Free The Witchfinder Wars by K.G. McAbee Page B

threshold, I saw Michael must
have heard every word. He was laughing until he caught sight of me,
and then he started singing under his breath.
    "Ding dong, the witch is dead...the witch
is..."
    I stopped long enough to grab the vase
sitting on the edge of his mother's desk, ripping the flowers out
and tossing them aside before throwing the dirty water in his face.
Michael's shout brought both Lofton and the principal out of the
office I had just left. They looked stunned as I set the vase back
down.
    "Add that to my list of sins too."
    I left, crossing through the now empty halls
to head toward the sidewalks leading me home. I was so angry I
don't remember most of the walk. All I could think of was how
unfair the whole thing was.
    When I reached Evie's gardens, I squared my
shoulders and put it behind me. I was a good student, the best in
school, but I would get better. I was more determined than ever to
prove myself to the idiots who surrounded me. No matter what it
took. Who it took. I grinned as I headed upstairs. They
thought I could call upon the Devil to help me. But I knew Satan
didn't exist.
    I had access to something much more
powerful, much more dangerous, than any devil.
    My Great Mother. My Goddess. She would lead
me down the path I was supposed to take, while I destroyed anything
and everything that got in my way.
    And the rest could go to hell where they
belonged.

Chapter Six
    Tommy
    I was sure I wouldn't be able to sleep a
wink after Grand told me, well, everything she told me, and she
told me a lot I couldn't believe. But I surprised myself. After we
talked until almost two in the morning and she left, I crashed and
fell into the deepest sleep I could ever remember. But not a
restful, soothing sleep, the kind of sleep I really could have
used. I kept having dreams and waking from them, my heart pounding
like a drum, covered in sweat yet shivering with cold.
    Or maybe it was fear. 'Cause some of those
dreams were strange. Falling rocks I could understand. The
sensation of being crushed alive. But the sense there was something
I had to do, someone I had to get to, before it was too late, that
was the worst. I'd wake and my legs would be trying to run, and my
hands would be grabbing out at the emptiness above my bed.
    The dreams began as soon as I was
asleep.
    I was standing in the middle of a long
straight stretch of highway. It unrolled in front of me forever,
until I couldn't make out where it ended. At first there was
nothing on either side of the blacktop—blacktop with a blood red
line running down the middle of it—just misty, cloudy
nothingness.
    Then the clouds began to group together and
rise up on one side of the road, clumping and getting less and less
hazy and more and more dense, until finally rough jagged rocks
loomed high over the road on my right. On my left, the clouds
collapsed like some giant was sucking them away through a
straw.
    A deep rumble shook the earth, like thunder
but louder and stronger than any storm I'd ever heard or
experienced. I looked up, craning my neck back to see the sky, but
there was no sky—only dense blackness without even a sprinkle of
stars.
    The rumble of almost-thunder came again and
this time, the blacktop beneath my feet shook and trembled with it.
I looked down. My feet were bare. Then the skin began to peel away
and I could see the bones of my toes, white against the black road.
I jerked my head up away from that terrible sight and there, off in
the distance, were two bright eyes racing toward me like a lion
after a zebra.
    The lion howled.
    But they weren't eyes, they were headlights.
I could hear the lion's growl change to the roar of a big racing
engine.
    A car was coming straight at me.
    I tried to move, but I was stuck. I didn't
want to, but I looked down. The bones of my feet had grown into the
asphalt, pushing it up and twisting it like the roots of trees tear
up the streets in a town.
    The roar grew louder, the headlights
blinding me as they got