Witch Risen: A Paranormal Adventure (Bad Tom Series Book 2) (22 page)

She checks a compass quickly to make sure that she knows which direction is north and leaves a door open there, then she solemnly makes her first circle with the athame. Having finished, she makes the second and third circles in the same manner.

After completing the circles, she lights the candles and places them in the four quarters. As an eclectic with loyalty to the universe, not to the Goddess, Natalie's invocation as she lights each of the candles is brief. At each corner, it is merely, "Watch over those who enter here in perfect love and perfect trust."

I shift to human form and throw down the vile potion I'd stowed in my pouch and then cast the bottle aside. It tastes nowhere near as bad as it smells, which is only a small blessing. Leaning naked against a tree in the dark, the rough bark biting into my skin, and watching the ring in the dim light of the candles, I'm chilled, I'm hyper alert, and I'm counting down in my head how long I have before Anat comes racing to Corey Woods to find me. If I'm right, she'll sense me immediately. But there's no point leaving it to chance.

I grab the phone off my collar and make a call. I call her on the shop phone number so that caller ID will show my name. When she answers, I say. "Got a fix on me, lover? I'm in Corey Woods. Come and get me." I tap the button to end the call. It isn't the chill night that makes me shiver.

From within the circle the High Priestess announces, "The circle is cast. You may enter."

Robert walks to the invisible door first. Natalie stands blocking his path. "How do you enter the circle?"

He replies, "In perfect love and perfect trust."

Natalie stands aside and Robert walks past her. Gillian is next. Her response is the same. The other three witches follow.

Once they're all inside, Natalie draws a pentacle with the athame to close each of the concentric circles. It's complete. They are as safe as they can be with ancient supernatural beings hanging around town and can now leave the circle safely only by cutting it with the sacred blade, the athame.

Gillian moves to stand facing the altar, her hands crossed over her chest. As High Priest, Robert kneels in front of her and uses the wand to trace the shape of the pentacle in the air between them.

"I invoke and beseech thee, O mighty Mother of all life and fertility. By seed and not, by stem and bud, by leaf and flower and fruit, by life and love, do I invoke thee, to descend into the body of thy servant, Gillian."

He leans into Gillian then, bending to plant a kiss lightly on the top of her foot. "Blessed be thy feet, that have brought thee in these ways."

He kisses her knees, then her belly to represent her womb, her breast, and her lips, speaking the blessing in turn for each of them.

After each blessing, the other witches quietly intone, "Blessed be."

Robert stands then and moves back a little, although he's impeded by the altar behind him. He bows his head to Gillian and asks, "Goddess, are you with your servant?" He looks up, and he backs away abruptly to smack hard against the altar stone when he sees the expression on Gillian's face. It's rage. Pure, undistilled rage. That emotion can't be Gillian's.

It's time for me to go. Anat will have had enough time to jump into a car and get most of the way here. There's only a few minutes left before she arrives. All I can do is hope that the rage on Gillian's face is directed at Anat instead of the others.

As I run toward the parking lot closest to the ritual grounds, Gillian's voice rings out loudly behind me.

"Stay here," she tells the witches. "You are not safe outside this circle tonight. Priestess, I need the knife."

I turn back to look. I shouldn't, I need to head off Anat and keep her away from the ritual grounds where they'll wait, but it's only a moment to make sure they're safe.

If Natalie's trust isn't perfect, everything we've planned will be undone. She doesn't flinch. She hands the knife to the woman who looks like Gillian but no longer sounds or moves like her. This woman is commanding, strong. Gillian's strength comes from her softness, not from authority. This isn't Gillian faking it. The Goddess has been drawn down.

I take off for the parking lot to meet Anat, hoping Gillian and the Goddess inside her are close behind me. I can't wait any longer to have my Cassie back. Whatever the Goddess plans to do with that knife, the witches who called her are on their own.

I wrap Cat's tail neatly around his body, holding our head erect. He's ready to unsheath his claws at a moment's notice. I watch the gravel parking lot where I expect the Cassie-thing to appear, the tip of my tail twitching swiftly up and down in big, twisting arcs. I can't think of her as a goddess. I won't. Goddess means something so much different to me than what Cassie has become.

I know I can't take her down on my own, but I had to be the lure. This had to happen where the witches are strong and the risk of bystanders getting hurt is low. What else could draw her here unprepared?

The econo-car barrels into the lot at its magically induced top speed of 55. The brakes squeal, and it slides for a few feet, accompanied by the crunching sound of gravel beneath the wheels. When the Cassie-thing steps out of the driver's side, I hold my ground. Cat's hackles rise involuntarily, causing the fur on his back to make a stiff peak across his spine. I will win or lose today. Either way, I'll have stood my ground and faced down my fate like a man despite my feline features.

She runs toward me, binding me before she even reaches me, with a wave of her hands and a flash of light. A small test of my range of motion confirms that I can move my limbs, but I can't leave this spot.

"So, you decided to come back to me? Good Tom." That sounds nowhere near as friendly as you might expect.

I'd anticipated the transformation: there are no surprises when it starts. I know better than to fight it—that will only increase the pain. My bones crack, stretch, elongate. My skin pulls taut and my jaw and head push outward, fur turning to hair to bare skin. She'll want to see my expression when she does whatever she's going to do to me.

When I'm a man again, I retest my magical bond and I'm still stuck to the spot. I dart a glance toward the woods, hoping to see Gillian bringing her passenger along as reinforcements, but there's no one there.

"Who are you, really?" I demand, stalling her, even though I know the answer. "You're not Cassie, and I don't think you're even Eunice."

She throws her head back and laughs like a silent movie villain. She'll twirl her moustache and tie me to the railroad tracks in the next scene, I bet. "My true name is Anat. I suppose it's time that we were properly introduced, given our intimate history. I'm a goddess, Tom—what better being for you to serve all those years then me? And soon, your delicious body will serve a god. Your spirit, of course, will have to be suppressed for that. Too bad. So sad. I'll miss our time together." She walks a circle around me as she talks and leans into my ear from behind for her last words. "But I'll let Ba'al know about the things you did that I liked." Her tone is meant to be seductive, I'm sure. But to me, it just sounds needy and pathetic.

"Some goddess. You have to enslave a man to keep a lover. And when you can't keep that one, you have to drag one out of his tomb."

She places a hand on each of my shoulders. Her nails dig into the bare skin. "You were never my lover. You were just a toy."

"I don't think so. I think you were lonely. I think no one loves you. I think no one ever has."

Pressure slams down on me from her palms, pushing me toward the ground until I lay flat, my lungs compressed between the ground and the force. I gasp for air, but she's crushing the breath out of me. If she keeps it up, there'll be nothing left of me to use. I'd take that over being her lover's surrogate, but not before I free Cassie.

I keep fighting my invisible bonds with the strength I take from Cassie's face smiling at me in the eyes of my heart.

My vision goes spotty.

And then—that's Gillian's voice I hear behind me. The voice of the woman I'd loved and wronged, but with something new hidden in those familiar tones. Something frightening.

"Release him, Anat. You've played with him long enough. He isn't yours anymore."

Anat's head snaps around to look at her challenger. She laughs, but the pressure holding me down recedes and I sit up again, gasping, turning toward the sound of that welcome voice.

Anat runs toward her full tilt, her head down like a battering ram.

Gillian disappears and reappears behind her, to stand in front of me, shielding me. "No, Anat. This one will leave with me. You have no right to him."

She reaches into the folds of her robe and removes the box we'd hidden beneath the art gallery. She opens the lid.

"Don't you see: I have something you want. I'll trade you—your Ab Khr for this man's soul. Or are you willing to lose yours to keep his?"

An image of Anat's true self begins to form as an outline around Cassie, more and more solid in appearance as the seconds tick past. Her true eyes, transparent but open in front of Cassie's, narrow to slits. "Where? How did you get it?" Anat's voice goes up the scale, ringing with alarm.

"It was easy to steal. You are simple. Predictable." She walks to the side, drawing Anat's attention away from me. She reads the words on the back of the box. Anat's shadow form is pulled toward Gillian and away from Cassie. Anat pulls back against the power that tugs her like a dog on a leash, but the pull is too strong.

"I don't want to inhabit you, you crone!" Anat rages as she's drawn toward Gillian, fighting it all the way.

I transform myself while she's distracted, making myself as small a target as possible, and when I'm done, the hairs in Cat's coat rise with the blowback of the magical charge. I test my ability to move from the spot where I'm stuck and find the spell has dissipated now that Anat is occupied by her own troubles.

As Anat's essence is drawn away, Cassie's body drops to the ground. I can tell there are still pieces of Anat's essence sticking to it—the aura it projects is red and angry. Then, the trailing wisps of energy let go when she's near enough Gillian's body to enter.

But Gillian is already possessed. Anat's entry is blocked.

Her apparition flares, howling. Anat has nowhere to go.

I can't stand here and watch when I need to act. I run to Cassie and butt her with the top of my head. She's unresponsive. I put Cat's sensitive nose near hers, and her breath warms it. Still alive.

I want to shift and carry her out of here, but I worry it will draw Anat's attention our way. I don't know if she can force her way back into a body once she's out, and I don't want to find out. Cat sits sentinel, ready for Anat if she comes.

On the battlefield, only twenty feet away, the Goddess matches Anat, making her true form visible now. "There are those who give their bodies willingly to a goddess when that goddess will treat it with respect and return it unharmed. But you don't know that, do you? You're no goddess at all, you have no ability to bring enlightenment or goodness to those who are loyal to you. No, as Ba'al always said of us—Astarte is the goddess, but Anat is a demon. Why do you think he allowed himself to be freed to the universe after I made that choice myself? And why do you think he imprisoned your chosen maiden so she could not come to you—did you never question why she did not return so that you could be reborn?"

Anat's apparition is fading now, no longer hanging together in a semi-solid shape. Wispy trails of it disperse into the air. "Liar! Ba'al always preferred me over you! Always!"

The essence that surrounds and protects Gillian grows, towering over her. The demon grows in height to match her, increasingly transparent the more she extends herself.

"It's time to let go, Anat. I love you, despite your flaws. You are my sister. Come join me."

"No!" She screams and turns, heading for Cassie again. As Cat, I move just as swiftly, leaping to her, tearing with both claws, and a slice of the demon's essence shreds beneath them. Anat reaches out with one filmy hand and casually snaps his neck.

Cat dies without pain after the quick dispatch of his nervous system, his disconnected brain first flaring to bright light then dimming as life leaves him.
How many lives left? One. He still has one. I
'll be safe…I'm sure I'm safe.

Blackness. Then my living human body unfolds from his dead one. I am there for only a moment when the shift begins again, pulling me back to the final life of the living Cat.

When Cat comes back, Anat is standing over Cassie, digging her hands in at her chest, slowly making progress pushing her essence back in.

"Anat!" her sister calls. "Move away from her. You can't take a human who's unwilling. You know that. She hasn't read your words this time. I
will
destroy the Ab Khr."

Anat removes her hands and turns, then laughs. "And yet you're not holding it anymore, are you, sister?"

And she's right, the box is at Gillian's feet. When did she set it down? What went on when I was gone?

Anat holds out her hands, and a silver tendril snakes out as another wraps itself swiftly around Gillian's arms, keeping her from reaching out to keep the box safe.