The implication was clear: Dy thought Cha had lost her nerve.“I don’t want to pull the plug,” she ground out.“I can’t explain, but I have to do this one little thing.Then I’ll catch up.”
“Can’t explain on the channel or to yourself?”Dy asked softly.
“Yes.”There, let her chew on that.“I’ll catch up faster if you’ll help me.”
That sigh came through quite audibly.“Are you sure this is worth it?We don’t have unlimited resources.”
Yeah—her magic, their time, Dy’s tolerance for Cha’s foibles.“I’m only sure I can’t turn my back.”Though, she could.What was it to her if Prince Charming met his fate with his horrible bride?An hour ago she hadn’t known he existed.She owed him nothing.Even he would say so.“I have a feeling,” she added, knowing she was playing her ace with Dy, and also it was true.
“All right then,” Dy said, resigned.She never questioned Cha’s hunches.Her “feelings” had gotten them out of too many tight scrapes.“Juice?”
“And a back ley assist.”
“You don’t want much.”
“I’ll owe you.”
“Yes, you do.Put the porn away.”
Cha cleared her mind of everything but love and gratitude for her bestie, the familiar feel of Dy’s magic flooding into her for the second time in less than an hour.She let Dy feel through her ley-rider senses, finding the road.It was a lot to ask at this stage of their journey—for probably a wrong-headed reason—but Dy really shone in these conditions.
The ley-sorcery reached through Cha like spidery fingers, finding the rural ley line and subtly altering it.She keyed into Cha’s mental image of the prince, along with the two fell wolves and the demon, a feeling of startled horror coming into Cha that wasn’t her own.
“Some shit you stirred up,” Dy commented aloud on the path-channel, an uncanny echo of her mental reaction in Cha’s head.
Katu leapt along with Dy’s juicing and on-the-fly creation of the ley-line, sending them shooting past farmhouses, fields, and lots of rocky land not useful for much.Very quickly, the towering red demon loomed in the distance.Bless Dy and her freaking amazing skills.
“Lay me a flat and get gone, Goldi,” Cha said to the path-box, mentally reinforcing it.
Dy threw a ley-circle around the demon, thoughtfully layering extra white into the center line, with grays fading to inert black on the edges to the gutters.That oughta do it.She blew Cha a mental kiss as she withdrew, saying aloud.“Be there at BX or Mama Bear will eat you alive—and not in the good way.”
Eying the iron demon, Cha didn’t reply.Sensing Dy’s magic, it had turned, scowling ferociously as Katu flew toward it, riding the new white at blazing speed.Reaching into the jump seat, Cha grabbed Giant Jo’s package, biting out a curse as her hand stung with hellfire at the contact, and hoping whatever the thing was would turn out to be useful.Unwrapping the oddly shaped bundle—good thing she didn’t need her hands to drive—she kept her eyes on the demon and her attention on holding Katu to the spiraling ley line as they circled the group.
So, it took her a moment to realize what Giant Jo had given her: a magic wand, one as long as Cha’s arm.
And not a super cool, join-me-on-the-dark side magic wand, but one very much like the kind Zazu played with, glittering pink with a sparkle-covered star on the end.Cha groaned internally.No one could ever see the Bandit using this thing.It would totally ruin her cred.
It also looked beyond silly compared to the towering, heat-radiating iron demon.It tossed its head, black, curved horns gleaming against the gentle blue sky—a monster that shouldn’t be in human lands.Though Cha’s first impulse was to leap out and use her sword against the thing, she’d tried that once already to no avail.She didn’t have much of a plan, and she was no genius, but she made a general point of not repeating her mistakes.
Except with men—and this episode potentially counted in that category—but other factors came into play in those cases.Some mistakes wereworthrepeating.
The fell wolves, still carrying their colorful burden, now lying limp in their grip, paused in confusion at the ley-line barrier to their progress.Magical creatures could withstand the concentrated pixie dust better than humans, but it still hurt or borked them up, depending on the species and which fae realm—or sorcerous creator—they came from.The wolves might have crossed the black leys, but that fresh white gave them pause.
With her quarry neatly trapped and a magic wand at her command, Cha elected to remain in Katu, racing circles at dizzying speeds as the iron demon spun ever faster trying to keep track of her, the annoying gnat buzzing around it.With no idea how to actually use a real magic wand—hopefully itwasreal and not an actual toy—Cha briefly wished Dy hadn’t withdrawn already.But she was a big girl who could solve her own problems.This was like another steeplechase obstacle.Just weirder.
Waving the wand in the air, which left a trail of candy-pink sparkles in its wake, an encouraging sign for it being actually magic, Cha whipped the glittering, star-shaped end at the iron demon and yelled, “Begone!”
It roared and swiped at her, Katu fishtailing as Cha goosed him out of the way at the last possible moment.All right then, maybe the rule of three would work.If not, she didn’t know what she’d do.Winding up the wand again—no idea if that made a difference, but—she again whipped the end at the demon and yelled, “Begone!”
(She’d briefly considered something more elegant like “I banish thee!”but figured she’d be better off repeating the initial command verbatim, in case the rule of three did kick in.)
The demon roared again, sounding pained, and clutched its horned head.Encouraged, Cha wound up the wand, pink sparkles filling the air and becoming glitter as they settled on Katu’s upholstery, and yelled a third time as she pointed the wand at the demon, “Begone!”
For a moment, nothing happened.Then reality shivered, jolting sideways, and the demon collapsed in on itself, folding up like an origami, red-paper version of itself.The fell wolves turned to smoke, sucked in behind the iron demon as it grew smaller, becoming a tiny hole in the human world.With a pop, the last of the wolf-smoke vanished into the void, the hole closed, and the lot of them had vanished.
Leaving a crumpled pile of prince behind.
~18~
