A grating sound thrust Skulick out of his musings. It sounded like hundreds of fingernails raking across glass. He spun his wheelchair toward the windows, which offered a breathtaking view of the glittering skyline beyond. His base of operation was located downtown, surrounded by blocks upon blocks of abandoned warehouses and a burgeoning homeless population.
Skulick had chosen to set up shop here because it provided a certain degree of anonymity and significantly reduced the chances of collateral damage during a demonic attack. Plus, you couldn’t beat the real estate prices.
Even though the fog was spreading on the street level, it had barely touched the city’s steel towers. He could almost pretend the whole thing was some big hoax, a crazy Halloween prank.
The strange grating sound repeated itself. Skulick’s eyes narrowed as he wheeled himself closer to the windows. Fall had arrived with a vengeance, and the glass was cold to the touch. His face tightened. Lips pressed into a thin line as he peered into the night and listened intently for the unusual noise to repeat itself.
Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t quite place his finger on what it was. A sense of wrongness, of eyes watching him from the darkness, but nothing concrete.
He was about to turn away from the window when a chill raced up his neck. Where were the wards? The protective runes had vanished. A different symbol now lined all the windows - an inverted Y with a line at the center.
Skulick clutched the arms of his wheelchair, realizing these new symbols were identical to the ones Raven had found in the park yesterday.
The crow’s foot. The witch’s mark.
Skulick’s breath caught in his throat as he spotted a spectral silhouette perched on a window ledge outside the warehouse across the street. The figure wore a monk-like black robe. Gusts of wind whipped the tattered fabric in the pale moonlight. The face below the hood remained shrouded in shadows. Even though Skulick failed to make out the figure’s features, he knew the robed presence was watching him with grave interest.
The witches are here.
Unlike most supernatural enemies, these infernal practitioners of the dark arts were human. Or at least they had been before trading their souls for a taste of magical power. The human mind was ill-equipped to handle real magic. Even those with the best of intentions could be corrupted and twisted by its unholy power. How many monster hunters and paranormal investigators had fallen prey to the siren call of the darkness over the years?
Skulick had often battled the temptation to delve deeper into the secrets of the black arts himself. The notion of using magic to fight the servants of darkness was alluring but fraught with risk. Tapping into the dark arts could backfire, doing more harm than good. Power corrupts, and absolute power came at the cost of one’s soul.
Another scratching sound against the glass interrupted Skulick’s thoughts. He spun in his chair and caught a flicker of shadowy movement behind a different window. How many potential assailants was he up against? With the wards down, it was only a matter of time before they made their move.
They were toying with him.
Another window rattled. Outside the moon poked from cloud bank , and Skulick spotted two more hooded figures balanced on the window ledges of the adjacent building.
Skulick rapidly pulled away from the window. His eyes ticked toward his desk. He had left his cellphone next to the bank of monitors. Fortunately, he carried a Beretta in a shoulder holster loaded with silver bullets. It was just an ordinary gun, not a mystical weapon like Raven’s Hellseeker, but it was better than going unarmed.
The array of computer screens on his desk fizzled and hissed. Electronic static devoured the faces of the news anchors on the TV screens, reminding him of the weird mist which had hungrily consumed the reporters on the ground. Anxiety churned in the pit of his stomach. He was afraid, he admitted it. His grip tightened on his Beretta as he released the safety. Not a moment too soon, either, as all the loft’s windows rippled like water. The glass began to crack in zigzags and spider webs.
I guess they’re done playing.
The windows exploded inward, showering the floor with a rain of glass. Ferocious gusts of wind blasted into the converted warehouse, the rush of air like the voices of the damned, alive with fury and madness. The violent blast sent Skulick backward, knocking him painfully against a bookshelf. For a second he feared the wheelchair might topple over, but he managed to grab onto the wooden shelf and steady himself.
His gaze fixed on the broken windows. Jagged maws of glass framed the robed, faceless intruders. He counted at least five witches. The smell of ozone hung heavily in the air as the lights sparked and the computer monitors went dark. Magic and science didn’t get along.
With the loft now solely bathed in dim moonlight, the intruders made their move.
One of the witches launched at him, bony white arms eerily extending from the shadows of her robe, her grotesquely long, gnarled fingers reaching out for him.
He brought up the Beretta and fired. The bullet slammed into the witch, flinging her backward. She shrieked in agony, but she did not fall.
Skulick cursed under his breath. The vault upstairs held the most dangerous mystical weapons in the world, but he would never reach it in time. His only option was to fight off a superior enemy with a magazine of silver bullets. He was about to go up against a tiger with a butter knife.
He targeted a second witch and pulled the trigger again. This new attacker skillfully side-stepped the volley, the bullets chopping the brick wall instead. It rained plaster. As the figure took three quick steps toward him, Skulick continued to rapid-fire, each bullet just missing the fast-moving target.
And then the witch was upon him. With a click of her long-nailed fingers, she unleashed a spell that dragged Skulick out of his wheelchair. He hovered helplessly in midair as the robed creature zeroed in on him. An invisible power pried the Beretta loose from his hand. The pistol clattered on the hardwood floor with the sound of defeat.
“It’s been a long time, my dear Skulick,” a menacing—yet familiar—voice said from under the shadow-soaked hood.
“Who are you?”
The creature drifted toward him, her bare, blood-smeared feet not touching the ground as they dangled eerily in the air. The witch’s black robe shifted and unfurled, the fabric moving on its own. She leaned closer, her features at last visible in the sickly moonlight.
Skulick gasped.
The face glaring down at him was bare of all skin, merely a glistening mask of exposed, shiny musculature. The flayed witch’s eyes blazed with a fierce hatred.
“Who are you?” Skulick asked again.
“How quickly they forget,” the witch answered. “Does the name Malcasta ring any bells?”
It did.
The past had finally caught up with him.
3
SKULICK’S LOFT, RIGHT NOW
The witches had stolen my partner’s soul.
While I was duking it out with Varthek, a ghoul with delusions of grandeur, and learning how to surf on flying coffins (don’t even ask), the spell-slingers had breached the wards that protected our base of operation and gone after my partner.
Dammit, the man upstairs sure had it in for me. Maybe he disapproved of the company I was keeping nowadays. I was talking of course about Cyon, the demon who had hijacked my body a few months back and with whom I had ultimately struck a bargain to save my partner’s life. Not much good it had done, considering Skulick’s current predicament.
And why, you ask, would anyone in their right mind make a deal with a servant of darkness? Desperate times call for desperate measures. The way I saw it, I never had a choice. Skulick could be a pain in the ass, but I would lay down my life for the man. Or strike a bargain with a demon if that’s what it took to save him. In my defense, Cyon was already in my head when this happened, and I’d gotten to know this demon a little better than most. I had chosen to trust Cyon. Perhaps that had been a mistake, or maybe the demon truly hadn�
��t known that witches were targeting my partner. It didn’t make a difference now.
I stared at the man who’d been like a father to me. The witches had carved a symbol into his forehead, and the sight of it made me sick. The mark was a cross with its arms broken, known as the crow’s foot or witch’s foot.
Medieval superstition claimed witches cast death spells with the help of the symbol. In the Middle Ages, the Church identified potential witches by looking for the mark. Many an innocent woman had perished on a burning pyre because a member of the Inquisition thought a mole or wrinkle was a crow’s foot. To my knowledge, the symbol held no actual magical power, but many real covens had adopted it as a badge of honor due to its violent history. A symbol of oppression had become one of pride for the practitioners of the dark arts.
I touched Skulick’s arm. It felt like touching a firebrand, hot to touch. My former partner was alive, in so far that he had a heartbeat and blood flowed through his veins. But his mind, his soul, all the parts that made him who he was, were gone now, magically extracted by the mysterious coven of witches which had descended on the Cursed City. At least that was Cyon’s diagnosis, and who was I to challenge the demon?
I clenched my reptilian demon claw, a souvenir of my diabolical pact with Cyon, and fought back the temptation to drive it into the nearest wall.
Get a grip on yourself, Cyon admonished me. Having a meltdown won’t help Skulick.
It might make me feel better to release some steam, but Cyon had a point. Losing my cool wouldn’t benefit anyone. I had to stay sharp, figure out my next move. Skulick’s blank stare made that difficult. Seeing him like this, the world’s greatest occult detective reduced to a drooling vegetable, was almost more than I could handle.
“Fine, punch the wall,” Cyon said. “Break some furniture, wreck the place. Do what you must if it helps you get your head back on straight.”
Shut up, I hissed, and the demon grew silent.
Every fiber in my body craved a stiff drink, but I refused to give in to my desire to numb myself. If I went down that path, it would end with me blacking out with an empty bottle of Jack in my grubby demon claw. Definitely not the way to fix this problem. It wouldn’t save Skulick or defeat this coven of witches. I had to keep it together. Somehow.
“Can we save him?” I said.
“There are rituals, but the longer the spirit stays separated from the body, the harder it becomes to reunite the two.”
I took a deep breath. There was a sliver of hope here, and I drew comfort from it.
“How long do we have?” I asked.
“Hard to say for certain. Two days if I had to make a guess…”
I leaned closer to Skulick and checked his pulse. His heartbeat was surprisingly strong and steady. “Don’t you worry, bud, we’ll get you back to your old self in no time.”
The words were directed more at me than my partner. I didn’t have a clue how I was going to pull this off, but I wouldn’t rest until I did. I owed Skulick that much. The man had saved my life too many times for me to keep track. Now it was my turn to repay the favor.
My partner’s dead-eyed gaze was unnerving, and what I did next pained me. I gently closed his eyelids so I wouldn’t have to face his empty stare. There was an eerie finality about the gesture. Like I was saying goodbye for good. No, this is not the end. I won’t let it be. As long as his heart kept pumping, there was a chance of saving Skulick. I fiercely clung to this belief, unwilling to consider the grim alternative.
Reassured that Skulick was in no imminent physical danger, my attention shifted to his desk. The electricity had gone out a little earlier judging by the blinking clocks around the loft, but it was back now. Reports were rolling in at a rapid pace on the bank of monitors. The city was still reeling from the fog that had transformed hundreds of Halloween partiers into a horde of bloodthirsty zombies. Apparently interrupting the ghoul’s ritual had reversed the effects of the death fog, and the afflicted had regained their humanity. I had expected—hoped—for this outcome, and I was grateful for a bit of good news. Not everyone had been so lucky, about thirty people pad for the ghoul’s ambitions with their lives, but it could’ve been worse. A lot worse.
Drawing some strength from this development, I focused on the problem at hand. Why had the witches targeted my partner? Was this some act of revenge connected to the Blackmore Witch I had dispatched a few months back? I couldn’t completely rule out that possibility, but it didn’t seem all that likely. For one, the Blackmore Witch didn’t belong to a coven—she’d stalked the woods on her own. Also, if the coven was purely out for revenge, they would have just killed my partner and not snatched his soul. No, something different was going on here. I planned to get to the bottom of it.
The first order of business was to see if the witches had breached the vault upstairs. I hated to leave Skulick out of my sight in his current condition, but I knew he would want me to make sure that the dangerous occult relics remained safely locked away.
I rapidly climbed the stairs and stepped up to the vault’s massive iron door. A keypad and computer flashed next to the entrance. I let out a sigh of relief when I realized the door was locked. The mystical wards and the electronic security system appeared to be intact. But that led to another question. The witches had successfully broken into our base, so the vault wouldn’t have posed much of a challenge. And that meant they hadn’t bothered with the vault because they couldn’t care less about its contents. Had they been interested in anything here beside my partner’s soul? And what did they plan to do with his spiritual essence? There were plenty of demons who’d be eager to claim such a prize. The image of Skulick roaming some dark corner of Hell for all eternity sent shivers up my spine, and my craving for a drink returned.
I searched the loft for any clues that might offer more information about what had happened, but I came up empty-handed. Signs of destruction abounded. The witches had torn the place apart. My partner was a neat freak, and he would have flipped if he could see our place now. Mystical texts and occult tomes had been tossed from their shelves and now littered the hardwood floor. A sharp gust of wind tussled my hair. My mood darkened further as I took in the row of shattered windows. I would need to replace the glass, redraw the wards.
I wouldn’t be able to pick up the pieces and fix all of this. With Skulick out of the picture and Father Cabrera and Archer after me, I would have to stay on the move. Not merely did it feel like I was saying farewell to my partner, but I was turning my back on my home, too. My old life was history, and an uncertain future awaited.
A future where the White Crescent would hunt me like a monster.
I was shaking by the time I returned to Skulick’s desk. The only sound in the loft was my partner’s steady breathing as his chest fell and rose in a mechanical rhythm, an animated corpse.
Unnerved, I touched the keyboard. A series of folders and open files popped up. I scanned the desktop and then perused my mentor’s search history. What had Skulick been working on before the witches struck the loft? Judging by the links, he had carefully monitored Father Cabrera’s attempts to hunt me down. It pained me to see that, but I tried to understand where he was coming from. If our roles had been reversed, I would have reacted the same way.
Swallowing my personal feelings of betrayal, I continued my exploration of Skulick’s computer. I didn’t expect to find any answers, but I had to do something to keep myself busy while I figured out a more viable plan of attack.
I ran across a recent news story Skulick had highlighted. The garish headline screamed out at me from the screen: The Witch Killer Strikes Again! A serial killer had targeted three female victims in three different cities and burned them at the stake like witches.
As I noted the names of the hapless victims, blood drained from my face.
“The victims are familiar to you?” Cyon asked. Maybe he couldn’t read all my thoughts, but he had a way of picking up my emotions.
In answer, I stepped over to
a nearby collection of framed photographs. Some had been knocked off during the witch attack, but the one I was looking for still occupied its usual spot on the brick wall. It showed a much younger Skulick with my father on his right and three women to his left.
“They were all paranormal investigators. Rachel Ballard, Melissa Sinclair, and Stephanie Macabros. Along with my dad and Skulick, they were legendary monster hunters. Once upon a time, they all worked together as a team. That all changed after my dad died. The loss of one of their own had spooked them. I don’t think Skulick ever forgave them for quitting on him. He took it as an insult to my father’s sacrifice.”
I paused for a beat and then added, “Nothing could make my mentor quit, not even being stuck in a wheelchair and losing his partner to demonic possession. Hunting the agents of chaos was a holy mission for Skulick and me. We both swore to battle the legions of Hell until we drew our final breath.”
I balled my reptilian demon hand into a fist. What would my father say if he could see me now, willingly cooperating with a demon?
“The former monster hunters were slain like witches themselves,” Cyon noted. “The killers were mocking them in death.”
I nodded soberly and glanced over at Skulick, almost as if I expected him to chime in with some logical explanation for this madness. But my partner remained silent.
“Sounds a lot like revenge to me.”
“So why didn’t the witches burn him at the stake too? Why take his soul instead?”
A female voice behind me provided the answer. “Because there is something Malcasta wants from your partner.”
I whirled around, my gloved hand reaching for Hellseeker on pure instinct. Pistol leveled, my eyes locked on the intruder.
A stunning brunette stood in one of the broken window frames, framed by the shattered glass. Considering that we were on the second floor, it didn’t take much imagination to know that I was dealing with a spell-slinger. Auburn hair spilled down her shoulders and her tanned skin nearly glowed in the moonlight, a far cry from the black haired, ivory complexioned goth image associated with witches in popular culture.
Witch Wars (Shadow Detective Book 7) Page 2