Burning the Witches Ch. 01

The only one I've gone against who knew what she was, is an older woman...well...she's older than the other two. She's probably in her mid forties. Her name is Angela, something or other. But she knows what she is and what she's doing. She did some kind of spell that blocked me from even seeing her let alone communicating. She actually laughed at the idea of giving me her power.

So I've gone back to sucking power out of the dead ones. But in a little while I'll be much stronger than any of the living ones and I'll go back and drain those bitches too. Meanwhile my pet vampire Papa Tulu will continue gathering allies.

* * * * * *

Sarah

With Chris staying in with the baby this evening, it left me free to watch my new target. From the way that Joey talked about her, I was expecting a super-model. It's funny the way that men view women. Joey went on and on about how beautiful she is, but all I see is a short red head with big breasts. My cousin Savannah is far more beautiful. So is my cousin Evie. My aunt Angela puts them both to shame and none of them are that disproportionate.

I guess from the maker point of view, breasts are like TV screens. There's just no such thing as too big. Anyway when I look at her, I see a lot of things, but I just don't see her as being earth shattering. In fact I'm not sure the woman is tall enough to even ride the fast rides at an amusement park. Poor Joey obviously has a thing for tiny redheads. Once I catch this one in the act, he may have to go to West Virginia to find himself another one. They grow like weeds there. I should know.

At about 11 pm, Joey leaves the house. He's headed for his job and leaving his future in my hands. It seems to hurt him as he does his best to avoid kissing his wife goodbye. I'm sure he's torn between his love for her and what he saw her do. I intend to do my best to wind this up tonight and spare him any further pain.

Rebecca came out about twenty minutes after he left. As I watched her I noticed that there was something off about her. I pulled my binoculars out of the glove box and train them on her face. There is definitely something odd about her but I can't put my finger on it.

I'm parked down the street from her but my binoculars make spotting her easy. The cool thing about these binoculars is that I can also record her to an SD card right on the binoculars. When Sony first came out with them every one wondered who would spend fourteen hundred dollars on something like this. Obviously they had private investigators and bird watchers in mind. It's a very niche product, but since I'm in that niche, I love them.

Since I'm three houses down the street from her, she doesn't pay me any attention if she did see me. She gets into her car and pulls out onto the deserted streets. When I took the job, I had Joey put a tag on her car. I power up my iPad and tap the locator app. Since the app is tied to google maps, I can even get driving directions to where she is.

Using my electronic toys is really a lot easier than having to drive around trying to tail someone, with the car's light off.

I gave her three minutes and then followed her. She and Joey lived in a fairly nice area. The streets we were driving down were not quite as nice. I glanced at my IPad and noticed that the car had stopped.

I spotted it about a block ahead of me. It was parked on a street that had a couple of bars and a liquor store on it. I saw her get out of her car. There was definitely something off about her but I still couldn't see it. She walked a couple of blocks over and stopped in front of a big electronics store. I started to record her then.

Without even looking around to see what was going on, she picked up a chunk of rock that had broken off of the crumbling curb. The heavy rock didn't seem to tax her tiny arm muscles. There was something odd about that too. I'm taller than Rebecca and in very good shape. I've been working very hard over the past six months to get my pre-baby body back and I'm in the best shape of my life. But I'm not sure that I could lift that rock let alone lift it with one hand.

Rebecca not only lifted the rock with one hand, she threw it through the window of the store and set off all kinds of alarms. A bunch of homeless men, who were huddled around a flaming barrel, trying to stay warm, heard the crash and the subsequent alarms and came running towards the store as Rebecca calmly walked away. A few of them reached inside of the window and grabbed small items that they could sell later some of the braver ones actually went inside of the store and ran out with larger boxed items.

I followed Rebecca at a reasonable distance, sticking to the shadows to avoid being seen. Three of the homeless men also followed her. I was still recording at that point. Rebecca seemed to know that she was being followed by the men. She headed to an area that gave her more room and began to slow her pace. Traffic was sporadic until we got to some of the bigger streets. At one of them, Rebecca and her retinue turned into an alley. One of the men rubbed her butt as they walked. She stopped in the alley suddenly and got down on her knees in front of him.

I've seen men and women do things that you'd never expect from them. I've seen schoolteachers and preacher's wives suck off men in hotel rooms. I've seen balding fifty year old fathers screwing twenty year old cheerleaders during college football games. You never know what lust will make a human being do. But this just seemed off to me. As I watched her servicing the three men in the alley, it suddenly came to me. It wasn't lust driving her. It was something else. Her actions seemed mechanical almost as if...

Nope, drugs wouldn't do that. Even when drugged most people still moved naturally. Perhaps they didn't have any memory of their actions after the fact, but they didn't move like that. I zoomed in on her face with my binoculars and noticed for the first time that her eyes were open. They were too open. She didn't blink at all. I had enough recorded so I stopped. Joey needed proof not a porno movie. Seeing too much of his wife fucking bums in an alley might drive him to do something I wouldn't want on my conscious.

When she was done, she simply stood up and walked away, pulling her clothes on as she went. I watched in fascination as she walked with her clothes still open and her sizable breasts jutting out of her blouse. When she got to the next intersection another homeless man with a sign begging for donations from passing drivers noticed her.

She grabbed her boobs and shook them at him from across the street. He was so engaged with her boobs that he dropped his sign. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out several bills. He started towards her but she held up a hand stopping him.

She pointed to her own crotch and then to him. He smiled displaying a mouthful of rotting teeth. She started to rub her own body, swaying in time to music that only she could hear. Across the wide street he began rubbing his own crotch as he watched.

She turned her back to him and started shaking her butt. He rubbed faster and faster. Finally she turned back to him and crooked her finger at him. Even as she signaled him to come across the street, I felt that again something was off. Her movements were too jerky. They were robot-like...puppet like. As I realized what was going on, I was too late to save the man. His lust had propelled him towards the woman gesturing for him. His mind, locked on those big pale breasts and their upturned cherry-like nipples zoned out everything else. As he stepped into the street, the SUV slammed into him knocking him at least fifteen feet in the air. His body turned several twisting summersaults before landing with a sickening crack. His head split on the pavement like an egg spilling his brains and a surprising amount of blood in the street.

The driver of the SUV hadn't had any clue that the man was going to step into the street. He slammed on his brakes, twisting the three ton vehicle in place so quickly that the back of it nearly left the ground. But it was too little too late.

I quickly dialed 911. There was nothing they could do for the homeless man, but perhaps they could save the driver. He'd gotten out of his vehicle and he didn't look good. Even as I heard the sirens in the distance, Rebecca walked towards me headed back the way she'd come. I ducked behind a door and into an abandoned building.

As Rebecca drew near to me she suddenly stopped and looked around. She screeched loudly in a voice so shrill that it shouldn't have come from a human larynx.

"I can feel you there, little witch. You have no idea of what you are, do you? Fortunately for you I have no time for you right now. But let's play," I peered around the door and noticed that Rebecca's mouth was propped open. She wasn't speaking. Her mouth wasn't moving but the words were coming out nevertheless.

"Next time we meet, little witch, I'll burn your bones and add your little bit of power to mine. But for today, I'll just toast you a bit as a parting gift. See you soon," she screeched.

She walked away while all around me tiny but hot flames started springing up. Smoke rose from them. I rushed to the back of the room, trying to find another exit. My lungs filled with smoke and I could still hear that screeching voice getting fainter as Rebecca and whatever was controlling her walked away.

Because of the smoke and the darkness in the building I couldn't see. I coughed a couple of times and couldn't get any air. Realizing that my binoculars had an infra-red mode I trained them on the walls. The door that I'd come in through suddenly didn't exist anymore. I felt myself getting weaker. There was no way this...whatever, was going to take my away from my husband and my child. I pulled out my gun and tapped against the wall until I felt wood. I kicked at it several times before it gave then I threw myself against it with everything I had just as I blacked out.

* * * * * *

Interlude

Across the country weird things were happening with alarming frequency. Several very powerful vampires had banded together. A few rogue werewolves had also joined them. None of them had ever met before. They had no shared history and nothing linked them together except for the fact that they'd all recently had conversations with Papa Tulu. He'd promised each of them something different and all of them were willing to put off their mutual hatred and mistrust of their own kind and every other to help Papa Tulu accomplish his goals. None of them knew that Tulu's goals were not his own. Nor did Tulu know that the goal his mistress worked for wasn't truly her own.

In a suburb of Chicago, Bridget hovered over a garage. She had no idea why she was here. But the witch who lived here was extremely powerful. The power seemed to ebb and flow and there were different sources and different frequencies.

Bridget had been learning a lot over the weeks of her search. But now it seemed as if she knew nothing. The source of the power seemed to be both alive and dead at the same time. She reached out with her mind into the moderately sized house and found two people, a man and a woman sleeping there. Neither of them had even an iota of magical power. Bridget screamed and the wind rustled in response to her frustration. She cast her mind farther and just as it touched the garage that her spirit floated over. She heard a sound so loud and so evil that it sounded as if the gates of hell were clanging shut. Even in her ethereal form Bridget shuddered. Suddenly the metal of the garage door bent outward and a car burst out of the garage destroying the door in the process. The car a bright yellow Mustang with black racing stripes sped off down the road faster than Bridget could track.

Sometimes spirits attach themselves to objects, thought Bridget. Obviously a very powerful spirit had locked itself to the car. Bridget wanted that power, but even more she needed to understand it.

She had no idea where the car was now, but she would find it.

Two or three hundred miles away from Chicago, but still in the great lakes region, a large man stepped outside of the manufacturing plant where he worked. Another man followed him out the door and they headed for the parking lot.

"Are you sure you need three weeks of your vacation time all at once?" asked the smaller man.

"He'll yeah," laughed the bigger man. "I need to get back to nature for awhile."

"Dude, I can't figure you out. All during the summer when it was hot as hell and everyone else took their vacations, you stuck it out. Now that the weather has cooled off and it's livable in this place, you want to get away," said the small man shaking his head.

The smaller man, Billy, got into an older model pick-up truck. The big man whose name was John, spoke then. Although there was no one around to hear him, he spoke as if there was.

"Yes, I feel it too. Something wicked this way comes. And it's bad this time," he said. As if in answer to his question, the wind kicked up and blew his long black hair. It seemed almost as if the wind caressed him.

* * * * * *

Sarah

When I came too, not very much time had elapsed. I could tell that because the sirens were getting closer, but hadn't arrived yet. I got up and dusted myself off. I looked around for Rebecca but she was gone.

I pulled out my iPhone and checked the tag on Rebecca's car. She was already in it and moving. It looked as if she was heading for home. I couldn't believe that the chunky little redheaded housewife that I thought might be screwing the butcher or something like that was doing the kinds of things that she'd done. Destroying the window at the store was one thing. Killing the homeless guy with the car was completely outside of the zone.

I had no idea what to tell her husband. On one hand something was obviously controlling her. I just didn't know what it was. I'd heard that people could be hypnotized to make them do things. But I'd also heard that a person couldn't do things through hypnosis that they wouldn't ordinarily do. The hypnosis was just supposed to bring down their inhibitions, not turn them into homicidal whores. I hated to admit it but I was out of my element. This case was too weird even for me.

I drove back to her house just in time to watch Rebecca get out of her car and wander back inside of her house in the pre-dawn darkness. I drove home and got into bed with my sleeping husband. He rolled over and wrapped his arms around me and we both fell asleep and everything was right with my world. Somehow, when Chris wrapped his area around me nothing else mattered. At some point during the night my cell phone rang. It barely registered on my psyche. I figured they'd leave a message. A short time later the house phone rang. They could leave a message too.

In the morning, I woke up and made breakfast for Chris and Charah. Everything was tea and crumpets until I got to the office and checked my messages. I realized then that my fatigue and almost dying in that fire had dulled my mind temporarily. The message on my cell phone had been from Joey. He'd called twice. The first time he'd called my cell. The second time he'd called the office.

"Sarah this is Joey," he'd said in the first message. "Have you found anything? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn't her and...What the fuck? Hey what's your fucking problem! Sarah, I'm going to have to call you back. There's an asshole here that needs to be taught a lesson." His voice had been angry and brimming with confidence.

The second time he'd called the office and his voice was frightened. "Sarah, I have to run. There's someone...something chasing me. I have to get clear. I can't go home because I don't want this thing to get anywhere near my Beck, so I..."

All I heard after that was some grunting and crashing and then there was another voice on the phone. "Hm...da boy seem ta be kind of under de weatha' raht na," he said. And then he laughed but the laugh was like something out of hell.

"You tell his little wife, that we'll be in touch, ya hear? And if'n she wants him back...heh heh heh..." that was all he said before the phone went dead.

"Fuuuckkkkk!" I yelled. "So much for dropping this case. No matter how weird it was. I couldn't very well quit while my client wasn't around to let him know that I'd quit."

Even though I'm the best there is at what I do, I did what I'm the best at then. It's also the thing that every woman does when she's in trouble. I called my husband.

"Chris, Honey," I crooned.

"Have Pam take Charah home and lock all of the doors until it's over," he said. "If they're following you, they probably won't trail her. We'll work out of your office and stay away from the house, so the danger doesn't follow Charah. I'll be there in twenty minutes," he said.

"How did you know?" I asked.

"Sarah, I love you," he said. "I know all of your moves and moods. I could tell by the sound of your voice that we're on a case. Besides, it's been six months since we've done anything like this. To tell you the truth, I was getting bored. Oh and your aunt called you last night."

"Chris, I love you too," I gushed. "Get here as fast as you can. Whatever aunt Angie wants will have to wait until this is over." Even as I said it, I sensed that it was a mistake.

I felt much better knowing that Chris would be working this weird assed case with me. I also knew what my next move had to be. I jumped into my car and drove to Joey's house, calling Chris to tell him where I was going, on the way.

When I got to Joey's house, I called the number that Joey had given me for their home telephone. The phone rang about five times before the voice mail picked it up.

I immediately dialed the number again. On the third cycle, a sleepy voice answered the phone.

"Hullo..." she said. Her voice was a deep hoarse timber for a female; especially for one as tiny as she was. There was no hint of the screeching voice from the night before. She sounded exhausted, but after everything she'd done that made sense.

"Rebecca, get dressed. I'm on my way to you now. I'm right outside of your house," I said.

"Who the hell is this?" she asked in confusion. "Do I know you?"

"No you don't," I said. "But..."

"Have a nice day, crazy woman," she said. And she hung up the phone.

I called her right back. "Rebecca, is Joey home?" I asked as soon as she picked the phone back up. She hesitated.

"Where is he?" she asked. Every trace of sleepiness was gone from her voice immediately. I suddenly felt like I needed to tell her everything that was going on. Just as I started to spill my guts without knowing why, a voice deep in my head told me to not only shut up, but to keep my thoughts blank.

"We don't have much time to figure this out, so get dressed," I said. She sighed angrily and told me she'd be on the porch in ten minutes. My cell phone rang again and I saw that it was my aunt Angela. I let it go to voice mail. I just didn't feel like talking about a family barbecue at that moment.

I waited on the porch. After a few minutes the door opened. She stepped out on the porch obviously ready to go to war. She scanned me up and down and then eyed me suspiciously. I could actually feel her anger and confusion rolling off of her in waves.

"I should have known," she spat. "I'm going to beat your ass and then his, you..."

"Rebecca what are you going on about now?" I asked. "We really don't have time for any bullshit."