Belle, Book and Candle: A Fantasy Novel by Nick Pollotta

by Nick Pollotta

  Casting a hate-filled glance backward, Laura kicked off her Jimmy Choos and raced barefoot down the street with the ever-growing swarm in hot pursuit.

  Bursting into laughter, Rissa went inside and closed the door. But almost immediately she felt guilty, and held the ring tight, commanding the bees to return to their hives. She didn’t want to actually hurt the snooty bitch, just take her down a peg or two. Or three, or four. Instantly the ring began to cool.

  “Enjoying yourself, dear?” the painting shouted up the hallway.

  “Enormously!” Rissa answered, cracking her knuckles. Okay, fun and games are over, time to start working. Step one, find that workshop!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Standing in the cool shadows of Forsyth Park, a dour Dominic watched the screaming woman dash through traffic to disappear in the distance. How very odd. None of the bees had actually been stinging her, so what was the problem?

  Returning his attention to Harmond House, he observed a victorious Rissa turn to close the front door. The instant her back was turned, Dominic reached into a pocket and threw a small brown lump at the bushes, muttering an incantation. The ancient words glowed brightly as they fell from his mouth and sank deep into the lump, changing it on a molecular level.

  As the irregular mass hit the ground it rolled out of sight. A few seconds later, a tiny humanoid figure dashed out of the foliage to charge madly across the busy street. Dodging cars, trucks, motorcycles, and morning trolley, the homunculus gamely hopped the granite curb and headed for the wrought-iron fence. As it got close, the homunculus compacted itself down to a small sphere and bounced between the bars without touching them.

  Masked in the leafy darkness, Dominic leered in delight that the infamous defenses of the mansion had been so easily bested! Then he stopped as the homunculus began to falter as it ran along the brick sidewalk, its movements becoming steadily slower until it simply stopped inches away from the front porch.

  Clenching both fists, Dominic aimed all of his rings at the artificial construct. His heart savagely pounded in his chest, and his blood nearly boiled as he mentally sent waves of power at the homunculus, feeding it essential life. Once more it creaked into operation, and sluggishly climbed onto the wooden porch to start lumbering for the front door. The mail slot is going to be a tight fit, but with any luck ...

  A split second later the wooden boards of the porch began to stir. Clattering loudly, one of them swung up—only to come slashing down at phenomenal speed to crush the homunculus flat. Mud, blood, spit, shit, chicken feathers, and rat bones exploded upward in a horrid spray. With a low grunt, Dominic staggered from the unbelievable stab of searing agony as a tiny piece of his soul died when the desiccated residue of the homunculus crumbled away into graveyard dust and was blown away by the morning breeze.

  Collapsing onto the ground, Dominic struggled to draw a breath, his entire body wracked with cascading waves of pain. There was no sensation of the passage of time, only a swirling blur of distorted images from the nearly stupefying torment. But eventually the hellish onslaught eased, and peace returned to his beleaguered mind and body.

  Another failure! Dominic raged internally, clawing his fingers along the ground to rip up handsful of dirty rocks and crush them into jagged splinters. By the dark gods, there must be some way inside that accursed fortress! A disguise, conjure, spell, incantation, curse ... something!

  Reaching into the trees, he grabbed a squirrel and bit off the head to hungrily drain the gush of hot blood. Just like a fine wine, the rich dark fluid carried hints and subtle tones of its origin: green acorns, roasted peanuts, stale bread, and millet seeds stolen from the bird feeders. Not very appetizing, but it was blood nonetheless, and fresh strength flowed into his trembling body. It took four more squirrels before Dominic was able to stand again, then two Chihuahuas and a mime before he felt normal once more. Okay, time for Plan B.

  Fingering the air, Dominic summoned one of the falcons flying over Savannah that the city released to help control the annoying flocks of pigeons. As the falcon landed on his forearm, Dominic gave it a kiss, then twisted the neck around until he heard the spine crack. As the bird slumped over, Dominic breathed raw life back into the creature, and it abruptly sat up fluttering its wings. However, the eyes were now solid white, and the body continued to cool until tiny patches of frost formed on the feathers.

  Throwing the winged zombie high into the sky, Dominic willed it to fly over the mansion as high as it could reach. Throating a battle cry, the icy falcon streaked toward the distant clouds, moving almost too fast for him to track. Its speed is incredible! Surely, this time ...

  But as the bird crossed the boundary marked by the wrought-iron fence it violently detonated into a cloud of bloody snowflakes.

  Braced for the magical backlash this time, Dominic reeled but did not fall. However, the expenditure proved too much for one of his older rings and it cracked apart, the tiny pieces of splintery bone sprinkling onto the green grass.

  A split second later, downtown Savannah rocked to a sonic boom from a low-flying jetliner, the echoing concussion sounded oddly similar to a vulgar word that most of the people in high society pretended did not even exist.

  ***

  Whistling happily as if she had just invented the concept of window shopping, Rissa diligently spent the next two hours wandering through the mansion. She discovered a lot of strange rooms, but nothing that might have been the workshop. Glancing at the clock, she admitted defeat, temporarily at least, and returned to the living room.

  “Okay, this place is enormous,” she addressed the oil painting. “And I don’t want to waste any more time playing Lara Croft. Where is my grandparents’ bedroom located?”

  “Whyever do you wish to know that?” the figure asked, looking up from her novel.

  “I’ve decided that magic is evil, and plan to burn this place down.”

  It dropped the book. “What?”

  “Kidding! I’m kidding!” Rissa smiled, waving both hands. “I have a date with Colt and need something nice to wear.” She paused. “Something really nice.”

  Nodding in understanding, the woman in the painting smiled. “I see,” she said. “Go straight up the main stairs and turn right.”

  Rissa craned her neck in that direction. “Doesn’t that lead to a blank wall?”

  “Correct! Now, go through the wall and take the first left.”

  “Go through the what now?”

  “You heard me, dear,” the painting chuckled, going back to the book. “The ball gowns are at the back of the closet, matching shoes on the shelf above. Avoid anything red! You’re too pale. Try something ... green.”

  Green? Proceeding up the stairs, Rissa felt more than a little foolish standing in front of the wall. It really was just a wall. She rapped it with a knuckle. Yep, that’s a wall, all right.

  Experimentally, she ran her fingertips slowly across the smooth plaster. Her ring grew warm, and the plaster bizarrely softened to fade away like mist from a mountain lake. Summoning her nerve, Rissa stepped through to find herself in a short hallway facing two doors. She started for the left, then abruptly turned and yanked open the right.

  Sure enough, it was her grandfather’s workshop.

  The room was cavernous, extending the full length of the mansion. A circular staircase made of iron reached from the tile floor to the distant ceiling, ending at a domed observatory. Cool!

  There were also countless worktables lined with tools of every description, along with huge industrial lathes, bandsaws, drill presses, and a host of heavy equipment that she hadn’t seen since a brief course of power mechanics in high school.

  Set prominently into the walls, glowing crystal rods gave off a pleasing light ... and those were the only things in any kind of order in the entire place. The rest was utter chaos. Every other inch of open space was jammed with ceramic figurines, bronze bowls, knickknacks, scrimshaw, tchotchkes, thingamabobs, and gewgaws beyond description. Marble statues of
mythic heroes battled for space with glass display cabinets mostly filled with currency from around the world. A long blackboard was covered with complex mathematical equations that kept altering themselves, and books were everywhere. Stacks of hardbacks and mounds of paperbacks, lying open on tables and draped over the edge of a display case as if trying to escape from a softly glowing Kindle.

  Black marble tables dotted the room, an archipelago of bubbling chemical beakers, braziers, cauldrons, microscopes, dissection boards, retorts, scales, and a thousand sundry scientific and occult items, most of which Rissa couldn’t even hazard a guess about. There were sea charts, star maps, scrolls, parchments, animal skins, skulls, jars, bottles, and a hodgepodge of candles in every size and color imaginable. Many of them were anatomically accurate, and brazenly obscene.

  Adorning the walls were hand-drawn charts showing the hidden insides of humans, insects, animals, and what must be demons. On a golden pedestal was a sundial with a tiny flaming sun floating above. As Rissa watched, fascinated, the orb moved a little bit and the shadow changed position with a subdued click. Okay, now that’s just plain cool!

  Hanging from the ceiling was a stuffed Bengal tiger with wings, incense sticks jutting from around the mouth instead of whiskers. Directly under the skylight was an iron statue of a hulking gargoyle, incredibly equipped with the reproductive organs of both sexes. Rissa looked closer. And maybe a third, as well. Yikes!

  Standing rampart on an ivory pedestal was a stuffed dragon, exhaling red glass flames. In a far corner stood a granite statue of a beautiful nude woman with flowing hair, the stone filaments moving of their own volition. A glass tank held the skeleton of a shark with two heads, the skeleton of a smaller fish in its belly, which had the skeleton of an even smaller fish in its belly, and so on. If there was an end to matter, it could only be seen with a microscope.

  Moving among the tables, Rissa noticed that the floor was laid out in a swirling mosaic, a tightening spiral that culminated at a wooden globe of the world set in the middle of the workshop. The colossal sphere was over six feet tall, the painted continents and seas covered with a grid of silver lines that wavered and changed positions even as she watched.

  Easily finding North America, she saw that all of the lines angled wildly about across the continent, but always ended at Savannah, Georgia. Ley lines? Nothing else made sense, but in this place, Rissa wouldn’t trust water to be wet. It was like a museum had mated with an insane asylum!

  Turning to leave, Rissa noticed a large armored safe standing in a circle made of overlapping occult symbols and mystic runes. Something was rattling inside the safe, clearly desperate to get out. Wisely Rissa kept her distance and gave them both a wide berth.

  Past the safe was a section lined with sandbags, a stack of fire extinguishers located nearby, along with a first aid kit that would have looked right at home inside an ambulance. Clearly that was the target range.

  In the far corner was a large wooden desk, the surface piled high with scrolls, and on the wall was an oil painting of her grandfather lounging in a wingback chair. He was wearing Edwardian clothing—a green brocade jacket and sinfully beautiful riding boots—and smoking a briarwood pipe, the dark fumes visibly rising from the top of the ornate gilded frame.

  “Poppy?” called out Rissa hopefully, but the painting gave no response.

  Heading that way, she immediately got confused. Every step toward the desk seemed to put her farther away. Experimentally Rissa tried walking backward in that direction, and suddenly found herself in the hallway.

  Stubbornly squaring her shoulders, Rissa started to march back into the workshop when she remembered the date with Colt. Pulling out her cell phone, she checked the time and saw a dozen missed calls from her parents.

  Probably asking for updates, Rissa guessed, quickly thumbing them a seriously truncated version of the events.

  Tucked among the daily spam, Rissa noticed an e-mail from Witchy101, subject line: The Cavalry Is On The Way! That stopped her short.

  Melissa is coming to Savannah? Excellent! No, wait ... yes, it is excellent! Rissa decided, sending a fast reply, including the address of the mansion. Mel’s encyclopedic knowledge of magic should be of inestimable value in figuring out things here at the Winchester Mystery House.

  A moment later, Melissa texted back with a winking emoticon. With a grateful sigh, Rissa turned the phone off and tucked it away. Good enough for now. But for the next couple of hours, she wanted uninterrupted privacy. Her feelings for Colt were still newborn, jumbled and confused. Nobody actually ever landed a rainbow; that was just for fairy tales. Yet the strange fluttery feeling inside of her said this was more than just friendly lust, and for one insane moment she wondered what their kids would look like. Banishing that nonsense from her mind, Rissa headed directly for the bedroom. Whatever else was happening, the first order of business was clothing.

  Easing open the door, Rissa was not overly surprised to discover that the bedroom was large, but not overly so. But it had windows overlooking the front walk and Forsyth Park. Which was rather confusing since this side of the mansion should be looking in the other direction ...

  “Must be magic,” Rissa muttered, dismissing the mystery with a shrug. After learning for certain that the supernatural exists, a lot of odd things in the world suddenly made a great deal of sense: sudoku, supermodels, game show hosts, Governor Schwarzenegger ...

  The room was tastefully decorated in neutral colors—not too feminine, but light-years away from bachelor digs. Rissa felt a little uneasy about invading her grandparents’ privacy, then noticed all of the framed photographs on the walls. There were some holiday shots, the happy couple at Paris, birthday parties and such, but the vast majority of them were of her at various ages. The elementary school recital where Rissa played a banana; washing her first car; graduation from college; sprawled unconscious in a hospital bed with her leg in a cast. Rissa massaged her left thigh. It still hurt just before a rainstorm. Tequila and skiing: a classic formula for disaster.

  There was even a framed shot of her former video store. Rissa saw a younger version of herself standing behind the counter, dealing with a customer, and wondered how many times her grandparents had visited Chicago, but never told her. Had they always been ghosting through her life, staying close, but just out of sight? Knowing something about their lives, Rissa could guess that they had been impatiently waiting for her to finally get old enough, and wise enough, to understand their unique lifestyle. Come to think of it, hadn’t they introduced her to Melissa? Paving the way, eh? Very clever, these British.

  Briefly she wondered why they hadn’t told the truth to their own son; then Rissa burst into laughter at the very idea of her stodgy father trying to accept the existence of magic. He barely tolerated Wi-Fi, and thought the GPS in the car was out to kill him. No, dear old Dad could not have learned about their bizarre lifestyle without running away screaming into the night.

  Bypassing the four-poster bed draped in heavy curtains, she went straight for the nearest closet. It proved to be her grandfather’s, his shoes, shirts, and suits hanging in neat rows. Rissa chuckled at the sight of the plastic tags dividing everything into levels of comfort: Itchy Formal, Awkwardly Impressive, Stiffly Business, and Pure Ecstasy, which was mostly composed of worn blue jeans, windbreakers, and T-shirts, many of which bore the name of sports teams. Rissa was not a major fan of baseball, but she could have sworn that the Dodgers were in Los Angeles, not Brooklyn. Curious.

  Going to the other closet, Rissa was enveloped with a cloud of perfume that smelled exactly like her grandmother, and that brought unexpected tears to her eyes. Grabbing a handkerchief from a shelf, Rissa dabbed her sight clear. She had been holding in the terror that her grandmother was dead for so long even the recent developments had only delayed the reaction. Tonight she was going to watch a sad movie and have good long cry. Unless things go very well with Colt, and I spend the evening counting ceiling tiles.

  This closet was
laid out in a much more logical and reasonable pattern by designer: Chanel, Dior, Vanderbilt, Wang, and enough racks of shoes to make Paris Hilton die of envy. There were also a jewelry armoire the size of a refrigerator, plenty of illuminated mirrors, and a nice little settee.

  However, one wall was oddly bare. The only decoration hanging in sight was a crude ashtray made from a child’s handprint in clay. It was like something done in summer camp or kindergarten. Extending her hand, Rissa compared it to the print; they matched. More tears threatened to come until the clay unexpectedly grew warm and there came the sound of a hydraulic pump building pressure.

  Smoothly the wall raised into the ceiling, revealing another room. Rissa felt a chill trickle down her spine at the sight of the two stainless steel coffins surrounded by coils of barbed wire and U.S. Army land mines attached to each other by a spider web of bright red laser beams. She started to enter the room, then changed her mind and stepped back. Automatically the wall closed once more, and heavy locks thudded into place.

  Coffins ... vampires ... the undead. The true meaning of her unique heritage had never truly occurred to Rissa before, and for some reason it made her burst into nervous laughter, then stop, only to start again. Sorry, Gloria Steinem, it’s been a long day.

  Easing down onto the settee, Rissa tried to get a handle on the moment. But there didn’t seem to be any way to wrap her brain around the fact that her grandparents owned armored coffins. They were probably just for emergencies, in case something happened to their rings. Better safe than sorry! Ordinary vampires had to sleep in the soil of their homeland, and the United Kingdom was very far away from the east coast of Georgia. But why would they need this much protection?

  “Vampire hunters,” Rissa guessed aloud. But that had to be wrong. Her grandparents didn’t drink blood. They didn’t kill. Something, or somebody, else was after them for another reason ... Dominic the antiques dealer?