I threw my head back, laughing with abandon. Her answering grin was radiant with evil glee. “Oh, if I could’ve seen that . . . thanks, I never knew.” I wiped tears from my eyes, thankful for her friendship and protection.
“So, you asking me how long we’ve known each other is trying to find out if we’re on the same radio frequency or something, right?” She was sharp. That was more or less what I’d been thinking.
“Yeah, I just—I think my mind reached out because I need you, or need something you have.” I shrugged. I was a witch, and even I didn’t understand all the nuances of my power. I might never, and that would be fine. The presence of mystery isn’t always a bad thing.
“You’re welcome to look through the truck, but it’s almost empty. Dropped at all the usual spots, and then a ton of luggage or something up at the cabins.” She pointed with her chin to the north.
“Limberlost cabins? Not some greasy creep, looks like the villain in a spy movie?” I lurched at her comment.
“I see you’ve met him. Ugh, slimy bugger. He looked me over like I was rotten fish, then told me to take everything upstairs. I barely held back from slamming the door in his face. He kept whining about family heirlooms and mirrors and all kinds of nonsense. I told him I was a delivery driver, not a servant, and he could call my supervisor if he had a problem with it. He made a big show of looking at his watch, which was stupid because even from five feet away I could see it was busted. Why he wears the thing, I have no idea.” She snorted, then pulled my door open. “Speaking of time, I gotta make tracks.” She looked at me fiercely. “I’ve always had your back, kid.” Then she gave me her trademark finger guns, clicked her tongue, and was out the door.
A tear slid down my cheek at the gift she’d just given me. I knew how the warlock was stopping the shifters in mid-change, and now, after months of pain and regret, I could move forward with a spell to bring Wulfric home. Warlocks aren’t cut from the same cloth as a white witch. For one thing, they’re rotten to the core. They have a grimoire, just like I do, and they might even use charms, but warlocks focus their power into talismans of two kinds. They have one that’s worn on their person, and then there are the portals. Based on the observant, wonderful, serendipitous eyes of Tammy, I knew everything about one Roderick Plimsoll. There was just one minor detail in the way, but even that didn’t seem to be anything more than a hiccup compared to what I was going to overcome.
Time, I thought. And the last piece of my spell clicked into place. I smiled at Gus and went to get my boots. The sun was going to be down soon, and that meant Rene would be awake. It was time to go into the forest.
Chapter Twenty: Bad Luck
Gran dropped us off at the north end of the lake with bellies full of warm tea and lasagna. I’m not sure one can prepare better for a trip into the woods, and Exit agreed based on our cheery dispositions as we tromped across the parking lot to hit the trail head. It wasn’t much of a hike to the point where Rene tended to hang out; if anything, it would have been even faster just to scoot across the lake. The ice was at least a foot thick or more, but we kept to the trail simply out of necessity. It was dark, and starry, and cold. Trails are your friend in those conditions.
“Does he speak English?” Exit was huffing a bit. His long sleep had sapped some of his conditioning, if not his vitality. I didn’t think that there was crossfit a century ago; it was one of the rare things I preferred about the year 1916. Had I lived back then, nobody would have been in my diner asking for egg whites and oatmeal while yammering about gains and this week’s muscle shred technique.
“You know, I’m not sure.” I thought about our conversations. I didn’t think ghosts were concerned with language barriers; once you’re dead you can kind of get around that by interacting on a more personal level. As in, they process your thoughts as soon as you address them. It’s a neat trick, and one I had mind to perfect if I ever did all of the traveling I’d had on my mind since my teen years. “But we understand each other perfectly.”
“Good enough, then.” We fell silent and kept working our legs like pistons until I saw the spark of a sepia-colored light hanging near the rock promontory at Sylvan Beach.
“He’s just there,” I said, pointing with a gloved hand.
“Well, I’ll be damned. He’s real.” Exit was just short of speechless, which might have offended me if I were the sensitive type. He had seen Gran practice some serious magic, but the psychic effect of seeing something inhuman carries great weight. Ghosts are a campfire story made real, and Rene’s appearance was certainly not common. At our distance, he looked like a faintly luminous man, dressed in the buckskins of a French fur trader. A long knife dangled from his belt, his chest was clad in a vest made from rough spun wool, and he was lean, even dangerous looking. Black hair was tied back in a leather thong, and Rene’s prominent, Gallic nose broke up the severe angles of his long face. Despite his serious appearance, a broad smile split his face as we got closer, transforming him from a frontier warrior into a cheerful presence who just happened to be translucent and floating a few inches above the snow-covered rocks.
“Carlie! It’s a cold night for social graces.” He turned silently, but his furs moved as if in a light breeze. It was a strange and beautiful thing to see, as it often is with friendly spirits. With angry ghosts? Not so much, and I had a bite mark to prove it at one point. “You’ve brought a new traveling companion?”
“This is Exit. He’s recently back from a long trip, and we’re in a bit of a pinch. How are things on this end of the lake?” I sat on a small patch of stone that jutted defiantly above the ice. Exit took a spot next to me just as Rene waved. A spectral campfire of blue flames blurred into existence, adding a cheery if otherworldly glow to the scene.
Rene’s grimace flickered wildly across the light of his face. “Not well, I am afraid. The deer are moving, the fox are silent, and something is driving the prey, but I have seen no sign of wolf or coyote. This troubles me greatly.”
“Could it be human?” I looked off into the starlit woods, wondering what was out there.
Rene gave a Gallic shrug with one shoulder. “It seems likely, but I cannot say. There is most certainly something wrong, but I fear it is outside my perceptions. I am limited in this state.”
“In what way, if I may ask?” Exit asked. His curiosity had a purpose. If a ghost couldn’t see in the visible spectrum, that was one thing. I’d never asked a spirit what they could detect. Perhaps their visions was radically different from ours, like a cat.
Rene considered that before pointing at a nearby tree. “It is winter, so you see the bones of that tree, yes? Not so for me. I see what was, and what will be. I see the sprawl of leaves yet to come, and it is beautiful. It is also difficult to process, and only after many years could I make sense of the living things around me. I think that some people caught between states of being are not malicious, just confused and overwhelmed. But this thing that is here, or nearby? It is not something I can detect, and that means—”
“It’s undead.” My words rang like a hammer blow. Was Wulfric here? I couldn’t think of any logical reason for him to be on this end of the lake. There were no people, no activity to speak of, and he couldn’t watch me no matter what lay in his heart.
“Just so.” Rene tipped his fur-lined cap and stirred the illusory wood at the heart of our campfire. Blue motes flared and were whisked away on the light breeze. “Although, there are many kinds of creatures who meet that criteria.” He spread his hands before the ghostly fire, adding, “All of them are bad, but some are worse. Much worse, I fear, and there is little I can do, save provide a warning if it is needed.”
“You think this presence is to the east?” I asked, taking note of the nearby forest. It was almost impenetrable at some points, thick with underbrush and saplings. Hard going for people on foot.
“I know it. The deer I’ve seen are panting, their eyes round with fear and foam flecking their noses. Whatever has frightened them
is newly arrived in the last day, and it is here for a purpose. This is not accidental, Carlie.” Rene’s ghostly voice grated with anger. He was angered by the offense given to his end of the lake. I understood, because it was happening on my family lands, too. The difference between us was considerable. I was corporal, and I had a well of magic to draw from that could be used to do something.
Something violent.
The thing about being a white witch is that our intent is pure, but the world around us is not. That means, on occasion, that you have to get your hands dirty, and this seemed like it was one of those days. Or nights. I considered cracking my knuckles in a dramatic fashion and saying something tough, but that would just make my fingers tingle, and I wasn’t really sure Exit wouldn’t laugh. For most jobs, actions are better than words.
An unearthly hiss cut through the night air, freezing the blood in my veins with each long, poisonous second of the noise. I’d only heard something like it once before, and that was plenty for my lifetime. I whirled to the ghost, who had heard it as well. That meant the sound was cutting across both spectrums—living and dead.
“Rene, do me a favor. Go to around the lake and tell everyone—right down to the last Wisp—to get into the Everafter right now.” He blurred into motion without another word and headed around the frozen shore like a low-flying meteor.
“He seems to be a man of action,” Exit remarked drily. “What is coming?”
I faced him, a smile of respect blooming on my lips. This was a man to count on in a brawl, which, if my estimate was correct, would be in about one minute. “A glass demon.”
He cocked his head in disbelief. “A demon . . . made of glass? And you know this because?”
I pointed with my right hand; my left was currently so loaded with magical energy that I didn’t dare use it. The charms around my wrist were vibrating with anticipatory glee. “The noise. I’ve heard it once before, in a casting, but I’ve never seen one in person, and no, they’re not made of glass. They’re made of foul magic and sour blood, and probably a little pure hate thrown in for good measure.”
The hideous scream repeated, much closer now. A sapling was snapped off close enough to us that we saw the top of it crash sideways, just inside the thickest part of the nearby woods. I saw Exit pull his knife and hammer, taking a stance that looked like he knew what to do with both of them.
“Where did this creature come from?” Exit asked, his voice low. The demon was seconds away.
“Tell you in a minute.” A low, spidery shape of glistening scales and sharp angles burst through into the clearing, its mouth opened wide to reveal gums packed with teeth like shards of crystal. It was pale and ran on all fours at a blistering pace, its talons spread wide to propel it in massive leaps over the snow. Five eyes ringed the knobby bone ridge over a long, curved muzzle that dripped sizzling ichor onto the frigid earth. Each eye gleamed with the orange of a forgotten fire, and it began laughing at its good fortune at finding two humans alone in the woods. I lifted my left hand, pointed to the woods, and screamed, “Aiteal gréine!”
A beam of sunlight exploded from three fingers of my left hand, splitting apart and striking the demon like a shotgun blast made of sunburns. Two of three parts struck the beast in chest and neck, and the third took it straight down the gullet to burst outward in a dizzying storm of demonic chaff. It keened in pain as I stood frozen in fear and anger, the six foot corpse sliding through the melting snow to come to rest in front of my boots.
With a ghastly hack, it spat ichor on my pants, shuddered once, and died, breaking apart into gelatinous mush before steaming away into the night. The stench was gut churning, and in seconds, only the long, wicked skull remained; although it too began to sublime.
Exit leapt forth like an avenging warrior who was just late to the battle, striking the demonic remains with his rock hammer. It shattered the glistening skull with a muffled crack. “And don’t come back lest I fetch you another!” He turned to me, his face split with a smile of exhilaration and relief. “Sorry, felt rather useless and wanted to get a lick in before the fun was over.”
I couldn’t take it. The laughter burst free into the night and infected Exit. We both fell to the ground, wracked with the painful joy of a shared danger. I wordlessly mocked his attack with the hammer, and it sent us both into further paroxysm as we, in other words, just plain lost it.
Then another demon shrieked, and nothing seemed very funny. Instantly, we both sprang to our feet, eyes drawn in the same direction. The scream repeated, but muffled by distance.
“It’s farther off.” I listened, eyes closed. “It sounds odd. I don’t think it’s moving.”
Exit pointed with his knife. “Then we should take the fight to the beast.”
“Agreed. Let’s go.” We began stalking across the snow, which was hard enough to let us trot at a good clip. I lofted yet another prayer of thanks upward to the winking stars, and then put my head down and moved.
After less than a quarter mile, we were forced to stop by the snakelike bends of Pigeon Brook. Ordinarily, we would walk right over it, but the demon’s earlier passing had broken and melted the ice apart so severely that I didn’t trust putting a single foot out onto the shifting fragments clinking against each other like ships in a stormy harbor.
“Not safe.” I tapped a section of ice with my boot, and it rolled over with a groan to splash freezing water in our faces. “Not even close.” The dark water rushed past in a hissing burble. Whatever the demon had done, it hadn’t dissipated. The creek might not refreeze for hours, and that wasn’t going to work. I needed a workaround, or—
“What is that thing?” Exit’s voice was low, concerned. He pointed across the creek to a glowing oval that seemed to hover. As my eyes processed the sight, something began to move within the beam of reflected starlight. Then the creature tore the night with another howl, and I knew where the demons were spawning. “It’s a warlock portal. He brought it out here to seed these woods with demons to hunt for him, like wolves or hounds.”
The demon wriggled in the grasp of the mirror. Coming through to our plane was painful, but the possibility of human blood made the beast nearly insane with ferocity and will.
“What happens if the mirror breaks?” Exit stroked his mustache thoughtfully.
“The portal closes, of course. But we have no blessed weapons, and I’m afraid that ouch! Hey! What are you?—”
He’d plucked a hair from my witchmark without asking, and began wrapping it around his rock hammer. “Your Gran may have mentioned how you dispatched a beastie or three by using rocks wrapped in your hair. Is there any, ah, incantation needed?” he asked innocently, hammer held upright before him like the sword of a crusader.
I glared, rubbing my witchmark. He’d probably gotten three hairs, judging by the sting. “Let me.” I took the hair from his fingers and exhaled. It was going to be quick and dirty, but the spell might work anyway, and we had no time. One wrap around, two back. Tie it off. I finished with a muttered incantation and held the hammer out to him. It began to grow lighter in my hand as he took it, and flecks of golden light streaked through the metal head. “It’s working. What do you propose to do—”
He turned and hurled the rock pick with such velocity it left a light trail, like an afterimage from a lightning strike in a summer storm. The hammer passed through the demon, who was nearly out into the snow, smashed into the mirror, and sent a cloud of silvered fragments erupting skyward. “That’s what I’m going to do.”
“Fair enough.” I can appreciate a swift plan of action, especially is if uses something like a magical rock hammer. “We don’t have to destroy the frame; the first touch of any sun will do that. Demonic energy renders wood and stone vulnerable to sunlight, but I’m concerned about other portals.”
“Why? Do warlocks use many? In fairy tales there was only one mirror, if I recall.” He looked longingly over at his rock hammer, which lay steaming in the snow some ten yards beyond the empty mi
rror frame.
“I thought so as well, but my friend Tammy delivered several boxes to Plimsoll’s cabin, and he was most explicit about their contents. What I can’t figure out is why he would put them out here.” I waved around at the expanse of the park. It made no sense. Demons wanted to kill. They were born to it.
“Maybe the demons are beaters.” Exit indicated the path it had taken before running into my little spell. “Straight line. Just like a beater . . . if it had companions.”
“What’s a beater?” The only one I knew was something I licked when it was covered in some sort of delicious batter. As a cook, quality control is my priority. I care. I really do.
“Hunters use them to beat the bushes, so to speak. Men would fan out and drive prey toward the hunters. It’s not considered overly sporting; it was mainly the province of the wealthy, but you can’t argue with the results.” He frowned slightly, indicating his distaste for the practice.
“Well, we know what prey he’s driving, but I told Alex and Anna if they set foot outside that I’d move them lock, stock, and barrel into my cellar until the danger is passed. I figure if he can’t find them, he can’t harm them, but still—” I paused, because something was missing. Warlocks use parts of the human body in their wicked magic, but that didn’t explain why he had Jonny guarding Reina’s remains for all these years. If her skin was useful, it did him no good hidden in that decrepit chapel.
It began to snow, slowly, but then heavier until we were standing in a swirl of flakes that whipped downward in erratic bursts. Without a word, we began walking back to Rene’s haunt, picking our way carefully through the darkness. When we returned to the rocky point, I called to Rene through the veil into Everafter. He popped back into sight with a look of mild alarm.
“You are quite all right? What happened? There was an incredible burst of wicked magic that tore through several layers of my sight.” His concern was palpable, despite his lack of a physical body.
Halfway Hunted - Halfway Witchy Page 12
