Free The Witch and the Werewolf by John Burks

clap of his hands. The priest stood and started
to walk away. Dutch stopped him.
    “ He said you’d been crazy
since the Spanish Inquisition.” Dutch didn’t believe the priest was
that old, but if he was, it would only go with the level of crazy
that he’d already been witnessed to. The basement shook, as if
shifting in the mostly gumbo like ground that lay beneath Houston.
Dutch cringed.
    “ My age may right be a
merry old moot point, yes?” the priest said with a smile. “I must
make my rounds, Dutch, and bring peace to the hearts of the
frightened. If we make it through this evening I’d like to offer
you a place here in our organization. You are very capable and
trust me, we will need all the capable men we can get with the
nightmare that is to come.”
    “ You want to give me a job
in the Church of the Dead Wolf?” Dutch asked, unable to hold back
the laughter.
    “ I know,” the priest said
with a broad grin. “I finally get to run up the flag.”
    “ And what are you going to
do while I’m doing this? I mean, besides build a
fortress?”
    “ I, me friend,” the priest
said, pointing at the huge ship, “am going to welcome the survivors
of that ship into our midst.”
     
    The boy held onto Cassandra and she held onto the house’s
frame, sure that the walls were going to come crashing down on them
at any moment. He saw the approaching wave as a dark green blur on
the horizon, a wall of death that they wouldn’t survive.
    “ What’s your name?” the
girl asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. He could tell
she was weirded out by the lack of eyes in his sockets. He was too.
Everything had happened so quickly. He hadn’t had a chance to
process it all.
    “ Jeremy,” he said meekly.
He was tired and scared.
    “ Okay Jeremy. Take a deep
breath. The water is almost here.”
    The wave hit the house
with a vengeance and the entire structure shook in its wake. He
took a deep breath as the water poured in the large hole in the
roof and then up, from the floors below. He held her tighter as if
the act would somehow save him. The house’s ceiling rafters shook
and parts of the roof began to slip away. He gasped in the water,
sure the end was near.
    He wanted to keep his eyes
shut, to not see death coming for him, but he couldn’t look away
from the destruction. But as he stared out, past the girl’s
shoulder, he noticed something building deep inside her. It was
like a fire starting in her belly, a swirling blue ball of light in
her belly. Blue filaments snaked out from her and the energy
surrounded them, weaving around them like a blue basket. The energy
bubble pushed out, stopping the water, and keeping them
safe.
    “ How are you doing that?”
Jeremy whispered.
    “ Doing what?” the girl
responded, eyes clenched tight.
    “ Look,” he said. “Open
your eyes.”
    The girl did and then
recognition bloomed. “I’m doing that?”
    “ I think so. It’s coming
from your stomach.”
    “ How are you seeing
that?”
    “ I don’t know,” he
admitted, “but it’s the most beautiful blue color I’ve ever seen.
You’re… you’re beautiful.” He felt stupid the minute he said it.
But the girl’s colors were beautiful.
    The tsunami was miles wide
and the wave pushed the house away around them, leveling it. But
they sat there, on the inside of the blue bubble holding onto the
rafter, neither flowing with the water nor crashing to the ground,
levitating fifteen feet from the ground.
    “ I can see where it starts
in you,” the boy said, looking at her abdomen. “It’s like there’s a
blue fire there and it’s burning the water away.”
    “ Were you always
blind?”
    “ No,” Jeremy said sadly.
“My father made me stare up at the explosions. I told him it was
stupid.” And now his father was dead, his body out there somewhere
with hundreds of thousands of other corpses. He felt guilty for not
feeling bad about it.
    “ Oh,” Cassandra said,
“wow. I’m sorry. Where is he