The Sword of Michael - eARC

by Marcus Wynne

  “She did not choose.”

  “Actually, she did, shaman. When she what was coming for you. Gave herself up. And she’s a tough one. Seriously tough. Or she was. You should see her in the little antechamber we have just for her. We’re all lining up for a taste of Jolene, Jolene, Jolene. Want to come watch? You know where to find us. But in the mean time, oh, did I say that? It’s going to get *really* mean, shaman. From here on out…”

  “What do you want?” I said.

  It laughed. “Oh, now you want to bargain, Marius? Let me guess. You for her? How quaint. How romantic. How utterly fucking silly. Seriously. Where’s the fun in that?”

  “It’s always been me you want,” I said.

  “Oh, but not quite yet,” it said. “Her body is so sweet and strong. Supple. Tastyyyyy.…”

  “SHUT UP!” I screamed.

  “Take me,” Dillon said.

  It turned and regarded him, her head tilted to one side. “Oh, Dillon, do be careful about what you say. And what you wish for. You are very tasty, oh so tasty, the pure white knight, our little knight errant…”

  Dillon stepped forward. “Take me. Now. I…”

  “Dillon, no!” I took his arm. “That’s what it wants to do, to turn us all around. That’s not Jolene. It’s just her body. The flesh. We have to find her another way, I can’t force her…”

  “You can make her!” Dillon shouted. “You can drive it out, make it go away! That’s what she wants! She didn’t give herself to that thing!”

  “It wants the contest, Dillon,” I said, as gently as I could. “It wants me to use power over, to force my way in…that’s the point. It wants you confused and hurt, it wants me enraged and slashing my way in…because it wins when we do that. So we can’t do it that way…”

  “How self-justifying, Marius,” it said matter-of-factly. “Actually, Dillon, it’s because he’s a coward. He always has been. He’s afraid. That’s why he has you, right? You’re the warrior, always have been. Always will be. He’s nothing without you. Never has been. He needs you, you don’t need him. Do you? Of course not. I…”

  “Shut up,” Dillon said.

  “Oh, baby,” it whispered. “I so won’t shut up. And soon…you’ll beg me not to shut up. So I think I’m dolled up enough, don’t you think, boys?”

  She turned on her heels, smacked the ass she pointed at us. “I think I’ll go out and let some sleazy dirt bag fuck me in the ass. You two can come along…or you can come find me later. If you can.”

  She turned and brushed past us as though we weren’t there. “Oh, and boys…you might *not* want to find me…or her body…if you know what I mean. Later.…”

  BOOM!

  The whole house shook.

  I heard the back door slam shut.

  Silence.

  And the sick slick oily feeling of the Dark.

  “Marius…” Dillon said.

  From outside, a bellow tinged in German, “Marius!”

  It was time to go. We were going to have to go to fetch Jolene’s spirit…and find her body before the demon damaged it beyond repair.

  “Marius?” Dillon said. His voice was heavy and broken. “I…I don’t think I can do this.”

  “It’s not her,” I said. My own voice sounded foreign in my ears. “It’s the demon. It will say whatever it knows will hurt or distract you. That’s what they do.”

  “Marius, drive it out of her!”

  I had to pause and gather myself. Turn and look at him. “Look at me, Dillon.”

  He did.

  “Do you think I don’t want to?”

  “You can! Do it! I’ve seen you…”

  “That’s what it wants,” I said. “That’s why it came for her, that’s why it says what it says.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll explain. Later.”

  “Now!”

  His anger was up, driven by shame and guilt. Great tools for the undoing of a good man—which was why the demon chose that. Of course he would have felt attracted to Jolene—any man with a pulse was. And of course he would have felt guilty about it. And of course at some level, with his unspoken loneliness and need for a woman like Jolene, he had wondered…

  That was the point of entry. That’s how it got to him.

  We all have those. It’s part and parcel of being human. That’s why depossessionists—those that live through the Tests without going insane or otherwise broken—learn to be and stay humble. It’s not us—we’re flawed, but that which moves through us is not. That which moves through us is the Light of the Creator and that is perfect. Our job, to borrow the phrase from the Lakota, is to be the “hollow bone”; to be a conduit and to do the best we can to move our crap out of the way so as not to hinder the passage of the Light. It’s a daily process, and one that can never be taken for granted.

  “They’ve mounted a full scale attack on me,” I said. “On every level. Physical, mental, spiritual, Middle World, Other Realms. That’s why they came after all of you. You’re my family: Jolene, Sabrina…you.”

  “I get that,” Dillon said. “But I’ve seen what you can do, Marius. You can drive it out. You can make it go away.”

  “They want me to exert Power Over, Dillon. They want me to use force.”

  “You always do that!”

  “Only with permission. The permission of the possessed, or the family member closest who can give that permission.”

  “Oh, bullshit, Marius! It’s Jolene! You can do that!”

  “I have to journey. If she did…”

  I couldn’t say the words. Choked back what was coming up in me.

  “You think she gave permission to the demon? She…why…WHY?”

  “I don’t know. I have to journey and find out.”

  “You can’t wait!”

  “I have to.”

  Power Over. Force. If shamanism is about alliance with spirits and powers, all of them facets of the Great Power of the Creator, the One, then how power is used, or how one is used by power, is the moral fulcrum that a practitioner constantly balances on. The definition of a sorcerer, or sorcery, is to use power to work one’s will, especially against the will of another; ethical practice, practice in alignment with the Will of the Creator and the Divine Plan, is to act as a healing conduit only with explicit permission of the person requesting the healing.

  Doesn’t mean the ability, power and techniques to do sorcery don’t exist within the ethical practitioner; it means that discrimination and right choice are exercised. The techniques and tools, practices and procedures, the METT of shamanic practice—they are essentially without ethos. How they are utilized and the choice exercised by the practitioner defines the ethos.

  Did I have the ability and the tools to force the possession demon out of Jolene’s body?

  Yes.

  So why not?

  A battle like that, inside of a body where permission may (or may not) have been given to the possessing entity, can destroy or kill the body. The spirit of the possessed, if driven out of the flesh, may be wandering in the Other Realms…or lost or consumed in some way. And more to the point, in this instance, having me exert force and having my emotional energy attached to the actions, would give the Dark Forces the big entry into my otherwise heavily shielded life; they’d be able to occupy the fulcrum, stand astride and unbalance me.

  Tip me into the Abyss.

  Which seems like exactly what they had showed up to do.

  We left.

  Outside, Otto scanned the sky and the street. Sabrina stood close beside him. They turned to us. Saw what was written on our face.

  “Oh, Mother Earth and Father Sky,” Sabrina said.

  Otto just nodded once, sharply. “So what now, Marius?”

  I looked up at the stars. The night sky.

  “God only knows, Otto. I don’t.”

  “Where is she?” Otto said.

  “They have her,” I said.

  “Who?” Otto said.

 
“The same ones we were up against.”

  Otto pursed his lips. “Ah.”

  “They took her?” Sabrina said. “Do you know…”

  “She’s possessed, Sabrina,” I said. “Her body went out the back door. It said…”

  “It said she gave herself to them,” Dillon said. “It said she did it for Marius. For us.”

  “No,” Sabrina said. “She cannot be taken and she would not give herself that way.”

  “It’s a possession,” I said. “She’s completely overshadowed.”

  “Which way did she go? Where is she?” Otto said.

  “It said it was going to take her somewhere, and…ah, I can’t say it,” Dillon said. He stepped aside and retched, a dry heave. His eyes ran.

  “Oh, no…oh, no,” Sabrina said.

  Otto studied my face. “This is how they will get to you.”

  “They already have,” I said. “They already have.”

  Chapter 22

  We flew down the streets in Otto’s car. Sabrina and Dillon huddled like beaten children in the back seat. Otto steered deftly, his lips drawn thin, the long scar on his cheek gleaming pale. I closed my eyes and called…

  …yes, Marius. This is how they have gotten to you, Tigre whispered.

  First In Front floated cross-legged, right outside the passenger window as we sped through the city streets. How you choose, he said. Be careful how you choose. Everything hinges on you.

  Burt was again, uncharacteristically silent. He flew right in front of the car, vectoring in on the energy trace left by Jolene…

  “Turn left at the next light, go down two blocks, then right,” I said.

  Otto nodded.

  “Where?” Dillon said.

  “Sharkey’s,” I said.

  Dillon blew out a long breath. “Oh, that’s just fucking great.”

  Sharkey’s was a notorious blue-collar bar that hosted at least one motorcycle club and a number of hangers-on, great blues and rock bands that played behind a classic wire mesh fence to prevent beer bottles and the stray bullet from hitting them. It was the last place I would want to go, and Jolene—my Jolene—knew it only from reputation and the occasional tale told…by Sabrina.

  “I can’t handle this right now,” Sabrina said. Silent for a moment. Then a loud laugh from her. “But I guess I will, right? Right? At least it’s someplace I know.”

  Dillon shook his head. “Why do you go there, Sabrina?”

  “Because it’s simple and uncomplicated. I don’t have to be a practitioner, I can just go in for a bump and a beer, take a guy home. Simple. Uncomplicated.”

  “There is nothing uncomplicated about you,” Otto observed. “It is not casual, casual sex. Especially for those such as you.”

  Sabrina stared out the side window and was silent.

  * * *

  Sharkey’s: a sprawling parking lot, part dirt from an vacant lot with the fence torn down, part cracked asphalt sprouting greenery in the cracks. One story, brick fronted, metal front door with two huge black men perched on stools. Otto pulled right up in front.

  “Is this wise?” I said. The car brought plenty of attention. So did Otto. As did Sabrina. Dillon and I were just side-acts to this circus.

  Otto got out and we followed in his wake. He held up a handful of bills—hundreds by the quick look I got—and whispered something to the two bouncers.

  They took the bills, nodded, waved us past.

  First barrier.

  They didn’t even pat us down, though one of them gave Sabrina a big leer as she passed him.

  More Sharkey’s: heavy wooden tables, too heavy to pick up and fling, ringed by battered chairs, a low ceiling with slow-moving fans, packed with burly men in feed caps and jeans, women bursting out of halter tops and tight jeans, lots of beer and shots in hand, the elevated stage protected by metal mesh, jukebox blaring ’80s heavy metal rock, cocktail waitresses ducking in and out of the crowd, a group of bikers in cut off denim jackets with MC patches.

  The jukebox switched tunes. “Dirrty,” by Christina Aguilera and Redman. Rocking hard stripper music. Good thing they…

  A woman climbed up on a table, accompanied by loud cheers.

  Jolene.

  “Oh, fuck,” Dillon said.

  She began to beat out the song, pumping the beat with her hips, and all the way across the bar it looked out of her eyes, leered and waved at us. Surrounded by a growing band of men, she began to roll the silk camisole up over her flat, toned belly, undulating to the increasingly frenetic crowd of men around her…

  Sabrina ignored the men who waved to her in the room. “Marius, this will be a gang bang in a few minutes. We need to get her out of here.”

  “This is not a good place for a fighting solution,” Otto said.

  First In Front, twisting through the crowd, invisible to the eye but the patrons moving out of his way as though they sensed his coming…whispering in Sabrina’s ear…

  Only maybe a minute into a three minute song, and already the men were chanting “Take it off, take it off, take it off!”

  Sabrina grinned, grabbed Dillon by the hand and said, “Throw me up there.”

  “What?” he said.

  She pointed at the table next to the one where Jolene’s body writhed. “Toss me up there. But don’t tell the elf, right?”

  He looked at her, puzzled, shrugged and handed her up onto the table. Sabrina threw back her hair and screamed, “Yeeeehawwww!”

  And broke into her own beat with the song.

  And took it up a notch. She beat Jolene’s body to the punch by stripping off her sweat top and shaking her large breasts to the riff by Redman.

  And the crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses’s staff.

  Or something like that.

  Not that Jolene (Jolene’s body, I reminded myself) wasn’t a show stopper, but Sabrina was a known quantity in this bar, and she was getting naked and wilder faster than Jolene’s demon, which was still getting a handle on her body…

  And Sabrina was surrounded near instantly by the crowd howling for her as she began to work the waistband of her sweatpants around and down…and she inclined her head sharply at Jolene’s body, suddenly abandoned…

  Dillon’s jaw dropped. I had to shove him out of the way. “Help me get her, Dillon!”

  Otto watched Sabrina as he might have studied Mussolini’s mountain.

  We elbowed a few of Jolene’s faithful out of the way, and the demon glared down at us.

  “You can’t compel…” it began.

  Dillon reached out and grabbed her ankle, tugged hard. It landed hard on her ass. “Oh, let me help you!” Dillon said. “Too much to drink?”

  “You can’t force…” it began.

  “He’s not,” Dillon said. “I am.”

  He brought his hand around in a short sharp arc and the open hand caught her right on the tip of her jaw, snapped her head around and her eyes rolled up in her head as she slumped, unconscious, and Dillon caught her, slung her over his shoulder and turned, so fast that the other men were still trying to figure out what just happened, and he said, “Let’s do like the cowboys and Indians and get the hell out of Dodge.”

  We made for the door, I was on point, and I shouted to Otto, “We’ll be back for…”

  He held up one shovellike hand to silence me. Reached under his coat and pulled out his MP5K-SD. The crowd clustering tighter around Sabrina didn’t even notice. He did something to the muzzle and the short suppressor came off and went into his pocket. He looked up, then fired a burst full auto into the ceiling.

  That, the crowd *did* notice.

  We were at the door and stepped aside just as the bouncers came running in, leaving the door free and unguarded. Jolene’s body was limp between us. I turned and looked back.

  The crowd parted before Otto, who walked up to the table and offered Sabrina his hand.

  “Come, my love. Your chariot awaits,” he said.

  Sabrina jumped down, breasts jigglin
g. Otto swept his greatcoat off and draped it over her shoulders, his MP5K ready in one hand. Then he offered his free arm, and Sabrina tucked her hands into the crook of his arm and he swept through the frozen and silent room to meet us at the door.

  “We shall go, yes?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “We shall go. Let’s do like the shepherds and get the flock out of here.”

  Chapter 23

  “Is it usual for her to be out this long?” I asked Dillon. He had way more experience than I did in the art and science of knocking people unconscious, but Jolene’s body and the inhabiting demon hadn’t stirred once during the drive from Sharkey’s to my house. We’d laid Jolene’s body out on my table, bounded it with sacred sea salt and amethyst crystals, topped at the top of the table with a crucifix and at the foot with a figure of Mother Mary, a sheet emblazoned with the crest of the Great Mother of the Wiccans laid across her.

  “I don’t know,” Dillon said. “Most people, they wake up in a few minutes. Some drunks, they stay out. Only if there’s a concussion.…”

  “Did you give her a concussion?”

  “I don’t know, Marius, I don’t think so, but someone as fine boned as she is…”

  I fought the anger inside me, another layer of the seething mass inside I tried to settle. Another layer to the onion, another tangent in the multifaceted attack the Dark Forces had orchestrated.

  And I still didn’t have the name of the demon behind all this.

  But I did have a name.

  Wilhelm Eichmann.

  A not-so-good German name.

  We stood in my healing room, loosely ringing the table, not yet a Circle, but soon. Sabrina was relaxed, happy almost, for the first time since we’d fetched her back. I guess stripping in her favorite bar and being escorted out at gunpoint by a badass long-dead German commando suited her. Dillon, though, was another story. He’d slapped Jolene (or to be more precise, her body) into unconsciousness, watched the other woman in his life stripping in front of a bar full of bikers be rescued by his personal hero, and the events of the last two days were taking a huge toll on him.