Juniper

by Eva Delaney

  “It was eons ago,” Shakespeare said.

  “But it wasn’t for them! You’re not supposed to be a criminal!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s not what we learned about you.”

  “You learned about my plays, and that’s all you need to know, capiche?”

  “No one in this car is who they’re supposed to be,” I said. ”You’re not supposed to be dead. He’s not supposed to be a crook. No one is supposed to be a pirate or thief. No one is supposed to be a dark witch. And dildo shifters are not supposed to exist. We’re all wrong, and that’s all right.”

  They fell silent. I glared at the road.

  “That doesn’t make it any easier,” Oscar whispered.

  “Accept what you can’t change, do what good you can.”

  “Well said,” Shakespeare said.

  “Pfft, I be exactly the proper man I should be,” Samuel said. “Ain’t no shame in going on the account.”

  “Going on the what?” I asked.

  “It means piracy. Ain’t no shame in it.”

  A tremor went through me. He was the first person I had met since Ram and Alyssa who thought there was no stigma in stealing.

  “Can you take me home?” Oscar whispered. “I’m just tired of…everything.”

  I pressed my lips together.

  “Please.”

  I had promised to give him what he wanted while I could. I knew a little invisibility magic, so I might be able to go unseen to get him to his old house.

  “Sure,” I said and hated the sound of defeat in my voice.

  I slowed to make a U-turn. As the car swung around, a flash of purple light filled the air like a fireball rushing toward us.

  Chapter 18

  “Get down!” I shouted and threw myself sideways, my head landing in Sammy’s lap.

  He folded over me. His arms wrapped around my head and shoulders to protect me.

  With a sound like bone grinding against bone before cracking, the curse tore through the top of the car. The roof ripped off and flew somewhere behind us. The wind whipped around the car.

  I hope Sapphire wanted a convertible.

  My blood hummed with power. My skin felt tight, but it lacked the shiver that warned of oncoming attacks. I pushed Sammy off me and stood on the driver’s seat.

  The car rolled along, though slower because my foot was off the gas. The wind dashed my hair around my face. I shook it away and faced the four witches standing in the middle of the road.

  Sandra, Brownshill, Ver, and Azea from my old days as a thief. They were part of my old gang. Old friends. Alyssa wasn’t with them, but she was certainly nearby, waiting to strike unseen.

  “Taiat rupe mor,” I shouted and raised a hand over my head. My fingertips burned with the curse as though I had touched a stove. I jerked my arm in a cutting motion, and a scythe of purple energy slashed through the air at the three witches.

  A pang of guilt tit-punched me because I might kill my old friends. And that doomed the men and me.

  Any uncertainty, any hesitation or moment of guilt, weakened a curse. Dark magic required rage and a joy in destruction. It needed me to laugh as I rained razor-sharp spears of light on someone.

  Guilt was the worst damn thing right now.

  My curse petered out even before it reached the witches. It hit with a slap rather than the scythe it had been a moment before. They batted it away like a kid at tee-ball.

  “Out of the car,” I ordered. I dropped to my seat, reaching behind to grab my backpack and check on Oscar and Shakes. They were ducked down against the seats. Oscar stared up at me with wide, frightened eyes.

  “Out, now.”

  I hit the brakes, jerking the car to a stop, and leaped out with my backpack in one hand. Sammy was already standing on the road, glaring knives at the witches.

  “Give Azea back her magic,” Sandra roared, her voice cracking with rage and fear. That made for good curses. The kind I apparently couldn’t cast anymore, though I had once been the most skilled witch in our group.

  “Into the forest, now.” I shoved Oscar ahead of me toward the cover of the trees.

  He crashed through the underbrush. I whirled, shouting words in Babylonian and twisting my fingers to throw a shield between the witches and Sammy and Shakes as they raced for the forest. Sammy carried the bag from Yes Now Bob.

  I felt like the witches were kicking me in the gut as curses slammed into my shield. They skittered along it, prying claws into it, looking to break it like those robots from The Matrix.

  I knew I couldn’t defeat Ram and his whole army, but fuck, these assholes should be easy. It should have been suicide to send them after me. Yet, I was struggling.

  I spent four years avoiding dark magic, caging the power in my veins, and creating pleasure rather than cultivating rage. Now, I couldn’t fight with the same strength as I used to.

  It was what I wanted, I suppose, when I chose this life. But now I was fucked.

  I leaped into the forest after the men, dropping the shield behind me. Black-purple fire flashed across the road as their curses whipped by.

  I dropped to a crouch with my men among a thicket of bushes and flowers. “Shift, now.”

  “We’re not leaving you to fight these monsters alone,” Shakes said.

  “I…I can bite them,” Oscar stammered. “If I…I…can get close.”

  “Shut up and listen,” I said. “They might not know that you’re dildo shifters. If you shift, you can easily hide under a bush—hehehe—and they’ll think you ran away. At least one of them will go after you, and I’ll have fewer of them to fight.” Plus, the men would be safe, assuming they were smart enough to remain hidden. Which they probably weren’t.

  “I have experience—”

  I cut Shakespeare off. “You have experience with threatening humans who didn’t pay your boss or whatever. You can’t fight witches, but you can trick one or two into leaving so I have fewer to face.”

  He frowned in his handsome bearded face but nodded. I glared at Oscar, and he nodded too. In a blink, they were both dildos sitting in a bush—a leafy one, not a hairy one.

  I grabbed Shakes and threw him as hard as I could in one direction, then grabbed Oscar and tossed him the other way. At least one should go unnoticed.

  “Aaahhhhh,” Oscar screamed as he flew through the air.

  Shit.

  A black-purple curse cut through the forest where I had thrown Oscar. It smashed through a tree at chest height, sending splinters flying. I sighed. Oscar would be somewhere on the ground, safely below that curse.

  “Fucking sidekicks,” Ver, a middle-aged witch with graying hair, said. He must be searching for Oscar. Though I couldn’t see him, the underbrush cracked and snapped in the direction I had thrown my vamp dildo.

  Please don’t find him, please don’t, I thought.

  “Juniper, I thought you were some kind of bad-ass,” Sandra called. “Not a coward who hides.”

  Pfft, like their insults mattered.

  I turned to Sammy. “Shift—”

  “I’m going out there with ye, and ye can’t stop me.”

  “Fuck.” I opened my backpack and dug around inside it. I needed all the help I could get right now, especially if I had to protect a pirate with more swashbuckle than sense.

  My fingers closed around cool metal, and I pulled the Scourge Stone butt plug from the pack. It was already clean—my special self-sterilizing plugs were bestsellers for a reason.

  A flash of purple caught the corner of my eye. I whirled, muttering ancient words automatically and throwing my arm up in front of me.

  The curse shattered my shield. The force of my spell breaking threw me and Sammy backward. My back popped as I hit the ground. Fuck, I was getting old.

  A voice boomed out like thunder…or someone shouting in a crowded, noisy theater. “Be gone, thee malodorousness fools! Away, you starveling. You elf-skin. You dried neat’s-tongue, bull’s-pizzle. You stock-fi
sh!”

  By Odin’s braided pubes, that was Shakespeare? He had been soft spoken and kind so far, but now, he roared like rage itself given a voice.

  “Who the fuck is that?” Brownshill cursed from the road. A flash of purple burnt the air in the direction of Shakes’ voice.

  I bolted upright with a butt plug in my fist, and my heart clogged my throat. Please, please miss.

  “I’d wreck your asses, but I would infect my hands with your fuckdummery.”

  I sighed in relief.

  As Shakes shouted and Brownshill stomped along the road, yelling curses, I gripped the plug. With my free hand, I half pulled down my leggings.

  Sammy’s fist clenched around my wrist. “Is that the stone they be hunting?”

  “You’re smarter than you look or sound.”

  “Give it to me. They expect ye to have it. They ain’t expecting a non-magic human.”

  He was right. “Do…you know what this is?”

  He pried it from my fingers. “Aye, it be for opening your arse before a pounding.” He spat on it and reached his arm under his jacket and behind him.

  “Huh. They had butt plugs in the eighteenth century? I need to learn more about the history of these things…maybe start a museum…” This wasn’t the time.

  Sammy grunted, adjusted his pants, and stood. I leaped up, yanking up my leggings. Maybe we could still outrun the witches. Smash Brownshill who was after Shakes, then grab Shakes and Oscar and make a break for it.

  “Juniper, Juniper, come out to play,” a voice called. A voice that sent a cold shiver through me, like icy water dripping down my spine. A voice that froze hope out of my chest and blood.

  Sammy must have noticed something change on my face. “Who is that fart knuckle?”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Sammy, find Oz and Shakes and run while I create a diversion. If you see a blonde woman, stay away from her.” I stepped toward the road.

  “Ye jealous?” Sammy said. “Pfft, June, ye know I’ve waited to smack that ass since I first laid eyes on ye.”

  “Fucking shut it, Sam,” I muttered.

  The bushes crunched under my sneakers as I went to face death from the only person to ever defeat me in battle. The man I used to work for before betraying him. The man who controlled most of the world’s magical amulets and needed the one currently in Sammy’s ass.

  But I wouldn’t go down easily.

  Chapter 19

  I stepped back onto the road. Brownshill’s back was to me as he shot curses into the forest toward Shakes’ yelling. I muttered a spell and clenched my fist.

  “Brownshill!” Azea screamed in warning.

  It was too late. My curse hit Brownshill, and he crumbled into a giant pustule sitting on the road in a pile of his own mucus.

  I turned my back to him and faced the other witches. Sammy swaggered—even more than usual now that a plug was in his ass—from the forest to stand next to me.

  He shouldn’t be here, but I would have to protect him and the others anyway. That he was willing to stand and face these witches with me made my heart feel cuddly, like a kitten in a blanket. Damn it, I was soft. No wonder my curse had failed.

  “Juniper, how good to see you,” Ramrod Johnson smiled, his eye crinkling from the screen of a tablet.

  Sandra held it before her. On its screen, Ram leaned on a desk with a wall of colorful homemade clay bowls behind him. His short dark hair was perfectly styled. He flashed a warm smile with teeth so white they nearly glowed.

  I sighed in relief. He wasn’t really here. Curses couldn’t be cast through the internet. We might survive this after all.

  “My favorite little monkey is back,” he said.

  His insults didn’t matter, so I said nothing.

  Sammy scoffed. “Monkey? Have you met her?”

  I snorted.

  “Do you have my items?” Ram said.

  “I had the strength, skill, and foresight to steal them. They’re mine.” It was what Ram had always said about the relics we stole for him.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk, monkey. Nothing belongs to you unless I grant it, including those items, your magic, and your life.”

  “You’re lucky you’re not really here, or I’d turn Sandra into an eel and send her up your ass to eat your intestines.”

  “Yes, you always were a monster,” Azea snapped.

  I rolled my eyes at her.

  “Perhaps I am lucky not to be there in person.” Ram grinned, and it sent off my every alarm bell.

  It was the same grin he used before killing someone. The grin he flashed before he nearly killed me the first time.

  “But you’re unlucky that I’m so far away,” Ram said. His lips moved—his voice dropped too low for me to hear—and his hands moved in an intricate pattern.

  “Shit.”

  The curse burst from the tablet and flew at my head like a bukkake at a gang bang.

  I opened the dam inside me that held back the full force of my power. It flooded me, pouring through my veins until there was no room left in my body for all the magic. It flowed into the world around me. With it came a laughing, mad joy. The joy of destruction, of burning something because you could. The air around me throbbed with my power. Alyssa had told me that when I unleashed my magic, my eyes glowed like purple-blue gems lit with fire.

  I raised my hands and the road came with them, breaking and lifting into a wall.

  Ram’s curse shattered my protective wall to dust. And something inside me broke with it, twisting like a muscle and snapping like a tendon. I fell to one knee, my breath loud in my ears. The joy of power turned to ash in my throat. The magic was cold and brewing with a hint of anger.

  I glanced up at Sammy. He was unharmed, at least. He dropped to a crouch next to me, one hand on my shoulder.

  I fixed a glower on Ram’s laughing eyes as I stood on shaky legs. How? How had he done this? Magic couldn’t travel over the internet like that.

  “Ancient peoples aren’t the only ones who created amulets of surpassing power,” Ram said. “Modern ones do too, such as this.” He held up his hand and pointed to a ring that pulsed silver and black. “Alyssa discovered this a few years ago. I see you lack one despite being so clever. So, you can’t attack me through this device, but I can attack you.”

  “Fuck.”

  Sammy pulled a pair of long kitchen knives from inside his coat. He crouched into a fighting stance. “Let’s do this, ye scurvy barnacles.”

  “Where did you get those knives?” I said.

  “Swiped them when I passed through the pub kitchen.”

  “You stole from Bob? How could you?”

  “Easily.”

  I snorted. He did look damn good in a fighting stance with twin knives in his hands. He was going to be killed, but his lack of fear made me want to blow him before they blasted him to shit.

  Ram sighed loudly. When we didn’t react, he did it again as though he thought we should be offended or scared by his sighing.

  “Azea, shoot him.”

  Azea reached behind her waist and drew a handgun. I started a spell to stop her, but my skin crawled as though ants crawled on me. Ram’s mouth and fingers moved on the video call as he built another curse.

  I couldn’t stop both him and Azea. It was a different type of spell to stop bullets than curses, and I couldn’t cast both in time.

  I couldn’t save us.

  “Sammy, run!”

  He didn’t. He pulled back his arm and threw a knife. It whirled through the air, end over end… I held my breath. Whether he succeeded or failed, I was about to watch someone I knew die.

  The knife handle smacked into Azea’s head right between her eyes. She collapsed to the ground, dropping the gun.

  “Good shot,” I said.

  “Not really. I aimed for the pistol’s bullet hole.”

  “You are so hot right now,” I said. Sammy grinned, his face bathed in purple-black curse light.

  Protect, I said in ancient Babylo
nian and raised my hands.

  The curse shattered, and so did my defense. I stumbled backward and my hands fell limp to my sides as though I had pulled the muscles.

  Ram laughed, the joy of destruction that I couldn’t seem to find. “You can always give me the stones, Juniper. Give up.”

  “Fuck you, shitnuts.”

  “Thou art a boil, a plague sore,” Shakes boomed out from somewhere behind me. “Stand down or be cursed with a pox!”

  Ram shook his head as though he were disappointed. With a word and a wave, a knife of pure rage shot toward me. Behind it, I caught Sandra’s lips moving, preparing to cast a follow-up curse once Ram broke my defenses again.

  Desperate, I reached for every ounce of my magic I could grab—and without the rage and joy of killing, there was less of it than usual. I stretched my awareness toward Sammy’s ass to the Scourge Stone.

  It pulsed with its familiar call like a vibrator against the back of my neck. Sammy shifted in his crouch, clearly feeling it move.

  I grasped its energy, letting it run through me like a drug in my veins. This time, it was easier and faster, as though the Stone remembered the path through my body.

  I screamed the words for a defense spell against Ram. I could barely lift my arm to raise the shield, so Sammy grabbed my wrist and held my hand up.

  I pressed my other hand to the broken ground and spoke a single strange word. It wasn’t the full spell, like when I had stolen Azea’s magic. The rest of the words vibrated inside me as though they were carved inside my skin. I only needed a single whispered cue to activate it.

  The Scourge Stone’s power raced along the ground and slid under Ram’s curse like a lubed hand on a glass dildo, unable to gain traction. The Stone’s magic didn’t work over the internet, then. I couldn’t stop Ram with it.

  Its power landed on Sandra’s feet. With a yank, I felt all the power in her unravel like dandelion fluff in a breeze. A breeze that blew it all back toward me, through me, and into the Stone in Sammy’s ass.

  Ram’s curse hit my shield. The defense broke as easily as a heart, and I watched the rest of his razor-sharp energy slash through the air at me.