Witch's Bell Book One Read online

  Chapter 7

  Ebony, sure that everyone was behind her, ran toward the crypt. Her wet hair trailed behind her, managing to sprawl out like a half-hearted cape, even though the rain drove down in a vertical stream so strong it felt as if she was standing underneath a waterfall.

  She extended her hand toward the locked crypt door. Amassing magic in her mind, she spread her fingers toward the chipped, white-painted iron gate.

  A protection spell lay interwoven between the metal bars, unseen, but crackling with zipping invisible charges of magic.

  As she snapped her outspread fingers toward it, the spell broke with an echoing crack like a whip by her ear.

  This was it.

  And she had to be careful.

  Not only of the crazed man at the foot of the crypt steps – but of all this purposeless magic.

  Allow herself to be drawn in by it, and it could take her over.

  So as the protection spell broke under Ebony’s effort, her mind went to the journal she kept by her bed. It was old and leather bound, its only decoration a tattered red ribbon that marked the current page.

  She wrote in that journal every single night. She didn’t jot down the events of the day for the purpose of memory or nostalgia. She wrote down the contents of tomorrow, the next day and the next. She didn’t try to foresee them, she simply wrote her wishes. She would have a good day, she might write on one page. On another, she would note how much she’d learn. Toward the back of the book, she might write about the wonderful news she would receive. And so on. But the trick, the absolute trick, was she did not write in order. She would turn to some random page and write a single wish on it. It was a way of writing her future while still keeping it a surprise. Different wishes, different wants may indeed come to her as she’d written they would – but in the random, capricious order she’d decided. And she never kept track of old pages – once written, they remained unseen.

  She had a very vivid memory of the moment her mother had given Ebony her Journal of Life. Avery Bell had sat on the edge of Ebony’s bed, the light of a full moon filtering in through the half-open curtains. While journaling wasn’t a necessary witchy activity, it was a Bell family tradition, one Ebony’s mother had been sure to pass onto her daughter at just the right time.

  Her mother handed her the journal, that old knowing smile on her lips. “Here you go, little witch, here’s a present for my daughter.”

  Ebony had been so excited, she’d snatched up the book and instantly leafed through the blank pages.

  “This, my child,” her mother tapped her fingers against the spine of the book, “Is possibly the best gift you’ll ever give yourself. But you have to promise me that you’ll be careful what you wish for and especially when you wish for it. There are things, little witch, that everyone wants – love, wealth, a meaningful life. But as a witch, you have to be very careful when and how you form these desires, and especially when and where you write them down. I don’t doubt that someday you’ll form the thought of the man of your dreams, and with the carefully practiced words of a witch, you’ll be able to write exactly what you want on the pages of your journal. But right now, little Ebony, you must wait. I’m giving you this journal now, because it is tradition. But I want you to promise me that you won’t start writing in it yet – not until you’re old enough to know what you really want. The wishes and dreams of a child aren’t the same as an adult, trust me on that.”

  Her mother left the room with one final warning, “Promise me, darling – promise me you’ll be careful what you wish for.”

  Ebony had promised her mother, only to drag the journal out from under her pillow that very night and steal down to her father’s office to borrow one of his pens. She’d snuck out onto the porch, and under the full light of the moon scribbled down wishes on random pages.

  As an adult, she could no longer remember what she’d written, but the moment haunted her to this day. Oh why, oh why hadn’t she been able to listen to her mother? Who knows what ridiculous things the young Ebony had written? She was a child, for crying out loud. She’d probably written about saving the world, riding dragons, and eating more cake than was humanly possible.

  But what really irked Ebony, was she was half-sure she’d written something terribly romantic in there. She’d formed some silly idea of her perfect match and had written it on some random page of her Journal of Life. Who knows what ridiculous man she’d written of, and who knows when she’d written it for!

  So her life had a plan, she assured herself – even if a random man would be thrown in there somewhere. And with that plan firmly in her mind, she could not be pulled in by the random, purposeless magic that swirled around her in great invisible blasts.

  She flung the door open, her hand now hot where it had once held the handle. Her other hand was clasped around her gun, which she’d recovered from the wet grass after her altercation with the gargoyle.

  The sound of a soft, stuttering moan met her ears. It brought her back to the here and now, pushing her off the path of memories and onto the road of magical policing. She had strengthened her memories, wishes, desires, and general life-purpose. And she hoped it would be enough to keep her from being magically rewritten.

  As Ebony descended into the bowels of the crypt, she wondered how deep this thing was. Either this crypt was a giant basement, housing a whole lineage of some wealthy Valian family, or time and space were playing a trick on her. That was one of the things about magic. When a lot of magic built up in a place, it tended to stretch itself between the two pillars of time and space, until reality became thin, hazy, and different.

  The chanting was growing louder, and regardless of how long these steps were, or weren’t, Ebony had a job to do.

  She rounded a corner, the body of the crypt opening out before her. It was a large room, but not as epic as she’d envisioned. There were six or seven tombs raised on plinths, all lined up in a row. Right at the end of the room, around the final tomb, sat a circle of flickering candles. The flames danced violently, as if a vicious wind roared about the room. Yet there was hardly a breeze. The air of the crypt sat as still and stagnant as air trapped in a bottle and buried deep underneath the ground. The flames would be reacting to a different force – the welling, spiraling, breaking magic seeping up from the ground itself. It was hot, raw, and strangely ticklish – leaving Ebony with the feeling she was standing on a hot grill.

  A man stood before the tomb, intoning deep, mournful words. His head lolled this way and that, like a drugged snake. His voice occasionally peaked with a sudden, manic pitch, before drawing back to its steady drone. Before him, he had a book.

  Ebony stared, trying to take in the whole scene before deciding how to act.

  The book would contain the spell or the story the man would be trying to create. Whatever he wanted would be written on its pages. When Death was summoned and its magic released, that spell would be enlivened. She hadn’t been lying when she told Nate that Death was the force that kept things alive. Death kept things going by ensuring nothing truly stopped.

  By writing down the present as he wanted it to be, ripped from the bounds of the past, the man would be hoping the power of Death would breathe life into the spell.

  With a sudden spike, the light of the candles glowed as if ignited by a puff of gas. They illuminated the edges of the crypt, showing Ebony exactly what she didn’t want to see.

  There was a woman curled up against the far wall, her head tucked into the crooks of her arms. It seemed like she was trying to make herself as small a target as possible, or as if she was receding from the scene like a flower closing before the night.

  Perhaps she sensed Ebony, or perhaps the flash of light awoke her, because the woman looked up and made eye contact. Even from a distance, Ebony could see the woman’s eyes alight, widen at the sight of someone unexpected in this terrible crypt. Her lips dropped open, a tiny gasp managing to escape.

  The man stopped abruptly, furled on his foot a
nd faced Ebony.

  Her stomach tightened.

  This maniac had gone and done precisely what Ebony had assured Nate wouldn’t happen – he’d kidnapped a near-and-dear from the ghost’s life, in order to keep it in check. Whoever this woman was, she would be so important to the recently deceased that its ghost wouldn’t dare risk attacking the crypt. It was a classic hostage situation. Well, a classic magical hostage situation.

  The man had an ashen face with sallow skin that seemed to drip from his bones like rubber melting in the sun. His eyes were large – too large – and had the blue-gray tint of pale storm clouds. He was young, maybe late thirties or early forties. Whatever life he’d led, whatever horrors he’d subjected his body to, they’d aged him decades. He had short, cropped, black hair, and wore a black robe to match it, the hems embroidered with silver symbols. He wore a medallion hung low on a gold chain that rested against his solar plexus. Ebony wasn’t close enough to see what the medallion was made off, or what symbols he’d managed to scratch over it, but whatever it was, it would be there for one purpose.

  “What are you doing?” Ebony let the word slip from her mouth. “You idiot,” she said, the word as vicious and sudden as a blow from a whip. The medallion would be acting as a beacon – a gathering point for magical forces to be channeled through the man and into the rite he was performing. But just like any beacon, the thing would be broadcasting on all signals – attracting to it, not just the magic of the void, but the magic of any creature nearby. In witch terms, it was the equivalent of painting a target on your head, walking up to a hardened criminal, handing him a gun, and insulting his wife. There was only one way this could end.

  The man’s expression soured. Maybe he wasn’t expecting a woman to walk in wearing a sodden white dress and a police vest, and maybe he wasn’t expecting she’d have just enough reverence for his magical rite to call him an idiot – but the man’s expression only grew into a deeper, stranger mix of anger, frustration, and hatred.

  “Who,” he said the word with a sharp exhalation of air, “Are you?”

  “You don’t get to know that.” Ebony leveled the gun. “All you have to know is, I’m here to stop you.”

  The man didn’t snap back and laugh, like the maniacs always did in the movies. He watched Ebony, his eyes fixed on her with such concentration it appeared as if he’d never look at another thing ever again. “You can’t do that,” he eventually offered. “This is a magical rite. You cannot disturb the forces I have summoned.”

  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 staring down at the woman by the wall. He 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 th—”

  Ebony frowned as the man reeled back with anger. It was too easy to break through – she completed the sentence in her mind. Way too easy. “You’ve done it, haven’t you?” she said, her 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 laughed once more. “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 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.”

  “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 with magic, it was way past that. If she added any more magic to this disaster, 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 – she 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.

  Could she call for backup? 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 gave a sharp laugh. Perhaps he guessed Ebony’s desperate situation, or perhaps he was just mad.

  He opened his book and began to chant.

  “No!” Ebony shrieked.

  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 slashed at Ebony.

  She ducked back, trying to keep herself between the man and his hostage. She couldn’t let him finish the rite, and she couldn’t let him take out his frustrations on the poor woman.

  “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 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. It would absorb the story of the giver into the given.

  The man began to slash at Ebony, his moves vicious and quick. She 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.

  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 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 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 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 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 bursting with pain.

  She grabbed the man’s elbow with her good hand and dug into the flesh. She twisted the arm forward and away from her. 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.

  ….

  Ebony lay there, motionless.

  Then the cavalry came in.

  She turned to see Ben, torch in hand, its beam lancing around the cold stone room. “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, she could make out Nate’s distinctive form. There was a strange kick of emotion in her stomach, which she quickly dismissed as leftover adrenaline. 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, she 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 he 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 flickering through her chest before it ignited with rage. “Why you complete—” she began. Before she could get the words out, a circle opened beneath her. Clear white symbols formed along its edges, its girth growing and growing with more power.

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

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

  The hand began to pull. With a tremendous force Ebony couldn’t fight, the hand pulled her through the floor of the crypt.

  “Ebony?!” Nate screamed, lurching toward the circle.

  It was too late. The hand had her.

  Ebony Bell disappeared completely, leaving the crypt full of police, candle-light, and a blood-spattered book no one would notice.