Blood Moon (20 page)

“Yeah, you’re right.
 
She hasn’t mastered that kind of control, plus she will be a stronger asset as a werewolf. Rowan, don’t take offense. I’m not insulting your capabilities as a witch at all, but the werewolf part of you is primal, and takes no effort on your part.
 
With a little training in battle, you will be a bigger asset to your sister, Devon, and Blake as a werewolf.”

“No insult taken, Dean.
 
Thanks for the help.”

“The other advantage we have is that they don’t have the incantation. Without it, they can’t hope to accomplish their task, which means in the next three weeks, they will be ramping up their tactics to get at it.
 
So be careful and be aware.
 

“The good thing is we know where the ceremony will be – at least in a general sense – the chapel or graveyard somewhere. Which means we should probably check it out and get our bearings on where everything is.
 
I think we should also check out the Keaton Mausoleum and the O’Rielly crypt; maybe there are some clues there.
 

“We also know all the instructions/setup of the ceremony, but this isn’t an advantage, because Rowan and I have already pretty much figured out that the Keatons too know the details.
 
The spell is very specific, having the girls’ initials match the name of the moon and month, thus ‘naming them in the name of the Full moon’.
 
We also know when the ceremony will happen – the next full moon – the Blood Moon.”

“I thought the October moon was called the Harvest moon?” Blake asked.

“It has many names, as do most of the others.
 
It just depends on where you are getting your information from, the Wicca, the Druids, the natives, they all have different names for them,” Rowan answered.

“Blood Moon seems appropriate for what they plan on doing to those thirteen girls,” Dean commented.

“No kidding.
 
If we stop this ceremony, will the girls survive?”

“I hope so.
 
I’m guessing they are all alive, just under some kind of spell either keeping them asleep or zombified. It wouldn’t be much of an offering to the lunar moons if they were dead.”

“Not to mention, they’d be smelly. I mean, some of these girls have been missing for two or three months,” Dean said.

“Thanks, Dean, I really didn’t need that mental picture etched into my mind,” Rowan said.

“No problem,” Dean chuckled, “I’m here to entertain.”

“So who’s up for a trek to the chapel and graveyard tomorrow morning?”

They all kind of grimaced, but Devon said as he looked at Darby, “Well, you are certainly not going without me.” She smiled.

“What about you guys?” Darby glanced at Blake and Rowan.
 

“Well, I wouldn’t jump to ‘Wanna go, Yeah!’ but I think we need to go and soon,” Rowan said, and Blake nodded.

“Good.
 
Dean, you’ll be on ‘Allison Watch’,” Darby said.

“Always!” he said deviously. Darby laughed.

“It may be a little overkill, but I’m guessing that if they haven’t done it already, they will try the sleep spell again, making sure everyone is in the house. So, Rowan, I was hoping that we could go through both houses each night and do the protection spells nightly.
 
They’ll be stronger if we do them together and they won’t wear off if we do them nightly.
 
I think things are going to get pretty lively in the next two weeks, guys.
 
Be on your guard and stick together. Nobody ventures out alone. Okay?”

They all nodded in agreement.

“So can we eat now?” Dean said, “I’m starving. I could eat a cow.”

“Okay, now there is another mental image I didn’t need to see,” Rowan said.
 
“Are you going to go pick up Allison, Dean?”

“That’s the plan,” he said, smiling.

“Why don’t you go get her and meet us at Paddy’s where you can have, at least, some of a cow,” Devon joked.

“Sounds good! Can I use your car? Or should I use Rowan’s?”

Rowan said, “Just use mine, it’s already in the driveway and the keys are by the front door. Darby doesn’t have a car so that would leave them without one if something happened.
 
Blake and I have his, so take the SUV.”

“Okay. See you guys in a minute,” he said as he shot out the door like a bullet.

Darby said, “Apparently, he’s hungry!”

“Or horny,” Rowan laughed.

“My guess is he’s both,” said Blake. They all laughed and walked to Paddy’s.

Wendy Madison waited at the Distillery Restaurant in Moss Beach for her friend to meet her.
 
She sat at the bar feeling very uncomfortable about being by herself.
 
After more than an hour of waiting, she opted to take her third glass of wine out to the deck to watch the ocean.
 
The sun had already set and the fog was rolling in.
 
It was windy there on the deck but it barely fazed her.
 
This was the last time John was going to stand her up.
 
She had made up her mind.
 
She tried to enjoy her view and make the best of the evening that was shaping up to be pretty lousy.
 

It had been two hours and she had ordered some food to take home with her.
 
When the takeout was ready, she paid her bill and headed out into the dark parking lot thinking about how she was going to give John a piece of her mind the next day. She passed the SUV that was next to her car in the dirt parking lot and set the food on top of her car to find her keys when up from behind something hit her and everything went dark.

Chapter 19

In the morning, Devon left his keys for Dean and they all piled into Rowan’s SUV and headed for the cemetery. They hit the chapel first. They thought if they ran into the pastor or the groundskeeper there, maybe they could help them find their way around, plus they could explain why they were looking around.
 
They wouldn’t be able to tell all the details, but it was a start. They entered the narthex of the chapel. On what looked like a very old table was a large, beautiful urn.
 
Rowan and Darby had seen it hundreds of times, but never really looked at it. Every time they had ever seen it, though, it was always holding flowers - never had it been empty.
 
As Rowan was admiring the flowers in the urn, the groundskeeper entered.
 

“Hello, folks, what can I do you for?” he said in a very friendly manner. He noticed Rowan admiring the flowers and continued, “Pretty urn isn’t it?”

“Hi. Yes, it is.
 
I was just thinking that I’ve never seen it without flowers.“
 

“That’s right, Darling, and you never shall. That’s part of the dedication.”

“Dedication?”

“See there on the base, the inscription? It is dedicated to a local family for their community assistance, a long, long time ago. My grandfather told me that as a sign of thanks to the family, the urn was cast and a promise made to never have the urn empty for as long as the chapel stood.”

Sure enough, there was a tiny inscription near the bottom in raised letters and at the very bottom was a year: 1889.
 

“So is there anything I can help you with?” he repeated.

Darby answered, “You wouldn’t happen to know where the O’Rielly Crypt is or the Keaton Mausoleum, would you?”

“Sure, sure! They are both on the old side of the graveyard to the east of the chapel.
 
Just go out this door, make a left, and take a little walk past the gravel path and the old, low stone wall.
 
You can’t miss either of them; they are the two largest buildings out there. I believe the O’Rielly crypt is locked, but you can see inside through the window. The Keaton Mausoleum is a bit larger and is open.”

“Thanks for your help!”

“Not at all.”

Rowan was still looking at the urn and she read the dedication when the man left.
 

“Darby, look.
 
The dedication is to the O’Rielly family.”
 

Blake said, “Rowan, look at the side of the base.
 
Doesn’t it look like a seam of some sort, like maybe an opening or a drawer?”

“It does.
 
Same on the other side, but the nine seems crooked.”
 
She touched it with her fingertip and it felt like it moved.
 
“Darby, wasn’t the year the family vanquished the Keaton witch 1886? Not 1889.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re right! 1886. You’d think if they were dedicating something they’d get the year right.”

“I think they did, but I think the 6 is a locking mechanism, because it just moved.”

“Really?” They stood around her as she turned the 9 upside down into a 6. There was a click and the base popped out a tiny bit.
 
Rowan touched the tiny drawer and pulled it out. There inside was an ancient, folded up piece of paper.
 
She grabbed the contents of the drawer and quickly shut it in case someone walked in on them.
 
The 6 rotated back into a 9 and they headed out the door and to the left as the groundskeeper had instructed.

While they walked, they inspected the piece of paper that looked curiously like the sheets found in their own Book of Shadows. There written in familiar handwriting was a vanquishing spell.

“Wow. That in itself was worth the trip here.
 
All this time I’ve admired that urn and never knew it was dedicated to our family and even held its own little secret.”

They passed the gravel pathway the man had described and from there they could see the low stone wall.
 
A cold wind rustled the leaves on the ground making everything seem a little bit more eerie. Darby hadn’t realized how big the graveyard really was until now.
 
As the man had said, once at the stone wall, they could see two large buildings in the graveyard down below.
 
They headed for the O’Rielly crypt first.
 

As the groundskeeper had said, the door was locked but they could see inside.
 
There really wasn’t much to see, just an open area with plaques on the wall and a couple of alcoves.
 
Above the door, Blake had noticed a coat of arms.
 

“Look, Rowan, maybe you were destined to be a werewolf. Your crest of arms bears a wolf.
 
How cool is that?”

“I didn’t even know we had a crest,” Rowan answered matter-of-factly.

“Most families have them; they just grew out of popularity, I suppose,” Devon stated.

“Doesn’t seem to be much here out of the ordinary, shall we head over to the mausoleum?” Darby said.

“Sure.”
 
They turned to the right and headed in the direction of the mausoleum.
 
It was a foreboding structure and on the creepiness scale it had to score at least a 9-9.5. As the groundskeeper had said, the door was unlocked, and inside it was dark and damp.
 
Much more ornate than the O’Rielly crypt, it was decorated with gargoyles and other gothic features.
 

The door creaked open on groaning, rusted hinges, making a high pitched screeching noise of metal on metal.
 
As the shaft of light got bigger, more and more of the room inside was revealed. Instead of having the bodies in the walls like the O’Rielly crypt, it seemed the oldest bodies were set in what looked like huge sarcophagi. On the opposite wall from the door was colossal crest of arms.
 

They entered one by one into the mausoleum and looked at all the plaques and dedications from family members left behind.
 
Rowan and Blake headed for the back wall to look at the crest while Darby and Devon respectfully read all the dedications as they went around the room.
 

Rowan noticed on the crest an oval indentation at the bottom.
 
It looked like something was missing from this space.
 
Blake noticed the floor had scratches on it, hinting that the wall may somehow move because the scratches on the floor made a perfect arch.