Page 50 of Hell and Hexes
Chapter 20
Eshu
Ifollowed Sylvie to her eldest sister’s house, then hung around while they discussed which spells to use to make it seem as if they were truly battling me, all of which were alleged to not truly harm me. I had to demonstrate my acting ability and performed a death-scene that would have done Shakespeare proud.
“Not dead,” that bossy eldest sister informed me. “If you’re dead, then we have to haul your giant dinosaur body off the mountain and pretend to bury it. Just act like you’re being horribly injured by the spells, then Sylvie will pretend banish you.”
“And then what? I pretend disappear?”
“No, actually disappear, then reappear at Sylvie’s house.” She frowned. “You can do that, right?”
I could, but thought for a moment about denying the ability, just to annoy this witch. I decided against it since being dragged through the woods while I played dead was probably plan B and I didn’t like that idea at all.
“Yep, I can do that.”
The twin looked at her watch. “You’d better get moving.”
Sylvie walked over to me, wrapping her arms around my waist and pulling me in for a long passionate kiss. “Be careful. I’ll see you at home after this is all over.”
Home. Not “my house.” And she’d kissed me right in front of her sisters. Oh, the things I was going to do to her once we were “home.”
“Another kiss for luck?” I asked. It was a request she granted with a smile. Then she spun me around, swatted me on my ass, and told me to get going.
I got up to Clinton’s compound with plenty of time to spare, so I amused myself by sneaking up on some of the houses and peeking in their windows, trying to get an idea of which ones I’d be able to stomp on without getting too many splinters in my feet. At midnight on the dot, I scooted a hundred feet or so down the road and transformed into a T-rex.
It had been a long time since I’d either seen a real T-rex or theJurassic Parkmovies, so I decided to embellish a bit on my recollections. Sixty feet long ought to do it. Red and black, because those were my favorite colors. And feathers, because feathers are fabulous. Everyone knows that.
Done, I let out a huge roar and laughed when three werewolf guards screamed and fell out of some nearby trees. A giant dinosaur laughing frightened them just as much as my roar, and they took off, shouting the alarm. I followed, kicking over a few trees along the way for good measure and giving a few more roars just to alert everyone that they needed to get out of the houses I was about to squash.
I’ll give these werewolves one thing, they were prepared. I’d barely made it twenty strides before the woods erupted with them and they began to shoot at me. I don’t care what that eldest sister witch said. It hurt. I bled. And it was then that I decided that I needed to change the script. There was no way I was going to keep marching through a hailstorm of bullets just to smash a few houses, then turn around and head back the other way. Screw the houses. I’d just knock over a few more trees and call it done.
And hadn’t that eldest sister witch said something about fire? Yes, I distinctly remembered her saying that I should burn the forest down. It seemed a bit excessive, but I was never one to say “no” to excess, so fire it was.
I spun around, sending a few werewolves flying with my tail as I karate-kicked a few trees down and began to run back down the road—careful not to run so fast that I lost my pursuers, but definitely fast enough that they had a hard time shooting me. Every so often I’d turn to the side and shoot flames out my mouth, setting nearby bushes and trees on fire. I could tell when the werewolves realized where I was heading because a few of them shapeshifted into their wolf forms and raced around me through the woods, getting ahead no doubt to warn the others that I was coming.
By the time I’d arrived, there was a nice plume of black smoke behind me from where I’d set some foliage on fire. The other werewolves immediately attacked, and I was trapped between the two groups, getting shot at and jumped on by four-legged werewolves who were hanging off me by some very sharp teeth and claws.
It hurt. It hurt a whole lot, and I wasn’t exactly having fun anymore. My pretty feathers were torn, my leathery skin was marred with bullet holes and bite marks. The witches were nowhere in sight yet, and I really didn’t want to endure much more of this while I waited for them to show up. I’d do a lot of things for my couch-witch, but I was giving her and her sisters five minutes to get their butts up here or I was ditching this plan for something less painful.
Somehow, I managed to continue moving forward in spite of every effort by about a hundred werewolves to kill me. Once inside the compound, I got to work knocking down some houses and setting fire to a few just to be thorough about it.
Thankfully the witches arrived just before I’d run out of houses to smash and burn. That eldest sister witch was a very good actress because I completely believed she was furiously angry. She yelled something very rude at me, then began putting out the fires I’d worked so hard to create. The others began to cast their fake magical spells, and I remembered just in time that I needed to pretend to be injured by them.
Pretending to be injured wasn’t exactly a stretch since I’d been shot and chewed on extensively. I staggered around, clutching my chest with one hand and waving the other about as if I were trying to ward off the spell effects. Sylvie raced toward me, and, overcome with joy, I forgot my role for a moment and picked her up, bringing her up to my face so I could kiss her.
Except I couldn’t really kiss her because like this I was big enough to fit her whole head in my mouth. Actually, I could fit her whole body in my mouth. I don’t think she would have liked that, though, so instead of shoving her in my mouth, I just nuzzled her.
“Stop. You’re supposed to be ferocious,” she whispered. Then she made it worse by booping me on the nose.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
Was I ready? I was shot and bit and clawed and was pretty sure I had splinters in both feet and my tail. I wanted nothing more than to change back into my regular form and go home—to our home—and wait for my couch-witch to return.
I nodded and she pulled one of the spent button charms from her pocket, tossing it at me. I caught it with my other hand and groaned dramatically, setting her down before staggering around a bit and falling to the ground in a heap.
Oh, crap. That’s right. I wasn’t supposed to die; I was just supposed to disappear. Oh, well, I guess a dead dinosaur could vanish just as easily as a live one. I opened one eye to see Sylvie waving frantically at me, mouthing “go, go.”
Giving her a wink, I left that mountainside and appeared in front of our home, scaring the crap out of a goblin walking a pair of groundhogs on leashes down the sidewalk.
Home. I walked up the steps to the porch, let myself in, and smiled. Home. Well, it would be home as soon as Sylvie was here with me.
