Marcy was propped against a tree. “If this bokor is indeed trying to steal Naomi’s power and stuff it into a fetish, she’d need to perform some kind of ceremony to do it. That’s a huge magic transfer. It can’t be rushed. If changing Danny into one of her zombie wolves is on the agenda as well, who knows how long that will take? But my guess is she has to prepare some kind of mumbo-jumbo potion first. So maybe you’re right. We are interrupting her and she’s not happy.”
I shuddered, and my arms prickled as thoughts of harm coming to Danny or Naomi washed over me. “I guess that means we double our pace and hurry. Juanita wants us to get there or she wouldn’t be leading the way. Let’s go.”
We maneuvered through the trees as fast as we could manage. We made it about fifty yards when something slammed into me from the side. I was caught completely off guard, and grabbed on to a root to steady myself.
At least I thought it was a root.
When it moved with me, and I fell to the ground, I knew something was wrong.
Marcy shrieked, “It’s unraveling quickly! Let go before it wraps its slithery, awful body around you!”
The thing hissed, its forked tongue inches from my face. I was on my back, but thankfully I had a tight grip on it behind the neck. Its red eyes pulsed, but there was also something else there. “Marcy, I bet we can kill these zombie snakes just like the wolves. Get your knife out!”
She was beside me in an instant, her hand steadily gripping her new best friend. “That thing reeks of magic. It might not work.”
The bottom of the python’s massive body slithered around my legs. It was getting ready to strangle the life out of me. “Marcy, use one of your spells at the same time you stab it. It can’t hurt.” The muscles in the snake’s body were heavy and rigid, like they’d been reinforced with steel. And Marcy was right—there was powerful magic attached to it.
“Okay, but if a verbal spell isn’t strong enough, we’ll have to use one of the dark ones.” Marcy began chanting, and the air around us tingled with power. The snake’s gaze slid toward her as it began to vibrate under my grasp. “Marcy, it’s working! Now stab it and see what happens.”
Marcy was clearly in a zone, but she moved forward, her eyes glazed in concentration as she expertly struck the snake right behind the eyes. She used so much strength, the knife lodged into its brain and she couldn’t pull it out. The red eyes above me began to blink like Christmas lights on the fritz.
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.”