First Destroy All Giant Monsters (The World Wide Witches Research Association)

“A fun paranormal romance with a wicked web of suspense!”

~
Ann Charles
, Award-winning Author of the
Deadwood Mystery Series

First Destroy All Giant Monsters

The World Wide Witches Research Association and Pinochle Club Trilogy

(Book I)

by

D.L. Carter

Corvallis Press

The World Wide Witches Research Association and Pinochle Club Trilogy

Book I

First Destroy All Giant Monsters

Book II

Do Not Awaken The Ancient Evil, You Moron

Book III

Bad Deity, Bad. No Apocalypse!

~To Ed, thanks for so much.

~ To my cousin Carol, the President of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Carnivores – inspiration and nag – thanks.

~ To Sarah and Esther: writers to emulate, couldn’t finish without you.

~ And the coffee/book shop down the road. Thanks for letting me work there, guys, but you should know – the chairs need better padding. Seriously. Ouch.

The Prologue

A little while ago …

Lucinda DeGoode, tall and silver-haired despite being only twenty-five years old, glanced out of the window at the rain pouring down on the streets of the village of Tintagel, then returned her attention to the game at hand. After a moment’s consideration, she put down the ten of hearts. Lucinda, recently graduated from college with degrees in History and Religion, had left the safety of central Pennsylvania for a tour of the standing stones and sacred sites of England, Cornwall, Scotland, and Wales and had not been surprised to find other like-minded witches engaged in the same pursuit.

Lucinda suspected the magical Law of Attraction to be responsible for four similarly trained women from different areas of the world to choose the same time of year for the journey and the same out of the way B&B in which to rest. On their arrival it had taken them, oh, about two seconds to recognize each other for what they were – witches out on the prowl; and now on this typically Cornish summer morning, four complete strangers on their way to becoming friends were trapped inside by bad weather. The sympathetic owner of the B&B advised them that in this corner of the coast of Cornwall playing cards was the only alternative entertainment to watching TV and the only channel she could pick up when it was raining was transmitted in Welsh.

The conversation this rainy morning covered all manner of topics of mutual interest – from the difficulty of translating old grimoires, to finding modern substitutions for old ingredients, and the embarrassment of almost being caught wandering about at night sky-clad. Not to mention how those night breezes did get into the most uncomfortable places.

“I wonder what it would be like to play poker with a tarot deck?” mused Lady Lisa Ellingswood – a traditional English witch with surprisingly modern views on life and magic – as she flicked the pasteboards with a shiny red fingernail.

“Pinochle is hard enough for me,” muttered Mahini Patel as she rearranged her hand yet again.

“It wouldn’t be right,” declared Lucinda. “It would be disrespectful to the cards.”

“Oh, please,” sniffed Lady Lisa. “What do cards know about respect? They’re pieces of cardboard: tools, just like candles and potions. You take your magic too seriously, Lucinda.”

“And you don’t take it seriously enough. How do you do magic? Do you just gather energy willy-nilly and toss it around with no thought to proper organization? No records. No consistency. No consideration of the impact it has upon the Ether? It’s wasteful and untidy!”

“Ladies, please,” interrupted Mahini, “don’t quarrel. Different is not wrong. Our dear friend Lucinda would never consider performing a spell without offering respect to the five
Elementals
and we know many witches who only acknowledge four
elements
and are still quite successful. We four even honor different Gods and Goddesses as we work and still the magic comes. No one is right and no one is wrong.”

“Maybe we’re all wrong and we don’t know because no one has studied the matter,” said Lucinda. “How do we know what is the best way to do a spell? Have you ever tested it? What I’d like to see is two witches perform the same spell with their own techniques and have the results assessed by an impartial observer.”

“If there’s a result how would you know which spell caused it?” inquired Lady Lisa.

That didn’t stump Lucinda for more than two heartbeats.

“We should match up two people with similar requests and have two different witches do a spell for each of them. We don’t tell the witches who they’re doing magic for, just have them do it and see what happens. Scientists call that a double-blind study.”

“Magical scientists,” laughed Lady Lisa. “Now that is something I’d pay money to see. Better than a show on the West End.”

“That wouldn’t be popular with those seeking magical aid,” said Mahini. “People seek us out only at times of great need.”

“Oh, please. You must have different seekers where you’re from,” said Lady Lisa, pausing to blow a raspberry. “Most of the time I get frivolous requests. Love spells, I ask you? Three of them last week. Oh, for the good old days when we cast spells to keep Hitler from invading!”

“Love spells?” repeated Lucinda. “Do people still ask you to do that?”

“What? Ask for love spells or make them?” Lady Lisa laughed. “Certainly they do. Not I, but enough practitioners do it for me to be ashamed of my sisterhood.”

She played an ace with some satisfaction.

“That’s true. How often do we get a truly serious request?” asked Lucinda. “Most of the stuff I see is, well, not frivolous, but not life threatening either. Besides, doctors test new medicines on sick people without knowing what the end result will be and that’s considered ethical.”

“It sounds like a lot of work, and really, why bother?” asked Lady Lisa. “My magic works well enough for me.”

“Because I don’t like wasting effort,” declared Lucinda. “Because I really want to understand what we do. There’s no reason why we can’t assess our magical spell books scientifically. See what really works. It’s almost the twenty-first century. Don’t you want to know? We assume a great deal. Just because our teachers told us something doesn’t mean it is right. We owe it to ourselves, to our future students, to test these assumptions. Personally, I think it’s long overdue.”

Mahini tossed down another card and considered. “True. And for the first time in history we can consult with witches from many countries. Communication is easy and relatively cheap. We could try researching a few basic things and use computers to correlate the data. I’d do magic for your clients in my country with my rituals and phone you to tell you it’s done. The client will tell you when he feels the effect and you can measure it and tell me.”

“We’d get him to fill in a questionnaire,” said Lucinda. “Just like proper scientists. Have the witch write down her exact ingredients and ritual and the next time we get a similar request we could change some part of the ritual and assess the result. Or we could have an ingredient of the month change, all white candles, for example, and see if it makes a difference!”

“I think we should do it.” Madame Charlemagne DeFue, who’d picked up and laid down cards without comment since the game began, spoke for the first time. “I for one want to know about the graveyard dirt of a hanged man. I’ve wondered for years, should it be from above the coffin or under it? Either is difficult in New Orleans, you understand, with our cemeteries all being above ground. And have you ever considered if it makes a difference if the man hanged himself or was executed for a crime? Suicide verses guilt should influence the results, if you think about it psychologically. And what if he were an innocent man hanged unjustly, does that change the spell? When you think that hanging of guilty men is becoming rarer, can we collect from the graves of the electrocuted or those poisoned to death? If not, then we shall soon see holes in graveyards where rests a hanged man from witches taking the dirt away.” She sat and regarded the others with a quizzical look. “You agree, ladies, this is something to think on, and at my time of life, I should like to stop hanging around graveyards at midnight.”

Since none of the other three could make a guess as to the Madame’s age, they simply nodded.

“Exactly my point. We don’t know. We don’t know and we should. If we want to be taken seriously we should be serious, or at least methodical.” Lucinda picked up the notebook where they’d been recording the scores and flipped to a clean page. “How do you think we should begin?”

Chapter One

Whenever Smoke DeGoode couldn’t sleep he’d walk through the corridors of the old house at Five Corners Farm checking the windows and doors. It wasn’t that the house needed his help maintaining the safety of those who lived within its walls. The house was well able to deal with intruders – both magical and mundane – on its own. Smoke’s role was more ceremonial than practical. Mostly he watched his own shadow dancing along the walls while his mind wandered. The act of walking the path through the house, rattling window locks, testing the doors, following in the footsteps of those who went before, reinforced the old wards automatically even when no magic was applied. Tonight in order to distract himself from his worries, he concentrated on the long shadow he cast down one hallway. In truth it was only at this time of day and with this angle of light that Smoke was “long.” His physical body was a mere four foot nine and if he weighed more than one hundred pounds it was because he was wearing heavy work boots.

But anyone mistaking him for a child or a weakling because of his small form learned in short order to regret their mistake.

(See: “heavy work boots.”)

(See also: judo, karate, and aikido, and Grievous Bodily Harm – one count – case dismissed.)

Between one step and the next his distracted state of mind vanished. He stood, one foot still inches from the floor, and focused his attention. Something within the house had changed.

It took a few moments for his thinking mind to realize what his instincts were reacting to.

The old, century old, house was silent.

There was no creaking or moaning as the house settled and released the heat of the day. No scritch-scratch as the thin fingers of the trees sheltering the house brushed against the walls and roof.

Cautiously Smoke pressed his foot to the floor. The planks yielded under the pressure, but released no sound.

Smoke waited. After a moment the silence was interrupted by a dull thud. Under his shock of dark curly hair Smoke’s slightly pointed ears twitched. Sure enough, after a pause long enough to make sure he was paying attention, a second thud came. Smoke knew the house as well if not better than he knew his own hands. The sounds came from the new library.

Smoke turned and went back down the corridor and entered the library cautiously. When he’d passed by only a few minutes ago the room had been dark; now all the overhead lights were on illuminating the room as bright as day.

On the center of the stone floor lay two books. One, a slim trade paperback, lay beside an old and yellowed dime store novella.

Smoke shuffled over and without touching it, read the title of the paperback and nodded.

“
Psychic Self-Defense
. Okay, always a good plan. Against what?”

Then he read the second title.

“
Lassie, Come Home.
”

Smoke straightened and stared up at the array of books spiraling into the distance above him.

“Lassie, huh? I miss her, too. Or does this mean she’s on her way back?”

A breeze that had no origin flipped the book open to the title page. The inscription in bold purple ink read, “To Amber, never forget your way home.”

“Ah, that lassie,” murmured Smoke, more than a little disappointed.

Then as he waited, a third book fell. A large, thin, hardcover coffee-table book, its shiny, photograph-covered dust jacket buckled and bent from the force of its landing. Smoke hadn’t seen this book in the library before and it didn’t seem to match what he had expected to find. As far as he could tell from a brief examination the book was a history book of the Japanese monster movie genre.