Bone Lantern Witch

by Kat Simons

  But she could banish the demon.

  The Molder demon picked that exact moment to shift its gaze and stare at her. Its smile widened grotesquely, making its teeth look even longer. A split in the side of its gray, skeletal face dripped a thick black liquid like tar. Or blood.

  Maybe she could banish the demon.

  The man who’d slowed her down, his words came back to her. That he was stalling. That the demon wanted her. Her.

  She didn’t have to think too hard to figure out why. If it could possess her body, it would be able to open demon realms and let loose a torrent of chaos onto this realm. But she wasn’t making any deals with it. And it no longer had the bone lantern.

  Keeping out of the way of Sebastian’s fight with Carmen, she approached the demon, studying the containment circle Carmen had drawn to summon the beast. This one was built from salt but no chalk this time. The area around it had been swept clear of leaves, and when leaves blew past in the breeze, they stacked against one side of the circle without crossing the line.

  In her mind’s eye, Angie could see the faint reddish color of the circle, a light not visible with the eyes. She let her gaze soften long enough to ensure the circle was intact. Carmen might be mad for revenge, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d built a solid circle that was holding.

  Unless Sebastian had to kill her.

  That worry nagged, but she carefully kept the fear from her face as she met the demon’s black gaze. Looking into that darkness was like staring into a bottomless void and she wasn’t immune to the vertigo. She was just good at ignoring it. She’d stared into that void more than once.

  “You don’t have the will to banish me, witch,” the demon murmured. “You know you don’t. It’s why you haven’t joined the hunters.”

  Its voice hissed out, full of Ss, sibilant with an undercurrent of something sharp that grated over her nerves like nails on a chalkboard. She kept her wince to herself.

  “My will is strong,” she said. “It’s just focused on something more—” she bounced the fire ball in her palm, “—magical.” She grinned back at the grinning demon. “And if you think I’ll let you use me, you’re wrong.”

  “I know you fear me,” it said. “I felt that when you touched the book. When we met in the realms of memory. You fear me, but you know me.”

  “Nothing personal, but I’d rather not know you.” She didn’t argue with the fear. It would be pointless. She was afraid. Very very afraid.

  She was also determined.

  “Your fire will not burn me,” the demon pointed out.

  “This? This isn’t for you. This is for your minions.” She thought of the hunter who Carmen had killed while the hunter had been trying to defeat this demon. She hoped not to make the same mistake. Carmen’s associate was still behind them somewhere. “You… You will require something else.”

  “A fight?” The demon laughed. “A bargain?”

  “Oh, no. I’m not bargaining with you. I know what you want already. And it’s not on offer.” Once Carmen uncovered her secret, Angie knew the demon would understand what it meant.

  “You would be more powerful,” it said, the lilt of a lure in its voice. “Power beyond your imagining.”

  It lunged close to the edge of the circle, a move that startled her despite herself. Like having a cockroach fly at her face. She bit back the screech, but cursed under her breath.

  “You would never have to fear being trapped again,” it whispered.

  Trapped. Trapped. They’re coming. Scrambling over glass-sharp rock. Blood. Heat. Fire. Burning. The chittering of demons. Close. Too close. Overwhelming her. The spark spell not enough. Tearing at her. Breaking through. No! The portal closing. Trapped. She was trapped.

  “You would control your gift fully,” the demon whispered.

  She clenched her teeth and forced down the memory that haunted her nightmares. Her heart pounded so hard in her chest it hurt.

  “No bargains,” she said, her voice deep, her throat raw as if she’d been breathing the sulfur air in the demon realm.

  Damned demon, hitting on just the right nerve, pressing just the right button. It knew her fear, knew her deepest terror.

  Or at least, it thought it did.

  Somewhere behind her, she heard a grunt of pain and then some cursing. Not all of the cursing was Sebastian’s, which was good. She hoped. The demon laughed at her and moved back a little. It rose higher, floating just above the ground like a ghost. There was a lot about this type of demon that hinted at ghost, and that only added to its insidiousness.

  When it towered over her, forcing her to drop her head back to look into its face, it pointed a long, skeletal, black claw-tipped finger at her. “You think you have stopped me from passing into your world, don’t you?”

  “I don’t see another bone lantern lying around the place,” she said with a shrug. The gesture made the fire ball hovering over her palm sway. “I hear they’re quite rare.”

  “They are,” it confirmed with a nod.

  It glanced behind her and despite herself, she looked. She couldn’t not, even though she suspected it was a trick of some kind. Sebastian had Carmen in a choke hold, a slow squeeze around her neck, her head tilted to one side as he pushed her toward unconsciousness. She’d seen him do this before—to get a human summoner out of the way for their own good. She knew he could knock Carmen out without killing her, trusted him to do so. But once Carmen was unconscious, the circle holding the demon would be more…breakable.

  Angie had a choice in the moments remaining before Carmen passed out. Build a personal shield. Or a protection circle.

  She faced the demon again, and startled back a step. It was right at the edge of the circle, again, its face close to hers. Smiling.

  “I will have you,” it whispered. “You will be mine. And then I will control everything.”

  “No,” she said.

  It laughed. “You think you’re safe from my possession? Because there is no longer a lantern?”

  “Because I won’t welcome you in,” she said. “And I’m not some wet-behind-the-ears child witch. Not anymore. You can’t come in without an invitation.”

  “You’ve already invited me,” it said.

  She knew she hadn’t. Oh, it was tempting to ask how, when, but if she did, she risked showing the demon her hand.

  It already knew enough.

  “No,” she said again.

  Inside her head, she murmured her spell, setting it up, rolling through the words. Because the fire in her palm prevented her from forming the appropriate hand gestures, she tossed it into the air and put it to “sleep”, letting it hover inside the magic realm, no longer present in this one.

  The demon narrowed its eyes at her. “You think I can be tricked?” It chuckled. “I make fools of others. No mere human witch can fool me.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, only half paying attention to it now. Her focus was on properly building her spell, on the rhythm of the words, the motion of her fingers…moving now, forming the final link in the chain of her magic.

  Movement behind her. She ignored it. Sebastian was there. He’d guard her back.

  The demon rose higher above her again. Hovering. Looming.

  She ignored it, too.

  “You cannot use magic on me,” the demon intoned.

  She didn’t comment. She was too deep in the chant, in the building of her spell. She let out a slow breath through her nose, releasing all the air in her lungs before filling them again. Once. Twice.

  And the final word whispered out.

  She raised her hands, palms facing the ground. Finally, she looked up at the demon. And jerked her hands downward.

  A flare of blue light momentarily lit in her minds eye, giving assurance the spell had set.

  She smiled.

  “What have you done, witch?” the demon hissed.

  “Safeguard,” she said. Without looking away from the demon, she said over her shoulder, “Is Carmen out?”
<
br />   A soft grunt. And then Sebastian said, “She’ll sleep soundly for a while.”

  “Good.”

  The demon laughed. “You’ve released me?”

  “Of course not,” Angie said. “She’s not dead.”

  “But her will no longer binds me. And I’m still here.”

  “You can leave now,” Angie suggested.

  “Her will was weakening. She’d grown soft. For the child.”

  “Which is why I’m here,” Sebastian said.

  “Your will cannot bind me either, hunter.”

  “We’ve gone over this before,” Sebastian said, stepping up to Angie’s side. “My will is strong enough for any fight you offer.”

  “Are you sure?” It moved like a snake, fast and suddenly, its face dropping from above to line up with Sebastian’s. “When I possess your witch, you’ll crumble. You can’t hurt her. I know.”

  If Sebastian had a button, Angie knew this was his. And demons were very very good at pushing buttons. Weakening wills. Tricking humans into ignoring their instincts. Sebastian had hunted them for decades now, and was hard to fool. But the demon had hit on a truth. And that truth was Sebastian’s one weakness.

  Her own trauma after getting caught in a demon realm hadn’t been the only reason she’d tried to push him away. That might have been the initial reason. The impetus for finally letting go of their love.

  But it wasn’t, in the end, the only reason.

  “Don’t let him in,” she murmured.

  She glanced at Sebastian. He smiled at her. And winked.

  The gestures made her heart swell and her muscles relax with relief. Maybe he knew…

  “Now,” Sebastian said, “I believe we’re to the banishing point of the evening. And it’s time for you to go.” He stepped in front of Angie, close enough that he and the demon were practically touching.

  The beast chuckled and reached for Sebastian. Sebastian met the black gaze without flinching, ignoring the claws reaching for him. He started to chant, in Spanish, letting the words of the banishing echo in the clearing. Once again using the method Carmen had used to summon the demon to banish it.

  The demon hissed words that weren’t part of any human language and struck out at Sebastian. Its hands came up against a wall of light that flared blue in the visible world. Its black eyes narrowed and it faced her. “You. What have you done?”

  “Backup safeguard,” she said with a shrug. “I thought I said that already. Is there something wrong with your memory? You might need help for that.”

  The demon wasn’t the only one capable of pressing buttons. Her comment, ridiculous of course, but it was such a very human issue that the suggestion of it would deeply offend a demon.

  From the way the demon lurched at her, all ghostly gray rage, she had to assume she’d hit a soft spot.

  Sebastian continued to intone the banishment chant, the spell rolling out of him in a deep, reverberant tone full of power and the strength of his will.

  Even Angie felt his will, like actual magic, filling the area and controlling the demon.

  The beast howled, throwing its head back. The gray strings of its garments swirled around it in a breeze she couldn’t feel. It lifted higher above them, and the stench of sulfur and rot increased. The demon screeched in ear piercing rage and a thick, snake-like tongue thrashed from its gapping mouth like a completely separate entity attempting to escape.

  Satisfaction and relief started to relax Angie’s muscles. Started to release all the tension she’d been holding.

  Until…

  “If you don’t stop,” Grant said quietly from behind them, “I’ll shoot the girl.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Silence descended over the clearing. Angie turned, very slowly, keeping the demon in the periphery of her vision but focusing on the horrible tableau behind her.

  Grant stood with Ellen in front of him, a gun to her head. She was bound and gagged, her hands tied behind her back, and tears streaked down her cheeks even as she glared at everyone.

  The pale man who’d supposedly been Carmen’s associate stood to Grant’s left. He had a hand on Mara’s shoulder, pushing her ahead of him like a shield even though she was just a little shorter than he was.

  Mara was also bound and gagged, though her hands were tied in front of her. She was pale, and even at a distance, Angie could see she was trembling. But unlike her mother, she wasn’t crying. She wasn’t glaring. She wasn’t wide-eyed with panic and fear.

  Her blue eyes looked…hollow. Like she’d resigned herself to her fate and wasn’t aware enough of what was happening to struggle anymore.

  That, more than Ellen’s terror and anger-fueled tears, broke Angie. Broke her heart, but also some vital element of restraint she held close to keep a check on her own anger.

  “What do you expect to happen here?” Sebastian said. He’d stopped chanting and the demon had stopped screeching.

  “I expect you to move out of my way so I can finish what I started,” Grant said. “You think that maid was in charge?” He snorted. “She was in over her head from the start.”

  From the corner of her eyes, Angie saw the demon hovering closer, smirking, but she kept her attention mostly on Mara. She was also keenly aware of Carmen laying vulnerably unconscious nearby, too. While Angie hated what Carmen had been doing, and wanted her punished in some way for summoning demons and putting Mara at risk, she didn’t want Grant to kill her while she couldn’t defend herself. Angie couldn’t be certain he’d bother with that. But she couldn’t be certain he wouldn’t either.

  As subtly as she could manage, she mentally said a small confusion spell, folding her fingers into the correct pattern before brushing her hand in Carmen’s direction. The spell would hover over the prone woman, making her hard to see, hard to focus on. Easy to overlook and ignore. It wasn’t bullet-proof—Angie couldn’t build bullet-proof shields with her brand of magic—but it would hopefully keep Grant unaware of her. Unless he literally tripped over her. But she was far enough away that shouldn’t happen.

  Once she’d assured herself Carmen was safely out of the way, she refocused on Mara. She was staring at the demon hovering behind Sebastian now, her gaze still hollow, her expression blank. There wasn’t anything there, like Mara had gone off somewhere else in her head. Angie recognized that for what it was, too, and her anger pitched higher.

  “Let Mara go,” she said, her always deep voice almost an octave deeper. Anger, and swelling magic, did that to her.

  Sebastian didn’t glance at her, but she sensed him adjust his stance, moving just a little closer to her. She wasn’t sure what his will could do against a gun. They’d never faced one in their years of battling demons together. If they survived, she’d have to ask him if guns were a threat to a hunter or not.

  Grant laughed. “I will have my reward, my bargain fulfilled. The demon wants her now. I finally have my sacrifice.” He pushed Ellen forward, keeping the gun at her temple. “No thanks to this bitch.”

  The closer he got, the more Angie realized how decrepit he looked. The light at his back in the study yesterday had prevented her from getting a good look at him, but she’d swear he hadn’t looked this bad. Now, even in the dark clearing, with only the ambient city glow turning the overhead clouds red and the ghostly gray glow of the demon, he looked like he was wasting away, decaying before her eyes.

  His hair seemed thinner. His cheekbones were hard lines under tightly pulled skin. His eyes were circled in dark smudges and sunken back into his skull. And when he smiled, the expression reminded her of a dead man’s rictus. Because he held Ellen out in front of him, Angie couldn’t see if the damage spread everywhere. He wore gloves, which could have been to prevent fingerprints, but also to hide further wasting.

  After only one day? Had he used some sort of magic or illusion spell yesterday to disguise the decay? Or had the last thirty hours gone very badly for him?

  Whatever deal he’d made with the demon, it was eatin
g away at him, destroying him visibly. That would make anyone desperate. A desperate man with a gun was not a good thing.

  “Thanks for leading me to my daughter, by the way,” he said, smirking at them.

  The comment had Ellen shouting something around the gag in her mouth, angry words Angie was sure were aimed as much at her and Sebastian as they were at Grant. She cut off her tirade abruptly when Grant jerked her arms and dug the gun into her temple.

  “You didn’t find her through us,” Sebastian said, his tone calm and assured. As if none of this was a problem. “Carmen led you to them. And the demon led her to them.” He paused, tilting his head to one side as he considered Ellen. “But how did the demon know?”

  Angie didn’t ask aloud how he knew all this. Sebastian often gleaned information in ways she’d never fully understood. Like he plucked the information from the air. Like he was the psychic. But in truth, she had a feeling it was something to do with his skills as a hunter. That his intuition, fueled by a will to know, was just that good.

  And he often made connections she missed, which only added to the feeling he knew things in strange and mysterious ways.

  She really wanted to survive so she could grilling him about it again.

  After a few moments, Angie noticed Ellen’s gaze drop, and she knew Sebastian had hit a button of some kind.

  “Ellen summoned the Molder demon? A second time?” she asked him quietly. Had Ellen tried to call the demon even after she realized her will wasn’t strong enough, after she’d made the deal with Grant and given him custody of Mara? But…why?

  Sebastian continued to stare at Ellen, not responding to Angie’s questions. But the demon behind them laughed.

  “She was desperate,” it hissed. “They are all desperate.”

  A shiver along Angie’s shoulders and movement in her peripheral vision told her the demon had jumped closer, close enough to test the edges of her containment circle. A faint flare of blue light in her mind’s eye confirmed its test, but her binding held.

  “They are all desperate,” the demon whispered, close to Angie. “You see it. You see he is wasting. The child… Think of the child.”