A spin of my wrist flung witch blood off the holy blade in an arc. Stepping over Athame’s body, I dropped the sword into the scabbard. It sank home with a hard pull on the leather belt around my waist.
Kneeling beside Tiff, I gently pulled her up, supporting her with my arm.
Her lovely face was ghost-white pale. Sweat beaded her upper lip and along the edges of her cheekbones. Her eye was bright, pain making it shine. Softly, I moved her hair out of her face. It was stuck to her skin with sweat. “Hey, little girl. Thanks for saving my ass.”
She coughed. “Thank me later, we’ve still got work to do.”
“Settle down. You don’t have to be tough anymore; I’ve got it from here.”
“That’s good, ’cause I think my leg is broken. It hurts like a bitch.”
I looked down. Her leg was bent unnaturally. There weren’t any lumps under her leather pants that would have been a compound fracture, but it didn’t look right.
Movement caught my eye. My hand was on my gun as Special Agent Heck staggered from the shadows. One arm was across his chest, holding his ribs, the other was snapping a cell phone closed. He came over, standing.
I looked up at him. “I thought you were dead.”
His voice was strained, words coming on shallow breaths. “Broken ribs. Maybe sternum fracture.”
He was tougher than I thought. Broken ribs are no joke. Everything you do—breathing, moving, hell, even thinking—feels like it’s tied in with your body core. It hurts constantly, a sharp, grinding pain that keeps a knife edge against your nerves. Every tiny sip of air is torture. He looked over my head, behind me.
“That’s a problem.”
I turned. Selene was still inside the pentagram. The spell bubble had turned a sickly violet, crackles of corruption magick zipping through it like miniature lightning. Selene was raging inside, still casting her ritual. It was all contained in the bubble of the spell, including the sound. Her poison green eyes pinned to me, fury naked on her chubby face. Both boys lay on the altar, still bound.
It was the air over them that was the problem.
It had split, rent open like a jagged wound. The edges of reality peeled back like the lids of an empty eye socket. Inside, a miasma of magick roiled, spitting sparks of witchcraft. It split wider as I watched, tearing and ripping.
I pulled Tiff to her feet quickly, gently as I could. She sucked in a deep breath when her heel struck the floor and became even paler. Fat droplets of sweat popped on her forehead. Definitely a break. I moved her toward Special Agent Heck.
“I know both of you are hurt, but you have to get each other out of here.”
“I’m not going anywhere. You need my help.”
“Don’t make me carry you out and toss you down the stairs, little girl.” I transferred her arm from around my neck over to Special Agent Heck’s shoulder. “Get your asses out of here so I can deal with Selene and finish the job we came for.”
“But—”
“No buts. Go.”
Her mouth formed a hard line. “Same deal as always, lover, you bring your ass back home to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I turned to Special Agent Heck. “Get all the way to the car. I want her to the doctor ASAP.”
“Backup is on the way.”
“Not my backup.”
“The O.C.I.D. has people coming.”
“Good, they can clean up my mess. Now get moving and try to take George with you, he’s by the door.”
Tiff reached out, touching my arm. “Love.”
“Love.”
She nodded and they turned to the door, leaning on each other.
I turned away and went back to work.
My fingers felt thick and dull as they fumbled with the straps of the holster on my thigh. It took a few seconds for me to work enough of them free so I could pull out the cross it held. Hexe Aufgabebrecher. The Witch Breaker. Damn near two feet long and twenty pounds of anti-occult kick-assery. It filled my hand and began to glow with a pure, righteous, blue-white light.
Time to finish this.
53
Stepping to the edge of the pentagram, my skin felt like it had been scoured. It was raw with stinging magick, the nerves pulled too close to the surface, open to the air, sore to the touch. The spell made a dome that was solid. I could see Selene through it, but I couldn’t hear her.
I edged my foot toward the dome, sliding my boot forward slowly to touch it. An inch away one of the sickly yellow crackles arced over, zapping my toes.
The whole thing went numb and cold up to my calf muscle.
Reaching down, I dragged my power out of my guts, unfurling it and pushing it toward the bruise-colored dome of light. The Angel blood in my veins began to boil, pushing my power hard. It rose, spilling out and crashing against the spell in front of me.
And broke.
My power ricocheted, bouncing off the spell, and slamming back into me. It bent my knees and sent my stomach into convulsions. I took a deep breath, settling myself. The gulp of air sent a stab of pain through my rib cage where Athame had stuck me with that damned soulsword of hers.
Selene’s eyes cut over at me. Magick continued to spill out of her mouth as she chanted. A pudgy hand reached down, tangling in the mane of the child in full animal form. He began to jerk, fighting until she lifted him up with a sharp yank of her chubby arm.
The wicked curved blade began to move down toward fur-covered throat.
Dear God, let this work.
I leaned, swinging The Witch Breaker back over my head. Every muscle pulled as I drove it down like a hammer, smashing it against the dome of magick. Cankerous, aurulent witchcraft flashbanged under the strike, backfiring up the cross. It jolted through my arms. The muscles of my hands seized and locked around the cross, clenching it in a death grip. A peal of thunder rolled through the sanctuary, reverberating like a gong had been struck.
The curved blade hesitated in the witch’s hand.
I pounded the cross against the skein of magick. With each strike, acid boiled up my nerves, climbing and crossing my chest. Yellow witchcraft crackled under the blows. Anger fought agony inside me becoming rage that clawed its way up my throat, tearing out in a roar.
The skein of magick rippled, splitting with the wet rip of an animal being skinned. Through the tear I could hear Selene chanting strangled consonants never meant for a human throat. The Witch Breaker clattered to the floor as I ripped Durendal out of the scabbard and shoved the blade into the hole. Twisting, I tore the blade up, the edge cutting through eldritch magick and parting a way.
The air was malignant as I stepped through.
I pointed the sword at her. “Stop what you’re doing right now.”
Selene stopped, pausing in her chant. The spell hung noxious in the air in front of her face. She pulled the pup closer, knife edge to his throat. Tears rolled down plump cheeks, shimmering on her soft jawline and dripping onto the head of the child in her arms. Her voice cracked with desperation.
“You’re ruining everything! Stop and let me finish.”
“That’s never going to happen, witch.”
Her eyes were desperate. “Wait, wait, look at the portal.”
My eyes followed her finger, sliding up above the altar.
The air yawned open, images flashing across the gape. It tugged at me, like the hole had a gravitational pull. It was like looking through a hole in a tent if the universe were a circus. The images rouletted around, settling on a scene in a home.
It was dinnertime, the table set with three places. The table was a hand-me-down, the top of it scarred from generations of children doing homework and craft projects there, discolored after an uncountable number of meals taken there, heat stained from years of Thanksgiving turkeys carved and Christmas hams sliced.
We always meant to refinish it and never did once our children started adding to the scars.
My heart locked in my chest as two people came into the scene. One was a boy who was stret
ching toward manhood. Midteens, he was just starting to fill out, still almost painfully thin from a growth spurt, but you could see his shoulders were widening. His hair was cut close and gelled into a short upkick in the front.
The girl was in the first bloom of womanhood. Her hair was thick, honeycomb brown, and bone straight. It bobbed behind her in a ponytail. A dash of freckles ran across her nose, and her lips were made for laughing.
Both of them had the same wide gray-blue eyes. Both of them were older. I hadn’t seen their faces in over five years.
They sat down. The girl looked up as someone else stepped into the scene.
Holy Mary, Mother of God . . .
54
My hand slammed over my mouth.
The woman was gorgeous. Long midnight hair that swung wild and free to her supple waist. She sat at the remaining place setting. Quick brown eyes danced behind thick-rimmed glasses that framed her face, her lovely face, thick lips pulled up into a smile. She reached out for her glass, a wide band of diamonds glittering on her slender finger.
It was the one piece of jewelry of any value she’d ever wanted, the one piece she had loved the moment we found it at the little jewelry store in town.
The pain in my chest intensified, sliding all the way through me. It hooked under my heart, barbs of memory digging in, tearing as they pulled. Tears ran hot and salty down my face.
My family. I was looking at my family. They were older than my memory.
About five years older.
They were alive.
The image wavered, edges breaking, flaking away like desiccated reptile skin. The scene dimmed. Fading. Going away.
I lunged. “Bring it back!”
“The spell is fading. I have to finish it to keep the portal open.”
I stopped, torn in two. My eyes cut to the image of my family. It was sliding away like water in a drain. I looked at the Were-child in Selene’s grip, knife to his throat. His eyes were wide over the muzzle that held his jaw closed.
The witch spoke. “I can give you what your heart desires most, Deacon Chalk. You see them but I can bring them to you. Your family can be with you again.” Her voice dropped, breaking. Tears welled in her poison absinthe-colored eyes. “I know the pain of a lost love. The hollow, empty feeling. I know what it is like to wake up in the dark of the night and reach over to touch the cold space beside you. The loneliness that gnaws at you, grinding away at your sanity while leaving you cold and dead and hard inside.”
“That’s not my family.” My voice was hollow in my own ears. The words dragged through me like regurgitated ground glass.
Absinthe eyes glittered fever bright. “But it is! That is your family. They live in another version of this world. In their version, it was you who died that night so long ago, not them. They live together, still missing you every day. They would gladly join you here if they knew they could.”
Oh, God. My family. To be with them again.
“Could you really bring them here? Do you really have that much power?”
“Yes! This world is the knot in the stitch. Every time a world-changing event occurs here on this plane of reality, it ripples out in different variations across the multiverse. We can’t go there, but I can bring them here.” Her voice dropped. “I can take away your pain, Deacon Chalk, but only if I finish the spell.”
“What else will come through?”
“My husband. I will only bring him and then I can rid myself of the pain I carry too.”
“And then you’ll close the rift?”
“Once open I cannot close it, but does it matter? You can have your heart’s desire. You can be whole again.”
My family. I could see them, they were so close. My heart ached, driven through with nails of memory. I could have them back. All I wanted was only one word away.
I looked up. My wife laughed at something one of the kids said. She held a napkin over her mouth, her body shaking with laughter. Everyone was smiling as they ate. I remembered that. Being at the dinner table, in a kitchen full of love and care.
Peace.
One word. Just a nod. Just not stopping Selene and they could be mine again.
They could come to my world, to my life.
My life of monsters.
My life of pain and blood and fear.
My life where they had already been killed by what I fought every day.
I looked Selene in her poison green eyes.
“Fuck you.”
“What?”
The sword blade rose in front of me, point toward her. “I said fuck you. No.”
“You want this, Deacon Chalk. I can feel it. You want to be with your family again.”
“More than you know, bitch, but I’m not willing to drag the rest of the world to hell to do it.”
Selene seethed at me, anger pouring off her in waves. It spilled from her rounded shoulders and down her arms in jaundiced rolls of sorcery. Her voice was a harsh, grating hiss.
“I am.”
The curved knife began to slide across the child’s furcovered throat, blood spilling across the wicked sharp blade.
I lunged, thrusting the sword in my hand toward Selene’s head, aiming for one of those damned absinthe eyes. The witch ducked, knife coming away from the child, swinging up to whack into Durendal’s steel. She dropped Sophia’s son, dancing back, chanting the entire time. Sorcery spilled out of her mouth in malignant syllables. Magick began to gather inside the dome like a thunderstorm, pressing with an intensity that was barometric.
The Were-child she’d held hostage rolled off the edge of the altar, landing on the floor with a thump. The movement loosened his bindings and they slipped off his front paws. He immediately set to clawing at the muzzle on his face, mane shaking and whipping around. It broke after a few swipes of his lycanthrope claws, falling away. It hit the floor and he drew in a long breath that he let out in an earpiercing howl. Blood darkened the fur on his throat and chest, but the cut was already starting to close. The blade wasn’t silver. He shook off the rope around his back paws, turned, and clamped his jaws on the ropes tying his brother, gnawing on them.
Magickal lightning crashed inside the dome as Selene brought her spell to a crescendo. The blade in her hand was painted in bright blood. Lycanthrope blood. The Blood of the Trinity.
A flick of her hand slung blood through the air. It spun, arcing toward the rift in reality. I dove, stretching, reaching, trying. My hand rose up as the blood tumbled through the air in five fat droplets.
Four of them splattered against the skin of my hand and arm.
The last one hit the rift like a bullet through glass.
I fell to the ground as Selene screamed in triumph. “Come to me, my dark darling! Chernobog, black god of depravity, I call to you. Heed me, join me in this world ripe for your plunder.”
Movement caught my eye as I began to stand. Sophia’s kids were both free. They stared at me with wide eyes. They still held their forms. I jerked my head toward the cleft in the dome I had come in by. As one, they scrambled across the floor, darting through the hole in the magick.
I stood up.
The rift in the air had solidified. My family was gone, now the inside of the rift was a tide pool of inky darkness. It swirled, flashes of sorcery cutting through here and there. Something moved deep inside it. Something drawing closer.
Something powerful.
55
A tentacle curled over the edge of the rift, slapping on its rim of magick. It pulsed there, suckers sucking on solid air. The underside of the slimy thing was a raw pinkish red, the red of skinned flesh. The topside was a liver-spotted moss green that dripped ichor on the floor. A second tentacle slithered into our world, squirming into our reality. It hung in the air like dog’s nose sniffing, testing it. The raw flesh suckers on the underside opened and closed like tiny, toothless mouths. Flexing and bunching, they began to pull.
A man’s head and shoulders pushed out of the rift. Blue-black hair hung aro
und a face carved from granite by a heavy-handed sculptor. It was rough-hewn, a wide nose, heavy jaw, a brow that jutted over deep-set eyes the color of an eclipse. Wiry hair covered a thickly muscled bare chest. The tentacles were attached to his shoulders in place of arms. Wide eagle wings filled the space behind him.
Chernobog.
He set the air on fire with sorcerous potential. Witchcraft broiled off him in seething streams of acid-flavored power. His eyes fell on Selene. White teeth flashed in a wide smile.
He was still smiling as I whacked his head off with the holy sword.
The severed head fell in a flurry of shorn hair that fluttered around like confetti. It tumbled to the floor, bouncing once before rolling to a stop at Selene’s feet. The body slipped backward in a spray of gore, falling away into the potential of the multiverse.
Selene’s mouth hung open in shock. Turning, I swung the sword at her, the holy blade sliced toward her head. Her hand flashed up, clamping over the blade in an iron grip. Eldritch black flame licked her chubby arm, sizzling around the sword steel in her pudgy fist. She held the sharpened metal inches away from her face.
“You think you have stopped me? You’ve stopped nothing! There are more of him out there. More of him waiting on me like I have waited on him.”
She yanked down on the sword, wrenching it away from my hand. It pulled me forward, stumbling close to her as it left my hand. She threw it behind her contemptuously. Poison eyes narrowed. “I will go retrieve your family, Deacon Chalk. I will call forth every version of them and I will bring them to this world and kill them slowly in front of you. I will summon every monster I can to have their way with them. They will know pain and torment unimaginable. And you, you will watch every moment of this before you die at my hand.”
Blood and Magick Page 24