Marcy kept yanking at the knife, trying to get it out. “Leave it in!” I shouted. “I can feel the thing weakening. Just keep doing whatever you’re doing with the spell.”
She immediately let go and stepped back, closing her eyes, bringing her hands up in front of her. To my surprise, her hair began to lift at the ends as the air shifted around us.
The snake began to shake like a tuning fork, vibrating so fast I had no choice but to let go of it.
A few seconds later the thing exploded.
Right on my chest.
I managed to look away in time, shielding my mouth and eyes with my hands a few seconds before it erupted. Snake guts had exploded everywhere. They were sticky and putrid. This thing had been good and dead before it had been reanimated by the bokor.
I ran a hand over my neck and chest as I glanced up at Marcy, coughing. “I think we can safely say that you just bested the bokor and her stupid snake. What kind of spell was that anyway? Good lords, woman. That was nothing short of amazing.”
Marcy’s eyes were bright as she extended her hand to help me up. “It was a tricky one. It was part null, to combat the bokor’s magic, and part boil.” Once I was up, she actually clapped her hands together excitedly. “I wasn’t sure I could do it, because it’s actually a dual spell, but I’ve been practicing them lately. You take a piece of one spell and combine it with another. It’s extremely hard to master and usually takes a young witch years to hone. But I only started doing them a month ago. Yay!”
I whapped the biggest, stinkiest bits of carcass off my body, trying to clean it the best I could with my hands. The smell was putrid. “Yay is right. You rocked it out. But now I hope you have a hose-me-off spell. In the Underworld they had these amazing showers that washed you and your clothes on the spot. I would kill for one of those now.”
It was really the only good thing about the Underworld.
“I have a cleaning spell, but it’s more of an ‘incinerate the crap off you’ spell. I don’t think a bathing spell even exists. That would be handy, but too risky. The spell would have to attack your actual skin. Lots of ways to backfire.” She smiled as she aimed her fingers at me. She said a few words and the bloody snake guts sizzled and burned up like ash and fell to the ground.
I glanced down the front of my shirt. “You took some material with it.” I put a finger through a hole on the hem and wiggled it.
“Good grief!” Marcy said with exasperation. “You can’t expect perfection a hundred percent of the time, O Grand Taskmaster.” She steepled her hands and faked a bow. “I just defeated a possessed python the size of five kindergarteners end to end. My brain is completely fried. You’re lucky your shirt is still attached to your body.”
I laughed. “Well, the guts are gone, so that’s all that matters.”
“Of course that’s all that matters. Now, let’s get out of here. That carcass is making me gag and we need to get to Naomi and Danny. Plus, I want out before any more possessed reptiles slither out of the woodwork.”
I started after her. “After your impressive display of magic, and how handily we took care of the wolves, I don’t think the bokor will risk any more of her precious pets. We’re systematically reducing her flock of terror one creature at a time. I’m betting she won’t pull any punches till we show up at her front door.”
As we made it to one glowing tree, another would light up.
We quickened our pace, meaning we continued to stumble over roots and knotted growth as fast as we possibly could, mostly jumping from tree to tree. The only positive thing was there wasn’t any water. In the regular world this place would have water everywhere, seeping in between the trees. “I wonder how she filters the water out,” I pondered as we went. “Seems like too much hassle and energy to keep it dry here.”
Marcy grunted. “She must live in a house or something, so she needs land to operate. My guess is it’s just easier to spell the entire area the same way, rather than pick places to drain it. That’s what I’d do.”
“I wonder why the loa has left us alone. It must be able to do more than catch me off guard so I’m forced to grab on to a snake.”
“I have no idea, but I do know a loa is strongest right after it has a ride in its host. It siphons energy while it’s inside. So maybe this one wasn’t primed on enough bokor juice?” I made a face. “That was the best explanation I had.”
“Well, I hope that’s the case, because I’d prefer to fight a tired bokor—”
A scream rent the air, followed by a strangled howl.
It sounded like a cross between a wounded cub and an anguished siren. “Oh my gods, that’s Naomi!” But before I could move more than five paces forward, something crashed into me from the front, bowling me over.