Witch Hunt (32 page)

“Blessed Diana, Queen of the Witches, hear my plea. Bring that man’s desire to me, so shall it be.”

The words spoken, she closed her eyes and created the vision.

Denver lay spread-eagled on Anita’s bed while she knelt between his legs and conjured pleasure. As he floated on a sea of delight, thoughts of Sylvan arose like a wave and engulfed him. Disconcerted, he tried to drive her image from his mind, but it refused to leave. For the first time he saw her as a woman with erotic possibilities. Up until now, he had viewed her only as a wedge his mother was trying to drive between him and Anita. He had virtually ignored her. But now he recognized how pretty her tiny face was and what a nice curve she had to her hips. Her small breasts even seemed inviting; he realized he could completely engulf them with his mouth, and he found that concept appealing for a change. He wondered what erotic secrets
stregas
possessed that
brujas
might not.

He pushed Anita away from him, stood up, and pulled on his clothes.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, Anita, but I’ve got to go.”

“You’ve got to what?”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get home. I … I forgot something.”

She watched as he struggled to fit his erection into his tight trousers. “You’re going to go like that? Why don’t you at least let me get rid of it for you first?”

“I have to go now.” As he bolted out of the front door, he heard the empty wine bottle crash against the wall of Anita’s bedroom.

Driven by his sudden, urgent need for Sylvan, he whipped his horse into a hard gallop and made it home in record time.

When he arrived, he quietly entered Sylvan’s room and found her lying naked on her bed, framed by a soft glow of moonlight.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

Still aroused, he took off his clothes and lay next to her. He kissed her, and the sweetness of her breath made him desire her even more.

“Become one with me,” she whispered.

Just as he rolled over on her, all desire left his body. Embarrassed, he pulled away.

Sylvan’s hand darted to explore. “The
bruja
did this.”

He did not want to admit that Anita could so easily emasculate him, and so he said nothing.

“Of all the luck, I have to come up against the Delilah of witchdom.”

Rose sighed and paced the length of Sylvan’s studio. “What are you going to do?”

“This for starters.” Sylvan held up a small wooden ball on which she had pasted squares of silvered glass. “A witch ball. When it’s done, we’ll hang it in the front window, and it’ll reflect away from us all negativity. Her spells will return to her and leave us untouched.”

Rose nodded. “Good. What else?”

Sylvan held up a small bottle filled with pins, needles, shards of glass, herbs, and wine. “A witch bottle. Once it’s charged and sealed, it’ll pierce and drown any evil that comes our way. I’ll bury it out by the front gate of the grounds.”

“Perfect.” Rose grinned. “We’ll show her, won’t we?”

Sylvan was uneasy. She had never encountered anyone like Anita before, and her confidence was shaken by the events the night of the full moon.

“For now, it’s getting late and dinner’s ready. Your father’s already at the table waiting for his chicken and dumplings. Shall we?”

Sylvan’s stomach growled in anticipation. “Denver?”

Rose shook her head. “He’s still at the Hunters’, planning the Samhain festivities.” It was October 31, the witches’ New Year. “We’ll join them later. Maybe you can share with us some of the traditions Italian witches honor on Samhain.”

“Shadowfest,” Sylvan said. “We call it Shadowfest.”

“See, we have so much to learn from one another.” Rose put her long arms around the tiny woman and gave her a warm hug. “I’m so grateful you’re here.”

Hand in hand, they headed up the stairs to the kitchen. They were midway when Sylvan felt a sudden energy drain. Her knees buckled, and her head began to swim. She reached out to grasp the railing and lost her hold on Rose, who fell down the stairs. Above her, Sylvan heard her father’s chair overturn and his body slam against the floor with a resounding thud. Waves of nausea flooded her as she looked down to see Rose’s twisted body in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Slowly and carefully, Sylvan inched her way down.

“What?” Rose’s voice was faint, and her eyelids fluttered in a vain effort to stay open.

“We took a hit,” Sylvan said, her tongue feeling swollen and lazy. She never knew a psychic attack could be so potent. “Anita.”

“Hard. Hit hard,” Rose said. “Can’t move. Think I’m dying.”

The spinning in Sylvan’s head grew worse, and she felt a terrifying darkness rising to claim her. She was sure that if she succumbed to it she would be plunged into a dank labyrinth from which she would never emerge. Her hand snaked its way into her dress pocket, where it clutched her
nanta
bag, a small leather pouch that contained sacred items which linked her with the forces of the earth. “Janus, god of two faces, turn away from us your face of death and let your face of life shine upon us,” she whispered.

The room seemed to lighten a little.

“Rose.”

“Still here.”

“Where do the Hunters live?”

“Take Main Street east until it ends. Keep going. Another mile, you’ll come to their farm.”

Sylvan took her
nanta
bag and pressed it into Rose’s hand, then she crawled up the stairs.

In the kitchen she found her father’s body. For him, it was too late for prayers.

“No time to weep.” She gave him a farewell kiss, and still too weak to walk, crawled out of the back door toward the stable. A stable boy had also taken a measure of Anita’s attack. He had fallen and struck his head. His blood flowed freely, but Sylvan could stop only long enough to wrap a strip of her petticoat around his wound. She pulled herself up onto the back of a mare, all the while trying to communicate her needs.

At first, the horse seemed to comply with Sylvan’s wishes and got her as far as Main Street, but then it became possessed by a madness that caused it to buck and squeal with frenzy. Sylvan clutched its mane and tried to calm it down, but it didn’t respond. Finally, as if its tail had been set afire, it bolted past a small group of curious bystanders and headed west at a furious gallop. Within minutes, they had left the town behind and were out in the wilderness, headed toward the mountains.

Sylvan laid her body down, wrapped her arms tightly around her captor’s neck, and gripped it with her thighs. Her mind swimming, she tried to find an anchor in prayer.

Around her the night shadows whirled. Vague images, gray against the slate of darkness, rushed past her as the crazed mare chased its demons. The sound of hoofs and two pounding hearts merged, and Sylvan realized that both hearts were galloping to their deaths. In desperation, she tried again to communicate with the beast, but the thoughts she sent were stolen by the wind. With an explosion of red, her mind witnessed the mare’s heart as it reached its limit of endurance. The horse and its rider went tumbling into oblivion.

Sylvan’s last thoughts were of Denver and the tragedy of what his life would now become.

Thunder Eagle’s face looked like a stretch of sun-baked red clay desert, and his hair was like the gray dirt that blew in the wind. He knew this because he had seen his reflection in the round mirror he found alongside a wagon trail in Wyoming. He had picked it up and kept it because it reminded him of the shield that Red Fire Woman had owned. And Red Fire Woman and the son she had borne him had been foremost in his mind for the past thirty-five years.

His body, though tired, was still straight. And his mind was still good. It was for this fact, more than anything else, that he thanked the Grandfathers.

When as a young man he had pursued his first vision quest, he saw that he would someday return life to a woman. She, however, wasn’t his beloved Morning Star or the woman with whom his seed was linked, Red Fire Woman. It was the woman the Grandfathers had brought to him on a crazy horse, in the middle of the night, at the outskirts of the remote camp he had made. His medicine gift of wind had breathed life back into her as his youthful vision had instructed him. Her own medicine soon took over, and the woman who had been dead was made alive again.

By the light of the fire in his tipi, he gently washed the dirt and blood off of her and wondered why her life was such a special one. He decided that he didn’t need to understand.

Her large brown eyes opened with sudden alarm. “Are you one of Anita’s demons?”

He had learned to speak the white man’s language through his travels of the previous three decades, and her words took him by surprise. He laughed. “Am I that ugly?”

For a moment she seemed disconcerted. “Yes.”

He sighed. “When I was young, many called me handsome.”

“So?”

“No, I am not a demon. I’m an old Indian who found a hurt white woman at my feet. And who is this Anita?”

“She’s the evil
bruja
who killed my father, hurt Rose, and has Denver spellbound.”

Rose. Denver. In his visions, Thunder Eagle had come to learn of their white names. “Do these people live in Montvue?”

Sylvan nodded.

Thunder Eagle’s heart raced like the mad horse this woman had ridden. “And how do you know them?”

She tried to sit up, but grasped her ribs and lay back down with a moan. “I’d marry Denver if Anita would let him go.”

“
Bruja?
” He thought he knew the word. “Isn’t that a sorceress?”

Sylvan nodded. “Evil. Powerful.”

“What about you? Are you powerful, too?” It was obvious she was; her breath returned to her, after all.

“Not as powerful as Anita.”

He dusted a gash on her head with a dried herb mixture. “I think you’re mistaken.”

“How would you know? Are you a — what they call it — medicine man?”

“I’m a man with strong medicine.”

Sylvan grasped his arm with desperate fingers. “Then help me.”

Thunder Eagle set aside the herbs and took her hand in his. “That’s why I am here.” He now understood why she was so special and why their paths had been destined to cross.