It felt like I was a steer being wrestled to the ground. My necklace choked and pulled at me in response to the witches’ summons.
It wasn’t going anywhere. It was bound to me and wouldn’t come off without being removed with my own hands—and right now all I had were paws. But the witches were encouraged. They hadn’t been able to do me any real harm, but they were consistently able to knock me off my feet in one way or another, and they were getting closer. Drawing some power from the earth of the lawn I’d slid on and bracing myself for further abuse from my necklace, I gathered my feet underneath me and leapt forward again, widening the gap. I wanted to pant but couldn’t risk losing the witch’s hair; it was the only reason they still pursued me.
They were cursing their fashion sense in German, one observing that their boots weren’t made for running but they’d had to do an awful lot of it this morning. The other said the running wouldn’t be necessary if people would just die like they were supposed to.
They were pretty shagged out by the time they fetched up to my house, but I was completely refreshed and recharged. The sirens nearby stopped, but they sounded only a few blocks away, up near University Drive and a bit to the east.
Granuaile had locked my door, as expected. I almost changed back to human form and knocked on the door, but just in time I remembered Oberon saying Mr. Semerdjian was back. I glanced over my shoulder and, sure enough, the telltale gap in the blinds told me he was watching. If I changed now, he’d report me for indecent exposure and whatever else he could dream up. Instead, I scratched at the door with my paws and called to Oberon, as the witches huffed and puffed and swore they’d snuff me for tearing out some of their hair and making the rest of it wilt.
Oberon was looking out the front window at the witches on the edge of my lawn and growling as I heard Granuaile coming to the door.
"Should I go out and bite them on their giant boobs?"
No, we have a witness. Must behave.
"What if they don’t behave?"
If they step on the lawn they’ll trigger the wards, and I think they know it.
Granuaile opened the door, and I bolted to the kitchen as she closed it and locked it up.
“Atticus? What’s going on?” She peered out the window. “Where did the p**n stars come from?”
I unbound myself from the hound form and gagged a bit as I spat the witch’s hair onto the kitchen table. The third amulet the Morrigan had given me was there, and I snatched it up as I said, “The p**n stars are witches, and they tried to kill us. Stay inside until I come back.”
“You’re leaving again? The phone’s been ringing off the hook, but I haven’t been answering it.”
“The widow’s in danger and I have to protect her. Keep ignoring the phone and stay inside,” I said as I headed for the back door.
“All right, but are you okay? Your skin looks like hamburger,” she said, noting where I’d had my unhappy landing on the street.
“I’ll heal.” The phone started to ring, true to Granuaile’s word. “Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon.”
“Okay, sensei,” she said. “Nice ass,” she added as I closed the door behind me. It was a comment I’d have to enjoy later. I tossed the amulet into a patch of grass, drew power, and changed form again into an owl. I hadn’t shape-shifted this much in ages, and it was starting to hurt. I collected the amulet in my talons and pounded the air until I cleared my neighbor’s fence, keeping below the rooftops so the witches wouldn’t see me. I hoped they’d be stupid enough to test my wards or at least waste their time shouting at my house.
The hope was short-lived. I cast camouflage on myself while in the air, and when I had to cross my street to head north to the widow’s house, I saw the witches already chugging back toward Roosevelt, grimly frustrated and looking for someone to take it out on.
I landed on the widow’s porch, screeching to get her attention, and her eyes widened. I unbound myself and remembered to cover my goodies just in time. The widow smiled widely and cackled.
“Whoo-hoo, Atticus, have ye come to give me a show? I think I have a couple of dollars in me purse inside.”
Crouching down carefully to pick up the amulet off her porch, I said, “Yes, let’s get inside quickly, please.” I had to get her out of sight before the witches got there.
“It’s open—get yer na**d bum in there.” I dashed indoors, asking her to please hurry, and I darted to her bathroom and yanked a towel hanging from the shower stall to wrap around my hips.
“Aw, why’d ye put away yer twig and berries?” the widow teased when I emerged. “I thought ye were goin’ t’give me somethin’ to confess on Sunday.”
“We need to lock up the house,” I explained. “We’re in danger. Witches are on their way. Do you have a necklace you can put this on?” I showed her the amulet. The widow had lived through the Troubles in Ireland. She knew by my tone that there wasn’t time to ask questions.
“Yes, in me bedroom I have some gold chains,” she said, her teasing smile gone.
“Grab one quickly and then meet me in the bathroom. We have to keep you out of sight of the windows until I get this on you.”
“All right. But ye’ll owe me an explanation,” she said, walking as quickly as she could to her bedroom. I dashed around her house, which was full of lace and oak furniture with overstuffed cushions, making sure the doors were locked. I quickly bound the metal of the locks to the jambs, making them a piece of solid metal; even with an unlocking spell, the witches would be unable to budge them. Still, since the widow’s house wasn’t warded, the doors would slow them down for only a few moments. They would break through the windows if they wanted us badly enough, and I suspected they did.
The widow was in the bathroom, waiting for me with a gold chain. I closed the door and locked it, then explained what was happening as I strung the amulet on her chain and clasped it about her neck. The pounding on the front door began as I spoke.
“There are two German witches out there who want us both dead. They can kill you with a word without this protection. It’s a talisman, and it’ll punch you in the chest if they sling their spell at you, but don’t take it off, because that just means it’s working, okay?”
“Okay, but why do they want to kill us?”
“The short version is that one of them’s having a bad hair day,” I said. “I’ll have to give you the long version later.”
Big front windows with panes in them don’t shatter all at once, like the sugar glass you see in movies. They can take an impact or two with loud whumps, and maybe a crack, before they completely shatter. After the first impact, the cats yowled and scattered somewhere to hide. It sounded like the witches were using the widow’s patio chairs to batter away at the windows. I compartmentalized it and concentrated on activating the widow’s talisman. Even when the glass shattered and I heard them cursing in German as they climbed into the living room, I kept focused on my task. I finished up just as someone rattled the locked bathroom door.
“Sie sind hier drinnen!” one called to the other.
“Get down into the bathtub and pull the curtain,” I whispered to the widow. “I’m going to take care of this.”
They began to kick at the door, which would not stand the punishment for long. Those courtesy locks on residential bathrooms are there to prevent your family members from walking in on you while you’re exercising your colon; they’re not designed to keep out homicidal hexen. If I waited for them to bust through, I’d lose the initiative and give them a shot at the widow. So I didn’t wait.
Concentrating on the locking mechanism, already buckling after a couple of kicks, I began to whisper an unbinding on the metal as I waited for kick number three. After it came—quite nearly shattering the lock anyway—I completed the unbinding and let the stressed metal relax. Then I yanked the door open, the steel crumbling like a day-old muffin, catching the kicker off balance and back on her heels. It was the brunette. I rammed my fist into her surprised schnoz, and she cracked her head painfully on the wall of the hallway, her knees failing after a moment and dragging her to the floor. The blonde, standing to my right outside the doorway, shouted “Gewebetod!” at me, and my amulet promptly punched me back into the bathroom. My towel came loose and I decided to take advantage of it, as the blond one encouraged the other one to get up and fight. I noticed that she didn’t pursue me; she just yelled at her companion to stop fooling around.
Pulling the towel taut between my hands, I twirled it locker-room fashion until it was coiled tightly lengthwise.
“Nice bum,” the widow said softly as I approached the doorway, and I almost laughed. But the blond witch had the drop on me outside that door, and I had to nullify her advantage; laughing would unwisely give her a proximity warning.
The brunette wasn’t even looking at the door; she had designs on hauling herself back into the living room, and I saw her reach up to the other witch, out of my view, for a helping hand. The direction of her eyes told me precisely where her partner was. Bingo.
I lunged forward, shot my right arm out, and whipped the towel up to head height. I heard it snap satisfyingly against something, and a sharp cry of pain followed from the blond witch immediately afterward. Douglas Adams was right: There is nothing so massively useful in the universe as a towel.
Dropping the towel and somersaulting into the hallway, I came up to see both witches retreating into the living room to regroup. The blonde had a hand raised to her right eye, and the brunette looked shell-shocked by the amount of blood streaming down her face.
“Vielleicht sollten wir ihn später erledigen,” the brunette said. Perhaps we should finish him later.
“Nein!” the blonde objected, moving into the kitchen. “Er ist allein und unbewaffnet. Wir machen es jetzt.” He is alone and unarmed. We do this now.
Of course I was alone. Did she think I had a posse or something? But it was also true that I was unarmed, and she was heading for the butcher knives. I shouldn’t have dropped my towel. I was considering going back for it, when our collective attention was drawn to the squealing of tires outside the house. A blue BMW Z4 convertible switched off and Hal leapt out, his nostrils already flaring with the scent of blood in the air.
“Er ist ein Wolf! Das ändert die Sache,” the brunette said. He is a wolf! That changes things.
Damn right it does, witch.
Chapter 19
Dropping a werewolf into a witch fight is like dropping a tank into a snake pit. The snakes might have fangs, but the tank isn’t going to feel their bites. Likewise, the witches could cast spell after spell at Hal and he’d just say, “Stop, that tickles”—right before he tore out their throats. The hexen understood that their odds of survival had dipped severely with Hal’s arrival, and they wasted no time in beating a strategic retreat. I had to duck and dodge a couple of hastily thrown knives, so I couldn’t slow them down as they scrambled for the exit. Hal tensed and flashed his canines as the witches bolted through the window and across the lawn to the street, but he made no move to pursue them; he simply kept his eyes on their retreating forms.
I started to give chase, but I remembered my profound lack of clothes just before I leapt through the window. A na**d man pursuing two curvaceous women down the street would probably be misinterpreted by the general public.
“Bloody curses,” I ground out softly. Then my voice rose in anger. “Curses in seventy dead languages, Hal! Why didn’t you stop them?”
He scowled but replied calmly, his eyes still tracking the witches. “Alpha’s orders, Atticus. You know I can’t get involved in your fights.”
He walked slowly toward the porch while keeping his eyes on the witches until they hopped into a Camaro and screeched away onto University Drive. Then he turned to look through the broken window and pulled up short.
“Great gods of seething darkness,” he said, putting his hands on his hips, “why the hell are you na**d in the widow’s house?”
“What? Oh, shit.”
“And you’ve got a new set of scratches and scrapes all over you. So help me, if you tell me it’s from the rough sex again, I’ll deck you right now.”
“Wait, Hal, let me explain—”
“I’ve been calling and calling you on your cell, and now I guess I know why you didn’t answer.”
“No, that’s not it, you don’t understand—”
The widow chose that moment to emerge from the hallway—the hall that led to her bedroom—and loudly observe with a slightly flushed and smiling face, “Well, that was quite an exciting bit o’ fun, wasn’t it, me boy?” She gave me a smart slap on my rear and cackled.
“Aw, that is just sick,” Hal spat.
“Hal, please.”
“If this is what happens to a man’s tastes when he gets to be your age, then I hope I die before I get that old.”
“Damn it, I flew here as an owl, and right after that, those witches attacked us! That’s all! Mrs. MacDonagh, tell him!”
“That’s what happened, all right. Why are his panties in a twist, then? Who is he, anyway?”
“He’s my lawyer,” I explained, and then it occurred to me that he’d seemed in an awful hurry to find me. “Why are you here, Hal?”
“Well, I had to finally call Granuaile on her cell to find out where you were, since you weren’t answering either your cell or at your house. She’s got your alibi, don’t worry.”