Page 36 of Fated Midlife Christmas
Now Erin rushed in, fluffy in her bobcat form. She sent blasts of her green magic firing straight at Mary, all the while dodgingand leaping around the room to keep herself as difficult to target as possible.
Mary was rotating now, swirling in the air as she sent one dark streak of magic after another in Erin’s direction.
The distraction was a good one, and Amanda wanted to take advantage of it. She shrugged into her bear form, immediately warmer as thick fur extended from her skin. Her feet felt solid on the ground once again, and her claws scratched into the wood floor as she charged back into the room.
I’m heading for the geodes,she told Erin through their coven’s telepathic link. She couldn’t think of any other way to start taking Mary down, but it was clear that the situation was only going to get worse if they didn’t do anything. What if Mary managed to leave the house? She’d wreak havoc all over Salem, and the witchy reputation that most ‘normal’ people thought of as a tourist trap would become all too real.
The remaining amethyst geode was the easiest one to get to, since it wasn’t in a corner. Amanda barreled toward it, tucking her head and slamming into it with her shoulder. It leaned back, moving so slowly at first that it felt as though time had frozen. It picked up speed and smashed into the floor, cracking in half and sending a blast of the released ley energy out into the air. It hit Amanda square in the face and sent her reeling backward, overwhelmed with dizziness and nausea.
Meanwhile, it only seemed to piss Mary off. She grabbed the altar chest once more, and this time she slid it across the floor and into Amanda.
The world tumbled as it knocked her to the ground. All the air left her chest when she slid into the wall. She gasped and reeled as dark sparks formed on the edges of her vision.
Amanda!Kristy cried out.
I’m fine.Or at least, she was alive. That was good enough for right now. As Kristy and Erin kept Mary’s focus elsewhere,Amanda slipped back out of the room. Corinna, seeing her opportunity, crawled out behind her.
Lucille was still on the floor near the couch, but now she was sitting cross-legged with her books on her lap. She looked up hopefully. “It’s clear that our magic isn’t strong enough to defeat her, but that’s not what we really want, anyway. We need to send her back where she came from. Tell me about the magic you used to get her here.”
Corinna’s clothes were torn, and the wind had churned her sleek hair into a rough knot. She staggered a little as she got to her feet, yet she still sneered at Lucille. “You really think I’m just going to give away my secrets? The spell that I worked the hardest on? The project that literally took me months to prepare?”
Lucille’s soft face instantly grew hard. “If it’s going to save your ass, then yeah.”
“No way.” Corinna folded her arms in front of her chest.
Amanda had shaken off her bear, something she instantly regretted as the cold took hold of her once again. “Seriously? We’re trying to help you. No one here is interested in stealing your work or secrets. We’d all just like to live.”
Corinna put her chin in the air, but then her haughty façade crumbled. Her shoulders slumped, and she put her forehead in her hand as she started to cry. “The truth is that I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t even know exactly how I managed to make this happen.”
Lucille jumped as another resounding crash came from the altar room. “What do you mean you don’t know? How could you not?”
“I was in a trance state, okay? Nothing was working. I was pulling all this energy in, and I knew I was close, but it just wasn’t happening. I slipped into that trance state and made ithappen, but I have no idea how.” Tears still streaked down her face, but she looked defiant despite them.
Amanda turned to Lorelei. “Is that true?” It was a lot to ask her to rat out her own High Priestess, but the situation was getting desperate.
“I think so,” Lorelei replied. “No one else was in the room. When some of us heard the noise, we came running, and Corinna was just sort of standing there in the room, completely out of it.”
“Until that old bitch chucked one of my own books at me!” Corinna added, pointing to a gash on her forehead.
“All right. Well, let’s at least work together and see what we can come up with,” Lucille reasoned.
“The rest of us will see what we can do in here.” Amanda ran back into the altar room, taking on her bear form on the fly. Maybe they could at least wear Mary down, making her weaker so that whatever spell the others came up with would be more effective.
She planted her feet on the floor. Plenty of ley energy was available, and she pulled it up from below. It flowed through her feet, up her legs, and into her body. Amanda gathered it, trying to ignore the chakra blocks that still inhibited her. She couldn’t wield ley energy the way that Mary could, but maybe she could at least give her a taste of her own medicine.
With a roar, she sent a blast of rippling energy through the room. It pushed Mary back toward the windows, but her non-corporeal form seemed relatively unaffected.
Jamie stepped up at her side. She was human at the moment, which made it easier to send out her magic. She slammed the undead witch with blast after blast of swirling red magic, but all it did was piss her off.
Mary tossed Jamie out of the room with a flick of her wrist.
This isn’t going very well.Erin raced out from behind one of the geodes. She lobbed a few balls of green magic as she went past Mary, once again serving as a distraction and making Mary turn away from Amanda.What if you hit her when she’s not prepared for it?
As with anything, it was worth a try. Amanda sent another blast of energy radiating toward Mary’s back.
The witch turned. She curled her fists and opened her mouth, sucking in a breath that pulled in all the air in the room. The wind whipped through Amanda’s fur and seemed somehow even colder than before. Finally, the witch let the air back out in an otherworldly scream that made Amanda’s sensitive animal ears squelch and squeal.
Tina’s wolf charged in, trying to assist. The orb of purple magic that she sent flying at Mary was returned straight back to her, hitting her in the shoulder and making her yelp.
