To Kill a Sorcerer (31 page)

I continued peering through the glass at his chest. Aha. There the filthy little creature was. It was the same sort of filmy, writhing cloud that had nearly strangled the life out of me.

Kanga had sent his spirits to kill Hamilton. And now one of them was strangling his soul.

Friday, December 24, 2:13 p.m.

I pulled the atomizer from my jacket pocket and stepped close.

Hamilton’s face contorted with pain. His hand scratched at his chest in jerky motions.

“Christ, Sebastian, do something.”

I held the Christo Glass in front of me, aimed, but before I could spray, the demon lifted him into the air. Hamilton flew across the dining room and slammed against the wall. I chased them.

He slowly slid down the wall, his coat shucking up his back, hand still at his chest, face dazed. If the creature was attacking him the same way it had attacked me, he couldn’t take much more. As soon as I was close, I pumped the spray at his chest.

A low scream resounded as the mist fell on Hamilton’s shirt. It was the same weird vibration I had heard when the spirits left me. I held the glass up. The demon had disappeared. All I could see were Hamilton’s internal organs.

Officer Kennedy must have felt the vibratory wail. She stepped inside and looked our way. I quickly stuffed the Christo Glass and spray bottle in my jacket pocket. Hamilton continued gasping, sagging at the knees.

“Just a touch of indigestion from dinner last night,” I said to her. “Oyster shooters, you know?”

Before she could answer, I took Hamilton by the arm and guided him out of the dining room toward the back of the house. A door off the kitchen led to a laundry room. I balanced him against the washing machine.

Holding the Christo Glass out like a shield, I searched the room as fast as I could. There were no demons in here, but I could feel their presence. We had to get out of this house.

Hamilton stooped over, as if he had gone six rounds with Mike Tyson. I took him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Steve?”

He jerked. His hand flew to his chest, touched it gingerly. His eyes were still cloudy with pain.

“Are you with me?”

“Yeah.” He steadied himself against the washer. “Okay, you got me. A spirit attacked me, right?”

“Welcome to the real world, buddy.”

“Don’t do that, dammit. I’ll shoot you, Sebastian, I swear to God.”

I decided to postpone telling him that the trapped souls of Sherri Barlow and Jessica Patterson were the spirits trying to kill him. He understood Kanga’s power now.

The Christo Glass remained clear. “We need to get out of here. They are still around, and they are after you specifically.”

“Shit.”

“You have to start moving faster.”

“We can’t just leave the scene,” he said. “We have to sign out.”

“I know. You can make it.”

“And you told Kennedy I have food poisoning. This is going to be fun.”

“It explains your symptoms. I didn’t have a lot of time to think it over. Let’s just get out of here before they attack again.”

I reached out to help him, but he waved me away.

“I can do it,” he said, straightening unsteadily.

We passed through the dining room quickly, scanning left and right. As we entered the living room, I stowed the glass in my jacket pocket and curled my fingers around the atomizer. With a shock, I realized it was the same motion Kanga had used before dosing Amanda with his paralyzing spray.

Hamilton and I crossed the living room, crunching over the plastic. Nothing invaded our bodies. We stepped outside and stripped off our gloves.

“Food poisoning, lieutenant?” Kennedy asked.

“Yeah.”

“Came on pretty sudden, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did.” Hamilton noted the time, scribbled, handed the pen to me.

Two other officers loitered close enough to hear our conversation.

“Did you find anything in there, Mr. Montero?”

I signed the log. “Nothing we didn’t already know.”

Hamilton and I angled across the yard, heading for the Maserati. I chirped the doors open just as the reporters spotted us. We waved at them and climbed into the car.

“Where are we going?” Hamilton wanted to know.

“My place.” I reached behind him, pulled the last onyx amulet out of the leather bag and handed it to him. “Put this on. It will protect you from those spirits.”

He looped the thong over his head and tucked it under his shirt. “Where did you get it?”

I turned onto the 101. “Remember when you asked me if I knew a man who could put a hex on Madame Leoni?”

“Okay, never mind.”

“He is a useful man in today’s world.”

“Are you rubbing it in, Sebastian?”

“Me?”

“You ass.”

“I hope you don’t mind that juju guardian doll there,” I said, gesturing at the garish charm, remembering Hamilton’s scorn. “He gave me that, too.”

Friday, December 24, 3:23 p.m.

I swung onto my private road. Hamilton called Gonzales, talked for a couple of minutes in a low voice, put his phone away.

“We have Kanga’s address,” he said. “A little place in Encino.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re assembling a SWAT team right now. The raid’s scheduled for seven.”

I could not tell him the operation was a waste of time and that Kanga was not there.

After we climbed out of the car, I paused by the ID glass sensor that activated the door to the house and entered a code into the number pad next to it. When the screen glowed red, I pressed my hand against it. After a couple of seconds, a beep sounded, and the panel glowed green. A message appeared:

ADD USER? IF YES, ENTER KEYCODE NOW OR PRESS CANCEL.

I tapped in the code. The panel glowed red again.

“Press your right palm completely against the glass and hold until it glows green.”

He placed his right hand in the center of the display. After six seconds, it turned green, and he lifted his hand.

“You now have security clearance to my house,” I told him. Not to Aliena’s room, though. That was an independent lock. “There is a sensor at the gate leading up the private road that allows you access to the grounds. Remember to always use your right hand.”

“I appreciate it,” he said. “What’s the occasion?”

“Call it a hunch. A precaution.” I pushed the door open and led the way inside. “Since you trusted me when I told you I didn’t kill anybody, I can at least trust you with my home.”

“Okay.” He followed me into the living room. “You have something to eat?”

I constructed a couple of monstrous submarine sandwiches inside thick artisan rolls, fished a bag of sea salt and vinegar kettle chips out of the back of my pantry, and set everything on the dining room table. I went back into the kitchen and returned with napkins and a couple of ice-cold bottles of beer. We sat on opposite sides so we could both look out the windows at the ocean.

“Why did it happen, Sebastian? How did you see through Kanga’s eyes for this murder? I assume this is the only one you saw?”

“Yes.” I still could not tell him my theory about the blood contact between us since that had occurred at Madame Leoni’s, but there was something else . . . “I was meditating, and I started recalling one of my worst memories. I think it triggered an escape mechanism, and my
ti bon ange
left my body without my conscious command.”

“What memory?”

“I would prefer not to say.”

“And why was your spirit drawn to Kanga?”

“That I don’t know. Perhaps because I am so involved in trying to catch him.” It sounded weak, but I honestly was not sure why my soul had gone inside Kanga.

“Do you think he knew you were there?” he asked, taking a bite of his sub.

“I didn’t feel that,” I said. I thought back to how abruptly the trip had ended. Had Kanga thrown me out? I did not think so.

“Could you do it again, consciously this time?”

“I don’t know. You seem to be open to many different avenues of investigation all of a sudden.”

“Understandable, considering I was attacked by a ghost.”

“It wasn’t a ghost. It was a malevolent etheric entity.”

“I’ll make a note. You did think of using your
ti bon ange
to spy on him, though, right?”

“It crossed my mind, but it’s dangerous.”

“Because of these spirits he sent after us?”

“Not really. He could use them against me, but it’s dangerous for him to have them so close to his soul. I don’t think he would take the chance. He killed them, and a part of their spirits would remember that.”

“What do you mean, he killed them?”

“The spirits that attacked us are the souls of the girls Kanga killed. He commands them now.”

“You mean . . . what Reed said about this soul thief was right?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus.” He thought for a moment. “What about when he’s traveling out of body? Doesn’t he worry about them then?”

“Remember what Reed said about becoming a Thief of Souls. He keeps his victims trapped in a sort of spiritual holding area—that’s one of the special benefits of his ritualistic ceremonies. Whenever he sends them out, they return as soon as their task is finished. I think he would only release them when he was in his body. The magical circumstances that caused them to be trapped in the ether give them hundreds of times the power of a living creature’s astral presence.”

“So they would just attack and destroy him?”

“No, probably not. They would still respond unconsciously to his authority. But it’s similar to being a lion tamer. If your illusion of control evaporates, your charges can turn on you with deadly results.”

“And you don’t think Kanga would take that chance.”

“No. Kanga is willing to take risks, but he does not do so unnecessarily. And at this point, anything he does in the ether, he will do alone, I’m sure of it.”

“Then what makes it dangerous for you?”

I drained my beer. “He has already trapped three souls, perhaps four. I am not in a hurry to become another victim.”

“He can take your soul without killing you?”

“Yes.”

“Then what happens?”

“For the body, it’s like being in a coma. As long as you are kept alive, the
ti bon ange
can be returned someday and consciousness will be restored.”

“And where is the soul during that time?”

“Wherever the sorcerer keeps his charges.”

“You really think he’s holding these girls in a physical place?”

“Yes.”

Hamilton looked around while he ate. He noticed the juju guardian dolls over the front door and atop the doors leading to the patio.

“I guess I’m going to need to protect my place, too,” he commented, taking a drink of beer.

“Already done last night,” I said. He looked at me in surprise. “When I was attacked yesterday, they came through the patio doors with a bang.”

He set his bottle down. “The banging I heard against my windows last night.”

“It may have been them. If they were trying to get to you, they couldn’t broach the charms I left around your place. I told you my man was good.”

“When we were eating last night. You put charms around my apartment?”

“Uh-huh.”

He touched his chest gingerly. “This is some next level shit. If one of those things had got me in bed last night . . .” He stood up, grabbed his beer, walked to the patio doors, and looked out across my property in the direction of Catalina Island.

I got another beer out of the fridge and plucked a cigarette.

“Come on, let’s stand on the deck.” The glass doors slid open with a low hum. We stepped outside, and I lit up.

“I just remembered something from my childhood,” Hamilton said.

“Something about your grandma?”

He nodded and took a sip of beer. “Once, she let me watch when she conjured. She said it was a simple spell, something to do with the weather for our crops, but it went strange on her. She shouted at me to run. I swear, I thought she was playacting, you know, trying to scare me.”

It appeared Hamilton’s paranormal encounter had cracked an inner barrier, releasing memories he had suppressed.

“I ignored her. Then she screamed, really screamed. That spooked me, so I ran. And, man, I hadn’t taken two steps when I felt something grab me—grab me on the
inside
of my body. It was the same thing I felt in the Meyer home today. I had forgotten about that day. Even then, I told myself I only imagined something grabbed me. My
abuela
was the real deal, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, everything we could find proved she had genuine powers.”

He blew his breath out hard. “Christ, I wonder how close I came to dying that day.”

I knew what had to be running through his mind.

“I owe you my life, don’t I? For protecting my place last night.”

“You don’t owe me anything. I wanted to protect you.” I puffed my cigarette. “You’re one of the good guys.”

“Thanks. You say these things will keep coming after me?”

“Yes. You need to carry some things with you until we resolve this situation.”

“That spray you have?”

“Yes, and continue wearing that amulet.”

“The same guy gave you all these things? Including the stuff you left at my apartment?”

“That’s right. He’s an old friend.”

“He sounds like someone we could use on our team,” he observed.

“He can’t help us, not with this.” I crushed my cigarette in the ashtray.

“It’s that bad?”

“Based on what happened to you, would you advise anyone else to become involved in this case?”

“No,” he said. “I see what you mean.”

My computer began buzzing. Someone requested a videoconference.

“Come on.” We walked inside. I spun my laptop around on the coffee table and opened the dialogue box. Reed’s face appeared.

“Mr. Reed, I have Detective Hamilton with me,” I informed him politely.

“Yes, sir. I found something interesting in the Leoni crime scene photos.”

“What have you got?”

“Take a look at this.” He tapped his keyboard, and our screen filled with a high-res photo. It was the table on which I had found Madame Leoni’s body. “You see the markings on either side?”