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“Gabriella.” Her dad—a whip strike of a word.
She shook her head. She couldn’t. Couldn’t go on knowing Joy had been hurt when Gabi should have protected her. Couldn’t live when those wounds, that bleeding, were stealing Joy’s life. Gabi staggered away from the witch grinning at her, sliding along the wall, not caring as she bumped into a computer desk, a stack of Xerox boxes.
The knife had gone, fallen from her hand when the claws pierced Joy’s skin. Her baton was lost somewhere during the struggle. Useless. If she couldn’t protect the woman she loved most… Utterly useless.
“Gabi,” her dad warned again, and as claws snagged her wrist, the tips biting into her palm, Gabi realised it was a command not to pull herself together but to beware the witch killer calculating her next move. Gabi didn’t care. She didn’t have the energy.
“She’ll be fine, Gabi.” Closer now, but as Gabi focussed her eyes, she realised she couldn’t see him. He’d used his magic to make their environment camouflage them. Gabi’s head hurt.
“Get her out of here.” Her voice came out harsh.
“I’m not leaving you, Gabriella.”
Gabi’s throat ached. “Get herout of here.”
She could feel him nearby, hesitating. The last thing she wanted was for him to leave but she kept seeing those claws slide into Joy. “Go.”
“I’ll come back.” And then the air swept by her, and she knew he was gone, him and Gus getting Joy to the closest thing to a healer among them. That should have brought some relief but this cold, aching nothing that had swallowed her had been building for a while, since she’d seen Perchta throw her brother over the top of a filing cabinet, then pursue him with a grin and a spell.
A wound had opened on his stomach as if by an invisible knife, and Peregrine… There was a lot of blood. Too much to come back from without the care of the clinic’s nurses or some sort of battle healing. Why hadn’t Gabi told the witches to prepare a battle healing spell? She went to drag her fingers through her hair, but the hand snarled around her wrist bit in deeper, drawing more blood. Pain, clearing and cleansing, trickled up Gabi’s arm to her brain. A bad move on Perchta’s part.
The witch was fumbling for something at her waist, but her transformation hadn’t brought her clothes and whatever was in her pockets with her. Gabi had no knife, no baton, no taser because she’d been naïve and assumed she wouldn’t need one. Weapon less, she reared her head back and recalled one of the most important lessons her dad had taught her: never forget the disorienting power of a headbutt. It was both a warning for her to avoid one and encouragement for her to give one.
Pain slammed into her skull as she connected with Perchta and she almost bit right through her tongue but managed not to as the witch screeched and reared back. Gabi brought the side of her hand down hard on Perchta’s wrist, disconnecting her grip. Falling back on training and self-defence classes, Gabi wasted no time bringing her knee up to slam into the witch’s crotch even as her vision blurred thanks to the headbutt. If she had her baton, she would bring it crashing into Perchta’s ribs but absent of it, she used her fists to rain precise, damaging blows to the witch’s stomach, chest, and throat, and swept her foot out to knock Perchta, while she was still fumbling for a response, onto her backside.
Panting, blood trickling from her wrist to the polished floor under her feet, Gabi reached deep into the begrudging power that lazed deep inside her. She felt for it, as Perchta got her hands under her and leveraged herself into a sitting position—physical blows would never keep this witch down, Gabi knew; it would take power to get her unconscious long enough to cuff her and lock her up.
Gabi’s breath came tight, her stomach cramping, and abdominal muscles pulling tight as she tugged and tugged on her elven magic. Perchta balanced on her feet, crouching, and Gabi slid a step away, eyes roaming the room for her baton, for the knife. There, a metre or so away, laid her baton. Could she dive for it quicker than Perchta could get to her unsteady feet? Gabi couldn’t trick herself that Perchta would stay unbalanced for more than a few seconds longer. She braced to leap the distance but a thin whisper of power wound through her stomach, up her chest, and down her arms. Gabi had never been happier to feel the uncomfortable tingle sweeping down her shoulders. She poured every ounce of her will and control into guiding that tingle.
Gritting her teeth as the itching turned to a thousand needles stabbing her arms, Gabi pushed her magic out, forced it to obey her, and exhaled all at once in both relief and inner pain as the boards and stone under Perchta turned from solid to liquid. The witch’s feet sank into the puddle and Gabi let the straining tether to her magic snap back to her core. The floor, the boards, the ground beneath turned solid again and while Perchta’s feet were trapped, moulded into the very floor, Gabi threw her aching body towards the baton, crashing to her knees hard enough that she had to fix her jaw to not cry out.
Perchta laughed as Gabi struggled back to her feet, her knees, thighs, and stomach all jabbing pain into her. Gabi gave the witch a wide berth even as she saw the knife was a few steps behind Perchta. She wasn’t getting anywhere near that ashen greything—long, thin teeth were bared, Perchta’s true face a stretched, angular thing with more bone than skin and more malice than humanity. Gabi shuddered as the witch—was she still a witch in this skeletal, naked form, mere cobwebs of a dress covering the fact that the mottled grey skin was shrivelling?—lashed her arms at her.
Gabi’s need to know everything about this new creature pressed into her—did Perchta look like she was decaying because she’d failed to kill Neil, because she was starving, or did she always look this way? Did she need to kill for sustenance?
A drowsy groan had Gabi jumping and turning. She’d completely forgotten about Salma, her spacial awareness gone to shit. Gabi pinched her face as she stepped towards Joy’s friend, trying to make herself more alert, moreawake. Before, the fear had always given her an intense clarity. Now it had dulled her. Or seeing Joy that way… She couldn’t think of it. Wouldn’t let herself until everyone was out of this building and safe.
As Gabi searched a nearby drawer for a penknife, scissors, anything to cut Salma’s bindings, she read Perchta her rights, officially arresting her this time around. Perchta only laughed a low, sensuous laugh that made Gabi shudder again. Getting cuffs on her … that would be difficult. Impossible. Getting everyone else out while Perchta was trapped was the priority. Not for the first time, Gabi cursed this tiny town, its useless head witch, and wished Paulina would allow her a partner. But that would cost Town Hall too much extra money. Never mind that it could save lives tonight. Her dad was decent backup, but she needed apartner. Right now, she’d have settled for a gun.
“Hey,” Gabi said to Salma, finally finding a letter opener. It would do. She peered at Salma’s dark face—was she more ashen than normal, had Perchta done more than just knock her out with a bump to the head?—as she sawed at the ropes holding her in the chair.
“Mama?” Salma slurred, her eyes blinking open but clearly unfocussed.
“It’s Pride. Gabriella. We’re in Town Hall. I’m going to get you to the clinic, Salma.” She got through the last rope and put her arms under Salma, helping the witch stand. Salma leaned heavily on Gabi, groaning low in her throat, but she was becoming more lucid, blinking at her surroundings. She recoiled at the sight of Perchta, but Gabi held her steady. “Do you think you can walk?”
Salma swallowed a tight breath, but she nodded and took a step. Gabi took a moment to scan her for injuries, but it must have been just bruising and dizziness. And for her to be awake, Perchta must have used a less powerful strain of sleeping witchcraft.
“Why are you leaving?” Perchta asked in a whisper-soft rasp as Gabi and Salma crossed the threshold into the main records room. “Weren’t we having fun, Pride?”
Gabi ground her teeth but kept walking, one arm around Salma’s waist. The thought of finding everyone, getting them off this floor, out of this building and to the clinic, felt monumental. Salma swayed but stayed upright, leaning on Gabi.
“Where is my coven?” she asked.
Gabi shook her head, a knot in her throat. She didn’t know. And Joy… Her breath hitched, sobs poised to shudder her chest and shatter her completely. She couldn’t answer Salma, could only focus on putting one foot in front of the other as they passed filing cabinets and blood trails. She had to get out of this room. She could do that. Everything else…One thing at a time, she told herself.
Every step was like the world pressing down on her but finally they reached the corridor. Salma had said nothing else, asked no further questions, but Gabi knew she’d seen the blood. She leant against the wall, staring up and down the hallway as Gabi slammed the records room door shut. She wished she could call her magic to seal it firmly, but it ignored her, impetuous. At least she could tell, through her elven senses, that Perchta was still held by the ground in the office. She doubted it would last but if it gave them seconds, she’d take it.
Adrenaline was starting to wear off and reveal a dozen pains across her body. It was a battle to keep her mind on the here and now, to not think about those claws piercing Joy’s stomach, the blood spreading across her coat, the floor. Gabi must have made a noise because Salma reached across them and squeezed her hand. Gabi was supposed to be capable and distant and calm, her emotions locked in a vault. Instead, this touch unleashed every one of her fears. Tears slid down her face. Was Joy dead? Gods, why hadn’t Gabi told her she still loved her, that she’d fallen in love with her all over again, with the person she was now as well as the person she’d always been?
