A Familiar Problem Read online

  He looked up at me as I said his name and gave me a creaky meow, as if his voice was still rusty with sleep. He dropped to his butt and cocked his head, his eyes squinting as he purred. The throaty rumble of his contented purring filled the otherwise quiet dawn. The grass rustled beside a thick birch tree and another small form trotted out of the shadows.

  Energy crackled on Mandy and Deg’s fingertips but I threw out a hand to stop them. “It’s only Mack, Ralph’s brother.” The smaller charcoal gray male ran up and threw himself at my legs, rubbing his face over my calf. His purring joined his brother’s until the noise was uncomfortably loud. “Keep it down, you two,” I whispered. “This is a secret mission.”

  “What is it with those kittens?” Mandy asked “They always seem to turn up when we have a crisis.”

  I crouched down and scooped up Mack, letting him rub his head over my chin as I snuggled him close. The brief moment made me feel more calm.

  Down at my ankles, Ralph was doing tight figure eights, his short, thick tail smacking softly against my skin.

  The air near my shoulder snapped with electricity and Mack meowed again, the husky sound turning into a growl with a quick hiss at the end.

  A slender ray of sizzling gold energy made a vertical slash against the pre-dawn darkness.

  “The barrier!” Mandy said. Immediately her hands came up and she started drawing symbols on the air. The spell glowed bright for a moment in the darkness, each symbol flaring to life and then fading away as she worked some kind of spell.

  Deg joined in, his magic flaring against hers in long silver streaks that wound in circular patterns around each symbol and then sent sparks into the air as they disappeared.

  I stepped back as the glowing golden portal in the air widened and flashed, showing a deep, dense darkness beyond its edges. It pulsed and throbbed, going nearly closed one moment and then flaring wider the next.

  Mandy and Deg scribed frantically on the air, their faces dark with intensity.

  The sun rose slowly toward the tops of the distant trees, and beyond the spit and sizzle of building magic, the sound of morning birds followed its golden rise. A gentle pinkness spread across the horizon and I knew we were running out of time.

  Dawn was coming.

  Sweat glistened on Deg’s forehead. Lines of weariness showed in thin furrows between Mandy’s brows. I started to panic.

  “What can I do to help?” I asked Deg.

  He shook his head, too busy to speak. So, I fell back on our training together and reached out, letting my energy roll in silvery strands from my fingertips. My magic headed unerringly toward his and burst, emitting light and energy in a backwash to send Deg and Mandy stumbling back.

  “Too much?” I asked with a grimace.

  The two Witches breathed heavily, their hands drooping as their energy died a quick death.

  “It’s no use,” Mandy said. “I can’t crank it open. We must be missing something.”

  I eyed the pink and purple horizon, feeling my stress returning. Ralph gave an angry yowl and scratched my hand, leaping from my grip and hitting the grass mere inches from the quickly closing barrier.

  “Ouch!” I yelled, sucking the torn flesh into my mouth. “That hurt,” I complained.

  Ralph didn’t seem to care. He was sniffing the breach, all the hair on his back lifting as his brother casually sauntered over and joined him.

  “Get them away from that!” Deg yelled.

  I realized as he yelled that the two kittens were in terrible danger. I jumped toward them, my hands reaching for them as I screamed. “No!”

  But it was too late. The kittens shoved their noses into the breach and were sucked inside with a surprised yowl.

  I stood there for a moment, staring helplessly at the atmospheric tear, and then made a frustrated sound, stepping toward the breach.

  “Don’t do it, LA. You won’t survive…”

  I didn’t wait to hear the end of Deg’s warning. I slipped a hand into the tear and screamed as something grabbed me in a brutal grip and yanked me through.

  Chapter Four

  I flew through the air and hit the ground hard, my bones bashing against a ragged surface of dirt and rock. Dust flew up all around me as I rolled to a stop several feet from the breach.

  I coughed, my lungs contracting on the silty dust. My eyes stung and watered so badly I couldn’t see.

  Something foul and poisonous filled the black-as-night atmosphere.

  “Sulfur,” said a voice I didn’t recognize.

  I jerked in surprise, fighting to clear my vision.

  The unmistakable sound of sizzling energy brought me to my feet, magic dancing along my fingertips as I used my sleeve to scrub at my watery gaze in an effort to clear it.

  Something hit the ground near my feet and barreled into me, taking me down again. The energy of the breach snapped again and another heavy form hit the dirt nearby. I folded protectively into myself, trying not to get hit with another flying body, but nothing came barreling my way.

  Crumpled up next to me, Deg groaned. “Well that sucked.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a smooth entrance,” Brock agreed a few feet away.

  I scrubbed my sleeve across my eyes again and finally managed to crank them open. It was so dark that, for a beat I thought my lids were still closed.

  As my vision adjusted, I turned to Deg and found him trying to dig something shaped like small rocks out of his elbows. I grimaced. “That must hurt.”

  “Yeah.”

  The breach sizzled again and we all flinched. It widened just enough to allow Mandy to walk gracefully through. She looked down her long nose at us, clearly disgusted by our messy, ungraceful sprawls. “I hope you three brought a change of clothes.”

  I looked down at my clothes, realizing I could kind of see the brown smears on my jeans through the dim light.

  “Welcome to Axismundi.”

  Yelping in an unmanly way, I threw out my hands, energy flying to dance at my fingertips. I’d momentarily forgotten about the voice.

  Deg and Brock surged to their feet, their own magic sizzling.

  Mandy rolled her eyes. “If he wanted to kill us you three would already be dead.”

  The slender, dark haired youth standing a few yards away nodded. “She’s right. I’m here to help.”

  He had bright orange hair with strange black highlights and a small frame. I judged him to be around eleven, but his green eyes were filled with an intelligence far greater than his years.

  We all stared at him another beat and then let our magic leak away. Deg offered me a hand up and I took it. Brushing dirt from my clothes as best I could, I addressed the young man. “Did you see a couple of kittens come through right before me?”

  “They followed my brother that way.”

  I glanced in the direction he indicated, noticing for the first time the throbbing glow lighting up the distant sky. “Where was your brother going?” All I could think of was getting those kittens back. They’d be helpless against the types of creatures they might encounter in that place.

  Who was I kidding? My friends and I were probably helpless against most of them.

  “He’s heading to the event.”

  “What event?” Brock asked, frowning.

  “The weekly coronation event.”

  Deg and I shared a look. “Weekly?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “That’s kind of an inside joke, actually. We’ve been trying to coronate her for a couple of decades but somebody always invades during the ceremony.” He shook his head. “I’ve lost more friends in those invasions.”

  “Who are we talking about coronating?” Mandy asked.

  He scoured us with a look filled with disbelief. “Did the council tell you nothing?”

  “Not nothing exactly…” I began. But then I couldn’t really isolate a single thing my mother had told me about what we were walking into except that Trudy, my dead aunt, was probably at the center of the problem.

/>   “Pretty much nothing, yeah,” we all agreed at once.

  The young man expelled air. “Well, that certainly makes my job harder.”

  “Um…sorry?” I asked.

  Mandy shook her dark head, frowning. “The council members aren’t the only ones telling us nothing.”

  Brock nodded. “Yeah. Who are you and what exactly is your job?”

  “I’m Deer and I’m supposed to take you to the resistance.”

  “Deer?” Deg asked with lifted brows.

  “It’s my code name.” When they didn’t immediately respond with understanding noises, he clarified. “Because I can run fast.”

  “Ah,” I said. “So, Deer, here’s the thing. We don’t want to go to the resistance. I need to speak to Aunt Trudy right away. There can be no suspicion at all that I’m with any resistance. I can’t risk it.”

  Deer looked confused. “Aunt…?” his expression darkened with anger. “You’re siding with her?”

  Energy flared from young Deer, creating a golden aura that surrounded his entire form.

  Deg held up his hands. “Whoa, there, Deer. Nobody said that. But we were given very specific orders.” His expression turned harsh. “And let’s be clear. We don’t know you from Adam. You could be a spy sent to test us.”

  “Adam? Who is this Adam?”

  Brock rolled his eyes. “Just point us in Trudy’s direction and we’ll get out of your very orange hair. Then you can catch up with your brother, Pig or Zebra, or whatever his name is.”

  Our would-be guide’s aura flared up again. His hands clenched and his expression turned dark and cold, making him look like an angry statue.

  I glared at Brock. “Not helping, demon.”

  The demon just shook his head.

  “We’re outsiders. Consider us neutral observers for now. We only want to talk to her. We’re trying to figure out her plans for our dimension. Can you help us get an audience?”

  Deer stared at me for a long moment and then shook his head. “I won’t be any part of helping you support the Nemesis Trudy.” He started to turn away and stopped. “But I will give you one piece of advice. Don’t tell anyone she’s your aunt. That information will get you killed faster than a stroll through Demon Hill. And you won’t have just one enemy here in Axismundi, you’ll have nearly endless enemies. That idiot woman isn’t creating the flat hierarchy she thinks she is, she’s creating a world filled with chaos. And if she gets her way that chaos will spread across the twelve dimensions. Then we’ll all be victims of her stupid plans.”

  He disappeared in a flash of light, leaving us standing in stunned silence. Hearing about the potential pandemonium of Trudy’s plan from my mother while safely ensconced in my normal and predictable world was one thing. But hearing about it when standing in a strange and hostile dimension where I’d just been told everyone wanted to kill me was quite another.

  “So, what now?” Brock asked in a rumbly voice.

  I glanced at him and saw the slight red glow behind his eyes and the muted smolder of his aura that told me he was in defensive mode.

  Deg was silent, his lack of comment concerning. Especially when I looked at him and found him frowning toward the razor thin breach. I could feel his yearning to return through that intangible strand of light. But I knew he wouldn’t act on it.

  He was the most determined and responsible Witch I knew.

  “LA?”

  I blinked, realizing my friends were waiting for me to respond to Brock’s question. “Oh. Um.” I pointed toward the distant glow in the sky. “We head that way. I’m guessing that light has something to do with the coronation. That’s where we’ll find Aunt Trudy.”

  Only problem was, I just wasn’t convinced that finding her was a very smart thing to do.

  The ground beneath our feet crunched loudly as we walked. Every crunch echoed into the darkness, falling away with a heavy thud as it hit the alien and curiously thick atmosphere. The ground was black, as if every inch of the place had been charred into permanent death. But it sifted beneath my feet like sand, a nearly non-existent light glinting off its surface at random moments.

  There was no moon in the sky above us. No light at all except for the pulsing illumination on the distant horizon. But somehow my eyes had adjusted enough to see the occasional shape rising up around us as we moved slowly through the limitless dark.

  There were no recognizable trees or other vegetation.

  Here and there something that might have once been green and alive lifted barren branches toward the black umbrella above, a testament to what might have been vibrant in an earlier time.

  My head was on a constant swivel as I walked. Needles of horrified anticipation stabbed a constant warning between my shoulder blades.

  I imagined that I could feel a hundred gazes on me, obscured in the all-but-total darkness, and wondered when the first attack would come.

  From my friends’ silence…and their constantly roving gazes…I could tell they felt the same danger in the air.

  Something drifted by, leaving an icy prickle on my face. It was like a sigh. A whisper. But it was thick with malice and dragged me to an alarmed stop, energy sparking from my hands.

  “What is it?” Deg asked, his gaze sliding uselessly around the night.

  “I felt something,” I whispered.

  Behind us, Mandy jumped, giving a breathy yelp of fear. “What was that?”

  Beside her, Brock’s aura flared brighter. His eyes glowed eerily though the dark. “I sense demons.”

  “Just perfect,” I muttered under my breath.

  The stench of sulfur thickened. The air heated noticeably. We all stood very still, formed in a circle without even thinking, with our backs to the center. Energy pulsed at our fingertips and I didn’t have to look at Brock to know he’d taken his demonic form. I’d seen it only once and it was terrifying.

  I only hoped it was enough to frighten whatever stalked us.

  The whisper of sound surged past again, bringing with it a biting wave of static that made every hair on my body rise to attention.

  Deg murmured softly beside me. And behind him, Mandy whispered magical words that sent fiery orange symbols dancing on the air. The symbols she and Deg formed with their quickly moving fingers danced around each other, forming into a ring of energy that encompassed all four of us.

  As the warding snapped into place, some of the dread I’d been feeling softened, muffled behind a wall of protective magics.

  The silence between us grew, became oppressive. Anxious to complete our mission and get the Hades out of there, I fought the urge to break through the ward and just start running, firing energy at anything that moved.

  But the others held me there. I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize their safety. So, I dug for patience and held firm, my gaze locked on the area around our small group.

  Nothing stirred.

  No movement.

  No sound.

  There was only the skin-prickling feeling of being stalked.

  Then the darkness shifted.

  The warding surrounding us stretched with an ear-splitting scream and I stumbled back, bumping up against Mandy as she and Deg chanted louder, their fingers moving so fast they were a blur on the night.

  The warding snapped again, sending reverberations through the space inside it and, as if someone had shot a starting gun at a gargoyle race, the blackness exploded into motion.

  Chapter Five

  The screams curdled my blood. Reacting in genuine fear and on the heels of pure adrenaline, we all scrambled backward. The warded circle snapped smaller to contain us.

  The air thickened with the stench of sulfur and rot and the frantic activity beyond our circle spun it around and over us, filling our nostrils with the reek of death.

  But the screaming and the stink were nothing compared to what we were seeing.

  Horrid, black-eyed faces with yellowed skin and sunken cheeks, and black stringy lips pulled back to show a terri
fying set of deadly fangs. Gray, curved teeth rose up from the narrow jaws and even bigger fangs curved down to meet them.

  Saliva dripped from the fangs and sizzled like acid on the black ground.

  They had long bodies with humanoid arms and shoulders and a bird’s tail. The feathers on their raven-like wings looked like they’d been oiled, a jagged fringe which wildly thrashed the air, sending their stink to invade our little safe space.

  Harpies!

  My heart was pounding so hard I felt lightheaded. For one, horrifying moment I thought I would pass out from fear.

  The creatures slammed into the warding, its invisible walls shuddering under the impact as several of them hit us at once. They screeched constantly, the sound slicing against our hearing like razor-sharp blades. I threw my hands over my tortured ears and fought to keep standing as my brain turned to mush and blood leaked from between my fingers.

  Between shrieks Deg and Mandy’s chanting grew louder, turning hoarse as the flying monsters beat relentlessly against their ward.

  I didn’t know how they could keep on working their magics. It was all I could do not to break through the doomed warding and run screaming to a certain death.

  Apparently, I wasn’t alone. Behind me, Brock suddenly flexed, his demonic form breaking free from the protective magic and surging straight up in the air with a rage-filled roar. The circle wobbled dangerously for a beat as Mandy lost her focus and looked up at him. “Brock, no!”

  I looked skyward, horror making me forget to breathe.

  Deg’s voice rose, his fingers flying upon the air, and the protective circle slid closed around the three of us again.

  My gaze locked on the enraged demon and, despite myself, I sucked air in an appreciative gasp. Brock was heart-stoppingly gorgeous in a demonic goth kind of way.

  He looked down on us, his fierce red gaze blazing like fire in a handsome black face. A thick cap of shiny black hair swept away from a face that I still recognized, splitting to show a pair of very sharp horns before falling in perfect waves down the back of Brock’s head and to his broad shoulders.