Anna's Hope Episode One (8 page)

The fact he had keeled over after his book
had been destroyed suggested he’d been sustaining other spells.

Though Anna was buzzing (and itching) from
the fight, she slowly pushed the pew from her hand, and stood.
Cautiously she stared around the room.

She could feel that same distinct dark
magic gathering. It was seeping up from the tiny cracks between the
flagstones and infiltrating its way through the gaps in the
glass.

She shuddered. Though her wrist and hand
hurt from where the pew had fallen on them, she ignored the
pain.

Though she was human and didn’t have
hackles, every hair on the back of her neck stood on end as a truly
cold shiver shot up her spine.

“Oh god, it’s not over,” she realized,
just as the stone below her feet began to shimmer.

She had managed to ward off the last effects
of the sleep spell, so she knew she wasn’t dreaming here. The
ground honestly was shifting and reflecting like a disturbed pool
of water.

She tried to jerk back, to find a patch of
stone that still knew it was just that – stone, and not water. But
she couldn’t. The whole floor of the chapel was transforming.

With a sound like cracking glass, the
floor shifted violently to the side. Anna already had weak legs
from all her fighting and running, and she was easily thrown from
her feet.

Somehow, though the chapel was very much
empty, she slammed into someone’s back, knocking them from their
feet.

She banged her chest hard on that same
person’s equally hard chest. With a groan she looked up to see a
very surprised, rugged, blond bounty hunter.

“Anna?”
Scott grabbed her shoulders and
helped her up.

If Anna hadn’t just been thrown sideways
into what looked like an entirely different chapel, she would have
appreciated she was currently in Scott’s arms. An ordinary,
powerful witch would have taken the time to notice and indulge in
the strong romantic undercurrents of falling into a burly wizard’s
embrace.

Anna
just pushed herself up; her head was
still swimming.

Scott got to his feet, darting his head to
the left and right as he clearly assessed her. “Where did you come
from? Are you alright?” He helped her to her feet, then he latched
a hand on her shoulder protectively as he turned and searched the
room for something. “You need to get out of here, there’s a dark
wizard—”

“You mean that guy?” Anna pointed over her
shoulder to the comatose wizard arranged over the broken
pew.

Though that strange rippling spell had
transported Anna to another chapel entirely, fortunately it had
brought the wizard and his broken pew with her. Once the guy was
awake – and in custody – she was going to have some firm words with
him about sacrificing witches under the full moon.

She watched Scott close his mouth and
shoot her an impressed look, one side of his lips kinking into a
charming, rugged smile. “Wow. When I saw you hanging out with
Merry, I thought you were the latest of her charity cases. She has
a habit of hiring bounty hunters down on their luck, who couldn’t
catch a dead wizard tied to a stake. She has this strange view that
by giving them a job, she’ll help them out. The only thing it
usually helps is to shorten their lives.”

Anna
gave an awkward, teeth-pressed
smile.

That would be her, alright. Down on her luck
and pretty much incapable.

Or maybe not entirely incapable. She had
downed that dark wizard. She turned over her shoulder to stare at
him again.

“How did you get down here, anyway?” Scott
brushed past her, leaned down, and checked the wizard. “And what
did you do to this wizard? He’ll be out cold for the rest of the
night.”

Anna
opened her mouth to explain. Before
she could, she glanced past Scott and saw a comatose woman lying on
the ground.

“Oh, her. I saved her. It’s okay. That
creep wizard was going to sacrifice her for some spell, but I got
here just in time. Or maybe you did.” He shot her another impressed
smile. “He’s my bounty, by the way. A tough catch. When he jumped
through some portal, I thought I’d lost him. You found him, I
guess.”

She still didn’t say anything. She
couldn’t. Instead she brought her hand up and stared at it. Her
skin was going bright red. As she stared at it, her back trembled
as a serious case of pins and needles impaled every muscle and
joint. “Oh dear.” She swallowed.

“Did you burn your hand in the fight?”
Scott walked over casually to check her wound. “Hey, you’re face is
getting a bit red too.”

The dark magic was back. And it was back in
a big way. It was tumbling into the room around them, spilling from
every crack and nook and gap, like the ocean trying to sink a
broken ship.

“Oh dear,” she muttered again.

“What is it?”

“I think we should get out of here,” she
yelped, latching a hand on Scott and trying to tug him towards the
door.

He wouldn’t budge. He was built like a
tree trunk and she was built like a spindly stick. It was exactly
like trying to tow a freight train with a bicycle.

“Hey, hold on. We’ve got to get the witch.
Plus, this place is fine now. That wizard is down—” Scott stopped
suddenly. Either he could feel the dark magic amassing around them,
or he’d just heard that suspicious scratching sound. “What the hell
is that?”

Understanding flashed through her mind as
she stared back at the wizard. He’d been sustaining more than the
chapel and her sleep spell with his magical book.

He’d been calling something to him.

Something that was about to arrive.

Outside, something shook. With a rhythmic
thump-thump-thump, it sounded as if something massive was making
its way towards the chapel.

The chapel ceiling suddenly shook, a hail of
dust raining down on them.

Scott looked up slowly, narrowing his eyes
as he brought a hand up to brush the grit from his hair. “I see
your point,” he somehow found the time to quip, “we should get out
of here.” He turned sharply on his boot and raced up to the
comatose witch. He picked her up carefully. “The door is back that
way.” He started to run towards it as he inclined his head towards
the back of the chapel. “Come on.”

Anna
, still shocked from the brutal pace
of this situation, stood there for a single moment.

She didn’t know why. Maybe that compulsion
was back, or, just maybe, a kick of courageous curiosity was
kindling in her gut.

It didn’t last. Scott rammed
into her with his shoulder as he shouted another desperate
“come on,”
right in her
ear.

She pivoted on her shoe and raced after
him. As she did, she turned over her shoulder, her hair fanning out
behind her, strikes of moonlight slicing through the windows and
playing across the obsidian strands.

Suddenly something burst through the
chapel wall, smashing the ornate window above the pulpit, and
sending shards of stone and glass scattering over the
floor.

Anna
screamed.

It was a soul catcher.

As the massive creature took a shuddering
step into the room, the torches along the walls swayed back and
forth like ships buoyed by a tidal wave.

She’d never seen a soul
catcher.
She’d only ever read about them in particularly rare and
esoteric books. According to the literature, those fell creatures
no longer existed. The magic required to sustain them had been
obliterated – whatever that meant.

Well, the books were wrong.

“Holy crap, that’s a soul catcher,” Scott
yelled as he too turned over his shoulder.

For a man who looked as though he embodied
adventure, he was clearly well-read.

The soul catcher was a massive,
troll-like creature. Or at least it was today. Soul catchers could
take on the forms of the souls they captured. Once they did, they
would become virtually indistinguishable from the dead person – as
they’d have access to not
only their likeness, but all their memories
too.

While soul catchers could use that ability
to go incognito, this guy had opted for muscle instead. Clearly
somewhere in its remote past, it had consumed a massive, burly,
grisly troll. One with arms like felled trees and a torso so large
it could crush a semitrailer.

The soul catcher leaned down, angled its
neck forward, and screamed. It echoed off the walls, shattering the
remaining windows and shaking the floor.

“Come on,” Scott rammed into her again,
“we gotta get out of here.”

Anna
turned and ran, faster than her tired
limbs should allow. Despite her lethargy and crazy allergies, there
was a fricking soul catcher behind her, and she really couldn’t
hang around.

They reached the end of the chapel, just as
the soul catcher changed form. She saw it, and boy did she felt it.
The rash climbing her neck suddenly exploded all over her face, the
heat so intense it felt as if she’d pashed the sun.

The massive troll leaned down, crunching its
form in half, as its massive hands coursed with black, twisting
magical lines. With a boom that shook the walls, the troll changed
into a black leopard.

“Ahh!” Anna now rammed into Scott, shoving
him towards the door as she threw a bolt of magic into it, blasting
it open. “Go, go, go!”

She heard the leopard pounce over the broken
sandstone, every bound bringing it perilously closer.

Scott jumped through the open door.

Anna
pushed herself through, just as the
leopard leapt towards her. She could see its glistening claws and
teeth, even feel the buffeting air that swept towards her from its
blisteringly fast leap.

She stumbled, grabbed the door, and slammed
it closed, ramming the metal bolt in place to lock it.

She expected the soul-catcher-cum-leopard to
slam into it. It didn’t.

She took a careful step back.

Then she sneezed. Violently. All over the
magical-reinforced wood.

“I usually shout when deterring enemies,
but I guess sneezing could work too,” Scott quipped. “Now come on,”
he waved her forward with a tick of his head, “we better get out of
here before that thing breaks through the door.”

Anna
stared at her hands. The rash was
gone, completely. Her skin no longer itched, and her back had
thankfully stopped tingling. “... I don't think it's coming through
the door,” she managed as she stared at the red-marked
wood.

“And how the hell do you known that? You
can tell me while we run,” he added as he leaned forward and
managed to shove her with his elbow while still holding the
comatose woman.

“I'm not sneezing or itching anymore,” she
pointed out as she half jogged up the stairs.

“Don't jog -
run.”
Scott shoved her in
the back again, this time with his boot. “And my congratulations to
your immune system, but I don't think the dark creature in there
cares that you've fought off a sniffle. Trust me, doll, he's coming
through that door as soon as he changes form into something that
can slam through it.”

“No, I have magical allergies,” she
wheezed as Scott kept pushing her forward, “I'm not sneezing and I
don’t have a rash anymore. That means there's no longer any magic
around.”

“... You have magic allergies? That's a
thing?”

Completely out of character, Anna gave a
terse grumble. Or at least as much of a grumble as she could spare
breath for. Scott was driving her up that winding staircase like a
sheepdog herding stock. A sheepdog with a modified magical gun
hanging off its hip.

“You're a witch and you have
magical allergies. Christ, that's the funniest damn thing I've
heard. I'd laugh my head off, but we're currently running away from
a soul catcher.
So run faster.”
 He planted his boot into her back and shoved
again.

“How are we even going to get out of this
tower?” she spared the breath to speak as she stumbled up another
step.

“By opening a door.
Now move.”
Scott pushed her
again.

He kept driving her up and up until,
miraculously, they came across a door. Scott didn’t pause, and
rammed his foot into it, sending a burst of magic down the boot as
he opened it with a bang.

It swung to violently, revealing ... the
backroom from the bar. There were several shocked magicians
standing around, cleaning up from Meredith’s demon fight.

Scott, still running forward, grabbed the
gun from his hip and shot the nearest one. Then, with a smooth move
that belonged only in the non-physical world of comic books, he
rolled with the woman still in his arms, and came up shooting. He
hit the remaining magician before the guy could prepare a spell or
even mutter a surprised curse.

Anna
gasped. She’d never seen someone move
so fast and instinctually.

Scott wasn’t done. He shoved her again,
pushing her towards the open window. “Time to make a discrete
exit.”

“But ... that wizard is still down there.
Shouldn’t we catch him?”