BOOM! Pause. BOOM!
Click. Two plastic impacts on the floor, the casings still smoking.
Two soft shicks. Then, an assertive ch-ch!
Bobby stepped over the ashes of the witch's familiar, a Doberman-esque animal, and flung open his front door, rattling the knickknacks. With shotgun in one hand and Mason jar of lamb's blood in the other, he stepped onto his front porch and bellowed, "Next witch that tries to stop me gets a face full of rock salt, and a bellyful of lead shot!" He had one round in each barrel, because Bobby was nothing if not efficient.
The moonless night seemed to balk at him, and he thought the wind carried titters of laughter. The witches were close: he could literally smell them. The scent of the entrails they used in their black magic and the God-awful knot of pure dread they inspired in his ulcerated stomach would tip anyone off. This coven was the second in as many months to make an attempt on his house. And Bobby could only think of one thing that could cause it. He was expecting a visitor on the solstice. That visitor carried knowledge of an ancient dead magic.
If this coven managed to capture Bobby, as they were attempting to do now, they could get information out of him about the visitor, or hold his life for hers.
Bobby snarled. Over his dead body.
No balls, no glory, he thought, and set foot on the first front step. Nothing happened, so he continued to the second.
The third one very nearly killed him. Two pairs of hands reached from under the step and grabbed his ankles, pulling hard. Bobby went down, losing the shotgun and just barely keeping from shattering the Mason jar. The witches continued to pull, and their long, sharp nails gouged his ankles and calves with bloody streaks. In seconds, he had disappeared under the porch up to his hips. But for all their strength, the witches could not get his beer gut under the steps.
Who says alcohol is bad for you? thought Bobby to himself with hysterical relief. He cracked the jar's lid, dipped his fingers, and began to paint on the step in front of him, all the while kicking at the grasping witches. Thirteen well-practiced finger strokes later, and the pulling on his legs vanished with twin screams and a bright flash. Looking up, he saw other flashes from all over his yard, behind cars, and in the trees. Roughly fifteen in all, now piles of ash.
Those that were within the barrier, that is.
As Bobby wriggled his way out of the space, he indulged in a half second of sorrow for extinguishing human life, albeit demon-fueled, magic-twisted human life. But he was a hunter, acting in self-defense, and they were evil, as evidenced by his border magic's flare-up. If they hadn't tripped the 'evil intent' spell around his property, he would probably be going somewhere against his will, hogtied and with a bag on his head. It took a while for him to get free: he was wedged in tight. "Where's the butter when you need it," he grumbled, wincing as he inspected the damage to his legs. Nothing he couldn't fix up with some Jack Daniels and an Ace bandage.
He sighed, touched up the rune that completed the array around his lands, and gazed up at the matte gray moon."You'd better hurry, Adrienne. They're coming for you."
To a trained eye, such as the three malicious pairs that watched the house and junk yard gravely from the shadows of the woods, the magic was a slightly glowing line in the ground connecting the runes in a thirteen-point star. The thirteen-pointed runes were arranged in a thirteen-pointed star: nigh unbreakable, totally uncrossable for them. The magic ran loops around its track, constant, strong. It was engineered for witches in general, and specifically for their brand of evil craft.
They may have been thwarted in this manner, but they would catch her, the visitor, as she attempted to pass them to reach the safety of the hunter's house. The visitor had picked her refuge well, and the timing of her usual solstice visit to the hunter conveniently coincided with the acquisition of her new powers, as foretold by the tarot cards one of them carried.
"We must have patience, sisters," said the middle of the three women softly. The very insects fell silent at her voice, and the tiny hearts of baby animals in the area, from squirrels to birds, stopped in mid-beat. The wind stirred their long hair, their black clothes. In the dark their pale skin glowed faintly, and their eyes told of unspeakable evil and unimaginable tortures for their victims. These sisters were the matriarchs of the strongest coven on the continent. The air was saturated with their power...and their malevolence.
"We have traveled far and wide searching for this magic," reveled the first with a sharp-toothed smile, fingering the deck of tarot cards. The wind ceased to tumble at her voice, became absolutely, positively still. "And spelled away many moon-and-star signs in wait."
"A few more will not harm us," finished the third. Though the woods were damp from rain, the youngest seedlings crackled to embers at her voice. As one, they nodded in agreement and melted into the shadows by becoming shadows themselves.
They would lie in wait.
They would kill the wandering witch.
And with her blood-spilled power, they would rule unopposed.
For if they could turn the night dark and silent with merely their voices, oh, the things they could do with Threadspell.