7. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Dash
Keir had become an enhanced human, more or less. He’d developed a keen radar for trouble. He’d sensed earlier that something in the vicinity wasn’t good, just as the three of us had, but only he could see it better than any of us. His focus was much better than ours.
Whatever the hell was following us was a dark entity, according to the sulfuric scent I picked up, and after glancing at my friends, their expressions of concern confirmed my assessment.
When I stopped digging, I stood and turned toward the darkest part of the forest. I glanced at Keir and shrugged. Even with my enhanced abilities, I couldn’t see shit.
I started walking toward my husband because I wanted to know what the hell was out there. Carl and Adon were behind me, but Keir put up his hand. “Wait. Let it come to us first.” They nodded and sat down beside a tree. I kept going.
Finally, the being came into view as I cleared a few more yards of forest. Keir was speaking to an entity with a coal-black aura, and I wasn’t thrilled. I was ready to charge ahead to protect my husband, but I heard Keir in my head through our connection.
Give me a minute. Stay near, but don’t come any closer until I signal you.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on Keir.
Who is it? What’s going on? I’m not leaving you alone.
Keir’s voice cut through the air. “Lorraine, what are you doing here?”
She spoke in a foreign language I’d never heard, but Dr. Carl was quick to call out the translation so Keir could hear him. “She said, ‘I’m here to get you, Claude. You’re avoiding me, and I won’t stand for it any longer.’”
The woman’s harsh tone had me moving closer. There was no way I’d let her do anything to harm my husband.
Keir sensed my movement behind him. Love, wait.
“Lorraine, I am not Claude. My name is Keir. I wasn’t alive when you fell in love with Claude. I hadn’t been born yet by several centuries.”
Keir was trying to be reasonable, but I sensed the woman didn’t give a shit about when my husband was born. She had tunnel vision on the topic.
Lorraine snarled out a response, which Carl translated. “She said, ‘Claude’s spirit is inside you. You’ve been born many times, but I always find you, and then you run away. This time, you’re coming with me.’” She chanted something in the language she’d been using, and suddenly, Dr. Carl appeared by Keir’s side.
The tall, slender holy man stared at Lorraine as she continued to yap. When Dr. Carl growled at her, she jumped in surprise. Finally, he spoke. “No. You’re not taking him. Speak English so he can understand what you’re saying. If he is the spirit of Claude from another lifetime, you must understand that in this lifetime, Keir serves a greater purpose than being your true love. He is the Gatekeeper. He stands between Heaven and Hell. You cannot do him harm.”
Lorraine’s steely gaze ran the length of Keir’s body twice before she met his eyes. “You are mine, Claude.”
She sent a withering scowl my way, fire dancing in her eyes. She wasn’t done with us yet, but she disappeared before I had the chance to respond to her unspoken threat.
I stepped closer to Keir. “She’s got GPS on you, baby. We need to get this done and get back to Reardon.” I took his hand and led him back to the tree, where we returned to digging.
After an hour of scraping away the soil from around the roots, I had a very bad feeling. Was there any way the box had been found by someone else and removed?
I turned to Dr. Carl. “Can you pick up the scent of tobacco or roses?”
Keir chuckled, stepping closer. “Love, it’s been a long time since we buried that thing. Dad had the cigar in a plastic bag, and that cheap toilette water Grandma Smith used probably didn’t last ten minutes, much less thirty-five years.”
“Found it!” Adon broke off a piece of a tree root. Attached to it was a white, red, black, and gold cigar box. A tree root had grown through it as if to hold it for the owner, which was significant because even the tree knew it was important. I hoped the contents weren’t damaged.
Adonis carried the box to Keir and handed it to him. “Let’s hope it’s in here.”
In my mind, I heard a drumroll through my connection with my husband and started to laugh. Keir glanced at me and grinned as he lifted the lid.
After removing the broken parts of the tree root, Keir showed us the contents, which were just as we’d hoped. The items Keir had listed before were situated inside the box, along with the bottom half of the scroll.
Keir handed the cigar box to me and carefully unrolled the bottom five inches of very brittle paper attached to a metal dowel with the same ornamentation as the top of the scroll Keir had found in a box of things his mother shipped to him.
“Dr. Carl?” Keir stepped closer and handed him the parchment.
The holy man accepted the paper and held it gingerly. “It’s faded and hard to read in this light. Let’s hike back and go to the hotel.”
We returned the dirt we’d disturbed around the tree roots, and Dr. Carl put his hands on the trunk, quietly reciting something in yet another language I couldn’t understand.
Adonis stepped closer to me. “It’s ancient Mayan. I’m not sure which dialect. My language skills are pretty rough, but I believe he’s thanking the tree for protecting the box until its rightful owner came to reclaim it.”
Adon chuckled at what he heard next. “He’s also apologizing for the damage I did to the root.”
Adonis walked over to the tree and put his hands on it next to Dr. Carl, mumbling the same words as the holy man. The two stopped and grinned at each other before returning to the trail to follow us.
I knew the one person I needed to talk with at that moment: my father. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible, so I called Mom instead. There wasn’t an answer.
I took a deep breath. Things were getting real.
“I hope this gives us the answers we need.” Keir held the cigar box as if it contained the secret of life. In a way, I supposed it did—it was the secret to our daughter’s life, anyway.
I pulled into the parking lot of The Lakehead Inn with Adonis and Dr. Carl behind us in Carl’s old truck. I glanced in the rearview to see they were quiet as well.
“I do too, baby. If not, then we’ll figure it out. We’ll see who we’ve got on our side and see what they know. I’m not giving up if that scroll doesn’t tell us how to fight.” I shifted into Park and turned off the engine, staring into the distance but seeing nothing in front of me, which would be our future if we lost to Nyx. I couldn’t let that happen.
The four of us went to Keir’s and my room, and we opened the heavy drapes and turned on the lights. Adon moved the small table nearer to the wall and grabbed a lamp from the nightstand.
We gathered around the table, and Dr. Carl gently unrolled the scroll. I held the dowel at the bottom as Keir went to our duffel to retrieve the top part. He and Adon unrolled it and placed it on the table, and we slid the two pieces together. Save for a few pieces that had flaked off over time, the two parts were a perfect match.
“We know the top half of the scroll is the dark magic spell, so let’s not address that again. The bottom part, however, seems to have been added after the spell was written.” He ran his fingers over the words on the page. “I’m sure of it.”
I stared at Dr. Carl. “Why? Why would there be a second spell that came after the black magic spell?”
“Maybe it was a concession? Think of it—the black magic spell was written by a dark entity, but it was too strong to leave Hell without being sanctioned by a light entity. That’s the way choice works, right? Two choices are given, one dark and one light. Maybe a white lighter agreed to allow the witch to use the magic, but only if there was a way to break the spell eventually?”
“Thanks for the history lesson. Now, how do we break it?” My patience was fast approaching its end.
He turned back to the scroll, closed his eyes, and began whispering some words even I couldn’t hear. Adon glanced at me and smirked. “Calm down. He’s reaching out to his spirit guide. You don’t want to scare them off with your dark energy.”
“I don’t have dark energy. Is there something going on between you and the holy man?” It wasn’t my business, but I was still asking. He could tell me to fuck off if he didn’t want to answer.
“Can’t be. We’re not a balanced pair like you and Keir. I was created in the underworld, and Carl’s been blessed with divinity and second sight, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends with benefits. It won’t last, but the memories will be mine for eternity.”
“Sounds sad and lonely.”
Adon stared at me and then glanced at Keir. “Thankfully, you’ll never have to know.”
Carl continued to whisper, and Keir stared at the scroll as though it could speak. Finally, Carl opened his eyes and stared at us. “Where’s your surrogate hiding?”
“We weren’t told. Why?” Keir’s face paled.
“The scroll reads that the baby girl who is born alive will break the curse. My guide tells me there have been girl babies conceived in your family, but none of them were born alive. If Nyx finds your surrogate first, she will kill your daughter, and the curse won’t be broken. Are you the last Dearly in the bloodline?”
“I, uh, I think so, but I don’t know for sure.” Keir stepped back and sat down in a chair. A moment later, he bent from the waist and put his head between his knees.
“Shit!” I tore through the trash can and found a small paper bag Keir had brought in from the truck. I hurried over to kneel in front of him, holding out the bag. “Breath in here, baby.”
A harsh knock echoed through our room. I quickly went to open the door, surprised to see Scotty and Jay, who happened to be one of the princes of Hell.
“Got yourself a little trouble?” Scotty scooped me up and hugged me before he came inside and went right to Keir who was still breathing into the bag.
Jay stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “We trailed that crazy spirit here. We were in the woods when she found you. I was about to drag the crazy bitch to Hell, but Scotty stopped me.”
“We found the time capsule Keir and his father buried near Lake Shasta. You trailed Lorraine here I guess?” I stepped out of the room and pulled the door behind me.
Jay nodded. “Things are becoming really unsettled downstairs, so when you suggested we go look for Lorraine, we did a little research on her. She’s been haunting an old farmhouse in France for centuries. Some spirits, they say, just go loco, ya know? That’s what everyone thought until she showed up in Limbo a few months ago asking for Claude d’Erlie Bonfils. She caused enough bullshit that she turned some heads, and we tracked her here to see what’s she up to now. The d’Erlie’s, they’re Keir’s ancestors, right?”
I nodded. “I believe so. I thought Jo closed all the portals except the two near Reardon.”
“Someone has been going behind them and reopening some of the portals. They’re doing the best they can, or so we’ve been told by the Celestials. My folks aren’t saying shit.”
“What the hell do you people have going on that you can’t keep track of who’s opening these portals that Jo’s closing? Hell’s sake, humans can buy a Ring security system at Best Buy and connect it to their damn phone to keep tabs on their house while vacationing. Don’t you people have something similar?” I meant every fucking word.
Keir and Scotty came out of the hotel room and stopped in the hallway, likely looking for us to see what was going on. Keir was breathing fine, thankfully.
“So now what?” Scotty asked.
“Until we can find Jo and Lilith, we’re at a standstill. Besides, we’ve got a wedding to attend. We must believe they’ll keep Lake safe. I hate to say this, but we’ll have to act on faith for a little while.” I stared at my husband, seeing he wasn’t talking bullshit.
He was right. We had to believe Jo and Lilith, as unlikely a pair of bodyguards as they were, would keep Lake, Jamie, and our baby safe.
It was a relief pulling into the driveway of Dearly & Son. For an instant, I could tell myself everything was wonderful, but the minute I parked the SUV, Jonas Schiff came out of the shadows without a shirt. That couldn’t be good.
“Hey, how’s Joachim? He still freaking out about the guy who broke into the Coroner’s Office to steal drugs?” Keir asked.
“He’s a little shaken up, but he’ll be okay. I’ll fade the memory of the event in time, and I’m going to request that a cherub keep an eye on things at the morgue while we’re in San Francisco for Trent’s wedding. I came by to ask if Vale and I could ride with you guys. He’s got too much shit for me to take on my bike. Do you have room for us?”
I laughed. “Yes. Tell Valentino only two suitcases. We’re leaving on Friday and driving home on Sunday. There’s not enough time for him to have Academy Award-caliber wardrobe changes.”
Thankfully, Jonas laughed. “I’ll quote you, Dash. What time do you want to leave in the morning?”
“We’re expected for a delayed Thanksgiving brunch at the hotel at noon. We’ll need to leave by nine so we have time to settle in at the hotel and dress accordingly. Come at eight. I’ll have coffee and pastries.” Keir hugged Jonas and grabbed the cooler with Lilith’s blood before running up the stairs to the apartment.
“Scotty popped by to say you found the bottom part of the scroll. He said there’s an issue.” Issue? That was a fucking understatement!
“Yeah. It’s not that there’s never been a girl born into the Dearly family since Henri ghosted Maria back in the eleventh century. It’s that there’s never been a girl born alive. The live birth of a baby girl breaks the curse, but if none of them are born alive, then the curse is never broken. Dr. Carl said he believed it was a compromise between Heaven and Hell. I want to know who in the Celestial Realm approved this curse for use. Can you find out for me?”
“You think a Celestial worked with Nyx on this spell? No. I can tell you that didn’t happen. No Celestial would work with the goddess of the night. If Nyx establishes herself as the supreme ruler over humans, she’ll have a foothold into the upper ranks of Tenebris Angelis—the original fallen angels—and she’ll be able to turn Lucifer’s former supporters into hers, which would give her the power to overthrow him.” Jonas began to pace.
“Dr. Carl says the way the scroll is written, the method for breaking the spell was a compromise to allow the black magic to be used. Nyx supplied the black magic. Someone supplied the clause to get the agreement from the Celestial Realm. Who would that be?” My patience was thin. This was my child at risk, and I wanted answers.
“I’ll try to find out. We’ll be here at eight in the morning.”
Without waiting for me to answer, Jonas glanced around before he took to the sky and disappeared. I wished to hell we didn’t have Amelie and Trent’s wedding. I wanted this shit to come to a head.