Demon Moon (Prof Croft Book 1) (16 page)

Good, because I had work to do.

After a dinner that was—I had to hand it to Tabitha—pretty stellar, I climbed the ladder to my library and lab.

The city model in the corner was dim, which disturbed me. I’d already decided that whoever had supplied the conjurers the shrieker spell was up to something big. What, exactly, I didn’t know. But for him or her to stop now?

No, I didn’t like it at all.

Best case, the Order had addressed the matter. But apart from disciplining their own, the Order almost never acted with that kind of speed. Even if they had, they wouldn’t necessarily tell me. Which left me on the hook with Bashi. No matter how I squinted at the situation, I was going to have to track down the East Village conjurer and find out who supplied the spell.

Right now, though, the cathedral case was the more pressing. There was my job at the college, sure, and needing to get the promised info to Detective Vega by tomorrow. But there was also Father Vick. The more I thought about what Vega had told me outside the cathedral, the more certain I became that the investigative noose was drawing around his neck. If I didn’t deliver a more compelling suspect, Father Vick was going to get strung up for something he hadn’t done. And given the nature of the crime, capital punishment was
not
out of the question.

My best lead—all right, my
only
lead—was the druid cult in Central Park, who might or might not call themselves Black Earth and might or might not have any connection to Father Richard’s murder.

Slam dunk, right?

I set a portable range on my table and placed a cast-iron pot onto each of the two burners. I split a bottle of green absinthe between the pots and set the burners to medium. Given the kinds of horrors that lurked in the Park—and that the druid group was an unknown quantity—my objective was to get in and out unnoticed and to keep anyone or anything who tried to kill me from doing so.

That meant potions.

I didn’t have time to prepare the more elaborate ones I’d been planning, but I had a couple of quick and ready recipes to fall back on. Into the left pot I scattered brown clumps of rabbit’s hair, a heaping spoonful of baking soda, and about half that of chameleon scales. With a wooden spoon engraved with casting symbols, I stirred the ingredients of the stealth potion.

“Furtiva,”
I chanted, directing energy through the spoon.

The liquid bubbled and thickened to a gray sludge. Satisfied the mixture was on its way to becoming the potion I wanted, I twisted the burner’s knob to low. In an hour or so, it would thin to a liquid I’d be able to drink.

One down, one to go.

I turned to the other steaming pot and took a focusing breath. This would be for self defense, and with a just-purchased vial of sloth urine on hand, I decided to go with an encumbering spell. I uncapped the vial and tipped it over the pot. To the absinthe and foul-smelling urine, I added a nugget of tungsten, a large syringe-full of condensed fog, and some Plaster of Paris. Following healthy doses of energy and intention, the mixture began to sludge and bubble, casting up a rancid odor.

“Christ,” I muttered against my sleeve. At least I wouldn’t have to drink that one. Woe to the unlucky bastard I squirted it at, though.

With my potions simmering, and an hour to kill, I climbed down from the lab and retrieved the music box and my revolver. It was a longish shot, but maybe Effie would have something for me by now.

Washington Square Park drifted with the chill mist of recently-fallen rain. I checked to make sure no ghouls were lurking before climbing into the drained wading pool and winding the music box.

“That you, Everson?”

“Hey, there.” I twisted to face the entity who would always remain the phantasmal likeness of an eight-year-old girl. Effie’s eyes widened as they moved past me.

“You brought me music box,” she cried, running toward it.

It was that whole echo thing. Unless redirected, ghosts tended to repeat themselves from one encounter to the next, and often several times within the same meeting, like video loops or skipping records.

“Hey, did you get a chance to talk to your friends?”

“ ’Bout whut?” she asked, focused on the box she couldn’t quite handle.

“About whether they’d been down to St. Martin’s in the last few weeks and seen anything unusual.”

“Oh, thas right.” She gave up on the box and started skipping in a circle, her shifting dress and clogs eerily silent over the damp leaves. “Jus’ Mary, but you can’t believe a word she tells ya.”

I frowned. Just what I needed, an unreliable witness.

“What kind of manure is she unloading this time?” I asked.

“Says she was there a fortnight ago, playing hide an’ seek with a feller at night.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Man with a funny robe and hood. Says ’e was in the graveyard, but ’e wouldn’t come from hiding, even when she found him.”

“Did Mary say
where
he was hiding?”

“Behind a crypt ’neath a scary tree.”

I perked up like an antenna. She was talking about the mossy tomb I’d walked past that morning, in the old part of the graveyard. A fortnight would have been about ten days before the murder. Had the robed man been staking out the cathedral? Plotting his crime?

“Did Mary notice anything else?” I asked.

“Jus’ that ’e was easy to find on ’count of his mumbling.”

Mumbling? “Could she make out any of the words?”

Either Effie’s ghost was tired of the questions or didn’t think anything from Mary’s mouth was worth exploring, because she didn’t answer. She stopped at her music box, and when she began to sing again, it was as though I was no longer there. I made a few attempts to bring her back to Mary’s story, but the ghost was too absorbed in her solemn lullaby.

I sat back in thought. Some druids were known to wear hooded robes. Not much of a lead, I admitted, but neither did the ghost’s account rule them out. I checked my watch. The potions would be about ready.

30

It was one a.m. by the time I reached Central Park. From the relative safety of West 110th Street, the North Woods looked perfectly forbidding. As my chatty cabbie had been all too enthused to point out (I suspected amphetamine use), the area had become known as “The Bone Yard” because of the gnawed human remains that turned up from time to time.

“So unless you’re trying to lose a whole lotta weight, guy, I’d steer clear.” His laughter had gone off like machine-gun fire in my face.

Hilarious.

I eyed the dense growth as the cab motored away, finding it hard to believe anyone would choose to venture in there, much less call it home—even a powerful cult of druids. But the bits of info I’d assembled pointed to just that.

“It’s just never easy,” I muttered, pulling a water bottle from inside my jacket and untwisting the cap. The stealth potion coated my throat as I gagged it down, the aftertaste like something you’d drain from an old car engine.

But as I ducked into the trees, the potion began to work its magic. A tingling force grew over me like a wool glove. An inspection of my body showed that I was blending into the surroundings. My footfalls softened until they made no sound. Though I didn’t have an animal’s sense of smell, I knew my odor was being suppressed as well.

After cresting a hill, I eased my way down a rocky ravine, where I could hear water flowing. The hidden moon diffused enough pale light through the low cloud ceiling to see by. When I encountered a family of cropping deer, I weaved through them as a test. None of them even raised a head.

“Yes!” I whispered, causing the deer to bolt.

Like much of magic, potion-making was unpredictable. A recipe followed the same way ten times could yield ten varying results, depending on the skill of the magic user. My consistency was improving, but it was nowhere close to Elder-level magic. And even though I’d nailed the stealth potion this time, it had its limits. Time, for one. It would probably hold up thirty minutes before petering out.

Meaning I had to hoof it.

At the bottom of the ravine, I rock-hopped a stream and came upon an old path winding alongside the waterway. That I’d found the path at all told me it was still in use. By what, I couldn’t tell. Whether it was a trick of shadow, one set of prints looked awfully trollish.

I followed the path, hoping druids used it, too.

Druids weren’t wizards, but they were wizard-like. They drew energy from nature essences, ancestral worship, and, in some cases, ancient gods. They were also big into consulting stars for omens. But that was all generalization. Like any class, druids came in different flavors—and if the group I was seeking
had
bludgeoned the rector, then I was dealing with one of the more homicidal variety.
Nigra Terra
of Roman times was supposed to have engaged in human sacrifice, even using human skin as parchment for its sacred texts. If we were talking about a descendant group, I hoped they’d at least updated to bond paper.

The path passed beneath a crumbling stone archway, fallen stones piled to one side, before seeming to end in a small clearing of boulders. The trees bordering the clearing looked impassable. I expended precious potion time searching the area but found no signs of anything. I was preparing to return down the path when it occurred to me to check for a veiling spell.

“Svelare,”
I said, sweeping my glowing cane in a slow circle.

One by one, boulders loomed from the darkness and receded into shadow. I had almost completed the circle, when a boulder set back behind some others seemed to ripple.

Hmm?

I was moving toward it when a whisper rose on the wind.

“We see you, fiend.”

My heart beat into my throat as I killed the light. I looked around but could make out no one and nothing. Just the shadows of boulders. A chill energy swirled through the clearing. Druid magic? As I returned my gaze to the rippling boulder, it straightened into the silhouette of a hooded, scarlet-robed figure.

I separated my cane into sword and staff. “Who are you?” I demanded.

“We are death to your kind,” the figure whispered.

The death part was troubling enough, but
we
? I ventured a peek around.

Okay. I was surrounded by robed figures. I must have triggered a spell planted on the trail. Veiled, the druids had waited for me to walk into their midst. Like a dummy, I’d obliged—and lit my staff. With the druids’ attention now focused on me, I could feel the magic I’d pushed into my potion thinning. So much for sneaking in and out. But if dialogue proved more expedient for learning what I’d come to find out…

“Wait,” I said as the robed figures moved nearer. “I’ve come to warn you.”

The whisperer, who I took to be the head druid, let out a chilling laugh. “
And he will appear unto mortal eyes as saintly, and earnest and righteous will seem his pleas, but do not be ye deceived, for he ariseth from the darkest pits and bringeth death and ruin.
So the stars have foretold it.”

I realized he was quoting from early pagan scripture, an omen that spoke to the return of Sathanas, demon lord of Wrath, the last to be cast from the world by Michael. I’d discovered in my research that the early druid cults defined themselves in part by the stars they consulted. The stars used by one cult in particular pointed to the present age for Sathanas’s return. That cult was
Nigra Terra
: Black Earth.

“Whoa, there,” I said. “I’m not the death and ruin guy, I promise. I’m a wizard, a magic user like yourselves—”

“Who comes bearing the stink of demon.”

I paused to sniff my shoulder. Damn. Not only was my stealth spell starting to wear off, but the smell from my shrieker encounter three nights before lingered like cheap perfume.

“I can actually explain that,” I said.

“Can you explain, oh
wizard
, why you were seen fleeing a demonic summoning?”

I hesitated. These guys read the
Scream
?

“Since you ask, yes,” I said, “but that’s not why I’ve come. There’s talk among city officials of cracking down on magic users. I’m not sure to what lengths they’re planning to go—mass evictions, arrests, worse—but I’m trying to warn all of the groups I know before it happens. We need to unify.”