Bravo barked with rage.
Jill got Elaine back into the suite, grabbing Bravo by the collar as well.
Brinke recovered first, rising to a knee and extending her thumb and little finger. Twin beams of pink energy flowed as though from a high-pressure hose.
Violina blew like she was dousing a match, making the pink light disperse into harmless, quick-fading sparks.
Brinke stood and helped Ysabella to a stand, from which she continued forward, flying like a rocket with glowing hands outstretched.
“Des Irtix!” Violina shouted. The words turned to a black net that opened to entwine Ysabella. It burned away on contact, but Ysabella continued forward, her hands a battering ram to Violina’s chest, knocking her back into the elevator doors.
Ysabella, momentarily spent, fell to her hands and knees with a grunt.
Stella glanced into the suite to check on her frightened little girls, relieved to see Leticia dragging them away from the door.
“Think iceberg!” Brinke shouted, as she grabbed Stella’s hand.
A starburst of blue light sailed over Ysabella and fell on Violina like a boulder, spreading across her body. As the glow died, ice remained, trapping Violina, the momentum knocking the frozen witch statue onto her back.
Ysabella struggled to her feet and stumbled toward the other witches. “It’s not enough! We three must…!”
A tinkling sound told them Violina had already broken free. She rose like a catapult, her left hand extended and cupped. A violet bubble grew and flew from it, enveloping Ysabella.
Brinke and Stella watched in horror as the energy blister began to close in on the elder witch like shrink-wrap. Ysabella’s scream was silent within the vesicle, but her pain and terror were plain for all to see.
The bubble trap crushed in on the old woman at alarming speed.
Brinke knew how this spell worked, knew that Ysabella would soon be a basketball-sized bag of crushed flesh. “Stop it, damn you, Violina!”
“Why, of course!” said Violina. “Just relinquish your magic energy to me, and I’ll let her hobble back to bed.”
“What is she talking about?” asked Stella.
“There’s a spell of transference,” Brinke said in a defeated voice. “I used it to revive Ysabella.”
“You too, my fledgling friend,” Violina said to Stella. “You will repeat her chant and grant me your powers…such as they are.”
Stella glanced toward the little girls and saw they were huddled with the terrified Leticia against the bedroom’s far wall. “All right.”
Violina stopped the bubble’s shrinking by turning her cupped hand sideways. “Begin.”
Brinke wept as she did. “Crotus Keemay Kah…”
Stella regretfully repeated.
“Sunoo Gemma Kah…”
Stella felt a pull, a draining from her solar plexus, like a powerful vacuum hose was pressed to it. “Sunoo Gemma…”
“’Scuse me.” She was shoved to the side.
Dennis stood beside her, his chin and shirtfront drenched in blood from his broken nose. In his right hand was Matlida Saxon’s athame, held aloft.
Dennis slung his arm like a baseball pitcher. The athame appeared in Violina’s throat. As if by magic.
Stella stared at him in astonishment.
“I took a mail order ninja course when I was Stuart’s age,” he said, sounding congested.
Violina grabbed the handle of the athame and began reciting an incantation, which came out as mere lip movement. This quickly trailed off as the baneful witch toppled face-forward, plunging the knife point through the back of her own neck as she landed face-first.
The bubble around Ysabella dissolved to a fine mist. She gulped fresh, glorious air. Dennis went to her, offering a helping hand. “I ain’t trying to be no nick-of-time cowboy here,” he said, “but I owed that bitch.”
He took a black bandana from his pocket and wiped his bloody nose and chin. “Besides, you ladies are gonna need all the magic you got for our real problem.”
Jill blindsided him, driving him against the wall as she laid a kiss on him that seemed shockingly violent to the onlookers. Their age of celibacy was quickly coming to an end.
Chapter 31
Walk Among Us
Trapped at dead center of the Community Center’s gym floor, Reverend McGlazer, the Stuyvesant siblings, Bernard Riesling and Timbo formed a tight circle facing out. Timbo chambered another round in his rifle but held off from shooting, considering the ratio of bullets to assailants.
The pumpkin goblin at the window just above them opened its mouth so wide its unsettlingly human teeth began to space out from one another. It squeezed its eyes shut in a sick farce of human pain—and vomited.
Reflexively, the survivors stepped back from the yellowish splash of pungent water and pulp. Kerwin’s grunt reminded them that there were tentacles waiting for them if they fell within reach.
Then came another stream of pumpkin puke. Then another. The goddamned squash monsters were trying to hurl on them for some reason. Timbo raised his rifle, gratified to see the wretched, retching horrors quickly duck out of range.
“Oh, God,” Mayor Stuyvesant whispered. “No…” She clutched her brother by the sleeves.
The first puke puddle was…doing something.
The seeds clumped amid the pools went into a hyper-fast growth stage, expanding to small mottled green spheres, then yellow ovoids, quickly darkening to orange as they swelled.
“They barfed up babies or something!” Stuart exclaimed, nearly running backward from the weight-room window.
Pockets set off a choir of frightened whining.
“Oh, man…” DeShaun saw for himself, and instantly regretted, for the kids’ sake, the defeated tone in his voice. “I mean…um, this might take some…wait!”
“What!?”
“In your backpack. The…”
“Atomic Corndog!” Stuart interrupted. “Hells, yeah!”
DeShaun knelt and grabbed Pockets by the shoulders. “Listen, buddy. There’s a job you gotta do, okay?”
Pockets shook his head vigorously. “No!”
“Everybody’s depending on you!”
Pockets started bawling as he nodded his affirmative, regretting that he was rising to the occasion.
* * * *
“What about your friend?” Ophelia asked Pedro, as he pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office.
Wrapped in a blanket, Deputy Yoshida lay in a cramped heap in the back of Pedro’s Honda, while Ophelia and her mother sat crunched together in the passenger seat.
“Keep it down. It’s been a while since he had some decent shut-eye.”
Thunder sounded. Pedro glanced back at Yoshida, both relieved
