Page 46 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
Who will get the final rose? Who will be the next to break a Seal? Who will be voted off the island? Who wins a custody battle with Death?
Aerin pinched the bridge of her nose, a headache pricking behind her eyes. Probably from low blood sugar. What had the prophecy said?
When the reckoning comes, who shall be able to stand?
Who exactly would be the warring factions? Who were the enemies?
Who would beleftstanding once the smoke cleared? The proverbial King of the Mountain. Or, more accurately, the entire world. A god, essentially. Or goddess?
Goddesses?Maybe four?
A scream interrupted her dangerous questions. It came from the direction of the backyard.
Moira.
The broom clattered to the floor as Aerin bolted through the house. Through the wall of brand new windows in the kitchen, she watched in horror as Moira drove the heel of one of the stilettos Aerin had discarded by the door into a man’s temple.
“No!” Aerin cried, grabbing the ax she’d also left leaning against the porch rail in case she’d needed a different branch.
Staggering back, the man, dressed in bell bottoms and a fringed vest the same brown as his stringy long hair, reached his hand up and tested the shoe sticking out of the side of his face. “Hey,” he protested in a thick monotone ubiquitous amongst pot heads and surfers. “Uncool, man.”
Aerin wasn’t certain who she planned on using the ax on until she reached them. “Yeah, Moira,” she agreed with the walking corpse. “Unfucking-cool. That’s my fucking shoe!”
“Peckerhead tried to eat me!” Moira pointed, her aquamarine eyes wide with disbelief.
“Who hasn’t?” Aerin said acerbically as she turned to the zombie hippie. “Give me my heel back or I’ll take it, along with your head.”
“No need to be salty ‘bout it baby,” the man drawled with squinty-eyed passivity. “You seem like real fine chicks, and this sort of thing isn’t my usual bag, but the lady fascist gave me no choice. It’s like ‘Namall over again, man.”
“Who in the Sam hill you talkin’ about?” Moira demanded.
The zombie ignored her. “Now which one of you groovy gals is the water witch? I’m a Scorpio, and I think I should stay with my sign, ya dig?”
Aerin stepped in front of Moira. “I’ll dig your eyeballs out if you don’t answer the question,” she threatened, lifting the ax.
“Hey, I’ll be the first cat to admit it’s a real bummer. But making a meal of you chicks is the only way to save my immortal soul. But if you’ve been good, yours’ll merge with the far out divine. Nothing more righteous than that.” He put his lanky arms out in front of him, evoking the image of the quintessential zombie. “Now do me a solid, and hold still.”
“Merge with this,Daddy-o.” Aerin swung her ax like she’d seen in the Bronx when Horowitz, the bookie’s Shylock used to swing bats to break kneecaps. Horowitz was old school.
It embedded in about half- way into his neck with an oddly fibrous sound and stuck there. As in, Aerin couldn’t pull it out no matter how hard she tried.
“Yeouch,” the Zombie wailed as he was yanked this way and that. In Aerin’s frenzy, she nearly knocked over Moira in their awkward, lethal tug of war.
Thinking fast, Moira managed to grab onto her shoe and pry it out of his face.
Arms slack with a bit of relief, Aerin didn’t realize the extent of the man’s strength until he gave a mighty tug and the handle of the ax was ripped out of her hands.
“Catch!” Moira snapped as she tossed the shoe at Aerin and lunged for the anachronistic zombie. “I got this.”
Grabbing the handle, Moira kicked out at the man and used his chest for leverage as she yanked the ax out of his throat.
Aerin didn’t know what she expected, perhaps a bit more arterial spray, but all that oozed from the wound was a foamy goo of indeterminate color.
She shuddered and swallowed some bile that threatened the back of her throat.
“Not gonna work, lady,” the zombie taunted, his voice not at all affected by the fact that his vocal cords had been severed. “Can’t kill a cat who’s been dead forty years.”
“Can’t eat a ‘chick’ if you have no head,” Moira volleyed back, swinging the ax one more time, her aim suggesting she’d done this before. Probably not with people, but one never knew.
