Page 27 of Witch Please
How was it that she always found me when I ended up dealing with cursed monsters in each door I opened? I needed to catch a break one of these days. Speaking of which, recalling the videos I’d seen of skydivers, I tried to slow down my descent by spreading my arms and legs wide in an attempt to hug the air. It worked for a second, but I turned a bit too much to the side and I pitched forward again with a cry of despair. In my flailing, I saw a bird shooting right at me, and in between the panic, Sissily screeching something, and my own spiral of death, I paid no attention to what it was. All I wanted was just for it to go away and stay away from Sissily and I.
I zapped it.
My magic hit it head on, sending it flipping backwards, and a sigh was ripped from my chest. Nothing was going to eat us today, I told myself firmly. Until I heard what Sissily was shouting from the top of her lungs.
“You almost killed River you idiot.” My best friend was bellowing from a foot or two below me. “Are you blind?”
“What?” freaked out, I twisted and turned so I could find the bird thingy I threw magic at. To my horror, white wings streamed limply behind a large muscular body that was swirling toward the ground. “Oh no. River.” I gasped in horror.
Instead of saving him, I actually killed him. The blood curdled in my veins. Without giving my brain a chance to think or panic, I aimed my body toward the falling Blackman and straightening my arms I shot like an arrow at him. If I could reach him, maybe I can do something to slow his fall. Or wake him up and he can actually save us all.
The closer I got, while Sissily kept shouting things from behind me, the more I realized his skin was almost gray. Unsure if it was the realm doing it to him or my magic that I hit him with, I pushed it aside and focused on getting my hands on him. Who would’ve thought I’d be eager to wrap my arms around Blackman. Yet here we were.
I barreled into him with a force of a freight train, our bodies slapping into each other with a resounding smack that hurt my ears. At that point, I was so tired from all the fighting, swimming and flailing, that my fingers had no strength to tighten around his arms. He slipped from my grip like water, and I lost contact.
“Eggs bound em.” Sissily’s words came out in almost a whisper.
“What?’ I shouted and cringed from the pain in my throat. “Eggs? It’s not a bird, it’s Blackman.” To make my point clear, I pointed at him a few times. Couldn’t she see? I mean he was a pigeon but it’s impossible not to recognize River. Even as a supernatural he had a perfection about him that was hard to match.
“Eggs bound em.” She pointed too and I frowned when she started to kick at the air.
Was she frogging in the air? It took me a long moment of staring, and Sissily humping and thrusting her pelvis at the air to understand what she was saying.
“Oh!” I wanted to slap my forehead, but I couldn’t from the pressure of the air whistling around me. “You want me to wrap my legs around him. Smart thinking.” I told her, but I doubt she heard me. I couldn’t hear me either. The important thing was I understood what she said, and she was right. If I could wrap my legs around him, I could definitely hold him to me.
Angling my body to the best of my ability, I made a second attempt at grabbing a hold of him. Sissily, by that point, learned my trick too, so she was doing the same. Both of us zipped and zagged around him, thankfully avoiding each other and not cracking our skulls in the process. After the fourth attempt, I finally snatched River’s falling body and latched onto him with my arms and legs. Locking my ankles at the small of his back, I dug my heels in his rounded buttocks and plastered myself to him. A second later Sissily slammed into us and latched on too.
Now we were spiraling down to our death in a bundle of three.
“Do something.” She yelled at me, ever so helpful.
“You do something.” I snapped out of desperation, more like anger, but I was already craning my neck to see something that would inspire me.
“Arrowing down was genius by the way.” She kept talking and hiccupping, which told me how nervous and stressed out she was. It also reminded me that I have seen situations like this, so I racked my brain to think about how to slow down our fall. I almost cried from relief when an idea struck me.
Releasing the death grip, I had on River’s shoulders, I slid my hand down his arm until I tangled my fingers through his. Lifting our hands, I showed Sissily and pointed for her to do the same with his other hand. She looked at me strangely, but did it anyway, thank Hecate. I reached for her free hand with my other one and waited until she laced her fingers with mine. Then I released my locked ankles from around Blackman’s hips and my body was flung up at the same time as Sissily’s who was doing everything I was doing. The moment we were only linked by our hands our descent stopped and we started floating up.
“Hopefully the door is floating around here somewhere.” I said more to myself than her.
“Actually, it’s not down here.” Sissily shouted, and I whipped my head straight to look at her.
Her chin jerked up and she raised her eyes toward the space above us. I followed her line-of-sight, anger gathering at the center of my chest. Sure, as hell the door was looming above us, but we had to aim our bodies to reach it and not miss it completely. To make matters worse, the cursed harpy was back. She circled us from afar once but was coming closer.
“What in Hecate’s name is that?” Sissily asked alarmed, the distress evident on her face.
“A demon, curtesy of Leviathan, I’m sure.” The twist of my mouth told her how annoyed I was with it.
“I can hit it with magic, but I’ll have to let go.” My bestie shouted.
“I’ll hold onto your forearm,” I yelled back. “I won’t let go.”
With a nod, we forced our fingers to unlatch, and I walked my hand from her palm to her forearm where I dug my nails into her skin, so my hold doesn’t slip. She didn’t complain, just clenched her jaw, and lifting her head up zeroed in on the harpy.
“She’s coming this way.” My shout hopefully stayed between us, and the demon couldn’t hear it. “Wait till the last minute.”
Sissily nodded to tell me she heard me, just a quick jerk of her head. I held my breath and kept glancing at Blackman hoping to see him awake. I was not sure I could live with the idea that he was dead because of me, despite all the back and forth between us. I was mean to him because if I allowed myself, I would care too much about him. And when he hurt me, I would never recover from it.
It’ll kill me.
