“What about the room with the burned circle?” I asked.
Kell met my gaze. “That was pretty strange. All through the building, there was so much EMF activity I actually thought someone was playing with us, faking it. The ghosts were more aggressive than ever. But the closer we got to the room with the circle, the quieter it got, until the last length of hallway and the room itself – nothing. Total null.”
That didn’t surprise me, if Reapers liked taking a bite out of ghosts to stoke up their energy, heck, maybe they liked a snack or two between plagues and disasters. I imagine hell spawn get peckish, too.
“You guys really know how to get around,” Teag remarked, finishing off his ale. “What about that old motel you said was out near the Navy Yard?”
Kell nodded. “We’ve been there. There was plenty of graffiti, doors ripped off, lots of damage, so we’re certainly not the first to go there. But we had heard a story about a young man who killed himself there in one of the rooms. Another guy hanged himself in one of the bathrooms when he found out his girl married someone else.” In other words, good ghost-hunting.
“This was our second time at the motel,” Kell went on. “The first time, we didn’t get anything except a couple of blurry orbs.” Orbs were balls of light caught on camera, and many ghost hunters believe they are spectral images.
“This time, orbs were popping up all over the place. Cold spots. Poltergeist stuff – doors and windows slamming, flying pebbles, objects falling. And the same feeling that we had at the power plant, that the ghosts really wanted us to leave.”
I looked to Ryan. “Any evidence that people had been in the building lately?”
He frowned. “Yeah. And if we hadn’t been trespassing ourselves, I might have called the cops. The only thing is, I’m still not sure whether what we saw was human, or just some big animals. The prints were strange.”
“Oh?” I asked.
Ryan nodded. “We saw several hoof prints. Gouges in the walls and rips in the carpet that looked like a bear had gotten loose in there.” He had photos, too. I was grateful, because it saved Teag and me a trip that was not likely to be in our best interests.
He paused. “The other difference was the smell. Some of the rooms at the old motel stank like nothing I’ve ever smelled before.”
There’s a reason people say something ‘stinks like the pit of Hell’. Supernatural creatures, especially those from the less enlightened realms, tend not to adhere to mortal notions of hygiene.
“What I really want to know,” Kell said, “is what’s causing this big surge in supernatural activity? From what I’m seeing on the ghost hunter forums online, lots of other people are asking the same question.”
I was pretty sure I knew, but it wasn’t an answer I could share. You can’t un-know something, just like you can’t un-see it. And for all that ghost hunters and paranormal investigators believe the truth is ‘out there’, very few people really want to have their nice, normal mental framework of how the world functions totally turned on end.
“Would you two mind sending me copies of those photos?” I asked. “I promise not to reveal my sources,” I said with a smile. “But I have some friends who might be able to figure out what caused the things you saw.”
“I was hoping you’d ask,” Ryan replied, grinning. He pulled a flash drive from his pocket. “Here. Kell and I put the best photos on this. Don’t worry – we know how to scrub the digital images so that they can’t be traced. But if you give it to someone in law enforcement, do me a favor and wipe it for prints, okay?”
He wasn’t joking. Ryan’s group of explorers is very careful not to damage property or steal left-behind items, but they still trespass, break, and enter. Teag and I did a lot of the same in service to the Alliance. The police were likely to take a dim view of such things. That made it awkward to do your civic duty when, in the process of committing a misdemeanor, you happen upon someone committing a felony.
“It’s probably something new with college students,” Kell said. “You know, some kind of hazing or role playing game. I certainly don’t want to kick off another one of those ‘Satanic panic’ mass hysteria things. But I do think it bears looking into.” He shrugged. “Something about the whole thing felt… wrong.”
“Since we don’t know if the people behind this are dangerous, you might not want to go back, at least until things calm down a little,” I suggested, hoping they would take the hint. I liked both Kell and Ryan, and the people I had met from their groups seemed like nice folks. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, and I sure didn’t want anyone in the way when the time came for us to take down the ghost-chompers.
“That’s okay,” Ryan said. “There are plenty more abandoned buildings near Charleston, and more haunts than Kell can shake a stick at. But if you do find anything out about what we saw, I’d love to know.”
The conversation turned to more mundane topics like the weather, travel plans and mutual friends. When we reached the street, Kell and Ryan headed to their cars, and Teag and I walked a couple of blocks back to where we had parked by the store.
“I don’t want our friends getting involved in this,” I said. “Someone’s likely to get hurt.”
“If we warn them off too much, they’ll realize we know more than we’re telling, and they’ll try harder to be involved,” Teag cautioned.
“You know we’re going to need to go out to that power plant and get a look at what’s going on,” I said.
“Yeah, I figured. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.”
“Let’s hope that Sorren gets back quickly, with reinforcements,” I said. “We’ve got to shut Sariel down before more Watchers can get through.”
UTILITY PLANTS ARE meant to be brightly lit. No one designs them to be prowled around in the dark. Everything echoes and huge pieces of equipment make for strange shadows and lots of hiding places. But here we were, making our way through the dust and darkness. Faint moonlight struggled through the old plant’s high, dirty windows, but it barely made a difference in the gloom.
“Not too hard to follow the trail,” Teag muttered. Once again, we were outfitted for a small supernatural war. Teag and I each had one of Josiah Winfield’s pistols, cleaned and reloaded and ready for action. I had my athame and my walking stick, Bo’s collar, and a satchel full of everything from witch mirrors to jack balls to some gris-gris powder, and I was wearing every protective amulet I owned. Teag had his fighting staff, his espada y daga fighting blades, some other nasty-looking knives, and an assortment of magically-charged knots and amulets. Teag was wearing a vest he had made with magical protections woven into its warp and woof, and he had gifted me with one right before we set out. I was happy for any extra protection I could get. I was pretty sure that he also had a few highly-illegal ghost-scrambling weapons courtesy of Chuck Pettis.
Tonight, Caliel came with us, and as a Voudon houngan, he had his own powerful protections. With luck, that included being under the watchful, protective eye of the Loas. Caliel, like Lucinda, was a descendant of Mama Nadege. He could throw down with the big boys. Sorren led the way. We were ready for trouble.
Huge generators the size of trucks loomed like sleeping giants, casting long, dark shadows. Darkened light fixtures hung from the high ceiling, and it did not take much for my imagination to turn them into hovering predators. I’ve seen pictures of old power plants built around 1900. They had soaring ceilings and big windows, resembling huge railroad terminals like Grand Central Station in New York City. This plant was far too new to have any architectural character. It was a big, concrete box, as ugly as it was functional.
Habitation changes the energy of a place, and so does abandonment. It’s like the difference between sleeping, and dead. The power plant had stood empty for decades, and all the energy imparted by the bustle of living beings going about their business had faded away long ago. What remained was a dead husk, energy-wise, but dead things have a way of coming back to life in the most disturbing and dan
gerous ways.
“Someone’s called up some bad magic, very strong,” Caliel said as we ventured deeper into the deserted power plant. “Can you feel it?”
We all nodded. To me, the taint of dark magic felt like something sticky and foul on my skin. The feeling grew stronger as we moved farther into the bowels of the abandoned plant.
“Kell said that the big generators and the offices are on this floor,” I said, “and the lower floors are mostly wiring and conduits.”
“Unfortunately, that’s where we’re headed.” Sorren led the way. Dressed all in black, he was ready for a fight. He wore two swords, his favorite weapons.
“There are the stairs.” Teag’s voice was flat. He was probably just as frightened as I was at the prospect of going down those steps where Harry had disappeared. Hell, going down into the underground, lightless subfloor was frightening under the best of circumstances, even when black magic and supernatural monsters weren’t involved. We were going in where fallen angels had not feared to tread.
Somewhere in the distance, water dripped and rats squeaked. I tried not to think about the roaches and other vermin skittering around our boots and I wondered if this was the way the guys who explored those old Egyptian tombs felt as they descended into the unknown.
We stopped at the top of the stairs. Sorren turned to Caliel. “What do you sense?”
Caliel closed his eyes and I felt a ripple of power brush against me as he gathered his magic. “On the stairs, nothing. Lower down, remnants of dirty magic, very dark. And...” his voice drifted off. “I don’t want to say until I know for sure.” He shook his head and muttered something in the island language I had heard him use to invoke the Loas. “Some bad shit happened here.”
“But the stairs are safe?”
Caliel gave me a lopsided grin. “Nothing here is safe, but whatever took Harry is gone from the steps. And if you’re right about the Reapers and the Watchers, then the rest of us are safe, unless you’ve got some past sins you’d like to confess?” He chuckled as he said it, but there was truth beneath the humor.
I couldn’t help glancing toward Sorren. He had been a thief before he had been turned, and what he had done in the centuries since then likely went beyond breaking and entering. Sorren gave me a wan half-smile. “Don’t worry, Cassidy. The Reapers aren’t looking for vampires. We’re not on their menu. They want mortal prey.”
Still, I held my breath as we carefully made our way down the steps. Our heavy-duty flashlights barely made a dent in the pitch black darkness. Sorren didn’t need light to navigate, but Teag, Caliel, and I did. While the power plant was ‘abandoned’, I wasn’t sure that meant the shadows that waited for us were empty.
Sorren was in front. I went next, followed by Teag. Caliel took up the rear, chanting and singing to the Loas to ask for their protection.
Nothing happened. I let out a long breath when we reached the dirty concrete floor of the second level. The ceiling was a lot lower than in the generator room. This level held wiring, pipes, and conduits – a maintenance sub-floor to keep the main generator room from being too cluttered.
Harry had vanished into thin air on those narrow concrete steps.
“Someone came this way,” Sorren said, pointing to smudged footprints in the dust. Cobwebs hung from the exposed rafters and the tangle of wires and pipes overhead was close enough that I could have put up a hand and touched them.
We made a careful search of the room. In places, Teag, Caliel, and Sorren had to duck to avoid hitting the low-hanging wires and the pipes that ran just inches over my head. I shivered each time something brushed my hair.
I was afraid we might find Harry’s body in a corner, overlooked by Kell’s ghost hunters. I was hoping that we’d find him holed up, stoned or drunk but alive, but I feared something much worse had befallen him. Unfortunately, Harry was nowhere to be found.
“I feel power, called and dispelled,” Caliel said. He moved up to the front with Sorren. Teag fell back to guard the rear, and I played my heavy-duty flashlight around the room. Sorren would sense any humans nearby, and some types of supernatural creatures, but I didn’t know if that included Nephilim, and I did not want to find out the hard way. Any angel fallen far enough to end up here had a rough descent.
“Someone’s done dark magic, close by,” Sorren agreed.
A strange odor lingered in the air, something I associated with an old, unpleasant memory. Then I knew what I smelled: burned meat and hair. That wasn’t a good omen.
“Look there.” Sorren pointed to a place where the dust had been swept clear. A large area, probably six feet by six feet, had been cleaned off down to the concrete, and charcoal and salt circle of power had been drawn on the stained old floor. The circle had been smudged open in one place, so whatever it was made to contain had either been freed or dispelled. I was pretty sure that anything called up in that circle was something I did not want to meet.
A black chicken feather wafted down through the air. What’s a chicken doing down here?
“Oh, oh, oh.” Caliel was standing over a blackened lump, and as we drew closer, I wrinkled my nose at the smell of rotting meat.
“What is that?” Teag asked, as our flashlights showed bits of yellow bone amid the blackened, charred surface. I saw a smaller lump nearby.
“Someone’s offered a burnt sacrifice,” Caliel said, “and whatever they used the circle to conjure, they called a Loa to help them.” He pointed to a smudged marking on the concrete. It was a veve, the elaborate drawings that were the signature of the Voudon Loa, powerful immortal beings that sometimes meddled in the affairs of humans.
“I don’t recognize that veve,” I said.
“Best you don’t,” Caliel replied. “No good reason to call that Loa. Marinette Bois Sech is cruel and powerful, and if she’s involved, we’ve got big trouble, you can be sure of that.”
“Then the things over there –” Teag asked, pointing at the blackened lumps.
“They’re the price Marinette charges for her help. A black pig and a black rooster. Burned alive.” Caliel was already drawing the veves for Papa Legba and Damballah Wedo, protective and very powerful Loas. Sorren examined the large circle while Caliel sprinkled salt and chanted, dispelling any remaining dark energy from whoever had called down Marinette’s spirit. “There’s a reason she’s feared. She does terrible things and she’s the patron of monsters. Some say she’s the protector of werewolves,” Caliel replied.
Werewolves have a patron Loa? I resolved to discuss that further with Sorren, once were well gone from this creepy place.
“What about that circle?” Teag asked. He stood with his back toward us, watching the rest of the floor to avoid being ambushed. “Did someone bring a Watcher through?”
Sorren straightened from where he knelt next to the circle. “That’s exactly what I think happened. We need to be gone from here. The sooner the better.”
“There’s another floor,” Teag said. “Kell’s people were freaked out enough after Harry disappeared and they found the circle that they didn’t try to go farther. But I found the blueprints online. There’s another subfloor, probably used mostly for storage, underneath this one.”
“All right,” Sorren said. “Let’s have a look. But we’ll make it quick.”
The upper floors had smelled of mold and dust, decay and disuse. The smell that rose from the lower floor made me think of fetid swamps in the dead of summer. Not a scent I expected to encounter indoors.
“Stop.” Sorren’s voice made us freeze in out tracks. “There’s a lot of stagnant water down here,” he said. “No idea how deep or what’s in it. But there’s something out there, and I don’t think we want to meet it. Back up slowly. Now.”
We were halfway back up the stairs before things started jumping out of the water like catfish on a summer’s day. I remembered the tentacles of the pool monster at Tarleton. Our flashlights barely cut the gloom, but I got enough of a look to know I did not want a close-up. Black
, wriggling things leapt into the air, trying to reach the stairway and us. Slimy and bulbous, they reminded me of individual octopus tentacles or impossibly large slugs, except for their gaping mouths.
One of the things landed on the open metal stairway ahead of me and I blasted it with a shot from the walking stick. It writhed as it shriveled and bits of it flew off, landing in the water with a muted plop. In the next instant, the dark water roiled as the creature’s companions fought over who got to eat the leftovers. My stomach lurched.
More of the things heaved themselves up onto the steps. They looked like snakes without heads. Open, lamprey-like maws were all I could see, no eyes or ears, no skull. Eating machines, hungry for fresh meat.
“What are they?” I asked, sickened and horrified.
“Leeches,” Sorren replied. “Only they’ve been exposed to very powerful magic.”
“Leeches?” My voice rose a note. I’d had an unpleasant, unforgettable encounter with leeches when I was a kid, swimming at my grandma’s pond. These were super-sized. We were going to have to fight our way back up the steps.
Teag hit one of the thrashing monsters with his staff, knocking it back into the water. I had to be careful with the walking stick, because I didn’t want to hit anyone with fire, and I wasn’t sure whether or not any of the equipment around us might be flammable.
One of the monster leeches hurled itself into the air and lay wriggling at my feet, its open maw flexing as it sought flesh. I leveled my athame and a brilliant, white light flared as my power sent it flailing through the air. Leeches don’t fly well, thank all the gods and spirits.
The leeches must have smelled blood, because the water boiled with them. They crawled over one another in their frenzy to reach us, and more than once, we saw one of the uber-leeches reach escape velocity only to be grabbed and pulled back into the stagnant depths by a hungry fellow bloodsucker.
I would have loved to have just torched the lot of them, but I had no way of knowing what else lurked in the shadowed recesses. If there were left-over cans of gasoline or other flammables somewhere above water level, I could set up a fatal fireball that would wipe us out along with the leeches.
Vendetta (Deadly Curiosities Book 2) Page 23
