Dark Magic (Harbinger P.I. Book 3) (15 page)

I let out a weary sigh. “Okay, so how do we stop it?”

“
F
irst
, we need to find out what stage of the ritual he’s at,” Felicity said. “I need to see the
Grimoire of Dark Magic
. The ritual is in there. If we can find out where Luke is in the ritual, we might be able to figure out where his next sacrifice to Gibl will take place.”

“I’ll get the book,” Sherry said, heading upstairs.

I sat on the edge of the coffee table and rubbed Felicity’s arm gently. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look a little shaken up.”

“Yes, I’ll be fine. It’s just that the Sacrifice of the Hundred and Sixty-Nine Souls is dangerous magic. It has the potential to destroy the world. Even in the
Grimoire
, the ritual isn’t laid out like most spells; its formula is only revealed in a symbolic story. If Luke manages to pull this off, it’s going to be horrible. There will be so many deaths, so much…”

“Hey, listen to me. He’s not going to pull it off, okay? We’re going to stop him.”

She nodded but the worry remained in her eyes.

Sherry returned with the
Grimoire
and put it on the table. The leather cover creaked as she opened it. The pages rustled as she flicked through them.

“There’s a section titled
Samuel’s Journey
,” Felicity said. “The subtitle is
How One Hundred and Sixty-Nine Souls Opened the Gate
.”

Sherry flicked past pages containing diagrams of summoning circles and blocks of text. “Got it,” she said.

“The ritual is told as a story,” Felicity said. “The main character, Samuel, is a practitioner of the dark arts, a worshipper of ancient, evil gods. I think the story begins when he kills someone in his hometown.”

Sherry read the first few paragraphs and nodded. “Yeah, it says that Samuel’s journey began when he murdered the local wise woman and offered up her soul to the dark gods. Then a demon appeared and told him that to bring the old gods to Earth, he must leave his hometown and sacrifice a total of one hundred and sixty-nine souls.”

“That number is used because it’s thirteen times thirteen,” Felicity said. “It has a lot of power.”

“That’s what Devon Blackwell said to me. Thirteen times thirteen,” I said. “Why the hell don’t they ever speak plainly? If she’d told me this ritual was involved, we could have got on it sooner.”

“You know what witches are like,” Sherry said. “Besides, prophecy doesn’t work like that. Devon probably didn’t even know what thirteen times thirteen referred to when she said it.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, but it still sucks.”

Sherry resumed reading. “It says here that the one hundred and sixty-eight remaining souls had to be sacrificed in a certain order. First, Samuel had to sacrifice thirteen virgins.” She rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s original. Next, thirteen holy men. Then, thirteen sailors. After that, thirteen learned men.” She looked up from the text. “The list goes on. Do you want me to read all this?”

I shook my head. “It isn’t relevant unless we know where on the list Luke is. And that’s even assuming he’s following it. That’s a lot of killing to carry out.”

“He has a monster to help him,” Felicity reminded him. “The death of Deirdre Summers could mirror the first killing in the story, the sacrifice of the local wise woman. Deirdre was a librarian so I suppose that fits.”

“Loosely,” I said.

“The story comes from the Middle Ages,” she reminded me. “Luke is finding modern-day equivalents of the victims.”

“The story says he left his hometown,” Sherry said. “So these murders could have taken place anywhere.”

Felicity nodded. “Except they won’t look like murders. Deirdre’s death looked like a suicide. The others will probably be similar or look like accidents. Luke wouldn’t want to draw attention to himself. I’ll get my laptop and do a search.”

“I’ll ask Leon to do that for us,” I said. “We need to read the rest of Samuel’s story and see if there are any more clues we can use.” I got my phone and called Leon.

“Alec,” he said when he answered, “what’s the problem?”

“Hey, Leon, I need you to do some searching on the internet for me. I’m looking for news reports in the past three years of thirteen people dying at the same time.”

“Okay, sounds weird. What incident are you looking for specifically?”

“I’m looking for a lot of them. Get me anything you can find.”

“Okay, man. Do you know where these incidents took place?”

I thought about Luke Fairweather’s zealous nature and the fact that this ritual was his life’s work. He would put as much effort into it as possible to make sure he wasn’t caught and stopped before he could complete the sacrifices. He would probably spread the killings over a large area to give himself the best possible chance of staying under the radar of authorities and groups like the Society. “Do a worldwide search,” I told Leon.

“Will do. You going to tell me what’s going on this time?”

“As soon as I know more, I’ll let you in on it,” I said.

“Cool. I’ll call you back.” He ended the call.

I put the phone on the table. “Leon will look into it.”

Sherry looked at me incredulously. “Is this someone else you trust with your life?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t mention your name.”

She nodded. “It’s just that I came here tonight to look at some books and then leave without being seen. Now, you’re getting the whole Scooby Gang involved.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We need that information.” I pointed at the book. “Skip past the list of sacrifices for now. What else does the story say?”

She read farther down the page. “There are descriptions of the killings. Samuel went to a convent in Italy and sacrificed thirteen nuns. I guess those were his virgins. Then, he did the same with thirteen priests. Two months later he went to the docks and sacrificed thirteen sailors. It describes the killings, saying that Samuel was aided by a monstrous servant of the dark gods.”

“A servant?” Felicity asked. “So Gibl is just a servant to something even worse?”

Sherry skipped ahead and read a few passages. “It says here that when the ritual is complete, the monstrous servant and its minions will come through the portal to prepare the way for the dark gods.”

“So Gibl is just a taste of something worse to come,” Felicity said.

“And I assume his minions aren’t those cute yellow guys from the movies,” I added. “We’re going to need help to deal with that many bad guys.”

“Cantrell?” Felicity asked.

“I was thinking more along the lines of Leon and Michael, maybe the werewolves, Timothy and Josie, and definitely the Blackwell sisters. Those witches have been vaguebooking the entire time I’ve been in town. Now it’s time they stopped talking in riddles and got their hands dirty.”

“Hell, why don’t we have a parade and invite the whole town?” Sherry asked sarcastically. She pointed at herself with both hands. “Hello, fugitive from the law here. You invite that many people over and someone is going to talk.”

“Do you think the cops are going to be bothered about arresting you when there’s a monster trying to eat everyone’s souls?”

She shrugged and looked embarrassed. “No, I guess not.”

My phone buzzed on the table, the screen displaying Leon’s name. I put it on speaker and said, “Hey, Leon, what did you find?”

“Well, it depends on which death of thirteen people you’re interested in,” he said. “Because there have been quite a few over the past three years.”

“Read some out to me. Do you have them in chronological order?”

“Of course. The oldest one I found is the death of thirteen nuns in a fire in a convent in Italy. That happened three years ago, in October. Then, two weeks after that, I have thirteen rabbis who died in a bus crash in France.”

“Virgins and holy men,” I said. “Just like in the story.”

“Story?” Leon asked.

“I’ll tell you later. What else have you got?”

“Thirteen sailors died in a boating accident off the coast of Spain in February two years ago.”

“He’s definitely following the list from Samuel’s story,” I said. Sherry and Felicity both nodded. “What’s the latest incident you have, Leon?” I asked.

“Well, that would be the thirteen people who died in that church near here.”

“Yeah, how about the one before that?”

“Thirteen members of various European royal families were lost at sea.”

Sherry read down the list in the book. “That’s written here as thirteen kings and queens,” she said. “After that, Samuel returned to his hometown to carry out the final two sacrifices. The first was the sacrifice of thirteen followers.”

“The church at Clara,” Felicity said.

“The final sacrifice was of twelve knights.” She frowned. “Where’s he going to find twelve knights in Dearmont? And why only twelve?”

“Because the wise woman who was sacrificed first counted as one soul, so after all those groups of thirteen, there’s only twelve left to make one hundred and sixty-nine.”

“Okay, but knights?”

The modern-day equivalent would be the police,” Felicity said.

Sherry looked dubious. “You think so? You haven’t had them chasing your ass for the past seven months.”

“It’s the police,” I said. “But Dearmont doesn’t have that large a force. There’s Cantrell and maybe, what, four deputies?”

“Five,” Felicity said.

“Maybe a different police force, then.”

“No, it has to be Dearmont,” Felicity said. “The story says Samuel returned to his hometown to carry out the final sacrifices. Luke is following it to the letter and the closest police force to Clara is in Dearmont.”

“Hey, man, you going to let me in on what’s happening?” Leon asked.

“I’ll call you back,” I told him. “It’s a long story. Are you willing to help us fight some nasties if we need you?”

“You know it.”

“Michael too?”

“Of course, he loves using that shotgun every chance he gets.”

“Thanks, Leon. I’ll call you later.” I ended the call and said, “We need to figure out what group of people Luke will substitute for the twelve knights in the final sacrifice.”

“Why don’t we just follow Luke and see where he goes?” Felicity suggested. “Then we’ll be there when he starts the sacrifice.”

“He’ll go to ground before the big day. This is his life’s work so he’ll take every precaution to not get caught. Besides, we don’t know when he’s going to carry out the final sacrifice. We can’t tail him forever.”

“I think we do know when,” Sherry said. “Listen to this. Samuel completed the ritual on the day of his birth so that the occasion also marked the birth of the new world he had created.”

“Does it say what day Samuel was born?” I asked.

She pored over the text. “December 25th.”

“What?”

“The story is symbolic,” Felicity said. “That date would have been chosen as a corruption of Christmas.”

“Luke carried out the sacrifice of the followers on December 25th,” I said, thinking aloud. “That was probably a symbolic celebration of Samuel’s birthday. I guess if he’s following the story exactly, he’ll perform the final sacrifice on his own birthday.”

“Hold on a second,” Sherry said. She dug into her box and brought out some handwritten papers. “I did a lot of research on the Fairweather family.” She scanned the pages. “So, the Luke Fairweather who was the pastor of the church in 1934 was born on July 19th, 1912.”

I felt a coldness in the pit of my stomach. “July 19th is tomorrow.”

I
paced back and forth
, agitated. Time was running out and we still didn’t know where Luke and his monster were going to strike. If I thought it would do any good, I’d drive to Clara and burn every house to the ground until I flushed Luke out of hiding but I knew that would be a waste of time—time we didn’t have. With the climax of his three-year ritual only a day away, he would be hidden somewhere else, somewhere I’d never find him.

“Twelve knights,” I repeated over and over to myself. It had to lead somewhere. If the police angle wasn’t feasible because there were only five cops in Dearmont, then there had to be something else.

“We’ll go to the island,” I said. “That’s where Gibl will appear in our realm, so we’ll be there waiting for it. We’ll send it back to where it came from before Luke can summon it somewhere else.”

“That won’t work,” Felicity said. “You saw that smoke on the crystal image. The monster doesn’t become flesh and blood until it’s summoned to its final destination. The first summoning brings it into our realm in a ghost-like state. But if it is going to be summoned elsewhere, while it waits on the island, it can’t be touched, never mind killed. When Luke casts the second summoning spell at the location of the sacrifice, the creature appears there in a solid form. Then it fades away, as Sherry saw in the church.” She sighed. “Only this time it won’t fade away. It will be here forever.”

“Only if Luke sacrifices twelve knights,” I said. “We can stop that from happening.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Sherry asked, “When we don’t have a clue where this sacrifice is going down? Twelve knights might mean twelve members of the Knights of Columbus for all we know.”

She was right. We had no idea who the intended victims were and going over it again and again wasn’t going to get us anywhere. “The one thing we do know,” I said, “is that the sacrifice will take place tomorrow. We don’t know exactly where it’s going to happen but it will be somewhere in or around Dearmont. So how can we use that to our advantage?”

“I guess we could patrol the area and wait for something to happen,” Sherry said.

That gave me an idea. “We don’t have to patrol the area to know when something happens,” I said. “Someone else can do it for us.” I called Leon again. “Leon,” I said when he answered, “do you still have that police scanner in your RV?”

“Of course. I’ve got a whole bunch of them. Not that there’s anything worth listening to around here.”

“Great. What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Nothing that can’t be rearranged.”

“Okay, you and Michael come over to my place in the morning. Bring a police scanner and your weapons.”

“We’ll be there, man.”

“Thanks, I’ll explain everything when you get here.” I ended the call.

“What was that all about?” Felicity asked.

“We know something is going down tomorrow but we don’t know where. So we monitor the police channel and wait until they get a call. As soon as we hear something that sounds like the ritual taking place, we get over there fast.”

Sherry nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”

“It’s the only thing we can do,” I said. “I’ll get everyone to come over here in the morning. Then we wait until Luke makes his move.”

“I’ll bring some food over,” Felicity offered. “We don’t know when Luke will perform the ritual. It might not be until nighttime.”

“I think it’ll be earlier than that,” I said. “It’s his birthday and I’m sure he won’t want to wait to open his presents.”

Sherry yawned. “It’s getting late. I should be going. What time do you want me here in the morning?”

“Do you have a place to stay?” I asked her.

She got up out of the easy chair and stretched. “I have a place to stay. What do you think I’ve been doing for the past seven months, sleeping in the woods?” She winked at me to tell me she was joking. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone. See you in the morning, bright and early.”

I followed her down to the front door and opened it for her. She stepped out into the night and turned to face me, her expression serious. “You seem like a good man, Alec. I think my decision to trust you was the right one.”

“It was,” I said. “When this is all over, I’ll call my father and get him to take you back into the Society.”

“Is he as trustworthy as his son?”

I sighed. “He can be trusted with Society business. And I know he isn’t a member of the Midnight Cabal.”

She pursed her lips. “That sounds very matter-of-fact. Not exactly a glowing recommendation from a family member.”

“No, well, he got some witches to do bad things to me when I was younger.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Ouch, that sounds painful.”

“Don’t let it influence your decision about whether to come back to the Society or not. As far as my dad’s concerned, the Society comes before everything else. He won’t want to lose a good investigator.”

Sherry smiled. “Thanks, Alec. I’ll think about it. After tomorrow, we may be living in some sort of end-of-the-world monster apocalypse anyway.” She waved and walked away.

I closed the door and went back up to the living room. Felicity was clearing away the dishes.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“I don’t mind.” She took the dishes into the kitchen and began loading the dishwasher. There was a nervous energy in the way she moved.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

She closed the dishwasher and stood to face me. “Yes, everything’s fine. I’m just scared about tomorrow.” Her glasses had slid down her nose slightly. She pushed them back up. “I don’t want to be alone tonight, Alec. The thought of going back to my house fills me with dread.”

“That’s not a problem, you can stay here.”

She smiled nervously. “Really?”

“Of course. Do you want to take one of the spare bedrooms?” Chivalry wasn’t dead. Hell, maybe I was one of the twelve knights the dark gods wanted to eat.

She swallowed. “I’d rather be with you if that’s all right. I don’t mean…in that way. I just want to be close to you.”

“That’s not a problem.”

“I still don’t think I’ll get a wink of sleep,” she said, relaxing a little. “I’m too worried about tomorrow.”

“Me too,” I told her. “But if I don’t sleep tonight, I’ll feel bad tomorrow and I hate fighting monsters when I’m tired. It just makes me cranky.”

She laughed.

“You go ahead. I’m just going to lock up down here and raise the level of the wards,” I said.

Felicity nodded. “See you in a minute.” She ascended the stairs.

I went into the living room and sat on the floor, closing my eyes and mentally connecting to the wards that protected the house. Wards were one of the first things I’d learned at the Academy of Shadows and I’d spent weeks warding everything I could, from my dorm room to my lunchbox.

The wards around the house were adequate for keeping out vampires, demons, faeries, and mundane thieves, but they could still be defeated by another Society member or a powerful magician like Luke Fairweather. I didn’t think Luke was going to attack us tonight but it was better to be safe than sorry.

I visualized the glowing green circles and glyphs that surrounded the house and recited a spell that would strengthen them for tonight. It wasn’t a good idea to place strong wards around the house permanently because the stronger ones burned with a powerful magical energy that attracted any beings nearby that were sensitive to magic, especially lesser beings that existed on the astral plane and sought energy to feed on.

So I usually stuck to the “slow burners” that were powerful enough to keep most things out but not so powerful as to turn my house into a magical beacon.

For tonight, though, I would feel better knowing that Felicity and I were safe inside a powerful magical barrier. In my mind’s eye, the symbols of protection glowed brighter around the house. I kept the visualization at the front of my mind for a couple of seconds but it wavered when my thoughts turned to Felicity. She was upstairs in my bedroom, probably in my bed by now.

I pushed that thought away and went back to the wards again, continuing where I’d left off. When they were at full strength, I opened my eyes and stood up. Despite the wards being at full strength, I still locked the front door. Then I turned out all the downstairs lights and went upstairs.

The bedroom door was slightly open, the room beyond dark. I knocked lightly. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” Felicity said.

I entered the room and waited a couple of seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Felicity was in bed, the cream-colored sheet pulled over her body. I undressed quickly, stripping down to my boxers. The night was hot, despite the cool air being pumped through the vents.

I pulled the sheet aside and slid into bed next to Felicity, pulling the sheet back over us. She was wearing a pale pink bra and panties. She turned to me, her dark eyes searching my face in the darkness. Her glasses were on the nightstand and their absence from her face made Felicity seem vulnerable somehow.

Our mouths met in a long, slow, gentle kiss. I placed a hand on her waist. Her skin felt hot. Her own hand stroked over my arm, her fingers tracing the outline of my muscles.

When our mouths parted, Felicity whispered to me, “We need to get some sleep.”

“Yeah, we do,” I said.

I reluctantly took my hand from her waist but she stopped me, placing her hand over mine. “Leave it there,” she whispered. “It’s nice.” She snuggled up against me and buried her head against my chest.

I held her close and shut my eyes, sleep taking me faster than I had expected. I let myself drift into its grip. I needed to be alert tomorrow, but for now I could relax and allow myself to dream.