Witch's Bell Book One (18 page)

She smiled, showing her
teeth.
“I'm
a trained witch, Mister. I think I know a little bit more about
magic than you do.”

The man snarled at her, yellow,
irregular teeth jutting out between his thin lips.
“A witch? A child
of Hecate? A child of the moon? You are nothing—”

Ebony responded by firing off a
round right into the ground by his feet.
“I got through your protection spell,
son, and now I'm going to cut through your lies too. Let the girl
go, and we'll have a talk about magic and cemetery
etiquette.”

The man slowly shifted his gaze
from Ebony, turning and gazing down at the woman by the wall. He
simply smiled.
“What interests me,” his eyes suddenly widened until they
were totally rimmed with white, “is how you got in
here.”

“
Your spell was pathetic,” Ebony
said, voice quick. “It was easy, too easy to break the—”

Ebony suddenly frowned as the
man simply reeled back with anger. It was too easy to get through,
she completed the sentence in her mind. Way to easy.
“You've done it,
haven't you?” she said, voice a hiss. “You've gone and got the
attention of something horrible.”

The man, whether he understood
or not, simply laughed.
“I will complete my rite; a new future will be
generated.”

“
You don't get it; you have to
stop this now. Something is eating at your magic, you total fool,
can't you feel it? Breaking through both of your protection spells
was easier than blowing my nose. Something has got hold of your
magic, and it's weakening it as we speak.”

But the man ignored her warning
and simply laughed.
“I am here to rewrite the universe,” he announced grandly.
“To solidify in the minds of all a great a new future—”

“
Stop it,” Ebony pleaded, “let
the woman go, and just get out of here! While you can!”

The man grabbed at his book,
closing it to reveal an emblem emblazoned on the back. It looked
like a family seal of some description. It had two lions and a
single sword.
“My employers will have the future they seek,” he said
through pressed-teeth. “And my power will finally be realized. For
I am the greatest of all wizards,” he said grandly.

“
You aren't a wizard,” she
snapped back, “you're an idiot. Now I don't know where you learned
magic, and right now, it doesn't matter. You have to listen to me;
don't go through with this rite. There are things waiting
to—”

“
I am something greater than a
wizard, you are right. But you are also wrong, for I will finish
this spell. And you, witch, will finally witness true
magic!”

Ebony, panic rising, tried to
think of what to do. She couldn't solve this situation by magic, it
was way past that. If she added any more magic to this situation,
she'd only fan the flames of the fire. Whatever forces the man had
attracted, whatever creatures he'd brought to him through his
purposeless use of magic
– Ebony could feel them pressing in. If she
cracked open a fireball now, she'd only invite their attention her
way. No, she had to end this, but she had to do it without magic.
She couldn't even rely on her gun – the bullets were imbued with
powerful runes, after all.

Ebony flicked her eyes to the woman in
the corner, then back to the man.

Could she call for backup, she
wondered? Could she turn around, run back up the stairs, and ask
for a non-magical gun, or at least a really big stick? If she'd
guessed this man would have been idiotic enough to call such
powerful creatures his way, and to have a hostage, she'd never have
swapped bullets in the first place. But now, here she was, without
a weapon, and without a hope.

The man smiled, then took a sharp
laugh. Perhaps he guessed Ebony's desperate situation, or perhaps
he was just mad. He opened his book, and then began to
chant.

“
No!” Ebony shrieked. Then she
did the only thing she could think of, and ran for him.

Just as the man dipped a hand down to
touch the tomb, to awaken the Death within the stillness, Ebony
lunged.

She whirled at him with the back of
her pistol, aiming for his temple.

But the man, despite his sickly
looking state, snapped to the side with incredible speed. He
brought up a sacred knife, and took a swipe Ebony's way.

She ducked back, trying to keep
herself firmly between the man and his hostage. She couldn't let
the man finish the rite, and she also couldn’t let him take out his
frustrations on the poor woman. That was a lot Ebony couldn't let
happen, and a lot to keep her on her toes.

“
Do not interfere!” he
screeched. “The spell is almost complete. All it needs is blood,”
the word rattled out of his throat like a coin down a copper
tube.

Blood would seal the spell;
give it life. The man had probably intended to open the tomb and
use the flesh of the body
– regardless of how incredibly disgusting it
sounded. But in place of that, blood would do. The blood would bind
with the spell, help it to live, help it to happen. But the man
wouldn't be foolish enough to use his own blood. He couldn't be
that dumb. Because the blood would transfer the life from one thing
into another. It would move the life force from the living, to the
spell intended to live. It would absorb the story of the giver into
the given.

The man began to slash towards Ebony,
moves vicious and quick. But Ebony was more than agile enough to
keep out of his range.

He slashed for her arm, but she
managed to duck down and roll out of his way.

But then he turned his gaze on
the woman. His yellow hands tightened around the blade and his eyes
narrowed to slits.
“Time to finish this,” he hissed.

Ebony, still on the ground, kicked out
at his legs. Her foot connected with the back of one of his knees,
and brought him down to the ground with a thud.

He screamed at her, twisting her way,
and trying to grab at her arms.

Ebony began to scream.
“Backup! Help! I
need backup down here!” She had no hope that her voice would reach
her friends. There was too much magic around for sound to travel in
a straight line. So she kept fighting. She angled a kick right at
the man's arms, and finally managed to connect with the book. It
spiraled out of his grip, and off into the darkness of the
crypt.

The man let out an aching
scream.

So did the woman. She screamed, right
in Ebony's ear, and right at the wrong time. It momentarily shocked
Ebony, and the man lunged forward.

His sacred-blade sliced across the top
of her arm, sending blood splattering out in an arc.

Ebony screamed, arm filling with pain.
But she didn't give up. She grabbed at the man's elbow with her
good hand, and dug into the flesh. She twisted the arm forwards and
away from her. Then she brought up her knee, right into the soft
flesh under his chin.

Her knee connected with a satisfying
thud. The man's jaw made a clicking sound, and he fell down,
unconscious.

For just a second, Ebony lay there,
motionless. Then the cavalry came in.

She turned to see Ben, torch
beaming in his hand.
“Ebony,” he said with a choked breath, “what's
going on?!”

Ebony took several shaky
breaths.
“It's okay,” she said. “The guy's down.” She managed to get
to her feet.

In the torchlight, Ebony could finally
make out Detective Nate's distinctive form. There was a strange
kick of emotion in her stomach, which she quickly dismissed as
leftover adrenaline. But she couldn't stop her eyes from locking
onto him.

“
Are you okay?” he said quickly,
carefully, kindly. His voice was strong and, for once, Ebony was
overjoyed to hear that unmistakable hint of control.

She put a hand up to her profusely
bleeding arm, and was about to mutter back a reply, when the
Detective walked straight past her. He rushed over to the woman by
the wall, kneeling down before her with an expression that would
set any woman at ease.

Ebony had barely a moment to
register the deep disappointment that flickered through her
chest
–
before it ignited with rage. “Why you complete—” she began. But
before she could get the words out, a circle opened out beneath
her. Clear white symbols formed along its edges, its girth growing
and growing with more power.

“
Oh no,” Ebony choked out the
words, just as a hand descended out of the circle and latched onto
her ankle.

This time Nate did look over to her,
his face filled with confusion.

Then the hand began to pull. With a
tremendous force that Ebony simply couldn't resist, the hand pulled
her through the very floor of the crypt.

“
Ebony?!” Nate shouted, trying
to make his way over to the circle.

But it was too late. The hand had her.
And in a moment, Ebony Bell disappeared completely leaving the
crypt full of police, candle light, and a blood-spattered book no
one would notice.

Chapter 8

Ebony didn't scream; she didn't
have to. She knew where she was going, and just let the fear ride
through her like a wave on its way to the shore. She dropped
through the circle, as if it were a glowing tunnel through the
center of the earth
... quite possibly because that was exactly what it
was.

Witches used several ways to
transport themselves
– not just cars, trains, feet, and all those other
mundane forms of locomotion. Witches had several more tricks up
their sleeves. While site-to-site transport was something you were
more likely to see in a sci-fi as it took simply too much magic to
perform, there were still other ways to get someone from A to B
without having to fork out a couple of bucks for a bus
ticket.

And the circle of light Ebony
was now breathlessly hurtling through was just such a way. The way
it worked was a witch would create a magical symbol at the intended
destination, careful to write down all the right runes along its
circumference, in case the transporter would accidentally turn into
an incinerator. Then, at the location of whoever you were trying to
transport, you would draw another magical circle. While an ordinary
witch couldn't do it, if enough powerful witches were gathered in
one spot, they could use the combined magical force of their minds
to write such a circle anywhere, without being physically present.
The two magical circles would then connect, temporarily emptying
out the space in between, whether it be earth, building, sky, or
forest
– and
creating a perfectly straight, perfectly neat, tube. The witch, or
whoever else was the intended target for the transport, would then
hurtle along the magical tube, at fantastical speeds, until she
reached her destination.

Witches, surprisingly, very rarely
used this type of locomotion because, not surprisingly, it tended
to mess up their hair.

As Ebony spun further down through the
earth, the strata of different colored dirt flipping past her like
lines on a motorway, she tried not to scream.

Oh no, oh no, oh no, she thought
instead, what are they going to do to me?

In a snap, she finally arrived
at her destination. Ebony fell out of the top of some kind of
underground cavern, and headed straight for the ground, with
literally break-neck speed. But instead of crashing into the
rock-hard ground, a magical circle on the floor sent out a wave of
energy to slow her motion. It wasn't like falling onto a pillow, or
candy floss, or any other appreciably soft surface. It was more
like having the acceleration literally sucked out of you. It was as
if the magic was hard at work, flowing through Ebony, convincing
every one of her constituent particles that they weren't in motion
at all
–
they were as still and safe as an undisturbed tree.

And it worked, of course it worked, it
was magic, after all. In another second, Ebony drifted down towards
the ground, finally touching it with the softest landing she could
imagine.

But not dying through terminal
velocity was the least of Ebony's problems right now. As soon as
she landed, she righted herself, completely ignoring the blood
still profusely dripping from her arm, and stood to attention like
a trained soldier.

Even though her body still shook with
the surprise of being sucked through the earth, and the residual
adrenaline of her fight with the gaunt man, Ebony tried to remain
as still, and apparently calm, as she could.

The cavern was dark, and as the light
from the landing circle ebbed away, it became only darker. But that
didn't stop Ebony from seeing. A witch learns very early on in her
career that there are certain things that can be seen in the dark,
and be seen very clearly. Humans mistakenly believed that you
needed light for the eyes to function, and thus see, but they
forgot some of their very own sayings. Because wasn't it true that
you could also see with your mind's eye? And couldn't you see into
the future? Couldn't you also see that things weren't going to end
well?