Witch's Bell Book One (30 page)

Chapter 13

Ebony's heart began to pound, but not
in the usual way. Usually when you were scared or startled by a
sudden noise, all that would happen would be your heart might
rattle in your chest, or you might hear it thumping in your ears.
Now Ebony found herself distinctly aware of it pulsing away so
unmistakably, it was as if she was feeling her heart for the very
first time.

What to do. The footsteps
continued behind her, getting louder and heavier by the second.
Ebony continued her pace, more out of sheer indecision than out of
the will to get to the mouth of the lane-way as soon as possible.
Not that exiting onto her home street would probably make any
difference. It was probably 9:45 already
– no one would be around. She could
scream, of course, but what good would that do? If all her
neighbors were huddled indoors either asleep or watching the TV,
would they even hear her?

Indecision swirled around her in a
blinding fog, as if Ebony had just walked into a room clogged full
of smoke.

If she had still been a witch, well,
this wouldn't be a problem. She'd turn, face the man, and hex him
so hard he'd likely become a puddle of criminal-goo dripping into
the drains.

But she wasn't a witch. She was
simple, ordinary Ebony.

A hand reached out of the darkness,
grabbing at her shoulder and pulling her to with a powerful
wrench.

Ebony twisted, surprised by the sudden
attack. She'd thought she'd had time.

Out of the darkness a fist moved
towards her head, angling down from the arm of an awful, gruff,
broken face. The shadows of the barely lit lane-way all seemed to
coalesce on the man's face, making him darker and more foreboding
than anything Ebony had ever seen.

She ducked back, body seeming to move
on its own, lips opening to let out a sharp gasp.

She missed the fist, but
barely.

But the man came at her again, not
letting up either his speed or the ferocity of his
attack.

Ebony wasn't thinking, she couldn't
think. Which some part of her knew was for the best.

No thoughts meant no restrictions, and
no restrictions meant pure action.

He tried to grab for her, lunging
forward with his hands outstretched.

Ebony backed up, twisting her
bag off her arm and trying to wield it like a bat. Suddenly, with
all thoughts of the fact she was or wasn't a witch gone, Ebony
remembered. Or rather, her body did. All those years of training
with her father
– self-defense, combat, and so on – it all came back to her
hands, her arms, her legs, and her torso. She tensed in all the
right places, loosened in others, and her memories simply took over
like a well-oiled robot.

She struck into the man with
her bag, pivoting on her foot to try and get the maximum force into
the move
–
like a baseball player twisting to hit a home run.

But the bag just impacted the giant
man as if it were no more forceful than a kitten batting his face
with a soft little paw.

Ebony ducked under another grab,
tank-rolling to the side. She still had her bag in her hand, and
clutched it like a grandmother going to the shops in the
ghettos.

What did this guy want?

Ebony shivered at the possibilities,
but still, too much of her mind was on autopilot, as her father's
diligent lessons poured through her like NOS into a rally
car.

The man practically roared, virtually
the first noise he'd made. And though it sounded human enough, it
still had enough depth, desperation, and anger to shake through
Ebony like an exploding shell.

He reached a hand into his pocket,
pulling out a switch blade.

Click.

He flicked it open, expression a
mixture of pure aggravation, and pure
primal-anticipation.

Ebony ducked back. Even despite
her training, she was too small to do anything to this man. Her
well-placed blow had been like a drop of rain trying to fell a
mountain
–
impossible.

Just who on Earth was he?

One of the first lessons her
father had taught her was know your limitations. And up until now,
Ebony had always remembered it, but only vaguely. Because one of
the first lessons of a witch, was to overcome your limitations.
Simply having magic made a situation more unstable, less likely to
go only in one direction. So just because this guy was five times
heavier than her, and seemed to have the muscles of a titan, it
wouldn't have mattered so much if magic was involved. It evened up
the odds, made the winner the one who was the most creative
– not necessarily
the most overtly powerful – though power did usually triumph in the
end.

But the fact was, this guy was simply
too powerful.

He lunged at her again, quicker than
his build should allow.

Ebony twisted, turning her back to him
just as he grabbed for her arms. Then she darted forward, falling
to the ground, but managing to quickly roll forward to escape
another grasp from the deadly, silent giant.

But just as she stood up, finally
deciding to make a dash for it, the man managed to get a hold of
her. One of his massive hands latched onto the ends of her
ponytail, like a climber grabbing a safety rope. Then he pulled her
backwards with a yank, viciously grabbing at her bag and pulling it
from her grip.

But just as his form overshadowed her,
and Ebony's heart sank into a pit of no return, she made out the
sound of another set of footsteps. They were light, but solid, and
they were heading towards them faster than a cheetah over the
savannah.

Something knocked into the man, rugby
tackling him in the side, and pushing him onto the ground with a
solid grunt. The man's knife spiraled out of his grip and into the
darkness.

Ebony scuttled backwards, like a crab
before a crashing wave, pulling herself to her feet and resting her
back against a cold brick wall.

From the glint of the moon barely
making it through the cracks between the buildings, she saw her
knight in shining armor.

“
Nate!” she screamed
quickly.

There he was, her once annoying
Detective Right, engaged in an epic wrestle with Ebony's
attacker.

She pushed herself off the
wall, wanting to do something, wanting to help him, wanting to
reach down and snap off these damn bracelets so she could
–

The man managed to stand, driving a
powerful punch into Nate's side. But the Detective didn't blink, he
just twisted to the left, lessening the power of the punch, and
replying with one of his own.

For the first time in her life
Ebony just stood at the sidelines, watching as the action happened
elsewhere. One of the lessons for young witches was to learn that
it was always best to be involved
– that it was only from within a situation
that you could really change it.

But here she was, the wind
knocked out of her, her scalp tingling with a powerful pain from
her hair being tugged, and her mind cold with dread. She wasn't
involved, there was nothing she could do
... but watch.

Nate's punch connected with the
man's jaw, pushing him back, but not enough to bring him down.
While Nate was certainly large, and knew how to handle himself,
Ebony's attacker was titanic. He was some kind of gladiator
– impossibly
strong, relentless, and viciously violent.

The man brought a knee up, trying to
connect with Nate's ribcage to knock the fight right out of him,
and possibly his teeth and ribs too. But Nate ducked to the side,
trying to grab at the man's leg to pull him off balance.

It didn't work, but Nate didn't
get hurt either. The man was simply too relentless, too
concentrated on his task
– whatever that was.

Ebony ducked forward, picking
up her bag, which had somehow tumbled out of the man's hands as
Nate had tackled him, and fallen at her feet. She started to
scream, finally finding her voice.
“Someone help!” she screeched, “help!” she
repeated over and over again.

But Ebony didn't need to be able to
sense magic to know that no one would hear her screams. They
sounded weak for some reason, muffled, as if someone had thrown a
blanket over this whole lane-way, ensuring that the grunts and
wretched screams wouldn't make it out into the streets
beyond.

Ebony began to get an awful,
apprehensive feeling in her gut. Was this man magical? Was that why
her screams wouldn't carry? Was that why he seemed to have the
strength of ten men? Was that why the relentless glint in his eye
seemed to glow like a forever-burning fire?

If that was the case, her and Nate
were in rather a lot of trouble. Without magic, how were they going
to bring him down?

Ebony put a hand on one of her
bracelets, trying to pull it off with all her might. She dug her
fingers in, trying to wrench herself free of her magical
imprisonment. But her nails just scratched into her own skin,
finally drawing blood from her frantic efforts.

She wanted to scream out Nate's name
again, but she didn't want to distract him.

What was she supposed to
do?

Unbidden, her father's words
came to mind:
“the winner is always the one who can hold their
concentration.” Making the loser the one that allowed themselves to
be distracted. And while her father's words didn't constitute a
universal law – with people managing to get lucky all the time –
trying to distract the man seemed to be Ebony's only
hope.

She ducked down, tipping her bag out
before her, and desperately searching through the contents for
something that she could use.

Anything. Anything at all.

She looked up to see the man land a
glancing blow to Nate's jaw, the Detective's head snapping to the
side, his eyes blinking from the pain. But he kept on fighting,
equally as relentless and determined as Ebony's
attacker.

Her top teeth bit so hard into her
bottom lip, that it felt as if she'd bite her lip right off. She
searched through the contents of her bag. Discarding her wallet,
tissues, and such to the side. Finally she clutched her hand around
a small vial of perfume. It wasn't much, but it was all she
had.

Ebony didn't quite know how she could
use it to her advantage, though she realized just spraying it in
the air and trying to distract the man with its alluring scent
probably wasn't the best strategy.

She pushed herself to her feet, the
small bottle clutched tightly in one hand.

She had aim, she told herself,
excellent aim. Her father had always told her that Ebony's
successes on the shooting range came from her stellar aim, and not
from the magic that lurked within. And even though this past week
had taught Ebony to re-evaluate all of her life skills, she hoped
like Heaven that her father was right.

As Nate tried to launch himself
into the man again, attempting to tackle him to the ground,
probably trying to keep his wild punches more contained
– Ebony saw her
opportunity.

As the man's face descended,
his usually titanic height cut in half as Nate powered into his
side, Ebony ducked forward, perfume in hand. She quickly,
elegantly, almost expertly, grabbed the lid off the perfume and
threw the lot into the man's face
– right into his wide, rage-filled
eyes.

He screamed in agony, clutching his
meaty hands towards his face, finally allowing Nate to knock him
off his feet.

Ebony swallowed hard, realizing that
if the man truly was magical in some way, then the alcohol would
have been a blow to him. And if he wasn't magical, well, it would
still sting a treat. The thing about alcohol was that it was used
in a lot of magical spells in order to dilute them. If you had a
powerful herb concoction, but you didn't want to burn someone's
head off from all the concentrated magic, you'd dilute it in a
solution of alcohol. Water wouldn't work. Water had exceedingly
special magical qualities, being one of the necessities of life and
all. But alcohol, alcohol was a known diluter.

Nate tried to land a blow to the side
of the man's head, probably trying to finally down the massive
giant. But before he could, something started to happen.

The air around them seemed to pinch in
a little, as if a giant mouth was trying to suck in all the
space.

And there was a crackle too, as if an
enormous thunderstorm was building above them.

All signs of magic, Ebony
realized almost detachedly. She couldn't sense the stuff, but she
still knew all the symptoms of it. To someone who didn't have her
magical past, it might seem simply as if the surroundings were
growing harsher, more erratic
– or that their minds were frazzled with the
adrenaline of the situation. But to Ebony, she knew what was going
on.

Something was being called
back.

She streaked forward, grabbing
at Nate's arm just as he tried to get the man into a head lock. She
pulled at him.
“Nate,” her voice was desperate, “get back!”