“Why didn’t it affect the nice spirits?” Teag asked. From his moodiness, I knew that our earlier battle had seriously spooked him.
Daniel shrugged. “Nice spirits—like nice people—have no desire to force themselves onto others.” He gave a sad smile. “This is the problem when people consider the sacred items of one culture to be mere art. I don’t fault collectors. Items like the Kachinas are beautiful, and our people have made all kinds of crafts for sale outside the tribes. But those pieces—like your airport Kachinas—were never consecrated. It would seem that Abby’s aunt managed to purchase relics that were actually used in rituals. Their power might have been latent, but present even so.”
“If those dolls become portals for the spirits, why don’t they cause problems for the tribe?” I asked.
Daniel met my gaze. “I believe both of you know something of magic. When you make a salt circle, you create a boundary for power. So it is within a tribe. For the Hopi, the Kachina dolls do not exist by themselves. They are part of a web of power and belief woven and renewed every day within a larger context.”
“So… take the magical item out of the salt circle, or the ogres out of the culture, and ka-blooy,” Teag summarized.
Daniel’s chuckle was deep and low. “Exactly. Ka-blooy.”
“Why would the Nataska prompt Dorothy and Abby to commit suicide?” I asked.
Daniel looked thoughtful. “The ogres and the ‘whippers’ enforce the tribe’s beliefs of right and wrong. They’re like a collective conscience, only given physical form. In the legends and ceremonies, they confront people who haven’t done what they ought to do and threaten to punish them.”
I met his gaze. “But take them out of context, away from the rest of the culture, and they get out of control, like having your worst critic screaming in your ear all the time.”
Daniel nodded. “Yes. I believe that is what happened. Dorothy and Abby were unprepared, and the relentless judgment drove them to try to kill themselves.”
“Can you get rid of the Nataska and keep Soyok Wuhti from coming back?” I asked. The idea of facing that dark power again made me shiver.
“Something has opened a door,” Daniel replied. “We must close it. To do that, we have to find the door.”
Teag and I were ready for a fight. Over the time we’ve been dealing with malicious magic, we’ve both acquired our own personal arsenal of magic weapons and defenses. Not every item worked for every situation, but it was nice to have a choice.
I had my wooden spoon-athame as well as Bo’s collar and my agate necklace. On one wrist, I had an onyx and silver bracelet, and I had refreshed my supply of salt packets. I left the Voudon, Norse, and Conjure amulets in my drawer since I didn’t know whether Hopi spirits would heed them, and figured that my fire-spewing magic walking stick would just make things worse.
Teag wore a vest into which he had woven protective spells. Several macramé knots dangled from his belt loops, something he used to store power for later use. He carried his martial arts staff carved with runes, and an onyx ring for protection. Around his throat he wore a Filipino agimat talisman.
Sorren was an undead immortal. A lot of magic couldn’t touch him, and the kinds that could weren’t easily turned aside by amulets. Still, I glimpsed a ring of black tourmaline on his left hand and a mirror set in bronze hanging from a chain around his neck. Although we were going up against shadows and spirits, Sorren wore a sword. Teag and I had knives as well. They didn’t do much against specters, but they worked just fine on nasty minions.
Daniel, I was sure, had his own protections. I guessed that the skin and fur bag on his belt was his medicine pouch, sacred and made just for him. I glimpsed talismans of bone and wood on a long chain that ran beneath the neckline of his shirt, and to my senses, the intricate braiding in the leather wristlet shimmered with power. He had a long knife in a leather scabbard on one hip.
Daniel looked at each of us in turn as if he had X-ray vision, and I was sure his shaman-senses saw our protections. “You’ve chosen well,” he said finally. “But I can give you an additional defense, if you will accept it.”
“I’m all for anything that saves my skin,” Teag replied. I nodded and so did Sorren.
Daniel withdrew three small paint pots from his rucksack. “Hold out your right arm,” he said to me. He daubed a black mixture onto his hand and then pressed it against my skin, leaving a complete hand mark. Beneath the hand print, he drew a symbol in red paint and another in green. As he drew the symbols, he chanted quietly under his breath. Then he made the same marks on Teag and Sorren.
When he was done, he took out an aerosol can and sprayed the symbols. The air smelled of drugstore hairspray. “Ancient tribal secret,” Daniel said with a smirk. “Keeps war paint from smearing.”
“How do we keep the Nataska out of our heads?” That question had been bothering me all evening.
Daniel looked at each of us in turn. “You are aware, so you can resist. The ‘war paint’ will help, as will your magic. But you must guard your thoughts. After all, the Nataska have been doing their jobs for millennia.”
“What’s the game plan?” Teag asked.
“Whatever triggered the problem is likely in the basement, so we start there,” Sorren said. “Daniel raises wards to hold off the spirits, and asks for the help of the friendly ones. If we’re lucky, we find the problem pieces and either destroy or neutralize them. Then we go home.”
He made it sound so simple, so straightforward, so clear. I knew from experience that it was not likely to be any of those. We were headed into a storm, and we would be lucky to get out in one piece.
Just another day at the office.
“Let’s go,” Sorren said. “Tonight’s our best shot. Time’s a’wasting.”
I was afraid that someone might have roped off Dorothy’s house with police tape, but there was none in sight when we pulled up. To avoid attracting attention, we parked a couple of blocks away and approached from different directions.
We gathered in the walled garden, and even before we entered the house, I noticed a heavy feeling of despair, the same leaden sense I remembered from being called to the principal’s office as a child. A new threat occurred to me. I wondered whether the Nataska had found fertile hunting grounds in the neighbors around the Battery. The thought of primal ogres and whippers stalking the citizens of Charleston made my blood run cold.
Inside the old home, the air felt colder than normal air conditioning. I remembered what Daniel had said about Raven Mocker stealing years of life from its prey. The disquieting energies seemed stronger than they had the day before, making me wonder if the Nataska had taken power from Dorothy’s death and Abby’s torment. I felt cold anger strengthen me. This had to stop.
“This way,” I said, using the moonlight from the windows and our own muted flashlights to lead them toward the basement door. When we came to the case of Kachina dolls, Daniel paused. He reached into his rucksack and drew out a cornmeal cake and an apple, and laid it as an offering in front of the case. Then he began to chant in Cherokee, clapping to keep time, and the mixtures of vowels and consonants were utterly foreign to me, strange and beautiful. He drew out a clay pipe from his sack and lit it. The smell of sweet tobacco and sage filled the air.
After a moment, Daniel turned to us. “I have asked the spirits for their protection, and petitioned Soyok Wuhti and the Nataska to turn away.”
“Do you expect Monster Woman and the whippers to listen?” Teag asked. Put that way, it sounded like a bad name for a metal band.
“The spirits may hear what I say. Soyok Wuhti and the Nataska will do as they do, but I have observed courtesies. Now, if we meet aggression, we are blameless in defending ourselves,” Daniel replied.
He kept his pipe in his mouth as we headed for the basement door. Then he put down his rucksack and withdrew a turtle shell rattle on a leather wrist strap and a hand drum made of stretched hide over a wooden frame. “My medicine is strong in c
onjuring,” Daniel said. “But not strong enough to overpower Soyok Wuhti. So I must call to the spirits and the ancestors for help, and send a warning to the Nataska that we are not ignorant of the ways of the Old Ones.”
“If you don’t mind, a little flash-bang-pow never hurts,” Teag said. “In case that’s in your bag of tricks.”
“If the spirits will it. I will not be able to help you fight physically. But I will be with you as I walk the spirt paths.”
I knew that Daniel was giving assurance but I also knew what Teag meant. We had gone up against nasty supernatural beings and vicious ghosts with the help of demon hunters and root workers, mediums, and vampire killers, and so while I wasn’t opposed to chants and ceremony, I was hoping Daniel had firepower in his magical arsenal, or we could be in real trouble.
“Cassidy—I’m counting on you to identify the source of the disruption,” Sorren said. “Teag and I will back you up. Daniel will gather protective spirits, and use his medicine power to shut down the gateway that’s been opened.”
Yeah, that’s all we had to do. Piece of cake.
Sorren headed down the stairs ahead of me. We turned on the lights, figuring passers-by would be hard-pressed to see. Bare bulbs lit the unfinished basement. It still smelled of damp and disuse, but I could feel magic fairly crackling in the air.
I jangled the dog collar on my left wrist, and Bo’s ghost appeared as a translucent shadow of his furry self, padding down weightlessly beside me. My grandmother’s spoon was in my right hand, the bowl of it pressed into my palm, handle pointing out with my fist clutched around it. It might not look like something a movie wizard would use, but just holding it tightly connected me with the powerful light energy of my late grandmother’s love.
Teag was right behind me. I saw him grab one of the Navajo blankets on the way past the shelf in the other room, but much as I wanted its protection, I knew that I had to risk opening myself to sense the magic in this room in order to find what was bringing the Nataska and Monster Woman through with a vengeance.
“How about you check crates for mojo, and then I open the crates and you hold your hand over them?” Teag said. I saw him pull a small crowbar and a pair of heavy leather gloves from beneath his jacket. Handy to have for a lot of reasons, though I wasn’t sure how good the crowbar would be in a fight with shadow-things.
Daniel moved down the stairs slowly, chanting and drumming, and the tobacco-sage scent of his pipe smoke drifted across the basement. Power was stirring all around me, old and strong. As I had seen on my brief visit with Abby, there were more than a dozen crates and boxes in the basement. I wondered how we could ever go through them all. Then I remembered something.
“Abby said the boxes from out West came just a few weeks ago,” I said. “That probably means they’re in the front and on top.”
Sorren circled the room slowly, sword drawn. He was faster and stronger because of his immortality, with heightened senses. I tried not to think about what might be waiting to strike, and concentrated my attention on the stack of boxes where Teag had stopped.
“These all have recent shipping marks,” Teag said, pointing to a stack of small crates. “What do you pick up from them?”
I frowned, concentrating, and ran my hands just above the surface of the top box. “There’s something of power in there, but I’m not sure what it is.” Teag put on the gloves and obligingly pried off the top of the wooden box, and then carefully separated the contents piece by piece. Bracelets, moccasins, necklaces, and pipes, all beautifully made, gave me no shiver of magic at all. Then Teag lifted up a short embellished cedar stick about a foot long, and my senses buzzed.
“Set that aside,” I said. “It’s not dangerous. Maybe it’ll help.” I didn’t have a deep background in Native American items, but I recognized that piece as a Lakota spirit stick. It was wound with red, white, and black colored twine and a turkey feather was attached to the top. The spirit stick radiated balanced, positive energy. It wouldn’t hurt to keep it handy.
Nothing else in that box resonated with me, so we moved on. Sorren moved the box aside as Teag opened the next crate. My senses felt jangly, as if I’d had too much caffeine. So much latent magic hummed around me that trying to sense the key pieces was like listening for whispers after leaving a rock concert: my magical ‘hearing’ was still intact but buzzing and overloaded.
I picked up flashes of magic from a couple of old tomahawks and a parfleche bag, but nothing to account for the attacks. Teag handed the box to Sorren and started on the one below it.
“Take that piece,” I said, more on instinct than anything else. It was a round shield made of wood, marked with a hand print like Daniel had placed on us, along with other symbols I did not recognize. I felt a strong protective energy from the shield, and when Teag lifted it, I could tell that its magic spoke to him from the look on his face.
Two more boxes to go. Teag pried off the lid of the next box, and we both fell back a step. Inside was a ceremonial mask in the shape of a bird’s head. Dark feathers and paint covered its face, with pitiless black glass eyes above a sharp, vicious beak. Raven Mocker, I knew and shuddered.
“Not what we’re looking for,” I said. The old mask held power, but to my surprise, it felt ambivalent, as if it had not played a part in the awakening of the Nataska and Soyok Wuhti.
“One box left.” Teag gingerly put the crate with the Raven Mocker mask aside, and cracked open the lid of the bottom crate.
As soon as the wood splintered, I felt the push of power. It was old, angry, and very strong. Unlike the Monster Woman and her ogres, this power did not feel dark or vengeful, but it was agitated, and to my inner sight, it looked like hurricane clouds, brooding and dangerous.
The temperature in the basement plummeted, and above Daniel’s chanting, I heard the swish of yucca whips and the clack-clack of teeth gnashing. “It’s in there,” I said, falling to my knees with Teag as he rummaged through the crate.
“No, no, no,” I said as he pushed one thing after another out of the way. Knives, wrist bands, shell capes, and bone breastplates filled the box, but none of them were what we were looking for.
“There!” I shouted, although Teag was right next to me. A metal lozenge tin lay at the bottom of the crate. Small as it was, the surge of power coming off of it was tremendous. “That’s it!”
Teag wrapped a rag around his gloved hand before reaching for the metal box, and then the storm broke loose.
Soyok Wuhti and her bully boys didn’t bother fighting their way past Daniel. They materialized right in the center of the basement, large as life, terrifyingly real. Monster Woman looked just like her Kachina. The two ogres with her had the same heavy fringe covering their features, but one of them had curled horns growing out of the sides of its head, and the other had a headdress with wide, black paddle-shaped pieces fanning out behind his oversized skull.
The nearest ogre brought its yucca flail down hard. Teag shoved me out of the way, taking the blow on his shoulder and I heard him grunt with pain. I flung out my right arm and concentrated my will on the wooden athame in my hand, sending a blast of cold white light at the ogre, driving it back a few steps.
Bo’s ghost sprang at the second ogre, going for the throat, and I heard the snick of snapping teeth as he hit his target. Sorren’s sword glinted in the light of the bare bulbs, slashing down at Soyok Wuhti herself, a powerful strike that cut from shoulder to hip. His blade passed through the specter without effect.
“Don’t let them get what’s in that tin!” I wasn’t sure how I knew it, but I was certain that if Soyok Wuhti and her ogres possessed the tin box, they would be too powerful to stop. The thought of killer nightmares and ghostly whippers stalking the streets of Charleston hardened my resolve.
The Kachina spirits vanished in the blink of an eye, then reappeared just as quickly a few paces away. Monster Woman wasn’t playing fair. The ogre nearest Sorren caught him across the face with his yucca whip, opening bloody stripes an
d narrowly missing his eyes. Sorren pivoted, striking again with his sword, a slash that should have disemboweled a mortal opponent, but the sword made no mark, passing cleanly through.
Teag sprang from a crouch, slamming into the second ogre with his sparring staff. It had served him well in martial arts tournaments, and Teag had added magic to its strength with the runes he had carved and the spelled braids that twined around its top. The staff thudded against something solid when it struck the ogre, and the shadow creature fell back a pace, surprised.
I sent another blast of white light toward Monster Woman, but this time she dodged with an ear-splitting cry, bringing her crook down on my arm and throwing me off balance as my athame fell from my hand. Her flail hit me hard across the shoulders, cutting through my shirt. I felt warm blood on my back.
The smell of blood sent the ogres into a frenzy. They blinked in and out, pausing just long enough to strike with their flails. Soyok Wuhti lashed out with her crook, hitting Sorren in the head hard enough to fell a mortal, then disappearing before he could strike back. We were getting our butts whupped.
Soyok Wuhti kept after Sorren, while one of the ogres started for me. With one mighty sweep of his flail, he swept Bo’s ghost out of the way and came after me.
I hurled a packet of salt at him. He never slowed his pace. His steps were heavy and deliberate, almost like a stomping dance, and he moved with the grace of a predator despite the bulky headdress. I didn’t dare take my eyes of him to look for my athame, so I grabbed the next closest thing, the spirit stick.
I could feel the mental assault of the Nataska even as the ogres struck at my physically. Despair threatened to overwhelm me. I focused on the power of the war paint drawings, using the handprint like a psychic stop sign to halt the tide of bleak thoughts from making me lose my will. It was like fighting a two-front war, mentally and physically exhausting, and I knew I couldn’t keep it up for long.
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