Everyone Dies in the End #91

Author Talking Stuff

Huzzah! Does anyone really say that? Well, if they did, I would. Two new blog posts in a week, I told you we were going to ramp it up. We left the story with Cindy in Eddie-who-used-to-be-Vader's arms and gunfire erupting in the church. On the opposite side of the altar, in the rectory, Susan, the good witch (again real witches don't think in those terms, nor use near as many commas in their writing, but it makes it easier to visualize), has come face to face and eye to eye with Mbande, the less than good witch. The gunfire they will hear, and indeed the gunfire Cindy and Eddie heard, is/was Kat and Zak fighting their way into the church. This stuff is all obvious when you have the book in your lap. Honest.

Susan

Her world shrunk to a blue universe flecked with gold. Behind her the guard’s former captive/girlfriend scrambled to her feet and bolted through the back door, all thoughts of revenge forgotten. To her front the woman stepped closer. Dusty was neither aware of the captive’s bolting nor the black witch’s stepping. All that mattered was the blue universe. Her hands dropped to her side. She stood motionless, unknowing, helpless, but not quite.

Mbande

It had always been about the power. It’s attraction intensely sexual, even more than sexual. She had been a small girl when the men came. Hutu men. She was Hutu, but Tutsi lived in her village. The Hutu came for the Tutsi, drunk and violent Hutu. When they finished the bloody business with the Tutsi they didn’t stop. Violence has an appetite of its own. A fact she learned that day, and cherished now. After the violent Hutu men finished with the Tutsi they came into her home. It wasn’t much of a home. A living area—where her mother, her father, and Mbande slept, ate, crafted grass baskets, and played Oware—and a cooking area in which her mother made bugali and boiled potatoes, were the only two rooms. An outhouse sat in a corner of the backyard, opposite the small shack where her mother practiced the magic. Her mother had shown her the magic. Taught her its ways. The good ways.

Three of the Hutu had stepped through the front door, the mud falling in rich clumps from their combat boots. Her father rose, protesting. The first of the three shot him dead with three bullets from the pistol in his hand. Mbande’s mother ran to the body of the man with whom she had shared her life, crumpling her body on his. Behind her Mbande screamed. The three men beat them, killing her mother, leaving Mbande for dead, cursing them for living among the Tutsi

Since that day Mbande had sworn to never again be helpless. She learned Nzinga, African martial arts, stick fighting, and the curved metal, but those weapons—her hands, feet, poles, glinting sabers—were child’s play compared the dark magic she had studied, practiced, perfected. Her mother’s magic had been for good—to ease a relative’s ache, heal a child’s cut, relax a friend’s mind—but Mbande had taken the spells her Mother had taught her and sharpened, honed, and perverted them. The magic, the black magic, was hers, as much a part of her soul as the memory of that beating, and her pledge to never again be the victim. That power was her shield, her weapon, and this evening it would also prove to be her undoing.

She stepped closer to the woman. Mbande’s will entranced her, prohibited her from moving. She was next to her now, her will dominating the girl. Mbande wanted her complete subservience. Not the way a woman wants a man, but in the way that her black soul demanded dominance over any who threatened. The cutlass hissed from its scabbard. The girl stood, silent as a ghost.

Susan

On the other hand, Susan was all about good. Or at least once upon a time—a time before nuclear missiles, gangers named Kill Dog, cannibals in calico dresses, and humans penned for food—she had been all about good. Like Mbande, she had also learned her magic from her mother, a good mother, who believed in the Wiccan creed, who believed a person should do no harm.

That same mother tattooed the pentagram on her cheek, triturating ink with her stone pestle and mortar. Susan never knew exactly what that ink was made from, but knew that it contained a bit of her mother’s blood, and she knew it was magic. Perhaps the magic was her mother, she didn’t know that, but she knew it tingled when she was in danger, glowed when the power within her was strong. It burned like fire now. Absolutely like fire.

The other witch, the dark witch (what a strange coincidence that is) stood close, her face mere inches from Susan’s. The gold-flecked pools of her eyes were deeply appealing, consuming, entrapping, but not quite. The fire on Susan’s cheek burned stronger.

The slender black woman was next to her, the scimitar hissing from its scabbard, when Susan shot her dead.

Or would have if the woman had been a normal lady, with normal reflexes. Susan whipped the pistol into the dark witches’ face and squeezed the trigger, but before that squeezing could cock the pistol’s hammer, the scimitar struck Susan’s hand. It was a backhand blow, struck with the dull edge of the scimitar. Dull, in this case, being a lethally deceitful word. The blow cut Susan’s wrist to the bone, and the pistol flew from her hand.

She grunted with pain, staring at the blood pumping from the gash in her arm. She didn’t have long to stare. Like a tornado her enemy whirred, kicking Susan hard in the stomach, doubling her, sending her stumbling backward. She gasped for air, struggling for balance. The witch strode confidently toward her, kicking aside Susan’s revolver, ignoring the blood on which she trod, smiling at Susan, her glitter eyes spinning.

Again the foot shot out. This time Susan’s knee erupted in agony, and she collapsed. Her wrist pumped blood onto the floor around her, her stomach spasmed, and white, wild pain shot from her knee. Susan felt reality receding, her vision dimming; she was seconds from loosing consciousness. The dark witch stood above her, still smiling, raising the scimitar for what would surely be her death strike.

         And then the gunfire began.