First Destroy All Giant Monsters (The World Wide Witches Research Association) (11 page)

“That will do.”

“Okay, ready when you are.”

Amber shrugged and sank down to sit cross-legged on the floor. She was grateful that one of the earliest “magical assumptions” the WWWRAPC had examined was whether it was necessary to be sky-clad for magical purposes. The finding – the Elementals, Elements, and Gods and Goddess couldn’t give a shit what was worn – the magic still worked, dressed or not. The WWWRAPC hadn’t been able to convince the magical community at large of this finding so the recommendation listed on the WWWRAPC website was – (birthday) suit yourself.

Smoke started ringing the small bell, a gentle double beat.

“Okay, this is to get you started. Get you into a trance. And this,” he beat out a rhythm that put Amber in mind of an old-fashioned fire truck, “is the signal for you to get yourself back here if I see your body is in trouble or you’ve been gone too long.”

“Got it,” said Amber with a smile. “What?”

“Just making sure you haven’t forgotten. You did say you were neglecting your training of late.”

Amber blushed. He was exactly right. He couldn’t assume that she remembered the simplest of magical rules. Not after her pathetic showing the previous day. And the truth was she had forgotten a lot about soul-flight. All she knew for certain was that she’d never done it before.

And the committee of WWWRAPC had. They’ll be able to help. To talk to the Elementals on her behalf just as soon as Smoke lifted his little ban.

“And when you meet the Elementals?” pressed Smoke.

“I will be scared to death,” said Amber with complete honesty.

“See to it that you are.”

The only thing Amber allowed herself by way of preparation, since the house would not allow her to do anything as simple as a cleansing, purifying bath, was to set light to a little white sage in a conch shell. Then she took her fan and raised it to her lips. She was worried that the magic embedded in the fan would not answer her any more than the Elementals, but the familiar blue glow came when she concentrated and spread from her hand to the fan, or was it from the fan to her hand. She frowned. Which was it? Did she have the magic or was the old stored magic all that there was?

It didn’t matter. If she was using stored magic this ritual was her only chance to reconnect to the Elemental flow. She rose to her feet and turned to walk the circle, sun wise, her fan-wand pointed at the floor.

“I, Amber, witch, do cast this Circle,” she intoned, “to be a sacred space. Protected and protecting. Set me apart from the world of man; take me to the world of the sacred. Hold me safe between the worlds as I work my magic. Spirits and guardians of the Quarters I do call you to my Circle. Do thou watch over my journey and keep me safe. Witness my workings and lend me thy aid.”

She pointed her fan one at a time at each of the four candles and let out a sigh of relief when the candle wicks ignited and settled down to a steady flame.

Three of her cousins sat in a neat row on the couch and did not move or make a sound. Smoke sat cross-legged on a cushion on the floor nearest to the white candle. While she was distracted, he’d changed his clothing. Instead of his blue jeans, flannel shirt, and work boots he wore homemade buckskins, a string of aged bone pieces around his neck, and his feet were bare. He handled the delicate chime as if it were of great ritual significance, which today it was. Most of the time her cousins made light of the story that there was some Arapahoe in their background. Today Amber could believe it was true.

She settled herself on her back on the stone floor and wiggled a bit until the irregular edges of the flagstones weren’t underneath the back of her skull. She might be here for a while and didn’t want to wake up with a hole dug into her skull. She pressed the flat of her hand onto the cool stones and closed her eyes. She hadn’t been joking when she told Smoke that she was feeling loose from her body. Usually when she tried to meditate she ended up staring at the ceiling, bored and frustrated. Today all it took was for her to close her eyes and breathe out and she could feel herself lifting.

She stiffened, resisting the sensation, and fell back into her body. Witches did nothing in Circle without intention. Smoke, seated just a few feet from her head continued to beat out the soft insistent rhythm. She glanced around the room again, fixing it in her memory, taking comfort from the solid stone beneath her, the weight of all that knowledge above her head. Then she closed her eyes and sank down into herself. If the attack had the side effect of making it possible for her to go into soul-flight without the tedious chanting and meditation then she’d take advantage of it.

And if she didn’t lift off, no problem. There had to be an alternative Smoke hadn’t considered yet.

There had to be.

Chapter Four

She slowed her breathing, concentrating on the sensation of air passing down her throat, the stretch and resistance of her diaphragm. Her muscles obeyed her command to relax, yielding to the support of the floor and the earth beneath.

Her fingers twitched and unclenched and her eyelids fluttered. The chime echoed in her mind, the vibrations reaching to soothe her trembling nerves. She drew in air on one chime and released it on the next and …

Opened her eyes.

The starlit night sky was above her. Directly above her. Not separated from her by such inconsequential things as roofs and air and atmosphere, but near enough to touch. Warm enough to bathe in. Sweet enough to drink.

The universe shimmered before her, above her, below her. Not dark, never dark, but lit from some distant place with an opalescent glow. She smiled at the vision. It was awesome in the same manner as the Grand Canyon. Huge, unknowable, eternal, and … she shivered as she rose from her body.

Wow. Wow. Wow. She was out. Free.

She was out on the Ethereal. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy! It … was amazing, beautiful. When she concentrated she could sense the worlds dancing their paths around distant suns. It was … finally she understood the word “awe.” If she experienced nothing else in this life she would end it filled with joy having reached the Ethereal Planes.

It was … she held out her naked ephemeral hands, then opened her mouth to try and scream. She was … she was dying.

There was something here with her. Something within her. She ran the memory of her hands over her soul. There was a wound. A hemorrhage. Her life was draining away.

A hunger, a clawing hunger was consuming her. Not her hunger. There was something out here with her.

She fought to return to her body against a pull stronger, no, strong but not as strong as her. A hunger for her. For the heat of her living body, for the spirit that floated free. For her. All of her.

She flailed about in the emptiness. There was nothing to hold onto. Nothing to push against. There should be something to hold onto. A security, a starting place. She … had forgotten something vitally important.

She spun in the void and found herself hovering over the inert form of her own body. Stretched out within a circle of protection with Smoke at her feet patiently striking a meditation chime. The same body that had carried her through an intentionally mundane, uneventful life; and with hope, would continue to do so for many years to come. Smoke continued striking the bell, but there was only silence in the void. Rust, Manny, and Lightning sat watching, their faces rigid with worry.

No, with fear.

Lightning leaned forward as if about to rise and step toward her, but Manny and Rust held him back.

She tried to call to them, demand, beg for help. She was lost, losing herself. They had to help her back to her body. They had to do something before the whatever-it-was drained her completely away.

She reached out and her incorporeal hand passed through her own body and she knew.

Fool.

She thrust both hands into her body and pulled. She couldn’t return, it wasn’t time to return to her body but she … there! Her body drew a shuddering breath. Yes, with that breath came the urge to rejoin her body and the awareness that when her journey was done her body would be there waiting for her. The sensation of hunger faded a little as the protections of the circle settled about her. Fool that she was she’d forgotten to remind her body to breathe while her soul was away.

And suddenly she could hear the chimes. Yes, they had been sounding all along, but she hadn’t understood. Now she remembered. She allowed her resting body to connect to the chimes so that her heart would beat and her lungs breathe until she returned again. Now she was aware of a heavy silver cord joining her spirit form to her inert body at her umbilicus. A starting place. A home. The link that bound her to life, to the real world. She was not loose, helpless in the void. She was just visiting. She sighed; that is, her discorporate body wanted to sigh with relief and below her, in the circle, her body filled its lungs and let out the air slowly.

Good. Now she was anchored and no random thing could attach … Amber glanced down her astral body. Too late for that.

Attached to her life cord was a sticky black strand of … something odd. She tugged at it and it stretched and bent like overheated bubblegum, then straightened with a twang that she could hear above the music of the void.

She studied the strand as she hovered in the twilight world. It was this thing that had tried to consume her. It still was trying. She could feel little tugs as pieces of her life’s strength were pulled out of her to go … away. But it wasn’t out of control anymore. Now that she was attached to the real world she had a source for renewal. It wouldn’t last forever, but she had time now. Time to investigate.

She tried to slide her fingers under the sticky black thread where it bonded to her life cord, but the linkage was strong.

This was going to be difficult to shift. Also difficult to hide. If she was lucky enough to find the Elementals would they talk to her while she carried this … this … this evidence that she’d fucked up?

No way to know unless she tried.

She turned away from her body and looked out across … everything. The Ethereal Planes stretched out in both directions, glowing, glorious – and without convenient signposts.

Hmm.

That was something that hadn’t been covered in her training. How did she go about finding eternal entities with a history of desiring privacy in an endless universe?

Especially when she hadn’t made the trip before.

What she could see, reaching across the Ethereal Planes, throbbing, pulsing as it pulled out a little of her spirit’s strength with each beat of her heart was the damned black, sticky spider’s web. The thing was huge. How could it exist on the Ethereal and not be seen by the witches who engaged in soul-flight? Surely someone would have posted a warning, a question on the website. She should have seen a comment. Something.

Her aunt had seen something. Known something. That was why she’d bought the book. That was why she was missing.

And if this was what had taken, hurt, captured her aunt and uncle – as powerful as they were – it was no surprise that it had torn straight through her pitiable protections as if they weren’t even there.

It was strong. Unbelievably strong and powerful. And huge. She could see it clearly now, the source of the hunger she’d sensed, black and ugly outlined against the glowing backdrop of the Ethereal Planes.

And she was supposed to fight this thing. Defeat this huge hunger!

Amber curled around her violated spirit, hugging herself tight.

Don’t panic! Don’t panic!

After a moment Amber uncurled. The expected terror was not tearing her mind apart. This was bad; in fact, she was certain of it. She should be on the ground trembling in fright but she wasn’t. Amber floated down to rest beside her body. Perhaps she needed adrenal glands to feel fright. Maybe this odd sensation of separation, distance, was what the other witches had written as the advantage of thinking about problems when on the Ethereal Planes. Because when she wasn’t in her body her chemical driven feelings didn’t get in the way.

So she’d save her energy for now and have the panic attack when she was back inside.

A plan.

Ta da!

She didn’t need to travel to change her point of view. She wished she could see the extent of the web and suddenly she did. It was huge, stretching away into the distance with the filament that was bound to her first going off into so many different directions that she didn’t know what to do first. Seek the Elementals – likely hiding off at the other end of the universe or try to find the center of the web.

Well, maybe not the center. That was likely where the monster lived. The other edges – that might give her some information.

She wasn’t aware of moving away from Five Corners and her body; suddenly, she was in flight traveling through the void, traveling alongside one of the fibers of the web. She didn’t know how far she had traveled before she found him.

Karl Benn.

For a moment she considered being surprised then she shrugged. She’d already suspected that he was involved and … boo … there he was.

She “fell” through the Ethereal and entered a small, square house. One of a long line of similar houses. She could see Karl seated in the middle of a group of people, all of them tired and … grieving.

The weight of their combined pain pulled at her. The house throbbed with it. Karl was seated not too far from the woman who had to be the mother of the departed. No one else wept like that.

Amber permitted herself to come closer to Karl. He didn’t show as evil from the point of view of the Ethereal, neither was he the terminus of the web nor the center. He was bound to her, and a great many other people, by thin filaments that were drinking his personal energy as well as hers.

If he was the cause of all this he’d fucked up just as badly as she had. Maybe this was a spell that had gotten out of his control. Then again, this could be an old spell. The Elementals themselves knew that books were dangerous. He might have read an old book, a secondhand book that just happened to be in his store, not realizing the words were more than ink on a page. It had happened before. Just look at what happened on the
Marie Celeste
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