The witch queen stopped mid-spin, unaffected by the law of momentum. Without opening their eyes, Brinke, Stella and Candace followed suit a split second later, all facing toward the Community Center.
The first leering, fiendish face, peering down from the roof of the now-closed sporting-goods shop, put a serious dent in their collective resolve and courage. Stella felt Candace grip her hand harder.
When it roared down at them, yellowy saliva spraying from its unnatural maw, a withering wave coursed through the coven. Ysabella’s power and determination quickly brought everyone back.
She began to turn again, in the opposite direction. “Spirits! Bring down the rain!” they all intoned. “Reverse the tide of infection! Halt the impetus of evil!”
The sky began to rumble again, sounding less like invasion, more like cleansing.
The horror on the roof leaped to the ground and charged, only to be bounced back violently by the invisible wall of the magic circle.
Gaelic flowed seamlessly into Greek, then Chinese, then Arabic, the feminine chorus a perfect harmony of goddess-mother intention, with no hesitation or lag time from one woman to the next, child or crone.
A half dozen more orange goblins appeared, all eager to test the circle, all quick to learn their lesson.
Clouds that had just separated and dispersed now rejoined. Flashing within was a vital bright green.
Now smaller pumpkins, soulless children of the original horde, began to appear and crawl toward the circle, threatening, but for the moment harmless.
“Strike down the pestilence!” said Ysabella/Candace/Stella/Brinke.
The first strike turned the autumn night to a brief green day.
The living pumpkins skittered back, but quickly regrouped, congregating and mingling in a way that suggested a hive-mind.
* * * *
The pumpkin things swarming around the witches’ circle numbered well into the dozens. Ranging in size from normal to the diameter of a delivery truck, the Halloween hellions crawled between and over one another to get to the border. But they could not cross.
They voiced their frustration with crusty croaks that scratched at the witches’ ears like broken glass.
Candace understood why Ysabella had suggested it be her hand that Candace held as they performed the ritual. Her mom, Stella, was as brave they came, but as a novice witch, she was probably trembling hard enough to shake teeth loose by now.
Ysabella’s hand was soft, strong, loving, determined and unwavering. The predatory shrieking and scrabbling taking place just a few yards away was impossible to ignore. But thanks to the crone, it was manageable for Candace.
Ysabella thrust her hands out in a command to stop.
The brisk, chaotic winds that blew from the south as part of Violina’s maelstrom went dead still, like a wall of thickened air.
In this quiet, the song of the witches was distinct, its harmony both soothing and enervating.
Distracted by this sudden shift, the demonic pumpkins went still.
Ysabella began a new chant. As before, all the enchantresses joined without hesitation.
By the third repetition, a new wind, steady and smooth, began to blow from the north. It smelled like a clean mountain stream.
The monsters raised a collective roar of rage, jostling one another as they surged against the invisible barrier of the circle.
Behind the witches, the theater’s entry doors exploded. Vein-severing shards rocketed at the witches. The spell had not accounted for the intrusion of such a mundane material.
Candace felt the glass missiles punch into her back and legs like a coordinated hornet attack.
Flying fragments cut across the chalk and salt, opening the circle. Demonic, demented faces bobbed from the shattered doors.
Stella eyed the crone with defeated horror. “They came through the th—”
“Do not stop the chant!” Ysabella called, to Stella and everyone, as she turned her diminutive body to face the cinema entrance. She directed her hands at the demons and issued an incantation that blew the monster mob back into the building.
It took a second before the women fell back into their rhythm. With the circle broken, they spoke now with less assurance. Brinke gasped at seeing one of the things doing its best to wipe away a section of the salt and chalk to create a weakness.
“Broma Hasha!” she exclaimed. The invading tentacle burst into sparks like a fuse that traveled back toward the pumpkin demon. Squalling, it dashed its tendril on the ground, trying to extinguish it before it traveled to the thing’s misshapen body.
It was unsuccessful. The thing became essentially an enormous smoke bomb, fizzing away to nothingness the same way Everett Geelens had when Matilda Saxon’s powdery mix met his skin. Lacking the time to designate a destination for the unwilling time traveler, Brinke could only hope it emerged into the ocean or desert, somewhere it could not hurt anyone.
It was not the best spell for the job. She had panicked. The execution was taxing for someone who had just given up twenty years of her life less than an hour earlier. Brinke dropped painfully to her knees, her head spinning.
Yet she did not stop chanting.
From the right of the circle, one of the monsters ejected a stream of seeds and hate. It passed over the circle but immediately steamed away to nothingness.
Ysabella leaned down to Candace. “Imagine the strongest, most powerful and loudest lightning you can!” she commanded. “Not red but green.”
Ysabella patted the girl on the head and returned to the chant.
Candace whispered, pointing at the nearest of the demons. “That one!”
The fierce green streak fell with a deafening crack, blasting the creature to bloody pieces.
The other monsters recoiled from the ruins of their comrade.
Candace pointed at one that was opening its mouth to try to vomit over the circle.
It was disintegrated in an instant.
The other witches placed hands on Candace to transfer courage and power.
Lightning bolts fell like the rain itself, vaporizing the assailants every split second, then several at a time.
They scuttled away like frightened crabs but could not avoid the focused imagination of the little girls and their adult batteries.
* * * *
Settlement
