Nightwind (40 page)

“That won’t happen so you might as well not even consider it.”

“Consider what?” he crooned. He eased along the bars.

“That if Lauren was to ever get hold of the Book, she might invoke the NightWind?” Angeline shivered.

“Maxine won’t allow that to ever happen.”

Syntian’s face brightened. “But if it did, Lauren could summon a demon capable of destroying you,

couldn’t she, Angeline? Maxine can’t do it because the pact between her and the NightWind was

broken. She can’t utilize what is in the Book, but Lauren can.”

“Lauren doesn’t know anything about the craft,” Angeline hissed, “and her mother sure as hell wouldn’t

give her the opportunity to learn.”

“You keep believing that, Angeline,” he warned her. “But if I were you, I’d keep a close watch on those

dark corners of my bedroom when the moon is full.” He jabbed his hand through the bars, trying to scare

her, but yelped as the handle of the broom came down hard on his forearm, bringing instant, terrible pain.

He snatched his hand inside the cell and cradled it against his chest, glaring at the servant who had

attacked him.

“Thank you, Devlin,” Angeline said, her chin up as she regarded Syntian with contempt. “Sometimes

pain is the only way to gain his cooperation.”

“Let me hurt him, Miss Angeline,” Devlin panted, aching to bring a scream of agony from the prisoner.

“Let me give him some real pain.”

Syntian snorted, knowing that was the last thing Angeline dared do even if she had wanted to see him

writhing in whatever pain the bastard could dole out. He flung her a disgusted look then settled down in

the middle of the cage, crossing his legs as he sat there and contemplated the two of them.

“Oh, he’s in pain,” Angeline told her servant. “He’s in so much pain he can barely survive it.” She smiled

at Syntian. “It’s a type of pain that leaves scars on his heart, not on his flesh.”

“Fuck you,” Syntian told her.

After the light had been turned off his existence once more, Syntian sat on the damp floor and stared into

space. The iron bars with their runic protection did not allow him to see beyond the place where he was

being kept, but he was aware of a shifting in the Veil, an undercurrent he didn’t think Angeline had felt.

He tried probing the feeling, but he got no further than the uneasy nagging that told him something was

going to happen.

“Don’t destroy the Book, Maxine,” he begged, hoping that wasn’t what he was feeling. “I don’t want to

go back.”

It would be too much to ask that Lauren find the Book and realize the power she held in her hand.

Although he was bound to another conjurer through a pact of blood, he was still tied and indentured to

the women of Lauren’s family. All it would take would be for Lauren to break the hold Angeline had

over him with the right invocation to the NightWind. Maxine couldn’t do it. Her power had been lost the

moment she had broken the contract between them. But Lauren was a different matter altogether.

“Give her the Book, Maxine,” he pleaded. “Show her what she has to do. Teach her how to use it to

free me.”

The only trouble was, he didn’t think Maxine would. She hated him and even though she loathed the

thought of him being at Angeline’s beck and call, rather than see him have what he wanted—her daughter

Lauren—she was more than likely content to let him rot where he was.

“Find the Book, Lauren,” he whispered. “Find it and come for me, Sweeting.”

Lauren gazed withdisinterest at the variety of strange-looking objects her mother had assembled in the

spare bedroom. She was still amazed at the older woman’s strength as her mother had ripped the

carpeting from the walls and had painted a blood-red circle on the bare wooden floor.

“There has to be protection for us,” Maxine had mumbled as she had begun to painstakingly paint a

series of symbols inside a second, smaller red circle. “You can’t go about any of this without making

damned sure one of those infernal bastards can’t snatch you away with him.”

Syntian’s wife had marveled at the glazed look on her mother’s face as the woman began to arrange

candles at the five points of an upside-down star she had drawn last, mumbling strange words as she

worked.

“Once we’re inside the safety of the circle, nothing can get to us. You just have to make sure you don’t

step even one toe outside the protection of the circle. Do you understand, Lauren?”

“Yes,” had come the bored reply.

Maxine had brought along a small hibachi that she now placed in the center of the star, or pentagram as

she told Lauren the thing was called. She placed bowls of water and salt and sand beside the brazier and

took out of her canvas tote a sharp-looking, double-edged knife she called an athamé.

“Every sorceress has one of these,” she had said with pride. “Mine is hundreds of years old and

belonged to an ancestor who was burned at the stake in France.”

Alongside the things she had already placed on the floor, came a twisted twig. Maxine said it was hazel

wood. There was also a golden chalice, two empty porcelain cups, several vials of murky-looking liquid

and a fat red candle.

“I’ve got the sacrifice, too, but I won’t get it until everything else is ready.”

The mention of a sacrifice brought the first animation to Lauren’s face. “What kind of sacrifice?”

Her mother had shrugged. “A chicken, Anna Lauren. I couldn’t find a cat so I stole a chicken from that

trailer down the road from the turn-off.” She placed the Book of Shadows beside the hibachi and then

glanced up at Lauren’s angry face. “Would you rather it be our blood the demon drinks or a stupid,

worthless chicken’s?”

Lauren’s face turned angrier still, but she kept her mouth shut.

When everything had been placed according to the instructions in the Book, Maxine retrieved the

squawking, flapping chicken, its feet tied together with string, and brought it into the circle.

“Come on, get in,” the older woman snapped with irritation. “This will take awhile.”

With one final look at the bare walls of the spare bedroom, Lauren stepped inside the circle, careful as

her mother told her to be of the still-wet paint and joined the other woman in the center of the pentagram.

“My eyesight isn’t what it use to be,” Maxine said as she fought with the struggling chicken. “You’re

going to have to read the words of the Invocation.” She was prepared for the objection she was sure

would be forthcoming, but when Lauren simply took up the Book and flipped to the correct page, she

shrugged away any unease her daughter’s state of mind was causing her.

Staring down at the words, it took Lauren a moment to decipher them and she read across the lines,

wondering what would happen if she mispronounced them. She said as much to her mother.

“You’ll say them the way they’re meant to be said. Believe me. They aren’t hard to say at all. Just go

slow and think before you speak.” She grabbed the chicken’s beak and hissed at it. “Stop that!”

As Lauren began the Invocation, she felt a trill of suspense go down her spine and the baby inside her

move for the first time. It startled her for just a moment, but she cast the pleasure of that feeling aside,

and grimly began to intone the words sprawled across the page.

Maxine watched her daughter’s face, caught up in the fierce look that had settled over Lauren’s normally

meek and pleasant features. Darkness had settled in the girl’s eyes and her lips were rigid around the

unfamiliar words as she spoke them. Her knuckles had bled white with the grip she had on the Book and

her cheeks were as pale as moonlight in the glow from the lit candles.

The room got progressively colder as Lauren continued to read. A smell, not all that unpleasant at first,

soon began to permeate the room. The hair at Lauren’s temples stirred in a wafting of breeze through the

opened bedroom door and her skirt blew against her legs.

“He’s coming,” Maxine whispered, feeling the shifting of unseen forces gathering about them.

The words meant nothing to Lauren. They were merely sounds as she spoke. She didn’t understand

their meaning, but she knew what they were doing. She was beginning to feel a presence, an entity lurking

just beyond her peripheral vision, taunting her, watching her, waiting. The smell in the room intensified

and it was pungent, musky, becoming offensive. Her hair was blowing freely about her head, now, and

her skirt was plastered to her thighs. She felt the baby stir once more, leaping in her womb, and she

smiled.

“Can you feel it, Lauren?” her mother asked, looking about at the deepening shadows that were seeping

into the room. “Can you feel the Portal opening?”

She ignored her mother’s awed voice. She had no idea what the woman was talking about, for the Book

she was holding in her hands was doing something strange to her. Never had she felt such

all-encompassing power, such capability, a vital effectiveness. It was growing inside her, this feeling of

potential, this super-charged energy that told her she was a potent power, that she could do whatever

she wanted. The force was gathering within her body, visible now when she looked down at the reddish

glow around her hands and arms.

“Lauren,” she heard her mother breathe as the older woman saw the aura that was beginning to form

around her daughter’s rigid body.

That smell, that scent of the demonic suddenly became so intense, it took her breath away, staggered her

beneath the sulfurous blast, but she kept reading, not looking up at the ebon shadow building at the south

corner of the room.

“He’s here,” Maxine whispered. “Lauren, He’s here.”

The room was frigid with cold, the wind whipping through it so intense it was all Lauren could do to stay

within the confines of the pentagram. She spoke the last words, saying them slowly, stressing each

syllable then she looked up into the most terrifying visage she could not have conceived of even in her

worst nightmare.

“L...a...u...r...e...n,”
It hissed, the sound of Its voice like the buzzing of a billion angry bees.

“Greetings, oh Master of the Demons; Bringer of Storms; Destroyer of Souls,” Maxine called out. “We

welcome you, oh Mighty Raphian!”

The thing was hideous, Lauren thought, shivering despite herself. It’s eel-like neck was capped with a

triangular head that glowed green. Beady red eyes and row upon row of sharp, grinding teeth made the

specter a prime candidate for future nightmares to come.

“What do you have as an offering, L...a...u...r...e...n?”
It hissed, milky drool dripping from its gaping

slit of a mouth to plot with acid sizzle on the wooden floor.

“Here!” her mother was quick to say. “Toss it the chicken!”

Staring into that horrible face, watching that eel-like neck swivel to and fro against the ceiling of the

room, Lauren wondered if Syntian, in his natural form, looked anything like this fiend.

“Lauren!” her mother spat, thrusting the chicken at Lauren.

She exchanged the Book for the flapping chicken, looked down once at the poor animal and then flung it

at the thing in the corner. A horrendous popping sounded as the gaping mouth opened further and the

chicken disappeared down the demon’s maw. There was a screech of ungodly pain then the beast

sighed.

“I am intrigued, L...a...u...r...e...n. What do you seek of me?”

Maxine nearly fainted with relief. She stepped closer to her daughter and whispered, “Tell him you want

a minion.” At Lauren’s frown, her mother explained quickly. “Tell him you need a minion, a helper, to

take back what belongs to you. Tell him you want the incubus to be the most pleasant of human males

ever to draw breath upon this Earth. Tell him you want him to be so handsome even his enemy, Jehovah,

Himself, will be envious of the male’s beauty.”

Lauren gaped at her mother. “I will not!”

Maxine snorted hatefully, then turned her attention on the fiend. “My daughter is new at this and I will

speak in her behalf if that pleases You, oh, mighty Raphian.”

There was a hiss of annoyance from the beast and then It swiveled Its horrid head closer to the

pentagram.
“Is she one of mine?”
was the sly question.

Maxine turned her head and looked at her daughter. “Are you?”

The power was still flowing through Lauren and she somehow knew there was a way to channel it for

what she wanted, not for the evil those before her had used. She ignored her mother and turned her gaze

to the creature.

“There is a woman who would dare take what was given to my family by You, Mighty Raphian. I seek a

way to punish her and to re-gain what is ours by right of the blood pacts signed by my ancestors.”

“Cree,”
the fiend snarled.

“Yes,” Lauren agreed. “I will have him back.”

“Why?”

Maxine watched the rage building in her daughter’s face. She had never seen Lauren angry. She had

never known her daughter capable of vengeance and retaliation, but Lauren’s words both shocked and

pleased Maxine for they were the same thing she, herself, wanted.

“Most likely to send his worthless ass back to You!” Lauren growled. “To shut him away from the light

and the warmth and imprison him in the Abyss for eternity, never to be allowed out again!”

A low chuckle, sinister and merciless echoed around the room. The walls trembled with the sound and

the floor shook. An evil glint shone in the beady red eyes and the gaping mouth appeared to form a smug,