Stupid and trusting.
They seemed content with never learning from mistakes. They had the technology to shut down cars if a drunkard got in it, but apparently, that technology was too expensive. Lives, apparently, were not priceless, and those in this bus were about to find out just how little they were worth.
With one turn of the wheel, the demon sent forty-eight more people to their deaths.
****
As Denny crossed the Quad, there was yelling and screaming from a drum circle that caught her attention. Denny would normally have kept walking, with her head down, minding her own business, but something made her slow down and look up. She seldom interfered in other people’s drama.
Today, she interfered. Today, she waded through a small crowd to stop an enormous football player from harassing Brianna as she danced about the drum circle. He was taunting her and calling her names.
“Hey, fudgepacker,” Denny growled, slinging one back at him. “Back the fuck away from her.” Denny marched up to the football player and shoved him with all her might.
Denny was strong enough to move the player a couple yards, and he stumbled backwards, stunned that a girl could actually move him.
“What the fuck are you thinking, girl? I oughtta pop your fool head like a zit comin’ up on me like that.”
Denny bridged the gap in three long strides. In for a penny, she thought. “I’m thinking, Jethro, that we stopped calling women girls back in the nineties. The 1890’s, asswipe.” Her voice held a strange tone to it. It was deeper. Lower. It sounded like someone else.
“You think I won’t hit a fucking dyke?” He raised his meaty fist and then turned to stare at it in confusion, as if he had never seen his fist before. “What the—”
His fist just held there, unmoving.
Before the football player could hit Denny, before his fist could regain its forward momentum, Victor stepped in front of Denny, his hands on his hips and his enormous arms stretching the fabric of his Polo shirt. Victor dwarfed the football player.
“You fellas wanna pick on someone who can fight back a little more fairly or do you just choose to beat up girls? ‘Cause I’m fixin’ to show you what happens when you pick on someone your own size. Or bigger.”
The football player slowly lowered his fist. “You gotta be shittin’ me.”
Victor stepped to within a couple of feet of the player. “Do I look like I am? You wanna harass a buncha women—”
“They ain’t women. They’s witches.”
“I don’t give a shit if they’re wart hogs. You fellas need to just walk on by. Shut your idjit mouths and move on, or I’m gonna embarrass ya’ll in front of everyone here.”
The football player’s friends urged him to leave the women alone, that it wasn’t worth a fight. But he had to try to get in the last word. It was a huge mustake.
He looked at Denny and growled, “Rug munching cunt.”
Victor connected with a right cross that sent the guy flying. “Oh hell, no. You did not just call my friend the C word.”
The guy’s buddies started toward Victor, who stood with his fists raised. Denny and Brianna stood beside of him, their fists raised, too. There was going to be blood shed, for sure.
“That’s enough, boys,” a campus security guard yelled. “Next punch goes to jail.”
“He hit me, man,” the football player said, rubbing his jaw. “He fuckin’ sucker punched me.”
The police officer strolled over to the player and sidled up to him. “Son. You want everyone to know you got your ass kicked by a gay guy, a lesbian, and a witch? Then, by all means, press charges. But if I was you, I’d rub my sore spot and walk away.”
The football player sneered. “Ah, to hell with it.” He joined his friends and they lumbered away like a pack of bears.
“Go on now, Victor. Get yourself and your friend outta here. Ladies, my apologies.” He tipped his cowboy hat. “I was called away. Carry on. Won’t nobody bother you now.”
Denny thanked the guard and lowered her voice to Brianna. “What, exactly, is this?”
“A drum circle,” Brianna answered. “For witches.”
Denny cocked her head. “Oh really? Witches.”
Brianna nodded. “Really. If you weren’t so involved with your ghost and your haunted house, you might learn a thing or two about the other paranormal residents of our great city. You live a pretty myopic life, Denny Silver.”
“Myopic? Me?”
Brianna shook her head. “You have so much to learn, Silver. When the time comes, and you need some answers, you know where to come.”
“Thanks.” Denny nodded as she grabbed Victor’s arm, smiled, and headed for class.
“What the hell you do that fo’? She obviously thinks you’re hot and you don’t seem to give a damn.”
“A witch? Are you insane? I need a witch like I need a hole in the head.”
Victor stopped walking and turned to her. “Better a hole in your head than the one you keep tryin’ to fill in your heart with a damned ghost.”
“She’s more than a ghost, Victor.”
“She a temporary filler, Denny. Temporary. You remember that.”
Denny shook her head and went to class, all the while wondering if what Victor had said was true.
****
After class, Denny went back to the coffee shop. She wasn’t sure why, except there was something about Brianna she found intriguing, something that seemed to pull her like a tractor beam to the buxom blonde.
“Can you take a break?” Denny asked softly. Suddenly, she felt like she was cheating.
While Brianna let her co-worker know she was taking a break, Denny made her way to the only free table and wiped off the crumbs.
When Brianna joined her, she handed Denny an Awake Tea latte. “On the house.”
“Thank you. That’s very sweet.”
“I have to say, I am surprised to see you. I figured I scared you away. You know…drum circle and all that.”
“So...a witch, huh?”
Brianna laughed and nodded. “Yeah, I am, and my sisters and I wanted to thank you for sticking up for us when that Neanderthal interrupted our drum circle. That was very brave of you.”
“Brave or incredibly stupid. The jury is still out.” Denny smiled sheepishly. “I’m kinda surprised you’re so out and about with the whole witch thing. I mean…you’re really a witch?”
She leaned forward, her bosoms resting on the table. “In the flesh, but tell me, Denny Silver… just what are you?”
“Me? I’m nothing. Just a girl trying to get by after dealing with the death of her parents and the incarceration of her brother and sister.”
Brianna tilted her head. “Your sister is in jail as well?”
Denny laughed. “Convent. Same thing.” She sipped her tea. It was extra hot. “But trust me. I’m only trying to negotiate life’s maze, nothing more, nothing less.”
Brianna shook her head. “You’re quite wrong on that score, Golden. All of us felt it. It was all we could talk about after that gorilla got his face pushed in.”
“Felt what?”
“There’s some sort of...energy surrounding you. It’s like light in a cardboard box. There are rays shooting out of every crack and crevice. You’d have to be blind not to see it.”
“Well then, the majority of the world is blind because there isn’t anything special about me except that I happen to live in a famous haunted house and have an infamous brother.”
“You are so, so wrong there. You are something…special. Something…different. You just don’t know it yet.”
Denny looked at her. “You’re not kidding, are you? I mean, this isn’t a come on, is it?”
Brianna smiled softly. “I wish it were, but no, it’s not. At first I thought it was residue from living with a ghost, but it’s not that. It’s something inside you. Something buried deep beneath the surface of your soul. You are…something amazing. I just don’t know what yet.”
“Whatever you say.” Brianna grinned. “You needn’t confess what we both know to be true. Besides, your secret is safe with me.”
Denny grinned. “I’m an open book.”
“Who doesn’t live with a ghost.”
“Right.”
Brianna laid her hand across Denny’s. “I am glad you came by. I wanted to thank you for what you did for us. I really appreciate it.”
Denny shrugged. “Those guys were assholes. They deserved it.”
“Yeah, but no one else would have stopped them. I can’t believe your friend popped him right in the mouth. That was a dangerous thing to do. Those no neckers protect each other.”
Denny felt the back of her hand become very warm. “Victor’s really a pussy cat at heart, unless you mess with the people he cares about, and then he becomes someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley...or a light alley for that matter.”
“It’s clear he cares for you a great deal. It is good to have friends like that.”
“Victor’s one of my best friends. There isn’t much he wouldn’t do for me, and vice versa.”
Brianna removed her hand and wrapped it around a mug that read Covens not Ovens. “Well, please let him know how much we appreciate it.” Brianna sipped her coffee. “Not many guys would have gone up against a pack of wolves lead by that asshole Pat Patterson.”
Denny leaned forward and whispered, “You really a witch?”
She nodded. “We prefer Wiccan. Witch conjures up the negative Hollywood image of pointy hats and broomsticks, and we are not that.”
“A Wiccan, then.”
“Then yeah, I am. Most of us in the drum circle are.”
“What were you ladies doing out there with your drums anyway?”
“We’ve started a club and were trying to get members.”
Denny smiled as she sipped her tea. “Recruiting wit—uh—Wiccans on our campus can’t be easy.”
“Oh, it’s easier than you might think. There are more of us around than meets the eye” Brianna stared into Denny’s eyes. “Oh. I get it. You believe in ghosts but not Wiccans?” She chuckled. “Interesting.”
“I never said I believe in ghosts.”
“You don’t need to. It’s written all over your face. Hell, your very aura exudes spiritual energy unlike any I’ve seen. You not only believe in them, you come in contact with them. Probably on a daily basis.”
“Spiritual energy, huh?”
“Yeah. It’s like...residue from coming in contact with a ghost or supernatural being. They slough it off like we do dead skin cells and it sticks on those capable of reading it.”
Denny casually leaned back. “Residue. You’re telling me that ghosts have residue?”
Brianna frowned. “Please don’t tell me you live in a house with a ghost and haven’t done any research about what makes them tick?” She leaned forward, her eyes blazing. “Oh, but you have, haven’t you? This—” she waved her hand dismissively in the air, “is all a ruse—this pretense of not knowing or understanding.” She leaned back. “Okay, if that’s how you want to play it, I’m game. I get it.”
“There’s nothing to get, Brianna. I’m not playing at anything. I’ve just never been told I’m walking around wearing ghost dandruff.”
Brianna laughed. “That’s a good one. I don’t know how much you know about psychometry, but there’s residue on just about everything.”
Denny shrugged but said nothing.”
“Fine. Psychometry is the modern day term for scrying.” She waited for a sign of recognition. “Scrying is divination of future events or the reading of an object to understand more about it.”
Denny was beginning to feel a little cornered—a little vulnerable—by this intense Wiccan who seemed to look into the core of her being. It was disconcerting. “I’m just more interested in living in the real world right now, you know? It’s hard enough trying to get good grades and—”
“Then go out with me.”
Denny blinked. “What?”
“Go out with me.”
“On a...date?”
Brianna laughed again. “If you want to call it a date, then sure. Go out on a date with me. You want to play in the real world, then come play with me for an evening.”
Denny kept blinking. How on earth did the woman get through her well-constructed walls? She hadn’t been asked out since she was sixteen.
Date?
That was so very much a Rush word.
“Under normal circumstances, I might, but I told you, I am sorta seeing someone, and I just discovered my brother might be innocent. That’s taking up my time and attention right now.”
“So you can’t eat?”
“Eat?” Denny’s angst had reduced her to a mocking bird.
Brianna shook her head. “I find you a fascinating enigma, Silver. If you ever stop your super-sleuthing long enough to grab a bite to eat, call me.” With that, Brianna set a business card on the table and went back behind the counter.
“Another card?”
“That one is special.”
Picking up the card, Denny realized it was her coven card. Apparently, Brianna was the vice president, or head, or grand poobah of a circle of witches.
Wiccans.
Denny pocketed the card and made her escape while she could. Her world was becoming stranger by the minute.
****
Denny’s Journal
Maybe I was putting some sort of vibe out into the air, but it suddenly felt as if the supernatural world was alive all around me, beckoning me to join it, challenging me to become one with it.
I figured I had enough of that in my life. Like cumin, a little goes a long way, and too much destroys the dish entirely. I was at an all-time high cumin level.
The first thing I did after talking to Brianna was call Lauren and ask her what was up with the notion of spiritual residue. Lauren was my living, breathing encyclopedia. What she didn’t know, she’d find out.
I was stunned when she brought up psychometry and told me to ask Ophelia about it when I saw her.
Ophelia.
In a town filled with ghost hunters, conjurers, palm readers and psychics, Ophelia was the real deal. She came from the low country of Georgia, where root doctors and conjure men hailed, Savannah’s equivalent to Orleanian voodoo. The city of Savannah was, quite literally, built on the dead, which gave rise to many of the haunted happenings permeating this grand dame of a city. Historians, theologians, and architects alike speculated that even the layout of the city was one that enabled ghostly energy to saturate its surroundings.
There are hundreds of ghost stories, exorcisms, and dozens of books about ghosts and whatnot, but Ophelia? She’s not some hack. She’s not a faux medium raking in tourist dollars.
She’s the daughter of a conjure man—a conjurer, a root doctor.
Back in the day, when slavery was alive and well in Georgia, there was plenty of slave traffic going in and out of our port. And anywhere you have slave trading, you have slave history. The conjurers and root doctors are part of that supernatural and mystical history, and Ophelia had mystical powers many had seen and few could deny.
The problem was she seldom did readings anymore because of a tragedy that befell one of her clients. Suffice to say, she doesn’t really participate in our society anymore, but her powers are still worth talking about, and she is a legend in the city.
If anyone could help me unlock my mother from her prison long enough to tell me whatever it was Quick thought she knew, even momentarily, it was Ophelia.
The only remaining question was...would she?
****
The Demons
This enabler demon’s job was to enable the darkest part of a person to take control of the rest of their being while also recruiting others who preferred to walk in the darkness than exists in man’s corrupt world.
There were so many humans who liked dark paths, and gang members
were a wonderful breed. Already on the dark path, they were so near to being blinded, it was amazing they could see at all. Their way, their darkness, even the brightest of light could not penetrate it.
They loved their shadows.
Pushing drugs, running weapons, pimping women—these monsters needed no demons to wreak their chaos. They did not need The Brotherhood. They were their own malevolent force, sucking the life out of every neighborhood they touched, like some light-seeking vampire feeding on the hopes and dreams of others.
As big and bad as they were, they were easy to manipulate. It was scary how malleable they were. A few well-placed drive-by bullets could start a war that might cost dozens of lives.
The ED grinned. The latest stats not reported by humans was more like twenty thousand gang-related deaths in the United States, home to over one and a half million gang members.
One and a half million little soldiers.
How this so-called superpower of a government didn’t merely blow them to smithereens had been a topic of conversation at many a meeting. How does the country with the greatest army allow these mini-militias to terrorize neighborhoods? Why aren’t they stopped?
Because humans were stupid. They cared about all the wrong things.
So the darkness grew, fed by a population of unwanted undesirables with no one—no one—to stop them. It was just a matter of releasing them into the population—much like releasing wild animals into a village. The damage, while not predictable, would still be severe.
That was what this demon was preparing to do. He would release them tonight to spread fear among the citizens by taking out one of their strongest…one who was revered by the population.
It was sure to be a fun night.
****
Denny was more than a little surprised to come home and find Sister Sterling cleaning up the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Denny asked as she shrugged off her sweatshirt.
“Never could get Pure to wash her own dishes,” Sterling said, drying her hands on a faded dish towel. “I’d hate to see her house when she is a mother.”
Demon Hunter Page 5
