It should have been terrifying, but instead it was unspeakably pitiful and sad. The creature staggered vaguely in our direction, its feet moving it along without any real purpose or direction.
“What the ever loving fuck is that?” At the sound of my voice, the beast stopped, trying to raise its head only to find its attempt hampered by the pseudo spines growing out of the base of its skull. It could hear, then, if nothing else.
“This is why we don’t come up here. This is what can happen if you wander into a pocket of the old magic.” The kid shook his head a little, sounding grim. “There have been more and more of these in the last few years. Animals horribly changed. They wander out to the farms, or into town, and we usually get called in to take care of it. Mamá thinks that something here is breaking down, barriers are weakening that used to keep the creatures out, or maybe just more of the magic is going bad.”
“Kill it.” Sveta’s voice was choked, and a small part of me marveled that we’d finally found something that could rattle the hardened killer. The other part of me totally agreed with her.
“May I?” The kid held his hand out for my sword and passed me the flashlight in exchange. I held the light steady as he advanced toward the pathetic creature, the thing managing a respectable hiss of warning as he approached. Estéban paid it no mind, though, and with one clean swing of the blade, lopped its head off. The body twitched for a bit where it lay, and then was still. After he was certain it was dead, he knelt to wipe The Way off on the grass and handed it back hilt first. “Let’s go home.”
It was a quiet ride back up the mountain. Oddly, I think that pitiful little former raccoon disturbed me worse than the rest of the evening’s events. The ability to use magic wasn’t common in the overall population, but it wasn’t exactly rare, either. And the thought that so many people were wandering around the world, callously wielding powers that could eventually turn into that was sobering to say the least. Not for the first time, I wondered at the price the human race would have to pay for dabbling in things like that. Years, even centuries later, one spell could still linger, wreaking havoc on people who might never even know it had been cast.
I don’t think I want to live on this planet anymore
.
Chapter 14
The kitchen light was still on when we pulled into the drive, and Estéban sighed. “We’re in trouble.”
I snorted as we all piled out of the truck. “You mean you’re in trouble. She’s not my mom.”
“You really think that’s going to stop her?”
As if on cue, the kitchen door slammed open, revealing Carlotta wearing a bath robe and a look that could have melted titanium. “And just what did you think you were doing?”
“I had to try to find him, Mamá.” As the kid tried to argue his way out of whatever trouble he was in, Sveta slipped off into the shadows, abandoning the kid and I to our fate. Gee, thanks. “I had to try to get the machete back.”
She smacked him upside the back of the head, and he just hunched his lanky shoulders. “They are things, niño. They are not special in any way. You can pick up any weapon and be a champion.” I must have twitched or made a noise or something, because she rounded on me next. “And you! What on earth possessed you to leave the safety of the wards? Do you know what happens if they find you undefended?”
“No, and neither do you.” That seemed to take the wind out of Carlotta’s sails and she just blinked at me. “I don’t think the demons have any more idea how to get these things out of me than we do, else they’d have been at your door already. Now can we please go inside? We’ve got some things to talk about.”
It took us a few minutes to get settled around the kitchen table, and involved the kid going to roust Terrence out of his bed, too. The old champion grumbled as he shuffled out into the bright kitchen, but did manage to mumble thanks when Carlotta pressed a cup of tea into his hands. When did she learn to make his tea?
“We didn’t find Paulito,” Estéban started, “but we found the ward he was using to bind the demon.”
“Oh?” Terrence raised his scraggly head and looked to me.
“Yeah. It was pretty much nonexistent. A show, nothing more. Which means…”
Carlotta sighed, inexplicable sadness in her eyes. “Which means that he is working with them.”
“Yeah.” And because I didn’t know what else to say… “Sorry.”
Estéban wrapped his arm around his mother’s shoulders and leaned his head against hers, the pair of them sitting in silence for a few moments. Finally, she patted his hands, took a deep breath, and drew herself up straight. “In the morning, when we are all rested, we will do a scrying to locate him. He cannot hide from that without more magic than he possesses.”
I’d seen Mira do scryings before, but they required something intensely personal from the person being sought. “Do you have something of his? Some way to track him?”
Carlotta gave me a ghost of a smile. “We keep hair from every member of this family, just in case it is needed. Finding him will not be difficult.”
Estéban leaned his elbows on the table again. “There is more. We went to the ruins tonight.”
The look his mother gave him was nothing short of horrified. “You did what? At night? You could have walked into anything, up there!” At that point, she switched to Spanish, because apparently English was not sufficient to express what a very bad, very stupid idea it had been to go walking around those glowing stones in the dead of night.
The kid took it for a while, then placed his hands on hers. “Mamá! English, please. Our guests can’t keep up.”
Carlotta pressed her lips together firmly, but gave a short nod. Her eyes fixed on me sternly. “I can excuse you, because you did not know. But he knew better. It is dangerous up there, even in broad daylight. There is an evil in those stones.”
I raised a brow at the kid, and he just shrugged. “Look, I don’t know what the history of the place is, but someone else has been messing around up there. We found a sacrificed chicken.”
That drew grim looks from both Carlotta and Terrence, and the old man made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat. “Blood magic…” I think he might have spit, too, but he didn’t want to make a mess in Carlotta’s kitchen.
“Neither Sveta nor I could feel any spell work around the carcass.”
I nodded my agreement. “The…they didn’t even twitch.” I lifted my shoulders in illustration. “Whatever someone was trying to do with the chicken, it failed.” When Carlotta continued to look deeply disturbed, I went on. “It was probably just some dumb kids, trying to do something they’d seen in a movie or something.”
She shook her head quickly. “Even untrained, even without any magic behind it, every death has power. Even a small death like a chicken. I will need to go there soon, and see if anything has changed. The ancient spells there have become unstable in the last decade or so. They are decaying.”
Terrence winced. “You be careful, missus. Old magic isn’t anything to trifle with.”
Carlotta cast him a quick smile, and there was no mistaking the fondness behind it. “All right, everyone to bed. After breakfast, we will scry for Paulito’s location. Estéban…” The kid paused in mid-motion as he was standing up. “I would like you to help with that. The more power we have behind it, the more precise it will be.”
“Sí, Mama.”
“I would like your help as well, Señor Smythe, and Sveta’s.”
“Yes mum.” The old curmudgeon levered himself up out of his seat. “Best get myself some rest then.” Together, he and the kid wandered off down the hallway.
Carlotta and I sat in silence for a bit. Most of me really wanted to go fall onto my rock hard cot and get some shut-eye, but she looked like she needed to talk. Sure enough, after a few minutes, she sighed. “He has not sold his soul.”
“No,” I agreed. “He doesn’t have the look.”
“Then what is he doing?” There was angui
sh under her words, the kind that mothers get when their kids have wandered off the right road. “I cannot fathom what has possessed him to behave like this. His poor mother will be devastated when she finds out. Paulito was not raised this way.”
“The human heart is a weird thing. You never know what’s gonna settle in like a little thorn and get all infected. Something’s eating at that kid, and it’s just all blowing up now. Festering to the surface.” She sat there, looking all distressed and I had to say something else, something that would give her hope, even if I didn’t really believe it. “Maybe…maybe it’s for a good reason. My own brother sold his soul to save his son’s life. It’s possible to do bad things for good reasons.” Did I believe it? Hell no. But for Carlotta, I’d say just about anything.
She finally looked up at me. “What will you do when you find him?”
“What do you want us to do?” That was an excellent question, actually. We couldn’t exactly arrest him. We couldn’t keep him tied up and gagged so he couldn’t summon any more demons. In fact, bringing him back into his family’s stronghold while he still had that ability might be…inadvisable.
“I don’t know. I honestly do not know what to do.” She twisted at the wedding ring on her finger. “I wish Estéban’s father were here. He always knew the right thing to do. I feel as though I am simply inventing things as I go along.”
It was hard to remember that Carlotta was not a Perez by blood. She had married into the powerful family, and was doing her best to see that it continued in its proud tradition until one of her sons could take the helm. Until Estéban was old enough to take over. If he survived that long.
“That’s what we’re all doing, Carlotta.” I patted her hands as I got up off the bench. “Just making shit up. See you in the morning. Don’t stay up too late.”
I left her there, staring at her hands, and went to collapse onto my cot. Estéban wasn’t asleep – I could tell by the stiff way he was laying on his bunk – but he didn’t say anything, so I didn’t either. We could talk in the morning.
The sounds of young boys’ soft snores lulled me into sleep, but it was uneasy. I dreamed the tunnel dream again, stepping out into immense space over and over again, always watching for the dark figure at the other end. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn’t, and I was never sure when I was more relieved.
Breakfast, when it rolled around, seemed more subdued than usual. I mean sure, there was the usual stampede of ravenous teenage males, the typical roughhousing and taunting, but the adults in the room all had a bit of a gloom hanging over them and the kids picked up on it. They scarfed down their food and scattered in record time, leaving me with the spell casters and a plan to work a scrying.
“What are we going to use, Mama?”
Carlotta pursed her lips for a moment, then nodded decisively. “Salt, I think. I want a clear picture of what he is up to.”
There are different kinds of scryings. Some of them involve a pendulum and a map, others can involve something akin to dowsing rods that will swing in the direction of the sought item. The only one I’d actually seen performed involved a giant basin of salt water, and if it went as expected, would provide us with an actual picture of where Paulito was and what he was doing at that given moment.
Oddly, the last time I’d seen a salt scrying performed, it had been Mira, searching for the kid’s brother Miguel. He’d already been dead by that time, and all we’d seen was the moment of his death, caught in an endless loop. It was…unpleasant.
Like a line of ducklings, we followed Carlotta across the compound to her little sanctuary. The souls in my shoulders prickled a bit as I crossed the threshold, but at least they didn’t drop me to my knees again. I found a seat on one of the benches and stayed out of the way as the four casters laid out their tools for the spell.
At one point, Carlotta looked at me thoughtfully. “I am unsure if you should be present, given how strongly you react to magic.”
“I can go back to the house, if you want.” Not being in this tiny building with massive amounts of magic swirling around was a brilliant idea as far as I was concerned.
“We need someone outside the circle,” Terrence grumbled. “In case.” After a few moments of thought, Carlotta nodded her agreement.
A large metal basin – nearly big enough to be called a cauldron – was placed in the center of the room, and Carlotta dumped the entire box of salt into the bottom of it. Esteban and I got drafted to haul in buckets of water from a nearby hydrant, both of us making four trips before we got the vessel filled to Carlotta’s liking. She stirred the water slowly, until the salt had dispersed enough to make it a uniform milky white, then nodded to her son. “Fetch the box.”
The box turned out to be a small cigar box, nondescript in appearance, unless you happened to have the ability to see spells. On the magical spectrum, the thing shone like a tiny little floodlight. It had been overlaid with so many sigils and marks that my eyes watered, and the souls in my shoulders swirled around in sudden interest. I backed my way into a corner, putting as much distance between myself and that box as I could.
The reason for such strong protections on it became clear once it was opened. Inside were locks of hair. Hundreds, probably, each neatly tied and labelled with a name. Here was a link to every single living member of the Perez family, something that would allow an instant magical connection. The only thing more powerful than hair would have been blood, but I was willing to bet that didn’t store well.
Carlotta sorted through them until she found the one she wanted, holding the clipping of raven black hair by the tag as the kid put the rest of the box away. “Sveta, Estéban, if you could step inside the boundaries while Señor Smythe closes the circle, we will begin. Jesse, if the souls become too agitated, you can step outside.”
There was a faint pop of changing air pressure in my ears as Terrence closed the circle around them with barely a wave of his hand. The four of them got comfortable, Carlotta facing Sveta across the vessel, and Estéban mirroring Terrence. Sveta and the kid both rested on their knees, I noticed, fighters ready to spring to their feet at a second’s notice. The older pair were more solid in their seats, legs crossed as best they could, and I had to wonder if it was a magical thing, or just the necessity of older bodies.
“We will begin now. I will take the lead.” Carlotta waited until everyone had nodded their understanding, then she closed her eyes, breathing deeply. The other three regulated their breathing as well, until they were all aligned with hers.
If it weren’t for the overwhelming scent of cloves that billowed into the air, it would have looked like nothing was happening. Carlotta and Terrence both sat with their eyes closed, while the younger pair watched everything with intense concentration. My skin prickled in response, like an army of fire ants crawling all over me as the souls roused themselves for such a blatant display. My vision flickered dizzingly between regular sight and that strange state where I could almost see molecules drifting in the air.
I could actually see magic pouring off of them, drifting upwards like tendrils of steam. Carlotta’s energy was a pale gold, delicate and warm, and there was a scent of something like warm tortillas. The magic rising from Terrence’s shoulders was an olive green, and there was a faint hint of something old and mossy beneath the cloves. The kid’s power was red and tasted like chili peppers, which didn’t surprise me a bit, though there were hints of his mother’s gold threaded throughout. Sveta’s was ice blue, like her eyes, and if there was a flavor to it, it was lost underneath the burn of absolute cold. The thin bands of energy wafted to and fro for a moment, twining in amongst each other above the casters’ heads, creating a solid rope of magic that then plunged into the depths of the cauldron. With every moment that passed, the braided cord grew thicker, stronger, almost pulsing with four matching heartbeats.
I’d never seen a group cast a spell before. I don’t know what I’d expected. Maybe a lot of chanting or robes or something. This went
beyond just a joint ceremony, though. This was a true melding of their powers, three of them willingly giving their magic over to Carlotta to be used and guided as she saw fit. And the woman herself glowed in my strange vision. Carlotta’s power – her soul – seemed boundless, shining bright enough that my eyes stung and watered. I couldn’t have looked away if my life depended on it. Some guardian I was turning out to be.
The feeling of pressure in my ears was building, almost to the point of pain, by the time Carlotta stretched a hand out over the cauldron and dropped a few strands of Paulito’s hair. Instantly, there was a disturbance at the surface of the water, the dissolved salt coming to the top like hungry guppies. It bubbled and churned there, and when Carlotta began making a circling gesture over the water, the salt followed. Soon, there was a whirling vortex of white streaks in the water, the salt solidifying, coming together with purpose.
“Show us.” They spoke in unison, though only Terrence’s words came out in English. Everyone else spoke their native language as they said, “Reveal him.”
I leaned forward as far as I could without disturbing the circle, anxious to see what the salt scrying would reveal.
The water continued to swirl in the confines of the cauldron, but the whiteness of the salt coalesced into shapes, amorphous at first, then taking on purpose and definition. What finally appeared was a vision of Paulito in negative, his black hair stark white, the tan of his skin showing as a light gray. His shirt, which must have been white, was marked by patches of perfectly clear water, which read as black against the depths of the giant bowl. The image was so clear, we could see individual strands of hair that hung down over his forehead, the wrinkles at the edges of his eyes as he opened his mouth to laugh at something.
The clove odor that I associated with spells took on a faintly charred smell, and the souls in my skin surged in Estéban’s direction. The edges of his power were frayed, pieces flaking off in spiky, brittle bits in response to his anger. Where his energy fed into the joined spell, the edges of the other strands browned and blistered with the heat, and instinctively, they tried to recoil from the damage.
A Snake in the Grass Page 16