It Happened One Doomsday

by Laurence MacNaughton

  “Oh, yeah.” Rane turned human again with a whisper like sliding metal. “I feel oodles of lucky right now.”

  “So what do we do?” Opal said. All eyes turned to Dru.

  She took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  Greyson pointed at Rane. “Did she just turn into metal?”

  “It’s okay. She does that all the time. Opal, you remember that time we had to break that curse of the lake deity?”

  Opal put her hands on her hips. “I remember for a week after that my hair smelled like leftover sushi. I am not holding the ceremony bowl this time.”

  “Where were those circle diagrams?”

  “The last two Stanislaus journals.” Opal held up a finger as Dru dug through the bag of books. “But I am not planning on smelling like fish again. My cat just about licked me bald.”

  “Well, luckily for us,” Dru said, pulling out the two padlocked journals, “it’s not a lake deity this time.”

  “Oh. Well. Should be a piece of cake, then. Why would I possibly worry?”

  Dru fished in her purse until she found a Starbucks napkin and a pen. She scribbled down a list of crystals: galena, sulfur, black tourmaline, amethyst, and a few others that might be helpful. “Do me a favor and find these, please. The clearest ones we have, not necessarily the biggest. The closer in size they are to each other, the better.”

  Opal sighed and leaned close. “Figures. I should’ve brought beer.” But she took the list.

  Dru spotted a spool of thick red wire hanging on the wall of Greyson’s garage. She pointed it out to Rane. “Find a sharp knife, slit the insulation off the wire, and pull it off. All we need is the copper core.”

  “How much?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. But probably the whole roll.”

  As Rane nodded and headed for the spool, Greyson stepped up to Dru. “I feel like I should be part of this team effort.”

  “Good. For starters, don’t turn into a demon again.” She gave him a tired smile. “Best thing you can do? Draw out a chalk circle on the floor. Make sure it completely encloses the car. And it has to be as close to perfect as possible. We can’t be too far off.”

  He turned to look at the car, frowning.

  She drew out a circle in the air with her finger. “Get some string, tie it to something heavy to anchor it beneath the middle of the car, and use that as a compass to draw the circle.” She squinted at the car. “But I don’t know how you’re going to work around the tires.”

  He scratched his chin, obviously trying to visualize a circle surrounding the car. He jerked a thumb toward his tools. “Floor jack. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thanks.”

  As he walked away, Dru felt a flush of satisfaction. For the first time, things might finally be under control. She watched Rane stripping wire and Opal sorting through rocks. Then she took the padlocked journals to an empty corner and sat down on the floor to study them.

  It wasn’t long before she realized things were about to get much worse.

  17

  MATHEMATICS OF A MADMAN

  It took over an hour to sift through the cramped, sometimes psychotic handwriting of Nicolai Stanislaus. An eastern European pioneer of demonology, he had laid the theoretical groundwork for fighting the forces of darkness in the modern era. If anyone’s expertise could be trusted, it was his.

  But hidden in the faded, ink-stained journals was nothing but bad news.

  Stanislaus likened demonic influence to radio waves, which were still a pretty revolutionary concept in his time.

  Think not of the cursed artifact as evil in and of itself,but as an antenna which must receive its wireless signal from another source of unimaginable darkness, then channel it to its chosen victim.

  That didn’t sound good. From what Dru could make out, the car, Hellbringer, wasn’t the actual source of Greyson’s problem. It was just part of a larger system of evil. A receiver, of sorts.

  A properly executed circle may break the connection and insulate the artifact from further evil influence, but only for a time.

  “A little more vague, please?” she muttered. She could construct a magic circle like nobody’s business, but how much time could she buy Greyson? A month? A day? An hour?

  The journal didn’t answer that. And it didn’t say anything about kissing, either. She still didn’t know why that worked, or whether it would ever work again. But sooner or later, she might get another chance to find out.

  All Dru knew for sure was that trapping the car in a circle was a temporary solution at best. It was more like changing the channel, so the car couldn’t receive any more transmissions from hell. But the source of darkness would look for another way to reach Greyson. Unless she could find the key to breaking the curse.

  But how? Even if she managed to scramble Hellbringer so it was off the grid, what then? How could she find the source?

  The tedious process of refining his calculations had driven Stanislaus completely insane. It was easy to see why.

  Dru twisted her hair in knots trying to figure out the proper diagrams for the circle she needed. Finally she narrowed it down to a seven-point star, which wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world to recreate on a concrete floor. Especially using copper wire.

  She dredged up some geometry from the depths of her memory and used her phone’s calculator to figure out the angles, sketching out the circle on the back of a napkin.

  Greyson leaned over her shoulder. “Shouldn’t there be an app for that?”

  Without looking up, Dru sighed. “That would be nice.”

  She wanted Greyson’s help. But she couldn’t shake her feelings of guilt.

  She tried to think of Nate and all the good times they’d had. Not the angry Nate, the one who blamed her for everything, who refused to listen when she told him the plain truth. The one who wanted to take a break.

  Take a break. What did that even mean?

  She’d call him, she decided, when he got back from New York. He’d be much more likely to answer the phone after he talked the investors into signing on the dotted line. Then everything would be fine. They could work it all out over a romantic candlelight dinner at Chez Monet.

  She frowned. Maybe a different restaurant next time.

  He just needed a chance to calm down and pull himself together, that was all. And in the meantime, she had to do her best to keep Greyson safe.

  Aching and stiff, Dru got to her feet. “Want to help me lay down the wire?”

  “Wire?” Greyson said, following her across the garage.

  “The chalk is just a guideline for the wire. I’ll show you.”

  Together, they laid down a circle of copper wire around the car, using Greyson’s chalk marks as a guide. Then they used seven straight lengths of copper wire to create the star inside the circle, twisting the ends where they met. They had to shove two of the wires beneath the edges of the tires to make them fit.

  Dru sat cross-legged on the cold concrete floor, attaching each crystal to one point of the star with a loop of copper wire. She crawled completely around the circle, wiring up each crystal in turn, finishing with a handsome cluster of dusky purple amethyst.

  Greyson came over to stand behind her. “What’s that one for?”

  “Amethyst is for protection. Just in case there’s any psychic backlash when we scramble the car’s reception. Could get a little zappy.” She pointed at a shimmering black spike of tourmaline on her right. “That one will take most of the heat.”

  He nodded to her left, at a noxious yellow lump of sulfur. “And that one?”

  “Sulfur acts like a filter. Soaks up negativity. When we activate the circle, the energy that the car’s receiving right now has to get routed somewhere,” she said. “Every crystal has a specific function. But where you put them in relation to each other is crucial, too. All the parts have to fit just right. They have to work together.”

  He considered that. “Like building an eng
ine. Only, instead of a camshaft or lifters, you’ve got little rocks.”

  She cocked her head up and studied him, feeling a smile perk up the corners of her lips. “Yeah. Kind of like building an engine.” She held her fingers an inch apart. “Maybe just a teensy bit different.”

  “I bet.” He held out a hand. “Getting up?”

  “Nope. I’m good right here. Ready to go.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Opal said, tottering over in her new sparkling lemon-sherbet-yellow heels. “I said it before. I think this is a bad idea.”

  Rane crossed her arms. “You didn’t say that before.”

  “Well, I would have, if anyone had asked my opinion.”

  Dru sat back with an exhausted sigh and admired the circle. “Good teamwork, everybody.”

  “Yay,” Rane deadpanned. “You really think this is going to work?”

  Dru gave her a sour look. “You might want to stand back a little.”

  Opal backed up halfway across the garage and said, “Okay, everybody. Here we go. Duck and cover. Hardhats if you got ’em.”

  “Everyone’s a comedian.” Dru cupped the amethyst beneath her hands, leaned over it, and focused as hard as she could.

  Nothing happened.

  She let out a tense breath, aware of everyone staring at her. “Just getting warmed up. Give it a second.”

  She closed her eyes. Focused again. Rane had called her a sorceress. Could she be right?

  Dru tried to feel the magic rising inside her. Flowing through her. She willed the amethyst to charge up in her palm.

  Nothing.

  She strained, trying to summon up the power she’d felt earlier. But either she was too tired or she was doing something wrong.

  She let out an explosive breath and sat back, shrugging her shoulders to let out some of the tension.

  Opal checked her watch. “Well, if that doesn’t work, I don’t know what’s gonna. You sure you followed those instructions right?”

  “Of course I’m not sure. Stanislaus was an insane demonologist, not Martha Stewart.” Dru tried to collect her thoughts. Something was blocking her.

  Either the curse was an order of magnitude stronger than she thought, or Greyson’s presence was interfering with the spell.

  It had to be the strength of the curse. If her theory was right so far, then Greyson’s proximity should make her spell more powerful, not less.

  But why? What power lay within him that could amplify her magic so much? Could he possibly be a sorcerer without even knowing it?

  She tried not to dwell on mysteries she couldn’t answer. She didn’t have to know how his presence helped her, exactly. She just had to accept that it did.

  Closing her eyes again, she cupped the amethyst in one hand and held up the other. “Greyson?” she said softly.

  Without hesitation, his strong fingers wrapped around hers. He gave her a reassuring squeeze.

  Across the room, Opal sighed. “We’re gonna be at this all night, mark my words. How late is Starbucks open around here?”

  Dru opened her eyes. “You know, maybe that’s not such a bad—” She didn’t get a chance to finish.

  An electrifying jolt shot through Dru’s body, peaking in a sizzling flash that made her hair stand on end. The points of the copper star flared bright enough to light up the room.

  Foul smoke from scorched wiring and melting metal prickled the back of her throat, and her mouth filled with a coppery aftertaste.

  She sensed Hellbringer’s infernal presence through the smoke. As it climbed across her skin, she felt the demon bound into the car, its very essence enshrined within the black-painted steel.

  Hellbringer wasn’t just a cursed artifact. The car itself was a demon in its own right.

  As if it whispered into her ear, she could hear its raging desire to run wild across the land. To roam free in the wind.

  And with that craving for freedom came a complete absence of fear. It wasn’t afraid of death, destruction, or even being cast back into the pits of hell. The only thing Hellbringer feared was imprisonment.

  Its solitude echoed through the smoke. The car had been locked away during most of its time on earth. Trapped. Unable to taste the freedom and relentless speed that defined the core of its being.

  Hellbringer roused itself from exhaustion and reached toward her. Her consciousness briefly touched the swirling edge of Hellbringer’s energy, a chaotic, primordial force that threatened to draw her in whole.

  For a terrifying instant, she feared Hellbringer would pull her soul in through the crystal circle. Before the car could reconnect to whatever source of evil had cursed Greyson, Dru closed the magic circle, trapping Hellbringer inside.

  Magic feedback jolted through her, again and again. Wave after wave of magical energy crashed against the bounds of the circle, pummeling Dru where she sat. But the circle did its work.

  As Dru held on with all of her willpower, the intensity of each wave started to diminish. Strangely, she felt a pang of guilt, as if she had just kicked an animal.

  A dangerous, aggressive animal who wanted to be free of its cage. An animal ruled by instincts and hungers that threatened innocent lives. But still, for the briefest moment, she could almost understand Hellbringer.

  One after another, the crystals fractured, as if they’d been dropped from a great height. The individual lights of the dying rocks flared through her tightly closed eyelids. The afterimage of the copper circle, and the star within it, became a flash of orange zigzags on a red background.

  Then it was over.

  Dru dropped the burning hot amethyst and scrambled to her feet. When she stumbled, Greyson caught her. She sagged against him, her head spinning. A pounding headache shot up the back of her neck and throbbed across the top of her skull, making her nauseous.

  The amethyst crystal crackled with vanishing motes of bright blue light, like a just-popped flashbulb. It gradually went dark, leaving behind nothing but a grayed-out cinder.

  “Damn.” Opal blinked. “Never seen a circle light up like that before. Did it work?”

  “Think so,” Dru murmured into Greyson’s strong shoulder. And then she straightened up and saw his face.

  The horns were back. Shorter than they’d been at the restaurant but still there nonetheless, where they hadn’t been a minute ago. Worse, his eyes once again glowed red.

  With a terrible sinking feeling, she backed away.

  “Dru, what’s wrong?” His voice trailed off as he saw his hands. The tips of his fingers ended in sharp black claws. He slowly turned them over, as if waiting for everything to go back to normal. It didn’t.

  Without another word, he rushed over to the oil-stained shop sink in the corner of the garage and bent to inspect his face in the streaked mirror.

  Dru hurried after him. “It should have worked.” Mind racing, she backtracked through all of her calculations, the combination of crystals, the configuration of the circle, trying to determine where she could have gone wrong. But there was no way to know.

  Greyson’s clawed fists tightened on the edge of the sink. “Then it’s only a matter of time. Sooner or later, I’ll become the demon again.”

  “Not as long as I’m here.” She waited until she had his attention once more. “If we’re going to cure you, Greyson, we need more information.”

  “About what?”

  “That symbol under Hellbringer’s hood,” Dru said. “Did you put it there?”

  Greyson shook his head no. “It was there when I got the car.”

  “And where did you get the car from?”

  He hesitated. “An estate auction. Why, is that important?”

  “It depends.” An ominous feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. “Whose estate was it?”

  18

  LOT SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX

  As it turned out, the auction had been handled online, so Greyson didn’t know whose estate it was.

  Refusing to give up, Dru promised him that she would fig
ure out their next move, no matter how long it took. She didn’t imagine that it would take all night.

  Opal brought them all coffee before the only nearby Starbucks closed. But she kept yawning so much, Dru couldn’t stand the guilt and sent her home around midnight. Determined to stay and work this through to the end, Dru flipped back and forth through the pages of her old books, scribbling notes on napkins.

  Eventually, Rane led her from the cold concrete floor to Greyson’s cramped combination of living room and kitchenette. Even though Greyson insisted that he felt fine, Dru didn’t feel comfortable leaving him unsupervised, and Rane refused to leave her side.

  As the hours dragged on through the dead of night, Dru caught herself nodding off while trying to redo her Stanislaus calculations. She sucked down every last drop of coffee, but it wasn’t enough. She was utterly exhausted. Her eyelids grew too heavy to stay open.

  She took off her glasses and decided to rest her eyes. Just for a minute, she promised herself.

  It seemed like only a moment later that Dru awoke with a start. Dawn sunlight streamed in around the edges of the window shades in Greyson’s apartment. It fell in golden swaths across the cluttered living room, illuminating a pocked dartboard, a well-used weight bench, and a half-rebuilt engine stuffed with red rags.

  Her phone told her it was six in the morning. “Son of a guano,” she muttered under her breath, then scrambled to find her glasses. A blue plaid blanket dropped from her shoulders.

  Glasses on, she looked around from where she lay on the couch, disoriented and foggy-headed in the morning light.

  Greyson’s furniture was old and worn, and that was being kind. A black-and-white checkered flag was draped in one corner. Car parts clustered on every available surface.

  The wall behind her was covered with snapshots of old muscle cars in various states of disassembly and repair, punctuated by finished projects gleaming with fresh paint. The whole wall was an unfamiliar mishmash of bright paint, stripes, and shining wheels.

  In the center of it all hung a framed snapshot of a scraggly-haired teenage boy, obviously Greyson in his high school years, shoulder to shoulder with a grinning freckled girl and a thin-faced middle-aged man in a leather jacket, the three of them leaning against what looked like a bright orange Corvette.