Witch Clan: Warriors! by John Stormm (good book club books txt) 📕

contritely, "when I promised our help. I had forgotten that you were not one of us and I had no right to speak for your commitment. I'm sure you'll not be held to it if you decide against it."

"Honestly, I'm honored to be considered as family," he said. "I've always felt as though I belonged here. I also feel that you and Johnny will need me in this and I wouldn't turn my back on that. I'm where I'm supposed to be at this point in time. You should know me well enough by now to know that this royal servant or body guard thing has no ill effects on my feelings. Titles are nothing. I know who I am and am not ashamed."

"Nor should you be," Emma responded. "As I've said, the Sidhe's interactions with humans has never been a light thing. The fact that they would even pay us notice at all has more implications than we realize of ourselves."

“So, just to satisfy my own mind as to what all this means,” he said. “This is not some kind of symbolic dream of the trials and tribulations of growing up in a mixed society, but that there exists a real physical threat of flesh and blood humans from another world that we will be required to infiltrate and neutralize?”

“I’m not sure I would have put it quite like that,” she replied, “but that’s the deal in a nutshell. I’m guessing that the unique mix of who you are combined with your military training is what qualifies you for this job. For Johnny and I, it is a matter of our Sidhe bloodlines and craft knowledge that puts us in this position.”

“You’re sure they don’t need a good carpenter,” Willard asked, “that can build a stout padded cabinet to lock all you nutcases into?”

“I doubt it,” he said laughing. “But you might build me one anyway. I’m sure I’m going to need one by the time we get back from this.”

“Hey, Grampa,” Johnny said excitedly. “Could you make me one, shaped like a coffin with a part cut out so I can watch Bela Lugosi movies on the teevee?”

“I don’t think you’re going to have time for television, sport,” John replied with a chuckle. “You’ve got six months of schoolwork to go and only that much time for me to train you before we have to go. In fact, I’m sure I’d feel a whole lot better if your grandpa and grandma could join us for most of this.”

“C’mon hon,” Willard said with a playful cuff, “he’ll teach us all to catch arrows in our teeth.”

“In which case,” she jabbed back, “we’ll probably keep our heads longer if we leave them soaking in a jar than putting them in our mouths. Just what did you have in mind, John?”

“I was thinking of increasing the level of Johnny’s training,” he said, “and a few basic self defense moves for yourself and Willard. I can’t be everywhere at once, but I’d like to assure myself that if it was necessary, the rest of you might have a couple lethal surprises of your own.”

“Grandma fought and killed a monster once,” Johnny volunteered.

“I’m all for that,” Willard said, looking askance at his grandson. “When do we begin?”

“How’s after breakfast sound to you?” he replied.

After breakfast they moved back the coffee table and furniture in the living room and he taught them all basic moves for getting out of choke holds and slipping out of a strong man’s grip. It took Emma a few tries to get out of Willard’s grip as the bulk of his labor had always been without power tools. He was a powerful man. But when she got the hang of it, even Willard was shocked.

“I dare say, old man,” John commented, “that with that upper body strength you have, and these same moves that there is probably nothing smaller than a full grown gorilla that could hold a candle to you.”

“You’re probably right,” Willard replied. “But I won’t be going with you all. Remember?”

“True,” he answered, “but the reason we’re doing this is because we are not out of danger here from these same killers. Besides, if I can teach Emma to get one over on you, I know she‘ll have some rude surprises for those wizards. We need you, buddy.”

“Hear that, hon?” Willard said. “You give ‘em one for me, and if any of them crossover this-a-way, then I’ve got a knuckle sandwich with their names on it.”

“You know I don’t approve of all this talk of fighting and beating people up,” Emma said.

“I understand that better than you might think,” John replied. “But I want you to remember that farmer walking beside his vegetable cart in the woods, and maybe those worshippers at their shrines. Was there anything else they could have done but die?”

“No,” she said looking sullen.

“And more than anything else,” he said, “I don’t want to see another kind soul murdered for their land or possessions. But that won’t stop just because we want them to. We will have to insist.”

“So, you think I could stop them if I trained this way a bit more?” she asked.

“If we practice this often enough,” he said, “self defense will become second nature and you won’t even have to give it much more thought than that.”

“Good, then we’ll train together as a family,” she said. “But right now, I think I need to take Willard into the other room and show him what we saw so that he understands.”

“You both did well today,” he replied with a slight bow. “I can see your grandson’s knack isn’t solely from his father’s side of the family. I‘ll be over later in the week and regularly so until we crossover.”

Emma and Willard retired to the summer kitchen to use her gazing bowl while he and Johnny practiced over and over again. He could tell the progress they were making with the visions in Emma’s bowl because every once in a while he and the boy would catch Willard’s outraged comments about the atrocities he saw.

“Them no good, murderin’ --” Willard’s voice sputtered from the summer kitchen at the back of the house.

“I’ll betcha a quarter that he’s going to call them ‘goose steppin’ Nazis’ before he’s done,” Johnny said with a smile.

“You’re on, sport,” he replied making a swipe at the boy’s head that was ducked easily.

“Why them god forsaken, sieg heilin’, goose steppin, murderin’ Nazis!” Willard exclaimed.

“He’s really mad,” Johnny explained, holding his hand out.

“Oh, quit smirking and take your quarter,” he said tossing a coin and cuffing the boy playfully as he caught it. “Gotcha!”
Martial Marital Bliss!

Willard was worried. Enough so to take full advantage of any time he could spend with John Little Fox for some martial arts tips. He even got Emma to teach him how to use the gazing bowl, but for some reason, he didn't seem to have much of a knack for that sort of thing unless she was there to guide him. He'd catch himself staring into mud puddles looking for news.

The Nazis, his personal epitome of evil, were long defeated and being hunted down all over the world. Nikita Khrushchev and his Commie comrades were threatening to bury Western civilization in a nuclear holocaust. Crime syndicates had entire neighborhoods parceled out as territory and God help those who disagreed with them. If all that wasn't enough, there was a whole other world that wanted to be the Universal Big Cheese and they had no reason to care who they hurt or how much they destroyed to get what they wanted. They'd be comfortable and prosperous in their own plane of existence and far away from all the horror.

His wife and grandson were seriously considering taking the roles of spies and moles along with their considerable talents to take this tyrant on. It frustrated him that he couldn't go too. He'd do all he was capable of doing to encourage and support them. Maybe there was more he could do at home to protect them. At odd times, he took on roles of enemy guards trying to arrest his wife and grandson.

"You there! Woman," he called out in stentorian crispness. "Halt where you stand. I have orders to take you in," he said as he moved up behind her wrapping his massive arms around her shoulders and pinning her arms.

"By all means," Emma replied coyly, "How could I resist such brute force?"

She straightened her arms in his embrace, twisting hard to her left and used the blade of her left hand to slap the inside of his left thigh, reminding him of a far more vulnerable area nearby. He loosened his grip in alarm and she twisted around to face him and delivered a right ridge hand to the same area, a little harder and come up still twisting from the hip with a right elbow just below his throat so as not to hurt him too much and sent him sprawling backwards onto the couch.

"Are you okay, dear?" she asked with a genuine note of