Maximum Witch

chapter Fifteen


Willa clamped her hands over her ears, trying to mute the horrible noise. All around her, glass shattered, including the Taurus’s windshield. Fragmented shards pelted her knees and lap. When she moved to brush them off, Max slammed her hand back in place.

The sound of his voice was muffled, but she read his lips loud and clear. “Keep those on your ears, damn it.”

She wondered how he could take the screeching without his eardrums bleeding. He shifted in reverse, the Taurus bucking as the gears caught. The acceleration on the gas knocked her back in the seat. They hit something with enough force to make the vehicle jolt. A moment later it happened again. Max floored the gas, finally clearing the obstacle. She stared in bafflement at the buckled blacktop. Even while she tried to process what she was seeing, the parking lot and the driveway continued cracking, heaving asphalt in massive chunks.

The woman left the doorway, the shrill decibel of her shrieks making Willa cringe and curl into a fetal position, convinced her brain was about to explode. Tiny hairline cracks radiated across the surface of her eyeglasses, blurring her vision. The Taurus spun in a wide arc, bouncing with enough impact to jostle her in the seat. Somehow she managed to keep her arms banded tight to her head, but the hideous wailing seemed to have wormed inside her ears anyway. Tears leaking from her eyes, she willed the agony to stop.

They drove at a breakneck speed for several minutes. With the majority of the windshield now scattered on the floor, the relentless wind pummeled her unmercifully. Eventually the vehicle slowed and the discord in her head muted to an unpleasant ringing. She became aware of someone vigorously shaking her. Max. Concern riding every inch of his face, he pulled her hands away and began speaking, his voice muffled and tinny, as if it were coming from miles away.

“Willa, I said can you hear me?”

A tremble coursed through her and she began crying. She hated sobbing like a big baby. Especially in front of Max.

“Damn it. Hold tight. I’m taking you to Boone.”

The only thing she seemed capable of at the moment was nodding weakly as she struggled to keep her wind-whipped hair from blowing in her eyes. By the time they reached the small animal hospital on the outskirts of Savannah, she felt like she’d been through a tornado and survived. Barely.

Max rushed to her side of the car and wrenched the door open. He freed her from the seat belt and bundled her into his arms before running toward the brick building’s front entrance. A young woman in bright orange scrubs stood behind the check-in desk. She stared at them in bewilderment, but Max ignored the girl, jogging right past her and down a short corridor. He shoved open a battered wooden door that bore countless scratches and gouges, likely from the four-legged patients that typically roamed these halls.

Boone looked up from the medical equipment he was sterilizing, his eyebrows knitting when he spotted them. “What happened? Did she relapse?”

It took her a second to remember the leviathan bite that Boone had previously treated. Goddess that seemed like almost a different lifetime, when in actuality it’d only been two days ago.

Max carefully settled her on the edge of the stainless-steel examining table. “No, screaming siren. I’m not sure what the extent of the damage is on her eardrums.”

To Boone’s credit, he didn’t even bat an eye at the announcement. Unclipping a penlight from the breast pocket of his lab coat, he quickly clicked it on and moved beside her. He looked in her ears, occasionally giving a noncommittal hum. Then again, maybe what she mistook for humming was really the residual ringing inside her head. Tucking his knuckles beneath her chin, he coaxed her to meet his gaze. The cracked state of her eyeglasses made them more of a hindrance than anything, so she plucked them from her face and hooked them on the collar of her shirt.

Boone flashed the light in her eyes. “Are you experiencing any sort of pain?”

“Not really.”

Boone winced, leading her to believe she must have shouted the words. Jeez, it was hard to judge sound when your hearing was wonky. Mindful not to blast his eardrums, she deliberately lowered the pitch of her voice for the rest of her statement. “I thought my brain was going to detonate earlier, but now it’s mostly just…foggy.”

Pocketing his penlight, Boone gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Wrestling a leviathan wasn’t exciting enough for you, huh? Had to go and get in a yelling match with a siren. You’re damn lucky your eardrums didn’t rupture.”

She peered at Max, recalling how he hadn’t even covered his ears. “Why is it that you’re perfectly fine?”

“I’m immune to any siren’s call. All sharks are. I suspect you would be too, if your nymph side was fully integrated into your psyche.”

“Nymph side?” Boone parroted.

Max gave him a quick rundown of events without revealing Willa’s true identity. But even without that staggering part of the story, Boone still looked properly stunned. “Do you think the siren was Reva, and not merely one of her cronies?”

“I’d say it’s a good bet. I haven’t heard anything from Justin yet about word of his grandmother’s escape, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything if he truly wasn’t in the loop of what was going on. Speaking of being in the loop, I better get a hold of Jona and let him know we have a homicidal siren in our backyard.”

Max reached for his cell, and she strained to keep up with his side of the phone conversation, her panic escalating. If Reva Bellemuir had indeed escaped… “Aurele! We have to let her know what happened.”

As soon as Max finished talking to his deputy, he handed over his cell phone, and she frantically punched in Aurele’s number. When the voice mail kicked on, she practically screamed in frustration. After leaving the older woman a brief message about Reva’s appearance in Tybee, as well as terse orders for Aurele to call Max’s cell phone, Willa hung up and buried her face in her hands, helpless sobs racking her. Max’s strong arms surrounded her. Despite her resolve to at least pretend at being a steady rock, she clung to him. He stroked her hair, soothing her. His presence comforted, but it didn’t change the reality of the nightmare facing them.

Secured prison walls no longer protected the world from Reva Bellemuir’s hatred.

The countdown to Armageddon had just begun.