Page 8 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
What came out of that first circle sent the fine hairs on the back of my neck standing up.
It was a witch-eater, a krampus.
And despite my fae heritage, I was still a witch, as were Caine and Spec.
Graceley.
“Gods-fucking-damn it,” I growled, mentally combing through the rest of my curses.
The thing about witch-eaters is that witches had much less of an effect on them, magically speaking. I chose another knuckle curse, also gifted to me by my mother, and hurled it in the monster’s direction.
It was tall, taller than me by at least a couple of feet, and dressed in the skins and furs of things it’d killed. Its horns made Hex’s look like toothpicks, and its mouth was already dripping with blood. When the curse hit it, it rippled the creature’s shield, and bounced off, slamming into a tree and severing its massive trunk in half. The bark peeled off, and the sap bubbled and lit up with flame.
Fuck my life.
“That’s Graceley’s blood,” Spec choked out, using Caine’s outstretched hand to find his feet.
My own blood ran cold at his words, but I squeezed my jaw shut tight against the panic.
“You’re sure?” I asked as the monster snarled, sniffed the air, and snorted like a boar.
“I’m fucking sure,” Spec spat, as I curled my hands into fists and locked the rest of the curses away. If one of my mother’s spells couldn’t do the trick, the rest were essentially useless.
“Magic ain’t gonna work on this motherfucker, is it?” Caine asked, running his arm across his lower lip. He was bleeding, but just a little. Sometimes a serious surge of magic could fuck up the body. Glad I hadn’t accidentally killed him. Grace would never forgive me.
Grace.
Shit.
“Tear his limbs off,” I said as the werewolf shifted, shook out his tawny coat and launched himself at the monster.
“We have to kick its ass with brute force, huh?” Spec asked, and I nodded.
I could still feel Grace out there in the woods of Hael … with Monster.
For a moment, I warred with myself: stay and fight or go and search. But the last thing I needed to do was draw the krampus back in Grace’s direction. Once a witch-eater tasted the blood of a witch, they could hunt them anywhere—even between worlds.
No, we had to kill this fucker. And much as I disliked the idea of Monster and Grace together, he wouldn’t kill her. That piece of trash was as in love with my wife as I was.
But he was toxic for her.
I’d never let him hook his claws in her again.
“Let’s do this—and let’s make it quick.”
I rolled my shoulders, waited for Caine to lure the demon over to me, and then drew out the ivory sword from the sheath on my back. Physical force, how banal. But this piece of crap touched my wife, and he was going to get it back a hundredfold. Nobody hurt my goddess-blessed wife and lived to tell the tale.
Except … for Monster. But as soon as I got this krampus situation under control, I would rectify that.
The witch-eater wasn’t alone.
A second, third, and fourth krampus came at us, one from every direction. The last of the four, whose spell circle opened up on the surface of the water, threw himself at me and managed to slash my shoulder with his claws before I threw up a shield.
The wound was shallow, but … fuck.
Holy flipping witch hats, what had I just done?! Once a witch-eater tastes a witch, he never stops. If I didn’t kill him now, I’d have yet another pile of bullshit on my proverbial plate to deal with.
A demon-witch war.
Hex Sorciere’s summoning.
My mother’s life clock running out.
And Monster. Motherfucking, cocksucking Monster.
“Dark God’s balls,” he cursed in that devilish tone of his. I could sense just the slightest hint of worry though. I’d known the man for too long to miss it. He was nervous. One witch-eater, we could handle. Two, maybe. But three? Four?
And these things, they were sort of, a little bit, kind of … like, impervious to witch magic?
I spun my broom around in a circle and took up a fighting stance as the creature that’d scratched me came charging back in my direction. He leapt up and launched himself at me in a flurry of flapping skins and furs, a smell like rotten ginger cookies permeating the air around him.
As I braced myself for impact, a spell circle appeared underneath him, shackles latching around his wrists and ankles.
The krampus was being summoned.
I gaped as the demon disappeared from midair, but my shock and surprise didn’t last long.
Monster, who was fortunately a full-blooded demon, spun a spell from the sulfur and lime deposits on the shore and unraveled a whip made of pure, raw energy. He flung it around one of the witch-eater’s furry little necks and jerked him forward hard enough to snap bone. Sadly, didn’t happen quite that easily with a demon, but at least I got the satisfaction of knowing it probably hurt.
