Earth Witches Aren't Easy Read online

  The strong smell of coffee mingled with the pot roast to create nirvana. My stomach grumbled loudly and my mouth watered as I wandered through the sitting room into Betty’s kitchen. Jack sat at the table, a mug of coffee in one hand and newspaper in the other. He looked like he belonged there, hair disheveled and a scruffy five o'clock shadow. A patient air hovered around him, relaxed, like a large cat at rest but that calm surface disguised his utter awareness of everything around him,

  “You smell much better,” he commented, eyes twinkling with a hint of devilment, before taking a swallow of coffee.

  “Pfft!” I fished a mug out of the cupboard. “So, how are you doing?”

  Shifting in his chair to watch me add three teaspoons of sugar to my coffee, Jack shook his head. “You want some coffee to go with your sugar?”

  “Just a little.”

  Old jokes, familiar and warm, just like him. God it's good to see him. I managed to bury the need to see him while he sat there in the kitchen, breathing the same air as me. Jack and I go way back. We went to college together, dated for a while, and ended up good friends. We kept each other sane—he for me after my attack and later, I held him up after his wife, Nancy, died.

  For nearly a decade, our lack of sexual tension kept our friendship comfortable. Don’t get me wrong. He’s all six foot two heterosexual male, with broad shoulders, and honest sex appeal. His charm never failed to make me laugh. His overabundance of personality could irritate me, particularly when he teased, but he was Jack, imperfect and fabulous rolled into one masculine package.

  He never forgot a birthday or an anniversary. Never late without a good reason and the occasional pack of mashed cigarettes he kept in the breast pocket of his shirt advertised his only bad habit. Too good to be true, maybe, but I’d seen him with Nancy.

  Jack worshipped the ground his wife walked on. I couldn’t think of a more deserving woman. I’d wanted to hate her, especially because Jack adored her. But the smart, funny woman turned into a good friend. She was working on her Ph.D. in educational leadership when the cancer diagnosis turned their lives upside down. She stayed positive; sure she could beat anything with Jack at her side.

  Two months after their marriage, her chemo treatments began and she died a week after their first anniversary. I nearly lost Jack, too.

  For weeks, he shut everyone and everything off. He crawled into a bottle and he stayed there. But I’m a determined bitch when I want to be, and I didn’t want to lose both of my friends. I fought Jack and his bottle bingeing, and eventually, he came around. It took almost two years, but between Gran and me, we took care of him.

  He took Gran’s death almost as hard as I did. Another tragedy we weathered together. It wasn’t unusual for us to get together on the anniversary of Nancy or Gran’s death and talk our way through the night—and several bottles of wine.

  We never talked about their deaths, instead we reminisced about their lives by telling a lot of stories, and some years it helped. Other years, it didn’t. Still, he remained the one, truly steadfast anchor in my life. He looked a little worse for wear. This wasn’t about Nancy. He always looked far away when it came to her. It was probably just work.

  “I’m tired, Chance, just tired. You?” A grin tugged the corner of his mouth.

  “Not bad. Work’s been pretty good the last few weeks. Actually might come out ahead this month.” I shared his grin and settled myself at the table. “Which is good. I hate having to ask Betty if I can get an extra week out of my rent until a check clears.”

  “Betty would let you live there for free if you didn’t insist on paying her,” he teased. “She loves having you here, and it’s good for her, especially with Billy gone to Charleston and Elizabeth in Los Angeles.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I curled a leg underneath me and my other foot tapped out a mindless rhythm. “But I like paying her rent.” Betty doted on me almost as much as she doted on her grandkids when they weren't so far away.

  “And you don’t want to feel like a mooch, right?”

  “No, I don’t want to feel like a mooch.” We fell silent and drank our coffee. I noticed a manila folder tucked under the newspaper he’d been scanning. I lifted a brow toward it and then looked at Jack.

  “Uh-oh, Miss Spooky caught me.” He grinned, but the effect didn’t quite reach his brown eyes.

  “I hate it when you call me that.” My nose wrinkled.

  He coined the stupid nickname after a rather obnoxious evening during the early days of dating. Like a dog worrying at a bone, he discovered that it annoyed me and used it to prick me whenever he experienced the urge. Gran used to say boys like to pull on girls’ pigtails to demonstrate affection.

  Fortunately for Jack, I outgrew my habit of punching those little boys back.

  Most of the time.

  “What’s in the folder?”

  “Well, it’s part of the reason I came out tonight.” His tone turned apologetic. “But not the only one, so I thought we’d visit for a while first. You know, catch up.” Jack didn't stall. Now I was really curious.

  “And get me nice and relaxed before you ask me something difficult?” Jack’s body language, his tone, and even the way his gaze slid away from mine all indicated he really didn’t want to be here.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  I didn’t need to be a psychic to figure that out. “Come on, spill. We’ve known each other way to long for this dancing around on ceremony bull.”

  He pulled the manila folder out slowly and laid it on top of the paper, hand flattening against the top. “Last thing I want is to reopen old wounds. But I really don’t have any choice.”

  An odd gesture, like he wanted to keep the contents contained. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. A sense of déjà vu burned in my belly.

  His eyes darkened with concern and another unfamiliar emotion. I'll be damned. He's hiding something. He never hid things—or held back before.

  “What is it, Jack?”

  He took a deep breath and put his coffee cup aside. He opened the folder and pushed it across to me. His posture remained stiff and erect. “It’s Randall Oakes. He’s started again.”

  My heart constricted in my chest, and mute fear coursed through my stomach. Where I’d been starving before, nausea washed over me. Cold sweat soaked through my shirt. My gaze slowly descended to the open folder and the picture that looked up at me.

  The black and white security camera photo, grainy in some places, didn’t do his dark, vicious eyes justice. Twin pinpoints of utter emptiness in the center of the photo. His unkempt hair and evil grin were exactly as I remembered. I stared in horrified fascination. My abdomen cramped. My scars burned hot and painful, as though freshly inflicted.

  Death stared up at me from the face of the man who gutted me and left me to die.

  Three

  I stumbled blindly into the doorframe, bouncing off it on my way to the front door. I managed to make it out of the house and onto the porch without throwing up. Jack followed right behind me, but he might as well have been a million miles away. I needed air, and the pouring rain loosened the choking closeness of the kitchen. Crazy as it sounded, the cozy atmosphere of the kitchen made the horror of Randall Oakes was so much worse. Nightmares belonged outside in the wet night. I made it to the railing and just held onto it. My heart hammered against my ribs.

  The scars underneath my shirt burned. Eight years old, they shouldn’t hurt at all. I closed my eyes against the vision of the rain-soaked yard, occasionally lit up by brief flashes of lightning. I needed to breathe. I started to manage my breathing, slowly, one measured breath after the other. Jack murmured something behind me, but I ignored it.

  Get a grip. Let it go. I reached for the Earth. I sought solace to mute the cacophony of thoughts whirling through my mind.

  The horror of that night threatened to overwhelm the present. I needed the grounding of the Earth’s embrace to drown out the fear. My eyes opened to the past, and the vision rushed
at me like a bullet train on a collision course. I couldn’t look away.

  ~ * ~

  A young woman dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, I saw myself as far more innocent then. I’d just finished listening to a lecture on criminal psychology. Studying to be a psychologist with a specialty in the criminal mind, the subject fascinated me.

  It was late. My Wednesday class let out at ten. Not deserted, the population centers of our campus tended more toward the dorms, away from the classroom buildings. I walked to my car, Gran’s beat up old Cadillac with green paint peeling away on both doors.

  I’d been humming Meatloaf’s I Would Do Anything for Love and half-danced my way to my car. I’d asked out Kurt Martin for dinner on Friday, and he said yes. First guy since Jack to float my boat, I just didn’t seem to date much, between classes and working fulltime at a bookstore to help pay the bills. My life just didn’t leave me much time for long-term relationships, partying or the general socializing most people expected in college.

  Almost to the Cadillac, I glanced at my watch. I remember thinking there wasn’t much time for me to get to the restaurant to meet Jack and Nancy. I hated to be late. Gran always said I’d rather be absent than be tardy.

  I blamed those distractions for not noticing him, but suddenly he stood in front of me. I thought he was just another student on his way from the parking lot to the academic buildings. Classes were done, but he could have been dropping off or hooking up. I started to step around him, and he moved to the side, blocking me.

  “Sorry,” I murmured with a half-smile. “Must be distracted.” I tried to sidestep him, and he appeared in my path, again. “Sorry again.”

  When I attempted the fourth sidestep and he blocked my path, I frowned. “Um, excuse me?”

  “You’re Chance, aren’t you?” My name oozed off his tongue. The hair on my arms stood up, and became intimately aware of how far I was from the buildings. Fear chimed a deep bell within. We stood alone—too alone—in the darkened parking lot.

  “Um, yes. Do I know you?” I rocked back on my heels. I wore flats and found myself wishing I’d worn running shoes instead. “Maybe Forensic Psych class? Dr. Jameson?”

  His mouth twisted into a cruel parody of a smile. If I didn’t know better I would say he weaved on his feet, slowly and sinuously like a snake. The proximity of our positions gave me an excellent vantage point for smelling the faintly acrid scent of cigarettes and booze that wafted off his clothing. Dark, lank hair crowed his unremarkable face. Between the sinister smile and cold, dead look in his eyes, my heart thumped painfully against my ribs. My internal alarms were starting to peel like mad.

  “No,” he said slowly. “Chance.”

  I absolutely abhorred how he said my name that time. There was no mistaking the dark, leaden tones that came out of his mouth. He might as well have said, I’m going to kill you, and I’m going to enjoy it.

  I didn’t hesitate. I flung the seven-pound psych class textbook at him, catching him square in the chin, and wheeled in place to run. Halfway across the parking lot, he crashed into my back, slamming me into the ground.

  My face rebounded off the pavement blacking out my vision. The air whooshed out of me painfully. I gagged as the foul stench of him filled my nostrils with my first gasped breath. I used it to cry out when his knee drove into the small of my back. My kidney felt like it imploded, and the scream of animal terror I’d been working toward came out a whimper.

  He hauled me up by my arms with such force I thought they would pop out of their sockets. Dazed and pained, I refused to lie down and die. He’d robbed me of the flight option, so I fought. I started struggling and drove my foot down on his. He laughed and twisted my arm behind my back hard enough it felt like it snapped a tendon, if not a bone. His putrid breath flushed against my ear. Searing, white-hot pain blanked out the meaningless words he whispered. He drove something into my stomach. It slashed right, then left, leaving a trail of fire in its path.

  A scream rose out of my throat that should have been loud enough to curdle my own blood, but a desperate mewling filled my ears. The blade drove in again, and again, slashing deeper each time. My breathing grew harder and more labored. He laughed against me, the wash of his breath sickening me with each exhalation. His lips brushed my lobe and then he disappeared.

  I stood there, in the middle of the parking lot, dazed and weaving in and out of consciousness at the searing pain in my belly. Sticky fluid coated my hands as I tried to keep my guts on the inside. The harsh glare of one streetlight overhead illuminated the dark blood spreading its way across my torn shirt and over my hands.

  “Help me,” I whispered to the wind as my knees slowly started to buckle. “Help me.” Why the hell couldn’t I scream? All the power my voice possessed leaked out of my belly, bleeding down to the pavement. Distantly I heard the sound of a car start and through blurred eyes, I watched the headlights turn out of the parking lot.

  “Help me,” I whispered again. The Earth rushed up, holding out her arms and calling to me, calling me to flee the pain and the fear.

  “Holy shit!” a voice called from somewhere behind as I collapsed. “Hang on, lady, hang on!”

  Then…nothing but blackness.

  ~ * ~

  “Chance.” Jack’s voice penetrated the darkness, lancing through the cocoon of the Earth. Jack's arms tightened around me, holding me close. “Come on, Chance. Come back.”

  “It’s okay.” My voice sounded as hoarse and pained as on that dreadful night¾barely a whisper where power once existed. “I’m here, Jack. I just…I just need a minute.” I needed to remind myself that I was safe. I was here, not in that parking lot. I didn't bleed to death. I wasn’t dying. Alone. Afraid.

  He squeezed gently. I wasn’t alone. Jack was here. “You sure? You choked, and it sounded like you couldn’t breathe.”

  I drew in another deep breath and forced the core of emotion and memory down. “Yeah,” I whispered again. I lifted a hand to touch the dampness of tears on my face. I refused to put a hand to my stomach. Not bleeding. It happened eight years ago—not tonight—not matter how vivid. Remember that. “Just give me a sec, okay? And…”

  “And?”

  I turned slowly, releasing my death grip on the rail. Jack’s arms loosened in response. He took a step back and his eyes searched my face. The pain in his expression tugged at my heartstrings. I didn’t blame Jack for this. I knew he’d sooner cut off his own hand than put me back through that experience. “Can I have a smoke?”

  “Didn’t you quit?” But he pulled out the smashed pack I knew resided in his breast pocket. He shook out a couple and handed one to me. Neither of us commented on how badly my hand trembled. I tucked the filter into my lips and watched, mesmerized, as Jack pulled out a lighter and ignited the flame with a flick of his thumb. I took in a deep breath and the tip glowed cherry red. He then did the same for his own.

  We both took long, shaky drags on the cigarettes and polluted the air around us in a haze of blue smoke as we exhaled. At any other time, it might have seemed comical, how exactly in tune our actions were. I took another long drag, the smoke curling through my lungs. It helped to press away the horrifying memories. I leaned my head back as a raindrop fell off the overhang to splat against my forehead. Hysteria threatened at the cold slap of reality.

  “I thought he was dead.” I took pride in the evenness of my tone. I exhaled the stream of smoke toward the sky.

  “So did we. After he attacked that girl in Chantilly, he took off in a car. We traced him to the airport and a counter purchase for a Florida flight. The airline confirmed his boarding pass and surveillance showed him passing through security and up the gangway. The flight crashed seventy five miles from Atlanta. Everyone thought he was dead, Chance.”

  Jack leaned against the side of the house. The shadows hid his expression, but the cigarette’s tip illuminated the frustration pinching his features each time he took a drag, which was frequently. “That’s why I came back so
quickly from Los Angeles. Burt Jenkins down in Forensics picked up DNA traces at a crime scene. One partial and one full fingerprint. The evidence points to Oakes.”

  “How did they have his DNA and prints? How do they know they’re his?” I sounded so rational. Gran would be proud. “How old?”

  Focusing on her age meant I didn’t have to think too hard about Randall Oakes being alive.

  He should be dead, consumed by a fiery hell of jet fuel. I didn’t even have to ask if the crime scene was a murder. Oakes specialized in one thing and one thing only, causing the sheer torturous death of bleeding out from a gut wound.

  The son of a bitch got off on it. He loved to cut up girls and leave them to die. I never did find out why he picked me that night. The police, and later the FBI, speculated a circumstance of the wrong place at the wrong time. Not a hell of a lot of comfort in that. It took me months to heal physically and longer to heal mentally. I thought I’d dealt with most of it, at least until now. Tonight told me I’d lost a lot more ground than I thought possible. Putting the fear to rest seemed easier when the object of my terror died. I hated the thought of him clawing his way out of the grave and back into my life.

  “She was twenty. Lived in Reston. Attended one of the local colleges. He got her…”

  “On the way to her car.”

  “Yeah, campus police found her. She died en route to the hospital in Reston.”

  I nodded slowly and took another long drag on my cigarette. “When?”

  “Night before last.”

  I closed my eyes. Reston was less than twenty minutes from here, thirty minutes in traffic. The Greenway made it feel a lot closer though. I listened to the sound of the rain continuing to splash down in its steady pitter-patter fashion. The smoke left my throat dry, but I sucked it in noisily. Better that than bursting into tears. “If he’s been alive this whole time, why suddenly start again now?”