Witch On The Run: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 4) Read online

  Hoisting herself inside the already moving van, Red barely had her leg inside before slamming the door. She usually had a witty parting shot, but not when facing a pack of werewolves. “Go!”

  Cursing, Vic sped around a dumpster to the front of the building.

  Shifters could be peaceful. There were even some species that Vic and Red hadn’t pissed off. Then there were werewolves—big, aggressive, and territorial. Vic had made his reputation hunting them. Even in human form, they were supernaturally tough with a better nose than a police dog.

  Red pressed herself against her seat, panting. “Wolves.”

  The Falcon lurched, cutting off an SUV in the parking lot on the way out of the truck stop.

  Red dug through the mix of supernatural defenses in the hunter’s kit between the front seats. “Dammit. It’s all stakes and holy water in here.” Her inheritance had bought them new toys like the costly were-mace, but they had been so focused on vampires. There wasn’t even a sprig of wolfsbane in easy access.

  The long-running west coast drought had made it rare for most hunters, and they hadn’t had it on their last werewolf hunt in Oklahoma City, but she had finally managed to find an importer in LA. She glowered at the reorganized wall of supplies. She had no idea where Vic had put anything. You could kill a werewolf without wolfsbane, but they could walk off a lot of damage—even a silver bullet.

  A tinge of wistfulness entered Vic’s voice. “I haven’t hunted a wolf in months.”

  Rolling her eyes at him, Red belted herself in and twisted in her seat. “Ellie, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just banged up.” Releasing her death grip on the door, Ellie shifted to find her footing in the back of the van, plopping into orange bean bag chair. “Thank you for saving me.”

  “That’s what we do. Vic here is with the Brotherhood of Bards and Heroes. Even if he doesn’t look like it.” Red smirked at his mullet and denim jacket. It was an outfit that screamed hunter, not scholar of the supernatural.

  “Don’t get used to this sweet van, kiddo.” Vic flapped his hand, hunched over the wheel like a disgruntled father on a family road trip. He pulled out his phone and typed out a quick text message as he spoke. “I’m dropping you off at the academy and letting the alchemists figure out the rest. I don’t need another intern.”

  Ellie wrapped her arms around her knees, shoulders slumping. “I can’t go back there. Not after what I did in the lab.”

  “You’re enrolled there?” Red fought her curiosity, knowing that the teen’s educational path was the least of their concerns now. Vic and Basil had told her stories, but they had to be teasing her. An academy of alchemists hidden on the Vegas Strip. Really?

  Basil straightened his heaving back and crossed his arms, capturing as much dignity as one could while perched in a tie-dyed bean bag chair. “Little Red Riding Hood, why are werewolves attacking you? And what’s up with the wig?”

  Legs crossing, Ellie pointed to the silver-streaked wig hanging off a strapped-down toolbox along the cramped van wall. “I can ask you the same question, mister.”

  Vic interrupted the sassy exchange, gaze locked on the dusty road leading back to the highway. “Do your parents know that you’re getting into knife fights at midnight?”

  “My parents are dead.” Ellie spat the words at him, hands on her hips.

  Red put a hand to her chest, sympathy blooming. “Ellie…”

  “Welcome to the club. I’m the president,” Vic snarked into the rearview mirror. “Since we risked our lives to save your ass, and you haven’t even chipped in for gas, I think we deserve answers.”

  Crunch. The van shuddered and lurched.

  Red flew forward. The seat belt dug into her ribs, forcing the air from her lungs. Her palms bashed the dashboard as she braced herself instinctively.

  An unlit jeep rode hard on their tail, close enough to see the driver’s yellow track suit and bleached hair. Suddenly, vivid white high beams flashed from the white jeep, blinding the mirrors. It rammed the van again.

  “That’s my trick.” Vic gripped the wheel tighter. The Millennium Falcon jerked to the side, missing the highway ramp to careen onto an unpaved frontage road.

  Red clutched the roof handle, teeth clanging together like pots in a spin cycle. She tried to ignite her magic. Nothing happened. She tugged at her energy with the desperation of a car jacker rubbing wires together to kickstart an engine as the cops closed in.

  Ellie shrieked, falling into a groaning Basil.

  “Fuck. They’re still following.” Vic’s head whipped between the car mirrors like a spectator at Wimbledon. “Do a soul thing, Basil. Make them chill out.”

  “I’m a soulmancer, not an empath. I can’t control their feelings!”

  Red sighed at the arguing and tried to problem solve by taking stock of their situation. She pawed through the pouches of the corduroy-lined hunter’s kit to see what they had for hand to hand combat. That was their last resort. Wolves were faster and stronger even without the claws and teeth. Basil wasn’t a fighter, and Ellie was spunky but spooked. That left her and Vic as the muscle. And he needed to drive. Gritting her teeth, she tried to estimate the growing distance between the vehicles.

  “You have guns. I see two! Shoot their tires.” Ellie pointed to Red’s holstered snub-nosed revolver in the hunter’s kit.

  Vic growled. “This isn’t a movie, kid!”

  “I’m not a sharpshooter.” Red shook her head, “No use wasting a silver bullet now. Our best bet is outrunning them.”

  “Ok, we have two witches then.” Vic swerved to miss a giant tumbleweed in the road.

  “Bugger.” Basil gagged, slumping against the wall.

  “Don’t spew in the Falcon, dude!” Vic yelled over his shoulder. “Do something magical, Red.”

  “I’m still recharging! Had my magic harvested by an unholy mixture of magic and machine this week, remember?” Red was whipped around in her chair from the defensive driving. “I couldn’t float a feather.”

  Ellie braced herself between the front seats. “And I need stuff. Witch stuff. I can’t just pull a spell out of my ass.”

  “It’d be cooler if you could,” Vic drawled as he yanked the steering wheel right to turn onto rougher road.

  Basil moaned from the back, palms pressing against his stomach. His usual tan had paled to a sickly beige.

  Red’s head whipped around to catch the word lake on a faded sign as they sped pass. “You can’t shake a tail on a country lane, Vic. There’s nothing else out here but rocks, and the highway is the other way.”

  “Ye of little faith.” He jerked the wheel. “This isn’t my first trip to Vegas.”

  A gun blast echoed behind them. The bullet pinged into the sand beside the moving van.

  Vic revved the engine and zigged off the road and onto the wide expanse of a dry lakebed. The van sped over cracked earth toward distant mountains darkened to shadows under the midnight sky. He balanced the wheel with one hand as he sent another text. “Who are you, kid? Don’t think I won’t find out once we ditch these furry losers.”

  “Watch the road!” Glaring at Vic texting during a car chase, Red grabbed her armrest to steady herself in the rough ride. “Why are they after you, Ellie?”

  Ellie drew back, cringing. “I don’t know!”

  Basil straightened his back, holding the side door for balance, and narrowed his eyes. “Her real name is Hannah Elizabeth. She’s been running since her parents died.”

  “No!” The teenager squeaked, neck disappearing in the rolls of her red hood as her shoulders tensed. “That’s—"

  Red studied her face. “Some people call Basil a shaman. He can read your soul like a book, Hannah. We’re trying to help.”

  Vic cursed as the van hit a jagged rock, wheels jouncing. “And we’re getting hunted for it. Who are they?”

  She flinched. “Fine. I’m Hannah, but I don’t know them!”

  “But you think they were sent to finish the Oklahoma
City job. What job, Hannah?” Basil crab walked on the bean bags, sliding on the rollicking van floor to grab her hand. He closed his eyes. A sheen of sweat rolled down his face. He gagged and fell back. “To take out the whole family. Her last name is Proctor. She is the last.”

  Red shared a panicked glance at Vic. They knew that story. They had been the intrepid werewolf hunters in it. But this was a plot twist. The Proctors had been massacred. Descended from the legendary Salem witches, the line was extinguished by the late and unlamented King of the Prairie Dead to stop a feud between werewolves and witches. Red had been given a vision of how they died from their ghosts. “You’re related to Brian, right?”

  Hannah nodded, lip trembling. “My brother. How did you know?”

  “Long story.” She’d save the fact that she had met Brian’s ghost and that she had been hired to hunt down his werewolf girlfriend for another night. Adding that she’d been double-crossed by the vampiress who hired her only made it more complicated. “I was there with Breanna Larson when she died. She loved your brother very much.”

  Hannah’s expression hardened. “She got him killed.”

  The werewolves fired another two shots.

  Red tried to keep the fear off her face for Hannah’s sake even as her throat tightened painfully.

  Vic zagged the van over the shifting sands to stop the wolves from getting a clear target. “This can’t be Breanna Larson’s pack. Cowboy Kurt killed them too. Made a pelt out of the alpha.”

  “Good.” Hannah bared her teeth as she opened the hunter’s kit.

  “No one is left from the feud,” Red said, swatting the teen’s hand away from the weapons.

  “Someone is still pissed.” Vic drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. A vein pulsed visibly in his forehead. “Okay, kiddo, they gave you a key to the academy. It should work on the back door. Take it out now.”

  “Vic?” Red didn’t like the conspiratorial nod the Bard and the runaway exchanged.

  Hannah pulled a golden casino chip on a leather thong out from her jacket. “I got it.”

  “Focus hard on the academy.” Vic pushed the straining engine until the van shook from the effort. He drove straight toward a dead cottonwood tree in the center of the dry lakebed. “Imagine the sights, sounds, the smells. You have to want us there.”

  Opening her spirit gaze, Red took Hannah’s hand. She visualized pushing a thread of her weak magic to the teenager. It felt like offering a cup of water to a stream. She didn’t know what the plan was, but she wanted to give the girl what energy she had.

  Head bowed and eyes squeezed shut, Hannah mouthed the words “I’m at the academy” over and over.

  Red shifted to monitor the gaining jeep. The seconds stretched by as the one-eared werewolf rose from the backseat. The bullet ripped through the back door into a duffle bag on the wall, pinging against a metal utility chest.

  “Concentrate, kid!”

  “Vic, look out!” Basil pointed over Red’s shoulder before diving into a bean bag chair.

  “Shit!” Red yelped at the fast-approaching cottonwood.

  Dead to the mundane eye, the silhouette of a drooping Banyan tree shimmered like a Milky Way aura around the physical branches. Magic sigils glowed on the gray trunk. Swirling concentric circles of a green and purple vortex grew in front of it. The mystical energy brightened to a supernova white.

  The Millennium Falcon hit a rock, axle creaking as the wheels lifted, and soared into the portal.

  Chapter Two

  Red held up her hands as the Millennium Falcon passed through the portal in a blaze of glory. She closed her eyes, still blinded by the brilliance.

  Time and space stretched as the van flew into the oblivion like its namesake. Screams couldn’t penetrate the silence. G-force rippled across her cheeks, flipping open her eyelids. Blue and purple thunderstorms raged like an interstellar monsoon outside the windshield. She reached into the back seat to check on Hannah. Her arm elongated, the atoms unable to stop the accelerating momentum. Reality snapped out of its unnatural extension, constricting like a dropped spring. The wheels landed with a hard, metal-creaking bounce.

  Her stomach dropped as the seat belt caught her painfully in the diaphragm. Red braced herself on the door.

  Teeth audibly mashing together, Vic hit the brakes. The Falcon skidded toward a shelf of delicate beakers and bottles. The glass rattled as the van stopped an inch away.

  Red scrambled out, leaving the door open, blinking away the sparkles in her vision. She bent at the waist, holding her hips, releasing an anxious breath that she felt down to her toes. “You could have given me a heads up on whatever the fuck just happened.”

  “Almost pissed yourself when I booked it for that tree, huh?” Vic said, a shit-eating grin in his voice.

  She straightened and immediately stumbled back, blinking from the vibrant magic traces in the long chamber. Sigils glowed like neon graffiti from every surface, nearly obscuring what was underneath. Energy hovered like a beaded curtain. She adjusted her dazzled magical sight like a dimmer switch. The surreal scribbles faded, leaving behind the strange objects cramming the walls. Glass cases filled with mummified hands, silver goblets, and uncut crystals mingled with lit up slot machines and old neon signs. Only shadowy arched passageways in the corners broke up the eclectic collection.

  “Holy shit, you weren’t playing with me.”

  “This is Sin City, baby!” Vic unbelted himself and rubbed his hands together. “You’ll learn magic and I’ll gamble.”

  “Next you’re going to tell me the academy has a buffet with all-you-can-eat shrimp.”

  Basil staggered out of the van and tried to lean against the bumper. It fell with a clatter. He groaned, green around the edges. “Bloody hell.” He tottered back inside.

  “That was so cool!” Hannah scooted by the sickly soulmancer to jump out the side door. Her red wig sat askew on her head, showing her natural brunette hair. Her excited smile made her honey-brown eyes twinkle. “Vic, how did you know a portal was there?”

  “Good question,” Red murmured as she spun in a circle, trying to decipher the chaotic mix of magic in the climate-controlled air. She was awestruck already, and this was just the storage room. “How did you?”

  “I know an alchemist who owes me one.” Vic climbed out of the driver’s side and walked around the van to inspect the damage. “Let’s hope he finds us first.”

  Hannah ducked her head and leaned back against the van. She mumbled to herself, “Please don’t let it be Trudy.”

  “Constantine.” A rich, theatrical voice boomed in the chamber as a tall Hispanic man emerged from a rune etched archway in a wake of purple sparks. Clever eyes studied Vic from a handsome face framed with a dark pompadour so shiny with gel that it reflected his electric blue suit. He pulled Vic into a hug, chuckling. “What an entrance!”

  “Sorry about the skid marks.” Vic drew back, sweeping his arm over the floor. “I’d make a joke about underwear, but after that portal ride, it hits too close to home.”

  “You’ve brought back our runaway witch. I think the academy will call it even.” The stranger straightened his collar. “Just in time, because my lounge set is starting soon.”

  “I thought you said he was an alchemist.” Red walked forward, hitching her thumb on her belt loop.

  “My man, Diego Blanco, is one hundred percent alchemist—in the top twenty here, if you want to be precise—but between us, he’s a better singer,” Vic said behind his hand with an exaggerated whisper and wink at a faux-modest Diego.

  “We have layers. Thank you. It’s not just all secretive research passed from master to apprentice in smoky laboratories.” Diego shrugged with a joking smile. “It’s mostly that, but I still like to moonlight on the stage. Layers. I also book the guest lecturers and apparently welcome the riffraff.”

  “You’re the hardest working alchemist in town,” Vic said. “I’m glad you checked your phone so close to showtime.”

  �
��Be gladder that I could decipher your misspelled text messages. Aramaic is easier.” Diego crossed his arms. “So, who’s the prospective student I have to convince the rest of the Alchemical Synod to accept?”

  Red waved sheepishly. They had tossed around the idea of her taking a class or two here but suddenly it felt too real. Her voice came out tiny. “Hi.”

  Vic jerked his thumb at the soulmancer emerging from the van. “And we have this guy. Can you get Basil a job? He’d make a hell of a poker dealer.”

  Diego glanced over, his smile turning dour as he lifted his brows. The jovial lounge singer demeanor faded as he scrutinized Basil. “I see you picked up a new name and a new life after leaving your old friends. Do I call you Basil or Phillip?”

  Red mouthed the word yikes to Vic. She knew the soulmancer had lived more lives than a cat, but she hadn’t thought about the people he’d left behind.

  “Listen, I had to move on discretely before I was exposed—"

  “You ran without word. There’s a difference. You know that Neville went broken hearted on a sabbatical in Prague, right?” Diego’s fingers tightened on his lapels, wrinkling the shiny material. His hands stilled as he looked away. “Left me with a gap in my lecture schedule and down a research partner.”

  “Nev was always dramatic. We were barely dating.” Basil flapped his hand, still looking pale and sweaty. He sat down in the open door of the van and flopped backwards onto a bean bag, hand over his face. “Oh, bother, now my life decides to belatedly flash before my eyes. I’ll just be processing another near-death experience over here.”

  Diego closed his eyes, cheek tensing. He sighed. “I’ll see if I can help him get a place in the academy. For you, Vic.”

  Vic wiped his brow, shifting to block Basil from view. “I appreciate it.”