Which Witch Switch - Julie Steimle (book series for 10 year olds .txt) 📗

feast.

I knew their faces. I knew their names. I knew and craved the taste of their blood. The only thing I didn’t know was where they lived, and in the end I landed near a pay phone, picked up the phone book and searched for their addresses. But as I flipped through the pages I realized that I didn’t know their parents’ names. Kicking the ground, I launched up into the sky again to search for my prey the hard way.

The Seven

 

My prey found me.

“Eve!” The tall redhead called up to me from the middle of a road. He wore armor of tinged red and dented metal. A sword was in his hand.

Grinning, I swooped down to get my bite. However, when I dived the weirdest sensation happened. My right palm started to burn. I turned to look at it. There I saw a sun shining up at me from a scar I had there. Shrieking in horror, I tried to close my fist to hide it, but it seared my fingers when I attempted it. How did a sun get there?

But then the memory of a boy, a face, and a handshake flooded back to me.

Michael Toms. The eighth of the Seven, my friend.

My stomach lurched.

Plummeting to the ground with my wings flopping, clenching my wrist, hot tears burned out of the corners of my eyes. I had betrayed a promise. It was a promise I had forgotten. Those witches had made me forget it.

Landing with a hard thump, I groaned there on painted yellow line in the middle of the asphalt.

Andrew walked over to me. I peered up at him, feeling those two sensations go through me again. One was to tear out his throat and eat him alive. The other was run from him—not because I was afraid, but because I didn’t want to kill him. Both sides pulled me apart.

I jumped back. “Get away from me!”

He held his place, his sword point lifted to defend himself. “Your face is covered in blood.”

“I said stay away! They made me drink it!” I shouted, retreating farther.

His eyes fixed on me, not sure if he should strike though his imps shouted for him to stab me, but not kill me yet. “Drink what?”

I trembled with that eagerness again, manically grinning. “Your blood. It tastes good.”

But I did not move.

I heard the clanking of other feet in armor. The panting of a wolf accompanied them, as did the padding of his paws. Turning my eyes from my prey only a little, I saw Rick transform from a wolf into a boy again, running up without his shirt and shoes. The others of the Seven were right on his tail, all in different colors of armor, though one boy ran up wearing hockey pads and a mask, lifting up a chain of dried garlic. I hissed at him.

“Eve, you don’t want to do this!” Jessica, who was wearing yellow armor, went to the front of the group, reaching for Andrew to move back. But she was carrying a sword and her imps were telling her give up and just kill me.

Hearing her speak, remembering how kind she had been to me and seeing Rick stare at me with the same pleading eyes as hers, I trembled more, clenching my wrist. My palm burned.

“I…I…I don’t want to.” I broke into tears, fighting the overwhelming urge to kill her. “Something is making me… want to…eat….”

I panted hard, twitching. The forces inside me pulled at my arms, my head, my feet and my legs like the strings of a marionette, making me rise and walk towards them. My fingernails elongated, thickening into claws. My wings expanded as large as a dragon’s.

Daniel shuddered, holding his sword up higher. “Oh, crap.”

Rick jumped in between us. “Eve! You told me you don’t believe that a curse can rule your life! You have a choice!”

Nodding, I fought against it, but the strings of the spell pulled me towards them. “I’m trying!”

They stepped back, lifting their swords for a counter attack.

Through the tears in my eyes I realized that there were powers that were even stronger than I was. I looked to Jessica, sobbing. “I’m sorry. But you have to kill me, or I will kill you.”

“No.” Jessica started to cry, though she held her sword up higher. “We just became friends!”

I cried harder. “Then save me!”

“How do we do that?” The boy in the hockey mask shouted to the others.

The burning in my palm grew more severe even as the urge to bite Jessica overwhelmed all the other desires in my chest. I howled as my hand seared, the light burning my skin. I jumped at her.

Jessica swung, but hit me with the flat of her sword, calling to the others, “I don’t know! Think of something! You know more about demons than I do!”

“You can’t save her,” the calmer yet entirely irritating voice of Danna replied for them all.

I really, really hated Danna now. If I weren’t after their blood, I would have been after hers. She sauntered down the road with several other witches perhaps come to watch the demise of the Holy Seven once and for all.

“Eve!” The clank, clank, clank of yet another set of feet in armor ran towards me down the road. It was Michael Toms. He said to the others, panting, “I got here as fast as I could.”

He was dressed in purple armor.

“How do we stop her?” Andrew asked him. It was clear he was the leader, though Jessica stood by him like a co-chair to their committee.

Michael shook his head. “I don’t know. She saved my life last time. I didn’t expect her to actually come here.”

“Neither did I!” Rick shouted out, baring wolf-like fangs.

“That’s because she really doesn’t want to be here.” Jessica jerked off her mail glove. She dropped it on the ground as if throwing down the gauntlet to challenge me. Only her eyes said she wanted to help.

I swiped at her again, scratching her across the chest. My claws scraped the metal. She staggered back.

“Eve, let us help you,” she said.

I looked at the deep scratches in the hammered steel. If she hadn’t been wearing that armor, I could have killed her then.

“How?” I jumped at her again, slashing with my claws and baring my fangs, though this time Andrew blocked me with his sword. I got a cut on my arm, luckily not deep.

“Fight it!” Rick shouted back, getting in the way again. “You fought it when you were in our campground.”

I had. I remembered. I just couldn’t remember how I threw off the urge to drink the blood of others after that first taste.

I flew over Rick and attacked the boys, while in the background those women laughed and cheered me. Sobbing even as I swiped at those boys, I struggled to regain control of my limbs.

One of their swords slashed the back of my left hand, leaving a bleeding scrape through the drawn hex mark. Almost immediately that arm dropped. I was free to move it on my own.

“Uh oh,” one of those witches said. Her imp shouted for her to push one of her friends at me for a distraction so she could run away.

But I wasn’t after her. The rest of me attacked the Seven, though my one hand was now mine again. So I grabbed my other arm and held it back.

“That’s it!” James shouted. “Those marks! They’re part of the spell!”

“But I don’t want to cut her!” Jessica shouted back at him, sweat dripping down her face and neck. All of that armor had to be heavy.

“I got a better idea!” shouted out the thin boy wearing silver armor. He pulled off his mail glove and dropped it. “Chosen one! Use your soul mark and burn those drawings off!”

I flapped to get back. Burn me? Terror overwhelmed me as I stared at their glowing palms. They also had suns in the center of them. Yet, I looked to the one on my palm, the one Michael had burned there and realized that it may be the only way to save me.

I reached out with the hand that was in my control. The rest of me wanted to flee and pulled back. “Help me!”

Andrew jumped up and seized it, pulling me down to the ground. My wings flapped harder, threatening to take us both up into the air, but Jessica grabbed onto him, and then all of them leapt up to pull me down. Rick got in there too, wrapping his arms around me to keep me still though my wings flapped violently as the others searched for the marks.

“It’s going to be ok,” he whispered to me.

“No!” screamed the witches on the road. They charged at the Seven, cursing and muttering dark phrases.

Michael stood up, holding out his sword. “Come any closer and I will kill you.”

Though I writhed under the control of that spell, clenching my teeth and snapping at them, each one of the Seven clutched the drawn-on hex marks and pressed their searing palms against them.

The pain was the worst ever. My entire body felt as though it were on fire.

But then the most unusual sensation surged over me. The burning became something like the warmth of my father’s arms, the tender hugs of my mother, the happy laughter of my bothers and my sister, and the forgiving friendship of my best friend Jane. I sat there weeping even as Rick embraced me, whispering that I was safe, that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.

Then they all let go.

I sat there staring at the smoking brands on each of my thighs searing right through the leather of Danna’s pants. Every one of those marks stung, but my mind was clear. The fog around my head lifted, the cold autumn air crisp against my skin. I shivered, surprised even that I felt the cold. Then in a rush, all the events from falling over in the school gym to now sitting in the middle of a darkened East Coast town road smacked my senses right in the face. Toto…I wasn’t in California anymore.

Looking up, my eyes set on Rick. I blinked at him as he peered down at me. He wasn’t a dream. “Rick?”

He nodded, a smile cracking on his face.

I then saw Michael. “Michael. I thought you lived in San Diego.”

Michael laughed, even as Danna backed up, her eyes going wide. But when I saw her, a fury filled me. 

“You!” I hopped onto my feet. “You! You freaking kidnapped me!”

Danna broke into a run.

I shook my head, flapped open my wings then soared right at her, swooping her up off the ground then shaking her within my claws. “I oughta tear your face off!”

She screamed, desperately looking to the other women. “Help me!”

But the other witches scattered.

And as tempted as I was to just drop her right there to break her legs, I flew her back and set her in the middle of all those teenagers wearing armor, though I blinked at the one in the hockey mask and pads. They surrounded her, their swords up.

I landed.

The moment I retracted my wings, Rick set an arm around my shoulders, grinning at me. “Glad to have you back.”

I chuckled.

However,