8 Gone is the Witch (32 page)

“Me?”

“Haven’t you see her?”

“No, I haven’t see
n her.” He threw his hands up. “I don’t believe it. Ursula’s missing and you two are worried about saving this scumbag’s life?”

“Carlos
. It’s not like that. I’m sure she’s around here somewhere. We’ll find her.”

“
Suckers,” Jerome said.

I took immediate offence to that. “What did you say, Half-pint?”

He pointed. We turned back and saw that a dozen or more sausage-sized slugs with dragonfly wings had landed on Yammer’s body. They seemed incredibly adept at burrowing under his clothing immediately upon landing. No sooner would one arrive, fold its wings against its slimy body and burrow under, than another would fly in and do the same. Soon, every inch of Yammer’s clothes were boiling with movement, as the slugs slithered and grazed on the soft flesh below.

“Moth
er of gawd,” said Tony. “What the hell are those?”

“Leachflies!” said
Jerome. “They suckers. More come soon.” He pointed at Tony’s wounded hand. “Smell blood. Come for you.”

“We gotta go,” said Carlos.
“Through the portal. Now!”

“No!” I said. “Not without Ursula.”

“But the leachflies.”

“I said no!”

Tony said, “You guys go. I’ll find her.”

“How’s that gonna help?” I pointed at
the blood dripping from his wound. “You’re a calling card for the little blood-suckers.”

As I said that, one landed on his hand. He swatted it to the ground and
stomped on it with the heel of his foot. Even in the soft sand, the damn thing split open, squirting blood in a fantail spray over Carlos’ ankles.

“Gross!” Carlos
stepped back and shook his foot. “It popped like a giant ketchup packet.”

“
That’s just the beginning. You can’t stay here, Tony. Even if you find Ursula, you’ll only put her in greater danger.”

“So what do we do?”

“
We
do nothing.
You
go through the portal. Take Jerome with you. Carlos and I will look for Ursula.”

“No. I don’t like it. I don’t think we should split up. Let’s just move
away from here.”

“No. We can’t go too far. Ursula could be anywhere. She could be lying unconscious somewhere, maybe right behind that rock. But the longer you stay here, the more danger you bring to the rest of us.”

Again, a slimy leachfly landed on Tony. This one on his shoulder. It quickly burrowed under his robe and began slinking down his arm and towards his hand.

“Get`em!” Carlos yel
led.

Tony balled his fist
up and punched his arm where the leach had stopped to sample the nectar. Once again, that awful squishy noise preceded the splatter of blood that oozed through Tony’s robe and down hi
s
bicep. Using the robe, he wiped the bug off and shook his arm until it fell out onto the ground.

“Nice,” I said. “See. You have to go. I’m sure the portal will return you
somewhere close to the ledge. If we can’t follow you through the portal, we’ll take the long way. In that case, we’ll see you in half a day. One day tops.”

“What if the portal doesn’t drop me off on the ledge?
”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the other end of the portal was out over the ledge. Remember?”

“So then you fall back into the portal and come out here again. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is I might fall into the ravine and kill myself.”

“Yes, or you might stay here and kill yourself. Now come on. Get going
.”

I palmed his shoulders and t
urned him toward the portal. Another leachfly landed on his back. It tucked its wings against its slimy segmented body and started to burrow down the back of his neck.

I crushed it with the heel of my
clenched fist.

“Thanks,”
he said, as he wiped the goop off the back of his head. I’m not sure, but I think I detected a tone of sarcasm in his voice.

“
No problem,” I guided him into a slouch and pushed him into the portal. He disappeared in a ripple of turbulent air.

“You’re next,” I told Jerome.

“No.” He reached up and took Carlos’ hand. “I stay with amigo.”

“
Uh-uh. Carlos, tell him.”

“I don’t know, Lilith. Why can’t he stay with us?”

“Because Tony might need him.”

“
We might need him, too.”

I looked at Jerome. His large stereoscopic eyes
stared up at me in unison. They weren’t exactly puppy dog eyes, but something close.

“I don’t know
,” I said. “Do you really think you can help us?”

Jerome
nodded eagerly. “Oh, yes. I help. Big help. All the time, help.”

“Sure, all the time. You know I’m getting tired of saving your little green
butt. Next time we won’t come back for you. Understand?”

“
Oh, he understands,” said Carlos. “Don’t you, Jerome?” Jerome just smiled his pointy-toothed grin up at Carlos and blinked. “See. He understands.”

“Good
. Now let’s go find Ursula.”

We
left the leachflies to feast on Yammer, and started out. We checked all the obvious places, behind boulders, along the tree line bordering the campsite and back in the thorny bushes where Tony and I came out. All the while, we called her name, hoping that if she had blacked out, we might wake her.

After working concentric circles from the campfire outward, I came to the realization that
Ursula might not have exited the portal at all. I mentioned it to Carlos, who told me he had considered that same possibility.

“What do we do in that case?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I suppose I could try going back through the portal to flush her out.”

“And if she isn’t there? What then?”

“Carlos, I don’t know what then. You’ve been through a portal just as many times as I have. Maybe sometimes people never come out.”

“Ooh
...” He shook his head faintly. “Dominic’s not going to like that.”

“No,
” I said, kicking at the ground and drawing small circles in the sand with my toe. “None of us are going to like that very much.”

Jerome came up
behind me and began mimicking my gesture, only instead of using his foot; he used the tip of his tail. Soon there were dozens of little circles in the sand, all indicative of where we were heading in our search for Ursula.

I was just about to suggest we go back to the
portal and rejoin Tony, when Jerome spotted something in the sand.

“Ooh,
shiny,” he said, and wandered off through a narrow break in the trees.

“What’s he
doing?”

Carlos
shrugged. “I don’t know. It looks like he’s following something. Maybe he’s picked up a scent.”

“What,
he’s a bloodhound now?”

“Maybe. Let’s follow him.”

We started after Jerome, who seemed intently focused on the anomaly he had discovered. What’s more, it appeared he had never seen whatever it was that had captured his fancy, as he kept giggling and pointing at it along the way.

“I don’t get it,” said Carlos. “I don’t see anything.
Do you?”

I shook my head. “
No, I know it’s not something he smells or he’d have his nose...” I stopped in my tracks to look closer. “No. It can’t be. I
don’t
believe it.”

“What is it?”

I laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I started into a trot, following the blue iridescent line that Jerome had spotted first, but until then was too faint for me to see. “It’s the witches’ light!”

“The what?”

I started into a full run, waving him on to follow. “The light! Come. Hurry!”

I soon caught up to
Jerome and overtook him, no longer needing him to follow what had become bright, clear and obvious for me. The witches’ light, that indelible electric blue vein of light that tethers Ursula’s soul and mine in spiritual bound, it was leading me back to her.

I don’t know why Jerome could see
it before I could. I guessed the natural interference the ES’s magnetic pull has on electric impulses aided in diminishing its panoptic luminescence. Either that, or millennia of dark sight evolution allowed Jerome’s eye to detect the faint trace of light that my eyes could not see until I got closer to its source. In any case, I was glad we let Jerome stay with us.

We
ran what seemed like several miles, following the witches’ light. And though sometimes it dimmed considerably, it never completely disappeared.

At its eventual end, we
did find Ursula. She was trapped below ground, covered by some clear, thick material resembling ice.

I got down on my hands and knees and pounded on the surface
, but couldn’t crack it. We could see her standing there, able to move around in an underground cave with intersecting tunnels leading off to who knows where.

“I don’t understand,” said Carlos. “How did she get
down there?”

“
Must be where the portal dumped her.” I ran my hand along the smooth, translucent ground. “What I want to know is, what is this material? It’s not ice.”

“
No, it can’t be. It’s not cold enough. Maybe glass?”

“
Glass? You think someone made a sheet of glass as big as the Roman Coliseum?”

“I don’t know.
What else could it be?”

“
See if you can scratch it with your knife.”

He
unsheathed his bolo and tried carving into the surface. It scratched easily, leaving a powdery white substance in the track left by the blade.

“It’s not glass,” he said.
“Too soft. Maybe Plexiglas.”

I shook my head. “No, I
believe it’s natural.”

“
Mineral.”

“Yeah.
”

“
Salt?”

“No,
I think it’s selenite. I’ve used it before in my witchcraft, only in much smaller quantities.”

“
What’s selenite?”

“It’s
a type of gypsum. Witches like it because it exhibits unusual healing powers based on its metaphysical properties of vibrating energy. I’ve used it in scrying and in cases of induced astral projection. It’s good stuff. I’ve just never seen so much of it before.” I stood and surveyed the terrain. “Ah-huh. Just as I thought.”

“What?”

“We’re standing in a crater.” I directed his attention along the rising slopes. “Look at the mountains surrounding us. Notice the gradient?”

“Yeah?”

“At some point, this crater became a lake. We’re standing at the bottom. Mineral deposits in the water obviously collected here. Those tunnels down there where Ursula’s now standing probably opened up after thousands of years and drained the lake, leaving this sheet of selenite behind.”

“That’s awesome.”

“You know if I could mine this lakebed, I could make a fortune.”

“You and me both.”

“What, your millions aren’t enough?”

“And what, are you Tony now.”

I looked down at Ursula, standing with folded arms, looking up at us, probably wondering why we weren’t doing something to help her. I waved to her and held up my index finger to tell her to wait a sec.

“Okay. We
’re going to get her out.”

“
How?”

“
We blast. Step aside.”

Carlos and Jerome
eased back to give me room. I held my hand out and spun up a zip ball the size of a grapefruit. I was just about to signal Ursula to duck into one of the tunnels to protect herself, when something unexpected happened.

Now, a
s I mentioned to Carlos, selenite exhibits unique metaphysical properties conducive to certain spells employed in witchcraft. Its low-level vibrating energy serves as a conduit of constancy, providing a proportional balance between spiritless force and extraneous matter. Unfortunately, what I didn’t count on was the spontaneous interaction of such a large field of selenite on something as supercharged as a zip ball.

“Lilith?
” is all I heard from Carlos before the bottom fell out. I mean literally fell out.

The
ground-jolting tremor caught the three of us off guard. We staggered back, knees bent, arms flailing, bumping into and holding on to each other to keep from falling. Eventually, the selenite surface crystallized and collapsed, dropping us unceremoniously on our asses into the earthen dungeon below.