Page 76 of Witch Unexpected
I looked to Sloane, expecting to see doubt, but there was a smirk on her lips, and it hit me that her mouth wasn’t moving with the chant anymore; none of their mouths were, but the chant was in the air, an independent entity, swelling and filling the room.
Sloane flicked her wrist, and the revenant’s hand bent back with a snap. It wailed, and, once again, the witches were thrown back.
It detached itself from the human and clambered for the window high up in the wall.
Brie shot a blue bolt of power at it, forcing it to alter trajectory. It clambered onto the ceiling, hanging upside down. Its body swelled, head growing, mouth widening. And then it launched itself at the witches.
They leaped back in unison to avoid its strike before converging around it. The chanting rose and the air crackled. Tentacles sprouted out of the revenant, whipping out to slap at the witches. Sloane leaped over one, Brie ducked, but Jessie was hit, knocked back into a stall. The chanting ebbed, and the thing swelled, barbs popping up on the tentacles that whipped and slashed at the witches.
Sloane looked at the stall Jessie had disappeared into, and for the first time since I’d met her, there was a flash of panic on her face.
The chanting dropped in volume and the crackle in the air diminished. They were down a witch.
Brie made a dash, trying to get past the revenant to the stall, but a tentacle cut across her path, forcing her back.
Fuck.
Bramble tightened her grip on my shoulder.
I turned to her. “I’m gonna jump.”
Her eyes narrowed, mouth tightening, and then she nodded. “Go. I’ll cover you when you come out with her.”
I focused on the stall and made the shift, materializing next to Jessie’s unconscious form. She was lodged, ass in the toilet, head slumped forward. Blood smeared the ceramic cistern. Shit.
“Jessie?” I tilted her head back and patted her cheeks hard enough to sting. “Jessie, wake the fuck up.”
She groaned, eyes fluttering open to blearily fix on me.
“There you are. Come on, the others need you.”
The chanting was a low hum now, and the whizz of power and the slash and thud of barbed tentacles on tile told me the thing was gaining the upper hand.
“Wha?” Jessie shook her head then cried out in pain, hand going to the back of her skull. “Fuck.”
“You with me? You need to chant.”
Her eyes went wide as she came fully to. “Fuck.”
She grabbed my shoulders, using me to dislodge her ass from the toilet, ready to fling herself into the washroom.
I grabbed her top and yanked her back just in time to avoid the slice of a barbed tentacle. It slammed into the ground at the threshold of the stall.
“Start chanting!”
“I need to get closer to the others for it to work,” Jessie said.
The tentacle whizzed across the entrance and hit the ground again, spraying slivers of tile into the air. It was followed by another tentacle too fast for us to get past. Fuck.
It was keeping us in here. Blocked us off from the others. I had to jump again, but with the thing out there with its tentacles all over the place, there was no way to be sure I wouldn’t materialize in the path of a barb. Fuck.
The tentacle pinning us whipped down for another slap at the ground. A battle cry ripped the air, blood sprayed, and the tentacle was gone, lopped off and shriveling on the ground.
Bramble stood at the entrance to the stall, face spattered with blood, mouth in a grimace. “Well, come on. What you fecking waiting for?”
The revenant screamed as Jessie bolted out of the stall and into the washroom. I made to follow, but Bramble shoved me back and stepped into the stall with me.
“We’re safest in here for now,” she said. “Nothing we can do.”
