Witch Gone Viral

by Sami Valentine

  And all that separated them were iron bars.

  The three occupied cells lay opposite the waist-high candelabras and manacles, leaving the few yards of space between them a no man’s land.

  Sal did pushups in his cell like a man killing time on a life sentence.

  Prone on the floor, eyes glazed, arms over her head, the undead seer twitched her foot as if chasing humans in her mystic catatonia.

  Tightening his big fists on the bars, Quinn’s lips curved into a chilly smirk. “My ears are itchy. You talking about me, Red?”

  “Only bad things.” Lifting her chin, she crossed her arms as she strode over to Lucas to visualize how she could set up the ritual circle. She didn’t have any spell books, and the Brotherhood database kept dorking on her, so she was going to freestyle it, stack as much salt and intention as she could into a barrier.

  Waving sardonically with his one free hand, Lucas shifted on his feet. A manacle bolted into the wall kept his other arm pinned. “Red, this isn’t going to get any prettier.”

  “Don’t be like that, Red, It’s your good pal, Q.”

  “You’re not my friend.” She tossed her ponytail back.

  “I might not have a soul, but I’m very much him.” Quinn bowed with a flourish. “I just don’t have all that stinking guilt. The ever-present moaning—I killed my dad. I massacred those nuns. I convinced John Lennon to leave the Beatles.” He groaned, clutching his head. “Constant whining and deliberating over every decision. The soul couldn’t even buy paper towels without thinking about deforestation. Ugh, you have no idea. It was like a possession. We have that in common, Red.”

  “We’re nothing alike,” Red spat out, full body shaking in disagreement. Even her fingers curled in disgust at the notion.

  “Don’t lie. You know exactly what a bodysnatching is like. I saw myself do things—saving cats and other idiots too stupid to know to stay out of dark alleys.”

  “How terrible. You became a better person.” Red turned her back on him. Her voice came out a dry huff. “I feel for you.”

  “Want to stake him yet?” Kristoff leaned over to set a paint can topped with a brush on the ground, then handed Red a blue cylinder can of salt. He patted his pockets before pulling out a white selenite pendulum on a necklace. “Best I could do. Moonwort is on the way.”

  Red tucked the salt canister under her arm before palming the necklace. “It’ll do.” She knelt at Lucas’s feet and set her burdens down.

  “I’ll wipe that smirk off your face, Kristoff. They might have taken my soul, but they could give you yours,” Quinn called out.

  Red looked over her shoulder in mid-reach for the paint brush. She glanced up at Kristoff. That was a possibility that she had never considered. What would he be like with a soul? Curiosity dug at her like kneading cat claws.

  Arms falling slack at his sides, eye twitching, he froze facing Quinn.

  “Oi, Novak. They won’t. You’re staying the same old devil. I guarantee it.” Lucas scoffed. Swinging his gaze to Quinn, he glowered at the caged vampire.

  “Is that some sire-ly feeling bursting loose, Lucas?” Quinn laughed, gesturing between them.

  Dipping her head, Red pulled the paint can over to Lucas. “I need you to stand still.”

  Dropping his glare, Lucas nodded, looking down at Red. “I trust you.”

  She smiled up at Lucas and nudged his feet to paint along the wall. As the wet brush traced a thick line around him to the wall, Red took a deep breath. She laid her phone down to reference sigils. Her hand moved quickly, creating the signs. Finished with the physical representation of the intention, she opened her third eye. Visualizing a golden barrier of protection, she teased out a wiggling thread of magic from the well behind her navel chakra to plug into the ritual circle. In the Dreamland, her magic flowed smoothly to her grasp. Not in the real world. It felt like jerking on a vacuum cord stuck on a furniture leg. Tongue between her teeth in concentration, she pushed intention into her painting.

  “You need to latch the other one, Red.” Forehead crinkled, swallowing thickly, Lucas waved his free hand to catch her attention. “Don’t want me running off again.”

  Feeling eyes on her back, Red put down her brush and stood. She squeezed Lucas’s hand then latched him closed. Green eyes met turbulent gray.

  “You’ll stay you,” she whispered in his ear before turning and stepping away. With the press of time upon them, she fell into hunter mode. “Where’s Delilah?”

  Kristoff met her eyes with quiet contemplation. “Coming.”

  “Any word on the moonwort?” Red picked up the paint and the bucket to move over to the other set of manacles on the wall. “It needs to be sprinkled on the circles. Even the boxed stuff will do.”

  “Are you going to help her grind up eggshells or lay down cat bones, Kristoff?” Quinn snorted. “Rub her third eye?”

  “No one’s rubbing anything.” Rolling her eyes at the innuendo, Red looked to Kristoff. “Could you pour salt around Lucas?” She started painting the ritual circle for Delilah, her motions impossibly slow compared to Kristoff with the salt canister.

  “Done. I’m going to check on that moonwort.” Kristoff turned on his heel. “Give me the word, Red, and your boss’s last wishes can be honored.”

  Sighing, Red shot him an unamused looked. Quinn was acting like a slimeball, but that was still her boss in there. They weren’t giving up on him.

  “Er, what?” Lucas piped up.

  “Tough guy, am I right?” Quinn motioned his thumb toward Kristoff.

  Shaking her head, Red returned to painting arcane sigils on the edge of the empty white circle. “You don’t want to know, Lucas.”

  “Reeedddd,” Quinn sung her name off-key.

  “Shut up.” She sighed, wishing she hadn’t said anything. The beast behind her was bored. Even if it was negative, he wanted attention. No, especially if it was negative. He was playing with them, looking for his chance to escape the cage.

  “The gang can still stick together. I got it all planned out.” Quinn raised his hand in an arc, fingers flicking dramatically, as if he was picturing the scene. “I turn Vic, Kristoff loses in this little love triangle, and we all just solve mysteries in the van. Hit the east coast. Forget this west coast, best coast stuff. I’m nearly 300 hundred years old, and I’ve never even been to Delaware. Talk about a series reboot!”

  Clammy hands shaking, Red struggled to keep her breathing steady. White paint dropped from her still brush. Dread gnawed at her. The words had been upbeat, like a studio executive pitching a TV show, but she caught the threat. He wanted to sire Vic and turn the fanged four into a fivesome.

  “Put a cork in it, Quinn,” Lucas grumbled.

  Quinn chuckled. “Don’t be jealous about the new baby.”

  Glowering over her shoulder, scalp prickling, Red squinted at him. It took every scrap of control to not lay into him. She knew he wanted her to rage at him. It would make his day. She tossed a terse warning at him. “You won’t ever get a fang in Vic.”

  “Don’t you want to see him walk again?” Voice low, brown eyes serious, Quinn asked the question without his usual arrogant smirk. “A bit of my blood would get that boy a-running. Only at night, and he’d have fangs, but hey—that’s better than now. You all know he’d give anything to stand.”

  “Fuck off with this shite.” Lucas launched into a barrage of curses.

  “How dare you. I’m being a good friend, here. Thinking of solutions.” Quinn raised a wagging finger at them. “Doing all I can for the team.”

  “The team, yeah. Everyone wants to be on the team.” Red huffed, forcing herself to concentrate on preparing the ritual space instead of Quinn’s poison. He was trying to distract her. He’d succeeded. Her grip on her magic had grown unsteady as her focus scattered. The golden line she visualized in her third eye wobbled. She tugged it back into place and eased a thread of energy into the circle. Moving her paint brush again to finish a sigil, she pushed her inten
tion to protect Delilah’s soul into the ritual space.

  “Feels good doesn’t it?” Crouching at her eye level, Quinn stared at her from between his cell bars. His low voice seemed to carry over the feet between them as if he were whispering over her shoulder. “You missed it. The power.”

  Paint brush stilling in her hand and heart quickening, Red rolled her shoulder as if to shrug his piercing words away. He was just trying to get to her.

  “Raw and primal like a live wire. I can tell you’re tapping into it right now.” Quinn murmured, hand on the cage. “Magic. Will I get to see your eyes change color? Hmmm, I do so love a black magic woman.”

  Red pressed her lips together, ‘I don’t do black magic’ bubbling on her tongue. It would just be meat to that jackal. Insinuation buzzing in her ears, she ignored him to continue etching a rune associated with the goddess Freya, the Norse goddess of witchcraft. Just one of many in her hodgepodge personal pantheon.

  Returning from the storage room, Kristoff stomped over to the cage, growling. “You’ll sit pretty in that cage until we slap your muzzle back on.”

  “So butch.” Quinn stood, lifting his hands and smirking. “I still remember what you look like on your knees, boy.”

  Snorting in disdain, Kristoff turned away to sprinkle dried gray viney moonwort on both white-painted sacred semi-circles flush against the wall and lined with runic sigils and salt.

  Red glanced between the vampires before shaking her head and standing. She walked to a standing candelabra and grabbed two pillared white candles then set one beside each circle.

  Chained on the wall, Lucas smiled at her sadly then looked at the empty set of manacles above the other protection circle. “The gang’s back together.”

  “It’s just a riff off a standard protection spell against psychic attack. Fingers crossed it’s enough to repel a soulmancer.” Red dropped her eyes. She wasn’t a real hunter and she was barely a witch. The best she could hope for was to hold off an enemy soul attack long enough for her side to find the source. The legend had it that even Father Matthew had collapsed after souling four vampires. If they were lucky, the Dague had drawn their soulmancer back to the desert to recharge and left the Black Libertine behind to stew chaos.

  “You can do it, Red,” Lucas said earnestly.

  She smiled and rubbed her temples, stepping to the door. “I need to be able to concentrate if I’m going to fuel these sacred circles.”

  Kristoff met her at the threshold. He quirked his eyebrow up as he brushed paint off her chin with his thumb. “What else do you need?”

  “Quiet. I’ll go to the storage room.” Red ducked her head and lingered in the doorway. “Be careful.”

  Amused, Quinn called out, “Doesn’t it gall you that Lucas is still fucking your dream girl, Novak?”

  Red blushed, meeting Kristoff’s eyes before glaring at Quinn.

  Quinn smirked and crossed his arms. “Admittedly, it took him long enough. Made me think he was losing his touch.”

  “Sod off.” Lucas flipped Quinn off from behind his shackles.

  “Lot of effort for a rerun, Novak. I repeated on the old girl myself, but still… Juniper was a pro.” Quinn’s gaze caressed Red’s form; his leer felt like a pinch on the butt. He licked his lips. “If this version was as good of a lay, would Lucas have run off?”

  “Pig,” Red spat. “I don’t need to hear your bullshit.”

  “My honor has been besmirched.” His sarcasm sharpened, Quinn put his hand on his chest. “Why would I lie about a tumble with a whore? That’s what Juniper was. You think Lucas didn’t share his toys?” He flicked a sly glance to Kristoff. “You already know she spread it around.”

  “You’re disgusting.” She folded her arms, skin crawling under her clothes, trying to cover herself.

  “And you’re the reincarnation of a hooker.” Brow lifting, wry amusement twinkled in his brown eyes. “It wasn’t all bad, Red. I stepped in when Lucas got soft about discipline, but we had good times—Juniper and I—once I beat her place into her.” Running his teeth over his lip, his eyes narrowed. “It’ll be fun breaking you in again.”

  Feet frozen, Red cringed. Nausea churned in her belly. A cold shudder rocked her rib cage. The chilling words rippled through her brain.

  Lucas shook his manacles in warning. “Red, go. This asshole is only getting warmed up.”

  “I don’t know. We have plenty to talk about. Maybe she wants to hear about an underworld contract signed in blood.” Quinn leaned against the corner of his cell, arms crossed and one ankle over the other. He leaned his head back, waggling his eyebrows “Call your agent at Smith and Reaper. She can pull it up from a vault in hell.”

  “Go, Red,” Kristoff said quietly.

  Looking behind her, Red had her hand on the threshold, but she couldn’t make herself move. Fear anchored her. She looked between Lucas’s shamed expression and the worry hanging on Kristoff’s shoulders.

  Red studied the elder unsouled vampire, trying to disconnect herself like a real hunter would, ignoring his barbs. He was twisting a verbal dagger into each one of them with the skill of an assassin. These were just mind games to pass the time until he could escape… and find Vic. Her heart clenched in her chest. Cold sweat beaded on her neck. She felt like she needed a shower, as if Quinn’s words had left a film of filth on her skin.

  “Shut your gob, Quinn!” Lucas said behind grinding teeth.

  “It could still be valid. She is a reincarnation after all.” Quinn rubbed his knuckles over his dark gray shirt before examining his nails idly. “Better have your lawyers look over the fine print, Novak. You technically did win Juniper in a fight, but the devil is in the details.”

  “I’m not even going to ask.” Red shook her head and walked into the storage room. She took a deep breath behind the door, leaning against the shelves. Maybe she should have asked for noise-cancelling headphones.

  Quinn’s voice followed her into the decoy storage room. “Aren’t you curious to know your progeny’s next gambit? Really. Maybe you might learn something and stop being an eternal disappointment. Novak here, now didn’t he make something of himself. A vampire’s American Dream.”

  “The kids call it a glow up.” Kristoff shrugged.

  Red rolled her eyes as she started closing the door, pushing on the bulky shelf disguising it.

  “Are my boys fighting again?” Delilah stepped inside the storage room from the parking garage. She raised her eyebrow.

  “Be careful in there. He’s—" Red licked her lips. What was the kindest way to say that he wasn’t the man that Delilah loved? Or maybe Quinn had returned to being the man she had fallen in love with?

  “I can handle my childe.” Delilah walked stiff-backed toward the cells in a cloud of Chanel No. 5. Polished like a diamond, she was ready for a red carpet, not shackles. Her beachy blond waves were perfect, and her purple cocktail dress hugged her curves like it was sewn on. Only her smudged mascara and the tinge of reddish tears in her blue eyes betrayed her pristine image.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  January 27th, Evening, Club Vltava, Sunset Strip, Los Angeles, California

  Cross-legged on the floor of the storage room between the jail and the garage, Red tried to feel her magic. She mostly felt the cold from the concrete seeping into her jeans. Straightening her back, Red tried again to finish the protection spell. She visualized a shimmering thread of power unrolling from above her naval. The thread fought. She yanked it to heel. Muffled biting banter echoed back and forth under the door from the cells. She was happy to not hear Quinn clearly. Unsouled, he was vile, so unlike the man she had come to know. What he had said before… Her attention fluttered away like a flock of pigeons.

  Kristoff crouched beside her, setting a rough cylinder of ghostly selenite in front of her. His elbows rested on the knees of his dark jeans. “I found a bigger crystal.”

  Opening one eye, then the other, Red fumbled in her breath count. The rapid burst of research on h
er phone had given her a rough idea of how to fuel the spell. She had created protection circles before, but it felt different outside the Dreamland. The hardest part wasn’t the set up. It was powering the engine. She hadn’t gained the discipline to keep it up. Her magic sputtered. After weeks of pushing her magic away, she felt like a relapsed smoker, lungs protesting as they puffed away on an illicit cigarette. “Thanks.”

  “This is a good thing you’re doing.” Kristoff dipped his head to meet her lowered gaze.

  “I know.” Red tried to smile. “The world doesn’t need the Byrnes gang getting back up to their tricks.”

  “Are you worried about Quinn? I’ll keep you safe from him.”

  “No, it’s just… I used to be excited to do magic. It felt like a missing piece. If I could just understand my power, maybe the rest would fall into place. Then I met some other witches.” Red shrugged. Accepting her magical powers would have been easier if she had born without Juniper St. James’s soul. “When you don’t know who you are, it’s easy to be scared of who you could be.”

  “You’re better than you think. Remember that.” Kristoff smiled, deepening the dimple in his chin and left cheek. “Magic is your birthright.”

  “I’ll tell my magic that.” Lip quirking up, Red shut her eyes on his handsome face and took a deep breath. She still felt his piercing gaze. “You don’t need to watch me do it.”

  “You really don’t,” Nedda said dryly from the doorway. “The gang’s waiting for their leader.”

  Stress rising, Red yearned to journal or do something from her list of sanity-making activities to calm her mind. Her fingers twitched on her knees. She tried to ignore the sound of Kristoff closing the door as Donal greeted him from the parking garage. Relax, she told herself.

  Her third eye opened, revealing two golden lines shimmering on the dingy floor of the storage room. They connected her to the protection circles in the hidden jail room. The spell instructions had given a weird flowery description of flying buttresses and rearing horses for what to visualize as the psychic barrier. She couldn’t picture it. She didn’t know how to make a flying buttress, but she did know how to knit a scarf.