“It’s like bloody Prague, seeing her like this.” Lucas bowed his head. “I could do something then. I ripped through those witch hunters, bringing blood and war.”
Kristoff’s top lip curled to reveal fangs. “If that medium doesn’t hurry up, I’m pulling this warlock out of hell myself.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve marched there together.”
The image of the vampires faded, leaving the ceiling bulb.
“It’s all grimacing and repressing emotionally stunted macho men here.” Basil’s rolling eyes were unseen, but it broadcasted through the psychic walkie talkie line loud and clear.
Red swallowed back the anguish at seeing her friends looking so lost in the vision. The jagged glimpse of reality cut through her mental fog. It made her feel more hopeless. “They’re suffering because of me. Me coming back into their lives only hurt them.”
“I don’t want to go full It’s A Wonderful Life on you since we’ve kept with A Christmas Carol so far, but you’re needed and wanted. You keep moaning on about possibly being the reincarnation of Juniper St. James. Whoop-dee-do if you are. You have a past life with baggage. Why do you think people get reborn? So, they can become better. This cosmic learning. Everyone does it. You have a choice here. Do better, or let this warlock win.”
Closing her eyes, she confessed her deepest fear. “If he’s right about Juniper then he is right about me.”
“He’s showing you evils that haven’t happened and trawling out all her skeletons. How many lies are mixed in? He’s certainly not showing you the best of her.” Basil’s acid tone grew pointed. “He’s using your amnesia against you. You don’t know yourself, and he’s trying to fill in the blanks with poison.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her memory loss was the best weapon that anyone could use against her. It was why she kept it secret. “You’re right.”
“There’s something you have to see. I’m getting it loud and clear from Lucas. I think this is from the night he was cursed with a soul.”
The vision of an outdoor hallway bloomed above the bed, projected off on the gloom. Screams echoed between the stone pillars as monks fled through a courtyard. In the center of the hall, Lucas and Juniper knelt together.
The doppelgänger looked hopeful even with blood dripping from her neck onto a white dress. Ripped stockings and black boots showed through the shredded white fabric bunched over her folded legs.
Suit disheveled and face bruised, Lucas brought his knees to his chest, eyes darting at the screams. Blood clung to his chin. “Who are you, miss?”
“Listen, hush.” Tearing up, she touched his cheek. “Luke, you’re going to remember a lot of terrible things soon. Most of it you did. All the guilt and the pain of twenty years as a vampire will hit you.”
“What?” Confusion merged into horrified remembrance on his ashen face. “No, that couldn’t have been me.”
“You have been given the greatest gift—a new beginning. You’re more than you know. Now is your chance to show it.” Juniper smiled through her tears and kissed his forehead. The vision faded.
Gasping from the surgeon’s table in the asylum, Red jerked up in the straps to get closer to the dissolving memory figment projected on the ceiling. “She knew. How did she know?”
“Yeah, no clue, I just scraped this from Lucas’s memories. She’s seemed quite calm for someone seeing the first soul cursing.”
“This must have been moments before she was murdered.”
“She might have been a bad witch bitch, but it looks like she was a part of whatever set the August Harvest in motion. Juniper St. James helped save countless lives. You might have her bad karma on your soul slate, but the ballsy move of neutralizing vampire kind, that’s on there too.”
Red digested the news like a still wiggling squid. None of the public records even showed Juniper being there, only the vampire’s accounts. She sank back onto the cold metal table, trying to imagine the ripple effect of that one night in an English monastery. “The spell that changed the world.”
“That little bit Juniper said to Lucas. That kept him from walking into the sun after he got his soul. It made him try to make amends. You keep thinking it’s the magic—it’s the soul, the energy. It’s what you do with it. You want to do good, so do it. Right now, that’s getting back to your friends and kicking warlock ass.”
“How?” Red croaked, trying to lift herself up despite the restraints.
“I’m throwing you a lifeline. Take it.”
24
December 23rd, 2:22AM, Dreamland, St. Brigid’s Hospital, Los Angeles
Red felt the grip of Basil and the medium on her spirit. Their presence cleared her throbbing head. Concentrating on Basil’s voice, she jerked against the straps binding her to the surgical table.
This was all in her head. Or well, Maxwell’s.
In the Dreamland, their consciousnesses overlapped with the real world and the spirit realm, but the asylum felt generated specially to torment her. Little veins of poisonous green threaded around her wrists in a cobweb connection between her skin and the restraints. She hadn’t noticed them before. It was her energy. The wisps of self-loathing and confusion anchored her to the table as much as the warlock’s magic. She strained against the burden of a century of karma.
The leather straps felt so real even if, intellectually, she knew the laws of physics were optional here. It wasn’t just mind over matter—mind was matter. If she was crazy enough to dream it and let herself have it.
Maxwell’s bonds kept her from getting up, she wasn’t strong enough yet. There was only one way to go: down. She sunk into the surgical table, hoping Basil could catch her, and let go of all of it—the self-loathing, the anger, the confusion, and the hate. Tumbling like Alice through the looking glass, she didn’t see clocks—only darkness. The spectral gusts blew away the asylum’s haze on her mind. She glided like kite on a tight line in a storm.
“That’s it. Now turn. We’re waiting.” He sounded tense as a father guiding his teen in parallel parking.
Her spirit dived through the ceiling of the hospital room and rolled on the floor before popping up on her feet.
Basil and Terry huddled over the bed while Vic and the vampires were spread out in the room in various poses of watchful anticipation.
The golden net of protection around her physical body was tarnished and strained after deflecting the worst of what her spiritual form had endured. Red did a double take. The burns on her legs had already healed below her cutoff jeans. The mage doctors had done something right.
“You’re here. Thank the goddess.” Basil smiled crookedly over the grisly wires on his teeth and squeezed the medium’s hand. His mental broadcast sounded stronger than when she was trapped in Maxwell’s asylum. “We’re going to try and get you into your body now. We can worry about Maxwell after.”
“Do you have anyone that can fight him? Any brilliant ideas?” Calming her quaking limbs, Red walked closer. He had freed her, but Maxwell would notice she was gone soon. They didn’t have time for a ghost hug even though she wanted too.
“The Scooby gang is still figuring it out. That doesn’t matter. One thing at a time.”
“Oi, what is going on?” Lucas glanced between Basil and the medium.
Basil reached out for a notepad resting on the bed to write, Red is here.
“Tell her to hop back into her body.” Lucas’s voice was gruff, but there was nothing but gentleness about the way his fingers brushed her cheek.
“Has the warlock followed her?” Kristoff glanced around the room, arms tensed for a fight.
“That slippery fuck was bad enough when he was alive. Pulling strings, scheming, if he had a body right now…” Vein bulging in his tense jaw, Lucas shook his head.
Kristoff shushed him. “Basil hears something.”
“Tell them we need to set up a ghost trap for two,” Red said, planning quickly, mentally steeling herself for the risks. She stil
l felt shaky from the electric shocks, but this was the hand she was dealt. They had to knock out the ghoul twins in this round. Would she last another battle of wills? She could rest when she woke up from this nightmare. “If I go back into that body, it still leaves them rocking and rolling in the Dreamland and able to haul me back in.”
Basil jotted down her command. “We can’t catch them in this realm.”
“In the Dreamland. We’re going to be working together on both sides. The two traps will hedge our bets. We can delay them long enough for you guys to exorcise Nevaeh. They’ll have to manifest in the real world to fight it.” Red gambled on a lot of assumptions in her plans. If the witch trap didn’t work, she had another trap lying in wait. Basil would want to talk her out of it. “Maxwell is strong, but he needs her for some reason. She ties him here maybe. He’s a warlock, he could be drawing on her magic like a battery for his spells. Whatever she has on him, she’s the weakest link.”
“Maxwell broke your last witch trap.”
“We’ll have more oompf in this one. For a bit.” She set her jaw and furrowed her brow. A red scorpion materialized to scurry across her lifted palm. It morphed into a sparking flame. “I just have to lure them here.”
“And trap them. You have a lot of things that could go wrong with this plan, Red. Where are you going to get the juice for the traps?”
“Just tell them!” She closed her fingers around the flame, soaking the energy back up. Without having to maintain two protection spells, she had some of her mojo back. Soon, she would have even more. If her plan went south, she was already half-dead anyway. It wasn’t as brave as it sounded; the guys would get her out. “Have Vic set them up at the foot of the bed and then get everyone out of the way. We need to focus on exorcising Nevaeh first. Whatever happens you must keep focusing on her. If she goes, it weakens Maxwell so I can make my move. That should distract him.”
Basil wrote her instructions down. “What’s your move?”
“I’m still deciding.” Scratching behind her ear, Red glanced away to hide an uncertain cringe. “I have a Plan B if Nevaeh gets in my body, but you guys have the same mission either way. Exorcise her. Hell, it might be easier if I was literally the witch trap.”
He flapped his notepad at her. “Pick another Plan B, toots.”
Lucas took the pages. “Vic, get in here. The psychics have a message from Red.”
“I didn’t tell them about Nevaeh. They don’t know what Maxwell promised her.”
“Do the spell, and we’ll laugh about the idea of her taking me for a test drive later.” Red cringed even though it was a contingency in her plan. Death was also a contingency in her plan. The idea of Nevaeh in her body gave her the bigger creeps.
Reaching out, Basil motioned for the notes making the rounds in the room. Terry the medium tightened the hold on his hand. “Focus.”
“It’s arts and crafts time at the hospital, boys.” Vic scooted closer. He grinned and reached into the backpack hanging on his wheelchair and pulled out a jar of salt. He doled out ritual ingredients to the vampires, serious instructions mixed with snark. They arranged the iron nuggets and other ingredients into circles at the foot of the hospital bed.
“This trick better work, Red. Your body can’t take much more,” Basil warned.
“It’ll fool them. For a bit. Just make the boys follow the plan. We need to exorcise Nevaeh first, then Maxwell.” She closed her eyes and imagined the dirty brick walls of the asylum lining the room. Juniper implied that the warlock felt powerful in the asylum. Red wanted to make him feel right at home.
The eerie moonlight of the Dreamland was more powerful here than in the bowels of Maxwell’s twisted memories, but the other details were right. Like an iceberg waiting for a ship, the wood-handled switch jutted from the antique electroshock device.
The hospital bed was replaced by the surgical table, straps coiled like snakes around her physical form’s ankles and wrists. She couldn’t shake the eeriness of the out-of-body experience. “Tell them to leave, Basil. You too. You’ll ruin the illusion. Wait in the hallway. Start the exorcism as quickly as possible. I need them distracted and weakened to get back into my body.”
Grabbing the notepad from Vic’s lap with a glare, Basil wrote down her instructions one-handed, not letting go of her body. “How are you going to lure them?”
“The same way I’m going to get more magic to ignite those traps.” Red chewed on her lip. She was betting a lot on her team’s back up.
Basil’s eyes darted between her and the trap. “I don’t get it.”
“Go. Get that notepad back. Besides, you know you want to be supervising Terry right now,” she said, pushing false lightness into her tone. “Thanks, friend, for everything.”
“I don’t like how you said that. Are you doing something stupid and brave to sacrifice yourself?”
“That’s Plan C, but I’m expecting you guys to pull my fat out of the fryer,” Red said, wishing he couldn’t feel the fear in her soul. “Tell them to have the exorcism rolling when they burst into the room. Don’t let them stop.”
Vic pulled on his arm, breaking the contact with her. The wheelchair herded the soulmancer out the door. “Come on. You said time moves different there. Let’s go.”
She revealed the hidden chakras on her body in the bed. The light radiating from them shone brighter than before. She figured that her energy, scattershot as it was, reacted to being near death all night. Her green aura pulsed with wisps of gold and purple.
Red formed a phantom ring above the ghost traps laid in the physical realm. Cat bones and marigold petals orbited the iron ore before settling over the traps. She channeled energy into the traps connected between the worlds, turning on the magic faucet to pour as much as she dared.
Laying down beside herself, she touched a dab of dark blood on the corner of her physical mouth. It didn’t react to her fingers like it had before.
She didn’t give herself the chance to ponder and sliced the connection to the protection spell. The room grew dark in the Dreamland without the golden glow of the net. She directed everything, even her life force energy, into the traps. Maxwell was monitoring her, he’d feel her spirit fade and come to gloat. The last bursts of magic grated as if clinging to her. She groaned, panting before easing up, survival instinct kicked in.
The heart monitor chirped a distressed robotic alarm, cajoling as if trying to reason with her.
Red was flatlining.
When Maxwell’s pitch-dark presence reverberated through the room, her spirit was ready even as her body died.
25
December 23rd, 2:34AM, Dreamland, St. Brigid’s Hospital, Los Angeles
Her life didn’t flash before her eyes as she watched her body die. No family secrets were revealed. No epiphany of a life not remembered. No angel choir sang to welcome her.
Only struggling rise and fall of her own chest. Red put a spectral arm over her body as she laid beside it. A ghost comforting her shell.
Shadows rained into the room like hail. Maxwell stepped out, smoke drifting off his velvet sleeves. He stroked his mustache. “You already look at peace, wife.”
Nevaeh rushed out of the shadows, pushing ahead of the warlock to gesture to the hospital bed. “She’s escaping!”
“No, look at where she is. My claws are still deep in her psyche.” He smirked, examining the spirit clutching her body on the bed. “She’s a stone’s throw from giving in and then the body is yours.”
Red tucked her head, hiding the stubborn set to her chin. Concentrating on the asylum illusion, she focused on the shade-strewn floor where the traps hid. She’d show the warlock just how much she had given in.
“So, are we just going to dick around until she cracks?” Nevaeh scoffed. “Because this is getting old.”
“Be of good cheer.” Chuckling, Maxwell took her hand, raising a calculating eyebrow as his tone grew consoling. “You know it’s happening.”
“I want my body.” Neva
eh pouted, forehead wrinkling, stomping her foot. “You promised.”
“This is the closest you’ll ever get to dancing on her grave.” He pulled her closer, features turning mischievous. “Don’t you want that pleasure?”
Nevaeh giggled, blushing and leaning into him. “I’m a triple threat, you know.”
“Take the opportunity.” Maxwell brought them together into a waltz, then dipped the starlet low. He pulled her up out of the dip. “Haven’t I given you all you wanted so far? This is almost your time to sparkle.”
“I can’t wait to get back into the world, handsome. Gotta decide if I am going to get a pumpkin spice latte first or see a plastic surgeon.”
“I told you your patience would be rewarded.” He tweaked her chin.
Hearing enough, Red lifted her head to glare. “I’m not dead yet.”
“Not for long.” Nevaeh laughed as Michel twirled her to the side. “Dancing on a grave, haven’t done that since high school.”
Waiting until they danced into the right spot, Red pushed her magic into the spectral witch trap in Dreamland and the ghost trap in the real world. The floodgates opened. She shuddered as the energy drained from her.
Nevaeh cried out, pulling away from Maxwell.
“You’re not dancing on me just yet.” Pushing herself up on the bed, Red smirked through the discomfort. She urged all her energy, will, and magic to rise in the witch traps. Near death, her magic jolted to attention with more zest than it had in weeks. It trooped to fuel the circles of iron, relics, and salt.
He glanced at the arcane rings on the floor. “Oh, you harridan.”
The hospital room’s door opened. Vic, Basil, and Terry stepped in with burning sage, chanting in Latin.
“You’re trying an exorcism?” Maxwell demanded. “Do you know who I am, little girl?”
“You’re god of the Dreamland, blah blah blah.” Red stood and lifted her chin. “Well, consider this Ragnarök, motherfucker.”
Long Witch Night: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 2) Page 22
