‘Son of a bitch,’ she breathed.
If she was right, the final murder and the raising ritual to free the demon Nathaniel was going to take place on the winter solstice, under a full lunar eclipse. That would mean they only had five days left.
Abandoning her laptop and picking up Hester’s Grimoire she started searching once again. There had to be something in there which would be of help, because the next time she faced her father she was going to be prepared.
Theo stopped mid brushstroke and cocked his head, listening intently, sure he’d heard someone at the door.
‘Olivia,’ he called out to her, but was met with silence.
The knock came again, loud and impatient.
Sighing in frustration, he dropped his paintbrush down on the table along with his palette, then rubbed his paint smeared hands on the front of his jeans and stepped out into the hallway.
The pounding came again.
He yanked open the door after checking the peephole and stepped back, allowing Jake to stride into the hallway, stamping the snow off his boots.
‘Took your time,’ he pulled his gloves off. ‘It’s freezing out there.’
‘What are you doing here? I thought you were with Erica tonight?’
‘I am, but Olivia asked me to stop by.’
‘She did?’ Theo frowned as he eyed the package under Jake’s arm. ‘What’s that?’
‘The reason she asked me to stop by presumably, where is she?’
‘The library last time I checked,’ he turned and headed in that direction with Jake trailing wet footprints behind him.
Olivia looked up from her book as Theo entered the room.
‘Good you’re finished,’ she began then realized Jake was standing behind him. ‘Oh, you’re here too, that means I won’t have to repeat myself.’
She glanced down to the snow melting at his feet.
‘What? You couldn’t take your boots off first?’ she frowned.
‘’It’s been a long day Olive,’ he sighed. ‘Here, these are what you asked for.’
She took the package from him, slipping the items from the plastic bag and unwrapping them to reveal two rather large hunting knives.
‘What do you want those for?’ Theo asked in confusion.
‘It’s a project,’ she set them down on the desk, ‘you guys might as well make yourselves comfortable, we’ve got things to discuss.’
Jake dropped down in the nearest chair. ‘What’s going on Olive?’
‘I know when the last murder is going to take place,’ she leaned back against the desk as Theo took a seat on the couch and Beau jumped into his lap.
‘What?’ Jake sat up straighter, ‘how?’
‘Hester’s Grimoire,’ she replied, ‘there’s a hidden message. It basically says the trap can only be opened on the winter solstice under a total lunar eclipse. According to the book there was one the night Hester trapped Nathaniel, there was also one back in ‘94 when the original murders took place, but obviously the ritual couldn’t be completed because my dad was arrested and missed the eclipse. I’ve checked and we’re due one this solstice.’
‘Damn it,’ Jake swore.
‘Uh, what’s a lunar eclipse?’ Theo asked.
‘It’s a…’ Olivia stopped and closed her mouth frowning. There was just no short and easy answer to that, especially not to a person who had no working knowledge of planets and the solar system.
‘You know what, that’s an explanation for later. Let’s just say it’s a special event that doesn’t happen very often, especially not coinciding with the solstice. I take it you know what the solstice is?’
Theo nodded.
‘That only gives us five days,’ Jake answered.
‘I know,’ she replied, ‘which means if we want to catch my dad we’re going to need a plan.’
‘How about you’re not going anywhere near the woods, that’s a plan,’ Jake said pointedly.
‘Jake, don’t start,’ she sighed, looking at Theo. ‘I suppose you’re going to side with him on this.’
‘I also do not think it is a good idea,’ Theo replied. ‘You said it yourself, your father requires your blood to complete the raising ritual. Taking you into the woods would be unwise.’
‘Look if he really wants my blood, trust me he’ll find a way to make it happen. But to be honest he doesn’t actually need me dead, just some of my blood. They could have quite easily taken some from me while I was unconscious in Walcott’s cabin, for all I know.’
‘But we don’t know that for certain,’ Jake argued. ‘I say we call in Captain Macallister and the others, and on the night of the solstice we’ll go into the woods, armed, and arrest him.’
‘That’s not going to work Jake.’
‘Why?’ he replied stubbornly.
‘Because the last time I checked, I’m the only witch in this room,’ she snapped irritably. ‘And my dad is a witch too, unless you’ve forgotten and he is extremely powerful. You won’t stand a chance against him. Only I can stop him.’
‘You can’t expect us to put you in harm’s way,’ Theo responded.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ she answered angrily. ‘In five days’ time, after sundown, my father is going to be in those woods killing some other innocent guy and raising a demon. If we have any chance of stopping him, it’s going to be me.’
Both of them stared at her silently. She could tell they knew she had a point, but they didn’t want to admit it.
‘Look,’ she sighed reaching deep inside to find her rapidly thinning patience, ‘we don’t have a choice, none of us do. I am the only one who has the power to stop my father. We can’t risk him turning a demon loose.’
‘But you are asking us to risk you,’ Theo spoke quietly.
‘There is a risk yes, but that’s what I have you two for,’ she looked back and forth between the two of them. ‘We started this together, the three of us and it is going to take the three of us to finish it. I know you want to protect me, but we don’t have that luxury. Welcome to the 21st century. I’m not a damsel in distress. God damn it, I’m Xena and I’m telling you I can do this.’
‘Who’s Xena?’ Theo whispered to Jake.
‘Oh man,’ he clapped him on the shoulder, ‘you are in for a treat. I’ll bring over the box set when all this is over.’
Olivia rolled her eyes.
‘So are we agreed?’ she asked carefully.
Jake looked to Theo, something passed silently between them and finally Theo nodded slowly.
‘Alright Xena,’ Jake sighed, ‘why don’t you tell us what you have in mind.’
Three days passed and Olivia spent every waking moment buried in either Hester’s Grimoire or her journals and when she wasn’t doing that she was studying the dusty old books on magic in her library.
Growling in frustration, she slammed another book closed and tossed it onto the growing pile of discarded volumes. She couldn’t find any reference to a raising spell, which would require five male victims with body parts removed. That was the one thing she didn’t understand. In order to open the devil’s trap, her father simply needed Hester’s original spell, which he would have had access to while he was married to her mother. After that it would be a case of re-creating the spell itself and reversing it. He shouldn’t have needed to kill anyone, it just didn’t make any sense.
She pulled the Grimoire back into her lap and opened it, flicking through a few random pages, trying to find some sort of spell to empower the hunting knives she’d asked Jake to bring her. She knew she could conjure Hell fire and that it would destroy a Hell Hound. The problem was, although she’d already killed two of them, they didn’t know how many were actually in the woods protecting Boothe’s Hollow. She would be focused on stopping her father and she didn’t have time to kill any more hounds, which meant she needed a way for Jake and Theo to defend themselves. It was obvious from experience regular bullets wouldn’t
get the job done. The hounds were creatures of the Hell dimensions, which meant finding some kind of supernatural weapon to kill them.
She rubbed her eyes tiredly and looked down at the open book on her lap.
‘I don’t suppose you want to help me out here do you,’ she murmured in frustration. ‘I really need a weapon that can kill Hell Hounds.’
Suddenly the words on the page began to swirl and churn until they rearranged themselves. Olivia’s mouth fell open, the handwriting was slightly different to Hester’s and somehow older, more archaic in its speech. She didn’t dwell on that slight discrepancy as she read on, a knot of excitement forming in her gut. Whether or not it was Hester finding a way across the veil to reach out and help her, one thing was clear, it was telling her exactly how to create a weapon that could kill a creature of the Hell dimensions. Propping the book up, she retrieved the two hunting knives and set to work.
It was strange, it wasn’t like any spell she was used to. In fact it was more like instructions than a spell and if she was reading it right it would only work for someone who could conjure Hell fire.
It was as if the book was tailor made just for her. Shaking the thought from her mind she set the candles out and they burst into flames. Casting the circle, she laid out the knives in front of her. She could feel the low murmur of her power filling the circle, overlaid by a stronger older power.
Suddenly, the room was flooded with the scent of the forest, the edges of the room blurred and she could see vines of ivy and night-blooming jasmine winding up the walls across the rows and rows of books. The hard floor and rug beneath her feet softened and became springy and when she looked down she was standing on a carpet of soft green grass, speckled with tiny white daisies.
She watched in fascination as a patch of grass in front of her split open and thick dark roots speared upwards. Catching the book and lifting it, they swirled and twisted until pausing about four feet from the ground, cradling the book like a bookstand.
She felt the warmth of a summer breeze behind her and she felt a presence. When she turned she beheld the form of the goddess Diana.
‘Mother,’ she whispered bowing her head reverently.
Diana smiled and Olivia felt her heart lift. This was the first time she had encountered the Goddess when her body had not been injured or pumped full of adrenalin. Now she was able to feel the full effect of being in her presence and it was like being allowed to come home after a very long painful journey.
‘Daughter,’ Diana’s voice was low and musical.
Olivia watched silently as Diana pulled a chain from the neck of her tunic and slipped it over her head. Placing it in Olivia’s hand she smiled. When she unfurled her fist she found a triple moon, the full moon at the center was a bright smooth moonstone hanging from a silver chain. Either side of the moonstone were two smaller silver crescent moons.
‘For protection,’ Diana answered her unspoken question.
‘Thank you,’ she replied softly, drawing the chain over her head.
Diana retrieved the two knives and placed them in Olivia’s hands.
‘You know what to do,’ she spoke quietly, her voice as soothing as a lullaby. ‘The book is only for guidance, trust yourself.’
Olivia took the weapons in her hands staring at them, feeling the solid weight of them in her palms.
She could feel the Goddess beside her watching with interest, but all her focus was on the blades. They reflected back the dancing flames of the fireplace, which strangely still burned merrily, nestled amongst the vines and leaves. She could feel the low hum of her power pulsing just beneath her skin. Before, when she’d reached for her magic it had been an effort, this time it slipped through her fluidly.
She called forth the Hell fire; it was intimate and seductive. She could feel the dark edges of it flickering at her consciousness, but she didn’t fear it, she embraced it and allowed it to flow through her body like silk.
She watched as it glowed through her skin, flowing down her arms like dark blue veins until it reached her hands. It flowed from her like ribbons of deep blue ink, winding around and around the two knives. The plain brown, common hilts turned to black and shone like highly polished jet. The stainless steel blades began to darken until they were a dark blue black and she could feel the strength in the blades, as if she could see each tiny molecule transforming.
‘Make it burn,’ Diana whispered in her ear.
At her words Olivia released the heat, letting it roar through her veins like a sapphire inferno. Her hands burst into flames, consuming the blades as she lost herself to the magic. She could hear the words echoing in her mind, an ancient language, and she barely recognized her own voice as the words rose unbidden to her lips.
She didn’t see the Goddess step back with a satisfied smile curving her lips. All she knew was the fire in her hands, a writhing primordial fire burning brighter and hotter, the blue black flames roaring higher until they reached flash point.
Olivia dropped to her knees, exhausted, and dragged in deep lungfuls of air as her body trembled. When she looked up the room was once again her cozy, somewhat dusty little library. The grass, the vines, the goddess were all gone and she was once again alone in front of the snapping fire, with Hester’s Grimoire now closed and lying innocently on the rug in front of her.
Looking down into her hands, she studied the knives. Now completely cool to the touch they were unique. The hilts were polished onyx, the blades were a strange metallic blue black inscribed with a language she didn’t understand. She couldn’t read the words, but she knew she’d spoken them from her own lips. She turned the blades in the dim light and the words glowed with a dim phosphorescent blue.
Closing the circle, she sent her thanks to the Goddess and wrapped the blades tightly in velvet cloths she’d found in amongst Aunt Evie’s things. Pulling the amulet over her head she sat down and studied it. It seemed the two smaller silver crescent moons either side of the moonstone were attached with tiny silver clasps, which meant they could be separated and mounted on their own chains. Good, she thought silently. She could give one each to Theo and Jake for protection and keep the moonstone for herself. She’d go online later and buy silver chains for them. Thank God for twenty four hour delivery.
Well, she mused to herself as she sunk down onto the couch, that solved two problems. Theo and Jake now not only had a weapon each to defend themselves, but also amulets to protect them against her father’s powers. That just left one problem. How the hell was she going to stop her father?
Despite everything, she didn’t want to kill him. It went against everything she believed in and even after everything he’d done, everything he’d taken from her, he was still her father. If she could render him powerless somehow, Jake could arrest him and take him back into custody. After that it would be up to the authorities to charge him with the murders. Maybe some sort of binding spell, she thought absently, as she picked up the Grimoire and once again began searching through the pages.
The next two days passed in a blur of activity. She managed to purchase the chains for the crescent moons and found a suitable binding spell. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t have Theo’s eidetic memory and had spent hours memorizing the spell word for word. She had one shot at stopping her dad and she knew she couldn’t afford to mispronounce even one single word.
As night fell the night before the solstice, the snow returned. Standing in her library gazing out of the window at the soft fat flakes falling fast, she breathed heavily. It felt like she had a great weight pressing down on her chest and no matter what she did, it wouldn’t budge.
The next day she was going to have to face her father and stop him from raising a demon. She was afraid, afraid of failing, afraid of not being good enough and most of all…afraid of seeing him again. Whenever she was face to face with him, the years simply fell away and she was eight years old again, looking up at the man she had loved most in the whole world…the man w
ho had also destroyed her whole world.
This was no good, she was just winding herself into a huge ball of nerves. Picking up her iPod from the desk she scrolled through her playlists and placed it in its docking station. Her shoulders relaxed and she blew out a breath, closing her eyes as the strains of music began to fill the still oppressive air, and the voice of Carrie Underwood washed over her.
She knew he was there before she felt Theo’s arms wrap around her.
‘You’re frowning,’ he spoke softly beside her ear as she leaned back into his embrace, each tightly wound muscle slowly uncoiling one by one.
‘I just..’ she shrugged helplessly, unable to find the words.
‘Don’t think about it,’ he turned her in his arms so she was gazing up into his face. ‘Tomorrow will come soon enough, we’re as prepared as we can be. Tonight it’s just you and me.’
A small smile tugged at her lips as she watched him tilt his head, listening to the music.
‘What music is this?’
‘Not the music you’re used to, that’s for sure,’ she smiled fully.
He stood still, listening to the words.
‘I like it,’ he murmured.
Olivia took his hands tugging him away from the window and into the center of the room.
‘Dance with me,’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know how,’ he frowned.
‘Here,’ she said softly, ‘I’ll show you.’
She took his hand and wrapped it around her waist as he pulled her in closer. Her hand snaked around his neck to toy with the slight curls at the nape of his neck, her other hand entwining with his.
She showed him how to move and after a few hesitant steps they began to sway together, circling the room as if they’d danced together a thousand times before.
The snow fell silently outside the window to blanket the house and for those precious few moments the world stopped and held its breath. They existed only in their own little pocket of time, wrapped up in each other, unaware of the golden colored threads spilling around them and causing the room to glow a soft warm gold.
The Guardians Complete Series 1 Box Set: Contains Mercy, The Ferryman, Crossroads, Witchfinder, Infernum Page 43
