Dying For You (18 page)

“I like to keep busy.”

“This time, if you don’t give over your powers to your greatest enemy, you’ll be doomed to walk the earth forever, alone and persecuted.”

“And if I do give over my powers to my greatest enemy?”

Goodman smirked, revealing teeth blackening with age. “But you never will, unnatural thing. You don’t have a heart to share, to open. And so I curse you, as this town curses you, doomed to walk the earth forever, alone.”

“How very Christian and forgiving of you,” the witch muttered.

Goodman, wrapped tightly in his cloak of smug judgment, ignored the witch’s comment. Instead, he sprinkled a foul-smelling herb poultice in the witch’s hair and clothes, ignoring the sneezes, then stood back as flaming chunks of wood were tossed, arcing through the air and landing on the pile of wood the witch was standing on.

The witch wriggled, but the town elders knew their business: The witch was trussed as firmly to the center pole as a turkey on a spit. An unpleasant comparison, given what was happening right now…

“Well, if I
do
come back,” the witch shouted over the crackling flames, “you can bet I will never set foot in Massachusetts again!” Then, as his feet caught fire, Christopher de Mere muttered, “Fie on this. Fie all
over
this.”

The villagers watched the man turn into a living candle, making the sign of the cross, as he hardly made a sound, except for the occasional yelp of pain or muttered taunt. And later, scraping through the ashes, they never found a single bone.

Things were quiet.

For a while.

Rhea Goodman sat at the broad wooden table in her mother’s farmhouse and waited expectantly. Her parents, Flower and Power (real names: Stephanie and Bob), were looking uneasy, and Rhea felt in her bones that It Was Time.

Time to explain why she’d been brought up a nomad, moving from commune to commune.

Time for Flower and Power to explain why they clung to the hippie thing, even though they were in their fifties and ought to have ulcers and IBM stock.

Time to explain her younger sister’s insistence on playing “kill the witch! kill the witch!” with the kid as the hero and her as the witch.

Her theory? Flower and Power had robbed a bank. Or blown up a building. Because they were on the run, no question.

Only…from whom?

And her little sister was just weird.

“Rhea, baby, we wanted to sit you down and have a talk.” Flower ran her long, bony fingers through her graying red hair, waist length and for once not pulled back in the perpetual braid.

“About your future,” Power added, rubbing his bald, sunburned pate. He was about three inches shorter than her mother, who, at five-five, wasn’t exactly Giganto. She had passed both of them in height by the time she was fourteen. “And your past.”

“Super-duper.” She folded her hands and leaned forward. “And whatever you guys did, I’m sure you had to do. So I forgive you.”

“It wasn’t us,” Flower said, sitting down, then changing her mind and standing. Then sitting again. The sun was slanting through the western windows, making the table look like it was on fire, and for the first time in memory, Rhea saw her mother wince away from the light. “It was destiny.”

Yeah, you were destined to rob a bank. Or free test animals. And then have kids and spend the rest of your life on the run. Homeschooling, ugh!

“As the eldest—”

“Yeah, where
are
the other ankle biters, anyway?” Rhea had four brothers and sisters: Ramen, Kane, Chrysanthemum, and Violet, aged nineteen, fifteen, twelve, and eight, respectively.

“Away from here. This is business strictly for the eldest of the family. For centuries it has been this way.”

Abruptly, Flower started to cry. Power got up and clumsily patted her. “We can’t tell her,” she sobbed into her work-roughened hands. “We just can’t!”

“We must,” Power soothed.

“Hey, whoa, it’s all right!” She held her hands up in the universal “simmer down” motion. “Whatever you did, it’s cool with me.”
Good God, did they kill someone?
“I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“It’s not what we did, it’s what you’re going to do.”

“Go back to college? Forget it. Like the man said, it’s high school with ashtrays. Get a new job? Working on it. Try to get one of my poems published? Working on that, too.”

“No,” Flower said, lips trembling. “Nothing like that.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s destiny.”

“Yeah, great, what does that mean?”

“You’re going to kill the greatest evil to walk the earth, and you’ll die in the process,” Power told her. “So it is, so it has been, so it shall be. Only if the hunter makes the ultimate sacrifice will the witch be vanquished.” He sounded like he was quoting from a book. Then he continued, and his voice no longer sounded like a recitation. “I’m so sorry, Rhea. I’m just so, so sorry.”

Her mother was beyond contributing to the conversation and simply cried harder.

Rhea felt her mouth pop open in surprise. “So, uh, you
guys didn’t rob a federal bank?” Then, “Don’t tell me all those fairy stories you told me about witches and witch-hunters and demons are
true
. Because if they are—”

Flower and Power nodded.

“Jinkies,” she muttered and rested her sharp little chin on her folded hands.

Chris Mere tried. He really did. If his family history wasn’t reason enough not to draw attention to himself, ever, the fact that he had parked in a rough neighborhood was.

But the girl was screaming.
Screaming
. And as he approached, he could hear the man ripping her clothes, talking to her in a hissing whisper, could see the moonlight bounce off the blade he held at her neck.

Chris cleared his throat. “Uh. Excuse me?”

Victim and would-be rapist both looked at him.

“Yeah, uh. Could you, uh, not do that?”

“Fuck off, white bread. Me and the bitch got bidness.”

“I guess you didn’t hear. Times have changed.
No
means
no
, and all that. And it looks to me like the lady is saying
no
. Emphatically. So why don’t you let her go, before I turn you into a turnip?”
And what the hell rhymes with turnip, anyway?

“You come any closer, I cut the bitch!”

“With what?”

“You blind? With this!”

“You who have a knife at her throat

Put it down or be turned into…shit!”

They were both staring at him. And the knife was still jammed against the underside of the woman’s chin.

“What’s this? Rhyming an’ shit?”

“Help me, you idiot,” the woman practically hissed, glaring at him.

“Wait, wait, I’ve got it.” Chris closed his eyes and concentrated on the mental image he needed.

“If you keep robbing ladies,

You’ll come down with rabies.

Not to mention scabies.”

“Stop with the poetry and call. The. Police,” the woman grated.

“Man, you are
nuts
. You—” He stopped suddenly and clutched his throat. “Oh, man…I am so hot. Are you guys hot?” He coughed and spat and spat again. “Where am I? Who the hell are you guys?” He dropped the knife. “I’ve got to get out of here!”

“That seems like a good plan,” Chris agreed.

“I-I—garrggh!” The would-be rapist started foaming at the mouth and actually barked at him.

“What the hell?” the woman said, twisting away from her assailant. “Did you just give him
rabies
?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Will he die?” The woman warily watched Sir Foams-a-Lot, as he darted in and out of a nearby alley.

“No, it’s only temporary. Of course, every time he tries to bother a lady, it’ll come back. Either that,” he added thoughtfully, “or scabies will get him. That’s some kind of skin condition, isn’t it?”

“He was right,” the woman said, backing away from him. “You’re nuts.”

“Hey!” he yelled at her rapidly departing form. “Don’t thank me or anything!”

She waved a hand over her shoulder, but never slowed down.

Chris sighed and kept walking, stepping over the knife like most men would step over dog poop. He was not really thinking about what he was doing, he was just automatically avoiding something unpleasant. He thought about turning it into a banana, but for the life of him couldn’t remember anything that rhymed with banana.

Why did he even bother? They never hung around. No matter what he did for them, what magic he could make, they always got scared and ran away. For two cents, he’d give them something to
really
—

He stopped walking and pressed his palms over his eyes.
Don’t think like that. You’re one of the good guys, remember?

Yeah, sure. As if he could fight three centuries of ingrained behavior.

You’d better.

Or what?

You know what.

He snorted. His inner voice sounded weirdly like his late grandfather…who had been killed by a witch-hunter from the Goodman line. His father had died at the hands of a Goodman twenty years later.

Now it was his turn. Unless he could prove to Goodman that he wasn’t a danger to society.

Because if
he
could fight three centuries of conditioning,
she
sure as hell could.

Hell, he was as much of a demon fighter as a witch…how many demons had he vanquished? How many lives had he saved?

Did you do it for them, or for you?

What difference did it make?

But sometimes, when sleep wouldn’t come, he’d burn with the desire for revenge. The Goodmans had been killing his family for centuries. Wasn’t it time the de Meres got back some of their own?

He’d shove the thought away, try to be a good enough guy, but it always came back. Freakin’
always
.

Mixed feelings or not, he’d spent the last five years tracking down just about all the Goodmans in the country. And he had satisfied himself that, in every past case, the surname was just a coincidence. And he’d had many pleasant conversations as a result…and even a few free meals. Not that, as a Mere, he needed free anything. But still, they had been nice. They gave him hope for what was to come.

Annoyingly, the last batch lived in—ugh—Massachusetts. Salem, to be exact.

Salem.
Just reading the name on a map gave him chills, never mind driving there.

Salem, land of the disenchanted and intolerant. Salem, the killing grounds for twenty accused witches (only one of which, by the way, had been a witch). Salem, where hundreds were accused of witchcraft during the rising hysteria between June and September 1692.

Come to think of it, he probably should have started there and saved himself several years of looking, but he couldn’t bring himself to take that step until it was absolutely necessary. As far as he knew, a Mere hadn’t set foot in Massachusetts in more than two hundred years, maybe longer. And there was a good reason for that. The freakin’ state motto was, “By the Sword We Seek Peace,” for God’s sake! No, he had been right to avoid the state, at least until it was absolutely necessary to his plan.

Unfortunately, now it was. It gave him the creeps to even be crossing the state line, never mind lurking in Boston’s dark alleys, tracking down more friggin’ Goodmans and vanquishing the occasional smelly demon.

Not that he expected the witch-hunter to be listed in the Yellow Pages under “Hunters, Witch.” Fortunately, lots of things rhymed with Goodman, and his magic was helping him methodically track them all down. And—and maybe it was just a fable, after all. Maybe all his antecedents had died of natural causes.

Ha. Were being burned at the stake or hanged on the gallows natural causes anywhere but Salem?

Still, he’d go. Then he’d talk, try to make peace. If only Goodman wouldn’t set him on fire before he could explain that he was one of the good guys…

Assuming he actually was. Sometimes he wasn’t too sure.

“Again, Rhea. Again!”

Panting, she lowered the crossbow and glared at her father. “I don’t see you out here slinging arrows of misfortune. And for an ex-hippie, you know entirely too much about how to kill people.”

“I watched my father train my older brother,” Power replied, absently running his hand over his bald spot—a sure sign he was distressed. “We never did find his body.”

“Oh,
great
.” Disgusted, she aimed the crossbow, and the arrow thwacked the mannequin right in the groin.

“That’s not a lethal wound,” her father snapped.

“No, but I bet he wishes it was.”

“Rhea, stop it! This is a serious business. You have to fulfill your destiny, to—”

“That’s another thing. Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

“Think, Rhea. Why?”

She sighed and reloaded the crossbow. “Don’t even tell me. Twenty-first-birthday ritual?” Oh,
great
. She’d been legal-drinking-age for twelve whole hours and was doomed to kill a powerful magic user and get killed in the process. “So you let me have twenty-one years of blissful ignorance, is that the way it works?”

Power nodded.

“Great. Any idea when Hot Shit Magic Guy is going to show up?”

“You’ve got a couple more years to train. So we have to be ready. Again.”

None of the weapons were new to her. She’d been training (for fun, she had thought) in the barn for more than ten years. But shooting a man-shaped mannequin or a scarecrow wasn’t the same as pointing a gun or a crossbow or a knife at a real man and finding the will to drive home a lethal stroke.

She’d never killed anything in her life. Heck, she’d never even swatted a fly.

But her parents pooh-poohed her worries, telling her that killing was in her blood, that with proper training she would do her duty when the time came.

“For what?” she had asked.

Her mother had finally stopped crying. “What do you mean, Rhea?”

“What’s the point? According to you guys, another witch and another Goodman—one of the ankle biters’ kids, I’m
betting—will be born in the next generation, and the whole stupid thing starts all over again.”