Kubo was moving so slowly he might as well have been crawling through the overgrown grass. Every mass of leaves, every arbitrary pile of twigs, was cause for suspicion, and he investigated them gingerly with his outstretched foot before slowly moving on.
“You looking for land mines over there?” I asked, yawning.
“Something like that,” he replied, nearing the building and laying a hand upon the brick exterior. Closing his eyes, he loosed a long-held breath and pressed his palm into the building. “I can sense them inside. There are numerous presences within.” Kubo reached into his pocket and took out a stack of paper seals, bound together by a rubber band. Smacking the bundle against his palm, he flipped through them, made sure none were sticking together. “I prepared these last night. I need to post them all around the building to break down the barriers that are in place. Ernie was right; there's powerful magic guarding this building. This spot is heavily fortified. I'll post my seals all over the property after I've found the source of their warding spells. I'll tamper with their seals and make them amplify the power of mine, instead.” Looking up and down the length of the wall before him, he appraised the worn-out bricks with care. “If I were Agatha, where would I hide the grounding seals for a barrier like this? Where would I center these spells?”
Isabella had wandered from his side, pushing through the overgrown grass and exploring the grounds. She called his attention to a large, flat stone half-buried in the swaying grass. “Isabella would use cornerstones like this one,” she said, pointing down at the stone.
Kubo rushed over, tore away a few fist fulls of grass, and then grinned. “Nice find. You're right, Isabella. The cornerstones make the most sense. We need only disrupt one to break the barrier, but I'll be interested in finding the other three so that I can manipulate them and power up my seals.”
I ambled over to the stone. It was a polished thing with a flat, clear face, and it didn't look like anything that belonged on the property. On the smooth surface was an intricate magic circle, drawn in careful smears of black ash. “What, the witches are drawing their power from this rock?” I asked.
“Not quite.” Kubo rifled around in his jacket pocket, eventually producing a small vial of water and a tiny bag that looked like a coin purse. “These stones, cornerstones, contain large amounts of quartz. They're fashioned by skilled craftsman to conduct energy, and the surface is made smooth enough to inscribe potent seals on, like this one. Agatha hid them in the four corners of the property, I bet, hoping that no one would find them in this mess of a yard, but now that I've found one, I can wash away her seal and inscribe one of my own.” He poured a bit of his water onto the stone and the magic circle was quickly eaten away. A puff of steam rose from the design as it was dissolved. With his hand, Kubo wiped away the dregs, leaving the stone clean and ready for a new circle.
“So, you just wash it off and write your own spell on it?” I asked. “Seems too simple. You dump some water on it and that's it? I thought these witches were supposed to be good. What if it had rained? Would her spell have gone to crap then?”
Kubo took a stick of black chalk from the small bag and then began slowly drawing a double-walled circle upon the stone. Within it, he drew a five-pointed star, and across the center of the star, was placed a large, black smear. I'd seen this very design before, on Amundsen's pendant. The inner ring was filled with small symbols as he further explained. “Mere water isn't enough. The water I used to cleanse the stone is enchanted. It comes from a particular spring, and has been aged for decades in a sealed vessel packed in rare herbs. It isn't easy to come by; a gift from Mona. This chalk is made from talc and ash. Aside from blood, ash is the best medium one can use in creating magical seals. It's been used since ancient times, its magical properties revealed to man by denizens of the Beyond eons ago. Not just any ash will do, though. Different types of ash have different properties. This stick was made with the ash of wormwood.”
I feigned excitement. “Oh, boy! And what the hell's that supposed to mean?”
Kubo finished his work, returned the chalk to his bag, and then cleaned off his hands, chuckling. “It means it's a bitch and a half to wash off. Wormwood ash is the permanent marker of the spirit world. Agatha won't ever be able to recover this cornerstone.”
I hate to admit that I was impressed. Kubo was a lying prick, a cold motherfucker who didn't care about me or the others except as a means to an end. But when he was in his element, demonstrating his skill, it was arresting to watch. The guy was a master.
“Where'd you learn all of this, Kubo? How long have you been practicing spell craft?” I asked as he started looking for the next cornerstone.
He replied disinterestedly, his tone relaying that he was far too preoccupied with the thrill of spell craft to talk about it right now. “My grandfather taught me. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime,” he said absently.
One by one the other cornerstones were found, and like the first, Kubo took his time erasing Agatha's work and replacing it with his own. When the four stones had been changed and the building was primed to amplify only his own spells, he started tacking the paper sigils to the outside of the building. He didn't need tape this time, however. They stuck to the bricks like dryer sheets drawn to staticky laundry. “What I've done,” he said, his deep voice marked in pride, “is effectively shut off their power. Disconnected their alarm system. Now, by posting these sigils on the outside, I'm casting a spell of my own. I'm changing the locks and moving in, see? Any spell I cast inside the church now will be boosted by this barrier the sigils create, and the whole thing is made possible because I've commandeered the cornerstones. Make sense?” Kubo was speaking like a lecturer now. I think he secretly wanted to gush about spell craft, to geek out about it with an interested party. I'd never taken him to be that kind of guy; he was far too serious most of the time. Then again, I'd never seen him work this hard, either.
“Not really,”I admitted. “This is all a bit over my head. But... it sounds to me like Agatha and her crew have just been evicted.”
Kubo placed the last of the sigils. “Absolutely goddamn right.”
THIRTY-FOUR
We approached the nearest door and began planning our entrance. Kubo could sense its inhabitants but we couldn't be sure just where inside the church they were. The main entrance, marked by large, wooden double doors, was out of the question. It was thoroughly chained and would have made too obvious an entry point for any watchful witches. We set our sights instead on a side door, presumably the one Ernie had seen the witches entering through the other night.
Before we went in, Kubo studied the door carefully. He touched it, pulled it open very slightly and studied the frame. Spotting something inscribed upon the inside of the frame, in the lower left, he looked to Joe. “Torch the door and the frame. It's been marked and we're going to tip them off if we cross the threshold without first destroying this seal.”
With more finesse than I'll ever be able to understand, Joe walked up, lighter in hand, and made light work of the door. First he melted the hinges by superheating them, allowing the door to fall outward onto the grass. When Kubo had dragged it out onto the lawn, Joe showered it with small tongues of flame until the thing was left a pile of cinders. The frame was next, and was a little trickier. He zeroed in on the small seal that'd been etched into it and burned that portion first. Then, melting the nails that held it in place, he pulled the door frame loose and burned it just like he'd done the door. “Voila,” he said, closing the Zippo with a click.
In the process of getting rid of the door and the enchanted frame, we'd created quite a bit of smoke. It wasn't a subtle affair, and I had trouble believing that onlookers from the street wouldn't take notice. We were setting fire to things, breaking into an abandoned church. Even if the view was decently blocked by overgrown foliage, the possibility of being found out by passing motorists or pedestrians seemed high.
And don't even get me started on the
witches.
What if they smelled the smoke? Heard us fucking with their door and came rushing at us from the next room?
Thankfully that didn't happen, and Kubo explained why when I kept looking nervously towards the street. “Isabella's muffling our sounds. Moreover, the fire and smoke has been masked by an illusion of clear sky. In order to actually see what's going on, someone would have to come up to within a few feet of the scene. Relax.”
“Well, why not just have her make the side of the church disappear, so we can see where the witches are hiding?” I asked. She'd done that to the house we'd scoped out, allowing us to zero in on the nursery and find the kid before the witches could get to him.
“There's a ward in place, protecting the walls from being peered through. It's an elementary spell. The seal that's generating it passively is probably scrawled on a floorboard or something. Anyhow, if we were to do that, we'd only see darkness. They've effectively blacked out their windows to keep craft users from snooping.”
Isabella was standing beside Kubo, her entire body twitching with a fury I'd never seen before. Her hands and face were particularly animated, and she shifted from one exaggerated expression to the next, her freckled face contorting like mad while her hands continuously pawed at the hem of her burlap garment.
“I think you broke her,” said Joe, slapping me in the arm. “That coffee probably wasn't a good idea.”
This seemed to upset her, because Isabella got in Joe's face and wagged a finger, her cheeks reddening. “No, no, no, that's not true. Coffee is fine. Mother never lets Isabella have coffee, but Isabella adores coffee, and if Isabella says it's OK to drink coffee, then it's OK. Isabella can make her own decisions. Mother doesn't speak for Isabella all the time.” The words came so hot and fast, and her grip on the collar of Joe's jacket tightened so quickly, that me and Kubo had to pry her off. In the space of a second, she'd turned into a wild animal, and was even scratching and spitting at him as we pulled her away.
“Jesus,” I muttered. “What's her problem?”
Kubo stood between her and Joe. “It's complicated.”
For his part, Joe started laughing, hands raised. “When it comes to Isabella, I just don't ask questions anymore.” He looked at her and bowed his head slightly. “Sorry, babe. I didn't mean nothing by it. You drink all the coffee you want, long as the enchantments keep coming.”
Slowly, Isabella calmed down, smoothing out the locks of bristling black hair that spilled from the edges of her hood. She took a deep breath, and then started twitching again, her fingers squirming at her sides as though she were thumping on an imaginary keyboard.
Note to self: Don't ever tell Isabella what she can or can't drink.
She'd always been weird, but that outburst had served to change my opinion of her drastically. Though talented, something clearly wasn't right about Isabella. She was a loose cannon, a bomb waiting to go off, and if we weren't careful, we were going to get caught up in the blast.
Kubo waved her in, asking her to initiate a new spell. “Invisibility. If you need a few more minutes to gather the energy, take your time. It's no rush, Isabella.” Pulling his jacket away, he hit a button on a small black square that was fastened to his belt. If I had to guess, that was the device the Veiled Order strike team had given him. If he failed to hit it once every half hour, they had express orders to storm the church.
Isabella mashed her hands together without hesitation, mumbling to herself. She was a little red in the face, the color not having escaped from her cheeks since her freak-out, and seemed to be having a harder time of spell casting than usual.
Joe walked up behind me and explained why. “Isabella can only cast so many spells a day. It takes a lot of focus, and if she works too hard, she can literally give herself an aneurysm. Tricks like hers can be very taxing. I think that's why she acts so weird. Probably pushed shit too far when she was still learning the ropes and fucked up her head.” Joe knocked on his forehead and clicked his tongue. “Hollow up there, I'm tellin' ya.”
“I see. And who's her mother?” I whispered. “The one who doesn't want her drinking coffee?”
Joe chuckled under his breath, shaking his head. His pompadour fell out of place, a few locks brushing against his forehead. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”
“OK,” said Isabella, “it's finished.”
I looked down at myself, then over to Joe.
Well, we didn't look invisible.
“Did it work?” I asked, motioning to Kubo.
He nodded. “She made us invisible to others, not to each other.”
Nifty.
That meant we were all ready to dive into the snake pit.
Before starting into the church, Kubo drew one last thing from his pocket, handing it over to me. “You'll be needing this.”
I accepted a small glass vial, filled with green liquid. “What is it?”
“Another gift from Mona. Take it now. It takes a little while to kick in.”
I eyed it suspiciously, giving the vial a shake and then wrenching off the rubber top. One whiff of the stuff was enough to make me retch; it smelled largely of moldy grass clippings and vinegar, with hints of dead fish. “Whoa, that's foul. No thanks, chief. Whatever it is, I'm sure I don't need it. You be sure to thank Mona on my behalf, though. Real sweet of her.” I prepared to pour it out, but Kubo caught my hand.
“Bottoms up, princess. This one isn't optional, since you're apparently unwilling to carry your gun. Either you guzzle it or you take it as a suppository. We don't have time to sit around and wait for you to make up your mind. It's a strength tincture.”
Gritting my teeth, I looked back down at the vial and felt my mouth water. That always meant one thing. I was about to puke.
And I hadn't even sipped it yet.
The very idea of drinking it made me want to barf.
The team was all ready to head into the church. They were just waiting on me to take my pungent new medicine. Holding my nose, I opened wide and poured the stuff straight down my throat.
And then I started coughing.
The stuff burned like hell, scalding my esophagus as though I'd guzzled literal fire. I struggled to breathe afterward, throwing the vial into the lawn and gasping for air. “O-oh... Oh God...”
Kubo wasn't paying attention. After I'd swallowed the stuff, he'd turned and started into the church, Isabella close behind him.
Joe snickered as I clutched at my throat and crept in after them. When I finally recovered enough to see straight, I followed, tears in my eyes.
I don't know what was in that, but it'd better do something impressive, else that old snake lady is going to be next on my list.
THIRTY-FIVE
I didn't know exactly what was in that tincture, but apparently Gadreel frigging loved it, because from the minute I set foot in that church and started looking out for witches, my heart started to pound like mad.
Gadreel. It felt weird, being able to name to the demon. For so long, he'd been something of a nebulous outsider, someone relegated to the margins of my personality and only coming to the fore when I was out of my depth. Now I knew his name, had some idea of his hobbies. Apparently he liked screwing human women and getting into fights.
Frankly, I'm surprised we weren't acquainted sooner.
My heart was going so hard I was nervous that everyone else could hear it. My muscles were tensing, and despite the relative coolness of the room, I'd broken into a sudden sweat. The fever was back. Gadreel knew it was his time to shine, his time to make an appearance. Surely, in the fight ahead, there'd be a whole lot more of Gadreel than Lucian participating. The strength tincture only seemed to be making things more intense. As if the demon's influence over me in the past wasn't intense enough. This was Gadreel on steroids. Never mind Kubo's claims; the thing had kicked in quickly. If it kicked in any more than this, my head was going to pop off my shoulders like the cap of a shaken two-liter.
> Kubo had his gun out, and was training it on each and every of the battered, dusty pews that we passed. It was a rather small church, with a tiny altar, three sets of wooden pews and little else. The rest of the fixtures had either been moved elsewhere or lifted by thieves since the building's official closure, and bits of garbage had been left in their places. The floors, cement, had probably been carpeted once, but now wore empty Coke bottles and crushed packs of empty cigarettes. Dead leaves, too, were aplenty, and as they skittered across the room in the draft, I couldn't help but shudder.
It was pretty clear that there was no one else in this room with us, but Kubo marched on in a slight crouch as if he were inching through a war zone. Far behind the altar, and to the left, was a door hanging slightly off of its hinges. To the right was an open doorway, leading to a hallway.
We were going to have to go down one or the other, but how the hell were we supposed to know which way was the right one?
Kubo, though, the marvelous bastard, had it figured out before I could even ask. “We're going to the right,” he said after a short pause. He'd bent down to touch the floor, and had apparently sensed movement in the hall that extended to the right of the altar. “The witches are underground, in the cellar. I can feel them. We need to go down that hall and find the cellar door.”
And so we went.
But not before Kubo stopped dead in his tracks.
He'd just walked past the last pew and had glimpsed something behind it that made him take aim with his gun.
I rushed up behind him, pushing Joe and Isabella out of the way, and found a number of blank-eyed, presumably cockroach-infested kids in rags sitting against the concrete.
Familiars.
Four of them.
Kubo stayed his hand, didn't fire upon them even though they were easy targets. They couldn't see us; Isabella had made us invisible and had dampened the sounds we made in order to allow us a discrete entry.
Raw Power: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Demon-Hearted Book 1) Page 19