Witch Blues: A Marshal of Magic tale (The Marshal of Magic Series Book 2)
Author: Lowry, Chris
Date: 2019-02-06

WITCHMAS

a Marshal of Magic story

by

Chris Lowry

@copyright 2016

Grand Ozark Media

All rights reserved

Can I send you a copy of GUNS AND MAGIC – A Marshal of Magic Tale for free?

Other works by the author

CHAPTER ONE

A trio of witches gathered on the edge of a parking lot at an abandoned warehouse between the airport and downtown. The property had once housed a furniture supply store in the fifties but was derelict for the past forty years. The time had not been kind.

Teenage vandals broke the windows with chunks of concrete and rock, which let in the elements. Rain, ice, snow and storms had worked their way through the wooden interior so that all that remained was the brick shell, and the occasional still standing wooden floor in the five-story building.

The homeless population of Memphis had scurried through the windows seeking any form of shelter from the harsh winds that roared down the Mississippi River. Some died in collapses, others were killed during infighting, and gang initiation rituals. It was a dead place, a dead building haunted by faded memories.

"Can you feel it?" whispered Hilda.

She was taller than average, beautiful in a cold ice queen manner, and stood in front of her two compatriots at a point of a triangle drizzled in blood on the cracked concrete.

"The ghosts are calling," answered the shorter one on the left.

She had long curly red hair that cascaded down to the small of her back and delicate features that made her look like the youngest, and a small silver necklace made of letters that read Cassidy, her name.

"This is going to be fantastic," growled Hilda in a husky rumble.

The third witch pulled a grimoire, a book of magic, from a messenger bag on her hip.

"This should be enough."

"It will be enough," said Hilda.

She bent down and scratched another symbol onto the ground in front of the triangle. She pulled a small penknife from a pocket on her dress and pricked her finger to infuse the rune with her lifeblood.

A breeze whistled across the lot, stirring up dust and debris.

"Now," she said.

Carla opened the grimoire to a marked page and ran her finger over the text. It was in Latin, written in a faded calligraphy in splotchy brown ink that barely stood out on the parchment.

"We call on thee."

Cassidy mouthed the words with her.

"Again," ordered Hilda.

"We call on thee," they said together.

It flowed into a chant, slow and melodic. Their voices blended in a vibrating harmony that echoed against the pockmarked brick and bounced back toward them.

Wind stirred again, and ghostly apparitions began to gather on the edge of the lot, leaking through the cracked windows in the building, surrounding the trio.

Carla set the grimoire down behind them and pulled a white rabbit out of her pouch.

It squirmed in her hands and she clenched down tighter.

Hilda reached back with one hand and Carla passed the rabbit to her.

She held up the passive bunny and sliced open it's throat with the penknife. She dripped the blood across the rune. Her voice joined the others as she drew a line from the rune to the tip of the triangle.

"We call on thee, we call on thee, we call on thee."

The blood reached the triangle and red light erupted from the rune to burn against the brick wall. Ghostly figures were drawn toward the light and sucked into it.

A black clawed hand reached through the portal and gripped an edge. It pulled the opening a little wider, enough for a second hand to jab through. Now it had two hands on the portal and ripped it open. A sound like fabric tearing accompanied by ghostly moans roared through the air.

A giant head emerged from the dark hole. A massive red face framed by ram's horns and a hyper muscular body, like a caricature of a comic book hero slid through the opening and rolled into a wary stance.

It flexed massive shoulders and turned its head to the wind to sniff. It was nine feet tall, shoulders broad and defined, with a hairy pelt that ran down its spiny back.

"Sullamaie," Hilda smiled.

She dropped the rabbit and unfastened her dress. It fell to the ground and puddled around her feet.

"Sullamaie," she said again.

The creature turned to face her and leered.

Hilda settled back on the concrete, her feet still at the point of the triangle. She opened her knees and invited the demon to take her.

"Sullamaie," Cassidy and Carla said with her.

The demon rumbled toward them. It kneeled in front of Hilda, planted a hand on the ground and jammed into her.

She bit back a scream.

The demon tilted back its head and roared.

It finished in a moment and rose.

Cassidy dropped her dress and kneeled on all fours into the triangle.

The demon sniffed and moved to her next.

Her hair fell across Hilda's face as they stared at each other, eyes locked. Cassidy wasn't as strong and shrieked as the monster took her.

"Sullamaie," Hilda reached up and caressed the young witch's face.

"Sullamaie," said Carla.

The demon growled again and leered at Carla with bloodshot bulbous eyes.

She dropped her dress and fell forward on her hands and knees.

All three witches were in the triangle.

The beast moved to Carla and grabbed her waist with massive hands. She screamed too.

Cassidy and Hilda put their hands on top of hers as they chanted.

It finished again with a roar that split the night air. Carla collapsed beside her fallen coven. The witches stopped their chant.

The beast dug clawed fingertips into the ground gouging claw marks into the concrete as it was slowly drawn back into the portal. It bellowed in defiance.

A shadow darted across the parking lot and scooped up the Grimoire.

Cassidy reached for the book thief.

"No," shouted Hilda.

Too late.

Cassidy's foot scuffed through the blood and broke the plane of the triangle.

The portal collapsed with the demon still on this side.

It roared and bounded toward the witches.

Hilda scrambled up.

"Fortress," she screamed and crossed her arms in an X in front of her naked chest.

The demon bounced off an invisible field. It roared again and ran for the edge of the parking lot.

"Damn," Hilda muttered.

She glanced at the thief as he disappeared through a hole in the fence on the opposite side of the parking lot.

"What do we do?" Cassidy asked.

She held her head down and refused to meet Hilda's burning gaze.

"The thief of course," she spat. "He has our property."

Carla held out their dirt encrusted dresses and they donned them.

"We can't summon Sullamaie without the grimoire," she said.

Cassidy nodded.

"He's going to do some damage."

Hilda caressed her stomach.

"Damage was the plan all along," she smiled.

CHAPTER TWO

He paused at the edge of the fence to look back over his shoulder. The witches were getting dressed. At least that's what he thought they were, witches or some other type of supernatural villain.

They had to be villains because what type of person summons a demon and then does that with them.

It couldn't be for any good purpose that was for damn sure.

Tyrone took off through the brush and bounded up on a railroad track.

He was less than a mile from downtown and the small pub where he was supposed to meet the man who hired him.

After the meeting, he had one plan.

Get the hell out of Dodge, because that giant bullheaded demon didn't make it back to the underworld or wherever else it had come from. It was currently running loose in Memphis, and the direction it was headed in took it straight to St. Jude's.

He wondered if he should call the police.

Wouldn't that be an ironic little kick?

A thief calling the cops to ask for help.

Technically it wouldn't be help. Tyrone would be warning them about a disaster in the making, though he wasn't sure they would believe him.

He wasn't quite ready to believe it himself even though he had watched the ritual and summoning with his own eyes.

"Damn," he said and scrambled down the railway embankment to cut across a ditch.

He could see the baseball stadium up the road several blocks away. There were cars lined on either side of the road which meant people, but he didn't slow or relax.

The streetlights on this side of town were still subject to being shot out or knocked out, and the streets were bathed in darkness.

The man who hired him had warned of supernatural AND mortal bad guys and Tyrone was a man of caution.

His erstwhile employer and predicted the ritual, and advised the best time to grab the book, and had paid in cash with a promise of more to follow on delivery.

He was accurate in prediction, so Tyrone thought he would listen when it came to the warnings as well.

He could smell a wind blowing off the muddy waters of the Mississippi River, the sickly sweet stench of dirt and decay that carried laughter and strains of blues guitar off Beale Street.

The bar wasn't far now.

He heard a roar from the east, something that sounded like a cross between a lion and Godzilla.

Even though he was running fast, he ratcheted it up a notch or two to go even faster.

CHAPTER THREE

Before that movie came out, you could have called magic the fifth element. I hesitate to even use the word magic because it conjures (see what I did there?!) up images straight out of Vegas.

Damn illusionists.

They fool everyone into thinking that has something to do with magic, or the tricksters who roam around in cheap tuxedo's pulling rabbits from hats. They're pale imitations of what Magic is really about.

I was nervous and taking it out on poor mildly talented hacks. Be glad there weren't any around, although a street performer on the corner up from Beale was using sleight of hand and misdirection to entertain the pre-ball game crowd.

It was a Tuesday night in Memphis, the Snowbirds were getting ready to play and I was on my first blind date in eighteen years. Nineteen years. It had been so long, I couldn't remember.

How I fooled someone into setting me up on a blind date is a whole story in itself, as was the reason I haven't been on one in practically forever.

I selected the bar because of its proximity to her neighborhood, which was on the river and just North of 240. Downtown crowds would be thick, but during the game, the bars and pubs tended to empty out as people wandered to the stadium.

There would be plenty of people watching as the game let out, just in case the conversation was running light, and of course the pub since libation is the best social lubricant ever created outside of a love potion.

Love potions are illegal by the way and if I catch you using one, I'm legally obligated to arrest, detain or even kill you depending on the severity of the offense.

If you're a wizard, that is.

The badge on my belt lets me do that.

The power in my will lets me enforce it.

Marshal of Magic.

That's my title, and job, and even though I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a calling, I'm pretty darn good at it.

Most of the time.

That's because I'm lucky.

Very lucky.

At least at magic.

Right now, I didn't feel very lucky as I stared at the clock above the bar for what must have been the hundredth time.

I did it enough to make the bartender notice and she shot a dimpled smile my way.

"You need another hon?"

I tilted up the brown bottle and swirled around the two sips of brew inside.

"Please," I said and swallowed the rest of the Southern Pecan craft beer down with a satisfied grunt. It wasn't ambrosia but smacked pretty good of being a powerful social lubricant.

She popped the top on a bottle and swiped it in place of the empty in front of me. I appreciated the artistry.

There was a mirror that ran the length of the bar and I faced it full on so I could watch the door.

I didn't look that bad tonight.

Not for a ninety-five-year-old man.

I didn't look it though. That's a perk of being a wizard, the slow aging process. I was born in 1921 and looked forty. I'd look forty for the next three or four hundred years, and then age slowly over the next hundred or so more.

If I lasted that long.

Most Marshall's didn't.

I'd had the job for two decades which made me practically an old timer in the ranks.

I looked old in the eyes, I thought.

But after what I'd seen in the Sidhe Wars, which you called World War II, and the Fairy incursions, on top of the hunting of Warlocks and Sorcerers and Sorceresses which were what we called Wizards gone to the dark side, I wasn't surprised.

She was definitely late.

I had arrived early.

Like I said, nervous.

Eyes up at the clock again. Fifteen minutes late.

"Damn it." I sipped the beer, and pondered why being stood up bothered us as a people so much.

Nobody liked rejection, but it's not like I knew the woman who was a no show. The cold heartless woman who probably hated dogs.

The door opened and my heart fluttered.

A young sweating black guy flitted in.

He pulled the door shut after him and glanced around the room.

I knew that look, so I glanced around the room too.

He scowled.

I guess the person or persons he was supposed to meet wasn't there either.

Or maybe he was stood up too.

He walked toward the back and caught me staring in the mirror, giving him some serious eyeball.

"Who the hell are you?"

I turned around and set my back to the bar. Sure the mirror was great for watching the comings and the goings, but nothing beats a good old fashioned face to face when you do this.

I slipped open the side of my leather coat to reveal my badge.

"Marshal?" he squeaked and blanched.

Totally worth it. Every time.

I did the eye thing up and down, trying to track details. I wasn't too worried about him. He didn't give off that low level vibration users of magic can feel off of each other, and my precog always gave me about two seconds of a head start on anything.

"Nice grimoire," I said.

He glanced down at the book, then started to shove it in a backpack over one shoulder.

I let my hand ease down to the edge of my belt.

"You don't look like a practitioner."

The Judge said a couple of us Marshal's watched too many Westerns growing up, that we had this sense of spell casting like gun slinging.

But I was the Marshal of the East. If you think I was bad you should see the guy from the West.

The young man in front of me licked his lips.

"I- um-"

Um is the universal signal. It lets the person you're talking to know that you are now about to lie your ass off, and that your mouth was engaged before your brain started.

"I'm meeting someone it belongs to," said the man.

Nice recovery.

"What's your name?"

I used the squinty eye thing a lot of people know from Clint. Clint rocks by the way.

"Tyrone," he answered.

"Tyrone," I rolled it around my tongue. "You're playing with forces that are beyond your ken."

He nodded and wiped the back of his hand across his sweaty brow.

"Don't I know it."

"Why don't you just leave that with me," I suggested and patted the bar.

He looked like he wanted to.

"I would, sir," he said.

Sir? Do I look like a sir? Or was it just a respect thing?

"But I can't," he finished.

I nodded.

Didn't have to talk.

Just squinted.

I let my eyes say it all.

Feeling lucky?

The door opened and she walked in.

My heart did that flutter thing again as I saw her.

Auburn hair to just her shoulders, athletic, pretty face framed behind sensible glasses and a fashionable business suit. She looked frazzled, like a person who had been delayed by circumstances beyond their control. A little crease was on her brow as she glanced around the room and her eyes settled on me.

She smiled.

I'm a sucker for a gorgeous smile.

There's just something contagious about them.

I smiled back.

Tyrone smiled too.

Damn it Tyrone, I can't be tough and sweet at the same time.

I motioned him to move along with my head.

That grimoire might not have been his, and I didn't know the whole story but Tyrone had dealt with the law before, that much I was sure.

He nodded again and skedaddled to a table in the back. Fast.

She moved across the room and slid up on a barstool beside me.

Smiled again as I spun around.

"Sorry I'm late, but parking was a bitch."

She waved a finger to the bartender and asked for a martini.

"Was it my idea to meet down here on a game night?" she asked.

She knew whose idea it was.

Too bad my luck didn't extend to zingers.

CHAPTER FOUR

Her name was Gloria. I figured it all on my own when she introduced herself.

“Hi, I'm Gloria."

She shook hands with a firm grip and eye contact. Four pumps up and down, full of confidence and elegance.

I almost didn't let go of her long fingers.

"Gloria," I said and she shivered.

I swear I didn't use magic on her.

It's just names have power, and sometimes when a magic user is feeling something, they accidentally use emphasis on the name, which releases a tingle of power.

Ever felt a ghost cross your grave? Or goosebumps when someone whispers in your ear?

That's magic folks.

Sometimes it's even accidental.

She smiled on purpose.

"I like the way you say my name."

She winked.

I took a sip of my craft beer, afraid I might say more.

She got her martini. Dirty.

My gut was a tumble of emotions, because of a few reasons. She was gorgeous, we had a chemical connection, one of those odd things you run across every so often where you meet a stranger and instantly they like you, and you like them and there's a hint of disrobing at some point involved.

Plus it had been awhile for me.

A long while.

Nervous, remember?

"I'm a little nervous," she confided.

"You're not the only one."

"Why?" she asked. "It's not like I don't talk to strangers every day. If I met you in line at the grocery store, we could talk about nothing for a while."

"It's the title."

"Date?"

"Too many connotations. Annotations."

She sipped her martini and watched me over the edge of the glass. Her eyes sparkled.

"Maybe you're right," she said. "There is power in words."

A little tickle crisscrossed the hairs on the back of my neck.

The door opened and three beautiful women stepped through.

"A lot more power than you think," I said to Gloria.

The newcomers had a bad case of bed head. All three of them. The lecherous part of me wondered if they caused it to each other. The more reasonable side of me felt the vibrations from across the room.

They used magic, strong wizards by the vibes they were shooting and they were pissed.

I thought about Tyrone and the grimoire stashed in his pouch.

"Am I not distracting enough?" Gloria teased.

I glanced up to see her watching me watch the women across the room. They lined up to form three points of a triangle, the tallest one in front.

Scratch wizards then, witches.

I eased up to the edge of the barstool, planted one foot on the ground.

Witches normally needed time to construct a spell. Their magic was ritualized and needed focus.

Very powerful witches could skip a ritual with certain spells.

Certain destructive spells.

A powerful witch backed by two of her coven could do some real damage.

The lead witch glared toward the back of the room where Tyrone ducked behind a table.

Her fingers started weaving a tiny spell, something that looked pinpoint and precise.

Probably aimed at Tyrone.

Probably designed to kill him.

I slid off the stool and stood.

"Will you pardon me a moment," I said out of the corner of my mouth to Gloria.

I didn't wait for her answer.

CHAPTER FIVE

I sauntered up to the tall witch and looked her straight in the nose. Seriously, she was WNBA material. Not willowy either, but proportioned like an athlete who met a supermodel and had a tall evil witch for a baby.

I know it was a saunter cause I practiced.

"Excuse me ladies while I whip this out," I said and pulled my leather bomber aside to reveal the badge.

It does the job.

Tall girl McTallieson shifted her glare from Tyrone to me and then down to the badge. Eyes go a little wide, not too much, so I know she's playing it cool.

But I was watching for it.

Bad guys react two ways when encountering a Marshall of Magic.

They either go for the spell, in which case we are obligated to waste them. Or if they are smart, they back down.

Most Magic users are smart.

Marshal's sort of have a reputation. Spell first, ask questions later kinda reputation.

We don't discourage it since we have to go up against some very strong warlocks, and baddies. And Trolls.

Don't even get me started on Trolls.

"Sir," she said and stepped out of the point of the triangle.

Her two witch friends let their hands slip off her shoulders.

The vibration in the room ratcheted down a notch.

I let go of a breath I didn't know I was holding.

"Thank you," I said. "Want to tell me what this is about?"

"None of your concern Wizard," growled the taller of the two in back.

Growled at me?

Now if that isn't a sign someone is hiding something and has a grudge to go with it I'm not sure what is.

"I know most of the talent in the area," I said. "I don't know you."

I let the bomber fall closed and hooked one thumb on the outside pocket, just in case. My bomber, like most Wizard's clothes, had been warded many times over. I was a little pissed I skipped the Kevlar vest I usually wear underneath, but come on, who wears Kevlar on a first date?

If the witches were packing heat, I could be in trouble.

"We're from out of town," said the tall one.

She waved a hand behind her back to keep the other two quiet. She was going to handle me.

"I think we just established that with the whole me not knowing you remark."

Her eyes narrowed.

I squinted more than she did.

"We are up from Jackson," she said.

"I patrol Jackson," I said. "What brings you to Memphis?"

"We're Snowbird fans," she smiled.

It was a great smile, a total knockout. Combined with her frame and her face, it was gorgeous. And wasted on me.

"They're having a good season," I nodded. "Games about to begin."

"We would just like a word with that gentleman," she motioned toward Tyrone.

"What word?"

She smiled again.

"Not that kind of word," she answered. "After all, this is a very public forum."

"It is that."

We stared at each other for a moment.

"Just a word," she said.

"Not too many more than one. I wouldn't want you to be late for the game."

She took a step toward Tyrone. I noted all three were pregnant, which surprised me that I hadn't noticed before. Little round bulges protruded from the front of their long flowing dresses.

My precog extends to me and me only.

If the witches were going to do something to Tyrone, he wouldn't have my luck. I was relying on the fact that they knew the consequences of using magic inside this pub.

We were in the world and though millions of people believed in magic in the US, not many needed to see it.

Especially witches who planned bad things for what I took to be a young thief in way over his head.

The witches approached Tyrone and blocked his exits. He scooted far back into the booth, pressed up against the wall. He held the book bag in front of him, but crossed both arms over it.

Gloria put a hand on my shoulder.

I'm not saying I jumped. Flinched maybe. Blanched a little.

But I did not jump.

Dang, I shouldn't have been so focused on the witches and their quarry.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Nothing yet."

"Do you know them?"

I turned to her, but kept Tyrone in the edge of my vision as I led us back to our seats.

"Let's say I know their type."

"What type is that?"

"Not good."

"Maybe we're at that part of the date where we tell each other what we do?" she said. "Are you a cop?"

I smiled.

"I'm not a cop."

"Law enforcement of some kind then."

"What makes you say that?" I kept up the grin and slid her martini glass closer to her hand. She took a sip.

"You jumped off this stool to confront them very quickly."

"Yes," I said. "I'm in the enforcement business."

"Can't tell me more? I bet you have a lot of stories to tell."

"Not as many as you might think."

She reached up and touched a thin white line that ran from my temple to behind my ear.

You don't really say "I got that in the Sidhe War," to anyone outside the community.

"Why don't you tell me about your job?" I asked.

The tall witch was pointing a finger at Tyrone as he cowered. She wasn't yelling but with that level of threat you don't really need to raise your voice.

"Investments," she answered. "Real Estate, Start Up's, the like."

"Good money in that?"

"Do you want to go over there?"

I looked away from the trio back to her.

"That was rude of me," I said. "I'm sorry."

"They're very attractive."

"That's not it. They're trouble. I'm just trying to decide what kind and how much."

"Then go back there," she said.

"You don't mind?"

"I think if you go take care of it, we could focus on this date and you telling me how you earned that scar."

I nodded and slid off the stool for a second time that night.

"Go rescue the boy," she said and called the bartender over for another martini.

CHAPTER SIX

There are Twelve Marshal's on seven continents. Even Antarctica gets one, though the population hovers roughly around one hundred. She's based out of Peru and covers a portion of South America to help out the Sao Paulo Marshal. They all have at least a decade of battle experience, since Marshal's are culled from Battle Mages, and all haven't been on the job as long as I have.

I wondered if they were ever scared when they approached the bad guys.

I swallowed down a lump in my throat and sauntered back to the table where Tyrone looked like he wished he had a gun. And a bazooka.

And a tank.

I sauntered to cover the shiver in my legs and wished I had a bazooka and tank too.

"If we keep meeting like this people are going to make some assumptions about us," I said behind them.

The three witches turned around. Didn't move their feet, didn't break the power triangle, just shifted their focus back to me and off Tyrone.

It put the shortest one closer to me, and the tall one at the back of the triangle. Back point of the triangle, if I was in the middle of the base.

Witches and their power moves.

The middle of the base left me exposed to two of them at an almost equal distance, and the third had a straight shot down the middle.

See why I was sauntering?

"This business is almost concluded," said the tall one.

"What's your name?"

She quirked up one eyebrow.

"Why do you need my name?"

"In the execution of my duties I'm allowed to ask the questions."

She noted the emphasis on execution and lowered her head just a little.

"Hilda," she said. "These are my companions, Cassidy and Carla."

The two of them rubbed their bellies at the same time.

Weird.

Their bellies which looked bigger in the five minutes they had been in the pub.

Weirder.

"Mame," I nodded. If I had a hat I would have tipped it.

"I'm trying very hard to have a nice quiet evening with a new found friend," I said. "But my concern for the welfare of this young man against your unique abilities is occupying my mind. A lot."

"He is completely safe," said Hilda. "If he returns that which does not belong to him."

"So the grimoire is yours?"

She flinched a little. They didn't know I had seen it.

"It belongs to our Coven."

"Are you planning to take this book back to your other ten or doing a little damage to my fair city?"

Those hands across the bellies again, this time all three.

Freaky.

I dangled a hand outside of my pocket and thought happy thoughts.

"We want what is ours," said Carla.

"And we will have it," muttered Hilda.

"Tyrone," I called to him. "Why don't you join me at the bar."

Tyrone scooted past the trio and darted by me. I didn't dare take my eyes off the witches because I knew they wouldn't bat an eye of newt to spell me in the back.

Hilda growled.

"I said we will have it."

My precog kicked in as her hand shot out and I stepped aside and tossed up a shield. Since we were in a somewhat crowded bar I made it an absorption field instead of deflection. Didn't want any innocent bystanders popped with a spell.

She shot out a thin bolt of white energy that bypassed me and drilled Tyrone in the back.

He yelped and staggered.

It was a hex spell. I could tell by the damage to his aura. Hex spells were nasty, since they weren't immediate.

Tyrone would have a streak of bad luck, and bad things were going to happen to him. He just wouldn't know when. One day he'd be walking along under an overpass and a bus would jump the rail and slam down on top of him. Or a plane engine would drop out of the sky. Or he would trip on a curb and break a toe, get blood poisoning and die.

Unpredictable and nasty.

He stopped at the bar and Gloria accidentally spilled her martini on him.

I couldn't focus on that though.

The witch had just used magic in a public place.

In front of mortals.

In front of me.

I tickled a finger at the trio and sent a blast of force against the little one's head to break the triangle.

She whipped around like she had been sucker punched by a heavyweight and collapsed to the floor. Which I guess was close to true.

I'm not the best at magic by far, but I'm a heavy practitioner and Battle Mage. Witches don't make it as Battle Mages because of the way they use magic. One has to choose the path of wizardry instead of witchery, and sure you could use the dark side and the light side if you wanted, but remember I didn't say it, you did.

As a wizard, I'm not so bad.

As a Battle Mage, well, let's just say my wife and I had a reputation of awesome bad assery.

She was a bad ass and I rode her coattails.

Yes, I'm married and I'm on a date, but I'm in the middle of a firefight right now so I'll have to share that story later. She's gone, okay.

When the little one hit the floor, Hilda and Carla screamed.

Powerful witches don't need long rituals to cast a spell and Hilda was a powerful witch.

She shot another hex at me followed by a curse.

I bounced one off the shield into the ceiling, and the second toward the floor.

It was a distraction.

Carla loomed up and punched me in the nuts.

I'll say things like wizards and mortals and supernatural, but I'm human. A male human. With tender giblets that do not like to be sucker punched.

I lost my breath and almost folded in half.

A lot of wizards have to use incantations to focus a spell, or wands. It's easier that way and frees them up to concentrate. A Battle Mage does not have that luxury and the Marshal of Magic certainly doesn't have time to incant or pull a wand.

We're trained by the Judge to think a spell and cast with just our minds.

Think about it.

Magic is willpower, a concentration of binding the forces that surround us in everyday life. There is quantum stuff going on, physics and mechanics, and wizards can have an affinity for any of the elements. Magic is the stuff that makes us and connects us with the elements.

So as I folded I thought a spell.

And screamed.

"Ralph!"

I didn't need to scream.

But it startled Carla and Hilda for a microsecond.

Cause seriously, who shouts a move line in the middle of a firefight?

My spell hit and they both threw up.

The old vomit spell. Takes the fight right out of you.

They grabbed the little one and retreated for the door.

"Feel better," I said as I walked after them until they were out of the pub.

I leaned against the bar and slid a twenty dollar bill to the bartender.

"Sorry about the mess."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Not the first time hon."

"What was that all about?"

I grabbed the backpack from Tyrone's hand.

"Drinking contest gone tragically awry."

"Want me to hold that for you?" asked Gloria.

"I'll take care of it," I answered but directed it to Tyrone.

"You know how deep you are in it, right?"

He nodded.

"And the best thing for you is to be somewhere else."

"I was planning to leave after my meeting," he said.

"I just canceled your meeting."

"Yes Sir."

"You got a way to get gone?"

He nodded again.

At least the kid was smart enough to be scared. There are folks out there like that, who have dwelled on the fringe of the wizard world, who know what kind of danger lurks in the darkness. Some of them even try to make a profit from it, and often pay with their lives.

I was a little proud of how I'd saved this kid.

And a little sad I couldn't brag about it to my date.

"Then get gone," I told him.

He looked at the door, afraid to move.

I cast out a sense to check. The witches might have set up an ambush, but the spell I used was going to last for at least fifteen minutes.

Maybe longer since they were pregnant.

"It's safe," I said. "So long as you don't delay."

"Marshal," said Tyrone and leaned in close. "They summoned a demon."

I blinked.

Damn it.

"What can you tell me?"

"Sulliemae? Sally Mae?"

Double damn it.

"Nine feet tall, built like a wrestler?"

He nodded.

“And naked.”

A nine-foot-tall demon streaking through one of my cities.  Some guys call that an old-school Friday night.

"Damn it."

Tyrone scooted off the stool and jogged for the door. He disappeared through it without a glance back.

"Did he call you Marshal?" asked Gloria.

I turned back toward her.

"Are you a US Marshal? How dangerous."

"Something like that."

"Witness Protection. Apprehending fugitives. Or an Air Marshal?"

"I have done those things," I said and drained the last of my Southern Pecan.

I laid another twenty on the bar.

"Duty calls," I told her. "But I would like to see you again."

She nodded with just a hint of regret.

"We'll see each other again Marshal. I'm sure of it."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Did you ever wonder why most pictures of Merlin and Gandalf and a hundred other "wizards" they all have long white hair and long stringy beards and great flowing robes? Because someone many years ago described a wizard like that, and it got passed down in the oral tradition, and then a priest wrote it down in his spare time in an effort to capture history and that made it so. Once something has been made so, it has to be so.

What I mean by that is once it was written down, that's how people began to believe in what a wizard was supposed to look like.

A smart magic user knows Faith and belief are the two most powerful weapons to enhance magic and make it possible, so they began to appear to expectation.

Get my drift?

A long time ago, wizards wore robes and beards and long ponytails, and when people started to think that's what all wizards looked like, we didn't have a choice. We had to tap into that belief so we could use the magic.

It's a self-perpetuating myth and only the most powerful magical minds can break away from it.

Thank God for all the modern interpretations of what a magic user can look like, because honestly, a Marshal would have a tough time pulling off a robe. It seriously eats into our street cred.

Now a wizard can pretty much look any way he or she likes, but most go for simplicity. Wiccan's end up looking like hippies because it helps them tie into their earth magic. Dark Artists go Goth and Metal because that's where they believe their power comes from, and you get the gist of it.

Are there some folks still going around dressed in robes with long flowing white hair?

Absolutely.

I think after a couple of centuries of being alive I'm going to get pretty damn sick of shaving and there grows the beard.

Until then, I'm sticking with jeans.

Faded comfortable soft jeans.

Leather jacket, bomber style. It covers up the shoulder holster really well. I tend to wear an oxford over a tee shirt. First because if I'm required to don a tie, I don't have to look too far and second because I think there's a certain gravitas that goes with the office, and since I'm not the best wizard out there, I want to at least look the part. Or part of the part as the case may be.

Yes, I'm well aware that the Marshal of Magic is supposed to be the best of the Battle Mages, but I'm just lucky, sometimes. Besides, when the Judge offers you the position, it's just not smart to say no.

I said I wasn't the best Wizard, I didn't say I was stupid.

And my tee shirt is made of a Kevlar blend. Combined with my warded leather bomber, plus pre-cog, I'm lucky enough to be bulletproof ninety nine percent of the time.

I stripped outside my truck and put on my Kevlar. Demon's don't respond to bullets except to get pissed off, but Kevlar can stop claws too.

Sometimes.

I chucked the book bag with the grimoire in it in the passenger seat and fired up the engine.

Find a demon. Stop a demon. Stow the book of magic to stop some crazy witches.

Anyone who ever said simple ain't always easy was one hundred percent correct.

I needed an Informer.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Elvis Rodriquez was the son of immigrants who set up a small shop in a neighborhood that surrounded MSU. His father was a professor of archeology in Mexico specializing in Mayan culture, and his mother was the proprietor of a small corner bodega specializing in jamon y queso blanco sandwiches. Her secret was pickles she grew and canned herself, and a spicy mayo that had taste and a hint of heat.

In honor of their new home, they named their one and only son after the King of Rock and Roll.

Elvis lived up to his namesake by learning to boogie, play guitar and slick back his black hair into a bouncy pompadour. He became an impersonator, and a damn good one.

Ask him to sing for a glass of lemonade and you'll see what I mean.

Elvis also had a degree in history, and a background that made him perfect as an Informer.

We had them in every state, and they had one job.

Watch out for supernatural stuff and report it to the Marshal hotline. I think technically the hotline was an emergency cell phone to the Judge or maybe it was a telepathic connection, but no matter what it was, if something was going down in a supernatural sense, somebody was watching.

And tattling to the Judge about it.

Elvis lived in a small three-bedroom bungalow set back from the street behind a wrought iron fence. It was more than decorative. It was warded from a lot of bad things, courtesy of yours truly. I wouldn't quite call Elvis a friend, but a dear acquaintance would suffice.

Marshals can't have friends.

Gives bad folks leverage.

It's why my wife and I kept our daughter a secret.

Mostly a secret.

Elvis was waiting on the front porch.

"We've got trouble," he said.

"Right here in River city? Let me guess, there's a demon loose."

"If you knew about it why aren't you stopping it?"

I handed him the book bag.

"Pizza delivery."

He unzipped the bag and spilled the grimoire into his hand.

"Big book," he flipped it open.

"Written in blood on human skin. Evil work."

Gross. I wiped my hand on my pants as he turned a page to face me.

"German witches? Those numbers are death camp tattoo's."

"Could be. I haven't seen them before."

"A demon running loose, summoned by a trio of German witches absent the rest of their Coven."

I watched the gears turn in his head. Elvis was crazy smart, and full to the brim with knowledge and facts. He would be my first pick for trivia night at a bar.

"They were pregnant."

"They're going rogue," he said. "Trying to build their own Coven."

"Demon babies? Damn it."

"Demon babies. Want a beer?"

"I probably need one," I said as I followed him indoors.

I could feel the tug of the wards as I passed the fence, and again when I crossed the threshold into his home. Wards are designed to prevent magical intrusion and protect from spells. They can be weak deflections or as strong as stone walls depending on the power of the wizard who created the ward and the magic user trying to break past them.

Wards can be further strengthened by bonds of family, of friendship, or a sense of shelter. Elvis' home was a host to tons of parties with friends, family gatherings, and fifteen years of occupation by an Informer. His wards were powerful.

"Someone left a couple of new beers here last week," he said as he led into the kitchen.

"Ever tried a Traveler Pumpkin Shandy or a Hard Root Beer?"

"Alcoholic root beer?"

"This ain't your daddy's sarsaparilla."

He fished a brown bottle out of the crisper drawer, popped the top and passed it to me.

"Elvis," I said. "It doesn't seem proper to send a man out to battle without toasting him with a real beer."

He twisted off the cap to a Shandy and toasted the necks together.

"Cheers baby."

I took a sip. Looked at the bottle. Took a longer sip. Damn fine for a soda. I sipped again.

"What's the plan?" asked Elvis.

"Find the demon. Kill it. Get the Judge to send someone to collect that," I pointed at the grimoire.

The one made from human skin that touched my hands.

I shivered through the willies.

"Beer's good, huh?" Elvis smiled.

Nice of him to shift the focus.

"I may need to hunt down the witches."

"Demon first. Then the witches. Seems like a good plan. I'll put out some feelers to find you a location."

I chugged down the rest of my beer. Root beer. Sarsaparilla. Damn I wish I had a cowboy hat.

And a sidekick. I'd call him Festus.

CHAPTER NINE

They watched the pickup truck drive away. Hilda stood slightly to the front of her two witch-mates, holding on to their hands.

Their bellies protruded even further now, as they expected. Soon it would be difficult to move, so they had to move fast.

"It's warded," said Carla as she blew strands of stringy hair back from her face.

Cassidy nursed a goose egg on her temple with her other hand.

"I may not be up to wards," she said.

Hilda clenched her hand even tighter.

"Never worry my sweet I am up to them."

She released their hands and strode across the dark street to the edge of the fence. Hilda reached out one hand and placed it against the invisible barrier. Her brow furrowed in intense concentration.

"Come," said Carla and she helped Cassidy across the street.

The two witches took up their points behind Hilda and placed their hands on her shoulders. She bowed her head as they chanted with her, channeled their will in with hers.

The wards glowed green and white in a dome over the bungalow. They snapped and crackled in the quiet night air.

Hilda jerked her second hand up and placed it against the barrier. She shoved against it.

Red light leaked from her fingertips and began to drip down the ward. It streaked into the green and white light, forming purple and pink drops that sizzled and disappeared on the concrete when they hit.

Hilda grunted and sagged.

Carla and Cassidy shored her up with their other hand and pressed harder. The witches concentrated, the chant murmured up into a shout.

A hole in the ward collapsed and Hilda lost her balance, tumbled through.

Carla reached down to help her up.

"These were strong," said Hilda. "Interwoven. Complex."

She eyed the wards.

"Interesting," said Cassidy as she moved in and stood beside her.

"Like a basket weaving."

"The whole ward didn't collapse when you went through, just this part. Very good craftsmanship."

"It was a powerful wizard who built it," said Hilda.

"And a more powerful witch to break it," smirked Carla.

Hilda reached for both of their hands.

"We did it together my sisters. Just as we will do the rest."

They turned as one and marched toward the front door.

CHAPTER NINE

Elvis was as good as always in directing me toward Sullamaie.

The Memphis Zoo is really awesome. Best known for their tiger display it also had a very impressive collection of bears. Say what you will about animals being caged, but the Zoo did a good job of trying to recreate natural habitat and educate everyday folks about the world all around us. In the future zoo's will probably be more immersive, with virtual reality simulators that put the patron right in the middle of the Serengeti, or crawling through the Amazonian jungle. VR simulations of animals would be right there in front of us, or beside us, moving, hunting, sleeping in their natural unreal environments. Extinct animals could be brought back to life, at least in a virtual sense, and kids could play with dinosaurs, or rhino's or dodo birds. There would be something magical about that.

Now though, zoos had a tough line to toe. Keep animals safe, and healthy despite being imprisoned, and educate the public on why we should have conservation efforts. At least the animals in the zoo wouldn't be hunted by idiot who paid for the pleasure. I'm not sure what the bears would say about the tradeoff.

The demon was at the zoo. The first thing a predator does in a new territory is eliminate the competition. It was going after the lion, the tigers and even the bears.

No cracks from me, I swear.

The monkey howling was the first clue. I heard it as soon as I pulled up. They screamed and roared above all of the other animals, a cacophony of noise that washed over the twelve-foot stone walls.

I parked my truck curbside at the gate and hopped the fence.

There were two thousand eight hundred animals spread out over seventy-five acres. Finding the demon was going to be a problem.

I had a plan.

I followed the screams.

It was standing in front of the Grizzly Bear exhibit roaring across the pit at a nine-foot bear that reared up on its hind legs and roared back.

Blood dripped from the demon's claws.

I noticed the zoo worker's golf cart and saw the body at the same time.

Score: Demon one. Innocent bystander: zero.

Magic is willpower which can be enhanced by emotion. Love, hate, passion, frustration all the gamut of emotion can make magic stronger. Nothing works quite like rage though.

And I got pissed when I saw the body. I shot a spell at the nine-foot-tall screaming demon and hit him right in the ding ding.

Rule number one is to avoid the fight if you can. Rule number two is, if you must fight ignore all the rules.

A piece of the demon bounced across the pit and landed at the grizzly Bear's feet.

The demon stopped roaring and glanced down in shock.

The bear stopped roaring and tilted its head to one side as if to ask, "Is that a demon pizel?" before he scooped it up with one paw.

The demon glared at me, glared at its now eunuch crotch and back to me again.

"You'd have to pay extra for that in Mexico," I told him.

He roared. And screamed. And howled. At the same time.

Good thing he wasn't a magic user because that much anger behind a spell could do some serious damage.

Uh-oh. No magic meant no pre-cog.

Demon's relied on speed and massive strength. Their modus operandi was to rip, shred and tear.

I took a step back.

It noticed. Turned toward me.

I ran.

Yes, I know running from a predator only excites their chase instinct. Running from an alpha predator with supernatural speed bordered on the insane. Or stupid.

Tell that to my lizard brain.

I heard it take off after me. Claws gouged marks in the asphalt. It roared. The bear roared around its new chew toy.

The demon gained fast.

But I had a plan. Marshal, remember, not just any geek off the street.

A fieldstone building was ten yards ahead. It loomed out of the filtered shadows cast by streetlights. I rounded the corner and slid to a stop.

I spun around, raised both hands-

Just as the demon slid around the edge of the building.

I shot two bolts straight into its snarling ugly face.

Imagine concentrated lightening that burns so hot it shifts from red-orange to yellow-brown in color. Hot like a July sun.

Now imagine one steady bolt drilling right into the demon's face, while my other hand cracked out bolt after bolt in a steady pain filled procession.

It roared. Fell back.

I followed.

Thought about the zoo worker and kept on shooting.

Thought about my date cut short.

My missing wife.

My daughter who had to grow up without me.

The judge who gave me no choice.

The demon fell back screaming. It crab crawled away. I stalked it, lightening crackling.

I saw a flare go up into the sky.

An emergency flare from a Watcher's house wizards created for just such an occasion.

Elvis was in trouble.

It distracted me.

From the Memphis PD Officer as he ran up on the scene. I know what he saw.

Shadowy me standing over a shadowy body, finger pointed like a gun and a fire that lanced out to the writhing figure on the ground.

Animals howling.

It was pure chaos.

He shot me.

I don't blame him. That's why I wear Kevlar. Still freaking hurts though.

The shot knocked me back behind the building.

I heard the demon get up and run away. The Cop emptied his clip at its retreating form.

He came around the corner as I got up.

"Don't move," he stuttered.

The front of his pants were wet.

"You're out of bullets," I said.

I'd bet money he was a rookie, which meant he had a partner.

"I'm not."

His partner rounded the corner behind me.

"I shot him," the rookie stuttered again. "I shot them both."

"He looks shot," said the partner.

He was a cynic. Older. It figures.

"Call for an ambulance," he instructed. "We've got a homicide."

They had found the worker.

"Officer," I said as the rookie struggled with the microphone clipped to his shoulder.

"Right to remain silent cowboy," said the cynic.

"Befuddled," I wiggled my fingers.

They both glazed over.

I hated to do it and it would only last for a moment. I limped back to the gate and hopped over it like an acrobat.

Or flopped over like someone with bruised ribs from being shot. Who knows in these sort of situations.

The cop's car wasn't behind my truck.

Lucky.

I climbed in, cranked it up and hauled ass to help Elvis

CHAPTER TEN

CH. 9 THY NAME IS TROUBLE – The Marshall Captures one of the Witches

I was about two blocks away when the flare went out and cursed my idiot brain. I cast about and found the hex clinging to the edge of my jacket hem.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," I muttered and jammed the pedal to the floorboard.

The flare was his emergency signal to let someone know he was in trouble.

The hex was a tracking spell set up by the witches in the crowded bar and I didn't notice or check before I led them straight to the Watcher.

I got to Elvis' bungalow and stopped.

It was quiet.

There were no witches, no fires, no sign of anything wrong.

"Boo," whispered a voice beside me.

I tried not to jump. I really did.

"Damn it," I sighed.

Elvis Rodriguez stood next to me in a white sequined jumper, gold sunglasses and a red scarf. His lip curled up on one side in a halfhearted sneer. He looked completely normal, safe and the same except for one minor detail.

He floated six inches off the ground.

"Hail to the King, baby," he grinned.

"I'm sorry Elvis."

"Couldn't be helped," he said. "Though I thought a damn Marshal was supposed to feel those sorts of things."

He meant the tracking spell.

And he was right.

"We are. I didn't bring my A game tonight."

"They got the book."

"And you," I said. "Did you see them do it?"

"Cursed my heart. It was quick."

"Did you see which way they went, in your new..."

"Non-corporeal form?"

"Yeah, that."

"My ghost suit?"

"Yes."

"My ectoplasmic armor?"

"Thank you Elvis, can you save me a spell or do I have to use it?"

He lifted a not quite solid finger that glowed a misty gray under the streetlight.

"They went that-a-way."

I glared up the street toward the lights of downtown Memphis and started walking back to the truck.

I had to brush up on my ghost rules since it had been awhile.

"Are you tied to this place?"

"I'm tied to you."

That made me stop.

Ghosts haunt places, not people, at least not since way back in the olden days. I wondered if that was part of the curse and asked.

"I don't know," said the Watcher. Former Watcher now, I guess, since once one died, another took their place.

"Where you go, I go boss."

I shrugged up the collar of my jacket. I didn't have time for this tonight, but someday soon, I was going to have to tuck in with some old texts and figure it out.

There was no way I wanted a ghost in my life.

“Do you need to ride or can you?”

“Can I what?”

“Float behind me or fly or just disappear and reappear?  Transport?”

“Like in Star Trek?”

He began to shimmer in a familiar pattern of swirling pixelated colors.

“Beam me up baby.”

Then he came back into his ghost form.

“Parlor tricks,” he explained.  “When I said tied to you, I mean, Tied. To. You.  I think it’s a ten foot rule.”

I took a step back.

He floated forward.

I skipped back on my boots.

His ghost form hopped with me.

“Done playing?”

“I was wondering if I got in the driver’s seat and took off, how fast you could fly down the road.”

Elvis grinned.

“I’d like to try that.”

CHAPTER

I’m not going to say dragging a ghost through the streets of downtown Memphis wasn’t fun.  We were way too involved in some serious heavy magic going down, and you don’t get a ghost without someone dying.

Just between you and me though, it’s a freaking blast.

Elvis must have thought so too because his whoops and hollers sounded way happier than ghostly moans should have.

I caught sight of him in the rear-view mirror and it looked like he was surfing a foot over the asphalt, or skateboarding just off the end of the truck bed.  We didn’t draw any weird looks or second glances from the pedestrians we passed, except for a couple of homeless dudes that had a little magic in them.

It was one more thing I needed to ask the Watcher about.  Who besides that kid in the movie could see dead people?

Was it a gift? A skill?  A curse?

He gave a different sounding yell to grab my attention and pointed left to tell me which way to go.

So I did.

The road curved down by the river after passing through downtown, carried us past the pyramid that housed a sporting good store now with what must have been one of the best vista views in the Delta until they slapped up high rise condos along the banks of the Mighty Big Muddy.

The ghost behind me was quiet as we drew closer to a construction gate that blocked off the road while they built more houses next to the river.

Far be it from me to point out that ever decade or so, the Mississippi washes up over all the flood control levees and sinks a thousand acres of land.  Building houses in a floodplain was a promise that insurance was going to payout in the short term.

I guess it made money for people though, not just the developers, but the insurance men, the mortgage brokers, and real estate agents.  An entire economy built on the predictable destruction of habitat.

And you think witches are bad.

I’m only halfway kidding.  I had a great realtor who looked at me only partially funny when I bought a one hundred and fifty year old house using four shell corporations and German gold coins from World War II.

There was a weird green glow coming from the other side of the fence.

I killed the lights on the truck and coasted to a stop.  Elvis drifted up beside my open window and didn’t quite rest his arm on the door.

“Any idea what they’re doing in there?”

“Magic?”

“Thanks Elvis.”

“I am here to inform Boss.”

“Anything else you can share oh wise ass?”

“If you park here you’re going to get a ticket.”

I looked where he was pointing at a No Parking sign that stretched to the end of the block.

“They won’t give tickets out this late.”

I hated saying it and regretted it the moment I did.  You just don’t throw the middle finger up to the Universe like that.

But I got lucky.

No blue lights popped on behind me, no rookie cop working on flat feet as he strolled a beat turned the corner with stopping evil on his mind.

Never mind that Memphis doesn’t have cops on feet.

Cops on horse and cops on bikes downtown.  Motorcycles, they had a dozen.  And more cars to patrol that anyone with half a mind would wonder why they didn’t send the black and whites to investigate a weird green light coming from a cleared lot behind a fence.

“Magic afoot,” I answered myself aloud and moved the truck to street parking two blocks away.

The stroll back gave me time to plan my approach.

I saw a quote about the Army once that compared it to a surgeon using a hammer instead of a scalpel.

That pretty much summed up my way of dealing with others in the midst of wrong going.

Subtlty wasn’t in my toolbox.

“Stick your head through the fence and see what they’re doing,” I told Elvis.

“What if they shoot me with a spell?”

“Will that hurt a ghost?”

He glanced at his body and the look on his face made me want to reach out and pat him on the shoulder.  I think he forgot that he was dead, just for a moment.

This time, the moan was real.

It gave me goosebumps.

But he stuck his head through the green fabric sheeting that covered the fence and gave me color commentary.

“Thirteen witches around a double hexagram.  Oh that’s not good.”

He pulled his head out.

“Marshals need back up you know.  It would be a good idea if you guys had back up you could call in, like magical SWAT.”

“SMAT?  Special Magic and Tactics?”

“MATS. Magic and Tactics Squad.”

“Sounds better when you say it.  I’ll put in a request to the Judge.  Do we have time to wait?”

We quit the make believe for a minute and he shook his head.

“Twelve points to the hexagram each centered on a witch, a number 13 directing so it’s a full coven.”

“There were only 3 earlier.”

“Guess you convinced them to call for help.”

One against thirteen.

Man I hated those odds.  But I mustered the spirit of a certain smuggler from a long time ago in a galaxy far away and muttered.

“Never tell me the odds.”

“I didn’t,” the ghost answered.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Don’t start talking to yourself Marshal.  That’s a sure sign of the path to madness.”

I wanted to tell him too late.

Crazy was thinking about attacking a coven alone.

If I thought too long about it, I’d back off.

Thinking wasn’t really my strong suit anyway. I’ve always preferred a more active approach.

I guess that showed in my eyes.

“Marshal?” the ghost called.

I aimed my fingers at the ground and infused a thought.

“Blackbird!”

And bounced over the fence.

CHAPTER

Ever been a guest at a party and no one really wants you there?  Maybe the hostess is nice, and plasters on a fake smile, but behind her eyes you can see the longing for a dagger and someplace to hide the body?

Yeah, landing on the edge of an active hexagram in the middle of a coven of witches wasn’t like that at all.

The leader screamed and I focused on her.

Except it was Gloria.

My date.

Shooting me with a fake smile.

And a spell from the tips of her finger.

I got a shield up in time and deflected it into the air where it fizzled out like a dud bottle rocket.

"Hexenfrau!" I screamed and thrust a bolt of lightning at her face.

The lightening was a distraction.

The real spell was a curse, hence the hex, and it was aimed at a girl.

The words were nonsense and unnecessary. Another distraction.

If you ever see two master spell casters in a battle, it's scary as hell. Neither says a word, just moves fingers and hands and all sorts of bad things happen. Lightning bolts. Force fields. Stuff flying everywhere. Ground popping in silent explosions.

Wizards are Spooky.

Capital S.

She grunted and ducked.

Into the splits like a gymnast.

And grinned.

She pointed her finger at me and chanted.

My magic is elemental and even though I've got a Marshal's badge, I know I'm not the best. What's that old adage?

There's always a faster gunslinger?

There is always a better Wizard.

Always.

What I am is lucky.

One of my pieces of magic luck is precog.

It kicks in when I'm in danger. My spidey sense starts tingling.

It doesn't matter what anyone throws my way, a spell, a hammer, a curse or a car, about three seconds before it happens, something makes me move.

It makes a huge difference in a firefight.

Let's face it, most of the Marshal's duties is firefighting with warlocks, sorcerors and whatever supernatural nasties they tend to conjure.

I dodged left and kept running as the other witches closed off the channels of power they were pulling from the points and began to point at me, preparing spells.

They moved in sync to stand behind Gloria, first two, then three, then five, each spaced so there was the width of a body between them.

She stood on the ley line only an arm away from the two women in front of her, two witches and flashed what could pass as a wicked grin when her green eyes sparked on mine.

They were surrounded by three fires, one on each end of the triangle, and I had no doubt there was a salt circle or some other such substance running around the group.

It would act as ward and wall, protecting them from most forms of magical assault while they did what they were doing.

"What are they doing?" I wondered aloud.

"Ritual magic," Elvis filled in.

"I got that part," I said to the ghost.

"Thirteen of them," he either ignored me or loved the sound of his voice so much he felt like a lecture was due.

Maybe he missed his voice now that he was dead, for a ghost speaking to you does not sound like a normal human voice. It's the rasping of dry leaves in the fall, or the branches scratching against each other when those leaves fall and all that is left are bare black bark branches like skeletal fingers scratching the sky.

The noise a ghost makes is mostly in your head, and for me, having known Elvis that's how I would hear him. Not saying boo. Not making ghost like howling noises. Just the watcher telling me something he thought I didn't know.

Elvis thought I didn't know a lot.

"I can count."

"My eyesight is better than yours," he lifted off the ground as if to prove just that point and hovered nine feet over the asphalt. The vantage point would give him a great view and I quietly cursed and admired him at the same time.

"You know the one at the top?"

"Yeah," I grunted.

A grunt seemed appropriate. I had just been on a date with her earlier that evening, though I suppose now it was yesterday since sometime between dropping off the Grimoire and fighting the pizel-less demon it had switched past the witching hour.

"She told me her name was Gloria."

"Gloria the Good Witch?" Elvis opined.

I literally wanted to kick my own ass. I wanted to slap me across the back of the head and yell at me to wake up.

Seriously I'm better than that. She must have been pushing some crazy sex magic my way to get me thinking with the wrong head because it never once occurred to me she was in league with the trio who walked into a pub chasing a thief.

So I played it back in my head and she still came off pretty cool.

I don't know what she was doing while I was playing Marshal and saving Tyrone, and why she didn't just take the Grimoire then. My mind turned it over and over but I couldn't put the pieces together, but they didn't fit. I was missing something, maybe a lot of somethings.

Witches. I hate witches.

Yeah, I know, I'm a wizard and sometimes witches evolve into wizards. We use it as a derogatory term mostly. A witch is someone with magical ability, usually a woman, who focuses on negative and dark spells to the detriment of those around them.

Doesn't that sound official?

Wizards are more practiced and way more powerful. Trust me, lady wizards are kinda bad ass. You're talking to a guy who was married to one of the most powerful Battle Mages in the world.

Is married. Geez, she's still alive. Somewhere. I hope.

Excuse me a minute, I've got some newt in my eye.

Witches. We were talking about witches. Give me Wiccan's any day. They're peaceful, powerful, and very in tune with nature.

Witches like to work in groups of three or in Covens of Thirteen. Thirteen is a very powerful number in magic, well, because some time ago, somebody wrote it down and then everyone started to believe it, and since they believe it, it has to be true.

Faith magic, the most powerful stuff on earth.

Anger. Aggression.

I really like a super popular film said those things lead to the dark side of power. Yet anger when channeled properly is an extremely effective source of power. Rage was the strongest, but like a super nova burned fast, bright and ultimately was no good if you missed in your first two spells.

The third spell and each one after was weaker because of the expenditure of will.

But anger that simmered, like yelling in traffic, that could be tapped into at the most opportune moments and could turn a good spell into something pretty great.

Faith in the rage, I called it.

Even Rage against the machines one night sharing a beer with Elvis. He had a highly technical explanation for it, but what it boiled down to really was that same type of strength a mom gets when she lifts a car to pick up her kid, or some soldiers get when the bullets are flying and a bomb blows their arm off, but they still fight and win the battle practically by themselves.

The Norse called it a Berserker but every culture had a name for it, the tapping into emotion to fuel the fires in battle.

There was no other feeling quite like it.

It was pretty effective in a one on one fight.

Damn powerful in a three on one situation. Thirteen to one. Unless I'm fighting Stormtroopers that's just bad ju ju no matter how mad you get.

The witches broke off into three groups of four.

Gloria stayed on the ley line, a shimmering mist of power around her, like a protective force field. That was the power of the earth magic they tapped into super charging the wards around her. I could see through the mist like a veil, her lips moving as she recited something, but I've never been much of a lip reader even though it is a skill I should practice.

Two of the quartets moved to either side of me, trying to trap me in the middle of a triangle.

They could all shoot spells in my direction, but maybe it was the fear of crossfire, or they just needed time to set up.

Either way they hesitated one second too long.

I focused on the foursome in front of me. Even as I thought it, I remembered how much I hated math and that gave me a little dose of power. I sent a ringshot from my ring finger and popped Cassidy one more time just above the Goose Egg I gave her in our last encounter.

She had enough time to mutter "Son of a bitch," before she flopped to the ground.

Not dead, but when she woke up she'd want to be.

It was a kill shot and someone had deflected it. I shifted left, felt a curse slither over my shoulder and zing off into the horizon. Hopefully it would dissipate before grabbing someone else.

"Help," Tyrone called from the stone alter set up on the ley line.

How the hell had he gotten himself caught again?

Gloria raised a stone knife over the dais and chanted in silence.

"Coming," I called to him with more confidence than I felt.

I might be able to reach him in time, but the three witches facing me were snarling now, and I'm pretty much sure they were tapping into some of that rage magic.

Curse, hex and spell winged through the air with each snap and twist of their fingers. I could hear them buzzing past me like angry hornets, and only my luck kept me from getting hit.

They were coming so fast I didn't have time to check on Tyrone or spare a glance. I just focused on the outside triangle of bodies the German witches presented and wiggled my index finger at the one on the left's foot.

It buckled under her, twisted and broken. She fell and her scream cut across the empty space of the riverside park.

It distracted the other two, heck maybe all of the rest of them, because they lost concentration and left a couple of openings for me to knock them out of contention.

Glancing blows with the spells though, and then I turned.

Gloria dropped the wards and I could see she was the one thwarting my aim. I sent a death spell her way and she waved it off into the muddy water of the river.

"Honestly Marshal, I expected better of you," her voice was different from the bar, a hint of German in the roll of her r's. The spell must have brought that out in her.

But if you're talking in a fight, there's a reason for it.

Distraction, mostly.

Sullamae hit me like a charging bull and lifted me up in both arms, his mouth snapping at my throat as momentum pounded us across the park. I had just enough time to get an arm between the tender flesh of my neck and his canines, and when he bit down, blood squirted across both of us.

My turn to scream and I zapped him three times in the face with a death spell.

He giggled.

He actually giggled.

I've fought demons before but I'd never heard one chuckle like a small child.

Gloria sent a stun spell into the back of my jacket and it knocked me out of his arms before he could carry us into the water.

He smashed a bare foot down at my head, but I rolled away at the last second and cracked off a shot into where his gibbly bits had once been.

The demon howl echoed across the water, but he dropped on me with bony massive knees and I couldn't breathe.

Something cracked.

I think it was a rib because a second later I heard a small pop and something inside me snapped.

Did he just puncture my lung? I wondered, and he bent over again, snapping at my neck.

This time I couldn't get my injured arm up in time.

Sullamae made a mistake. He left my uninjured arm free.

His head disintegrated.

Just popped right off and sprayed me with demon goo.

I don't know if you've ever tasted demon, but they come from a place where sulfur is the dominate smell, and they taste worse than that. Ass end of a dead rhino worse.

If I hadn't been so preoccupied with the whole not breathing thing, I would have been more concerned.

"Get up," Elvis said to me.

His ghost eyes were watching as Gloria left the ley line and stalked toward me. She lifted one of the other witches and helped her toddle along and I could see the crackle of power in her left hand as she drew closer. The knife was starting to glow and I think Gloria wanted to kill me.

"I. Can't." I gasped to the spirit.

I couldn't move the dead weight of the headless demon, and even if I could, I couldn't breathe so the punctured lung seemed like a sure bet.

"Been nice knowing you," said Elvis. "I'll see you on this side."

"Better. Days." I sighed.

Like I told you before, Marshal's don't last two long in the gig.

Folks got a lot of juice in the community when they took one of us out. I lasted longer than most, and it had been a good run. I guessed I'd get to find out what happened to my wife, if there were answers on the other side. I should have asked Elvis if he had access to cosmic secrets and mysteries of the Universe, but I'd know soon enough.

Gloria stopped a few meters from me and grinned again. Hilda stood behind her swaying on uncertain legs, swollen belly rolling. She put her left hand on her leader's right shoulder, and her hand began to sparkle too.

They raised their fingers and pointed straight at me.

"Perfunctus," I thought and wiggled my finger.

A wall of mud slurped up out of the Mississippi riverbank between me and the witches.

Their spells splotched into the dirt and I could hear them howl. They sounded a lot like the demon still on top of me.

I funneled dirt under the body of the demon and rolled it off of me. It wasn't elegant or graceful.

Just functional, and barely that.

Gloria topped the mound of mud and aimed her wand at me.

I shot a bolt past her head that made her duck and followed it with a shot into the ground under the witch’s feet. It turned to slurry and Gloria dropped into the mound like standing on quicksand.

I sent will down into the ground under my feet and rocketed up the mound like taking off from a slingshot.

It hurt.

Lucky I couldn't breathe because it would have taken my breath away. Wizards don't fly, not normally, at least not without the aid of an enchanted object.

What I was doing was hurling my body across the park. It hurt. Bad. Stars behind the eyes hurt. Purple skies hurt.

But I arced up high enough to shoot the bonds holding Tyrone to the alter and as I fell I watched him scamper away into the darkness.

Score one for the good guys.

The earth rushed up to meet me as the stars starting popping all around my head.

“Home,” I muttered and disappeared.

CH. 12 – THE TROUBLE IS –

The thing about going home was I actually wasn't.

It wasn't my home that I thought of. I live in a well warded old house, a simple affair with the living kitchen combo below and the bedrooms up top with a shared bathroom. It's at the end of a street with a back patio area next to some woods with ancient oaks that have been there since before Tennessee was a state, heck since before America was a country.

I didn't stay there often.

As you can imagine a Marshal's work is hardly ever done, and many nights I spent in a hotel or driving toward a hotel, or breaking up a ritual much like the one I just stopped.

So home for me was not where I laid my head when I was in Memphis, nor was it in the orange blossom scented cabin in Florida, or the mountain top A frame I kept in Appalachians.

Those were places I stayed alone.

I didn't entertain family or guests in those abodes, I didn't cook large meals and make memories there. When I visited those places, I unlocked the wards, unlocked the doors and hid out for a day or so until the Judge called me back to duty.

Home was where my thoughts carried me, only it wasn't a home of my making.

I showed up at Sara's house.

Sara was my wife's twin sister, a battle mage in her own right.

Hell, she was a better battle mage than I was, even better than her sister. The Judge never offered her a Marshal gig for one simple fact.

She might have been a Valkyrie.

Yes, I know that means my wife might have been one as well, and they were supposed to be triplets, all sworn to Odin if you believe some of the Norse myths.

They had the look.

Tall, blond, ice colored gray eyes, high cheekbones, and muscles that Michelangelo would have carved from marble.

The ice colored eyes were very judgmental when she cracked open the stone door to her castle.

I said castle and I meant it.

She lived in one in Scotland, above a loch. It was what was left of a castle really, the stone turret and a cottage built around it, but the foundation for the castle proper was still there.

The turret was five stories high and towered over the landscape providing a commanding view of the black Loch below and the hills that meandered up into stony mountains to the North. It was a good place for defense, and well away from the village five miles up nestled next to the water.

In certain instances, one can be forgiven for not thinking about the wife. Like when she's been gone for twelve years. Missing. No word of what happened.

It's one of the mysteries of our kind of life.

I hated it.

I asked the Judge one time to check into it. He disappeared for a week.

Came back and said he couldn't find anything.

I need you to take a moment and grasp that.

The Judge has been the most powerful magic user on the planet since Merlin roamed around a thousand years ago.

There were rumors that the Judge was Merlin, just living in disguise, a sort of Wizard Protection Program, except that Merlin was an Alpha who didn't need a bunch of green wizards protecting him.

I asked the Judge for help and he checked it out and said no go.

It's not final, because you don't get any sense of finality from that kind of ending.

Like when a kid goes missing, or a woman just disappears. There's always hope that doesn't quite fade but does become a low throb at the base of your skull after a couple of years.

Was she blasted to bits in a duel?

I don't know.

Was she a prisoner in some castle waiting for me to come rescue her?

No way to tell.

She went on a raid and no one came back.

That's when the Judge asked me to be a Marshal.

Deputized me since he knew I'd go looking. It gave me carte blanche to be a little bit nasty in the question asking department. I won't share the details, but in mortal terms, it makes waterboarding look like a foot massage.

Nobody knows nothing.

And in my line of work, that means one of two things: all parties involved are dead, which happens.

Or there's some powerful mojo at work.

My wife looked just like her sister.

They were fraternal twins.

I was very thankful they weren't identical.

Cause in the dozen years my wife has been missing, her sister has grown to occupy a huge place in my life.

Which is how I found myself at her door.

It's where I end up when I'm wounded.

Marshal's get wounded a lot. Sure, we heal fast, but that doesn't mean we don't need help and it doesn't hurt.

It does and we do.

"I thought that was you," she said as she opened the door.

"Hurt," I gurgled.

She reached out and threw one of my arms over her shoulder to drag me in the house. I tried not to bleed all over the place.

"What did you tangle with this time," she asked in a calm voice.

It was a practiced affectation we learned on the battlefield in the Sidhe Wars. We both knew magic had healing properties far beyond the ken of mortal medicine, and both of us were practiced enough to use it.

No need to panic unless you were headless.

Headless usually meant dead.

She motioned the door closed and set a piece of redwood block crosspiece in place with a thought. The house was warded, but the extra protection at the door could buy a few precious seconds in case we were attacked.

"Demon," I muttered. "Witches."

"Damn witches," she cursed under her breath.

She settled me on the overstuffed couch and froze. Her eyes grew wide and she whirled around, hands held up in a defensive spell. I couldn't see the forcefield she cast, but could feel it.

There was nothing in the room with us.

Nothing she could see anyway.

I was impressed though. I groaned in appreciation. She couldn't see Elvis but she could feel him.

"By the fire," I said. "Ghost. He's with me."

She lowered one hand and glanced at the stone hearth.

"Tell him to stay there," she growled.

I liked her growling. Reminded me of battle.

"Stay Elvis," I said.

"I'm not a dog Marshal."

She couldn't hear him.

"A ghost named Elvis?" she quirked up one eyebrow.

My wife used to give me the same look, which often led to some serious canoodling.

Scratch that. It always led to the canoodle.

I hated it when the sister in law did it.

"He's harmless," I winced as she probed my side.

"I'm pretty formidable when I want to be," Elvis protested.

She sucked in her breath.

"This looks really bad. You're gonna need to sleep. And tell him to shut up. I can't hear what he's saying, but it sends chills across the room."

"Shut up Elvis," I whispered.

She ran a hand across my eyes and I felt the curtain drop with a sleeping spell.

"Sweet dreams," said the ghost.

CHAPTER

"Oh great," I groaned as I shifted on the couch.

Magic heals, but it hurts.

Sara was sitting by my feet, long legs tucked under her.

"What is it?!"

She pulled a small round shield from behind a couch cushion.

Literally a round shield a little bit smaller than the one Captain America carries.

This one had one of the symbols of Odin on the front instead of the star.

"Seriously?"

She scowled but didn't put the shield away.

"Who keeps a shield in the couch man?"

"Shut up Elvis," I told the ghost.

"Is that him?" she glanced around the room, eyes wide.

"Elvis Rodriguez," I said.

One eyebrow arched up and tried to touch her hairline.

"He was wondering about the shield too."

She looked down at the shield, nestled it over her chest and brushed a burnished edge with the tip of her finger.

"It's a gift from an admirer," she sighed. "Is Mr. Rodriguez your imaginary friend?"

"He's a ghost."

"There are a lot of ghosts tied to this castle,” she said.  “Tethered.  Why I she here?"

"He was killed helping me," I stammered.

Look, I don't often stammer.

Or maybe I do but mostly when speaking to myself. It would not do for anyone to hear the Marshall of Magic stammer.

Even my Sister-in-law.

"Let me get this straight," she tucked the shield under one arm and hugged it like a security blanket.

"You're talking to a ghost?"

"You didn't tell me your sister was so hot, dude."

"Sister-in-law."

"You're talking to the ghost of Elvis?"

I swear she tried to hide the smirk.

"Are you all shook up?"

Did you know ghosts can laugh?

I was more interested in the shield.  Who was the admirer?

“Who?”

“Who what?”

“Don’t play coy.”

“I’m not playing coy. I’m not being coy.  I’m literally asking what are you talking about?”

“Who gave you the gift?”

“Which gift?”

They say deflection is a sign of dishonesty, but I couldn’t tell if she was lying or didn’t understand what I was asking about.  I went for the misunderstanding first.

“The shield.”

She ran a finger across the face of the intricate carvings, a side relief of Odin, the Far Walker before he carried two Raven’s on his shoulders.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

This from a woman who fought werewolves, vampires and was rumored to remove the Kraken from Newfoundland.

“Me?”

“You.”

“I’ve seen a thing or two,” I reminded her.

She huffed.

It did interesting things to her lips. I didn’t even notice and didn’t stare at all.

“You’re a Marshal,” she told me.

“I know,” I slid my coat aside and showed her the badge.  Habit.  “It’s what I do.”

“It’s who you are.”

“How do you mean.”

I was trying to skip a misunderstanding again.  Ninety percent of communication is non-verbal and her body was telling me she wasn’t happy.

“Laws. Rules,” those lips pouted out.  “Judgement.”

I’m all about ritual. I like to make my bed every morning because I read that when you do, you start each day with a feeling of accomplishment.

I drink the same coffee every day made the same way, drive the same old truck.  The only times I go out of my lane is experimenting with craft beer and whatever I encounter on the job.

The things I encountered didn’t care about the rules, didn’t follow the laws of magic.

I thought about that for a micro-second.

Was that why I was good at this job?

When people ignored the rules, and flaunted the law, I was offended.

But she said Judgement, and gripped the shield closer when she did.

This wasn’t about me, or it was only it was about me judging.

Judging her.

It dawned on me like a load of bricks.

Told you I could figure stuff out.

No long and winding ways to reach the conclusion jokes please.

She was afraid I would judge her about the gift giver.

“I won’t,” I promised.  “Who is your admirer?”

“Was,” she corrected.

“Was your admirer,” I fixed my mistake.

“All-Father.”

Elvis giggled in my ear.

“He gave her a picture of himself.”

Which made me laugh too.

That did not help the whole feeling judged thing she was going through.  She clenched the shield even tighter.

“I knew what I was doing,” she said in a flat even voice.  “I am a grown woman.”

“It’s not about your choice of amore,” I shook my head. “It’s the gift itself.”

She pushed it back and examined it again.

“What’s wrong with the gift?”

“The ghost pointed out it’s a picture of him.”

“So, a lot of guys give portraits as gifts.”

“But it’s a carving.”

“He’s old fashioned.  You will be too in a couple of thousand years.  Hell, you’re old fashioned now.”

“Am not,” I protested softly even though she was right.  It’s tough to keep up with all of the advances in magic and technology.

A bastard son of the survivors of Atlantis gifted my sister in law with a carved shield because that was the rage when he was learning to court.

I ran my hand over it and felt a tingle.

It was infused with magic.  Okay, maybe more than a portrait.

“What happened?”

“We broke up,” she said.

Maybe I imagined the slight pout to her lip and I wasn’t at all jealous.

“She broke up with a god,” Elvis said in my ear.

“Small g,” I told him.

“Tell him that in a bar fight.”

I tried to ignore him.

“How long ago was this?”

“Before I knew you.”

Good deflection again.  I was trying to get a bead on just how old she was, which would tell me just how old my wife was.  Is.  If she was around to date a Northman, then she or the two of them could both be valkiries, which would make their power ten times beyond mine.

The tickle in my stomach was not nerves.

“You’ve known me half a century.”

She smiled then, knowing what I was trying to do.

“He’s still around you know.  On a walk about.  I’ve seen him since this,” she indicated the shield.

“He come’s calling on you.”

“Cat calling like an old Tom sniffing,” she snorted.

She was messing with me.  Or maybe she did get an occasional booty call from Odin.  I’ve seen stranger things.

Besides, I went on a blind date with a witch who tried to kill me with her pet demon.  Who am I to judge.

“Speaking of witches,” I said aloud.

“He’s not a witch,” she was stuck on defending him.

“I was thinking about my problems, not your conjugal woes.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

“No details, please.”

“Yes details please,” Elvis tried to nudge me.  His arm floated through my shoulder and sent a shiver down my arm.

“Back to the witches,” I steered the conversation where I wanted.  “There are thirteen of them and Elvis thinks I need back up.”

“You do.  A Coven is a formidable foe.”

“So?”

“So?”

“Are you going to back me up?”

“Are you asking me to back you up?”

I nodded.

“Just like old times.”

We had raided together in the Sidhe War when her sister and I fell in love.  Perhaps I fell a little in love with both of them, and this was the result.  Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but presence makes it a lot easier to stay in love.

I couldn’t think about that now.  I needed to focus on what the witches were up to, how to stop them, and get Elvis on to the next world and away from my ear.

I swear ghosts don’t breathe but I could feel a tickle of wind on my neck as he leaned next to me.

“Tomorrow,” she said.  “Today is for rest, tonight is for preparing.

“Sunset,” I amended.

I couldn’t take the chance of them completing the spell overnight, and showing up too late.  I really wanted to jump off the couch and hit the town for clues or anything to break up their little magic party.

My still knitting ribs protested any jumping and counselled more rest.

Sara agreed with a nod.

“I will make soup and you will sleep.”

She had no problem getting off the couch.  No problem walking across the room.  I watched just to be sure and felt the ghost wind shift as he stared too.

CHAPTER

She made soup.  It was hot and delicious and full of mushrooms that made me sleepy.

“Did you drug me?”

“Just long enough to heal,” she pulled the bowl from my hand and set it on a coffee table.

She could read my face.

“That's not the when and where of it," she said.  "It's not the how and why."

Those things were important.  I knew this, just as I knew she had things that she wanted to say to me.  Soft things, warm things, words designed to smolder between us.

But we were stopped by a memory.

A ghost just as sure and present as Elvis, but not in the room, only in our minds and the shape of her lips as she pointed them at me.  Raspberry soft, Nordic lips.

We sat shoulder to shoulder on her couch facing the fire burning in the stone hearth, no more words to share between us, but the tingle of her sleeve on mine just from the pressure of being.

It might not be wrong, I wanted to reason.

She's been gone too long, I wanted to say.

But saying anything about her would make the ghost real, would turn the chasm between us into a wall.

Better to sit and wonder, and maybe add a little hope to the mix.

That's what made Moonlighting such a good show, and so many others I had seen over the years.  The will they won't they tension.

Hoping it happens and afraid of what came after.

All the shows lost momentum them and if life imitated art, I'd be screwed.  Out of a friend, out of my ally and all for a couple of hours of pleasure.

But what a pleasure it would be a part of me tried to intrude on the argument in my mind.  In my youth, he would have won.

Nanty five years of experience taught me to ignore him.

Mostly.

She giggled as I shifted.  It's easier for a woman to hide her wanting, her desire, than for a man sitting next to her on the couch.

"Time for bed?"

She was teasing.  I knew she was teasing.  She meant her in her room, and me in the guest room and a long hall between us.

That did not stop the desire though.  Nope.  Fed it hope instead and I squirmed some more.

"Probably.  You go first."

I watched her get up and move across the room.  She put a screen in front of the fire designed to catch stray embers and keep them off the centuries old rug.  The flames made interesting shadows in her thin night robe, silhouettes and promises.

She caught me staring and was nice enough to keep her lips closed in a tight smirk.

"Good night."

Then she was gone and I was left with the heat, in my lap, in my head and from the hearth.

"All shook up," said Elvis.

"You got that right."

"You know the tension must be thick when even a ghost can feel it."

"Yep."

"Why don't you do something about it?"

"She's my wife's sister."

He snorted.

"Your wife is dead."

"Missing."

He raised one eyebrow.

"That's not what we have on file."

"I had the Judge alter the file.  Too many questions if people started looking for her."

The eyebrow arched up even further.

"The Judge can't find her?"

I shook my head and Elvis let out a long low whistle.  At least I think it was a whistle.  Coming from his lips it sounded more like a moan.

"Want me to check on this side?"

"You can do that?  I thought you were tied to me."

"Marshal," he shook his head in amazement at just how dumb I sounded.  "There are hundreds of ghosts around here."

I did a quick search, first with my eyes, then with my senses to find magic.  I couldn't feel anything.

"Hundreds?"

"This castle is a thousand years old, a nexus built on a Roman outpost, site of four major battles.  The ones tied to this place are still around."

Remember, I said lucky, not smart.  Sometimes, I just don't think about those things.  The world is populated with just as man ghosts as living, and they tend to hang around a lot longer.

Elvis and I were going to have a conversation about what happened later.  About where some went, and why some stayed.

But right now, I was tired.  And a little weirded out that there were a hundred spooks around us.

"How will they know what you're asking?"

He thought about it for a moment.

"Did you ever play the game telephone like in the Norman Rockwell painting?"

I knew the one he was talking about.  A small-town gossip chain in the Saturday Evening Post, a magazine from bygone days.

"It's like that.  I ask someone, he goes to the edge of his tether and asks someone, and on down the line.  We can search the globe in a couple of days."

Huh.

It took getting a ghost sidekick for me to find some answers about my wife.  Or at least the promise of answers.  That told me there was a limit to the Judge's power and second, I had a new resource to make my job a lot easier.

"Do it," I said.

"Say the magic word Marshal."

"Wha-lah?  Abrakadabra?"

"Please," he answered.

"Please Elvis."

I watched him turn and face the wall, then stick his head through it.  Neat trick.  It gave me more ideas on how to make my job easier.

For now, I'd just sleep on it.  I stretched out on the couch instead of getting up to go to the room.

The fire felt warm, the heat in my lap died down to glowing coals, a level easier to manage.  I closed my eyes and tried to meditate.  It took two breaths for me to fall asleep.

CH. 13 – HOW DO YOU SPELL TROUBLE? –

The Marshall deputizes his sister in law to help with the witches

One of our biggest problems is being so American-centric when it comes to wizarding. Hell, being Euro-centric is just as bad. We make assumptions based on accidental bigotry, and let's face it, location.

America is the best country, therefore American wizards must be the best.

Unless you're from Russia, in which case they think Russia is the best, therefore Russian Wizards are the best. Go down the line for the two hundred plus countries on this globe and you get a pretty strong idea of what to contend with.

Now expand it to magic users from other realms which touch on Earth, and you multiply the problem a thousandfold.

That's how we got the Sidhe War, which mirrored WW II on Earth. In some places where the Old Forest was deepest in Germany and German occupied territory, things crossed over from Sidhe and Fairie into our realm and vice versa.

I'm not saying there were ever Nazi Werewolves brought down by a young soon to be Marshal and his now missing wife, but a lot of records were lost or never kept up with in that war.

"Are you thinking about her?"

"Am I breathing?"

Sara stared at me with those all too blue eyes.

"I think about her too you know."

"I figured you might."

"I'm just saying, you're not the only one who is hurting."

"I get that."

She twirled her fingers in that cute nervous gesture that reminded me so much of her sister. It was a habit they shared.

"So, if you ever wanted to talk about it..."

"I don't."

"But if you did."

"Thank you," I said.

Because what else do you say to someone who's reaching out to you, to let you know it's okay to talk about how you killed their sister, or were responsible for their death. To discuss why you survived and the better person had to die, and that you know she felt exactly like that because she said it at the wake. In front of your daughter.

And she was probably right.

No probably about it.

"Let's just focus on the task," I said.

Who said I wasn't a gentleman to give a lady an easy way out?

I wiggled my finger and pulled a silver start out of thin air with the word DEPUTY engraved in the center.  It earned a smirk.

“Illusion,” she said.

I passed it to her anyway.

A lot of wizards get their start because they are drawn toward magic.  The magic illusions that performers trick audiences with resonate with a user, someone with the ability.

It’s only natural that they gravitate toward it as a first step on the path to learning about a new world.

Card tricks, rabbits in a hat, flash powder and more, all designed to feed the young tadpole magic user’s mind and keep them searching.  The real power doesn’t manifest until puberty.

Talk about a hormone imbalance.

Mine was coin tricks.

I could make them dance, spin, disappear and pop out again just about anywhere.  I was only a little disappointed when I learned it was about misdirection and fooling the eyes.

Never trust the eyes.

Especially when they’re ice blue gray and staring at you over cute pouty lips that beg to be kissed while she knows you’re playing tricks.

“Duly authorized,” I told her.  “For this mission only.”

I had to add the last part to make it official.  If the Judge found out I turned a deputy Marshal loose, he’d have my skin hung on his wall, and probably hex me alive just to stand beside it as a warning to anyone else who wanted to break his rules.

“This mission,” she agreed and pinned the badge to her chain mail.

That was an interesting bit of magic since the badge didn’t have a pin.  I almost asked her to show me how she did it, but she grabbed my hand and dragged me through the front door.

I could feel the whisper of Elvis behind us as she stopped, gave me a nod and transported us to battle.

CHAPTER

CH 14 – TROUBLE AT THE OK CORRAL

The Marshall and his Sister stalk the Coven back to the ritual site.

The world of magic is bigger than anyone can even imagine. That's the problem with linear three dimensional thinking especially the kind that mortals used for the past two thousand years.

Scientists now were introducing the concept of quantum physics and multiple universes and though it was difficult to accept more people could imagine the possibility. It was the imagining that made it easy.

It also made enforcing extremely difficult.

Think about law enforcement just in the United States which I called home. You had beat cops, detectives, traffic cops, deputies, SWAT, sheriffs and Marshall's. There were even layers and divisions among these distinct duties.

The world of magic was like that. Except you add in layers like the military and intelligence community on top of that. The thing is, it can be tough for a witch to police a witch. Their powers may be too close matched.

So we divided it up in our world. Flavors.

There were the Northmen who fought vampires with their shield wall. The Wiccan Council that covered witches. Werewolves were mostly under control. The wizard in Chicago had his area buttoned down so nobody messed with him, and besides he had to cover one of the spirit worlds to keep horror at bay. That's right I said one of the Spirit Worlds.

There was a Druid roaming around the Southwest I wanted to work with sometime. After all how many creaking chances do you get to meet an actual Druid? The last one? But my territory was East of the Mississippi River. The West Marshall handled, well, the West.

The Marshall of Magic was a powerful position. Some said we were the most powerful mortals in the magical world. It sounded like a bunch of crap to me.

I wasn't powerful but I was damn lucky.

During the Sidhe War, or World War II as it was known in this realm, I did a couple of Audie Murphy moves on the front lines. If you don't know who Audie Murphy is looks him up. He was a real hero because he was one hundred percent mortal and didn't have a lick of magic to protect him. He stormed machine gun nests, took on German tanks and pretty much became synonymous with courage under fire during the war.

I wish we could have shared some stories.

I did a couple of things that turned out well, like I said I was lucky. Those good things attracted bad attention from nasty bad guys. That turned ok for me too meaning I lived which is saying a lot.

Since I lived I got to meet the Judge.

Capital J implied.

Remember when I was talking about all those different magical types? They report to various Councils meant to monitor and if needed control those individuals.

The Councils reported to the Judge. All of them.

If you haven't guessed by now the Judge has one job. It's in his name. Once he's done doing all the judging, that's where we come in.

The Marshall's.

I told you before we were pretty spooky.

Especially when we pop up on the edge of a Coven’s magic summoning ritual.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE NAME GAME

The twelve witches were at the points of the hexagrams again.  Gloria was standing over a makeshift rock alter with a stone knife again.  Tyrone was bound to the alter. Again.

“What is it with this kid?”

“Which kid?”

Sara was right.  There were at least four of the witches who couldn’t have been more than eighteen.

“The one on the alter, not the witches.”

Right.

She wiggled her fingers and the bonds popped off Tyrone.

Gloria screeched and wiggled them back into existence.  Her yell turned heads our way, but no one moved.

That made me worry.

“Uh-oh.”

“Did you see what she did with my spell” Sara growled as she shifted the Odin shield higher on her arm.

Not good.

I'm not sure what gods Tyrone pissed off since they had captured him again.

"I think you need to get out of the thieving business, Tyrone," I told him as he struggled against the bonds holding him to the alter.

"Man, I keep trying," he grunted back.

Gloria and Hilda had both feet bathed in the green glow of a ley line, tapping into the power.  It created a teal colored fog drifting across the low gorund.

I could practically hear the energy humming off of them as they built up power, channeling it among the other eleven witches.

Johnny Cash songs rolled through my head.

"I fell into a burning ring of fire," I hummed and took a step forward.

"Tell them to stop in the name of the law," Elvis said from my shoulder.

If I could punch a ghost I would have.

"Excuse me ladies," I called over their chanting.

They had to know I was there because I had done the whole talking to Tyrone thing just as soon as I popped up on radar.

Gloria knew.

She didn't get to be the head of a Coven by being stupid. Mostly by being evil and probably mean, but not stupid. She flicked a glance in my direction.

"Sullamae," she muttered from the side of her mouth. "Destroy."

I heard the demon rush at me from a dark corner of the park. Nine foot of muscled aggression and a drooling howl that made a Doppler effect as he ran. Pounding footsteps shook the ground.

I gulped.

Elvis shrieked in my ear and almost threw off my concentration, but I held on and let him get within five feet of me. His eyes burned with hatred, intense as a thousand hellfires. The cords in his bulging muscles popped as he strained his hands out for my tender neck.

I tickled up some star flashes and popped them in front of his eyes. If you've ever seen a red carpet premiere then you know exactly what a star flash spell looks like. A million flashing strobes blink in the darkness, each a blue flash of lightening that sparkle in front of the eyes.

Sullamae howled as he went blind.

But he didn't stop.

He kept rumbling for me, hands going a little wider than his shoulders as he prepared to scoop me up with a killing crunch.

Sara zapped his head off and sent a mist of goo across the line of witches.

I had to hand it to them though. They were deeply engrossed in the spell and none of them flinched as the rotten fish smelling stench of demon fricassee splattered across their clothing.

I had just enough time to admire their dedication and twist to the left to avoid the hurtling mass of headless demon as it careened past me and splashed down into the water.

"You have to keep your head in battle," Elvis intoned with as much wisdom as he could muster.

"After that scream you sounded like you lost yours."

"That was a battle cry."

I wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.

"I have been in a thousand battles," Sara planted her armor covered boots into the soft grass next to the river. "That was no battle cry."

"Crying maybe," I said as she moved up to stand next to my shoulder. "A battle sob. Are there things such as that?"

"Not from men I think," she winked at the ghost on the other side of me. "Though I have known the Berserkers to shed tears as they fight. Are you a Berserker former watcher?"

Elvis licked his lips and wiggled his hips in a way that would have done the king proud.

"I ain't nothing but a hound dog, baby."

"Crying all the time," I finished for him.

Ghosts don't photograph well but I wish I could have clicked off one and showed him the look on his almost translucent face. He didn't forget the lyrics so much as he just plain didn't think about the timing. It didn't happen often. Like I said Watchers were pretty smart.

Sara guffawed and lifted her shield toward the Coven.

"These are the witches who give you so much trouble?" she sniffed.

I've been on the other end of those sniffs from both her sister and her. It was a perfectly designed Nordic sniff of dismissal, as if people who grew up with polar bears instead of teddy bears couldn't be bothered by thirteen magic users.

I felt like part of the sniff was aimed at me and shame washed over me in a wave.

Sniff magic.

I knew it was a spell she cast, like a pheromone they put out in a fight, and I was caught in the backwash of it, but it didn't make me feel any better.

The witches in her direct line of sight swayed, but held.

Maybe she wasn't impressed, but I was. That was a level of dedication to completing the ritual that I hadn't considered.

"Kill them?" Sara almost made a statement.

It would be the smart thing to do.

Just end a couple of heartbeats, take out three in the chain and the ritual would fall apart. We might unleash some magic from the ley line, a minor explosion or two, but the collateral damage to the park and surroundings would be better than anything the witches had planned.

Even though the Marshal has the right to kill, a license that would make James Bond jealous, and the power behind it, I always wonder if it's the right thing to do.

Killing the Sidhe in the War meant ending a life that was almost immortal. Killing their human fodder was no easier, even if they were mindless drones. When I went up against a Sorcerer, I always gave them the chance to come along peacefully. I never used those words because even though the Western Marshal and I had a fetish it just sounded way too much like a black and white western to say it aloud.

I thought it though, each time, sending a silent prayer out into the Universe that they would just be peaceful.

Sending thoughts like that with just a little hint of will, a little hope of faith magic sometimes worked and when they did go with me to the Judge, it was toward some form of rehabilitation. He handled that part of it. Judge, remember.

And if they came in front of him and he gave a thumbs down, I'd drill a small spell through their temple just like a needle and they would be as dead as death allowed.

I sent that prayer out now. Thirteen lives to be saved, thirteen potential opportunities to turn back to good.

I've really got to stop watching Star Wars.

"Not yet," I said to her.

But then Gloria raised the stone knife and uttered the last chant of the ritual and Sara went to war.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MY NAME IS TROUBLE

the Marshall and his Sister in law break up the ritual and rescue Tyrone. The Marshall and the Main Witch, Jennifer Salem face off in a duel.

"Face the wraith of Salem!" she shouted as she shot a bolt of electric energy in my face.

I ducked.

"Town's don't have wraith, wartface."

Have I mentioned how sensitive witches are about their skin?

She screamed and double downed on the voltage. Slivers of lightening crackled from the tip of each finger and she brought them all to bear.

"The Town was named after me!" she cackled.

She stretched out and sent all ten bolts of lightning at me.

There was no way to dodge them and barely enough time to deflect them with a force shield.

A ricochet bounced off my shield and ripped through Elvis.

"Lawd-a-mighty," he crooned. "I feel my temperature rising."

Magic didn't work on ghosts, but his singing distracted the witch.

I gathered up a ball of energy in my palm and winged it at her head. It splatted against her temple and spun her around. I could see the ritual knife she had been holding in her hand.

I watched her lose control and fall.

WHOOSH.

My Sister-in-law shot a column of Force across the clearing but it missed the witch. She fell on the blade with a scream that turned into choking laughter.

"Idiot!" shouted my Sister-in-law.

She might have been talking to the witch.

It was possible.

Blood coursed through the runes and lines etched on the ground. The display lit up in a red orange fire that under different circumstances would have been gorgeous. You know, less deadly circumstances.

A body slammed into me and knocked me down.

My Sister-in-law raised her Odin shield to cover our heads.

Fire lanced out from the ritual and latched on to the remaining dozen witches where they lay or stood scattered over the grounds.

They threw their heads back and cackled. Echoes of their evil laughter rolled across the industrial wasteland until it stopped.

We glanced up.

Twelve creatures stood where the witches had been.

Giant, humanoid and absolutely terrifying creatures. Big, mean, nasty, okay you get the idea. This was Trouble.

With a capital T.

Times twelve.

A ram. A centaur. A bull. A crab.

"Oh no," I muttered. "Ooops."

"You dumb bastard," my Sister-in-law said.

The Twelve Creatures of the Zodiac turned toward us and roared.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I'LL BE THE JUDGE OF THAT

I carried the body of Hilda back to the Judge.

He made me wait while standing in front of him. Wizards don't really need glasses but the judge wore them anyway. Round giant circles on thin gold fames. His resemblance to that actor on MASH made me want to call him Colonel but I didn't dare.

I think he would have been offended, since he was a General in the Sidhe War.

"Let me get this straight," he said.

"You completed the ritual and created twelve Nightmares."

I cleared my throat.

"I didn't actually-"

"Cause and effect, son."

I nodded. And gulped.

"And then your unauthorized deputy blasted them who knows where so you could escape."

"Discretion and valor, Sir."

"Save the horse hockey for your jockey Cowboy. I should reduce you to cinders."

Didn't I tell you. Gulp.

He lifted the gavel.

"Your sentence, Marshall, is to get your hindquarters out that door right now, hunt down those Twelve Monsters you released on this world and I want it done yesterday."

"Yes Sir, Colonel Potter, Sir," Elvis whispered.

The Judge's eyes narrowed to slits.

"What. Did. The. Ghost. Say?"

"Nothing Sir," the stammer was back along with the gotta-go-pee feeling.

"He said we'll help.

"Fine," he slammed the gavel on the bench.

"Pronto," he gestured and I transported.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I was standing in the ritual field again.

Judge. Very Powerful. Very very Powerful.

Elvis ghosted up next to me.

"Howdy Marshall," he said with a sneer on his lip.

"What do we do next?"

"Elvis," I pulled the ingredients for a tracking spell from my pouch.

"Let's go get those witches."

THE END

The Adventure continues in WITCHMAS EVE

Laissez le bon temps rouler is French for “Let the good times roll” in New Orleans and the Marshal is headed to the Big Easy to find the first zodiac monster he created after he broke up a Coven’s spell in Memphis.

The ghost of a Watcher hovers over his shoulder like the world’s worst back seat driver, second guessing his younger, prettier NOLA counterpart and pits the Marshal against a new demon, a monster and worse, the Dixie Mafia intent on creating a vampire army to secure the drug trade.

Not quite all in a day’s work, since the clock is ticking before another spell unleashes Hell.  All he really wants is a bengeit and some chicory coffee but that will have to wait until Witchmas Eve is over.

Lunar Hustle- Prequel to The Dipole Shield
The Dipole Shield - The Dipole Series
Planet 9 - The Dipole Series

Planet 10 – The Dipole Series

Phalanx - Invasion Earth
Pyrrhic - Invasion Earth

Beachhead - Invasion Earth
Bridgehead - Invasion Earth
Lodgement – Invasion Earth

Ultima Thule – Invasion Earth

Infiltrate – Invasion Earth

Dustoff – Invasion Earth

Riki Tik- Invasion Earth

Snakebit – Invasion Earth

Defilade – Invasion Earth

Moon Men
Epoch - The Future Templar
Eon- The Future Templar
Era - The Future Templar

Super Secret Space Mission
The Herd Shot Round the World

High Steaks

Battlefield Z
Children's Brigade
Sweet Home Zombie
Zombie Blues Highway
Mardi Gras Zombie
Bluegrass Zombie
Outcast Zombie
Renegade Zombie
Everglade Zombie

Flyover Zombie - the Battlefield Z series
Headshots - the Battlefield Z series
Overland Zombie

Battlefield Z – Gone Dark

Battlefield Z – Silent Run

Battlefield Z – No Entry

Conscripted - the Shadowboxer files
Mission One - the Shadowboxer files
Shadowboxer - the Shadowboxer files
Decreed - the Shadowboxer files
Suspect - the Shadowboxer files

True Nature – the Shadowboxer files

Nominee

Attache

Tin Trooper – a Shadowboxer story
Nazi Nukes - a Shadowboxer story

Witchmas - a Marshal of Magic story
Witchmas Eve - a Marshal of Magic story
Witchmas Day- a Marshal of Magic story

Small Medium at Large

Low Elf Esteem

Big Trouble

The Holy War – Blood Bound

The Holy War – Oath Bound

The Holy War – Honor Bound

Fort Smith – Judged by Twelve

Fort Smith - Carried by Six

Evasion - Destruction Earth

Omnibus Collections

Battlefield Z Collected Adventures Volume I

Battlefield Z Collected Adventures Volume II

Invasion Earth Collected Adventures Volume I

Invasion Earth Collected Adventures Volume II

Sanctioned – Shadowboxer Files

Unsanctioned – Shadowboxer Files

Incursion

Mobilize