Shadows in the Mist: A Paranormal Anthology

by Kristine Cayne

  I pulled out my cell phone and called Justin.

  A sleepy voice answered.

  “When can we buy that shotgun?”

  Because, if evil was coming after me, I had to be prepared.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Dawn grew up in the Seattle area and attended the University of Washington, graduating with an Honors Degree in English, emphasizing Creative Writing. She is also a cartoonist, Flash animator and caricaturist with a preference for comedy writing. Combining her love for cartoons and mystery novels, she published her first novel, Cattle Capers™: Search For the MooMoo Pearl. It is the first of a series and is available at online bookstores and in the King County Library system (Washington State). A short story trilogy, based upon the Cattle Capers™ characters, is available in ebook form titled, Murderous Critters, #1, also available at online bookstores. She’s proud to be a member of the Seattle-based Rainy Day Writers and Cartoonists Northwest, besides other writing organizations.

  You can view her work or contact her at: www.CattleCapers.com, Twitter: @CattleCapers or like her fan page on Facebook under Cattle Capers. She’d love to hear from you. (The photo below was taken in Ljubljana, Slovenia.)

  www.CattleCapers.com

  Also by Dawn Kravagna

  Search For The MooMoo Pearl, Cattle Capers #1

  Murderous Critters, Cattle Capers(tm) Comedy Mystery Trilogy #1

  The Eye of Lilith

  By

  Sherri Shaw

  Chapter 1

  Naples, Italy

  Marc Blakely focused his camera phone on the mosaic floor of the ancient Roman ruin. After two weeks of excavation, he had managed to uncover the image of a dark-haired woman, her face in profile. What he had first thought was a random pattern inlaid in the decorative band surrounding her portrait turned out to be an inscription. His back to the bright morning sun, he zoomed in on the Latin text once used exclusively by scholars in the time of the pharaohs.

  An enthusiastic shout from the supervising professor broke his concentration. One of his fellow students must have found a notable artifact because the whole class rushed to the far end of the dig. Marc had no interest in following. The words he had discovered were more valuable than gold. Thrilled by the rare find, he snapped numerous photos and with each click, the woman’s blue gaze seemed to follow his every move.

  He saved the images to his phone and slipped it into the side pocket of his field khakis. Kneeling on the dusty floor, he ran his fingers along the curves of the text and sounded out each syllable as he deciphered the writing.

  “Beware the Siren for her wicked song leads thy down the path of shadows and unto the Ides where death shall claim thy soul.”

  A jolt of energy surged into his fingertips, drawing with it a mist of dust from the portrait. The dirt shimmered golden in the sunlight before the fine grains fell back to the ground. His mind reeled. Was he hallucinating or did that really happen?

  “Oh no.” The shocked whisper muttered in a soft, southern accent conveyed him back to reality.

  He glanced up to find Cindi, a fellow graduate student, standing close, her jean clad thighs tense. The white knuckles that gripped the strap of her canvas backpack showed stark against her purple T-shirt. Horrified blue eyes, eerily reminiscent of the woman in the portrait, locked on the mosaic and her face paled as if she’d seen a ghost.

  Someone from far above the ruins cast a shadow onto the floor where they stood. He glanced up and pushing back the brim of his pocket cap, swept his gaze along the top of the cliff that skirted the dig. The security guard hired by the Italian University had disappeared from view and two men holding what appeared to be semi-automatic weapons had taken his place.

  Cindi was too late. Marc had gazed into the eye of Lilith.

  “I think we’re in trouble,” Marc said in a low, husky voice that captured her attention. For a split second, she thought he understood his fate until she followed his gaze.

  Her stomach dropped at the sight of the gunmen. Instinctively Cindi thumbed the bronze amulet ring on her middle finger. The enchanted metal hummed with warning, a telltale sign that evil lurked near. Her eyes focused on the bandits, she spun the metal around her finger and channeled the ring’s energy while murmuring an incantation in the language of the Originals.

  “I call upon the powers of Juno Divine to freeze a minute of time.” All sound disappeared as if time had halted and, for the people in the immediate area, it had. Like real life statues, they stood in various positions, blissfully unaware of what was happening to them. They wouldn’t stay immobile for long. Cindi put all of her concentration into repeating the words. The most powerful witches in her coven could easily freeze large blocks of time with the use of a single round of the spell, but the Magic of the Word was still new to her and she was forced to echo the phrase, gaining a minute per turn. “I call upon the powers of Juno Divine to freeze twelve minutes of—” A familiar masculine voice jolted Cindi out of her exercise.

  “—time.” Marc finished. He stood, caramel brown eyes fixed on her. “It’s you. You’re stopping time. When you started to chant in Gaelic, your ring began to glow and then the next instant everyone was stuck in some bizarre state of suspended animation.”

  “You understood what I said?” Panic and surprise hit her at the same instant. More disturbing still, why wasn’t he affected by the incantation like the others? She wanted to ask him but realized the foolishness of such a question. He wouldn’t know the answer any more than she would.

  He towered over her, all six-feet of his muscular body stiff with outrage. “Enough to get the gist. Who are you? And what did you do to them?”

  “I’m saving their lives.” His disturbing proximity, more than his daunting stare, spurred her into action. “Like I’m saving yours. Now please, I don’t have time to explain. You’ll have to trust me. Stay here where it’s safe.” She turned and ran toward the steep path leading to the cliffs, but only made it a few feet when she heard the unmistakable sound of following footsteps.

  “How did you freeze all those people? Are you some kind of magician?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she lied and pushed herself to move faster up the incline. Let him think her a magician; it was much easier than admitting she was a witch. “Now please go back. These men are dangerous.”

  “I gathered that from the guns. But what about the others, will they be okay?” he asked, determination riding his question.

  “They’ll never realize what happened. Now, please go back.” Not waiting for a reply, she dashed the last few feet to where the two gunmen stood at the edge of the cliff, their guns pointed down at the dig. The university guard lay slouched on the ground a few feet from them, his eyes closed. Dread skittered up her spine as she felt his wrist for a pulse. Thankfully, it beat strong.

  “Is he dead?” Marc asked from behind her.

  “Knocked out.” She unzipped the front fold of her backpack and grabbed a ball of twine. “I’ll need to subdue them.”

  He moved to the closest gunman and wrenched the weapon from his stiff fingers. “With yarn? What do you plan to do, knit handcuffs?”

  She narrowed her eyes at his sarcastic remark. “It’s all I’ve got. If you have any better ideas, please let me know.”

  “If you’re a magician, why can’t you pull a set of handcuffs out of the air? I mean, you froze our whole class.”

  Regrettably, not you.

  “I’m not that type of magician.” She approached the second gunman. Blain. Out of all of the suspects, she had hoped her favorite professor would not be the guilty one. She sighed with disappointment and touched the gun barrel in his hand. Blain’s eye twitched which proved the rumors about his weakened state false. He was more powerful than she or her coven had anticipated.

  She took the gun and rested the weapon against a rock before she unraveled the enchanted twine. Fingers shaking, she looped it several times around his wrists as she muttered in Gaelic, “I won�
�t let you have her.”

  Blain’s grey eyes shifted.

  Marc slipped behind Blain to search his pockets and extracted a small revolver. He turned it over in his palm. “Have who?”

  “You understood that too?” She noted how he handled the gun with marked familiarity. There was definitely something different about him. He hadn’t frozen nor had he freaked out about the strange goings-on. Perhaps he wasn’t innocent after all.

  He pointed the gun at her. “I’m a linguist. I understand languages. What I don’t understand is you.”

  She froze, her heart hammering in her chest. “What are you doing?”

  “Look, it’s not like I don’t want to trust you, but I don’t trust you. How do I know you don’t plan to kill those people and run off with whatever treasure you found?”

  She met his intense stare, chin raised in frustration. “I’ve already told you, I’m trying to help. If you want to protect them, help me. We’re running out of time.”

  “You’re right not to trust her.” Blain’s whispered comment, spoken in an Italian accent, made her flinch. “She knew of the treasure and she planned on stealing it from the beginning. Admit it, Lucinda.”

  Cindi raised her chin a notch higher. “I had no intention of stealing anything.” Destroying the eye was another matter entirely.

  Marc’s jaw tightened and his fingers flexed on the gun. His gaze still held hers and she read indecision in the depths of his eyes. She forced herself to stare back. Right rested on her side. “Why did he knock out the security guard if he was trying to stop me?”

  “You saw what she did. She’s dangerous. Once you help her, she’ll kill you the same as she’ll kill all those innocents.” Blain’s voice became stronger as the spell destabilized and his face and upper body showed slight movement.

  “Please let me bind him.” She raised the twine and shook the roll for emphasis. “The clock is ticking.”

  A breathless moment later, Marc lowered the gun and clicked on the safety. “Do you mean the spell’s about to wear off, or is it considered an incantation, or more like a mind meld?” He raised his brown T-shirt to tuck the gun into the waistband of his khakis. She caught a glimpse of cut abs and tried not to stare.

  “Does it matter?” She shrugged, unsure of how to answer without revealing too much.

  “I suppose not. Do you really think this will hold?” He touched the string in her hand and his fingers absently brushed hers. She glanced up to find him watching her, his mouth quirked in amusement. “Unless you’re Wonder Woman. Her ropes bound her captives and made the bad guys tell the truth.”

  She flashed an exasperated look and laughed despite the severity of the situation. “I’m not Wonder Woman.” Though she sure could use the superhero’s gift right now. Her own abilities were lame in comparison

  She made quick work of binding Blain’s cohort and then stepped back. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the elements; earth, sun, water, air. All possessed their own strength, yet she had developed a connection with air. She called upon its authority and a slight breeze picked up, raising grains of sand in a slow moving swirl. The end of the twine caught in the forming vortex and tightened the strings that bound the captives. Blain tried to snap his wrist free and much to her relief, the magical bonds held firm.

  “Lucinda.” Her name flowed from his lips, his smile calculating. “If you host her, you’ll become the most powerful woman in the world.”

  “And lose my soul in the process? Not damned likely.” A swirl of her finger elongated the strands as she purposely made each circle tighter. With her other hand, she tugged her cell from her pocket. “After the Spe—” Her tongue tripped over the near slip up. Her coven, the Speakers of the Word, frowned on outsiders discovering their existence, and the last thing she needed was more questions from Marc that she wasn’t at liberty to answer. “—police haul you off, I’ll destroy her.”

  Blain’s eyes turned brittle and his cold gaze flicked to Marc. “You saw what happened and you know the consequences. If you host her soul, you can save his life. Otherwise, he dies.”

  Marc looked from one to the other. “I die? Why the hell do I die?”

  “You aren’t going to die,” she said with more conviction than she felt.

  Blain eyes turned eerie steel, a metal as cold and hard as his soul. “You’re willing to let an innocent die, Witch? I thought your good nature forbade you to kill indiscriminately.”

  She retrieved a white handkerchief from her back pocket and shoved it into his mouth. “It is and it’s a shame because I wish I could hurt you really, really bad. Unfortunately, Marc isn’t the only innocent suffering here.”

  Putting the phone to her ear, she turned to Marc. “I’m calling the police. Can you see to the guard? Because in about two seconds, everything will return to normal.” No sooner had she issued the warning then the fallen man moaned.

  Still baffled by the events of the past half-hour, Marc followed Cindi back down the path to the dig. Although he hadn’t observed it, she must have performed some kind of mind trick on the police because they offered no questions, only took Blain and his cohort into custody.

  The professor called her a witch.

  Marc was familiar with the Wiccan religion, but he’d always thought their brand of magic a bunch of hocus-pocus. A big mistake. Magician, witch, whatever she might be, the implications of what had transpired were overwhelming.

  A thousand questions bounced around in his head. He settled on voicing the most important one. “What did Blain mean about me dying? He was talking about some stupid superstition, right?”

  “Of course, it’s a superstition. Nothing to worry about. You’re not going to die,” she said in an overly cheerful voice, then murmured under her breath, “Not if I can help it.”

  “I heard that.” Annoyed by her insistence on keeping secrets, he grabbed her elbow. “Look, I chose to trust you. Since you seem to know what’s happening, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop trying to blow me off and explain.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment, indecision flickering across her features. “It’s complicated.”

  He crossed his arms. “Well, try. If my life’s in danger, I deserve the truth.”

  “Are you familiar with the meaning of the word, theurgy?”

  “Doesn’t it have to do with Platonism and the study of abstract objects?”

  She brushed a strand of burnished hair aside and sighed. “Originally conceptualized by the early Egyptians, it’s a type of divine intervention into human affairs.”

  “Divine intervention? Like the Greco-Roman gods and demi-gods? Or Christian, like water being turned into wine.”

  “Ironically, both. For the sake of time, let’s walk while I explain. I’m not sure how much longer they’ll be interested in what I uncovered.”

  His eyes were drawn inexplicably to the other students still gathered around her earlier find, seemingly oblivious to what had transpired. “What exactly did you uncover?”

  She shrugged and her fingers tightened on the strap of her backpack. Was it with anger? Fear? Anticipation for the kill? The last thought brought him up short. Was he wrong to trust her? If she meant to hurt him, she’d had plenty of opportunities. Obviously, she possessed some kickass abilities though they hadn’t worked on him. Why?

  “I planted an old ceramic pot with some symbols,” she said with a strained laugh.

  He absently fingered the handgun. “Why didn’t I freeze?”

  “I don’t know. It shocked me too.” She offered a helpless shrug. “It’s unfortunate but we don’t have the luxury of dwelling on the subject right now. You need to understand the repercussions of what happened here.” Jogging the last couple of feet to the mosaic, she halted in the middle of the floor. She dropped to her knees beside the woman’s image and used a pocketknife to dig out the dark pupil.

  Marc experienced an uncharacteristic need to protect the woman in the portrait. Without realizing his actions, he seized
Cindi’s wrist to end further desecration. “Stop, that’s priceless.”

  She shrugged off his hand. Eyes narrowed, she rose to her feet. “No, it’s cursed. Since you seem to be familiar with Plato, we’ll discuss this as a Platonism. To the naked eye, this rock is a concrete object until infused with magic. Then it becomes abstract, in this case cursed by a goddess known for her ability to seduce with a single glance. Look more closely at the pattern. What do you see?”

  “It’s circular, Roman in style. Nothing out the ordinary, except for the picture of the woman.”

  “Exactly. Her name was Lilith. You might have heard of her; she was born in the image of God. When she was told she could never leave the Garden of Eden, she fled and took refuge with the Roman gods who were well known for their debauchery.”

  “And was seduced by the archangel Samuel…” he trailed off, distracted by Cindi’s actions. She pulled the neckline of her T-shirt back and her fingers, still holding the eye, slipped beneath the cotton. He watched her tuck the stone into her bra and admired the curve of her breast outlined by the tightened shirt. “Do you need some help?”

  She ignored his offer but a pale blush colored her cheeks. With one last adjustment, she completed the task. “Samuel sought to annoy Jehovah, and in the process, gather more souls. Lilith thought to avenge herself on Adam and his ilk. In exchange for a minor goddess status and the villa we’re digging up, she played along with his scheme. Born in the image of God, she epitomized man’s ideal woman. Legend claims that if a man gazed upon her beauty, he’d be caught under her spell. She toyed with her victim prior to driving him insane. If you look more closely at the pattern in the mosaic, you’ll see it’s made up of the faces of tortured souls entrapped in the stone.”