Chapter 1
A dark omen flew silently through the trees, only the soft whisper of disturbed stillness heralded the crow’s passing between the oaken columns that stitched together the realms of Earth and Sky. There were patches of moist moss here and there, little more than splotches of green that intermittently decorated the ranks of trees that stretched out unending into the constant brown of the deep wood. This forest was old, very old, a testament to fact that Man did not wholly own the land. At the border of their neat little existences, beyond the walls they built to keep out both man and beast shadow still danced with the light in an endless chaotic ballet in the old forest and hid things that men still feared.
The crow passed through all of it uncaring, slipping between rays of golden light and dusty shadow in a primal, ethereal way before finally passing under the eaves of a particularly great oak where it took a perch on a low branch and melted into the shadow cast by the trunk. Whether something had directed it here, or if its presence was simply the mysterious result of chaotic chance it had its own little part to play in the tapestry of fate. It was not long before something else moved in the forest; passing through shadows of its own, a figure too tired to move gracefully stumbled across the forest floor. Soon the invader in this dark realm was made plain, a human girl was moving across the roots and leaves that formed the forest floor.
Whether the crow recognized the girl would be another mystery, it had seen plenty like her at the town some five miles away that was marked by signs that read Rouen though the crow had no use for Man’s strange symbols. The bird noted to its dissatisfaction that while the outward curve at her chest was significant there was no large matching curve at her belly. The act of bringing life into the world was still fraught with peril and the carrion bird remembered some of its finest meals had come from the results of mothers who were more girls than women failing to survive the primal act. That however, was not going to claim this girl anytime soon and while she was dirty, she was not filthy. Her stained rough brown woolen dress had seen its share of wear, but was still clothing rather than rags. The lines of her face spoke of occasional hunger but not starvation, and while her breathing was ragged as she approached the tree that the crow had its roost in, it was the ragged breath of exertion not disease. The crow was disappointed that nothing about the girl’s appearance hinted at death, this girl existed outside of its mystic dominion, and in its frustration it fluffed itself up unnoticed as she came to rest against the tree trunk. Her occasional wracking sob sent fresh tears down her cheeks to etch new pale lines in the dirt there between deep breaths meant to give solace to her burning lungs.
“KAW!!!”
The crow finally announced his presence, sending his loud shrieking call down to the girl below who nearly panicked at the sudden sharp sound. She reflexively jumped back only to trip on the hem of her own dress sending her sprawling backwards with a flail of limbs to land on her back and rear which sent a plume of dust up from the forest floor. She lay there a moment trying to block the throbbing, aching fatigue in her legs from her mind before rising to get up. She rubbed her head trying to soothe her frayed nerves as she got to her feet, mumbling to herself in thin relief.
“J'ai besoin de se détendre, c’est juste an oiseau, Marion.”
(I need to relax; it’s just a bird, Marion.)
Except as she finally found the bird in its shadow, still sitting on the branch it ceased to be simple bird, it was a crow, an omen of death and doom all too recognizable to the scared girl and it wrung fresh frightened tears from her terror. It appearance was altogether fitting, although Marion Dumere’s heart still beat out its pounding staccato rhythm behind her breasts her life had come to a crashing end some fifty-three minutes ago, though none of the men that now chased her had anything that could measure the passage of time that accurately. The magistrate could do the best, he had a miracle of modern technology, a water clock that on a good day was only an hour or so off that sat next to a hand copied almanac in his quarters that identified today as the 9th of June, 1492.
Now though, time seemed to stretch out for Marion as she stood transfixed by the unwelcome harbinger of doom, afraid of what dark sinister portents it presence could deliver.
“KAW!!!” The bird called, bringing attention to the fact that this girl was no more welcome in its world, than in the world she was fleeing from.
“S'en aller,” the girl whispered, desperately hoping the bird would give her peace.
(Go away)
“KAW!!!” The bird refused.
“S’en aller,” the girl again commanded, a note of frustration creeping into her shaky voice.
“KAW!!!” The bird refused again, asserting its right to darken this corner of the forest and this girl’s life with its presence.
“S’en aller!” The girl spoke in anger, her voice unwavering in its defiance of the avian prophet.
“KAW!!!” The bird replied, its beady black eyes seemed to bore into Marion’s soul and whisper that it knew all too well what she was.
“S’EN ALLER!!!”
The girl screamed her anger at the crow fueled by inward denial and outward fear. That anger peaked and then seemed to fall away from Marion, and then it was as if a ripple moved through the fabric of reality, then shot like a dagger towards the offending bird leaving for an infinitesimal instant a slash across the face of existence. The distortion intersected with the crow and suddenly a wet splatter of crimson decorated the trunk of the tree and the branch the bird perched upon. A spray of jet black feathers exploded outwards before they began to drift downwards in a silent rain. On the branch, the crow slowly tilted backwards on its perch before finally falling off the branch, spinning uncontrolled in its descent through an awkward death spiral. The crow’s body passed through the shower of its own dislodged feathers on its final flight before impacting the ground with the soft thud of its broken body hitting dirt, its feathers floating down to leave a black halo around the corpse of the dead bird.
A few feet away Marion collapsed to her knees in shock. Her hands flew to cover her mouth; muffled soft squeals of fear emphasizing her terror generated more from the unnatural event that had seemed to emanate from her own will than for the fact that she had killed the crow.
“Je ne suis pas une sorcière, je ne suis pas une sorcière, je ne suis pas une sorcière...”
(I’m not a witch, I’m not a witch, I’m not a witch…)
Marion repeated her words in vigorous denial at first, growing softer with each condemning iteration, her statement desperately trying to assert and make real a truth that even she had trouble believing at this point. Even to her ears the words sounded falsely hollow. It was too similar to an event that had transpired some fifty-four minutes ago in Rouen’s market square.
Then she had been trying to deliver a bundle of carrots when a starving street urchin had tried to steal her cargo. The resulting tussle had raged for a minute drawing the casual attention of bored onlookers but no aid. When the urchin bit her it was too much and she screamed for him to be gone from her sight in a tone that promised imminent vengeance. The sensation that followed an instant later was not in the least bit expected as something had seemed to push away from her, carried on the edge of the hot wave of her anger, before snapping back to send the urchin flying through the air riding a strange iridescent ripple in space before he came crashing down into a pile of wood some thirty feet away. Marion had been almost as shocked at the event as the score of eyes that had watched it, and she had sighed in relief, her anger already forgotten when the urchin got up and scrambled away from her in abject fear as fast as his legs could carry him. That relief had withered and died a scant moment later as she collected a few wayward carrots; she felt dozens of eyes watching her and a chill descend across the square despite the day’s summer warmth as if a cloud had crossed the sun. She had hurried on past the suddenly silent crowd. As she had passed the edge of the square the whispers had started as the townsfolk confirmed each other’s observations. Marion had gulped as the quiet silence enveloped her in her passing and carried one particularly hostile whisper at the edge of her hearing to her. “Witch” it had spoken in quiet damnation as the sound of running feet began to echo up and down the dirt streets.
Still, she had mechanically made her delivery, her mind racing uncertain as to how she going to explain that she had no idea as to how the event in the square had happened. She had barely left the stall and passed beyond the corner of the next narrow street when the sound of heavy boots, clinking metal, and angry voices reached the stall where she had been but a moment before. Marion had peeked back around the corner dreading what she would see. There a group of men held an impromptu council their hands full of cruelly held pitchforks, scythes, hammers, and pikes according to their profession. The local priest had run up panting for breath flanked by men bearing coils of heavy rope and lit torches, their pitch heads crackling in hungry yellow flame. Marion had pulled her head back whimpering in a horrifying realization. Two years before she had been in mandatory attendance along with the rest of the town when an old woman that had lived on the edge of the forest was brought before the Inquisitors in the church square for her ‘trial.’ The matron had protested her innocence long and thoroughly, alternatively explaining that she had never hurt anyone, or throwing herself submissively upon the tender mercies of the judges in hopes of vindication. Nothing had altered her fate and Marion all too well remembered the crowd’s intermittent chants of “Brûler la sorcière!” (Burn the witch!) The memories of the woman’s terrible agonized screams as the flames had consumed her, the billowing, acrid, oily black smoke that had covered the square, it had all suddenly become far more personal as they echoed through the young girl’s mind and thus in a panic she had fled a moment in front of the mob, through the gates, and across the farm fields, fleeing without thought, plan or reason into the primeval forest where she now knelt at the foot of a great oak more in mourning for her lost life than the crow dead by her will.
A world away back in the magistrate’s office an agitated clerk was opening the town’s register. He sought an entry with an ink stained finger, found it, picked up a quill and dipped it in ink to write a quick note. He pulled out a sheet of parchment and began copying the note along with the description of the girl who had fled the town not an hour before. In old ink the entry read:
Marion Dumere, woman, born May 1476
In new wet ink the clerk had added:
Revealed as a witch by her own witch craft on the 9th of June 1492, and fled from justice. By edict she is condemned to be burned at the stake should she ever be captured.
The clerk finished his notes and addressed the letter to the head of Inquisition in Paris where the information would be noted and eventually forwarded to Rome. The existence of a strawberry haired teenage peasant girl from Normandy in the north of the kingdom of France would shortly become vastly more important to many. With the final act he sealed the letter in hot red wax and pressed the town’s coat of arms into the seal. With that act Marion Dumere, peasant girl, was officially dead, the first victim of Marion Dumere, hunted Witch, monster, and abomination. There would be no funeral, no kind words, no flowers, and the only participants that would shed tears would be the deceased and the accused.
Those tears of a virgin monster flowed heavily now, generating a slow soft patter on the forest floor until a new sound filtered through the trees. The baying of hounds echoed across a long arc between Marion and the town as the mob, its collective courage reinforced by its growing size, moved ever deeper into the gloom of the woods after its quarry, now led by the local lord’s tracking hounds. Marion slowly rose to her feet, frozen at the distant, approaching sound of the hunters and the call of their dogs like a deer. Finally her mouth moved to command the rest of her frozen weary frame in quiet, yet desperate words.
“Enfuir, Marion, vous devez fuir!”
(Run, Marion you have to run!)
Turning, she put her back to the hunters and fled away from everything she knew into the unknown. It would become a haunting reality, the same so many times over. Generations passed, nations rose and fell, the maps were filled in, but always, relentless shadows dogged the running steps of Marion, WITCH.
Chapter 2
Thud, thud, thud, thud… Marion was running again, the cadence of the synthetic material of her tennis shoes striking solid weathered concrete kept time with the rapid rhythm of her pounding heart. She moved quickly, her long sweeping strides eating distance through an urban jungle in her latest escape so very different yet very similar to her first. No trees and no moss decorated this landscape, just the large blocky shadows cast by large square edifices of artificial rock themselves decorated in places with garish neon graffiti. She spared a concerned glance behind as she rounded a street corner, hooking the dingy steel post of a street light with a hand and swinging herself around it to conserve as much precious momentum as possible. Passing into the shadow of a building she jumped over a comatose wino sprawled out on the sidewalk as she shot a hand into the cargo pocket of her loose jeans and fished out her phone between strides. Thankfully she was still getting enough GPS reception among the buildings to accurately track her position which her phone dutifully plotted on the small map it displayed on its screen. Marion’s pace slowed slightly as she spent a few seconds to memorize the immediate pattern of the city streets before she replaced the phone and redoubled her efforts, silently thanking whatever powers that be that she wasn’t blindly fleeing for her life again in a long dress…again.
The need to blend in with the feminine fashion of the day was not always compatible with the requirements of hasty retreat and the tradeoff had nearly gotten her killed several times, most recently in San Francisco in 1906 as the complex Victorian style dress she wore that day had dramatically slowed her movement; her own mistakes in getting lost in the dusty young city hadn’t helped. Only the dumb luck that the Hunters had also gotten confused in the warren of hastily erected, unplanned streets had let her make her escape. She glanced over her shoulder again as she made another sudden turn sending a couple of loose pebbles skittering over the curb into the street, a worried frown etched deeply on her face as a large athletic man of Nordic stock with a blond buzz cut came barreling around the corner at which she had made her previous turn. More ominously, a familiar Hispanic man was riding a black, nondescript motorcycle further down the same street; he had been the one on foot at first when the pursuit began an hour ago, the blond riding. They had switched off half an hour ago and now were probably about to switch back. Marion silently cursed the situation as she had no breath for words; the advance of technology was evenly indiscriminate in its aid.
The two Hunters were at most thirty seconds behind the fleeing Witch, which was not good. Her lead at one point had been almost a minute. While her gift/curse gave her endurance and speed far beyond that of a normal young woman, her body’s reserves were not infinite and she was beginning to tire. A single Hunter team would have had trouble keeping pace with her gazelle like run even with their motorcycle relay, but a second team had shown up not long after the chase began and between the four of them they were doing an annoyingly good job of keeping tabs on her location by directly chasing her and getting out in front of her path. Thus, ever so slowly, they were consuming the distance between themselves and their quarry.
Four whole men, hardly even a mob. Marion spared a stray thought as she considered her options. Truthfully though, the Hunters didn’t really need a mob any more than they had needed the Inquisition. History may have moved on, but the Hunters had not, when other organizations outgrew the hunt for Witches the Hunters merely shed the obsolete organization as a snake sheds its skin and continued their unilateral genocidal campaign. Not that Marion doubted they would have any trouble killing her without a mob if they caught her, experience had taught the five century old young woman that they were most likely armed to the teeth. In 1906 the Winchester Rifles and Colt 45 revolvers had been carried in open view in the still lawless West. Now there were probably carbon-fiber semi-automatics and sniper rifles hidden under their jackets and stashed out of sight. Five centuries and the one of the few overriding constants through all of that time had been mankind’s unflagging improvement in the tools they made to deal death to one another.
She was not without weapons of her own, but the mere fact that the Hunters had blindly detected her could only mean one thing, and Marion could only assume that they all had those damnable necklace charms that absorbed witch craft and detected the ripples in the flux of reality that the use of witch craft generated. Her most potent weapon was thus rendered less than useless; her Craft would only serve to telegraph her location. Still she was going to have to start taking risks if she wanted to live, as much she disliked adding chance to the equation she had too. Unless something drastic happened the distance that was her only real defense against her end would continue to shrink as the burning fatigue that marked the flagging of her endurance crept ever more into her lungs and legs.
Turning another street corner Marion willed herself to a faster pace, demanding more from her aching body even as it offered ever dwindling performance. She covered half a block before the short haired Hispanic man came around the same corner, his faded jacket and shirt not quite fully covering the bulges at his hip and neck which denoted the presence of his most powerful weapons. Her lead had grown back to 45 seconds as the two chasers had switched places but it was a temporary respite at best. Finally, she saw a possible plan and darted across the street towards the entrance of a decaying urban housing project. A beat up old blue Ford nearly ended things right then and there in the middle of the street but she dodged out of the way. For a few seconds the blaring of a car horn and a stream of unprintable profanity was added to the things chasing her before that too fell away. As she passed through the entry drive she stuffed a hand into her other cargo pocket and pulled out a small bag of metallic objects that a child might have assumed to be jacks. Making another turn down the first ‘street’ of the complex she emptied the bag across the road in a cascade of scattering, pinging metal. The caltrop had gone out of general warfare about the same time that the cavalry charge went out of fashion, but they could still puncture a tire as easily as hobble a horse.
With that she left the road and darted down an alleyway paved in cracked concrete between the dilapidated, decaying buildings seeking the maze of fences that enclosed the small spaces that were the pathetic excuse the residents had for yards. If she guessed right the motorcycle rider would probably follow the runner in here; they couldn’t risk her getting lost in the multitude of buildings that formed this parcel of urban blight. It would let her have a chance to rest or slip away. The law of averages owed her in luck so far today, but she couldn’t count on the motorcycle running over her trap, still delay might suffice, if she could break contact her odds went up dramatically as she had not come in here to hide but rather increase the variables in the pursuit to the point where two Hunters couldn’t possible cover them all. Chaos worked in her favor for she was its unwilling acolyte.
Coming to the end of the alleyway she vaulted the first fence using nothing more than raw athleticism infused with a not entirely human grace, from there she was a streaking blur passing in and out of the lives of various families. It lent a slightly surreal tinge to the life and death pursuit as she got a few heartbeats to examine each family’s small slice of life before vaulting the next low fence. A well used tricycle with most of its vibrant red paint flaked off sat forlornly here, a Barbie play set missing most of the furniture pushed into a corner there, a tired old bulldog raised his head to watch her go past in one yard, and in the last before she cleared the row only her heightened Witch reflexes allowed her to awkwardly hurdle a row of stunted tomato plants that some poor family was cultivating. Finally she cleared the last fence growing increasingly tired thanks to her impromptu acrobatics, the strain in her arms adding it self to the complaints of her legs, but she was sure she had gained ground on her pursuers. She was near the back fence of the complex now and on a hunch she decided to cross an open alleyway to seek the boundary. The buried fear she had been suppressing peaked as she was again exposed for the world to see for several terrible seconds, but if any noted her passing they made no noise and no sign of the blond or the Hispanic man was forthcoming.
She darted again towards the back yard of the building that abutted the rear line of the property and vaulted yet another fence. She came to a crashing halt as she came up to a weathered gray, but solid, ten foot high wooden fence that marked the edge of the property, another foot of rusted barb wire sat haphazardly on top of that. Also of immediate concern was the massive pit bull that strained the concept of the word ‘pet’ that had begun a low growl to her left. Witch and Beast regarded one another silently for a moment as primal moisture glistened on the hound’s revealed fangs. The beast however, had an instinctual knowledge that ran deep, it knew without even knowing why that it would not win this fight if it pressed the confrontation. An unspoken agreement passed between the two, the Witch would not linger and the beast would confine itself to merely announcing how impudent her invasion of his realm was in the form of ominous growls. The confrontation settled, Marion turned back to the fence and thought over this latest dilemma. In that pause her ragged breathing suddenly seemed very loud in the background hum of the city. She’d need her Craft to clear it which would announce her presence, but there was no way a normal human man, Hunter-Killer trained or not, was easily getting over this barrier, her pursuers would have to go back around and lose a massive chunk of time, thus it was worth the risk. With the decision made she backed up and summoned her power, a swirl of dust and detritus swept out from where she planted her feet carried by a wind that was not wind. With a flying leap she cleared the fence with a foot to spare like some Hong Kong martial arts movie stunt and noted with happy glee that a flat weed-overgrown alleyway stretched out on the other side for an easy landing.
The last five minutes
Bruce Maxham was not in pleasant mood, the wiry man with a hawkish face well suited to his profession was tired, and the long chase even with the relay rest on the motorcycle was pushing his forty-two year old frame to its limits. The fact that had the whole exercise could have been avoided was particularly galling to his professional spirit. All the rookie Sven had to do was quietly alert the others that he had stumbled onto a Witch without going nuts and the Hunter teams under Bruce’s lead could have surrounded and efficiently ambushed her. Instead Sven’s erratic, unsubtle behavior had tipped off the red-headed witch that the bulky Nordic man was no ordinary city resident and thus the day that had started with the promise of a quick snatch and grab of an inexperienced witch instead had found all of them sucked into a marathon chase of a completely different, much, much older witch. The fact that this was not the first time this Witch had been chased was glaringly obvious from the beginning. The seemingly random changes in direction, the avoidance of law enforcement that he could have co-opted with a number of exceptional fake government ID’s, the refusal to be herded into a chokepoint, and above all her discipline in avoiding the use of her craft that would have given him pulses to triangulate on spoke to her experience in avoiding Hunter team tactics.
Contemporary doctrine for this situation was to use the relays to keep pressure on the target Witch, using fresh legs and the motorcycles to combat the witches’ inhuman endurance until, inevitably, fatigue wore them down, preferably after being herded into a secluded location with few exits. At that point invariably a Witch would turn and fight, but protected by their charms which absorbed witch craft, a Witch’s most potent weapon was removed and with precision teamwork it was usually a simple matter of subduing the exhausted witch and hauling her back to a suitable location for ‘information extraction’. With two teams and four trained men it should have been easy, but it had taken all of his skill and deductive insight gained from over twenty years of hunting these abominations that looked like women to keep the slightest contact on her. He had just started to think he had her as team two slowly closed in, but they had lost her in a housing complex and precious minutes were slipping away without a sighting. His frustration peaking, he whipped his PDA/phone from its holster on his belt and hissed a question into it.
“Sven, Diego what the hell is going on?! You had eyes on her, and you weren’t that far behind, at least tell us what direction she was headed?”
A Latin voice replied in words interlaced with heavy breathing in Bruce’s earpiece, “She’s gotten into the (huff) patchwork of fences in this housing complex; I (huff) can’t cut across them as fast as she can. (huff) I could have reacquired but numb nuts (huff) ran over a spike she left in the entrance way (huff) of the complex and the cycle is out of action. (huff) He’s fallen out of detection range and our triangulation has gone to hell. (huff) She’s at the extreme edge of my passive detection and I don’t have a direction anymore. (huff) Sven was coming off a run rotation; he’s got nothing left to do this on foot.”
Bruce swore under his breath and contemplated his targets’ imminent escape, it was nearly impossible to triangulate on a moving target with a single data point, even if they reacquired, down to one relay team due to the rookies’ second mistake of the day, it would be an extremely difficult takedown if the witch could still run. Switching to a different receiver he sent Carl his own teammate to patrol the road that ran nearest the far boundary on their own motorcycle desperately hoping he could get a new fix on the Witches’ location. Carl affirmed the command and moved down the road away from his leader and half a minute more passed in silence as the leader of the Hunters considered what punishments the rookie was due to receive thanks to this debacle.
He had just begun to reach towards the transmit switch again to chew out said rookie when his charm faintly glowed in response to the spreading wave of a Craft pulse echo. His mind raced at his good fortune even as his phone/PDA/data uplink gathered data wirelessly from his charm and the charms of his compatriots, the fusion of mystic focus and modern technology doing its job well. By comparing the strength of the pulse at the various points and distances along with the differential in arrival times it was a simple mathematical calculation to pinpoint the approximate origin of the pulse’s source and thus the Witch who generated it. Several seconds later and Bruce was looking a nearly perfectly circular probability map overlaid on the local street map with the GPS locations of his comrades noted. The disposition of his assets was not good, Sven was too far away to quickly get back in passive detection range, and by his own orders Carl was badly out of position. He himself was a good eighth of a mile away. Finishing the motion he had begun earlier with his phone he quickly formulated a plan,
“She’s at the north edge of that property. Diego, get back on her. Carl bracket her to the northwest, I have northeast. Sven I don’t care what you have to do, find something you can use as transportation we are not losing this bitch again.” The words trailed off with his frustration creeping in at the end.
Bruce once again ran, trying to shrink down the distance along the leg of an imaginary triangle bracketing the pulse’s center, eyes darting between his surroundings and the currently unlit passive range indicator of his detector charm. A minute passed and the dot representing Diego was approaching the center of the probability circle and the last known point of the witch’s location.
“Diego, status?” Bruce demanded without slowing his own pace.
“Sec, fence…HMMPH….Ah mierda (shit) there’s a high boundary fence I’m going to have to…AH MIERDA!!!…” Diego didn’t complete the thought.
“ROMPH!!!”
The deep bass of a massive bark/growl was so loud that even separated from the event by telephone Bruce winced at the sound and tried to mentally picture the animal that made it. Bruce could do nothing other than listen to the open line and the struggle between Hunter and the vicious hound. The battle lasted a good thirty seconds and was set to a score of Spanish profanity, muffled growls, and the frequent yelps of pain of both man and beast, but mostly man.
“BZZZZTT… (dog whimper)” The unique electric sound of a powerful Taser and the whine of an animal carried across the connection and announced Diego’s technology assisted victory.
“Dog?” Bruce flatly inquired, still grimacing at the thought of what Diego had run into.
“A Chihuahua is a dog that was no dog. Listen amigo, that bestia maldita (@#$% beast) chewed me up good, I’m bleeding in several places. I may be out of this.” The controlled note of pain in the Latino’s voice was readily apparent.
Bruce swore at the situation, he was definitely down a team now and on the verge of failure. Those thoughts were put on hold as a strawberry haired girl slowly jogged out of the alleyway between two blighted buildings at the end of the block neither close nor far from his running form; his charm faintly glowed with a passive detection at the extreme limit of its range. She was clearly tired, and Bruce suddenly hoped that maybe he could still pull this one out. That possibility got a lot harder though as she looked around and seemingly zeroed in on him, as far away as he was, likely helped by the fact that he was one of the few things moving in the decaying neighborhood. For the briefest of instants the girl froze in recognition.
Marion knew that speed was crucial after her Craft assisted jump, but the limits of her fatigue demanded a slower pace. Several minutes of jogging had taken the edge off the burn in her lungs and legs even as she emerged from two low buildings and began to cross a street. A hundred yards to her right, a man was running in her direction which immediately drew her attention. She stopped for the briefest of instants as recognition set in.
“MERDE!!!” (SHIT!!!) The single exasperated word escaped her lips, as she turned and broke back into a northward sprint, knowing all too well that despite everything, including her cunning and resourcefulness that she had just bumbled into the second fresher Hunter team that had been chasing her, which might prove fatal in her current condition.
“Carl, She’s on Industrial and Washburn headed north on Washburn!!!” Bruce cried knowing that though the witch’s pace was not what it had been earlier that he could not long match it. Still he did his best to close the distance.
“Roger that.” Carl heard the desperation in his friend and commander’s voice, he needed to turn around which was complicated by the busy traffic on this street. Noting the deserted sidewalk on the other side of a row of parallel parked cars seemed to promise a ready solution, a moment later he finally grew frustrated enough to jump the curb with his motorcycle and take the improvised lane. He looked down briefly to his PDA to get an idea of the distance and confidently spoke.
“On my way, ETA 5 minutes, I’ll intercept…”
(CRASH) The awful sound of breaking glass, screeching tires, and tortured metal suddenly filled Bruce’s ear before diminishing to silence.
In his haste Carl hadn’t been paying attention to the row of parked cars, and the law of averages had taken the golden opportunity to once again balance the day’s luck between Hunters and hunted as an elderly man failed to notice the oncoming motorcycle on the sidewalk and opened his car door out over the sidewalk with predictable results.
“OH (huff) you got to be @#$% me (huff)!!!”
Bruce asked the rhetorical question to the universe in particular as he tried to keep pace with the Witch in front of him. The entire calculus of the equation had boiled down to him versus the Witch in a contest to see who could run just a little farther. For both, the outside world and all in it fell away as their minds fixated on escape vs. pursuit and the all consuming fire in their lungs and legs as their bodies begged both of them individually to stop.
In a well used car not far away Gregory Pash was savoring the sweet bliss of freedom that comes with the end of a workday. He tried not to fixate on his annoyance with the odd hours that went hand in hand with a position in retail management.
“Hey, at least I don’t have to worry about traffic.” Greg softly reminded himself out loud as he threaded the surface streets, determined as always to avoid the congestion on the freeway. As always though, he felt just a touch nervous as his route passed through this particular section of town that was seedier than he would have liked. He always feared that he might breakdown here someday with disastrous results, and the marginal feeling of unease was always unwelcome. Doing as he normally did, Greg loaded one of his mix CD’s into his player and set it for a random song, a second later distracting music began blaring from the car’s well used speakers.
Here we are, born to be kings; we’re the princes of the universe
Here we belong, fighting to survive
In the war with the darkest powers
And here we are, we’re the princes of the universe
Here we belong, fighting for survival
We’ve got to be the rulers of you all
I am immortal, I have inside me blood of kings
I have no rival, no man can be my equal
Step into the future of you all
Queen – Princes of the Universe (verses 1-3)
Greg began to hum and tap the steering wheel as the song played. He couldn’t really even say why he liked the 80’s Queen song that much, it was just a catchy tune. One tap though brought a wince to his face as he accidentally hit a tender cut on his right hand. It had happened right before he had left his store when he had broken down a shipping box without wearing gloves, like he always told his staff to do, in his haste to finish work before shift end. The reward for his haste had been a large packing staple, pointy end down, drug across the flesh between his thumb and index finger. It was a cut deep enough to draw blood, but not really serious enough to need more than a large Band-Aid, and he had simply left work rather than deal with filling out a bureaucratic injury report which accessing the medical kit would have necessitated or explaining to the store staff why he had ignored the safety protocols he was always scolding them about. He came to a stop at a red light and glanced at his hand and the shallow wound where some liquid blood still oozed from the inch long gash, not entirely scabbed over yet. It was annoying, but on the whole it was little more than another minor injury the type of which any man might expect to occasionally receive in the normal wear and tear of life, it wasn’t like it was going to be big deal…His reverie on the subject and his music was broken however as the long low notes of a train horn to the south defeated his worn car’s soundproofing.
“Well at least I’m not going to be waiting on the train.” Greg remarked to no one but himself as he sat waiting on the stop light to turn, noting how fortunate he was that his daily route didn’t have to cross the train tracks.
Greg was not the only one suddenly interested in the passing locomotive. Marion two blocks away to the south west recalled the times she had passed by those tracks and a desperate plan formed in her mind. She had no idea that the man she was outpacing behind her was the last Hunter that could stop her escape, and so she pushed her herself to her limits hoping she would have enough left to carry out the risky maneuver she now felt was her last viable option.
Bruce internally noted that the Witch wasn’t changing direction anymore, she was making a beeline straight north and the sound of a train horn moving in the distance sent a sinking feeling into his gut as he suddenly deduced what his quarry was about to attempt. He considered his options as each beat of his heart sent pulses of weary agony through his leaden limbs and mingled with the searing fire in his lungs, every fiber of his being wanted him to stop running after an hours worth of off and on sprints. The fact that only a tiny percentage of men could have run as well was cold comfort against the undeniable truth that the Witch was opening the distance between them. He could tell she was tired too, her posture screamed out her fatigue; he thought about how much she must be hurting right now after over an hour of this without rest, and then mentally crushed the stray thought that had dared to consider his foe’s humanity. He had a choice to make now as they passed into the last block before they would hit the tracks, he could shoot, but to pull a gun was dangerous. It was easy for him to pretend to be a cop in most situations, but cops don’t gun down what appear to be unarmed young women in the middle of city streets in broad daylight, if he pulled his gun and someone saw him there would be questions, difficult questions, was it worth it? The glow of his charm winked out as the Witch passed beyond his passive detection range and emphasized the moment of decision.
Right, left, right, left, Marion’s mind concentrated on the strikes of her feet on the pavement as she willed herself on in an act of endurance born of desperation. The Hunter was falling behind, and she could see the end of the row of endless mundane shops. At the end of the block bright sunlight filtered through the city haze and announced a break in the pattern of repeating square blocks. The Union Central Railroad had two parallel lines running through the center of the city, part of the endless webs of roads and rails that supplied the inorganic behemoth, bringing in food and materials to supply the collective mass of humanity that inhabited the city and carting away trash and goods as citizens lived out their lives each day with their own little dramas.
The long term implications of the train’s existence was lost on Marion in this moment, more important to her was that in the name of efficiency the builders of the train tracks had decided to carve the tracks through the rolling hills to keep the tracks on an even grade. The result was a massive scar through the heart of the city, a 50 ft wide canyon flanked by 15 foot deep vertical embankments along this section set in featureless concrete slabs. Its builders called the man made ravine progress, the neighborhood punks thought of it as prime advertising space for their graffiti and gang signs, and Marion thought of it as a giant freaking moat which is exactly what she needed.
The collective breath of fate seemed to still as several things happened in short succession as Marion broke out of the shadows at the end of the street into bright daylight. She willed herself to focus her power even as she lit off her first Craft assisted jump to clear the battered chain link fence designed to keep pedestrians away from the tracks. The unnatural, forceful wind she generated dislodged an empty faded soda can from the trash collected at the base of the fence and sent it flying back up the street in a high lazy arc, carrying it out of the fluttering cloud of shredded plastic left behind in Marion’s wake. As she cleared the fence Marion turned her head back towards her distant pursuer and gave a one fingered salute to the Hunter in a rash act of defiance born of half a millennium of fear and anger.
It was too much for Bruce’s wounded pride to take, against his better judgment, in a single fluid motion robbed of its grace by the fatigue in Bruce’s frame; he drew the silenced 9mm Heckler & Koch Match grade USP from his holster and fell into a marksman’s stance. It was a long shot to make and he didn’t have his breathing or forward motion entirely under control as Marion continued her own motion and made her second gravity defying jump from the lip of the train canyon, arms flailing awkwardly as she fought for balance in the midst of her flight. Bruce had expended tens of thousands of rounds in his career into nonliving targets and a hundred into actual Witches, the skill born of a lifetime of practice flashed through his eyes as he sighted down the cold forged chromium-steel barrel tracing the arc of Marion’s inhuman leap to its apex. Bruce squeezed the trigger and made an automatic follow up shot. Two gouts of flame leapt from the muzzle of his weapon in quick flashing succession, the rounds propelled by the harnessed explosions streaking through the air spinning in their flat trajectories. To any eye fast enough to track their progress the silver etched runes carved into each bullet, only partially marred by the rifling marks of the gun’s barrel, seemed to strobe as with each spiral as they reflected the bright sunlight in their passing.
It was a horrible, terrible ballet of physics and time as the shards of metal death approached their target. Bruce however, already wished he could have those two rounds back. Fueled by raw emotion and sabotaged by his own weariness he had felt the barrel of his gun slip ever so slightly out of alignment even as he had squeezed the trigger. Though the two rounds ate the distance between themselves and the Witch at the rate of 1,200 feet per second, they drifted ever so slightly to the right, pulled off course by the fractional error in Bruce’s aim at their launch. Truth be told, it would have been an incredible feat of skill at all to even hit a target moving in three dimensions at extreme range after running for miles, but it spoke of Bruce’s extreme personal standards for himself that he felt like a failure for a bullet that missed by less than a foot.
Miss, however, was a relative term. Though the first bullet did not hit the sought after spot that would have passed through Marion’s spine and into her vital organs its path still intersected her body in a deep graze carving a quarter inch divot out of the flesh of her right shoulder and imparting a spin to her body in mid air, turning Marion around just in time to feel the second bullet whiz by her head as her body began its ballistic descent. An instant later the sound of the first bullet’s flight and the screaming wake of torn air generated by it caught up to her ears followed shortly by the sound of the second bullet. Some intellectual part of Marion’s mind knew that she had been shot as it happened, the abrupt change in the motion of her jump, and the spreading arc of crimson mist carried away from her by its own momentum testified to their cause, but it was not for another second until the blinding sensation of pain, racing along fatigue deadened nerves, finally reached her brain that the wound became real.
Gravity however, was not going to stop its inexorable pull to accommodate the wounded Witch no matter how plaintive her cry of pain was. An old memory of long ago flashed through her agonized mind in the seconds before she met the ground about a bird hitting the ground in a broken heap. She wondered if she would even be alive when she reached the concrete ledge stretching out before her. Even worse, it was becoming obvious she had leapt too well and was going to overshoot the ledge, but not the barrier fence on the other side. For a horrible eternity as the ground rushed up to meet her, she waited for the next set of lethal bullets, which never came.
As the can Marion had dislodged seconds earlier completed its high arc and hit the street in front of Bruce, ringing with the plinks of hollow aluminum as it bounced, on the other side of the rail canyon the sounds of clattering metal and reverberating thuds announced a fence’s solidity despite its builders never having considered the possibility of a grown woman falling out of the sky and landing on top of it. Marion hit the fence halfway up her body, the top cylindrical rail of the fence trying to go through her hips near her center of gravity. Inertia carried her top half over the rail and in the last second of her flight the world spun around her point of view in a nausea inducing whirl before she landed like a sack of potatoes with a dull bruising thud on her back. For several long seconds she lay there looking up at the sky all thought momentarily lost to the shock that had claimed her mind from this latest abuse. The sensation of throbbing pain in her arm and a warm, sticky, wetness creeping across her shoulder finally forcibly rebooted her consciousness. With a roll she came to a crouch and broke for the cover of a nearby corner bus stop intent on putting a thin sheet of Plexiglas between her and her attacker before moving off down the street.
Bruce had been waiting in anticipation for his target to get up and offer him a better shot. He was unwilling to risk further attention on the low odds of hitting a prone target, but Marion’s low roll hadn’t given him much more of a profile to shoot at, and once she was behind the bus stop it was over. It would have taken a miracle anyway for him to hit her at that range through two chain link fences but he hadn’t given up. The obscuring shelter of the bus stop however, meant that he couldn’t even see her anymore. Bruce shifted his gun to one hand and whipped out his PDA as the sun-faded empty soda can rolled slowly towards his feet. It only took a few seconds for him to verify what he already suspected, and what Marion had been counting on. It was three blocks to the nearest street bridge that went over the rail canyon, three blocks up and three blocks back down to get back on the Witches’ trail. Six blocks at a dead run for the slimmest chance of success, and the veteran Hunter didn’t have it left in him. Bruce fixated a furious gaze in the direction his quarry was departing in; his ice cold expression would have done Captain Ahab proud. In front of him the passing train slowly chugged through the cut, with a final act of frustration Bruce raised his booted foot and brought it down with all the angry force he could put into the blow on the unoffending aluminum can at his feet. The satisfying crackle and crunch at least made him feel a little better for the lost chase.
“DAMNIT,” Bruce yelled, his loud obscenity masked by another long note of the train’s horn as he turned to slowly walk the three blocks up to the nearest crossing.
Marion’s world consisted solely of pain as she stumbled and shuffled zombie-like up to the next street, her spent body aching from the effort of her run and combining with the bruised flesh of her front where a diamond pattern was already printing itself across the skin of her legs and hips in red battered flesh under the material of her pants. The dull, throbbing ache at the top of her right arm only added additional insult. She could feel the flow of warm, wet blood running down her injured limb, coating her skin with a sheen of liquid crimson. The long forlorn note of a train horn behind her barely registered on her mind. She had no idea that her misery was over, that the chase was won though it had half killed her to do so. As far as she was concerned another man in a jacket with a bulge at his hip could be around the next corner, or another of those damnable black motorcycles could come down the street at any moment. She couldn’t run anymore, but she was determined she was not going to die here, and so she threw the rules of what she was and wasn’t supposed to do in public to the winds. Rules and codes of behavior were luxuries the half dead couldn’t afford. Thus as a well used Chevy came down the street she stepped off the curb and into its path holding up her good hand commanding it to stop unknowing that what she was about to do was completely unnecessary.
Greg’s thoughts about his duties and responsibilities had evolved over the last few blocks to general introspection about his life. His position didn’t afford him much luxury but it paid his bills, that in and of itself might have saved his first marriage which only lasted three years under the strain of the tight budget necessitated by his then position as a department lead back when he was an inexperienced twenty-something. The emotional damage of that episode had left him wary of relationships, and he had to admit with growing alarm that as the years passed his chances in that realm were dwindling. It wasn’t that he was a failure; he just hadn’t succeeded to any great extent in life and the opportunity cost of the lost decades spent in mediocrity was beginning to weigh on his mind. His eroding potential and the possibility of a life spent without anything great accomplished to show for it was fast becoming a concern as his age slowly ticked through his mid 30’s. His introspection along the familiar route drew his focus from the road, and only the warning from an instinctual part of his brain caused him to refocus attention to the street in front of him, suddenly finding that space occupied. He slammed his brakes and felt as much as heard the protesting screech of his brakes and tires. He managed to stop just shy of the young woman standing in the road, and momentarily he battled with the confusion born of the uncertainty of whether he should be angry about her being there, or fearful that this was some kind of ambush here in this rough part of town.
Then his confused mind realized that the blood red color of her shirt at the right shoulder wasn’t its natural color, it was in fact actual blood. That combined with her overall obviously poor state prompted a horrible realization in Greg’s mind.
“Oh God, she’s been mugged or something,” he softly, uneasily, spoke to himself.
Clarity finally dawned on him on what he thought the battered woman wanted, he assumed she had stopped him to get help. With that partially correct assumption Greg let his caution slip, threw his car into park and opened his car door to get out. He quickly moved up to the wounded girl and instinctively reached for her injured arm with his right hand to see how badly she was hurt. He wasn’t the least bit prepared for what the girl did as his hand closed around her blood streaked slender wrist.
Marion had almost thought the man was going to run her over. He had finally stopped but not before leaving twin rubber streaks on the pavement. She had slowly stepped forward as the man sat dumbly in his car for a moment before getting out. The look of concern on his face was appreciated, but Marion didn’t have the strength left to pretend to be anything other than what she was, or be in the least bit subtle. His hand closed around her injured arm even as she raised her left hand to his face.
Greg never had the time to consider why this girl was putting her hand in his face when a bright flash seemed to fill his mind. He didn’t have any natural defenses against the Craft Marion worked, and with his will unfocused against resisting the intrusion it took only the blink of an eye for his consciousness to be hijacked.
Marion knew she had succeeded when the man’s body had suddenly tensed and then relaxed even before the tell tale, unfocused glassy look came into the man’s brown eyes. Even so, her own mind wasn’t operating very quickly as her own body drifted in and out of physical shock. It took several seconds for her to concoct a plan and in that time the man’s right hand stayed firmly anchored to the wrist of her injured arm. Finally, she spoke.
“Let me go, you will drive me north, keep driving until I tell you otherwise. Obey all traffic laws.”
Marion flatly commanded before her temporarily enthralled would be rescuer released her and moved back to his vehicle. She slipped into the passenger seat and collapsed. The sensation of motion was so welcome now to the tired Witch since she didn’t have to provide the means of locomotion. Marion slumped down in the seat, completely spent, and willed herself to make certain she was out of danger before moving on to phase two of her plan. She knew that she was getting her witch blood all over the man’s car, and she could clearly see where it had covered the man’s right hand. It was dangerous and there were risks with the exposure, but she was too wasted at the moment to really care. Finally after several miles had passed she directed the enthralled man to pull behind a strip mall. Focusing her will again she worked a Craft of healing and regeneration on herself. The much needed spell done she had her thrall pull out from the strip mall and continue his northward journey. As the miles ticked by she could feel her injuries begin to lessen, and the wound in her shoulder knit shut.
“Go west, you are to take to me to the Clover Hills bus depot, obey all traffic laws. When you have dropped me off at the bus depot you will return directly home making at least two changes in direction to do so, you will have no memory of picking me up or where you took me, once home you will be free of my control. Do you understand?”
Marion directed the zombiefied man, a note of happy relief evident in her voice now that the prospect that she was out of danger free and clear seemed certain.
Thrall-Greg silently nodded, his thinking mind recorded the instructions even though his will and memory remained caged. By the time Greg pulled up to the bus depot Marion was feeling relatively whole again. Most of her volatile blood had evaporated off of her arm and the fading stains on her shirt were pink rather than red. Even so, she was glad she had set up the emergency jump point back in the maintenance area rather than the passenger lounge and away from prying eyes. It was a simple thing to avoid the few workers and reach an outwardly mundane supply room. Inside the room, which was brightly lit with artificial light from a large flickering fluorescent bulb, rows of stacked cleaning solvents of all types lent an acrid smell to the air while various mops and brooms in various states of wear stood stacked against a wall. It wasn’t the most pleasant place to be, but she wasn’t going to be here long. She bent down and pulled a large loose tile from the floor, revealing a pattern of hideously complex runes and diagrams visible only to eyes that could see the Craft. One of the diagrams was specifically designed to contain the Craft wave the other diagram would generate. Marion touched and triggered the primary spell then carefully replaced the tile, waiting on the timed countdown to finish. Only a brief flash of iridescent light shone through the cracks of the closed door as the timed spell activated to indicate that something completely out of the ordinary had transpired within the mundane storage room which was now again empty. Far away, Marion waited for her head to clear in the basement of her home after the disorienting jump through space-time, and debated which was more pressing, a drink, a shower, or a long catatonic rest on her couch. She decided to start with the drink, followed by rest, then the shower and despite all of the day’s terror a slight smile crossed her face as Marion Dumere, Witch, realized she had lived to see another day.
Meanwhile
About the same time Marion was entering the bus depot a sullen jacket clad man was sitting alone on a sidewalk near the train tracks and pondering what he and his men had done wrong that day. Bruce could see clearly the drops of blood here and there which confirmed he had hit the Witch; he could also see the black screech marks on the nearby pavement that ended just in front of one of the larger pools. He had no doubt in his mind that his quarry had finished her escape in a car after hijacking the driver; if the Craft pulse his charm had detected was anything else he would have been shocked. It had taken thirty long minutes for him to wearily walk the distance to the crossing point and back down. He had no illusions that his quarry was long gone as he watched her cursed blood slowly evaporate off the pavement. He knew he it was valuable if he could collect it, but the specialized equipment needed to do so was far away in the team’s truck and beyond his reach. He softly swore as the last of it disappeared. Five minutes later a large cargo truck, the kind so ubiquitous in large cities, marked ‘AJ’s Freight’ pulled up to the curve. Bruce slowly stood up and moved up to the truck, he opened the small access door at the truck’s side and pulled himself up into what should have been the cargo area as the truck pulled away from the curb.
Instead of darkness, his features were bathed in the soft glow of electronic light as a cutting edge surveillance suite stretched out to his left and softly hummed with the flow of electricity. The illuminated monitors showed a map overlaid with a various colored lines and punctuated with red points denoting the places the sensitive equipment had registered Craft pulses. Bruce snorted as he recognized the spaghetti-like twists and turns of the pursuit paths. The red dot superimposed over the train tracks where the paths ended blinked over and over taunting him for his failure in its mechanical fashion. Bruce turned away knowing he would spend a great deal of time dissecting the complex map, but now was not the time. Across from the data center a narrow work desk that could convert to a cot sat underneath various locked weapon cages that held an assortment of the most lethal small arms currently manufactured across the world many of them of dubious legality. At the end of the truck a pair of black motorcycles sat in their cradles flanked by equipment lockers behind the hinged façade designed to look like a tight pack of brown shipping boxes. Bruce noted the flat tire on one cycle and the mangled front on the other. Turning towards the cab he could see Sven driving, while Diego bandaged his injuries in the passenger seat, in the rumble seat in front of him Carl sat quietly cradling a medical kit and a small box that contained a mix of several small, bloody shards of glass and copious amounts of crimson stained gauze. Carl felt Bruce’s eyes on him and he turned his injured face to look at his leader.
“I’m sorry boss, I let you down today, if I hadn’t wiped out we would have…” Carl’s apologetic words were interrupted by a wave of Bruce’s hand.
“No, you didn’t fail me, Diego didn’t fail me. That was not an easy pursuit and you gave it your all. It was a high risk chase and things go wrong in high risk chases.”
Bruce’s words were firm and reassuring as he spoke, in the front seat Diego silently nodded in recognition of the compliment.
Bruce continued in a far harsher tone, “NOW, Rookie, why don’t you explain to us why we had to engage in a high risk chase instead of setting a proper ambush?”
In the drivers seat Sven winced at being called out, and tried to think of what words might mollify his commander. He took too long.
“Answer me, DAMNIT!!” Bruce swore angrily, he was not going to let this pass.
Finally Sven answered in the quiet tone of the chastised, “I screwed up.”
“You screwed up, yes there is that, you realize now that the Witch we just chased is going to run to some bolt-hole of hers and disappear, and if she’s in contact with the other Witch we actually came for then that Witch too is going to disappear as well. You may have just burned years of work, dozens of people may die at this Witch’s hands, and this cancer will only become more difficult to root out. If you do it again I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your career mopping floors at HQ, ROOKIE!” The threat hung in the air before Bruce’s angry face finally returned to its neutral mask.
“Okay, what’s done is done; now let’s figure out who we were chasing.”
With that Bruce pulled a chair from the data center, and pulled up the Hunter’s database. Carl moved to sit next to him and soon the two were looking at the several hundred records of known Witches.
“What you want to start with?” Carl inquired.
“Hair, there can’t be that many with red hair like that.” Bruce flatly replied.
The database indicated that there were 32 witches known to have naturally red hair.
“Well it’s a start, any ideas to age and type?” Carl suggested.
“The Witch ran at a dead sprint for over an hour at top speed, got up after a nasty fall, AFTER I got a piece of her with a warded bullet. High pain tolerance, super endurance, fast as hell, she’s either a very new Class V without a visible mutation, or she’s a very mature Class IV, lets go with IV. Trust me if you saw her last jump there wouldn’t be any question as to type, Air type, without a doubt.” Bruce spoke more to himself than his friend.
The database took the offered specifications and cut down the number of possibilities. There were 16 redheaded Class IV’s known. There were 5 known redheaded Class IV Air type Witches.
Bruce pondered a moment before adding, “She knew this city, she’s clearly been here awhile, remove any possibilities with known residences outside the country and knock it down to those Witches known or suspected to be living in America for more than 10 years.”
Two possibilities now showed in the database, the first was a regal woman with straight long auburn hair. Bruce shook his head recognizing the picture.
“Molly McGrae, not her, she got into some money a century back and she’s dug herself into Boston society like a tick, we’ve been trying to get to her for half a century, there’s no way she would be out here for a stroll alone. Who’s the other one?”
A second record flashed on the screen illustrated by an artist’s rough pencil sketch, dated 1906, that wasn’t off by much from the profile Bruce had so recently seen.
Witch # 531492(5-European, 3-Caucasian, 1492-First Encounter)
Name: Marion Dumere (confirmed, 4 confirmed aliases, 7 suspected aliases)
Place of Origin: Rouen, France (confirmed)
Date of Birth: May, 1476(confirmed)
Type: Air (90% certainty)
Discovered by: Locals, believed accidental use of power, escaped from hometown mob. File recorded by Inquisition and forwarded to Hunter records September 1492
Major encounters: 1492 (Local, Rouen), 1511(Bordeaux), 1537(Rheims), 1558(Marseille), 1599(Lyons), 1632(Manchester), 1788(Paris), 1851 (Paris), 1906(San Francisco)
Current location: Unknown (suspected America)
Bruce swore under his breath before listing the similarities, “Yeah that’s her, it fits perfectly, 532 years old, 516 as a Witch, which puts her right past the border between Class IV/V. If that 1906 sketch is accurate it matches what I saw, the jaw line is a bit less angular now with more of a curve but that’s a pretty common change as a witch approaches the IV/V transition. Nine major encounters, eight by Hunters, good grief, no wonder she’s so damn hard to pin down, she’s had a lot of practice running away.”
“How you want to play this boss? We got a pulse way off to the north as we were coming to pick you up.” Carl asked, already knowing the answers to his questions, but it never hurt to confirm his commander’s intent.
“She won’t be up north, this one is too crafty and experienced… she’ll go way out of her way before she goes home. Head for safe house Baker; we’ve got to get the bikes repaired before we make an attempt on our original target, provided # 622005 hasn’t already been tipped off that we’re here.” Bruce’s voice rose at the last sentence making sure Sven heard.
Bruce punched in the spoken number and pulled up a picture of a pudgy, dark haired girl of Asiatic descent. There was cold zeal in Bruce’s eyes as he considered the day’s original target like a crocodile might consider a zebra. Marion Dumere had bested him and was gone beyond his reach, Jennifer Chou however might still be within his grasp and his peaking frustration promised that the significantly younger Witch would pay for the older Witch’s transgressions against his team.
In the parking lot of the apartment building he called home, Greg Pash was suddenly very confused as to where he was. The last thing he could recall was driving down a street near the railroad tracks, now he was sitting in his car, at home, with no memory of how he had gotten here. He looked around hoping some clue could provide sense to this madness. His eyes passed over the passenger seat and then came back to trace the outline of a slight pinkish discoloration covering much of the passenger seat’s right side. His hand traced along the upholstery finding no deposit and sensing no difference in the material, just a slight stain. He thought to the cheap camera in his bag in the trunk and quickly moved to retrieve it. However, in the short time it took him to get it out and a fresh memory card loaded the stain had virtually disappeared. He was certain it had been there earlier, faint, but now with camera in hand there was nothing to be found. Perplexed, he stood for a moment and ran his large free hand through his thinning hair while trying to make sense of the sharply defined void in his mind. There were no answers forthcoming, and finally he collected his bag and walked towards his rented home.
As he turned down the concrete paths that wove between the buildings of the complex a movement to his right caught his attention. Sitting in a tree there off the path was a black bird, that Greg struggled to identity, watching him with an eerie unbroken gaze.
“KAW, KAW, KAW!!!” The crow suddenly shattered the stillness calling down to the halting man a dire prophetic warning of doom that the modern man had no basis for understanding.
Greg watched the bird in return for a long moment before mentally reminding himself that it was just a bird, and he had better things to do than stand transfixed by a mere bird. The crow just watched Greg as he left until he passed through the door of an apartment with a jingle of keys.
The world was as it should be again, Witch, Hunter, and Man had returned to their abodes. The status quo had returned…well not perfectly, there were 247 of Marion’s red blood cells floating around in Greg’s bloodstream having flowed from the wound on her shoulder down her arm and into the cut on Greg’s hand during their brief contact, but a couple hundred cells were such a trivial matter among trillions. In one of Greg’s veins one of the out of place cells collided with a native cell and a tiny, infinitesimal something passed between them in the contact. In the native cell that disturbance seeped into the nucleolus and washed over the genetic information stored there with a strange power. In response, nucleotide sequences began to spontaneously change as the surge passed up and down coils of bundled DNA rewriting key sequences as it went. A weirdness invisible to all but the most powerful of electron microscopes played out as genes were shuffled, some being turned on, others off. In vast stretches of previously inert DNA, unique genes unknown to the scientists who thought they had fully discovered the blueprint for humanity sequenced themselves into Greg’s biology and opened the possibility for debate as to whether this cell was even human anymore. Most noticeable of all however was the radical change that occurred in the 23rd chromosomal pair. The large chromosome there jerked slightly as the original information was overwritten, but its half sized partner practically writhed as the genetic information stored there was assaulted and amended. The battle did not last long before the smaller Y chromosome began to swell in size, gaining untold genetic secrets even as the crucial SRY gene was deactivated. A last half-hearted twitch and Greg’s 23rd chromosomal pair, in this cell at least, was now a matched set of XX chromosomes. The genetic blueprint the altered cell now carried was almost a perfect match to the one carried by the unwitting invader that had collided with it. There were some very minor differences between the two, but the more crucial distinction was that the altered cell carried an exotic blueprint that in no way resembled the stocky, balding, middle age man in whose veins the cell flowed.
In other arteries and other veins, the same event was already repeating. For some of the invaders it was the second time it had happened, for some of the altered natives it was their first time as donor.
247, 248, 250, 256, 279, 328… cells out of 100 trillion, a triviality, but it is by trivialities that fates are altered and the status quo dashed, and this triviality was slowly growing….
Chapter 3
The next few days passed uneventfully, notable if it all for how exceedingly dull they were. Greg, with no other additional outward oddity to disturb the routine of his days began to settle back into his groove. He did his best to put the blank in his memory out of his mind, but all too often when he was in his car he found himself glancing over to the passenger seat and wondering what had caused the vanishing stain.
Marion for her part simply threw herself into various bits of work day in and day out determined to keep her mind off the nearly fatal encounter. Her skill set was large and varied, the byproduct of living through multiple centuries where nothing came preassembled, precooked, or premade. Now by combining various crafts that at one point had been crucial life skills Marion pulled in a respectable income. A translated book here, a handmade sewn dress there, it added up. More importantly all of her consignment work could be done under aliases and away from people who might otherwise wonder why their seamstress, furniture maker, or archaic French language expert never seemed to get any older. Marion, the child of another age, hadn’t really given the Internet its due even as it had been invented and built server by server, but now Marion reveled in a brave new world where things could be bought and sold over vast distances without ever having to show one’s face.
A notice in her mailbox one morning indicated one such order had arrived. The manufacturer of the load of steel beams that waited for Marion at a local freight yard had already been paid, and since they never had complaint with Marty’s Construction Company they paid no additional notice to the transaction or the oddity that a singular young woman would come to pick up a load of structural steel for a construction company. By the time the freight yard was filing the invoice as completed, Marion already had driven the load to a storage unit where she had a much larger teleport drop and jumped to the closest thing she had to a truly permanent home.
Marion might have come late to the California gold rush, but the warren of tunnels and rooms she was digging out of the heart of a mountain in California would have done any forty-niner proud. This was to be her great bastion, a place where she was beyond reach and truly safe. It had taken her decades to slowly acquire the necessary capital to acquire the key properties from which her subterranean abode drew power and water, the various tenants unknowingly contributing funds to the construction that was transforming a cave deep below their feet into a Witch’s fortress.
Marion quickly put the load of steel to its intended use; though her Craft did much of the work of forming and moving it still required a great deal of raw physical work to handle much of the finer details. She put in a hard, full day of unflagging labor before she was satisfied with her progress. She had started this project only two decades ago, and the slow pace of the one-Witch job was beginning to worry her. Her thoughts remained on the subject even as her weary, dirt covered form jumped back across thousands of miles of space to her city home and a much needed and anticipated shower.
The hiss of warm water and accompanying pulse of warm humid air were welcome and soaked into Marion’s sore muscles. Marion began to relax but quickly found her self pondering the unrelenting passage of time. Almost reflexively, like some strange sensuous ritual, Marion’s slender soft fingers began tracing the lines of her body in exploration as warm water and slick soap caressed her nude body. The tips of her fingers began tracing the gentle arcs of her legs feeling the lean muscles that had proved so critical a few short days ago, tense and relax as she shifted her weight, flowing under the sheath of feminine padding that imparted such exquisitely sleek lines to her lower half. From there she reversed her hands, the edge of her nails gliding over the generous curves of her hips in a whispering graze. For a moment her soft hands lingered, putting gentle pressure on the inward curving arc of her lower back before they moved across her flanks, noting in their passing the inflection in the soft curves as they pulled inward to form the taut, narrow waist that joined her upper and lower halves. Marion’s hands followed the gently undulating swell and valleys of her abdominal muscles south, passing the oval of her navel before they stopped as they began to feel her abdomen fall away as it arced into the curve of her womanhood which held dominion between her sleek thighs. From her nether lips gentle streams of warm water, finding no more smooth, velvet skin to cross, dripped.
The hesitation there, near the beginning of the inward ravine that announced the crux of her sex, was almost palatable before the exploring, tapered fingers withdrew northward. The moist internal topography of her secret grotto was well known to Marion, the product of many earlier encounters some of which had not been in the least bit pleasurable. Extinguishing those dark thoughts and memories out of her mind, Marion’s exploring hands continued up her chest where they found their path blocked by a pair of remarkable breasts. Marion closed her eyes in anticipation of the imminent small spark of pleasure as her small hands, not quite capable of fully encompassing her twin mounds, gently squeezed her breasts, hefting each one slightly to test its mass. Marion noted no discernable difference in the twin heralds of Marion’s femininity between the last time she had tested their weight. Thoughts flowed over her mind like hot oil, finding no purchase in her psyche even as the warm water flowed over her skin, garbing her in a transient liquid dress. A single finger, taking advantage of her nipples’ warm, gentle spray induced swollen state, glided across the slick apex of her left breast idly teasing the pink nub that crowned the soft mound, and generated a thread of pleasure in Marion’s body until Marion’s mind returned from its self-induced sojourn. Thinking clearly again, Marion quickly tested the lines of each arm with its opposite before her fingers moved to oddly probe her back and scalp. Finding nothing out of the ordinary Marion quickly washed her hair and wrapped up her shower.
Marion turned the water off with a sigh and stood for moment tracking the liquid sensations as the last straggling rivulets of water ran down her curves before they found the drain. A few more pattering drops hit the floor as Marion stepped out and stared at the indistinct blur reflected in the fogged glass of her mirror. Marion focused for an instant and waved her arm in front of the glass and suddenly the condensed water there was gone. Marion dried herself with a towel before replacing it on the rack and turning again to stare at her nude form in the mirror.
Marion already knew what she would see; her roaming hands had already told her much of the answers she had sought. In the mirror Marion’s reflection gave an image to her stunningly beautiful body, even her damp matted hair didn’t detract from her beauty, the strawberry red even more vivid after taking on a richer, darker hue when wet. Marion’s eyes quickly traced the route her fingers had taken in her reflection, confirming the exquisite lines of her legs, how the narrow tautness of her waist complemented the curves of her generous hips. How the clean lines of her torso accented the swell of her breasts, which took full advantage of the 3 3/4 inches that they stood out over her chest to run in gloriously round, soft curves before being capped by Marion’s rosy pink nubs. Further emphasizing the spreads of curvaceous flesh was the fact that despite the significant mass of Marion’s borderline D cups and the absence of a bra, her breasts refused to rest on her chest; instead they pertly hung out in space, mocking gravity with each slight bounce as Marion moved her arms. As much as Marion might have wished otherwise, she really did have an epic rack. Still, a good number of men did manage to look her in the face when she talked, which might have had something to do with the strikingly rich hue of her cobalt blue eyes and the perfect balance of delicacy and presence in the features of her face. Marion pursed her full, rose lips as she concentrated on the familiar, yet alien creature that stared back at her in the mirror, doing a minor Craft as she had so often done in the past. An indistinct image seemed to pull from her reflection in the mirror, separating and refining until the ghostly image of another girl stood next to Marion’s reflection in the same pose.
Anyone seeing the two images separately out of the context of their odd presentation might have thought the two sisters. Both had the same fair peach skin with a just hint of darker caramel coloring which gave the appearance of a slight tan, the result of a mix of Celt and Viking ancestors spiked with an out of place Mediterranean Roman ancestor millennia ago. Both had reddish locks, even if the taller girl’s were far shorter and far richer in color. In truth though, both images were Marion, the shorter ghostly version being Marion circa June 1492. 16 year old Marion was on the whole pretty, but far from the curvaceous feminine ideal that 532 year old Marion was. Younger Marion’s face was a touch too long, with a slight outward aquiline hook in her slightly overlarge nose, lips slightly too thin for her mouth, and watery blue eyes. Her younger body was attractive with full breasts, but had narrower hips with less of a curve at her midsection making her ‘hourglass’ less pronounced. Her limbs were long, and slender, but bony in places rather than sleek, the result of long, hard work in her youth.
Current Marion noted the occasional flaw in her younger, pretty, but less than incredible form as she compared herself across the centuries, and remembered as how ever so slowly as time had passed the strange gift/curse that marked her had slowly remade her. She had grown nearly eight inches over the centuries from her previous 5ft height, necessary to keep up with the increasing average height for women plus a little extra oomph added into her legs. The slight outward aquiline hook in her nose had slowly reversed until the bridge of her nose had gained a slight concave curve; the increasing proportions of her face had taken care of the size issue. A nose slightly overlarge on a 5 foot tall girl was just slightly small and delicate looking on a woman eight inches taller. The blue of her eyes had grown more vivid with each passing decade along with the rose pink hue of her slowly plumping lips. Marion’s cheekbones had slowly risen and pushed outward as the slight hollows in her cheeks had filled in, subsuming the original long narrowness into gentle curves. Even the few traces of brown left in her originally red hair had been subsumed into a richer strawberry hue that normally required artificial dyes to create. Looking downward, Marion continued to catalogue the familiar litany of alterations across the centuries from the increased width of her hips, which had created a slight gap between her toned, slender thighs just below her vagina, to the increased inward curvature of her waist. As the years had passed the lean muscle of her body had toned and slightly filled out granting various shallow arcs and swells that fed into the overall dramatic curves of Marion’s body. Most recently, Marion’s breasts, already generous at a mid C cup, had grown half a cup size into borderline D’s, which had been multiplicatively emphasized as the markers of Marion’s female sex had also grown dramatically perkier.
However, there had been no increase in the curvature or mass of her ripe bosom in almost a decade, and no noticeable changes anywhere else for that matter. That unsettling fact lingered as Marion’s eyes finished their inspection and reported what she already knew. Five centuries and change as a Witch had turned Marion into a paragon of the female form. Her mix of understated raw graceful athleticism and sensual beauty replicating an archetype that appeared everywhere in human art, but much more rarely in actual life.
“I wonder how much you would get for me today father.”
Marion flatly clipped her words; lifetimes ago her father had been more than a little interested as Marion’s breasts had dramatically blossomed as puberty changed her from child to woman. His greed had led him to virtually shop his pretty daughter around to prosperous merchants and country gentry seeking the highest bride price he could possibly get. The time necessary to do so was the only reason that Marion, unlike her friend Sophie, also 16 at the time, was neither wed nor pregnant on that fateful June day when time had changed her from Woman to Witch. A part of Marion’s logical mind told her it was a simple matter of her father using his resources to their fullest. In that earlier age daughters were commodities, it was just good business…Marion still loathed the man for it.
Marion’s cynical observation about a man long dead did little to distract her churning mind from her more immediate pressing concern.
The undeniable truth was that she was pretty, she was gorgeous, and she was a perfect example of Woman within her archetype. There was nothing left to alter, no flaws left to correct, and so the changes had stopped. She was utterly and completely terrified of what that meant, for it heralded that far more radical, inhuman, changes to her body were not far off.
Marion had been doing this little ritual for a decade, exploring the contours of her body and standing in front of a mirror like a little girl watching for the first signs of a new phase in her life, a second sort of Witch puberty. She was acutely aware of her age and how it stood over the five century mark. Witches that survived to reach past their half millennium birthdays were supposed to be sitting on huge fortunes amassed down the centuries, living in heavily guarded estates waited on by minions bound by mystic debts. So what if those Witches grew horns, or a tail, or turned green, or some other inhuman aspect? They were beyond the easy reach of the Hunters and shielded from the mortal masses that might object to their inhumanity.
Marion had at best a minimal fortune mostly tied up in real estate and a half built cave in California to her name. The prospect of her waking up one soon morning with an odd lump some where on her body haunted her nightmares with the promise of approaching doom. She had gone to great lengths in the last century to hide what she was. To seem more normal, her wardrobe was filled with loose shirts and baggy cargo pants which masked her seductive profile and hid the sensual lines of her body. She kept her hair modestly short, it reached only to her jaw, and it was left in its natural state without any added style. Marion would have been hard pressed to recall the last time cosmetics had touched her face, or when a sports bra had not been compressing and flattening her impressive breasts when she was out in public. Even with all that effort to look unremarkable, any close scrutiny would reveal Marion to be incredibly exotic and memorable, a dangerous condition for the hunted. What was she going to do when the inevitable happened?
With a final pained sigh, Marion turned away from the mirror and began to dress herself. In what felt like eons ago she had lied to a dead bird about being a Witch; she silently prayed that that her unsought power would give her more time before she would have to start lying even more about being a monster.
Chapter 4
1 week later
Greg had been having a truly awesome week. It had started several days ago on his way home when he had hit every stoplight green and gotten home in record time. It had even seemed a little odd as he was pretty familiar with the timings and there were several times he was sure the light should have turned.
Things kept going his way all week. The shipment of new cash registers that he needed, but was low on the list to receive, that was supposed to go to the store across town was delivered to his store by some fortunate mistake. He even got to use them anyway. He had caught three shoplifters and one thieving employee red handed just by being at the right place at the right time. He even found his missing utility tool which he had almost given up on finding weeks ago one afternoon when he had really needed it. Greg never even considered that the earlier oddity and his streak of luck might be related. He simply enjoyed the results.
Greg was particularly enjoying his luck Saturday night. Poker night was usually good for some fun, but he wasn’t the best player and a good night was one where he broke even. Tonight though, there was a massive haphazard pile of chips on his quarter of the well used kitchen table that the foursome used. This wasn’t Vegas; the chips weren’t worth much, only a couple hundred dollars but still it felt sublimely wonderful to finally be winning big for a change. The current round came to its conclusion with the last card dealt; Greg again had to struggle to contain his glee and only partially succeeded, a half smile crossed his face before he managed to suppress it.
“I fold.” Mark at his left threw his cards down in disgust.
“Me too.” Steve at his right added in the same tone.
“Oh hell, just take it Greg; we all know you got something great. I suppose you have to show us what it was this time though.” Larry’s words from across the table carried the contempt of the beaten.
Greg laid down his cards, and raked in his winnings, the others merely growled at the sight of five cards all marked with red hearts.
“Good grief man, another flush? How the hell are you doing that?” Larry blurted out.
A blind man could not have missed the scowls that were etched on the faces of the middle aged men around the table. Sensing the mood turn decidedly hostile, Greg worriedly replied.
“Oh come on guys, everyone gets a good run of luck now and then, I was just due is all, especially after you practically took my shirt last month Larry. Besides how could I be cheating, they’re your cards Larry. On top of that, even with tonight I’ve still got a long way to go before I break even all-time. Let’s do one more hand and then break. Why don’t you deal Larry?”
Greg cautiously offered the final round as the surrounding frowns softened slightly at the cold logical reminder that despite his current luck Greg usually put money in their wallets rather than empty them.
The cards were dealt again. Greg didn’t have much to work with as the early cards fell. The others bet heavily on apparently good hands and Greg felt obliged to match them if this last round peace offering was to be taken seriously. The pot sucked up the remaining funds from the other men, and Greg’s competitive desire, already at a fever pitch at the prospect of closing the night and winning big, was tinged with a hint of greed. He really wanted to win as the possibility of another Heart flush again developed in his hand. On the last round of betting Larry went all in with everything he had left, the others joined in and Greg was faced with the possibility of either taking home a minor jackpot or losing a massive chunk of the night’s winnings if he matched the bet. He had the possibility of a royal flush, missing only the Queen of Hearts, but that was a hand you never played for the odds were astronomically atrocious, but a regular Heart card…that would work too. Logic told him he was throwing away money because he had nothing if he didn’t get a Heart card, but Greg’s emotion ruled his thoughts as he matched the bet and brought a laser focus onto the deck as his final card was dealt.
A curious thing happened to Greg then. Time seemed to slow for an instant and it felt as if a twinge went off deep in his mind causing a slight unnoticed shiver to pass through his body. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as Greg reached forward to pick up his card. It felt almost dreamlike as he pulled the card too him, gliding face down across the pitted wood of the table top before he flipped it over to reveal a complex abstract picture of a woman in red. In the corner of the card a red Q sat above the unmistakable symbol of a red heart. Greg merely sat in stunned silence as he held his cards. He barely heard Mark lay down his full house, or Mark’s pained cry of defeat as Larry confidently laid down a straight flush. Steve added his own noise by banging the table with a fist knowing his four of a kind was already beaten. Larry expectantly looked at Greg mistaking the reason for the other man’s stunned expression completely. Greg mechanically revealed and spread his cards without making a sound. Abruptly the only noise was that of the nearby refrigerator’s cycling compressor.
“What…the…Hell! Do you have any idea the odds of you getting a royal flush back to back with a flush?” Larry’s unkind words were filled with icy venom.
Looking around Greg could see the sullen expressions that clearly announced that Mark and Steve thought he was cheating too, they just couldn’t figure out how.
Quickly and without words the men packed up, they honored their debts to Greg, but Greg got the distinct feeling he was being thrown out as he left. He strongly doubted that he would be welcome for some time, if at all.
On his way home, the jubilation of victory was forgotten as Greg tried to piece together the events of the week, turning them around over and over in his mind seeking some common thread that bound them. The realization that something incredibly peculiar had occurred would not leave him in peace, and before long his mind wandered to a less recent oddity.
“It couldn’t be, could it…?” Greg turned and swept his gaze over the empty passenger seat next to him. Greg tried to think how a vanishing stain and an improbable streak of luck might possibly be related, but no epiphany was forthcoming. He had effects with no obvious causes, no clear link, and a single maddeningly vague clue to work with. The mystery drove Greg to distraction, and with each pass in and out of the alternating sequence of dark night and yellow light from street lamps, a growing frustration was illuminated strobe-like on his face.
Finally getting home Greg sought the answer that haunted him. A quick internet assisted reference told him what he both wanted to know and feared learning. The odds of a royal flush consecutive to normal flush were 1 in 330 million. With no other reasonable explanation as to why reality wasn’t behaving Greg took the only sensible path left by retrieving a six-pack of beer from his fridge and chugging it on his couch in a display completely out of character.
A warm buzz was just beginning to spread through Greg’s mind, giving the world a slightly fuzzy feeling, when he felt a slight tickling sensation in his right hand. He absentmindedly flicked his hand to remove the odd feeling, but it returned in a series of twitching pulses. Finally annoyed enough to see what was causing the odd tingling and tickling sensation Greg reached over to turn on a light. The table lamp pushed back the dim shadows only for Greg to see no obvious cause to the weird feeling as he brought his hand up to his face for inspection. Then he saw it. There in the curve between his thumb and index finger, right where he had cut himself two weeks ago, a strange discoloration marred his hand’s normally pale skin, the natural product of time spent under artificial fluorescent lights. The discolored skin however, was fair rather than pale, a richer creamy tone slightly darker as if it had gotten just a little bit of sun. Greg’s mind slowly churned, impeded by the alcohol that flowed through his veins, trying to think if he had come into contact with any agent that could cause the odd stain. Then another tickle, Greg did a double take as he thought he saw the edge of the stain creep outwards. Greg was just beginning to doubt his own eyes when it happened again, bringing the limit of the strange area into close proximity to the first fine hairs growing out of the back of his hand. Another pulse and the discolored area crested the knuckle at the base of his thumb smoothing some of the lines caused by the joint in the process. Greg’s focus on that area distracted him from the fact that the limit of the oddity’s spread had crept deeper into the forest of short hairs on the back of his hand, and that the richer skin had clear cut the thicket of hairs down to bare nothingness where it now held sway. What had started as a tickle in a discrete point was now a spreading charged sensation across the back of Greg’s hand which was beginning to surge in time with the increasingly rapid beats of Greg’s heart.
“What the hell?!!!” Greg exclaimed as he noticed what the pulsing alteration was doing to the hair on the back of his hand.
Greg’s mind tried to supply a rational explanation for why the man hair on the back of his hand was disappearing but failed to succeed through the beer haze clouding his mind. As Greg raised his left hand to feel the spreading patch of smooth skin, the patch had already grown across the back of his hand and was halfway across his palm with running tendrils creeping up his fingers towards their tips.
Greg’s eyes shot wide in surprise as the thumbs and fingers of his left hand began gliding over their altering counterparts. There was a subtle but noticeable difference as the tactile feel of his skin was normal up until the crucial point where the sensitive tips of his fingers passed over the demarcated line into the area where the marginally darker skin held sway. As Greg spent several seconds feeling the back of his hand the discoloration finished its march down Greg’s fingers covering them in the new skin from tip to base even as it began pushing up Greg’s wrist. In Greg’s mind the information being sent by his left hand warred with everything he knew to be possible or true. Greg’s mind refused to recognize the soft, smooth, creamy skin for what it was, but could find no other definition for the odd sight of seeing his large mannish hand encased in soft girl skin.
“This isn’t happening, it can’t be happening, you’re drunk Greg and you’re hallucinating. Focus on the real and you’ll be fineeEEE!?”
Greg’s self reassuring words were finished off by a sharp intake of breath as a sharp twinge like pins and needles invaded the tips of his fingers and announced that whatever phenomena was altering the end of his limb wasn’t going to be content with merely altering the surface of his hand. The sharp pains quickly spread through his fingers marching towards their bases and into his hand proper. Greg cradled his pained right hand in his left as it seemed every tendon and ligament in his right hand seemed to draw painfully taut. With a series of pops as if he was cracking his knuckles the sharp pains redoubled and brought wincing tears to Greg’s eyes.
Even through his clouded senses Greg’s left hand relayed a crucial fact to his mind…as insane as the sensation was, his right hand was shrinking. Greg forced himself to hold up his right hand which wasn’t entirely under his control as muscle and bone twitched generating rocking spasms in his fingers like some dying insect and which drew Greg’s hand into a claw. Far more frightening than the sinister shape of his hand were the shapes his large thick fingers were reducing to. Greg’s mind had refused to accept the obvious earlier, but there was no mistaking what was happening to his hand as his thick fingers changed into tapering elegant shapes. His nails narrowed and crept slightly past the tips of his fingers as his knuckles ground down into a far more elegant bone structure. As the pain began to move into his wrist Greg could only stare in shock at the small, delicate looking hand that was so out of place on his large body. The long, narrow, tapering fingers, the slightly protruding nails, the silk-like smooth creamy skin with just a hint of caramel in its tone, his hand was so strange, so alien, so….feminine. Greg’s mind had been hostage to his senses and to the befuddling alcohol that clouded his thoughts, but the realization of what would happen if this peculiar anomaly continued was a clarion call for his sense of self to rally. Greg finally found his focus as it burned through his mental beer haze.
“STOP!!!” Greg shakily commanded as he beheld the feminine skin creep up his forearm, noting the slight hesitation as he focused his will on the aberration at the end of his arm.
“STOP, DAMNIT!!!” Greg reinforced his command and refocused his will on his desire to return to normal. Unnoticed off to the side on his coffee table, a cheap decorative candle suddenly lit itself.
For a few long minutes Greg’s conscious mind warred with the substantial portion of his own body which had been altering into the Witch blueprint it had inadvertently inherited. The anomaly stalled out, still subject to Greg’s conscious will. Like a stepped on hose, the indescribable mystic pressure grew until finally, unable to bear the load, the surge of power that was altering Greg imploded sending static-like shocks up Greg’s arm and across his body. Like an electrocuted man, Greg writhed and twitched before he finally sunk down into the cushions of his couch, unconscious, into a dreamless sleep.
The hours following crawled by like slow tears. Caught in the soft firelight and electric luminescence Greg’s feminine hand slowly reverted to its original mannish state driven by Greg’s last standing act of will. Though his elegant fingers slowly lost their feminine appeal and swelled back out into thick appendages, the battle whose source Greg hadn’t even divined had not been without its casualties. For inside Greg’s chest as he slept a Witch’s heart now beat and the temporary injunction supplied by Greg’s will had done nothing to address the root problem of fifty trillion cells which were attempting to fulfill an ingrained destiny completely alien from his current state.
What had started with only 247 invaders was now an army eight orders of magnitude larger. The only trivial thing now was how long its inevitable victory would take.
Chapter 5
Greg awoke with a start, suddenly very uncertain as to why he was sleeping on his couch fully clothed, then his memories caught up in a rush with his waking, disoriented mind. Greg quickly held up his right hand in near panic and sighed in deep cleansing relief as nothing seemed out of place. No discoloration, no narrow fingers, nothing feminine at all about his right hand. All was as it should be…right?
So why was he so sure it had happened? A throbbing, splitting hangover in his head reminded him what he had been doing just prior to last night’s extreme oddity. Greg stood up abruptly, regretted the sudden movement, and turned. A resounding crunch brought a wince to Greg’s face as he stepped back to realize he had stepped on an empty beer can at his feet. He gingerly picked up the crumpled can, avoiding any additional sudden movements that his hangover might object to, and went to his kitchen and began to make a much needed pot of coffee.
“That’s the last time I buy this brand of beer. I’ve heard of beer goggles, but beer hallucinations, that’s gotta be a first…” Greg remarked trying to convince himself of his words which were not filled with anything resembling certainty. The coffeemaker added nothing to the conversation other than the bubbling sounds of percolating water.
Greg wasn’t really sure what was going on. He had three clues now, but still no connecting cause even if the last clue was significantly more alarming than the first two. Like giving a man an astrolabe and a telescope and telling him figure out his position, the method for finding the answer was out there but beyond Greg’s knowledge. Greg simply didn’t have the information to put the sequence of odd events in context.
Greg pondered, trying to find some succor for his growing unease but again came back to the unsolvable enigma. He weighed whether he should call in sick, but finally decided that the one thing he was certain of was that if didn’t make it in there would ten times as much work tomorrow as the various department heads would gladly let things go to hell in a hand basket if unsupervised. Doubt still riddled his mind as he made his preparations. A short time later he was out the door and on to work. Greg got halfway out to the parking lot before he was ambushed by an old foe.
“KAW!!!” The crow’s unexpected avian call nearly made Greg leap out of his skin.
Collecting his composure Greg tried to seem in control as he hurried on his way, but even he felt like he was running from some nameless doom which wouldn’t give him peace.
Several hours later
Marion was mad. Mad at her self for not catching the error at the supply yard, mad at the supply yard where someone had probably helped themselves to her hard earned supplies, and mad in general at the universe that had granted her a uniqueness which made an exercise in subterranean fortress building necessary.
She had made another pickup on behalf of Marty’s construction company, as always doing her best to get in and out before any questions could be asked. In her hasty count she had double counted something and so not realized she was missing a spool of electrical cable. She had unloaded everything before noticing the minor discrepancy.
She had returned to her computer intent on a writing a fiery complaint for the theft of her goods, but had quickly considered all the myriad possible outcomes that contesting a signed invoice could generate. She quickly admitted to herself that an unreasonably high number of possibilities existed that could result in far more attention than she wanted and could conceivably expose the fact that Marty’s construction company only produce a single employee. With a Hunter team likely still looking for her it was an unacceptable risk.
Marion sighed dejectedly and mentally chalked up the loss as unfixable. That left the question of what she was going to do for the last spool of cable. She couldn’t order one spool; a tiny order to her supplier would raise eyebrows as a strange behavior for what was supposed to be a commercial builder. She could include it in a future order but she wasn’t ready for the next one, and doing so would cause a significant delay. The prospect of lost time was by far more worrisome than the lost money. Finally Marion was left with one option; she would have to buy it locally at retail. She considered her options, a large store wouldn’t take notice of an odd purchase like a young woman buying construction supplies and she could get lost in the crowd, but Hunters could get lost in the crowd as well…The staff of a small specialty store would remember her and her odd purchase, but the chance of a Hunter team loitering unnoticed at any given mom and pop hardware store was ludicrously remote.
Marion was still pondering what to do when she was distracted by the ping of arriving e-mail, most were rerouted purchase requests coming in from a host of dummy accounts as her customers offered requests for her crafts, or inquiries about specific orders, a few concerned her supply purchases, the rest were spam…wait…except for an odd e-mail to her Marty’s construction dummy account. She read it, read it again, and then yet again. Two short, simple lines spelled out an unwelcome new wrinkle for her consideration.
“Hey just thought you might want to know, the Countess is in town looking for you. I would be very interested to know how she found out you were there.”
Marion looked again at the subject and sender, the garbled sequence of letters and number in the e-mail address gave no hint as to who had sent it. Marion put her head in her hands and wondered if she had kicked a puppy recently and not realized it, as the universe in general seemed to be gunning for her.
“Great, just what I need, someone else who wants me dead. I do not have time for this!!!” Marion exasperatedly announced her displeasure, the accented bite of her sarcasm plainly evident.
It was clear the message had been sent by another Witch, the motivation not immediately clear. Marion suspected however, that some very old Witch looking for a pawn was going to claim this little favor some time in the future as a way to drag her into some ongoing Witch feud. The whole episode bluntly reminded Marion that she was a minor league Witch about to be promoted to the majors by default.
Future problems with Byzantine Witch politics or not, she still needed her electrical cable, and a few other tools. With a homicidal Witch and several homicidal men looking for her that meant she needed to gather her provisions in as few stops as possible, that left one option. Marion shuddered as she steeled herself for the crush of humanity in the aisles of Megalomart, and tried not to think about the realization that despite her best efforts at secrecy and concealment some random well connected Witch had still managed to track down one of her dummy e-mail addresses as if it wasn’t a big deal. The thought of what might happen if a foe could do the same was acutely sobering.
Thirty minutes later
Greg adjusted his Megalomart Manager’s shirt as he strode up to another customer and another problem. He had been off his stride all day, but the work had helped after the previous night’s peculiar oddity. Now he was cycling through rote handbook platitudes for a silver haired grandmotherly type who was expounding on the monumental injustice that Greg’s cashier had done to her by refusing to honor her expired coupons. Noticing the line building, Greg decided he couldn’t spare the old lady anymore time and overrode the expiration date. Greg barely had a moment of respite before the radio on his hip crackled to life.
“(zzz) Manager to hardware, manager to hardware…(zzz),” a disinterested, disembodied tinny female voice called.
Greg merely sighed, such was life, and turned to make his way over to the hardware section. A slight smile crossed his face as he collected the department head and started listening to the current problem, it was all so refreshingly normal.
In the Megalomart hardware section
Marion was as tense as a coiled spring; her paranoia was raging in her mind against being forced into close proximity to so many unknown people in this teeming nest of shoppers. Centuries of living with the old adage that being paranoid doesn’t mean that people aren’t out to get you had badly corroded Marion’s social ability to interact normally with people. She had even inadvertently worsened the problem in the last twenty years by moving most of her necessary shopping onto the Internet, further isolating her from people and their day to day activities. Marion couldn’t have put a precise date on when it had happened, but the sad reality was that she no longer empathized with the human existence of the people around her and it was slowly, inexorably destroying her ability to think of herself in human terms.
For the immediate moment though, Marion was forcing herself to compare the features of two similar tools. It had been a mental marathon to get through the store, but she had just about everything she needed. Her more mundane purchases were doing their best to hide the large spool of electrical cable which had been the outing’s primary goal. She had just made up her mind when she felt the slight resonating tingle, which announced the nearby presence of another Witch as their individual Craft auras interacted, run up her spine and make the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Marion’s already strained mental state immediately went to DEFCON 1 and she began frantically checking the bulges in her loose cargo pants which denoted her weapons of choice. Pepper spray, TASER, combat knife, Marion rapidly considered her arsenal before the more rational part of her mind did the equivalent of a mental shoulder tap and reminded her to examine the feeling before assuming it was the Countess.
Determined to get a grip, Marion centered herself and gauged the sensation. She could feel it moving which meant the other Witch was close, but the strength of the Craft resonance was faint and unsteady, almost flickering in its strength. Marion’s face scrunched up slightly as she considered the generating Witch’s very weak aura. Marion let out a deep sigh of relief and let her muscles relax as she reassured herself of her impression and mentally classified the unknown Witch as at most a Class 0, and possibly even less, she might not even have awakened as a Witch yet. Marion’s assumption confronted her with choices, did she warn the girl about what lay in her future, could she risk revealing herself to another Witch given the danger? She was so alone in the world…and a newly minted Witch that had not had time to form ulterior motives would be perfect to strike up a badly needed friendship.
Marion was still tangled in her internal debate when the sensation peaked as a man in a Megalomart Manager’s shirt strode past the open end of the aisle Marion where was standing with a harried gait, some unremarkable store minion matching his strides in pursuit.
“NO…,” Marion softly spoke, the single syllable carrying a mountain of crystallizing dread.
Marion had already recognized the man, but she was intent on confirming what she had seen. She took a half step out of the aisle and turned to face into the central area where several low bins held clearance items. There the Manager was communicating his displeasure to several minions concerning some seemingly important subject. She could feel the strength of his aura pulsing in time with his emotions, which was not good; she could see the arcing tendrils of uncontained Craft that he was throwing off, invisible to human eyes at their current strength as they subtly rippled through the weave of reality but not to Marion’s. There was not an iota of doubt in Marion’s mind that the man was more Witch on the inside than human. The last damning piece of evidence clicked into place as the man turned around and began walking out of the section. This Witch-man had the same face as the man she had last seen sitting in a beat up Chevy in front of the Clover Hills bus depot. His nametag was legible to Marion’s enhanced eyes from thirty feet away and she pulled back into the aisle as Greg, the Megalomart manager, passed back by.
Marion hung her frame over her basket, her dejection openly written in her posture.
“HELL NO, why me?” Marion flatly asked the universe, her head tilting up as if to ask some higher power why nothing was going to plan recently.
The Megalomart ceiling with its fluorescent lighting gave no reply. Marion however already knew why. She had been bleeding. At the time that fact had been beyond her wretched state’s ability to care. She should have known better, she did know better, she should have been more thorough and less careless…she should of... the what if’s played through her mind as she mentally worked out how many of the possible permutations of this accident could result in a major incident that might damage the carefully constructed collective lie that Witches were just fairytales. Marion trembled, her lower lip quivering, as she considered the very real possibility that if one of the High Witches could easily find her in an attempt to purchase her favor, the same Witch might also ‘accidentally’ leak her home addresses to the Hunters as a convenient way to take care of her and destroy any possible evidence in the name of ending a threat to all Witch Dom.
Marion decided she was going to keep the lid on this, she had to keep a lid on this for her own sake…this mistake could be fixed, and doing so was now her highest priority as she began pushing her basket to the checkout. Fifteen minutes later she was stalking Greg through the store doing her best not to show her creeping frustration at the fact that he was never alone or out of sight of the other patrons. Finally she came up with a new plan.
Greg was feeling decidedly uneasy as he made his rounds, the ominous feeling quickly ruining what up until that point had been a decently unremarkable day. A strange tingle similar but different from the one he half remembered feeling last night had been running laps up and down his spine for the last ten minutes. It had started when he had gone to the hardware section, disappeared momentarily and then come back with a maddening vengeance. He got the very distinct unshakable feeling that he was being watched, but his increasingly erratic behavior would not shake this new unseen foe. The sudden crackle of his radio was both a welcome and annoying distraction.
“(zzz) Manager Call on line 3, Manager call on line 3 … (zzz),” the disembodied voice of a bored woman intoned.
Greg pulled out his phone, hit the button to transfer the line, and did his best to reengage his professional mask.
“This is Greg, store manager, how may I assist you?” Greg chirpily answered feeling not a shred of actual perkiness.
A clearly worried female voice replied softly, barely above a whisper, “This is very important, you have questions, I have answers, but I need you to go to the end of aisle 7, on the top shelf on top of the boxes there is a piece of paper, read it…”
Greg was shocked. A waterfall of questions related to the recent strangeness in his life cascaded across his mind. His true emotions of worry, fear, and anxiety played across his face and swept away all pretenses otherwise.
“Who are you?!! What’s wrong with me?!!” Greg softly hissed into his phone.
“Not here, not now…” The whispering female voice trailed off into unkind silence, giving no further clues.
Greg stood motionless for a moment paralyzed by doubts before he strode to the end fixture of aisle seven with a zealous purpose in his stride and reached up to the top rack. His heart thundered for a few seconds before the tips of his fingers felt the paper lying on top of the cardboard boxes. Greg shuddered as he unfolded the paper; it gave a single address and time in a simple feminine script. A warning scrawled out lower gave the situation an even more sinister vibe.
“Do not tell ANYONE about anything strange or about where you’re going, memorize the address and then completely destroy this paper. BE THERE AND COME ALONE!”
Greg looked at his phone full of questions for the mysterious voice, but realized that the mysterious female caller had already hung up.
Marion saw this from where she stood her small hand already replacing her own phone in one of her cargo pockets; Greg was clearly reflected in the mirror of the cheap furniture displayed not far from the alcove where she hid. She could only hope for both their sakes that Greg followed her instructions to the letter as she turned to leave.
Chapter 6
Several hours later
The sun was beginning to set as Greg pulled out from his store’s parking lot. His thoughts boiled and churned as he made his way to the address on the piece of paper he had shredded and then thrown in the industrial trash compactor out by the loading docks. His face was an impassive mask lit in the red and orange glow of sunset. Off to the north an ominous storm front was sweeping in, the faces of the dark grey clouds were illuminated by the red light of the dying day which battled the shadow cast by the surging rain clouds, the net effect was as if a burning shroud of dark fire moved to consume the sky and the city which lay under it.
Greg had just reached the location given on the paper. He couldn’t possibly begin to fathom what could possibly make this unassuming nearly deserted Business Park, with its low beige concrete buildings clearly designed for economy, special enough to warrant a clandestine meeting. He got out of his car as the clouds above obscured the remaining sunlight, a first drip of cold water falling into his thinning hair a few seconds later. He felt the hunting knife he had ‘borrowed’ from the Sporting Goods department tucked into his waistband under his shirt and tried to not to think about the possible necessity of using it. Greg tentatively approached the door and read the words neatly hand painted on the glass.
“Michelle’s Fabrics: Makers of Fine Clothing”
Greg did a double take, the secret to everything was being held a by a seamstress? He felt like he had been had, nevertheless he opened the door and stepped out of the slow drizzle of cold rain that was increasing as the vanguard of the storm passed. The room he stepped into was small, dark, and empty, it was little more than a minimal receptionist’s desk sitting across from a couple of chipped plastic chairs. It looked like every other receptionist’s area at a small business struggling to make ends meet. The same six month old magazines, the same fifteen year old computer, the same immaculately arranged business supplies which looked they had never been used. Greg started to turn to leave, angry at him self for falling for such an idiotic hoax when his mind rewound part of his last observation. ‘Business supplies that had never been used.’ Wait…Greg turned back and examined the desk, it was subtle, all but unnoticeable save to one looking for the signs, that no work had been actually been done there in some time, if at all. All over the office there were little clues that not all was as it appeared be, there were no scuff marks on the floor or on the walls, no tracked in dirt, no random papers lying here or there, and a very thin film of dust uniformly coated everything with an undisturbed stillness. This wasn’t a working business at all, which meant it had to be something else...imperceptibly Greg tensed at the confirmation that this was no hoax.
“Nice façade you’ve got here, whoever you are? Planning on letting me in on the big secret?” Greg’s words held a hollow bluster, they still echoed through the emptiness of the small office.
A sullen red light adorning the phone on the receptionist’s desk lit up and a familiar voice came on the line.
“Did you come alone?” The female voice brusquely inquired.
“Who are you? What’s going on?” Greg irritably questioned in reply.
“DID YOU COME ALONE?!”
“Yes.” Greg curtly supplied the answer.
“You weren’t followed? You didn’t see a hawkish, thin, wiry man, a blond Scandinavian, or a Hispanic man following you, did you?” Greg could sense the note of subdued fear the description held.
“No.” Greg again answered, before continuing, “I didn’t come here to play twenty questions, show yourself…”
A pause hung in the air interrupted only by the sound of rain beginning to drum on the building’s metal roof.
“Alright, come down the hall, take the first left.” The female voice was almost weary with tense resignation.
Greg slowly walked down the dim hall, his right hand lingering near where he had his knife. As Greg approached the door he could feel the same tingle he had felt earlier that afternoon start to run up and down his back again. He turned to the door on his left and opened it. In a dim profile he could make out the shape of a young woman sitting behind a cheap desk, as he stepped across the threshold he just barely felt an unseen phantom power slightly crackle across his skin seemingly dancing just beyond his senses. He got a very distinct anxious feeling that he had wandered into a very carefully prepared trap with a hair trigger.
“Who are you, and what is happening to me?” Greg again sternly inquired.
The sitting woman turned towards him. Greg could barely make out the silhouette of her face in the dim light provided by one small tinted window in the far wall but her profile promised she was beautiful.
Marion looked over the man standing some ten feet away from her and hoped the slight worry on face couldn’t show through the dim light. It was clear he had felt the ward line as he crossed it. That coupled with the noticeable increase in the power of his aura from this afternoon meant that there wasn’t much time before this man became something he was ill prepared to be.
“My name is Claire,” she lied before continuing, “and your name is Greg. Why don’t you tell me what your exact symptoms are so I can give you a more specific answer?”
Greg turned the request over in his mind and found it annoyingly logical. “Alright, two weeks ago I was going home, I was near the train tracks and then suddenly I was home and there was a stain on the seat of my car. It disappeared before I could get a picture of it. A week ago, things I wanted to happen started happening, last night I think I made something insanely improbable occur, later I think my hand changed until I made it stop. Now will you please tell me what that means?”
Claire/Marion winced slightly at the revelation that Greg had nearly changed already, but counted that against the bit of good luck that he hadn’t gotten a picture of the blood she had left in his car. She softly inhaled and spoke.
“It means there’s not much time left, and that you’re a fire type.”
“Fire type of what?” Greg’s tone was decidedly icy.
“Witch.” Claire/Marion’s measured response was imbued with subtle meaning.
The next line of inquiry was cut short as a flash of lighting illuminated the room through the small window with soft silvery light for a brief instant. Greg breathed sharply as the light confirmed that the woman in front of him was exceptionally pretty, but that observation was captive to a far more damning realization. He had seen ‘Claire’s’ elegant right hand sitting on the table between them in the brief instant and it was a perfect twin for the hand that he had willed away not twenty-four hours earlier. The disjointed pieces clicked into place, and suddenly the frustrated anger Greg had been feeling coalesced around this strange, pretty girl.
“YOU!!!, YOU’RE DOING THIS TO ME!!!” Greg all but angrily yelled his accusation.
“Not intentionally.” Claire/Marion fought to keep her tone under control as she confirmed the base truth of Greg’s words.
“WELL STOP IT!” Greg had not been remotely pacified.
“I can’t.” Marion softly announced.
“WHY THE HELL NOT?!!” A jagged desperation crept into Greg’s question.
“Because to do so would require that every cell in your body tainted with my pattern be removed, and right now that’s about 60% of your body, you wouldn’t survive the operation. Even if I had known sooner it would still have been nearly impossible to stop this once it started. I’m sorry.” Marion offered her explanation in the most soothing manner she could give. Taking Greg’s stunned silence as an opening she barreled on.
“Two weeks ago I was being chased by a group of Hunters, they kill Witches, and I was beat up real bad, one of them even shot me. I was too tired to run anymore so I stopped you and used mind control Witchcraft to make you drive me to one of my escape points; I blanked your memory so you wouldn’t remember before I sent you home. The left over stain in your car was my blood from where I was shot. Witch blood is volatile and evaporates off like water, that’s why the stain disappeared. You must have had a cut which allowed my blood to get into your body. Since then my Witch pattern has been overwriting your own genetic code and slowly altering the tissues of your body. As that happened you’ve developed your own Witchcraft which is flaring in response to your emotional state and altering probability.” Marion quickly rambled off the sentences as she struggled to render this insanity down to a few choice truths.
Greg just stood there, trying to figure out how he could possibly get his mind around the enormity of all this in the same way a man might try and figure out how he was supposed to eat a raw whole coconut. He ultimately resorted to the same process.
“There were men trying to kill you? The same men you described when you asked if I was followed?” Greg inquisitively asked, trying to break a chunk off the informational coconut.
“Yes, the Hunters, they kill Witches, especially younger Witches that haven’t lived long enough to gain enough power to fight them off. That’s part of why I was so insistent on meeting with you, they’re still in the city looking for me. If they find you, they will kill you, and they can detect when you’re using your Witchcraft. Avoid using your craft if you haven’t shielded the area to absorb it, and never from your home if you aren’t absolutely, positively sure your shield is working.” Marion shivered slightly, old fears and threadbare memories creeping into her voice.
“I haven’t done anything, I’m not a criminal.” Greg protested.
“They don’t care! As far as they’re concerned you’re a threat to humanity either as a Witch or as a Ghoul. They think we’re all like the Wicked Sisters using our Craft to kill each other for power, screw up humans, and using our Craft to get what we want. Oh no, the Hunters make no distinction between me living quietly and Estelle Fleur, ex-Countess de Burgoyne, who is a psychopathic murderess who wants my power! You would just be an added dessert to her if she finds you.” Greg’s line of inquiry had touched a nerve and Marion’s native accent grew slightly heavier as she lent a razor edged fire to her indignation. Her railing at the injustices of the world all never considered whether this was the best way for Witches’ to be presented to Greg.
Greg swallowed hard. He had suspected that this meeting would not be pleasant, but this was downright ludicrously bad.
“Okay, so there’s a bunch of people out to kill me, absolutely freaking great, but you’re telling me that its mostly predicated on actually using Witchcraft. So fine, I’ll be some crazy Fire Witch, I just won’t use the power ever again, and everything stays relatively normal.” Greg could not believe the undercurrents of desire he was expressing for his old, boring life, but he actually found that preferable to this vortex of madness.
“Oh you won’t use the power, which you don’t know how to control, and which you’ve been using continuously ever since you walked in the door, a worthy plan.” Marion matched the slowly escalating hostility, angry at Greg for his naiveté and resistance.
“I DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS! THIS ISN’T THE LEAST BIT FAIR!!” Greg again all but yelled at Marion.
“Fair? You’re complaining about the world not being fair? Until you’ve been chased away from everything you own and spent a year in the slums of Paris whoring yourself out for scraps of bread you have no right to claim anything is unfair.” Marion spoke softly, but it was with a quiet boiling rage.
Greg’s anger at ‘Claire’ was checked for the moment by that revelation, but he continued, “Alright, things are going to have to change, can you at least point me in the direction of where I can find a man Witch to infect me with his pattern so I don’t wind up as some 98 lb. weakling.” Greg waved his right hand in emphasis.
Marion’s clarifying reply came like a descending guillotine blade and was just as excruciatingly final, “There are no male Witches, only female Witches, and what’s happening to you is not a merge, it’s a near complete overwrite. It’s an integral part of what we are, why I don’t know. Every Witch that has ever lived, despite what she looked like as a child, becomes a beautiful ageless woman, and you aren’t going to be an exception. In two or three days, maybe less, maybe more depending on how much you accelerate the process with your Craft, a week tops, you’ll be as female as I am.” Marion deliberately omitted what always came after the whole ‘beautiful ageless woman’ part.
Greg revolted at that pronouncement, his face contorting as his core self rejected that possibility in its entirety and rose up in fervent protest. “I am not turning into a girl!”
“Yes you are, it’s going to happen, it’s inevitable, I’m sorry but you have to be ready when it happens. You have very little time to prepare your resources and a new identity, its imperative that you not be discovered.” Marion put steel in her voice as she worked to ram home her point, not entirely certain if her aid flowed from her compassion or her fear at what would happen to her if this man was anywhere near a recording video camera when he changed.
Greg’s head drooped as he considered the inconceivable. “You’ve killed me. In a couple of days I might as well be dead.”
Marion winced; Greg had spoken like a condemned man. She then said a horrible, awful truth without thought for the collateral damage it would inflict “I’m sorry, I really am, but that’s why I’m telling you this, because if the Hunters find you its over, if the Countess finds you its over, if the Humans discover what you are they will try to kill you, its what they do.”
Deep in Greg’s soul something snapped, it was his turn to talk in quiet brooding rage as he answered. “Humans, as opposed to Witches? …It’s so very clear now. To save your own skin you rolled the dice on my life and now I’m as good as dead to the world. My only possible future is to live like a rat hiding and scurrying, hoping to survive long enough to reach the point where I’m too powerful to be stopped by anything other than another power hungry Witch. Then by masquerading as a woman I’ll be able to screw with the world and people’s lives with impunity. I wonder how different you really are from your ‘Countess’ Miss Claire and I would be shocked if that is your real name. For as far as I can tell the only difference between the two of you is that she’s honest about what she is. …Yes, this Human finally understands now why the Hunters come after every Witch, they’re all monsters, just some are in denial.”
Greg would never know how close he came to a gruesome death in the seconds that ticked by as he finished speaking his epiphany.
Another flash of lighting strobed into the room and lit the faces of two strangers livid at the other over their impudence to pass judgment on the others’ life.
Marion’s soul warred against itself, half of her mind wanted to reduce this man to a bloody streak on the linoleum floor, while the other half screamed warnings that to do so would prove the veracity of this man’s hateful words. In the balance of the shifting battle of her mind a few whispered words leaked from her full lips, quiet but with the heavy promise of a thousand dark threats.
“S’en aller!...Get OUT!”
Greg needed no encouragement; wordlessly he turned and strode from this horrible place where he had learned of his dark altered destiny.
The rain slowly ended as he made his way home, and the nearly full moon periodically peaked from between the low clouds bathing the dark, wet streets in pale, shimmering moonlight. Greg could not see the world’s beauty, transfixed as he was by the horrible knowledge he had gained. Back in the false office of a make-believe company, sitting at a desk decorated with the nameplate of a person who didn’t exist, a young woman who could no longer tell if even her humanity was real anymore, wept.
Marion had been so angry at Greg, so sure she was right and he was a moron that even suppressing her most violent urges she had still nearly engaged the trap she had laid as he walked way which would have dumped him in close proximity to the South Pole. Solving her problem would have been so easy, yet a deep, quiet part of her conscience had reflected her hate to her like a mirror. Forced to examine herself on a level she had rarely done since she was sixteen she came to a singular damning conclusion. The man she considered so ignorant was right on so many levels…She had so many skills from lifetimes of work, but she had never practiced how to communicate the essence of what it was to be a Witch. Lacking any charm or wit to disguise the horrible truth she had been herself and the perceptive man had recognized that she was just as hollow as the lies she cloaked herself in. Five centuries of solitude and paranoia had ravaged her in ways that were not reflected in the lines of her angelic face. Desperate for anything to change the mood she retrieved the remote for a small TV which sat in a corner, occasionally left on during the day set to a news channel in an attempt to convince the building’s other occupants that this suite was actually in use. Flipping through channels she stopped on a music video channel as a melancholy piano began to play.
How can you see into my eyes like open doors.
Leading you down into my core
where I've become so numb.
Without a soul
my spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
until you find it there and lead it back home.
(Wake me up.
Wake me up inside.
I can't wake up.
Wake me up inside.
Save me.
Call my name and save me from the dark.
Wake me up.
Bid my blood to run.
I can't wake up.
Before I come undone.
Save me.
Save me from the nothing I've become.)
Now that I know what I'm without
you can't just leave me.
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life.
Bring me to life.
I've been living a lie
There's nothing inside.
Bring me to life.
Frozen inside without your touch,
without your love, darling.
Only you are the life among the dead.
All of this sight
I can't believe I couldn't see
Kept in the dark
but you were there in front of me
I've been sleeping a 1000 years it seems.
I've got to open my eyes to everything.
Without a thought
Without a voice
Without a soul
Don't let me die here
There must be something wrong.
Bring me to life.
Bring me to life.
I've been living a lie
There's nothing inside.
Bring me to life
Evanescence, “Bring Me to Life.”
Marion choked as the song finished, all rational thought momentarily blotted by surging emotion, a faint rippling disjunction passed through the room and suddenly the TV erupted in a shower of burning sparks and bits of flying hot plastic as the silenced appliance fell apart into two halves. It only made Marion feel worse as she counted this most recent failure of her self control as darkness again descended on the Spartan room.
Marion watched the waves of faint rain rippled moonlight play across the bare walls of the office before burying her face in her hands as she tried to escape from her bottomless misery borne of the inescapable dread that her life would always be like this, always alone, always empty, and always consumed by the fear that was necessary to keep her alive long enough to begin the cycle anew. Tonight, she had been given the chance to make amends to one she had badly wronged, and gain a precious friend, one who would understand what it was to be a Witch, and instead she had convinced that person that she was a selfish monster. Long ago she had wept for her lost life, now she wept again until dawn for the precious opportunity she had squandered.
Chapter 7
The next day
The whispers had begun not long after the store had opened. There was no industry, and no endeavor of man where seeing the boss come in looking haggard and disturbed was a good sign. Greg had said nothing and so without any information to fall back on, the staff had begun speculating as to what could possibly be bad enough for the usually keen disciplinarian to let them have the store to themselves. Greg could only muster the minimal amount of effort to even make it look like he was doing his job, and that was only by doing the things he could manage without spending any conscious thought. What was he going to do? He was pacing up and down an aisle when he heard two of his staff enter the next aisle over and begin quietly flirting figuring that it was open season with the store manager all but physically gone.
Greg stopped and listened quickly recognizing the nasally high voice of Erica who was supposed to working in House wares. He had inherited her from the previous manager and had fought a long running day to day battle to keep her clothing decent. She kept working mostly as a means to meet men. Everyday she was straining the dress code with tight shirts and tighter pants, occasionally seeing how much skin of her soft belly she could exhibit before Greg called her on her infraction. The suggestive clothing coupled with her heavy round tits and wide hips gathered her quite a deal of male attention. However, with a face like a horse and a mind like pudding Erica’s could only retain that attention by increasingly skankish behavior, such as allowing herself to be felt up by her latest boyfriend in the middle of a busy Megalomart store while her boss casually listened. It was a generally open secret that she would be putting out by the second or third date and expectedly she had a long list of ex-boyfriends and disposable relationships.
Uninvited, a thought popped into Greg’s mind. It wouldn’t be too long and that might be him. Who was to say that in the horrible future he wouldn’t be the one wearing a tight shirt that hugged his promised curves, cooing as a man caressed his soft tit flesh, while listening to whispered sweet promises designed to get him to spread a pair of shapely legs? The dire possibility of being pinned to a bed under the bulk of a man as that man thrust in and out, in and out…was terrifying in a way beyond words.
Greg silently shuddered and retreated from the scene, he turned and walked away, back to his office, shoulders sagging, chased by the sounds of sloppy wet kissing.
Several blocks away
Diego was frustrated as hell. It had been a very long week as Sven, desperate to make good in Bruce’s eyes, had been driving himself twelve hours a day looking for Witch # 531492. Applied judiciously that zeal would have been commendable, but it wasn’t being applied judiciously. Diego knew that the odds of an experienced Class IV Witch doing any kind of detectable craft outside of a shielded environment was close to nil, still Sven had insisted on long search patterns up and down the maze of city blocks and Diego had unfortunately been along for the ride. They had found absolutely nothing in a week of searching, and Diego’s patience was wearing thin. His initial tolerance had run out, and now he was counting each wasted hour that wasn’t fruitfully spent searching through public records at the courthouse or tax documents in the local IRS building. Stumbling onto a Witch was a million to one shot, yet Sven in his desire to kill one red-headed Witch wouldn’t accept a plan of action that would virtually exile him to the record archives of various institutions for at least the next several months despite that plan having the only real chance of long term success.
Even worse Diego was hungry as this current patrol was stretching well past lunchtime. His stomach rumbled and for the third time in the last hour he bitterly complained.
“Hey man, let’s stop and get something to eat.”
Sven didn’t even turn to look at him as he focused on the road, “Okay, after we finish the G-2 grid.”
Diego checked the map; it would be another hour before they finished the search pattern in that grid square. “Hey hombre you made me miss breakfast when we pulled out at 5 AM, I am not missing lunch too.”
“Our goal is to find the Witch.” Sven pointedly replied.
“Then hell, lets go find her, the County Records building is at 3rd Street and Main, all you’re doing you mula terca(stubborn mule) is putting miles on the truck and running up the diesel bill.” Diego enthusiastically complained.
Sven searched the angry face of his so called partner and began to formulate a response when his own stomach reminded him of his own needs with a low rumbling growl. Sensing defeat he conceded.
“Okay there’s a Megalomart at the end of this street with a gas station across from it, they’ll have food, would that be fine?” Sven’s words were more of a statement than question and Diego decided that a deli sandwich would suffice. A nod communicated Diego’s acceptance.
A few moments later Sven was looking for a spot large enough to park the oversized truck and finding few options in the crowded parking lot. Sensing Diego’s growing impatience he pulled around the side of the store heading for the back.
“What are you doing, this area is for the store’s delivery trucks?” Diego pointed question was quickly answered.
“I’m parking, I thought you wanted food, or is there a better solution than using an empty spot behind the store that isn’t even on the loading dock?”
Diego registered the insult and knew that it was against protocol to risk drawing attention like this, but he was tired and hungry so he let it slide to avoid further delaying his rendezvous with a bland sandwich and a weak cup of coffee. He did make certain that the truck was locked before they got out walked back around to the front of the store.
In the store’s manager’s cramped office Greg was sitting on his well used office chair, face in his hands, as he tried to for the hundredth time so far today to get a handle on his improbable situation. Every slight involuntary twitch of a muscle, every slight discomfort from old injuries, and every pop of his joints was a reminder that he was a living time bomb. He sighed and looked around at the rows of three-ring binders and piles of paper that surrounded his workstation. Such was his life, that he was now afraid of losing. It wasn’t a great life, but it was his damn it and he was still a little angry that fate seemed bent on taking it away.
He looked down at the slight bulge in his pants at his crotch and again tried to imagine a future without the fleshy rod he had always known. Intellectually some part of him knew that having his manhood replaced by a female honey pot could ultimately be adapted to and overcome, but his emotions would have no part of that discussion. His mental turmoil had just grown to again to consider the ramifications of a pair of feminine mounds seductively hanging from his chest when a knock at his door broke his concentration. He considered telling whoever it was to just go away, but a shred of his professionalism remained and he forced himself to answer it.
Joe was standing outside with a worried look on his face. “You okay boss?”
“No, but I’ll manage, what’s the problem? You didn’t come here to shrink my head.” Greg half croaked his question.
“Well, there’s a cargo truck parked out back, but we received everything on the daily shipment log this morning. I don’t recognize the carrier either, some outfit called AJ’s Freight.”
“What’s the driver’s invoice say? He might be at the wrong store?” Greg couldn’t help but ponder the problem; it was almost instinctual after so many years.
“That’s just it, we can’t find the driver and the truck is locked.” Joe supplied.
Greg began to say that it wasn’t hurting anything and that it could wait until they located the driver, but he instantly realized that lacking an immediate problem his mind would quickly resume its torment of his psyche. For that reason he was suddenly very interested in the minor mystery.
“Okay, get back to what you were doing, I’ll look into it.” Greg was momentarily happy for the distraction.
It only took him a moment to get out to the loading dock. Across the short stretch of concrete a white non-descript cargo truck enigmatically sat, marked only by the simple lettering of AJ’s Freight. Greg hopped down off the platform and walked over to the truck racking his brain for any memory of that particular freight company and came up empty. He walked up to the cab and knocked on the door. There was no answer. He experimentally pulled the latch and found Joe to be truthful as the truck was locked. He had one last hope as he walked to the main cargo door at the back of the truck. He expected to find it locked as well but was surprised when it rolled up to reveal tightly packed large cardboard boxes.
“Odd” Greg thought, considering that he couldn’t see any shipping labels. On a normal day he would have given up, but nothing had been normal in the last week. He went to remove a box hoping to find some clue as to why this truck was here, but quickly found that he couldn’t budge a single box.
“Very odd” cycled through Greg’s mind; he again debated leaving the truck be, but his curiosity along with his continuing desire to be distracted would have none of that suggestion. He pulled again, harder this time, until something supremely odd happened.
“CLICK”
The sharp metallic sound had come just as the entire wall of boxes shifted slightly. Greg suddenly had a very sharp pang of worry that he had found, for the second time in two days, a business which was not what it appeared to be. He searched the edges where the “boxes” met the interior wall of the truck. Sure enough, his earlier attempt had just revealed two metal catches along one side not so different from the latches that kept the store’s roll down security doors shut. Whipping out his multi-tool he quickly manually forced open the catches, helped by the experience gained from several annoying instances when his similar security doors had jammed.
Greg’s heart pounded in his chest as he pushed the released wall of boxes open. A second passed before his eyes adjusted to the dim light within, but he suddenly found himself looking over a black motorcycle its front clearly recently patched. He stepped forward into the dim interior of the truck. Cages of weapons and ammunition, motorcycle, and what looked like an electronic surveillance suite; there was lead in Greg’s stomach as he suddenly had a very good idea as to this truck belonged to. He almost turned to run but was suddenly confronted with a possibility. ‘Claire’ had said there was no cure for what she had inadvertently done to him, no way to escape his feminine future, but if there was anyone who might know differently it would be the owner’s of this truck right? At this point he would gladly trade his potential as a Witch for a return to normalcy.
Any reservations he had about being caught here vanished as his mind recalled the sound of Erica’s sloppy kissing, his desire to avoid womanhood overriding his sense of caution. He quickly picked up the holstered mouse at one of the surveillance terminals and brought the computer out of sleep mode. He was suddenly looking at picture taken at long range, but clearly the same woman he had argued with last night. It took only seconds for him to realize he was looking at the file of the very Witch who had infected him. Quickly he read the information it contained.
“Hah…I knew your name wasn’t Claire you bitch…” Greg’s mood was decidedly triumphant as he came to the end of the file, if Marion had lied to him about her name, then it was conceivable that she was lying about the impossibility of him avoiding a journey into the ranks of the fairer sex.
At the end of the file there was a new note referencing the questioning of another Witch about Marion’s whereabouts, Greg read it and wondered who Witch # 622005 was, there was a link to a video file and hoping there would be another useful revelation Greg opened it.
Suddenly he was looking into a dim sparse room where a young, pudgy Asian girl was sprawled out on a concrete floor naked save for the heavy steel manacles that chained her neck, hands and feet to the floor, additionally she also sported numerous, obvious purple bruises already developing across her milky skin. She was crying softly as an unseen male voice quietly announced, “Questioning of Witch #622005 concerning her relationship with and possible location of Witch #531492, 3 hours 15 minutes into information extraction session.”
The girl on the floor stiffened and pitiably cried, “My name is Jennifer, Jennifer Chou. PLEASE I haven’t done anything wrong!!”
A male figure covered in protective gear strode into the frame and hit her with what looked like an electric baton across the back. The young witch convulsed in pain. The figure leaned down and quietly spoke in a tone filled with malice. “You will answer us when we have a question, if we don’t ask a question then you will remain silent or we will punish you appropriately. Now where does this Witch live?” The figure held up a large photo.
Jennifer started crying again until the figure menacingly waved his baton. “I DON’T KNOW! I’ve never met her. I didn’t even know Witches existed until I was able to make things move. PLEASE all I ever did was animate small objects, I never hurt anyone, and I swear I’ll never do it again…AHHHHH!!!” Jennifer screamed as she finished blurting out her pleading words as the figure hit her savagely again.
The figure icily intoned, “We’ve covered this, you will answer the questions I ask and those only, or I will hurt you.”
Greg’s stomach felt like a leaden bowling ball as he watched two more figures enter the frame and instantly recognized some of the men that Marion had feared. The blond Nordic man wore an expression of sadistic glee as he watched the helpless girl writhe under the effects of the electric shock. Jennifer whimpered as he leaned down and quietly asked a question.
“You know, its not so much fun when the humans fight back is it? I lost a sister to Baba Yaga; I’m going to enjoy this.”
The beaten girl searched the face of her latest antagonist before pitiably answering. “I’m not Baba Yaga, whoever that is.” She cringed, waiting for the expected blow which this time came from the large fist of the Nordic man, the force of the blow snapping her head back and causing a trickle of blood to flow down to her chin from her nose and lips.
The second newcomer figure was shocked, but not at the large man’s brutality. “Sv…..YOU FOOL, keep handling her with your bare hands while she’s bleeding, I’m sure you would love to become one of them and grow a nice pair of tits. I’m sure the doctors would agree as well, they were ecstatic about what they learned from the last man they got to vivisect as he turned.” The blond man was clearly taken aback by the chastising observation and quickly cleaned his hand as if the traces of Witch blood there were radioactive.
Greg choked at the horrific pronouncement.
The speaker continued, moving into the dim light revealing the thin hawkish man, he began putting on gloves and other protective gear as he put a battered tool box down on a low table. He regarded the helpless girl and slowly began to casually monologue as if the assembled group were having an intelligent discussion in which he was the teacher.
“Well my dear, my men inform me that you’ve been most uncooperative, which is a real shame. Even worse you keep insisting that you’re harmless, and maybe you are right now, but that doesn’t really matter. The one thing that any dedicated Witch Hunter quickly realizes is that Witches are the ultimate parasites. Like the cowbird they hide their young among us, exploiting our basic nature, getting us to feed and nurture their brood, destroying any who stand in the way of the process until their young mature, shedding the pretense of their humanity as their larval stage completes. Then they reveal themselves as the abominations they truly are, murderous and ruthless agents of death and destruction. The only way you eradicate corruption like that is to systemically destroy every last infection. I would put a bullet through the heads of my own men before I would let you turn them, and I would shoot myself before I would consider letting you go to wreak havoc on the world several centuries from now.”
Jennifer whimpered slightly, but her face hardened as she contemplated thoughts that no young woman should ever have to face. She put her remaining strength and resolve into her next few words as she spoke them, “Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. - Frederich Nietzsche.”
“Quite. However, I must insist, I find it very hard to believe that you have lived in this city for years and have no knowledge of a five century old Class IV foreign Witch living in the same area. So I intend to make absolutely certain that you are telling the truth, because, I assure you, by the time I am finished with you, it will be impossible for you to even think about lying to me.”
Greg watched in numb horror as the man began removing various tools from the tool box. A battered hammer, a pair of sharp pliers, a wicked looking awl, and a jagged saw all came out of the toolbox. The man pondered the implements the way a golfer might dispassionately consider his clubs. He selected the awl and advanced on the helpless Witch. Greg could take no more. He turned off the video making certain the screen was as he found it, holstered the mouse, reset the fake wall of packages and closed the cargo door. He was certain that everything was as he found it before he sprinted to a low row of marginally landscaped shrubs and retched what little food he had eaten that day out into the bushes, he wasn’t sure if the screaming echoing through his mind was his own or that of an unfortunate young Witch named Jennifer.
Inside Greg’s store, Diego was calmly reading a newspaper at a small wobbly deli table while Sven’s watched him impatiently. Diego had taken his sweet time eating his food to make a point, which seemed to be trickling through Sven’s thick skull. Neither man realized that after a week of marathon work days that fatigue had caused both men to skip an important step in the daily routine that morning, as neither man had reset and engaged their truck’s sophisticated anti-intrusion system and alarm.
The rampant hostility between the two suddenly vanished as both felt their necklace charms faintly vibrate with the detection of a Craft pulse. Quickly both fished out their PDA’s and watched as their devices tried to calculate a probability map off the pulse. Both scowled as their PDA’s independently reached the same conclusion. Insufficient Data – Irregular signature- Classify as probable sub/young Class 0 experiencing extreme emotional stress. Sven went to say something and Diego held up a hand to silence him.
“Not till we get back to the truck.”
The two Hunters were walking back out the front door as a recovering Greg came back in from the loading dock. He steeled himself as he located his Assistant and put him in charge for the rest of the day. His assistant didn’t even protest, how do you say no to a man who looked like he had just seen the Maw of Hell itself?
Greg was out the front door and pulling out of the parking lot as Sven excitedly pulled up the data the truck had recorded in their absence. Its sensors too had recorded the event but the raw irregularity of the pulse combined with its weak amplitude had made it impossible to pinpoint the source. In their fatigue neither Sven nor Diego noted the fact that one of the terminals was running its screensaver when they came in instead of in sleep mode like the other terminal.
“And you thought this was a waste of time.” Sven couldn’t resist running his mouth.
“OH SHUT UP, you didn’t find the Witch we were looking for. We didn’t even see the Witch that did this; we have nothing new to go on other than that there was a Class 0 Witch at most in the area that got some very bad news about ten minutes ago. Until you can tell us who you’re tracking you have accomplished nothing, and I’ll be damned if I spend any more time on this pointless stupidity with you.”
Sven seethed as they quietly waited for any additional sign of this new Witch to surface.
Heading away from the store Greg’s mind had come to two very fundamental conclusions. One, as much as he disliked the concept of becoming a woman, it was the least of his worries. Two, last night he had called Marion Dumere a monster to her face. At the time he had thought he understood the meaning of that word. Now he knew better, and he doubted he would ever use that word or the world evil so lightly again. He owed Marion an apology.
Chapter 8
Marion was idly spinning a coin on the same desk that she had been sitting at for the better part of a day doing her best to not think. To think was to feel, and to feel was to hurt. Some part of her was extremely hungry and thirsty, another part implored her for sleep, and her intellect knew that she looked horrible after crying all night. Those thoughts begged her to get on with the basic functions of life, but she simply didn’t feel like doing anything at all. She had managed to survive so long by not thinking about what she was surviving for. For long years she had existed for the sake of existence; a carefully managed mental state had allowed her to function across the centuries in that limbo, but everything had come crashing down last night. A growing part of her just wanted to go downtown and start blowing stuff up until someone came and shot her, whether that was SWAT or the Hunters she didn’t care, it would feel good and then it would be over.
Marion was actually beginning to seriously consider the mechanics of that fatalistic plan when she heard the unlocked front door open. Her escape teleport jump was fifteen feet away in the same room from where she sat, she could be gone in under ten seconds…She didn’t move save to pull her combat knife from its holster. If it was the Hunters she was determined to fight until either they or she was dead, probably the latter, it would be a fitting end to her life. She observed the slice of her face reflected along the blade’s razor edge as she held the weapon before her and began to welcome the prospect of an end to her misery when she felt the tingle announcing her visitor was another Witch.
Her mind rapidly switched gears and the prospect of finding a sinister purpose with the Wicked Sisters flashed through her spirit but didn’t have time to fully germinate before she heard the heavy footfalls of booted feet in the hallway.
“Him? Why would he come back?” Marion thought, uncertain whether to be joyous or angry.
A few seconds later a contrite Greg peered around the corner of the open doorway before fully stepping inside, clearly relieved that Marion was still here. Marion simply sat there uncaring that she looked like hell, or that she was fully visible in the bright daylight that streamed through the small back window. The two regarded each other for a long, breathless moment before Greg finally apologetically spoke.
“Marion, I…I called you something last night that you didn’t deserve to be called. I was angry about everything, and I wasn’t really listening. I understand now why you live like you live. Witches don’t become what they are naturally. They seek the shadows because it is the only path the insane fanatics among us will let them take. I am so very sorry.”
Marion nodded a spark of hope returning to her listless soul before she flatly replied. “No, you were right about many things, the truth always has two faces. Just because the Hunters force us into the darkness doesn’t mean we have to become lost to it. Many of us, however, gladly embrace it and seek it. In the end for many Witches the absolute power granted to us through our tainted blood corrupts absolutely, deepening the shades of gray until there is no more light in their souls. We are Witches and it is very easy for us to become monsters. I had forgotten how traumatic it was when I first changed. I had no right to expect you to blindly accept something in five minutes that took me the better part of a year. If you don’t mind though, how did you learn my name?”
“The Hunters were at my store today…I think they were shopping, they left their truck where it wasn’t supposed to be and it was unlocked, they had your information up on one of their screens, they’re definitely looking for you.”
Marion’s face hardened, “Do you have any idea what would have happened if they had caught you there…?”
Greg shuddered and went very pale, he answered barely above a whisper. “Oh yes…oh God yes…There was another file with a video, they caught another Witch last week, her name was Jennifer Chou. They wanted her to give you up…I couldn’t watch anymore to see if she did.”
Marion grimaced in disgust before she shakily responded. “She couldn’t have, I didn’t even know her. Did you see what number they assigned to her?”
Greg forced himself to recall the horrible details he so desperately wanted to forget. “#622005, they list you as #531492.”
Marion curled her hands into fists of rage. “Four years as a Witch, Class I, she couldn’t have hurt anyone with her power if she had wanted to…I doubt she even knew the Hunters existed, why didn’t I realize she was here? Please let her be in a better place now.”
Marion looked up to see the slight confusion on Greg’s serious face and realized she had referenced something he knew nothing about. Feeling a touch sheepish she clarified.
“The Hunter numbering code is very simple, the last four digits is the year they first record you as a Witch, usually tied to the date they suspect a Witch awakened. The first two are region and ethnicity. #622005 means that Jennifer, poor girl, had probably only been a Witch for four years.”
Greg’s brow creased as his mind turned over a realization that seemed impossible. He got very wide eyed as he stammered out a question.
“But #531492, that’s 1492…you’re…you’re over 500 years old!”
Marion smiled weakly, “Sit,” she asked. When Greg had pulled up a chair, she spoke again in a voice that seemed to echo from the ages. “My name is Marion Dumere, I was born in 1476, in the town of Rouen, in what was then the Kingdom of France. In 1492, a month after I turned sixteen, I became a Witch…”
Marion told Greg everything. Greg sat spellbound for hours as Marion relayed the events of human history that she had witnessed in her life. The great shifting tides of humanity that had altered her world. She had seen so much, yet not truly been part of it. Like a great neutral observer she had seen the great states of Europe born, crossed the English channel seeking to become lost in the bustling city of London in time to bear witness to the Gunpowder Plot, and seen Macbeth performed in the original Globe Theater, the actors unknowing that a real Witch in the audience was amused by their imitation of her kind. She had been chased back to France, and watched the ancient divine right of kings crumble as the citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille. In search of a better life she had journeyed west where she had hoped to find a land uninhabited by the Hunters, but the Hunters had already beaten her there. She had watched America rise from a backwater to a leading nation of the world.
Marion moved on to the mechanics of being a Witch as dusk fell. This time the two of them turned on the lights and continued. Greg interrupted at one point with an inquiry.
“Why does the ‘Countess’ hate you so much?” Greg asked.
Marion pondered a moment before replying. “Officially, because she claims I formed a mob to rob and kill her during the French Revolution. Now, I technically was part of a mob which went to arrest her in Paris which probably would have resulted in her death if she had been caught, but I didn’t start it I just got sucked into it. Showing a reluctance to stick it to a noble in 1789, even a minor one, was dangerous. She managed to get away so the mob started looting her mansion. I had just lost everything the year before thanks to the Hunters, and I was still surviving by working as a streetwalker in Paris. I was hungry and desperate. I didn’t want to live by spreading my legs for men anymore. So…I waited for the mob to loot everything else and then broke into the Countess’ most valuable stuff that she had hidden using her Craft after everyone else had left. Of course I could see the Craft she had used and the rest of the mob couldn’t. It took me weeks but I slowly pawned off her best stuff and used the money to start a respectable business. I sent letters to her decades later explaining the circumstances and offering to make amends but she kept gunning for me. So unofficially I think it’s because she needs to cannibalize the power from at least a high end Class IV to realistically compete with the other major Class V Witches she’s pissed off. I’m the only one she can claim a legitimate grudge against and make it look like she’s not a totally psychotic murderer.”
Greg quietly absorbed that information before asking another question. “You keep referencing Witch Classes, what are those?
Marion rolled her eyes and pleasantly smirked. “Okay you asked for it, let’s see if you follow. Witches have “borrowed” the Hunter Classifications simply because they’re useful. Hunter classifications are a guide to a Witch’s overall power level which steadily increases with age. Class 0 is from the time a Witch awakens to her power, usually when she’s under stress to about one year after her awakening, that’s usually how long it takes for a Witch to grasp the basics. Class I is usually from about that one year awakening anniversary to about five years, that’s usually how long it takes for a Witch to get a full handle on her power. Class 0 and I Witches are usually limited to very minor Crafts, like lighting a candle, moving a small object, simple physical forces etc. Class II is generally six years to twenty-five years. That’s when Witches typically have to reinvent their identities for the first time as they can’t realistically claim their true age anymore without raising serious questions. Typically this is also when they fully dissociate themselves from any past social connections. Most Witches at that point are steadily adding complexity and duration to their abilities, but there’s still not much finesse or raw force available. The first physical changes usually start to appear in that Class as well. Class III typically runs from twenty-six years out to about the century mark. Class III Witches can do decently complex Craft on the fly and can usually apply enough force to achieve whatever they’re trying to accomplish, but duration and endurance is often an issue. The physical alterations of increasing beauty are generally significantly noticeable by that point. Class IV runs from about the 100 year mark out to about the 500 year mark. Class IV Witches are capable of permanent enchantments and can apply substantial force through their Craft. We’re talking lifting cars, steel beams, and stuff like that. Endurance in Craft use is less of an issue, and limited reality alteration is possible in small areas and ways. By the end of Class IV, a Witch will have become a flawless woman often undergoing significant changes to do so, and its not just aesthetic beauty that’s increasing, stamina, reflexes, and resistance to injury all increase.”
Marion paused for a moment before continuing, clearly uncertain how to approach the next part.
“The Class IV/V transition is considered a big deal, because that’s when a Witch starts mutating, it’s typically subtle at first, but some Witches are distinctly inhuman by the end. Class V usually runs from the 500 year mark out to the millennium mark. Most Witches are masters of illusion Craft by the end of Class V as a necessary tool to mix with normal humans and in small ways they really can start bending the normal rules of physics, biology and so forth. The Hunters might try and take out a young Class V with a carefully prepared trap, but generally they do not want to risk combat with a mature Class V as their warding charms often can’t absorb that much power. After that point you start adding a Class level about every 500 years. The old fairytale story of Witches turning princes into frogs is pretty much hogwash…but a mature Class VI could do it and make it stick. The Hunters are smart enough not to screw with the VIs and VIIs, there is a slow attrition though at that level as Witches kill each other in duels for their power. By the time you get up to Class VIII, or IX you’re talking about some seriously scary stuff, in the whole “Things man is not supposed to know” territory. I’ve heard rumors that Witches at that level will sometimes just up and leave the planet, going who knows where…Meeting a Class X Witch is supposedly like meeting a minor Goddess, but that’s hearsay, I’ve never met one of the handful rumored to still be around.”
Greg whistled as he struggled to deal with this latest infusion of information. He worked the math out in his head fixed Marion in his gaze.
“So you’ve been a Witch 516 years, that would make you a V, but I don’t see anything odd about you.” Greg’s question caused a frown to pass across Marion’s face.
“No, I’m overdue, I really haven’t been ready for it, and that’s been bothering me for a while. I just got comfortable with myself and now things are about to change again. I suppose you can relate given your current situation, for which I am very sorry again.” Marion’s anxiety returned as she broached this painful subject again.
It was Greg’s turn to frown. “I’m still having trouble thinking about it, but based on what you’re telling me I should have a couple centuries to get used to it before I’m at your level of craziness.”
Marion’s features took an even more serious cast as she answered to break more bad news. “Uh Greg, you’re inheriting my pattern, and my pattern is for a 516 year old Witch. I’m sorry but you’re going straight from Class 0 to IV. That’s part of why I’m so worried about you. You’re going to have all the power, but none of the experience of using it.”
Greg felt a momentary spark of anger rekindle itself at the pronouncement, but quickly dismissed the feeling, reminding him self that Marion wasn’t throwing him to the sharks. He had simply gotten attached to her as she got thrown to the same proverbial sharks. His intellect was still battling with the specifics of impending womanhood but the epiphany he had come to that afternoon was simple, if the choice had been to his to make between anything else and capture by the Hunters, knowing what he knew now, he would have made the same choice Marion had. Given that realization he could no longer fault her for her deeds. He simply sighed and nodded that he understood.
Marion cautiously prodded him. “You need to make all of your critical arrangements tomorrow if you can. Most of your body is actually already genetically female, about 80%, only your sense of self identity and will is holding everything in its old configuration and shape. You are very close to hitting a ‘critical mass’ level of saturation. When that point is reached it will be near impossible to stop a spontaneous conversion.”
Greg nodded again; suddenly very interested in his hands as he recalled the memory of how hard it had been to stop that process earlier.
“Please be careful. There’s a large teleport drop that I use to move freight at a storage unit about a mile from your store. If you have to, head for it.” Marion wrote down instructions on how to find the hidden enchantment.
“I will.” Greg tried to sound confident but he could hear the anxiety in his voice as he memorized the instructions.
Suddenly, Marion was practically on top of him, wrapping her slender arms around him in a tight bear hug. “Please, I don’t want to be alone anymore, It makes me forget who I am… I don’t want to forget anymore; please…s’il vous plais (please) don’t get your self killed … s’il vous plais….” Marion softly entreated him through a suppressed sniffle. Greg was surprised by the sudden display of affection. A primal part of his mind stirred and pointedly reminded him that while Marion might be a Witch she was also an insanely attractive woman, and tainted or not he was still a man. The upwelling of desire might have gone farther, but Marion shifted her posture and Greg became very aware that her impressive bosom was being flattened against his chest. In any other situation that sensation might have been a turn on, but now he was frankly reminded that a phantom clock was invisibly counting down the time until he gained a matching set. That thought of his precious dwindling time was sobering and so he simply reciprocated Marion’s hug until she released him. With a slight bow, he turned and left calling out “au revoir.” Marion giggled slightly at Greg’s mispronounced, butchered farewell and watched him go. The outside door had barely closed when Marion did a double take. “Did I just giggle?” Marion inwardly asked her self. It had been decades since she had allowed herself a genuine feminine outburst. That wasn’t the only thing out of character for her tonight, she quickly realized, as she slowly slid her thighs over one another, her pants making a soft rasping noise as she savored the slight moist heat that her contact with Greg had generated between her hips. Centuries of sporadic and not so sporadic abuse by twenty generations of men had virtually killed off her libido long ago. Even now, despite the pleasant sensations in her groin, the thought of a man mounting her, even Greg, evoked a near phobia level of revulsion. Still the brief teasing pleasure that still faintly radiated from her sex was yet another sign that despite everything that had happened, Marion was still very much a woman. She also was very hungry and tired.
That night in one house Marion was ravenously eating trying to make up for a day spent without food, she wasn’t clairvoyant…yet…but long experience gave her pause as she thought things through for the Nth time. A lot of things needed to happen very quickly, and she doubted it would all go off perfectly. She was going to need her strength.
Elsewhere Greg was working through lists of things that needed to be done. Emotionally though he was still trying to avoid thinking about the ramifications of what was about to happen. He simply treated it as if he needed to plan for a long, extended vacation. It let him focus on the problems…and he was very good at solving problems.
Chapter 9
The next day
Working his way down the list had been going well so far. He had gotten some odd looks at the bank and had his ID double checked but they had given him every cent of his savings.
Food, gas for the car, making sure the bills were paid, those were easy to do. Writing the “I’m going far, far away” letter had been more difficult, especially as it forced him once again to confront the onrushing tide of woe. He had forced himself through it but by the end he was almost glad to be heading into work. Sweet, normal, work, oh how he was going to miss it. He gave a mirthless laugh as he considered how insanely ludicrous it was that the job that had been boring him to tears would now seem so peacefully wonderful that he was losing it.
He walked through the door into the din of activity and immediately set himself on the store’s problems with a vengeance. Even the staff members that usually grumbled about the old blowhard seemed to be happier with him fully back. He didn’t have the heart to tell them it was probably going to be his last day. The melancholy that thought produced every time it bubbled to the top of his mind was always swept aside; he had a great deal of work to do. There were security tapes showing him walking across a parking lot towards a strange truck yesterday that needed to be subtly overwritten. The tapes from the day before that showed a slightly odd young woman in grainy black and white soon met the same fate. After that it was time for him to cash in a number of favors, by the time it was done he had virtually arranged his own replacement without even looking like it. It felt very final when he shakily slipped a thin envelope into the outbound mail. His farewell letter announcing he wasn’t going to be coming back after his week off for “health reasons” carried far more emotional weight than its meager mass should have allowed. It was a moment for introspection as he looked into the racks of security feeds from his store watching the crowds of humanity as they secured various wants and needs, contemplating the great charade that would set him apart from that mass of people that he was going to be joining so very shortly. He wondered how much various Witches had sacrificed of themselves to maintain the lie that both protected them and caged them; the memory of Marion’s face as she hugged him last night somberly answered that question. Greg would have quietly pondered longer but he was suddenly aware of a strange familiar tickling in his right hand.
Greg pulled his hand to his face as if he had been bitten, focusing a laser will on the limb.
“NO! Two more hours, that’s all I ask…GIVE ME TWO MORE HOURS!” Greg harshly hissed. The sensation seemed to petulantly throb for a moment before it slowly faded. Time was running out.
The day slowly died as most do, the crowds slowly dwindled. Greg in his own personal drama was fighting a slow grinding battle of attrition against the clock. Several times now, he had been forced to mentally arrest his imminent metamorphosis as it began. For the first time in ages he locked the doors five minutes early. The half hour to finish everything seemed to take forever. Greg wasn’t the only one impatient for the store to close.
“Man, how much more do they have to do in there?” Sven petulantly exclaimed watching the front of the Megalomart from the cab of the Hunter’s truck across the parking lot in a spot carefully chosen to be outside of the view of the store’s security cameras. Bruce didn’t answer him so he went back to slurping his nearly empty drink. Bruce gave a martyred sigh and looked out the window making a mental note to put in a good word for Diego for having put up with a week of this. Sven was going to be exhibit ‘A’ one day when the discussion of recruiting came up again, he was a textbook example of why drive, in and of itself did not ensure a recruit was suitable to be a Hunter. Sven went to say something else but Bruce imperiously held up his hand for silence.
“Look the staff is starting to leave. Make sure you have all the supplies, I want to be in and out in less than fifteen minutes with copies of the security tapes and the staff manifest. Hopefully there will something that can identify the source of the Witch pulse you registered yesterday”
Greg had flown through his checklist like a madman. He was so close, all he needed to do was to get the roll down security door shut and he could go home and be done with this. He exchanged waves with the last employee out the door and pulled the worn door key missing most of its original finish from his pocket. He inserted it with a satisfying scrape of metal and surveyed the mostly empty parking lot, and then went sheet white as he recognized the large truck sitting across the parking lot. A slight tremble went through his limbs as he realized how little distance there was between himself and the Hunters. “Calm down.” Greg reassuringly whispered to himself. “They don’t know you’re the Witch. Close the door, walk to your car and leave…they’ll never be the wiser”.
“There’s the manager, get ready to pull around back, we’ll give them fifteen minutes and then make our move.” Bruce quietly intoned from the truck’s cab.
The security door had just begun to descend, in a symphony of poorly oiled metal when the phantom clock measuring Greg’s remaining time ran out. As if a gong had rung in his being, Greg could feel the prickles of static Craft making his hair stand on end and announcing that no amount of willpower was going to deny it this time. Like some strange twisted Cinderella tale, the spell of will that held Greg’s illusionary form was breaking, eager to reveal what he actually was.
Across the parking lot two amulets specifically designed to detect Witchcraft emitted a soft glow and relayed the spiking surge of Craft in the immediate area. Both surprised Hunters quickly fished out their PDA’s and watched them display the approximate direction of the pulse’s source. In seconds it was clear that the only person that the pulse could have emanated from was the stocky store manager standing at the descending security door. Sven was confused for a moment, but Bruce just gravely shook his head before speaking.
“Poor, poor bastard, oh well, come on Rookie, run a casual stalk through the parking lot we’ll take him as he heads for his car.”
It took all of Greg’s self control to not panic as two figures got out of the Hunter’s truck and began leisurely moving across the parking lot. What could he do? If he made a run for it they’d probably get him before he managed to pull out, if he went back inside he’d largely be trapped, but he might be able to slip out later. It was a moment of hard decision as the descending door passed the half way mark. “Even if you get to your car what are you going to do? They’ll follow you…you’ll lead them straight to Marion if you do that.” Greg’s cold logic reminded him that to flee blindly in the direction of a safe haven might render that haven unsafe. No…he would have to try and lose the duo in the store and then slip out and head for Marion’s jump point.
Greg gulped as he could wait no longer. With a single fluid motion he pulled his key from the lock, dropped to the ground and rolled under the security door and up against the main doors. With a flash of long practice he had one unlocked. He was back inside a few pounding heartbeats later.
Bruce had not been expecting the stocky man to head back inside. In an instant he and Sven were sprinting trying to get to the security door before it closed, it was a close race but the tainted man managed to get to another unseen control inside the store and finish closing the security door seconds before he and Sven reached it.
“SVEN, back door now!” Bruce growled as the two Hunters turned to race around the large building.
Inside, Greg was heading for the same vital door that led out to the loading dock; it would be another a tight race as the Hunters had to run around the perimeter of the building, but Greg had to navigate the maze of aisles designed to force shoppers to see as much merchandise as possible, the complications from the throbs of tightness passing through Greg’s body were not helping.
Greg couldn’t see Bruce but he won the footrace to the back door by fifteen seconds. Greg threw every ounce of desperation he possessed into turning over a storage shelf to barricade the back door. Outside Bruce checked the momentum of his run outside the back access door on the loading dock just in time to hear a muffled series of reverberating thuds as something large was dropped to the floor on the other side of the wall. He turned to Sven pulling up behind him with a grin that announced his pleasurable anticipation of the hunt to come.
“Kill the alarm.” Bruce sternly commanded.
With quick precision in under a minute Sven opened up the housing of the main telephone trunk line that fed the store and severed the circuit. Greg’s and the automated security system’s ability to call for help was gone, a victim of the uniform design blueprints for Megalomart stores. He nodded to Bruce who fired a single silenced round into the nearby roll down loading dock door at a carefully chosen point, shattering the single metal bar that held the door latched shut. Its locking mechanism defeated, the roll down door was easily pulled up allowing the Hunters into the back storage area of the store.
Not far away in his office Greg was desperately trying to sabotage a key piece of equipment. He had considered barricading himself in his office but almost immediately considered that plan a suicidally bad idea. He knew that the loading doors or even the access door he had barricaded wouldn’t last long under a determined assault. Locking himself in a room secured by a single cheap deadbolt with no escape might as well be gift wrapping himself for the Hunters, still he was here because he had no doubt the Hunters would use his own security cameras against him; he had to take them out of the equation. He had quickly peeled the label from yesterday’s tape and inserted it into the old VCR that the feeds recorded to, a precious minute had been lost though while he synced up the tape with the current time. The faint ping of something breaking down the hall had alerted him that he was out of time. He quickly swapped two wire sockets and pushed play on the VCR and tore out of his office and into the main area of the store.
Both Hunters had their semi-automatic pistols out now, carried in one hand with their PDA’s in the other. Like shadows they lurked in the darkness of the storage area surrounded by boxed merchandise pushing forward at urging of their talisman’s which insisted the Witch they tracked was moving away from them. The two rounded the corner of a hallway and found the partly open door to the manager’s office. Bruce noted with satisfaction the pen that hung from the whiteboard affixed to the door was still swinging gently like a pendulum. He was not far behind. Bruce wordlessly waved Sven forward as he himself passed into the just vacated office. His attention was immediately drawn to the bank of grainy security feeds.
“Where are you, you bitch-man?” He whispered, disappointed his quarry was shown on none of the feeds. He quickly checked the timestamp on the feeds, suspicious. It was a minute or two off, but that was expected of a sloppy retail outlet like this. He could spare his doubts no more time he had a Witch to kill; he pulled a transceiver from a small pouch and began to patch the security system into his PDA.
Sven stepped through a heavy double door scarred and scuffed by the passing of a thousand freight carts into the brighter light of the main store and blinked as his eyes adjusted from the dim light. He hastily ducked behind a display as cheery jazz began to play from the speakers in the ceiling, startled by the sudden noise. Sven cursed the man-Witch for making him look foolish, glad that Bruce hadn’t seen him rattled by easy-listening tunes. Onward he pressed at a slight jog, his PDA managing to give a general direction of the Witch’s location but still struggling with the uncertain variable strength of the Witch’s aura.
Greg was doing his harried best to activate every thing in the store that moved, made noise, or that could otherwise mask his presence. He had just turned on the large banks of TV’s in the electronics department when he saw movement out of the corner of an eye. He dropped to the floor, out of sight, and did his best to quietly scramble away. The throbbing in his right hand peaked as he hunkered behind a big screen along the middle of the row the electric warmth slightly comforting as it seeped through the back of his shirt.
Sven frowned, his PDA said the Witch was close, but couldn’t pinpoint the exact location. He began to softly stalk down an aisle, the soft creak of the rubber of his heavy boots blending into the sounds of the annoying nature program playing on all of the TV’s, normally designed to sell people on the merit of high definition television but which now hid the soft breathing of a terrified Witch.
Greg couldn’t move his right hand; it had stopped obeying his body. He could only watch as blotches of irregular creamy skin with their cinnamon-milk tint began appearing over the surface of his hand, a particularly large one spreading from where his fateful cut had been two weeks ago. Again, he became acutely aware of the rapid beating of his heart, the thumps of which the blotches seemed to grow and merge in time to like some mystic metronome. Like a sidewalk being covered by the first drops of rain, the discoloration spread over his fingers, palm and wrist the spots spreading and merging. Greg wrung his hands trying to maintain some control of the process and felt the horribly familiar sensation of rough calloused man skin passing over soft, new elastic girl skin. As it had before the throbbing tickling moved deeper into his hand taking residence in the deeper muscle and tendon. Greg clasped his hand to his mouth desperate to muffle the yelps of pain his body wanted to instinctually make as the bones of fingers began to shrink. He could feel his fingers getting smaller, softer, and narrower as the warping flesh played on his lips. He risked a quick peek around the side of the TV and saw the midsection of a powerful man framed in profile between the TVs on the other side of the row, his hip holster ominously revealed and empty. Greg swiftly pulled his head back. The TV’s droned on as a single unit oblivious to the life and death struggle they mirrored.
Shown dozens of times in stark detail, a large black bear was rooting around the scrub thicket of a forest, searching, and hungry. The camera zoomed in on a small reddish fox kit curled up into as small a ball as possible in a tiny hollow. The even dulcet tones of the narrator began to sound even as Greg fought to stifle a scream as his nails now clear and strong, narrowed and grew slightly past the ends of his fingers as they continued their warping from their large beginnings down into narrow tapered shapes.
“The bear will kill the kit for food if it catches it. It knows its prey is near, but the kit is well hidden, it’s only chance for survival is to remain perfectly still and quiet.”
Greg brought his still large left hand up to clasp on top of his now hairless, mismatched right hand still held over his mouth reinforcing the hold as it barred the grunts and whines his body so very much wanted to make. With a final set of muffled pops, his excruciatingly taut tendons began to relax leaving behind a small, elegant hand so perfect for a young woman and so out of place on Greg’s body.
In the next aisle over, Sven snorted in derision for the strange coincidence and went back to his search; a second later the bear in the TVs growled his own frustration at his inability to locate his own prey. Greg saw an opportunity as Sven’s back was turned and quietly bear crawled to the end of the aisle and slipped around the corner noting that his left hand was now covered in creamy blotches as well.
A moment later in the men’s clothing section Greg’s left hand had followed his right, the creamy skin beginning to flow up his forearms as the points of girl skin appeared, grew and merged, the pins and needles sensation following below as the small percentage of male cells remaining in his body were assaulted and assimilated by his own power which insisted that his body take the form specified in the blueprint laid out in the majority of the double XX chromosome cells. With every living cell altered, the power attacked non-living bone, grinding it down into the necessary shapes altering the very shape of Greg’s body from within.
Peeking around displays and racks Greg played a lethal game of hide and seek with the two men that stalked him. The two Hunters might have been ruthless and deadly, but Greg had spent years practicing his own unilateral crusade. Granted when he caught a shoplifter it was usually only a misdemeanor theft, but the never ending battle had taught him how to move through his store without being seen.
Bruce was pensive as he noted the target vector changing again as he caught up with Sven, this Witch’s aura was still highly unstable which was giving the necklace talismans problems. It was possible to triangulate, but not with a high degree of accuracy. An error factor of a hundred feet might have sufficed out in the empty parking lot, but in this environment with so many broken sight lines, obstacles and noise, it was coming down to raw hunting skill. He could see now why the Witch had chosen to come back in here, he grinned as he reminded himself that as time passed the Witch’s aura would only stabilize, the margin of error was only going to steadily drop.
Greg ducked into the women’s clothing section as his once hairy, meaty forearms finished withering into slender shapes that flowed down into his now narrow wrists and up into a pair of sharp elbows, the sensation of cool air caressing his thin, hairless skin as he moved his arms felt very strange, but he could not spare much mental bandwidth to analyze the tactile feeling. He scampered quietly from row to row as the two Hunters followed him some distance back, again drawn by their ability to home in on the disturbance in the fabric of reality his presence generated.
Sven was getting a tad frustrated; this wasn’t going like how he envisioned it at all. Worse still, Bruce seemed to be in his groove. When Diego had defiantly refused to work with him to infiltrate the Megalomart Bruce had stepped in to make peace and keep the operation running. This was supposed to be his chance to prove himself, if he failed and Bruce got the kill…no he would get this kill…he would destroy this cancer on the face of humanity. Sven was momentarily distracted by his inner focus as he moved around a corner of a rack of slinky formal dresses in a crouch, suddenly he saw a young woman move to his left. Sven let out a triumphant cry as he raised his weapon and unleashed a round into the back of the Witch’s head. He savored the feeling as the bullet took the Witch’s head clean off, still oddly she continued to turn…and there was no blood.
Several rows over hiding between displays of women’s pantyhose, Greg cringed as he heard the sharp report of the pistol and froze uncertain if that bullet had been meant for him. Nothing had hit near him, so what had the Hunter been shooting at? A chunk of foam exploded from the unknown target drifted down out of the air in a wobbly spiral and fell in front of Greg. On the finished side, the stylized contours of woman’s ear were distinctly apparent. Greg’s anger welled up from his wounded pride but he caught himself before he audibly complained.
“You bastards, do you have any idea how much trouble it was to get that motorized mannequin working?” Greg thought to himself. However, sensing the Hunter’s had been distracted, again he crawled further away, feeling the pins and needles beginning to surge in his feet happy that Mabel the Mannequin had finally gotten someone’s attention for a change.
Bruce, drawn, by the sound of gunfire, fluidly strode over to Sven’s location wondering if the Rookie had gotten lucky. He caught Sven moving away, as if he didn’t want to stay where he had fired the shot.
“Where is she? Did you get her?” Bruce demanded.
“Um, no…false alarm.” Sven sheepishly answered trying to block Bruce’s view of the area behind him with his body.
“False alarm…?” Bruce annoyed, questioned, before looking around Sven’s bulk to where a headless mockup of a woman’s upper body still rotated on its mechanized mounting. “Oh great, you shot a mannequin, but hey you shouldn’t feel too bad about it those are real hard to distinguish from actual Witches you know. And its not like leaving warded bullets everywhere for a forensics team to find is a bad thing, is it?” Bruce’s voice dripped with venomous sarcasm as he berated Sven.
Greg was crawling under racks of feminine lingerie moving through them as a great cat might move through the tall grass of the savannah. He was developing a rhythm, he could slow and suppress his transformation as he moved, then let it claim the next part of his body as he stopped to listen for his pursuers. He stopped next to a display of lacy bras capped by a large picture of a model coyly posing in one, doing her best to convince women shoppers that one of her company’s bras would make them feel confident and attractive. Sitting below her photograph Greg winced as he once again released his mental brake and felt his biceps began to achingly twinge smaller as his power began its assault on the muscle residing there, warping the large bulge of ropy man muscle down into lean arcs of feminine grace. Further insult followed as he could sense his arms pulling in, becoming slightly shorter. For a few seconds Greg felt so horribly weak, oddly pretty, but weak. His male ego railed at his loss and Greg’s mind marinating in a sea of mystically potent estrogen almost lost control of his oscillating emotions. Then a curious thing happened, Greg began to feel stronger completely out of proportion to the limited female muscle he now possessed, which when relaxed was almost completely hidden by the layer of feminine padding which was making him so deliciously supple. The memory of what Marion had told him was increasingly relevant as the raw mechanical power in his arms increased courtesy of the complex mutation from girl muscle into Witch flesh. That reassuring development that though he was rapidly becoming a female ideal, that he would not share in that forms notable weakness was a welcome salve for Greg’s male mind and he regained his composure even as he felt his feet begin to shrink in his heavy boots. Greg stifled another gasp at the wholly strange tactile sensation of his toes, now covered in their own soft, smooth girl skin, drew across the insoles of his boots pulling inward as his feet became increasingly dainty. With a final set of muffled tense pops the arches of his feet quivered and reset vastly smaller than they had been. Almost immediately the Craft moved up into his ankles intent on reshaping them to match, Greg shuddered and ran through every mental trick he had ever heard of fixed on suppressing the throbbing sharp pains. He vowed that if he got out of this alive he was going to give Marion grief for decades for this. He grimaced one last time as it felt like knitting needles were being forced into his ankle bones and then with a last throbbing wet crunch it was over, he had a pair of slender elegant ankles to match his girlish feet. Immediately, Greg put the mental brakes on the spreading transformation, he had spent several minutes under the lingerie model’s alluring photograph and he could not afford to linger longer, the Hunters were close and if they had their way he would never get the chance to need the garment the model was selling. He rose to a half crouch, momentarily unsteady on his new smaller feet, and began to move away. The soft clunking noise of his boots hopelessly shifting on his diminished feet with every step, now several sizes too small for them, threatened to betray Greg to his doom.
Bruce turned, finished with his lecture about sloppy work to Sven, concentrating, trying to decide if the soft rhythmic sound he had heard was part of the damnable easy-listening saxophone music that kept filtering down from the speakers in the ceiling. He debated whether it was worth it or not to track down the controls and turn off the music. He pulled out his PDA, and considered his options. He had a very strong suspicion as to who this Witch’s ‘mother’ was, and he reminded himself that if this Witch was anywhere near as crafty as #531492 he was going to have to start getting out in front of her rather than simply reacting. He hit a button on his PDA with a frustrated jab and brought up the grid of the stores’ security cameras. He cycled through them as Sven moved off in the Witch’s general direction. Nothing was moving in the camera grid, and that bothered him, but a quick glance at the ceiling revealed that the few cameras out in plain sight were covered in the standard black domes designed to hide where they were specifically facing. Unsure of where he precisely was looking at other than generic department names he couldn’t be certain that something was wrong.
Greg darted across the main walkway feeling terribly exposed as he moved into the next section with a purpose. He knew that he had to get out of the store; he couldn’t keep playing hide and seek with these men, eventually he would lose with disastrous consequences, but his boots flopping around on his feet were going to get him killed if he didn’t fix this problem. He almost didn’t make it to the shoe section before the advancing power claimed his calves determined to grant them sleek lines in exchange for the original thick muscle. He sprawled unceremoniously out on the floor with a distinct thud as the twitching spasms began, he could feel the lower part of his legs shrinking shorter, the legs of his pants beginning to accordion fold on top of each other, no longer the correct length for his shorter legs. He furtively crawled into a blind spot in a corner ignoring the protests of discomfort from his abused knees and cowered as a shadow moved past on the floor not far away.
Sven stalked his way down the main walkway peering into each deserted aisle growing ever more frustrated at this Witch who refused to give him a target to kill.
Bruce was cycling through video feeds, again coming up empty. He flipped through them at a fast clip spending only seconds on each one. One screen that read ‘Shoes-Main Walkway’ he paused on for a few seconds looking at the unmoving form of a young woman before coming to the conclusion that he was looking at yet another of the seemingly innumerable ad displays. He could not have known that 23 hours, 58 minutes after the image he had just looked at had been taken, that there was something either incredibly wonderful or incredibly horrible depending on one’s views happening next to that ad. There was a Witch-to-be standing on the tips of his cute, delicate toes, his small, smooth heels in the air, reaching two slender arms up to the top shelf to remove a pair of women’s sneakers, the first time he had needed to stretch to accomplish that action.
Greg had guessed at his new size, but had come remarkably close. He spared a quick glance towards the picture of the woman next to him who was caught in mid pose as she stood with a leg bent at the knee in a classic feminine pose. The strappy stiletto sandal she was wearing on her raised foot pointed directly at the shoe’s brand name with its sharp pointed heel. Greg shuddered at the alien sensation as his soft hands grazed the smooth skin of his calves as they rolled a brand new pair of feminine athletic socks onto his girlish feet. He was deeply conflicted over the thought that his small feet with their cute toes, clean lines, and smooth skin were probably prettier than the models’. He pushed that disturbing yet attractive thought out of his mind as he quickly donned the women’s sneakers, chagrined that he had managed to randomly pick a pair decorated with a pink stripe. Lost in the facets of his thoughts, Greg momentarily forgot to rein in the Craft and it took the opportunity to mold his knees’ into gentle curves.
Newly shod with footwear appropriate to his rapidly developing inevitable femininity Greg began cautiously working his way towards a larger goal ducking and weaving his way through House wares. He could feel the growing spread of Witch flesh, his body warping, changing into something arguably inhuman and decidedly curvier. He was becoming more in tune with the Craft as it spread, the latest indicator of its advance being the subtle play of his shirt across his back as he moved. With each passing aisle, each thundering beat of his heart, each movement that pulled the fabric taut he noted the minute lessening of friction as his back smoothed. A stray thought wandered to the last time an age ago he had given his ex-wife a massage, he had no doubt that anyone feeling his back right now would find the texture of their skin to be quite similar. The essence of his transition was intellectually weird, it was biologically wrong, and so, so, increasingly, emotionally right.
Greg wasn’t certain if the Craft was affecting his mind already, but with each step of his metamorphosis, each part of himself lost to that dangerous, exotic power strangely made him feel more whole. Each thud of his Witch heart made him want to fight it less and simply let it happen. The deep tickling as muscle and sinew rearranged themselves was fast becoming almost seductive, as if some phantom lover with thousands of microscopic hands was caressing his flesh and entreating it to change. Now as the tickling spread across his sides and crested his shoulders intent on diving down his front Greg was fighting an internal battle over whether he really wanted this terrible, horrible, beautiful, wonderful state of being to end, reverse, or accelerate.
The Craft didn’t wait for a decision. Greg could feel it battering at his shaken will, it wanted his thighs, and so his thighs it took. Greg barely had time to press himself up against a wall in an alcove across from the displays of cheap furniture and hang on to the fixture as if it could anchor him. The tendrils of power crept up into the large dense muscles of his legs, knotting and unknotting them. Greg stifled the first harsh gasp, but the sparks of unseen Craft dancing and chasing each other across the surface of his thighs threatened to unseat his mind. Then tickled from without by the folds of his pants deepening and sliding across the newly silken erogenous skin of his creamy thighs, and from within by the power that was caressing his muscle and bone even as it robbed him of another inch of height it all became too much. A low, gentle, purring moan escaped his lips, for a second its pitch breaking as his voice cracked momentarily into a higher register. He unconsciously began to press and rub his silky curvaceous thighs together in motions instinctively designed to heighten and feed a woman’s arousal. A sudden uncomfortable pressure at his groin however immediately broke that reverie and bluntly reminded Greg that though he might now possess a pair of maiden thighs, wonderfully soft at the surface yet firm and strong at their core, their lines unmarred by bulges of muscle, perfectly frozen in time at that singular fertile point between the distinct slenderness of girlhood and the thicker curves of womanhood, that for the moment at least, he was still very much a man, and despite the enticing sensuality of his power in some ways at least he still wanted to remain a man.
That crucial realization that his manhood now lay between a pair of thighs that many men would have given much to touch and caress and be touched and caressed by, coupled with the immediate echoing memory of how he had moaned like a lust stricken girl brought the fractured cores of his identity and their strange juxtaposition into sharp relief.
In the mirror atop a cheap dresser reflecting the end of aisle seven, a Nordic man suddenly appeared and peered at his tracking PDA, the grinding frustration of a fruitless hunt evident in his harsh features.
Greg surprised himself with how fast he ducked out of the end of the aisle carried on his swift doe legs. He breathlessly counted to five and then doubled back. His fate hung by a thread as both he and the Hunter passed each other at opposite ends of the aisle. Fortunately, Sven was too engrossed in the probability indicator on his PDA to notice the blur of motion at the extreme edge of his peripheral vision.
Greg had been far more observant in that split second. Seeing the Hunter in close profile, his face set in the stone of unflagging zeal and hate had served to interject a cooling note into the growing heat of his metamorphosis. To master his Craft, to stay in control was to live; to be lost to it was to die. It would have been a test of will under ideal situations, and with Greg jogging through the store, digging his slender fingers into the front of his pants trying to hold the over long garment up as he moved, his situation was far from ideal. Even worse, his fingers kept grazing the skin of his stomach which set up a sensual paradoxical dichotomy where he was both touching the velvet, hairless cream skin of a woman’s belly, and being touched by a woman’s feathery caresses. He cornered an aisle and the tips of his fingers were forced to splay across the sensitive erogenous region below his navel. Greg had to practically mentally scream at himself to focus and move, denying the Craft addled part of him that was furiously begging his conscious mind to stand aside and let it reshape Greg’s midsection into an aesthetic mimicking the stem of an hourglass.
What was he? He had been a man, an averagely large, hairy man, but that wasn’t true anymore. The play of his clothes, now emptily baggy in the sleeves and legs but still filled out in the middle, across his skin made it clear that the man hair he had sported, a Neanderthal relic of primitive man, had been wiped out. He was smooth and virtually hairless below the neck now, save perhaps…Greg swallowed hard and looked down at the bulge in his increasingly ill fitting pants still evident at the junction of his thighs and tried to gauge through the layers of clothing whether he now sported a distinct triangular patch of downy girl fur there. It was a hopeless divination that did nothing to solve his dilemma. What was he? Who was he now?
Man…Woman…Human…Witch…Man…Woman…Human…Witch…Man…Woman…Human…Witch
The cycle played out endlessly in the back of Greg’s mind as he streaked past rows and rows of auto parts. The part of his mind not caught in the gender identity war raging around it was still looking for an escape, and it was ticking off options. He couldn’t fight them with his Craft it was still occupied with fighting the diminishing remnant of his male body, and Marion had made it clear that threatening an armed Hunter with Craft at their level would be like threatening a duck with rain. The sporting department had guns, but they were disassembled and there was no ammunition in the store. Greg thought hard…he needed to even the odds but how? He gulped hard as something seemed to catch in his throat as he jogged, then again, and again, unnoticing that the bulge of cartilaginous tissue that moved with the swallowing action was fractionally disappearing with each repetition.
“Marion said they can home in on the use of Witchcraft. How do I use that?” Greg rapidly pondered but came up frustratingly empty, unfamiliar with how to use a Witch’s arsenal. “So good at fixing problems and now you can’t fix your own.” Greg mentally berated himself. “Well it’s not like this is something I can fix with a creative policy interpretation on inventory storage…” Greg sarcastically thought to himself. Then a realization crawled out of the deep, dark recesses of his mind and hit him upside the head with a very pertinent recent memory, policies existed to short cut the interpretive process, homogenizing action, they worked well until they encountered something outside their scope. The Hunter was tracking him using his PDA talisman almost exclusively in the same manner…. action without thought, power without skill…the tool had subsumed its wielder and so the wielder inherited the fundamental limitations of the tool. Greg changed directions and darted towards a very specific aisle and thought about the trap he was about to lay intending to take advantage of one of those limitations. A smile formed at the corners of his mouth as he contemplated the possibilities. He could not have seen the rich, vibrant rose-pink color that crept into his lips at the same time, nor the expanse of smooth, feminine throat that now stretched down his neck.
Bruce had been dispassionately moving through the store, as if on a leisurely stroll through a park. He glanced down at his PDA from time to time; occasionally giving a martyred sigh as he watched the antics of the hunt’s other two participants, the only thing that could have made the chase lines displayed on his PDA more ludicrous would have been if some Benny Hill music started playing. Sven was dogging the Witch’s every move, but without considering the overall strategic picture he was invariably playing catch up, he was never going to catch the Witch at this rate. Bruce was not concerned, the margin of error in his triangulation on the Witch was dropping a few feet with every handful of minutes that passed, and he had all night to play the Hunter to Sven’s hound. Still, he was annoyed on general principle that he had been unable to efficiently capture the man-witch, and as he passed the Jewelry counter he stopped and fixed his icy gaze on the ceiling where a number of black glossy camera balls mutely hung. He paced a few feet as he flipped his PDA over to the surveillance feeds and scanned through them, his ire already growing at the imminent confirmation of what he had been suspecting for the last half hour. He found what he searched for, in a grainy video feed the Jewelry counter sat deserted, nothing moving the in the frame. “Well…” Bruce slowly exhaled, reaching out his hand to solidly pat the counter, an action that was not mirrored in the feed. “Aren’t you a clever little bitch, Miss Witch?”
“He brought his phone to his face and flatly commanded, “She sabotaged the video system, Sven, I’m going to undo whatever she did, keep her contained in that corner. That’s all you have to do, just make sure she doesn’t get out of the store, please don’t screw that up.” Bruce let a weary sigh come in at the end of his command just before he hung up, and with minimal speed began slowly sauntering his way towards the back of the store.
Hidden in the Sports section Greg spent a paranoid thought about where the second Hunter was, but decided that it would benefit him little to speculate. On another level, a dwindling part of him was screaming its objection from the still raging identity war to what he was about to do, another growing part was egging him on. He tried to rationalize it as a necessary sacrifice to pull off his immediate plan, but that was not a complete truth as a spark of anticipation ran up his spine. Greg wrapped his slender arms around his torso, giving himself a tight hug, and then he squeezed with muscle and mind. A gentle grunt passed Greg’s rose petal lips, already plumping slightly, as his self-initiated assault got underway.
The tingling, tickling power that had been skittering unseen over the cream skin on the surface of his back and front, held at bay by Greg’s will, suddenly not only found its path deeper into his body unopposed but actively invited. It raced inward eager to serve its role as catalyst. For a few seconds longer Greg held his hug, his mind trying to process both the possibilities of his planned counterstrike and the sensations of his ribs being tickled from within, and found it had nowhere near the requisite mental bandwidth. All of the sudden an electric roiling spasm seemed to build in his toes and fingers. It traveled fast as greased lighting up his arms and legs to collect for infinitesimal surge in his spine before it rushed around from his back to front to collect in his sternum. Greg’s slender hands didn’t quite reach his mouth to squelch the first exhaled squeal before the first of twelve distinct muffled pops, one for each pair of ribs, fired in quick succession. Greg’s torso trembled as each pair of ribs pulled inward, his entire body swaying as his legs struggled to maintain his balance with his overloaded mind unable to provide coordination.
(POP, wheeze…) Greg gasped for air as his lungs forcibly shrank no longer afforded the luxury of a barrel chest. A few tense shallow breaths passed before the change finished and Greg could once again breathe deeply, his Witch lungs already beginning to make up in efficiency what had been lost in volume.
(POP, urk…) No sooner had the threat of suffocation passed than Greg suddenly had a very good idea what it felt like to have a heart attack. A hand flew to Greg’s chest and felt his thundering, irregular heartbeat spasms through his reshaping and diminishing pectoral muscles and sweat dampened shirt. Greg sharp’s protruding feminine nails dug into his chest as he counted the seconds, hoping, praying for it to end. With one final jerking spasm his heart finally regained its rhythmic beat, slightly slower now.
(POP, snap…) It was not over, but the incredibly taut pull of his deltoids was a minor, insignificant pain compared to the just resolved disruption of the core machinery of his body. Greg softly panted as the changes continued with his deltoids and other muscles in his back and shoulders withering and reshaping as the shallow curve from his neck down to his shoulders reshaped into a far squarer angle.
(POP, crack…) As his collar bones refined themselves down Greg could tell this part of his metamorphosis was almost over. He could feel the way the muscle and flesh of his shoulders gently sloped into and out of his slightly pronounced collarbone and swannish neck. In half a minute’s time his frame had warped and shrunk to the point where his shirt hung from his shoulders. It was a disturbing sensation that demanded attention but Greg’s logical mind forcibly reminded him that he had lingered far too long in one spot. He turned and moved on but had barely made it to the next aisle break when his shoulders on their own schedule set off their big finish.
(POP, crunch…gahhh!!!) Greg could not have stopped his exclamation from crossing his moist rose lips if he had tried. The wet slithering feeling of his shoulders pulling inward was too much. His mind overloaded and he skidded across the polished floor on his knees, his teeth biting down on his full lower lip as the initial shock passed yet still throbbed. Down the aisle a row of Tiki torches lit themselves as the released energy of an unseen Craft wave passed. Greg hastily struggled back to his feet as the discomfort slowly tailed off; trying to ignore the feeling of a pair of gently rounded female shoulders swimming in his shirt. It was not far too where his chosen weapon lay, but it still took another precious moment to get there as he hurried on. In that time, the play of his clothing across his thin, sensitive skin told him more than he really wanted to know about his changing body. Only a few minutes ago his upper body had been unmistakably male despite the creamy soft skin that covered it. Now he had none of the dense, corded male muscle that a lifetime of lifting heavy objects and testosterone produced, or the heavy anchoring bones that such muscle required. Instead he had been granted lean aerobic muscle in trade, and far less than he had sported. Almost a third of his upper body muscle had vanished, and were it not for the almost immediate sensation of an indescribable otherness, creeping into those girlish muscles as Greg’s Craft permeated them and granted an otherworldly strength, he would have again felt pitiably weak. As it was, Greg could tell he had his full Witch strength in his arms and shoulders available to him now, but the ramifications were still troubling. It had not been an even trade by far. He might have been stronger now than he was before, but he had gained a set of elegant lines in his back and ribs that clearly were meant to feed into a narrow waist. Greg still had his old chunky, large midsection and the effect was to make him look like some obscene pear. Even worse, the soft, sloping curves of his shoulders and chest were already hinting at what would soon be riding atop his pectoral muscles. Greg put a slender hand to his chest and pursed his full lips as his small hand tested the flat expanse like some anxious pubescent girl. No remarkable yielding softness resided there yet to Greg’s relief and slight dismay, but the foundations had been laid. He gulped as he considered whether he would make it out of his store as a man along with whether he would make it out alive.
Sven Petrovich would have laughed the mirthless chuckles of the mad if it was not all so damnably tragic. The man whom he admired as a titan among mortals had all but called him incompetent a few scant moments before, barely worth acting as a scarecrow to keep the Witch contained until he, Bruce, could be deigned to come and deal with her. It was painfully clear that Sven was utterly worthless in Bruce’s eyes. There were no words in any of the tongues Sven knew that could describe the aching, empty hollowness he felt to the core of his soul. Sven had fed all that he was into his quest, his old life had been discarded so that he could learn the art of death, he had abandoned long held dreams to chase these abominations to the ends of the Earth, and he had assumed the mantle of anonymous protector, unknown by those he guarded, nameless. Yet he was failing, despite all that he had sacrificed, every aspect of his life that he had fed into that grinding maw that becoming a Hunter entailed, still he was not succeeding. Without that there was nothing left, he was less than nothing. As nothing…he would never see his quest complete. Ilsa would have died in vain. The thought of his young sister choked Sven up; a suppressed sob crossed Sven’s rough weathered features and echoed in the stillness broken only by the contemptible strains of light jazz. Sven’s face flashed to anger.
“DAMNIT, what more do you want from me?!” Sven queried the heavens through the Megalomart ceiling.
It was not supposed to be this way. In the old folktales the wise that recognized evil would eventually defeat it, and five years ago he had recognized the aloof, regal woman who led the thugs who came to shake down his poor village. She pretended to be young, but Sven saw the ancient predatory eyes that lurked behind her sun glasses, Sven saw the birch walking stick that she used to wipe her passing from the Earth, and Sven saw the crows, her servants, circling and watching. Sven knew as she peered into his soul that the terror of countless generations, the evil that old man Danukas had spent countless dusty afternoons warning the village children about, Baba Yaga, had come to town. He had warned the elders that this was no ordinary mob boss and yet they had called him a superstitious fool. They chose to reject the thug’s demands and be brave. The woman just gave a crocodile smile and left without a word. No one was brave when the children began disappearing, how do you fight a primal force of evil? Sven had argued long and hard for the village to seek help from those who might know how to stop her, but they refused to see the truth. Lies they had told each other, and lies they had believed rather than the awful truth. He alone had searched the gloomy forest when precious Ilsa went missing. He had found her, but not all of her. Her mind was gone; her eyes that had once been so full now empty, glassy shells. He had no doubt Baba Yaga had eaten her mind. Sven swore that day, hot tears falling on his sister’s soft cheek that he would destroy the Witches if it took him his entire life…they would not hide behind their false faces, their lies would not dissuade him. He would be the righteous tool of vengeance for all of mankind….for little Ilsa, who had died without a voice.
Sven could feel his future in the Hunter’s falling apart, if he could not kill the weakest of the Witches’ spawn then there would be countless more like Ilsa. He had to succeed…for to fail was to utterly fail the only purpose he had left in the world.
Sven’s talisman shone a dull white; the tainted man had used Craft. Sven had been motionless as he had stared into the vortex of his own personal hell, but now…Bruce had commanded him to merely contain…but no…he was going to remove at least one horror from the world before Bruce was rid of him…for Ilsa.
Sven took off like a flash, grim determination set like iron in his eyes. It was only few aisles to where the Witch had used his Craft...Sven readied his gun, shifting the rubber coated grip in his sweating hand. A kaleidoscope of color from hundreds of toys surrounded him as he closed in on the exact position marked on his PDA. He made the final turn and leveled his weapon, sighting down the aisle as his instrument of death swept a lethal arc to point at…nothing…Sven looked into an unbroken emptiness…Sven checked his PDA again…this was the spot, and the probability indicator still showed the Witch as extremely close by, but there was nothing…no that wasn’t true. There was something lying on the floor a few paces from the aisle entrance. Sven cautiously stalked down the aisle towards it, his boots softly creaking with each step. He checked his PDA again…no movement from the Witch, the tainted man was at most fifty feet away…Sven tentatively reached down and picked up box, flipping it over. One of Sven’s nightmares became real in that instant, fully visible from the box’s other side, separated from him by only a layer of contour molded plastic. In the box a plastic doll with golden thread for hair lay, her painted on blue eyes looking into Sven’s. The doll’s polyester dress was generically mystic looking, but the conical hat, the plastic broom, the large plastic rectangle representing a book, and the black raven all included with the doll as accessories mutely confirmed what this little plastic girl was supposed to be. Sven’s hand and the box in it trembled as he read.
“Witch Apprentice Chloe – Help Chloe learn how to use her powers with Frederick her talking raven! Based on the popular children’s TV series. Parents: Recommended for girls ages 6-10”
Sven swallowed hard, to see such an unholy perversion of the truth was gut-wrenching. He was trying to protect people and they were encouraging their daughters to emulate the monsters. He holstered his gun without thinking and looked at his PDA, still no movement from the Witch. Sven turned a half step and the direction probability indicator slowly swung around, he turned the other way and the arrow feebly reversed, being of no help at all. Sven stopped again with his PDA and the doll in his hands, his attention shifting back to the sign that the world had gone mad. It wasn’t right, Witches were cold blooded murderers. Why did people show such sympathy for the devil? Unable to stand the sight of the blasphemous toy any longer Sven threw it as hard as he could manage, the box clunking end over end down the aisle, the painted smile never disappearing from the doll’s face.
It wasn’t right…they were murderers…
A shadow passed silently over Sven Petrovich’s face, a portent of doom. A fractional instant of sublime clarity silenced Sven’s thoughts, suddenly the doll, the directional confusion for the talisman, it all made perfect inescapable sense, if only it had been the same for the entirety of his life. His hand began its futile motion for his gun where it sat holstered, but Sven’s only repeating thought was simple.
“I am so sorry Ilsa, I failed you.”
(THUD…DOOOOINK.) The ringing impact of an aluminum bat swung with all the inhuman strength Greg could muster against the hard bone of a man’s head reverberated up and down the aisle. He had almost misjudged the distance between the top of the fixture where he had hid himself and where the Hunter would come to stand. He shouldn’t have been able to walk up there at all…but a creative policy interpretation of his concerning boxes of surplus toys stored inside the fixture had helped with that. The Hunter reeled from the blow that snapped his head around like a punching bag. Greg quickly jumped down from the top of the fixture, his sleek legs easily absorbing the landing, and brought his now dented aluminum bat, which would never be used for the baseball game it had been meant for, around for another crippling blow. Time, always fickle, seemed to slow down as Greg began applying the torque that would bring the blunt instrument back through the sweeping arc that would intersect with Sven’s head at the point of maximum leverage. The remnants of Greg’s human conscience flickered through his mind like fireflies on an oppressive humid night and swirled around the central question of whether he was prepared to be a killer, but in this moment they were utterly irrelevant to Greg. He would do justice; he would destroy this murderer before him, he could have no sympathy for these devils that hunted Witches, vengeance would be his…for Jennifer Chou and all the others the Hunters had slain.
Greg’s face was set in a mask of snarling, feral rage as his bat gathered speed. No compassion, no mercy, and precious little humanity shone in his brown eyes as he aimed for the thin bone of the Hunter’s skull at the temple. He was going to enjoy this.
(THUD…crunch, crack, DOINK) Greg all but screamed his joy as his improvised blunt weapon connected with the Hunter’s skull, his talisman powerless against simple unadulterated kinetic force. Only the fact that the Hunter, with his last staggering step, had managed to turn his head into the blow kept the strike from being lethal. Greg relished the sound of a normally sickening crunch and crack as the Hunter’s nose and jaw fractured under the assault, adding the sounds of their destruction to the ringing aluminum pings. Tiny crimson splatters flew through the air and decorated Greg’s hands, shirt, and face as he pulled his bat back again, their transferred warmth added to the hot frenzied flush that surged through Greg’s flesh and being. The Hunter staggered and then for a brief instant dropped to his hands and knees, but the control circuits of his brain had already failed, internal hemorrhaging already robbing the man of his last whispers of conscious thought. The Hunter collapsed to the floor, his hands and legs twitching like some dying insect as his nervous system short circuited.
Greg happily stepped up to the now prone Hunter, gleefully noting the little pools of blood that were forming on the polished floor from the crimson streams that issued from the Hunter’s shattered nose and jaw. He crouched down, balancing on his pink shoes, and gave the wounded Man a shark grin as he spoke.
“It’s not so fun when the Witches fight back is it? I watched you kill a woman, I’m going to enjoy this very much.”
Greg’s words were carried by a silky mezzo-soprano voice, but they were as cold as artic ice. A low moan rose from the broken man, but Greg just stood back up and set his feet. He raised the bloodied bat over his head for a powerful vertical stroke, a coup de grace, and a congealing drop of blood slowly rolled down the battered aluminum barrel towards his gore flecked hands and face leaving a crimson trail in its wake. Greg was ecstatic, the sublime, seductive power he carried within himself was victorious over those who would have denied him, there was nothing else to consider. A half crazed cackle rose in Greg’s throat as he tensed for his death blow on the helpless Hunter.
Time though, betrayed him. The world seemed to swirl around him and fall away as he beheld the crumpled figure at his small feet; the glassy crimson pools slowly reaching out to engulf his footprints. Everything suddenly seemed so dark and indistinct as if a fog had rolled in imperceptibly unnoticed. An old voice that carried untold wisdom that was not his echoed in his mind and destroyed his certainty.
“Mind your thoughts maiden Witch. Those who hunt their shadow will be destroyed by their shadow.”
Greg quickly spun around but found no source for the mysterious voice. He frantically looked back to the downed Hunter and to his lowered weapon, sticky with drying blood. Greg’s awareness fractured like a mirror as reality resumed its normal flow. Thoughts frantically raced through his mind, each more difficult to discern whether it was his own or an impulse supplied by the dangerous exotic power that coursed through his body. The fortress of Greg’s soul had all but been overthrown from the inside by stealth; the resulting battle for control was terrible indeed as his own personality counterattacked. Greg nearly had a seizure as he struggled to resolve the fundamental question.
“Man…Woman…Human…Witch?” The question coursed through his veins like liquid fire as his mind boiled. “What are you, who are you?” Greg silently questioned himself as he looked at the crimson smears covering his hands, his slender fingers still wrapped around the bat’s handle.
(CLUNK, Doink, doink….) The clattering rings of hollow aluminum hitting tile resounded like peals of thunder. The bat had weighed little, but dropping it seemed to remove the weight of ages from Greg’s soul. It slowly rolled away as Greg hung his head, heavy as lead, and regarded his two small, pretty hands which he held before him, counting the bloody smudges that writ his damnation across the canvas of his smooth skin.
“I’m not a monster…” Greg whispered to himself, more inwardly fearful now than at any point in his life for just how fragile that truth was.
He looked down and stepped back just before the edge of the blood pool reached his feet. Turning, he ran, leaving that horrible place he himself had unhallowed.
Hot tears flowed down Greg’s cheeks that would never again need a razor’s touch, they cut swaths through the crimson smears that had been left there, but they could not wholly erase the stains. Greg’s hand trembled as he whipped out his key and raised the front security door a few feet, less now for the fear that the second Hunter would stop him than fear of what he had almost become. He rolled under the door and closed it from the other side. A moment later Greg vanished into the night with a squeal of rubber tires, two old yellowed headlights doing their best to stave off the enveloping darkness that seemed to reach for him from both within and without.
The truth was simple; to stay in control of the power was to live; to lose control was to die in a way far worse than a bullet to the head.
Back in Megalomart
It had taken Bruce little time to deduce that the Witch had changed the system over to play an old tape; far more problematic was the rat’s nest of poorly labeled wires that carried the system’s data. It had taken several abortive iterations of trial and error to realize that the Witch had switched the input and output cables. It was an annoying, less than ideal situation, and if they hadn’t cut the alarm the wasted ten minutes of time might have been worrisome. As it was Bruce was confident that Sven could keep the Witch busy until he got back there, in fact he expected this experience to do the younger man a great deal of good. With a hissing crackle the bank of video feeds switched over to live footage.
“Ah, good…now where were we?” Bruce announced with satisfactory anticipation. He picked up his talisman PDA from the table where he had left it while he experimented with the wires and the contented look on his face melted like ice on a hot day, the Witch was nowhere within range, completely off the detection grid, the probability trail of her path a ribbon, rather than an amorphous cloud, clearly leading out the front of the store. Anger flashed through Bruce’s eyes like hot coals as he raised his phone towards his head intent on lambasting the hapless Rookie, half turning towards the bank of security feeds in the process.
“Sven…” The angry inflection of Bruce’s question was only granted a single word before he stopped deathly silent. A camera feed marked “Toys” had supplied the answer to his question in the most gut-wrenching manner possible. A leaden lump caught in Bruce’s throat as he sprinted out of the small office, hastily speed dialing a number he had long prayed he would never need.
“AJ’s Freight, Dispatch…” A distant voice hurriedly intoned.
“Truck 9, my right front tire is shredded, nearly gone, need IMMEDIATE assistance at depot 9B!” Bruce tried to keep his voice under control but did not wholly succeed.
“Dispatch copies, get to 9B and there will be help waiting, don’t worry Truck 9, you’ll make it.” There was a hint of encouragement in the far away voice.
“Doctor’s coming kid…don’t die on me damn it, please don’t die…” Bruce choked up, mist in his eyes as he pulled Sven from the floor into a fireman’s carry and headed for the back door and into the blanket of darkness that lay over the city.
Chapter 10
It was all happening too fast. Two weeks ago he had been an unassuming, mundanely average man. An hour ago Gregory Pash had outwardly been normal, yet with a very odd, very unique affliction. Ten minutes ago he had nearly surrendered his mind to the power of the Craft. The normal low intensity guerrilla war between the Craft and a Witch’s latent humanity that usually played out over centuries for a normal Witch had in Greg’s case been speeded up to a thermonuclear exchange that was still being resolved.
Greg gulped and dried his tears as he drove careful not to scratch himself with his protruding nails.
“I was a man, I’m still a man, and I’m going to keep acting like one.” Greg shakily spoke. The pronouncement carried weight but sounded utterly absurd in Greg’s rich melodic soprano voice.
Greg spared a look at himself in the rearview mirror as streets passed. Man? Maybe, but the honey tones spoken from full, moist rose lips gave rise to the undeniable truth of Greg’s condition. Men do not have soft, sloping, narrow shoulders that flow down slender arms to elegantly narrow fingers. Nor do they have sleek legs, and no amount of electrolysis and skin moisturizer was going to give a man the same hairless, silken, cream skin. Greg mentally ticked off the features that disqualified him from Man status. He had not even finished the list when a new one was added. A low involuntary purr issued from Greg as he squirmed in his seat feeling the increasing amount of shaping feminine fat that was flowing into his rear. Greg again began subconsciously rubbing his knees together as the aching yet pleasurable throbs passed through his butt as it became round and ripe even as it lifted into a pert curve that would connect the delectable contours of his thighs with the yet unmade inward curves of his belly.
The thought of what motion that cushioning was meant to absorb passed in and out of Greg’s awareness. Greg still hadn’t come up with a satisfactory answer to the question of whether he was willing to countenance the female role in an act of love, but a distinct part of him was very unhappy with his decision to not press last night’s moment with Marion now that it knew just how curvaceously perfect her ass was under those loose jeans courtesy of his own derriere becoming its twin. The thread of sexual frustration added itself to Greg’s web of thoughts as his eyes scanned the empty, run down, storage park he had pulled into.
“Bay 69, bay 69, where is it?” Greg softly whispered to himself. The thread of frustration absentmindedly pinged at the inadvertent reference.
A moment later, Greg had found Bay 69 and pulled his car up to the gate. His car’s headlights cast twin pools of light onto the meagerly maintained gate which had needed a fresh coat of paint sometime last decade. Greg worriedly looked around as he got out of his car, tripping slightly on the already rolled up cuffs of his pants, a dead giveaway that he had shrunk a little more during his quick drive. Greg quickly increased the amount of rolled up fabric at each cuff and stood back up. He spared a glance over his shoulder and winced slightly at the sight of the pronounced curves that the seat of his pants now hugged.
“Great…” Greg sighed as he focused on the rotary bar lock that secured the gate the, the occasional flying bug darting into and out of the bright light that framed Greg against the wall before disappearing back into the darkness. Greg looked around realizing that he was horribly visible like this, and the same light he needed to see was ruining his night vision. Past the edge of the light from his headlights the world disappeared into inky, concealing blackness. His heart thudded in his chest as he warred with his fear, the thought of what the Hunters might do to him after he had maimed one of their own caught in his throat.
The sharp click of the rotary lock disengaging fortunately released Greg from his paranoia, but he moved with the speed of the spooked as he got back in his car and pulled into the mini warehouse. He quickly got out, closed the gate, and reengaged the lock.
Greg allowed himself a long cleansing sigh of relief, safe at last, it felt good to be inside a locked building away from the Hunters even if the empty partitioned mini-warehouse wasn’t exactly the coziest place.
The tickling sensation of some errant insect crawling down the back of his neck was momentarily distracting as Greg turned and searched for the breaker box for the inside lights using the low ambient light from his car’s headlights. Greg shook his head to send the bug on its way but the tickling sensation only swept over the back of his neck and ears. Greg located the breaker box and headed for it, pursing his lips at the realization of what aspect of his form was changing as the tickling gave way to a flowing, slithering mass that originated from an electric tingling in Greg’s scalp. Greg hesitated in front of the breaker, feeling the minor physical and massive symbolic weight of the mane that was spilling across the back of his shoulders and creeping down towards his shoulder blades. A soft feathery caress from the tip of one his newly long bangs traced across Greg’s soft, yet still man shaped, cheek. Greg reached a hand towards his ear and despite what he already knew to be true was still surprised by the soft curtain that obscured it save where its delicate tip poked through the soft strands. Greg pondered as he pulled a lock of his hair towards his face, he hadn’t even felt or noticed his ears shrinking down into delicate spirals.
Greg rolled the lock of hair he held in his hand between his narrow fingers and noted its satin texture and the way it fell into gentle curves, but it was the color that surprised Greg the most. It wasn’t wholly red. Marion’s soft locks were a rich vibrant red, so pure as to almost defy the limit of human genetics and all but matching the color of ripe strawberries. The lock of hair Greg held in his hand was harder to classify, its color seeming to emulate some arcane mix of bright gold and polished copper. Greg supposed that from a distance he would appear as some unique shade of strawberry blonde, but he wasn’t certain that the term did the shade of his hair justice. In fact, Greg smirked; it would probably drive more than a few people to distraction wondering whether he was a blonde with red-highlights or a redhead with blonde highlights. Greg just shook his head and felt the sway of his hair swinging across upper part of his back as he reached for the breaker switch.
“Here I am with a whole mess of problems and I’m admiring how my hair looks, could I be any more of a girl?” Greg thought to himself, a strange cross between a chuckle and a giggle forming in his throat.
Without warning, the light died as the headlights of his car winked out and the interior of the storage area was plunged into darkness. The mirthful giggle was consumed by a fearful, anxious gulp. Greg almost reflexively threw the breaker but stopped as a tingle that had nothing to do with his cascading shoulder length tresses began to run up and down his spine.
“Marion?” Greg apprehensively thought. “No…this doesn’t feel like Marion at all.” Greg worriedly concluded as his heart began to thud percussively in his chest. Greg turned and peered into the darkness focusing on where the feeling was coming from the strongest. His eyes saw nothing, but Greg could feel something moving in the pitch dark, regarding him in a less than friendly manner.
“Vell, vell, vell, what do we have here?” A heavily accented female voice called out from the darkness. Greg shivered slightly as the words seemed to chill him to his core.
“Oh no…” The syllables of Greg’s realization were more breathed than spoken, and they barely even qualified as a whisper. More so than the content of the speaker’s words it had been their inflection that now terrified Greg, for it was a very similar inflection pattern to Marion’s and there was only one other Witch in the area besides Marion who would naturally speak like that.
“Oh but of course, vhere are my manners? Introductions are in order.” The mocking voice slightly echoed in the large space.
(CLACK…) Behind Greg the breaker flipped, a static electric feeling at the edge of Greg’s perception lingered on his shoulder where the felt but unseen Craft had passed over. Greg cringed as his eyes worked to adjust to the instant pall of yellow light cast by sodium arc lamps set along the girders that framed the ceiling. Bathed in the washed out yellow light a raven haired woman with a severely beautiful face stood, seeming uninterested in Greg. The Witch was a remarkable sight standing there in high heeled boots on a concrete floor decorated with ancient stains of unknown origin in a chic outfit that was more suited to the boutiques of Paris than a dingy industrial park. Her very presence seemed to demand respect, her body language imparting the sense of some high queen. It would have been intimidating, but a vision born of what Marion had told him crawled its way through Greg’s head leaving a path of clarity in its wake. A great many things had changed in this world, this haughty, regal Witch in front of him had not. Whether she was being dressed by the seamstresses of Versailles or the Dior fashion house was irrelevant, she was nothing more than a petty aristocrat without a fiefdom, and like all aristocrats much of her actual power was derived from the trappings of power and wealth rather than any innate essence. When those trappings were collectively ignored as they had been in Paris in 1789 then the aristocrats who relied on them became very mortal, very fast. This was not to say that Greg didn’t consider the haute couture clothed Witch standing in front of him exceedingly dangerous or vicious with her Witch power, but the intent of her entrance had failed, Greg did not feel in the least bit inferior with his ill fitting Megalomart clothes.
The haughty Witch looked through her sun glasses and down her nose at Greg before she finally spoke again.
“I am la Comtesse de Bourgoyne, nee Estelle Fleur un noble femme de la Cour Francois. (Noble lady of the French Court) You may bow or curtsey in my presence now according to your condition.”
Greg stood ramrod straight, stiller than a statue.
Even through those dark sunglasses, Greg could feel Estelle’s eye’s narrow.
“Very well, I should have expected as much foolishness from the combination of a mash brained man and the filthy blood of a peasant whore.” Estelle’s razor edged words, to her annoyance, had no visible effect on the Man-Witch.
Greg replied as solidly as his soprano voice would allow. “Marion is not a whore, and at the very least she is living in the present without deluding herself with a title that ceased to mean anything of real importance over three centuries ago.”
(WHACK) Greg recoiled from the slap, his cheek burning from the impact that hadn’t involved any physical contact between the two Witches. Steadying himself he resolutely continued putting as much steel as he could manage into his melodic voice.
“You know, you have no true grudge with Marion, she was a much a victim of fate as you were. In the end she offered to make it up to you despite the fact that you would never have recovered your stash anyway. I suppose though, that the peasant acting like the noble doesn’t fit into your plans, does it? All this inter-Witch fighting has only accomplished one thing, and that is to isolate every Witch, severing them from the others, making them easier targets for the Hunters. You would have accomplished far more for yourself and for Witches as a whole by working with Marion for the last three centuries rather than stalking her.”
(WHACK) This time the Craft slap came from the other direction snapping Greg’s head back around on his slender neck.
The Countess icily countered. “I do not care in the least for the other Witches. Let the weak serve the strong. As for the Hunters, why should I impede them when it is so much easier to buy one of them and get access to their records, harvesting the fruit they fail too? I will have my lands and more back before I am done, the descendants of those who usurped me will one day kneel at my feet when the world is put right again. For this I need power, nothing else matters.”
“When there is nothing left and you are utterly alone will the power that you’ve surrendered yourself to be any comfort? To live by the sword is to die by it.” Greg’s soft truth carried in the tense stillness between the two.
Only the tiniest thread of regret crept into Estelle’s face before it was snuffed. She shifted to a predator’s stance, smirking, “To hold the power of life and death is be as God, cling to your petty human morality weakling. I will become something far greater than you can possibly fathom and I will bow to no one’s law but my own.”
Greg stood his ground, but the weight of those spoken words was like an iron chain. A terrible, unspeakable lie uttered by the Hunter who had destroyed a Witch named Jennifer a week ago had been proven at least partly true, and to admit that truth was to open the door for the inevitable damnation of all Witch kind, including him self. Greg would not abide it; he would fight not only for his right to live, but for his right to live in a world where he was not an abomination.
Greg lunged at Estelle doing his best to catch her off guard; she gave a wicked smile as he covered half the distance between them and then was folded in half by a vicious strike from her Craft checking his momentum and dropping him to the floor with an audible “Oomph” as the air was knocked of his lungs. Greg wobbly stood up, his slender legs feeling like rubber from the potent impact. Greg had barely reestablished where Estelle was when he was forcibly picked up and sent flying, his small hands clutching at thin air, seeking anything solid to grab on to. There was nothing, a half second later a dull ringing was reverberating through one of the warehouse’s steel columns as Greg tried to mentally block out the pain from the impact of soft girl skin on forged metal at the column’s base. The logical part of him self begged Greg not to get back up and invite further punishment, but he was not going to capitulate that easily, like Davy Crockett at the Alamo it was utterly hopeless but he would fight on as long as he could. Greg slowly stood back up, forcing his battered body to operate by sheer will power alone.
(THWACK…) Greg went flying into another column, this time though he didn’t fall to the floor, but instead he slowly floated upside down, held by an ankle, towards the Witch who outclassed him in both power and experience by several orders of magnitude. He struggled to stay conscious through the throbbing pain and the rush of blood to his head. His reward was coming face to upside down face with Estelle, looking vaguely comical, as all the loose fabric from his now oversized clothes obeyed gravity and hung loosely out into space.
“As much I’m enjoying this Mon Cherie I have bigger fish to fry, and it would not do for you to expire so soon. Still I must insist that you invite Marion to our little party, cooperate and I’ll let you out of here alive,” Estelle grinned.
“NO, I’m not giving Marion up to you…” Greg weakly replied, trying to force the words out even though it hurt to speak.
“Oh but I insist…” Malevolent cruelty danced in Estelle’s eyes as she reached up to Greg’s head with both hands. A second later, powerful Craft began to arc between her hands and through Greg’s head.
“AAAAHHHHHHH.” On another disjointed plane of thought vaguely connected to the waking world Greg was faintly aware that a girl was screaming, it slowly dawned on him that the girl was him.
A wicked voice echoed through Greg’s head and across a mystic link between himself and Marion he hadn’t known to exist.
“Oh Marion, come out, come out wherever you are? I seem to have found something that belongs to you. The longer you make me wait, means the longer I play with it.” Estelle ended her sing song taunt with a joyless chuckle.
Chapter 11
Marion stared at blank section of her bedroom wall, sheet white, looking through the spot and outwards in perfect alignment to the location several miles away from whence an agonized scream and a mocking challenge had been psychically issued. She trembled slightly as this new nightmare unfolded, Estelle had Greg, and she was going to do horrible things to him until Marion came to stop her. However, what could she do? Estelle outclassed her significantly, and showing up to fight her would be suicidal. She nervously paced a circuit across the floor coming to a stop in front of her dresser mirror. She liked Greg, but the thought of a Witch duel with Estelle was terrifying.
“Don’t go.” A reasonable voice whispered deep in Marion’s mind.
In front of Marion, her reflection in the mirror stopped copying her movements. It fell into a thoughtful relaxed pose with a look of detached serenity on Reflection-Marion’s face. Then it started speaking to her with a perfectly calm copy of her own voice.
“It’s highly regrettable…horrible really, but what can we do? If we go, what do you expect to accomplish by walking into a trap? No, the best thing for us to do is to go downstairs disable the teleport and leave it be. I know you liked him, but honestly, do you really think he would have made much of a Witch in the long run Hmmm? If you’re really that lonely it’s so simple…tomorrow find someone much better suited to the mysteries of Witchcraft, mind wipe them, and inject them with a few drops of your blood, a few days from now, bingo instant Witch. You get a friend, and neither of us dies. Maybe later on we plan a way to get even with Estelle…but right now the important thing is that we survive.”
Real-Marion found the argument strangely appealing, it was so logical, regrettable, but truly what could she do? Marion softly sighed and looked at her alter-ego in the mirror which gave her a confidant smile in reply.
“I’m sorry Greg, but I can’t…I can’t help you.” The hesitant words were unpleasant and bitter but Marion felt better acknowledging the necessary sacrifice.
“Why not?” A second copy of her voice harshly inquired of Marion. In the mirror Marion’s sixteen year old self crowded into the frame overshadowed somewhat by her more voluptuous older version. In her simple, medieval, brown woolen dress, and dirty, she was a down right anachronism standing next to the current Marion-Reflection.
“We can’t help him. We can’t beat Estelle.” Real Marion choked out her words.
“As much as we value your input, the adults have already decided on a regrettable, but necessary course of action. We don’t need you making us feel worse about it.” Old Reflection-Marion pointed out.
“So we’re not going to try? We would abandon a friend who we put into this situation by our own actions to misery and death because we’re scared? We’ve always been scared, but we’ve always been resourceful and persistent. We can do this, we can save Greg, and we have to try!” Young Reflection-Marion passionately made her case.
“Your foolish ethics are going to get us killed, the important thing is our survival, that we live.” Old Reflection glared at her earlier version in the mirror as she argued her point.
Young Reflection was not cowed. “If we do not do this we may survive to see tomorrow, but we may die in a far more important way. Have you forgotten already?” The image of a shattered dead bird lying on a long gone forest floor filled the mirror. Young Marion quietly intoned in a sobbing voice that echoed from the past, “Je ne suis pas une sorcière…, not a witch, not an abomination, not a monster, you made that claim long ago, is it still true Mademoiselle Marion Dumere? What are you? Monsters leave friends and those they should care about to die, a woman would not. Which are you? Choose…”
“This is not that simple…We have to…” Old Reflection’s protest stopped at the sight of the angry scowl on Real Marion’s face.
Real Marion tightly shut her eyes and deeply inhaled before she resignedly spoke, “She’s right. I may be a Witch, I can’t change that, but I will not be a monster. We’re going to save Greg or die trying. I will not become Estelle. I’m going to be watching you a lot more carefully from now on.” Real Marion glared at her older reflection; the doppelganger just threw up its hands defensively and gave a non-committal shrug as she faded out.
“You’ve been listening to her way too much lately, try and listen to me a little more from now on, please?” Young reflection gave her best teenage winning smile and pressed her hand against the inside of the mirror. Real Marion nodded and reached out, touching her side of the mirror, matching the two hands. Marion blinked and the mirror was empty save where her normal reflection reached out to her. She took her hand off the mirror and then turned and ran to where she kept her weapons. Marion was going to need all the firepower she could get.
Chapter 12
“Oomph, ayah! Oomph, ayah! Oomph, ayah!” Greg had to remind himself that of all the things Estelle could be doing to him that using him like some perverted yo-yo wasn’t that bad. Still being shot up to the ceiling and then released only be caught again an instant before he crashed into the concrete floor was jarring. The only positive thing about it was the lack of blunt trauma which was slowly letting Greg recover from his earlier abuse. Even so it was a temporary respite at best made all too clear by Estelle rolling up the cuff of her glove and impatiently checking her watch.
“I am beginning to think the whore has abandoned you to my mercy, little Witch. Though I should not be surprised, she has been hiding from me for over three centuries, why should I have expected her to be brave now? Pity, the consolation prize however, is adequate.” Estelle huffed and then gave Greg a hungry smile as she held him helpless in mid air.
Greg would have liked to at least look angry but he was struggling to focus through the intense tickling sensation that was running up and down his flanks and across the front of his belly.
“Uhhhgg.” Greg gave a girlish grunt as the tickling surged tighter and tighter.
“Oh I almost forgot you’re not done are you? Here let me give you a better view.” Estelle flatly interjected before pulling Greg into a mid air spread eagle pose.
The sounds of ripping and tearing fabric suddenly filled the empty space. Greg grimaced and cried out as dozens of knife-like Craft distortions generated a shimmering wave as they raced towards him shredding his clothing as they reached him. Many of the knives nicked his skin as they passed, each no worse than a paper cut. A final general pulse from the Countess removed the last surviving bits of fabric from Greg’s body and carried them away from him in a swirling storm of cotton-polyester bits intermixed with a few severed strands of strawberry-blonde hair. Greg’s soft plaintive wail did little to abate the sharp hellish pains from the dozens of shallow cuts that crisscrossed his cinnamon tinted cream skin.
“Still a man I see, you must be fighting that part. You do not know what you’re missing.” Estelle commented as she walked up to Greg noting the spasms that were already beginning to pulse through his midsection.
Greg could offer no reply; his momentary concern was simply to breathe as the crucial organs of his abdomen began to crush inwards under the vice-like grip of his own merciless, relentless Craft.
Estelle ran a gloved hand across Greg’s hairless but stocky belly, feeling the flesh roil as the mutating spasms intensified. “Each Witch is her own work of art, except in your case since you are little more than a pitiful copy. Show me though, what Marion has created.” Estelle flatly demanded.
Greg didn’t want to take any action that might smack of obedience, but his body was on its own timetable. Soft feminine grunts echoed from his rose lips as his stocky male middle began to pull inwards. A full body spasm and the swell of flesh trailing off from the bottom of his narrow ribcage melted to transform the convex curve of the out of place male potbelly to a straight flush line. With that change alone he would have had difficulty finding any article of adult male clothing that would have fit, but a second spasm was already building deep in his middle. Estelle’s gloved hand traced Greg’s flank as the spasm hit pulling the line of Greg’s profile into an indented concave curve that flowed off his ribs and into a markedly trim waistline. Given Greg’s stabilized height of 5’8”, matching Marion’s proportions, the narrow stem of the hourglass shape that was already becoming apparent was fast developing. Estelle pointedly probed the developing swells of female abdominal muscle even as Greg’s navel, once a round thing, moved higher on his body with his upwardly migrating waistline and reformed as a narrow vertical ellipse. Around his navel and flanking it to either side, Greg’s abdomen grew taut and swelled out ever so slightly forming a beautiful, slightly raised, padded shelf that betrayed the presence of firm stomach muscles underneath. From that small bulge, a shallow depression ran north from just below Greg’s navel up to his sternum marking his mid-line, from that line’s southern terminus the arc of Greg’s abdomen melded into the line of his still narrow hips and down into the upper foundations of his pubis which already hinted at the imminent creation of a Venus mound. It was that soft, sensually erogenous, sloping area below his navel that his fingers had accidentally traced during his escape in Megalomart escalating his internal gender war to new heights, now larger and appropriately shaped to the woman Greg was fast becoming. It was here that Estelle sought to overthrow his mind. She gently caressed the swell of satin girl flesh from groin to navel and around to his flanks where the inward valley of his waistline was deepest creating an electric, erotic sensation in Greg’s mind as the velvet of her glove lightly traced across the silky smooth, soft skin. Greg clamped his jaw shut refusing to give Estelle the sensual moan she wanted but his body would not entirely obey and the trapped moan became a muted rumbling purr in Greg’s throat.
“You could be so much more, you know? Give me Marion and I will show you what you could be, free from petty constraints, and free to explore the limits of pleasure and desire. Is my price so unreasonable?” Estelle finished her query by running her gloved hand down the inside of Greg’s sleek thigh and across the back of his knee sending a shiver through his body. She was careful to avoid the small beaded lines of blood that had flowed from the numerous cuts on Greg’s legs and were already generating a slow wet patter of crimson drops on the concrete floor below; it would not do to get peasant Witch blood on her expensive clothing.
The temptation gnawed on Greg’s mind. Could anything that felt so good be wrong? Would it really be that bad to explore that lust? It was intriguing, but the image of a broken man, and a bloody bat would not leave his mind. With each wave of surging Craft and feminine arousal Greg grew surer that the path the Countess offered could only lead to single destination, and he had already glimpsed what lay at the bottom of that dark consuming vortex.
“Get away from me!” Greg hissed his desire to be rid of Estelle burning white hot. It happened unexpectedly then, a slight catch on his Craft with his mind, like a finger sliding down a glass pane and finding the smallest hint of traction.
Estelle just smiled her wicked smile. It only infuriated Greg more.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Greg grabbed at that internal mental catch with all the will power he could muster and found greater traction, failing any knowledge of what to do with that ball of internal energy he pushed it towards Estelle. With an electric iridescent sizzle the two opposing Crafts negated each other and Greg fell to the floor finally released from the Countess’ grip. The small patches of Greg’s blood on the floor gave off wisps of an incalculable something.
“Very well, you give me no choice, die like the fool you are,” Estelle coldly pronounced.
“You always had a choice.” Greg softly retorted.
Estelle reached for Greg with her Craft, seeking to render him helpless again. Greg again responded by expanding the bubble of his own Craft preventing Estelle from getting a grip on him. On the steel rafters, girders, and columns complex diagrams and runes began to faintly glow, the enchantments that Marion had put into the building designed to absorb the Craft pulse of a single teleport had now absorbed substantially more energy than expected which now bled into visible light that sullenly added its own illumination to the yellow pall.
Estelle smirked unconcerned; Greg tensed waiting for the next shoe to drop, his face feeling flush and hot. The Countess’ next attack came a few seconds later. The slicing body blow to his center, rocked him back in his stance, staggering him, but he did not fall. Greg could feel the Craft coming at him, but it was like standing in front of a high speed pitching machine. Greg’s limited detection of the nebulous bursts simply wasn’t enough, they simply came too fast. Greg needed to concentrate, needed to figure out to use the power that flowed through him… and that was nearly impossible with his face beginning to rearrange itself. Another pulse from Estelle hit his bubble, loosing its killing edge but still passing through and striking Greg like a sledgehammer, spinning him around and dropping him to his hands and knees. Greg shut his eyes and again tried to ride both the pain and disorienting tickling surges as his jaw began to reshape from its blocky square shape to a curved, truncated triangle. Greg panted hard as his features warped, the small pops and muted squeaks of bone shifting feeling both very immediate and distantly hazy simultaneously. His head throbbed worse than any migraine or hangover he had ever had as the overall size of his head shrank slightly. The rugged heavy cheekbones and brow ridges he had sported shifted slightly and diminished leaving behind a smooth forehead and full cheeks that fed into the curve of his jaw line. With a sharp wet snap the bridge of nose broke into a shallow inward curve as the slightly bulbous tip shrank down to a smaller more acute point. A tickling surge of craft danced over his forehead and the bushy heavy dark eyebrows Greg had sported disappeared to reemerge seconds later as vastly more refined, elegant, strawberry-blonde arches giving proof that the vibrant, unique, color of the matching tresses that framed Greg’s soft jaw had originated deep in his scalp and not in a bottle. As his head shrank a little more the orbits of Greg’s eye sockets had not changed, though their overall depth had grown shallower. The result was to increase the size of Greg’s eyes relative to the rest of his head making him look far more innocent. Greg’s already full lips were now perfectly sized to the dainty pointed chin that his face flowed into. A final throb and Greg found his unnatural headache mercifully breaking. He slowly got to his feet, unsure why the Countess had not finished him.
As Greg stood the Countess did a double take, to see such a remarkable change. Though Greg’s shape was far too womanly at this point to even be remotely considered mannish she had still been thinking of him as a man, albeit with odd hairless skin and oversized lips but still a man. That man had fallen to the floor a moment ago but a young woman with a primal, innocently seductive face had gotten up. Estelle Fleur knew that she was no less beautiful, but her face had gained a stern regality that exuded a sense of power rather than the fresh wide-eyed beauty that Greg’s countenance had gained. In an earlier age, the painters of the Court would have been falling over themselves to put Greg’s face on every shepherd girl, and country maiden as they painted a bucolic countryside that existed only in Baroque fantasy. Every eligible and some ineligible gentlemen would have dreamed about bedding this girl and making her the mother of his children even if the realities of politics and power necessitated other unions. The realization of how close this new Witch was, even with a board flat chest, and a set of very unwomanly organs still reigning between her thighs, to becoming a true rival in that arena grated on Estelle’s mind despite the logical reminder that this golden-strawberry haired Witch knew next to nothing about her Craft. Estelle had refrained from finishing Greg off because she wanted Marion, and dead bait was worthless to her, still the irrational psychology borne of the countless 18th century snubs of a slightly pear shaped, dark haired, noble lady with oversized buck teeth fueled the blow she launched at this new usurper. From where she stood Estelle could not have seen the handful of turquoise pin pricks of color that was sprinkled through Greg’s otherwise brown irises like bright stars.
The lethal, razor edged Craft flew at Greg, aimed to cleave flesh and bone, its trajectory leaving an iridescent screaming wake as it tore across the weave of reality scattering normal light as it flew. Greg stood for infinitesimal eternity watching the play and dance of the possessed wisps of power that flew out of the main roiling schism and then dove back in, recaptured by the spell’s dark gravity. Time was stretching out again, its flow distorted by the insane power surge of a raging dark Witch. In Greg’s bright eyes the onrushing bolt of doom was reflected in a brown sea filled with a constellation of turquoise gems. A blink that seemed to stretch across a glacial age hid the constellation for a microsecond only to reveal a galaxy of green tinged blue points when the curtain of Greg’s eyelashes again parted. The death bolt would have been terrifying save for one crucial truth.
Greg could see it.
Like a mongoose a heartbeat before the cobra’s strike, Greg pivoted on his feet dropping away from the Craft’s path, shoving all the power he could grasp into the bolt’s path. For a week he had failed, his attempts to hold the Witch’s power had been like grasping at smoke always finding it gone save for the splinter in his mind that reminded him it was still there. A moment ago his hands had found the Craft like water, a splash had freed him. Now it was like sand, hard to hold, but movable. For a week he had failed, this time Greg did not.
With a crackling boom the power of the opposing Witches connected, snapping arcs of multicolored light exploding outwards from their meeting along with hot sparks. It was a close thing and Greg could feel the lethal power of the main bolt as its exterior corona passed near his nimble body. A second later the building shook with the bolt’s impact into the rear wall, the containment wards now growing white hot with a mystic rather than thermal heat. The two wards closest to the singed impact point could not contain the blast and ruptured sending errant bolts of iridescent lightning to arc among the rafters and sodium lamps turning the constant yellow pall into a strobing, flickering dreamscape. Greg had deflected the Countess’ Craft…barely.
A faintly popping hiss made its way to Greg’s ears. He looked down astonished to find the small puddles of his blood shed by Estelle’s violent disrobing of him boiling like liquid rubies on the floor and his legs, wispy tendrils of something that was not smoke entwining seductively around his limbs caught in his aura. Curiouser and curiouser Greg thought turning his attention back to Estelle the strange calico patchwork of his blue and brown eyes flashing in the flickering sequence of unnatural light that alternated its source between Man’s science and Witches’ magic, harsh yellow and shadowed white.
Again Estelle hurled mental death at him this time as spiraling twin bolts, this time Greg stood his ground and the twin bolts cleanly deflected away from him, spiraling away to the rear leaving fractal tongues of trailing bright and dark fire in their passing. Errant twinkling sparks swirled on currents of Craft that flowed uncontrolled in the chaos of the Witches’ duel.
Greg blinked slowly; a long cleansing exhalation carried much of his inner turmoil away and the sounds of the universe died as the long breath tapered off. When his eyes opened again to the light they were endlessly deep blue pools tinged with a touch of luminous green. The world had gone silent; no sound dared interrupt the unearthly beauty of the flows of Witchcraft fully visible to the sight of the new Witch. It was utterly breathtaking to see the dancing arcs and the play of the power, which denied escape by Marion’s art virtually dripped from the walls and ceiling sparking massive discharges of iridescence flux. The corona of that power sang across Greg’s skin and called to his being; its awesome tendrils caressed the shallow depression in the middle of his back and played across the small of his back. It was a wonderful thing to experience and Greg did not begrudge the power its due when the curve of his back changed slightly, his pelvis tilting backwards slightly emphasizing the contours of his female booty while leaving a sloping inward curve where his back flowed into his soft, supple derriere. Greg breathed, his stance falling into a decidedly feminine posture, he was at the apex of his reverie and each surging beat of his heart and Craft was nearly orgasmic. Greg looked up and distantly realized that the Countess was screaming at him, though her throbbing red face with its gaping mouth could not push the sound of her rage through to Greg’s disjointed reality. Another massive schism in reality formed from her will and flew at him scattering all lesser Witchcraft in its wake, its lethal edge like some dark event horizon from which no light escaped.
Greg did not dodge. Twenty feet in front of him the void bolt exploded, silent to his ears but an expanding ball of iridescent light and the concussive shockwave that blew out the few grimy windows the small warehouse had betrayed the force of the blast. For Greg it was like being at the center of the explosion of some gigantic 4th of July rocket. Around him, bouncing off him, swirling and caught up in his own personal gravity, a million shards of burning flame and ember cascaded outwards in a Maelstrom of shattered energy, rings of fire spreading and dying in concentric ripples in the vertical plane. All around the two Witches the glyphs, wards, and runes Marion had set could take no more, each grouping glowing like a miniature sun before exploding outwards in their own showers of white hot sparks so intense they were almost blue.
“I can see it, I can see the Craft.” Greg whispered to himself in an almost ritual way. “I can see her element of Air; I can feel the element of Fire that flows within me. I am a Witch of the Flame.”
At the apex of his reverie Greg drank deeply from the power, feeling the bond of his communion with it. It sang dangerous truth through his soul, and Greg understood the elements air, the element of translocation, water, the element of transmutation, earth, the element of fabrication, and fire, the element of evocation. Greg understood how the four were bound together into the circle of the Craft. The power was like a great tidal wave, riding it well could bring an unfathomable joy and bliss, but a step over that fine line of control could plunge you into its dark primal depths, swallowed and enslaved to its motion. Estelle Fleur had tried to drink too deeply from this raging avalanche of power and it had consumed her as it had consumed many other Witches. For a handful of heartbeats Greg looked at Estelle as she panted, weary from her exertion and felt pity for the Countess, but her Craft still surged and Greg quickly noticed the occasional faint resonance of water, earth, and fire Craft taken through force from other Witches not wholly subsumed into Estelle’s element of Air. Greg’s pity for Estelle withered and died, she had lost control and become enslaved by the power, that failure had already caused incalculable collateral damage; other Witches had died for Estelle’s failure. Scorn glowed on Greg’s face and righteous fury burned in his eyes.
“You are no Witch; you are a slave who traded your mind for power long ago. Your creed slowly damns those who would listen and tears at the threads of Creation.” Accusation dripped from Greg’s lips.
“The power is all, it is the only truth and to live without it in so-called freedom is a lie perpetuated by the weak.” Estelle hissed, her hands trembling from her depleted reserves of Craft like an addict too far removed from her last fix.
Greg would not abide that lie from the ruby lips of a fallen Witch. From the tips of his small toes and slender fingers he began to pull the power inward that throbbed within him here at the moment of his rebirth, a dominating, cascading, singing force. A litany of memory flashed through his mind, a wounded Witch in the street, a candle lit without match that illuminated a strangely shaped hand, a bloody, gore stained bat, Greg pushed it all in to the ball of energy at the core of his being, formed from all that he was, to hold it was an exquisite serenity that radiated warmth across his soft cinnamon-tinted cream skin. On the floor and on his legs the lines and puddles of his shed blood ignited into streamers of Witch flame, garbing Greg in a dress of iridescent flame, his long red-blonde hair flowing wild in the updraft of its rising heat like the flaming locks of some unearthly banshee.
Man…Woman…Human…Witch….the cycle shattered there was only one inescapable truth, one answer that encompassed both alpha and omega.
Witch…
In the fire’s heart Greg’s eyes focused on his target, his pupils dilating as he released the energy. Two ringing, proclaimed words accompanied Greg’s Craft as a monstrous wave of his own Craft streaked away from him, a cone of inferno fire burning at its apex.
“BURN, HERETIC!” Greg screamed.
Unlike Estelle’s razor honed Craft there was little finesse to Greg’s attack, it was more a tightly bundled collection of energy than a true spell, at a normal level of power it would have been trivial to defeat for a Witch of the Countess’ experience. There was nothing normal about the power in that wave however. Fed by Greg’s raw emotions, fueled by the surge of power at the strange birth of a new Witch, and amplified by the storm of residual Witchcraft in the small space, Greg’s simple Craft carried with it an obscene amount of energy that rapidly turned into a tornadic firestorm that consumed Estelle. At the inferno’s core, entombed in the flames, Estelle was pushing all the force she could muster into her protective bubble as it collapsed ever nearer to her skin under the Witch fire assault. Estelle Fleur had not been scared in over a hundred years, now as the hungry essence of an elemental force of iridescent flame licked at her defenses, she was terrified. It was a close thing, and her bubble became virtually a second skin before the energy slowly began to burn itself out, but Estelle desperately hung on.
Greg could not see what he had wrought; he was staggering, dizzy and light headed from the release of so much energy. His legs again felt like rubber and threatened to give way underneath him. A few panting breaths and the sensation began to pass. Slowly his internal reserves began to refill, he would recover in a minute, he would…
(HURK) Like releasing the cork from a bottle of champagne the spending of Greg’s glut of power allowed other threads of Craft to rush in to fill the void. In seconds the faint tickles in his lower half grew exponentially until from his taut, narrow waistline down through his fertile thighs the pulsing spasms of change became the sole reality in that region of his body. Greg let out a soft whine as the pressure built in his pelvis, his eyes going wide as he struggled to ride this latest assault on his body.
(cCRACKk) Greg lost all leverage in his hips as a muffled series of cracks emanated from deep within his flesh. He again dropped to his hands and knees as he felt his pelvis begin to throb and widen. From behind it was most apparent. Before there had been something of a curve created by the shaping feminine padding that flowed out of his thighs over his hips and ass and then tapered into his narrow waist, but this was on a whole different level. As Greg’s hip bones flattened, reshaped and pushed wider the overall curves grew more distinct. What had been hinted at by Greg’s curvy, ripe ass was now being fully realized; a set of solid womanly curves that would link thigh, hips, ass, and belly together into a monument of womanhood was being created. The thought of his altered pelvis and its role as a cradle for any future occupant of his unmade womb was disconcerting but Greg dared not dwell on it, the Countess had not taken the opportunity to finish him when the Craft had been sculpting his face to match a feminine ideal, but Greg had no illusions that Estelle would make that mistake twice. Greg searched for his internal focus and willed the Craft to hurry up and finish moving the joints of his legs apart so he could stand again. With a pair of taut snaps his hip joints reset into their new wider angles and Greg could feel normality return to his hips, though that new normality included a sensuous gap between the upper reaches of his thighs.
Quickly Greg sprung to his feet and panted out a recovery feeling the minute but discernable differences in his stance. From the way his body rolled and flowed from his shoulders down through his chest into the inward curve of his narrow waist and onward through the curve of his lower back, around the soft slightly bent curve of his ass and hips, and down his sleek legs it was all so delightfully, strangely female, and with tongues of fire still caressing those same curves so enchantingly exotic.
Thoughts of how pretty he must look in profile and from the back now, where he was unidentifiable as a former man, still rattled around in the back of Greg’s mind with ever stronger feelings of regret that he had not pursued a romantic interlude with Marion last night even as he watched, with firelight flickering across the front of his nude body, dumbfounded that something could be alive in the middle of the raging fire he had spawned. A few seconds more and the fire, having burned out all the energy Greg had supplied to it, and with no natural fuel in the middle of the empty warehouse, died, letting the flickering shadows creep back into the space now that only a few surviving arc lamps and smoldering patches of fire feebly lit the room. Greg had known Estelle was still alive in the blaze, the tingling in his spine generated from the interaction of their auras had not ceased, yet Greg was still shocked to see the Countess relatively unharmed. The same could not be said for her outfit. Estelle’s protective shield had been forced almost to her very skin, the haute couture she wore as the symbol of her nobility in most places had not been fully protected. As the Countess moved to resume the duel, huge swaths of cloth now little more than sheets of delicate carbon after being flash incinerated simply disintegrated into swirling clouds of ash that mixed with the acrid smoke rising from Estelle’s body carrying with it the stench of singed hair and desperate sweat.
Unintentionally, Greg had rendered the Countess as naked as he was. His eyes quickly traced the more powerful Witch’s feminine curves that were on many levels so similar to ones he had so recently gained. Though there was a certain je ne sais quoi about the Countess’s curves which again harkened to the aloof regal queen rather than the vivacious girl. In all, Greg might have considered Estelle attractive outside of her murderous intent but the jet black, spined, feathers that were sparsely growing out of the exterior edge of her forearms and legs that were now visible, no longer shrouded by designer clothing, killed any possibility of that occurring. For a second the two Witches regarded each other, Greg quietly gasping as he looked into Estelle’s eyes, no longer masked by chic sunglasses, noting the mismatch between them, one hazel the other dull red. Greg could only wonder if Estelle understood what her obsession was costing her and mentally chastise himself for not recognizing sooner the reason why a Class V Witch seeking a fight would be wearing sunglasses at night, or high heeled boots. That last thought sent a mental shudder through Greg’s mind as he considered the mechanics of walking on feet that were well on their way to becoming talons.
If Estelle noted the judgment in Greg’s eye’s she gave no sign and the two continued to stand frozen, regarding each other like old West gun fighters waiting for some imperceptible instant when their lethal dance in the dim flickering light would recommence.
“Harpy” Greg softly whispered in condemnation.
The Countess shouted in rage and released a bolt of Craft, Greg responded by summoning another loose wave of incinerating energy, feeling light headed even as he gathered the energy. The monstrous power he had released in his first attack had virtually erupted out of him, there was no such pressure this time, but the new Witch dug deep and threw every ounce of his strength he could muster at the Countess hoping, praying that this sacrifice would win him the fight where his first attempt had so narrowly failed. The two competing spells impacted halfway between the two and Greg’s raging wave of fire demolished Estelle’s attack and carried onwards to her, its momentum barely checked. Greg was already slumping to his knees, feeling numb and exhausted in a way he had never experienced until now. Estelle did not seem concerned. From her feet something flew out of the ashes of her clothing and into her hands. Greg’s attack hit Estelle and tried to engulf her as before, but this time the raging fire seemed to falter before surging forward again but diminished. With each fast surge the flame weakened until after one last pitiable attempt it died altogether, the last remnants being sucked into the object that Estelle held. Around Greg the smoldering drops of his burning blood winked out one by one no longer sustained as the aura of his power collapsed. He could only kneel, his calves folded up on the outside of his thighs, drops of exerted perspiration trickling down his trembling skin, with only a few smoky wisps of vapor rising from his body as protection from the worst the Countess could offer.
Slowly, assuredly, the Countess slowly walked towards Greg, a false smile playing on her lips as she regarded him with unspeakable malice, the occasional rasping noise of her thick, black, sharp toenails, more proto-claws than human, scratching across bare concrete adding their own horrible noise to her advance. Greg could offer no more resistance to the Countess who triumphantly struck a pose that lorded over the exhausted Witch enveloping him in her shadow cast from one of the few remaining lights.
“That vas quite impressive little Witchling, I did not think you had it in you, but I did not live this long by playing fair. As I said before, there are perks to buying a Hunter. I wouldn’t normally use this clever little talisman seeing as how it might give other Witches the wrong idea, but seeing as how you’re not going to be telling anyone…” Estelle grinned and help up the crystal talisman, etched runes covering its surface, which thrummed with a pulsing white glow from an indistinct orb of energy trapped in its center.
“Now though I think it is time you died.” Fragments of malice dripped from Estelle’s words, and no hint of mercy showed on her face. Around her raised hand a corona of dark energy formed, coalescing into a killing rend in the fabric of reality.
On the floor Greg could barely move. He cursed himself inwardly for falling into the trap, and sought desperately for the tiniest shred of power that he might use to combat the imminent coup de grace but there was nothing. Nothing at all he could do to stop the building blow whose cracking death energy was reflected in his glassy, unfocused eyes. He had lost, he was going to die, and his remaining time could be measured in the beats of his heart.
(Thud) Greg gave his all to meet his end with defiance on his face.
(Thud) Estelle tensed, energy crackling across her hand and up the knife-like edge of the feathers sprouting from her forearm.
(Thud) A last pitiful tingle of Craft power raced up Greg’s spine.
(WHAM….shatter…TWHACK) Like a shutter being released suddenly there was no shadow on his face and no Witch in front of him. To his side Greg could hear the sound of breaking glass, and a dazzling bloom of iridescent light lit Greg’s features in profile an instant before the crashing sound of a body flying into the far wall with a forceful impact resounded and echoed through the space. It had been as if the Countess had been hit by a truck speeding down some freeway at full speed. Greg willed his body to focus on the tingle in his body for confirmation, and though he could not turn his head his heart leapt in his chest for joy. A few struggling breaths later and he could feel Marion’s hands, virtually identical to his own now, on his arm and shoulder trying to pull him to his feet.
“Greg we got to go! You have to get up!” Marion anxiously pulled at Greg’s limp body.
Marion had needed no explanation when she had jumped into the warehouse a moment ago to find the Countess poised for a death blow on a young Witch. The fact that the young Witch must be Greg was deductively simple, but even that logical truth did not prevent Marion from being deeply shocked at just how much Greg now looked like some long lost sister of hers. Pondering the consequences of the transfer of her unique blood was still secondary however to simply getting the two of them out alive, and Greg’s inert state was not helping. Marion forced herself to calm down and looked beyond the surface and down into the flows of Greg’s living energy. She gasped in wonderment that Greg was even conscious as much as his reserves had been depleted, it was clear that Greg was going to have to be carried to safety. Fortunately she had time; she had hit Estelle with enough power to flatten a small building, which should….
“Not…dead…Hunter…ward….” Greg’s softly choked words interrupted Marion’s thought, she turned following the wake of her attack to its end.
Sure enough at the far wall, which now had a sizeable woman shaped dent in it, the Countess was struggling back to her misshapen feet, her left hand pulling jagged shards of fractured crystal from the wreck of her right hand. Only the Hunter warding talisman had prevented Marion’s blindside strike from being a mortal wound against the Countess’ battered defenses but that serendipity had come at a high price. Already filled with energy from Greg’s last ditch effort and unable to radiate that Craft power out into an environment already saturated with it, Marion’s attack had only been partially absorbed before the Hunter talisman’s matrix overloaded and shattered in a mystic explosion as it flew through the air still clutched in Estelle’s hand. The dark blood that flowed ichor-like from the Countess’ mangled hand was a testament to just how much force had been carried in that blast. Her face a mask of feral, blind rage the Countess stalked forward intent on her revenge against her self-chosen arch foe.
Marion swallowed hard, but stepped forward knowing that she would be unable to safely move Greg until the battle she had feared was resolved. On top of that she was truly angry now that she knew how Estelle had found her and the others she had killed.
“So the little whore finally shows her face.” Estelle hissed, drawing herself into an attack stance.
“Mon Dieu (My God), better a whore two centuries ago, than a traitor now! Working with the HUNTERS! Is there no limit to the depths of depravity to which you will sink?” Marion growled her reply, the corona of her gathered power beginning to shimmer in the gloom.
“I will not be judged by peasant trash.” Estelle haughtily announced.
“NO, YOU WILL BE JUDGED BY A WITCH OF THE SKY, EN GARDE! (Defend yourself!)”
Marion shouted her rage and then launched a flurry of attacks on the battered Countess. An instant later the room was enveloped in a blinding series of iridescent and dark flashes as the opposing Witch bolts flew between the combatants, parried and redirected to ricochet off walls, beams, and columns as lightning-like shards of power. In the corner of her vision between slicing volleys Marion saw to her relief Greg slowly, tentatively crawling away from the middle of the room towards where his car still quietly sat. Good, he would be out of immediate danger from the fight. Less worried now, Marion redoubled her focus on Estelle and slowly began a systemic pummeling of the blood traitor’s defense.
Had this fight been joined when Estelle Fleur had planned, the balance of power would have developed in reverse. With more intrinsic power available for a straight up duel, such as the one that now raged, it would have been she who had the advantage and Marion on the ropes, but Estelle had spent a great deal of her reserves on Greg, and the vicious blow Marion had hit her with earlier was beginning to tell. Furthermore, Marion unlike Greg was an experienced Witch and was husbanding her power carefully, waiting for an opening and striking hard when she got Estelle physically or mentally off balance. A minute filled with traded volleys of power ticked by, slowly; gradually Marion was wearing down Estelle’s defense, glancing body blows only partially defended delivered by distorted space-time were taking their toll and it was fast growing apparent to both Witches that Estelle could not long stave off utter defeat.
Estelle contemplated her ruin. There could be no surrender, she was certain that she had pushed both of the Witches she had fought this night well past the point where they might honor such a request. There was a final desperate weapon in her arsenal learned through study that the wise could not countenance, but she feared to use it, for its invocation carried with it a terrible price.
“Ummmph.” One of Marion’s attacks slipped through Estelle’s defense and impacted her dead center, keeling her over from the blow. A reflexive cough carried up a bit of pink tinged froth.
“Enough.” Estelle pulled a final small shard of shattered crystal from her hand and used the pointed fragment to sketch out a glowing crimson runic sigil in the air before her.
Fifty feet away a nervous frown crossed Marion’s face; she didn’t fully recognize the Craft that Estelle had used but what she could make out as the sign of the Craft began to collapse on it self was deeply disturbing, the Countess had signed a very ancient, costly pact in her own blood. Marion launched a last probing attack which shattered on the sigil like a wave breaking against a rock as the sigil reduced itself to a glowing crimson sphere. The sphere rose up and reformed as a blood red pupil-less eye, from which a shroud of void erupted. Marion stood in frightened awe as the shroud formed into the profile of some monstrous crow which ate all light. She winced and covered her ears as a scream from some unholy plane raked her. The giant spirit crow spread its wings and engulfed Marion in an endless, unbroken void. No light, no sensation, no sense of the world at all existed in that place. Once in her fortress cave she had accidentally cut the power. The inky blackness bereft of light was similar but then she could still hear the water, still feel the wall she had been working on, still smell the hot drill in her hands, the moment it had taken her to find her flashlight by touch and memory had been a primordial moment of fear. Here now, she existed in an endless, silent nightmare that was wholly severed from the world, it was an existence that could drive man or Witch mad in minutes. Desperately, Marion tried to focus through it, tried to see with the Craft rather than her mortal sight, but it was of little avail, Estelle had summoned something from the depths of the abyss and it had rendered Marion utterly blind and helpless.
In the waking world, Estelle smiled and stumbled forward grateful to see Marion retreating, her eyes frantically searching for anything in the dark prison Estelle had banished Marion’s mind to but seeing nothing. Marion fell back, struggling to stay on her feet with no sense of gravity, or the touch of the floor. Marion’s hands flailing, yet sensing nothing. Estelle would have moved quickly, but her own legs felt like rubber after the punishment she had taken. Even worse she could feel the strength in those same legs begin to wane. Throughout her body, her blood began to run ice cold. She shuffled forward, a grim look on her face as she held up her good hand and watched it begin to age and wither. All over Estelle’s body her youth began to fall away, eaten by the ravenous demands of her dark Craft. Taut, young, elastic skin began to loosen and wrinkle. She could feel her breasts begin to sag, succumbing to the pull of gravity; deep lines etched themselves into Estelle’s once smooth face as her body passed through an accelerated middle age. Estelle would have gladly killed Marion with her Craft to end these rapid depredations of age if she could have, but that too was being siphoned away from her through the blood pact she had made with the realm of shadow. Estelle could only struggle stubbornly forward as osteoporosis began to eat into her bones and arthritis chewed at her joints. The Countess was afraid, deathly afraid, she had to kill Marion before she ran out of life to sacrifice to the spell.
As the once sternly beautiful noble lady reached the now far physically younger Witch her sole overriding goal became to choke the breath from Marion’s body with her now bony hands before she succumbed. On Estelle’s face spots were marring her once flawless skin, a yellowish tinge spreading over her features, her breasts now little more than hanging veined bags, her once sleek legs reduced to wrinkled, shriveled flesh. With a growing nose and graying, thin hair the once proud Witch was now all but a Hag. The Countess was so close, so close; the reflection of the object of her hate in her cloudy, red eyes was turning a subtle shade of blue, unable to mount even the most basic resistance with her mind trapped and her eyes unfocused glass. It was going to work, the sacrifice of her body, and more importantly the temporary destruction of her beauty would finally see her take the power she needed.
“I hold the power of life and death, and I will not be denied…” Estelle cackled in the voice of a crazed crone.
Marion twitched within Estelle’s vice like grasp, her weak attempts to breathe failing. Estelle could almost taste the power Marion’s still nubile body held, she would add it to her own, rebuilding her lost beauty bit by bit with each kill. She had succeeded in destroying this usurper where generations of Hunters had failed and she would rule as her birthright…she would...
“HURK…” Estelle was only dimly aware of the touch of another young Witch falling on her from behind, or the sharp penetrating pain in her back and chest. The crone-Witch’s heart struggled to beat in her withered form and her strength failed, her hands fell away from Marion’s throat and she fell back, a trembling, ancient hand traced the handle of a cheap Megalomart hunting knife, ‘borrowed’ two days ago and stashed in the battered Chevy ever since, protruding from the back of her ribs, its steel blade nicking into her heart from behind. On some fundamental level Estelle Fleur ex Comtess de Bourgoyne knew that she was dead, her pact had collapsed with nothing left but a withered husk for it to consume, and the knife in her back would seal her fate, but she was determined to not go into the waiting shadow alone. With a final waning spark of Craft she pulled the knife from her back and aimed it at the Man-Witch that had accomplished the unthinkable by killing her with a mere piece of sharp mundane metal.
(THWACK….clatter) The knife descended but in a wide tumbling arc. Estelle’s broken body flew a short distance through the air, her snapped back head trailing a flew errant crimson drops, before landing in a broken heap on the concrete, a few of her proto feathers dislodged from her withered, loose skin in flight floating down to gently fall around her. Greg felt the weak, cold tingle in his spine fade to nothing, leaving only the more familiar, welcome one. Slowly, he turned his head to see Marion clutching at her throat, coughing, wheezing for air, but her deep blue eyes focused on the Witch she had helped dispatch. She noticed his attention and gave him a pained smile.
“(Cough) We…we did it, we won…its over…(Wheeze)” Marion slowly choked out from where she sat, her normal skin tone slowly returning as the bluish hue faded with each welcome breath.
Greg crawled forward a little and collapsed into Marion’s lap and gave a thankful sigh that only the saved, who know how close they truly were to their end, can make. Marion just held the head of the man that now looked so much like her it was uncanny, running her free hand through the younger Witches’ silky locks. The two Witches remained like that for a moment content to linger in the dim pool of light given off by a surviving lamp overhead, communicating through the inflections of their labored breaths as words were patently extravagant luxuries in their current states. Marion looked up across the singed floor at the broken remains of her foe with a resigned, thousand yard stare, still having trouble comprehending how a single misguided Witch could cause so much horror. In her lap she felt her free hand suddenly held by another warm, soft hand that was virtually its twin. She looked down into the two turquoise pools that had seen and endured more in one night than Marion had seen and endured her entire first year as a Witch.
“I…never…want…to…do…that…again…EVER.” Greg slowly drawled out.
Marion pulled Greg up onto her lap and cradled the battered new Witch’s head on her chest. Wistfully she spoke over the Greg’s head into the darkness. “Never is very long word…and it doesn’t much care for Witches.” More so than any other moment both Witches felt their age in that moment, Marion and the difficult time stretching back into the mists of the past, Greg and the unknown age stretching out into the future. A faint flickering iridescent light began to play across the profile of the two huddled girls. Both of them turned, drawn by the light. From the Countess’ ravaged form a thread of light was emerging. It coiled around itself like some living snake, before seeming to home in on the two Witches. Its end shot towards the two, dividing at the last second into twin spiral streams that reached for both Greg and Marion. For a split second the wispy end of the stream seemed to caress Greg’s nude form before the end shattered into myriad threads of power that dove into his core.
In the logical, rational part of his mind, Greg knew that this was half of Estelle’s power being added to his own, but emotionally there was no such clarity, for never in his life had Greg experienced such euphoria as this even as his physical body convulsed, twitched, and was lit by racing pulses of power as it was held in Marion’s arms which also were also trembling with the result of receiving their victor’s bounty. No words could describe the giddy heights that the surge took him too, and no words could describe how much Greg hated himself for enjoying the euphoria bought by a blood sacrifice, however necessary. Greg did his utmost to endure the mind shredding storm of the transfer but too much had been asked of his physical and mental being that night and with a final quaking spasm Greg blacked out. He never heard Marion’s soft breathing as she knelt with an unconscious Witch in her lap in a dark empty warehouse lit only by a pool of radiant moonlight that passed through an open window rimmed in shards of broken glass. Nor did he feel him self carried a moment later or the final jump back to true safety.
Chapter 13
With a low soft, pained moan, Greg slowly returned to the waking world. The feel of a blanket pressing and shifting against his hairless legs, the way his padded butt pressed into the couch beneath him, the way the mass of his soft hair tickled his shoulder, the suite of haze deadened sensations was all so very alien to him. “What’s wrong with my body?” Greg wondered slowly reaching up to his head, and pulled a silky red-golden ponytail around into his vision. The pink, elastic scrunchie vied with the sight of his dainty hand for the greater share of confusion in Greg’s mind then like some high-light reel the night’s events began to rewind through his memory. “Oh right, Witch…” Greg softly sighed to himself, his other hand tracing the new curve of his hips, the flat expanse of his stomach, the lower edge of his ribs, the still flat expanse of his chest…the… “oooooh.” Greg pursed his lips slightly and tweaked the organ his hand had just crossed again. A pleasurable tingle again suffused his body. He had brushed his male nipples before and never felt anything like this. Still lying on the couch with his hand under the blanket, Greg quickly began tracing a circle around his nipple with his soft fingers. His tender lips parted slightly as the thread of pleasure began to grow. Suddenly a realization of why this tactile act felt so good rocketed through Greg’s awareness. He struggled to sit up, still weak, but after an abortive attempt, succeeded. The blanket that had been covering his nude body fell down to pool around his hips exposing his chest to the cool air. The sudden cooling and ministrations of his fingers had wrought profound effects on the vestigial nipples which clearly weren’t entirely vestigial anymore as the rose pink nubs crinkled in response to the stimuli. Greg wasn’t sure how he felt about the still small nipples with their minimal areolas, in this aspect Greg was very much like a pubescent girl, the nubs decorating his chest were far beyond anything male but still not yet fully mature female teats. Greg had fully embraced the Witch part of his existence, but the whole female sex attached to it was still carried some residual apprehension. Like the archetypical teenage girl he was both intrigued and frightened of the inevitable ascension to the ranks of womanhood. Greg looked up as he heard footsteps enter the room.
“You fight a supremely dangerous Witch, nearly die, and the first thing you do when you wake is play with yourself, how very male.” Marion chuckled at her observation before setting down a mug of steaming amber liquid on the coffee table in front of Greg while keeping another for herself. Her face grew serious for a moment as she continued. “Do you feel okay? I was worried that I didn’t put enough juice into the healing Craft I used.”
Greg reached down to the cup and folded his legs up underneath him, under the blanket, barely noticing the feminine mannerism creeping into his behavior. He cradled the warm mug in his hands and inhaled the herbal aroma coming off of it. He glanced at Marion before answering. “Weak, but normal, I feel a lot better now.” He began vigorously sipping the concoction, feeling its warmth pool in his stomach and then spread through him. “This is really good!” Greg exclaimed.
Marion sheepishly smiled, “Only took me a hundred years to get it right, the first couple of batches worked but they were hideously awful to drink.” She finished her mug and set it down. Her apology was written on her face even before she spoke it.
“Greg I’m so sorry, you shouldn’t have had to go through that tonight. You did really well. I’m sorry that I put you through this; I should have done something about Estelle long before it came to this. I spent a long time hiding from the problem and you almost paid dearly for it.” Marion’s voice shook a little as she came and sat down on the couch next to Greg.
“Greg shook his head slightly. “No, not really. You don’t have any control what Estelle or the Hunters choose to do. The important thing is that they had a shot at me while I was at my most vulnerable and I walked away.”
“HUNTERS!??” Marion excitedly questioned.
Greg nodded in the affirmative, noting the shock on Marion’s face he slowly recounted the span of time between the close of the store, his arrival at Bay 69, and eventually Marion’s entrance. Marion sat dumbfounded through the description of Greg’s exploits and mentally kicked the part of her that had tried to dismiss Greg as unworthy to be Witch.
“We’ve really made them look bad, and you really hurt one of them. They’re going to hunt us really hard for awhile.” Marion flatly stated the obvious.
“I know, but I think we’ll be okay, they’re used to hunting lone Witches, once I get better handle on things we should be more than they can handle. We’ve already proved that together we can overload one of their talismans and that was before we picked up Estelle’s power. Teach me and we’ll keep each other safe.” Greg leaned in towards Marion as he finished his last sentence, his inflections carrying subtle shades of meaning beyond the face value request.
“Greg…I don’t know…I don’t know if that’s wise. You look so much like me, almost like a sister, but your Craft is different somehow, and as much attention as I attract you might be better off away from me.” Marion didn’t know what had made her say that, and part of her was knotted up inside praying that Greg would have the good sense to listen to what her flushed face was saying rather than her cautious words.
“Hey we outlaws have to stick together, its not like I really have anywhere better to be. Besides I’m not even really Greg anymore, that kind of ended when I dove head first into being a Fire Witch. I’ve been wondering who I really am all night, odd as it may sound; Estelle helped me find that answer for I know now beyond doubt that I’m a Witch and as a Witch I need a name.”
Marion watched as her near doppelganger pondered at the edge of her personal space their crossing warm breaths faintly warming each others faces. Marion’s certainties and uncertainties about what she really wanted both physically and personally danced a confused tango in her mind.
“I know Marion and Robin Hood, outlaws together. Hmm, might have to shorten that to avoid oddities, Robin it is then. I am Robin.”
“Gr…Robin…I’m not sure about this.”
Robin slowly closed in on Marion, drawing close to her and took the older Witches’ trembling hands in his own. He gently stated the realization that had been haunting his mind and dogging his emotions all night with a thousand facets of hidden meaning and open desire in his rich soprano voice. “Marion, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. If there was one regret I had all night, over and over, it was the fact that I didn’t tell you that yesterday night. I may look different now, but that hasn’t changed. I still think you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and despite all that I have given to reach this point I would count it well spent if I had but a single night in your arms.”
Marion’s whispered objection was barely audible and not backed any real conviction. “But Robin we’re both…”
Marion’s words stopped short as she felt one of Robin’s cool hands slip under the hem of her shirt and come to rest on the upper curve of her hip as it transitioned into the inward curve of her waist.
Robin’s eyes seemed to bore into Marion, then for a moment Robin closed them and pondered the unspoken word that hung between them. A woman…that’s what he was destined to shortly become, and the supposed partner of a man, their union producing new life. Robin thought hard and imagined the countless male models on the signs back in his store, the large muscles, the inherent power, the throbbing rod of meat between their thighs, and the general paragon of manhood that he had never really been and was completely divorced from now. Robin mentally catalogued it all and found it had no attraction for him. From there he recalled the sensation of Marion’s breasts against him and remembered the way they curved. He recalled the litany of changes he had undergone up to this point, how he had become soft and smooth, curvy and feminine. A raging flush of warmth and growing sensual tension gripped Robin even as his member began to stir under the blanket. He knew what he wanted with complete certainty, the spark of desire did not lie and the spark very much wanted to trace the canyon valley of Marion’s cleavage, race laps around the ellipse of her navel, fly down the slope of her belly and plunge into the treasures of her grotto.
“I don’t care.” Robin whispered with forceful finality.
Robin opened his eyes and gently smiled at Marion and leaned into her. Marion sat frozen like a doe in headlights as Robin’s velvet pink lips closed in on hers. She hadn’t ever really considered this, but she dared not deny that her body craved the attention and after swearing off men a half century ago what other option was there? Whether she was brave enough to explore that option was a debate that still raged up until the point that the two pairs of moist, tender, rose-pink lips touched in a butterfly kiss. Down below, Robin’s soft hand glided up Marion’s body through her waistline, over her side, and gently caressed Marion’s breast. Marion softly gasped in pleasure and looked deep into the turquoise eyes of the Witch that wanted her to give her self to him, soon to be her, and offered the same to Marion in equal trade. For fifty long, desolate years this part of Marion had lain dormant and suppressed, now as her nipples tightened, her skin grew warm and teasing moisture throbbed deep in her mound the flimsy barrier that still existed in Marion’s mind and heart came crashing down, swept away by a flood of need that had broken its internal dam.
With an almost feral hunger Marion came back into their embrace. Butterfly kisses soon gave way to full lip locks as two bubblegum pink tongues dueled. Lower, two pairs of nearly identical hands traced over two nearly identical waistlines, gently caressing the matching inward curves and tickling across taut bellies and sensitive flanks. The sharp cadence of high pitched girl squeals and soft soprano moans interspersed with the occasional slight pop as full, wet lips passed over one another. The two Witches’ ministrations were quickly driving both of them to abandon. Robin’s member was rising, eager to give its final performance and Marion nearly groaned as each wave of erogenous pleasure added to the building wet heat between her thighs.
Like an uncorked bottle of champagne, the immense released pressure from Marion’s psyche was becoming evident and she was nearly rabid with need. She was only vaguely aware that her shirt was hung up on her arms as she pressed her fingers into Robin’s smooth, narrow back. It took Robin several tries to perfectly time Marion’s motions and ultimately get Marion’s shirt off, flinging it to the floor where it joined the discarded, forgotten blanket at the base of the couch. Robin spent several more frustrating attempts trying to get the constricting sports bra Marion sported off her lithe torso. Eventually, Marion had to pause to take it off herself but didn’t quite fully succeed before her body quaked from the pleasure of a pair of velvet lips enveloping and sucking on one of her nipples while slender fingers pressed into her soft curves. With her arms tangled up in her bra above her head, Marion was at a unique disadvantage as her ripe bosom in its full glory stood pertly out in space making itself a prime target for Robin’s nimble fingers and full lips to gently explore. Robin had wasted no time in charting the soft treasures, feeling the mass of Marion’s generous tit flesh as the satin cream skin of his cheek nuzzled the tender cream skin of Marion’s breast and Robin’s pink lips sucked on her rosy nipple, feeling it harden between his tender lips. Then, using the tip of his pink tongue he slowly traced a circle around her areola the smooth, wet tip sensuously gliding over the pebbly, sensitive skin.
A fully body quiver rocked Marion in her kneeling posture and erupted from her lips as a full throated moan as Marion finally got her arms untangled from the elastic brassiere. The near involuntary motion combined with Marion’s discarding of her sports bra was just a bit out of control and to Robin’s surprise he was suddenly alone on the couch as Marion went tumbling over the back. Concerned he looked over the back of the couch and was relieved to see Marion looking back up at him from the floor with a sheepish, embarrassed look on her face. Both of them quickly broke into wide smiles and Marion started giggling uncontrollably which Robin partly echoed. Seeing no reason to not to join Marion, Robin haphazardly rolled over the back of couch and down to the floor in a tangle of curves and sleek limbs.
Marion however seeing an opportunity seized on Robin’s less than graceful dismount and rolled out of the way only to leap on top of the nascent Witch pinning him to the floor. With a practiced motion she hadn’t used in nearly two centuries she drew her hands across Robin’s sides and pulled herself forward, dragging her pillowy breasts across Robin’s taut, soft belly. Robin looked up questioning, but Marion just smiled like the Cheshire cat and leaned down towards Robin’s flat chest.
“Let’s see if you’re up to the taking as well as you are to the giving.” Marion knowingly quipped.
With that she began massaging Robin’s toned flat chest with her hand while her lips and tongue engaged one of Robin’s pink nubs. The feel of flawless cream skin grazing its equal was sublimely electric and Marion had to fight several times to remain focused on her target. Underneath her, Robin was squealing in delirious abandon and alternatively arching his back and trying to buck his hips under Marion’s weight, both actions doing little more than press his supple, curvy derriere into the floor. Marion knew it would feel good, but even she was surprised with how quickly Robin was responding. A quick glance upwards revealed the unfocused look in Robin’s eyes which announced to the discerning Witch that the potent Craft that had brought Robin to the brink of womanhood that night was again working its own special magic. A second later, Marion detected the change. As her own pink tongue slowly circled Robin’s areola it noted the subtle change as bumps and depressions began to form and push outward from the central axis of the nub heralding the outlets of dozens of ducts which rose up from deeper in Robin’s chest. Like a seasonal mountain spring, these upwelling fissures were currently dry, but they held the miraculous promise that one day ambrosia might be carried up to the surface from the deeper caverns below. The image in Marion’s mind only grew more apt as the nub held in her lips grew like some low stalagmite, its small protrusion swelling and plumping into a rounded, cylindrical shape. Marion allowed her lips to come off Robin’s burgeoning nipple and tilted her head to look inquisitively across the heaving plane of Robin’s flat chest, now oddly marked by two mature nipples that incongruously sat on the flat expanse. No, not flat, Marion quickly realized, smiling enigmatically, as she reached forward with her hand across Robin’s chest and confirmed what her eyes had just barely detected between Robin’s quick breaths. For under the far nipple, her fingers could just make out the firm but yielding mass of a lump, a lump that was already beginning to impart a shallow swell that was distinctly altering the contour of Robin’s pectoral. Marion was giddy with anticipation as she watched the lumpy molehill begin its journey to becoming a mammary mountain; even she was surprised how much she was enjoying watching her partner’s boobs blossom and just how rapidly her mind had switched gears to the point where it found those nubile curves the epitome of attraction and beauty.
With that thought in mind, Marion closed back in Robin’s nearer nipple and gently kissed it, nuzzling Robin’s small blossoming swell like he had nuzzled her mature full breast, while her far hand tweaked and entertained its partner. Underneath her, Robin gasped for air, and then bit down on his full lower lip as he whined while trying to spread his thighs. Marion realized something was happening well below her field of vision and drew away from her pinning position to see what. There between Robin’s quivering, wondrous thighs a new shade of color was creeping into the caramel hinted creamy skin. Across the last major symbol of his fading manhood a dull rose pink hue was beginning to subsume the creamy tone as skin that had for decades been exposed to the outside world readied itself for a new existence as the slick interior lubricating sheath of an unformed hidden feminine socket.
Marion was momentarily conflicted, she searched her feelings and realized that emotionally the appendage had no real attraction for her, yet the aching need in her groin recognized the shape that was ideally suited for scratching her maddening itch. She might have sat there pondering the philosophy of her sex save for the fact that she wasn’t sitting on the ground anymore.
“Oomph!” (Thud) The feeling of her back and butt firmly pressing into the wall, while her feet dangled in mid air, her weight resting on Robin’s hands which had taken up positions under her thighs, quickly brought Marion out of her thoughtful trance, she inwardly laughed at herself for her inability to stop thinking even long enough to enjoy the passion of her love making. She fixed her gaze on the eyes of the demi-man that had so forcefully lifted her and noted the burning purpose in those green tinted blue orbs. Marion nodded her understanding to Robin, perfectly willing to grant the rite that would let that remnant of Greg be satiated before it could wholly assimilated into Robin’s womanhood. Emphasizing her own desire, Marion locked her legs around Robin’s narrow waist and pressed her lithe warm body into Robin’s equally warm sensuous frame in the universal female body language that wordlessly announced “if you can carry me I’m yours.” Robin quickly obliged his partner, finding Marion’s grip solid especially since Robin’s wide curvy hips naturally prevented Marion from slipping down his delectable midriff. Even with his passenger’s grip assured the position would have been impossible had Robin only possessed the strength of a mere human girl, but Robin again put the strength of the Witches to good use and despite his slender arms and legs the two Witches were soon at the verge of Marion’s bed. Marion was only dimly aware of the journey, reveling in the feel of Robin’s feminine strength under her searching hands as it played in his round, narrow shoulders and back. Lower down she could feel Robin’s two twin points ever so slightly beginning to push into her stomach. She sighed with deep bliss as Robin’s lips began to kiss the base of her neck, tracing the line of her throat with his tongue.
“Oooooh…Vous êtes tellement incroyable! (You are so incredibly beautiful)” Marion purred, whispering into Robin’s ear, before she darted in for a flirtatious nibble on the lobe. Feeling Robin tense she retreated, but not before she made sure that her hair swept across the side of Robin’s face like a red silky curtain. The feeling of a mattress under her curvaceous rump unfortunately cut short the time Marion had to play with Robin’s bouncing ponytail. She did manage a few kitten-like bats at few flowing strands before the subtle release of tension from the waistband of her pants refocused her attention lower.
The baggy garment had once been chosen for the reason it would not restrict Marion’s motion in desperate situations. It fulfilled that need again by obeying Robin’s decisive action and coming off without protest, allowing the lovers to continue their desperate bliss without pause. Finding her lower half shucked of its wrapping Marion simply laid back and watched as Robin slowly began working his lips up the lines of her calf, his probing fingers seeing which hidden spots held the greatest locus of Marion’s pleasure. Marion shuddered slightly as Robin traced the line of her legs, and grazed the curve of her knee and glided across the cream skin of her inner thighs. With a reverent touch, Robin hooked his fingers into the elastic waistband of Marion’s simple, white cotton panty and lovingly pulled downward, slowly revealing Marion’s mound to the outside world. Once he had the garment down to Marion’s knees Robin quickly finished off the motion and was instantly mesmerized by the sight of Marion’s waiting slit crowned by a downy triangle of vibrant red hair, primal moisture already seeping from its folds.
Robin started to climb onto the bed, but stopped at its edge, his eyes rolling back in his head slightly. A rolling shiver quaked through Robin’s hips and up into his torso proper. Like some strange time-lapse picture, wispy strands of hair pushed from the base of Robin’s pubis sprouting and filling in until an inverted sharply triangular field had been created, destined to forever exist in the twilight of an autumn harvest. Such a sight as it was, the russet field was only noted in passing as both observers were far more entranced by the slight jiggle that each of Robin’s nipples had made in the involuntary movement. For the two lumps on Robin’s chest had not been idle during their short transit as Marion’s keen senses could attest, for now the small lumpy swells had pushed the rosy nipples that rode them up away from the plane of Robin’s chest and formed two little plush pert cones. Robin was almost gawking wide eyed at his own small tits, mind racing as his body fell ever faster towards complete womanhood, when Marion interjected a sly remark.
“Oh Robin, the old lecherous men in the market square that have gone too long without a woman’s touch, they are going to be very interested in you now I think. I would know.” Marion broke into a wide grin that Robin reciprocated, blushing from face to toes at the thought.”
“Who said that I’m going to let some old coot sample my wares? I am no girl, I am a Witch; my fruit will only be tasted by those whom I give it to.” Robin defiantly countered and climbed up onto the bed, refocused on what he had been planning before the distraction.
With only a brief teasing interlude as his rosy lips probed the erotic mysteries of Marion’s elliptical navel, Robin advanced up Marion’s body caressing each curve with his own matching set. In a moment Marion was all but pinned under his less than bulky profile. The two witches held each other intimately for the space of a few pounding heartbeats, feathery touches from their hands flying over the other’s back, then Robin slowly began to work the head of his erect member into the space at the junction of Marion’s thighs where her Venus mound reached its apex. Marion gasped as the sensation of Robin’s penis, exquisitely velvety given its covering of feminine skin, began to push against the seam of her labia.
Deep in Marion’s psyche the thought that this old familiar sensation of being penetrated and impaled on a male penis should be utterly revolting to her given the abuses she had long suffered percolated up through her conscious thoughts, but try as that part of her might, it could find no traction. The living being attached to that male tool had sloping rounded shoulders for Marion’s hands to hold, the high pitched tones of its grunts and squeals were enticingly melodic, and its body was soft and sleek. Marion’s inner psyche simply could not recognize Robin as a man, thus the Witch that had mounted her was fully welcome to use its odd implement in Marion’s most personal of places. Marion arched her back and released a long, aching moan of pleasure as Robin rocked his hips, pushing his member past the petals of Marion’s inner labia and into the slick tunnel of her inner cavern. Sinking all the way in Robin buried his shaft in Marion’s eager sheath, the red and the red-gold carpets that matched their owner’s drapes mingled briefly as the two pressed their groins together. Ecstatic with bliss Marion pulled her knees into the air, spreading her thighs as far as they would go. Seeking leverage, she dug her small heels into Robin’s curvy, padded derriere. Robin let out his own purring soprano moan as he began pumping his rod into Marion’s hole. Quickly, their intensity grew. In and out Robin drove himself, while the curve of Marion’s calves and ankles sang their whispering symphony as they glided over the curves of Robin’s generous rear and fertile thighs. Marion’s hands, and when possible, her luscious lips, pleasured the small tits that bounced a little more with each thrust as their tips only moved further out into space carried away on the lengthening, filling curves that at their apex now crested an inch above the plane of Robin’s chest.
Marion reveled in each increasing bounce of Robin’s breasts finding them ever easier to hold as they swelled past their pubescent stage already starting to pull down into teardrop shapes. Even at small A cups they already held their own girlish magic. Marion’s soft caresses only heightened Robin’s rapture and he worked himself with increasing abandon into Marion’s grotto helped by the increasing gyrations of her hips as she constantly worked to alter Robin’s angle of attack. Both squealed their approval of the other’s prowess and felt the thundering beats of their hearts as they slowly converged in their cadence. Across their bodies the electric tingling sensation as their Craft auras interacted, fed by the bleed over from their bliss only added to that bliss in a reinforcing loop. The flow of their lovemaking was seamless until during one piston-like drive Robin shuddered and disappointed Marion by not driving himself all the way into her vagina. The next thrust met with similar results and Marion would have been unhappy save for the fact that she could feel Robin pushing his groin into hers with a firm grinding force. Robin grimaced slightly, seeming slightly dazed, and Marion realized that whatever claim Robin had to manhood was reaching its final expiration.
“Fight it; control it with your will…just a little longer…” Marion breathlessly pleaded with Robin
“A few more minutes as a man, that’s all I ask.” Robin whispered desperately between girlish grunts to the universe at large.
He refocused all the willpower he could spare on preserving his member for the last crucial moment, and was rewarded by the cessation of his member’s shrinking. The diverted Craft still had to go somewhere and Marion’s fingers suddenly found a substantially greater amount of flesh pressing into them as Robin’s breasts pulsed larger, their mature female nipples now looking less out of place on B cups that had traded their conical shape for the true teardrop shape of womanly breasts, their tips now a full two inches above Robin’s chest.
That was not the only casualty of Robin’s diversion. With the next inward thrust Marion noticed that Robin’s sack had not gently bounced off the lips of her labia. Furthermore the shift in Robin’s posture as he spread his thighs and the slight whine of discomfort in his voice made it clear that the Craft was working its transformation between the former man’s thighs.
Robin could feel the power as it worked. It was like some invisible hand reaching down from deep within his belly, cradling his balls and inexorably pulling them upward. Robin tried not to begrudge the wondrous power as it caressed his testes, turning them into ovaries from which a primal seed of life would issue every 28 days from henceforth, yet the monumental shift still evoked a pang of dread especially as Robin sensed his scrotum pulling backwards between his legs, its seam neatly bisecting his crotch as the two halves began to thicken and swell into opposing crescents. Robin reminded himself that his time was precious and he could buy no more of it. With renewed vigor he threw himself into Marion trying to make up for in virile effort what he had already lost in length and girth. Robin would do his utter best to prove the saying that it wasn’t size that mattered; it was how you used it. Bravely, he ignored the pushing, boring sensation that started with the seam of his sac pulling inward to form a noticeable crease before it drove through the root of his penis deep within his scrotum and began forming a tunnel deep within his mound. Robin only cried out briefly as the twin bulges in his labia-scrotum caused by his newly minted ovaries deflated as the two ovoid organs were pulled into the chasm of his forming vagina. With the bulges gone whatever scrotal features of his labia remained melted as his labial lips contoured themselves into the mound of a flat feminine crotch, marred only by the rose pink rod that still pushed from the slit that the seam of Robin’s scrotum had become, a slit that already anchored its upper terminus around the base of Robin’s diminished rod and from which feminine lubricating moisture was beginning to seep. Robin tried to ignore all of this and focused on his sole consuming goal of bringing Marion to her peak, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to hold back the Craft, and the slow rotation of his mound wasn’t helping as more and more his sex pointed downward between his thighs rather than outward.
Marion sensing Robin’s struggle drew him into her, wrapping their bodies together tightly to prevent Robin’s penis from leaving her wet vagina. With each passing thrust she worked her hips every which way they would go, in corkscrews, from side to side, and bucking like a mad woman trying to reach that exquisite instant. With each maneuver she had to increase the pressure of her hold as the growing mass of Robin’s tits pushed into her own, the sensual feel of a pair of gloriously soft C cups on her own breasts competing with the acrobatics being performed by her nether regions.
Now desperate with need yet frustrated by the deadened sensation as the nerves in his groin were disrupted Robin could only hope the orgasmic pressure in his body and Marion’s would reach critical mass before the building presence of the Craft in his penis overwhelmed him and finished its work by rendering his penis down into a clitoris incapable of penetrating anything. It was a race against time and the voluptuous curves of his breasts, which would have reached a solid three inches off his chest had they not been compacted against Marion’s own, attested to how close Robin was to reaching his final destination. Then a deep twinge in his lower abdomen announced that the upwardly racing tunnel had cleared his pubis and found the perfect spot to begin ballooning into a uterus, layers of powerful muscle growing to encase the pear shaped cavity on its outside while cushioning tissue that could accept and nourish a fertilized egg coated the inside. The twinge seemed to race down his vaginal tunnel and out to his labia, and for the first time in his existence, Robin knew the warm, aching, slick wetness as feminine lubricant seeped from his vaginal walls. The warm aching need to be filled was too much; Robin’s control over his member broke. He gave off a low breaking moan and both partners felt Robin’s penis once again begin to wither within Marion’s vagina.
Alarmed, Marion did her best to keep Robin inside her, but he was powerless to stop his manhood’s final retreat and aside from maximizing her position there was nothing more she could do as the pressure on the walls of her vagina decreased while the head of Robin’s member slowly pulled away from Marion’s cervix even as his own finished forming. So close to orgasm, Marion resorted to forcefully seizing Robin’s small hands and placing them on her breasts. With a final loving tweak of Marion’s nipples and a gentle squeeze Robin succeeded in driving Marion over the edge. Marion screamed her ecstasy and her vagina tried to squeeze shut on Robin’s member but even the strong muscles of Marion’s sex could not prevent her lover’s retreat. Though each pulsing contraction caressed Robin’s penis, with each heartbeat, Marion was ever emptier. Noting the frustration dancing in Robin’s eyes, Marion decided to try the same trick in reverse. She fell on Robin’s full breasts and vigorously massaged them, her fingers and tongue painting circles around Robin’s nipples. Marion could feel the Craft working in the soft mounds and tried to push Robin over the edge through it. Almost instantly, Marion could feel the thread of pleasure running from each of Robin’s breasts to his center. Critically she tried to time her ministrations with the Craft’s internal pulse of change.
“Uhhhhgg” Robin moaned, his breasts adding another quarter inch, deep inside the man-Witch two symmetrical tunnels were sprouting from the upper corners of his uterus. His ripe, full bosom by now was well past the cute magic it had developed back at an A cup, now a pair of pert womanly mounds, it possessed the power to enslave most any red-blooded man even without any additional mind altering Craft.
“Mmmmhhh” Marion kept driving Robin higher, though she could feel the remnant of his penis pulling out of her inner labia, the swollen petals of her sex caressing the departing member as if to beg it not to leave. Perhaps in trade, she felt the next pulse add another quarter inch to Robin’s breasts.
With one last attempt Marion sucked on Robin’s nipple and felt him tense. “AAAAHHHH” Robin screamed as the final orgasmic pulse rocked his chest adding the final quarter inch to his breasts bringing him to a heavy C or a light D matching Marion’s bountiful breasts with his own magnificent tits. A rocking spasm raced through his body as his core seemed to ignite in erotic pleasure. An arc of flashing Craft passed between the two Witches caressing their flat bellies. The dwindling spike of rose-petal flesh tried to stay enveloped by Marion’s folds, but it was too late. Despite the entreating embrace of Marion’s labia, Robin’s stub pulled out even as it twitched, rocking in spasms that were only a faint parody of a male climax. A single pitiful spurt of fluid escaped from Robin’s Skene’s glands, once his prostate, and pushed down the deteriorating tube and out the tip of his one-time penis to softly decorate Marion’s mound. The member kept twitching, but it was obvious that the muscles needed to pressurize the flow had all but been consumed to form the clenching muscles designed to milk a male penis which were throbbing in Robin’s vagina, coated with a fresh pulse of lubrication from Robin’s internal plumbing that had robbed him of much of his final release. Marion just graciously smiled and put her hand on Robin’s Venus mound and felt his vagina working itself through the soft flesh. With her other she probed the small release of fluid and felt it between her fingers, it was clear that Robin’s final ejaculate as a man had ironically contained nothing but clear female lubricant. A few seconds later Marion’s hand on Robin’s belly felt a pair of twin soft spasms as the ovaries that had been patiently waiting in Robin’s womb raced up the completed Fallopian tubes and socketed themselves into place to begin cranking out the estrogen that would add to the flood already flowing through Robin’s body as it finished its transformation.
Still panting slightly and basking in the afterglow of his orgasm Robin laid back and spread his thighs and was only granted a few seconds more to watch as the hole at the tip of his fleshy spike, once his proud penis sealed itself. A twinge within the folds of his mound as a new outlet formed above his labia minor reminded him that he would be sitting to pee from now on. A handful of heartbeats after that and the pink tip slowly sank beneath the horizon of his labia, the pink organ now little more than an oversized clitoris, enveloped by his female sex. A slow heartbeat more and a long shudder raced through Robin’s body as his clit tucked itself neatly under a fold of pink flesh above the slit of his labial petals.
Robin breathed a long cleansing exhalation and surveyed her body, looking through the valley of her impressive cleavage and down to where her snatch held queenly dominion between her graceful thighs, still aching with primal moisture. She knew without doubt that her body was wholly and completely female. Cinderella had been made whole, it had only taken three hours, but those hours seemed to encompass several lifetimes some terrible, some joyous.
“I am a woman; it feels so strange, yet right.” Robin melodically remarked to Marion, her hand tentatively exploring the curve of her breast.
“Did you doubt? It feels right because it is who you are now, the form of the Witch you have become. It is a terrible, wondrous thing to change. Are you still mad at me?” Marion hesitantly asked.
Robin wistfully looked down at her moist slit again before fixing Marion’s dark blue eyes in her own green tinted blue orbs. “No, I’m not mad, I wish I could have done better tonight, it was my last time.”
Marion grinned, “Robin you were wonderful, man or woman you’re going to make me very happy. I only hope I do as well for you.”
Robin’s face brightened at the reminder that all other things considered Cinderella had found her princess. With a coy smile she sat up and kissed Marion again. Marion gently held her and drew Robin into a hug pressing their breasts together again.
“Je t’aime, Robin, qui a apporté la lumière dans ma longue vie. Je t’aime.”
(I love you, Robin, who has brought light back into my long life. I love you)
Marion whispered those words that held such great gravity into Robin’s ear. Robin turned and smiled at Marion her eyes misting slightly. Again they hugged, the moment seeming to stretch out as the world weary Witch held her maiden Witch counterpart who had already sworn to herself that no man would ever have her. The two might have remained that way save for the fact that both concurrently realized that the other was gently fondling her breasts. Both Witches pulled back and gave the other a hungry grin.
“Round Two?” Both asked each other at almost the same instant. Taking the other’s question as an affirmative answer both began running the tips of their fingers over the other’s body in feathery caresses stoking the waning sexual heat that soon again was pushing out of their cores and radiating from their cream skin.
Robin was thoroughly enjoying her seconds until her sense of internal timing told her that it was time to mount her lover. That of course was now out of the question. The procedural conundrum confused her for a moment until Marion knowingly smiled and then broke off their foreplay by pushing Robin down to the bed. With that the older Witch turned and straddled Robin’s head, then leaned down drawing her breasts down Robin’s chest. Marion licked the well of Robin’s navel with her tongue before crawling down her body and pressing Robin’s thighs apart giving her unimpeded access to Robin’s newly forged vagina. Marion could feel Robin tense beneath her as she recognized what Marion was up too. Marion slowly caressed and licked the slope of Robin’s abdomen as it curved into her mound. Marion shut her eyes and luxuriated in the feel of Robin’s nimble tongue and lips reciprocating. Both women gasped in pleasure as the other gently pulled her partner’s passion swollen labia apart and began licking at the sensitive folds seeking the other’s pink clitoris.
Each wave of passion drove the two back towards that awesome point of critical mass. Neither however, noticed between their muffled cries of joy and rapture that the two Witch hearts were now beating perfectly in time. A few seconds later Robin softly squealed as a shockwave of pleasure reverberated through her body heralding Marion’s successful discovery of Robin’s clitoris within the fold shrouded sanctum of her labia. The ex-man struggled to focus through the crashing waves of indescribable bliss that were impacting her mind, making her body quiver, and her hips buck underneath Marion’s advance, but the densely clustered nerves of her small pink bud kept flooding her body with throbbing heat that made it hard to breathe. It was not until Robin managed to locate the center of Marion’s sexual being in turn that she got some relief as Marion struggled to hold her own rhythm as the tip of Robin’s pink tongue played with Marion’s pink clit. The two lovers almost instantly fell into a kind of cloying game to see who could pleasure the other the most before the other’s actions reduced her partner to a squealing, moaning wreck. That in and of itself would have happened quickly enough but already areas of shimmering iridescence fed by the feminine bliss were playing across each Witches’ body, quickly erupting in heatless arcs of Craft that crackled across their caramel hinted cream skin racing from feet and hands, to hips and shoulders, from hips and shoulders to navel, from navel to breasts, from breasts to lips and from lips into her partner’s clit. The circuit thus reinforced itself and brought both Witches to heights of passion that the raw mechanics of biology would strain to match. The awesome power at work fast became evident as the previously hidden inscribed sigils and runes of Marion’s containment Craft began to glow on Marion’s ceilings and walls pulsing in time with the arcs that jumped between the two Witches.
As a result neither Witch was entirely lucid when Robin’s Craft aura, having only fully stabilized moments before, began to fully attune to Marion’s. The two auras which had been generating a low feed of interference now heterodyned, flowing in sync with each other and feeding off each others critical resonance in the weave of reality. Through their Craft, Robin and Marion felt as if they had fallen into the other’s soul, the hints of hopes and dreams, of the shadows of buried fear, and the entire kaleidoscope of their lives glowing gem-like before the other. The universe seemed to flow through the two threatening to sweep them away with some cosmic eddy of unmatched power. Around them thousands of motes of energy formed at the convergence of fire and air swirled around them in a ballet of sparks making each Witch nearly glow as the sphere of light reflected from her skin. In the middle of it all both Robin and Marion struggled to ride the unearthly bliss, both a little frightened of the power they had invoked but refusing to end it each sensing that the only safe exit was finish what they had begun. This time, Robin reached her limit first. With a quick roll, Robin was suddenly on top, the cloud of energy seemed to shudder and twin spiraling streams of the brilliant, star-like motes began to flow into Robin’s shoulders causing the young Witch to arch her back in response. Down below, Marion whose pink tongue was still darting in and out of Robin’s depths even as Robin’s hips jumped with the knotting and unknotting of her vagina through her climax, noted a remarkable change in Robin’s taste. The clear sticky fluids took on a shimmering quality and suddenly Marion’s tongue and face were coated with a kind of sweet ambrosia like some rich wild honey. Between the pulsing ecstasy of her Craft and the monumental climax rocking her body Robin all but collapsed from her position, the falling roll bringing Marion back on top as she too hit her critical threshold. The swirling energy dove back into her body even as Robin became faintly aware that Marion now smelled and tasted of delicate lavender. Neither woman entirely noted the streams of energy that flowed for a moment more into their spent bodies before dissipating. Both of them had been carried too far away from rational thought by their shared nirvana that combined the joy of both their physical, sexual union, the craft linked mental union, and a frighteningly powerful connection with the underlying flows of the universe.
Utterly drained and spent, the two lovers rolled away from each other and simply laid head to foot on Marion’s bed staring up at the ceiling simply panting and waiting for their rational minds to reclaim their senses from their shared euphoria. A few breathless moments passed before Robin weakly spoke.
“Marion…sweetheart (uhhh) is that normal?”
“Noo...auhhh” Marion groaned out in reply.
The two panted for another moment before Robin reached out to pat Marion’s leg wondering if they felt as much like Jell-O as her own. Marion ran her still trembling hands over her face, stopping only briefly to lick some of Robin’s residue from her fingers.
“There are two kinds of Witches, those who have drunk from the well of eternity, and those who have not. I heard that long ago from a passing Witch one day in London. I finally understand what that means.” Marion wearily quipped.
“Well of eternity huh? No kidding….” Robin answered and then sighed. She would have gone on further but she stopped noticing Marion squirming slightly as if she had an itch between her shoulders that wouldn’t go away. Suddenly, Marion rose to a kneeling position, her eyes saucer wide and her hands struggling to reach behind her. Concerned Robin rose to kneel as well, facing her beloved. She would have asked what was happening but a deep twitching tickle so familiar to her at this point seemed to bubble up from deep in her back and slowly rise towards the gap between her shoulder blades. It dawned on Robin at that point that the two of them had split Estelle’s power, that power added to their own placed both of them well into Class V territory, the overdue result was arriving.
Marion was nearly panicked as she tried to probe the lumps that ached in the middle of her back.
“No….NO…NO! I don’t want this, I was happy the way I was! Please stop!” Marion pleaded with her body. She was near hysterics when Robin placed her hands on Marion’s shoulders and leaned in knowingly. In their communion she had felt this age old fear of Marion’s and given her recent experiences she could empathize easily.
“Marion, listen to me. Let this go, you’re not a monster, you proved that tonight, and as long as we can love each other we won’t be. You may be a Witch, but you’re not a monster because you have never chosen to be one.” Robin gave her firm assurances and then reached up to give Marion’s forehead a gentle kiss. Robin’s relief was palatable as she felt Marion relax.
“What do I do then?” Marion questioned seeking direction.
“The same thing I’m doing…PUSH.” Robin answered and then smiled.
Hesitantly one of Marion’s hands snaked over Robin’s shoulder and felt the twin lumps forming on her back. For a moment Marion felt Robin tense and then her hands felt twin protrusions begin to rise from Robin’s back. For a moment the spurs were inflexible but then Marion felt joints form in the lengthening yet small appendage making them more arm like. A flap of cream skin spilled off the tapering point only for blue down to cover the membrane a half minute later. From the down, long interlacing feathers reached out, their bases pure white but their tips the same cobalt shade of blue as Marion’s eyes. In the space of few minutes Robin had grown a pair of cherubic wings, stunning, but small, her wingspan almost didn’t reach out past her shoulders.
Marion gasped in surprise, “They’re beautiful.”
“Yeah they are, but I want to see yours and that’s not going to happen unless you stop fighting your own power.” Robin playfully teased.
A moment later, Marion gave her own white and turquoise wings a tentative flap after they finished growing in. “They are kind of small, it’s not like they’re going to be much good for flying.” Marion remarked.
“What precisely makes you think they’re going to stay this size? Hmm?” Robin smirked, the weight implications of her observation giving both Witches pause.
“Touche…” Marion surrendered the point and then looked meaningfully at Robin. “I never thought I would be this happy ever again. Merci Beaucoup, mon bien-aimé, my beloved Robin” Marion’s eye’s misted as she spoke before Robin hugged her again. “Same to you, my beautiful, lovely Marion…” They hugged, happy to have found each other for a while yet before they cuddled up and slept through the rest of the dark night waiting for the morning’s dawn.
Epilogue
(Beep)….(Beep)…. (Beep)…. (Beep)…. (Beep)…. (Beep)…. (Beep)…. (Beep)…. (Beep)….
The slow droning of a medical monitor drowned out the sounds of a stern faced man as he typed by the bedside of his wounded compatriot, trying not to think about the prognosis given by a portly silver haired doctor who’s eyes had been heavy at the sight of the downed Hunter, his own memory of his son who had gone out one night and never come back, used in some sinister purpose by a unknown Witch reflected in his aging eyes. Internal hemorrhaging, probable brain damage, it was a litany that spelled out Sven Petrovich’s misfortune. Another casualty in the war, thought Bruce Maxham, another name to be added to the list of the fallen. He sighed temporarily breaking the steady rhythm of the machine. He had underestimated his foe, and a man under his command had paid dearly for it, even if Sven had not been following his orders to their intended purpose. The loss weighed on Bruce’s heart, he could only vow that the Witch who had caused that hurt would one day taste his vengeance.
Witch # 632009(6-North America, 3-Caucasian, 2009-First Encounter)
Name: Gregory Pash (former man, Witch use name unknown)
Place of Origin: unconfirmed)
Date of Birth: unconfirmed, Turned into Witch 3/2009 almost certainly from contact with #531492)
Type: Fire (99% certainty)
Discovered by: Bruce Maxham, Sven Petrovich (Hunter Team #9) ***SPECIAL NOTE AGENT SVEN PETROVICH CRITICALLY WOUNDED IN ACTION AGAINST WITCH***
Major encounters: 2009 (*See movement map*)
Current location: Unknown (America)
Yes, Bruce thought, 531492 and 632009 had proved themselves cunning and dangerous, enough so to win this battle, but the war would continue and Bruce Maxham, called by many “The Hawk” would not rest until he had both of the offending monsters within his grasp. This he swore….
Bonus song
I feel like it’ll disappear
The instant I look away
I just kept counting
All the many traces of loneliness
That I’d vomited up
In this time that seems so dry
My heart is thrashing around and drowning
It takes those lies that make my head spin
And tears them to pieces
And the place I lose my way in
Is a dim and hazy world
Witch Hunter Robin, opening credits, Bandai Entertainment © 2002
FIN, Thanks for reading
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