Patience

After discovering she was pregnant, my mother hid for a time in a brothel. Looking to understand her death, I’d ended up in the same place. The madam knew nothing of magic but told me stories I needed to hear. And taught me restraint.

When Nate recovered, I’d insist he send her a thank you card, as those lessons prevented me from jabbing him with a sharp object.

I slammed on the brakes and sat, focusing on the chirp of crickets. Waiting.

“Why the fuck would I give a witch my blood?” he spat.

That stung.

“Because I’m your brother.”

______________
Next

Creeping Death

by Colleen Foley

Seth's spell galled me to no end. The fact that I could do nothing really pissed me off. But I felt like six layers of crap on an already ugly wall. Even Seth's touch had hurt.

“What the hell kind of magic did this?”

He glanced at me and shrugged. "Dunno, closest I can taste of it is Voodoo, but even that's not quite right.”

“OK, Emeril. So if you can't taste it, how do we figure out what it is? It's invisible, even to you.”

“For starters.... blood test.”

“Stop the car. Right now.”

___________
Next

Turning Point

Eyes closed, I let the rune form in my mind, flow down my arm, and slip from my fingertips onto the lid of the wooden chest. I’d tuned out the sound of traffic and the pinging of whatever ran through the pipes. Nate’s labored breath was my focus, a wheezing metronome, winding down too fast. I finished warding the box and turned to him.

“This next part is going to suck.”

“Because it hasn’t so far?” He laughed. It devolved into a coughing fit.

“Not like this.”

“At least if you kill me, the pain will stop.”

I didn’t know if that was true, but he didn’t need my opinion on the afterlife. Or un-life, in this case. Watching my brother die would be devastating. Killing him again if he rose would be worse. And harder.

“Hey, Seth? You know what you’re doing, right?”

“Magic is my thing, remember?” I couldn’t lie to him outright, but dissembling was okay. “I’ve got this.”

“I just wanted to be sure.”

I wanted that, too, but I’d never tried to remove a zombie curse before, and the source of my lore was sketchy, at best.

“Keep looking in my eyes, okay?”

He screamed as I withdrew the knife and tossed it in the box. When I closed the lid, Nate collapsed. Black goo oozed from his wound. I packed it with ritual herbs, laid him down in the circle, covered him with sigils, and settled in to wait, machete in hand.

----------------
NOTE: This is is out of the regular story time-line, taking place some time in the future.

Highway to Hell

I had the gall to believe I could trick Nate. Most spells are invisible, protection runes notwithstanding. He shouldn’t have noticed a change. It wasn’t a cure, after all, just a quick trick to slow the rate of infection.

“What did you do to me, you son of a bitch?”

Dodge. “Took control. Get over it.”

“When you touched me, you got that smile I only see when you think you’re being clever.”

“I’m fucking brilliant, what’s your point?” Honest, vain, distracting.

“You’re up to something.”

“It’s called science. Hence, our destination.” We had a lot of road to cover.

_____________
Next

Driven

Keys wrested from reluctant fingers, I consigned Nate to passenger. If a stasis spell occurred in the exchange, he needn’t know. It was that or listen to him pitch a fit, and we’d squabbled enough lately.

My ethics diverge from the norm. The world is not black and white, but shades of – no, not grey – yellow and green and red.

Always red.

Blood is power. I needed Nate’s…and a dark field microscope.

“University, it is.”

Engine rev muted Nate’s reaction.

I answered anyway. “To identify the illness.” And magically track its maker, but he didn’t need to know that, either.

____________
Next

Descent

by Colleen Foley

Grey-green smoke wafted upwind as the crop burned.

“Smells like chamber pots in hell.” I chuckled, aimed, and fired one round at the biggest fruit still not burning. It died in a satisfying spray of tumor and tomato guts.

Seth gave me a What the shit? look and diverted me, pointing skyward. "Okay, Mr. Myopic, focus! What if it's airborne?”

I headed for the car.

“Call Jimmy from the road. We'll figure it out. C'mon, chop chop.”

“Nate, what're we doing?”

“We're gonna find whoever did this and make tomato soup out of them.”

____________
Next

Tainted

Retrieving gloves from the car, I paused to draw protection runes. Invisible, they still crawled over my skin like ants.

When I returned, Nate was standing. Naturally. He solves problems by chambering another round – or ordering one. With no way to divert fear, he faked bravery.

“No spells,” he warned.

“This isn’t witchcraft. The flavor is wrong, corrupt.” Traumatic myopia drove me to reveal secrets I shouldn’t. “I can’t cure you.”

Red lines blossomed under his skin. “I thought tumor fruit was a myth.”

“Apparently not.”

“Then before I die, let’s torch this crop and hunt down whoever created it.”

____________
Next

Reunion

When they were little, he’d teased Sasha about her carrot-red hair and freckles.

Karma is such a bitch.

She leaned against the wall, auburn curls swept into knot, sweater falling over one shoulder to reveal her long neck and sinfully tempting collar bone. He wished for nothing more than to let his tongue play connect the dots with freckles he’d once maligned, while his fingers explored her fine skin.

She smiled at him as if sensing his arousal, then turned to reveal a deliciously toned ass as she stalked to the bar. Normally, he’d pursue without hesitation, but this was not his usual quarry. He took a second to think before approaching her.

It did him no good at all.

“Jason Stillwater.” Her rich voice was his undoing. “This must be kismet.”

“Welcome back, Sasha.”

“So, you remember me.”

“When we were kids…”

“…we never finished playing doctor. That’s what you mean to say, right?”

He swallowed his apology.

“No time like the present.”

She led. He followed. Mouths locked, she fumbled the door open and kicked it closed behind them.

“Now,” she said, “you’re all mine.”

For the first time in his life, Jason Stillwater was the one taken.


__________

A bit of a change for me, topic-wise, this is an entry in Rebecca Grace Allen's Sinful Sunday challenge.

ETA: Apparently, the judge liked it! Totally shocked.
 

Misstep

by Colleen Foley

Back on the road felt right. The farm Jimmy had sent us to looked deserted but well-kept. Perfectly normal, really. I still couldn't figure out why we were there. He'd handed us a slip of paper, told us to check out the produce, then stalked off to his library.

When Jimmy says check, we check.

Yep, row upon row of gorgeously fecund tomatoes.

**splut**

Seth gagged. "Dude. That's ....”

I nodded. “ A tumor tomato.”

Lucidity slipped. I saw red. Then black. Then nothing.

"Nate? Ah, dammit!"

I regained consciousness slowly. Seth’s anxious gaze confirmed my fear. I was infected.

____________
Next

Reflection

When I was young, Nate protected me from others at school. He didn't know I could and would stop them. We were all damaged, so his defense was precious.

Under a blood-moon, we swore oaths of brotherhood. He meant every word – then and now – but he suffers for it.

“Seth,” he says, “you awake, lucid?”

I open my eyes, nod.

“We’re coming up on the farm. Are you with me?”

I hate that he has to ask. His mistrust grows like a tumor, but removal must wait. I tap my magic, check my gun, and follow him into the darkness.

________________
Next

Boiling Point

They used the water cage to keep him isolated, though it hadn’t been designed for such purpose. I’d tried to explain the flaws in their plan, but they refused to hear me. I quit soon after.

Now, I watch the flames rise, along with those who’d been blissfully unaware of David Hagen’s incendiary “gift.” That’s how he saw it, why he’d come to us for help controlling it. I’d had ideas about that, too, but they’d chosen to lock him away.

Anger increases his abilities. I probably should have mentioned that. I search my soul for remorse and find none.

Treatment

Harsh words slap like hands, flat and callous, incomprehensible.

“A ritual,” he explains.

He smiles, like when we first met, just days before my life changed. He’d stuck with me, even so.

“This is a sacred place.”

I stare at wood-slat walls, decorated with leather harnesses and ancient harvest blades.

“My family farm,” he supplies, as if that might increase my appreciation.

“My life’s work, to restore it.”

I’m barely lucid, as usual. “I’m not able help you.”

“Lindsey, your body is riddled with tumors. Here, at least, your gin-soaked blood will do some good. One last sacrifice. For love.”

Mote to Beam

Sitting atop a mountain, I caught the whisper of a Word.

My brothers had mocked me when I suggested we Listen. They were drunk with love, and none could blame them. Certainly not I. We’d been denied simple pleasures – any pleasures, really – for our whole existence.

He must have Seen this.  Either He had reason for allowing us to carry on, or He simply got distracted. With the whole of time and space laid out before Him like a jigsaw puzzle, one can hardly fault Him for missing a detail or two. I was counting on it.

Interesting trick, subterfuge: alien to us, but inherent in the creatures we were given to watch over. I’m certain we were not meant to watch them quite so closely, but perhaps that, too, was Ordained.  He is both crafty and subtle.

I was neither. Not before the Word.  With dreadful understanding, I descended to the valley.

“Bring me the daughters.” A simple Command, immediately obeyed.

Without explanation, I led the girls away. Humans could not stop me. My brothers cared not. They had their precious boys – rowdy giants wreaking havoc for amusement.

I’d been Blessed with daughters.

I led the girls to where Lucifer slept in peace, where he sleeps to this day, and left them there, safe and sound, until the Flood had passed, and the sons begat by Angels had perished from the Earth. The Word had said nothing about daughters.

Nephilim yet live.

That’s what He gets for overlooking girls.

________________
 Note: This is background for my current novel project.

Impact

Ronald’s words reach me over the beeping traffic. “Julius isn’t naked.”

No, of course not. He’s right there next to me in the car, telling me my taste in music sucks and laughing when I deny it. He’s turning off Bad Company and plugging in his iPhone. I’m hit with screeching garage death metal from hell… so loud and terrible it makes me dizzy, nauseated. He screams along.

“They spied every Dane.” Ronald makes no sense, shouldn’t be there. He’s at work.

Like a game of telephone reversed, I finally hear the truth.

Julius didn’t make it.
They tried everything.

Captured

I climb in next to her, warm, welcome. Her hands paint pictures on my skin, symbols on symbols, a landscape of waiting, stretching time and sense and patience until it threatens to break. 

Until I threaten to break. 

She likes me thus, desperate, hungry. Her eyes seem to glow in the darkness, another of her seemings, bodies steaming up the windows, until I forget that I was ever cold, ever lonely, ever wandering the world in search of something.

In search of her. 

Once upon a time. That’s how the stories begin. Isn’t it? I can’t remember. The world has shrunk to this place, this woman who holds me captive, holds me still, holds me off, asking with her silence for me to scream defiance, beg forgiveness, ache, ache, ache with wanting. She keeps me waiting, keeps me sound, keeps me ready, always ready. 

Until I understand war. 

She is armored in amour as she dances just out of reach. I advance, steady, predictable. A front. Inside, I am wild, angry, willing to rend and shatter beauty. Willing to plunder, to plow furrows in paradise until it yields to the thunder of my need. I take, at last I take, and it is all I ever craved, all I require. I claim this place, this world, this woman.

But it's not enough.

In the satiated dark comes the whisper of a whisper of the thing I’d sought, the thing I could no longer have.  I remember freedom…and despair.

Fortune

When I hit the lottery, mother bought me a silvery outfit. “So you can look pretty when you go to your new life.”

The newspaper took a picture of me with a pumpkin, the only other thing our village is known for.

The rumble that preceded the Dragons was met with a cheer. They swooped in, all leather and metal and the smell of death.

I swallowed bile and went to them.

The Elder greeted me with a toothy leer. “Mount up, cherry.”

I got on the bike, knowing my ruin would keep the people safe for another year.

Bargains

Uncle Jim called The Monastery – an impressive compound indicative of the Priest family’s sense of humor. They’re neither celibate nor religious. Father Mark would consider truce if Jim returned the car, armaments included.

We pretended détente was possible while sabotaging their equipment.

“So, am I on my own?” I asked.

Nate’s jaw clenched, released. “Best keep you close.”

I went to lay wards on his car, before my magic found its own way out.

Nate approached, weapon raised.

Spells still glowing, I froze.

He flipped the gun around and handed it to me. “Time to get out of Dodge.”

______________
Next

Morning Becomes

I look down on the city, a maze of lights in motion muted by the rain. Behind me, people who mean well murmur platitudes no one believes.

“We’re so sorry.”

“He was a good man.”

“Everything’s going to be okay.”

They’re speaking to soothe themselves, for all that they claim to be here for me. Lies cannot mend what has been shattered. Untruth wraps around me like my widow’s weeds, tight, strangling. Comforting.

“At least he left her enough to live well.” That whispered where I should not be able to hear.

He did not leave willingly. Every last breath was a struggle to survive, to return to the world we’d built together, this castle on the hill. No matter that it’s a penthouse apartment, it is every inch a fortress, impenetrable – or so he’d thought.

Display cases are filled with mementos from our travels, each one a small torture of memory. The art on the walls creates a study in restraint. Everyone remarked on my keen eye for décor, but it was all Sidney’s doing. He never did like to take credit for his work.

Nor did he wish to be given credit for what grew inside me, but it was all his, and I was not giving it up. He should have realized that before attempting to kill me. Not even Sidney could unmake what he’d made of me.

I suck the last bit of dried blood from the crevice of my fingernail and turn to accept condolences.

What Passes for Normal

I hip-checked Nate just to watch him flinch. “A cipher key is mental.”

“Like you.” His retort felt right, familiar.

Jim hooted like a drunken owl. “There’s the brothers I know.”

“My father must have left word for the Priests, in case he met with a bad end.”

“Is that what you are?” Nate asked.

I shrugged. “You’ve banked on that for years.”

“Now it’s painted a target on my back.”

Jim snorted. “You fight like old women. I’ll tell the Priests you’re not what they heard.”

“But I am.”

“For once in your life, Seth, shut the hell up.”

___________
Next

Crossroads

“Paltry paltering’s pointless.” Demon tongue twisted like her tattoo vines. “I’ll not suffer a liar.”

“The offer was fair,” I protested.

“Until you slide that sticker ‘twixt my ribs. I’m no fool.”

“If I meant to kill you, I’d have done already.”

“And I’d have done you for less than a promise, but I know what you are. Witches usually come begging. Not you.”

“Magic born, but I still need information.”

“A kiss for payment.”

“My soul?”

“Yours, if you can keep it.”

Swirling tongue warmed my blood.

“I know what hunts you,” she whispered.

The knowledge chilled my marrow.