I did as he asked, stepping back and relaxing my muscles while he pressed against it. He nodded. “It’s about right. Take a break and I’ll hold it until I’ll need to switch with Ori.”
I wondered about that for a moment, until I realized she was a little shorter than me and couldn’t reach the top of the opening easily. With the day warmed than I’d expected, I found myself drenched in sweat from that little bit of exertion. I turned my gaze to Gavin, spotting the moisture spots on the back of his light blue cotton shirt. On the other hand, Orielle looked cool as a cucumber except for a couple of moist wisps of hair clinging to her forehead.
I grabbed a water, drank a few gulps, and stretched my back and legs. Now that we were this close, my nerves were tingling with anxiety and I just wanted to get the job done.
Ten minutes later, Gavin called me back over and I resumed bracing the wall while he relieved Orielle and began the final phase of chipping the edges loose. The other woman took time for a quick break and stretch, then joined me in holding the wall up.
Nodding his approval, Gavin started working his way across the top. “What about the bottom seal?” I asked, suddenly realizing we’d done nothing to clear that edge.
“There isn’t one,” Gavin answered as he hit a piece that was the tipping point. The door weight grew dramatically heavier and both of us girls shifted stances to throwing our body weight against it in an attempting to slow the sudden drop. A section of the upper door broke where Gavin hadn’t been able to complete the chipping and tumbled down.
I grimaced, shouting an expletive as it bounced against my head, continued down to my shoulder, and shattered before it smashed to the ground. By then, Gavin had added his strength to the support and we managed to lower it the rest of the way
Once it was down, I caught my breath, brushed at the dirt in my hair and got a look at the back side of the door. It was crawling with life.
Bugs! Bugs everywhere and all kinds of creatures, most a sickly white from being in the dark cave. I jumped back, not sure whether they were harmless or not. But they were bugs! I might have shrieked.
Of course, they fled as soon as the door hit and they were exposed to light, but it didn’t matter. The sight of the retreating bugs was enough to leave me jittery, hairs on my arms twitching, and certain something was crawling on me. Worse, we were going into that cave with more of the creepy crawlies in it. I hated bugs.
We had a good look at the mud slab now and only a few cracks marred its surface. From this side, I could see the sticks, tied together with twine, that had formed the support for it. Pretty crafty on Gavin’s part.
Gavin lit a portable torch, one with an oil soaking the wick, walked a few feet in, and stuck it into the ground inside the cave. He came back and called a fifteen-minute break to give the “critters in the cave time to scurry away.”
“Why didn’t you use a flashlight?” I asked.
He sat on the ground, stretching his legs out, and leaned back against the rock.
“Smoke and smell will drive out anything else that might detect it.”
SMALLER THAN I EXPECTED, the cave was only about six feet deep, barely six feet high—Gavin had to bend slightly to stand in it—and four feet wide, just about the same dimensions as the opening. I passed my flashlight around the edges, realizing it had been carved into the bluff and was either not a natural cave or had been enlarged.
Most of the residents had departed, slipping into their holes in the stone or hiding behind the assortment of crumbled stones and dirt clots in it. Only a few spiders in webs in the corner remained and they had retreated to the edges of their webs for the most part. One spider, a fairly large one, held its ground in the middle of its web and seemed to glare at us. I’d have to keep my eye on that one.
In the center of the back, a little below eye level, a half-round opening had been carved out that went about six inches on all sides, the top being curved while the bottom was reasonably flat.
“Is that bronze or copper?” I asked as I gazed at the lining that looked like bronze tiles set into a plaster of mud. Had they made bronze when this was set here?
“Sure is,” Gavin answered. “Pretty nice tile work at that. You don’t often see it cast that way, but someone knew what he was doing. I think they hoped to seal this in so no one could access it. A bronze plate had been set across the front as well with the ribs of ivory behind it, then it was sealed over.”
Something about the antiquity of the little cave, the bronze, and what we were doing here filled me with a sense of timelessness. We were still connected in this peculiar way, our task now identical to the one Chun performed many centuries earlier. I prayed we would be as successful.
Gavin lowered his pack, then knelt to pull out the ivory box and the carved pieces of ivory to place across the front of the opening. Instead of a copper tile, he’d brought a shiny silver-colored one.”
“You’re using steel,” I accused.
“I am.”
“Will it make a difference?”
“It shouldn’t,” Orielle answered for him. “If anything, it is stronger than the bronze and we’re sealing it with instant concrete.”
“Oh, I guess that works,” I said feeling a tad stupid. Maybe the materials used didn’t have any significance.
Bringing out the incense and the tiny plate, Gavin placed the ivory box in the recessed opening, pulled the key piece to open the lid, and placed the plate inside it. He took a deep breath and gazed at Orielle and me. “Are we ready to do this?”
Orielle looked at the set-up, then stepped back. “I don’t have a part to do here and there is no room anyway, so I will wait outside keeping watch. We do not know how or if Belphegor will appear here or if his spirit enters directly.”
We knew too little about this whole plan. A few lines in an old scroll written by someone who wasn’t there, but had heard about it? It was like a game children play where one whispers to another and the whole story changes after the fourth or fifth kid tells another.
I turned to the alcove and pressed my hand against the bronze lining, preparing myself to begin chanting. As soon as my fingers made contact, I shuddered at the sensation of pure evil and a demon’s face flashed in my mind. I cried out and jerked backward again. The image burned in my mind, a skull-like face with barely any flesh, or something leathery, covering it, deep eye sockets with gleaming red eyes peering out. Ridgebones rose in an inverted V above each eye and the skull was devoid of any hair. Was this Belphegor’s image? I swallowed hard, almost choking, and I bent over coughing.
“Gillian! What is it?”
I barely heard Gavin’s voice as my head seemed to buzz with hornets. Still coughing, I shook it a few times, finally feeling it clear as the image faded away. “This whole place reeks of evil,” I choked out. “I saw a devil’s image, frightening and so foul.”
I turned and stepped out into the open air needing to be away from the closed-in feeling I got in that cave.
Gavin followed a few moments later and grabbed my shoulders spinning me toward him. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, still breathing in the fresh air as fast as I could. “It’s a wicked place. Could all that...evil have leaked...through the box?” I asked between gasps.
His fingers kneaded at my shoulders as he stared at me. “Maybe. Did you say a protection spell?”
I nodded.
“Okay. Maybe we need something stronger.”
He let go of me and went back into the cave, then came back with a vial of an amber liquid. Opening it, he put some on his right middle finger—his bird finger, no less—then pressed it against the center of my forehead and murmured some totally unintelligible words. He repeated this three more times, pressing his finger to each cheek, then to the center of my throat.
“That should do it. I don’t know if it will stop the vision, but it won’t harm you.” He started to put the vial away.
“What about you?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you use it also?”
>
“Already have.” His smile seemed a little too smug to my liking. So I was an afterthought?
Pulling my wits together, I followed him back into the cave and gave the alcove a little more space, not willing to touch it again. This had better work without my direct contact. A determined grim line set on my mouth, I prepared to begin and nodded at Gavin.
He set the incense burning and flicked his fingers at me in what I presumed to be a signal to start.
Closing my eyes, I called the chant to my mind and began to repeat in the same sing-song that I’d heard in my vision. I ran through it once, then started again...and again...and again. After the fourth time, Gavin told me to stop.
“Something isn’t right,” he said as he pinched the incense off. “Either the chant is off or the demon isn’t interested in you.”
“After I insulted him?” I said in my defense. “You’d think that would be enough to get him here.”
He jerked his head toward the entrance and we went outside in the starting-to-grow-darker daylight. We may be in a warmer climate and closer to the equator, but the days were still on the shorter side. If we didn’t get this done soon, we wouldn’t have time before it grew dark. I didn’t savor the idea of not finishing this today or tromping back through the forest in the dark. It had to get done now.
Tension mounted as we sat and talked about what hadn’t worked and why. It came down to either the incense was wrong, burned at the wrong time, or the chanted spell was wrong.
“There’s another option,” I said slowly as a thought drifted into my mind. “Maybe I don’t have the magic to do it. If just saying the words isn’t enough, it may take someone who actually has magic to make it work.” I stared pointedly at Gavin.
We were silent for a few moments before Gavin sighed heavily. Climbing to his feet, he went back into the cave and returned with the ivory box. Sitting on the edge of my rock, he held it out to me.
I pulled my hands back, sliding a little further over from him. “I don’t want to touch that.”
“Just read it one more time. Try to get the same vision scene again in case we missed something. Concentrate on the chant and repeat the words as Chun says them. See if the vision will replay another time after that if you can control it.”
“It’s not like I can request these,” I retorted in my snarky tone at his presumption.
“You can try.” He sounded exasperated with me.
He was tired. I was tired, and I imagined Orielle was also.
Biting my lower lip, I took the box and sat on the ground, crossing my legs and setting the cursed object onto my lap. I closed my eyes as I heard Gavin click on the recorder. Concentrating, I reached out to the box again with thoughts of the ceremony in my mind. I hadn’t a clue how to ask for a specific vision. I felt lucky when I got anything from an object.
Gradually, an image formed, a clear day in a green countryside. I could see long grasses waving in a breeze and bushy trees in the background. At an outdoor table, a man’s hands moved in front of my vision as his fingers worked deftly to fit a piece of carved ivory in the almost pure white box composed of several similar pieces.
Preparation, a part of my mind registered, before the capture of the demon. The man, I assumed it was Chun, spoke to someone else, and as he turned his head I saw another Asian man pull up a stool and sit. The new arrival listened intently, dark brown eyes rapt, as Chun spoke. Of course, I couldn’t understand the language. Even if I had, they spoke so quickly I couldn’t have followed.
From my perspective through Chun’s eyes, I saw he waved his fingers at the other man as if conducting an orchestra as he spoke slowly in the rhythm of the spell chant. The other man repeated the words and I spoke them at the same time, trying for the same inflections. They didn’t sound like the same language the two men had been speaking, so the new man was also learning, or so it seemed to me.
The chant had six phrases, each similar but different in subtle ways and slight word changes, something I hadn’t picked up on before. Then it changed with two completely new lines repeated three times.
Hoping they would run through it one more time, I was elated when Chun did exactly that, speaking them slower than he had during the ceremony, but going through the entire chant without stopping.
Please show me the capture ceremony, I begged in the back of my mind, but the vision faded and nothing else came.
I opened my eyes to see Gavin watching me closely.
“It wouldn’t repeat the previous vision. Only one a customer, I guess,” I told him. “But I did get an earlier vision and if you recorded it, we can hear the spell, word by word, almost.”
He stared at me a moment longer. “Hope it’s enough.” He took the box from me and turned on the recording.
I heard the words again, going through them in my mind and seeing where I’d missed some things before. I didn’t know if the speed was an issue, but I could say them more clearly at a slower pace.
After a few more times through it, I had them memorized and the rhythm matched even though I said them slightly slower than I recalled the first recording being.
“You ready to try again?” Gavin asked.
“Yes, I guess. I’m still not sure the chanter doesn’t need to have more juju than I have.” It seemed pretty clear to me that Chun must have been a magic manipulator and I, sure as heck, wasn’t.
Gavin snorted. “What makes you think you don’t have any? Protection prayers are a form of spells; therefore, you use magic to make them work. What do you think your light blast is? Magic, baby, magic.” He grinned.
“Okay, point taken,” I admitted with a frown. I hadn’t really considered those details. I just knew I didn’t have any idea how it worked.
But he took me seriously. As he put the box back in place and relit the incense, I started the chant again. I blinked in surprise as I heard his low voice along with mine as I ran through the first phrase. I raised a questioning eyebrow and he shrugged, his eyes dropping to a piece of paper with his crib notes he’d secreted in his hand.
As I reached the third phrase of the first set, I felt movement in the cave, something like a breeze, but not as pleasant. A spirit entering? Had we done it this time? Abruptly, a pacura yiaiwa materialized in front of us, no room hardly to even jump back. I screamed and brought my hand up in a blast move and let it flow out as a white light burst into the creature reaching for us.
It screeched, wobbling back, and I turned to run outside the cave, reaching for Gavin, just in time to see him fold to the ground as his knees gave out. I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him, terrified I couldn’t get out before the yiaiwa recovered.
You cannot run, little bird. The voice in my mind was the one I’d heard before.
“Belphegor,” I cried out hoarsely. “Are you here?”
I am indeed. You must stay.
I whirled around and began the chant again, yelling it at the top of my lungs even as I blasted the yiaiwa with another bolt that I focused at its head, aiming for what passed as eyes. I hit the last two phrases and there was a flash of light, followed by a thunderous boom.
In a split second, I was flying through the cave exit and the whole thing was collapsing around me. Dirt falling, rocks flying, bugs scrambling away! I couldn’t see anything clearly, but then I hit the ground hard, stunned, and winded. Vaguely, I heard Orielle screaming, but that was the last I heard as everything went black.
TWENTY-NINE
A buzzing filled my skull, throbbing along with my heartbeat. Dazed. I lifted my hand to touch my cat. “Nygard?” I croaked as my fingers fell on a hard, uneven surface instead of soft fur. Blearily, I opened my eyes to view an evening sky with the glow of a red and golden sunset. What the heck?
Then I heard a woman screaming nearby. I couldn’t make it out what she yelled at first until, in a flash, everything crashed back in on me. The yiaiwa, the voice in my head, the blast followed by an explosion of some sort. I’d tried to reach Gavin before I’d been bl
own into the air.
Slowly, I moved my arms and legs to make sure they worked, then I pushed myself up on my elbow and looked down. My tee shirt was covered with dust and holes were ripped in my jeans. I squinted at the blood oozing just below my right knee, but it looked like it was clotting. My head throbbed and I lifted my hand to the back of my head, feeling wet there. I pulled my hand back and studied the red liquid on it gradually concluding it was blood. My blood.
As I shifted toward Orielle yelling Gavin’s name, I saw her pulling at his arm where he was half-buried under dirt and rocks at the entrance to the cave. He wasn’t moving...
Staggering to my feet, I stumbled in an unsteady gait to help her. “Gavin!” His name came out as a croaking sound.
Orielle turned her head back toward me. “Help,” she yelled, urging me on toward her.
I got there, saw that Gavin was out completely, and bent to help pull him. “We need to get more dirt off,” I mumbled and began using my hands to shovel the dirt and debris away from his hips and legs so we could move him.
Orielle jumped up and ran for her pack, pulling out a small hand shovel not much bigger than a garden trowel, but it was more than I had. I shoveled with my hands the best I could, using my usually well-manicured nails to dig in and pull the debris aside.
I paused to press a finger against his throat, holding my breath until I felt a pulse, but it seemed slow. Frantic, I resumed digging. Between us, we managed to get enough off, so we could pull him free of the cave-in.
I laid a hand against his face, feeling cold on his skin and I knew that the shade or its master had blasted him. He was like ice. “We need to get help,” I said as I limped over to grab my shirt.
Orielle nodded and pulled out her cell phone, searching for a signal. “I have to go down the trail a bit,” she told me.
“Go. Hurry!”
I stayed with Gavin, checking for other injuries. Cuts, bruises starting to darken, and a possible broken arm from the explosion, but the real worry was a probable concussion and the effect of that freezing blast. Ironic that a creature from Hell would have a cold blast as a power.
A Song of Forgiveness Page 28