On Pins and Needles: Sierra Fox, Book 3 (2 page)

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Her eyes darkened. “How’s Ebony doing?”

“I don’t know. She’s still avoiding me.” My assistant, Ebony Aikan, wasn’t taking any of my calls, and certainly wasn’t making any.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“She’ll get over this eventually. She just needs some time to process everything.”

I nodded. It was the same thing I kept telling myself, but Ebony had nearly died after being taken hostage and she blamed me.

“Do you think one of
them
was driving the car?”

I shrugged, recalling the Slevani brothers trying to dominate me into submission, and then Mauricio the black dog’s attack. They’d all seemed to be trying to kill me but that wasn’t what they wanted. Not yet. These sick bastards actually needed my power for some ancient ritual that would summon a demonic entity into this world. Yet the way they’d acted while trying to get their hands on me made me wonder if they actually had the intention of keeping me alive that long.
 

“Well, I want to help in any way that I can.”

I let her drag me over to a plush green couch pressed against the far wall. Three low bookshelves sat beside it, all stacked with an array of slim books, figurines of fairies, dragons, gargoyles, candles of every color, and several other items I didn’t recognize. It reminded me of looking over Roger Hocking’s office and discovering a bunch of occult relics I couldn’t even begin to name.
 

Sitting on the couch beside Lavie, I took a deep breath and let the comfortable warm air calm my nerves. This store seemed to radiate positive energy.

“So, what’s wrong? Well, aside from the obvious.” Lavie raised an eyebrow. “It’s not your ex, is it?”

Her unasked question—
“Do you think he was driving that car?”
—hung between us. “No, it’s not about him.” Actually, I hadn’t seen Jonathan since the night I escaped the Spook Catcher Council Tower. He’d left me countless messages, but I deleted every one of them.
 

“What is it then?”

“It’s about the USB drive you gave me.” Even now, after scouring through all the information, I didn’t feel comfortable saying the word out loud. Yet, having read actual historical and mythical accounts about the
Obscurus
actually made them real. Not that they hadn’t been real before, since they’d tried to kill me several times already.

Her eyes widened. “Ah, so you checked it out?”
 

“I’ve read everything about ten times.” I sighed. “Well, the bits I could read.”

“Did it help?”

“It helped me understand more about what I’m dealing with, but it didn’t answer all of my questions.”
Obscurus
was Latin for obscure, unknown, shadowy—all relevant words to describe the maniacal group I’d had the displeasure of discovering were after me. Just the name sounded ominous. Knowing this group had been around for over a thousand years in one incarnation or another didn’t make me feel like I could outrun or defeat them. So far, I’d overcome three of its members and knew of two more, but according to the texts Lavie had given me, the organization consisted of six members—one for each tip of an inverted pentagram, with the leading member positioned in the middle. If I had to hazard a guess, I would bet that Mace Clamber, the unscrupulous scout for the Spook Catcher Council, was this cycle’s leader.

“What did you need to know?” Lavie asked.

“Ah, here we are.” Sally stepped past the beaded curtain behind the counter, with a wooden tray in her arms. She breezed over and placed the tray on the coffee table. Three white porcelain teacups sat on saucers, steaming liquid inside. A small jug filled with milk, an intricate sugar bowl, and a plate of choc-chip cookies finished off the goodies. “Dress it up as you like. I prefer mine unsweetened and without milk.” She grabbed her cup and saucer before lowering herself into the armchair beside the couch.
 

This store was set up like a comfy coffee shop or bookstore rather than an occult hub, as the plate-glass window advertised. The word IMPRESSIONS was painted inside a pentagram on the pane, with
Tarot, Tea & More
in smaller font directly beneath it.

“What are you two discussing?”

“Sierra needs some help with the info I gave her about the
Obscurus
,” Lavie said.

“Lavie, keep it down.” Sally turned her head towards the door. “That’s not the kind of name you want to shout out into the wind. You never know who is listening, especially not after what just happened.”

“There’s no one here but us, Aunty.”

Sally cocked an eyebrow. “I think I’ve taught you better than that, have I not?”

I had to agree with Sally. You never know who was around the corner or watching from afar. I wasn’t a paranoid person by nature but after being hunted down by the Slevani brothers and a crazed black shifter dog, I’d become especially cautious.

“Whenever the demonic is involved, we must be extra careful,” Sally whispered.

“Sorry.” Lavie sighed and looked away like a little girl who’d been caught out and didn’t know how to respond. The demon hunter had been raised by this woman, so I wasn’t surprised to see them interacting more like a mother-daughter.
 

“No need to be sorry if you do the right thing in the first place,” Sally said with a small grin. She turned to focus on me. “Now, are you here to discuss the encrypted file?”

“Yes.” It hadn’t made sense to have so many texts and pictures available to read freely, and just one file that needed a password. “How did you know?”

Sally shrugged before taking a sip from her cup. “Did you read everything else?”

I nodded.

“Saul translated a few things for you,” Lavie added.

“Saul?”

“He’s her demonic
friend
,” Sally said with a little irritation in her voice.

“You know he helps me out whenever I need him.”

Sally nodded. “Yes,
people
tend to do that when you save their lives.”

I had no idea what was going on here, but had to admit I’d wondered why Lavie was involved with anything demonic, myself.
 

“He doesn’t owe me anything.”

“Lavie, let’s not get off track. Sierra’s not here to hear our squabbles about the demonic and whether one should become friends with what they hunt.” Sally flashed a half-smile my way.

“Aunty doesn’t like
anything
demonic, even though she knows that many of them are willing to risk their own lives to help humans.” Lavie rolled her eyes. “It must be like that for you too, right? I’m sure not every ghost you cross paths with is malevolent.”

“No, not all of them.” Actually, only a small percentage was but they were enough to keep me in business.

“See?”

“Anyway,” Sally said, “do you grasp what you’re up against, Sierra?”

“Yes, unfortunately, I do.” I glanced at the cup waiting for me, suddenly craving something soothing and warm. Whenever I thought about the
Obscurus
, my body chilled to the bone. I knew these bastards needed me alive long enough to complete their pathetic ambitions, but along the way the members I’d faced hadn’t hesitated to inflict pain.

I rubbed my clavicle at the reminder. The black stain from the horrid shape-shifting dog might have faded after I killed him, but the memory hadn’t. It stuck around to haunt me almost as much as having his blood on my hands.

No need to concentrate on what I did to him right now. It’s me or them.
 

I’d simply decided to choose
me
.

Lavie beat me to the tea by pouring a generous amount of milk and sugar into her own cup. She then grabbed a cookie and gnawed on it. “Aunty, why did you encrypt that particular file?”

“I didn’t encrypt it.” Sally sighed. “But it’s the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle of this demonic sect.”

I leaned forward and dropped two heaping teaspoons of sugar into my cup, followed up by enough milk to lighten the dark tea. I preferred coffee but didn’t want to offend Sally. “Is that what they really are, an overzealous cult?” I asked.

“Sect, cult, group, faction, circle, book club…it doesn’t matter what you call them, at the end of the day they’re the same thing—a bunch of ambitious and greedy magic users who toyed with darkness, and conjured up one of the worst demons in history. As you probably read, the Nazis were rumored to have conjured Legion. Led by Hitler, the demon got very close to real power in our world.” She sighed, took another sip from her cup and settled it onto her lap. “From what Lavie has told me, so far a ghost/witch hybrid and a shape-shifter have threatened your life, which as you probably read isn’t what the demon requires. The demon wants to inhabit as much of this world as it can, and this is something Legion can most certainly do after its given proper passage.”

A shiver raced down my spine. According to the information on the USB drive, Legion was a group of demons who made an appearance in the Christian Bible. The New Testament contained a story about Jesus healing a man in Gadarenes who was possessed by this demonic entity. The story went deeper than that, but at the end of the day the message was the same:
“My name is Legion, for we are many.”
 

This was the demon the
Obscurus
not only worshipped, but were all influenced by. Each member seemed to have a different degree within, but I knew it was just a matter of time before they were entirely consumed. Of course, that couldn’t happen until I came into my full powers so they could strip them away from me. I hated to think how they would do such a thing, but knew it was their strategy. However, by having already defeated two points of their pentagram, what did it mean for their ritual?

I swallowed a sip of tea. “So this Legion wants to, what? Take over the world?”

Sally shook her head. “Ah, if only it were that easy. Demons are strange creatures—some have their own humanoid bodies, others glamour themselves to appear human, while some can only appear to us in dreams, but still cause material things to happen.”

“Sort of like Freddy Krueger,” Lavie chimed in. “Remember how he could kill people in their dreams and they really died? Well, demons can do that kind of thing too. A succubus or an incubus can invade someone’s dreams and give them ultimate pleasure, but it comes with a price. If you’re a woman, it usually ends in a surprise pregnancy. If you’re a man it equates to losing a little more of your soul with each encounter.”

“That’s gross.”

“Yeah, it is, but there are also exceptions.” Lavie sat forward. “Like, remember when there was a tear in the fibers and I spotted a succubus passing herself off as a prostitute?”

I nodded.

“Well, she was able to physically filter through by taking over some poor man’s body and converting him into something else.”

I winced. “Is that what’s happened to Jonathan?”

“No,” Sally answered. “There are many breeds of demons that don’t have corporeal bodies and therefore love to filter into our world so they can possess humans and take a body to do as they please.”

“What does Legion want with Jonathan?” He might be a jerk and I wanted nothing to do with him, but I couldn’t forget that he’d once been a man. And there was still the mystery of had he looked for this, or was he dragged into it? Trying to reconcile the nice guy I’d first met while removing a poltergeist from his bookstore with the malicious asshole he’d become didn’t add up. Or maybe I just didn’t want to believe everything about our meeting had been orchestrated.

“Jonathan was probably Legion’s closest point of contact to you. By taking over his body the demon could get close enough to verify if you were the one they needed to complete Legion’s arrival into our world,” Sally answered with a grim look.

“I still don’t know what that means.” In TV shows, books, and movies, monsters always wanted to take over the world, but somehow this didn’t seem to be the same thing.

“Sierra,” Lavie said, taking my hand. “By possessing him, Legion was able to taste you in an intimate way it couldn’t do with the others.”

I chose not to add that I’d also slept with Mace years ago, so he could have done the same thing. But that would mean this demonic entity had been close to me in one form or another for years, which was fucked up.

“It’s why he was able to magically develop healing powers,” Sally added, and sadness returned to her eyes.
 

I had a feeling that even though Lavie was trying to protect her aunt from what had really happened to Samson, she already knew.

Just take a deep breath and relax.
“Okay, so Jonathan confirmed who I am. Then why did the others try to kill me?”

“Simple,” Sally said. “Legion has been conjured by the six of them and has touched their very souls, but is not powerful enough to control their every move yet. Even Jonathan will have moments when he seems more like himself.”

I nodded, because she was right.

“Those six idiots are supposed to be Legion’s mediums into this world. By exerting considerable control, it will be able to send others out through them and into the world.” Sally looked down at her cup. “And to answer your previous question… No, Legion doesn’t want to rule the world or take it over—it just wants to inhabit this patch to cause chaos, destruction, and mischief.”