by Nancy Holder
“I won’t ever get to her if I have to save you from drowning. For all we know, the bridge will collapse or I’ll drive over the side. You’re staying here.” She gestured to Silvana’s purse. “You have some money. And a cell phone. If you get tired, go to a motel. I’ll call you when it’s safe.”
Silvana stared at her. “You’re serious.”
“Get out of the car or I’ll make you get out.”
Her beaded cornrows clacked together as Silvana yanked open the door and got out. Angrily she slammed the door.
Without so much as a good-bye, Holly took off the brake and peeled out.
Grimly she drove on, watching for road signs, looking up for falcons, to the sides of the road for other evidence that Michael Deveraux was waiting for her. Maybe he thought I’d come in on a broom, she thought hotly. Everyone keeps telling me how powerful I am, but I don’t know how to use that power. I don’t know that many spells.
I need help.
She kept going, the fog nearly impenetrable as she remembered to use only her low beams. She went through the tunnel, and then she moved with the traffic onto the bridge.
A deep groaning sound seemed to emanate from one of the steel girders as she passed it, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. “There is no one around me that I care about, all right?” she said aloud, as if she had to address the curse like a person. “So don’t even think about it.”
With the rest of the traffic, she traveled over the bridge, her face prickling with anxiety as she made it across; her nervousness did not lessen even after she got to the other side. If anything, it increased. Her intuition was guiding her to fork to the right, and she knew the finder’s spell was working. The longer she drove, the closer she was getting to the epicenter of whatever bad magic Michael Deveraux was wreaking on people she cared about very much.
Those I love are back in Seattle, battling dark magic indeed… .
Then she felt the house rather than saw it, and realized that it was cloaked from the gaze of the rest of the neighborhood. She murmured a Spell of Seeing and it rippled into view: a small house on a rise, set apart, separated from a group of houses lower down the street by what appeared to be storage sheds and rows of oleander bushes. The rooftop was glowing with green energy and as she pulled the car to a stop and opened her door, she heard the shattering of glass.
She climbed out of the car. Then a wild wind whipped up, smashing into her and flattening her against the car as the door slammed shut. She moved her hands and murmured a spell, and the wind separated on the other side of her body as she moved away from the car and began to run to the structure.
Glass was flying everywhere, which her spell deflected. There was loud pounding and the rushing of wind.
She took the steps to the porch by twos, hordes of tiny imps streaming around her feet like tiny horses on stampede. Perhaps recognizing her as the enemy, they began to clump around her ankles, scratching and biting her, and she cried out and hurtled a fireball toward her foot, careful not to harm herself as she took the majority of her attackers out.
She flicked a wrist at the front door and it opened with the burst of a howling wind from the other side. She was pelted with dozen of bodies of dead imps, which she deflected with a protection spell; they hit an invisible barrier in front of her, dropping to the stoop and piling up. With a flick of her wrist the pile shifted to the right, and she shouted, “Dan! Tante Cecile? Uncle Richard?”
She could barely hear herself over the noise and confusion, much less anyone else. She raced across the threshold and stood in the foyer. The ghostly baying of Hell Hounds warned her of their presence; she flung herself against the wall as their toenails clattered on the wooden floor. She warded herself, placing another barrier between herself and the hounds, and felt a spray of hot breath before the spell took hold.
There was a loud crash, followed by a shout on the second story of the house. Holly turned and raced up the stairs, to find her uncle in the hallway, swinging an ax at a large, scaly demon sprouting a crown of horns from its head. Vaguely human-shaped, it stood on two clawed feet and swung at Richard with long, taloned hands. It was slathering and drooling.
Richard lunged and swung his ax, then ducked to a squatting position as the demon swung. Then he swung again from the awkward position and, this time, sliced the demon across its bony kneecaps. The creature roared and staggered backward; Richard pressed his advantage and sprang at the monster, pushing it to the ground, where he swung the ax again and brought it across the demon’s neck. Its head rolled off, and green blood sprayed the hallway.
Sickened, Holly ran to her uncle’s side and threw her arms around him.
“Holly!” he cried, embracing her. “Thank God! Where are the girls?”
“Seattle,” she said. She pulled away. “What’s going on?”
“We think it’s Michael.” He pointed to the opened doorway a little farther down the hall. “Cecile and Dan are in there.”
She nodded and barreled into the room with Richard following behind.
It was total chaos. More demons of many varieties and monsters she had never encountered before were overwhelming the two magic users, who had crouched behind a dresser that had been pushed into the middle of the room. They had shielded it with energy, but Holly could see that the field was weakening.
Cecile turned her head, saw Holly, and shouted. “Thank goodness! Holly, stop them!”
Holly lifted her arms and opened her mouth.
And that was when she froze.
Cecile frowned. “Holly?”
Her mind was a blank. She couldn’t think of a single spell, couldn’t feel magic anywhere in her being.
What’s wrong with me?
“Holly!” Cecile shouted. She waved her hands in her direction. “Have you been bewitched?”
I don’t know, she thought, bewildered.
Then she had a sense of something crowding inside her mind, of a presence like a shadow looming over her; although there was nothing there when she glanced left and right. She was cold; she began shivering as goose bumps broke along her arms.
Then the coldness slipped inside her, as if she had swallowed a glassful of ice.
Before her stood Isabeau, perhaps more solidly than ever before, as if she was not quite a part of the material world, but more than she had been.
Not actually before me, Holly realized, but in my mind’s eye.
A veiled woman stood beside Holly’s ancestress.
Hecate, Holly thought.
Imperiously, the Goddess bowed her head, acknowledging her name in her incarnation as the supreme deity of witches.
We can help you, Isabeau said. Michael Deveraux has sent these creatures to harass and kill you. Without your witch sisters, you are not enough of a match for him.
“Holly, help us!” Dan yelled at her. “Damn it!”
As Holly blinked, it was as if she could see the room through Isabeau and Hecate; she was aware that the battle was escalating, and that her side was losing.
You want more of me, Holly accused Isabeau. Want me to make another sacrifice, ensnare myself more deeply in Hecate’s service … have you made some sort of bargain with her yourself?
Isabeau made no answer, but a smile played at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes glinted.
There was a huge blast, followed by another. Holly looked through the two women to see three enormous black shadows burst through the walls of the room. They were at least eight feet tall, and covered with scales; their eyes glowed red, and their hands ended in talons like scythes.
They stood for a moment in a row, and then they hurtled themselves toward Holly, Dan, and Cecile.
Without thinking, Holly raised her hands and thundered, “Begone!”
The room exploded. Flame, whirlwind, a rushing torrent of water and stone … all cycloned around Holly as energy shot through her body, making her convulse. Her eyes rolled back, and she shouted in a strange language she did not know; she was
tumbling end over end in the chaos, every part of her sizzling. Her hair was on fire; her eyelashes danced with sparks. Her teeth smoked. Blue flames crawled and danced along her skin.
Someone screamed her name, over and over and over.
The shadows grabbed at her, roaring in fury …
… talons sliced at her, and missed …
… and Holly woke up on her hands and knees in wet sand.
She raised her head and opened her eyes.
It was night, and she was on a beach. Tante Cecile lay beside her on her back. Dan lay on his side facing her, surf washing over his body. Holly looked around and spotted Uncle Richard draped over the hood of a car in a parking lot approximately twenty feet behind her. He lifted his head and regarded her.
Slowly the others moved, Cecile sitting gingerly upright, and Dan rolled over again onto his stomach, giving a short shout as a wave crashed over his back. Then he pushed himself back onto his haunches and awkwardly lurched to his feet.
“What did you do?” Cecile asked Holly, her voice cracking as she stared at her. Her eyes were wide.
“I don’t know,” Holly replied honestly. But whatever it was, I did it by myself, she thought with wondering satisfaction. I didn’t sacrifice anything to the Goddess.
She rose to her feet. “Let’s go,” she ordered the others.
“Where?” Cecile asked her. “Back to Seattle?”
“The hospital first,” Holly said. “To Barbara.”
“Of course.” Cecile stood. She gazed at Holly and said, “You’ve claimed your power. I can see it. It’s crackling around you.”
Holly glanced down at her hands. A blue fluorescence gleamed along her flesh, then gradually dissipated.
Were Isabeau and Hecate blocking me somehow, so that I would have to ask the Goddess for help? she wondered. And so I’d keep making sacrifices to her?
She lowered her hands. “You’re right,” she told Cecile.
After using a pay phone to call a cab, Richard rented a car. Holly connected with Silvana, who ordered take-out that was ready by the time they picked her up. Silvana and Tante Cecile embraced tearfully. Holly was pleased by the look of gratitude on Silvana’s face when she looked at Holly, but even more pleased by the forgiveness in her eyes. Not that I need anyone’s forgiveness, Holly thought, feeling suddenly defensive.
They devoured hamburgers and fries en route to Marin County General. Although it was well past midnight, it was easy for Holly to “convince” the night nurse to lead her to Barbara Davis-Chin’s room.
“I need to warn you, she’s comatose,” the woman—whose name badge read ADDY—said cautiously. “She won’t know you’re here.”
Holly nodded absently, her gaze fixed on the half-opened door. It was painted a soft green. In the center of it hung a clear plastic rectangle containing a manila chart affixed to a clipboard. The chart read, DAVIS-CHIN, B. Holly had a flash of a mental image of her mother hurrying down the corridors of the emergency room with an armload of similar charts, consulting the names of her patients as she approached their beds. It had always been so amazing; her mom took care of people for such a short time, and yet she made certain she knew their names, bonded with them, focused on them.
I miss her so much, Holly thought with a sharp pang.
Then Holly pushed open the door, and nearly fainted.
Barbara Davis-Chin lay in her bed as Holly remembered her from her last visit: pale and thin and hooked up to machines. But this time, a nightmare sat on her chest.
It was a hunched, evilly smiling creature with pointed ears and a face as sharp and angular as a skeleton key; it was the color of dirty coins, and covered with filthy gray hair.
Its fist was sunk deep into Barbara’s chest, and Holly could see that its filthy fingers were socketed around Barbara’s beating heart, squeezing poison into it from its own veins and arteries, which pulsed and rivuleted on the exterior of its body.
All the while it cackled maniacally, and Holly realized that no one could hear it except her.
She thought of running back to the waiting room where Silvana and the others were waiting, then steeled herself to turn to the nurse, who was still bewitched and obviously did not see or hear what Holly saw and heard, and say, “You can go back to the nurses’ station now.”
“Yes,” the woman said.
As the nurse drifted away, Holly steadily walked toward the creature. It jutted its bottom lip toward her—it was a brilliant red, as if it were bleeding—and began to growl.
Holly began to intone a protection spell, then realized that each time she prayed to the Goddess, she had to sacrifice a tiny part of her soul; she wondered if this was the price other witches paid, or if this was a cost she bore alone. But knowing it, she kept her mouth shut and decided to deal with the imp—if that was what it was—on her own terms.
She moved toward it; it smiled at her, completely unruffled by her presence.
Holly stared at it, her focus centering on it; then, in a strange juxtaposition of her senses, she was aware of the thrumming of Barbara’s pulse, the loud drumming of her heartbeat— kathum, kathum, then she was a sight, not a person, careening down the arm and then the fist of the creature, slamming inside Barbara’s heart—
The heart of darkness; this is the center of the evil, of the dreams, of the sickness that is killing her …
… all around Holly floated nightmare shapes and tortured landscapes; she whirled around in a circle with her mouth open screaming in silence—
STOP IT!
And then she was back at the doorway, staring at the imp, which grinned back at her and then chittered happily, drawing Barbara’s heart clean out of her body and displaying it to Holly. She thought of Hecate, the dead familiar, and how Bast had presented the dead falcon to her and her cousins as a trophy; only now, it was Barbara’s diseased heart being presented to her; her heart that was bleeding and in such misery—
STOP IT!
The creature disappeared … but Holly sensed its malevolent presence. Even if she could no longer see it, it was still torturing Barbara.
She rushed to the waiting room, all eyes upon her. “We need to get Barbara out of here.”
Uncle Richard ceased his pacing and fixed his eyes on her. “Sit, rest, I’ll take care of the paperwork.” He took off.
She sank into a chair and accepted the coffee that was offered her by Tante Cecile. She was tired, and very worried. The lines were being drawn … across living bodies and through living hearts.
This is a deadly game Michael Deveraux is playing, she thought. And I can’t afford to lose it.
Wearily she closed her eyes.
How many generations of Cathers and Deveraux have kept this up? It’s got to end. We’ve got to win.
Johnstown, Pennsylvania: May 31, 1889, 2 P.M.
The lake had risen two feet overnight. The dam at South Fork groaned against the weight of the extra water. The dam was old and in need of repair. No one seemed to care, though. Everyone expected the dam to go on doing what it had always done. Every year after the rains, people would scratch their heads and marvel that it still stood, but they did nothing to help it in its battle to contain the lake.
Fourteen miles below the dam the town of Johnstown sat in a flood plain. The good citizens occasionally made rumblings against the owners of the dam, but the rumblings meant nothing. They were just a way to pass the time, something to speak of besides the weather.
And so, year after year, the town rumbled and the dam groaned and nothing was done. The water pressed harder, the lake rose higher, and in the dam a tiny fracture became a crack.
The crack had been noticed, and several men now struggled to relieve the pressure on the dam. They tried, among other things, to open a new channel to allow the water someplace else to go. Their efforts were too little, too late, though. The dam groaned as it tried to hold back a wall of water sixty feet deep.
Claire Cathers was happy. The thought took her by surprise as she was swe
eping her front porch. She stopped and leaned for a moment on the handle of her broom as she stared idly out into the wet street. It was nearly sunset, and the rain had let up for a few minutes. A couple more hours and her husband and daughter would be home.
She smiled at the thought of Ginny. The little girl was beautiful, headstrong, and passionate—a Cathers through and through. Of course, that was to be expected. Cathers blood always seemed to prevail, and Virginia had a double dose of it.
Five years earlier if someone had told Claire that she would marry her third cousin, Peter, the one who had tormented her as a child, she would have called them crazy.
Old Simon Jones stopped before her and tipped his hat. “Afternoon, Mrs. Claire.”
“Afternoon, Simon. How’s the day shapin’ up?”
“Tolerable so long as the dam holds.”
She chuckled good-naturedly at the joke. The dam had been the subject of much concern, talk, and humor for as long as she could remember. Still, the old structure held.
The sky darkened perceptibly, and a few fat drops of water splatted on the ground.
“Have a good evening, Simon,” she called after his retreating back.
“Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. Well, at least not more than it has.”
She smiled. Life was good. In fact, it had turned out altogether differently from what she had expected. Her mother had died when she was very young. Her father had always been a sternly disapproving man. In most matters he always acquiesced to his two older sisters, and he had taken that frustration out on Claire. He had taught her to act like a lady, and that meant being humble and submissive; matter of fact, they had been married an entire year before she could bring herself to look Peter in the eye.
Peter was a salesman. Most Cathers were, and had been as long as anyone could remember. They were all smooth talkers and quite persuasive, but none was quite as silver-tongued as her Peter.
For all that, though, he was a gentle and loving man. He had vowed to her on the day she gave birth to Ginny that he would raise his daughter differently than her father had raised her. He had kept his promise. He always said to little Ginny that a woman was the equal of a man. Even though she was tiny he took her everywhere with him. He even took her on sales trips like the one they would be home from soon.