Play With Fire

by Justin Gustainis

  “Got a box of wooden matches. Will that do?”

  “Yes, I think so. And some kind of flammable liquid.”

  After a moment’s thought, Love opened a drawer and placed a half-empty bottle of cheap Scotch on top of his desk. “Guess I’ll have to make the sacrifice,” he said.

  “Excellent,” Libby said. “Now, if you’ll assemble those other items for me, please, I believe I can cast a spell that will have a very satisfactory outcome.”

  Twenty minutes later, she had just finished using the first two fingers of her right hand to apply the concoction she’d created around the entire perimeter of the office door. As she did so, Libby had recited an incantation in ancient Greek. Morris had studied enough Greek in high school to realize that he had absolutely no idea what she was saying – but this was Libby Chastain, white witch extraordinaire, so it didn’t really matter.

  “Oh, I’ll need a reliable ignition source,” she said. “A wooden match takes too long to flame up, and there’s always the chance it’ll blow out. I know Quincey doesn’t smoke, so Barry, can you...?”

  Barry Love produced a plastic disposable lighter and handed it to her. “I smoke like a furnace,” he said. “Lung cancer is the least of my worries, and tobacco helps me relax.”

  Libby tested the lighter, then adjusted the flame to make it higher. “Very good,” she said. “Now comes the tricky part.”

  Barry Love gave her half a grin. “Figured there was gonna be a tricky part, sooner or later.”

  “Is the hellhound out there now, Barry?” Libby asked.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I figure it’ll show up pretty quick if it thinks I’m vulnerable.”

  “You mean, if the wards on the door weren’t protecting you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “All right, then. What I’m about to suggest involves an element of risk,” Libby said. “But if it works, it should rid you of this creature, once and for all. Of course, there’s no guarantee that whoever called up this hellhound won’t send for another one someday.”

  “Someday sounds like a pretty good deal to me right about now,” Barry Love said. “Let’s do it.”

  “And, if something should go wrong,” Libby said, “Quincey is our backup.”

  Morris held up the knife, its silvered blade glinting in the light. “If it jumps you, try to keep it away from your throat long enough for me to stick it with this.”

  Love looked at the blade, then at Morris. “Will that thing destroy a hellhound?”

  “Can’t say for sure,” Morris said, with an embarrassed shrug. “I never tried it on one before.”

  “Then maybe we’d both better hope Libby’s spell does the trick.”

  “Amen to that, podner.”

  Sixteen

  IT WAS JUST past midnight when the Dodge Caravan rolled past the sign that read, “Welcome to Decatur – Alabama’s Friendliest City!”

  “Wonder how friendly they’d be if they knew what we had planned for them?” Jeremy said from the passenger seat. After taking part in two sacrifices, he had lost any uncertainties that had plagued him in the beginning. He was a true member of the team now.

  From the rear seat Mark began to breathe loudly and rapidly and a moment later groaned, “Oh, my God!”

  Jeremy glanced at the driver. “Does it piss you off, hearing him say that name?”

  Ware gave a small shrug. Without taking his eyes off the road he said, “In other contexts, it very well might – which you would all do well to keep in mind. But it seems to be almost universally uttered at the point of orgasm. Atheists and agnostics say it, too. Hell, even I say it.”

  There was a spitting sound from the back, then Elektra appeared, wiping her mouth and chin with Kleenex. “How come we always have to travel at night, Theron?” She was careful not to say that in anything like a whining tone. Polite questions were permitted, but whining was punished.

  “We can hardly have you back there performing fellatio on one of the boys in broad daylight, can we, Elektra? Some righteous citizen might see, and tell the police – and we are carrying things in the back that I would rather not explain to the authorities.”

  “The thermite bombs, you mean?” Jeremy said.

  “Those especially, yes. Besides, I enjoy the night – it seems to give me strength, whereas I often find daylight saps my energy. It’s psychological, I’m sure – since I haven’t joined the ranks of the bloodsucking undead.”

  “Vampires are real?” Elektra asked.

  “Most certainly.”

  “I always thought it was just one of those things they use to scare kids at the movies.”

  “Elektra, my dear – how can you believe in the power of black magic, which you have seen with your own eyes, and doubt the existence of other dark things?”

  “Well, when you put it that way...”

  “Are we gonna be stopping soon?” That was Mark who had apparently recovered from Elektra’s oral ministrations.

  “As soon as I find a motel that looks small enough for the clerk not to process my credit card if I show him a great deal of cash.”

  “What good is a credit card, if you never use it?” Jeremy asked.

  “I do use it, frequently – but not on this trip,” Ware said. “I don’t want any record of our passage through town to appear on some database. It’s possible that the FBI might have seen a pattern in our sacrifices, and one of their tactics is to see if the same credit card has been used in the vicinity of more than one so-called crime scene. I don’t want to make things easy for them.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jeremy said. “They do stuff like that on TV all the time.”

  “I don’t plan to be as careless as those morons in the cop shows. Although I suppose it’s possible that someone, official or not, might get on our trail, eventually.”

  “You don’t sound too worried about it,” Elektra said.

  “I’m not. I have various contingency plans to deal with interference, if and when it comes our way.”

  “How about this place?” Jeremy pointed to a large neon sign coming up on their right. “It says ‘Vacancy.’”

  “Looks like it might be suitable,” Ware said. He turned into the motel’s parking lot. “Let’s see if anybody is still awake at the registration desk – yes, I believe I see a light. Good.”

  Ware parked their vehicle and slid out from behind the wheel. In five minutes he was back and handing Jeremy a key with a big plastic tab attached. “This is your room. I’m next door.”

  He started the engine and drove slowly down the line of motel rooms, peering at room numbers as he went. “When the three of you are doing whatever it is you do in bed tonight, try to keep the noise down. I want to get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, we got a busy day tomorrow,” Mark said, with a snigger.

  “Exactly,” Ware said. “A town like this ought to be just full of Baptist churches. I’m sure we’ll have no problem finding exactly the right one.”

  Seventeen

  BARRY LOVE RECEIVED a nod from Libby Chastain, took and expelled a deep breath, and opened wide the door of his office. As instructed, he took a few steps back, but remained squarely framed in the doorway. Morris stood a few feet behind Love and to the side, the blessed switchblade open and ready in his hand. Libby Chastain knelt to the right of the door, out of sight from the corridor. She held Barry Love’s lighter in one hand and was softly reciting the ancient Aramaic words of a spell that she hoped she remembered correctly.

  From Love’s office, the hall ran for perhaps two hundred feet before turning a corner to the left. Love stood looking down that corridor like a Christian in the arena waiting for the lions to appear, fear and resolution alternating in his expression.

  It was very quiet there on the fifth floor of the old office building, especially after Libby stopped chanting. The battery-powered clock on Love’s wall clicked off the seconds audibly. Once the door was opened, it did so twenty-eight times before Love said, tightly, “There it is.
”

  Looking over Love’s shoulder, Morris saw the hellhound as it slowly rounded the corner at the end of the hall. A year or so earlier, Morris had encountered a black dog that was being used to guard a sorcerer’s estate, but this was a different creature entirely.

  Mate a bull mastiff with a black panther and raise the resulting progeny on growth hormones, and you might have something resembling the creature that stood in the corridor, staring at Barry Love’s open door and growling. Its eyes glowed crimson over a gaping mouth equipped with the kind of fangs a lion might envy. Even from a couple of hundred feet away, Morris could smell the odor of brimstone that clung to the creature.

  The hellhound, muzzle dripping, stood for a few seconds, as if mentally thanking Satan for leaving its prey unguarded at last.

  Then it charged.

  “It’s coming!” Morris snapped.

  Libby Chastain began softly chanting again as she raised the lighter and sparked it into a two-inch high flame.

  Barry Love stood in place, as he’d been instructed to do, but he apparently couldn’t stop his hands from clenching and unclenching, over and over.

  Morris’s stomach felt as tight as one of the detective’s fists. He really hoped Libby’s spell would work as planned, because the closer that monster got – and it was closing rapidly now – the less confidence Morris had that his knife’s six-inch blade would do any good, silver plate and Bishop’s blessing notwithstanding.

  The hellhound was fifty-feet away and closing fast. Libby touched the lighter’s flame to the doorframe where she had smeared her hastily-assembled magical concoction. The alcohol in the Scotch worked like a charm, as it were, and within a couple of seconds the doorway was surrounded by flame – but there was only enough fuel to keep the fire going for a few seconds, so Libby’d had to wait until the last possible moment.

  The hellhound was, understandably, not deterred by fire, but as it stormed through the open door she finished her chant by shouting “D’Neenad!” which is ancient Aramaic for “Depart!”

  An instant after crossing the threshold, the great beast disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the stink of sulphur and its final howl of frustration and rage.

  Barry Love slowly took his arms down from where he had crossed them to protect his throat if the beast attacked. “What... what did you do to it?” he asked.

  “All systems... tend toward... equilibrium,” Libby said. She sounded a little out of breath. “Even supernatural ones. The beast was not native to this plane of existence – it belonged in Hell. I just gave enough of a magical shove to send it back to its natural environment.”

  Morris folded his knife and put it away. “As nice a job of impromptu spellcasting as I’ve ever seen you pull off. Well played, Libby. Well played.”

  “I don’t know how I can thank you,” Barry Love said. He offered the Scotch bottle to his guests, had no takers, and so took a long pull from the bottle before putting it away. “That thing was making my life a living hell, if you’ll excuse the expression. It feels like I can take a deep breath for the first time in a week.”

  “Think of it as professional courtesy,” Libby said with a smile. “After all, we’re both in the same business, broadly speaking.”

  “Well, I sure appreciate it,” Love said. “And if there’s ever anything I can do to repay the favor...”

  “As a matter of fact,” Quincey Morris said, “there probably is. Do you reckon maybe we could all sit down again?”

  Once they were seated, Morris said, “We’re trying to get a line on a guy – and I use guy just for the sake of discussion. The one we want may well be female.”

  “Assuming such a person even exists,” Libby said.

  Barry Love leaned forward, the old leather chair creaking beneath him. “Now you’ve got me intrigued. Just who – or what – are you looking for?”

  “I suppose the shorthand description is,” Libby said, “we want an occult burglar.”

  Love’s head tilted a little to the side. “You mean, something like a vampire who steals stuff? I know quite a few of them.”

  “No, we’re talking about somebody who steals from occult types – I mean, folks who can use magic to protect their property.”

  “Hmmm,” Love said. “Are we talking about white or black magic here?”

  Libby and Morris looked at each other before Libby said, “Either one, probably. I don’t think it matters.”

  Love leaned back again. “Maybe you guys better tell me exactly what you have in mind.”

  After a brief hesitation, Libby said, “All right, we will. I’m sure we can rely on your discretion.”

  The detective gave her a crooked grin. “You could, even if you hadn’t just saved my life. Go on.”

  Libby and Morris took turns explaining to Love about the burglary at St. Ignatius Monastery.

  When they were done with the story, Morris said, “Ordinarily, I’d be inclined to say that any practitioner could be a suspect. But Libby says there was no scent of black magic anywhere around the book repository.”

  Barry Love looked at Libby. “What about traces of white magic?”

  “Couldn’t tell,” she said with a headshake. “I’m too close to it. It would be like trying to smell myself.”

  “But some kind of magic was certainly used,” Morris said. “Whoever it was, he got past that ward over the door – which would have stopped any run-of-the-mill sneak thief.”

  Love sat there for a while, staring off into the middle distance. Then he said, “I don’t know anybody like that personally, but I know a guy who just might.”

  He went to one of his battered filing cabinets, pulled open a drawer that squeaked in protest, and came up with a small, ring-bound book. When he brought it back to the desk it was clear that he was holding a battered address book, its bent plastic cover decorated with coffee rings. Several scraps of paper had apparently been tucked between the book’s pages.

  Love thumbed through the book for a few moments, finally coming up with an old three-by-five index card that seemed to have the information he wanted. He peered at the card as if the writing on it was in a language he didn’t know very well. Then he said, “Either of you guys got a phone I can use for a local call?”

  Libby was closest, and handed him her Samsung Galaxy S. “You have to press the–”

  “I know what to do, thanks. I’d call him on my own phone, but you never can tell who – or what – might be listening in, you know?”

  Love glanced at the card again and began to tap numbers on the phone’s keypad. Then he put the phone to his ear. He sat there placidly for a few seconds, but then apparently heard something that did not please him. “Pick up, Raoul,” he said, frowning. “It’s me.”

  A few moments later, his voice was louder. “I said pick the fuck up, Raoul!”

  The elusive Raoul must have answered, because Love said, “You know better than to blow me off, man. Or you damn well ought to.”

  There was a pause, and Love said, “All right, forget it. Listen, remember the guy you were telling me about a couple months back – the one who supposedly got Karen van der Hoeven’s spell book back from the witch who stole it from her? You said the story was, he got past a shitload of magical protection, then cracked her safe besides?” Pause. “Yeah, that’s the one. Tell me, do you remember the dude’s name, or did you even know it in the first place?” Pause. Love grabbed a pen and began writing on the index card. “How do you spell that? Uh-huh. Where’s he live, do you know?” Pause. “Okay, well thanks for the name, Raoul. I owe you a favor. No – not a big one.”

  Barry Love terminated the call and handed the phone back to Libby. “Here you are. You know, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t hang on to the number I just called.”

  Libby looked down at the phone, pressed the touchpad a couple of times, and said, “Already deleted.”

  “Thank you,” Love said. “Now, about the guy you’re interested in – who is a guy, by the way – I’v
e got good news and bad news.”

  “The good news being that you got his name,” Libby said, “and the bad news is that you don’t have an address for him.”

  “Aww, you were listening,” he said with a grin. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Well, at least I got the name. Anybody wanna do a drumroll?”

  “We’d rather just have the fella’s name,” Morris said.

  “Okay,” Barry Love said. “His name is Robert Sutorius.”

  Eighteen

  DURING THE CAB ride to Libby’s condo, Morris and Chastain kept their conversation discreet. If they spoke openly, it was unlikely that the driver would understand anything he heard, or know whom to tell about it even if he did. But a lot of small, unnecessary risks eventually add up to the big one that kills you.

  “So, I guess we’ll have to find this fella,” Morris said. “Any ideas?”

  “I’ll ask my Sisters, for a start,” she said.

  “Didn’t you try that route once already?”

  “Yes, but all I had then was a job description. Now we have a name.”

  “Maybe we should start the way everybody else does these days, and Google him,” Morris said.

  Libby gave vent to a rather unladylike snort. “You think somebody like him has a website? Or maybe a blog?”

  “Probably not, although he’s got to drum up business somehow.”

  “I’m guessing in his case, it’s mostly by word of mouth.”

  “Maybe, but have you noticed – these days, most things that start out as word of mouth end up on the internet sooner or later.”

  “You have a point,” Libby said. “Anyway, it can’t hurt–”

  Music began to issue from Libby’s purse. People of a certain age might have recognized the light, bouncy ringtone as the theme from the nineteen sixties TV series, Bewitched. Libby liked her little jokes, sometimes.

  She plucked the phone out of her purse and checked the Caller ID. She looked at Morris. “It’s Colleen.”

  Morris didn’t need a last name. As far as he knew, the only “Colleen” he and Libby had in common was Colleen O’Donnell – white witch, member of the Sisterhood, and Special Agent for the FBI.