by Sam Cheever
I nodded again. “Okay, I’ll go looking for him then. And I guarantee I won’t find him there.”
Myra’s blue eyes held a sad note as she began to shimmer away. “I hope you’re right, Astra.”
It wasn’t until after she was gone that I realized she hadn’t given me the information I’d demanded. Damn stinkin’ angel!
~SC~
I called Emo on the televisual. “Have you located the hostages yet?”
He shook his head in the negative. “I haven’t spoken to everyone yet but nobody I’ve talked to knows anything. All anyone will tell me is that the witches are involved somehow. And that there’s big magic being worked.”
I bit my lip and disconnected. Bent frunkin’ gargoyle toes! All air traffic pathways seemed to point back to the coven and Raoul.
My televisual beeped and, since I had it on automatic answer mode, my father’s face popped up on the screen.
I smiled and felt myself calming at the sight of his beatific face just as I’d done since I was a very small child. “Blessed be, father.”
His smile was fond but his angelic blue eyes didn’t match. “Blessed be, Astra. You look well, if a bit tired.” He tilted his red-blond head in silent question.
“You’re the second person today to tell me that. I must look like hell.”
He frowned at me. He didn’t like it when I swore. Old habits die very hard apparently. But his natural good humor took over and he shook his head as if I were a particularly naughty but entertaining child. “Not quite that bad, daughter but you do look as if you carry too much of the world’s cares on your delicate shoulders.”
I snorted in a very unladylike way. Only a father could view a demon vaporizing, ball busting daughter as delicate. “It’s not like I have much of a choice. Your boss keeps dragging me into things.”
“He knows you’ll get done what needs to be done. But I’m afraid He doesn’t take into account your mortality.”
I could see him settling into the sad posture that had colored much of his life since the falling. Everything in his life weighed on him. The pleasures, the pain, the obstacles, the successes. Somehow it all represented what he’d given up, what was lost to him. And, though I knew he was proud of my sister and me, we were a painful reminder that he would never again be what he’d once been.
I shrugged, determined to change the subject. “So what’s up with you? Have you spoken to mother lately?”
His shoulders almost visibly drooped. Oops. Wrong change of subject.
“Actually, that’s why I’m calling you, Astra. Myra came to me...”
“Damnable angel!”
His angelic face creased in a frown. “Please don’t use that language, Astra. Especially about your guardian.”
I mentally bit my tongue. “Sorry.”
His piercing blue gaze stayed fixed on me just long enough to make sure I was truly repentant and then he continued. “Myra is concerned for your well-being. She thinks this current situation may be a little too difficult for you. She’s asked me to help her dissuade you from continuing on.”
I suddenly realized I had an advantage with my father that I didn’t hold with others. He wouldn’t lie to me. Ever. He couldn’t possibly fall that far. I smiled suddenly and I don’t think it was a nice smile, because my father blinked rapidly, watching me like a particularly scary bug on his arm.
“Father, I want to ask you something and I know you won’t lie to me, unlike that da...” I cleared my throat and gave him a weak smile. “Sorry again. Unlike Myra.”
“Myra cannot lie to you, daughter.”
I flung a hand toward the televisual in a dismissive way. “Of course she can’t lie directly, father but you and I both know she’s the queen of lying without lying.”
He looked down rather than having to meet my eyes. A faint flush crawled up his neck to his cheeks. He truly loved Myra but he couldn’t possibly be blind to her faults. Though he gave it his best shot at all times. When he looked back up again he seemed to have his emotions back under control. “What would you ask of me, daughter?”
I didn’t waste any time. “What secret does everyone know that they’re not telling me?”
He frowned slightly as if perplexed. “Secret?”
“Yes. Since I was dragged into this situation I’ve been awash in innuendo, implication and downright secretive behavior. It’s like there’s a big fat secret at the core of this mess and nobody wants to tell me what it is. I want you to tell me what it is, father.”
“Your mother.”
“Huh?”
“I spoke to your mother today. I’m worried about what she might be up to. And I’m afraid she’s going to cause you pain somehow.”
I narrowed my gaze. “Have you had a vision?”
He sighed. “I spoke to Deirdre.”
It appeared my aunt had been very busy for a dead woman. “Go on.”
She says your mother’s sphere is opening and growing and it approaches yours. Deirdre fears your mother will pull you into something you cannot escape and she will pull you from the side of good.”
I shrugged, trying to act unconcerned when I was actually very concerned. “She can’t pull me where I don’t wish to go, Father. I’ve grown a lot in strength since last she saw me.”
He fixed me with a clear blue gaze. “Yes, you are much stronger, Astra but your powers come from her and she knows that. She has had centuries to perfect her strength—to grow it—you have only recently been enhancing your abilities.” He looked down and I could visualize his long, pale hands in his lap, being wrung for all they were worth. It was something he’d always done when he was upset. “I blame myself for that. I shouldn’t have stopped Deirdre teaching you when you were a child.”
It was a thought I’d had countless times over the last couple of decades but I was suddenly reluctant to let him take the burden for it. “Nonsense. You did what you felt you needed to do to protect me. Maybe I wasn’t quite ready for the power then. I am now and I can stand against mother if need be. I don’t want you and Myra to worry about me.”
I wished I felt as strong as I sounded. But, for whatever reason, it was important to me to soothe my father on that particular subject. He had long been a pawn in my mother’s intricate and selfish schemes. I would not let that pattern continue if I could stop it.
I disconnected after promising him that I would be very careful and instructed the televisual to contact my sister.
Darma’s pretty face swam into view almost immediately, as if she’d been waiting for the televisual’s summons. “Hello, Astra.”
Darma was older than me by five years. She had served as both sister and mother to me throughout my childhood. Since our real mother had led a busy and secretive life, which apparently hadn’t been entirely compatible with her role as a mother, Darma’s inclination toward mothering had worked out fine for everybody but me. She’d always felt she was within her rights to tell me how to live my life. And she’d always been dead set against the way I make my living.
Darma’s the sturdy, serious, dependable daughter. I’m the hot headed, passionate and borderline psychotic spawn. I’m the dark side of a pairing between a devil and an angel. Darma is the cranky and all too serious but light side. She has no powers and, with her size nine feet resolutely planted on terra firma, she appears to have a severe allergy to all things unearthly and magical. I’m pretty sure she was adopted, but my parents won’t admit it.
However, at the moment, she bore a startling resemblance to my father as she tilted her red-blonde head and frowned. “What have you gotten yourself into this time, Astra?”
I took a mental deep breath and smiled. “It’s nice to see you too, Darma.”
My response only deepened the frown. But she said nothing more, apparently waiting for me to open my mouth and seal my own fate. Her judgment awaited.
“I just wanted to say hello and see how you were, sister. We haven’t spoken in a while.”
The frown tu
rned into a scowl. “Mmm-hmm.”
“And... I wanted to find out if you’d spoken to mother lately.”
The scowl deepened. “You aren’t cavorting with her and her playmates are you, Astra. That would be serious bad news.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t spoken to mother for three years. But everybody is suddenly telling me to stay away from her.”
Darma’s face relaxed just a titch. “Good advice. I’d take it if I were you.”
But you aren’t me are you Darma? I couldn’t help the wayward thought.
The scowl returned. “Who’s been warning you against mother?”
I paused, reluctant to tell her about my visitation from Aunt Deirdre. I knew she wouldn’t take it well. “Father for one and my angel...”
I thought that might be enough to satisfy her but, with her usual astuteness, Darma read the exclusion of information somewhere on my face.
“And?”
Damn! I was gonna have to work on my blank face.
I sighed, not bothering to try to hide my reluctance from her. There was obviously no point. If I didn’t know for a fact that she had no powers I would think she could read my mind. “Aunt Deirdre visited me in a dream.”
Darma jumped as if goosed and I felt compelled to go on in a fruitless effort to staunch the torrent of verbal abuse I was sure was coming my way. “She visited father too.”
That did give her pause. She glared at me through hostile blue eyes for a long beat and then, amazingly, she sighed and seemed to deflate a bit. “What did she say?”
“I...she...we...” I stammered. I was so shocked by her lack of reaction that I found my brain and tongue wouldn’t function together.
Aside from being earthbound and practical to a fault, my older sister was also not the most patient of creatures. “Spit it out, Astra. My holy savior! What is wrong with you today?”
Her familiar crankiness ripped me out of my dazed state. “She’s worried that mother will attempt to pull me into whatever dastardly deeds she’s currently involved in.”
Darma nodded as if she were not surprised. I suddenly wondered if she was. “Darma have you spoken to mother lately?”
Her response was too careful. Too composed.
“No I haven’t, Astra. The last time I saw her was totally by chance. I ran into her about a month ago, in a restaurant downtown at midday. She was with some filthy Satanist. We barely spoke.”
I tilted my head. “A Satanist? Are you sure? Did he have the tattoos?”
Darma seemed to realize she’d told me more than she wanted to and tried to shrug it off. But the shrug was a bit too jerky to be nonchalant. “Not that I could see.”
Alarm crawled up my spine like a slimy supra demon. “Then how did you know he was a Satanist?”
She looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I have to go, Astra.” And she was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dastardly Deeds
The demon bent to do his worst, his thoughts on making hay,
With zest our demon slayer zapped, his willingness to play.
The Viper dropped silently into hover in a field at the edge of dense, night painted woods. I experienced a sense of déjà vu as my dream from the previous night lurked in my mind. Glancing up at the sky as I emerged from the Viper, I saw the same strange ribbons of clouds skittering rapidly over the same fat moon. I shivered, causing Emo, who had come up beside me and was tucking a long, slim knife into a band he wore around his arm, to look at me and cock his head. “You okay, boss?”
I gave him a brisk nod. “Let’s get this over with.”
Emo watched me as I left the relative brightness of the open field and moved reluctantly into the trees. I knew as soon as I entered the woods that something was not right there. Evil tainted the air like a bad smell, coating everything under the trees and bringing the hairs up on my arms like static electricity.
I skimmed Emo a look. The light of the obese moon came through the trees in wimpy strings that painted his gorgeous countenance in soft stripes. It was hard to get a bead on his emotions through the striping affect but I noted the red spark in the center of each eye that told me he was more than wary.
As if to punctuate my thought, Emo shuffled my mental drawers and said, There’s something bad building here, Astra. I don’t like it.
I feel it too. Stay close. We might need to fight our way out of here.
Almost simultaneously we reached for our knives and started off again, following the trail of evil to the spot that I could picture in my mind. The spot where my Aunt Deirdre and I had had our little moonlight chat. I was quickly coming to the conclusion that my dream had been more than a visitation, it had also apparently been foresight.
As I retraced my steps from my dream, the air around us became gradually more charged until my hair lifted away from my head and a random touch brought sparks that stung and spat in the cool night air.
Malevolent breezes moved through the trees and swayed against us, not like normal wind, which brushes past and keeps going, but like a disembodied presence that winds softly around you before pulsing away.
There was something more in the wind too. Something that made my stomach clutch and caused sweat to bead against my upper lip.
I took deep breaths against the need to escape the caressing, invasive breezes and risked a glance at my partner. One look at his face told me all I needed to know. The air was filled with more than evil.
It had sexual heat too.
It was at that moment that I smelled it, the primordial musk that was the human sexual experience. And I knew. Black rites were being performed, with sex as power. I was both disgusted and relieved. At least it wasn’t the blackest of magic rites, which used human sacrifice.
But sexual black rites could be almost as bad. Especially if the victim were unwilling, or worse, a virgin. Some cultists used only virgin sacrifices for the rites. And I was praying my friend Raoul wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive him for that.
The woods began to thin and I knew we were getting close. I stopped and Emo ran into the back of me, nearly panting in my ear.
I jumped as the tree next to me moved. But then realized it was just swaying in the building wind.
It wasn’t a natural wind.
For the last several minutes my mind had been registering a booming sound on an almost subconscious level. I’d been processing it as if it were thunder and kept looking up to the sky. But as we stood near the edge of the clearing where I was now certain the black rites were being performed, I suddenly realized that what I’d been hearing was chanting. The sound bounced off the dense vegetation in a way that amplified it out of proportion, creating a general feeling of being larger than life and making it darker even than I knew it to be.
I took a deep breath and reached out with my aura. The magic in the air tangled with my senses for a moment and I had to struggle to push past it. But once clear of the cloaking magic in the clearing, I got a general sense of humans, dozens of them, in various states of magic intoxication.
Opening my eyes, I looked at Emo. Sometime in the last few seconds he’d moved closer to me and was standing a mere breath away. His eyes were dark pools of black velvet, touched in the center by a tiny red flame that flickered softly in the building magic. I sensed his need to touch and be touched and, just for a moment, I felt myself swaying toward him, my eyes closing and my lips tingling in anticipation.
Just before our lips met I felt his hand at my waist and heard him sigh. My body pulsed suddenly with need and I very nearly gave in to it. But a thought passed through my mind that extinguished the rampant sexual feelings like ice water poured on a candle.
He was my friend and partner and we were only reacting to the sexual heat that was coming off the rites in that clearing. If we touched each other at that moment it would ruin our friendship for all time. I jerked away from him before his lips could cover mine.
Emo opened his mouth as if to object but I shook my h
ead and turned away. Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the clearing. What I saw there wiped any feelings of regret right out of my mind.
The clearing was nearly filled with bodies. The participants wore rough, hooded robes in dark colors, their faces and most of their bodies obscured. They were crowded together around something in the center of the clearing and their bodies swayed as if enchanted. The deep rumble of their chanting pulsed and vibrated the air around us.
I felt Emo join me but didn’t turn to look at him. I didn’t want to know what was in his eyes at that moment.
The scene before me was blurred by something, as if I were looking through steamed or filmed glass. I blinked to clear my vision but when I opened them again the scene was still blurry.
I wondered if something was happening to my eyesight but then my mind registered movement in the air above the swaying witches and, with a jolt of understanding, I realized what I was seeing.
Spirits, possibly hundreds of them, hung above the proceedings in that clearing. Adding their energy to the rites and throbbing with intoxication from the energy coming off the sexual rite.
If I squinted I could just make out ghostly faces in the cloudy air above the crowd and human forms that seemed to be unclothed.
I stood rooted to the spot, afraid to move because, with my powers, I tended to draw spiritual attention even when I didn’t want it.
Emo touched my arm and I turned my head to look at him. He nodded once and I looked in the direction he’d indicated.
A single form in a long, black robe stood just outside the circle, head thrown back and arms raised high. He stood on a raised platform of rock, towering above the gathered group of black worshipers.
I couldn’t see his face but I knew he was chanting something that was bringing the spirits forward to enhance the energy level. I couldn’t help wondering what he was generating all of the power for. As I had the thought it was as if the figure on the rock platform heard me. The shadowed face turned in my direction and his arms dropped a fraction, as if he’d momentarily lost focus. I could have sworn I saw him jerk in surprise.
But he quickly recovered and raised his arms even higher, increasing the volume of his chanting until I could hear him above all the rest. My heart thundered in my chest. I recognized that voice.
