Omens Bite, page 29
She blinked through the bright spots staining her vision. Amphitrite was gone.
Hunter pushed away from the tree and peered at Sugar Creek. The water had quieted back into a lazy, steady trickle.
“I know you’re not gone. Not for good.” She whirled around to face the pentagram. “Getting rid of you won’t be that easy.”
Hunter swallowed back the rush of certainty that had come from accessing a piece of her power that had gone undiscovered and wiped her hands before she plucked her spellbook from the base of the tree. It nuzzled her palms, delighted to be free of the worms and the rot that coated the earth beneath the gatekeeper of the Japanese Underworld.
Hunter stepped over the circle of shimmering blood and around the sunken point of the pentagram and into the middle of the five-pointed star. Withered leaves drifted down from the branches like ash as she settled back into the spell and refocused her intention.
Close the gate. Close the gate. Close the gate.
She faced the ancient cherry tree and held her spellbook out in front of her. “Realms,” she read the title aloud. “Locked, secured, shielded.” She buried her nerves in the pit of her stomach and reread the last line of directions. “Read the spell, let your declaration be known, and revel in your power.”
Close the gate. Close the gate. Close the gate.
“This will work.” Her fingers searched for the pendant she used to wear around her neck.
She inhaled a deep, cleansing breath and did her best to pronounce the Greek spell with a magical power that spawned unfaltering confidence. “Ξεκλειδώστε, εγκαταλείψτε, καταστρέψτε.” Her tone deepened and an otherworldly vibration tickled the back of her throat. “Αυτό που αποφασίζει η μάγισσα, το αντίθετο θα είναι.”
The waters of Sugar Creek burbled and splashed, but Hunter remained focused.
Close the gate. Close the gate. Close the gate.
Another inhale. “χάος ελευθερωμένο από σένα.”
The spellbook heated and the edges of the page flapped against Hunter’s palm.
“Heal, strengthen, close!
Lock, secure, shield.
What I decree, so mote it be!”
The ring of blood burbled and hissed around her and white smoke drifted up from the pentagram.
Close the gate. Close the gate. Close the gate.
“Ακούστε την εντολή της και κάντε το”
Flames shot up from the burbling scarlet as Hunter shouted the last line of the spell. She clutched the open spellbook against her chest and shielded her eyes from the roaring flames. She squinted through the fire and tried to get a look at the tree. Sweat popped against her forehead and rivulets cascaded down her back as she struggled to capture a view of the guardian of the gate. But the flames were too high, too thick, too ferocious.
The spellbook heated against her chest and red smoke drifted from the pages. She dropped the book and blew on her tender palms. The red smoke curled around the pentagram and settled in the hollow nooks of the carved star. Hunter blinked back the sweat burning her eyes and wiped her brow as the flames settled and the tree came back into view. Black feathers encircled the trunk. Hundreds of ravens soared, up, up, up through the branches, croaking and cawing as they flew around the tree.
“Close the gate. Close the gate. Close the gate,” she chanted to the wind that twisted around her and swept the charred and acrid air from the pentagram.
The ravens seemed to stop midflight, gliding on an unfelt rush of air. Whispers tickled Hunter’s ears as the birds sailed into the sky as one and dove down toward her. Her gaze shot to the base of the tree and the blue velvet pouch that held her tarot. She jolted forward and the unkindness of ravens flew after her. Birds swirled around her and choked out the sun. Hunter opened her mouth to speak, but only a pained wheeze escaped. She dropped to her knees as screeches and cackles tore at her ears and feathers scraped against her bare arms and legs.
This evil was wild and dark—the stuff of stories. But Hunter was stronger than any character in any storybook. Hunter Goode was a witch. A witch whose ancestors lived in her blood, and the earth beneath her feet, and the cosmos above. Hunter closed her eyes and reached up. She was a giant inhaling stardust, cradling Mother Moon, and comforted by the black that stretched on for eternity. This was her power—not wrath, not blood, not a goddess—but the cold, unending dark of forever and the burning fires in between.
Hunter’s eyelids snapped open. She rose to her feet and stared up through the whirling black feathers. She could see everything.
She spread her arms wide and called on the power of the stars that blazed overhead like ignited cherry bombs. “Close the gate! Close the gate! Close the gate!”
She challenged the spell, the unkindness, the very air around her to defy her wishes.
“What I decree, so mote it be!” Lines of power shot from her fingers like lightning. They clawed through the ravens with the force of cannon fire. Feathers exploded in the wake of her power and rained against the earth as black ash.
Hunter’s chest throbbed and her skin ached. She collapsed onto the scorched earth and stared up at the specks of otherworldly ash, the canopy of branches, and the last of the leaves that still clung to life. She’d done it. She’d defeated whatever evil had broken the gate in the first place. She, Hunter Goode, Cosmic Witch, had won.
Tears pressed against her eyes and swirled her vision. It wasn’t the grand surge of rightness she’d hoped for. This success was hollow and barren and a spotlight on her loneliness.
Hunter’s back prickled with energy and the leaves overhead seemed to … sparkle? She pressed her hands against the thrumming earth and squinted up at the tree. The leaves were green. Really green. Lime green, frog green, sour candy green. Living, thriving green. She sat up and brushed away the lazy tingling that crawled on the back of her arms like ants as she continued to stare at the tree and its Technicolor foliage. Power spiked through her fingers and she stared down at her hands. Thin strips of green light floated up from her palms like dental floss. She jumped up and whirled around. Green light sprouted from the back of her body. It followed her as she spun and leapt and flapped her arms, creating emerald light trails in her wake. This was it! Proof that her spell had worked! Proof that she had vanquished the evil and—
Pain sawed through Hunter’s head and blared static against her ears.
“Hunter Jayne Goode!”
Hunter cupped her hands over her ears and shook her head as her name echoed through the ache.
“I’m stuck…”
There was a familiarity about the voice that Hunter couldn’t quite reach through the fire that scalded the backs of her eyes.
“Hunter Jayne Goode! I’m stuck!”
Green continued to shoot from her skin. The green of the ley lines. The green of her sister.
“Mercy?” Hunter breathed through clenched teeth.
“I’m stuck in Egyptian Hell and I’m going to die unless you and Xena help me!”
The pain vanished and stole with it the echo of her sister’s voice and the light that coated her skin and the cherry tree.
“Mercy?!” Hunter’s gaze swept over the burnt earth and the tree, Sugar Creek and the road Hunter had taken to get there. “Mercy!” she shouted again as her phone chimed. Hunter ran to her purse at the base of the tree. Her hands shook as she dug for her phone.
“Xena!” Hunter was breathless as she answered. “It was Mag. I heard her! I heard her in my head. She used the ley lines, Xena. She’s trapped.”
“I know, kitten.” Xena’s voice was rushed and frantic. “I heard it, too. I felt it. She’s terrified, Hunter. She will die if we don’t find her.”
“We won’t let that happen. Meet me at the palm.” Hunter pinched the phone between her ear and shoulder as she stuffed the spellbook back into her bag. “And, Xena, run.”
Hunter grabbed her tarot off the ground and paused. A thin loop of rope had fallen out of the satchel’s opening. She tugged on it. Tears sprang to her eyes and her breath stilled inside her chest. She ran her fingers over the rope cord and choked out a sob as she grazed the symbol of Tyr. The T-shaped opalescent pendant was shiny and new and swirled purple and pink beneath the energy of her fingertips. She slipped the necklace on over her head and tucked her tarot cards into her purse. Tyr had sent this to her. He was back. She was back. And she would save her sister.
Thirty-six
Amphitrite had watched as the Goode witch completed the ancient spell, and had almost intervened when the chaos it had released tried to claim her as its first victim, but the goddess had thought better of stepping in to rescue Hunter from yet another mess. Too many times Amphitrite had attempted to steer the witch down the correct path, the easy path, to no avail. Youth was, indeed, wasted on the young. Plus, the goddess had no need for a witch who could fall prey to a faceless and unorganized evil such as chaos. No, Amphitrite needed a stronger witch than that, and it seemed that Hunter Goode was on the right track.
Tentacles the shiny white of a fish belly twirled around Amphitrite’s arms and stroked the lengths of her hair. She smoothed her hands over the writhing appendages that made up her true legs before lifting the end of her thin skirt.
“Away with you,” she commanded, and eight of her ten tentacles receded under the gauzy fabric. There, they shimmered and twitched before resettling into the glamour that they wore when outside of her realm, and resumed their appearance as layers of full and undulating skirts. Her two longest tentacles settled against the silty bottom of Sugar Creek and morphed back into the slender, blue-tinged legs that suited the mortal realm and its narrow-minded views much better than her true form.
She left the cool creek waters and glided on the steady push of her camouflaged tentacles to the old and wilted guardian.
“You are ill.” She frowned and flicked shriveled leaves from her skirts as she parted the boughs and approached the strong trunk. “Such a shame.” She bent down and pressed her palm to the scorched pentagram. Blood pulsed just beneath the surface of the charred earth. It had waited for her. She brushed off her hand and stood in the middle of the pentagram. “I didn’t lie when I told the young witch that she and I were fated.” She faced the trunk and spoke to the guardian as she would an old friend. After all, it had once been powerful. Not as powerful as she, but strong enough to protect the mortals who scurried about this realm like roaches. “As you know, what comes next was written in the stars. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to.”
The branches creaked and groaned in response.
“Well, maybe I could tweak things a bit. But where’s the fun in that?” She held her arms out by her sides and shivered as energy rushed to her fingertips. “After all, mortals are only good for one thing.”
She let loose her power and water poured from each finger like a hose. It splattered against the earth and rushed to the blood that encircled the pentagram and waited just beneath the dirt. It bubbled and spurted as it fed from the blood, absorbing it until the cerulean waters turned scarlet.
Amphitrite grinned as she held her hand beneath her lips and exhaled a perfect orb of glittering blue liquid. She pressed her lips to the bubble and whispered a command before she tossed the sphere into the air. The crimson ring of water surged up from the ground and collided with the glittering orb. Beneath the tree limbs, the air exploded into burgundy rain.
A moan escaped Amphitrite’s lips as she tilted her head back and let the water drench her face. She licked her wet lips and stared down at the current of water that rushed against the base of the tree trunk. Imbued with her magic, it carved out a hole in the once great guardian. Again, the boughs creaked and groaned with the tree’s complaints.
Amphitrite pressed her finger against her cool lips. “Shh. It won’t be long now.”
The rain ceased and the last of the water snaked into the dark hole at the base of the tree.
“I’ll be seeing you,” she whispered to the limbs that trembled overhead before she narrowed her gaze to the tunnel her magic had carved in the trunk of the cherry tree. “A goddess doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
A shriek of laughter tore from her lips as Amphitrite snapped her fingers and vanished.
Thirty-seven
“Mercy, my dear, how long before your sister and your familiar arrive to take us away with them?” Meryt asked as she poured Mercy and her son fresh mugs of thick, fragrant beer.
Mercy shrugged and smiled at Khenti’s mom. “I don’t know, but Xena and Hunter are pretty impatient—and they’re really smart. I imagine they’re going through grimoires, making notes, and figuring out spells right now. It won’t be too long.”
“But long enough for me to fix Tee’s favorite meal?” Meryt smiled lovingly at her son.
Beside Mercy, Khenti had been lounging against the curved side of his mother’s luxurious cave. He sat straight up. His grin lit up the homey room. “Stuffed bread with garlic and cheese?”
“Of course, sweet boy.”
Khenti cut his gaze to Mercy. “I know you must leave—soon. We all must, but…” He looked at her beseechingly.
Mercy laughed. “Abigail, my mom, used to say that a man’s heart could be found in his stomach. Until this moment I thought she was being sarcastic.”
Meryt nodded. “Your Abigail was a wise woman.”
“She absolutely was. Well, we might as well eat.” Mercy grinned at Khenti. “And if the cavalry arrives too soon we’ll just take it to go.”
Meryt’s brow furrowed. “And that means?”
“That I shall get my favorite meal, no matter if we—”
Khenti’s words were interrupted by the terrible sound of “Wa-hu! Wa-hu! Wa-hu! Wa-hu! Wa-hu! Wa-hu!” which echoed eerily all around them, drawing ever closer.
Meryt’s slender hand pressed against her throat. “No! Hathor bound the In-teps, as well as all other demons, from finding me!”
“What’s happening?” Mercy’s stomach roiled as the cries of the In-tep demons mixed with shrieks, snarls, and roars of other creatures—all growing louder, all getting closer.
Khenti stood and took his mother into his arms. “Muta, forgive me.”
“My dear, there is nothing to forgive!”
“Yes, Mother, there is. You are protected by Hathor. Mercy and I are not.”
“Oh, shit! The demons followed us here.” Mercy’s heart pounded so loudly in her chest she thought it would explode. She glanced down at herself, sure that she would see it thumping against her skin—and she felt the blood drain from her face, leaving her pale and terrified. “Khenti.” She spoke softly, but his gaze instantly found her. Mercy pointed to her chest where Hathor’s sun disc had faded so much that only a slim crescent was still visible. “I—I think I’m going to die here.”
Epilogue
Nure-Onna was brought abruptly out of the stupor-like existence she had fallen into unnumbered eons before by a scent she thought at first was a cruel dream sent to torture her. She uncurled her thick, serpentine body and slithered to the murky stream she burrowed by—as she could never be far from water. Her crime demanded it. Her sentence required it.
The serpent woman’s forked tongue flicked between her scarlet-stained lips to taste the brackish stream. She shuddered with distaste. No, the enticing scent wasn’t coming from there. Her powerful reptilian muscles contracted as she glided along the muddy bank following the scent. Just as she was about to give up—to believe the aroma was nothing more than a fever dream—she discovered the source of it. From a hole in the bank of the fetid stream poured a luminous liquid. Nure-Onna hardly breathed as she lifted her human torso up, rested her long, white arms on either side of the weeping hole, and flicked her forked tongue out to taste.
Salt water and blood! Human blood—mortal human blood. She smacked her thin lips and rolled the liquid around in her fanged mouth like it was a fine wine she savored. The blood was not fresh, but it had been so, so long since she’d tasted of the copper succulence that it hardly mattered. She dipped her head and lapped more of it, almost drunk with ecstasy as it filled her mouth and spilled from the corners of her lips to stain the ancient kimono that was all she had left of the distant life she had once lived.
Nure-Onna’s scaled body quivered with equal parts need and excitement. From the hole, that widened even as she continued to lap from it, came another odor—that of living things, greenery, fertile earth, clear skies, and mortals filled with fresh, delicious blood. The perfume of life beckoned as the bloody conduit before her continued to expand. Even in Jigoku, the Hell she had been sentenced to so many centuries before she had lost count, earth eventually surrendered to water.
Nure-Onna smoothed back her perpetually wet, long, dark hair. Before one of Emma-Ō’s minions could stop her, she dived into the tunnel and wriggled against the delicious red tide up and up and up, until her head broke the surface. Using her human arms and hands, she pulled herself from the hole and was astounded to find herself in a world where the sky was clear and as heart-achingly blue as Lake Mashū in the summer. Behind her was a weeping cherry tree that could have grown in her family’s garden, though its scent was odd and its leaves withered—but Nure-Onna had no time for trees and skies. Water drew her as surely as did blood. Her forked tongue flicked out, tasting the breeze, which was ripe with a freshwater creek. Moving in an undulating motion, she followed the breeze to the creek. She sighed in pleasure and slithered into the water, submerging herself completely to wash away the foul scent of Jigoku. Underwater, Nure-Onna allowed the creek to guide her. It flowed swiftly, musically, over rocks and sand until it emptied into a lovely lake, framed by greenery. Nure-Onna swam along the shore while she delighted in the freedom she had somehow, miraculously found.
Finally, she surfaced, flung back her long hair, and breathed deeply of the world.
“Living humans!” The perfume of mortals drifted to her on the lazy breeze. Her nose quivered and her forked tongue flicked in and out, in and out, tasting the air.
