by Jamie Hawke
BAM! The car jolted as something slammed into us. Then came the screeching noise of car-on-car as she swerved away. We turned to see a car, dented, about to slam into us again. The crazy-looking overweight man behind the wheel had a shaved head and tattoos up his neck, but what really caught my attention in the brief moment I was able to see him was his glowing, red eyes.
That wasn’t normal.
“Shit!” Leena shouted and swerved to avoid him, pulling into the lane that went against traffic, and then turning again as he pursued. Again he slammed into us, this time from the rear. Our car lost control, going over the side of a small hill and side-slamming into an old rundown parking garage.
She tried driving off but the car wasn’t moving, the hover stuttering and then fading so that we fell to the ground. The shock of impact jolted us, leaving us groaning as we unbuckled and made our way out of the car.
“Quick, in here,” I shouted, and we ran down into the parking garage.
We made our way in through the staircase, darting along old, rusted cars—the kinds with wheels. This place was clearly abandoned long ago. A crash sounded, confirming that the man was not giving up. He was relentlessly continuing his pursuit.
I had nothing. A fucking demon-possessed man was after us and I didn’t even have a damn knife. Leena was searching herself for a weapon, cursing, until her hand went into her coat pocket and she pulled it back as if burned. Actually, there was what looked like green smoke rising from her finger.
Frowning, she grabbed the crystal around her neck with one hand, reached into her jacket pocket with her other, and pulled out a card.
“The tarot cards,” she said, voice full of confusion and awe.
I could see why—it wasn’t just one of her cards. It was one of her cards but with a green flame running along the top. It was the card with a tower on it, cracked with lightning and flame images.
“Is that… normal?” I asked.
“Never happened before,” she replied.
The possessed man came scurrying around the corner, eyes flaring, actual flames licking out of them, and his hands looked like they had long claws, although it could’ve been a trick of the shadows.
He charged at us and I stepped forward to meet him. Only, from my side Leena held out the card, and I turned to see she was still holding onto her crystal with the other hand, mouthing something as she did so. Her eyes took on a bright, green glow, and a blue light formed around the card. Then with a flash, a bolt of lightning shot out from the card as it vanished, the lightning slamming into the man and sending him flying back. He hit the far wall and collapsed, a smoking pile of corpse.
“By the goddess,” she said, her now-empty hand going to her mouth. She looked like she was about to scream, but instead, fell to her knees. The green slowly faded from her eyes, leaving them their normal brown.
I was in such a state of disbelief, I walked over to the corpse, rolled him over with my foot, and stared. He was dead. No doubt about it.
“What now?” I asked, staring as the glow faded from the man’s eyes, his body shriveling unnaturally.
“I don’t know. Oh fuck, oh fuck.”
I nodded. Oh fuck, was right. “We gotta go. We need to… I don’t know. Shit! We just killed a man!”
“Not a man, exactly,” she said, breathing deep and pushing herself to her feet. “But yes, the cops won’t see it my way.” She bit her lip, took my hand, and said, “Come on.”
“You have something in mind?”
A nod. “We need to find my aunt, the coven. That girl you saw at my aunt’s place, she’s… the best, or so I hear. We’ll find a supernatural solution to this.”
Based on what I’d just seen, that seemed to be the best possible plan. Together, we ran off. If we were lucky, we’d find a way to fight this insanity. For now, I just hoped we survived long enough to find her aunt. After that, who knew what was possible.
The car was toast, but to our relief, the demon’s wasn’t. Its side was bashed in and took some back and forth to get it unhinged from the building, but soon we were on our way, cruising down the streets in a very smashed-up Audi.
For a few minutes I simply drove, the two of us in silence. When you go through something like that, your mind takes some time to get back to its normal operating speed. The world stopped spinning, the dryness in my mouth slowly dissipated, and I found questions bubbling up.
“Did you know this kind of thing was out there?” I asked. “I mean, have you been fighting evil forces at night or something, like a Harry Potter version of Batman, and not told me about it?”
“No!” she protested. “Goddess, no. Magic, or at least, magic as I knew it to exist, was never so different from, like, Christianity. Meaning, we have our spell circles and all that, and believe in it, but nobody casting fireballs from their tits or anything like that.”
“Nice imagery there.”
“You get what I’m saying.” She leaned back, groaning. “This is so fucked up!”
“You had to have known this was coming, right? I mean, it’s your fault.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your fault. Isn’t it? Isn’t this all connected to that weird LivreCorp project you were working on?”
She sniffled, ran a hand through her hair, and then sighed. “In a sense, yes. Or maybe completely, yeah. Me and the others. There was even a coven of witches who were trying to stop us. Sending threats and whatnot.”
“Oh.” I let that process, then had a thought. “Is it possible they, I don’t know how it works, hexed you or something? Like maybe they did something that made the work you were doing get corrupted, so… it’s their fault this happened?”
“Like they thought we were playing with fire, so lit a match to show us,” she looked physically pained at the thought, “and accidentally created an explosion?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Damn, I mean… does it matter?” Her voice went low, trembling. “Regardless, we’re in the shit now. I hope my aunt and the others have something for us.”
“Speaking of…” I glanced over, noticing the tired look in her eyes. “Damn, are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I think whatever happened back there, with the card… I think it really took it out of me.”
“Get some sleep. But first, mind telling me where we’re going?”
“Ah, yeah.” She took my phone, told it where to go based on some information on hers, and then swiped up so the screen with the map projected above the dash.
A few heartbeats later she was asleep, her heavy breathing adding a calming effect to the gentle purr of the engine. Our route, which was taking us past tall buildings and fluorescent lights, people going about their daily lives without a clue as to what was happening, gave me the opportunity to collect myself.
Was this really so bad? I mean, at least she wasn’t cheating on me. I chuckled at that thought, and at the realization that I’d rather be going up against a demon army and play with magic than have her messing around. That had to say something about my feelings for her.
And she had agreed to move in with me, so even if she wasn’t into labels, that meant something, too. Now we were in this crazy situation together, and I wasn’t sure what could bring two people closer together than fighting a demon. Putting a hand on hers as she slept, my other on the wheel, I had the calm feeling that everything was just as it should be.
My mind even wandered off to thoughts of work and what it would be like going back into the restaurant I managed, or if I’d have to. In a way, I was used to dealing with demons. Shit, customers, crazy cooks, the occasional illegal washing of dishes? It was the best training for a situation like this that I could think of.
“You have arrived,” the GPS told us, and I pulled up to an old building that sat alone with a grass field on one side, a half-torn down residence on the other.
“Arrived… where?”
Leena awoke with a long, stretching yawn, causing something to stir in me that I’d a
lmost forgotten about, my mind racing back to the two of us in the shower. Sometimes people get complacent in relationships, forget how hot their partners are. With her, I couldn’t ever imagine that being the case.
“This is it,” she said. “I’ve only ever been here once before, but it’s a hard place not to recognize.” She sat up and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for driving.”
I smiled, shrugged, and said, “Thanks for killing the demon thing.”
She laughed, and we headed in. Before we could knock or try the handle, the door opened to reveal Cindy, eyes wild.
“Everything’s changed,” Cindy said, almost hesitant to let us in. She gave me a look like I didn’t belong, a look I thought we’d moved past.
“We know,” Leena replied.
A look came over Cindy’s eyes as she ran her hand over her niece, and then that hand went to her mouth as her eyes went wide. “A demon?”
“As best we can figure it, yeah.”
“Eyes glowing and all,” I added, not sure how she knew, but rolling with it. “And then Leena—”
Cindy grabbed my arm, shook her head, and then pulled me in. “Not out here.”
She led us into the house, past a room where a man looked out to see what was up. Candles burned, a woman standing in the middle of a circle. So there were male witches, too. I guess that made sense. He nodded curtly, looking at me as if I’d been expected, and then ducked back in.
“When you said ‘everything’s changed,’ I’m guessing you meant something on the level we dealt with?” Leena asked.
Cindy nodded, opening the right side of a set of double doors, leading us into a larger room with folded tables and chairs pushed off to the back of the room. A stage with a piano was beyond that, and I had to figure this was some sort of community center or something.
“I’m going to show you,” Cindy said. “Whether we should be showing him or not, I can’t decide, but it seems he’s already in deep, regardless.”
“It would seem,” I said with a scoff, earning a glare from both of them.
Cindy paused, then indicated another door on the far side of the room. “It’s… through there.”
The door had a small window in it, covered with a cloth. Light showed through, purple, changing to blue. Then green.
“What’s through there?” I asked, still shaken from everything we’d seen that day and not sure I was ready for more. Judging by the look in her eyes as she merely pointed, not answering, I was out of luck.
Cindy nodded, indicating for us to go.
I took Leena’s hand in mine as the two of us trudged over, her hesitancy giving me the sense that this wasn’t normal for her, either. She paused at the door, then pushed. Inside, a dark shape was hovering above the floor over a triangle of light, candles around it with the girl from earlier in a circle that had been drawn on the floor, or carved maybe, that connected to the triangle.
We stepped into the room, the door closing behind us, and the dark shape turned to face us. It was small, almost round, but had thick arms and a strange head that seemed to lack eyes. Whatever this was, it clearly didn’t belong on Earth. In a flash it lunged, arms swinging wildly at the magical barrier that held it, and then it was gone.
What remained was a shimmer in the air, a ripple around it as if we were staring at a vertical pond and someone had just tossed in a pebble. The girl wobbled, and I darted forward to catch her as she fell out of the circle.
“Set her over here,” Leena said, helping me pull her towards some cushions against the wall. They were like thick blankets with what looked like Central Asian patterns of blue and yellow weaving on them. “Tam, Tam, are you with us?”
The girl, Tam, groaned and her eyes opened to see me cradling her like that. She smiled at Leena. “We’re getting this started already?”
I frowned in confusion with a look at Leena, but she just shook her head.
“Wh—what was that?” Leena asked, making me glad I wasn’t the only one lost there.
“A rift… has been opened,” Tam said, looking almost let down when I moved back. She pushed herself up to a seated position, legs folded under her and off to the side. “We weren’t sure, but we started testing, checking for interference from the spiritual realms, the afterlife… it’s all unwinding. It’s… I don’t know, crossing over?”
“So that thing…?” I asked, not sure how to refer to it.
“I wish I knew.”
She massaged her temples for a moment, then looked at Leena. “Whatever’s happened, it’s going to be so much bigger than we can even imagine right now. And us, I think we’re going to be at the front lines of it.”
“This isn’t our fight,” Leena countered.
“If it’s our fault, it’s our fight.”
Leena furrowed her brow, but clearly didn’t have a counter to that.
Turning to me, Tam’s eyes took on that same look Cindy had when assessing my aura. When Leena finally cleared her throat at the awkwardness of the moment, Tam said, “He’s going to play a big part in this too, I can tell.”
“You said something about ‘getting this started,’” Leena said, a hint of unease in her voice. “What exactly were you referring to?”
“I know you might not be ready, or comfortable with it, but if your aunt is right…” She pushed herself up, smoothed out her skirt, and then stared into my eyes. No longer looking past me or at my aura, but looking at me with a small bite of her lip. “We have to unlock his… potential. “ She stepped up to me, eyes focused on mine as she started unbuttoning her shirt.
“Tam…” Leena’s eyes were going from her to me and back again, but I couldn’t read her expression. It was almost like she wanted this to happen, but didn’t know how I felt about it. To be honest, I didn’t know how I felt about it.
“Your aunt told me the whole story,” Tam said. “This aura of his, this something special. Wouldn’t it be better to find out what it is sooner than later?”
“We don’t know what we’re up against, or if he can handle it.”
“I can handle—”
“Shh,” they both shushed me at once.
I frowned, about to push back, but then thought better of it. Leena wasn’t protesting out of a sense of sexual fidelity or anything like that, but because of some magic reason. This lady, Tam, was certainly nothing to scoff at, and having her help unlock something within me, especially if that meant her removing her clothes, didn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.
“He’s not a guinea pig,” Leena protested.
“No, he’s… what exactly?” Tam grinned, mischievously. “Your boyfriend?”
Leena’s eyes darted to the floor, lips pursed.
When Tam turned to me again, I shrugged and explained, “We don’t like labels.”
“Is that so?” Tam smiled wide now, reminding me of the Cheshire cat. “Well, Mr. Not-Boyfriend…” She undid more of her shirt, untying the purple bow as well, so that it all fell open and exposed a lavender bra beneath, the soft mounds of her breasts pushed up. “Are you ready to find out what sort of role you’ll play here?”
My eyes went back to Leena, who was still staring at the ground. Before I had a chance to say anything one way or another, though, Cindy burst through the doors.
“They’re almost here. I don’t know how, but they’ve found us.”
“Who?” Leena asked, clearly glad to have a distraction.
“The eastern coven,” Cindy stated, eyes taking in the situation and Tam with her shirt open, but surprisingly not showing any thoughts on it one way or the other. “It’s done then?”
“What?” Leena asked, her eyes moving to Tam. “You knew about this?”
“It’ll take more than one of us,” Cindy explained.
“I… see.” Tam took a deep breath. Then nodded.
“Doesn’t matter though, because it’ll have to wait.” Several other witches followed Cindy into the room, including the man and woman I’d caught glimpses of on t
he way in. “We’re on the move.”
“We’re running from them?” Leena asked.
“Not running, just… staying clear. There’s something off about it all—I saw it in the cards. We don’t want to have to deal with them right now, so… move it.”
All of us went for the back door while two of the strangers started doing their best to remove signs of their ever having been there. Cindy shouted at them that there wasn’t time, and they followed us out the back door, to a parking lot where a couple of other cars waited. We piled in, me in the back seat of one with Leena on one side of me, Tam on the other. I was about to ask what was so bad about this other group, when I felt a hand on my leg.
I glanced down, expecting the hand that was now moving up my thigh to be Leena’s, but nope, it was Tam’s. Not sure what to do here, my head jolted to look at Leena, but she was watching. For a moment, she seemed unsure, then she reached over, put her hand on Tam’s, and continued to move it up, closer… closer. Then both were kissing my neck, the pressure in my pants as a result almost hurting.
How this would help us, I had no idea, but certainly wasn’t complaining. As their intertwined fingers reached my bulge, I bit my lip, trying not to make a sound, ignoring the fact that Cindy had clearly just looked my way in the rearview mirror, and then it hit me.
The vision.
Demons. Not just a man with demon eyes, but actual demons with long horns, shadows that moved on their own, skeletons with cloaks that flowed as if in the wind. Flames, thrust aside, water rising, blasts of magic exploding and wisps of light moving through vast armies.
Eyes staring at me. Stark green, glowing bright.
And then, just as suddenly, it all pulled away as if vacuumed up, flashing to darkness, and I was back in the car.
Holy shit, were we fucked. Good thing we had a plan, and somehow… that plan involved two beautiful women caressing and kissing me. We were fucked, and yet, I was looking forward to the whole experience.
Bracket Time!
Welcome to my short story bracket! Are you ready for this?
