Kane tucked and rolled as the dark in the room swirled, moved to one corner, wrapped into a figure. A man.
Richard.
His eyes glowed, two beads of light in Kane’s blue Ethereal Sight. It wavered, dimmed. Kane forced his mind back to the spell. He couldn’t afford to let Richard have the upper hand. Not in the dark.
Not while the Grimoires were exposed.
Richard smiled as he held up the Seeker.
“Good little piggies cast spells,” he said, his voice slick and serpentine. “It makes you easier to find.”
“Find this,” Kane said as he tucked both books under his left arm and held up is right hand. “Aethereum Ignus!” Kane shoved his palm forward, shooting a fireball at Richard. The demon sidestepped and sent a shadow tendril at him. Kane ducked as the shadow swiped at him, missed him, left a gash in the wall where he’d been only a split second before. Kane sent another fireball at Richard. He heard Farnsworth shouting something, heard Wilson call Kane’s name.
They could wait.
Kane spun, slung his arm out, sent a large fireball at Richard. It caught the man in the chest, but he only melted into shadows and reformed, letting the flames pass through him and smack into the wall. Some of the fire hit the cots, and they went up in flames instantly. Kane’s sight wavered and died out.
Shit.
The fire gave some light, but not enough. He heard Richard shifting around the room, his mocking coming from every direction.
“I’m in the dark now, piggy,” the man said, his voice singsong. “Gonna get you now, little piggy. Little Magician. Little dead thing.”
Wil’s voice sounded in Kane’s ear.
“You done got yourself in a heap of trouble, Kane Shepherd.”
Kane looked around. Richard appeared in front of him, swiped at him with long, sharp fingernails that scratched at Kane’s face. He felt the wet of blood as it ran down from the wounds on his cheek.
A blast came from the doorway and caught Richard in the side, sent him flying into the burning cots. The man screamed and was on his feet in a flash, smacking at his clothes where he’d caught fire. Kane watched as Wil walked into the room, her hands up, her gaze locked hard on Richard.
“You done with your hunt today, boy,” she said, grinning at him. “Unless you wanna dance with a Mambo from hell.”
Richard snarled at her, held out his hand. Shadows shot from his fingertips, flew at her like spears. Hit her.
Went through her.
She blinked out into thin air. She was beside him before he could react, her hands on him. Her eyes closed as she mumbled something quickly in another language. Richard was blasted into the wall, then down to the floor with a loud thud.
“You still wanna tango with me, boy?” Wil’s face was contorted with anger, her body hunched as if she were about to spring another attack at the Hunter, hands out and fingers clawed.
Richard stood, grinning as he leveled his gaze at Kane.
“We are not done, piggy.”
Kane went to sling another fireball at him, but Richard stepped backward into the wall and disappeared. Kane stood for a moment, his body tense and ready for another attack.
He could hear Farnsworth outside.
“What’s going on in there?! We’re coming in, Mr. Shepherd!”
Wilhelmina appeared in front of him.
“Time to sleep,” she said, raising a hand. She held it upright, palm up, and blew. A white powder splashed Kane in the face, and he sputtered and coughed as it went into his nose and lungs. He suddenly felt as if the weight of the world was on him.
He collapsed to the floor, unable to move as he body relaxed. Wil stood over him, looking down at him and chuckling as the light faded from his eyes.
“You rest now,” Wilhelmina said, her voice distant. “I ain’t even got started yet.”
Chapter Seven
Kane opened his eyes, the dark room greeting him, the silence almost painful in his ears. He reached out with his hearing. Nothing. Was he dead?
Tabitha stepped out of the shadows, only up to her chest, her face still hidden in the viscous black. Her shirt was matted with blood, her breathing ragged. Kane tried to move, but his arms and legs felt like weights. He looked back at her, tried to see her face. Why was she bleeding?
“You did this.”
Her voice was pained, thick and harsh as if she’d swallowed glass. He shook his head, tried to sit up again.
Nothing.
“Did what?” He shook his head, tried to cast his Ethereal Sight, but the words wouldn’t come. “What happened?”
“I can’t see anymore, Kane,” she said, taking another step toward him. The shadows moved away as she leaned in close, her face visible in the black, covered in bloody tears.
Her eyes had been torn out.
“You did this to me, Kane. Why did you do this to me?”
* * *
Kane jerked, his spine jolted as he sat up. His throat hurt as if he’d been screaming.
“That musta been a good dream, Kane Shepherd.”
Kane looked around the room. It was an old shack, the walls littered with hanging bones and skulls from whatever wildlife the Marsh Witch may have gotten her hands on over the years. The place reeked of rot and blood, the stench acrid and sweet. The walls were mud and stone, the ceiling the same.
It looked more like a tomb.
He found Wilhelmina sitting in a chair in the corner next to a crude fireplace, stoking the flames with long stick, not looking at him.
“Where am I?” He sat up more, his head pounding.
Wilhelmina chuckled as she put down the stick and turned enough to look over her shoulder as she spoke.
“You in my home, white man,” she said. “You in a place where you can get answers to all yo’ questions. But, you have to ask yourself: do I really want them answers?”
Kane swung his legs around and off the cot.
“Not really,” he said, his mind a whirlwind. “I want my books. Where are they?”
Wilhelmina turned fully in her chair, reached down, and picked up a large tome in each hand as if they weighed nothing. She grinned at him as she spoke.
“You mean your ‘Grimoires?’ Your spell books?”
Kane bristled. Shit. She had him. All she had to do was burn the books, and he and Tabitha were as good as dead.
Play it cool, Shepherd. De-escalate.
He sighed, focused on making his tone casual.
“Okay, you got me.” He got to his feet, rolled his left sleeve back up where it’d worked its way loose while he was out. “But I have a feeling you won’t do anything to those books until you get something from me.”
Wilhelmina grinned with yellowed and blackened teeth, her eyes sparkling in the firelight.
“Very good, Magician-man. Very good.” She sat the books down in her lap. “You smart. I see why she pick you. Got brains and you good-lookin’. But I don’ wanna burn your books. No, I need you to have your power, fickle as it is.” She set the books down on a small table next to her and motioned Kane to join her at the fire. He walked over, sat down in a chair that looked as if it were made of bones and skin.
He hoped the bones were from an animal.
Wilhelmina leaned forward in her chair, eyed him.
“First thing’s first, Kane Shepherd,” she said. “You got a curse, you do. You seein’ things in your sleep. Things that make you uneasy. Scared. An’ you don’t scare easy, I wager.”
Kane nodded. He had to have said something in his sleep. Damn. But a curse? Magicians weren’t known to cast curses, and Sarah Broussard was dead. If Blood Priests could curse people, then whatever she’d laid on him would’ve lifted the second he’d torched her. Still, to jump right on to asking about a curse could give the Marsh Witch the idea that he was unnerved. Better to play it down and work up to it.
“So how does this play out, then?” he asked. “I need answers, you need me for something.”
“Tit-fo’-tat, Kane Shepherd,” Wilh
elmina said with a laugh. “That’s how everything work out here. Give a little, get a little. You dancin’ with a Mambo, now. Ain’t nothin’ free from this Conjure-Lady.”
“I’ll start, then,” said Kane. “What the hell is that guy, Richard? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
She nodded in approval.
“A wise question. Richard Beauregard is a Shadow Wraith. They hellish things, not so much human as creatures. Demons. People who can bend shadows and twist themselves up in darkness. But that kind of power can make men mad, and it done drove that man insane. He under control, though. Work for Harbor Plantation under the Master.”
“And who is ‘The Master?’”
She grinned at him, waving a finger as she shook her head.
“No, no, Kane Shepherd. It my turn, now.”
Kane bristled. Shit.
“Fine.”
“Your element is fire. That much clear. Your woman’s element is water. Ice. But who that other Magician-man who come down here today?”
“William Gentry,” Kane said immediately. He wasn’t surprised that she knew about Gentry’s visit. The man hadn’t exactly been subtle. “He’s the police commissioner up in New Chicago. I don’t know his element, though.”
A Magician’s power came from two sources, the most important being the dead. A Magician’s Grimoire was comprised of two key elements: spells written by the family, and the post mortem photos that kept the smallest fragment of the deceased’s soul to give the book power, thus giving the book’s owner power. Each Magician’s power was fueled by the elements laid out by the book. Kane’s family Grimoire had been bound in Stonehenge during a ritual of fire. His ancestors had believed it to be a means of purification. As a result, his entire family line had been fire elementals. Tabitha’s Icelandic ancestry had been a fair explanation as to why she was in tune with ice.
Kane realized that he knew less about Gentry than he thought. He had British accent, but there was no telling how deep his ancestry went.
Wilhelmina nodded, not hiding her disappointment.
“That too bad,” she said. “It might give you an upper hand when you fight him. Know what to expect.”
Kane tried his question again.
“Who is ‘The Master?’”
Wilhelmina shook her head, smiling at him again.
“You sure you wanna waste your question on that?” An opossum wandered by her feet, sniffing the floor around her chair looking for scraps of food. She reached down and picked it up, stroking it like a pet cat. Kane swallowed back some bile. He’d seen plenty of them get onto the cargo ships when he was younger. Disgusting animals. They stunk, and looked like bloated, dead rats. “You sure you don’t wanna ask a real question? One you ain’t gonna eventually figure out on your own? Maybe about your curse? Maybe about why you need to be so, so worried about that? About what you might do to that poor creature you cherish?”
Kane sat back. She was right. The curse did bother him. He wondered how far he could get ignoring it. Ignoring the fact that someone had done something to him. Done something to his dreams.
And that someone was likely far from done with him.
“Fine,” he said, breathing out, his tone even. “Tell me about the curse.”
“Wrong again, Magician,” Wilhelmina snapped, shaking her finger at him again. The fire blazed up when she spoke, the light from the flames making her dark skin seem to glow a brilliant bronze. “You know good and well I can do no such thing. Not if I don’t even know what you got. I know you got one, though. Can smell it on you like stink on a corpse.”
“Fine,” Kane said again, getting annoyed. “Can you tell me what kind of curse I have?”
The blade was out before he knew what happened, cold steel in his arm, slicing his flesh easily. The pain didn’t come until he looked down and saw the blood flowing. He jumped up to his feet, knocking the chair back. His Ethereal Hellfire was on his tongue, rage flashing in his eyes, turning the room red. He called Wilhelmina a bitch as he put his hand over his bleeding arm. Blood dripped through his fingers and onto the floor.
The Marsh Witch had her head back, cackling as if he’d told a funny joke.
“I need yo’ blood, Magician. Only a little.” She stood, the opossum still in her arms, went to a nearby shelf, picked up a wooden bowl. The thing was crudely made, likely by her. She moved over to him and held it under his arm, letting the blood pool in the bottom. Kane watched as the blood seemed to flow from the wound faster as if the bowl called it. Waved her hand over the wound, then stepped away. Kane pulled his hand back.
No cut. No blood. Nothing.
She spoke over her shoulder as she moved to her kitchen table.
“Blood tell all, Magician,” she said over her shoulder. She placed the bowl on the table, set the opossum down next to it, and began to pilfer through the various bottles, vials, and bowls strewn on the heavy wood table. Kane stepped up next to her, watched as she poured a drop of dark, viscous fluid into the bowl. The opossum sniffed at the bowl as she put the vial back, picked up a bowl of soil, and put a few pinches in the concoction. The animal looked up at her, shook off. Wilhelmina smiled at it, stroked its head lovingly as she spoke to it. “You’re needed now, sweet.” She grabbed the thing around its neck, picked it up, and gored it open with her knife. Kane stepped back, his hand over his mouth as the animal’s guts spilled out onto the table. She held the opossum over the bowl, wrung the body, bones cracking as blood spilled into the bowl. She tossed the husk aside, the thing falling off behind the table and out of sight. The witch picked up a spoon and stirred the mass as she spoke.
“I seen your curse before. It’s a hellish one at that, but I have to be sure before I can begin the counter curse. They’s steps to this process, Kane Shepherd.” She turned to him, holding the bowl up in both hands. “And the first step is figuring out what you got.”
Kane stayed tensed, ready to cast a spell and end the madwoman.
“You’re insane,” he said.
Wilhelmina laughed.
“No, my friend,” she said as she brought the bowl up. “Hoodoo ain’t crazy. You jus’ never seen it before.” She brought the bowl to her lips and tipped it up, emptying the contents into her mouth. Kane felt bile worm its way up his throat, his blood on fire as she swallowed the potion. He heard the sound of the opossum writhing on the floor behind the table, squealing and thrashing.
How? She killed it! Kane’s mind roared in his ears, all of his thoughts hitting at once. His head pounded, and he put the heels of his hands to his eyes, the pressure feeling like they might pop out if he didn’t. He felt something moving in his mind, swimming around in the sea of musings, ponderings, memories, and traumas.
Someone.
He peeked out from underneath his hands and stole a glimpse at Wilhelmina. The woman hung in the air, her feet dangling a foot off the floor at least, her body rigid, her hands splayed open and out by her sides. Her eyes were blood red, tears of blood rolling down her cheeks, her mouth turned up in a rictus grin.
“You a man of secrets, Kane Shepherd,” she said, her voice a strained rasp. “A man with a bloodied past. Blood Priests done played a roll in your life. Mama and daddy dead. One! Two! No death for you, Kane Shepherd! You don’ get off so easy.”
She turned her head, and Kane felt something akin to a snake writhe in his head, the agony driving him down to his knees.
“Get out!” he shouted. “What the hell are you doin–”
“No, no, no, Magician-Man,” Wilhelmina laughed. “You ask a question, I gonna give you that answer. But you reckless. You never ask yourself the most important question. ‘Do I want to know the answer?’” She jerked, and Kane felt something in his head twist. He fell to the floor, his head in his hands, his skull feeling as if it might split open.
“You a man of darkness, Kane Shepherd,” Wilhelmina said from above. “You a man who carry so many burdens, don’ let nobody in. You got one light, and that light had to fight
its way in kickin’ and screamin’. Had to make you see it.” She went quiet, her breathing going ragged. Kane slowly got back to his knees, looking up at her, his head throbbing, his eyes feeling too big for the sockets. Her face was stricken in horror as she spun slowly in the air. She let out a long, drawn out breath before she spoke again. “You got that curse?”
She dropped to the floor instantly, landing in a heap as she went down. Kane felt the pain in his head and eyes lift immediately. He let out a breath of relief as his mind calmed down, the noise gone from his ears. He got himself to his feet, backed away from the witch as she gathered herself and stood, staring at him, her eyes dark.
“You got a hellish curse on you, Kane Shepherd. And an enemy out there who wanna see everyone you love decay and die.”
“But not me?” Kane laughed bitterly. “I smell bullshit.”
“No,” Wilhelmina said, shaking her head slowly, her eyes flashing at him. “Whoever curse you, they don’t want you dead. Not yet. Not before you do their dirty work. And not before you a broken man.”
His dreams about Tabitha. He’d hurt her. Maimed her. But they were just dreams. Still, it was different. The only dreams he’d had about people getting hurt were dreams about events in the past. Things that had actually happened. He’d never hurt Tabitha. Not like that.
“What ‘dirty work?’” Kane said.
Wilhelmina shook her head, pushed her dreadlocks back out of her face.
“Didn’t see. But I can promise you, that dirty work involve the Revolution.” She sat back down in her chair by the fire. The opossum she’d killed earlier came out from behind the table, walking as if nothing had happened. She reached down, picked it up, stroked it lovingly as she placed it in her lap and gazed into the fire. “It all connected. You. The Revolution. But you the focus for whoever give you this sickness. And once you lost that control, once you lose that line between reality and your dreams, they gonna control you. And no tellin’ what happen then. But I can tell you this,” She cocked her head slightly and looked at him sidelong. “Everyone around you in danger.”
Gaslit Armageddon (Clockworks of War Book 2) Page 8