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 deep 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.