Earth (21 page)

“Even if he thought it was amusing and was
willing to answer the summoning, he wouldn’t go himself, he’d send
a lackey. God’s got his angels, Lucifer’s got his minions,” I said
as I placed a steadying hand on Steven’s shoulder and looked him in
the eye. “Honey, there are scarier things out there, and down
there, than Lucifer. I know that’s hard to understand, but really,
whoever this caster is, worries me a lot more right now than
Lucifer does.”

“How can you say that?” Steven’s voice was so
quiet if I hadn’t been leaning close to his face I might not have
heard him.

“Because this person is messy, greedy, and is
trying to open the gates of the Underworld and doesn’t realize the
consequences. Lucifer, like most gods, is a businessman; he
wouldn’t risk his power for one mortal. But this person, right
here, right now, is planning on killing someone and that’s what
scares me.”

“How do you know he’s gonna kill
someone?”

“Because Steven,” Jodi said, “it’s in the
last stanza of the spell. You spill the blood of an equally
powerful innocent. What do you think that means?” she asked looking
up at me.

“An equally powerful innocent?” I asked and
Jodi nodded at me, pointing to the line she’d read. “Someone with a
lot of faith in God, maybe?” I wasn’t sure, but that steeled my
resolve to stop this. “Whatever it means it’s obviously referring
to someone who wouldn’t be sacrificed willingly, so we have to do
something.”

“What happens to the demon once the person is
sacrificed?” Steven asked, his voice breaking.

“If I’m reading this right,” Jodi said, “then
the demon has full access to our world, like an un-exercisable
possession with all his powers. It would be free to do whatever he
wants.”

“Why would someone do this?” Steven
asked.

“Because the spell is worded in such a way
that it makes it sound like you get the demon’s powers and dominion
in Hell and on earth, not that you’d be giving up your body for a
demon to take up residence,” I said. “I mean world domination would
sound quite appealing to a lot of people.”

“Ok, Shay, I think I owe you an apology…”
Jodi’s voice trailed off. I turned to look at her and saw that she
was staring intently at the book again. “The warnings… it says to
be especially careful when choosing your final sacrifice and to
avoid the use of anyone whose eyes you cannot meet. So even if it
is Jensen, he’s not after you.”

“Wait, what?” I asked, taking the book from
her, reading over the passage she’d found. “‘Beware your final
sacrifice. Those whose eyes you cannot meet may see your true form
and will have power over you, turning he who sacrifices into the
sacrificed.’ Well that’s interesting.” I started reading through
the warnings more carefully then. “Did you see this? It has to be a
woman for the final sacrifice. ‘She who is the barer of life on
this plane.’” I handed the book back to Jodi. “Well, at least Deb
was right; we’re looking for a man. Probably one in a
relationship.”

“Why do you think he’s in a relationship?”
Steven asked, rejoining the conversation.

“Because, where they’re doing their rituals,
you’d have to really trust a guy to go into the woods at night with
him and it says the final sacrifice has to enter the circle of her
own free will, so he’s not kid-napping anyone or taking a first
date out there.” I was pacing again.

“So why is the weather screwed up?” Steven
asked.

“Because the first minor sacrifice is just to
do a blood offering to open the gates and it warns that opening the
gates between planes or worlds may disrupt this world and weather
abnormalities is a common result when you disrupt the different
planes,” I explained.

“Yeah, and it says once the offer has been
accepted the disruption should subside because whoever answers
would have entered through the gates and they will be shut once
again,” Jodi said, translating from the spell.

“So we’ll just have a demon spirit roaming
around?” Steven asked.

“No, he’ll possess the caster and share his
body until they seal the ascension with the final blood sacrifice,”
Jodi explained.

“So when the storm stops we’ll know if a
demon accepted?” Steven asked. His voice was steadier now.

“Well, I dunno. Shay? I mean, maybe they’ll
close if the offer is rejected,” Jodi offered.

“Even if it’s a very minor demon that
answers, one will. Black magic is the easiest to perform and any
demon or devil would answer him. It’s too tempting, like selling
your soul. They always accept,” I said, shaking my head.

“So, how long is it supposed to take before
you get an answer?” Steven asked, looking to Jodi, who scanned the
spell again.

“Three days, at most.”

“Of course,” I said sarcastically. “How
original to take yet another element from us and pervert it.
Whatever.” I shook my head, clearing my mind. “Well today would be
the third day, so that’s probably why the weather turned so
violent. I’ll bet money the storm is over tomorrow.”

“You think the weather will go back to
normal?” Jodi asked skeptically.

“No, not normal, but I’ll bet the flooding
subsides and the rain lets up.” I walked over to my window and
pulled back the curtains. The rain was still coming down in
torrents; a few thick branches had broken away from our trees and
were littering the ground. I stared up at the gray, rolling clouds,
willing them to open up to perfect blue skies that a Southern
California October usually had. “If he succeeded, if he’s answered,
this will stop at Midnight.”

“How do you know?” Steven asked.

“The witch’s day begins at noon so it ends
and begins both in light. Someone like this finds power in the
dark. His day would begin and end at Midnight, always in darkness.”
And that explained the cliché black candles and midnight spell
work. “He’ll attempt the third sacrifice on Friday because that was
the same night he tried to do the first sacrifice. Technically at
midnight Friday night is Saturday and that’s traditionally the day
for casting for physic attack and black is a power color.” I
started laughing, but even to me it sounded wrong, like breaking
glass. “It’s all so obvious and cliché I cant believe we didn’t
pick up on it sooner!”

Jodi’s face had contorted with anger, like
she too realized how simple this was to see before we’d found the
spell. “How could we have missed all this?”

“If you want to hide something, you put it
out in the open where no one will think to look for it.”

My dad took Steven and Jodi home in his big
truck pretty quickly after we’d found the spell. My parents were
getting worried about the water level in the roads and wanted to
get them home before it would be impossible to drive. I sent them
both home with spell books to do some research on combating demons
and sending them back to Hell without the aid of a priest or
pastor. I was sitting in my armchair again staring out the window.
I had pulled back the curtains to watch the storm and as night fell
it seemed to grow in intensity, if that was possible. I had decided
to stay up until midnight to test my theory and see if the storm
really would end.

I sat there in silence, gripping my mug of
hot chocolate with a blue candle burning on my side table for
protection against psychic attacks. I blinked, realizing my gaze
had become unfocused, and cleared my vision. The wind had died
down. I chanced a glance at my clock and saw that it was just a few
minutes after midnight. I walked over to my window, securely
bundled up in an oversized sweatshirt and sweatpants, and opened
the window. It was still raining, but it had a different quality
about it now; I didn’t feel magic in the air.

I looked up at the sky and realized the
clouds were a flat gray now, no longer billowing in different
shades of black. I couldn’t hear thunder in the distance anymore
and even as I stood there the rain lost some of its consistency. I
felt my cell phone vibrate in the pouch pocket of my sweatshirt and
answered it. “Hello?”

“Are you watching?” Jodi’s voice asked
me.

“Oh yeah.”

“This is bad.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know how I know, but I know it’s
stopping because he was answered, not denied,” her voice was calm
and even.

“I know.” I nodded even though she couldn’t
see me.

“Shay, we have to find out who’s doing this.
If we don’t, he’s gonna kill someone,” Jodi’s voice wasn’t scared
or worried; it sounded angry.

“I know.” Someone had invaded our territory
and destroyed a little bit of our peace. I felt like someone had
slapped me in the face. “We will, Fae, we will.”

I went to bed expecting to feel scared or
worried, but, just like Jodi, I felt resolved that, no matter what
was out there, we were going to stop it. We knew that it was just a
person and nothing to be scared of. I lay curled in my covers,
staring blankly at the ceiling, watching the shadows from my candle
dance across the ceiling and walls. I had taken to falling asleep
with the television on to help mask my screams in case I woke up
from one of my dreams. I reached and found the remote and clicked
it on, letting the soft white and blue light mingle with the orange
of my candle.

We didn’t have much time to figure out where
the caster was going to perform his final sacrifice, knowing he
would have found a new place because of the police and media
coverage of the last two ceremonies. I had a feeling the new site
wouldn’t be too far from the original. If I had spent so much time
and energy on something this powerful, I wouldn’t want to give up
the residual power I would have built, so I didn’t expect this guy
to. I convinced myself I was right about that because it gave us a
much smaller area to search. If we could find the location of the
sacrifice, then we didn’t have to worry about figuring out who was
doing the magic, we would find him. I just wished I had more
time.

I rolled on to my side, nuzzling into my
pillow and felt something sharp dig into the side of my neck. I had
almost forgotten about the pentagram necklace; I wore it so often
now that I usually forgot to take it off at night. I sat up and
unfastened the chain and set it on the bedside table. I felt sleep
pull at me and let it drag me under, pulling the covers tighter
around me.

I was walking through a fog bank, white and
gray mist swirled around my ankles, parting for me. I could hear
the distant crash and wash of ocean waves on the shore but it was
too far to taste salt on the air. Grass was beneath my feet, I
couldn’t see it, but being barefoot allowed me to feel the cool
blades bend beneath me. I heard a twig snap underfoot off to my
right and I froze, eyes going wide, trying to take in more of my
surroundings. I crouched instinctively, knees and back bent as if I
was getting ready to pounce. I turned slowly on the balls of my
feet in the direction of the sound, making as little sound as
possible.

“Where are we going?” I heard a young female
voice ask, giggling a little, but the voice sounded like an echo in
a tunnel, too far away. I waited, breath caught in my throat.

“Not much farther…” A man’s voice, but I
couldn’t recognize it. It wasn’t an echo like the girl’s, but it
was too far away to really hear the quality of the voice. The girl
laughed again, but the sound was fading. They would be too far away
to hear if I didn’t follow. I started off in the direction I
thought they were going, staying crouched as if it would hide me if
I came upon them. The fog began to dissipate and realized I was in
the woods again, but I could still hear the girl’s echoing laugh
and knew I had to follow.

A low rumbling growl clawed the inside of my
mind. The air shimmered around me with unholy power. Tips of claws
clacked against a stone all too close.

I took off like a shot, racing through the
woods, clawing at the ground for momentum, darting around trees and
letting branches whip at my face and scratch my skin. It was behind
me again, like a mad dog on the trail of a rabbit, starving for
meat and blood. I realized I could still hear the girl’s voice
asking where they were going and it wasn’t much farther; I was
leading this thing to them. That sense I always had in my dreams
that safety was just beyond the next tree was missing this
time.

I changed course, running with everything I
had in the opposite direction of the couple. I ran until I thought
my side was going to explode with the pain from the cramps, my legs
were lead, and I could hear the rushing of my own blood over the
crash of the waves. Somehow I found the edge of the forest,
bursting out of the line of trees onto a paved road. Like the
breaking of a circle, I felt all the magic of the pursuing beast
fall away from me.

I woke immediately, drenched in sweat but
miraculously unharmed for once. I lay there, gripping my covers to
my chest, breathing in the familiar smell of my room and caught my
breath. I refused to get up this time; the monsters always get you
when you give up the protection of your covers. I reached blindly
for my journal and pulled it in under the covers with me, turning
the pages frantically and writing down a list of images from the
location of my dream.

School was closed again on Thursday. The rain
had let up, but the schools were so flooded the city had called in
special trucks to pump out the water. The news reports said many
classrooms on the ground levels of the schools were damaged, so we
were probably looking at another day off, a five-day weekend. Too
bad it wasn’t something we could enjoy. Jodi and Steven had come
over in Steven’s mother’s car and were curled up again in various
places in my room. I finally told them about my dreams, accepting
the fact that the dreams must be tied to the sacrifices. Maybe they
were premonitions of the night we were going to try and stop the
guy. If that were so, Steven and Jodi needed to know about the
thing chasing me.