Flint Lock (Witches of Karma #10) (8 page)

WINTER

F
lint’s expression, as I wrapped chains around him, was one of those unexpected and priceless rewards that I would treasure for the rest of my life.

However long that might be.

Despite my cool and confident words to the contrary, I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to banish this demon. It had already ascended to the point that I could feel it, leaking miasma, from its nest within Flint’s soul. And that was without me having to take a peek at the said soul to try to hunt it down.

The demon was already more powerful than the few I’d helped to exorcise. Well, I had watched the process, at least.

I wasn’t about to let Flint know that I’d never banished a demon on my own.

It wasn’t that I had a death wish, it was that Flint was already on borrowed time. The longer we waited, the more likely it was that he would be completely consumed by the beast within him. Trying to find anyone else—someone more experienced—would just cost valuable time that we couldn’t afford.

I didn’t want to think about Flint becoming demon food. Despite my best efforts, I liked the guy. Sure, he was surly and quiet and not the best conversationalist in the world—and there was the whole demon thing, where he attempted to kill me every few hours—but, underneath all of that was a guy that I thought I’d like to get to know.

Heck, maybe it was just my appreciation for a pretty face. I liked looking at his face—and the rest of him, too, if I was completely honest. He’d looked ridiculous in my robe, for sure, but it had showed off the tone of his legs. I’d never appreciated a man’s legs before this and I was pretty sure that it was the specimen in front of me that inspired it, not a new-found fondness for male limbs.

Flint was back in his own clothes now. I’d starched his jeans, just because I could, and the bruises that covered me from head to toe really did hurt more than I was letting on. Let the starch be my subtle form of revenge.

From the way he shifted under the chains, I thought Project Jeans Starch was a wild success.

Other than that slight shifting, Flint didn’t appear to be phased whatsoever by being bound, chained, and padlocked to the bars of the stall, where we would perform this particular operation. I figured it was our best bet—for privacy, any mess management needed, and because these stalls could hold a ticked-off stallion, and I was hoping that meant that it would also be able to help contain a demon.

I was putting a lot of stock into hope at this moment.

As if those precautions weren’t enough, I’d pulled out the old Book of Shadows from the room in the barn attic. With that as my guide, I’d surrounded the inside and the outside of the stall with two large circles, containing basil, cedar, hyssop, cinnamon and other protective herbs mixed with salt. On top of that, I had added some amethysts, quartz, and obsidian that I had seen in one of the trunks in the workroom. If they didn’t actually work, protectively, they still looked pretty. Finishing up the protective circles were white candles, placed carefully at each of the six true points and seated carefully in small silver bowls—also from the attic—containing water. The bowls were set in small hillsides of even more salt.

Better overkill than be killed. I lifted up the book and started to chant:

“With Earth’s power, I protect thee

With the Sea’s tears, I surround thee

With the Heart’s flame, I guide thee

With my Breath, I stand by thee

Guarded from ill or harm or geas

As I will, so mote it be.”

So, it didn’t exactly rhyme, but I thought it should do the trick.

I turned ninety degrees and waved a bundle of smoking white sage around me. The smoke made my eyes sting. I fought the urge to cough. I’d always hated the smell of burning sage, but it was supposed to help banish evil, so I was willing to deal with it.

From the North I call the Dragon

From the South I call the Gryphon

From the East I call the Raven

From the West I call the Eldest One

Protect this place, and those within it

And if it fail, scour it and burn it

May a hundred years pass

Without life within it

Contain the circle

Contain the demon

Come to my call

I grabbed the silver athame from where I’d set it on the floor, and sprinkled my blood in all four directions, promising myself as sacrifice, should I fail.

I didn’t love the idea of my farm being scoured from the earth without life for a hundred years, but if it would help me banish a demon, it was a risk I had to take.

I wasn’t planning on failing.

Even so, I had sent Jinx off with Ms. Abel, who believed that I was going out of town for a funeral.

“Hopefully not ours,” I murmured under my breath.

My hand stung, where I had cut it. I glanced down, wondering if I might have been a little too enthusiastic about that part of the ritual.

Now it was time for the part I had been dreading. I drew in a deep breath, trying to settle the nerves that twisted my guts until I understood how a horse with colic must feel.

“Are you ready?” I asked, looking at Flint. He’d stood patiently through all my preparations without an expression beyond slight curiosity on his face. His expression didn’t look worried, but I could feel the turmoil under the calm surface.

Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. His arms were tight with tension. He looked me in the eyes and nodded sharply.

There were no more reasons to procrastinate, and a hundred reasons why I should act as quickly as I could.

Still, I hesitated.

It had been so long since I had truly used my magick. Sure, I had used it to help me heal, but that didn’t require for me to
really
tap into my powers. It was more like skating over the ice, instead of plunging into the turbulent depths.

I was scared.

I looked at Flint, hoping that he couldn’t see the panic in my eyes.

But, obviously he could. His lips curled ruefully as his eyes met mine. His life was in my hands, and he knew it.

He trusted me to get this right.

I closed my eyes and fell into oblivion.

Something wasn’t right. Normally, I could just close my eyes, align myself with the other person, and ‘listen’ to what their soul might tell me. I had counted on that being the case this time. The plan was to find the demon, and use everything at my disposal to drive it out of Flint.

Instead, I was sitting in a dark room.

The only illumination, through an impression of inky darkness, came from a bare bulb hanging above me. The light from it was weak, barely making a dent in the heavy blackness that surrounded me. It swayed slightly, though I could feel no breeze.

The room was bitterly cold and damp, with an underlying stench of rot. I gagged a little and tried to breathe through my mouth. The stink permeated the air. No wonder the ancients had believed disease came from miasma—bad air.

There was no furniture in the room. It was completely bare. The floor was made of dirt, and it was from here that the stench came. In the little light I had, the dirt appeared oily and dank.

I ran my fingers along the rough cinder-block walls of the room, trying to find an exit. I made three circuits around the room before I accepted that there were no doors leading in or out.

There was a single window, though it was far above where I could ever reach. I could just make it out in the light of that bare bulb. It was little more than a heavy grate in the ceiling. It dripped with rust and moisture. Oddly, despite the damp, it reminded strongly me of the kind of grate that my family used to use for barbecues.

As if to solidify that impression, the sky, or whatever it might be, beyond the grate was tinted with that strange color that clouds over fires reflect. It was murky, with flashes of reds and oranges. The colors moved and receded in a definitively flame-like way.

I shivered and tucked my hands under my armpits for warmth. If the world outside of the window was made of flame, I would have thought that it would be warmer within my cell.

Instead, the room seemed to suck any warmth from my bones. My teeth were already starting to rattle.

I dug the toe of my boot into the dirt below me. It was heavy and drenched in some kind of liquid. Not water, I was sure. Perhaps oil… or blood.

Blood would explain the stench. It did remind me of the cloying scent of decay and slaughter.

“You could have saved me,” a hoarse whisper croaked from the darkness.

I started and pressed myself against the wall at my back in an instinctive motion. It took a moment to realize that what I heard was, indeed, a voice. I’d been so sure that I was alone.

How could I have missed another person in a cell that was no more than ten feet by ten feet? Even as my brain sought to deny the possibility, my eyes picked out the huddled form on the floor.

Long, fair hair spilled over the awkwardly bunched-up body, soaked with the same damp that filled the entire room. It hung in tendrils, hiding the pale face of whatever being might sit there. The hanks of hair looked almost like tentacles in the dim, swaying light above us.

I was sure that it was only in my imagination that they moved.

It could have been a child, but I knew at once that this was no adolescent creature. There was something about her—and I knew, also instinctively, that it was female.

It was a young woman. She wore a long t-shirt over the scrawny awkward bones of her twisted body, the kind of t-shirt that passed as a nightshirt. I didn’t need to see the logo printed on it, because I knew exactly what it would say.

My heart galloped. At once, I wanted to know, but wanted also to deny whom it was that sat in front of me.

The girl raised her face. Her hair hung in front of it, but I could still make out her features.

After all, they were features that had haunted me for the past fifteen years.

Her face was pale, except for where it had been darkened by broken blood vessels. Those patches were dark grey in the deeper gloom of the room. Her eyes were wide, no longer a soft blue, but a glittering, malicious black. They were hooded and deep set, surrounded by dark bruise-like circles.

I could see hate in those eyes.

And I deserved that hatred.

She had been beautiful once, though that beauty had been robbed by death, as it robs all of us, sooner or later. The narrow bones of her skeleton pressed hard against the flimsy parchment of her skin. Her nails were dark around the edges. Her lips were cracked and dark. As I watched, a trail of blood slid out of one corner of that wrecked mouth and dripped a pathway across her chin.

She regarded me with her head cocked at an unnatural angle. It was a predatory sort of pose, the way she crouched there.

I could not help but lean away from her, though I felt guilty for the movement. I wanted to force myself to look at her—to acknowledge the truth, but I couldn’t.

I could not meet that hateful gaze.

“You could have stopped me,” she croaked, her voice grating out of her broken vocal chords. Her fingers dug into the dirt below her, more claws than fingers now.

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her that her death was not my fault. I wanted to tell her that there was nothing I could have done to save her.

But, I had always wondered, in the deepest, secret parts of my heart. How many times had I been haunted by the very words that she accused me with? How many times had I castigated myself for not seeing what was in front of me? Sometimes awake, sometimes asleep, but this haunting was no new thing.

She had haunted me for every breath I’d drawn since she breathed her last.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. My vocal chords were not damaged as hers were, but I could not make them work. The words scored my throat as I forced them to the surface.

She made a distorted paroxysm of what could have been bitter laughter, if only her face weren’t so bitterly cold.