Bethany Plantation had been deserted for decades. I had seen pictures of the old place, a huge brick mansion that looked like something out of a Civil War movie, long past its glory days, overgrown with kudzu and vegetation. The wooden pillars of its front porch were cracked and streaked with dirt, and its roof sagged in places from neglect. No one seemed to know why the place had been abandoned or where the last Bethanys went, but the years went by, and no one returned to take possession of the old property. People gave it a wide berth and said the place was evil. Even vandals left the old plantation alone, or never emerged from their attempt to deface it.
The long driveway had once been shadowed by an alle of live oak trees, but many of those had fallen to storms over the years. I could see tracks where the construction trucks had been through recently.
“If the family trust decided to sell the plantation, do you think it means the last of the Bethanys are really dead?” I asked, breaking the silence as we approached.
“Maybe,” Sorren replied. “Or perhaps they finally chose to move on to somewhere else. There were rumors of a family curse. I never heard details.”
Lucinda raised her face to the wind, as if she could smell magic, and maybe she could. “What’s been worked here still has power,” she said. “Old, strong spells linger. People may have left this place, but the magic is still here, and it’s bad stuff.”
Once we got closer, it was clear that the restoration project had begun clearing away brush and refuse. The old mansion was still standing, built to last from red brick though its porch sagged and looked like it would collapse at any moment. Still, the trees, vines, and bushes that had overgrown it were gone, and as we carefully circled the grounds in the moonlight, we could see that the rear garden area had also been cleared.
“There were stories about the Bethanys burying their slaves in sight of the house, so Mistress Matilda could control their spirits with her magic,” Father Anne observed.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Sorren said. “I was told on good authority that she sacrificed and buried a slave at each of the four corners of the garden, to protect the house and give more power to the plants she grew for her spells.”
Teag glared at them. “Aren’t you two both little rays of sunshine,” he grumbled. “I vote we keep a sharp eye out for trouble. I tapped into the police database before we drove over. This area’s had more than its share of disappearances over the years. So maybe Matilda’s descendants kept her garden—or its occupants—well fed.” I thought about the garden gnome in its cage, and shivered.
Teag had his staff in one hand, and a fighting net made of magically-woven, silver-infused fibers in the other. I had my athame ready in my right hand, and an old walking stick that had belonged to Sorren’s mentor, Alard, in my left. I could reach through the walking stick’s memories to channel old power, and that made it a formidable weapon. Bo’s ghost materialized next to me when we got out of the car. People don’t think of golden retrievers as guard dogs, but Bo was ninety-five pounds of muscle when he was alive, and fiercely protective. We also each wore charms and protective amulets, to help dispel harmful power. I had the feeling we were going to need all the help we could get.
Sorren wore two swords, and Father Anne had a couple of deadly, blessed silver-plated knives as well as plenty of other weapons that packed a religious whammy. Lucinda always carried powders and items she needed to call to the Loa, the Voudon gods. We were as ready as we were going to get. I just hoped it was enough.
“House or garden?” Teag murmured.
I concentrated, opening myself to my magic. Tonight, I had worn shoes whose heavy rubber tread blunted my power’s connection to the ground. I wanted to control that link myself. So I bent down when we neared the tumbled remains of the garden wall, and sank my fingers into the dirt, ready for what the visions showed me.
Screams echoed in my mind. Images forced themselves through my defenses, of flame and blood and pain. Sacrifices had been made here, human and animal. Restless spirits remained bound to the sullied ground. Dark intent tainted the foundations of the great house, the mortar in the walls, the plants that thrived in the blood-soaked earth. And over it all were faintly glowing lines of old power, sparking and crackling like a bad electrical connection, but still full of enough juice for a deadly jolt. Most of all, there was something present, something that sensed my power and turned its attention on me with a malicious force of will. In my mind, I saw what I searched for, glowing points of light that showed me where the dark magic was anchored in the garden.
I must have cried out from the intensity of the vision, because Teag and Sorren pulled my hands away the dirt, breaking the connection, and Father Anne was chanting a litany as they helped me stand. After a moment, the hellish images receded and I caught my breath.
“It knows we’re here,” I said breathlessly. “And it’s not afraid of us.”
“What did you see?” Teag asked as I stopped shaking.
“The magic is anchored at each corner, like we thought,” I said. “There’s a section toward the back that feels jumpy and restless. Maybe the slave cemetery. They’re not resting quietly. And there are five other points of power inside the garden. I’m betting they’re statuary.”
“And I’d bet the five anchors are points of a pentacle,” Teag added.
“Well, that gives us something to go on,” Father Anne said. “I’m in the mood to be disagreeable. Let’s get started.”
The closer we got to the brick garden wall, the more my magic prickled a warning. “Do you feel that?” Teag asked quietly. I nodded. Father Anne was still chanting under her breath. Sorren had the stubborn set to his jaw he gets when there’s bad business to be seen to its conclusion. I suspect he figured this reckoning was long overdue.
The garden wall was little more than rubble, reduced to mounds of broken bricks after years of storms. Lucinda walked a circle counterclockwise around the wall, chanting and singing and sprinkling a generous amount of salt in a large, protective ring around the area. At each corner, she pushed a piece of a broken mirror into the ground and sprinkled more salt.
Father Anne walked the same circle clockwise, with her own chants and prayers, reinforcing Lucinda’s warding with a mixture of rosemary, garlic, and juniper that she had blessed. She stood back and looked at the garden, which seemed to have grown darker. “Somewhere in the garden is a focus for the spells Charles and Matilda set long ago. It could be anything, anywhere. Find it, and we find their weak point.”
We crossed over the protective barrier, being careful not to smudge the line of salt and protective powder. I felt a ripple of energy as I did so, but the power was clean and pure. A few steps later, we climbed over the broken bricks of the wall, and a new wave of energy hit me full force. It felt foul, unclean and although the night air outside had smelled of gardenia and green grass, in here, the sluggish wind carried the tang of an abattoir. I had no idea how workmen had ever stood the negative energy long enough to clear away overgrowth, and decided they must have been psychically blind and deaf not to have noticed.
A quick glance around the flower beds at the plants that had grown untended showed me nightshade, monkshood, Jimson weed, oleander, and angel’s trumpet, all deadly poisons. Elder trees and weeping willows loomed over the garden, along with a variety of thorned bushes. Down the slope from the garden was a cypress swamp, with dark trees and black water. Over our heads, the branches of the trees rattled like dry bones, although there was no wind.
Statues and stone decorations dotted the old garden. Angels, animal figures, fountains, and decorative shapes occupied each of the flower beds and hunched in the shadows beneath the trees. They looked old and weathered, but even at a distance, the objects raised my hackles. I saw a few empty pedestals, and wondered if one had once held a garden gnome or a pixie statue. One look at the arrangement of the paths told me Teag’s guess has been right. The Bethany garden was a large pentacle inside a warded brick walled area. Charles, Matild
a, and their descendants might be gone, but the dark power anchored here was as strong as ever, and it didn’t like us being here.
The garden hit us with everything it had.
Strands of bougainvillea curled toward me, moving fast as a snake across the ground, covered with inch-long thorns thirsty for blood. Bo’s ghost lunged and snapped at the tendrils, then dove out of the way as I leveled Alard’s walking stick and tapped into his memories and the magic of the stick’s maker. Fire burst from the tip, and the thorny tendrils shrieked as they drew back, their leaves singed, blooms cindered.
A manchineel tree, better known as a ‘death apple’, shook loose its poisonous fruits, and where they hit us, the caustic sap raised red, blistering welts. Sharp-edged tall grasses swept like scythes, whipping out into the walkways on the still air, slicing at us and opening bloody cuts on unprotected skin. The weeping willows lashed their thin, flexible branches like flails, trying to drive us off the pathway.
I focused on the image my gift had shown me of the key points on the pentacle. The four corners were likely the graves of the unfortunate slaves. I turned in a slow circle, trying to match what I saw with my eyes to what I had ‘seen’ with my magic. One was a little girl, but this child was holding the body of a headless rabbit, and smiling a nasty smile. Another statue, farther away, looked like a large, crouching lizard. I saw a third monument, and thought it was an angel before I realized it was a winged skeleton. The fourth statue was the Grim Reaper, a faceless robed figure with a scythe. And the fifth monument I couldn’t quite make out, since it was in the shadow of the manchineel tree.
“There,” I shouted, pointing out the important anchor statues. “Destroy those, and we break the focus of the power.”
Lucinda was already chanting, laying down a circle of salt to surround her as she focused her Voudon magic on the sacrificed victims buried at the four corners. That left the rest of us to take on the malicious monuments, and fight off the plants that stirred and rustled, looking for a chance to slash with their sharp edges and tear at us with their thorns. The manchineel tree flung its poisoned apples harder, pelting us, causing more burns.
“That’s enough of that.” Teag brought his staff down in the dirt and channeled his power. He’s a Weaver, and I realized immediately that he was reaching for the mat of roots beneath the ground, tangled and woven together over the years. He sent his magic down into the ground, and after a moment, I watched as he began to shiver. His lips turned blue, and his breath misted although the night was warm.
The plants around us darkened and turned brown as a killing frost chilled their roots. Teag was panting with the effort, and a thin skin of ice formed on his wooden staff. The trees and grasses stopped moving, shrinking back on themselves away from the deadly cold. With a start, Teag broke out of his trance and looked at me. “Did it work?”
All around Teag in a ten-foot circle, the plants and trees were blackened, frozen and dead. “Yeah,” I said. “That worked.” He grinned, and I reached out to him. His skin was ice cold.
The sound of stone grating on stone jarred me to attention. The statues had begun to move. They lizard shuddered, as if waking from a long sleep, and then took one, lumbering step toward us. I heard a giggle, and realized the murderous child had jumped down from her pedestal, still smiling her serial-killer smile. The wings on the skeleton trembled, and the skeleton turned to fix its hollow gaze on us, as the Grim Reaper swept forward, moving fluidly, as if he had wheels beneath his concrete robes. Bo’s ghost growled and barked, hackles raised, staring down the enemy.
“Take them down!” Sorren yelled.
Sorren ran at the Reaper, our fastest-moving foe. Teag gripped his staff in both hands, and squared off with the lizard and the skeleton. That left the killer kid for me and Father Anne.
Teag swung his staff with his full strength, cracking the skeleton statue across the wings, its most fragile feature. The thud of wood on stone reverberated in the night air, along with the crack of old concrete snapping away as part of one wing crumbled. A hiss sounded, and the lizard struggled forward, as the skeleton turned, grasping at Teag with one bony hand that caught at his jacket.
Plenty of martial arts competitions had taught Teag how to take on multiple opponents. He slammed the butt of his staff into the lizard’s snout, and gave a grim smile as the concrete broke. Then he wheeled, ramming the other end of his staff into the skeleton, knocking its carved arm off at the elbow, and shaking off the hand and forearm that still clung to his jacket.
The Reaper moved more quickly than the other statues, but not as fast as a vampire. Sorren tackled the statue from behind, staying well away from its scythe, and gave the hooded head one vicious, powerful twist, breaking it from the body.
From where Lucinda danced in her salt circle, I could hear her chants growing louder, and the air stirred, heavy with magic. Blue-green lights, like foxfire, shimmered at the corners of the broken brick walls, and I thought I glimpsed figures in the lights, moving toward us from far away.
A creepy giggle brought my attention back to the killer child’s statue. She still gripped the headless rabbit in one hand, but I saw a stone knife now in one hand, and murderous intent in her sightless eyes. I pointed my athame at her, reached into the well of power created by the emotions and memories I associated with the old wooden spoon, and blasted her with a cone of cold force. I hit her point-blank, right in the chest, and the statue blew apart, sending rock shrapnel into the air. Immediately, I felt one of the five anchors of power wink out.
“Destroy the statues!” I shouted. “It breaks some of the garden’s power.”
Teag was already swinging his staff at the skeleton, taking off chunks with every blow. Father Anne had grabbed a piece of rebar from where the construction crew had piled their materials, and she swung the heavy iron rod with both hands like a major league batter, crunching it down through the lizard’s thick stone body while making sure to stay well back from the creature’s long, clawed feet. Sorren used his supernatural strength to lift the headless Reaper statue. I saw the carved figure writhe in Sorren’s grasp, and then he hurled it against the brick wall, breaking the statue into pieces and bringing down a hail of bricks on top of it.
Four statues attacked, but there was a fifth, somewhere. I steeled myself, picked up a piece of the child’s statue, and felt old malice like the smell of spoiled meat. I forced the fading remnants of the statue’s trapped spirit away and felt for the other anchor points I had sensed before. Four of their lights vanished in my mind as I stretched out with my gift. That meant one more anchor point we hadn’t found, one that was keeping itself hidden. It still glowed brightly as I pulled impressions from the concrete in my hand, stone that was crumbling as I held it. But not before I heard one final, evil laugh from whatever had animated the child’s statue, the promise of worse to come.
A moment later, the ground beneath our feet began to tremble. All across the garden, the dirt split open, and things began to wriggle up from the depths. Toward the rear of the garden, I saw corpses drag themselves out of the ground. Some looked very old, the Bethany’s slaves, pressed once more into service against their will. Others wore the remnants of more modern clothing, and I figured they were the people who had gone missing near the plantation grounds over the years. At least a dozen of the zombies had already crawled from their graves, and more were struggling up through the ground.
Sorren brushed the concrete dust from his hands and drew both swords. Father Anne was chanting the Episcopalian burial rite, but she had a long silvery blade in one hand and a blessed boline knife in the other. I knew from prior experience that knife could vanquish even a vampire’s ghost. Teag still gripped his staff, but he held his daga, a martial arts fighting dagger, in his left hand. I still had my athame and Alard’s walking stick, and I was pissed off.
“Watch out!” I shouted, and channeled my frustration and fear into the old cane, tapping into its power and memories. Fire shot from the cane’s tip, inc
inerating the front row of zombies that lumbered toward us. I knew it wasn’t their fault, that they were being misused in death as they had been abused in life, but I also knew that the curse controlling them would not be gentle with us if they reached us. So I poured my magic through the cane, amplifying it with the power its long-ago maker had infused into the wood, until the torrent of fire had forced the animated corpses back a pace, stumbling over the charred bodies of the front line.
Sorren waded into the fray now that the fire was gone, moving at superhuman speed, swords glinting in the moonlight in a blur as he cut through the dead figures. Father Anne was right beside him, knives flashing as she stabbed and slashed, murmuring prayers for the dead as she sent the corpses back to their eternal unrest. Bo’s ghost lunged at the zombies, teeth snapping, and from the damage he inflicted, his spectral defense was real enough against them to make a difference. I plunged my hand once more into the disturbed ground of the garden bed, and I knew what I needed to do.
“Teag!” I shouted. “This way!”
Lucinda’s chanting and dancing had reached a fever pitch. I could feel strong power in the air, her magic and the power of the Bethany curse, fighting an unseen battle. The curse had sent out its foot soldiers against us: plants, statues, and zombies. But the real power anchoring the curse lay at the four corners, where Lucinda was gathering her magic, and in the fifth and most important anchor statue, the one hidden in the shadow of the poison acid tree.
I knew a little about manchineel trees, enough to know that I couldn’t just barge in beneath its canopy to find the fifth statue, even if this particular tree wasn’t animated by malicious magic. The manchineel’s leaves, sap, bark, and fruit weren’t just poisonous to eat; touching them was enough to burn skin. Setting fire to the tree was out of the question, because its smoke could blind. But the tree was native to the islands, used to the heat of the tropics. And that gave me an idea.
Trifles and Folly Page 27