Scarlett Wrappley's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

The barrel hissed louder. Green smoke rose off the surface and spread across the ceiling. Scarlett set down the red batch and coughed. The fumes stung her eyes. They rolled over her shelves and settled on every flask she owned. Her formula sat open on the bench. If the smoke touched it, weeks of work would spoil. "Garrison, the samples," she said. "We have to clear this." Garrison covered his nose with his sleeve. His yellow eyes watered. The werewolf had killed the hunter and saved her, but now the dead man's acid poisoned the air between them. The smoke gathered into a shape above the barrel. A face formed in the green haze. Old. Wrinkled. Ezekiel's face, grinning down at them. "You think I'm done?" the cloud whispered. The voice came thin and wet, like the hunter's had. "One more trick, little bat. Breathe deep." Scarlett understood. The acid had not just killed him. It had freed something. His last spell hung in the smoke, choking the room. She grabbed a wet rag and pressed it to her mouth. "Don't open a window," she said. "Fresh air feeds it." Garrison lowered his sleeve. He looked at the door across the lab, then at the cloud. "I can push it out," he said. His chest swelled. A werewolf's lungs could blow a candle out from across a room. But he stopped. To blow, he had to breathe in first. One deep breath of that green would kill him. The face laughed. It drifted closer to Garrison's head. "Go on, dog. Take your big breath." Garrison's eyes narrowed. Then he turned around. He bent forward and braced both hands on the workbench. Scarlett stared. "What are you—" He answered without words. A long, thunderous blast tore out of him. It hit the cloud like a gale. The green face broke apart and rolled backward toward the door. Garrison strained and let loose again. The stench was worse than the acid, but it worked. He never had to breathe the poison in. He only had to push it out the other way. The cloud scattered. Ezekiel's face stretched thin and warped. "This isn't over!" the hunter shrieked. His voice thinned to nothing as the smoke poured out the doorway. "I'll come back. You'll both pay for this!" Then the last of the green slid out the door and was gone. Scarlett lowered her rag. The air cleared. She rushed to her bench and lifted the formula to the light. The red held. No haze. No ruin. It had survived. Garrison straightened, sheepish, waving a hand behind him. "Sorry." She almost laughed. Then she looked at the acid still bubbling in the barrel. The hunter was dead, but his magic had lingered in the fumes. If a dead man's spell could rise from that acid, so could anything else she'd dissolved. The barrel was no longer safe. She'd have to drain it before she could work again.