Mary Singer's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Mary laced the runework vest tight and waited for the threat to come. It came at dusk. The wards flared, then split down the middle. Cerberus rose from the doorway, all three heads snarling at the dark beyond the steps. The shadow cat pressed against Mary's leg, tail low. Whatever approached made even the hellhound uneasy. "It's here," Mary said. She felt it push against the bunker's fortified walls. The vest warmed. The runes on the leather glowed faint blue. It would turn teeth. It would keep her breathing. But it could not strike back, and she had nothing that could. Dean came up beside her, knife drawn, jaw set. He was the hunter she'd sworn to protect, the man who'd watched her drop three hellhounds and called her a real witch. Now he saw her empty pouch again. "Tell me you've got a plan," he said. "The vest only guards," Mary said. "I can't summon without the flowers. I can't hurt it." "Then we're a wall with no fist." Dean's eyes cut to her. "Bobby never left you a wall without a fist. Think." Bobby. Her uncle. Mary turned and ran deep into the bunker. She pulled open the heavy metal door of his old workroom. Dust hung in the air. Along the far wall stood a rack of his things. There, propped in the corner, was a length of dark wood taller than she was. Runes ran up its face in green and pink and blue light. She'd seen it as a child and been told never to touch it. She touched it now. The staff woke. Heat ran up her arm. The runes brightened, then pulsed in time with her heartbeat. This was not armor. This was the fist. Something slammed the bunker door. The metal buckled inward. Cerberus roared. Mary ran back, staff in both hands. The thing forced its shape through the broken frame, too large for the space, all shadow and weight. Mary planted the staff and shouted the old word carved at its base. Light poured from the runes. It struck the shape in the chest and threw it back down the steps. The blast cracked the concrete. The creature shrieked and did not rise at once. "That's the fist," Dean said. Mary's arms shook. The staff had spent something in her, some reserve she didn't know she had. The runes dimmed to embers. The creature stirred on the broken ground, wounded, not dead. And on the wood, one rune had gone dark and cold. Cracked. "It's hurt," Mary said. "But so is this." She held up the staff. The dead rune stared back. She'd found her weapon. Now she had to learn what it cost her each time she swung it, before the thing on the steps got up again.