“Okay, okay.” I got the distinct feeling she was avoiding something. “Your father–"
“Okay, that’s it,” I said, absolutely not wanting to involve the spirit of my father in anything occult-related ever again. I tried to stand but failed. “Who the fuck brought him into this?” I asked, still sitting on my ass on the floor.
“Well…you did,” Cyrus piped in from his leaning post. “While you were unconscious, you had a very distinct conversation with your father. We only got your side, but it was obvious who you were speaking to. Your father is both your strength and your weakness. When Azelie took over your soul, it was your father she used to trick her way in. Now, in your most desperate hour, your father is the first on your mind. Whether his spirit was honestly communing with you or your mind focused on the one person it felt safe with is irrelevant.” I looked at Lupe for magic-bitch confirmation. She nodded. “Your father is the key to your salvation. He is your mind’s link to this world and the next.”
My heart thudded at the thought of my dad being near me. The last I’d seen him he’d been an illusion created by Azelie d’Entremonte, and there was no telling whether his presence was real or my imagination. The idea that either could’ve been true was more terrifying than knowing there was an unknown demon hot on my tail.
“What do I do?” I asked, forcing myself to accept what was in front of me. The time for questions was over. I was marked, according to Lupe, and that meant action was the only answer. Or death.
“You’ve got little time if you’re to do anything tonight, so please listen carefully and resist the urge to argue.” Lupe had my number. I listened patiently. “If you are to survive your curse long enough to discover the source of your mark and banish the thing that seeks you out, you will need protection from your ancestors. I can help you, but you must also help yourself. First, you must believe. You must have faith in anything and everything that enters your path, faith that those things have the power to help you and the power to harm you at their will. The time for skepticism has long passed. If you believe in the devil at your back you must also believe in the power to keep it at bay. Can you do that?” I nodded. “Tonight, before midnight’s end, you will collect a pocket full of your father’s grave dust.”
“Crazy witch lady says what?”
She cocked a brow at me and let out a frustrated sigh. I’d already done what she’d just asked me not to do. “Your father is buried locally?” I nodded once. “Then this shouldn’t be a problem. Facing north and digging at his head, use your hands to collect enough dirt to fill your pocket. In the hole you dig, pour this and thank him for his service to you. Carry his dust with you until midnight tomorrow night. Bring it to me and together we will finish your workings. Until then, stay close to Cyrus and do not lose a speck of that dirt, mija. Your father is connected to it and to you and will help protect you from your demons.”
“What happens tomorrow night? When I come back.”
“I will do what I can to rid you of evil. Your mark…it’s something I have never seen. For your friend’s gift to me, I will use all the power he has given me to help you. I can’t promise any more than that. You will have to fight. When the time comes, you will have to save yourself.”
“Fair enough.” I stood.
Lupe handed me the small clay bottle stopped with a cork, filled with the liquid she wanted me to pour on my dad’s grave. When I leaned to take it from her, she held the back of my head steady as her other hand laid flat against my chest. “Lord, God, bless the damned. Divine God, heal the damned. Holy God, save the damned. In the name of the saints, in the name of Michael, the archangel, in the name of Mary, Mother of God, in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, in the name of Holy Ghost. Amen.” Her devotional took me off-guard. I wasn’t aware a woman of her standing had a close, personal connection with the Big Guy.
I met her eyes and saw a heavy line of tears welling at her eyelids. She knew something I didn’t. Somewhere in her rotten old heart, she felt sorry for me. What she knew brought tears to her eyes, and that scared the shit out of me.
Too scared to ask why, all I could spit out was, “Thank you.”
Not truly believing in anything Bible-related, it was hard for me to take her words to heart, but the conviction in which she said them told me I’d better start trying. I was going to need all the help I could get.
“Be vigilant.” Her last words rang in my ears as the bell dinged above the front door when I walked through it.
For the second time, I exited the ghetto shop of horrors hours after I’d entered. Night had fallen and a handful of stars twinkled in the sky, the rest cloaked in smog. Yet another night had come and I still didn’t have the protection I’d been hunting for, although, unlike the other nights, I wasn’t alone in my quest. There was a sense of security in knowing I’d finally let those closest to me in on my impending insanity and possible demonic possession.
“Where are we headed?” Cyrus asked, closing his driver’s side door.
“Take the I5 to Pierce Brothers Valhalla,” my tone sounding more flat than I’d anticipated.
Cyrus didn’t say anything when he tore away from the curb. The glowing green numbers on the dash said we had just over an hour to reach the cemetery in Sun Valley, illegally trespass, find my dad in the dark, and take some dirt. I’d been out longer than I was aware; hours and then some more hours. Whatever had happened in that obscene amount of time was as lost to me as the time I’d missed getting inked. As long as no compromising pictures of me and a donkey surfaced on the internet, though, I could assume I was in good hands.
Like a good neighbor, witchcraft is there.
Chapter 10
Weaving through traffic and stealing the carpool lane, Cyrus drove faster than my head could follow. Having suffered a head injury not long before, I had to close my eyes so as to not be forced into a seizure with the lights intermittently flying past.
“Dylan, we’re here,” Cyrus said, his voice an eerie whisper.
I opened my eyes to see the dark and creepy version of my dad’s final resting place. Time had flown by and I wondered if I’d dozed off and not realized it. A modern cemetery, Pierce Brothers Valhalla wasn’t near as death defying as the likes of Lafayette Number One, the last cemetery I’d visited. Cyrus had parked his oversized white SUV near a back gate and not the front entrance, which was a smart move considering visiting hours had ended at dusk. The season change had brought the challenge of Daylight Savings Time and hours upon hours of darkness for scary shit to hide and lurk. Surely there’d be an aging or overweight security guard sleeping in a golf cart somewhere on the premises. I just hoped it wasn’t in eye or earshot of the headstone marked Gordon Llewelyn Hart.
Clay bottle in hand, I shuffled through the loose dirt and gravel that surrounded the chain-link fence. Only waist-high, I could have easily climbed over it...with a boost, maybe a stepstool. Cyrus eyed the lock then glanced around the hardly-lit back street, which separated the graveyard from a modest neighborhood. In one swift kick, the links in the chain snapped and the gate was free to open.
“Hey, thanks. That was loud, but I’m glad I didn’t have to try and wiggle my fat ass over the top of that.” My snark had begun climbing slowly out from the fog after my freak-out and loss of consciousness. I hoped it stayed status quo and didn’t go off all willy-nilly and try to kill things again. I didn’t think I could handle another notch in my gun case, not for a while, anyway. As it stood, I was looking at four teardrop tattoos should I ever hit the slammer for my crimes.
A little jaunt through the headstones and I found a landmark I recognized. From there, I knew where I was headed. A beautiful archway and sculpture dedicated to the space shuttle marked the halfway point. My sneakers weren’t quite as sneaky as they crunched along dried leaves and dying grass from the drought more than the changing weather. As I passed over the tops of cement headstones and weaved around the standing-stone variety, my eyes caught flitting movement off
in the darkest shadows. Whether it was my overactive, paranoid imagination or that open door I was stuck with, I didn’t care. I couldn’t see any reason why I’d want to see any of it. Searching for my father’s grave, the last thing I cared to meet was a damn whiny ghost in need of some kind of closure or whatever the fuck whiny ghosts wanted.
“Go away,” I whispered as low as I could manage, not wanting Cyrus to hear me.
I pulled my borrowed phone from my pocket and used the light to find the marker I was seeking. Watching the light and only the light, I ignored the growing presence of flittery and misty things moving around the acreage. I hadn’t asked for the ability to see things, or hear them for that matter; it was yet another shitty thing I was stuck with. I sure as shit wasn’t going to sit in the center of a cemetery at night with my door wide open and accept my gifted menace.
Just because you’re not looking at them doesn’t mean they’re not there, dumb ass. Just like your big ass, it’s there whether you can see it full-on or not.
“Loving father and husband,” Cyrus said, reading the words on my dad’s headstone and breaking my focus on the spectral shit following me.
“That’s the guy.” I let out a long breath, thankful I didn’t have to move about the haunted place any longer.
Of all the things to bring into an already-volatile psyche, stranger ghosts and a dead dad weren’t the best. A peek at my phone told me I had twenty-three minutes to kill before I could start digging. Lupe’s rules were specific. Before midnight passes, she’d said. Not eleven-fifty-nine, not twelve-o-one, midnight. I had one minute to fill my pocket with as much graveyard dirt as I could. I wondered if I could sell the idea to the Game Show Network.
I sat on the grass, a few feet from where the head should have been. “Which way is north?” I asked, my expression scrunching.
He shrugged. “That way?” he said, pointing off toward nothing in particular, his answer more of a question than fact. “Don’t they have an app for that?”
“You’ve been in LA far too long, my friend. Besides, this is my mom’s phone. I doubt I can even take a damn picture.” I held up the ancient artifact. I looked up at the moon, still making its nightly pass across the sky. “Never eat soggy waffles,” I repeated the mnemonic phrase I’d learned in second grade.
“Who would?” Cyrus retorted.
“It’s a phrase. It means, North, South, East, and West. If the sun sets in the west then the moon rises in the east. Meaning, if that’s east,” I pointed at the moon gaining height in the sky, “then that must be north.” I scooted my butt around in the damp dirt which had likely been watered recently to face as north as I could figure.
“Looks like you’ve got all the tools you need then.” His tone held a bit more bite than I deserved.
“What’s up?” I asked, sure there was something clicking along in those cogs of his.
He sat in the dirt with me, not caring a bit that his expensive jeans would get dirty. “I’m tired.”
I could tell that much back at Lupe’s shop. Whatever he’d done, whatever she’d taken from him, had wiped him out. Hopefully, it wasn’t lasting. “I’m sorry.”
“What do you have to be sorry for?”
“Ha! Everything. More than I can even fathom right now. Eventually, I’ll have to write it all down and get my facts straight, like in a twelve-step program. I’ll have to atone for my mistakes. For now, I guess I’m just sorry you’re in this with me.”
“I’m not,” he smiled. “I’m sorry this is happening to you. I wish I could take it all back and put you back on that bar stool in Macabre Saturnine and leave you there.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.
“I mean, give you your life back. Sitting in a cemetery at midnight getting ready to dig up dirt from your father’s grave…that’s…I’m glad you are who you are, Dylan Hart. Any other person might not have made it this far.”
“If I’ve made it this far on my own, why are you sorry?” My tone held bite as his had, but I knew exactly why I was being a brat. His nurturing, kind-hearted attitude had taken me off-guard and at first I kind of liked it, but hours later it was starting to get a little too ABC Family for the likes of me.
“I guess I’m as sorry for you as I am sorry for myself.”
“Your cat is out of the bag, so to speak,” I said, and realized my pun only after it’d come out. I looked away from him to hide my own acknowledgement of what I thought he truly was. Not a vampy boy, not like the others, but I doubted he was actually a big-ass cat. I knew he was something else, just not what.
“I had a feeling when you told me she asked for my blood after she’d sent you on your magical mystery tour that she must have dug around in your mind. I knew she must have seen what you know. There was no other reason for her to want my blood specifically. There are vampires out there who would sell gallons of it for a spell from Lupe. Like Azelie, she is quite gifted. Unlike Azelie, she has morals, of sorts. Whatever Marienne needed from Azelie, Lupe could have given her tenfold.” He was quiet for a long minute. “She’s capable of more than sitting in her chair in the storeroom of a rundown building in East Los Angeles.”
He all but outted himself. My dream, the one I’d let go as my own kooky head putting stories to things I didn’t understand, was true. If he’d already known that I had it in my head what he was when Lupe plucked it out, then the only explanation was that he’d really known all along.
Knowing is half the battle.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” I asked and socked him in the arm, perhaps a tad harder than was necessary.
“There are rules, you know.”
“Oh, that’s right. The don’t-tell-Dylan-anything-until-she-nearly-gets-herself-killed rule. Maybe you guys need like a handbook or something.”
The Handbook for the Recently Fucked. If it’s anything like the information I got from the source, it’d probably read like stereo instructions.
“Not exactly. Yes, I intentionally kept more from you than I should have. Don’t forget, you are a journalist, and a good one from what I’ve heard. When I first met you, there was a story you wanted badly enough to get yourself nearly killed for. How did I know I could trust you? How did I know you wouldn’t, like you have, discover the truth and bring us all out into the light of day? Furthermore, I knew the knowledge you wanted had a price. That price is a beacon calling home anything and everything that may feel threatened by you, that may want your human soul for something unimaginable. You talk about doing anything to protect yourself and those you care about. I did the same. You cannot fault me for that.”
Fuck you, honesty. “Fine. Then I want to know right now. What the holy hell are you? No fancy shit, just facts.”
He pulled in a long breath of air. “I’m a cursed human alive until the end of time. I will never die. Barring any advancements in technology, like I’m annihilated in a nuclear holocaust, my body will not be killed. I will never get cancer. I will never grow old. My hair grows, my nails grow, and I can get fat or thin, but my life for all intents and purposes has been halted in time.” Facts I wanted and facts I got, with no breather between to cushion the blow.
“And the lion?” I pressed and wished I could take back the promise that I’d never put any of his information in a book.
“A representation of my ancestors. He is in me, in my soul, keeping my heart pure through my torment.”
“What did you do? I accidently dumped a bunch of voodoo blood.” I shrugged.
“I fell in love,” he said, yanking bits of grass from the earth.
Ouch. “That’s it?”
“Mostly.” I lowered my brows at him. “I fell in love with someone I couldn’t have. My punishment for disgracing my village was eternity in this body.” I looked the body up and down as if to ask what the big deal was. “Hell, if you must know.”
“All for love?” He nodded. “She must’ve been worth it.”
“He was,” he said, looking me in the eye.
/> I stopped breathing as my jaw fell firmly to my boobs. Trying to stay open-minded, I asked, frog in my throat, “Oh? Westboro Church around back then?” He smiled.
“Worse.”
So he liked dudes; me, too. Friend-zone had just gotten much more pleasant. “Tell me what happened. I know it’s probably not easy, but we really don’t have anything else to do at the moment…” I checked the time to be sure and let my words trail off. I waited, impatiently silent.
“My father had died years before. He was what you might call a mayor now, ruler of the area. When he died, a man and his followers took over rule. They believed in a magic more powerful and corrupt than anything Lupe or Azelie could think of. My village was tormented for a year before my salvation passed through.” He smiled at the thought of his lover. “I was a man, I had a wife, and I had a son.” His smile faded. “Baca and his cohorts ripped them from their beds while they slept. They were sacrificed to appease gods they didn’t believe in. I had nothing. I should have taken over rule, but I was too weak to fight for my people. I was too weak to fight for my family.” I was sensing a pattern. “Nicolas saved me.”
My head dropped and I looked at him under my brow. “Sandorus?”
He nodded once, sensing my surprise. “He showed me a world I never knew existed. Like you, I didn’t believe. I thought he was tricking me. I worried he was part of the Baca regime and would use my treachery against me. Over a month, he proved to me otherwise. Helping to rescue many in my village from the same fate my family had faced, he and I nearly took back what I’d lost. It wasn’t long before I realized I held love for him like I’d never felt for my own wife. The same love I see in you and Mike. Wrong in many ways, but too strong to fracture. When Baca discovered my affair, only after I’d nearly won back my title, he had Nicolas killed. His men beat me and took me to a canyon outside the village.” He took a breath. “Your dream was my curse.”
“If Nicolas was killed, who killed the men?” I was so enthralled with his story I bypassed the burning question of how I’d received the telecast and went straight for the climactic ending. At least something could climax in my life.
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