Brock clapped a hand on the man’s back. “You continue to protect the witches. I’ll go try to see what’s going on in the house. Hopefully it was just a warning shot.”
“I’m already on it,” Molly called out as she slinked through the bubble and away into the thick fog with her gas mask firmly in place.
My eyes widened.Whatdid that crazy bitch just say? “Molly, I forbid it! Get back here.”
“Shh, don’t worry,” she called back over her shoulder. “I’m just going to peek in a window. If anything makes a move for me, I’ll blow its head off.”
Oh God. My apprentice was a lunatic!
“Her balls are bigger than mine,” Cass commented.
Molly was already gone, and Brock was left standing there like a fish out of water, looking between me and the direction of the officer’s house, probably debating whether he should stay with me or go help Molly.
My apprentice had said she’d only take a look, and in the end Brock remained at my side, watching the fog pound against Tianna’s bubble as if it realized what we were working to accomplish here.
The detective appeared somewhat mollified and returned his attention to the witches. All our hope was with the ten-pointed pentagram spell. I cautiously peered out beyond our bubble into the fog and any zombie humans that might emerge from it. I really didn’t want to shoot anyone.
Cho was practically yelling to be heard above the enraged roar of the fog. The more of the spell she completed, the thicker it grew, and I suspected this was the fog demon calling on all its parts to concentrate its power in one place for a fight.
When a fourth line sparked to life in continuation of the pentacle, the fog screamed, making me flinch and cover my ears until the screeching cry abated. Bertie and Samantha spat on the ground and flung their hair into the fire amid worried glances at the bubble above us. It seemed impossible that something invisible could protect us against such a powerful force as the demon fog, but it held.
Cho shouted, flinging her hands in blazing gestures above her head. The fog, now a thick cloud of putrid black, pushed in on the bubble, squeezing and indenting it in places … but Tianna’s protection held.
Thirty seconds later, the fifth and final line of white fire raced across the grass to complete the pentagram, linking Aunt Bertie to Cho on the outside, and Sam to Paula on the inside of it. The pentagram was finally complete, and holy shit did it look awesome.
Every witch and the one warlock spat on the ground three times in quick succession and cast several more strands of hair into the blinding white of the line of fire. The light of magic consumed the hair offering, sputtering and arching ever higher.
The fog demon roared so loudly I thought my eardrums would surely shatter. The detective and deputy shrank into a ball against the ground, taking cover.
Cass and Brock drew in a quick breath beside me, and I tilted my attention upward.
“Holy shit,” Molly breathed, slipping back inside Tianna’s bubble after her stakeout. She looked unharmed, and for that I was grateful. I agreed wholeheartedly with her expression.
Directly above Cho’s head, pressed against the bubble, were three huge, bulging, grotesque eyeballs. Placed without apparent order amid the fog, the three eyes glared at Cho, and then at the rest of us. They were yellow around the edges, with large, black pupils of varying shapes and sizes. And they all promised death if the monster could break through Tianna’s shield.
My breath caught in my chest; I reached for the hilt of my katana, though it wouldn’t help me in this particular fight. One look at Tianna told me the witch was still confident her protective magic would hold, but also that maintaining it was straining her. Beads of sweat ran down the sides of her face. The demon fog was placing the entirety of its intent toward breaking her protection.
“How’s the family?” I whispered to Molly, not taking my eyes from those of the fog demon.
“Scared, but alive. It was a warning shot. The cop seems to be warring with himself, fighting the demon’s power over him.”
That was a relief, and I could see it in the deputy’s face.
The demon fog completed coalescing itself. From the dense black of its body, I guess, appeared a large, gaping maw. It roared again, this time rattling the fear loose from me as pointy, jagged teeth took form in its mouth, apparently out of nowhere.
Oh God.
Cho screamed out the rest of her spell, but I could no longer make out any of her melodic Japanese. My dad’s witch was engaged in a battle of wills with a demon fog straight from the underworld, which meant it had arrived with all of its power undiluted. She shook from the power needed to maintain the spell.
The remaining witches and warlock began to show signs of their own strain as Cho’s power linked to theirs through the spell. My cousins, the weakest among the bunch, though they were in no way weak compared to normal witches, began to quiver from the strain first. Willemena, Tianna, Johnny, and Bertie lasted the longest, until eventually they, along with Cho, began to tremble from the effort of trying to trap the demon fog and hopefully blast it out of existence.
When Paula and Amy began to convulse from the strain, Cho let out an almighty roar, filled with so much power it electrified the hairs across my arms, and Brock pressed himself against my back.
The demon fog produced hands out of the dense wall of black and began to pound against the bubble, which had started to shake alarmingly in a way it hadn’t done before. It suddenly looked like the demon might break through.
Cho looked like she was fighting to keep her eyes from rolling back in her head.
“Fuck,” I breathed in a terrified whisper. “It’s not enough. We need more power.”
