09 - Return Of The Witch (24 page)

“
How `bout your backup?”

He lifted his leg.
“.38 Special in my ankle holster.”

“
Got any gum?”

“
You need a piece of gum?”

“No. You
do. Your breath smells like burritos. Gypsy has a keen sense of smell.”

“Funny.”

He started away. I stopped him. “Carlos?”

“Yes?”

I pressed my hand to the gun tucked inside his shoulder holster. “This won’t stop her unless she’s in human form. You know that, don’t you?”

“
I know.”

“If
you see her take human form, you can’t hesitate just because she’s my mother. You don’t need to wait for her to demonstrate hostility. Her intentions are clear. If you have the shot, you need to take it.”

“Lilith, I’ve had to shoot people before.” He hiked his thumb up over his shoulder. “So has Dominic. We’re professionals.
When it comes down to it, we know what to do.”

I patted his jacked
again. “Of course you do.”

I
turned to Ursula, took her hands and cupped them in mine. “Urs, listen. This isn’t your battle.”

“
Oh?” She batted her eyes in childlike innocence.

I shook my head.
“See, this is what I mean. Things could get messy here. I know you’re a fine witch in your own right. You can make zip balls and what have you, but Gypsy’s powers are great. Yours are no match for hers. You have to remember, this is my fight. Her beef is with me, not you. No matter what happens, I want you to promise me you’ll keep out of it. Just stay in that office and keep your head down. You got that?”

“Sister,
by thine own words thou should listen. What better day lest we discover to get thee gone and live another?”

“
Run? No, I don’t think so.”

“Thou hast time to walk.”

“Urs, I’m not spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. This ends here and now.”

I let go of her hands, turned her around by the shoulders and
started her off with a gentle push. “Now go. All of you. Gypsy will be here any minute.”

As the three of them worked their way toward the supervisor’s office, I meandered through lanes of
rusted conveyors and settled in behind a stack of wooden crates at the southernmost corner of the building.

After just a few minutes, and way sooner than I expected,
Gypsy made her presence known by causing a rumble in the earth so great, it rattled the walls and shook blankets of dust down from the rafters.

B
arn bats and water rats took their cue from that, the former taking flight out the broken windows, the latter diving through holes in the floorboards.

It occurred to me then that maybe she had
been there all along. If so, she knew about Carlos and Dominic hiding up on the observation deck and Ursula in the office. It also meant she knew where I was hiding.

I crouch
ed and duck-walked around the crates to a less conspicuous spot behind a wooden trough once used to deliver fish to the conveyor lines. There, the floor had sustained considerable damage from the weight of the trough and the constant water leaks it presented. My sneakers were quiet enough on wood, but the rotted boards cracking under foot threatened to give my position away just the same.

I decided I had better
stop and play my cards right there, lest my movements give me away and rob me of any element of surprise I might have had.

S
omething near the weigh station moved. A sound like metal-on-metal pinged in one corner. In another, the flutter of wings gave a nesting pigeon’s hiding place away. I wondered if that hiding place was now free for me to take.

Things grew suddenly quiet after that.
A caped shadow swept silently across the wall. Was it a cloud passing over the skylight? My brain told me it was. My gut disagreed.

I took a deep breath and held it a moment.
The patter of footsteps echoed behind me. I removed the witch’s key from my pocket and slipped it over my head.

“Lilith?”

It was Gypsy. Her voice sounded distant as if uttered through a tunnel.

“
Lilith, you might as well come out and face me like a witch.”

My heart
hammered in staggered beats. I gasped and covered my mouth for fear that my very breath would give me away. Then I thought of Tony, what he would do if he had come here with a plan. He would not second-guess it. He’d just do it.

I poked my head up above the trough. She stood in a most conspicuous light, not caring that I could see her. Yet I knew she did
n’t see me, for she was looking toward the crates. Perhaps she had seen me take refuge there earlier.

I positioned myself in a narrow beam of sunlight streaming through a hole in the galvanized sheet metal.
With the witch’s key to my lips, I whispered this spell.

“
What light is dark and dark is light, a mirror image cast I might. Be one to all and hide no more, that she may see me on that floor
.”

I blew across the face of the key and cast a life-sized, 3-D image of myself out into the room. I knew it wouldn’t fool her for long, but I only needed to distract her for a couple of seconds, long enough to come out from behind the trough and whip up a zip ball without her seeing me.

Gypsy
confronted the hologram, though seemingly startled that I had appeared before her so suddenly. Without hesitating, I slipped under the elevated trough and stepped out into the open. I spun up a compact but powerful zip ball and called her name.

“Gypsy!”

She turned on her heels to face me, but I had already let it go. The zip ball tore across the room, slicing through Gypsy as if she were a mirage. It hit the wall behind her and exploded in a spider web of electrical discharge. The static energy traveled every inch of the sheet metal wall, along the ceiling and down the other side where it terminated in a white-hot arc that blew the lock and chains clear off the front doors.

I stood there dumbfounded, unable to move. I couldn’t imagine how she survived a direct hit like that. A compact zip ball should have drilled a hole right through her.

She saw me looking at her in wonder, shaking my head and disbelieving my eyes. Then she smiled that serpent’s grin, the one Tony used to think was mine alone. It wasn’t, of course. I may have gotten it from Gypsy, but she owned it, and I knew what it meant. She had gotten one over on me.

I realized
then, something peculiar about her stance. She appeared disproportionate to her surroundings. What’s more, although she stood in sunlight spilling in through the bayside window, she cast absolutely no shadow on the floor at all.

“
I don’t believe it,” I said. “You’re a hologram!”

The bitch had stolen my idea. Worse, she beat me at my own game and managed to flush me out
of hiding.

I
turned around and there she was only fifteen feet behind me. I staggered back to gain some distance. She pointed at me, releasing a steady stream of fire from the tip of her finger as if it were a blowtorch. I held the witch’s key up instinctively, bending the incoming flame and redirecting it skyward.

The
deflected flare hit one of the sprinkler heads in the rafters, setting off the entire sprinkler system, including the alarm. I was surprise that either of them were still in operation, let alone both. I used that diversion to slip back under the trough and make a break for cover.

Carlos and Spinelli
seized the opportunity to open fire on Gypsy from their position above the office. At first, Gypsy seemed too disoriented by the deluge pouring down from the sprinklers to know where the shots came from. But her quick action rendered that point moot.

With
a wave of her hand, she harnessed control over the elements of wind and water, redirecting every drop of sprinkler water to form a swirling barrel-like shield around her. When Carlos and Dominic ran out of bullets, she funneled that water into a torpedo sized tube and blasted the two of them clear off the observation deck.

By then, I had circled around Gypsy and come up with another plan. Using the witch’s key, I invested nearly every ounce of energy I had to create an instrument for trans-molecular diversion. I positioned
the key between two of the tallest stacks of crates I could find and triggered the dissipation of stagnant resistance between them. Through matter deflection, I was able to lift one of the stacks with a single finger and hurl it across the room at Gypsy.

Oh, what a beautiful thing, I thought. To see that tower of
wooden crates flying through the air gave me such a feeling of joy. I imagined it would hit Gypsy so hard, she wouldn’t even feel it. The only question left was where to bury her? Certainly, no one in Essex County would want her. I thought perhaps a nice burial at sea. That seemed fitting. I could drop her right next to Osama bin Laden.

Of course, Gypsy had other ideas.

As if she had eyes in the back of her head, Gypsy spun on a dime, put her hand out and delivered a shockwave that blasted the entire stack of crates to smithereens. Splintered wood flew like buckshot. Jagged pieces as large as tree limbs and as small as drumsticks scattered in a semi-circular pattern. The fragmented debris impaled everything in its path. If not for the second stack of crates shielding my position, they’d have skewered me as well.

I
thought my luck had run out. The only thing left was to try to reach Carlos and Spinelli, get my hands on one of their backup pieces and cap Gypsy’s ass.

I kept my head down and made a dash for the office. I knew she would see me, but I thought I was quick enough. Then it happened. She hit me with a second shockwave so powerful it lifted me off my feet and sent me
flying through the air. I crashed through the plate-glass window fronting the supervisor’s office.

As I struggled to get up, I noticed Ursula crouched under the desk, covering her head with her hands. She peaked out from a space between her arms and
waved.

“Art thou kicking ass now?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m kicking ass. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

I
got up and brushed the bits of tempered glass off my shoulders and out of my wet hair. As I stepped over the sill and back onto the cannery floor, I heard Gypsy say, “I’m surprised at you, Lilith. I’d thought you’d have more fight in you than this.”

“I ain’t done fighting yet, Gypsy.”

I couldn’t see her, but I knew she was close. Her voice no longer sounded as though it was coming through a tunnel. I walked out onto the open floor, more so to protect Ursula than to exercise any advantage it might offer me.

“Why don’t you just use the power of the quintessential?” she asked me, though it came out more as a sarcastic dare.

I answered back though gritted teeth, “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. I don’t have the quintessential.”

“Hmm,” she said, and it sounded as though it came from all around me. “In that case, there’s no reason to spare you.”

“What? Have you been going easy on me up until now?”

She didn’t answer.

“Well, just so you know. I’ve been going easy on you. Ha! What do you say to that?”

She didn’t have to say anything, but
then action speaks louder than words. I heard a click like that from a solenoid switch, and then a mechanical clunk. The rattle of heavy chains on block and tackle followed.

I looked up at the ceiling and let the sprinkler water splash my face. It felt col
d and refreshing, and reminded me of the salty spray that greets me out on the jetty at Gloucester Beach. Oh, if I were only out on Gloucester Beach right now, I thought, instead of pissing around with Gypsy, fighting about something I didn’t really understand.

As I squinted into the falling drops, I noticed
an overhead bridge crane, its trolley rolling along double steel girders. Attached to its block and hook was a cable; hanging from that, a Dumpster-like container the size of a minivan.

I think I actually laughed aloud, thinking how crazy Gypsy was if she thought I wouldn’t simply step out from under the load once it centered over me. But the laugh was on me.

As I tried to step back, I found that my feet wouldn’t oblige. Further attempts to initiate muscle movement with any part of my body proved equally fruitless. I had lost all command between brain and muscle from the neck down.

“What the hell did you do, Gypsy? Why can’t I move?”

My head was tilted back, my eyes blinking into sprinkler drops. Yet in my periphery, I could see her. She had formed a sort of air dome over her head that deflected the falling water like an umbrella. It moved as she moved; stopped when she stopped. Damn, she was good at that.

“You don’t know what I’ve done?” she said
to me. That sarcastic tone was in her voice again.