Poltergeeks (18 page)

  Suspended high in the air like rotting marionettes were twelve corpses. Their burial garb was matted with smears of dirt and fluttered about as a cold wind kicked up dust devils beneath their dangling feet. Each pivoted toward me and then slowly floated to the ground. My mouth was bone dry and I tried to gulp but my throat was like sandpaper. Ice cold malice filled the air like a poisonous fog. I felt a tinge of something faintly familiar, and
very
focused on its task.

  The creature dropped down onto the grass. There was a flash of photo-negative energy and the creature's body parts exploded apart in a blast of eerie green light. I was just about to exhale in relief when I saw twelve ribbons of spectral energy weave across the cemetery toward the rotting husks.

  "Oh my God!" I whispered. Another jolt of panic shot through me. Each of the twelve corpses stretched out their arms. Their jaws opened wide and their hollow eyes rolled over to my position in front of the hedge. Slowly, deliberately, they began to stagger forward.

  "Run!" I shrieked. I leaped over the hedge, completely forgetting about the pain in my ankle.

  The creatures lumbered on, their lifeless eyes staring straight ahead and yet they somehow managed to keep in a line. The copper bracelet stung like sunburn against my skin and I grunted through my teeth as I leaped over another hedge, Marcus in tow.

  "You can't outrun them, Julie!" my father shouted as he floated backwards about thirty feet in front of us. "This is dark magic we're dealing with and those things are going to keep coming after you, even if you make it back home!"

  I came to a sudden stop. How in the hell was I supposed to take down a dozen revenants? My only exposure to the living dead had been through movies and TV, and now my father was telling me that I'd have to somehow come up with a spell to destroy them without getting our heads ripped off.

  "They're latched onto my magical signature," I barked. "And that means someone is controlling them."

  Marcus squatted and rested his arms on his knees. "So this is just another spell?"

  "You bet it is," I said, as I stretched out my hands to see if I could triangulate the spell's source. "But where there's a spell there's always a path of flow for magical energy. It's pointless to duke it out because the spell will just spawn more of them."

  "And there's probably a few thousand graves in this cemetery," my father said. "If it were me, Julie, I'd take an overhead view and see if you can tap into its location."

  My jaw dropped at my father's suggestion.

  Contrary to popular belief, witches don't hop onto the backs of their corn brooms and take to the skies. That said, science doesn't
always
apply to magic and because of this, witches have been known to
defy
gravity when the need arises. In short, we don't fly; we float.

  Two simple words make up the
Volatilis
spell, but magic words and phrases, like my amulet and now my copper bracelet, are merely a focus that allows magic to flow through a practitioner. A spell like the
Volatilis
is something only a seasoned practitioner can actually pull off and, like all magic, it takes intense concentration and the practitioner runs the risk of crash-landing if they're fatigued. I was already feeling the throbbing pain of a twisted ankle and the blast I'd sent at the creature had weakened me. To make matters worse, I'd never before attempted the
Volatilis
and I knew of no witch who could do it.

  The extended line of undead creatures plodded along, tripping over headstones and clumsily getting back to their feet. They were about two hundred yards from us. I gave my father a pained glance. "You can do it, Julie," he said with an air of authority. It was almost as if he knew what was going to happen next.

  I took a deep breath and grabbed Marcus by the scruff of the neck. "Put your arms around me."

  "Um, sure?" he said in a nervous voice as he wrapped his bony arms around my midsection.

  "Close your eyes and don't ask questions," I said as I tried to ignore the fact that this was the first time any boy had put his arms around me and that it was actually kind of hot. "Just
trust
me, okay?"

  I squeezed my eyes tight and reached for my magic. The copper band hummed as I shut out the sounds of the night and dug down as deep as I possibly could. It was time.

  I lashed out in a voice that blasted through the air. "
Volatilis Levitata! Volatilis Levitata! Volatilis Levitata! Volatilus Levitata! Volatilis Levitata!"

  I opened my eyes to see a whirlpool of magical energy above my head. Thin tendrils of magic reached over my shoulders and down to my feet like strands of spun gold, and I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch them. I pulled Marcus close to me and I tried to stifle my utter shock that the spell seemed to be taking hold. My feet were slowly lifting off the ground and I grated my teeth together as Marcus' weight threatened to short circuit the
Volatilis.
I pushed my focus deeper, drawing on all the supernatural energy in the graveyard to fuel the spell. It worked; we floated higher and higher into the air.

  Marcus buried his head into the nape of my neck. That was actually kind of hot too, well, except for the fact that he was shrieking into my shoulder. I glanced at the copper band and had to turn away from its blinding white glow. It amplified my magic, pulsing with the power of the spell that carried us higher and higher.

  "This cannot be happening!" Marcus wailed. "Human beings cannot defy gravity! No way this is real!"

  The spell's magic poured through the supercharged atmosphere and into my body as I pushed forward, floating through the air like a human balloon as I looked for a safe place to deposit Marcus. "It's happening! I don't know how I did it, but it's really happening!"

  "Good luck to Stephen Hawking if he tries to figure this one out!" he whispered in amazement. "Just don't drop me, okay?"

  "Not a chance. I've got to get you to a safe place."

  I looked around for my father and spotted him hovering beside an enormous poplar tree. The creatures were well behind us as I ducked into the dense foliage and deposited Marcus safely on a branch that looked like it was thick enough to support an elephant. I decided that it was time to use my peripheral focus to see if I could detect the path of flow for the dark spell that Hudibras was using to animate the corpses. The air was prickling with supernatural force, raising every hair on my body. I shut my eyes tight to allow my spirit to feel the waves of magic drifting through the cemetery.

  I reached out through the complex tendrils of energy, sending my senses rocketing out of the cemetery, soaring over buildings and rooftops at blinding speed. Below me, entire neighbourhoods appeared and disappeared as my focus stormed past familiar city landmarks in the blink of an eye. I whizzed along sidewalks, dodging pedestrians and parking meters and cars at busy intersections. I barrelled skyward, over treetops and lampposts at breakneck speed until I spotted a sign that read 'Welcome to The Beltline'. Less than a second later my focus was hovering over a row of high-priced apartment buildings so I scanned the pebbled surfaces of each rooftop, ignoring the ventilation ducts and elevator shafts until I spotted it: the Baphomet Sigil.

  The air carried the taint of malice and I could taste the bitterness of Hudibras' dark spell, but he was nowhere to be found. Suddenly I felt myself slingshot at near-warp speed through a magical wormhole until my mind realized it was back in the cemetery. I concentrated, letting the energy flow through me as I shaped my peripheral focus into an enormous magnet for dark magic. I grated my teeth together and pushed my newfound magical Sight to its breaking point, reaching out further and further across the rows of graves until I found what I was looking for.

  I opened my eyes and gasped.

  Below me as far as the eye could see was a tightly woven blanket of energies that pulsed and hummed in the darkness. Miniscule threads of purple light intermingled with thick strands of blues and greys that resembled the vapour trail of a jet plane. Plumes of ghostly mist shimmered and stirred like a bubbling stew, enveloping smaller, less dense clouds of energy, blending and swirling together as if they were all in an enormous pot.

  I held out my left hand – my copper-banded hand, the hand of a
Shadowcull
– and clenched my jaw as I latched onto a trace of the malice. My body pivoted in the air, as if I were a needle on a compass, directing me to the source. Within seconds, I spotted it. Like a giant shining worm slithering across the pavement after a thunderstorm, the dark spell's path twisted through the maze of spectral energy. Even at one hundred feet in the air, I could taste its hatred.

  It felt ancient, something that had been rotting beneath deep layers of dust and time. I could smell the faintest traces of burning coal and I could hear distant bloodcurdling screams. Terrified women's voices begged and pleaded as a chorus of self-righteous sounding males quoted biblical scripture. They spoke an older form of English, caustic and bitter, heavy with an accent that hadn't been heard in hundreds of years.

  My mind flooded with images of damp stone walls and loose hay scattered across a plank floor. I could hear the hissing and crackling of fire and my nostrils filled with the smell of smoke and blood. I saw chains dangling from a wall and the image of an emaciated woman, old and bent double like a labourer who'd worked a lifetime in a stone quarry. The oil and smeared soot on her wrinkled face did little to hide the bruises and cuts around her eyes and mouth. Another image flashed, the old woman now lay stretched across an enormous tree trunk and her wrists were bound to her feet. Kneeling in front of her was a thin man with an almost regal bearing. He was clad in a doublet, a red velvet jerkin and hose that stretched up from his buckled shoes over his knees. A thick cloak was draped over his narrow shoulders and his cold, accusing eyes bore into the old woman like a pair of blades, cutting through her cries of pain like a butcher hacking through flesh and bone. I fought back bile because I'd latched onto a simmering hatred so bitter that it seemed to poison each breath I drew into my lungs.

  "That's Matthew Hopkins," I whispered. "The Witchfinder General!"

  I should have been terrified at my glimpse into the past, but fear was the last thing on my mind. That poor old woman was either a witch or someone who was falsely accused and there was nothing I could do for her since the image was just a shadow in time. Not that it mattered much because Matthew Hopkins was back with stone cold vengeance aimed squarely at me.

  And I wasn't going down without a fight.

  I drew my spirit into a counter-spell that would act like a computer virus, latching onto the menacing path of flow, short circuiting his magic and sending him a reminder that I was onto him. Black magic might be forbidden, but I was a Shadowcull and the vile image of inquisition and torture ignited a primitive set of emotions in me. Here was the entity that was responsible for what happened to my mother. He was close. So close I could push through his centuries of hatred and repugnance. So close I could almost reach out and tear the skin from his face. I was a Shadowcull. I had the ability and license to draw upon the darkest magic in the name of protecting the innocent and dispensing with anyone who would threaten me and those I loved. I decided then and there to lace my power with malevolence so that Hudibras would know that I wasn't going to go down without a fight.

  The spell flew out of me as a toxic mixture of hatred, vengeance and rage. The words poured out of my mouth like a torrent of water through a spillway. My magic cascaded out, levelling headstones and hedges as a plume of brown dust and debris spewed high into the air. An inky column of black magic connected with Hudibras' spell like a battle tank smashing through a brick wall. A hundred feet below me, the rotting husks of the dozen creatures cried out in one shrill terrified scream, splitting the air with an explosion of pain and frustration. They dropped to the ground, writhing in agony as the magic that fuelled their decaying bodies shrivelled and withered like vines dying in a drought. I reached out, channelling my rage through Hudibras' spell, shaping and moulding it into a dagger that would mark my target. He was my prey now.

  I watched with calm fascination as the energy of his dark spell dissolved like a morning fog burning off in the sunlight. I willed the
Volatilis
to carry me back to the ground and the last thing I saw as I drifted over the treetops was a scorch mark etched into the soft turf below.

  It was my sigil, my mark and my birthright. I was a Shadowcull and it was payback time.

 
 

 
 
 

My father escorted us down a winding path leading to the north gate of the cemetery. Marcus said very little after witnessing me dispatch Hudibras' spell using dark magic.

  You know, really nasty dark magic that was laced with every ounce of malice I could muster.

  Yeah, he was pretty freaked out. Being chased by a swarm of rotting corpses bent on tearing your limbs off is probably a one-way ticket to the land of posttraumatic stress disorder, and my gut told me (not to mention the distance Marcus was now putting between himself and me) that he was probably scared to death of me now.

  "You've no need to feel like you've broken a vow, kiddo," my father's ghost said. "Were you not a Shadowcull, yeah, your coven would be coming after you right now. Pfft, the idiots would probably try to plug you into some kind of deprogramming regimen."

  I shrugged hard as we shuffled down a twisting path. "I don't feel bad about it. I did what I had to do. I've marked Hudibras with my magic and now all I have to do is follow the trail right to him."

  My father floated in front of me, as if to block my way down the path. His eyes narrowed and a look of foreboding washed over his face. "Yeah, well don't get too over-confident there, kiddo," he said grimly. "The spirit of Matthew Hopkins has spent more than four hundred years in the afterlife, bags of time to brood and plot against our kind. You need to understand that this guy was a pro during life. He used any and all means to extract a confession of witchcraft from thousands of innocent women and children. Don't even think for a moment that he doesn't have an arsenal of tools at his disposal to take you down."