21 May 2012
Fiona regarded her flat tire with exasperation, turning to look at her cat, Bane, who rode shotgun beside her. A darkened country road was not the best place for a young woman traveling alone at night to suffer a breakdown.
As she opened her trunk to locate her jack, Fiona observed a pick-up truck pull in behind her disabled vehicle. Two strapping men emerged whose mannerisms did little to reassure Fiona that the cavalry had arrived.
"Well well, little Missy, what do we have here?," asked the first man, stretching. His companion grinned toothlessly and continued to chew on a wad of tobacco. "Name's Jake. Suppose me and Hiram here give you all a hand, and then maybe you can give us one?," he offered. Hiram leered and spat tobacco juice.
"Thanks, but I'm fine," said Fiona curtly. Jake reached out and put his dirty hand on Fiona's shoulder. "Don't make us have to persuade you," he cautioned. Hiram shuffled closer, the reek of tobacco on his breath.
Fiona quickly extended her palm in the direction of the first man's chest, and he was propelled as if by some invisible force a dozen feet backwards, his back slamming into the unyielding trunk of a tree. From behind Hiram there was a a menacing growl, followed by a large mountain lion landing on the back of the man which knocked him to the asphalt. He batted ineffectively in panic at the claws and teeth which busied themselves around his neck and shoulders.
Stunned and uncomprehending, Jake staggered away from the tree trunk into which he had flown to find his mind focused by the searing pain inflicted on his leg by the clamped jaws of a German Shepherd, a dog which apparently had been dead for some time. The road-killed animal's head hung at an impossible angle, one intact eye glowing with the otherworldly energy which had reanimated the canine corpse.
Tearing away from the spectral dog, Jake screamed at his companion, who had managed to roll away from the mountain lion. Shaken and bleeding, the two men raced to their truck, fired up the ignition, and threw the vehicle into gear. They fled the scene as if pursued by the demons of hell itself.
Bain had returned to the passenger seat of Fiona's car, and was grooming himself following the tussle. Fiona regarded her familiar with a slight smile and remarked, "I guess that some of these rubes don't know to leave a witch alone, eh Bain?" The lug nuts spun untouched on their bolts as Fiona telekinetically changed her tire and resumed her journey to Salem, a pentagram emblem glinting in the moonlight as it dangled from her rear-view mirror...
Fiona
The Craft • Opuss № I