Sacred Fire

by Tanai Walker

  “Are we ready?”

  “Yeah,” Sandra said. She guided me to the car. As we climbed in, several excited shouts rang out as another gallu exited the fire. Before any of the others could react, Juliette pulled out a cannon of a gun with a silencer on the end. She fired on the thing, and just like the other, it broke into smoldering pieces.

  Sandra slid on her seat belt. “We’ve got to go.”

  Juliette plunked herself behind the wheel. “I had always hoped it would never come to this. All the training in the world couldn’t prepare them for this.” She looked in the rearview mirror at me. “This is what you wanted, Tinsley.”

  “Stop it,” Sandra told her. “It’s not all her fault.”

  Juliette began to back the car away from the fiery eye. “It is my fault,” I said in a voice so small, I didn’t recognize it as my own.

  Sandra turned to look at me. “Let’s just all cut out the whining for now.” As we made our way off the parade route, two completely naked woman frolicked past the headlights and into the darkness.

  “Damn,” Sandra said. “They’re having a time.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  We drove at a breakneck speed down I-45 to Galveston. Juliette and Sandra explained to me that they were going to get the beast back in our custody.

  “You mean back in me,” I said.

  “It has to be you,” Juliette said. “We can’t risk channeling the beast into anyone else.”

  “What if this is it?” I asked Juliette. “Leda gets to go back to the underworld, and a few demons get loose.”

  “Not according to Alexandrine,” Sandra said. “It seems Leda was the only thing trying to get into the underworld. Everything else apparently wants out.”

  I felt my hands ball into fists. “Leda promised to free me of the beast, a chance at a normal life. It was more hope than I had in a long time.”

  I glanced at Sandra. That last bit had been a lie. That afternoon she walked into the ladies’ room and saw the beast and did not turn away had given me more hope than Leda’s promises.

  “Of course it never occurred to you that she might be lying,” Juliette snarled. “You only think of yourself, Tinsley.”

  “Myself is all I’ve had,” I countered.

  “You made that choice.”

  “I never would have agreed to anything if I had known people would be hurt and there would be so much property damage.”

  “Maybe you should have fucking listened.”

  “Girls,” Sandra interjected.

  “You’re in love with her,” Juliette scoffed at her. “It’s obvious that she’s not into the Sisterhood, and you’re still in love with her.”

  “Just shut up, Juliette,” Sandra growled as she dug around in the glove compartment. She turned and kneeled in the seat to present me with a gun as big as Juliette’s.

  I shrank away.

  “Just point and shoot,” she said, balancing it on my leg.

  “You don’t expect me to know how to use this after a four-word instructional course?”

  Sandra reclaimed the gun and flicked a little switch near the top of the handle two times. She once again proffered the cannon in her open hand.

  “Safety. That’s five words.”

  I took the gun and she patted my leg reassuringly.

  Our first stop was the Palm and Oak Cemetery, the oldest one in Galveston. A long gravel drive lined with towering pines led up to the wrought iron black gates. Juliette cut the chains with something shiny and furtive. She led us through the cemetery just as Quinn had led the procession of the Sisterhood back in ’83. Juliette, all business, carried a flat piece of metal under her arm. We crossed through rows of tops of mausoleums lost when the city was leveled after the hurricane of 1900. We stopped in front of the winged woman who guarded the door to the stone building with the placard that read Tinsley.

  Sandra shined the flashlight on her phone, and the stone angel’s roman features angled in the brightness.

  “Fire,” I said. “This statue is not of a winged woman. She is wreathed in flame.” I touched Juliette’s shoulder. “Why have we come to Alexandrine’s tomb?”

  “Actually,” Juliette said. “No one is buried here.”

  Sandra and I glanced at each other as she slid the bar alongside the door until something on the other side clicked audibly. She pushed the door and it glided away as if on casters. She stepped aside.

  “You should go first, Tinsley,” Juliette said. “This is your birthright.”

  Her words made me pause. Sandra took my hand and gave me a smile of reassurance. I led the way down a low, narrow passageway. After a few steps, I noticed a dancing glow and moving shadows up ahead. I heard voices. My foot caught on a deep crack in the floor, and I reached for the wall to steady myself. The walls had changed from smooth stone to rough and damp. Sandra’s hand covered mine.

  “Texas limestone,” she commented.

  She tilted her head up. I did so as well and saw that the ceiling was made of roughly hewn branches and palm fronds in a thatched fashion. We made our way to the end of the short corridor and into an airy room.

  Seven women waited inside the mausoleum. They wore dark full skirts that swept the floor and white aprons, most of which were torn and stained. One woman languished on the floor. She lay on her stomach. Her dress had been burned away at her back, revealing heavily blistered skin. Three women attended her, held on to her as if they held her very soul in her body.

  They all looked at me as one, then at each other.

  One of them stood and crossed the small space. She stood tall in a black dress. The apron was made out of a tight metal mesh. Chain mail. Her hair fell in curls as dark as her dress. She took my hand and spoke to me in French. I could only pick out one word: Fille. The woman, who looked only to be a few years older than I was, called me daughter.

  “She knows who you are,” Juliette said.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “English,” the woman said. “Yes, of course. What is your name?”

  “Tinsley Swan,” I said. “Do you live in here?”

  “It is a spell,” she said. “Time is frozen here in this crypt so that my daughters may always seek my counsel.”

  Sandra touched my shoulder. “Oh my God, we’ve gone back in time.”

  I looked to Juliette. She gave me a wry smile. She stepped past me and reached for the tall woman’s hand.

  “Tinsley, this is Alexandrine D’Orleans,” she said. “Quinn told me exactly what was in here before she died.”

  “What year is this?” I asked the tall woman, my ancestor.

  “Seventeen ninety-two,” Alexandrine said. “We brought the incarnation of the goddess across the ocean, to the land beyond the Indies, to destroy her once and for all.” She motioned to her fallen sister. “We have nearly failed, and the gallu were almost too much for us. We made the decision to sacrifice ourselves here, to remain in this time and place.”

  “The barrier to the underworld has been broken before?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Alexandrine said. “And it will be opened again. It is up to the Sisterhood to close it each time.”

  “We have lost possession of the beast,” Juliette said. “The generation before us was careless and extravagant. At the first sight of trouble, they scattered to the wind.”

  Alexandrine looked alarmed for a few seconds, then her serene smile returned. “As long as one of the Sisterhood breathes a loyal breath then the wisdom lives. The goddess must never be allowed to stay in the underworld long enough to pass through the seventh gate.”

  “What do we have to do?” I asked.

  She smiled again and motioned for the rest of the Sisters to stand. They did, two of them helping the wounded one, groaning, to her feet. Alexandrine walked a circle around me, her eyes gleaming.

  She stopped and removed her chain mail apron and her dress. One of the Sisters assisted her with removing her stays. Suddenly, she gasped and doubled over. She slipp
ed off her shift and fell to the muddy floor on her knees.

  She was changing. It was strange to see it happen to someone else, but no less gruesome. Seven short, crooked horns sprouted from her head. She moaned as her rib cage rippled and expanded. She reached for me, and I took her clawed hand.

  Blackness claimed my vision. I saw the beast galloping through a strange landscape of skeletal trees barren of leaves beneath a blood-red sky randomly blackened by fast-moving clouds. Leda clung to the beast’s back. She leaned forward, her eyes narrowed, her brow furrowed with the intensity of a jockey. They approached a ring of stones. Leda fell hard to the dusty ground. The beast had vanished beneath her. Leda roared, her glowing skin brightening until flames sprang forward.

  The light returned, and there stood Alexandrine, her dress torn from the change. The six other sisters helped her to her feet.

  “Won’t this change anything?” I asked.

  “No,” Alexandrine said, out of breath. “Time is a trifle to the old ones, Tinsley.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Because my blood is pure,” she said, “The fire there is only a spark, yet the wisdom will never die. Carry it with you until the end.”

  I stooped and helped her to her stand. The Sisters came and clothed her again. Their attentions seemed to give her strength.

  “Go,” she said. “Put things right.”

  Sandra was in a deep conversation with a red-haired woman. They spoke slowly in Spanish, as their dialects were an ocean and several centuries apart. The woman handed Sandra a blue velvet pouch with a black braided drawstring. Sandra opened the bag and reached her hand in. She gasped and pulled out a large deck of cards. She fanned them out expertly as she searched the faces around her.

  “Tinsley, these look just like my cards.”

  I looked to the red-haired woman who reached out and touched the ends of Sandra’s hair. She seemed to marvel at its coloring. When Sandra tried to give the cards back, she refused them.

  After a round of embraces, Juliette led us back out into the night. I glanced at my watch. I had checked it just as we entered. We had only spent about two minutes inside the mausoleum, yet it felt as if at least twenty minutes had elapsed. There was still time.

  I reached out in the darkness and caught hold of Sandra’s hand. If there was ever a question in my mind of whether I could love her, it was gone way before I discovered she was one of the Sisterhood. I wanted to tell her.

  “I slept with Leda,” I blurted.

  “Tinsley,” Sandra said, peering at me through the night. “I figured you would.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You’re an idiot,” she said simply.

  In front of us, Juliette slowed her walk to a stop and motioned for us to do the same.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Quiet,” Juliette hissed out a whisper.

  She removed her gun from the holster strapped to her thigh.

  I held on tight to Sandra’s hand as I followed the direction of Juliette’s gaze to the shadows of a sprawling oak that melded with the shadows of several monuments. After a few seconds, my eyes picked out what looked to be twin red-hot embers floating in the darkness. The embers moved, and I saw the outline of a body, back hunched, low to the ground, the protruding jaw that yawned low as the creature opened its mouth.

  “We must have done something right,” Sandra whispered.

  “Let’s walk,” Juliette growled. “When I tell you to get down, I need you two to hit the dirt.”

  She moved quickly up the path, Sandra and I close behind.

  We continued to move toward the gates we had slipped through earlier. I tried to call upon the beast, but the pains of transformation would not come. I wondered if Alexandrine’s transference had worked. Sandra’s hand tightened around my fingers in a death grip.

  The creature began to rock on its stout back legs. It lunged, launching itself several feet into the air in a noiseless leap. Juliette shouted for us to get down.

  Sandra dragged me to the ground as gunshots thundered. The creature’s head exploded into glowing ash and hellish debris that rained all over us. Juliette urged us on, coughing as we went.

  We slipped through the gate and climbed into the car, Sandra and I in the backseat, Juliette in the driver’s seat. I retrieved the gun I had left behind, my hands shaking. I looked around at the faces of my companions in the interior light of the car. The fear and strain showed in their darting eyes, the tightness of their lips.

  Juliette spoke. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  She turned on the engine and flicked on the headlights. The night before us lit up, revealing a beast about the size of a rhino, but hyena-like in its look and movements. Like the other gallu, it had large eyes like burning coals.

  Sandra cried out, her alarm cut short by the shriek of tires. We were thrown forward into the backs of the front seats as the car began to speed away in reverse. The creature let out a raspy bellow and galloped forward on its stout legs, quickly gaining speed with each step.

  The car hurtled backward down the long gravel drive toward the main road. Juliette wrapped her arm around the back of the headrest on the passenger side, then looked over her shoulder and past us to the night beyond the back windshield. The monster thundered closer, and in the glare of the headlights, I could make out every detail of its visage from the freakishly long snout, to the long ivory fangs curled up on either side in a snarl. The bottom half of the muzzle fell open, revealing double rows of jagged teeth.

  “When we get to the road, shoot it,” Juliette said. “Sandra, you first. If you can’t take it out, Tinsley will join in.”

  I nodded dumbly, sure that it was pointless to remind her I had never fired a gun in my life and of all the things that could possibly go wrong.

  She seemed to sense my doubt, and for a second, rolled her eyes from the back windshield to stare directly at me.

  “That thing could topple the car if it hits us.”

  Sandra rolled down the passenger window and took hold of the gun she carried. The moist air of the humid July night brought the scent of burning coal and sulfur. The fabled smell of brimstone. I removed the safety of my own gun, as Sandra had instructed during her very short training session earlier.

  Sandra reached over and touched my face and moved away as if to give me space. That brief gesture assured me more than any words she could have spoken.

  The car tilted backward, and we were jostled as the drive ended in a steep slope and gravel transitioned to pavement. Sandra leaned out the window and fired on the thing, once, twice, three times before we turned onto the street. As we drove away, I could see it stamping and shaking off the bullets as if they were ants.

  “I think it’s off our tail,” I said.

  In the rearview mirror, Juliette smirked, pleased with Sandra’s shooting. I wondered what other camaraderie they shared.

  The car lurched forward, the tires squealing as we were struck from behind. I turned to see the demon that had chased us out of the cemetery galloping close enough to ram us once more with its massive head.

  “Shit,” Sandra shrieked. “We’re going to need your help, Tinsley.”

  “Empty your clips,” Juliette barked. “Make every shot count.”

  I leaned out the window and fired at the gallu that pursued us. The interior of the car thundered with each pull of the trigger. I gritted my teeth and continued to fire at the thing’s face. The bullets pierced the demon’s hide, leaving burning holes. The wounds hardly fazed the demon at first, but my aim got better with each shot, and a chunk of its muzzle fell to the ground and was trampled under black claws.

  The town unfolded around us in silhouette backlit by orange streetlights. The sound of gunshots would bring attention. The thought alarmed me, but perhaps if a police officer saw a two-ton demon chasing after us, they would join in.

  My arms trembled from the recoil. My hands were sweaty and the gun felt like a slippery
fish. It took all my will to continue holding it and firing. The creature kept pace with the car, a black liquid trailing from its damaged mouth. It exhaled a cloud of sparks that showered the dark street.

  I stopped squeezing the trigger and watched as the demon’s head began to dissolve in clumps of burning debris. There were more sparks, and a mist of ash floated in through the broken back window.

  The creature fell and crackled like the remains of a burned-out log reduced to glowing cinders. Sandra turned to lean against the seat in relief. I joined her and we leaned together, shoulder to shoulder. In the rearview mirror, I saw Juliette’s eyes. No longer so intent on driving, she dialed someone on her cell and told them we were close. She ended the call and told us that the pyre was ready.

  “All we need is the Lost Goddess.”

  The car slowed as we came to the mouth of the white gravel drive that led to Salacia. Once we passed through the gates, a speeding red form collided with the driver’s side of the sedan. Sandra and I were thrown against each other and into the passenger door panel.

  The car bounced and slid sideways several feet in a cacophony of shattering glass, tortured fiberglass, and bending metal, then came to a grinding halt. I glanced around and saw Juliette still buckled in. She was slumped over at the waist; her torso was across the center console, and her head was angled toward the passenger seat.

  Next to me, Sandra groaned and fumbled around in the dark. She popped open the door and called my name weakly before stumbling onto the street. I followed and stopped to look around to see what hit us. Over the hood of the car, I saw Jimmy’s van, the front end wrecked, the engine hissing white smoke. His crooked form sat still behind the driver’s seat. The bastard had hit us.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted.

  He didn’t answer.

  “You son of a bitch, you could have killed us.”

  Sandra grabbed the sleeve of my shirt. “Juliette.”

  I opened the front passenger door, leaned in, and touched Juliette’s neck. I felt her pulse still strong and steady. I patted her face gently to wake her. I kneeled on the seat, reached over, and unbuckled her belt. To my relief, she stirred beneath me. I whispered her name.