A Touch of Mistletoe (16 page)

She smiled down at M.C., who gave her a small smile back. "Okay."  

An-An slid off the couch and knelt in front of the fireplace again. She'd just lit the kindling when she saw M.C. stiffen on the couch. "What?" An-An froze too, senses straining. Caught a sound from outside. An animal, howling or something, off in the distance.

Standing, M.C. crossed the room to one of the windows and pulled back the curtains. "There's something out there."

"The demon?" An-An stood, brushing dirt and wood flakes off her jeans.

"Probably." M.C. pulled out their phone to check the time. "It's still early though." They turned and headed for the door, pulling on their boots and coat. "I'm going to go see."

"Not without me." An-An headed for the coat rack to pull down her own coat and started yanking on her boots.

"You should stay here." M.C. pressed one hand to An-An's chest as she straightened up. "It'll be safer."

"I have the mistletoe." An-An gently touched the sprig still pinned to her chest. "You might need my help."

M.C. considered that for a moment and then nodded. "Fine, just stick close." They picked up a large flashlight and pulled open the door.

The wind that whipped into the house was freezing cold and brought stinging ice and snow with it. An-An hunched forward as she followed M.C. out onto the porch, wishing she'd brought a scarf with her.

The floodlights on the outside of the house flicked on as soon as they stepped through the door, illuminating the driveway and the front yard. The snow that lay a few inches deep across looked untouched except for their own tracks going back and forth to the truck and the plowed out drive. An-An's eyes strained against the brightness of the lights contrasted with the darkness of the woods around the house, but could make nothing out. Beside her, M.C. was still frowning.

The frozen branches of the trees in the woods around them creaked a little and the gutters rattled as they were blown by the wind. If the demon or animal they'd both heard earlier howled again, An-An couldn't make it out over the other normal sounds of winter.

"Over there." M.C. swung the flashlight towards the woods just outside of the floodlight's reach. An-An stiffened, body ready to fight even as her eyes and ears strained for any hint of a demon attack.

 M.C. took off at a fast trot down the porch stairs and toward the woods, out of the circle of light.

Despite the way her gut twisted with fear An-An followed. "Where are we going?" They cut through the untouched snow towards the trees, further and further from the house.

"Shush." M.C. hissed, swinging the flashlight in an arc trying to see as much of the forest around them as possible. An-An tripped over a fallen branch buried in the snow, partially blinded by the rapidly moving light. She cut off a curse, straightening up as M.C. took off again, walking fast and with purpose.

"I should be inside drinking eggnog," An-An muttered, hurrying to keep up with M.C. "Not running through the fucking snow."

Branches above their heads cracked loudly and a deluge of heavy snow dropped, some of it sliding down the back of An-An's neck and catching in her hair. She hissed and swore and dusted herself off.

M.C. knelt by what appeared to be a large tree stump, though it was hard to be sure since it was half-buried. "Come here." M.C. waved her over and An-An shuffled closer to see where M.C. was digging in the snow by the base of the stump. "What do you think this is?"

Squatting down close enough to M.C. that their shoulders brushed together, An-An studied what seemed to be a circle of stones half-buried in the frozen ground. The remains of several generations' worth of candles rested within it.

"It's obviously a spell of some kind." An-An reached out to brush snow off the tree trunk and trace the symbols that had been carved there. Frowning at them, she tried to recall her readings from the handful of classes she'd taken on folk magic. It had been her minor in college, but she hadn't used the knowledge much since. All the money was in corporate spell craft. "A summoning I think, for…" She frowned. "Something to do with revenge or vengeance. This spell is pretty much a curse."

"Great." M.C. sat back on their heels. "Do you know how to lift it?"

"I don't even know what kind of curse it is." An-An pulled out her phone and began taking pictures of the circle and the markings on the stump. "But give me a few hours and an internet connection, and I can figure it out."

"Do you think it's the curse itself killing the Morgans, or is part of the curse summoning a demon to do it?" M.C. stood.

"I'd say probably the second." An-An snapped a few more photos while M.C. scanned the forest around them.  When she'd finished, she stowed the phone and stood.

"We should go back to the house." M.C.'s voice became urgent and An-An's attention snapped to them.

She focused her attention on the woods around them. She couldn't see it, and didn't hear anything unusual, but, but M.C. was right, there was something wrong here, she could feel it in her bones.

They were being watched.

M.C. walked fast back in the direction they'd come; An-An hurried to keep up. Was that the crunch of snow under heavy paws, or was she imagining things? An-An could swear she heard breathing now, long, ragged pants, like a dog that had run a long distance, but deeper and with a growl. The smell of dirt mixed with wet fur and rotting flesh pricked at her nostrils, lodged in the back of her throat like ash.

Her steps faltered as she struggled to get a good lungful of air around the stench. They needed to keep moving, get back to the house. She knew that, but she couldn't breathe. She could hear the snow give under the creature's weight as it came up behind her. There was a high, sweet singing, but she couldn't pinpoint the source. Maybe it was coming from inside her head.

Fear froze her. The creature was close enough that she could almost feel its hot breath on her back.   

A hand slid into hers, the feeling of chilled fingers against her palm snapped her out of the consuming terror. "Come on." M.C.'s voice was low, but crackled with unspoken power. "We need to hurry."

An-An finally managed to move, turning her head enough to look behind her, but the giant demonic wolf she had expected to see wasn't there. Nothing but darkness, snow, and trees.

M.C. tugged on her hand again. "We need to
go
."

An-An let herself be pulled, half stumbling in M.C.'s wake, body leaden from the cold and her head still fuzzy, like in the first few minutes after waking from uneasy sleep. They reached the circle of illumination cast by the floodlights, but M.C. didn't slow, dragging An-An past the truck and up to the porch. Setting aside their flashlight, M.C. fumbled with the front door, finally pushing it open and towed An-An into the living room.

They slammed the door and then turned to where An-An still stood trying to gather her scattered wits.

"How do you feel?" M.C. took An-An's hands in their own and began to rub them briskly and it wasn't until they began to ache that An-An realized just how cold they were. Colder than they should have been, in fact. Yes, they'd hiked around the woods in December at night, but still her hands looked leeched of all blood, had gone blue under the nails.

"Cold. Fuzzy." An-An shook her head, still not feeling a hundred percent like herself. "Weird. I thought it was behind me."

M.C. frowned, obviously angry, but An-An didn't think it was at her. "It's more powerful than I thought."

"Too powerful for you to deal with?" An-An pulled her hands free even though they still tingled painfully and began tugging off her coat.

Turning towards the kitchen M.C. snorted. "Hardly, it will just take more effort than I had originally thought."

After pulling off her boots, An-An followed them into the kitchen. She found M.C. at the stove heating a teakettle full of water. "What would you rather have, instant coffee or hot cocoa?" M.C. asked without turning around.

An-An grimaced. "Hot cocoa for sure."

"I wasn't the one who packed the instant coffee," M.C. said, a smile in their voice.

"When you said cabin in the woods, I didn't know you actually meant mansion in the woods." An-An sat at the kitchen table, still feeling cold and weary to the bone. "If we'd really been roughing it, we would both be thankful for the instant coffee come morning." She pulled her phone out of her jeans and started to stroll through the pictures she'd taken of the spell they'd found.

The kettle whistled and M.C. poured hot water into two mugs with a spoonful of cocoa mix and then carried one over to An-An.

"What do you think?"

M.C. leaned over to table so they could see the photographs as well. "Definitely a summoning."

An-An sipped her cocoa and let the heat soak through her body. "Like I said out there: I think this mark means vengeance, so probably part of a curse. But these inscriptions are old, by at least a generation. I don't understand why this demon would only be a problem now."

M.C. crossed their arms over their chest. "Maybe the spell was deactivated and then reactivated for some reason."

"Or not completed until recently." An-An took another sip of cocoa.

"I'm going to call Linda Everett, since she was technically the one who hired us, and see if she knows anything about this." M.C. pulled their own phone out and headed for the living room.

"I guess I'll do research," An-An said to the empty kitchen. Taking her hot cocoa with her, she went in search of her laptop. She found her bag upstairs in their bedroom and hauled it out, then sat cross-legged on the bed, cup on the nightstand

She looked up when the door opened and then closed behind M.C. "I spoke with Linda. She knew the site we found. Evidently it's been there for as long as she can remember. The children used to play around with it when she was little. She said last year her siblings and cousins had stayed up late drinking and decided to light a candle out there for good luck. They thought it was some kind of shrine."

"They managed to complete the spell by lighting a candle?" An-An rubbed the back of her neck. "Does that seem right to you? Because that seems a really easy trigger for a spell like this."

"No." M.C. was on their phone again. "It doesn't seem right. If just lighting the candles was the trigger, the curse would have been completed a long time ago." They raised their phone to their ear. "Abigail? Yes, hello, I'm sorry for calling you so late and on Christmas Eve, but I need you to run a background check on someone. Yes, the name is Linda Everett. Is there anything on her? A background in spell craft, any affiliations with known cults or secret societies? Yes, I know we should have done this earlier but she's the client. Also anything you have on her family or husband would be great. Right now we suspect one of them of having laid a lethal level curse. Do we need backup?" They glanced over at where An-An sat "Well I'd hate to get a curse master out of bed at this time of night. I think I can handle the curse, but do contact law enforcement and tell them to be on standby. Look into that family because someone is lying. Oh, and have a good Christmas." They hung up and turned back to An-An.

"According to my folk magic databases, the curse seems to be of a kind very popular during the latter half of the nineteenth century," An-An said, looking down at her laptop. "It is related to a branch of folk magic referred to as 'household spell craft,' which generally means any kind of magic practiced by women inside the house and not sanctioned by an official college or university. In general, these curses are incredibly dangerous and cannot be lifted. You'll have to physically remove the demon or there's no way out of it."

"Lucky for us I'm an exorcist." M.C. came and sat on the edge of the bed.

"You keep saying that, but you haven't yet." An-An kept her tone teasing but M.C. still gave her a disgruntled look. Smiling, she slid closer to M.C. on the bed until she could reach out and put her hand on M.C.'s thigh. "We should be having sex right now instead of researching old curses."

M.C. finally smiled. "Work first, play later."

"This was supposed to be our vacation."

"And it will be once we finish up this case." M.C. leaned forward and kissed An-An on the lips. "I do want to have time with you, just the two of us, even if it's only an evening." 

"I want you so badly." An-An pulled M.C. close and buried her face in their neck, remembering their conversation from earlier that evening. Again she was overcome with the need to hold and protect. "I wish we were back home, I'd take you right now, beautiful boy."

M.C. kissed her again, harder this time, tongue pushing into An-An's mouth, teeth scraping across her bottom lip. She pulled M.C. closer, until she could hold them mostly in her lap, hands pushing up their back as she ate at M.C.'s mouth.

She wanted to push them both down on the bed. Wanted to slip her hand into the front of M.C.'s jeans, press her fingers into M.C. slick, hot cunt. She loved how M.C. would spread across the bed, would get up on their knees, lovely ass in the air, and beg to be fucked. M.C. loved to be gagged, loved to be taken from behind and An-An loved the noises they made, the way M.C. would gasp and mewl as An-An fucked them.

M.C.'s hands fisted in the front of An-An's shirt and they bit down on An-An's lip hard enough to make her growl. Heat coiled tight in the bottom of her stomach, spreading out to settle between her thighs and making her wet. She rocked her hips up against M.C.'s and groaned when M.C. shifted enough to press a knee between An-An's legs, not enough to hurt, but certainly enough to put pressure where An-An needed it most.

"I promise." An-An said as they pulled apart. "I am going to fuck you so hard when we get home, you'll remember it for days." She took M.C.'s lips again, plundering and claiming until she was light headed. 

"We need to finish the case," M.C. said when the kiss ended.

An-An very much wanted to push them back into the bed and convince them otherwise but nodded instead. "Maybe we should go back downstairs." She ran her fingers through her hair. Doing anything on a bed was way too distracting right then.