The Summoner's Sigil

by Renee Sebastian

  “It’s on the other side of the town. We could at least escort you there,” Pastor Bob said. “There is safety in numbers.”

  Why were they so anxious for me to not go there? I rebuked them when I said, “Nonsense, if you have forgotten, I am a Summoner, and those things lurking around out there are my business.”

  “On one thing you are correct; your family would tar and feather me alive if I were to let you come to harm.”

  “That is why I have him, and in all frankness, now that I’ve looked at your defenses, I think you are all too vulnerable to stay here yourselves.” That got the effect I was looking for, as he became blatantly insulted. I had no issues with that. Let him stew.

  “You should at least stay to the back alleys,” Millie added.

  “Thanks, we will,” I replied. I wanted to take her with us, but as much as I hated to admit it, she was probably safer under the roof of a liar than out in the streets with a demon hunter.

  Chapter 13

  Zombie Teeth

  Rule number twenty-three: To see clearly what lies behind you, one must first turn around.

  By the time we got back out in the alley, the road was dimly lit by the setting sun. Low lying clouds dressed the sky in gray flowing skirts. Thunder rumbled in the distance and rain was once again a promise in the air.

  “What did you see with Pastor Bob?” I asked Colin.

  “It was that obvious?”

  “Hmm, mmm.”

  “Why did you tell him my name?”

  “If someone in this town is looking for you, then I just gave them the keys to the kingdom by telling Pastor Bob your name. Knowledge can be more valuable tool than a balance caliper is for a clockmaker.”

  “His animosity for me means nothing, but his intentions towards you were confusing. He clearly doesn’t hate you, like he does me, but he still means you harm,” he replied.

  “Regardless, there is nothing we can do about him now, except being prepared for the worst. I want a magchain, a Westinghouse pistol, and some smoke bombs.”

  “Is there anything you don’t want?” he asked.

  I chose to ignore him and said, “The easiest place to get these will be the constable’s office.”

  “We’re not headed to the mayor’s home then?”

  “Not yet. That was to throw them off our trail. Once we get to the office, you can send a C.W. message to the president to update her on our progress, while I look around for weapons that might prove useful.”

  “What if there are constables still alive?” he asked.

  “Based on what we saw outside, I doubted it. But if there are some, then our job just got a lot more complicated.”

  “How so?”

  “They will either be ridden by these demons that everyone has been talking about or they are going to be undead. Otherwise, we would have seen them out patrolling the streets and protecting the civilians of Convent.”

  “There is a third option. People get frightened sometimes. They may simply be hiding there,” he pointed out.

  “People full of fear are even scarier than demons.” I noticed that he didn’t dispute my claim.

  I had been leading us to where the office was located on the corner of Market and Primrose Avenue, but before we reached the end of the alley, he grabbed me by the waist and firmly turned me around to face him.

  His eyes seemed to flash in the dim light when he said, “Maybe we should just let the entire town go.”

  “Won’t work. We’ve already seen the catacombs under the Deist church. Who knows how many bolt holes there might be underground, not to mention escape tunnels. They’ll simply hide out until it is safe to come topside again.

  “Let’s not forget too that they want to kill you, and they want me for some nefarious reason. Whoever they are, they will come for us, even if we leave this town.

  “This also might be their trial run, and if it fails here, they will simply retry elsewhere. Of this, I am certain.”

  He stared deeply into my eyes, and thunder faded to the back ground. The gas lamps turned on along the streets, obviously on a mechanized timer that required little human maintenance, unlike the electricity.

  “I can’t let you die.”

  I smiled and said, “Of course you can, but if Neverland didn’t kill me, I doubt that I’ll die here.”

  “You don’t understand…,” he said.

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I’ve never had…”

  “What?”

  He clenched his jaw and said, “Someone to protect.” I didn’t believe for a second that this was what he had originally intended to say to me. But whatever he was going to say was plainly difficult for him to communicate to me. I didn’t probe for anything he wasn’t ready to tell me, because heavens knew I certainly didn’t want him to look too closely at my secrets.

  He swallowed loudly, and I found my gaze riveted to his neck. I could see that the top button of his shirt had come undone. Fine hairs teased the top of his collar.

  “Lead on,” he said softly. “But know this; I won’t wait around for us to be found.”

  “I have no intentions on being ambushed either. Let’s get to the constable’s office, and then we’ll check the Post Office. After that, we’ll head on to the mayor’s.”

  “Very well.”

  I felt distracted as we made our way to the cross street. It felt as if he was watching my every move the entire way. Once we finally made it to the corner that opposite of our destination, I asked him, “I don’t have a mirror, do you?”

  He dug around for a minute in his leather bag and produced one. I angled it around the corner and saw no one. Someone could still be hiding in a dark building alcove or up above from a window.

  “Can you hear or see anything useful? I think I am going to make a run for the front door.”

  “Cities confound my senses,” he said, but then I thought I heard him add, “Or maybe it is just you.” But I must have been mistaken.

  After I studied the roads on either side of the cross street, he took the opportunity to say, “I smell odd scents.”

  That paused me in my tracks. “What kind of scents?” I asked.

  “Some people, some not.”

  “Can you tell where they are?”

  “Not yet.”

  “How much longer before you can?”

  “I need two things that we don’t have, time and experience. If I hadn’t been cooped up with books most of my life, I might be worth a damn right now.”

  “No use crying over the acid rain spots on your coat, or at least that was what my Grandfather used to say.” What I didn’t say was that this was back when I used to care quite a lot about frivolous things like clothes.

  I decided that it was now or never, so I said, “I haven’t seen any lights, smoke from smokestacks, or movement from any of the windowed buildings. We’re going to make a go of it now.”

  “Wait!” we heard a girl shout from behind us.

  We both turned around and out ran Millie from the shadows.

  “Millie,” I heatedly whispered. “You need to turn around right now and march yourself back to Pastor Bob’s store.”

  “There is something wrong with Mr. Ensley.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked her.

  She finally caught up to us and between frantic breaths she said, “He’s been off.”

  “How off?”

  “There was one point when he couldn’t even remember our names,” she answered. That was peculiar, but inconclusive.

  “When was this?” I asked her.

  “A few weeks back,” she lamely added.

  “That could mean anything,” I told her, but I thought anyone sampling too much of the apple pie moonshine might qualify this kind of behavior.

  “I would rather stay with you, if it is all the same to you.”

  It wasn’t, but I felt as if I owed her some loyalty, so I acquiesced. “Yes, you can stay.” I slid the small mirror into my coat po
cket and then added, “You can come with us to the constable’s office. Hopefully, there will be people there who can protect you. After that, we will move on without you. Do you understand?”

  “I can only protect Basil,” Colin added to emphasize my point.

  She got a little snippy when she replied, “I’m not asking you to defend me, just let me tag along a while until I can find a safer place to hide until morning. Then I will make my way to the gates and hope the soldiers will take pity on me and allow me to leave,” Millie said, which made an excellent theoretical argument, but in reality, it might just get herself killed while she was carrying it out.

  “I may have stretched the truth a bit when I mentioned that escape route earlier. I don’t believe for a second that anyone is leaving this place until I straighten this mess out,” I truthfully told her.

  She frowned and nibbled her lip in worry.

  I said, “Fine, you can stay with us, but please make yourself useful in the meantime. Can you cast an illusion over us so we can make it over to the constable’s office without injury?”

  She looked up at the dying light. The wind had picked up, which made the dust from the shale roads swirl in the air more than an impressionistic painter’s version of leaves on trees. A huge storm was settling over the town like a smothering blanket.

  “I can try,” she said hesitantly. She was a Lux Illusionist, and no quantity of water vapor would make one of her illusions work if she didn’t have enough light to go with it. Too bad the lamplights weren’t on.

  I tried to see what laid ahead for us by using my foggy eye, and I saw that there were indeed people who were hiding in the second story of the building to the left of us. What I couldn’t see was if anyone had a gun.

  “We dash towards the door in ten seconds,” I told them. “There are people to our left, but I can’t tell if they have any weapons. Prepare yourself.”

  I counted down and then Colin darted out in front of me, before I finished my countdown. I tried to stop him, but he was faster than I was. So Millie and I did the only thing we could, we ran after him.

  We made it about halfway to the office, when I heard a shot ring out from above us. I didn’t see anyone flinch, so I could only assume that it had missed its intended target.

  A few more rounds were shot off, followed by cursing from the supposed sniper who had obviously missed his targets. Finally, we made it to the doors, which were naturally locked, but Colin somehow shattered the tempered glass with his elbow and proceeded to unlock the door for us. I halfway expected us to be shot down by the remaining constables holed up in the office, but what greeted us was far more insidious.

  While there were dead men lying in puddles of their own blood, some looked as if something had been ripped out of them. Their torsos had been split open exposing ribs and entrails, which naturally meant the odor was predictably unpleasant. Others had lumps and bumps protruding from their body. The only good thing about being inside rather than out right now, besides not being shot at, was that these men would not be rising from the dead. There was nothing in this room worth rising.

  Colin threw off his military grade coat and I saw a red flower stain on the back of his shirt. It was growing larger right before my eyes. “You’ve been shot!” I exclaimed.

  “I’m fine. The bullet went right through my shoulder,” he said tensely.

  “Nonsense, it needs to be bound,” I went over to the first aid kit that was mounted on the wall, and removed a roll of gauze, tape, and antiseptic wipes. I tore open the pouch and told Colin, “Sit down and let me clean it. Millie, make yourself useful and see if there are any survivors left in the building.”

  He walked back to the window and began looking for our would-be adversaries.

  “What happened here?” Millie gasped. Then she said quietly, “Maybe I would be better off back with the pastor.”

  I touched Colin’s arm and said, “Move away from there, and let me dress your wound.”

  “I will, once we secure this door.” Then he went and tried to pick up one of the desks, but with his wounded shoulder, he immediately dropped it. He seemed surprised.

  I went over to him, and ripped the hole wider in the front of his shirt, looking for the entry wound. I next examined the wound more closely. At first, it appeared to be a simple bullet wound, until I leaned in and got a whiff of it. This time I wasn’t greeted by his typical pine scent, but rather with something sulfurous.

  “Colin!”

  “Shush, there could still be someone in the back rooms.”

  “There is, as a matter of fact,” a woman’s voice called out from the dark hallway. I ignored whoever it was for the moment, and dabbed some iodine onto a bit of gauze. I then pressed it to his wound.

  He didn’t flinch under my ministrations as he called out, “Who goes there?”

  “Name is Gertrude Basquiat.”

  “Mrs. Basquiat, what in the tarnation are you doing here and not back at the swamp, safe and sound in your house?” I called out to her while wrapping his shoulder in gauze.

  “I wish I was there too.”

  “Come out, where we can see you,” Colin ordered her.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I’m locked behind these blasted bars.”

  “Why?” Colin asked.

  “I failed the Lord.”

  I had several questions about that, but what I really wanted to know was if she was the one who sent the draugs to attack us. I finished wrapping some gauze around his midsection and then tightened the knot in the dressing, causing Colin to flinch a little.

  “Who is this Lord?” he asked once I was done.

  “Hell if I know, I’m not hoity-toity enough to know the Lord. I only took my orders from his middlemen.”

  “Like who?” Colin asked.

  “I know who you are. You’re that Colin Townsend,” she said in return. “Is that Basil with ya’?”

  “I’m here Mrs. Basquiat.”

  Gertrude paused before she finally said, “If you get me out of here, I can take you to him.”

  “You don’t even know who he is,” he reminded her.

  “But I can get you to his people. You know they worship the ground he walks on.” I might decide to take her up on her offer, but only after she answered some of my other questions first.

  “Did you send the draugs to my house?” I asked her.

  There was a long pause before she reiterated, “Get me out of here.”

  “Millie, can you push some desks over to the door and pile up some of the lighter objects in the room on them like… the dust bins over there?”

  She nodded her head, even though she couldn’t take her eyes off of the bodies in the room.

  “If any of them even move an inch, give a holler,” I told her.

  She nodded her head, looking white as a ghost, and then she started pushing the desk that was closest to the door.

  Colin put his coat back on and went over to a dropped lantern. Even though the glass shade was cracked, he was able to light it with a match he found in the matchbox that had fallen next to it, and then we walked back to have a little talk with Gertrude Basquiat.

  Colin and I took the darkened hallway that led to the jail cells. There were six cells in all, three on each side. Gertrude was located in the last one on the right. It appeared that she had been trapped here for at least a day, because the cell lacked proper plumbing and the chamber pot was full in the corner.

  “Gertrude Basquiat, your husband would be rolling in his grave if he knew you were in jail,” I told her. I found a stool propped up against the cell across from her, and after grabbing it, I sat down upon it. I then told her, “You better start telling me what happened, and it had better be a good story.”

  “It’s not a happily ever after story, if that is what you’re angling for,” she told us before spitting to her right. Her hair was wild, and her clothes were simple dungarees and a plaid work shirt, which covered u
p some sweat stained thermals.

  “Go on and tell it then.”

  “All right, hold yer horses. I was instructed to watch your lake house.”

  I sensed more than saw Colin tense at her words. I could tell that he wanted to do more than just talk to her, but I grabbed his hand and asked her, “Who ordered you to do that?”

  “Like I told you, I don’t precisely know who is in charge, but it was Blake Morlock Jr. who gave me my instructions.” Well, that was unexpected.

  “Blake Morlock?” Colin asked.

  “Yes, he is a local man whom I went to school with,” I told him. “His father is Blake Morlock Sr., the Mayor. Gertrude, what does Junior have to do with all this?”

  “How the hell should I know? All I know is that he told me that if I didn’t do like I was told, then I was going to wind up like old Mr. Basquiat. He said I’d be in my house burnt up alive, quicker than a wood rat could find a hole in a piece of wormwood. There wouldn’t even be a body to set afloat and be mourned after.”

  “You’re a strong woman, who can defend herself. What convinced you he was telling you the truth?” I asked her.

  “They killed my dogs.”

  To an old woman, sometimes your dogs were all that was separating you from insanity. “I’m sorry to hear that Gertrude.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t the act that scared me silly, but it was the manner in which they killed them.”

  “How did they do it,” I asked her quietly.

  “They gutted the first one, and then they used her small intestines to strangle the second around her neck. The third dog, my Gillie, tried to attack me, but when I looked in her eyes, I knew she was not herself. Her eyes had turned all black, and she even puked up some black stuff. I had to place the bullet in her head myself. Then with the last one, Brock, he went into the swamp and drowned himself. What was a girl supposed to do?” she asked.

  “You might be safer behind the bars than not.”

  “Until they come for me again,” she said.

  “Did you send the draugs to my house for me or not?”

  “I did not,” she said, but then she sighed dramatically and amended what she had said by adding, “But I did send them for him.”