Mathilda, SuperWitch (Mathilda's Book of Shadows #1)(109)
I took a good look at the something solid.
Aidan.
Ohmygoddess!
Yay!
Yay!
Yay!
I shouted for joy and jumped on him, flinging my arms and legs around him and kissing him all over his face.
He gave me a tight squeeze then gently lowered me to the ground, kissing me on the tip of my nose.
It was his turn to hold my hand.
“You ready?” he said to Ash.
“Yes, let’s go,” Ash replied, not looking at me but behind us, still holding his gun.
“If I could have just one moment.”
Jeremy Bligh and Scary Faerie appeared from nowhere out of the night and was Bligh who was talking.
They had to have had a glamour to shield them because none of us had seen them.
Fucking Agatha.
Bligh was holding a gun pointed at me.
Ash raised his gun and pointed it at Bligh.
Aidan raised his (!) gun and pointed it at the Scary Faerie.
I raised my wand and pointed it generally in the direction of the baddies.
But the Faerie was holding an orb o’ magic that was much like my orb o’ magic but I think all of us standing there knew the difference.
Which meant that BecBec was forced to build an orb of her own.
Holy Mutually-Assured Destruction, Batman!
Yikes!
* * * * *
By the way, faeries may be small but they’d been here far longer than humans, their magic was far older and far, far more powerful.
So much so, they were not allowed to use their magic near to its full potential in the human realm (only in the faerie realm). If they did, there could be pretty f**king serious consequences when they answered to their higher powers.
One zing from Scary Faerie and we were all toast (and so was half of Glastonbury).
A reciprocal zing from BecBec, even as a young faerie, and there was a good possibility The Tor and most of Somerset would explode.
Fuck.
* * * * *
Just then, there was a strange but definite rumble in the ground.
What now?
* * * * *
Bligh was too intent on aiming to notice the rumble and I felt it best, for once, to keep my mouth shut.
I noticed both Aidan and Ash were steady but Bligh was shaking and looked nervous.
Cocky but nervous.
I didn’t like nervous. In moments like that, nervous was not good.
And cocky didn’t go well with nervous. In fact, cocky and nervous were a recipe for disaster.
Another rumble came just as Bligh spoke.
“Don’t worry, Miss Honeycutt, this won’t be like one of your movies where we give you a chance to figure out some ingenious plan to get away. No, instead, I think we’ll just kill you.”
And then, without further ado, he shot at me just as Scary Faerie threw his orb.
* * * * *
The orb should have killed us.
But, you forget.
I am The Chosen One.
And we were standing at the base of The Tor.
Which also happened to be the Gate to the Underworld.
* * * * *
Not to mention, Ash was from magical stock.
So before Bligh’s finger squeezed the trigger, Ash stepped in front of me.
Faster than a speeding bullet?
Not exactly but almost.
And very, very unfortunately.
* * * * *
At the same moment I used everything I had left to wave a sheet of protective magic up in front of us and it shot forward, toward Bligh and Scary.
* * * * *
Simultaneously, with a final rumble and an awful hiss and screech, the Gate opened and out flew a twinkling of multi-colored light which separated instantaneously and formed into a two women.
One was Althea.
The other one, I did not know.
And together, the ghostly spirits absorbed, and my shield deflected, the ancient, powerful orb of faerie magic then shot it straight back at Bligh and Scary Faerie, pinpointing them with deadly accuracy.
The blistering burst of mingled otherworldly and SuperWitch power blew them off their feet and backwards to pin them hideously against the side of The Tor. It scorched off their eyebrows and most of their hair and clothes and, icky though it was, quite of bit of their skin as well as a huge spray of the earth around them.
* * * * *
I stared in horror at this result and then, without hesitation, Althea and the woman zoomed back into the Gate as if their borrowed time was more than up.
The Gate closed with a resounding whoosh the instant they passed through it and the ground rumbled its last warning.
And in the distance I could just hear the echoing:
“This will be the last time I’m going to tell you, quit calling me Elly or no more help from me!”
* * * * *
My spell mixed with the power of the Underworld was extraordinary, unheard of magic.
Beautiful and astonishing.
This fusion of natural and Underworld power would someday fill pages and pages in history books.
The problem was, magic could repel magic.
But faerie, witch, Chosen One or Underworld magic…
None of it…
Could stop bullets.
And Bligh’s bullet hit Ash.
Right in the belly.
* * * * *
“Don’t worry, baby,” I whispered to Ash, whose head was in my lap as he lay across the backseat of Aidan’s Mercedes while Aidan drove like his usual madman to the nearest hospital and BecBec zoomed beside the car, lost in a rocket of color.