Spectral beings were all around us, drawn by Daniel’s chanting and the crates we had opened. Some were ghosts, attached to whatever was in the metal tin Teag fought to protect. Others, like Monster Woman and her ogres, were far older. They were beings that had never been human, and whether we thought of them as gods or demons, spirit-guides or something alien and other, they were far more than mere humans, living or dead.
Daniel’s chanting and drumming took on a new intensity, and as I opened my senses to it, I felt new spirits join the fray. I recognized them from the Kachina case. These were warriors and seers, spirits of rain, and new life. The spirit stick tingled in my hand, and in a rush I felt one of the Kachina beings envelop me as if I had dropped a costume over my head.
I was me, and not-me. The Kachina seer spirit didn’t possess me from the inside, but it overlaid me on the outside, like an exoskeleton, making me stronger, faster, sharper. I felt the spirit stick’s magic slide across my body, felt it connect with the handprint and the painted symbols where Daniel had marked me, and felt the power settle in as if taking the marks as acceptance. This time, when I concentrated my will into the spirit stick, a relic from an old and proud native people, the blast of light was a wide cone, and it not only hit the ogre, it drove him back, over a pile of boxes, and into a wall.
“Daniel’s spirits are helping us!” I shouted to Teag and Sorren. “Use the relics!”
I was bleeding from several strikes of the ogre’s flail. Teag’s shirt was sliced open, and I saw blood on the torn cloth and down the deep cuts on his arm. Sorren had gone after Soyok Wuhti one immortal to another, and while the Monster Woman was moving a little more slowly, Sorren was bloodied with deep gashes from her flail and bruised from her staff.
Teag grabbed the nearest relic of power, the round shield. I don’t know whether he felt the same transformation I did, but from the outside, I saw a fierce warrior’s form overlay Teag’s own, one of the brightly-colored Kachina fighters. Teag had his staff in one hand, and he snatched up the Navajo blanket, throwing it across his shoulders so that his Weaver magic could draw from the power invested in its warp and woof. This time when he swung his staff, it connected against the ogre’s solid form with much more force, and I saw a slow, triumphant smile spread across Teag’s features.
Sorren had taken more damage than a mortal could have withstood. His sword was of no use against Soyok Wuhti, and his vampire teeth, strength, and speed gave him little advantage against such an ancient and powerful being. He fell to his knees under Monster Woman’s flail, and as he did, the crate with the Raven Mocker mask tumbled to the floor beside him.
“Put it on!” I shouted as Soyok Wuhti closed with her staff upraised to strike again.
Sorren grabbed the headpiece, put it over his head and rolled to evade the blow. When he got to his feet, Sorren the vampire was gone, overlaid by Raven Mocker in the flesh.
Sorren, rose off the basement floor and hurtled into Soyok Wuhti. This time, his sword hit flesh with a sickening thud, and Monster Woman shrieked as the blade bit bone deep across the arm holding the crook. She struck with the flail, but Raven Mocker was faster, and the sword sliced through the stiff reeds, cutting their length by half.
Arm dangling, bone protruding from her flesh, Soyok Wuhti gave a banshee scream, jabbing at Sorren with the spiky remainders of the reeds and swinging her crook like a baseball bat to crush his skull.
I felt like I had a front-row seat at a monster-vs-monster smackdown match. Raven Mocker and Soyok Wuhti seemed pretty evenly matched, but beneath the spirit’s overlay, Sorren had the speed and cunning of an ancient vampire going for him as well. He launched himself at Monster Woman, blade angled at her head. The tip slit the black fringe that covered Soyok Wuhti’s face, cutting her from eye to chin.
Her crook caught Sorren across the back and I heard bones break. Sorren sank toward the ground, then sprang up suddenly, ignoring his injuries, driving his blade deep into Monster Woman’s belly.
“Yikes!” I yelped, then got in a shot from my spirit stick against the ogre Teag was fighting, while my opponent was still peeling himself off the basement wall. Now that we could do real damage, I grabbed my knife, switching the spirit stick to my left hand, as I saw that my ogre enemy was coming back for a rematch.
Meanwhile, my thoughts spun. Daniel’s Kachina spirits had evened the playing field, but they hadn’t won the war for us, at least, not yet. I didn’t understand spirit politics, and now wasn’t the time to try to figure it out, but I hoped their intervention meant that we had some kind of shot at success. Daniel’s chants and the steady beat of his drum and rattle echoed from the basement’s stone walls, heartbeat and war chant. His pipe smoke sent a haze over the room.
My ogre lumbered toward me, but taking my cue from Sorren, I didn’t wait for him to reach me. I used a move I had learned from Teag in martial arts, slamming the Nataska in the chest with a high kick, and swinging around to slice my knife across his chest.
His flail hit me hard, driving me back, opening up new deep cuts with reeds sharp as razors. I countered, lunging forward with my knife, shoving it deep into the ogre’s abdomen as I sent most of my remaining will into the spirit stick. The cone-shape blast of power threw the ogre tumbling into Teag’s opponent, then onto the floor.
Teag seized the moment, spinning around and slamming his staff into the head of the ogre he fought. The staff connected with a thick, skull-crushing thud. His shield caught the worst of the ogre’s flail, sparing him worse injury as the ogre fell to its knees.
We were scoring points, but could we actually destroy immortal Kachina spirits, beings that native peoples had revered as elemental forces of nature if not outright gods? Were the spirits Daniel called interested in finishing the fight, or just in seeing how valiantly we could pursue a losing cause? I ached in every bone and muscle. Blood was running down my arms and back. I was bruised and battered. If the fight went on much longer like this, odds were good that Teag, Sorren, and I would die of our wounds when the spirits who overlaid us with their power departed.
Teag’s ogre was climbing back to its feet, though it was hideously wounded. The back of its skull was crushed, and dark ichor seeped from the wounds. Still, it rose, ready to continue the fight. Despite the spirit that enveloped Teag’s form, I could see that Teag was hurt badly. One eye was swelling shut, and the side of his face was already bruising. His shirt hung in bloody shreds, and even his jeans were slashed and wet with blood.
It was harder to see Sorren’s injuries beneath Raven Mocker’s overlay, but watching the suicidal ferocity with which he and Soyok Wuhti attacked each other, I wondered if either of them would survive the fight.
Teag’s ogre landed a series of brutal blows with the flail that sent Teag reeling. The metal box slipped from his pocket, and I dove for it without thinking. Only as my hands closed around it did I realize what I was doing.
Oh shit.
Blinding light flared in my mind as my touch magic connected with the ground zero epicenter of our haunted house disturbance. I saw a vision of a barren stretch of land, something that looked like the Western desert. Dead men lay everywhere I looked, felled in battle. The fighting was done, but the burying had just begun. Images flashed by like a movie set on fast-forward. Bodies were wept over and prepared for their final rest, dressed in beaded finery with weapons befitting their bravery. Something about the beads caught my attention, even as the back of my brain warned that at any minute, the ogre Kachina was going to return for revenge.
The metal tin shook in my hand, and I heard the rattle and slide of a lot of tiny somethings inside. Whatever was in there, it had a hold over the warriors that streamed through my mind, storming forth to do battle one final time.
I had no idea whether the warriors from the vision were real or imagined, but I took a chance that my magic made them tangible. Gathering the last of my strength, I held tightly to the metal tin and ran toward Daniel.
“It’s in here!” I sh
outed. “Pull the plug on this, and it all goes down.”
Beaten, battered, bleeding, I stumbled my way toward Daniel. He didn’t stop chanting or puffing on his pipe, but he managed to set aside his drum and take the box from my hands. I collapsed at his feet, too exhausted to get back up.
When Daniel’s hands closed around the metal box, brilliant white light flared. It limned his entire figure, giving the medicine man an otherworldly appearance. He spoke words of power and words of blessing, and although I could not understand the language, I felt relief and release in the warrior spirits who were bound, somehow, to that small metal tin.
Daniel raised his arms wide in a gesture of benediction. One by one, the warrior spirits walked up to Daniel’s luminous figure, stepped through his body and into the light—and vanished.
Daniel was holding open a portal to the afterlife, shimmering and shining with the cold moon glow. Most of the warrior spirits had passed through the portal, and I felt the balance of magic shift. The pent-up energy of the trapped warrior spirits had been the catalyst to bring Monster Woman and her bully boys into the mortal realm. As those ancient warriors went to their eternal rest, the long-denied anger and vengeance that fueled their rage and fed Soyok Wuhti’s power dissipated.
Soyok Wuhti gave a banshee screech, hurling herself in a desperate attack at Sorren, but the Raven Mocker spirit countered by driving Sorren’s blade into the Monster Woman’s chest with one hand while the other hand thrust itself inside the shattered rib cage to yank free the blackened, shriveled heart. She gave one final shriek, and disappeared.
Teag was fighting off both ogres, but their movements had become sluggish and slow. He smashed the butt of his staff into one ogre’s face, slamming him to the ground, then hit the other ogre hard with his shield. He straightened for the next blow, and the ogres were gone.
As the last few warrior ghosts passed through Daniel’s portal, I felt the Kachina spirits that had overlain Teag, Sorren, and me with their power begin to flicker and wane. Another heartbeat, and they vanished, leaving me merely mortal once more, bleeding and spent on the cold stone floor.
Daniel murmured a few words of gratitude, and lowered his arms. Only then, as the otherworldly light of the nimbus faded did I see the cost of the evening’s fight in his face. Though he had taken no physical damage that I could see, Daniel looked worn out and on the verge of collapse.
“Some fight,” I said, feeling like breath was more effort than it was worth.
“That,” Daniel said with exhausted pride, “was one for the legends.”
* * *
Later, back at my house, after Sorren’s private physician left, Teag, Sorren, and I were all stitched and bandaged. We sat in my living room and looked at each other with sheer amazement that we had survived.
“What was in the box?” I took a sip of the bourbon I had poured for Teag, Daniel, and myself.
“Grave beads,” Daniel answered. Teag and I must have looked puzzled. “Our ancestors buried their dead all across these lands. Out West, where the dry climate preserves the dead longer, it’s common for huge ant hills to rise in the desert,” Daniel explained.
“The ants dig tunnels far underground, and often, they run through the graves of the long-dead,” he continued. “To the ants, the remains are in the way, and they carry what they can to the surface to clear a path. Find one of those ant hills, sift through what they’ve brought topside, and you’re likely to find old beads that were originally part of clothing worn by the dead.”
“Is that legal?” I asked, staring at the little metal box that had caused one death and nearly four more.
Daniel shrugged. “So long as the graves themselves aren’t disturbed, what the ants bring to the surface has been fair game for collectors for a long time. For some reason, the beads that Abby’s aunt purchased came with some supernatural baggage. Those dead warriors weren’t able to go to their rest on their own, and there was enough energy trapped in the beads that it made it possible for the dormant Kachina spirits to awaken.”
I shivered. “You’re sure the passageway to the other side is closed now?”
“It’s closed. I don’t think Soyok Wuhti and her ogres will be back this way again,” Daniel reassured me. He glanced at Sorren. “And I’ll be just as glad if Raven Mocker stays away as well.”
Sorren actually looked a little shaken by the fight. Teag and I had compared notes about the Kachina spirits that had overshadowed us, but Sorren had been unusually quiet. “I will be grateful as well,” he said. His wounds were nearly healed, but something in his eyes made me think that the price of being overtaken by Raven Mocker’s sprit had left their own, invisible scars.
“So it’s over?” I asked, sipping my bourbon and relishing the burn of the liquor that reminded me I was still alive and so were my friends.
“The Kachina spirits are quiet. The monsters are gone. All those boxes of artifacts are just interesting souvenirs, supernaturally speaking,” Daniel said. “Abby should be able to go back without danger.” He tossed off the rest of his bourbon. “Yeah. It’s over.”
Teag and I would take a while to heal, even with Daniel’s medicine magic to speed our recovery and assure that our wounds were cleansed of any magical residue. I was pretty sure that the memory of the fight would be part of my dreams—and nightmares—for a long time. And we still had a big job ahead of us, finishing the appraisal and auctioning off the collections.
But sitting in my house, with Baxter curled up on my lap, surrounded by friends, I was willing to deal with the work and the dreams. That was the price to be paid for fighting monsters in the dark. We deal with the nightmares, so everyone else can rest easy, never knowing how close they came to a terrible fate.
We know. And that’s enough.
Bad Memories
“I’ve got a problem, and I’m hoping you can help me.”
I recognized Kell Winston’s voice on the phone, but the tone sent a shiver down my back. Because I figured that anything Kell needed my help on was going to be trouble.
“What’s going on?” I asked. I played with a pencil, trying to contain the nervousness I felt.
“We got called in because there was a situation over at the new World War I exhibit near the Navy Yard,” Kell said. “And we’ve documented the sighting, but we can’t figure out the anchor.”
Oh, joy. Two sentences spelled a heap of problems. Kell was a professional ghost hunter, and unlike some of the folks you see on TV, he was the real thing. He and his team didn’t just go looking for spirits; they were pretty good at laying bothersome ghosts to rest. So if he was calling me, that mean a couple of things, neither of them good.
First, that someone had been bothered by a haunting enough to get over their skepticism about the supernatural world and hire a ghost hunter. And second, that Kell’s folks hadn’t been able to handle the problem, so he thought I could help.
Like I said, trouble.
I’m Cassidy Kincaide, owner of Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio shop in historic, haunted, Charleston, SC. The store has been around for three hundred and fifty years, always run by someone in my family and our silent business partner. We’re a great place to sell off grandma’s silver tea set or buy a few pieces with vintage charm. But the store’s real business is getting dangerous magical and supernatural items off the market and out of the wrong hands. When we succeed, no one notices. And on the rare occasions we slip up, lots of people die.
Most people don’t know about my magic. I’m a psychometric, someone who can read the history of objects by touch. Not every object, thank goodness, but pieces that have been touched by magic or strong emotion. I work with Teag Logan, my assistant store manager, who has Weaver magic. That’s the ability to weave supernatural power into fabric as well as to weave data strands together to find hidden information, meaning he’s a hell of a good hacker. Our silent partner is Sorren, a nearly six-hundred year-old vampire. We don’t advertise the ‘special’ side to our business,
but a few people have figured out my abilities, and Kell is one of them.
“What do you need?” I asked. I had picked up the call while I was up front in the store, and Teag was giving me a curious look, hearing only one side of the conversation.
“Can you come over and take a look for yourself?” Kell asked. I had been afraid of that, but Kell sounded really worried, and he’d helped us out before, so I wanted to return the favor.
“Sure,” I said, trying not to let him hear me sigh. “When?”
“Five o’clock?” Kell asked, and he sounded relieved that I had agreed. “That way, you can be in position to see what’s been going on. Things start to get interesting between six and seven.”
“All right,” I said, although the old Navy Yard is definitely not one of my favorite places, especially at night. It’s had a bloody history, and I’ve personally had some bad experiences out there. But I owed Kell, and he sounded pretty freaked out, which wasn’t like him. “Where?”
Kell gave me an address, and I wrote it down. “Mind if I bring Teag with me?” I asked.
“Sure,” Kell replied. “The more the merrier.”
When I was off the phone, Teag raised an eyebrow, his question unspoken. “Kell’s got a ‘situation’ out at the old Navy Yard and he wants me to see if I can pinpoint the source.”
“Sounds like fun,” Teag said, with a tone that made clear it wouldn’t be. “I figured it was something like that. I’ve already checked, and Maggie can close up for us.”
Maggie is our wonderful part-time helper, a retired teacher with a great smile. She dresses like Woodstock and thinks like Wall Street, and she often covers for us when Teag and I have to go save the world.
Modern Magic Page 253
