Salem's Revenge Complete Boxed Set (13 page)

B
ilagaana Nez—Bil for short—is a witch hunter, like me. Slightly older, in his early twenties, he’s refused to join any witch hunter groups. A loner, also like me. We’ve crossed paths a few times, fought a few exceptionally nasty witches together. Parted amicably on more than one occasion.

Hex continues growling. “Sit, Hex,” I command. As usual, he ignores me and keeps growling.

“Your dog never did like me,” Bil says. His already-brown skin—he’s half-Navajo—is well-tanned by significant portions of time spent outdoors under the hot Arizona sun. Phoenix is his home. Or at least it was, until he left to travel across the country, hunting witches. Homes don’t really exist anymore. I mean, who would’ve thought a southern boy like me would end up in Pennsylvania?

“Hex doesn’t like anyone,” I say.

“He likes you,” Bil points out.

“Someone should tell
him
that,” I say, scratching my dog behind the ears. He’s as stiff as a plank of wood, still tense from the battle with the other witch hunters.

“Who the hell are you?” Laney says. “Carter, you know this guy?”

“Not a nice way to introduce yourself to the guy who just saved your life,” Bil says.

“Thanks,” Laney says. “So who the hell are you?”

Bil laughs. “As much as I’d like to continue trading barbs with this little spitfire you managed to
rope
”—he chuckles again while Laney pulls the lasso off her shoulders—“we should get out of here,” he says. “They’ll be back.”

I nod. “I just got here. You know a place?” I ask.

“Carter, wait. We should talk about this. You trust this guy?”

I don’t really trust anyone, but Bil did just save our lives. “Mostly,” I say, which earns me a smirk from Bil.

“Follow me,” he says. “I’ve been here a week.”

“Thanks,” I say, but he just turns away. Saving lives is a thankless job these days.

Putting pressure on the gash on my shoulder, I traipse behind Bil’s brown cargo shorts, trying to read the tour dates off the back of whatever rock band t-shirt he’s wearing. July 9
th
Cincinnati, September 7
th
San Diego, November 14
th
Dallas. Meaningless cities and meaningless dates.

Behind me, Hex pauses for a moment, but then trots forward, brushing against my side. He looks calm again, like he’s just going for his daily walk, but I know better. His ears are perked up and he’s ready to defend us at a moment’s notice.
Good dog
, I think.

Laney falls in behind me, muttering something nasty under her breath about witch hunters.

“What happened to your crossbow?” I ask Bil, keeping my voice low.

“Still got it,” Bil says, “but I nabbed this old boy”—he taps the barrel of his rifle with his hand—“off a dead witch hunter back in Columbus, Ohio.”

“I thought you hated guns,” I say.

“They’re growing on me,” he says, pushing his black ponytail behind his head. “Some folks deserve a bullet in the head.”

This Bil is different than the one I met three months ago. Rougher, harsher. What happened to him between then and now?

We reach a row of houses across from a mini-mart. After snapping a quick glance in either direction, Bil opens the gate to a small, red-brick duplex and ushers us inside. “Youth, dogs, and women before beauty,” he says.

“You fit at least two of those three things,” Laney retorts. “So you should go first.”

“I’ll go first,” I say, trying to diffuse another potential argument.

I enter and make my way to three concrete steps leading to the double entrance. Hex runs ahead, looking back past me to Bil. Unwilling to trust even the guy who saved our skins just a few minutes ago. He and Laney have plenty in common.

Even in the dark, the small house looks like it’s been hit by a hurricane. The roof is caved in on one side, black shingles scattered in the yard and under my feet. Five of the six windows are shattered, and the sixth is so dirty it’s like trying to look through fog. The brown, wood door is cracked and warped, although when I try the handle I find that it’s locked. A glass eye stares at me—a peephole. I wait for Bil and the others to catch up.

“Nice place,” Laney says, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” With a wink, Bil produces a key from one of his many Velcro pockets, and opens the door. “Home, sweet home,” he says, pushing in.

When I step inside, I blink. “Hex, pinch me,” I say, and despite his lack of fingers, my dog paws at my leg as if he’s trying to help.

Beside me, Laney’s jaw drops open and for once she’s speechless.

Bil laughs. “You’re not dreaming,” he says. “When I found this place, I was as shocked as you. It seems some witch magged it up and then left it.”

Wow.
I scan my surroundings in wonderment. The dark wooden floorboards are polished to a shine. Large landscape paintings hang on the white-painted walls. The windows, which appeared broken from the outside, are whole and smudge-free. Sunlight streams through them despite the fact that it’s night outside. Beautiful furniture fills the space, and this is just the foyer. I can clearly see that the house on the inside is way bigger than it appeared from the outside, a trick of the magic.

“Who did this?” I ask.

Bil shrugs. “Don’t know, don’t care. All that matters is that they’re gone.”

As we move inside, Hex sniffs at one of the windows, as if trying to breathe in whatever magic is holding it together. Laney runs her hand along a beautifully carved wooden table. Trish, however, doesn’t seem impressed. She marches past all of us and into the next room.

“What’s with her?” Bil asks.

“If you’re talking about my sister,” Laney says, “you can shut the hell up. If you’re talking about me, you can shut the hell up.”

“Let me guess, your name is Mouth,” Bil says. I put a hand over my own mouth to hide my smile. Truth be told, it’s not a totally inaccurate nickname.

Laney gives Bil a dagger-filled glare and follows her sister into the next room.

“We should do something about your shoulder,” Bil says.

“It’s not too bad,” I say, glancing at the blood seeping between my fingers.

“You need stitches.”

“I haven’t seen a doctor since Salem’s Revenge,” I say.

“I’ve patched many a holey shirt,” Bil says.

“You’ve got holy shirts?” I exclaim. “What do you do, wash them in water blessed by a priest?”

“Very funny,” Bil says. “But you can joke all day and all night, and I’m still going to sew your skin back together.”

Hex trots over and stands between us, as if sensing our disagreement.

“Okay, okay,” I relent. “Thanks for caring.” Although I say it with my usual dryness, I mean it.

“What are friends for?” Bil says.

“Dying and being abducted,” I say, throwing a wet cloth on the mood.

“Don’t I know it,” Bill says, squinting, as if trying to see something. “So are you and…” He motions after Laney.

“Laney,” I say.

“Yeah. Her. Are you and her…a thing?”

“I just met her,” I say. “And no.”

“Good,” Bil says. “Because she’s pretty hot.”

I shake my head. “C’mon.”

We go through a door and into a spotless kitchen, complete with stainless steel appliances and black granite countertops, one of which Laney is using as a seat. The lights are on as if electricity still works. A thought pops into my head.

“Do you have the internet?” I ask.

Bil laughs. “This place is magic, not heaven,” he says.

I sigh. “It was worth a try.”

“Sit,” Bil commands. I obey, pulling out a chair from a twelve-seater table. “Refrigerator, open,” Bil says, and I start to stand, wondering why he asked me to sit if he wanted me to open the fridge.

My mouth falls open when the refrigerator opens itself. Bil smirks. “Handy, eh?”

Laney drops to her feet and, as usual, raises her shotgun. “Are you a warlock?” she asks Bil.

“Do you want me to be?” he says, the edge of his lip curling. “I’ll be one if you want me to be one.”

Laney makes a gagging motion. “Blech. You said you’re friends with this guy?” she asks me.

“Sort of,” I say, which draws a frown from Bil. “But he’s not a warlock. Whatever witch left this place behind infused it with all kinds of tricks.” I change my tone, trying to make light of the situation. “Good thing Americans didn’t get their hands on this technology before the witch apocalypse…they could’ve gotten even fatter
and
lazier.”

Laney lowers her shotgun and Bil chuckles and sits next to me. For the next few minutes, he speaks commands to the kitchen, which obeys silently and without question. Soon there are a number of items on the table. A sewing kit rests ominously in front of me, open so I can see an already threaded needle. A bottle of rubbing alcohol flanks the kit, flush against a bag of cotton balls. Scissors, bandages and a roll of tape round out the medical ensemble.

Trish sits on the floor next to Hex. Laney paces around the kitchen.

“Drink some water,” Bil commands, and for a moment I wonder whether the kitchen is thirsty. But no, he means me this time. And, like the kitchen, I obey, raising a glass of ice water to my dry lips. I take a sip and pour some on the floor for Hex.

I take another sip of water, delaying. A wave of weariness washes over me. My eyelids droop. “Nice try,” Bil says, “but we’re doing this tonight. Then you can sleep.”

We both look at the slice in my shoulder at the same time, which is dribbling blood down my arm. The room spins a little. Bil’s right, I can’t lose any more blood.

“Silent deserves to die,” Bil says, getting to work on my injury. He starts by wetting a cloth and cleaning the blood off my skin. I stare at him, trying to figure out when he became this dark and violent person. When I met him in Georgia, Bil had a code he lived by. He was one of the few witch hunters who did. Like me, he only went after the witches who threatened him or the lives of innocents. Has that changed? What brought him to Pennsylvania?

“Who’s Silent?” Laney asks.

My eyes never leaving Bil, I explain to her about the leading members of The End. When I finish, she says, “They’ve been killing humans.”

“You saw them?”

“Yeah,” she says. “A gang of witches caught some humans, back in Morgantown. They were messing with them when those witch hunters—The End—showed up. I thought they were going to save the people. Instead they just killed everyone.”

“They all deserve to die,” Bil says. I’m thinking the same thing, but it’s the way he says it that makes my blood curdle. Like he means more than just The End. Like he means everyone.

“What happened to you?” I ask, my question coming out with an edge I didn’t expect.

Bil looks at me sharply and I flinch, not from the pain of the alcohol he’s just rubbed into my gash, but from the sharpness of his shadowy stare. But as quickly as I see the anger in my old friend’s eyes, it’s gone, replaced by tenderness and—is that sadness?

“Nothing happened to
me
,” he says, “although sometimes I wish it would have.”

I wait for him to continue. His fingers go about their work, as if stitching together wounded witch hunters is part of his daily routine. Wake up. Brush teeth. Kill a few witches. Stitch friends. Eat dinner (at least I’m hoping there will be dinner). Sleep. Repeat. All in a day’s work.

“You sure you want him to stick you with a needle?” Laney asks.

“
Now
you’re concerned for me?” I ask.

“Hey, I did save your skin when that chick tried to chop your head off, didn’t I?”

I’d almost forgotten about that. “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you both.”

I look away when the needle pierces my skin, gritting my teeth and trying not to cry out. But the pain is immense, and soon I’m clutching the table with my other hand just to keep from passing out. Hex licks my hand comfortingly.

“This doesn’t hurt, does it?” Bil says.

“Not at all,” I say through clenched teeth. I’d take a hundred hits catching a pass in the middle of the field over getting stitches without anesthetic.

Laney is grinning at me, as if enjoying watching me in pain.

“I still only kill those who deserve it, you know,” Bil says. I don’t say anything, just slam my eyes closed as the needle jabs my skin again. I feel the thread slide through, putting pressure on my wound, and then tighten as Bil moves on to the next stitch. “I just think more people deserve it these days.”

I notice he doesn’t say witches. People. Like the Silent Assassin and the other witch hunters that are part of The End. Fair enough. I can’t argue with that. “Okay,” I say.

“I’m not a murderer,” he says. Is he trying to convince me or himself?

“I kill witches, too,” I say.

“But not witch hunters,” Bil says, reading between the lines. He pulls the next stitch tighter than the others and I let out a low groan.