I set the cauldron on the countertop and fill it with water from the tap. Then I place the other magical items around it in a circle—the feathers, the stones, the candle, the red salt. The athame I place to my left-hand side. I keep thinking of what my father said, calling me the Left Hand of Darkness, and this seems to fit. Finally, I spread the Devil’s Tarot in a circle around all the other items. I’m not following any patterns or spells. I’m just going by instinct here—doing the best I can.
I stand back and look over my impromptu altar. I realize I need something that’s sorely missing.
Going to the beecosystem, I unlatch the series of safety doors and slide them open. My bees slowly drift out and form a dark cloud that fills the tiny room. The sight would surely send any sane person running off, screaming, into the night. A few settle on my shoulders, and one lands on my cheek. Their collective hum fills my head and heart.
I reach inside and collect the queen in my hand, since she is wingless.
“What do you think? Can you help me, Your Majesty?” I ask as I feel a warm surge pass through my body.
The queen sends a hum trough my body in response.
I carefully carry her over to the altar and set her down on the edge of the cauldron, where she waits for me to begin my work
Honestly, this isn’t all I need to work this spell. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to both my brides as I position myself in front of the altar. I’ve given both men heaven in the past; it’s time they give me this.
Picking up the knife, I raise it above my head and close my eyes. I try to find the words necessary to achieve the spell, but I can’t think of anything to say. The only thing that comes to me is an old rote from my time in Catholic school, and that’s no help at all. And the harder I try, the more frustrating it becomes. The bees move upward into a cloud over my head. Their hum fills my mind. I listen to it and slowly, over time, I start seeing words in my head—just not in any language I’ve ever heard.
I start speaking the language as I hear it. It sounds like an obscure Russian dialect—if it was spoken backwards and with a mouth full of marbles. I wonder if it’s angel-speak.
With the knife, I cut a sigil into the air. It doesn’t at all surprise me that it’s the sign of the House of Lucifer. I mean, what other power am I capable of summoning? Certainly nothing of God or man.
The humming increases in my head. The air suddenly crackles with raw blue energy. And when I open my eyes, I see the sigil hanging in the air over the altar in what resembles glowing blue-white strikes of lightning. I suck in a quick breath at the sight. I’m afraid to move or make any sudden gestures, lest I break the spell. But even as I slowly lower the knife, I see the Devil’s Tarot drift upward, forming a deadly silver halo around the sigil.
The entire display is pretty to look at, but when I check the water in the cauldron, all I see are my own eyes reflected there. They are full of the same energy as the sigil, but that’s not what I’m looking for. Maybe I need more power for the spell. I remember what Nick said about the Lucifers being natural channelers. We don’t originate our own power. Closing my eyes again, I imagine, quite literally, a well—deep and dark and full of blue light. Both Mac and Father Matt immediately come to me.
They feel close—so close, I can smell Mac’s cologne on the air. I can hear Matt’s sweet and balmy voice. I can even see them. Father Matt is talking with a young woman who is weeping on the pew they are sitting on together. At the same time, Mac is getting his young daughter Charity into her PJ’s. I feel like my brain is splitting in half as I watch them—and I know what I am seeing is happening in real time.
The moment I sense him, he senses me and quickly turns from his daughter and walks downstairs, shutting himself away in his study. Father Matt doesn’t miss a beat. Ignoring the crying woman, he gets up and lets himself out of the church and crosses to the rectory nearby. Both men lie down on the nearest surfaces available to them. Mac his leather lounge sofa. Matt the ratty old sofa. Both immediately cross their arms and stare up at the ceiling as their lips began to move. I can’t hear their voices, but I think they are speaking my spell.
I tear my inner eye away from them and refocus on the cauldron. I’m actually surprised to find the water in it swirling clockwise around the small container. “I need to see,” I tell it. “Show me.”
The water moves faster, but that’s all.
I need more. More power. I raise the knife higher and cough out another angel-speak spell I don’t know.
That makes both men jerk as if they have hooks in their flesh and I’m yanking their wires. It’s not pleasant for them, I know.
“I need to see!” I command the cauldron. “Let me see!”
This time I raise the knife and shout the spell to the ceiling at the same time, putting all my will behind it. The swarm of bees rises with my gesture, their humming so loud, it drowns out all the other sounds around me like a blanket. This must be some kind of summoning spell, because both men jerk upward at the same time on their horizontal surfaces, the pull on them so fierce, it actually bows their backs as a dark light pours form their open mouths. Both their eyes turn pure black, and even though I can’t hear them, I know in my heart that both men are screaming as I rip the power from their very bones.
The water moves much faster now, like a miniature cyclone barely contained within the small black cauldron. Finally, finally…I see light in the water. I see images. And because of my brides’ sacrifice—because of the well of power that they have opened to me—I recognize the place where Sister Marie is hiding my enemy.
52
I PARK in the front lot of the vast Tyson Manufacturing Company Plant. It’s a sprawling, long-abandoned steel manufacturing plant in the northeast section of the city. I’ve read about it here and there in “hunted Philly” brochures, which are incredibly popular. When Sebastian and I first launched Confessions, Sheri came in with an armful of booklets she said we could have because she was always ordering too many from her printer. We set them up in the window alongside the chocolates and teddy bears and they were gone in one afternoon. I knew from the pamphlets that Tyson was among one of the more popular hotspots for ghost hunters and tourists who loved photographing abandoned places, a popular sport in this town.
The pictures I’d seen of the Tyson Plant didn’t do it justice, though. Up close, it looks like one of those places you see in post-apocalyptic movies, full of zombies and flesh-eating cannibals.
I get out and cautiously approach the crumbling building. The structure itself covers several acres and rises maybe fifty or sixty feet into the air—all broken, eyeless glass and ragged black steel bones with the skin scraped away. I feel a chill that has nothing to do with the darkness, the full moon, or the lonely sodium lamps that line the vast, broken concrete apron.
The doors and part of the building in front is simply gone, producing a ragged hole into darkness. No lie; I’m a little freaked out about going in there. Partly because of the damned ghost stories about the steel mill in Sheri’s brochures, but mostly for practical reasons: I’m really scared of getting lost and wandering around in the dark inside until a drunk or high homeless person grabs me.
Thankfully, there are plenty of windows and enough moonlight pouring through the skylights above to see by as I walk to the center of a large, hangar-like space. I find myself gaping at the total ruin of the mill. Old machine mounts and piles of scrap metal lay scattered across the floor. Arcane graffiti covers the walls. Metal catwalks bridge the space above me like weathered bones. From them hang the rotted wiring entrails of ancient electronics and sheets of ragged plastic that sough mournfully in the cold breeze billowing through.
I’m dressed in a short black pea coat tonight. It’s far too warm for this time of year, but I wanted something that made me feel somewhat protected. I’m happy now I wore it, as I’m freezing my ass off as I clump along, the echoes of my footfalls sounding too loud and intrusive to my sensitive ears. Shivering, I walk around a bit
in this huge, abandoned catacomb to turn-of-the-century human endeavors, trying to avoid the pools of oil and stagnant water on the floor, but even though I peer into every corner, I don’t see anything that resembles the vision I had. Still, I know I’m in the right place. In my cauldron vision, I clearly recognized the elaborate Tyson Manufacturing logo painted on the walls.
I can smell the black mold actually invading my lungs. Somewhere, a cat yowls. After twenty minutes of wandering around aimlessly, I get fed up and start back. But as I turn, I see a light ahead and stop.
A shadow is standing about a hundred feet away, holding up a battery torch.
I swallow hard and feel my nerves sing. I want to say something tough and clever, but I don’t have any spit left in my mouth. Anyway, the figure speaks first.
“It’s you, Princess,” comes a woman’s soft voice. She lifts the lantern and I see her sad, carven face. She’s wearing civilian clothes and a long windbreaker, but it’s definitely Sister Marie. The witch-nun who first gave me the name Lady Lucifer.
“Y-you…” I have to swallow to wet my throat before I continue. “I thought you might be here.”
Our voices echo so loudly, it seems we’re shouting to each other.
Sister Marie ignores my statement. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for you. And for…her.”
I still don’t know her name. All this time I’ve dreamed of her, feared her, abhorred her, and waited to speak to her again, and I don’t even knew her goddamn name.
Sister Marie remedies that. “Xtabay.”
The exotic sound of the name echoes in the vastness of this dead place and drives what feels like a cold scalpel up my back. “Xtabay,” I repeat. “That’s…that’s her name?”
Sister Marie only looks at me accusingly.
“Who is she?” I press when she doesn’t immediately answer me. “What is she? Not a real goddess…?”
“Leave here, little Princess,” Sister Marie intones. “Forget her. Forget all this. Go home and live your sad, lonely life with your brides and your necromancer.”
She starts edging backward, but I take a quick step forward. Angry now. Fucking belittle me?
“Stop!”
To my surprise, she stops. But she glares angrily at me as if I’ve slapped her.
I take another jump-step forward, narrowly avoiding an oil spill on the floor between us. “I need to know more. I need to find out answers.”
“Answers? Why?”
I want to sob in exhaustion and frustration. “Because I’ve seen things! Things that I think she can do. But I don’t understand why she’s doing them!” Now, I am shouting. Anything to stop her from running away so I can understand what the hell is happening to me.
To my surprise, Sister Marie moves swiftly toward me. I don’t even have time to react before she’s practically nose to nose with me. I can smell her sweat and a faint odor of urine. I suspect she’s been holed up in here for days, wearing the same clothes.
Again, she surprises me. Grabbing me roughly by the arm, she uses an inordinate amount of strength to drive me to my knees in a puddle of stagnant rainwater. I cry out in surprise as I go down, splashing stinking water up the front of my coat.
I could easily set her on fire, if I want to. I know that. But I don’t want to hurt her. I just want answers!
“You stupid puta!” she screams in my face, startling me. “How dare you come here after what you have done to her?”
She slaps me so hard, I wind up down on my ass on the concrete. I cry out, but she’s not done with me. She grabs me by the hair and shakes me violently and starts spitting Spanish in my face. The pain and violence makes me cry out in surprise. The whole experience is so different from what I expected that I’m left stunned and helpless as she yanks on me and slaps me, then throws me back down again.
I don’t fight her. I lay there, heart thudding in my ears, breathing roughly, and listen to her raining down her rage on me. In too many ways, I deserve this—someone to hurt me. To tell me exactly what I am. A bitch. A monster. Something else. Something worse.
Finally, Sister Marie, who once seemed so at peace, spits on me.
Her cold saliva hits me in the cheek and partially in the eye. I blink it away. I don’t know exactly what I did to her or to Xtabay, but I’m sure, whatever it is, I probably deserve it.
Only when she draws a decorative magic athame from under her coat do I start to panic. If it was just a regular knife, I might even let her continue. But a witch’s athame can really hurt another witch—even kill her. And I don’t want to die. I don’t want to know where someone like me goes when she dies.
With a cry, Sister Marie lunges at me.
I start to move, to roll away, but I know I’m not fast enough, not in this vulnerable position. Instead, throw my arms up in defense, not that that would save me. But just as she reaches me, the athame is torn from her hand and flung as if by invisible forces the full length of the hangar.
I heard the athame hit the floor and skitter along for a while before it disappears into darkness. Sister Marie almost pitches over, catching herself at the last moment. Lurching back, the witch mutters a curse in her native language, then turns her head to try and find the lost athame.
I’m thinking about getting up and charging her while she’s distracted when I spot the woman—the goddess—Xtabay standing on the crumbling metal catwalk above us, her arms outstretched to perform the spell that saved me from the athame. She is no longer dressed as she was when I first saw her step out of the iron sarcophagus. She is still so beautiful that it hurts to look upon her, but she’s cut her hair short like a boy’s so her ears stick out a little, and she’s wearing jeans and a strappy T-shirt of the kind I favor. Over it all, she sports a white wrap sweater that flows around her like wings.
All of that is weird enough on its own. But what really surprises me is the look of horror on Xtabay’s beautiful face. I don’t expect that. She puts a hand on the railing, and with almost no effort at all, launches herself over it. But she doesn’t fall like a human. Instead, she falls like what she is—a goddess come to earth—and I can’t help but be mesmerized by the sight of her floating down to the floor in front of us.
Sister Marie straightens up and turns to address Xtabay while I lay there on the floor, watching them. “I told you to stay upstairs.”
Xtabay narrows her black, cattish eyes but says nothing. Nothing I can hear.
“It’s none of your concern!” Sister Marie insists as if they are holding a personal conversation only she can hear. She gestures wildly. “She is his daughter. Ha-Shaitan’s corrupted blood! And she is corrupting you, my lady!”
Xtabay shakes her head as if she is not convinced.
“You need to stay away from her!”
Xtabay raises one long arm and points her finger directly to me while I scramble to my feet. Then she brings her hand in and lays it to her heart in some arcane gesture I can’t translate.
“No…no, you don’t understand, my lady! Do you not know what she is?”
Xtabay brings her up and then down in a long line. I think she is making the sign of the House of Satan. She then makes the heart gesture again.
Sister Marie actually blanches as she grows more hysterical. “My lady, she is the Left Hand of Darkness! She is his cursed daughter…!” Exasperated, Sister Marie turns and gestures to me. “You do not understand! She is the heir. She is the fucking Whore of Babylon!”
Those words hurt me worse than any knife. I’ve heard them uttered in the past by equally hateful people. I’ve been called the Great Whore so many times, I want to scream my rage to the sky. “Stop calling me that!” I roar, taking a step toward her. I want to scratch the witch’s eyes out for that. But Sister Marie turns to me.
The look on her face stuns me into silence. I’ve seldom seen such fear and hatred on a human face. “You’ve corrupted her! You’ve destroyed everything I’ve tried to do!”
Yes, of course
, I think as I put everything together in my head. It takes a moment, but I finally understand. “Sonja…the other girls. You’ve been using Xtabay to murder those men, haven’t you? To kill anyone hurting the women on the street…”
She doesn’t deny a thing. She just moves more purposely toward me, her lantern swinging and casting slanting shadows across her tired, enraged face. Too late, I realize she has a second athame in her hand! I don’t know where she got it from. Perhaps she had it hidden in her clothes or in a boot, but, somehow, it’s found her way into her hand now.
“I’m sorry, Princess. Sorry it must be this way. But you cannot be allowed to continue.” Sister Marie’s voice dissolves into another language as she casts a spell. She raises the athame high and positions it so she can plunge it straight into my heart. I see it shimmer, red hot and more than capable of carving into my flesh. I try to move, but I can’t. She’s a powerful witch. I’ll give her that. Her spell has bound me to the floor. I can’t shift out of the way. All I can do is raise my arms hand in defense and scream in raw red fear as the blade plunges toward me.
53
XTABAY RAISES both hands and speaks, but not in any language I have ever heard before. It’s definitely not Spanish. I suspect it’s much older than any human language.
And I feel the entire world crank down into motionless silence like someone put a brake on. It reminds me of what my father did at the roadhouse. In the end, only she and I can move. Sister Marie is stuck in her goddess’s strange stasis, her mouth hanging open in a scream of insult, her eyes wide and mad, her body canted forward and arm outstretched, the blade of the athame only a few inches from my heart. To me, she looks like a strange and macabre object de’art.
“W-what…?” I ask no one in particular because I can’t believe she saved me.
Xtabay lowers her arms. “Stand up, little flower.”
To the Devil a Daughter (A Vivian Summers Investigation Book 1) Page 22
