But wait! Even as I stare out at the aftermath of the battle, a fleet of pickup trucks roll in. This time I duck, peeking only a single eye over the edge of the window frame to watch as the Necros move through the battlefield, collecting any unclaimed witch and warl bodies, like scavengers. They load the dead into a pickup truck, to be used for their magical purposes later.
They’re the same Necros that forced me to hide in this very restaurant. The corpses loaded up, they drive away, heading for the rest of town.
“Yes,” I whisper, carefully replacing the curtain and moving back into the room. I’m back on the Necros’ trail, the trail that could lead me to their headquarters, where I can finally make the Reaper pay for what they’ve done.
Laney, watching me with narrow eyes, opens her mouth to speak, but I put a finger to my lips, gesturing toward the window. “Necros,” I whisper.
“You mean the ones that collect the dead?” she says, thankfully keeping her voice low.
I nod. “You’ve seen them?”
“They come through now and again. Collect any bodies. Move on. They never really do any fighting though.”
I nod again. Makes sense.
“Who was that white witch and why didn’t you try to hide from her?” Laney asks. “And why didn’t she tell the rest of her gang that you were up here?” she adds.
“I don’t know,” I say, which is the honest answer to all three of her questions.
It’s a good thing the Necromancers showed up, as otherwise I might’ve gone crazy, my thoughts climbing and tumbling over each other like a bunch of restless children, every last question centered on one person: the red/white witch. Trying to answer the very same three questions that Laney just asked, particularly her last one, about why she didn’t rat me out. That’s not normal, for a witch to protect a human. In all likelihood, she saved my life. Which is even weirder considering she tried to kill me not that long ago.
Another important question: Which gang does she belong to? I thought she was a Volt because of the blue lightning she shot at me during our first meeting. But now I’m not so sure considering the way she used a wand to conjure a warrior to stop the wizard and witch from fighting each other. And then she walked away after seeing me, as if she really had no interest in the Conjurers and Brewers after all.
And why on God’s green witch-warring earth would I have the urge to speak to her? My only desire should’ve been to remove her head from her neck with my magged-up sword.
Weird and confusing.
I shake my head, almost expecting a ball of string and a few cobwebs to fall from my ear. I have to focus. I’ll probably never see her again. No, I hope I never see her again. Don’t I?
Hex barks. Crap. Will the Necros hear him, or have they moved far enough away?
I hold my breath, waiting for them to return, but they don’t. They’ve moved on, which means we need to hurry if we’re going to catch them.
Hex barks again. “Shh,” I say, turning to reprimand him, but realizing that he’s no longer beside me. Laney and I look at each other, simultaneously turning to stare back into the fevered darkness of the lantern-lit room.
Trish is at the top of the staircase, Hex beside her. She’s pointing at something, and whatever it is, Hex doesn’t like it, his low growl edging toward an angry snarl.
Laney grabs her shotgun as I lift my sword, and together we rush over to the entrance. Something pale flashes in the inky gloom below us. The click of bone-hard feet tap against wooden floorboards. Soulless, empty eye sockets peer up at us.
Chapter Sixteen
More skeletons crowd behind the first one.
The restaurant patrons are no longer content to eat their eternal last meals of spaghetti and meatballs and eggplant parmesan. Either by design or because they were inadvertently captured by a Necro reanimation spell as the corpse-collectors were passing by, our party-going friends have decided to drop in for a visit.
“Trish, get back,” Laney says, pushing her sister behind her.
Hex barks at the bone-people, who stare back eerily with unseeing eyes.
“Stay back,” I say to Laney, trying to usher her behind me much the same way that she did to her sister.
“As if,” she says, knocking my arm aside and aiming her shotgun down the staircase. “Hey boners!” she shouts, and I’m mildly impressed by her ability to seemingly draw witty nicknames from the air around her. “Suck on this!” she shouts.
BOOM!
The thunderous blast of her shotgun rips through my ears even as its recoil throws her back into me. I try to catch her, but her bony elbows are already pushing off of my chest and moving her forward to the edge of the staircase where she widens her stance, cocks the weapon, aims, and…
BOOM!
Hex is barking his head off and Trish is clutching at my arm and I can see bone-shrapnel flying through the air. “C’mon!” Laney yells, grabbing Trish’s hand and pulling her down the steps, right toward the skeletons. By my current count, this girl is at least three kinds of crazy, but I suspect that number will rise into the double digits soon enough.
With no other choice, I plunge after her into the darkness, Hex at my heels.
In front of us, Laney yells, “Die boners!” and I almost—almost—want to laugh. Her shotgun erupts in flame and sound and I hear the tinkle of shattered bones raining around us.
Suddenly, the room is thrust into visibility. Hex’s entire body is glowing like a white neon light. As I take in the scene, I almost wish Hex would just keep his powers to himself.
Dozens of skeletons, some barehanded, some carrying meat-cleavers, large two-pronged forks, and meat-tenderizers, stand before us. Their jaws slide open and their cracked upper and lower rows of teeth separate to reveal terrifying emptiness, a soundless war cry that I can almost feel in my chest rather than hear in my ears.
“Oh no you didn’t,” Laney says, ripping off another shot. One of the skeleton’s heads explodes, the individual pieces of bone torn into pieces so small they’re like chalk dust.
That’s when the skeletons charge.
The first boner—am I really thinking of the reanimated skeletons using Laney’s nickname?—that reaches us gets the butt of Laney’s shotgun in the head, severing its skull from its spine. It crumbles lifelessly to the floor. The second gets the edge of my sword to the jugular—if it still had a jugular, that is.
Even as I hack away with my blade and Hex leaps at the closest enemy, Laney whips her gun around with two hands, like a Big Leaguer swinging for the fences, knocking mindless skulls from bony shoulders like a child clobbering balls off a tee. “I will not…be taken…alive,” she mutters with each swing, as if the skeletons are looking to arrest us rather than tear us limb from limb.
She takes a particularly vicious cut at one of our attackers, and the poor pile o’ bones’s head flies past me, nearly cracking me in the temple. “Watch it, Babe,” I say, instantly wishing the words back.
Not missing a beat, she swings the gun around to firing position and discharges a shell point-blank into a boner that leaps at her carrying a horror-movie meat cleaver. I’d recognize that skeleton anywhere. The chef from the kitchen, the one with the huge hole in its head. What’s left of its skull disintegrates. “Babe?” she says. “You can’t call me that on our first date.”
I hack the legs out from under a thick-boned skeleton before slashing its spine to ribbons. “I meant Babe Ruth,” I say. “You know, like the famous homerun-hitting baseball player?”
“Sure you did,” she says, but the smirk on her face doesn’t believe me.
When Hex springs past me and rips the head off another skeleton, I realize he’s doing his “big cat thing” again, where he turns into a lion. Very good boy, I think.
And then, abruptly, they’re all dead…again.
Hex morphs back into a dog.
Laney stops blasting at anything that moves.
My arm drops, the tip of my sword jabbing into the wooden floorboar
ds.
And Trish starts drawing in the air again.
Laney watches for a moment, and then announces, “She says I took out two more boners than you.”
I just gawk at her. I’m beginning to think she’s missing some vital link between brain and mouth. Hex chuffs and it’s obvious it’s a laugh. “You can wipe that grin off your face,” I mutter, but he keeps smiling. To Laney, I say, “That’s not what she’s writing.”
I make my way over to where Trish is staring off into space, her finger moving in elegant swirls. “G…O,” I say. She repeats the message. “Go. Now that sounds like a great idea. Those Necros are going to be coming to investigate any second. See you later. Or not.”
“Mind if we tag along, Zorro?” Laney asks, raising her eyebrows.
Yes. “Umm…”
“It’s the least you can do considering it’s your fault our hideout’s been discovered.”
“My fault?” I say, unable to mask my disbelief.
Laney taps her toe impatiently. “We’ve been living here for months,” she says. “It wasn’t until you and your witch hunting dog showed up that the trouble began.”
Good point. “Coincidence,” I say, annoyed at how unconvincing my voice sounds. Do I have a choice? Probably, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some company, even in the form of a slightly-insane-but-impressively-capable teenage girl. “Okay. Let’s go. The Necros could come back any minute.”
“Lead the way, Harry,” she says, looping one of her thumbs through the strap of a backpack I didn’t even notice she was wearing.
I draw a blank. “Harry?” I ask stupidly.
“Harry Potter. You know, like from the books?”
“One, I’m not a wizard. Two, if you haven’t noticed, the witches out there make Hogwarts look like a beach resort. And three, I’m much taller than him.”
“Height is just genetics,” she says. “And you wear glasses.”
“So I look like every other person who wears glasses?”
“Pretty much,” she says, and by the finality of her tone I can tell this is yet another argument with her that I’m not going to win.
“Follow me,” I say, heading down the steps, bone fragments crunching under my trod. Hex pads silently in front of me.
Laney’s backpack clinks as she follows.
“Why is your backpack so loud?” I ask.
“Ammo,” she says. “Loose shotgun shells. I’ve had this backpack prepared for months, just in case.”
Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.
“Where are we going anyway?” Laney asks.
“To follow the Necros,” I say.
“Why?”
Good question. Because I want nothing more than to destroy each and every one of the witches and warlocks that belong to the Necro gang, especially the Reaper, making them pay for killing my friends. “Why not?” I say.
Apparently I’ve stumped her, because she’s silent as we make our way through the now-empty restaurant dining room. This time, I use the customer entrance onto the main road. Is that a scream in the distance, to the south of the town? It might be the wind, but either way, Hex heads north, and I’ve learned to trust his instincts as much as my own.
Thankfully, Laney stops with the questions and remains silent as we steal out into the darkening evening, ducking behind bushes and the corners of buildings. Fearless followers. Shadow stalkers. Purposeful prowlers. A bad poem that I tentatively title Stealth springs to mind but I blink it away. Ten blocks later I spot the rear of a pickup truck just as it turns a corner.
“I can’t believe we’re actually following the witches,” Laney mutters beside me. “Do you have a death wish?”
“No one’s forcing you to come,” I say, which shuts her up. But she doesn’t turn back, stays right with me, holding her silent sister’s hand.
I keep my eyes glued on our prey, who are chugging across town slowly, careful not to miss any other bodysnatching opportunities. Their vehicles travel noiselessly, fueled by magic rather than gasoline.
As the college town transitions to countryside, I see signs for I-79 North. An interstate, which probably means a major highway, presumably with four lanes and a grassy median. I’ve got a map in my pocket, creased a thousand times and split around the edges. The Tri-State region: West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
We stop and Hex stands guard, making sure none of the Necros double back.
Laney crowds over my shoulder. “Last I checked, this road goes north,” she says.
The map confirms her words. The interstate runs mostly north across the state line into Pennsylvania, all the way to Washington, PA. From there it turns northeast, Pittsburgh being the next big city it reaches. I run my finger absently over Pittsburgh. Is that where the Necros are going? What’s in Pittsburgh other than the home of Heinz Ketchup, which I’m pretty sure isn’t producing anymore fry-sauce these days, and a couple of successful sports teams that won’t ever make another tackle or take another slap shot?
“You want to go to Pittsburgh?” she asks.
“Maybe,” I say.
“There’s nothing in Pittsburgh but salads with fries and Terrible Towels,” Laney says.
“There’s nothing here,” I retort.
“We could be safe here,” she says. For the first time, I notice a slight tremble in Laney’s voice. “You, me, Trish, your dog. I’ve got enough food for a while, and I know where to get more.”
“I wish I could,” I say, somewhat surprised that I actually mean it. The thought of stopping and settling down again is a temptation I can’t succumb to. My only path is toward revenge, and I’ve already delayed my mission for too long. And then I don’t know why I say, “But you’re welcome to travel with Hex and I as long as you want.” Do I really want two more passengers on a train bound for hell? Two more people to worry about, to need to protect? But no, Laney doesn’t need protecting any more than I do.
“Well, I guess we’ll go with you as far as Pittsburgh,” Laney says. “But only because I’ve always wanted to try salad with fries.”
Hex licks her hand and she laughs. A swell of warmth bursts in my chest and I can’t stop the smile that forms on my lips, so I turn away to hide it.
I return the map to my pocket. The Necros are fading away into the distance, pushing their body-filled truck to cruising speed, likely anxious to reach the next town full of dead people. We’ve got to get there before they move on, so it looks like it’ll be a late night for us if we can’t find a faster way to travel. While we were in town it was like following a slow-moving garbage truck, but the Necros will be impossible to keep up with now that they’re on the highway.
Everyone, including—to my surprise—Laney, stays silent until we’re well past the city limits and on the road toward Pittsburgh. Trish doesn’t even try to draw anything in the air.
The highway stretches miles out in front of us, under a surprisingly blue spring sky. Even the weather is ignorant to the darkness that plagues the earth.
Laney’s blond hair is radiant in the sunlight, so much so that it’s slightly unnerving seeing her carrying the shotgun with both hands.
Hex pees on the flat tire of an abandoned dirty old pickup truck. His urine glows blue and then red, something not even I’ve ever seen. Laney laughs. “Your dog’s a crack up,” she says. “I’ve never seen a witch animal.”
“He’s not a witch. Just a witch’s experiment.”
“Well, whatever he is, he’ll come in handy if we run into anymore magic-born. That lion thing he did back at the restaurant? Priceless.”
I can’t argue with that. Since we’re having such a nice, friendly conversation… “When did your sister stop speaking?” I ask.
“After I killed our parents,” Laney answers without hesitation. There’s no emotion in her voice, like they’re just words. As if her act was like brushing her teeth or changing channels on the television.
“How did she know those two witch gangs were coming?” I ask.
“She didn’t.”
“She wrote ‘They’re coming,’ in the air…and then they came.”
“She’s got good hearing,” she says.
“Not that good.”
“Coincidence,” Laney says, throwing my word back at me.
“Touché,” I say.
Our progress is slow as we’re hampered by Trish’s short strides. At this rate, it’ll take days to reach the next town.
For a short while I had a motorcycle, something I found along the way, but eventually it broke down and I had to leave it. Rumbling motors draw too much attention anyway. There’s an old, rusty bike in the overgrown ditch between the incoming and outgoing traffic lanes. The previous owner is still there, his or her corpse decaying against the black bike frame. A desperate attempt to escape the witch apocalypse, cut short before it really even started. I’m not against using a dead person’s bike, but with two flat tires it won’t help much.
Trish stops briefly to inspect the bike and dead person. Apparently she’s got her sister’s same iron stomach.
We move on, walking fast at first, and then easing into a light jog. Hex charges out in front of us, seemingly intent on scouting ahead. Twice he’s distracted by something that entices his uber-sensitive nose and we manage to pass him, but each time he easily catches us and moves off down the road.
Occasionally we pass cars and trucks with starred windshields or dented door panels, many of them flipped over, as if a giant child has been playing with them. Either there was a spontaneous game of demolition derby—not out of the question for West Virginia—or the witches methodically worked their way down this very road, killing the fleeing humans in undoubtedly creative and painful ways. Merciless. Deadly. Evil.
Are all witches evil? It’s a question I posed to Mr. Jackson after a month of training to kill witches. His answer: Only the evil are evil. Thanks for that, Mr. Jackson.
I think maybe he meant for me to judge witches and warls the same way I’d judge humans. With an open mind and without prejudice. Kind of hard when they’ve killed your family and abducted your friends. Well, I haven’t met a witch who hasn’t tried to kill me, so I’m thinking the sample size is enough to prove a pattern of sorts.