Awakening (19 page)

I ate in front of the fire. When
finished, I decided to lie down and close my eyes. There was no
reason not to take a nap. Nothing pressing had to be done. If my
family was going to contact me, they would. There wasn’t anything I
could do to speed up the process.

A blanket lay on the back of one of
the chairs. I grabbed it and pulled it over me as I settled down on
the couch. I closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind. After a
while, I drifted off to sleep. And the dreams began.

I was back in the pantry.
James closed the doors in front of me and whispered the spell that
locked me in. I watched in horror as men surrounded my family. My
father fought. He struggled hard, using magic to keep the men at
bay, but the defensive magic of a healer was no match for the
physical and magical forces he was facing. They quickly overpowered
him. They grabbed him from both sides and forced him down to his
knees.

A man I didn’t recognize
pulled out a knife and raised it high in the air.

“
Join us and live or
refuse us and die,” the man demanded.

“
Macaven, I’ll never be a
part of your madness,” my father yelled.

Before I could cry out,
the man brought the knife down fast and hard against my father’s
throat. Blood gushed out. Desperation filled my father’s eyes as he
struggled to get free. The more my father struggled, the faster the
blood spilled. It ran down his shirt and splattered onto the floor.
Gradually my father stopped resisting. His body went limp. The men
let go of his arms, and my father fell forward, crashing to the
floor.

I cried out. I screamed. I
pushed and shoved against the pantry doors. My fingers bled as I
clawed at the wooden slats, trying to force my way through. But I
couldn’t get out.

I watched the man holding
my mother throw her across the room. She fell to the floor. And
then she was up on her feet and running. But she only took two
steps before her body lurched forward. A bullet tore through her
and embedded into the wall. A red spot appeared on her forehead as
she twisted around and fell backward. She slammed into the wall and
slid to the ground.

I closed my eyes, covered
my hands over my face and screamed “No!” over and over. I slumped
forward, tears streaming down my face. I was crying so hard I could
barely breathe. I don’t know how long I was there, on the floor.
There was only grief. Pain and rage filled my mind and body. Time
seemed to stand still.

This wasn’t happening.
This was a nightmare I would wake from any moment. I finally sat up
and forced myself back on my feet. That’s when I heard James’s
screams. I made myself look again through the wooden
slats.

James stood on the other
end of the room, his hands raised in the air. Magic flowed from his
fingers until other magic came crashing down on top of his and
forced him back. Another scream ripped from his throat, and I
watched in horror as they scooped James’s spirit from his body.
Some sort of death magic I had never seen before skipped the step
of murder and went straight to stealing his soul. They tore his
soul from his body. Forced it out and threw his spirit into the sea
of unrest. I could hear James’s anguish as his spirit left this
world and was sucked into the other. James’s screams lingered until
I didn’t think I could take it any longer. I clamped my hands over
my ears, praying to wake from this horrible nightmare.

And then my eyes opened.

Luke stood over me, gently shaking my
shoulder. ”You were crying out in your sleep.”

“
I was?” I touched my
cheeks, which were wet with tears.

He sat down next to me. “You were
calling out a name.”

I sat up. “What time is
it?”

“
It’s late.” He was
suddenly anxious. “Colina, did your brother’s spirit come to
you?”

“
It was just a dream. I
remembered what happened to my family. It was a nightmare.” The
same nightmare I’d had since my family was killed.

Luke looked grim. “There’s been no
contact with your family?”

“
None,” I
whispered.

Luke’s fist came down hard
on the coffee table. “It doesn’t make sense!”

“
Maybe they went to the
light.”

“
Maybe.” He didn’t sound
convinced. He turned and watched the fire. “But their deaths were
so sudden and unexpected.” He turned back to me. “The way they
died…violently. I was so sure they’d come to you.”

Images rushed into my mind
again, those last terrible moments of my family’s lives forever
embedded in my mind. I tried to force those horrific memories
away.

We watched the fire for a while in
silence.

Luke reached out and
grabbed my hand. “There’s something we can try, but it’s not
something I would normally even think about doing. But we’re
running out of options and time.” He squeezed my hand. “It could be
dangerous.”

“
More dangerous than the
trials?” I whispered.

“
No.”

I realized I’d been holding my breath
and let it out.

“
Have you ever used an
Ouija board?”

At his question, I sucked
in a breath. Was he serious? An Ouija board? “My parents would
never have allowed one in the house.”

He gave my hand a
reassuring squeeze. “My kind doesn’t need the boards to communicate
with those on the other side. Since you’ve become one of us, since
you’ve gone through the first two rituals, you can contact any
spirit that wants to communicate with you.”

“
If my parents or James
wanted to talk to me, they could communicate with me
directly?”

He nodded. “Yes, but since they aren’t
coming to you, there’s a way we can persuade them to
communicate.”

“
Force them like you force
the banshees?” The notion of binding my family like that made me
ill.

His voice was low. “This is
different. The banshee is a spirit that willingly comes to you.
Once you’re in contact with spirits, you can bind them to you. Make
them do your bidding. You create the banshee. If your family is out
there, their spirits unsettled, we can use the board and do a spell
that will make them come to you. Forcing a spirit forward isn’t
something we normally do. The spirits, when they come to you this
way, are angry and upset.”

Upset and angry spirits. Not something
I wanted to deal with. Ever. “So making them show up pisses them
off?”

“
Yes, and spirits do have
power. They can hurt you physically.”

I touched the scratches on my arm.
“Like the scratches I got from the banshee.”

“
If they’re angry enough
they can touch the living and manipulate objects.”

I sucked in a breath and jumped to my
feet. “Manipulate objects. You mean move things?”

“
Knock things over, throw
things.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I
turned away and walked toward the fire. I stood there watching the
flames for a long while before I asked, “We do this spell and my
parents will come?”

Luke came to my side. “If they’re
around, yes.”

“
And then what?”

He put his hand on my
shoulder. “Then we try to get any information we can that will help
us find Darla.”

I turned and looked at him. “Okay,
let’s do it.”

He looked surprised at my
answer.

I shrugged. “We don’t have
a choice, right? Without their help, we’ve no idea where to start
looking for your sister.”

“
Right.” He looked around
the room. “Pagan has an Ouija board somewhere. We can use it. This
could get a bit tricky. The board is a catalyst to the other side
on its own. The spell just amps it up and then focuses it and sort
of pings the other side. Puts out a call, beckoning whatever spirit
you’re searching for to come to you. If they’re around, they’ll
make an appearance. They’ve no choice.” He looked more than uneasy.
“Unfortunately, if something else is out there, it might also try
to break through. We have to be on our guard and keep anything
unwanted from answering the call we put out.”

I didn’t like the whole
idea of the “something else” that might break through. I imagined
dark things, like what I’d felt when I’d been shoved aside, and the
spirit of Wanda had taken me over. “How many times have you done
this?” I hoped to hear “a zillion.”

“
A few.”

Terrific. I sighed. “What do we need
for the spell?”

“
Some candles and a
medallion.”

“
The gypsy used a medallion
to heal you.”

“
She did. There are
different kinds of focus items. You can fill them with spells. Give
them power and then release that power when you need
to.”

What choice did we have but
to do this? We had no idea where Darla was. If she was still alive,
if there was still time to save her, we had to do whatever it took
to find her before it was too late.

But an Ouija board? Luke
had said this would be less dangerous than the rituals, but I
didn’t know if I believed him. My kind had been brought up to fear
things like the Ouija board. Communicating with spirits was
considered unnatural, something evil. But the spirits were
communicating with me now whether I wanted them to or not. Did it
really matter how I talked to them?

I wrapped my arms around my
body and tried to force away the panic consuming me.

* * * *

The books had been cleared
from the dining room table. Now in the center of the table sat the
Ouija board. Four white candles surrounded it, and on the outside
of the candles lay a black bag and two small bowls, one black, the
other red.

Luke had a large metal amulet hanging
from a thick, silver chain around his neck. The amulet had a black
phoenix etched into its surface.

We sat across the table from each
other.

I looked at the board with
trepidation. It was only another way of communicating with the
spirits, right? I kept telling myself that and tried to believe it,
but there was something ominous about the board. It felt
wrong.
Evil
.

The wooden board had a polished
surface, making it shine. Letters and words gleamed against the
grain in sharp contrast.

I leaned in to get a better
look.

In the top left corner was
the word
Yes
. In
the top right corner was the word
No
. Below these two words were
letters from the alphabet. The letters were arranged in two rows,
and each row was arched in a way that created a half circle.
Beneath the letters were numbers--one through nine. There was no
number ten, but there was a zero to the right of the number nine.
And below the numbers, the word
Goodbye
.

A pointer sat on top of the
board. A heart shaped piece of plastic mounted on three felt-tipped
legs. At the tip of the pointer, there was a circle that was
transparent, to show the selected letter or number
beneath.

“
We both place our fingers
on the planchette.”

“
The what?”

Luke gestured toward the
white plastic pointer. “It’s called a planchette. We ask questions
and the spirits answer by moving the planchette back and forth
around the board.”

It sounded easy enough.

“
But before we begin, I
have to do a few things.” He rose and took out a green bundle about
four inches long from the black bag on the table.

He saw me watching him.
“Sage.” He took out a lighter and lit one edge of the bundle. He
let it burn for a few minutes before blowing out the flames. The
fire gone, the bundle emitted a thick white smoke. He gestured with
it. “It’s an old Native American trick. The sage cleanses the
room.”

I watched him make his way
across the room. He held the sage up high and waved his hand as he
walked back and forth across the room. When he was done, he came
back to the table and put the sage into the black bowl.

He then took the lighter
and lit each of the candles. Reaching into the bag, he pulled out a
bottle and slowly poured the contents into the red bowl. He then
pulled out two raven feathers and placed them on either side of the
board. He placed two fingers from his left hand into the red bowl,
closed his eyes and wrapped his right hand around the medallion. He
said a few words in Latin and slowly brought his fingers out and
then spread them across the board, smearing reddish black slime
against the wood of the board. When he finished, he wiped his
fingers against his pants before sitting down.

He held out his hands across the
table. “Now we say a prayer.”

I stretched out my arms and put my
hands in his.

“
You should never use the
board alone. It’s best if you use it with two people, preferably a
man and a woman.”

I was never going to use the board
again if I could help it.

Luke tightened his fingers
around mine and closed his eyes. “Spirits, let the flames of the
candles protect this space. Let all negative energy leave this
space. I invite spirits to come through who are helpful. Let those
helpful spirits harm none.” He opened his eyes and let go of my
hands. “I need you to take a moment and think about your
family.”