The ward delivered a powerful shock, but it probably couldn’t sustain that power indefinitely. It would take time to recharge although there was no way to know how long. Regardless, she wasn’t too excited about taking the direct approach to draining it. Been there. Done that. Got the rug burns.
Amanda rubbed her hands together. Her element, earth, was a good match for the challenge. She stretched her palms toward the door and started an incantation with an appeal to the spirits of the light.
Nothing happened.
When she reached out with her senses, she immediately understood why. The Foundation was home to demons, and the place was thick with dark spirits. She needed help. “Jessie, could you perform a purification before I try to work on the ward?”
“With pleasure,” her friend answered. Amanda waited while Jessie started her own incantation. As a water witch, Jessie was the best in the coven at purification. After a few seconds, Jessie stopped with a look of surprise and disgust. “Yuck. This place is a sewer.”
Amanda nodded ruefully. “Now you know why I need your help.”
Jessie squared her shoulders and started again.
After a few moments, the suffocating darkness lifted somewhat. Amanda took over the incantation from Jessie, relieved when the Resonance Star smoothly shifted its power flow back to her.
Tentatively probing the ward, Amanda detected a web of energy along the interior of the door. Turning the door handle would put it in contact with the web, and anyone who did manage to get the door open would walk straight into it.
But what powered the thing? Passive wards like the ones she used at Hayworth Farm required little energy. The shock Marcella’s ward had given her had to have come from somewhere. Tracing the edges of the web, Amanda found a link to a nearby electrical outlet.
Marcella had tied the ward into the building’s electrical system! How diabolically ingenious.
Amanda shook off her curiosity, wishing she had time to examine the ward further. Mixing magical and mundane powers took a lot of skill. However, she had limited time to accomplish her mission, and she didn’t know what other obstacles they might face. She might not know exactly how the ward was constructed, but she had a good idea of how to defeat it: the ward’s strength was also its weakness. With just a small bridge of her own earth power directed right about there ….
A muffled pop from inside the room startled the rest of the team until Amanda waved her hand in a calming gesture. She ended her spell after verifying that she had successfully shorted out the web of energy and that the door was clear of other dangers.
Glancing at Kyle, she gave him a “here-goes-nothing” look before reaching out and grasping the door handle. She turned the cold handle slowly and cringed at the memory of her last attempt to enter the room. This time, the door unlatched and swung open on silent hinges.
Eager to find the wolf skull, Amanda hurried inside and then froze in place. Kyle, not expecting her sudden stop, bumped into her from behind and mumbled an apology that he cut short with a gasp.
The room seemed to resist the light that seeped through the window curtains. Deep shadows lurked in every corner, and a thin dark fog dimmed Amanda’s view, like the atmosphere in a smoky old jazz bar. She rubbed her eyes and looked for the source of the fog, finding nothing obvious.
Suppressing a shiver of revulsion, Amanda stalked over to the window and yanked the curtains aside. Although the sun was on the opposite side of the building, the additional natural light was a tremendous relief. When she turned around, it was as if the strange fog had never existed. The room was still menacing but nowhere near as oppressive.
Kyle stared at the floor in one corner of the room. When Amanda followed his gaze, she spotted the casting circle that held his attention.
Amanda stepped forward with her fists clenched. The dark witch had desecrated her moon shrine, and here was her chance to return the favor.
It was obvious that the casting circle was designed to be portable. It consisted of a metal band set on edge in the shape of a ring. Four candle bases were attached to the outside surface at evenly spaced positions. The ring was maybe three feet in diameter—not much more than standing room for one person. It could probably be carried in the trunk of a car and would take just a few minutes of alignment before it would be ready to go.
The temptation to destroy Marcella’s casting circle faded and was replaced with a desire to steal it instead. That would show the bitch. It was probably heavy, but Kyle was strong. He could lug the thing back through the forest to her car.
Kyle appeared at her side. “Cool,” he said.
“Yeah. I want it.”
“Bad idea,” Jessie said from behind. “You think the moon shrine was a mess? It would take months to consecrate that thing.”
Amanda sighed. Jessie was probably right. Who knew how much dark magic had passed through that circle? The spiritual stain might be impossible to fully cleanse. She’d be better off starting from scratch with raw materials.
“Yeah, but still,” Amanda mused out loud. “I wish we’d had this when we put out the fire at the farm. It’s just a tool, and even tainted, it would have magnified our powers. We should at least consider stealing the idea and making our own. The coven could perform powerful ceremonies just about anywhere.”
Jessie seemed to accept Amanda’s suggestion, and her expression turned contemplative as she stared at the device.
Amanda shook her head in frustration. She was letting herself get distracted again. Turning away from the casting circle, she started searching the room for the wolf skull. Jessie and Kyle helped while Jonathan kept watch in the hallway.
Kyle was searching through the bottom drawer of the desk when he let out an “aha” of triumph and held up a familiar looking folder. Amanda took the folder and quickly paged through it, verifying that he’d found her notes.
She handed it back to him with a satisfied smile. “Good job.”
However, they still hadn’t found the wolf skull. Amanda and Kyle continued to look in and under every stick of furniture while Jessie muttered something about being thorough and went into the bathroom.
The sight of a small trunk gave her a moment of hope, but when she opened it, she found it was filled with the dark witch’s spell-casting implements. No wolf skull.
Several minutes of searching later, Amanda stood side by side with Kyle and Jessie. All three of them stared at the door to the closet—the only space they hadn’t checked.
“Do you think she’d bother to put a ward within a ward?” Jessie asked.
Amanda shrugged. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
Amanda opened her eyes and lifted her hands off the surface of the closet door. If it was warded by magic, she couldn’t detect it.
“Anything?” Jessie asked.
Amanda shook her head, hovering her hand over the doorknob. She tapped the doorknob with her index finger as if checking for static. When nothing happened, she gripped the knob decisively and turned. The closet door swung toward her a couple of inches.
Nothing blew up, no sirens went off, and she wasn’t dead. So far, so good.
Amanda opened the door the rest of the way and turned on the light switch. The closet was too small for anyone else to help. As she searched the shelf above the hanging clothes, her heart skipped a beat. A set of wicked white teeth gleamed at her.
Reaching up, Amanda grabbed the wolf skull with both hands and carried it out into the room. She smiled at Jessie. “Got it!”
Jessie closed the distance between them and ran a finger over the symbols etched into the skull. “It’s so … primal … and savage.”
“I know,” Amanda agreed. “It seems fitting, doesn’t it?”
Jessie nodded, continuing to stare at the skull.
Kyle was looking over Amanda’s shoulder into the closet. “What about the cash box?” he asked.
Amanda held up the skull. “Who cares? We found what we came for. Let’s get out of here before ou
r luck runs out.”
Kyle stepped around her and took the box down from the shelf. “It’s locked. What do you suppose could be so important that she’d bother to lock it up inside her ward?”
Amanda was about to tell Kyle to leave the box alone when Jonathan leaned into the room from the doorway. “I’m with Amanda. We should go.”
“No,” Jessie stated, finally taking her eyes off the talisman. “I want to do this now.”
“The exorcism?” Amanda asked incredulously. “Here?”
“Yes. We have everything we need, we should have plenty of time, and I don’t want to take the chance that we’ll lose the skull again.”
Amanda looked around the room. “It isn’t safe to stay here. What if one of them comes back early today?” Her eyes lingered on the casting circle. “And do you really want to trust the ceremony to that thing?”
Jessie glanced at the circle. “It’s not ideal, but like you said, it’s just a tool. Don’t you want a chance to return the favor after what she did to your moon shrine?”
Amanda was aware that her friend was appealing to her sense of vengeance in an attempt to manipulate her, and truthfully, she was tempted. If Amanda’s coven used the casting circle, the work they did with the spirits of the light would “defile” it, at least temporarily, for the dark witch’s purposes.
“Nice try,” Amanda said in a wry tone. She took a step toward the door and beckoned with the skull. “Come on. We’ll go straight to the farm and do this where we’ll be safe.”
Jessie folded her arms and shook her head. “You know as well as I do that we won’t be safe anywhere. Marcella is going to discover our theft as soon as she gets back, and the farm will be the first place she goes. Even if we finish the ceremony before she can stop us, we’ll get Lucille in trouble with her and the Order.”
Amanda sighed with exasperation. “We’ve been over this. Lucille already gave her blessing, but okay, fine. We’ll go to your house.”
“We can’t. The kids are there, and it would take too long to set up anyway,” Jessie said stubbornly. Then her tone turned pleading. “Amanda, we have to do this now while we still can. I’m scared to death that someone will stop us before we can get this vile thing out of me. I’ll kill myself before I let it take me from my family.”
Kyle looked over from the desk where he was fiddling with the lock on the metal box. “I can relate to that feeling.”
Jonathan’s face fell when he heard his wife’s heartfelt plea. The expression he turned toward Amanda gave his support for whatever she might decide.
Amanda had no more arguments to present, and she couldn’t deny the validity of her friend’s fears. The clock was ticking, and the only thing that really mattered was completing the ceremony. “Then we’d better get on with this,” she said, her voice tinged with annoyance. She went over to the casting circle and dragged it away from the wall so there’d be more room around it.
“Jonathan, call Cara and Tanya up here. I’ll need them at the circle with me.”
“But we won’t have anyone keeping watch outside,” Jonathan objected.
“You can keep an eye on things from the window in the entryway,” Amanda suggested.
“No way,” Jonathan replied, shaking his head. “I’m not leaving Jessie at a time like this.”
Amanda was tired of losing arguments. “Fine. I guess it doesn’t really matter. If any of the Pack returns while we’re in the middle of this, we’re screwed anyway.”
“Ow! Shit!” Kyle yelped, leaping back from the desk so fast that he overturned his chair. He shook his right hand and then stared at it, flexing his fingers. On the desk, the metal box sat open.
“What happened?” Amanda asked.
“I guess I triggered some kind of trap when I opened the box. It zapped me and burned my hand.”
Amanda snatched the toppled chair and thumped it down in the center of the casting circle. “Dammit, Kyle. You’re lucky Marcella didn’t ward the box with something really nasty.” Grabbing his wrist, she checked the reddened skin on the back of his hand. It wasn’t much worse than a sunburn. “She was probably trying to mark anyone who was poking around.” Releasing his wrist, she added, “You’ve been caught red handed.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Very funny,” he said as his attention strayed back to the box. “But it makes me even more curious. If Marcella put that much effort into hiding something, we might be able to use it against her.” Lifting out a notebook, he started perusing the pages.
Amanda blew out a breath of irritation and left Kyle to his snooping. The damage was done. Going back to her own task, she rummaged through the trunk of magical supplies. The dark witch had to have candles somewhere.
“Huh,” Kyle muttered as he thumbed through the notebook.
“What now?”
“I’m not sure. I think they were spying on someone. And there’s a bunch of cash in the box.”
Jessie looked over Kyle’s shoulder at the notebook. “I see what you mean. It appears to be a journal of dates and times with notes about people’s movements.”
Amanda stood up from the chest with a candle in each hand, her curiosity piqued. What was Marcella up to?
“The notes are for a sequence of locations,” Kyle added, flipping forward and backward through the pages. He glanced at the stack of bills. “I think she was casing these places. I’ll bet this money is stolen.”
That wasn’t a surprise. In her past, Marcella had been in trouble for committing crimes with dark magic. But that was before the lupusdaemon took over … or was it? “How recent are the dates?”
Kyle thumbed forward to the last pages that had writing. “Pretty recent. Like, yesterday.”
Too bad Blackstone wasn’t still around. He’d undoubtedly be interested in Kyle’s find. Maybe Amanda would try to send the master hunter a message when she returned to Hayworth Farm. Cara and Tanya walked into the room, reminding her that it wasn’t their immediate problem.
“Kyle,” she said firmly, waiting until she had his attention. “I need you put that back the way you found it and do something else for me.”
“Sure, what do you need?” He returned the journal to the box and repositioning it carefully before closing the lid. “Not sure I can get it locked again.”
“Don’t worry about that. I want you to go downstairs and keep watch from the entryway.”
Kyle sighed as he put the metal box back into the closet. He was obviously disappointed that he’d miss out on the action, but he understood that someone had to make sure they weren’t taken completely by surprise.
Chapter 31
Foreboding
Flipping through the Spokane Yellow Pages, Marcella considered their options. They needed another target that would have plenty of cash on hand and that wasn’t open 24 hours. And they needed a bigger score.
The last few hits had gone perfectly, but they couldn’t expect their luck to last indefinitely. Although she and Cyrus had spread their efforts across three states, the cops would eventually work together and recognize a pattern. That was one major advantage of working from North Idaho: Washington and Montana were each only an hour away.
“I want this to be the last job for a while,” Marcella announced over the rock-and-roll music playing from the radio.
Cyrus turned down the volume. “Why? I thought things were going pretty well.”
“Better than I had hoped,” Marcella agreed. “But I want to get this stupid membership issue out of the way so I can keep the momentum I’ve built with the packs. The conference has to happen as soon as possible.”
“Why don’t you just hold the conference anyway? Rutlinger can’t stop you.”
“Appearances. When the pack leaders arrive, I want to be in full control of the Foundation. I want them to see me operating from a position of strength with the full support of the Selkirk Pack.”
“Except for Rutlinger.”
Marcella made a derisive noise. “No one will credit the sour gr
apes of a deposed alpha.”
Cyrus pursed his lips. “Probably not. How much more do we need?”
“We’re close. Just a couple thousand more, I think,” Marcella answered while she dug into her canvas carry bag. “Crap. I forgot to bring the job journal.”
Cyrus squirmed in his seat. He straightened his back and glanced over at her bag. “You left it at the Foundation?”
“Don’t worry, the wards are in place, and I didn’t exactly leave it sitting out on my desk.”
Cyrus focused on his driving and didn’t say anything more, but his wrinkled brow told Marcella that he was still concerned. “We don’t need it today,” she reasoned. “We’re casing a new job, so we’ll just pick up another notebook. We’ll merge them later.”
“We should burn them later,” Cyrus countered.
“Sure,” Marcella said with a shrug. “Once the Foundation is ours, we won’t need them anymore.”
Members of the Foundation had full access to all of its resources, including several homes and properties around the area. For a while, Marcella would stay at the Foundation building and solidify her power base. After that, she would leave the commune lifestyle behind and move into a place of her own.
She glanced over at Cyrus. He’d proved to be a reliable lieutenant and an adequate, if unimaginative, sexual partner. Perhaps she’d take him with her.
About an hour into their drive toward Spokane, Cyrus slowed the car and pulled into a travel center near the town of Post Falls, Idaho. They weren’t particularly low on gas, but it was their habit to start the evening’s stakeout with a full tank, just in case it became necessary to leave quickly and travel far. “This place has a large convenience store,” he pointed out. “They might have a notebook.”
Marcella opened her door. “I’ll check.”
She wandered through the store, impressed by the quantity and variety of products available. It seemed to cater to the trucker crowd with all kinds of automotive supplies, snacks, and coffee. She had no trouble locating a spiral-bound notebook. Cyrus joined her at the checkout with an energy drink he favored.
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