Harvest Moon

by Mercedes Lackey, Michelle Sagara

  “I haven’t made any commitments. Not yet,” he added.

  No humility, no regret, no apparent concern that he may have put the outfit at risk. No apparent fear that I might lose my patience and melt his face. The guy was either more stupid than I gave him credit for—and I gave him credit for a lot—or he really liked his hole cards. What was his angle? Why did he feel so damn safe?

  “Then we’re good,” I said, mentally adding, “Until I get around to killing you.” I stood up and walked to the door.

  “Thanks for coming by,” Alexander said. “You made the right decision, this time.” He smirked again.

  I gave him a hard look. “I’ll see you soon, Jefferson.”

  With the Alexander situation handled and the cops temporarily off my case, I had an opportunity to turn my attention back to Samael. The attempt to bind him with the ritual I’d used on Mr. Clean obviously hadn’t worked out, and that pretty much exhausted my knowledge of spirit magic. I needed an expert.

  Ismail Akeem was a Somali sorcerer who’d been with Shanar Rashan a lot longer than I had—longer, in fact, than any gangster I knew. Spirit magic was Akeem’s specialty and his paranoia was legendary. His house in Koreatown was known to be well warded against spirits. I figured that gave me a decent shot of picking his brain without Samael eavesdropping on the conversation.

  You meet enough freaks in the underworld to get used to it after a while, but no one in the outfit creeped me out like the Somali witch doctor. Akeem had a certain presence that seemed a little out of step with the rest of the world. There was a light in his eyes that might be knowledge the rest of us didn’t possess, or that might just be madness.

  I parked my car on the street outside his house. The grass in the front yard was dead and marred in places by disturbing black splotches, like someone had spilled crude oil on what was left of the lawn. I had no idea what had caused the stains and quickly decided not to think about it too much.

  The light came on as I reached the porch and the front door opened.

  “Welcome, Domino,” Akeem whispered. There were conflicting stories in the outfit about the whispering. Some said it was caused by the ritual possessions Akeem exposed himself to. Others said it was because he ate spirits. Akeem himself always said he whispered so the spirits wouldn’t know what he was thinking. It made me wonder if I should be whispering, too.

  We went inside and I sat on the sofa. Akeem served tea. He sat in an antique armchair and we drank the tea in silence.

  “You have troubles with the spirits,” he said when we’d finished. “Tell me about them.”

  “Just one spirit,” I said. “And how did you know why I wanted to see you?”

  “How many times have you come to see me before?” Akeem asked.

  “Never, I guess.”

  Akeem nodded. “And why else would you be here now? Most people find my company disturbing.” I shook my head, but he waved away my objections. “There are many of us in here,” he said, tapping his temple. “Sometimes I find my own company disturbing.” I’d bound Mr. Clean to an old TV set. Akeem had bound many more spirits to his service, but he didn’t use a TV. He imprisoned them within his own body and bound them to his soul.

  I told him about Benny Ben-Reuven and the death curse, about Samael and my failed attempt to bind him to the angel statuette. Akeem sat silently and listened without interruption or reaction.

  “These spirits tell many stories about themselves,” he said when I was finished. “In that, they are just like us. It doesn’t mean the stories are true.”

  “So this Samael may not really be the Angel of Death?”

  Akeem shrugged his thin shoulders. “There is no way to know. But what does it matter if it is true?”

  “Well, if it’s true, I’m fucked.”

  “What will be, will be,” Akeem said. “Do not allow the stories this being tells about itself to defeat you before you have even begun to fight.” That sounded a lot like Mr. Clean’s advice. When I thought about it, that didn’t really surprise me.

  “So what can I do? He’s proven that he’s stronger than I am.”

  Akeem shook his head. “He’s proven nothing. He’s only shown you that you cannot bind him. This may be a matter of superior strength, yes, but it may also be a product of his nature, or of the magic that brought him here.”

  “Okay, that’s good. What are some other ways I could get rid of him?”

  “You could give him to me. He sounds…interesting. I believe I should like to eat him.”

  “No, Akeem. Thank you for the offer. But this is my problem. I can’t put you at risk. You’re too valuable to the outfit.”

  Akeem nodded. “When did you say he will make the attempt on your life?”

  “Three days from when I killed Benny. When the moon is full.”

  “And this powerful spirit, this angel of death, why do you suppose he would need to wait? What does he care about the phases of the moon?”

  “Yeah, I wondered about that, too. Why not just take me out? He said those were the rules—three days of torment, then he’d kill me.”

  “The answer is that he doesn’t care about these things. Those are the rules, yes, but not his rules. They are merely the rules of the magic that called him and bound him to Benny Ben-Reuven’s service.”

  “Okay, but what does that mean? How does that help me?”

  “It helps you because these details are limitations. You see? It does not matter what this Samael is, or is not. The curse itself is limited, it has weaknesses, and you can attack those weaknesses. The spell is your enemy, not the spirit.”

  “Okay, that’s real good. I may not have the juice to handle the Angel of Death, but I should be able to handle any spell Benny Ben-Reuven can throw at me.”

  “Yes,” Akeem said.

  “So this spell, how would it work?”

  “As you say, Benny’s death powered the summoning, initially. But this was only powerful enough to call the spirit and bind it here. The spell needs time to gain power, and it draws that power from the swelling moon. When the moon is full, the spell will have ripened sufficiently to compel the spirit to obey Benny’s command.”

  “To kill me.”

  “Yes.”

  “But if I could stop the moon from becoming full, the spell wouldn’t ripen and Samael wouldn’t be compelled to kill me.”

  Akeem arched his eyebrows at me. “Is that within your power, to stop the moon from becoming full?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Indeed. The moon is beyond your reach, but the connection between you and the curse is not.”

  “Would I be able to see the connection?” I asked, giving myself a quick examination.

  “You are marked.”

  “Where?” Whether the mark was physical or arcane, I should have been able to see it.

  “Come,” Akeem said. He stood and extended a hand. He led me over to where a mirror hung above a side table in the living room. He disappeared into another room and returned holding a hand mirror. “Lift your hair and look at the back of your neck,” he said, and handed me the mirror.

  I looked and didn’t see anything. I looked again with my witch sight, and I saw it: a faintly glowing, lidless eye.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  “There is your mark,” Akeem said.

  “Why my fucking neck?”

  Akeem shrugged. “It is the usual place. Some say it is to place the mark nearest the seat of the soul. I don’t believe such superstitions.”

  “Why then?”

  “A hand or a foot, even an arm or leg—you could just cut it off.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I guess that’s not going to be an option here. So how do I get rid of this fucking thing?”

  “Even on the neck, there are physical methods, depending how deep the mark is. It might be possible to remove the skin with fire or blade.” He reached out and placed a cool, dry hand on the back of my neck. “Unfortunately, this mark is very deep.”<
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  “Yeah, that’s too bad. What are the other options?”

  “Your death would likely tear the mark free of its tether,” Akeem suggested.

  “On the other hand, I’d be dead.”

  “You could be revived, probably.”

  “Let’s keep that one as a last resort. What else?”

  “You could go to Rashan. He is old and very powerful. He might know a way to remove the mark.”

  “Okay, that’s the last resort. I’ll go to my boss if dying doesn’t work.” Rashan had made me his lieutenant because he believed I could take care of business on my own. I wasn’t eager to undermine that belief. My job security depended on it.

  “You could perform a cleansing ritual in a sacred river—the Ganges, the Jordan, the Nile…”

  “Anything closer to home?”

  “Aha Kwahwat.”

  “Never heard of it, but it doesn’t sound that close.”

  “It’s the Mojave name for the Colorado. Their name for themselves means ‘people who live along the river.’”

  “Cool. Can you teach me the ritual?”

  “Yes, it isn’t difficult, but I must warn you—it’s very dangerous.”

  “Of course it is. Okay, what’s so dangerous about it?”

  “The ritual will create a physical manifestation of the magic that marks you. I do not know what form it will take, but you must defeat it to cleanse yourself of the mark.”

  “No problem, I prefer a stand-up fight to all this sneaking around.”

  Akeem looked at me blankly.

  “You don’t go to the movies much, do you?”

  I drove through the Mojave Desert for the third time in two days, but this trip was taking me all the way to the Arizona border. It turned out some parts of the Colorado were more sacred than others, and the aqueduct that stretched from Lake Havasu to the Santa Ana Mountains didn’t make the grade. I was looking for a spot near Needles where ancient petroglyphs adorned the rock formations along the river.

  Akeem had showed me the cleansing ritual, and he’d been true to his word. The spell wasn’t complicated and it didn’t take long to learn. The real trick, I knew, would be dealing with the spell once it manifested and tried to kill me.

  Now that I knew it was there, the mark on the back of my neck had started itching. I was pretty sure it was just my imagination, but that didn’t make it itch any less. I drove through the desert night and smoked and itched.

  Needles was the kind of town I wouldn’t mind relocating to if I ever got tired of city life. It was a small, never-was kind of town in the middle of the desert, but it had juice. It perched on the western banks of the Colorado for starters, and as the petroglyphs I was looking for suggested, its history was ancient. It also straddled Route 66, which runs along one of the most potent ley lines on the continent. The town is full of the mid-century Americana that’s kitschy at its worst but too cool for school at its best. Maybe it was a tourist trap and hotter than hell’s attic, but Needles was still my kind of town.

  I turned off I-40 and drove north for several miles on River Road. I parked the Lincoln at an RV park and campground near the river and set out on foot for the last leg of my journey. There wasn’t much in the way of a canyon along this stretch of the Colorado, grand or otherwise. The ground was broken and rugged, but mostly flat. The area compensated for the general lack of canyons with a lot of interesting rock formations. After a couple hours, I found the cluster of reddish spires I was looking for.

  I stopped at the edge of the water and examined the rocks with my witch sight. The petroglyphs were easy enough to find, and I could tell they were still altering the flow of magic in the area after who knew how many millennia. Just like the graffiti back home but built to last. I couldn’t tell exactly what the symbols were meant to do, but I guessed I’d find a hollow or crevice that had once been a shaman’s cave back in the rocks somewhere. A player had to carve out his turf and control his juice. Some things never change.

  I stripped off my clothes and waded out into the water waist-deep. The flow wasn’t too strong, maybe because of the ample width of the river and the gentle gradient, or maybe because of all the fucking dams humans had built along its course. The water wasn’t cold—it was early summer, and even in the dead of night, the temperature must have been pushing seventy.

  I bathed myself and then began the ritual. I opened myself to the river, and the rock, and the vast vault of stars overhead. The rush of magic that washed over me was so powerful, tapping it was effortless.

  “If the doors of perception were cleansed,” I chanted, “everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” The words were from a poem by William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and they flowed freely with the ancient magic that swept through this barren land.

  The mark on my neck began to burn and the waters around me began to roil and churn. Gradually, a form began to take shape just below the surface, partially hidden from view by the white, moonlit froth. Slowly, the figure rose from the river, water streaming from its limbs and hair, until it stood before me. The figure was a familiar one.

  It was me.

  The chant died on my lips and I stared at my reflection. After the initial shock, I looked with a more critical eye. I thought I looked a bit wide in the hips. I wasn’t getting any younger, and I supposed my metabolism was slowing down. I’d need to amp up the spells I used to keep the cellulite at bay, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to skip the burritos for a while…

  I noticed my doppelganger had a rather annoyed look on her face.

  “Let me guess,” I said, “evil twin?”

  “I know you are,” she said, “but what am I?”

  “Huh?”

  “You have it backward, sweetheart. You’re the evildoer. I’m the part of you that wants to be punished.”

  “That’s a little twisted, don’t you think?”

  “You would say that.”

  “Uh, yeah, I just did…”

  There was a moment of awkward silence. We stared at each other. We cleared our throats.

  “So what happens now?”

  “Now I punish you…us…whatever.”

  “Seems a little self-defeating. Can’t we just go back to the way it was? You know, I’ll do what I do, you can cry about it, and I’ll mostly ignore you.”

  My self-righteous twin shrugged. “That’s not going to work anymore. There’s a contract.”

  “Yeah, but if you kill me, Samael won’t be able to.”

  “I’m a manifestation of the curse. Maybe I am the way he kills you.”

  “It’s not time yet.”

  “It won’t be long. I can make it last a while.”

  “So make your move.”

  She sighed. “You summoned me, remember? You’ve got the idea you can kill me and make the curse go away. I can stand here all night.” She laughed and shook her head.

  I laughed, too, and then hit her with the force spell stored in the gangster ring on my pinkie finger. She triggered the magical shield in the ring on my—her—left ring finger, and my spell shattered against it like an arrow striking a steel door. We stared at each other some more.

  “This really could take a while, huh?” I said.

  “Yeah, I told you.”

  I pulled in juice from the river and started spinning spontaneous attack spells. I hurled them at her, one after the other, as fast as I could flow the magic and twist it into lethal implements of my will. There was a lot of juice to be had and I brought a furious storm down upon her.

  She easily deflected every attack as quickly as I could launch it. It was no mystery how she was doing it. I knew every move she was making and anticipated every defense. It didn’t fucking help me, though, because she anticipated every attack no matter how hard I tried to juke her. Really, it was infuriating.

  After a time, she got bored and began countering. This didn’t exactly liven things up. Thrust, parry, thrust. Swing, block, feint, swing. Back and forth, going now
here. I’m not sure how long we stayed at it, but eventually I could feel my toes pruning.

  My toes were pruning. Because I was naked, standing in the river. I was naked. My self-righteous twin was naked. Only difference was, I had a pile of clothes waiting for me on the bank. I pretended to tire and began to give ground, retreating to the edge of the river. My adversary didn’t seem to be buying it, but she pressed the attack anyway. When I gained solid ground, I ducked, rolled, and reached for my clothes.

  And I came up holding the stainless-steel forty-five semi-automatic I’d placed in the pile under my jacket.

  “Eat lead, bitch,” I said, and squeezed the trigger.

  My twin went to the crucifix at her neck, activating the physical shield stored in the amulet. There was an electric-blue discharge of magical energy as my shot ricocheted harmlessly into the night.

  “Son of a bitch!” I took a couple hopping steps and threw the pistol as far out into the river as I could. It arced over the surface, end over end, and plopped into the water like a bullfrog going for a swim.

  “Well, what did you expect?” my twin said. “You know about the shield, did you think I’d let you shoot me?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “I’m just saying, it wasn’t very clever. You could have tried throwing rocks at me first, try to get me to discharge the shield. Then you shoot me.” So helpful.

  “You’d have thought of that, too,” I said. “You could have used a telekinesis spell to throw the rocks back at me and still used the shield when I shot you.”

  “Yeah, good idea.”

  I threw up my hands and sat down on my clothes. “That’s it,” I said. “I surrender.” I was all juiced out from the ridiculous duel, and the mark on my neck burned like a motherfucker. Besides, there’s only so much frustration a girl can take.

  My twin waded to shore and sat down by me, so close we were almost touching. “What did you think would happen, Domino?”

  “I thought I could take you, obviously. You’re not really me. You’re just a spell.”