Before stepping outside, I rolled up the bottom of my jeans and kicked off my sandals. Sometimes it was good to feel the earth under your feet. It kept you grounded. The grass was still covered in dew as last night’s frost melted. It was cold, but not cold enough to stop me from rolling my toes in the soft earth.
I said a little prayer, thanking God for helping me save Rain. Even if it wasn’t him, I knew I hadn’t done it on my own. While God and I might not have been on the best of terms, I often found myself talking to him as I searched for answers. Mostly, it was a one-sided conversation that involved a multitude of curses for shackling me to this lonely existence, but today it was all thanks.
“Thank you for whatever you did yesterday to save Rain. Thank you for protecting David, and for healing me. It's days like this I almost think we could be friends.” I sighed slipping on my sandals and heading towards the green house. “You do owe me a new demon trap, though. That last one was hard to come by, and now it’s destroyed.” I wasn’t holding my breath for the big guy to come through on that request, but it never hurt to ask.
The greenhouse was covered in the morning sunlight. The sun wouldn’t be poking its head out for too long; I could already see the dark clouds gathering on the horizon. That was one of the hardships you faced when you wanted to grow plants in Oregon, there wasn’t a lot of natural sunlight, but there sure was a hell of a lot of rain.
Some plants thrived in the moisture and low light conditions, but not all of them. I’d spent a bundle augmenting the greenhouse with artificial light, but plants naturally craved the sun, and today they were getting a nice late morning dose of the good stuff.
Stepping into the greenhouse was like walking into another world. The smell alone made you feel as if you went back in time. There was a freshness to the air, a pureness that you normally couldn’t find in the city. This was where I came to get away when the world became too much, and no, it didn’t have anything to do with the four plants tucked in the back corner. Those were strictly for medical use, I promise.
Here in my garden, you could find just about everything you would ever need for casting a spell, making a protective ward, or even just a few tomatoes for a salad. I’d hidden some of the rarer herbs amongst the garden variety stuff. It was enough to keep prying eyes off of the goods.
If some of the magically inclined knew what I was actually growing in here, they wouldn’t rest until they found a way to break my wards. Thankfully, I had the strongest wards in town, and all of the local knuckleheads knew better than to try and break in. At least they did after what happened to Berry Thompson.
Berry tried to break into the greenhouse while I was away for an exorcism. When I got home three days later, he was hanging in the air above the door. The poor bastard had almost been dead, if it hadn’t rained, he might have been. At least I hadn’t ended up with another body to get rid of.
Still, Berry and his story did more for protecting my property from other magicians than I did. Because of his foolishness, greed, and big ass mouth, no one wanted to get within a hundred feet of my greenhouse. Maybe I should send him a gift basket.
A few deep breaths was all it took for me to let some of the tension go. This place had that kind of effect on you if you stayed here long enough. After a bad day, I loved to come here and just talk to the plants. They never talked back, but maybe that was what I liked about it.
My favorite pair of pruning shears found their way into my hand, and I started moving through the rows, clipping what I thought I might need for today’s adventure. Thirty minutes later, I was ready to go. I gave the plants in the back corner one last look before turning back towards the door. The harvest was going to be plentiful this year. There wasn’t much else you could ask for.
Back inside the house, David had found his way back into the kitchen, and it smelled delightful. I topped off my coffee while waiting to see what kind of wonderful creation David had in store for me this morning. Maybe that is why he lasted longer than any of my other apprentices. It never hurt to boost your resume with a skill like cooking when it came to working for me. I could grow just about anything, but if you asked me to dice it up and put it in a pot, you were asking for disaster to strike.
Still riding the life-affirming high of the greenhouse, I nestled into the breakfast bar and sipped my coffee while looking over the news on my phone.
Three more disappearances yesterday and a murder suicide. It had been going on like this for weeks. We weren’t like Chicago; this was unusual for us. At least they had the Bears, all we had was the Seahawks up north and college ball. Thankfully, the Ducks and the Beavers normally put on a good show, or there wouldn’t be much to cheer for around here.
David slipped a ham and bacon omelet in front of me, and I couldn’t keep the grin back. It wasn’t often that we took meals together, but today he had also made an omelet for himself and was preparing to chow down. David didn’t even look up as he dug into his breakfast with gusto. Eventually, he noticed I wasn’t eating yet and looked up to see what was wrong.
“What?” His eyes sparkled with a challenge.
“Just wondered if you really wanted to eat that?” I said taking a bite of my own omelet. It was delicious. The man really could cook.
“You seem to be enjoying yours just fine.”
David was trying to figure out where I was going with this, and I was trying to find a way to get the other half of his omelet onto my plate. “I just thought it would be such a waste of good food if it ended up on your shoes later.”
“As if. Just because I’m queer doesn’t mean I can’t handle my shit, or that I have a fascination with shoes.”
I let out a little laugh. “Everyone thinks they can handle themselves until they find out they can’t. As for the shoes, I know how much those loafers cost, and there is no getting puke out of them.”
David glared at me, but scraped the rest of his food onto my plate before dumping his dish in the sink. “Fine, but you owe me dinner and none of that cheap shit. I want to go somewhere nice.”
My mouth was full of deliciousness when I answered. “You got it.” I washed the food down with a sip of my coffee. “Might as well get the car ready; I’ll be out in a minute.” David turned to go, but I could see he was pissed. I would have been too if I’d given up my omelet to the town glutton.
A Mezzoloth hunt wasn’t anything too terrifying. It was the smell that got most people. Well, it was the smell if you had someone trained with you. If you didn’t, then it was their claws that got you, and if you died, you didn’t even get to tell a cool story afterwards.
Dead apprentices tell no tales and all that.
I guess that wasn’t true. Strictly speaking, you couldn’t get the dead to shut the fuck up. There was a real fun duality there, but that was a discussion for another time.
It was my turn to dump my plate in the sink. I topped off my coffee again and moved in the direction of the lab. I wanted to give David’s work a once over before we left. I also needed to grab a few things.
The lab looked good. Outside of the huge broken windows and my missing devil’s trap, everything was back in order. David must have been up half the night doing this. I was impressed, but I hoped he still had the energy to get through the day.
Against the far wall was a safe. I kept a few trinkets in there I didn’t want anyone to have access to, even my most trusted apprentice. I quickly cracked the safe and pulled out a black box. I opened the box and carefully unwrapped the white silk that covered the item inside. I wasn’t clairvoyant. I couldn’t talk with the dead that way, but this item was powerful enough to give you visions that would have you begging for death.
The hand inside of the box belonged to a particularly loathsome individual named Tyler Moore.
Tyler had some unsavory appetites, and murder was just the tip of that proverbial iceberg. He liked to keep his victims alive for days, sometimes weeks. His victims were lucky if he just raped them. If they were unlucky, he also like
d to cut them. There had been rumors that sometimes he ate what he cut off while he was doing the deed, or that you didn’t need to be very alive for him to enjoy himself.
At the end, when the police had him cornered, he killed himself. They found thirty bodies under his home. Men, women, and children. It didn’t matter to Tyler Moore what you looked like or how old you were. As long as he could take you with no one noticing, you were the right victim.
That was the kind of evil that didn’t die when you passed from this life, and as horrible as his life was, in death he served a purpose for me.
I took a pair of disposable gloves, a piece of silk, and a glass jar out of my bag. Moving back to Tyler’s skeletal hand, I slipped on the gloves. I removed all three bones that made up his right pinky and wrapped them in the silk I had brought over before slipping them into the jar and closing it.
After stripping off the gloves, I cut my finger and placed a drop of blood on top of the jar activating the ward and sealing the evil inside. Tyler’s hand went back into the safe, and the gloves I had used to touch the horrid thing went into the fire.
This was my ace in the hole when it came to Balthazar. If he didn’t want to help, I’d break out this little gem and he would be putty in my hands. I tucked the jar into my bag, remembering the day I had gone to the morgue to secure the hand.
The morgue attendant had looked at me like I was crazy, one of those people that got off on serial killers. Like I ran some kind of website where you could buy shit they used to own. No amount of words could convince him of the truth, but ten thousand dollars had been enough to get him to look the other way while I cut the bastard’s hand off.
It didn’t matter who you talked to, almost everyone had student loans they needed to take care off—even morgue attendants.
David was sitting in the drive when I exited the house. I tossed my bag in the trunk and slipped into the back seat. “Let’s hope the weather moves in soon rather than later.”
“Why’s that, Boss?” David asked as he put the car into gear.
“Always seems to be less prying eyes when it rains.”
“And where are we going that we need to worry about prying eyes?” David said casting a glance in the rearview mirror.
“Memorial Gardens.”
David waited until our eyes met in the mirror. “Seriously?”
“It’s the only place where we can get what I need.”
David turned on news radio but not before I heard him mumble. “Thank God I didn’t finish that omelet.”
I let out a little chuckle and leaned back to get comfortable for the ride. It was going to be a long day, but I could sense it would be worth it. If anyone could tell me about what was going on, it would be Balthazar. That man knew things no human had a right to know.
9
Memorial Gardens was a two-century old cemetery on the edge of town surround by lush pine forest. There was a church on the front left corner of the three-mile property, but it was only used for funerals.
Based off the lack of cars in the parking lot, no one was laying Daddy Dearest to rest today. That was good for us, and even better for the people that weren’t here. Mezzoloth were nasty little creatures, and if one got by me, then it was better if there were no people around.
David pulled into the cemetery and started driving slowly down the winding path that led to the mausoleums. You didn’t often see the larger stone monstrosities anymore. More and more people were being cremated these days, not interned with generations of their family all in the same place. Century, Oregon was unique like that. All the Starbucks and McDonalds of the big city, and yet five minutes out of town and it was like you stepped into the Stone Age.
The car came to a slow stop as we reached the end of the drivable path. We’d have to head the rest of the way on foot. Of course, that is when the heavens decided to open up for the first time today. God must have a truly wicked sense of humor. Here I was, risking my life to find out what the demons were up to, and I couldn’t catch a break with the weather.
That was fine. The rain suited my mood, and it would keep most of the people out of the cemetery. I was still feeling a little salty about how I sent Ka’ua away. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t be together, but we could have at least been friends. Shit, I would have settled for acquaintances that just shot the shit twice a year when they happened to bump into each other at the market.
Anything was better than the nothing we would have now.
Instead of trusting my feelings, I’d sent her packing. It wasn’t as if I had a lot of friends or people waiting in line to join that incredibly small group. Zed tolerated me because I helped his business, David was just trying to learn from me, and Benny only called when he had a problem the Catholic Church couldn’t deal with. Bless his little Christian soul.
None of that mattered now. The rain doused me as soon as I stepped out of the car. The droplets were cold as they ran down the back of my neck. I guess it was better than the warm rain I had grown used to in the desert. That was the thing in Arizona, everything was hot, even the rain.
Here everything was just wet. Wet I could deal with. Buy a high-end jacket and some nice boots and the weather wasn’t an issue. You could never cool off in one hundred and twenty degrees; just wasn’t possible.
That’s part of the reason I made the move north. That and this place had an aura about it that pulled me in. I could have settled anywhere, but Century just felt right. It was almost as if was made for me.
Century wasn’t just a city, it was my fucking city.
I loved it here, and I’d dip a toe into hell to save it, even if that meant I had to save the city from itself. Plus, I had a good thing going here. Benny kept the cops off my back, and whenever I needed to run a hustle I’d just catch a flight to Vegas. Never shit in your own backyard. Especially when one of your only friends is a cop that tends to throw himself in front of trouble for you.
David cast a look over the car at me as he climbed out. This was the first time I was bringing him on a hunt, and it almost felt like he was double checking that it was ok for him to come still. I gave him a curt nod, letting him know to follow as I started walking into the tree lined path. David was nervous, and probably a little jumpy. That was good, a little bit of fear would keep you sharp, keep you alive.
He was better off than I was the first time I had come here. I’d been twenty at the time and pretty confident with myself and my abilities. That all changed when one little Mezzoloth turned into four.
I’d been able to get three of them stunned, but the fourth one almost eviscerated me. The only thing that kept me alive was my personal warding. By the time the foul little beastie tried to attack me again, it was too late. I’d broken its protections and stomped it into slimy goo. Still, I’d never forgotten that lesson on overconfidence, at least not when it came to facing down minions of the dark. It seemed I still had a thing or two to learn about exorcising demons.
We were deep enough into the cemetery now that the walking trail had started to grow weeds and the trees’ foliage had grown dense enough that it made it look as if we were walking at night. The ground was relatively dry under the canopy; enough so that my boots might have the chance to dry out a little before we had to trudge back to the car.
Walking up to one of the massive mausoleums, I knelt down and examined the lock on the gate. It was rusted and looked as if it hadn’t been used in years. In other words, it was exactly what we needed.
Reaching out, I took the lock in my hand and griped it tightly. I gave it a few good yanks, but it wasn’t rusty enough to break. Using my magic would alert the Mezzoloth that we were coming, but I had never learned how to pick a lock without my magic, so those were the breaks.
Focusing my will on the inside of the lock, I commanded my magic. “Liquescimus!” Molten metal spilled from the keyhole, and the lock opened in my hands. Quickly pulling the lock from the gate, I stepped forward to the door of the mausoleum.
T
his door was also locked, but required a much simpler solution. I took the crowbar from my bag and then handed the bag to David. “Keep watch and whatever you do, don’t lose the bag.”
I turned around only to hear David speaking, the nerves he was feeling evident in his voice.
“Are you sure we should be doing this, Boss?”
Looking at him again, I could see that he was damn near shaking. Maybe I hadn’t instilled in him the right amount of confidence in his abilities. He had the skill to do this without breaking a sweat. There was no reason to be worried.
I turned away from the door and put a hand on his shoulder. “You can go back to the car if you want, but I know you can do this.”
If he couldn’t, David was just wasting his time with me. This was the job.
A little bit of color crept back into David’s cheeks. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if one of the little buggers would just give themselves up for our needs?” I said as I slipped the crowbar in the gap between the door and the cement wall again.
The iron door creaked as I put some real weight into the crowbar. Rocking my entire body back and forth didn’t seem to be doing the trick, so I put one leg up on the wall and pulled with everything that I had. The door gave almost instantly, and I landed on my ass, crowbar clattering to the ground. Well, if they didn’t know we were coming before, they sure as hell did now.
The interior of the mausoleum was pitch-black. I motioned behind me for David to hand me my bag. I tossed the crowbar back in and pulled out a small talisman shaped like the sun and tossed it in the air.
“Volant!” The little talisman burst to life and light filled the entryway.
A few dark shapes scurried off into the shadows. Damn, they were faster than I remembered. Thankfully, I only needed one.
Stepping into the space, I motioned for David to follow me. “Are you ready to bag your first Mezzoloth?”
Possessed (Bozley Green Chronicles Book 1) Page 8