Otherworldly Discipline: A Witch's Lesson (6 page)

“Charlotte!” Moriarty cried, pulling a blade from his pocket and charging into the water.

The old man hissed at him as he approached and Moriarty hissed back, approaching quickly and slashing against him.

Moriarty suddenly felt a sharp slice push through his chest—he had been clawed. But he didn’t waste a moment on the sensation. He tore fiercely at the man’s throat, and sliced it.

And then the man turned into a black fish, floating on the top of the water, quickly making Moriarty aware that he just fought against a water demon. Moriarty grabbed onto Charlotte and dragged her back to shore, his body aching with the sharpness of the cut.

Charlotte’s face was white, but she still had a heartbeat when he checked. He tilted her head back, pinched her nose, and breathed into her mouth. The first couple of tries, it didn’t work, and then suddenly, as if waking out of a spell, her chest filled with air, her eyes opened, and she turned her head to the side, choking up the water with hacking coughs.

Moriarty pushed backwards on his arms, staring at her with both shock and relief.

It took a minute or so before she was able to turn and look at him with recollection. “Moriarty! What happened?” She pushed herself up on her elbows, still heaving breath and shivering. She blinked her eyes heavily, as if she was having trouble seeing, and then looked at him. She flinched backwards with surprise. “You’re bleeding!”

“No shit, Sherlock,” he replied with a grimace. He tried to push himself back up onto his feet, but stumbled.

She wearily climbed to her own and pushed her hand underneath Moriarty’s arm to steady him. “I’ll help you back…”

“No, don’t touch me,” Moriarty replied, trying to push her away.

“Let me help,” she begged with chattering teeth, planting her feet firmly until he finally leaned against her. He groaned as they both, wet and freezing, journeyed back towards Ashcroft’s tower. She bit her lip, trying to still the chattering of her jaw. “Th-Thank you,” she finally said, timidly.

“Never leave the property alone,” he told her tersely growling, and then coughed deeply. He wiped his hand at his mouth, but Charlotte had seen that he had just wiped away blood, because her eyebrow worried pathetically.

“I’m so sorry,” she told him shallowly, as if she wished she could say something more profound.

He tried not to lean on her too heavily, but he did more and more as they approached the tower. He felt so weak; he was bleeding so much. Still—Ashcroft had pulled him out of worse.

It had just been one very crappy morning.

“Ashcroft!” she cried as loud as she could as soon as they were in the gardens, within hearing distance of the tower. “Ashcroft! Hurry! Ashcroft!” Her voice seemed strained, which certainly it was—he was leaning so much into her that she was shuddering under his bodyweight.

Finally, Ashcroft rushed out of the tower, still dressed in the clothes he went to sleep in, flew wide the heavy oak front door, a dark look of concern on his face. “
Jesus
!” he exclaimed, looking over the scene. Moriarty knew how pathetic they surely looked—him bleeding, her tired, weary and pale. Both of them were soaked to the bone.

Ashcroft pulled Charlotte out from under Moriarty and propelled her a few feet towards the door as he supported Moriarty’s weight, gently helping him inside. “
My word! What
happened?”

Moriarty opened his mouth and began to speak, but every word felt like a pained agony. “Water demon… Tricked…. Charlotte…. Near… Ambrose Bridge….”

Charlotte walked backwards into the tower ahead of Ashcroft’s step until he brushed by her. “Is he gonna be okay?” she asked with a childlike concern.

“Charlotte—go to your
chambers
!” Ashcroft barked at her; the stone surroundings made his loud, angry tone seem that much angrier, that much more firm.

“But can I help?” she asked quietly, hopefully. Moriarty felt nearly bad for her.

Ashcroft turned his head and gave her a look so frightening that she took a step backwards.

“I’m so sorry!” she choked out, her face twisting as if to keep back tears, and then she ran up towards her room. Moriarty stifled a sigh as Ashcroft moved him into the sitting room and dropped him gently onto a divan, then disappeared out of the room, appearing a moment later with a box of tools.

“
I am truly
sorry about this, Moriarty,” Ashcroft grumbled, opening up Moriarty’s shirt to take a good look at the deep g
ou
ge. He winced and shook his head, mostly at himself, his face twisted with guilt and disgust. “I was such a
blasted
fool. I thought that after last night she would
n
o
t
rush
to disobey me.”

Moriarty watched as Ashcroft pulled out a magic sort of foam and spread it over the wound. It stung like holy hell. Moriarty hissed in response, his whole body winced and writhed.

“Urgh!” was all he could say, his voice gurgled.

“The demon
sliced into you
well
. You must have pissed him off,” Ashcroft said, but tensed his jaw as he opened Moriarty’s mouth and shot something even worse down his throat—some sort of fiery liquid, that felt like acid in his lungs.

“
Son of a bitch!
” Moriarty exclaimed, and was startled to find his voice had come back. His breathing was clear; he was no longer gasping.

After that, he lost track of what Ashcroft was doing. Maybe giving him stitches; he wasn’t sure. All he was sure of was how much pain he was in.

“One of these days I
will not
be able to bring you back.
Y
our
kind only has
9 lives
, do they not
?”
He
grinned. “And what are you on? Fifty?”

Moriarty shot him a dirty look. “I’m not stipulated by that law,” he reminded, tight-lipped. He thought that Ashcroft had tired of making cat-jokes a century ago, not just put them away to be brought out later.

Although he’d heard this one before—he’d heard them all. The really stupid part being that he never WAS a cat. He was a Huxian—an immortal species of
fox
—which weren’t cat like in any way except for maybe the pointy ears… claws… fur… tails…  whiskers… But anyway, he spent most of his time as a human for the last seven hundred
years
.

“Obviously,” Ashcroft agreed, carefully beginning to clean his wound and bandage him up. “This will take three days to heal, Moriarty,” he warned. “
Do try
to take it
easy
.” He looked
towards
Moriarty
’s face
, and then back down at the wound and cleared his throat. “I… I want to thank you for saving Charlotte—for being so quick on the mark.
I am certainly surprised you chose not to wake me and not
even
trouble with her.
”

“I didn’t want to waste any time,” Moriarty said aloofly. “Besides, I thought she’d be just past the garden. I could still practically smell her scent in the air. I certainly didn’t think she’d been seconds away from being a water demon’s next meal! She’s as dumb as a brick, don’t you
see it?”

“Common sense is
no
t so common, as it turns out,” Ashcroft replied dryly. “She’s young. Of course she’s stupid. We were stupid at her age, too.” After a moment he added, “I went out to slay dragons and nearly got
slain
myself in the process, if I recall. Looking back, I am astounded that I reached my immortality. And you…”

Moriarty couldn’t help but grin at the ancient memory of him in his late teens. His species was mischievous by nature—watching chaos was endlessly enjoyable to him and his brothers... Only a couple of his
several
brothers even made it to thirty. “Touché.” But he arched one of his dark eyebrows and added, “But I must ask if there’s ever anything Charlotte can do that would make you believe her an idiot? Or are you simply clinging to the blind hope that she is not?”

“Well, I don’t see how she could be an idiot,” Ashcroft replied. “I
certainly have not
seen a true
idiot come out of her faction yet
—laziness, certainly, but not stupidity
. I
ha
ve seen a
great deal of
talent
come from the Byndians
. Merlin was a genius.”

“I thought Merlin was a madman.” Merlin, although strangely revered by humans,
tried to take over his faction and began a war that nearly brought his race to a speedy extinction
.

Ashcroft shrugged his shoulders. “There’s a thin line between madness and genius…”

“Well, I wouldn’t call Charlotte ‘mad’. I’d call her simple,” Moriarty clarified.

He could hear Ashcroft growl at him, and Moriarty tilted his head to the side. “I think she’s been making
you
mad.”

“Unfortunately, I think you’re right. Mad in every way.” Ashcroft pushed himself up on
to
his feet. “I
ha
d better go handle her.”

“Go easy on her,” Moriarty sighed. “Really, I don’t think she can help herself. And she nearly drowned to death. She’d stopped breathing by the time I came along…” He watched Ashcroft’s posture freeze rigidly as he absorbed that information. “She’s probably scared half-blind now that she’s seen the tip of the iceberg as to what’s out there.”

“She’s not getting off light, by any means,” Ashcroft assured decisively. “After I warm her backsid
e—
again,
I might add—
I’m putting a cuff on her.
I don’t know if I can rest at all again without doing so.
”

Moriarty hadn’t known what he was talking about at first. It had been a long time since he’d heard
of
anyone placing a conjurer on house arrest.
Slowly, he
was able to dredge up the old term. There was a type of dragon crystal that did place wizards defenseless to leave an area—it was a charm that had done far more harm for Ashcroft’s race than any good. Moriarty was surprised to hear he had any in the tower.

“That will make her miserable,” Moriarty reminded cautiously. “Not that I’m against locking her in her room at night, but if she thinks that she’s a prisoner now, she
defiantly
will when she’s wearing a cuff…”

“Why would I care? I’m not the one who escaped within ten hours after being punished,” Ashcroft replied defensively.

“You care because you like her,” Moriarty replied simply.

Ashcroft’s face reddened slightly. “I do
not
,” he denied.

“You do
,
too,” Moriarty said, rolling his eyes and folding his arms behind his neck as he laid back. “Just admit it. You want to keep her here for your own sake just as much as for hers… If not more.” His grinned curiously. “If I may ask… When was the last time that you—”

“You may not ask,” Ashcroft replied with a bark.

“That long, eh? Look, put the cuff on her, go to Earthside, go get a leg over on a single female at a bar somewhere and come back to being something that resembles the wizard I’ve known for the last seven hundred years. Not… not whatever you are now.” He waved his hand in the air dismissively.

“I do not need to get a leg over anyone,” Ashcroft said, crossing his arms through the air. “My relationship with Charlotte is purely professional. Maybe even fatherly. Nurturing, not…” he continued to try to rationalize his feelings towards Charlotte, mostly all lies, as he left the room and wandered out of Moriarty’s earshot.

Moriarty shook his head with a knowing grin and then realized that he didn’t have his morning cigarette yet. With excited fingers, he looked into his vest pocket and put his fingers around one of his rolled cigarettes. He pulled it from his pocket
and saw that it was
soaking wet, limp, bloody, and completely unappetizing.

“That girl’s going to be the death of us all,” Moriarty grumbled, and put the trash back into his pocket.

Ashcroft had to remember that he was upset with Charlotte before he stepped into her room. After all, she did go against Rule Number One…. And there was a reason why it
was
Rule Number One. It was the most important and, as it turned out, the second she went against it she almost died and his best friend and most competent servant nearly bled to death from saving her.

In truth, he was horrified when he saw them come through the gardens. Moriarty had become cocky—he obviously thought Ashcroft could save him from anything, which just wasn’t true. Ashcroft wasn’t a healer. He was an
A
rchivist—nothing came easily for him. Everything he knew and could do well was only accomplished by relentless study and by the sweat of his brow.