Pure Blooded

by Amanda Carlson

  “Okay, but if a verbal spell isn’t strong enough, we’ll have to use one of the dark ones.” Marcy began chanting, and the air around us tingled with power. The snake’s gaze slid toward her as it began to vibrate under my grasp. “Marcy, it’s working! Now stab it and see what happens.”

  Marcy was clearly in a zone, but she moved forward, her eyes glazed in concentration as she expertly struck the snake right behind the eyes. She used so much strength, the knife lodged into its brain and she couldn’t pull it out. The red eyes above me began to blink like Christmas lights on the fritz.

  Marcy kept yanking at the knife, trying to get it out. “Leave it in!” I shouted. “I can feel the thing weakening. Just keep doing whatever you’re doing with the spell.”

  She immediately let go and stepped back, closing her eyes, bringing her hands up in front of her. To my surprise, her hair began to lift at the ends as the air shifted around us.

  The snake began to shake like a tuning fork, vibrating so fast I had no choice but to let go of it.

  A few seconds later the thing exploded.

  Right on my chest.

  I managed to look away in time, shielding my mouth and eyes with my hands a few seconds before it erupted. Snake guts had exploded everywhere. They were sticky and putrid. This thing had been good and dead before it had been reanimated by the bokor.

  I ran a hand over my neck and chest as I glanced up at Marcy, coughing. “I think we can safely say that you just bested the bokor and her stupid snake. What kind of spell was that anyway? Good lords, woman. That was nothing short of amazing.”

  Marcy’s eyes were bright as she extended her hand to help me up. “It was a tricky one. It was part null, to combat the bokor’s magic, and part boil.” Once I was up, she actually clapped her hands together excitedly. “I wasn’t sure I could do it, because it’s actually a dual spell, but I’ve been practicing them lately. You take a piece of one spell and combine it with another. It’s extremely hard to master and usually takes a young witch years to hone. But I only started doing them a month ago. Yay!”

  I whapped the biggest, stinkiest bits of carcass off my body, trying to clean it the best I could with my hands. The smell was putrid. “Yay is right. You rocked it out. But now I hope you have a hose-me-off spell. In the Underworld they had these amazing showers that washed you and your clothes on the spot. I would kill for one of those now.”

  It was really the only good thing about the Underworld.

  “I have a cleaning spell, but it’s more of an ‘incinerate the crap off you’ spell. I don’t think a bathing spell even exists. That would be handy, but too risky. The spell would have to attack your actual skin. Lots of ways to backfire.” She smiled as she aimed her fingers at me. She said a few words and the bloody snake guts sizzled and burned up like ash and fell to the ground.

  I glanced down the front of my shirt. “You took some material with it.” I put a finger through a hole on the hem and wiggled it.

  “Good grief!” Marcy said with exasperation. “You can’t expect perfection a hundred percent of the time, O Grand Taskmaster.” She steepled her hands and faked a bow. “I just defeated a possessed python the size of five kindergarteners end to end. My brain is completely fried. You’re lucky your shirt is still attached to your body.”

  I laughed. “Well, the guts are gone, so that’s all that matters.”

  “Of course that’s all that matters. Now, let’s get out of here. That carcass is making me gag and we need to get to Naomi and Danny. Plus, I want out before any more possessed reptiles slither out of the woodwork.”

  I started after her. “After your impressive display of magic, and how handily we took care of the wolves, I don’t think the bokor will risk any more of her precious pets. We’re systematically reducing her flock of terror one creature at a time. I’m betting she won’t pull any punches till we show up at her front door.”

  As we made it to one glowing tree, another would light up.

  We quickened our pace, meaning we continued to stumble over roots and knotted growth as fast as we possibly could, mostly jumping from tree to tree. The only positive thing was there wasn’t any water. In the regular world this place would have water everywhere, seeping in between the trees. “I wonder how she filters the water out,” I pondered as we went. “Seems like too much hassle and energy to keep it dry here.”

  Marcy grunted. “She must live in a house or something, so she needs land to operate. My guess is it’s just easier to spell the entire area the same way, rather than pick places to drain it. That’s what I’d do.”

  “I wonder why the loa has left us alone. It must be able to do more than catch me off guard so I’m forced to grab on to a snake.”

  “I have no idea, but I do know a loa is strongest right after it has a ride in its host. It siphons energy while it’s inside. So maybe this one wasn’t primed on enough bokor juice?” I made a face. “That was the best explanation I had.”

  “Well, I hope that’s the case, because I’d prefer to fight a tired bokor—”

  A scream rent the air, followed by a strangled howl.

  It sounded like a cross between a wounded cub and an anguished siren. “Oh my gods, that’s Naomi!” But before I could move more than five paces forward, something crashed into me from the front, bowling me over.

  You won’t get to her in time, the voice said in my ear as I hit the ground. Your blood will taste deeeelicious. We will devour it gladly. But you must wait your turn.

  I punched the air in front of me but came in contact with nothing. And just as quickly it was gone. “You’re not getting her!” I shouted to the sky. “You’ll have to kill me first!”

  “Jess.” Marcy stood over me, her voice quaking slightly. “The air smells like black pepper and lavender.”

  “So?” I stood up and brushed myself off. “Did you finally hear what it said? It’s going to drink Naomi’s blood. We have to stop it. It doesn’t want us to get to her and it’s trying to slow us down.”

  “No, you don’t understand.” She grabbed my arm, pulling me up short. “That is a very particular scent, and once I smelled it, it triggered something that was taught to me a long time ago, like clicking the last cog into place.”

  “What does it mean?” I asked. When she didn’t talk immediately I urged, “Marcy, spit it out!”

  “If what I was taught is correct, the loa harassing us is the spirit of Marinette.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked as I dragged Marcy along with me. “Come on, talk to me while we move.”

  She followed, frowning. “How can you not know who that is? She’s renowned in the lore as one of the most powerful and vicious spirits around. The rumor, at least for the witches, is she started out as an extremely powerful goddess, who was killed or punished for her wrongdoings—which is almost unheard of. Then she came back as a spirit to seek revenge and wreak havoc on the supernatural world.” We scrambled over trees, trying to make up for lost time. “Honestly, when you learn things as a child, it’s in one ear and out the other—until you see, or in this case smell, some kind of real proof. Well, that scent is enough proof for me. It’s a huge part of the story. No one else smells like black pepper, much less coupled with lavender. But there’s one more key piece—” Marcy stumbled over some roots and I grabbed her arm to steady her.

  “What is it?” I stopped, turning to face her. “I know I’m not going to like it, so just get it over with.”

  “Marinette is the patron of werewolves.”

  I processed that bit of information. Werewolves?

  Marcy was impatient. “Do you understanding what I’m saying? She’s a former goddess—the goddess of werewolves. As in, she was the first one to create them.”

  I was too stunned to respond.

  Marcy nodded sympathetically. “I know this is crazy, and must be a lot to process, but who do the wolves consider as their creation myth?”

  Marcy was right to call it a “myth.” Supernaturals had inhab
ited the earth long before there had been any written documentation. For a millennium, only oral legends had been handed down through each Sect, which were highly susceptible to being embellished or exaggerated, as anything is if it’s handed down through that many years of history. Our Pack Bible had many facts, but our creation, the birth of the first wolf, was considered legend—loosely interpreted—but believed nonetheless.

  “Our creation myth states that the first human was turned into a werewolf,” I recited from memory, “by an ancient Scottish goddess who’d been rebuffed by him. He’d been a great warrior—the greatest the world had seen—and was cursed to live out a life of immortality without his lover.”

  “A Scottish goddess, huh?” Marcy’s voice held some irony. “Voudoun is an ancient magic that has been around for eons. Your goddess creation story could easily be entwined with some myths and legends of the voudoun, which would be how she ended up a loa. Honestly, Celtic and African myths are not such strange bedfellows when you go back millennia.” She shrugged as we began to walk again. “I’m telling you though, that scent is unmistakable. It sent all the hairs on my arms jumping at once.”

  “So what you’re saying is, if this is Marinette, there’s a chance I might be heading to do battle against my creator?” I was dumbfounded even thinking that something like that could be true.

  Marcy tucked an errant curl behind her ear. “I have no idea. I’m just telling you what I learned as a young, impressionable witch. Witches like to hammer scary folklore crap into our brains to prepare us for the unexpected, and this”—she waved her arm around—“is about as unexpected as I’ve ever seen. The goddess of your creation myth could be her, but who knows? There’s no way for us to know for sure until we know for sure.”

  “Eloquent,” I said wryly. Another scream rent the air and I took off, yelling, “We’re coming, Naomi! Hold on!”

  13

  As I raced forward, my mind replayed everything Marcy had just told me. I leapt and bounded over roots and trees, mindless of anything else. My wolf snapped her jaws, urging us on. We’re close, I told her. I can sense it.

  We’d shot ahead of Marcy, but she wasn’t very far behind.

  My wolf held her nose in the air. And as we ran, the scent of black pepper and lavender grew stronger. I think I see something up ahead, I told my wolf. There’s a break in the trees.

  I soared through the opening and somersaulted onto an expanse of cracked, dry earth—if you could call it earth. It was more like a bunch of accumulated dust. I was up on the balls of my feet in a low crouch before I came to a full stop. In front of me stood an old, dilapidated wooden shack that looked to have been constructed sometime during Prohibition.

  The old building was in bad need of repair. There were boards missing, window glass was gone, the porch was decayed and slanting at an angle, and the entire thing was covered in hanging fetishes, old animal parts, dried herbs, and other things I couldn’t—and didn’t care to—identify. They hung from every available space on the house, from the dormer all the way up the roofline, and they chimed together eerily in the soft breeze.

  The house is empty, I told my wolf. I didn’t sense any movement. She put her muzzle in the air and scented. Then I heard it.

  Chanting.

  I spotted a path across the expanse to my right, but before I could take off, Marcy burst out of the trees behind me, panting.

  “It’s about time,” I told her.

  “Shut it.” She bent over, gasping in a few harried breaths. “Last time I checked, I had no animal in me, but making sure I wasn’t python bait was a big motivator to move quicker than I ever have.”

  “Something’s going on over there. I hear chanting.” I gestured to the path across the way and turned to start moving forward when Marcy grabbed my arm once again.

  “Hold it, Wonder Wolf,” she ordered as she manhandled me back, tugging at the bag around my waist. “I need you focused. You can’t just barrel in there without protection at the ready. You’re going to need your dark-magic baggies.” She opened the pouch. “We need to throw a wedge into her evil plans, and this is the only way to do it.” She dug her hand in and pulled out two spells. “Perfect.” She set them in my hands, one in each palm. “One stun spell”—she curled my left hand into a fist around it—“and one protection.” She did the same thing with my right. “Once we get in there, I want you to throw these in front of you at the same time and speak both words. I’ll be there to back you up.”

  I noted the colors. “Say both words in one breath?” I asked as she made sure the pouch was accessible to my hand.

  “Yes.” She set her hands on my shoulders. “And, Jess, it’s not going to be pretty in there. Whatever she’s doing is evil. Don’t let your emotions get in the way. If you have any Achilles’ heel, it’s that you have too much human empathy, something supes who are born supernatural never have. The prime objective is to kill her and eliminate the evil—even if it’s at a cost.”

  I nodded. Marcy knew me well. If the cost was Naomi’s and Danny’s lives, it was too steep a price to pay, but I wasn’t going to argue with Marcy. I would make the tough decisions as I went. “The only one who is losing her life is the bokor.”

  The chanting picked up, coming faster and in more hurried tones. “It sounds like she’s performing some kind of ritual,” Marcy whispered. “That’s probably why the loa didn’t come back. She’s probably inside the bokor. The best way to stop what’s about to happen is to disrupt the ceremony before they get a chance to finish it. Mess it up completely, which I know firsthand you’re good at.”

  “Like physically destroy it?”

  “Yes, exactly. There should be an altar, and nearby potions or bowls of blood. Destroy anything and everything you can get your sharp claws on.”

  “You got it.” I headed down the path, a spell clutched in each hand, Marcy close behind me.

  “Oh, and expect there to have been a blood sacrifice, so don’t let it catch you off guard.”

  I started to trot. “What kind of blood sacrifice?” I glanced over my shoulder and grimaced.

  “My guess would be human.”

  I stifled a gag. “Why not a wild boar or chicken?”

  “Because death is the best kind of energy for the darkest magic, and the bigger, and more intelligent, the better. Remember, this bokor is a supernatural without conscience. I just told you we don’t have much empathy as an entire race, but most of us do have a conscience. The evil ones don’t. They kill without thought, vying only for power.”

  “If she wanted the strongest magic, why wouldn’t she just sacrifice a supe?” My mind instantly shot to Danny. That’s why she let him in! Before Marcy answered, I shouted, “She would sacrifice a supe.”

  We both ran down the winding path. At the end, we came to a wall of trees and nothing else.

  “This can’t be a dead end!” I exclaimed. “I can scent her, and I can hear the chanting.” I placed my hands on the bark nearest me and it hummed with magic.

  “This is just a strongly warded illusion,” Marcy said, closing her eyes as she began to murmur. “Push some of some of your magic into that tree and see if you can break the ward while I try a spell.”

  I closed my eyes. We need Selene’s or Eudoxia’s magic for this, I told my wolf. For the first time, she uncurled the power of five. She grabbed Selene’s red signature and mixed it with Eudoxia’s white. As the magic moved forward, it churned through my body, a ribbon of pink. It was strong. We toss it at the tree all at once. “Marcy, get ready,” I said. “I’m going to blast it on three.”

  “I was born ready.”

  “One, two… three!” I forced the magic from my body, shocking the ward at the same time Marcy shouted her incantation.

  There was one pulse and all of a sudden it burst open. The impact threw us backward. What stood before us was terrible.

  “No,” I breathed.

  Naomi was laid out on top of an earthen altar, her body still, covered by a gra
y blanket that could’ve been white at some point.

  “You are too late, lone wolf.” The voice coming out of the bokor’s mouth held an accent, possibly Haitian.

  “She’s stalling,” Marcy whispered from right beside me as we both stood and stared. “The ceremony isn’t finished. I can feel the magic vibrating for release. You have to go now.” She elbowed me. “Destroy it before she can say anything else.”

  Needing no more prodding, I bounded into the area.

  It was a perfect circle, lined with tree trunks carved into gruesome totem poles with expressions of death and destruction detailed onto each tier. Tied to every pole was a rabid wolf, each baring its teeth and snarling. In the trees behind the totem poles, snakes of various sizes slithered here and there between the branches and skated across tops of the structures in eerie silence.

  It was a grisly scene.

  But the capper to the entire show was the female, who stood tall at the head of the altar. She was thin, her skin a deep milk chocolate, her hair pure white and sheared close to her scalp. She wore a multicolored robe, the sleeves draped to her elbows, her hands raised high in the air. Her nails were long and yellow, curved around her fingertips like claws. And blood dripped from her palms.

  As I entered the circle, her head rose slowly to meet my gaze.

  Her irises were the color of ice.

  The effect was immediate. It was like she could see through me, straight into my soul.

  Naomi lay in front of her. The altar was crude, made of mud and twigs, and as I rushed closer, I noticed that under the gray blanket, Naomi was dressed in a simple sheer gown, her hands restrained by thin iron rings.

  She didn’t move, which was distressing.

  I was going to destroy everything I could find.

  “Halt!” This time the voice that came out of the bokor’s mouth was different. It sounded ancient. The loa’s voice was authoritative, the Haitian accent gone. I stopped in my tracks. “You came too late to save this one. The blood that rides within this host has already been consumed.” The bokor grinned, an expression that looked unnatural since the command had been issued from the loa. I noticed now she had a red smear mark on both her cheeks, and as she smiled, her teeth were broken and blackened.