Chapter 5 Marta
Marta
I’d always believed in an afterlife. Despite my issues with God and whatever collective divinity watched over us, I’d never wavered in the idea that places like Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory existed.
The power I had came from my long line of ancestors, and evidence of their reassuring presence made itself known in my everyday life.
The sound of birds chirping in the morning, the peaceful energy radiating from the earth, the calming hum of trance and meditation. This was where I felt them most.
But those bodies…there was nothing in them anymore. When I placed my hands on them, the magic pulsing back made me ill. Their souls had not been passed onto the fade. It was almost like they had been devoured. Gone. Poof. Right into nonexistence.
Monsters like incubi or succubi could feed from souls for years and never fully extinguish them.
Demons thrived on the chaos they created, reveling in the violent energy of humans under their thrall.
But this? I had no idea what we were dealing with.
It could be a demon, but maybe one I’d never heard of before.
On the drive back to the motel, Atlas and Wes talked in the front seat while I breathed through the rotten agony boiling in my veins. My skin prickled like I’d touched a live wire or stuck my tongue in an electrical socket.
The more we drove, the worse it got.
The sun had started to set over the horizon, painting the sky in brilliant violets and hushed roses.
It should have been a beautiful sight, but my paranoia had only escalated.
The hair on the back of my neck rose, and the churning in my stomach had me checking the back window every five seconds, one hand on my pistol, the other on my cross necklace.
There was nothing behind us, but that didn’t mean we weren’t being followed.
Atlas slowed the car to a stop at a crossroads as that prickling awareness scratched over my scalp and down my spine.
“I don’t know, Wes,” Atlas said. “I’ve snorted and swallowed almost every drug out there. Nothing’s ever made me feel like I needed to fuck my way to an early grave.”
“Well, you’re hardly a reliable source,” Wes countered with a smirk. “You’d fuck anyone with a pulse and a warm hole.”
“Hey!” Atlas smacked Wes’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “Don’t slut shame me.”
Wes laughed, but movement in the woods off to my left got my attention.
“I don’t think you have the emotional capacity for shame,” Wes replied.
“Shhh,” I cut in, narrowing my focus to the thrashing grass and swaying leaves.
“What? You side with him?” Atlas said. “Typical.”
“Shut up,” I said again, harsher this time. “Do you see that?”
Thick, heavy energy coated my insides, the air seizing in my lungs. We were being followed, and the thing was massive, whatever it was.
“What?” Wes said, following my line of sight to the tree line.
“What the fuck?” Atlas leaned closer, squinting to try to see better.
The ground thumped like a giant had taken a step toward us, and the windows of the car rattled, vibrating with each heavy footstep.
Anticipation had me yanking my gun out of the holster and reaching for the bottle of holy water in my satchel.
If it was a demon, it was big and likely all hopped up on soul energy.
Which meant we were fucked.
“Go,” I said, pounding on the back of the driver’s seat. “Go. Go. Go!”
Atlas stepped on the gas pedal, but before we could move, something massive slammed into the car from the left side.
My head smashed against the window, and the world darkened around me, stars blinding my vision.
The white noise of tinnitus rang through my ears, and I clenched my eyes closed as the car flipped on its side.
Metal crushed against asphalt as sparks flew into the back seat.
I struggled to focus, to come back to reality, my heart pounding and my hands shaking, my entire reality now upside down.
Just when the car would have toppled, I murmured a spell and blasted energy to the right, forcing us back onto four wheels. A black cloud spiraled outside, coalescing into the shape of an enormous human with glowing red eyes.
Demon.
Not just any demon. This was more colossal than anything I’d ever encountered.
It rammed into us again, growling and spewing venomous words in a language I didn’t understand. Like Aramaic, but a much older version than the one I’d been taught. I caught bits and pieces through the high-pitched whine in my eardrums, but it was enough for me to realize it meant to kill us.
Consume, it snarled. Consume. Take.
Atlas raised his gun and fired off rounds right into the beast’s midsection, but that only pissed it off more. The beast stumbled back, growled, and hit the car again.
Dizzy and disoriented, I scrambled to get out, shoving my weight against the door until it finally gave way and I tumbled onto the asphalt.
“Marta!” Wes shouted, scrambling after me. But I had a plan. Holy water and a few enchantments should force it away long enough for us to figure out what to do. Wes joined me outside, sprinting behind me to the back of the car.
Mustering all the magic I could, I held my hand up and forced the energy through my palm, shouting in Latin.
“I expel you,” I screamed. “Be gone, demon. I command you. Leave this land! Leave this place, immediately.”
It turned to face me, crimson eyes gleaming, and curled its lips into a deadly, toothy grin.
“Ancestors, hear me!” I grounded myself in my mental safe space and reached out to the land, the heavens, and the other side of the veil. “Saint Marta, help me. Grandmothers, give me your strength.”
White light beamed from my palm, energy surging through my fingertips, hitting the monster in the chest. I tossed the bottle of holy water at the demon, reveling in its groan as it stumbled back.
“I call upon the powers of this great mother: earth, wind, fire, water, spirit. Erase this monster from our sight. Erase this being from harming your children.”
Atlas joined Wes at my side, and something tugged inside of me, that immature bond blaring to life.
One Colt grabbed my right hand, the other grabbed my left, and magic surged between us, uncontrollable and untamed.
Wes’s calm stability clashed with Atlas’s wild energy, burning through my earthy groundedness like wildfire.
I couldn’t contain it, and it poured out of my chest in a bright white beam, decimating the space between us and the demon, blinding me.
Something warm trickled down my lips, over my chin.
Ignoring it, I continued my assault, and the demon leaned into the force field, like a peon trying to withstand a hurricane.
A strangled growl tore from my chest, and just when I thought I would pass out, the demon dissipated into a cloud of obsidian.
Exhausted and panting, the connection to my warriors sizzled out, and I let go of their hands, leaning forward to put my weight on my knees.
I’d never channeled that much energy before, and doing so made me lightheaded.
Wes heaved deep breaths while Atlas stared at what remained of his precious POS.
“Fuck!” he shouted, clutching at his chest. But I didn’t know if that was because of the car or the energy he’d just exerted.
I grabbed my phone and called Bridge, who answered on the second ring. I told her what had happened and asked her to get us, seeing as Atlas’s vehicle wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But that wasn’t the major issue.
No.
When I searched deep down inside me, they were still there, lingering like electrical currents under my skin.
This was more than the bond. This was chaos in my blood.
This was their souls mingling with mine.
It was too much. Too much indeed. It kept zinging back and forth between us, caught in a feedback loop.
It passed through Atlas, into Wes, back into me.
Over and over, gaining momentum as it went. I didn’t think I could withstand it.
I ignored that for the time being, and eventually Bridge showed up, taking us back to the motel.
“Here,” Bridge said, holding out a bar of chocolate after I collapsed on the bed. “It’ll help.”
“Thanks.” I took it from her and sheepishly bit into a piece.
Atlas sat on the other bed, cleaning a wound on his head, and Wes stood next to Leander at the edge of the room, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Well?” Isobel said, raising her eyebrows. “What happened?”
“It was a demon,” I replied.
“No shit, it was a demon,” Isobel said. “Did you get an idea of what kind?”
“A big one,” I answered.
Isobel’s silent glare was enough to have me wilting into the mattress.
I did my best to explain as I chewed. Damn, this chocolate was good.
I got to the part where the warrior bond burned through me, was still burning through me, and I stopped.
No one had ever had two warriors before.
What if this was normal for that kind of thing?
Was there even a reason for concern? Could Wes and Atlas still feel me this intensely? Still feel each other?
“I just…couldn’t control it.” I avoided the stare from both Atlas and Wes as it drilled holes through me, almost like they could see all the way down to my soul.
Atlas didn’t trust me, but his adrenaline was still high, so he was riding the waves of anticipating another fight.
Wes seemed more level-headed, like a tiger hiding in the bushes, patiently waiting for the right time to pounce.
The bond’s whirlwind energy didn’t seem to frighten them as much as it did me, and maybe that was because they didn’t know any better.
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be like this. It…it scared me.”
Isobel looked at Caspian while Bridge glanced at Leander.
Yeah, definitely not.
“You’re okay now. Rest up,” Isobel said. “We can’t have you frying out in the middle of the ritual.”
I swallowed and drank water from the glass on the table next to me, avoiding her scrutinizing gaze.
“It kept saying consume and take,” Atlas continued, bringing their attention back to the demon. “My money’s on some kind of deadly sin. Maybe gluttony or lust.”
“What did you find out at the hospital?” I looked from Isobel to Caspian, praying they learned more than we did.
“One survivor is still in a coma,” she explained. “The other was too traumatized to talk about it. He did say that it came on quickly. One second, they were normal. Then he was overwhelmed with desire…like if he didn’t have sex, he would die. Literally die.”
“So a lust demon then,” Leander said. “Wonderful.”
“The farmer was pissed about his sheep,” Bridge continued. “It was a massacre. He’d already cleaned most of it up, but from what I could tell, it had all the signs of a ritualistic sacrifice.”
“What about the woods?” Caspian asked.
“We didn’t find much more than candle wax and leftover salt,” Leander added.
“The magic residue was overwhelming.” Bridge ran a hand over her face and back through her hair. “I brought a few books with me, anything I thought would be important, but there’s nothing like this in there.”
The Harlots had the most extensive collection of metaphysical and esoteric texts in the country.
Our grandmothers had been gathering texts for decades, and now we maintained all of that knowledge to pass on to future generations.
Bridge had the best catalogue of every book in there, even if I’d spent a large portion of my childhood roaming its shelves myself.
“Someone conjured something they shouldn’t,” Bridge continued.
“The Bloody Femmes?” Isobel raised her eyebrows in expectation.
Bridge nodded. “I think so. The energy was dark. Desperate. Almost…evil.”
“What if it’s THE Deadly Sin demon, the one who created the others?” Wes suggested. “Or maybe Babalon.”
“He’s super old,” Isobel said. “Esoteric. Why would the Femmes haul him outta hell?”
“It doesn’t matter why,” Bridge said.
“Would a liminal even work on him?” I asked. “To create one, we need to know what we’re working with.”
“We’ll do a summoning spell,” Bridge replied, “quickly followed by an exorcism to the pocket world. Once we know what we’re working with, we can adjust the spell accordingly.”
“What about the salt ward?” I shook my head. “I’ve never seen anything that powerful. He might be able to walk right through it.”
“There are three of us,” Isobel replied. “And four warriors. That should be enough.”
Should be.
That didn’t make me feel better.
“Great.” Isobel shook her head, sighed, and glanced at the rest of the warriors in the room. “The moon is conjunct Mars tonight at exactly 9:03 p.m. We’ll go to the same spot where the Femmes conjured the son of a bitch and pull on that power to build the liminal.”
That, too, made sense. We could pull on any residual energy left there to trap this specific monster.
“We leave in twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes? I doubted I’d be ready for a walk, much less a ritual, in that time. Especially with all this warrior energy buzzing around my molecules.
That decided, Isobel and Caspian left, quickly followed by Bridge and Leander, leaving me alone with my warriors.
I licked the rest of the chocolate off my lips and swung my legs around to stand, wanting to head to the room I shared with my cousin.
But when I sat up fully, my vision swam, and another wave of unease rocked through me.
“Hey, take it easy,” Wes said, grabbing my arm to help me up.
I shrugged him off. “I said I’m fine.”
“Clearly, you’re not,” he snapped.
I glared at him, suddenly irritated with his fussing over me. I didn’t need his help. Either of them. I sensed his frustration and disappointment as I walked outside to ground myself in the earth’s energy before we left.