Page 58 of The Accidental Witch

Her heart stuck in her throat as Gwinnifer shot through the night. “Leave him alone! It’s me you want! Come get me!”

“I’m going to kill you, Greer, and then I’m going to kill your girlfriend!” she screeched, making the world around them rumble as she raced toward them, her hair streaming behind her, eyes red with rage.

All the panic drained from Robbie then. She didn’t think. She didn’t feel any fear. She did nothing but react to the idea thatGreer was powerless, and his grandmother was going to try to kill him for a second time.

Lobbing herself in front of him, Robbie knocked him out of the way, taking the hit of magic Gwinnifer flung at him right in the gut. The hot sting sliced through her flesh, leaving her in a ball of pain, writhing on the ground.

“Robbie!” Greer yelled, crawling to her as the ground beneath them swelled, pieces of concrete breaking and cracking.

He snatched her around the waist, dragging her aching body toward shelter by a bush, protecting her with his long frame, only to be knocked out cold by falling debris.

Pushing herself up, Robbie called to him, laying over his chest and clapping his cheeks. “Greer! Are you okay? Greer!Wake up!”

“You fucking crazy bitch!” Robbie heard Nina bellow. Squinting as debris swirled in the air, she saw Nina soar across the sky, tackling Gwinnifer like an NFL star and taking her to the ground, rolling over and over as the vampire clung to Gwinnifer’s throat.

“Get Greer!” Wanda cried. “Get him out of the way!”

Darnell rushed in then, hauling an unconscious Greer up by his armpits and dragging him behind one of the few hedges still standing.

And then, out of the absolute blue, as she fought to find the strength to get up off her ass, as sweat dripped from her brow, she heard a voice whisper,You can do this, Robbie! Get up and do this! Trust in the universe. Get up and let her have it!

But do what? Let her have it with what?

Then she heard Greer’s voice in her head after all those lessons.“Let the magic come to you, Robbie. It will if you let it.”

Forcing herself to her feet, dragging her week legs, she stumbled and tripped toward Nina and Gwinnifer when an ideahit her right between the eyes. Her hands. They had to contain Gwinnifer’s hands.

“Hold her wrists,” she cried. “Don’t let her use her hands!”

But Gwinnifer wasn’t so easily contained. Before Nina could latch onto her delicate wrists, she zapped the vampire with a hit of magic, forcing Nina to roll away, her clothes on fire.

As Greer lay unconscious, as Marty, Wanda, and Darnell threw their jackets on Nina to tamp out the flames, as Tottington wandered, dazed and confused toward Greer, pulling him into his lap to cover his body, Robbie’s temper soared to heights she didn’t know existed.

Gwinnifer rose to her feet, swishing her arms in the air, forcing the wind to take on a new speed, making hard raindrops fall from the sky. Chaos ensued as the group fought the elements, slipping and sliding, grunting and grasping onto anything they could use to anchor themselves.

Now she wasn’t only angry, Robbie was livid, beyond the scope of any word she could craft to depict what was churning inside her. While the madness played out before her, she simmered until she burst.

No. No. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.No.

“I said,” she started in an eerie calm that rose to a fevered pitch, “leave them the fuck alone!”

With a twist of her wrist, power surging from her hand, Robbie ran toward Gwinnifer, her arm out in front of her. Unfamiliar words fell from her lips as she pumped her legs, fighting the heavy wind and pelts of rain until she was standing below Gwinnifer.

Lifting her chin, spreading her legs to hold her stance, she yelled above the wind, “Evil be gone, back from where you came! Leave us now, this power I claim!”

Gwinnifer screamed, a bloodcurdling howl of pain as her skin began to crack, her image distorting and melting as magic swirled in the air around her—dark, ugly magic Robbie tasted.

But Gwinnifer had a whole village worth of magic in her arsenal, and as she straightened, her bones creaking, her body crumbling and twisting, as she rose tall and proud, morphing into a nightmare, she showed Robbie what she was actually made of now.

Scaled and horned, her new body unfurled, slick with rain and glimmering in the night, her feet and hands clawed with long talons as she lifted them to the sky.

When Gwinnifer opened her mouth, it revealed long teeth, threads of saliva dripping from them. And then she shrieked, “Dark magic, reveal my power, show the world my force! Rain Hell down upon them all, let evil take its course!”

Apparently, the dark magic, whoever that was, heard her…because holy reign of terror.

The fabric of the world around them literally began ripping in two, the tearing loud and screeching as it uprooted everything in its path.

Wanda and Marty screamed to her, “This way! Run, Robbie! Run!”

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