I Brake for Biker Witches (2 page)

"Aw now, Lizzie. Why don't you let me have any fun?" His legs dangled as he tried to push off me and jump down. "I'll be careful."
 

Like a bulldozer.
 

Grandma studied the phantom bar. "Okay," she said, rubbing at her mouth. "I want half of you to stay outside and make a perimeter," she said to the witches. "Get your spells out and be ready to use them." She eyed Carl, who had already walked up to the front door and stood beckoning us. She raised her voice. "The rest of us will follow Carl."

Ant Eater leaned in close, as she pried off her leather riding gloves. "You sure that's a good plan?"

"Best one we got," Grandma muttered.

I was with Ant Eater on this one. A demon could take on many forms. Of course I wasn't naïve enough to think we were safe outside, or anywhere for that matter. "I'll go first," I said, setting my dog down on the ground. "You," I said, pointing at him, "are on backup patrol." Maybe I could at least keep him out of trouble.

"Now that's just crazy." He said, circling before he sat. "Who ever heard of a watch dog going last?"

I gave him a quick rub on the head before Grandma, Ant Eater and I led the way across the parking lot.
 

The ghost paused at a shimmering wooden door. Clusters of cinnamon sticks wrapped in sage faded in and out of the wood and a rusty red substance streamed down the frame.
 

It was all too familiar—and stinky. Okay, so maybe I was starting to believe that Carl really was the ghost of a Red Skull biker witch.

He opened the door and music poured out, along with a great deal of bar noise.
 

I stepped inside and nearly fell sideways.
 

The Tanglefoot/Paradise looked like a saloon, straight out of a Wild West movie. The large high-ceiling room featured a scattering of rounded tables under gas-lit chandeliers. The walls were rough wood. A long carved bar stretched along the back, with a mirror behind it. Along one side, a standing piano hunkered next to a modern sound system.

Biker witches crowded the tables, playing poker with outlaws and cowhands. Saloon girls weaved between the tables. Cheers erupted over a minor fistfight next to some kind of big, round gambling wheel.

Sadly, this wasn't the strangest thing I'd ever seen.

And then I saw them.

"There's Hog Wild Harriet," I gasped, "dealing poker." And cheating from the look of the cards stuffed in her bra. I could see them every time she faded out.

And there was Easy Edna, Lucinda the Lush and a half dozen other dead witches. They'd been killed helping us, sacrificing for us.
 

Grandma drew up short. "Son of a bitch."

"Heyyy!" Betty Two Sticks staggered up to us, a bottle of 1800 whiskey in hand. "This stuff is good. Now I'm seeing demon slayers." She poked me with a finger, only it went straight through. "Damn it all, it is a demon slayer. I was hoping you'd make it."

I turned to Grandma. "She's smashing drunk."

Betty screwed up her face like she had to think about that one. "I know you are, but what am I?"

"They're all here," Grandma muttered. "I know every god damned one of them."

Unbelievable. I stared at drunkard next to me, from her tie-dyed bandana to her steel toed boots. "What is this place?"

Betty stuck her face inches from mine. She smelled like the inside of a Jack Daniels bottle. "Hey," she tried to whisper, only she was on full volume, "you gotta meet this guy. He shot seven people. He's the fastest gun in," she turned around, "what are you the fastest gun in?" she yelled to a table of outlaws behind her.

This was too much. "Where's Carl?" I leaned to see past Betty. "Oh. Great." He was over by the juke box, making out with Frieda. That was a big help.

The bar flashed to modern and then back west again. And Betty had clearly forgotten the meaning of personal space. I took a step back. "Why are you here?"

She screwed up her face like it was a tough question, not even flinching as one ghostly cowboy clocked another over the head with a whiskey bottle. "I'm socializing," she concluded. "Had my eye on a few of them hotties from the Lazy K Ranch."

Oh geez. "No, I meant—" How could I explain?
 

It was like reasoning with Pirate, only way worse. I didn't want to think of these dead bikers stuck here. They deserved to be in a better place.

"You can move on, Betty," I said, ducking as a chair flew past my head. It didn't matter. The chair crashed straight through Grandma and skittered across the hard wood floor. "Why didn't you go to the light?"

I wasn't sure how one went to the light, or got out of this place for that matter, but I hoped somebody around here could give her a few hints. Then again, it could be a spiritually sticky place. Clearly the Wild West show had been playing for awhile.

She clutched the neck of her whiskey bottle, eyeing me intently. "Scarlet went to the light."

At least that was one.

"She was a real pussy about it too. The rest of us are waiting," she said proudly.

My head was starting to hurt. "For what?"

She flipped her long grey braid behind her back. "For you."

Okay that was creepy. My heart thudded in my chest. This had better not be a trap.

"You see this?" Grandma clapped a hand on my shoulder. "Battina, Easy Edna," she said as the ghosts of biker witches ambled up behind her.

I gave a half wave, not getting this at all. Grandma merely grinned, watching as the biker witches, live and dead re-united. Some tried hugs, but their arms went straight through their friends, so they'd settled on clinking whiskey glasses and gathering around the rough, wooden tables and along dusty barstools.
 

"Damn it's good to see everyone. I wouldn't mind spending a century or two holed up here," Grandma said, her gaze traveling over the bar. "Except for that," she added, fixing on a rickety wooden staircase near the back bar. A thick yellow fog tumbled from the top. I could feel malice at the top of those stairs.
 

I focused my demon slayer senses and saw it like a dot in the back of my mind—latent evil waiting to strike.

And then I saw someone else and my heart instantly lightened. "Uncle Phil!"

I'd lost my fairy grandfather almost a year before. He'd died saving me.
 

Leave it to Phil. He wasn't partying or goofing around. He was busy working some kind of a spell at the bottom of the stairway. Well, at least that was the only thing I could figure from the way he waved his short, thick arms.
 

He stood in a cloud of silver sparkles, his bushy eyebrows fixed in concentration and his bulbous nose as red as it had ever been. I could almost smell his familiar bubblegum scent.
 

"Watch my back," I said to Grandma as I made a path straight for him.
 

Phil didn't see me until I was almost up on him. When he did, his mouth broke into a wide grin. "Lizzie! I knew you'd come. I just knew it." His voice shot through me like sunshine. "I'd hug you, but I'd go right through you."
 

Didn't I know it. "What are you doing here?"

Fairy dust settled over his pointy ears, which looked like they'd been crammed on as an afterthought. "I told you I'd always watch out for you."

Sure, but, "here?"

A frigid wind whipped from the top of the stairs, startling us both.

"Just a second," Phil said, replacing pennies that had tumbled down. It was then I noticed that coins littering the stairs.

"What are you doing?"

"Basic fairy protection," he said, hurrying. "We use coins for good wishes, but the positive energy can also work against evil spirits, or any basic malicious entity."

Another dose of cold power blasted the stairs and more pennies scattered down the steps.

"Cripes. We're down seven," he said, lobbing them back up. He glanced over his shoulder. "You wouldn't happen to have any extra change, would you?"

I hitched my switch star and began digging in my pockets. "Two quarters and a dime."

His eyes lit up. "Oh yes. That's good. We like the big spenders."

I'd never been accused of that. "What is this?"

"Wish magic," he said, carefully arranging the coins on the bottom steps. "Only this is a lot more powerful that what you humans do when you throw pennies in the fountain at the park."

No kidding. "Is that where we got it?"

"Of course. Now aim for the top. As you throw it, wish for the darkness to fade. I want to get as many up there as I can."

"Okay," I said, stepping onto the bottom stair.

"Wait. No!" He grabbed for my arm and his fingers went straight through. "You'll be incinerated!"

"How?" I froze, one foot on the stairway, scattering change as I drew switch star.

Phil's eyes had gone wide with shock. They darted to me, then down to my foot, then back up at me. "By stepping on the stair," he said slowly.

He gawked at me like I was the crazy part of this equation.

"Yes, well I suppose that's one advantage of being a demon slayer," I said, suddenly embarrassed. Of course there were a whole lot of disadvantages as well, one being whatever was waiting for me on the second floor.

"Keep up the magic down here," I said, double checking my switch stars, "I'm going to go see what's eating your quarters."

Phil's nostrils flared. I could see he was torn. "I can't protect you, Lizzie. Not up there."

"I know," I said, my hand hovering above his arm, wishing I could give him a little reassurance. "Maybe I can protect you."

Chapter Three

I took one step at a time, trying not to disturb the change, more for Phil's sake than my own. If I failed up here, he'd need the protection.

The coins were slick under my feet as I made my way upward.
 

The evil at the top of the stairs pulsed with energy. It called to me as the air temperature plummeted.
 

I blew out a breath and watched it cloud. Ice meant evil.
 

My fingers tightened in the handle of my switch star.

Focus.

This wasn't about me. It was about what needed to be done up here. I braced myself on the second to last step.

It was pitch black beyond the doorway. I could almost feel whatever-it-was breathing in the darkness. Adrenaline slammed through my veins.

I reached into the front left pocket of my weapons belt and drew out a Lamp Spell, a little something special Grandma had brewed up for me. It skittered across the floor and light burst from the broken gas lights along the walls of the second floor hallway.

It illuminated a narrow hallway and a portal unlike any I'd ever seen before.
 

H-e-double-hockey-sticks
. It was as large as two people and glowed with an unearthly blue fire. Sparks scattered from it, charring the walls and floor. It thrummed, as if it were trying to grow.

My mouth went dry. I gripped the entry way as it slowly began to advance on me.

Could I switch star a portal?

I didn't know.
 

Portals thrived on energy. For all I knew, my switch star would be like hitting it with a power boost.

Hell.

"Grandma?" I called down the stairs. There was no response. Either she couldn't hear me or she couldn't get close. I wasn't about to turn my back on this thing to find out.

"Oh frick." I didn't have much of a choice here. I drew back, ready to fire.

"Wait!" A red headed witch stepped from behind the pulsing blue mass.

It hit me like a rock to the stomach. "Scarlet?"
 

She was supposed to have gone to the light. I wanted that for her, needed it. She'd died saving me. She deserved some peace.

But there she stood, in black leather pants and an emerald bustier. She flipped her long red hair behind her shoulder as she gathered her composure. I think she was as surprised to see me as I was to see her.
 

"They told me you'd moved on," I said.

"Not yet," she said, worry creasing her brow. "I can't leave everyone else here. They refuse to go," she said, as if she couldn't quite believe it.
 

"They need to leave," I said, thinking of the trashed Betty. "But you can't make that decision for them."

"Oh so you want me to abandon them here forever?" She crossed her arms over her chest. "Typical, coming from you. Always the individual. You never thought about the group."

That wasn't true, but I wasn't about to get into it with her. I flinched as the portal spit a blue spark way too close to my arm. "Whatever you're working on here has gone bad." Besides, "I don't think our friends want to go." At least, not yet.

"Doesn't matter," she said, as if it were fact. "I'm going to save them whether they like it or not." She smiled, a sweet turn of the lips laced with venom. "So kindly keep your switch stars away from my portal."

I shook my head. "You're messing with free will, Scarlet." No wonder evil had seeped in. "This is a portal to a bad realm."

"Impossible," she said, her eyes widening as I drew back to fire. She rushed to stand in front of the pulsing blue mass, blocking me.
 

"Move aside," I ordered.
 

"No." She was frantic now. "It will go to the light. I'll make sure it does."

The portal was growing behind her. "You can't choose that for anyone but yourself, Scarlet." My fingers whitened on the grips of the switch star. "Now back away." I didn't want to take a chance on her getting hit, but I wasn't about to let this thing get any more out of hand than it was.

"Don't fuck this up, Lizzie. You can't fuck this up," she hollered, shaking, tears in her eyes as she scurried to the edge of the hissing portal. "I'm not going to leave them behind."

"Scarlet, no!" I drew back and fired as she shoved it straight for me.

Chapter Four

I dove to the floor as my switch star slammed into the portal. Energy shot out, singing my arms and numbing my teeth.

The brightness blinded me for a moment. I lay clutching the floor, blinking against the dots. Horrified, I saw the portal zoom straight over me and down the stairs.