Dark Magic (Harbinger P.I. Book 3) (14 page)

“I told Mary no, but she said if I didn’t help her, she’d go undercover and investigate the church by herself. I got the impression that she thought she had something to prove to her family. Her husband was the sheriff, her daughter a deputy, and I think Mary wanted to make them proud of her by taking down some bad guys herself.

“So I said I’d work with her on the case. I didn’t want her to go wandering in there by herself and get hurt. Every time she was going to the church or meeting with other members of the congregation, she’d let me know and I’d follow her. I was trying to protect her more than anything else, making sure she didn’t get into trouble.”

She finished her beer and put the empty bottle on the table. “It didn’t turn out that way. Mary infiltrated the group too well and when twelve people from the congregation were chosen to attend a special Christmas Day service, she was one of them. She called me on Christmas Eve and told me something big was going down and we might be able to kill Gibl. Up until then, all we’d uncovered was a bunch of crazy people praying to a monster.

“I wanted to kick down the church doors and start busting heads but there was nothing I could act on, no evidence that the pastor and the congregation weren’t just deluded. Mary said the pastor had assured the twelve chosen ones that Gibl would make an appearance on Christmas Day so I figured if that monster was ever going to appear, that was the time.”

She paused, sniffed the air, and said, “I think that lasagna’s ready.”

“I’ll go get it,” I said.

“I’ll help you.” Felicity followed me into the kitchen. When we got in there, she whispered, “Alec, if Cantrell finds out that Sherry is here, you’ll be arrested for harboring a fugitive.”

“So he won’t find out,” I said, grabbing the oven mitt and taking the lasagna out of the oven. I got three dishes and began slicing the pasta into three portions.

“You don’t seem too bothered about it,” Felicity said.

“Cantrell is in a world of his own right now, trying to figure out if there’s a connection between the death of his wife and what he saw happen to Deirdre Summers. He’s probably hoping the two aren’t related because nobody wants to think of their loved one being eaten by a monster.”

She sighed. “Well, just make sure you don’t get in trouble over this. I don’t want to have to visit you in prison.”

“You’d visit me?” I asked.

“Of course. I’d bake you something every day.”

“It might be worth going to prison just for that,” I said with a smile.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I bake for you all the time as it is. I always bring food to the office.”

“Not every day, though. And if I went to prison, you’d have to add an extra ingredient.”

“What’s that?”

“A file.”

Felicity rolled her eyes and went to hit me playfully on the shoulder. I caught her forearm and pushed her back gently against the wall, keeping her arm pinned above her head. Our faces were close, so close I could feel Felicity’s breath against my mouth.

Her dark eyes looked into mine for a second and then she closed them and leaned forward slightly. We kissed. She tasted of sweet tea and lip gloss. I released her forearm and Felicity lowered her hand so her palm pressed against mine, our fingers entwining.

Sherry’s voice came from the living room. “A girl could die of hunger around here.”

We broke the kiss and looked into each other’s eyes as we laughed. I reluctantly let go of Felicity’s hand and stepped back, dazed by what had just happened. “Wow,” I said.

Felicity grinned. “Yeah, wow.”

“We should get that lasagna to Sherry,” I said.

Felicity nodded. “Definitely.”

I handed her a dish and followed her into the living room with the other two and some forks.

“What were you two doing in there?” Sherry asked. “Making kissy-face at each other?”

Felicity looked at me sheepishly and I was sure a similar expression was on my face.

“Oh, sorry,” Sherry said, holding up her hands in front of her face and turning her head to one side. “None of my business.”

We sat on the sofa and I handed Sherry her lasagna and a fork. She tasted the food and closed her eyes in satisfaction. “Mmm, that’s good. Now, where were we?”

“You were telling us about Christmas Day,” I said.

“Oh, yeah. So, I waited on Mary’s street in my Jeep until she came out of her house and got into her husband’s Dodge Ram. It had been snowing heavily so I guess she wanted to take the pickup in case she needed to use the four-wheel drive. I followed her over to the church but I stayed a mile or so behind her because I wanted everyone to be in the church by the time I got there. That way, I could park my Jeep with the other vehicles and get my stuff out of the back while they were all busy in there doing their thing.

“When I got to the church, everyone was inside. I got out of the Jeep and opened up the back. I had an enchanted sword and a crossbow with silver-tipped bolts. I had no idea what would kill the monster and my research didn’t reveal anything specific so I planned to get some ranged attacks with the crossbow and then move in with the sword. The enchanted blades kill just about everything.”

She took another bite of lasagna and waited until she’d swallowed it before continuing. “I shut the Jeep and stood there for a while for something to happen. There was chanting coming from inside the church and, even though I didn’t recognize the language, I knew it was some kind of summoning spell. So I moved closer to the doors, ready to run in there if the summoning succeeded and Gibl appeared. That’s when I heard screaming and the sounds of bodies being thrown against the walls. I pulled the doors open and rushed inside, sword in hand, ready to slice up anything that wasn’t human.

“The place smelled of blood and sulfur and there were bodies lying on the floor, as well as pieces of broken furniture. In the center of the room, there was a dark bulky shape that stood as high as the church ceiling. I couldn’t make out any features because it was fading slowly, returning to whatever hell it came from. Luke Fairweather was standing by the altar, magic sparking from his hands. I knew who he was because Mary and I had researched the entire family and Mary said that even though Simon was the current pastor of the church, she got the feeling it was Luke pulling all the strings.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Luke thought Simon was a blasphemer and sacrificed him to Gibl.”

“Well, here’s something that doesn’t make sense,” Sherry said. “I started sprinting across the church with my sword ready and all the time I was telling myself that it was crazy to attack a magician like that. I expected a bolt of energy to come flying out of his fingers and blow me away at any second. But that never happened. Luke turned tail and ran through a door at the rear of the building. I heard voices outside and figured the rest of the family was coming to inspect the monster’s handiwork. So I went back to the Jeep and got out of there.

“As I was heading back up that road that leads to the houses, I ran into some kind of magical barrier blocking my way. So I turned off the road and drove into the woods but there wasn’t any trail I could follow and eventually I got stuck among the trees. I walked to the highway and hitched a ride from a passing trucker. Next thing I knew, my face was on the TV and the FBI was hunting me.”

“The sheriff and his daughter arrived at the church and found the bodies,” I told her. “All of the circumstantial evidence pointed to you. Amy knew you’d followed her mother to the church that day and when the police found your Jeep and it looked like you’d fled, they put two and two together.”

“And came up with five,” Sherry said.

“I don’t think they take monsters from other realms into consideration when they carry out their investigation,” I said. I ate the last forkful of my lasagna and then waved my fork at Sherry. “What were you looking for in my books?”

She put her plate on the coffee table and leaned toward us. “Luke Fairweather isn’t done killing yet. That’s why he ran when he faced me at the church instead of blasting me to pieces.”

“He’s saving up his magical energy for something big,” I said. “He could have blasted Felicity and me when we were at his house but he chose to let one of the family shoot me instead.”

“Whatever he’s up to,” Sherry said, “the church massacre was only a part of it. There’s more to come. I was checking your books to see if I could find any black magic rituals that involve killing thirteen people.”

“There are lots of them,” Felicity said. “Thirteen is a powerful magical number.”

“Yeah, I discovered how many there are when I looked through the
Grimoire of Dark Magic
.” Sherry shook her head. “So we’re back at square one. I was hoping to find which particular ritual or formula he’s following so I could predict when he’s next going to cast a spell and deplete some of that energy he’s been storing up. At the moment, he’s so full of power that attacking him would be suicide. When he releases some of that magic into a spell, that would be a good time to strike.”

Felicity closed her eyes and her brow furrowed. She began reciting something to herself.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“I’m mentally going through all the rituals I know of that require a sacrifice of thirteen victims,” she said. “Maybe I can find one that specifically requires a sacrifice of thirteen people in a church.”

“Has she got a database in her head?” Sherry asked, pointing at Felicity.

“She has a good memory,” I said.

Felicity opened her eyes and sighed in frustration. “It’s no good, there are too many.”

“How about the altar on the island?” I asked. “Do the symbols help to narrow it down?”

Felicity shook her head. “No, but if I knew which spell Luke used to summon Gibl, I might be able to work out the ritual he’s following.” Her eyes widened as an idea came to her. “Of course, why didn’t I think of it before? We might be able to find out exactly which spell he used. It should be on the crystal from the Apollo Stone.”

“You have my Apollo Stone?” Sherry asked.

“Yeah, it’s in there.” I pointed to the cardboard box in the corner of the room.

She went over to the box and took out the Apollo Stone. “Do you have a crystal reader?”

I nodded. “In the car.”

“Okay, so let’s fire it up and see what’s on here.” She took the crystal from the center of the stone and held it up to the light. “It’s recorded something because the crystal has gone cloudy. When there’s nothing on them, they’re clearer.”

“I’ll get the reader,” I said. I went out to the car and took the box out of the trunk. The rain had stopped, leaving the street glistening. The night breeze was warm and humid, tinged with the smell of night blooming jasmine in one of the nearby gardens. The smell reminded me of Felicity’s perfume.

I took the crystal reader back inside and put it on the coffee table. “Are you sure this is going to show us anything useful?” I asked Felicity. “Luke summoned the monster at the church, not the island, on Christmas Day.”

“No, he didn’t,” she said. “Not technically speaking. The reason he made that altar on the island out of a tree trunk is because he set it up as a permanent anchor point for Gibl to cross over into this realm. The tree is part of nature and it’s better than a manmade altar for making a portal that’s bound to a specific area. The summoning that took place at the church merely invited the monster to that location from the island.”

“So Luke would have summoned it to the island first and it waited there until his second spell transported it to the church?” I asked.

Felicity nodded. “He would have needed to use a lot of power to summon Gibl from its realm to the church. Since he already had the portal on the island set up, it would be much easier to summon it there and then later use a minor summoning to get it to the church.” She shrugged. “That’s what I’d do anyway.”

“It’s worth taking a look,” I said. Sherry handed me the crystal and I put it into the depression on the top of the reader, making sure the face with the projection hole was pointing at the wall. I turned out the lights.

A soft, blue glow emanated from the crystal and the box. A beam of blue light was projected on the wall. At first, nothing happened and we were all staring at a glowing blue square but then images formed like ghosts becoming corporeal. I saw trees, the sky, and the clearing on the island, all in blue monochrome.

Luke Fairweather appeared, trudging through the snow, his breath condensing in the air in front of his face. Instead of the usual black hoodie, he wore a padded winter jacket.

He cleared snow from the top of the tree trunk altar and mumbled a few words that were too low to hear.

“I can’t hear anything,” I said.

Felicity shushed me by putting her finger to her lips. The blue image on the wall was reflected in her glasses but I could still see her eyes, locked on the screen so intently that I wondered if she was trying to read Luke’s lips.

“I know this,” she whispered excitedly. “I’m sure I recognize it.”

Luke stepped back from the altar and raised his arms, reciting words in the same weird language he had used at the lake three years ago.

Felicity seemed to understand some of it, at least. She was nodding at the words, taking them in.

Luke’s voice rose as he seemed to be approaching to the climax of the spell. He flung his arms toward the sky again and shouted a sentence that included the word “Gibl” before stepping back to the edge of the clearing. Black smoke began to rise from the ground, twisting itself around the altar and the surrounding trees. It rose upward in a thick column, obscuring everything. Then the image flickered and ended. The blue glow dimmed slowly until it faded into nothing.

I got the lights and blinked against the sudden brightness when they came on.

I looked at Felicity, who was sitting very still, staring at the blank wall where the image had been. “Did you understand any of that?”

She nodded. Her voice was low and weak. “Some of it. Enough to know what ritual he’s performing.”

Sherry put a hand on Felicity’s shoulder. “Are you okay, honey?”

“This is really bad,” Felicity said. “He’s performing the Sacrifice of the One Hundred and Sixty-Nine Souls. It’s a thirteen-part ritual that will open a portal to Gibl’s world that will remain open. The monster, and whatever else lives in its hellish realm, will be able to come here and feed on as many souls as they want.”