the next blink, energy hit it from a different direction, illuminating it in fire in his hands, a fire that didn’t burn but flashed like a lighthouse beacon.

  A quick glance to the nearby roof showed Ruby and Ramona had been ready, sending that ray of attention-getting magic to the icon, as Ramona had ca
lled it. They were an unlikely pair, the tough-looking, gun store owning witch shoulder-to-shoulder with the ethereal, flowing dress, long hair streaming Ramona. But the integrated power of what they were channeling toward him told him why they treated one another like sisters, even without the tie of familial blood.

  He brought his attention back to the creature. And in that moment, it turned its focus to him.

  “A key moment,” Ramona had said. “Start calling out what we’ve talked about in that second, because it will take no longer than that to lose the baby’s attention.”

  She’d told him what the book was about, two rabbits, presumably parent and child, coming up with whimsical measurements of their love for one another. She’d let him read it, but emphasized the words had to come from him.

  The structure of it is important, both for the rhythm of it and the underlying power of parental love that drives the story. But because you are the one executing it, the words must be yours.

  “How much can I love you?” he shouted. He stumbled over the words, not entirely sure of himself, but as soon as they left his lips, he knew that was what he’d intended to say. They didn’t know one another. So the world of possibilities was open to them.

  The beast’s head drew back, like a snake thinking about striking, going higher, up and up and up. He probably looked like a morsel of food.

  He knew he was forgetting something important. Something he’d known a few moments ago, before it had emerged from the water and that memory with Elagra had disrupted things. But he kept going, because the only way through this was forward.

  That massive skull reversed direction, drew closer, the big shoulders bunching as it crouched to come down closer to him. As he shouted out more words, “As wide as my arms can reach, as tall as ten Mt. Everests stacked on top of one another,” he got the distinct impression it was less than impressed. Maybe they should have used the actual words, which were far more poetic.