Dire (Reaper's Redemption Book 2)

by Thea Atkinson

  "I can't get this," he said.

  She pursed her lips. "This isn't simple magic. This has to be powerful stuff."

  He crumpled the paper into his fist and jammed it into his jeans pocket. I noticed he avoided looking Sarah in the eye, and when he did, revulsion was etched over his face. I wondered what was on that paper that had him so repulsed.

  His jaw clenched. He shook his head. "It'll make me sick to my stomach."

  "Do you want to be that thing's boo for the rest of your days?"

  His mouth twitched. "And then what?" he said, wary.

  "Then we need bait."

  "Me," he guessed.

  She shrugged. "You can think of a better lure?" She appraised him head to foot with a look of appreciation. I could barely watch her, knowing I'd laugh just from nerves alone and he would be insulted. Eventually, he grunted his consent.

  "Are you in, Ayla?" she asked me and I shrugged.

  "You're the expert," I said. "But when we do this thing we have to do it right."

  We discussed the specifics over cocoa and graham crackers while Callum was gone, pausing every now and then to consult the parchment to make sure we had interpreted everything correctly.

  The concept was an easy one as far as I was concerned, but both Gramp and Sarah agonized over every detail. Sarah planned to create a Shen ring as a protective circle and put all the earthen pots and contents back in place, then set each pot within the circle.

  "The words are the hard part," she said. "I don't have a fluid Egyptian enunciation, so I think it'll have to be hieroglyphs only, traced from the Book of the Dead, invoking her and pleading for her protection for the little one. Hopefully, we can use the binding spell to keep her tied to the vessels."

  "So we leave it all in the containers, and just wait for her to step into the circle?" I couldn't believe it could be that simple.

  She eyed me. "That's where you come in."

  "What do you mean me?" I had thought Callum would be the bait. I was up for that. The thought of facing the thing again made the hair stand on the back of my neck. It wasn't as though I was a coward, really, it was just that facing down a vulture goddess who had the hots for the guy I was crushing on didn't exactly jump to the top of my bucket list.

  "The baby is safe in the protective circle we have here," she said. "But it won't be safe there forever. My guess is that as soon as we try to extract it from that protection, Azrael will be back."

  I didn't like where this was going.

  "So you need me to ferry the thing over to the crypt?" I guessed.

  She nodded. "He seems to be averse to hurting you. I'm not so sure he'd be quite so sympathetic to the rest of us, judging by his reaction in the basement."

  It was true. Azrael had taken great pains to set me up in the first place, I doubted he would do anything to jeopardize it. However, he would think nothing of putting the rest of them in harm's way.

  I let go a shuddering sigh. "Alright," I said. "Just so long as it doesn't mean more than that."

  She chewed her lip and looked away from me. For a second, I thought she wanted to say more but she plucked a cookie from the platter and bit into it. "I have a good feeling about this," she said. "It couldn't be more perfect. Each one of those jars has one of your markings on it. It has to work."

  "Except for that last one," I said. "That last one has nothing to do with me."

  She cocked her head. "But it has the goddess on it." She chewed reflectively. "You've got to admit that's a good sign."

  "Good sign or not, I guess we're doing this."

  "Why don't you want him to have the baby anyway?" she asked.

  I looked at her in silence for a long moment, trying to decide whether or not I wanted to admit the truth. It was bad enough they saw how painful each mark was, if they also knew what I suspected would happen to that baby when Azrael collected it, they would also make the leap to what would happen to me if I didn't complete my duty. I felt bad for that little thing. It was innocent. A small thing born into a world it'd only managed to see for a few short moments if it had gotten a chance to see at all.

  I hated the thought that Azrael would collect that thing up into the top of his cane and let it sift about there in a pile of glittering dust for all eternity. I felt a kinship with it. However, I couldn't forget that if I didn't reap the little thing, I'd be putting myself at risk of ending up in the top of the same cane.

  I managed to avoid the question throughout all of the preparations at the house, and as I collected up the tiny baby and placed it beneath my jacket with the amulet wrapped around its neck and the spell of protection tucked into its towel, I worried we weren't doing enough to protect it. All I had to count on was an old druid, a young and inexperienced necromancer, and bit of Nephilim bait who was already weak from her work.

  I knew Callum planned to meet us at the crypt with whatever it was he'd collected for Sarah, and as I grabbed the keys to Old Yeller, I was already running over the dozen things that could go wrong.

  CHAPTER 17

  I said nothing as we headed to the driveway. Sarah had her red cooler in hand and planted it on the rack of my scooter where it hung like a brooding thing daring me to look inside. She sent a quizzical look my way when she caught me staring at it.

  "Just a few niceties," she said. "All to lure the energy of the goddess away from the house and to the church with us." She put her hand on the lid as though she thought I was going to peek inside. "Nothing you'd be interested in." She tapped the top with drumming fingers.

  I chewed my lip and gunned Old Yeller to life. I had my doubts we could even trick Nehkbet into materializing at all, let alone in the dank underground of the cathedral's tombs. But what did I know? I'd been human up till three weeks ago.

  When we arrived at the crypt, we lit the candles in the tunnel's sconces for every few feet we travelled The flickering of flame as we moved through the shaft painted odd shadows on the walls that played over the stone and eventually the rubble of bones we'd left on the earthen floor last time we'd been there.

  Sarah immediately headed to the area where her bed had been and pulled the rib bone she'd stolen from the cooler. She drew a large circle onto the floor that she referred to as a Shen ring right where the altar should be above us. She held onto that bone again in her left hand and gripped the jasper amulet in the other as she studied her work.

  "This should be the place with the most power," she said as she drew the bone against the floor in a horizontal line underneath the circle. "Having the ring here will add another layer."

  "We'll put the containers there." She scuffed around with her foot, clearing debris from the area.

  "Just let them sit there?" I said, watching as a pebble rolled free of the circle. "What's to stop anyone in the future from knocking them over or rolling them out of the ring?"

  She lifted a single blonde brow at me, indicating she didn't think I had much understanding of the magical world. "I'm doing my best, Ayla. Do you think you can dig through solid stone?" She pointed at the floor with the bone. It looked pretty ragged at the end. I thought I could make out a crack in the tip.

  I shook my head.

  She grunted. "Didn't think so. It's the best I can do for now. I'll ward the army later to keep the crypt safe from invasion."

  Callum arrived when she was busy arranging everything just so. She wanted to make sure that the spell and the canopic jars were laid with just the right care within the circle. I noted she had left the child still wrapped in its cloth next to where her bedding used to be. I got a quick memory flash of those nights. Saw her bedroll and all of its throw pillows laying across the sleeping bag. The red cooler that she had used as a nightstand and as a sandwich cooler. I knew there had been other things in there as well, things I didn't want to think about. Things that she used to raise her skeleton army outside to act as her protectors should anyone break in.

  She didn't seem worried about any of that stuff now. She either felt very safe, or
she was too preoccupied to worry about whether she was putting herself at risk. Progress, I smiled to myself.

  When Callum burst through the door, he had two grocery bags hanging from one hand and the scarab amulet in the other. He held it out like a communal wafer. He still looked worn out. I noticed he hadn't shaved yet and the bristles on his chin stood out against his skin. Whatever the goddess had taken from him, it wasn't something a little sleep could fix.

  Sarah plucked the scarab from his palm and looked it over. "You got the other thing?" she said.

  He nodded but stared at me when he answered. "Beneath my jacket."

  She pocketed the amulet and then took the bags from him. One by one, she placed them into the cooler and then she returned to his side to extract something from beneath his armpit.

  I thought I heard something chirp as she rustled around inside. He stood there, immobile, letting her dig beneath his coat while his gaze ran up and down me head to heal. I had more than one reason to squirm beneath that gaze.

  "Don't tell me that's a baby bird," I said to Sarah.

  "Then don't ask," she said and then turned her back on me. The bird, too, she put into the cooler. I could hear it scraping around and flapping against the inside. I didn't want to think about what she was going to do with it.

  I knew she planned to duplicate the spell from the book of the dead that called out to the goddess by drawing it on the floor outside of the ring. With the amulet held firm in Callum's grasp, he would be even more of a lure for her simply because she knew his energy signature. Sarah said she would be drawn to it, to finish what she'd started. It would be far easier for her to join with Callum because she had already done so. Callum was to stand inside the ring along with the baby and the containers. If all went well, the goddess would simply materialize there, and with the protective wardings around the ring, the only one able to step outside of the boundary would be the human.

  At least that was the theory. I didn't trust it like Sarah did. Just watching, the way he made his way around the room in a dumbfounded manner, I couldn't imagine the spell working.

  I wasn't confident he could maintain his role at all, and I had to know he was alright. I pulled in a bracing breath and forced myself to cross the room to find him. He seemed brighter somehow when I touched his arm.

  He said my name like he would say a prayer and the hushing sound of it made me drop my arm to my side. I shoved my hand in my pocket, nervous. He edged closer, finding some way to press his thigh against mine and place his palm on the small of my back. I inched away until I was against the wall.

  He put his arm on the stone wall behind me, looming over me as though he wanted me to be in a position where I had to look up at him. He pressed so close, I felt my back dig against the wall.

  "I'll be glad when this is over," he said.

  "Me too," I said and tried to push myself sideways to get out from underneath him. I didn't like the way he looked. He had a strange, haunting quality to his eyes. He didn't seem himself. He hadn't seemed like himself ever since the attack. It was just one more reminder of the urgency of neutralizing the goddess. It wasn't just to keep Azrael from getting the baby. There were other things at stake. Things--people--that meant far more to me.

  He ran a finger down the back of my arm until his palm cupped my elbow. I felt the familiar tingle run across my skin, but it wasn't enjoyable the way it usually was. I was too distracted to let myself think about anything else. If I was honest with myself, he should have been as well. Yet, he looked almost disinterested in what was going on around him, as though he had other interests and the spell making that Sarah was doing over in the corner just happened to be on the periphery of it all.

  When I tried to extricate myself from him, he put his other arm above my head against the wall. We ended up dancing like that for several seconds before I finally gave him a shove. I was nervous enough without his creepy, compulsive actions making it worse.

  "Back off," I said.

  It was so out of character for him and the faint buzz that always rode my skin when he touched me, was so conspicuously absent, I couldn't stay there a moment longer. The goddess, I told myself. She had taken too much energy from him and left him hollow, with nothing but base emotions seething below a thin shell of propriety. I knew she would want more.

  I didn't care what Sarah thought, this wasn't an ordinary entity we were messing around with. Like Azrael said, it was a goddess. We had no idea how much energy would be enough.

  Azrael had warned me it would take more than Nephilim blood to satisfy her. She would want the rest of it. We were counting on her need to want to protect the offspring of a beleaguered mother when we had no idea who that mother was or even whether that nature would override Nehkbet's need for power. It was too much to bank on--we were risking everything on that bet.

  Callum trailed after me everywhere I moved within the crypt. Eventually, I had to leave the room and light the candles in the hallway just to get away from him. The skeleton army was where we had left it the last time we had fled the place, piled outside the crypt door. Some of them lay as though they had simply sat down right where they were. I silently made my way over to the place where I knew one full skeleton remained. In a crook in the wall, the skull still leered out at me, and if I played my cell phone flashlight over it, I could see all of the bones pressed into its cranny behind the skull. I knew every bone was there except one. The one Sarah carted around with her. The one she had drawn out the Shen ring with both in my basement and in the crypt just beyond me.

  It was a strange plan, if I had to admit it to myself. We left Gramp home because Sarah didn't want to take the chance that natural, earth-based magic would contradict and war against the types of things she had to do in order to call out to her magic. Nothing about this was natural, she had said, and she wanted to leave him untainted. He had argued at first, but I had simply told him we needed him where he was.

  Beyond the door of the tunnel, I could hear chirps and Sarah chanting. I pushed open the door to see markings on the floor of the crypt. Hieroglyphs, I guessed, drawn out in red. I had to tell myself it wasn't blood. Paint. Dirt. Salt. Anything but blood. I noticed the cooler lid was open and the tops of plastic bags hung over the edge. So. It had begun.

  I was standing inside the crypt room, with the door wide open and showing the lights through the tunnels all the way past the skeleton army. Callum was behind me, standing in the middle of the circle with the amulet poised on his outstretched palm. At first, I attributed the distinct ringing in my ears to be left over from the magic Sarah was pulling from the other world, told myself it was the constant hum I always felt around Callum.

  But I knew better. When it grew louder, more shrill, I knew what it was. It was that part of me that had been marked, responding to Sarah's magic. It was the shift in the material plane reaching out to that other world where the goddess lurked, waiting to break through.

  It was the goddess coming.

  I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't a rumble in the earth. The vibration ran to the bottom of my boots and up into my shins. I expected her to materialize right there, but she didn't. I stole a glance at Sarah, but her eyes were heavenward, her arms outstretched. One single ball of light rested over her solar plexus and I realized her hands were dripping blood. The chirping noise had stopped.

  Beyond the door to the crypt, in the heart of the tunnel, I could just make out a crack in the ceiling where a reddish light was shining through. Some sort of rend in the material of worlds, I guessed. At first Nehkbet pushed a talon through, and then a foot. Along with the foot that poked through the crevice, came a reptilian sort of leg. I saw feathers next.

  "She's coming," I said in a hoarse whisper.

  She was much larger than I remembered, yet she slipped through much like a baby might from the womb. One second she was clawing to get into the world and the next she burst from hers into ours. Strangely enough, as large as she was, as broad as she was, she s
till seemed to fit in the confines of the tunnel. Not fully physical, then. She was half woman, half bird, but neither at the same time.

  She didn't seem to understand at first where she was or what she was looking for. Even as far away as she was, I could still see her eyes darting about like a bird's might. It seemed to take an eternity before her eyes landed on Sarah and in that moment I heard Sarah's lilting voice rise. Some part of Sarah knew her quarry had slipped through. Whatever language she was speaking, whatever words I didn't understand, Nehkbet understood them perfectly.

  I watched as she turned that blood red gaze past Sarah to Callum. The amulet seemed outlined in golden light against his skin. A smile creased the goddess's face. In that second, I knew as surely as if I had read her mind she wasn't planning to play nice and simply let herself be trapped. She wasn't going to simply materialize directly into the circle.

  She was rushing it.

  I knew I couldn't just stand there. Callum had been wrong about me holding my ground. Azrael had been right.

  I had to run.

  I had one split second, and one second only, and then I wasn't thinking at all. I ran. I felt her behind me, that vacillating presence, raising the hairs on my arms and sending squeals of ringing through my eardrums.

  I reached the circle before she did and pushed him out of the way. He landed on his backside just outside the circle, surprised. I stooped to reach for the infant, thinking to hold it tight in my arms and present it to her.

  I never got the chance.

  I felt her behind me and I spun around. In the next instant, her talons were around my ribs and her beak was shoved deep down my throat.

  I couldn't breathe.

  I was gagging.

  The next thing I knew, I was swivelling on my heels, taking in wall after wall of muted grey. If there was any illumination in the room, I couldn't find the source. All that was there was unending and gloomy grey.

  Then in the next instant, he was there.

  Azrael.

  "Where am I?" I said bewildered, trying desperately to work out where everyone had gone, why I was alone.