Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) (11 page)

A trip to the grocery store was in my very near future.

Chapter 15

First thing next morning, I hurried over to visit Mat. Surely by now she’d be ready to talk.

Her shop door was locked tight again, but this time there was a “Back in Fifteen” sign, one she displayed often. I frowned. Jim, aka Gordon, could be in there. If that was the case, I didn’t want to be the next visitor.

As I turned away, there was a very loud
clank
from within the store. Before I could imagine what caused the noise, the sound of something else heavy and fragile shattered against the tile floor.

Not good. There were a lot of spells in there and any physical fight—or magical fight—would be a disaster. Been there, done that, and the results hadn’t been pretty. Somewhere out there was a guy who still had petunias growing out of his arm as a result of mixed spells firing all at once.

I leaned in close to the door, struggling to peer inside. Not even shadows shifted within, but at least one deep voice or...was that a growl? Jim didn’t growl, did he? And he wouldn’t hurt her, right?

Sound didn’t carry well enough through the glass, but it wasn’t Mat making that noise. The high-pitched scream, however, was probably her. It rattled the windows and maybe even damaged the casing.

“Moonlight madness.” It definitely wasn’t in my best interest to visit, but I wasn’t about to stroll away and hope for the best either. “Can’t call the cops. He’s probably already in there.” For the second time in as many days, I ran for the alleyway. I didn’t hide my tracks this time.

If the noise turned out to be a domestic dispute, I’d...well, Aztec Curses. If I weren’t married to his brother, there would be no question. Between the two of us, we’d blast Jim into the next century. Of course, White Feather hadn’t said I couldn’t take action. He just said I had to leave Jim alive. There was a lot of room between alive and not alive.

I skidded around the corner, yelling to announce my entrance. “Mat? You okay in there?” My attention was on the open door, but I sidled close to the side of the building. I very nearly tripped over a pile of clothes strewn along the outside of the building.

Two more steps and Mat let out another screech. “Ruuuun—” Her voice cut off on a strangled gurgle.

“Mat!”

Reaching the door only made everything worse.

A coyote, shaggy blond and browns, larger and better fed than any wild animal, snapped wicked teeth in my direction. The beast was no better groomed than his wild cousins, and this one obviously had a lot less sense. No sane coyote would venture this far into town and attack two people.

“Zandy!” I cursed.

Saliva dripped as the coyote swung back around in time to dodge a piece of a broken chair aimed at his head. Jim jabbed with the chair leg again and then again. He was hunched against the living room wall with Matilda smashed partially behind him. The floor was wet, and the reek of sewage made me gag.

“You misbegotten mutt of an Aztec Curse!” I yelled.

Zandy turned his back on Jim to face me without a worry. From the lack of a real weapon in Jim’s grip, Zandy’s confidence was understandable. Zandy was dangerous enough as a coyote, and that was before his blood had been tainted with concoctions that, if he bit one of us, might make us wish we were dead.

I plucked a silver bead from my bracelet. Zandy snarled low and bunched to jump. No time for precision. I yanked the clasp of my new bracelet and
pushed
the silver hard. All of it.

“Choke and die!” I screamed.

The silver balls flew through the air. Several hit, singeing his fur. Sadly, the little missiles didn’t stick. The welts may have hurt, but the silver bounced off Zandy as fast as they hit him.

The distraction of my attack allowed Jim to lean in and beat at Zandy. “Bastard!” The series of threats that followed were possibly more dangerous than the chair leg.

I called the rolling, ricocheting silver balls, spinning them relentlessly at the coyote.

Jim kept up his end of the attack until he suddenly stumbled and fell to his knees. He gave a hacking gasp and gagged.

The coyote stepped on a silver ball, yelped and dodged. I
pulled
silver and then
pushed
again. The ones that hit sizzled, but continued to bounce off. “Mayan moonlight sacrifices in a bloodbath!” I knew I should have gone with something pointy and sharp.

Matilda pounded on Jim’s back. He heaved a breath and stopped gagging as suddenly as he had started.

Zandy coiled again. His growl was unnecessary showing off. I already knew he was gunning for me.

I
pushed
again, not even thinking about where or how. Balls zinged through the air, one of them scoring a lucky hit on Zandy’s eye. It wasn’t that my aim was improving, it was that I had no other option than to keep pounding him.

Zandy leaped anyway. The silver on my wrists flared, and the gold ring on my finger went hot. “Moonlight madness!” Now White Feather would be the one to find my dead body next to that of his brother.

I ducked and rolled. My momentum carried me further inside, while Zandy went over my head into the relatively cleaner alley.

Mat yelled, “Roll again!” No longer behind Jim, she gathered the water from the floor, her eyes an eerie transparent blue, a wave that you think you can see through, but can’t. The water swelled into a black roll and spilled against the back of the door that Zandy had just leapt through.

She almost slammed it closed, but Zandy turned and jammed his canine self against the wood. Black water burst backwards from the force of his hit, mostly missing me.

I linked to Mother Earth in a desperate search for more silver. If Mat had a silver dagger...the first silver I sensed was in the kitchen, but I was too new at this to grasp any useful information.

Despite my concentration, the silver resisted me, clanging, but not moving to me. I took two steps towards the kitchen, but finally recognized the shape enough to realize its nature. “Great. I’ll beat him to death with a spoon.”

The only other silver sensation came from the shop. “Spells with silver?” The feel of it was odd, and I almost ignored it. But Zandy was behind me now so there was no point in standing in the open. I bolted for the front of the store and the silver. It didn’t matter what the spell was set to do. If it had silver in it, that was good enough for me.

The jar was a beacon calling to me, but even after picking it up, I couldn’t guess anything about it except its silver content.

Silver flakes? Maybe it would stick to his fur.

I didn’t even have to return to the living room. Mat screamed an obscenity. Jim yelled something about a gun. I didn’t wait. I pulled the stopper, pushed the silver, and physically threw the entire jar into the snarling jaws of a mad coyote.

I grounded hard, waiting to feel teeth lock onto my arm. My grandmother’s bracelet was on my right wrist, held high, protecting my throat. I ducked sideways, but Zandy was already midflight.

He would have hit me too if Jim hadn’t landed across his back, cutting short the launch. They hit the floor hard.

Zandy snarled, whined, sneezed. Both paws frantically rubbed at the liquid silver on his snout.

“Colloidal silver,” I gasped. I didn’t even need to keep directing it. The wet blob burned without bouncing off.

I clenched my fists with the effort of calling the silver beads from the living room. Several pinged off the wall; guiding them all through the doorway at once wasn’t in my skill set yet. Those that beat the odds pelted the already injured coyote.

Jim scrambled to the right, putting some distance between he and Zandy.

I pushed and pulled carefully now. There were a lot of spells in this room. No sense in setting them off by accident.

Mat rolled through the doorway in one fluid motion. She spat a word, flung a spell and dove for the floor. I’m no idiot; I went down behind the counter the second she started flinging.

Zandy’s fur ignited in a huge fireball. He barked an injured cry that changed to screaming yelps as he scrambled for the back door.

None of us made a move to stop him.

Chapter 16

Jim groaned first. Or maybe he was just the loudest. I raised myself on my elbows and dared peek around the side of the counter.

“Whaat—?” Jim moaned out.

“Did he scratch you?” I whispered. I owed Jim my life. Or my sanity. It wasn’t a comfortable position to be in, given that my best friend hated him.

“Jim?” Either a rat was in the room or Mat had developed a higher pitch to her voice.

“What,” he repeated weakly.

I decided to crawl over and see if he might live. Mat’s phone rang. I touched the gold band on my hand, but it had cooled. White Feather was bound to be trying to reach me. I kissed the ring and hoped he’d know I was okay.

By the time I stumbled to Jim, Mat was patting his face and arms, searching for wounds. He stayed down, blinking and breathing.

“That stuff. What. Was that stuff?” he finally wheezed out.

“He’s a shifter,” I said. “Coyote.”

His hand flopped weakly. “No. Stuff you were shooting. Buckshot? Lead pellets? Spelled?”

I frowned. “Silver.”

“Spell? Will it kill me?”

Of course, he’d been hit. I’d been slapped with my own beads, multiple places. “Just silver. Shifters can’t handle it. But the beads bounced off him for the most part. I was aiming for his eyes or hoping to stuff some down his throat, but I’m not that accurate yet.”

He groaned. It was a magnificent cacophony, worthy of a passionate death throe. Quite overdone, really. Sure the pellets hurt. There was a large welt on my arm and possibly one on my forehead, but he was a cop. Surely he’d been hurt worse.

“Jim?” Matilda leaned in closer. “I don’t see any scratches. Are you bleeding anywhere?”

He finally peeled one eyelid back, but he had eyes only for me. There was no sign of the smug individual from the dinner table. His brown eyes were regretful, worried and angry. “Your aim was off,” he bellowed. “I swallowed the damn thing!”

Mat blinked and then switched her attention to me. When the tension left my shoulders in a puffed out breath, she said, “Unspelled?”

I nodded, unable to keep a smirk from my face. “But I’m definitely planning to change that. And add some arrowheads to my collection. Mat, did you know you don’t have a single silver dagger in the place?”

She huffed. “I’m not like you. I generally don’t
need
to carry around weapons.”

“Yes, you do!” Jim and I yelled at the same time.

She startled back on her heels. “Well, I didn’t before.”

“What happened?” I demanded.

Her eyes slid to Jim. “We were having a discussion.”

“A fight,” Jim corrected. “And she opened the door to kick my ass out, only the damned coyote was there waiting. Luckily, I was avoiding the door, despite the fact that sewage was spewing from all the drains, or that thing would have had me for lunch.”

Mat straightened her shoulders. “I told you there was nothing to talk about.” Only from the way she was gazing at him now, maybe there were a few things worth discussing.

“I need to call White Feather.” I started towards the living area, but stopped without turning around. “I owe you one, Jim. Gordon. Whoever you are.” Mat would probably hate me, but he had tackled Zandy right before the coyote sank his teeth in me.

“White Feather would never forgive me if I let something happen to you,” he growled.

“Neither would I,” Mat said softly.

Okay, this was definitely the kind of thing I had been trying to avoid walking in on.

I stomped to the phone and called White Feather’s cell. Of course he was on his way already.

I told him what had happened and assured him it was over.

He said, “I’ll pick you up.”

“What about my car?”

There was static on the line for a bit and then he said, “This truck will be madness to park that close to the plaza.”

“Truck?” Neither of us owned a truck. Maybe he meant his jeep, although he was in the process of converting it from a gas guzzler to a vehicle that could run off stored energy from the windmills. “I’m fine. I’ll drive myself home. No vamps this time.”

His sigh was as expected as cold in the wintertime. “Zandy may as well be a vamp.”

“I know. I’ll meet you back at the house.”

“You’re fine?”

“Perfectly.”

“What route are you taking back? When are you leaving? Zandy might come back.”

“I’m leaving right this second. I’m going, I’m going.”

When I hung up the phone, Mat had her hands on her hips, surveying the damage. “I think I’ll invest in a silver dagger.”

“And a spear. Zandy is infected with more than your average shifter.”

She pushed her foot through a murky pile of sludge. “There was already some plaster missing from the side of the kitchen. Now it’s wet. And smelly.”

“Let me guess.”

She held up her hand. “It wasn’t the toilet. I kind of wish it was. Who knew the stuff that went down kitchen drains was this gross?”

I leaned over and picked up a silver bead. So long as I was down there, I called the rest to me. Unintentionally I felt the tingle of the ball that was inside Jim. “You okay here?” I asked, tilting my head to the front of the shop.

Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah.”

“You tell Jim I said he can keep that silver bead, ‘k?”

Despite her stress, she laughed. Right away, she stifled it with her hand. “I need to learn that trick of yours.”

I shook my head. “It isn’t perfected yet.”

“Oh, it was perfect. Although the timing was off. I’d have liked to have done it without having to fight off a rabid coyote.”

We hugged tight and I whispered, “I didn’t know he was lying to you, Mat. And even still, he might not be all bad.”

She nodded into my shoulder. “He said he started seeing me as a way to collect info on the underground, on us witches. But he swears that only lasted the first date. He saved me. And you. I wonder if he can fix my wall?”