The set belonged to a dear friend, Grandmaster Castillo, who used them in service to the Alliance until his death.”
“Tell me he died of old age.” Teag said with a wary look.
“Sadly no,” Sorren replied. “He was killed by a dark witch. But he died with valor and gave us the victory through his sacrifice. And while the blades aren’t tied directly to your Weaver magic, they’re powerful and do fit very well with your fighting skills.”
Teag reached for the second package, which was wrapped in newsprint. He broke the seal and lifted out a carved wooden circle the size of his palm, with hemp cords of varying length knotted to the ring.
At first glance it looked like a Native American dream catcher that had yet to be finished.
“What is it?” I asked.
Teag handled it reverently. “I’ve seen things like this in books about Weaving magic. You weave the cords to create a spell within the circle,” he said. “Kind of like a hand loom for magic. It’s a way to create powerful spells quickly.” Even from here, I could feel the stored power in its twisted threads.
“Until you’re trained in creating your own, this one will serve you.” Sorren said.
“Hemp also helps with vision and clearing a path,” Lucinda added. “Knot it as you invoke power, and it will store that power to refresh you when you tire. Keep it close at hand, and you’ll be able to find your way even in the dark.”
“I don’t know what to say. Thank you. If it weren’t for the whole demon thing, I’d agree with Cassidy that if feels like Christmas,” Teag said with a grin.
“Thank you,” I said, looking to Sorren.
Sorren nodded. “Lucinda made suggestions, and I asked Taras to bring me the pieces from one of the Alliance libraries.”
I was about to ask a question when my cell phone rang. I glanced down and recognized Maggie’s number. It was extremely unusual for her to call this late, so I got up and walked a few steps away to answer.
“Cassidy – have you seen what’s on the news?” Maggie said, foregoing any greeting. She sounded upset.
“Maggie, what’s going on?” I asked.
“Turn on TV! They’ve found another one of those mangled bodies – and this time, it’s right in front of the store!”
I caught my breath. Lucinda’s wardings would have kept harm from coming to the store itself, but leaving a body so close was a warning, if not a provocation to fight. “I’ll check the news,” I said, trying to stay calm. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“Do we open up tomorrow?” she asked.
I wondered what kind of messages would be on my answering machine at the house. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “If we don’t hear from the police, I’d say so. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.” I ended the call and slipped my phone back in my pocket. Only then did I realize that the others were staring at me expectantly.
“There’s been another demon murder,” I said. “And this time, the body was dumped in front of Trifles and Folly.”
Vampires watch TV, as it turns out, and subscribe to cable. Sorren turned on the TV and we all gathered to see the newscast. Police tape crisscrossed the area in front of the store, cordoning off a section of sidewalk between the curb and the door.
I sighed and put a hand over my eyes. I was likely to have an answering machine and email box full of questions, condolences and friends asking ‘WTF?’ “Do they know who the victim is?” I asked.
Teag already had his smart phone out and was searching the Web. “Officially, no,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
“Male, approximately forty years old, Caucasian, the ID they’re running is Chris Turner,” he reported.
He looked up. “Last known address, the men’s shelter out by the old Navy yard.”
“Let’s wait for the crowd to clear,” Sorren said quietly. “Then we need to do a little investigating of our own.”
Hours later, when the police had finished up for the night and the gawkers and news crews had gone home, downtown Charleston was dark and silent. Teag and Mirov and I drove past the store once in his car to make sure everything was calm. Sorren followed in Lucinda’s car. We figured that if anyone reported us, Teag and I could say that we came by to check on the store and brought Mirov along as a bodyguard. Sorren and Lucinda would just be a couple out for a drive Normally, the area around the shop is considered to be a ‘good’ neighborhood, and some of the restaurants and bars a few blocks down are open late, so foot traffic after midnight wouldn’t seem completely out of the ordinary.
Teag, Mirov, and I pulled around to the back of the store, warily watching the shadows. Sorren and Lucinda parked in the alley behind us. Mirov insisted in getting out first. He had a very modern SIG P225 in one pocket and a nasty-looking broadsword in a scabbard at his hip. All he needed was a long duster coat and he would have looked like he was right out of Hollywood central casting.
Mirov jerked his head in the direction of the store to give us the all-clear. Teag and I were wearing all our protective charms, and I still wished I had a gun like Mirov’s. Guns don’t work on demons, but they do just fine on the humans under a demon’s control.
As soon as I stepped out of Teag’s Volvo, I could feel something very wrong. The air itself felt tainted, and the energy of the space was twisted and foul. I closed my hand around the ring, willing clarity, and when I opened my eyes, I could see a very faint glow around Trifles and Folly – Lucinda’s warding, still holding strong. I let out a sigh of relief. Awful as it already was, it could have been worse.
Mirov was moving down the alley slowly, making sure our way was clear. We came up the side street, and I was afraid someone would spot his sword and gun, but no one passed by. Sorren and Lucinda were waiting in the shadows in front of the store. I noticed that Sorren was also wearing his sword. I was really hoping we didn’t have to explain any of this to the Charleston police.
“What do you make of it?” Sorren asked Lucinda. Lucinda was wearing her very large shoulder bag, which I had learned carried a multitude of Voodoo necessities. She walked slowly toward the crime scene tape, careful not to touch anything. Lucinda raised her face to the wind, and lifted her hands, palms up, to the sky. I saw her lick her lips as if tasting the air, and she drew a deep breath. Finally, she approached the front of the store, stopping a few paces back from the façade. She stretched out a hand, and in response, her warding shimmered at her touch. It looked as if streaks of black soot marred the otherwise golden light.
Lucinda began to chant under her breath, and the sooty taint gradually faded, leaving the warding energy clean and strong. Lucinda stepped back, admired her work, and spoke another word of power.
The warding became invisible once more.
Next, as Mirov and Teag watched for trouble, Lucinda ducked under the police tape, approaching the dark stain on the sidewalk that remained despite the crime scene technician’s best clean-up. Lucinda chanted again, and withdrew a Kretek clove cigarette from her bag. She lit it, and the smell of its distinctive smoke hung on the night air. I knew that smoke purified, and that tobacco smoke was used to open communication to the spirit world, while cloves produced visions. I noticed that Lucinda kept a hand under the Kretek, not wanting to leave the ashes behind. Magic was safest when you left nothing for your enemies to find.
I made a fist with the hand that wore the ring, willing myself not to go into a trance. One of us was enough. I walked back and forth, looking for found objects, anything that the beings who did this might have dropped. Part of me hoped I would find something that could help us stop Moran and the demon.
The other part of me really didn’t want a vision from anything that either of them ever touched. To my relief, I didn’t find anything, but that wasn’t a surprise. The cops had already been over the area, and I doubted our enemies were that sloppy.
Lucinda began to sway back and forth, humming an unfamiliar melody, her eyes shut, face upturned.
After a few moments, she took a de
ep breath, opened her eyes, and murmured her thank-yous to the Loas.
She ducked outside the police tape and turned to Sorren and me. “Like the other murders, he wasn’t killed here, just dumped,” she said, her voice tight with anger. The smell of cloves clung to her clothing like an aura. “That’s why there wasn’t as much blood as you’d expect, considering.” Considering that the body had been flayed and then torn apart, bones broken and joints shattered, before the killing blow was administered.
“Did it leave a revenant?” Sorren asked.
Lucinda shook her head. “Not anymore. I freed the spirit and its energy. And in a moment, I’ll get rid of the nasty psychic sludge the killers left behind.”
Although the whole thing had taken less than ten minutes, I was getting antsy. I could see that Mirov was fidgeting, looking decidedly uncomfortable.
“We need to get out of here,” he murmured. His accent seemed thicker, and I wondered if that happened under stress. “Not long,” Lucinda said, with a glance toward Sorren. “I think you want this space cleared.”
Sorren nodded. “Just be quick.”
Lucinda reached into her large bag and withdrew a bottle of rum, a piece of chalk, a horseshoe and a handful of iron nails. She used the chalk to mark a veve on the horseshoe and laid it front of the stained pavement. Then she walked in a circle outside the police tape, sprinkling the ground with rum and dropping iron nails as she hummed and sang. When she had finished the circle, she retrieved the horseshoe and the nails and handed them to me, along with the rum.
“Put the horseshoe near the front door and the nails near the back door,” Lucinda instructed.
“Sprinkle a little of the rum on the sidewalk outside the warding at both doors.”
She turned to Sorren. “We’re through here.” The five of us walked around the block to the alley.
“What about security cameras?” I asked nervously, torn between glancing up to see which cameras might have captured our image and not wanting those cameras to have a full-face shot of me.
“Not a worry,” Lucinda said. “Your demon hunter friend zapped them with something that fried their circuits.”
I was glad he hadn’t zapped the security lights in the alley behind the shop. They weren’t bright on the best of nights, and tonight my nerves were jangled enough, I would have preferred the kind of lights they use for nighttime football games.
I was very aware of the shadows as we walked toward the cars. The alley smelled of old garbage and mold, urine and dirt. Just then, every security light in sight suddenly went dark.
I heard the scuttle of claws against pavement, and a low, guttural growl. The akvenon ran like hunchbacked, reptilian Mastiffs, as big as a large man but with teeth like a crocodile and skin like a snake. Horrible, curled claws protruded from their feet, and powerful hind legs propelled them with nightmare speed. “Incoming!” Mirov shouted.
I looked up to see three akvenon minions, heading straight for us, in between us and our cars. The scuttling noise grew louder, and three more of the minions closed on us from behind.
Mirov stepped up to meet the three demon spawn hurtling down the alley toward us, while Sorren moved to get between us and the others approaching from behind. Lucinda stood with Mirov, while Teag and I took our positions a pace behind Sorren, ready to do what we could.
“I liked fighting them better when I could hit them with my car,” I muttered. Tendrils of mist curled around my ankles, coalescing into Bo’s ghost dog form. Bo lowered his head and stalked forward, growling. I wasn’t sure he could do anything to the akvenon, but I didn’t figure it would hurt to have all the help we could get.
“One for each of us,” Teag replied. “That’s better odds than we had last time.”
“Get ready,” Sorren said grimly. “Cassidy – draw on the memories from the new artifacts and see if you can call the kind of power you summoned at the Archive.”
There was no time to point out that I had absolutely no idea of how to do that. Instead, I planted my feet firmly, stretched out my right hand with the spoon-athame up my sleeve, and opened myself to the memories of the spoon and the spindle whorl, the ring, and the bracelet. Alard’s walking stick hung from my belt loop, just in case. Lives and centuries spun around me, gathering in a cloud of power, and with a shout, energy coalesced in my body, coming to a focus in my outstretched palm, and blasting toward the akvenon with a torrent of power that stung my hand.
These new artifacts enabled me to call an energy stream that wasn’t flame but packed a wallop when it hit the target, unlike Alard’s wand which spewed real fire, and my grandma’s spoon that projected a force-field.
The stream of energy caught the akvenon at the front of the pack full in the chest like an explosive charge, blowing a hole through his ribs. The akvenon gave a death shriek, as its form began to unravel, decomposing into shadow before it vanished entirely.
The energy stopped abruptly, and I felt as if I had just run a marathon. Why don’t magic objects ever come with instructions? I thought. It would have been nice to know I only get one shot before I have to ‘reload’. Grimly, I grabbed Alard’s walking stick, since it looked as if the spoon-athame and the souped up power it got from the jade torc needed time to recharge.
Sorren went for the second akvenon with his sword, his speed and vampire strength easily a match for the creature. Bo’s ghost harried the third minion. Teag bent down to pick up a rock the size of his fist from the gutter and let fly. The rock struck the third minion right between its slitted reptilian eyes. He lobbed off two more shots, smacking the akvenon in the head both times. Every time it tried to advance on Sorren, Teag forced it back again. At this rate, he should pitch for the Yankees.
The rocks had kept the minions at a distance, but that wasn’t going to last forever. Sorren already had his sword in hand, and Teag drew his new short sword and dagger. Warily, they advanced on two of the akvenon, while I took aim at the third.
Sorren went left. Teag went right, and I sent my shot down the middle. Sorren had immortal strength and speed, making him a match for the creature. Teag wasn’t immortal, but he was damn good. Years of martial arts made him quick on his feet, able to make lightning-quick strikes and get back before the monster’s claws could strike. He had blades in both hands, but the minion underestimated what Teag could do with his feet. Eskrima had taught him blade work; Capoeira taught foot fighting and acrobatics.
Put them together, and he was lethal as he swept the minion off its legs, then followed with a kick that could break bones. By the time the minion came back for more, Teag was ready with his blades. I wished I could watch, but I had my own akvenon to fight.
I leveled the walking stick at the akvenon and used the ring to focus my thoughts, managing to blast a torrent of fire that blackened the monster’s tough skin. The creature recoiled, then charged me again. I concentrated harder, hoping to get fire that was hotter, longer in duration. I heard a popping, sizzling sound and an ungodly shriek, and the akvenon exploded into charred bits that disintegrated and vanished.
Mirov’s Sig popped once, then twice, its suppressor muting the sound of the shots. The rounds slowed the akvenon rushing him, but didn’t stop it. Mirov was cursing under his breath in Russian as he jammed the gun in his belt and took up his sword two-handed and went after the monster.
Lucinda had a short wooden staff in one hand, something else she had pulled from her huge tote. It was festooned with crow feathers and charms bearing the veves of the Loas. She called out a word of power and leveled the short staff at the akvenon like she did this kind of thing every day. A wave of power blasted the creature back, slamming it into one of the other akvenon. That slowed them down, but didn’t stop them.
Mirov pivoted out of the way of the akvenon’s sharp claws and brought his sword down hard on the monster’s neck, severing its head. With a cry, he ran at the next minion. He slashed low, severing one of the thing’s legs, then brought the blade point down, through its chest. It
was already disintegrating into shadow when the third minion sprang forward, slashing at him with its claws.
Mirov blocked the creature with his sword as his left hand grabbed for something under his jacket.
Silver glinted in the moonlight as he flung a knife-edged throwing star at the beast. The star blade caught the akvenon in the neck, spraying the alley with its ichor. Mirov wheeled, bringing his sword down with his full strength, impaling it from one side through the other. The creature jerked and spasmed, flailing with its deadly claws, and Mirov twisted the blade. With a screech, the akvenon bucked against the blade and then dissipated into darkness.
The air smelled of ozone like after a lightning storm, and my palm was red and blistered. Mirov was breathing hard, splattered with the beast’s black blood. Lucinda kept her short staff aloft, watching the shadows for another attack. Sorren and Teag had both finished off their opponents and walked back to rejoin the group. Their clothing was streaked with ichor, and Teag was sweating, but they looked unharmed.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sorren said. “There’s no good way to explain this to the police, and we can’t stop a demon from inside the Charleston jail.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
EVEN THOUGH IT was Wednesday, we were too busy in the store for Teag and me to talk about anything but business all day. I hadn’t even had time to check the package Sorren had left on my desk. When the time came to close up, I sagged against the wall and closed my eyes, letting out a long breath. “Be careful what you wish for,” I said. “That was the busiest we’ve been all week.”
“At least we can pay the bills,” Teag noted, looking on the bright side.
I had been so busy, I hadn’t had a chance to check the voice mail on my cell phone. I recognized the number and put it on speakerphone.
“Hi Cassidy,” Mrs. Morrissey’s voice chirped from my voice mail. “I did a little more digging on the Navy yard. Turns out that, during the Quake of 1886, there was an old warehouse in that area that was used as a temporary morgue for the victims of the earthquake. It gets worse,” she added. “Back in 1858, there was a Yellow Fever epidemic. It hit Charleston so badly, some churches lost half their membership within a week. Guess where they brought the bodies to try to contain the contagion?” She paused.
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