Sinistram (Night Vigil #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

“Behind you!”

Travis Dominick shouted a warning. A shotgun boomed seconds later as his partner, Brent Lawson, wheeled and sent a blast through the ghost that appeared from nowhere a few feet away.

Rock salt sent the spirit packing with an angry wail.

“Guess we’ve met the ghost who’s been causing trouble.” Brent kept the shotgun up and his finger on the trigger. “Mark the sigils. I’ll watch your back.”

Eighty years ago, Michael Poole fell to his death from one of the towers at the Durable Cement factory.

The facility had once been a booming concern, only to wither and die as markets and manufacturing changed.

Now abandoned, the large site had fallen into disrepair, attracting thrill seekers and legend trippers who explored modern ruins and went looking for spectral trouble.

“Third tower,” Travis reminded Brent. “At least, that’s where they found the body.”

“Lead the way.”

Storms and vandals had taken their toll over the years.

Taggers had covered the walls with graffiti, garbage collected in the corners, and most of the windows were broken.

Travis picked his way across the debris-littered ground, careful of his footing while he kept watch for Poole’s ghost—or other spirits—to appear.

Cement making had been dangerous work. Aside from the usual hazards of falls and heavy equipment, wet cement burned skin, and the dust caused fatal lung damage. Poole wasn’t the first to die on the job at the old factory, but he had been the last fatality before it closed.

Locals suspected that the actual death counts were doctored by management, and old-timers claimed to know people who had been paid to keep quiet about a family member’s on-the-job death back in the day.

For years, the dead kept their silence. But lately, something had roused ghosts like Poole’s from uneasy sleep.

People who lived near the old plant or drove by it daily started reporting seeing jumpsuit-clad gray figures at the edges of the property and its access roads.

That caused more than one accident, which is how Travis and Brent ended up on the job.

Travis kept a flask of salted holy water in his left hand and blessed chalk in his right. When he reached the tower, Brent took up his position as guard while Travis chalked sigils to banish ghosts and demons, dispel evil, and remove negative energy.

He could sense the ghosts watching them, but for now the spirits kept their distance.

“Hurry up, the energy’s building,” Brent said.

Travis took a deep breath, and his right hand went to the silver crucifix hanging from a chain around his neck. He left the priesthood years ago, but had never forsaken his vows to heal, guide, and protect.

“Spirits of the dead, hear me.” Travis’s measured tone was both commanding and reassuring. “Your time here is over. You were wronged and died too soon, but the people responsible are long dead. It’s time to move on. There is no one for you to take your vengeance on.”

The wind stirred, colder than before. Travis felt the hair on his arm rise and a prickle at the back of his neck.

“You’ve got their attention,” Brent said. “Finish up so we can get the hell out of here.”

“I would ask that you leave by your own accord, but you can’t continue to harm the living. Go now, or I will send you to your final rest,” Travis continued.

The wind picked up, and Travis could hear the sound of distant, angry muttering. Then invisible hands pushed him backward, nearly making him lose his footing.

Brent fired the shotgun into the empty space where the shove had originated, and for a few seconds, the air lightened, until more ghosts rushed in to make their displeasure known.

“They aren’t listening!” Brent shouted, as if Travis hadn’t noticed.

The wind swept toward them again, but this time it carried a fine cloud of white dust, billowing across the debris-strewn factory yard.

“Try not to breathe,” Travis cautioned. “Cement dust is bad news.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Brent replied as they both pulled respirators from their backpacks.

More ghosts appeared like shadows in the dust, far more than the company claimed. Apparently, they were done waiting.

Travis pivoted into the exorcism litany, as useful against hostile ghosts as demons. “Exorcizamos te, omni immundus spiritus…”

Poole’s ghost howled in fury, and the dust swirled around them, making it difficult for Travis and Brent to see. Scowling faces appeared in the cloud reaching out for them with grasping spectral hands. Scratches appeared on their faces and arms, proof that the ghosts could do real harm.

“Plan B. On my mark.” Travis spoke a few words of magic, and the wind pushed the cloud back toward the tower where Poole had fallen on the other side of the yard.

“Now!”

Brent fired his shotgun into the billowing dust, igniting it in a fireball around the old tower.

“Run!” Travis had gone a few paces before he realized Brent wasn’t behind him, still keeping his gun trained on the cloud of spirits. He ran back and grabbed Brent by the arm. “Come on!”

They nearly made it to the gate before they heard a thunderous crack and the old tower split, collapsing as the flames engulfed it.

Much as Travis wanted to stop and catch his breath, he knew that they needed to be long gone before the police showed up.

He and Brent piled into his old Crown Victoria, a car he chose because of its powerful engine and enough room in the trunk for a body.

Travis didn’t burn rubber, but he got them back on the main road headed in the opposite direction in record time.

They pulled off their masks and shoved them under the seat.

“Talk to me. Can you breathe? Are you okay?”

Brent nodded. “Yeah. Although if we get stopped, we’re probably covered in cement dust. You are, so I’m betting that I am too.”

Travis glanced at the rearview mirror. “Shit. There’s a box of wipes under the seat. Maybe we can at least clean up enough not to get noticed.”

Brent laughed as he reached for the box. “And we’ll smell ‘powder fresh.’”

“Shut up.” Travis could tell from his reflection that his grin had the slightly maniacal ‘we lived through it’ edge that came with cheating death.

Travis was thirty-four and six-foot-two, with solid lean muscle, chin-length black hair, and green eyes. The cement powder in his hair and eyebrows made him look like he had suddenly aged decades.

Not too very long ago, Travis had been a member of a secretive order of warrior priests who used magic and arcane knowledge from the Vatican archives to fight demons, malicious hauntings, vampires, and other infernal creatures, the Sinistram.

The Sinistram reported to Cardinal Vasylyk, one step away from the Pope, and considered itself to be the “left hand” of the Holy Father, fighting the monsters in the dark.

Not all of the Cardinals approved of the Sinistram’s secrecy, hubris, or tactics. They called the organization by another name: Filios Tenebrarum. The Sons of Darkness.

Internal politics, corruption, and cynicism led to Travis’s highly controversial resignation from a role that was supposed to be for life.

He left the Sinistram, left the priesthood, and left the Church, although the Sinistram refused to accept his decisions and made periodic “invitations” to return, which Travis always rebuffed in no uncertain terms.

Instead, Travis now ran the St. Dismas Outreach along with his helpers, Matthew and Jon, a halfway house in a rough part of Pittsburgh that served the homeless and fought paranormal dangers on the side.

Named for the believing thief on the cross, it gave a wry nod to the protecting and healing parts of his past vocation that Travis had never renounced.

He drove them back to Brent’s office on the South Side.

“Do you think that will stop the hauntings?” Brent asked as they parked, and Travis followed him inside.

“Hope so, although Poole certainly wasn’t the only fatality,” Travis replied. “Dangerous work is one thing, but cutting corners on safety features is evil.”

“Happens every day.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Travis said.

Brent’s office was in a converted house, so it had a full bathroom where they could shower, handy in a line of work that often left them covered in dirt, blood, and gore. Travis usually left clean clothes at the office for just such occasions.

“Go ahead and get the first shower. I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee and see if we’ve got cookies.” Brent waved Travis ahead of him.

Brent was in his early thirties, with short blond hair and a muscular build.

His first brush with the supernatural came when demons killed his parents and his twin brother, Danny.

He barely escaped a demon attack that claimed most of a village when he was in the military, causing painful injuries that flared up at the worst times.

Angry and ready for revenge, Brent swore he would find a way to avenge his family and atone for surviving.

Now, Brent was ex-military, ex-FBI, and ex-cop, finally opening a private detective agency that specialized in paranormal cases.

That put his supernatural experience to good use and addressed problems that regular law enforcement wasn’t prepared to handle.

It also gave Brent more schedule flexibility on days when painful old injuries from the military or demon hunting caused problems.

Like Travis, Brent had seen enough corruption, denial, and cronyism to be disillusioned and angry, but he was too stubborn to abandon what he thought of as his core mission: stopping the things that went bump in the night.

Travis had met Brent on a case where they were both hunting the same demon and decided to team up. It wasn’t like the television shows about fearless monster hunters, which Travis and Brent were fond of watching to poke fun. Nights like tonight reminded Travis how much fiction and reality differed.