Blackmail Earth (11 page)

“Hey, you know the one with the tat on her shoulder?” Jason said. “Big fucking flower?”

“Big fucking tits?” Gabe, his halfback, smiled. Built like his father and uncles: square body, square head, stumpy legs. Tiny dick.

“Yeah, Forensia, the one my brother drilled.” She’d never fucked Gareth again. Wouldn’t even kiss him. Called him a “bad mistake.” And then Gar ran off and signed up and got his ass shot to death in Baghdad. The bitch didn’t even come to his goddamn funeral. She breaks his heart, gets him sent to fucking Baghdad, and then spits on his grave.
Time to defend de family honor, bredda.
“She’s joining some kind of witches’ thing along with that new chink chick. Christy told me.” Christy Walker, the sheriff’s younger daughter.

“Christy gonna be there?” Carl asked, sounding like he couldn’t have cared less.

“She wasn’t sure. Suze’s going.” The older sister, the one Jason had played grab ass with forever.
More like grab dem everything, mon.

Jason and about half his team squeezed into two cars and tore down the old lake road, which led along rolling hills before they roared onto a dirt track and raised a huge cloud of dust that tailed them past the Empire Campgrounds. If not for the drought, the campsites would have been packed with every kind of suck-ass city shithead, but since the lake started looking like a burned-up biscuit the place had been practically deserted.

Jason slowed, turning off Shabba Ranks’s reggae rap because now he had to focus. (“Make yuh choo-choo like a train…”)
This is where it gets tricky as shit,
he thought. He pulled over; the second car followed closely. Jason kicked open his door and hopped out. “We’re gonna hafta huff it for about a mile up to Pointer Ridge.”

“Shit, man, I don’t want to hike all that way,” Carl complained.

“You know what?” Jason stuck his head back into the car and stared as Carl tried to crawl out of the Camaro’s tiny backseat. “You really are a fucking faggot.”

“Fuck you,” Carl muttered for the millionth time. “I’m just tired’s all.”

“Get out so Bert can move. You’re no faggot, are you, Bert?”

Bert was a lineman, a body crusher; and he’d be a lineman the rest of his life, near as Jason could tell. Always staring at girls like he was Lurch from
The Addams Family
. Not that any girl would go near him. Jason figured Bert was storing up the sight of legs and tits for later use. A goddamn squirrel thinking only of his nuts.
Well, not only de nutbag, mon.

“Everybody,” Jason said after the guys emptied out of the two cars, “shut the fuck up when we get near the ridge. You want to see some fucking ass, you shut your fucking pie holes.”

“I’m planning on a whole lot more than
seein’
some ass,” Ryan Petress said. The team’s split end.

“Yeah, Ryan, what’re you thinkin’?”

“I’m thinkin’ we’re raidin’ their hot witchy asses.” That set off a cheer.

“Yeah, nobody ever recognize you.”

“It’s dark.”

“Ain’t that dark, bro. Full fucking moon. Let’s just get up there, see what happens. Hey, they may be rapin’
us.
”

They set off like they were possessed, except for Carl, dragging ass like always.
Got de moves of a potted plant.

The team settled down, but the trees went off like .22s every time an arm or a shoulder caught a branch.

“Watch your goddamn step,” Jason hissed. “You want them throwin’ on their panties before we get there?”

“Long as we get to tear the fuckers off,” Ryan said.

Carl laughed, but like he had to.

Jason scrabbled up to where the trail fed onto the ridge, and crept to the overlook.

Holy fucking boom dogs, mon.
They were all starting to stand, turning this way and that, really showing off their snatches. Giving him a crotchful, thanks to Mr. Moon. Couldn’t be more than a hundred, hundred fifty feet away down in the clearing. Twenty of ’em, at least.

Shit.
Some were guys, including the one with the butt that had caught Jason’s eyes.

“Hey, Carl, check it out,” he whispered. “There’s your boyfriend,” he said, pointing to the dude Jason had wanted to ream till he figured out the owner of that firm round ass had a goddamn dick.

Now he could see the girl who’d fucked his brother, moonlight splashing all over her tits and tattoos.
Fucking whore.
Killer
whore.

“We got to get closer,” Jason said, drawn in by the raw excitement of so much willing pussy. Beside him, Ryan was panting and Bert was almost drooling, staring like a starving squirrel.

*   *   *

Forensia brushed bits of dry grass off her legs and bottom, more conscious of her nudity now that she was standing and could feel eyes on her. Richtor’s, yes, but other Pagans, too, about half of them witches. She didn’t blame any of them for looking—she would have, in their place. Still, all those eyes on her … it felt like a million. Not that she was self-conscious about her appearance. She worked hard on the farm. Her arms, legs, back, all showed her strength, and her belly was tight and narrow.

GreenSpirit stepped naked from the shadows and raised her arms before them.

Oh my God,
Forensia almost exclaimed aloud.
It’s
her
. It’s really her.

Heart Warrior had intimated that a high priestess would conduct the initiation, but GreenSpirit herself? The rumors about her being around had been true, after all. GreenSpirit had been known to suddenly appear at such ceremonies, but Forensia had refused to let herself hope that the Wiccan leader would show up at her own initiation.

The tall woman stepped into the circle of power, her back to the altar. Her eyes roamed the gathering: almost two dozen devoted followers. She was naked but for a beaded necklace with a wooden ankh, the same symbol Forensia had tattooed on her shoulder. And GreenSpirit’s face glowed in the moonlight, lean as her long limbs, and as serious as the spiritual practice she had long embraced.

“Shall we begin?” With a brief wave of her hand, GreenSpirit drew Forensia and Sang-mi into the circle and made them kneel before her. With another gesture, she banished the Pagans who were not witches, including Richtor, to a natural amphitheater hidden in the trees beyond the far side of the clearing. Heart Warrior had instructed them to conduct a silent ritual in support of the two young initiates.

Forensia felt the lingering intensity of the woman’s gaze even after GreenSpirit turned to study Sang-mi. She thought the witch had a handsome face, a commanding presence. GreenSpirit had reportedly spent her adult life moving from coven to coven, nation to nation, making mysterious visits to powerful men and women, and occasionally speaking in public of the threats to Gaia. “Gaia is an organism as alive as you or me,” she’d often said, “and it has its own survival foremost in mind.” Now she repeated those cautionary words as the ceremony began, adding, “Gaia is magic. And magic is the science of the control of nature. Someday, science will understand what we know in our hearts: that other worlds thrive within and without.”

She looked back down to Forensia and Sang-mi. “Have you studied the Law of Threefold Return?”

“Whatever action a person takes, good or bad,” the two answered in unison, “will return to them with three times as much force.”

“Do you know this in your hearts?”

“Yes,” they said.

“And the eight virtues?”

“Beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence.”

GreenSpirit turned from them, raised her eyes to the pentagram, whirled back around—arms reaching up to the night sky, as if imploring the moon. Then she lowered her hands so that she could cup Forensia’s face and draw her close. The initiate closed her eyes in anticipation of a kiss.

“Open your eyes,” GreenSpirit whispered.

Forensia complied, staring into the witch’s large green irises, eyes that were wild with an exuberant, entrancing spirit. The Pagan leader remained only a sweet breath away, so close that Forensia could indeed have kissed her.
Wanted
to kiss the swooning seductive power of belief, not body. For the first time that night, Forensia fully sensed the lush world of mysticism and magic that awaited her.

The witch’s hands warmed, quickly becoming as hot as stove pads. GreenSpirit drew away so slowly that seconds passed before the tips of her fingers lost contact with Forensia’s cheeks.

GreenSpirit repeated these actions with Sang-mi. She and the Korean woman were locked in an intense union when the night’s silence was suddenly broken by the snapping and trampling of nearby branches.

CHAPTER 8

Jason and his teammates froze. They had crept down from the ridge and slipped behind a thin curtain of parched forest that encircled the clearing. They’d stood there in silence until Bert lost his balance while beating off and fell into some tinder-dry and
noisy
bushes. Now the boys stared through a wicket of branches at the eerily silent witches, who were staring back.

“Step out from behind those trees,” the older witch called.

Jason wanted to kick Bert’s horny ass for giving them all away. GreenSpirit started forward.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Ryan said, no more raidin’ on his mind. “They’re doing some spooky shit, man, and I don’t want any part of it.”

“That shit’s shit,” Jason said. But he might as well have been talking to the trees—the whole team was scuttling off.

Hell with that.
Jason watched the witch walk toward him, moonlight on her sweet spots.

Dem de full fuckin’ Monty, mon.
Jason smiled. Old, but doable. A real MILF.

He stepped out, met her green-eyed gaze full on. His boner wanted to rip open his pants … and a whole lot more.

“What are you doing here?” she said calmly.

Jason peered at her closely. “Hey, I
know
you. Everybody’s looking for your ass.” He’d seen her face so much on TV that he would have known her even if she’d whipped by on her goddamn broomstick at Mach 5. He laughed. This felt great.
Wait’ll I tell dem fools.

“What is it that you want?” she asked.

“Shit, I don’t want anything. Just heard there was a party. Thought we’d check it out.”

“Where are your friends?”

Jason shrugged. “They got a little freaked.”

“But not you.”

“Nah, not me.”
Check dem jumbly fucking bumblies, mon.

“I think you’re curious. That’s healthy, a good thing,” GreenSpirit said.

“Not
that
kind of curious,” Jason volleyed. He let his eyes wander all over the witch.

“You needn’t be ashamed of your interest in witchcraft. People are called to it from all ways of life.”

“I’m not called to this shit. I’m just checking out the party.”

“Then join us.”

She’s bluffing.
He’d call her on it: “Yeah, sure.”

“But you must take off the rest of your clothes.”

No shirt, and now she wants dem pants?
“No can do.” Not with his woody saluting the commander in chief.

“Don’t worry about
that
.” She eyed the bulge in his jeans. “Nobody cares.”

Another naked group drifted out of the forest to his left, the younger ones whom he’d watched from the ridge, including Christy. She stared at him like she was worried that he’d give her away. Her sister, Suze, stood close by. Suze knew what he had in his pants.

The old witch put her hand on his shoulder. Before she could speak, he slapped it aside. “Don’t you fuckin’ touch me.”

“Leave,” the witch replied.

A guy with blond dreads hurried over—a hippie asshole Jason had seen around town. Standing next to her like a goddamn bouncer. “Leave,” he said, but to Jason, he sounded like a jerk-off, and his dick looked smaller than a stinkbug.

“Yes, go,” the witch said to Jason.

“Nah, I’m staying, see how you naked witches party. Then I’m selling your ass to the highest bidder. See this?” He pulled out a business card. “CBS News. I got one from all of them. They’re all over the place looking for you. They want you to tell them all about your sex parties with your old boyfriend, Roger.” As in Roger Lilton, the presidential candidate.

He could see her face clearly now and knew that he’d spooked
her.
She was so desperate she was trying to fix him with a stare. What was that supposed to do? Melt him like he was some goddamn Snow Queen?

“I’m going to cast a spell on you, if you don’t leave.”

Did he hear her right? A spell? “What? Turn me into a fucking frog?
Ribbit, ribbit.
” He grabbed his swollen crotch, gave it a nice tug. “I’ll cast one on you, you’re not careful. Hey,” he tugged again, “you’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?”

Much as he was loath to admit it, the witch’s eyes were freaking him out. He turned away, thinking it was time to go, then spun back, refusing to admit his fear to himself or to her.

The fucking witch threw something in his face. So light, it could have been dust; but no, it felt moist, like she’d spritzed him. Hard to say what it was, except it was cold,
freezing fucking cold,
and his face turned numb. A goddamn fucking ice cream headache. He pressed the heels of his hands to his temples, wincing. Her green eyes were looking past him. No, they were staring
through
him, icier still. Scared him half to death. Nobody had ever looked at him like that. Her lips were moving, but he couldn’t hear shit.

“What? What?” he shouted.

The icy cold drained from his head. He was so grateful, he whimpered. But it kept draining—down through his chest, belly, and in the next instant he knew with horror where it would stop.
You fucking bitch. You goddamn fucking, green-eyed—

The frigid flow froze every imprecation, settling like a blizzard on his cock and balls. Draining all desire.

His boner was gone. Forever. That’s all he kept thinking:
Forever.

He ran off, moonlight still on his bare back.