NightWind 1st Book: HellWind Trilogy

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  The place smelled, he thought with rancor. It reeked. Not as bad as the Pit, he remembered with a shudder of revulsion, but bad enough that Angeline had not been down to torment him for more than two weeks. He had begged her to have someone come to clean out the excrement in the south corner of the cell, but she had refused, reminding him he was little more than a beast and beasts did not mind the smell of their own waste.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” he had shouted at her. “What would just a gods-be-damned pail hurt, Angeline?” He had pleaded with her, beseeching her to allow him at the least the dignity of a slop can in which to relieve himself.

  “You are being punished for killing Delbert, Syntian,” she had informed him. “No chamberpot. No eating utensils. No drinking utensils.” Her laugh had been filled with contempt. “You acted like an animal and now you are being treated like one. I removed your manacles; do not ask for more!”

  His bellow of rage had shaken the very iron bars onto which he clung, but she had been adamant and the stench worsened every day. His own body odor was vile for he had not been allowed to bathe since being confined. His hair was plastered greasy to his head and his fingers were caked with dirt, his nails filthy. He kept them chewed down as close to the quick as he could. His face was smeared with grime plastered to his flesh.

  Syntian slid his hands down the bars and sat heavily on the floor, buried his face in his dirty palms. Even the smell of the meat in the tin plate a few feet away held no allure for him although his belly rumbled with hunger. He was thirsty, so thirsty his mouth was parched, but he knew it would be at least five to six hours before the man came back. Idly, he wondered if Angeline knew how her servant mistreated him.

  From the first moment they had laid eyes on one another, Syntian and the man whose name he had never heard, had loathed one another. There had been a spark of recognition between them and Syntian had understood by the look on the man’s face that he would do everything he could to make Syntian’s imprisonment as close to being the hell of the Abyss as he could manage.

  “I’ll see to him, Miss Angeline,” the man had cooed, his feverish gaze intent on Syntian’s face. “You can count on that.”

  When the man had come the next day to bring food and water, he had deliberately spilled the water and placed the plate of food just out of Syntian’s reach.

  “You are of the NightWind, aren’t you?” the man had sneered. “One of the so-called higher orders.”

  Syntian had known at that moment that Angeline had failed to conjure one of his own kind and had brought forth instead one of the minor demons the Christians classified as “unclean spirits.” This one would have no powers not expressly given to him by his mistress. He could do nothing on his own. Obviously, the man was ashamed of his failings and jealous of Syntian’s abilities.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” the servant had bragged.

  “Why should you be?” Syntian had offered. “I’m where I can’t get to you.” He had grinned viciously. “For now.”

  Syntian’s tormentor had backed away from the cage. His bravado had been short lived, but on subsequent trips down to the basement, he had regained his confidence. No doubt Angeline had assured him Syntian posed no threat.

  “I can walk free,” he’d said once. “Out in the light. In the warmth.” The man’s taunt had struck a chord of helplessness in Syntian and he knew it. He had turned the plate of food over on the floor and ground it into the concrete. “And you can do nothing but sit there and dream of being free!”

  “And killing you,” Syntian had responded.

  For that remark, he didn’t get food or water for three days.

  Syntian lifted his head and leaned against the bars. He wondered what Lauren was doing. If she was all right. If she was beginning to show. A fleeting smile crossed his face. It had been four months. She would be showing by now.

  A groan of frustration erupted from him and he squeezed his eyelids shut to block out the face of the man whose seed was growing inside the woman Syntian loved.

  “After a few years have passed, maybe even before that, she’ll begin to realize you won’t be coming home to her,” Angeline had told him. “She’ll need a man to help her raise the child and do you know who’ll be right there ready to step in and lend a hand, Syntian?” She had laughed. “Why, Ben Hurlbert, of course.” She had ignored his growl of rage. “He’ll be glad to take your place in Lauren’s life.” Her brow had cocked in challenge. “In her bed. Raising his own child.” Her smile had been terrible. “A child with which you were seeded, my demon. Did you enjoy that degradation, Syn? Do you remember Hurlbert’s hands on you? His prick thrusting inside you? Remember it well, demon, for that is what Lauren will be feeling!”

  He had gone nearly insane with that taunt and had caused himself some minor damage that had taken a full week to heal. And gained for himself a week of total darkness and cold in the concrete confines of his cell. She had not even allowed him a rag upon which to lie and the floor chilled his bones and made him stiff.

  “But he’ll be good to her, Syntian,” Angeline had assured him. “After all, Benny loves her. He’ll see that she gets what she deserves.”

  “Just as you will get what you deserve!” Syntian had bellowed at her.

  Angeline’s face had lost its humor. “Make no mistake about it, Syntian. On the day I know I am to die, I will send you back to that hellish existence from which Maxine drew you. That will be my final revenge upon you, my demon!”

  Sitting there in the dark, his mouth so dry he could find no spittle to swallow, he knew to the very core of his being that Angeline did not possess the power to do what she had threatened. The extent of her ability was evident in the manner of fiend she had been able to bring forth. Thinking back on it, he suddenly realized that it hadn’t been Angeline who had called forth Delbert, either. It had been another woman who had broken her pact with the black man and lost him to Angeline.

  “Listen,” Delbert had once told him. “If your mistress dies, see, you ain’t got no choice but to return to the Pit. It draws you back, you know? There’s no reason for you to stay unless you’ve been bound to another mortal. If’n that mortal breaks the pact between you and another woman steps in to bind you to her, then you can stay. That’s what happened to me, you see?”

  Just as it had happened to him, Syntian thought with misery. Maxine had broken the contract and he had, unwisely and stupidly, signed his soul over to Angeline in order to keep from being sent back to that horrible place again.

  “You know what else? What can happen even though you’ve signed a pact with another mortal?” Delbert had asked, reminding Syntian of something he had known all along but refused to think about. “If the woman whose family drew you up, whose family originally bound you looses her Book of Shadows or it gets stolen or destroyed by someone who don’t know what it’s for or how to use it, you get sent back and you won’t ever return to the light!”

  That was his greatest fear. That the Book of Shadows that belonged to Lauren’s family would somehow be destroyed. If that happened, he would spend eternity inside the foul boiling of the Abyss. Once he had been afraid Maxine would burn the Book, she had threatened to, but he had cajoled her into keeping it. But he worried that one day the old woman would turn that Book against him and send him back, never to be free again.

  “Lauren,” he mumbled, lying down on his side and curling up on the cold floor. “Oh, Lauren.”

  How he missed her, he thought with abject grief. Her laughter, her smile, her gentle touch that wanted nothing from him except his love. Her tender nature that asked no evil thing of him; that demanded nothing more than his strength and protection and security. He grieved for the time they had had together; the loving they had shared in that brass bed he had had to search the world over to find for her. He had moved mountains to find everything she had ever wanted, just because he wanted to see the pleasure such material things could give to the woman he loved.

  “I wil
l find a way,” he whispered into the darkness. “I have to find a way to get back to you.”

  But he knew his chances were slim.

  “I will be back in half an hour,” Maxine told her daughter. “I have everything we need at my place. Do what I told you, get everything together I listed, and when I come back, we’ll begin.”

  Lauren looked at her mother with a steady gaze that held no emotion. “Doesn’t there have to be a full moon or some such thing?”

  Maxine laughed. “Only in fairy tales!” She patted Lauren’s arm, unaware that her daughter stiffened at the touch. “That book tells you what you need to know and it don’t matter a rat’s ass when you do the ceremonies if you’re good enough at your craft to ward off those demons that will try to come through while you’re conjuring.”

  If the thought of other hellish creatures coming into her world frightened Lauren, she didn’t show it. She simply stared at her mother with a chilling attention that made the older woman uncomfortable.

  “You rest until I get back. You’re going to need all your strength for what we need to do tonight.”

  Lauren shrugged. “I’m all right.”

  From the look on her daughter’s face, Maxine wasn’t sure, but she needed Lauren’s help to do what had to be done and she couldn’t take a chance the girl would be useless later on.

  “Go lie down until I get back. Will you do that?” She walked to the door and turned. “Will you?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Lauren conceded.

  There was something cold, and alien, in Lauren’s voice and in her manner, but Maxine didn’t have time to think about it. She hurried from the house, and the presence of Syntian Cree within its walls, and drove as fast as she dared to her house near the Blackwater River. She didn’t have all that much time to waste in gathering together the things necessary for the ritual that evening.

  “Just a few more hours, Angeline. Just a few more hours and you will know the wrath of the Fontenelle women!”

  Lauren had asked about a full moon. She doubted her daughter was even aware there was one tonight. Not that it made any difference to what they were going to do that evening, but it was certainly going help.

  Lauren sat down on the sofa and stared across the room, seeing images that up until that morning had meant nothing to her.

  Onyx, coming out of nowhere. Staying. Seeming to belong to no one but her. Watching her every move, appearing to know just what she was saying to him. Syntian’s surety that he knew just what the animal needed and wanted. The cat’s sudden disappearance when she and Syntian had married.

  “A familiar,” Lauren whispered. “He was my familiar.”

  “No,” an inner voice whispered back. “He was Syntian!”

  “Louvenia drew this thing,” Reed Yelverton had told Lauren once after his wife had been committed to the Chancel Sanitarium in Louisiana. “She keeps drawing this horrible-looking monster.”

  And she saw that monster, didn’t she, Syntian? Lauren wondered. Did you let her see you as you really are or did you conjure for her a nightmare image that would snatch away the woman’s sanity?

  “Inez swears there was someone there, but there wasn’t anybody in that room,” Montez had told everyone when his wife was hospitalized.

  “Karla keeps babbling about this invisible monster what attacked her,” Mrs. Cooper had said sadly when Lauren had met her on the street and expressed her sadness at Karla’s troubles. “Can you imagine that? The incident was so terrible for her, she just can’t make herself think of that bastard’s face.”

  But you didn’t let her see your face, did you, Syntian? Lauren questioned. If she had seen your face, she would have been able to identify you and you couldn’t have allowed that.

  Only briefly did she wonder if Beth Janacek or the VanLandingham girl had seen his face before he had slaughtered them.

  “What did you do to the Black sisters?” she asked aloud. “And the Athertons and Mrs. Malone? What spell did you put on them to make them suddenly like me?”

  She lay down on the sofa and curled into a ball, her hands protectively wrapped around the life growing in her belly. She thought fleetingly of Benny. Of how that good friend, if he really was a friend and not a conjuring of Syntian’s, would feel knowing how he’d been used.

  “You have a lot to account for, my demon,” Lauren whispered.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Angeline held her handkerchief to her nose as the cell was hosed down. Devlin, the name she had given her new minion, was laughing gleefully as he flicked up the nozzle of the water hose and blasted the water over Syntian, driving him back against the far wall of the cell. She watched Syntian stumble under the onslaught of the water pressure, throwing his arms up to protect his face as he cowered at the back of the cell.

  “He doesn’t like that, does he?” Devlin chuckled as he held the steady flow of cold water on Syntian’s upper body.

  “That’s enough,” Angeline warned him. “Just clean the floor of that foul smell.”

  Devlin frowned, wishing he could do more than just drench the uppity bastard in the cage. He grinned at the malevolent look that was shot his way as the prisoner, as Devlin liked to think of him, glared at him.

  “You look a sorry sight,” Devlin taunted. “Wouldn’t no mortal woman want you looking like that.”

  Syntian swung his gaze to Angeline, hating her with every fiber of his being. He found her studying him as though he was a specimen under a glass and he looked away.

  “I thought you might like to know Lauren was in the hospital for a few days.”

  His head snapped up and he rushed to the iron bars closest to Angeline, reaching out to wrap his fingers around the uprights. “Why?” he asked, flinging his wet hair out of his eyes. “What happened?”

  Angeline shrugged. “She fainted. Not all that uncommon an occurrence for pregnant women, Syntian.”

  Syntian’s heart was slamming in his chest. “Is she all right, now? Is the baby all right?”

  “She’s fine,” Angeline snapped, annoyed at the disgusting look of concern on his wet face. “Her mother took her home this morning.”

  “Maxine,” Syntian whispered, fearing the word. He clutched the bars tighter. “Would she tell her about me, Angeline? Do you think she’d tell her?”

  Angeline’s mouth twisted. “There’s no telling what that bitch would do, but I don’t think she’d tell Lauren about you. If she did, she’d have to tell her about the Book and I know she wouldn’t dare do that.”

  His ears perked up. “Why not?”

  “Because of the Book’s power. If Lauren was to ever try any of the incantations...” She stopped, her lips drawing back over her teeth. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she hissed. She pointed an angry finger at him. “That won’t happen so you might as well not even consider it.”

  “Consider what?” he crooned. He eased along the bars.

  “That if Lauren was to ever get hold of the Book, she might invoke the NightWind?” Angeline shivered. “Maxine won’t allow that to ever happen.”

  Syntian’s face brightened. “But if it did, Lauren could summon a demon capable of destroying you, couldn’t she, Angeline? Maxine can’t do it because the pact between her and the NightWind was broken. She can’t utilize what is in the Book, but Lauren can.”

  “Lauren doesn’t know anything about the craft,” Angeline hissed, “and her mother sure as hell wouldn’t give her the opportunity to learn.”

  “You keep believing that, Angeline,” he warned her. “But if I were you, I’d keep a close watch on those dark corners of my bedroom when the moon is full.” He jabbed his hand through the bars, trying to scare her, but yelped as the handle of the broom came down hard on his forearm, bringing instant, terrible pain. He snatched his hand inside the cell and cradled it against his chest, glaring at the servant who had attacked him.

  “Thank you, Devlin,” Angeline said, her chin up as she regarded Syntian with contempt. “Sometimes pain is the only
way to gain his cooperation.”

  “Let me hurt him, Miss Angeline,” Devlin panted, aching to bring a scream of agony from the prisoner. “Let me give him some real pain.”

  Syntian snorted, knowing that was the last thing Angeline dared do even if she had wanted to see him writhing in whatever pain the bastard could dole out. He flung her a disgusted look then settled down in the middle of the cage, crossing his legs as he sat there and contemplated the two of them.

  “Oh, he’s in pain,” Angeline told her servant. “He’s in so much pain he can barely survive it.” She smiled at Syntian. “It’s a type of pain that leaves scars on his heart, not on his flesh.”

  “Fuck you,” Syntian told her.

  After the light had been turned off his existence once more, Syntian sat on the damp floor and stared into space. The iron bars with their runic protection did not allow him to see beyond the place where he was being kept, but he was aware of a shifting in the Veil, an undercurrent he didn’t think Angeline had felt. He tried probing the feeling, but he got no further than the uneasy nagging that told him something was going to happen.

  “Don’t destroy the Book, Maxine,” he begged, hoping that wasn’t what he was feeling. “I don’t want to go back.”

  It would be too much to ask that Lauren find the Book and realize the power she held in her hand. Although he was bound to another conjurer through a pact of blood, he was still tied and indentured to the women of Lauren’s family. All it would take would be for Lauren to break the hold Angeline had over him with the right invocation to the NightWind. Maxine couldn’t do it. Her power had been lost the moment she had broken the contract between them. But Lauren was a different matter altogether.