by Marcus James
These were the things he needed to tell her. This was what he needed to put before her. This truth-this honesty-this ownership was what he needed to win her back. He just had to find her.
Sheffield’s eyes traveled from the pool, up the sand colored exterior and white metal balconies of the rooms, and settled on the skyline looking towards the Strip.
She is out there. Right now. She was possibly still in bed in some hotel room, deliberately taking her time to start her day. Or perhaps she was already out and about-doing whatever-and all he needed to do was find her.
He was so close to her with only city blocks between them, and yet they could possibly never cross paths again. He had to start with hotels. He needed to look up all of the hotels on the Strip and begin to determine which one she would most likely be at.
Then perhaps he could scope it out, or call it and lie his way into them telling him if Kathryn was a guest or not.
He had tricks at his disposal, and all he needed was some girl at the front desk, or a gay man and his southern charm would go a long way in getting them to bend the rules and tell him if Kathryn was registered.
Sheffield Burges stood and walked back into the pristine white hotel room and grabbed the phone book from off of the end table, along with a notepad and pen, and brought it back to the balcony table.
He lifted the cigarette off of the glass ashtray and took another drag, the smoke billowing out as he began to flip through the thin yellow newsprint, eager to begin jotting down potential hotels to check out.
All he cared about was finding Kathryn and bringing her home. She was in danger. He was could feel it deep down. Those dreams had been warnings, and now that he was in Los Angeles, those nightmares of her terror-stricken face as she ran for her life in the night were all he could think about, and he was aware that the only way that they would stop is if he found her and brought her back to Bellingham, or Paris, or Spain. It didn’t really matter where; he just knew he had to get her out of Los Angeles before it was too late.
VIII
Kathryn’s head was pounding. She had dreamt of that fallen city and those creatures, and she had heard the voice of Manny Esteban calling to her from the deep dark.
Food for them.
Why did these creatures eat the brain and the heart? What did this bring to them? What were they that they required these things?
“Jesus...” Kathryn sat up and looked at the glowing digital clock. “Ten thirty-probably the earliest I’ve woken up since I got here.”
She walked over to the chair by the patio door and grabbed the black silk robe that was draped over the back. That usual, bright California sun came in like the light of an awesome angel, radiating its heavenly fire, and it made Kathryn think again of their cries for the justice of Enlil as if it was the condemnation for defying God.
Perhaps Enlil is a god... Kathryn pondered as she walked out into the hall and glimpsed the guestroom to see the beds empty.
“Of course you’re already up!” she hollered as she made her way to the living room. Magdalene was lying on the sofa, her legs drawn up and her hands held tight to a fragrant cup of coffee.
She wore a simple silk robe, and those auburn curls framed her caramel face and enhanced the amber hues of her eyes.
“I had a rough night of it,” she said with a frown.
Kathryn reached for the white coffee cup and poured herself the strong room service coffee that must have just recently arrived-perhaps waking her up from those dreams-and sighed.
“Yeah, I can relate.”
Kathryn spotted her purse on the dining table, and walked over to it, grabbing her cigarette case and walking to the patio door. She unlatched it, then drew back the big glass door and pushed back those sheer curtains; lighting up and walking back over to the sofa.
“Kathryn, what is going on? What are we dealing with?”
She shook her head, staring straight but seeing nothing at all, really. It was just the void of thought as she took a drag from her cigarette.
“I don’t know... they are monsters-like demons from a Bosch painting, and yet they are so much more.”
“I can’t help but think that they are serving a purpose-that they have been directed to come here by something else. That they obey and they have one specific target... and that’s you.”
Kathryn was quickly drawn back from her stupor and turned to look at Magdalene. Those eyes held something she had never seen in her cousin before, and it was something that turned her stomach. It was fear. Pure and exact. Fear that pierced the very heart of reason and could drive one into a compromising panic.
“I just don’t understand what they want from me? What have I to give them?” she had run it all through her head so many times that it began to wear her down. If she was the target, if she was the ‘one alone’ then why?
She tried to piece it all together, she tried to unravel the mystery-to sift through her life and examine every choice-every decision made-and see what it was that she could have done to bring the rage of the heavens or the very pits of damnable hell upon her.
“Or, what will you be giving them?” Magdalene’s brow arched and Kathryn shrugged.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Magdalene began, adjusting her position on the sofa. “Maybe these things are not coming for you because of something you have done, but of something you are going to do.”
“I can’t imagine what that would be...”
“The Legacy?” her cousin suggested.
“But what about the Legacy? The ones to end the Legacy will have names that begin with a T and the letter B. it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
They both sighed and Magdalene sat upright, pouring herself another cup of coffee and staring into the nothingness just as Kathryn was.
“We have ways of getting answers...”
Kathryn took a sip from her steaming cup. It was strong and thick, the kind of coffee that was more like motor oil. It was the best way to drink it; with just enough sugar to make it sweet, but not enough to take away from the flavor of the coffee itself.
“I have the book with me.”
“I wondered if you had. Does Aunt Annaline even know?”
Kathryn shrugged and gave a smile. “Let’s be honest, my mom is usually too tipsy or too stoned to even care. She’s either always drinking high balls, or she’s smoking that blessed weed and flying to Sabbats in the woods to fuck Dionysus or whatever.
“It’s safer with me than sitting in the house collecting dust.”
“You mean this?” Magdalene grabbed her white mohair purse and removed a small vial with cork top, the familiar oil-soaked green buds inside.
Blessed weed, as they liked to call it, was made with oil steeped in wormwood, mandrake, poppies, and Belladonna on the night of a new moon, and then once cooled, it was applied to marijuana buds. The recipe was of the anointing oil used by witches to “Fly” to the secret meeting places.
To complete the intended purpose, a shot of absinthe, distilled by the Blackmoores, was taken before smoking. The absinthe, which was brewed with the usual ingredients, was enhanced with the added benefit of datura, The final, and most important ingredient to the salve.
This, along with the required incantation and the smoking of the blessed weed, allowed the witch to leave their body and go to the sacred meetings.
The Christians believed that they flew with brooms at half-mast between their legs, and traveled to secluded distances far from the eyes of the village, to copulate with the devils and to spit on the cross and kiss Satan’s buttocks.
Spread upon the body as an oil, or smoked or ingested, it would kill a normal man, but for the witch it caused no harm. It was the key to separating the specter from the corporeal form and going wherever one wished. It allowed for the travel into the in-between. The place between sleep and dreams, the place where the dead roamed and the wild spirits of the earth could be seen.
Perhaps it was what was needed.
Magdalene nodded again, and removed two bottle-green vials, no bigger than airline sized bottles of alcohol, holding them up into the light. “I just had a feeling to bring these. It’s not a lot, just enough for one use; I didn’t want to risk trying to bring anymore on the plane.”
Kathryn was grateful. Whatever deities were looking out for her, she was glad for it. Magdalene was always so much more attune, so much more devoted-as if she had taken holy orders and was committing herself to the priesthood.
Her cousin was going to be the type of witch that Fiona was, or Queen Mab. Kathryn and her mother had been so different. They were devoted, but it was not a daily thing. They would never be priestesses of a coven, or run the spiritualist church. They were sin-during-the-week-be-good-on-Sundays-type of witches. But Magdalene? She would be a true student and she would care and give council.
She would become the saint of the Blackmoores. She would be the one with the direct channel and the guidance to give. She would be the one who the Blackmoores turned to in times of tribulation.
At least for those Blackmoores who didn’t try to run away from who they were.
The Blackmoores of Ireland-Those Who Stayed-as they were called, were deeply Catholic. Devout like her father, Trevor Mayland, had been devout. They truly believed their powers and their wealth all came from the Devil, and sought to use what they felt to be tainted with evil, for good, in order to purify it and absolve it.
For Kathryn the humor was always found in their hypocrisy. They thought the American Blackmoores-Those Who Left-were sinful. Willfully damned, and yet, they never refused the wealth when Tristan Blackmoore began setting up accounts with Dutch banks and purchasing the nearly nineteen square miles of land that the Blackmoores had settled in once they abandoned the moor.
They did not refuse the rents paid to them by the people on all of that land, and the money from the businesses they taxed. They had no problem in being landed gentry, and the investment in brandy from Spain did not wrestle with their religious convictions.
Sure, they showed nothing but kindness to their tenants, and had close to a century and a half of never evicting a single family or closing a single business, and perhaps they gave so much to the catholic charities as a way of repentance for what they saw as their inherent sin, but for many of the American Blackmoores, it was a division that only served to hinder what the family could have been if they had remained united and bound.
The gossip in the old superstitious neighborhoods and towns was that though the Blackmoores of Ireland did good work and appeared to be god-fearing Catholics, who were respectable and cared only about the work of the Church, it was still well-advised to be wary of most of them, as many Blackmoores were still believed to have the Devil’s touch and were prone to extreme wickedness-that it was intrinsic-inborn and undeniable.
They were so terrified of what they were that they had nothing to do with the American Blackmoores, who most of them believed had fallen in with the hedonistic voodoo of the pre-civil war blacks of New Orleans and built their kingdom on greed and debauchery.
Everyone had a story about the divide, a little variation here and there, but it always came down to the same thing; the battle between heaven and hell.
Though the County Mayo Blackmoores hated and vilified their American counterparts so much, they never bothered to denounce the wealth, to return it to Tristan Blackmoore and stay poor. Kathryn had always figured that was the greatest act-the greatest show of faith-that they could have ever done.
But no, they took that money and ran with it. They built themselves into the European division of Blackmoore World Corp. and had no issues with that as well.
No, they would never seek out Magdalene for that guidance, and they would continue to go to mass and say their rosaries, and try to ignore the ghosts in the dark and the wild spirits of the night, thinking that they were somehow saving themselves from the Legacy.
But the future descendants of Sarafeene and Malachey would trust in Magdalene; they would understand who they were and they would embrace it as they had always done. Kathryn was certain of it.
“We should get the book and prepare...” Magdalene said, sticking the pot and the absinthe back into her purse. “I feel we are running out of time.”
Kathryn nodded and stood up, setting the cup of coffee back down on the coffee table. “I should get a hold of Angelina too; I need to make sure she’s alright.”
The memories of last night came rushing back to her. The feel of Kuri deep inside of her, thrusting his hips and covering her body in hot, passionate kisses, sent a tremor down her spine.
Kathryn’s cheeks were flushed. She could feel the heat without having to put her hands to her face.
The memory of him was so visceral that it felt like he was still between her thighs, his strong sex ripping her open and bringing her into other worlds, far past the stars, to where time meant nothing and nothing was contained within its lineal embrace.
“Kathryn?”
She blinked quickly and shook it away. “Sorry.”
Kathryn made her way back to her room and began to unlock the safe. She remembered the vision of Angelina wrapped up in Arish and Niiq, and the shelf with all of those books on ancient civilizations and the occult.
“Stay focused.”
She walked back out into the living room, book in hand, and found Magdalene standing at the open patio door, a warm breeze billowing the drapes and moving through her hair, and the sun reflecting in those amber eyes revealed the obvious concern that lingered behind their luminescence.
Kathryn knew that Magdalene could sense the danger, and it was so unknown, unlike anything they had ever faced.
“Hey,” Kathryn stood in the foyer for just a moment, holding up the book for Magdalene to see, then she made her way over to the dining table and her cousin followed.
“Sorry, just got lost in my thoughts, I guess.”
Kathryn shook her head and smiled. “I get it. You come down here and walked into hell. I get it.”
“I’m just worried that this is beyond us. We don’t even know what THIS is. What if we can’t stop it? Perhaps there is no stopping it. These things have power that we can’t even conceive of.”
Kathryn stayed silent for longer than she had intended. Magdalene’s words reached down deep and took hold of her lungs and gave them a squeeze. What was it that they were facing? What creatures-what manner of beasts under God could they be and why did they want her?
“Fighting is all that we can do. I don’t think there is any running from this. It’ll keep coming, and I don’t want to involve anyone else in the family. It’s bad enough I allowed you to come into this.”
Magdalene threw her head back and laughed, shaking her head and waving her hands dismissively.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but really? You didn’t allow me to come into this. I had read the tea leaves, I knew something was up. I was going to come whether you asked me to or not. My calling you yesterday morning had nothing do with asking for permission.
“I had called to tell you I was coming. I willingly walked into this and I am staying involved because I’m witch enough to make my own decisions.”
Kathryn smirked at her cousin’s assertions. She had made the mistake throughout the years of always seeing Magdalene as that teenager following behind in her academic footsteps. It struck Kathryn that for the first time she was finally seeing her cousin as a woman who could handle herself and risk life and limb if required.
“Alright,” Kathryn flipped open the book and began to search through its pages, her eyes glancing at the titles of different recipes and incantations. “Let’s see what we can figure out.”
They spent most of the day gathering the things they required. A birdcage large enough for a single bird, which they found, simple in its steeple shape and metal work, at a second-hand shop.
From the market they got milk, local honey, and fresh roses and
stopped at a hardware store for a shovel and chalk. Finally they had stopped at Crescent on the way back to the Marmont to pick up a package of dried myrrh, and a black taper candle, to be burned and held during the summoning.
It was a different shop girl this time, a nymph of a girl with a pixie cut of blonde hair and a ballerina’s frame who paid them very little mind while they looked around.
Magdalene was impressed with Crescent and though it had never mattered much for them, still commented on the fact that it would have been nice to see a shop like this back home in Bellingham.
Kathryn had tried Angelina twice, once before they left and as soon as they had returned to the hotel, and both times it was the machine that answered. There was a sick unease growing inside of her, deep in the pit of her stomach, and Kathryn found herself constantly wringing her hands together in apprehension.
She shouldn’t have left Angelina there. The books on the shelf had confirmed everything that she had suspected, and whatever was going on, Arish, Niiq, and Kuri were most certainly connected-to what extent she couldn’t fathom-but she knew that seeing them again was dangerous.
She thought again of that visage of Sheffield standing there and shouting to her from within the crowd. Was it simply the guilt that had always worked its tricks when she hooked up with a man, or was it something else-was it her witchcraft trying to warn her? Had it conjured this phantom Sheffield to try to shock her and perhaps stop her from going to the party at the band’s house in the hills?
She missed him. The ache was palpable, and once again, she could feel those tears begin to swell and she swallowed them down hard and dismissed the thought of his apparition from her mind.
Before they had left to run their errands, Kathryn had also called Richie, asking him if he had heard from Angelina, and of course he had not.
She apologized for not calling or meeting up the night before, and invited Richie over to the hotel after last call, informing him that she would explain to him as much as she knew, and that she was excited for him to meet her cousin.