50+ Ways to Annoy the Death Witch: Chapter Six

Chapter Six: Fighting a Necromancer in a Cemetery at Night during a Fucking Tornado

We got into his truck just as fat drops of rain started falling. They were sparse, still, but wouldn’t be for very long- the storm was coming. 

He rubbed his face, for a moment. “How do we get your magic back?” he asked. 

“It’ll come back on its own after a day or two,” I said. I felt like raw meat, like I was bleeding from wounds nobody could see. Not to mention all the bruising and the way my eye was throbbing. “I think if I get my hands on her I can maybe pull it back out of her, but I’ll get it back either way. She can’t graft it onto herself, or anything like that. Not with stealing it. She’s only gonna be able to use it so long, now that you’ve killed the siphon.”

“You can’t… just fill back up? When I borrow magic…”

I shook my head. Which wasn’t useful- it was basically pitch black in the cab of the truck. “So, the first thing siphons like that do is they damage your ability to hold magic. Like, I don’t know, putting a hole in a cup. Water falls through it. With the siphon, there’s a straw it goes through, or- whatever, I know the metaphor isn’t quite-”

“I can feel a slow trickle of magic around you, I thought it was because there wasn’t much, but-”

“I can’t stop that,” I told him. I pressed the heel of my hand to my eye- it was throbbing. “I don’t have magic, and my body wants to have magic, so I’m going to be pulling it in, no matter what. Since I can’t hold it, I just put it back out. I can turn it into something else. That’s the- death magic can turn into a bunch of stuff real easy. Life, water, earth, you know. Anything related to death. I can’t use it, but-”

“But it kept your mom from just sucking on you like a straw for years.”

I wanted to throw up. “Yeah,” I admitted. 

“Right.” He sighed. “Okay. Well, if she’s just gone somewhere to lay low- then that’s that. Okay? We don’t need to hunt her down or nothing. But if she’s in the graveyard, she’s doing something fucked.”

“Right. So we go to the graveyard. And do what? I can’t do shit about fuck all right now.”

“If she uses death magic, you can pull it apart and change it, like you said.”

“Yeah, but-”

“And you know more about necromancy and death magic than just about anybody,” he said.

“It’s a graveyard, Callahan, I can’t destroy all the death magic there, if I worked at it for thirty years.”

“You can do it long enough to slap her hands and maybe get her magic back.”

I sighed. “I guess, as long as you keep her from stuffing me in the dirt again. How long do you think you’ve got on that borrowed magic?”

“I dunno,” he said. “A while, it feels like. They definitely understood what I was asking for, it felt like- it feels pretty solid. I’ll keep you safe.”

I nodded. “Alright, well. Let’s go. But cross your fingers she’s not there.”

“I’ll do that,” he said, and started the car. 

It wasn’t exactly a comfortable silence, I couldn’t say that, we were both too tense. But we were tense, you know, together, so. 

We got to the cemetery just ahead of the storm, but the rain was now pouring down steady, and was only gonna come on harder, if I was any judge. 

We pulled in. I guess the caretaker hadn’t made it out to pull the gates shut, because they were both sat open. 

“Well, now what?” I asked. 

“I don’t know. Let’s see if we’ve got a sign she’s out here.” 

As he said that, the ground under the truck surged and bucked, and he gripped the steering wheel tight as he fought her for control over the dirt beneath us. It stopped as abruptly as it started. I could only guess what was going on with him. 

“I guess she’s here, then,” I said. “I think we need to split up. Divide her attention.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” he said, reaching out to grab my arm. He leaned over and pressed his forehead to my temple, and I could feel magic pushing into me, giving me strength and speed, just a little edge. I couldn’t bear to carry my own magic, so he poured as much as he could into me. “Don’t you dare die on me, Tabitha Greene.”

“You neither,” I told him. I put my hand on his, squeezing. 

I didn’t feel good, but I felt alert as hell. A bit like I was having a heart attack. Or a panic attack. Or both. My heart was pounding, and I could feel energy jumping under my skin. 

It was almost too much, really. There’s an upper limit to how much you can magically enhance a person, and he’d pushed right up against it, I was pretty sure. For the moment, however, the pain in my eye had pushed to the back, which I was grateful for. I still couldn’t really see out of that eye, but at least it didn’t hurt so much. 

I slipped out of the truck, looking around for a moment. 

We’d come in on the right side, the lane we were on ran to the back of the graveyard, and there were two lanes that crossed it, one towards the middle, and one at the back. There was another lane on the left side of the graveyard. I couldn’t see that, I could just see what was directly in front of the truck, but we’d been out here once and it wasn’t a huge one. 

I decided to cross the truck and head to the left side of the cemetery. I didn’t want to get out of range of Callahan’s magic, but he was temporarily an earth mage. They tended to be pretty powerful, and power tended to pair with range, so probably the whole graveyard was in his limits. It was easily in mine, even with as badly injured as my magic was. 

The further I was from him, the harder it would be for her to catch us both at the same time. The ground was shifting under my feet as I made my mind up, she was still trying to get us, and he was still fighting her.

I had to quit thinking about it and move. 

I headed around the truck- after my first step or two, I realized some of the magic he’d put into me was to help me keep my footing, and my step became more confident, I could move a little faster. 

As I crossed between the headlights, the tornado sirens started wailing. 

I know sometimes they’re different, in different places. In Oklahoma, though, they’re basically air raid sirens.

They don’t all turn on at the same time. Even if they did, sound takes time to travel, and so sometimes you’ll hear distant ones first. Especially on a storm night- you’ll hear the county over start calling in the distance, sometimes, depending on the county lines and where you are and all that.

I heard one, in the distance, and then more, a rising chorus of the eerie, discordant wailing, as the ones nearest me came on. They’re loud, and the nearest one was close, and it was basically all I could hear, when that one came on. 

I’m not particularly scared of bad weather, I never have been. But usually I’m not out in it, with rain pouring down on me, and lightning flashing, the wind starting to pick up, tossing the trees at the back of the graveyard, with one eye blind.

Outside and unprotected is basically the last place you wanna be when a tornado is coming your direction. I was a little bit unsettled, I’m not gonna lie. 

The sirens seemed to pulse with the magic in my body, bleating and throbbing as one with my eye, the ache slowly getting worse and worse again. 

Between that, and the rain pouring down, harder and harder now, the wind blowing harder and harder, hearing anything else was gonna be a problem. Seeing was a problem. I think he gave me some of that cat’s eye night vision stuff, but you still need some light to work off of, and with the thick clouds and the lack of hardly any lighting in the cemetery, there just wasn’t much. Might give me an edge on what’s her face, even counting that I was one eye down. But at the moment, even standing in the headlights, I could see sweet fuck all beyond them.

I moved around the driver’s side of the truck, my heart pounding. 

Some of the graves had lights on them. Not all of them, little lights set into the stones or the ground to reflect on the stones. Not enough, but between that and the flashes of lightning, I could see well enough to walk without tripping.

Probably.

This was so fucking stupid, but I felt the ground heave again, and I threw myself forward, and started moving faster, trying not to run in the dark when I can only half see if there was light, but desperate to not get caught in the ground again. 

I ran smack into her, and she wrapped her arms around me, and tried to throw me on the ground.

I had Callahan’s magic on my side, as well as lower center of gravity, and probably about 30 pounds, so I managed to twist her around and trip her up enough to slam on top of her. 

I could feel my magic. I could feel it under her skin, it was right there, but I couldn’t get it out. It was stuck into her, somehow. 

She’d had enough time, maybe she’d done some kind of protective sigil? I had no idea, and of course now I had no idea what to do. I pulled harder, slowly, testing the boundaries- and immediately stopped, as her whole body seemed to almost seize up, as she screamed in pain- whatever it was she’d done, if I pulled harder, I would do some amount of damage to her. Like, a lot. 

Shit a fucking brick. I didn’t want to hurt her. I mean, I wanted to kick her scrawny ass, obviously, but I didn’t want to hurt her.

Something slammed into me from the right- a load of dirt, I think, pushing me off of her and rolling me to the side, trying to wrap me up. I could feel Callahan fighting with her, I think- the dirt would squeeze around me tight and then relax and go loose, and I managed to scramble out and away, running several yards in a near panic (okay a full panic) before tripping over a gravestone and falling again. I caught myself and managed not to hurt myself- I think this had to be more of Callahan’s magic, because that should have been a mouthful of dirt situation, if I was lucky.

I rolled onto my back, stared up into the darkness, watched the lightning flash for a second. The sirens still wailed, and I wanted to cry. 

I wanted to go home. I wanted to stop doing this. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know how to stop her without hurting her real bad, and I didn’t wanna do that. 

Maybe if we left, she’d just calm down on her own. Maybe she was just had it in her head that we were cops or something, if we left until she calmed down and then tried to talk to her later-

I felt a magic surge, and caught her trying to pull up some dead animal that had been left in the wood. She was real sloppy with it, and I don’t think it would have worked, but I pulled the spell apart before it got there.  

It’s hard to explain how that worked, ripping spells up. Have you ever done like knitting or crochet, and then have to undo a few rows, and you gotta pull the yarn out? It was kinda like that, but magic. 

I wasn’t even converting the magic or anything, that’d take more energy and time than I had, I was just pulling her spell apart. Converting the magic wouldn’t make sense, anyway, there was too much of it. But I could slap a spell right out of her hands.

Over the sound of the sirens, I heard her shriek in frustration.

I made myself get up. We had to do something. 

I saw another vehicle pull into the cemetery. They came in on the other side that Callahan had, and my first thought was that they were storm chasers. 

Which was bad news two ways. The first way: that meant the tornado was real fucking close. The second way: even if that wasn’t the case (they were cutting through to catch another one, or something) they usually had cameras everywhere, and some of them live streamed their chases. 

Then the lightning flashed, and I recognized the Toyota with the snorkel. The Matthews boys, thank the Lord. I was so relieved I almost fainted, and felt dizzy for a second. I shook it off and headed for them- this was a different complication, and they needed to get the fuck out of here, but at least we weren’t dealing with potentially a dead body bursting out of the ground being broadcast live to god knows how many people.

I could feel her spinning up more death magic. I couldn’t tell if she was going to throw it at me or them or Callahan, but it didn’t matter, I was still close enough to rip it apart. I couldn’t figure out what she was doing, this time, I caught it before she’d put enough intent into it. Raising something, again, maybe another shot at the thing in the woods. My attention was pretty split, I just wasn’t sure. 

And, once again, I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have managed whatever it was if I hadn’t caught the spell before she threw it. Sloppy, sloppy work, if that spell hadn’t quite formed by the time I caught the magic. 

I know she knew how to be precise, those bodies in her basement tell me that, but I think she probably relied on being able to lay out sigils and have a lot of materials for that kind of precision. She was having to go by the seat of her pants, and she sucked at it. 

I was having to pick my way towards the Toyota. I had run far enough that I wasn’t sure where I was. I couldn’t fucking see, and the last thing I needed was to bounce my head off a gravestone. There were still lights on some of the graves, but the rain was pouring down harder, which made it hard to keep my eyes open. I had my hands cupped on my face, over my eyes, trying to keep some of the rain out.  

The sirens still wailed, and I thought about killing just the one nearest me- I still had the remote in my fanny pack, and I’d just that moment remembered that it still had some juice left. 

But you can’t do that. 

If I turned it off, my granddad would perform the first act of spontaneous self-necromancy, just to come chew me out for risking people’s lives. 

However, it did make me wonder if there were lights in the graveyard that hadn’t been powered on, and I dug the remote out, and started just pointing where I think they might be and pressing the power button, praying for a light. 

I found three streetlight kind of things before the remote died. 

Finally, finally, finally, I could kind of see what was going on. There was enough light that the rain was more limiting the visibility, now.

I could see well enough to move, though. I could run over to the Toyota, where Jacob had gotten out. He had a hand up over him, and basically had some kind of magic umbrella situation going on. His eyes were wide. 

“You boys need to get out of her, it isn’t safe!” I told him. I was having to basically shout to even hear myself above the sirens, no telling if he could understand me at all. “You need to leave!”

He pulled me under his umbrella- the water running around him dampened the noise somewhat. “Mom says that you gotta stop her!”

“What do you mean?”

“You gotta get your magic back, before she figures out how to use it! It gets bad!”

“You sure?”

He nodded. “You gotta! Dylan and Mom both had visions, and it’s so bad, Miss Tabby!”

“Well, shit,” I said. “Okay, I’ll figure something out. But you gotta go, though, kiddo-”

Lighting struck and thunder cracked right on top of us, loud enough I felt the air in my chest moving, and we both startled. And, just at that moment, she shoved out another spell. 

I couldn’t stop this one. She was putting everything into it. But it was still just sloppy as all hell.

That’s the thing about necromancy. To do it well demands precision. 

What she wanted was a big damn zombie party, she wanted the whole graveyard to get up and dance. But that’s not what happened, because that’s not how this fucking works. The best she got was that every dead body kinda twitched in place for a minute as I yanked the magic back out of them.

“You alright, Miss Tabby? Your nose is bleeding.”

I wiped my face. “I’m fine. You kids need to get out of here, this is real dangerous, alright? She’s not playing around.” I really shouldn’t have been using my magic at all, but that just wasn’t an option. I turned back towards her, and forced myself to walk back out into the rain.

Every stitch of clothing I had on me was soaked through, I was cold and in pain, my skin was crawling, and the fucking tornado siren seemed to be piercing my brain. 

I could see where she was, and she’d walked out in front of the truck- Callahan must have gotten out of it, because she was looking around like she’d lost him. I remembered that she couldn’t see as well as me and probably Callahan. She turned towards me and Jacob.  

There was another big surge of death magic- she was trying again. This time with a smaller group than ‘everybody in the cemetery’, and this time it kinda sorta almost worked. Except, again, it was so sloppy that this was just basically puppeting. If she’d had them above ground she could have puppeted them around at us, but they still would have been rotting corpses and nothing more. 

They were still in caskets underground, and while she could in theory fix that at some point, she hadn’t yet, and I could pull the magic out of them before she could try. 

I felt the ground shifting under my feet- and then Jacob cried out. 

I turned back and saw the Toyota shifting as she tried to sink it, and Callahan was clearly fighting her, and so I ran for her, figuring I could distract her with myself- but the pickup surged towards her, scaring her, and her concentration slipped. She ran around and opened the driver side of the truck, but he wasn’t in there. 

She decided to take a different approach with Callahan, I guess- she started fucking with the Toyota, and then with the pickup, and he was fighting her on both- I could see the pickup shifting, and the Toyota was kind of sinking, but Dylan was also a mudder and was working to try to keep out of the sucking mud. Jacob dodged away, running kind of blindly, and I went to go stop him from running into something when the ground just dropped away from under me, and I was hip deep in fucking mud and cold dirt. 

There was a flash of lightning, and the sirens abruptly stopped. 

It almost felt like being slapped with a lack of sound, and my ears were ringing so hard I still could barely hear. 

I twisted and turned, trying to figure out where she was, when the earth around my body started twisting, my right leg slowly wrenching around as I slowly got pulled deeper into the ground. 

I screamed. 

I was bait. I was fucking bait. Fuck!

There was something horrible happening in my knee. It felt like fabric tearing inside of my knee. I was clawing at the mud, digging my fingers into the dirt and trying to pull myself out, forward, fucking away from the pain. 

I was a crazed animal in a trap. I would rip myself in half to get away, if I could, escape was the only thing that mattered. 

Jacob heard me screaming, I think. I saw him stand up and send witchlights out. “Duck, Miss Tabby!” he shouted, and I basically slammed face down in the mud as much as I could. A wave of water rushed over the top of me, and I heard it slam into her. 

Her concentration must have broken, because the ground vomited me back out, and Jacob ran forward, and yanked me up. 

Dylan had gotten the truck away from the mud pit, and a woman jumped out of the backseat and came running along. As soon as she got in reach with the necromancer, she grabbed the woman by the hair and dragged her forwards, trying to bounce her face off the nearest gravestone.

It was a pretty solid effort, but unfortunately the necromancer shifted the gravestone out of the way with her earth magic. She sent a spike of pure, raw death magic at the new lady. 

I ripped that one apart, but it scared the shit out of me. She was just using the magic as a blade.

Okay, so everybody’s got a little bit of death magic in them, because everybody’s got a little bit of death in them- stuff you eat is usually already dead, or dies in your body. Or little things inside of you die, sure. But, in general, you do not want a lot of death magic in your body unless you can use death magic, like me. 

She shoved their mom away from her, and I worried, because I could feel her spinning magic up, and I lurched towards her. 

She knew I couldn’t stop her if she used all her might. I couldn’t protect everybody. 

“Don’t you fuckin do it!” I shouted at her. “Don’t you dare!”

She turned to look at me, with a sort of ugly sneer on her face.

I grabbed her arm with both hands, latched onto her. “I will stop you.” 

“You don’t have the guts,” she said. 

I felt it coming, I felt it start, and the only way I could stop it was to take my magic back.

So I took my magic back. I pulled as hard and fast as I could, and I felt her die. 

It was pretty much instant.

I yanked the magic out of the spell- sloppy work, still, sloppy til the end- and I dropped down next to her, rolling her onto her back, trying to call her soul back. “Callahan! Get over here!” Sometimes you can get them back, if you do it right away. If I could pull her back, he could heal her, keep her alive, until- well, I didn’t know, until we could get an ambulance out there.

Callahan slid to his knees beside me. “Can you get her?”
“I’m trying,” I said. 

And I was, but there was nowhere to put her. There was nothing to call back- just shreds. However she’d tied my magic into her, it had shredded all the important parts that make that work, and she was just dead.

She was dead, and I had killed her. 

 

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