Have Stakes Will Travel

“I told you. Witches smell different from humans. You smell, I don’t know, powerful. If he’s trying to build a blood-family, and if he has some ability to reason, the new blood-master might hold on to her. To try to turn her. It’s worth a shot.” Jane grinned grimly, her beast rising in her. Bits of gray light hovered, dancing on her skin. “Besides. The governor and the vamp council of North Carolina just upped the bounty on the rogues to forty-thou a head. I can use a quarter mil. And if you come up with a way to keep me safe down there, when I go in to hunt them down, I’ll share. You said you need to replace that rattletrap you drive.”

 

 

I put a hand to my mouth, holding in the sob that accompanied my sudden, hopeful tears. Unable to speak, I nodded. Jane went to get a roast.

 

*

 

I slept uneasily, waiting, hearing every creak, crack, and bump in the night. If we smelled differently from humans, would the vampires come after my family? My other sisters? Just after dawn, the phone rang. “Come and get me,” Jane said, her voice both excited and exhausted. “Carmen’s still alive.”

 

I called my sisters on my cell as I drove and told them to get over to my house fast. We had work to do. When I got back with Jane, my kitchen had three witch sisters in it, each trying to brew coffee, tea, fry eggs, cook grits and oatmeal. Evan was glowering in the corner, his hair standing up in tousles, reading the newspaper online, and feeding Little Evan.

 

Jane pushed her way in, ignoring the babble of questions, and took the pot of oatmeal right off the stove, dumping in sugar and milk and digging in. She ate ten cups of hot oatmeal, two cups of sugar, and a quart of milk. It was the most oatmeal I had ever seen anyone eat in my life. Her belly bulged like a basketball. Then she took paper and pen and drew a map of the mine, talking. “No one’ll be going into the mine today. Count on it. The vamps killed four of the men watching the entrances and the governor won’t justify sending anyone in until the national guard gets here. Carmen is alive, here.” She drew an X. “Along with two teenage girls. The rogue master’s name is Adam and he has his faculties, enough to see to the feeding and care of his family, enough to make more scions. But if he dies, then the girls in his captivity are just another dinner to the rogues. So I have to take him down last. I need something like an immobility spell, or glue spell. But first, I need something to get me in close.”

 

“Obfuscation spell,” I said.

 

“No one’s succeeded with that one in over five hundred years,” Evangelina said, ever the skeptic.

 

“Maybe that’s because we never tried,” Boadacia said.

 

Elizabeth looked at her twin, challenge sparkling in her eyes. “Let’s.”

 

“But according to the histories, a witch has to be present to initialize it and to keep it running. No human can do it,” Evangelina said.

 

“I’ll go in with her,” Evan said.

 

My sisters turned to him. The sudden silence was deafening. Little Evan took that moment to bang on his high chair and shout, “Milk, milk, milk, milk!”

 

“It would have to be an earth witch,” Evangelina said slowly. “You’re an air sorcerer. You can’t make it work, either.” As one, they all turned to look at me. I was the only earth witch in the group.

 

“No,” Evan said. “No way.”

 

“Yes,” I said. “It’s the only way.”

 

*

 

At four in the afternoon, My sisters and Evan and I were standing in front of the mine. Jane was geared up in her vamp hunting gear, a chain mail collar, leather pants, metal-studded leather coat over a chain vest, and a huge gun with an open stock, like a Star Wars shotgun. Silvered knives were strapped to her thighs, in her boots, along her forearms; studs in her gloves; two handguns were holstered at her waist, under her coat; her long hair was braided and tied down. A dozen crosses hung around her neck. Stakes were twisted in her hair like hairsticks.

 

I was wearing jeans, sweaters, and Evangelina’s faux leather coat. As vegetarians, my sisters didn’t own leather, and I couldn’t afford it. I carried twelve stakes, an extra flashlight, medical supplies, ammunition, and five charms: two healing charms, one walking-away charm, one empowerment, and one obfuscation.

 

Evan was similarly dressed, refusing to be left behind, loaded down with talismans, charms, battery powered lights, a machete, and a twenty pound mallet suitable for bashing in heads. It wouldn’t kill a vampire but it would incapacitate one long enough to stake it and take its head. We were ready to go in when Brax drove up, got out, and sauntered over. He was dressed in SWAT team gear and guns. “What? You think I’d let civilians go after the rogues alone? Not gonna happen, people.”

 

We hadn’t told Brax. I glared at Evan, who shrugged, unapologetic.

 

“What are you carrying?” Jane asked. When he told her, she shook her head and handed him a box of ammunition. “Hand-packed, silver-flechette rounds, loaded for vamp. They can’t heal from it. A direct heart shot will take them out.”

 

The cop paused, maybe remembering the last time he went up against a vamp with Jane. “Sweet,” Brax said, removing his ammunition from a shotgun and reloading as he looked us over. “So we got an earth witch, her husband, a vamp hunter, and me. Lock and load, people.” Satisfied, he pushed in front and led the way. Once inside, we walked four abreast as my sisters set up a command center at the entrance. Behind us I could hear the three witches chanting protective incantations while Regan and Amelia began to pray.

 

We passed parts of several bodies. My earth gift recoiled, closing up. There were too many dead. I had hoped to be able to sense the presence of the rogue vampires, but with my gift so overloaded, I doubted I’d be of much help at all. The smell of rancid meat and rotting blood was beyond horrible. Charnel house effluvia. I stopped looking after the first limb—part of a young woman’s leg.

 

Except for the stench and the body parts, the first hundred yards was easy. After that, things went to hell in a handbasket.

 

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