Vasili gave a wheezy chuckle and drew in his breath with a rasp that suggested a pack-a-day habit. “What would you know about that?”
“I know that neither Vinnie Trinotti nor you can move on. Something went wrong that night seventy-five years ago, and now you’re both trapped here. All that’s left of Vinnie is an insane, murderous ghost. And all that’s left of you is right here.”
“I don’t want your pity, boy.”
“You don’t have it,” I snapped. “I thought we might make a deal.”
Johnny looked like a corpse. His skin had a bluish-gray cast to it I’d only seen in the morgue, and it hung on his bones, stretched so tight that his face looked like a Death’s Head. He must have been a big man, long ago. Physically powerful, in addition to his magic. Now, he resembled a concentration camp inmate, hunched and emaciated. Then he turned to look at me, and his hard gray eyes bored into me, merciless and shrewd.
“Come closer, boy. Tell me about this deal.”
I had the sudden urge to make damn sure we weren’t at a crossroads because if Johnny Vasili wasn’t a demon, then God didn’t make little green apples.
“Come with me back to the railroad line, where you did the spell on Vinnie. I need your help to break the magic and send you both on.”
Vasili gave a wheezy, bitter laugh. “On,” he repeated. “And where, exactly, do you think someone like me will go?”
“No idea,” I replied, although I had my own suspicions.
“Liar.” Vasili turned to look at me, and while the body was that of a frail old man, the eyes were flat and cold, an unrepentant killer.
“Mr. Vasili—”
“That’s why I let it go this long, you know,” he said, speaking to me, but not really. “It worried me, where I’d go. What might happen…” He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Oh, the priests will tell you about confession, but they’ll also talk about mortal sins. I used to care. Now, I’m just tired. Ready to go.”
“Then help me,” I said quietly. “End it—for both of you.”
Vasili caught me again in his killer’s gaze, and I felt like he could see down to my bones, pondering the best way to snuff me out. “If you’d have come to me ten years ago, I’d have killed you on the spot,” he said matter-of-factly. “Just for bothering me.”
I remained silent, refusing to take the bait.
“I’m fucking done,” Vasili said in a whisky rasp. “Tired of it. Ready to take my chances. Never meant to get stuck here over that fucker.” He took a sip of his whiskey and swore quietly in Italian. I didn’t need to know the language to pick up on the gist of it.
“Then you’ll come with me?”
“Don’t give yourself credit,” Vasili muttered. “I’d been thinking about doing it for a while now.” He pushed up from his chair. “I need to gather a few things. Come back in an hour. Bring a priest.”
When I picked Father Leo up from St. Gemma Galgani church, he had a tight-lipped expression that usually meant he was ready for a fight. I hoped it wasn’t with me.
“Everything okay?” I asked as he got into Elvira and closed the door.
“It will be as long as we’re back in time for the Ladies’ Auxiliary meeting at eight,” he said. “Mrs. Guthrie just called with an extensive list of potential projects she’d like to discuss.”
“We could always pick up some beer on the way home,” I offered helpfully.
Father Leo leaned back and closed his eyes. “I think whiskey’s a better bet,” he sighed. “She’s very ambitious.”
Father Joe’s parish might have fifty families on the books and about ten old ladies who come for morning Mass. Everyone wonders why the church hasn’t been shuttered, but the truth is Father Leo holds down this area’s outpost for the Occulatum, a secret Vatican organization that battles supernatural and demonic activity. I’m his designated first responder, and while there are some other hunters in the area, Father Leo and I make a pretty good team.
“Still on for the poker weekend?” I asked, hoping to cheer him up.
“Assuming we survive our stroll with the hit man and the stregone?”
“Unless you have it on good authority that there’s beer and poker on the other side of the Pearly Gates.”
“Dear Lord, I hope so. I hate harps, and I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.” He sat up and rubbed his eyes, accepting the cold energy drink I fished out of the cooler on the floor of the back seat. “Yes, I’m looking forward to it. Given what’s on my calendar for the diocese and the parish committees, that poker weekend is pretty much giving me a reason to live.”
I laughed. “If you can weasel out of your responsibilities, you’re welcome to come up early and fish.”
“Don’t be surprised if I do,” he replied. “Fishing sounds like a little slice of heaven. They don’t tell us about this kind of thing when we sign up, you know. We think it will be blessing babies and Last Rites and weddings and funerals. And it turns out to be mostly committee meetings and administrative paperwork.”
I almost made a smart remark about celibacy, but given how long it had been since I’d gotten lucky, I figured I should keep my trap shut. “Did they say much about witches and ghosts?”
“Nope. Which just further proves my point.” Father Leo might gripe about the paperwork and his more difficult parishioners, but he’s one of the few men of the cloth I actually thought was suited to the calling. If he didn’t believe what he peddled, there’s no way in hell he’d have stared down some of the stuff we’ve handled. Not to mention the fact that my Latin sucks, so he comes in handy for exorcisms.
I glanced at him as I drove back to pick up Johnny Vasili. “So, do you have a plan in mind for this?”
He gave me a look. “Do you?”
“I’ve got salt, holy water, and cold iron in my bag. None of those worked the last time, but I’ll bring them again, just in case. Otherwise, I’m hoping Vasili holds up his end of the bargain.”
I half expected Vasili to have changed his mind, but he and Nikki were waiting when I got to Serenity Acres. Father Leo got in the back, and Nikki No Neck helped Vasili into the front seat, then climbed in behind him. We drove in tense silence to the trail parking lot. Nikki offered a meaty arm to help Vasili down, but after that, the elderly hit man refused any assistance.
“Things sure look different,” Vasili said as we reached the construction site. “It was dark and real smoky the night I capped Vinnie, good night for that kind of work, you know?” he reminisced. “He was expecting to pick up a drop from one of the trains. That’s how things were done back then. Thought he was going to retrieve a suitcase full of money, payment for a job. Only, surprise! There wasn’t any suitcase, but there was a job.”
Even now, after more than seventy years, knowing he was about to meet his Maker, Vasili didn’t sound sorry at all. It made my flesh crawl.
“What was the spell supposed to do?” I couldn’t help asking.
Vasili looked down the long straight path where the trains used to run, and I could tell he was seeing a different era. “It was a binding spell. Vinnie was a city guy. Hated the woods. Didn’t like to get mud on the cuffs of his trousers. So the spell was gonna keep him out here, in the middle of nowhere, ’till Kingdom Come. See, that’s where I went wrong,” he said, shaking his head. “I shoulda kept it simple. Couldn’t stand the guy when he was alive, finally have a chance to get rid of him, and what happens? I’m stuck with his fucking ghost for seventy-five fucking years.”
“No time like the present to fix that,” I said, biting back anything I might have thought about poetic justice.
Vasili fixed me with his cold, killer stare. “Don’t rush me, monster boy. It’s my funeral.” He looked to Father Leo. “You gonna say Last Rites for me? Not that I think it’ll make any difference on where I go, but hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?”
Father Leo managed a pained half-smile. “If you want me to, I’ll say them. Do you wish to make a Confession?”
Father Leo’s expression remained carefully neutral. “You asked for a priest to attend. I want to make the…transition…for Vinnie and for you as easy as possible.”
“Ain’t you a Boy Scout,” Vasili said, and patted Father Leo on the cheek before he turned away, walking down the rail line.
“Should be right in here,” Vasili said. He paused as if he were listening for something only he could hear, and perhaps he was, because after all this time, he moved unerringly to the spike, and lifted his head.
“I know you’re out there, you son of a bitch. Show yourself!”
The woods around us stilled, and the temperature plummeted. I’d already pulled out my iron crowbar from the gear bag, and I had my holy water flask and a canister of salt in my pockets, plus the charms Chiara had given me and a sawed-off with rock salt shells. Father Leo had a rosary in one hand, and he had the other in the pocket of his suit coat, which I’d be willing to bet money contained a relic.
A cold wind gusted through the trees, whipping up the leaves around the stakes.
“Still a prick after all these years, Vinnie? You want out or not? ‘Cause if I came here and you don’t show, I’ll wait another seventy years. And so will you.”
The air shimmered several feet behind the stake, and the figure of a man solidified from mist. I got a better look at him than I did when he’d rushed me the last time. Vinnie Three-Nuts looked like he stepped out of Hollywood casting for a Mob enforcer, with a pinched, rat-like face and dark, furtive eyes.
“About time you showed up, you muther—”
Father Leo cleared his throat. Vinnie glared, but adjusted.
“You clap-tongued son of a whore,” he finished.
“Same old Vinnie,” Johnny said. “Didn’t learn a thing in all these years, did you?”
“Oh, I learned plenty,” Vinnie said with a very unpleasant smile, right before the wind picked up, pelting us with sticks and rocks from the forest floor. A strong gust forced us back a step. The frigid air numbed my nose and cheeks like a blizzard, and frost began to form on the ground around us, although the autumn day had been mild.
“Is that all you’ve got?” Johnny raised a hand and muttered. I couldn’t catch what he said, but Father Leo began murmuring a litany I recognized as protection against dark energies. The gale died, the frost vanished, and a flash of green light seared from Johnny’s palm and arced to hit Vinnie in the chest. The ghost staggered, and his face twisted in pain.
“Watch and learn, old man,” Vinnie replied, moving in a blur right at Johnny, arms stretching out impossibly long, with grasping, clawed hands. Nikki stepped between them. The spectral hands went right through the big man’s chest, and Nikki grunted in pain, paling as a death rattle sounded from his throat. Johnny jumped backward, suspiciously agile for a man his age, and Vinnie stepped right through Nikki’s dying body, intent on finishing the fight.
Johnny shouted words of power, and a lattice of green fire sprang up from nowhere around Vinnie, momentarily trapping the spirit. Vinnie’s form disintegrated, materializing outside the cage and hurling a ball of gray energy at the old witch. “Eat shit and die, old man.”
Johnny sidestepped the energy, which careened past him, forcing Father Leo and me to throw ourselves out of the way, and the gray power blasted a tree behind me. Vinnie threw another mojo-ball that went zinging through the trees, and Johnny threw up a translucent shield that sent it careening into the woods where it took out two saplings.
“Do it!” Father Leo yelled. “Send him on!”
Vinnie’s ghost hurled a thick limb like a javelin. It barely missed me and bounced off Johnny’s wardings.
“I warned you, Johnny!” Father Leo said, and his posture straightened. “John Vasili, we find that you are legally convicted both by the evidence of credible witnesses and by your own repeated confession, that you have fallen, and fallen again, into the heresies which you abjured,” Father Leo recited, and Vasili recognized it at the same time the words clicked in my memory as being from the Malleus Malificarum, the “Hammer of Witches” used by the witch-finders in the Middle Ages.
Vinnie threw a rock the size of a grapefruit. Johnny’s attention was on Father Leo, until the rock struck his left shoulder and he cried out in pain.
“End this!” Father Leo commanded. “Or I will. I’ll send you on, John Vasili, condemned by the old words, and Vinnie will remain trapped here for all time.”
Vinnie was so obsessed with Johnny he didn’t see me raise the sawed-off. I pulled the trigger and hit him right in the chest with the rock salt. The ghostly image blew apart. “I’ll cover you,” I snapped, glaring at Johnny. “Just quit screwing around.”
For a moment, I thought I’d pushed my luck too far. Johnny’s gaze was murderous. He dropped to his knees next to Nikki’s body. “Watch my back,” he growled, as he rolled the dead man over and patted down his pockets without the slightest indication of concern or remorse. Johnny found what he was looking for and rose, scanning the woods for Vinnie.
“Keep him off me. He’ll be back.”
I kept the sawed-off in one hand and the iron crow bar in the other. Father Leo stepped closer, fixing Johnny with a no-nonsense glare. Or maybe, no-nunsense, since a ruler across the knuckles or a slap up the side of the head seemed to be in Johnny’s future.
“Keep your collar on, padre. I’m working.” Johnny took a swig from a flask in his pocket, and then pulled out a cigar and lit up. “For old time’s sake,” he said with a crooked smile.
Vinnie started to pull himself together, and I fired again, scattering his atoms. “Hurry it up,” I griped, loading more shells.
Johnny replaced the flask and lighter and held up a glass bottle filled with a foul-looking concoction. “Lightning in a bottle,” he said, and began to walk counter-clockwise around the prong, dripping out a thin line of the awful-smelling liquid. When he closed the circle, he stood inside it next to the stake, and as the last drops hit the ground, a phosphorescent green light flared, like the glow of rotting plants.
Vinnie re-formed. I shot him in the balls. He vanished. Father Leo cleared his throat menacingly. Johnny swore in Italian and pulled out a ritual knife with a bone handle and markings scribed down its curved blade. I don’t have a magical bone in my body, and I knew I was watching dark power at work. Father Leo crossed himself, but continued to bear witness.
Vinnie popped up to my left. I wheeled, and the rock salt blasted through his head, taking off his skull above the eyebrows and his damned Fedora before he winked out.
Johnny rolled up his sleeve, his arthritic hands moving with surprising dexterity. He drew the knife down his forearm and dripped a steady trickle of blood onto the stake. A sickly red glow answered, and Johnny continued his chant without a hitch, though the deep cut must have hurt.
Vinnie materialized between me and Father Leo. “Duck!” I yelled, and fired. The blast went through Vinnie’s neck and chin, and sailed over Father Leo’s back as he dropped to all fours.
“Are you done yet?” I yelled at Johnny.
“Almost,” he replied around the cigar he chewed as much as puffed. “One more element.” He fumbled with the belt on his trousers.
“Oh, hell no,” I growled, but by then, Johnny had dropped trou to reveal baggy striped cotton boxers so thin I could make out a mole on his butt cheek. Some things can’t be unseen. He pulled out his wrinkled willie and held it limply over the stake.
“Seriously?” I said. “You have to piss on him?”
“Don’t interrupt. I gotta concentrate.” A few drops fell, and Johnny shook his limp lizard. “Come on,” he muttered. A yellow light around the stake stuttered and vanished.
Vinnie popped up behind me. I felt the shift in temperature, dropped and ro
lled before he could get his grubby hands into my chest, and came up shooting.
“Watch it!” Father Leo yelled as the rock salt flew.
“Aren’t you done yet?” I shouted at Johnny.
“Hey, I got prostate problems! Have some respect!”
“Mark!” Father Leo warned.
Vinnie, the crafty little fucker, materialized in the branches overhead. I filled his belly full of salt as he fell toward me and smirked when he winked out just as I swung my iron crowbar at his head for good measure.
I chanced a look at Johnny and couldn’t tell whether he was coaxing out more pee or having a last round of “alone time” before the great hereafter. Father Leo opened his mouth for what I was sure would be the next section of the Malleus Malificarum, just as Vinnie popped up from the ground—just from the waist up—wrapped his arms around my legs, and pulled. I went down hard, but as I fell, I sighted the shotgun between my knees and over my nuts and got Vinnie right in the face.
Piss-yellow light flared. The woods smelled of old blood, fresh pee, and cigar smoke. I got to my knees in time to see Vinnie forcibly pulled into the circle, and this time, his form looked as solid as Johnny’s.
“Well fuck me sideways,” Johnny muttered, looking beyond us and Vinnie to something distant across the Veil, something the living could not see. “That’s a helluva thing to spring on a guy.”
The light flashed, and they were gone.
Father Leo put the rosary back in his pocket and withdrew a thin purple stole, which he placed around his shoulders as he began to say the Last Rites. I got to my feet and tried to pretend I wasn’t shaking. Still wary, I advanced slowly on the place where Johnny and Vinnie had disappeared, cocking the shotgun just in case.
The stake looked like it had been struck by lightning, and nothing remained of the rounded dome where the binding sigil had been except a melted, twisted lump of metal. I caught a lingering whiff of cigar smoke and something that smelled like a backed-up toilet. I racked another shell and shot the ground, just because.
Spells, Salt, & Steel--A New Templars Novella Page 6
