Chaos and Ash, page 5
Wariness drew Higgins’ face into a scowl, making him look either nauseated or constipated. I didn’t know him well enough to determine which. He had a thick black book tucked under his arm, and when we approached, he shoved it toward me. “This look familiar?”
The second my skin touched the leather cover, foreboding magic seeped into my fingers, chilling me to the marrow. I shoved it against his chest and jerked my hands back, rubbing my palms together. “Next time, warn me when you’re sending dark magic my way so I can protect myself.”
I focused on the tiny flame burning in my soul, imagining the light filling my body before creating a protective bubble around me. It wouldn’t stop an attack if the book was hexed, but it would keep the sticky, icky magic from seeping into my skin.
I held out my hands, and he gave it back to me. “This isn’t ours, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Where did you get it?” Ember peered over my shoulder and visibly shivered. As far as we knew, our coven had one dark magic book that our great-great-great grandmother had confiscated from a bad witch way back when. She’d locked it in a vault in the cellar, and no one had seen it since.
“Jason Monroe had it.” Higgins used his tongue to move the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other while he looked us up and down. “Said he and his friends got it from the thrift shop in town and used it for a séance but they contacted more than a ghost.”
I cracked open the book and flipped through a couple of pages. Drawings of demons, dark spells, and demonic sigils filled it from margin to margin. Someone had scribbled notes in the white space as well. The librarian in me wanted to gasp and clutch my pearls, but I highly doubted a dark magic practitioner cared much for book etiquette.
“A witch could easily summon a shedim demon with that book.”
Maybe so, but a human couldn’t unless the rift in the veil existed before they started the incantation. “I’m going to put this in the van. We’ll have to lock it in our vault.”
Higgins nodded. “Whatever it takes to keep your wicked spells out of the kids’ hands.”
“I told you it isn’t ours.” I gave Higgins the stink eye before turning on my heel and marching away.
“Is there a rift here?” I whispered.
“Just past the spruce tree in the clearing. You must close it, or others may escape.”
I hit the key fob to unlock the van and slid open the side door. In the bottom of the secret compartment lay another even more secret hidey-hole that only Ember and I knew about. Two taps of my index finger, my ring finger, index again, and then my pinkie unlocked the hatch. I slipped the book inside, tapped out the key backward to lock it, and grabbed the brown satchel containing our travel spell kit.
“Why do you care if others escape? You’re Chaos. Wouldn’t it please you to see our world fall under demon control?”
“Nothing would please me less. We must have balance. Order and chaos must be matched, or both our worlds would implode.”
“Well, when you put it that way.” I locked the van and jogged toward the clearing.
Ember parked her hands on her hips and squared off with the chief. “Did you call us here for help or to accuse us? You said yourself the missing kids are human.”
“I said they aren’t on the coven roster you gave me. They could be new recruits.” He took the toothpick out of his mouth and tucked it behind his ear.
It was a good thing Ember didn’t have her sword because the look on her face said she was ready to draw it and take his head clean off.
“We don’t recruit.” I stood next to her, resting my hand on her arm to calm her. “People are either born with magic or they aren’t. If they are, they find us. I promise you, our coven had nothing to do with this, but we will find out what happened.”
His gaze cut from Ember to me, his posture relaxing marginally. “Do you think it could be related to the fire in the old cemetery?”
I did my best to keep a neutral expression. “I thought they decided a discarded cigarette started it.”
He shrugged. “Seems odd the ground fire had been extinguished while the trees were ablaze. I’ll leave you to it.” He grabbed the toothpick and put it back in his mouth.
Ew. “Heat rises.” I returned his shrug and headed for the rift before he could ask any more questions.
“Can you believe that guy?” Ember fumed beside me. “After all the help we’ve given him… The safety we provide to the people of Salem.” Her hands curled into fists, her energy shifting, vibrating more intensely like she was about to summon her fire.
“Cool it, Em. We don’t need you setting the forest alight. That’s my job.”
“Right here,” Chaos said.
“No kidding.” I stopped in my tracks. Three feet in front of me lay a summoning ring the size of my bedroom. A thick line of salt encircled the space, and half-melted black candles sat on the inside where the five points of the pentagram would have been if they’d bothered to finish the spell. “We’re lucky the kids didn’t burn down the forest. Jeez.”
Ember let out a long breath. “Is this what you felt? But they couldn’t have summoned anything like what the kid described unless they had help.”
“You think we’ve got a rogue witch in town?” I set the bag at my feet and rummaged through it for my supplies. A bit of horehound, some heather, and dandelion ought to do the trick.
She shook her head. “How? We would know. We have the Witch Watcher in place. It would have sounded the bell if a new witch stayed in the city limits for more than twenty-four hours.”
I crushed the herbs in a small copper bowl and poured in the lavender oil. “Have you been reinforcing it? The spell has to be invigorated every two weeks.”
“Cinder always did that.” Her voice sounded tiny, her gaze drifting to the grass.
“And Mom before her,” I said. “It’s the duty of the High Priestess.”
“Well, shit.” She plopped cross-legged on the ground next to me. “What about that book? Aren’t you supposed to scan the resale and tourist shops to confiscate all the real magic before kids like Jason Monroe and his buddies can get their hands on them?”
I blew out a hard breath. “We’ve both gotten behind in our duties.”
“Maybe a power grab by one of the older witches wouldn’t be such a bad thing.” She bumped her shoulder against mine.
“Don’t say that. Leading this coven is our birthright. We can’t help it if we weren’t prepared for all hell to break loose. A little fire, please?” I held the bowl up, and she pointed her finger, shooting out a controlled flame as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do. For her, it probably was. I rose to my feet and brushed the leaves from my jeans.
“Don’t step inside the circle.”
“Thanks, genius.”
Ember clambered up next to me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Crap. Recover! “Gorgeous? It means you’re beautiful, silly.”
“Oh.”
Holding the bowl in front of my face, I whispered the incantation and blew the smoke into the circle. It spiraled upward, coating the inner rim in a translucent haze. Near the opposite side, not quite in the center, the smoke gathered, darkening into a thick mass before disappearing through the rift. “Found it.”
Ember’s mouth dropped open. “How in the hell…?”
“Back up,” Chaos demanded. When I didn’t follow his order, he boomed, nearly splitting my skull, “He is drawn to my power. Back up now!”
“Who?” My gaze snapped to the smoky tear in the veil, where a charcoal arm with thick talons protruding from each finger jutted through. “Oh, crap! The demon!”
I backpedaled, grabbing Ember’s arm and dragging her away from the summoning ring. A muscular shoulder appeared next. Then the side of a thick neck, and finally the fiend’s head. He had a wide face with a flat nose like a pug. A set of four-inch spiraling horns grew from his forehead, and as he snarled and pulled the rest of his body through the rift, black drool dribbled down his chin.
Ember yanked from my grasp and stalked toward it—typical Em—while my heart lodged in my throat and my feet froze to the ground—typical me. “Ember, you’re unarmed!” I shouted, and then I whispered, “What should we do?”
“Don’t move.”
“I couldn’t if I tried.” Ice flushed my veins, and my knees wobbled. I had never come face to face with a demon before, and let me tell you, I was not reacting the way a witch should. I should have been casting spells and kicking butt. Instead, my knees nearly buckled, and every spell I’d ever memorized evaporated from my mind as if I’d set a pot of my memories to boil on the stove and forgotten about it.
The demon growled, stepping one clawed foot back and shifting his weight, preparing to lunge at my sister. Em stood literally two feet away from the monster. It would take three seconds for him to fillet her. I couldn’t let that happen.
“Hey, ugly,” I shouted, my feet still glued to the ground. “When was the last time you brushed your teeth?”
The demon’s eyes snapped toward me, and his lips peeled back over jagged fangs, showing me no one had ever introduced him to a toothbrush.
“Careful, Ash. I cannot protect you without my corporeal form.”
“Holland witches don’t need protection.” I don’t know why Chaos’s statement rubbed me the wrong way, but it did. I must’ve been channeling Ember’s ego because I stomped forward, rubbing my palms together, ready to burn this bastard to the ground.
My fingers sparked, and I curled them toward my palms, lighting flames in both hands. Ember held a fireball the size of a cantaloupe.
“Fire won’t harm a demon.”
“This is magical fire.” I wound up like a baseball pitcher and hurled the biggest flames I could create at the demon. They bounced off the circle and landed in the dried leaves.
The demon roared and lunged. His horns smacked the perimeter, jarring him, and he careened back, falling on his butt. Don’t you know that pissed him off? He shot to his feet and rammed into the magic again. A shockwave pulsed from the circle.
“The cage holds.”
“Not for long. Ember, go get your sword. We’ve got to banish this sucker before he breaks free.” Grabbing my bag, I stomped out the flames, backed away from the circle, and dropped the kit on the ground. I wiped the copper bowl with an enchanted tissue to neutralize the magical residue and assembled the ingredients for a binding spell. I added the final component—a single drop of peppermint oil—and the concoction released a puff of purple smoke before turning to a fine powder.
I held up my hand and whispered a prayer to the goddess before casting my spell. “Standing tall or on your knees, in the name of the goddess, I force you to freeze.”
I blew the powder toward the demon as Ember bounded back with her sword clasped in both hands. But the spell hit the circle’s perimeter and shot back toward me. “Son of a bison!”
The enchantment wrapped around me like a magical boa constrictor, squeezing just tight enough that I couldn’t move my arms and rooting my feet to the ground.
“Interesting.” Ember reached for the circle, and her fingertips pressed against the invisible barrier. “Nothing can get in or out. I’ve never seen a ring like this cast before.”
“That is because the magic used was meant to trap a demon. Only those who practice the dark arts use it.”
“It’s a demon cage. Of course you haven’t.” I struggled against the spell, which was pointless. I’d cast the strongest one I knew, and no, I could not unbind myself. What would be the point if it were that easy to escape? Another witch would have to release me, but my sister was preoccupied.
Ember pretended to lunge at the demon, laughing as she feinted right, then left. The fiend was not amused in the slightest. He roared and rammed against the magic. A sound like cracking glass reverberated through the clearing.
“Would you mind unbinding me before that creature kills us both?”
My sister winked at the demon, getting in one last taunt before she recited the unbinding incantation. Lucky for me, Ember had that one ingrained in her vim and didn’t require a potion. The hold on me disintegrated, and I stumbled, dropping to my knees.
“We’ll have to break the circle before we can banish him.” I dumped the contents of my bag on the ground, scrambling to find the right ingredients—again—to make the potion. “I’ll bind him; you stab him.”
“The shedim has two hearts. Both must be pierced to vanquish him.”
Well, wasn’t that hunky dory? “Where? Side by side?” I whispered under my breath.
“In the center of his chest, one above the other.”
I crushed the herbs with a pestle and looked at Ember. “I’ve been learning about demons. If this is the kind I think it is, he’ll have two hearts in the center of his chest.” I pointed to the two spots on my body where I imagined they would be. “You have to pierce both to vanquish him.”
“I am so glad you’re a bookworm.” She spun her sword at her side. “I’d have just taken off his head.”
I unscrewed the cap on the peppermint oil and tipped it toward the bowl. Nothing came out. “Crapity crap. I used the last drop in the spell that bounced off the circle.”
“Can you improvise?” Ember’s eyes grew wide, and I followed her gaze toward the circle.
The demon crouched at the far side and took off like a sprinter, ramming the perimeter and shattering the spell. He was free, and we were screwed.
CHAPTER SIX
The shedim ran straight at me. My heart didn’t just leap into my throat; it tried to escape through my nose. Ember jumped in front of the beast and swung her sword, giving me a chance to scoop up an armful of ingredients and get the hell away. I ducked behind a tree trunk and laid out what I’d nabbed, hoping to Hades I’d packed an extra bottle of peppermint oil…or at least stashed a York patty or something. Peppermint was essential for this spell to hold.
“Improvise faster!” Ember called above the racket of demon snarls and sword slashes. She grunted like she had the wind knocked out of her. Then the demon wailed. Payback was a bitch.
“Why would your sister taunt such a demon? He will shred her once he is finished playing with her.”
“If you both would can it for a minute, I might be able to stop that from happening.” I tossed aside a bottle of lavender oil. It might slow the beast down, but I needed something sharp and quick if I wanted to bind him. “In answer to your question, that’s Ember for you. Hot-headed, quick-tempered badass, who’s the most loyal witch you’ll ever meet.”
He scoffed. “Witches are only loyal to themselves.”
“Says the demon who’s helping me vanquish another demon.” Lemon grass, chamomile, bee balm. If I wanted to give this guy the best nap of his life, I’d be set. Wait… That wasn’t a bad idea. A relaxation spell combined with what I had of a binding potion could slow him down enough for Ember to do her thing.
“Does the shedim have any immunity to magic that I should know of? I mean, aside from being impervious to fire?” I uncorked the lavender and chamomile when my gaze locked on the bottle of spearmint by my right foot. This just might work.
“Sadly, none of us do, or I wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
“Good to hear.” I put a drop of each oil into the bowl. Nothing happened. “Shitake mushrooms. Come on!” I stirred the contents and peeked from my hiding spot behind the tree.
Ember grasped her sword in both hands and swung it over her head, spinning in a circle as her right leg swept out and connected with the demon’s ankle. The demon flailed backward, but he caught himself before his ass could meet dirt. My sister was so good at pissing off her foe. The shedim swiped a taloned claw forward, catching her t-shirt and tearing it nearly in two.
“That was my favorite top, you sorry sack of incubus jizz.” She slashed again, ripping into his thigh. His pained screech nearly tore my head in half.
“He’s angry. She will not last much longer.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” I whispered the incantations: first the binding spell in hopes that the spearmint would be strong enough, and then the relaxation invocation. The potion simmered. Then it sizzled. Then it popped, and a green flame shot out six inches from the bowl. “Huh. That’s new.”
“Have you tried this spell before?” I didn’t appreciate the wariness in his voice.
“Apparently, this is my day to step out of my comfort zone.” The potion turned to black granules, like fresh ground pepper, rather than the powder I expected.
“Will it work?”
“Only one way to find out.” I poured the grains into my palm and fisted my hand. Pushing to my feet, I peered around the tree to gauge the demon’s location. At least one of the Holland sisters had to look before she leaped.
Ember stabbed the fiend in the gut. It wailed and jerked away, wrenching the sword from her grasp. Black goo oozed from the wound as it yanked the sword from its belly and tossed it aside.
“Any day now, Ash.” Ember grabbed a set of daggers from her ankle holster.
With the demon’s back toward me, I whispered a silencing spell so I could attack in stealth mode. My feet pounded the ground, but I made no sound as I darted toward it.
Ember jabbed her dagger into its shoulder. It swung its arm, claws raking my sister’s stomach. A pained shout ripped from her throat, and she doubled over.
I hurled the enchanted granules at the beast’s backside. They stuck to him like ticks on a dog before absorbing into his ashy skin. He lifted his arm again, his movements slow and heavy.
“That’s the best I could do. Are you okay?” I grabbed Ember’s sword and ran toward her, ready to stab the fiend through both his hearts. She couldn’t hear me, thanks to my silencing spell.
“Oh no.” Ember made a grabby motion with her hands. “This is personal. He’s mine.”
Who was I to steal her chance at retribution? I handed her the sword.
