The Enchanted Writes Book One (15 page)

“Do not be afraid,” Brick gave her the
thumbs up sign, “no one will see you transform here.”

It was dark, but she wasn't comfortable
whipping off her clothes in a magical swirl of energy and
transforming into her outrageous witch hunter costume out on the
street. “I'm not going to transform here.” She dropped her hand,
the hairpin resting against her leg.

Brick sighed, grabbed her wrist, and tugged
her along once more. They ran down another section of road until
they reached a small park. It had large trees, and there were no
houses around the sides.

Henrietta felt comfortable enough to pick up
her hairpin and write the words Witch Hunter.

She transformed, the magic sparking and
crackling over her form until her heels touched down on the
grass.

She patted her short skirt and gave a good
tug on her jacket. She was ready.

“Excellent.” Brick turned from her. He
shifted his shoulders around, cracked his neck, then opened his
jacket wide.

She pressed up on her tippy toes, trying to
see over his shoulder.

He kept his back to her at all times. After
a great deal of rummaging, he stood back.

There was a sodding great Harley-Davidson
motorbike sitting in front of him. It was big enough for three
people.

“Don't worry.” He threw himself on the
motorbike, his jacket flaring around his hips and back. “I have my
motorbike license.”

She didn't say anything.

She jumped on the back of the motorbike,
locking her arms around his middle.

He gunned the engine, and the bike roared
out of the park, spewing a plume of exhaust in a thick cloud.

They headed to the dock.

Henrietta was starting to get good at this.
Or at least that was what Brick was telling her. She no longer
hesitated as much when she met a witch, and her spells were coming
quicker and easier. They also appeared to be growing in strength.
When she cast an ice ball these days, it would shoot out quicker
and would travel for a longer distance.

Brick had assured her that the more she
practiced and fought, the stronger her magic would become. Yet she
was still not strong enough to fight the Witch King. Brick told her
it would take months if not an entire year of practice before she
was ready to face him. But at least she could contain his efforts
by going after the lesser witches under his command.

Henrietta walked along the dock, her boots
clinking against the old, rotting wooden boards.

It was well lit, but even still, the street
lights that were dotted around the place still left great swathes
of darkness in between. You could be standing right under one of
the lamps, and be fully illuminated, and yet all around you would
be a great area of shadow. Henrietta was starting to appreciate
that a lot could lurk in the shadows.

“What are we dealing with here?” she asked
as she kept walking along, never once falling, despite the fact her
heels should have been treacherous along the uneven boards.

Brick was sniffing the air, and Henrietta
had come to realize he always did that when he was trying to figure
out what kind of witch they were about to fight. He even brought
his finger up, licked it, and ran it through the air as if he was
trying to check the direction of the wind. “Water witches,” he
rumbled, and as he did, there was a loud wet splash from behind
them.

Henrietta whirled around, her jacket
plastering against her legs.

She brought up her wand.

She hadn't fought a water witch yet. She had
fought plenty of fire witches and earth witches and even an air
witch. But not a water witch.

Each different category of witch looked
different. Some of them were far more human-looking than the
others; it seemed to depend on what kind of magic they had. The
earth witches looked like young women who had caked themselves in
dirt and dust. An air witch had such a flighty, flowing quality to
her, that you could tell she wasn’t human. As for a water witch,
Henrietta was about to find out.

There was another wet thump from behind her,
and Henrietta twisted, bringing her wand up and writing wall.

It was a handy spell, and the second she
finished writing it, a wall formed in front of her and Brick.

It was in time to see a massive spurt of
water rush from the river and smash into the wall.

The wall shook from the force of it.

“She is powerful,” Brick warned as he
grabbed his crossbow from his jacket. “Be careful.”

Henrietta turned again; she could hear a
steady dripping noise to her left.

She hadn't yet seen anything. While the
water had rocketed from the river and smashed against her wall
spell, she hadn't seen the creature that had cast it.

“Remain on guard.” Brick kept turning around
in a circle, crossbow grasped in his hands.

Though Henrietta got the urge to write a
fire spell and cast it in every direction, she stopped herself. The
more she wrote, the more she would drain her magic, and until she
knew what she was dealing with, she couldn't risk wasting
resources. She had learnt that important lesson over the past
couple of weeks. Her magic had a definite limit, and though that
limit was increasing with practice, it was still there. Depending
on the strength of the spell, she could cast about 10 or 12
different words before she started to ache with fatigue. She always
had to be careful to keep enough magic left for the banishing
spell. While there were several ways to defeat a witch, the
banishing spell was always the most reliable. However, she could
not cast it the second she came across a witch; she would have to
defeat the witch first, or at least fight her for long enough until
the witch became tired.

“Get down,” Brick hollered from her side,
knocking into her, and planting a hand on her back.

Henrietta let herself fall to her knees.

She rolled onto her back and brought her
wand up.

A sharp jet of water like a knife sliced
over where she had been standing. It twisted around in a wide arc
and managed to cut through the metal post of one of the street
lamps. The light blinked out in an instant, and the pole fell over,
the glass smashing against the dock and covering her back and
face.

She jumped to her feet, dusting the glass
off, and she shot towards the water.

She had never faced a spell like that.
Fireballs, yes, mini earthquakes, sure, but that water spell had
been incredible. It had been strong enough to cut through a metal
pole.

“Get down,” Brick roared again. This time he
wasn't close enough to her that he could grab her and pull her to
her knees.

Henrietta flattened anyway, but it wasn't
quick enough; another one of those jets of water sliced over her,
and it managed to cut off the tales of her jacket.

She shrieked, pushing herself further down
into the broken beams of the dock, and covering her head.

“It's on the barge,” Brick roared by her
side.

She pushed herself up and stared into the
darkness. She could hardly see; now that the street lamp behind her
was gone, it was too dark to pick much out.

Night vision.

Henrietta wrote the word, and as she
finished, a surge of energy shot up from a symbol at her feet. The
energy collected in her eyes, and she blinked through the peculiar
sensation until she could see again.

It didn't matter that it was dark; she could
see everywhere. She glanced towards the dock and the water, and she
saw a barge. What was more, she saw the creature standing on top of
it.

A water witch.

She had the form of a young woman, but the
clothes she was wearing were decidedly other. Also, her hair hung
around her like a wet sheet billowing in the wind. Droplets of
water cascaded from her arms and legs at every movement, and her
eyes were wide and glossy.

Wall.

Henrietta wrote her favorite spell once
again, in time to stop another one of those jets of water from
chopping her in half.

Brick skidded on his feet and did a
somersault right behind the wall, but not before the jet of water
managed to knock his hat from his head.

The bricks of her magical wall took a
beating, and shifted backwards with the force of the witch’s water
jet, but they did not fall. Still, they would not be able to take
too much of an onslaught before the spell failed.

So she had to be creative. She could figure
that it would take an enormous amount of magic to banish this
witch, so she had to be scrupulous with her remaining spells in
order to defeat it.

Tremble.

She wrote the spell, bringing her arm out as
far as she could, trying to write the word as far away from her
body as was possible.

Though it was hard, Henrietta was starting
to get a handle on where to cast her spells. When she'd first
started out as a witch hunter, she’d written her words willy-nilly,
with no care for where the spells were cast. Now she understood
that the relationship between where she wrote them affected where
they appeared. She still wasn't that accurate, but she was trying
to improve.

Fortunately this time she got it right.
After she finished writing the word tremble with her wand, the
barge the witch stood on started to shake.

It was violent and quick, and it made the
witch stumble on her feet until she fell over, her body slamming
forward with a wet splash.

The witch cried out. While a fire witch
shrieked like a whistle, a water which sounded far more like a
distressed drowning person.

It was a frankly horrible sound to listen
to, and Henrietta found herself flinching at it.

“Cast your magnification spell,” Henrietta
snapped at Brick as she darted around the side of her magical
wall.

Brick did not hesitate; he pointed his
crossbow right at her and fired. That familiar blue spark landed on
her shoulder, then a mandala formed at her feet.

It sent such a rush of energy through her,
that her shoulders tugged back and she took an enormous involuntary
breath.

It was the rush she needed to perform the
next spell.

Tornado.

Fire.

She wrote both words in such quick
succession that the symbols seemed to form together. Both spells
twisted around her until they shot out towards the barge.

Henrietta stumbled backwards. Though she'd
gotten Brick to cast a magical magnification spell, casting two
spells at once had still taken their toll on her.

She didn't stumble over, she still kept on
her feet, and she looked up in time to see the fire tornado pass
over the barge.

The water witch shrieked again, that
horrible drowning sound echoing around the docks.

Henrietta wanted to clamp her hands over her
ears to block it out. But she needed to hold her wand at the
ready.

The fire tornado dissipated; combined spells
never lasted long.

As the last twist of fire disappeared, she
ran forward to the edge of the dock to see what damage they had
done.

The barge itself was trashed; it was covered
in black char. Still, amongst the mess, there stood a young woman,
no longer dripping water, but sizzling as steam hissed over her
body.

Henrietta did not wait. She whipped out her
wand and she wrote the word banish. Before she could finish, a
funny thing happened.

The witch disappeared. A hole formed
underneath the creature's feet, and in an instant she dropped out
of sight.

Henrietta stumbled backwards, startled, her
hand stiff around her wand.

“What the—” she began.

Before she could finish her sentence, Brick
toppled into her, latched a hand over her arm, and started to pull
her back. “We have to get out of here.” His expression was wild. It
was a look she'd never seen. Sure, sometimes Brick would look
startled or angry or frustrated or even powerful in the heat of
battle, but the fear plastered over his face now was different.

“Brick?” Henrietta's voice shook. “What's
happening?”

“Run,” he pushed hard into her back, and
then he stood and faced the barge, bringing his crossbow up and
pointing it right at the hole that was still there.

She stumbled from Brick's shove, but she
didn't do as he said, and she didn't race off into the night.
“Brick, what's happening?” she asked again.

“Run,” he repeated. He did not pause or even
waste the breath to call her Warrior Woman Witch Hunter. Which was
something he had never done before. Despite how quick and fraught
and violent a situation could become, Brick always used her full
name while addressing her.

Not right now.

What was more, his leather jacket was
twitching from side to side as his arm shuddered whilst he held
onto his crossbow.

She backed off, her heels clicking against
the wood below her.

Something began to form out of the hole in
the barge.

The spell she'd cast on herself that made
her eyes capable of seeing at night was still working, so she had
no trouble in making out the figure that was pulling itself out of
that black hole.

First she saw the hands, then she saw the
arms, and then something rose right out of that black, bottomless
pit.

That something was a man.

He was dressed in a pair of suit pants and a
white shirt. His top button was undone, but the rest of his outfit
was neat and pressed. He was young, maybe in his late 20s, and he
had a keen handsome face and expression. His eyes were wide with
interest, and in another moment he offered her a smile.

Henrietta kept backing up until her boots
collected against the pole of the chopped-in-half street lamp.

She fell right over it and bumped her butt
right on the ground.

This always happened when she was afraid;
she lost the ability to walk around in her ridiculous heels and
fell down unceremoniously.