Michael joined Angela and Christie, who embraced him enthusiastically. “Don’t scare me like that!”
“I don’t know what happened, one minute I was just looking at her and then the next Bernie was dragging me away and I was right in front of her.”
“Well at least we know your type now; tall, blond, crazy and cannibalistic,” Angela muttered.
“Not funny,” Christie scolded.
“That’s no normal possession. Whoever took that poor woman can hypnotize and influence people through protective barriers, don’t look at her,” Bernie advised quietly.
“Shaaaaadow siiiiiren. Zachary’s Kingdom comes. We’ll be free. Free to eat, free to play, free to take whoever looks for their reflection and finds us. Stare into a siren and slip your skin.”
Part VII: Debt
Everyone inside Books and Blessings jumped at the sound of something impacting the rear metal door. Bernie had his overladen key chain out and in the lock of the central glass case in a heartbeat. Without a moment’s hesitation he picked up a sharp gladius. Michael was right behind him about to reach into the case when Bernie pushed his hand away. “Have any training with a sword?”
“No, how hard can it be?”
“These are battle ready sharpened blades, you’re as like to hurt yourself or someone else if you don’t know what you’re doing,” he pulled a long, decorative knife from the case instead and sheathed it before handing it over. “Here, only take it out when you’re about to use it and remember- pointy end first.”
“Nice, right.”
“Well, I could take it back,” Bernie said with a raised eyebrow.
“I mean, thank you,” Michael corrected, affixing the scabbard to his belt.
Bernie handed another dagger to Angela and offered the last to Christie, who shook her head. “I’m not so good with pointy things. Show me a spirit allergic to foul language and I’ll beat the hell out of him though.”
Bernie chuckled and walked towards the back door, sword at the ready. The store was quiet except for the sounds of the blonde woman at the gate, chuckling softly. He listened for something other than the rain.
“He’s coming and blades won’t help you,” sang the blood encrusted woman at the mall gate.
“Would you shut up already?” Christie burst.
“It’s okay, she can’t come in,” Angela reassured. “Just ignore her.”
The sounds of metal against metal sounded through the door and Bernie stepped back. “Chains. They’re going to pull the door off with chains.” He heard an engine rev and the door was torn free of its hinges.
“Bernie!” greeted Zachary through the sounds of the pouring rain and the door being dragged off by the chain tied to the back of a pickup truck. “It’s been what, twenty eight years?”
Michael ran to the staircase, staying out of sight. Angela remained at the far end of the store with Christie, and Bernie held the sword with both hands. “Move on, you’re not welcome here.”
“But the world is abuzz with word of your good hospitality. Why, Maxwell was just saying how good you were to him today.”
“There’s no crossing this threshold for your kind, you may as well move along.”
“Really, there’s no need for hostility.” Zachary raised his hand. Bernie’s sword spun across the room, clattering against a book case before falling to the floor. With a dark, glad expression Zachary stepped over the threshold. “No one’s seen a lasting resurrection since Cheops. Did you really think you could stop me old man?”
Bernie stepped into a charging stance and crossed half the distance between him and the door when a flick of Zachary’s wrist sent him hurtling across the store into the mall gate.
“He’s all yours, my darling,” the dark figure invited as he forced the lock on the gate open.
Bernie turned just in time to fend off the crazed woman and step back behind the protective barrier. She waited in the half open gate, salivating and glaring. “You have to leave sometime,” she growled.
Angela bared her dagger. “Huntsman watch over me,” she whispered as she stepped between Zachary and Bernie. Her grip on it was white knuckled. “Unclean thing be gone from this sanctuary. I call the spirits to witness your violation of the natural order and restore it.”
Zachary feigned a shiver and laughed uproariously. “Good words! This isn’t Wicca summer camp girl!” He crossed the distance between them in several inhumanly quick steps and curled his fingers around the hilt of her dagger. Before anyone had a chance to act he was back at the threshold and Angela’s blade was buried deeply in her own chest. The hilt twitched with the beating of her heart as she sank to the ground.
“By this sacrifice I anoint this space to my own purpose,” Zachary spat.
No longer impeded by the store’s protective barrier, the possessed woman leapt for Bernie, clawing at him with her jagged fingernails, her teeth, screaming and screeching hungrily, frantically.
Christie stepped over Angela, tears filling her eyes, shaking with fury. “I call the spirits of the north, west, east, and south to visit upon the man before me the full invocation of the three times law!” She screamed.
“What was that?” Zachary laughed.
“That was a distraction, asshole!”
Zachary’s expression darkened as he looked up to the balcony overhead. Michael stepped to the edge and looked down, muttering at a feverish pace as he cut into his palm. “Where did you learn that Sumerian ditty?” He growled as he tried to run up the stairs. He was stopped as though his feet were nailed to the floor. Zachary looked down to see a fleshy, barbed white hand gripping his foot.
The stench that preceded the creature’s arrival clung to the mouth and nose, leaving a corpulent fragrance behind. Its head was broad, covered in slick, translucent skin. Yellow - red eyes opened, set in a nest of hard spines and barbs that begun around its toothy mouth and ran all the way down its jagged back and bony arms.
It opened its mouth wide, impossibly wide, exposing three rows of pointed teeth as it caught several drops of Michael’s blood.
“No! You can’t exist! Not here!” Zachary screeched as he tried desperately to back away, to brush it free from where it crept up around his knees. His eyes were wide, panic gripped and shook him.
Michael stepped back from the railing, he too was wide eyed and shocked. “I was summoning help, only help,” he muttered.
The creature caught his eye and grinned. The language it spoke was unrecognizable to Michael’s ears, but the words carried deeper, to other comprehending senses. “This debt you will repay. Soon you’ll hear the call.”
Climbing and shambling, it turned its attention back to Zachary. The thing’s barb and spine coat caught on Zachary’s fine suit, pricking the skin on his thighs, piercing his hips and stabbing the frantic man’s hands as he tried to fend it off. It spoke once more, this time only a rasping whisper.
“I won’t go with you!” Zachary wailed in return.
It was a small thing, white and sickly. The first drops of Zachary’s blood dripped to the floor. The creature ignored them as he placed his hands on the man’s withdrawing face like he was a hesitant lover. Zachary’s shrieks bordered on inhuman as the creature’s grip tightened, slowly lacerating his ears, scalp and temples. As though savoring the moment, the white thing’s mouth opened slowly, wider and wider until the toothy maw was large enough to encompass Zachary’s mouth and nose.
It tilted its head and hesitated, as though waiting for his meal’s screams to reach an impossibly panicked pitch. Michael and Bernie couldn’t look away. Christie only had eyes for her dying friend and tried not to look.
The screams muffled as the broad maw descended. Its teeth ravaged all the flesh under Zachary’s wide, panicked eyes. The creatures’ flesh and spines changed, flushing crimson slowly from its head to the tips of its barbs. Bones cracked, the muffled screams stopped and Zachary fell to the floor.
His fall didn’t end on the tiles, however. Zachary and t
he creature descended the same way the creature came, leaving the space they’d been darkened by black dust but in otherwise perfect condition.
Bernie let the crystal ball he’d bludgeoned the crazed woman with fall from his hand. “Michael, you’re not to so much as crack another book! Now come down here and call an ambulance!” He rushed to Angela’s side.
Christie was on her knees, holding Angela’s blood covered hand. “It’s going to be okay. Just hang on, it’s going to be fine.”
Maxwell arrived at the rear door at a run and caught a whiff of the air. “What did you do?” he asked as he brought a kerchief up to his face.
“Got rid of Zachary,” Michael shot at him as he ran down the stairs and past Maxwell. “He’s dead and gone.”
He caught sight of Bernie, who was inspecting Angela’s wound carefully. He took a moment to nod at Maxwell; “He’s gone for sure. If we ever see him again we probably won’t recognize him.”
Maxwell rushed across the shop and fell to his knees at Angela’s side. “Well look at that, caught a blade. Not to worry, it’s barely a scratch. Just hold still.”
“Tell my father I’m sorry,” Angela whispered.
“No talking, especially if all you’ve to say is goodbye,” he placed his hand on the wound, the dagger between his fingers and closed his eyes. “You can hang that phone up, lad. No need to bother emergency services. Now, let’s see how broken things really are.”
Michael was in the middle of telling the emergency operator the shop’s address when he hung up the phone. He turned to watch Maxwell attend to Angela’s wound and caught a glimpse of something moving at the neck of Maxwell’s shirt. It was a finely tattooed serpent coming to life right before his eyes, slithering under his collar and down his shoulder.
“No Max! She’s almost gone!” Bernie shouted.
Maxwell gritted his teeth and broke into a sweat. The pager under his coat vibrated.
Angela bit her lip, screwed her eyes shut and tried not to scream as the dagger slowly rose out of her chest.
The dagger clattered to the tile and Angela opened her eyes, astonished.
“There you are, good as new,” Maxwell smiled. “Don’t say I never did anythin’ for ya.”
Bernie helped him to his feet, looking him over. The thin serpent tattoo had gone from him and appeared around Angela’s throat like a choker. “You’re all right?”
“A shot or two of that swill you keep behind the counter and I’ll be fine.”
Angela took Maxwell’s offered hand and got to her feet, feeling under her blouse. “Oh my God, it’s like nothing happened.”
Christie pulled the side of her blouse open to look then squealed and hugged her enthusiastically.
“Looks like those crystal balls were good for something after all,” Maxwell said, gesturing towards the display table beside the mall entrance. The unconscious crazed woman lay beside the weighty crystal ball that had knocked her senseless.
Bernie chuckled as he brought out the pair of glasses and unscrewed the whiskey bottle. “I’ll never look at them the same way again. Make sure you tie her up tight Michael, we don’t want her getting loose before we drop her off at the police station.” He reminded the youth as he bound the woman’s hands behind her with a thin cloth Celtic wall hanging.
“If it were me I’d get her into that back room and get ready to perform an exorcism. Not like the coppers’ll know what to do with her,” Maxwell muttered as he picked up his glass and shot it back. “That hit it,” he sighed.
“Never did understand why you drank so much. Doesn’t seem to get you drunk.”
“Keeps the voices down to a dull roar,” Maxwell smiled wanly as he sagged against the counter.
Bernie stepped around the end of the counter, bashing his shoulder against the cash register in his haste and got under him in time to catch his long time friend in his arms. The glass slipped from Max’s hand and shattered on the tiles.
“Hang on, I’ll have the boy call-”
“Shut your gob and listen,” Maxwell whispered. Blood ran down the left side of his shirt through the wound he’d taken from Angela. “Just because Zachary’s gone doesn’t mean the covenant’s not broken it just means it spreads slower. World’s about to change and no one’s on watch.”
“What do I do?”
“Mind the shop,” Maxwell laughed softly to himself and cringed. “Glory that hurts.”
Angela knelt down beside the pair, her expression fraught with worry. Her brown eyes darted from Maxwell’s faintly smiling face to the growing circle of blood on his chest and back.
With a shaky hand he managed to touch her face. He was in awe, as though seeing something so beautiful he almost couldn’t stand it. “Couldn’t have come out better,” he whispered as she caught his hand in hers.
With a sigh he was gone.
~ Thank you for reading. The continuation of this story is dependent on reader support. If you like this story, its setting and characters please donate an amount you feel is appropriate for how much you enjoyed your experience. Browse to www.randolphlalonde.com and click on the Dark Arts link. ~
Table of Contents
Dark Arts: Rising
Dark Arts: Rising Page 5
