Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
“Covens, take the lake shore, and make sure you cover the cemeteries and the spots near where the towns were flooded,” Brent told the witches. “Do your best to keep anyone from exploding the oil and gas wells. You’ll also be protecting Travis and lending him whatever power you can spare.
“Pre-cogs and mediums, stay back from the front lines but keep your phones on and let me know if anything changes,” he added. “The ghosts are our eyes and ears. Use them as scouts to keep from getting surprised.”
Rowan and Aricella had gathered and briefed the witches earlier that day, ensuring everyone knew the needed spells and understood their role of keeping supernatural attackers at bay.
The two more powerful witches intended to stay with Travis and Brent, as did Archibald Donnelly and Dr. Peters, figuring that necromancy would be the most help in keeping the restless dead at bay.
Jacinski and the half-dozen Logonje priests chose to cover the most haunted spots, the ones that might pose the greatest threat as the lake’s dark magic powered up. Father Leo and the six Occulatum priests went with them. They were already in position.
“I don’t like doing this at night,” Travis grumbled. “Vampires sleep during the day.”
“We weren’t going to get far in daylight, not with park visitors and security,” Brent reminded him.
“I know. But I don’t have to like it.”
Brent stayed with Travis, backing him up with guns and his limited ability to see ghosts. They had chosen the spot closest to where the town of Mayne had been flooded, marked by stone pillars, railroad tracks that led nowhere, and an overgrown cemetery.
Some of the allied covens were on alert for attack, protecting the ritual area as best they could, given the large size of the park. Others laid down suppressing magic to avoid having the old gas and oil wells explode.
“Do you think the elders know we’re here?” Travis asked as he got the final elements ready for the ritual.
“If they don’t yet, they will soon,” Brent said.
“What are the odds that CHARON will show up?”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Brent replied.
An hour ago, taking travel time from Pittsburgh into consideration, Brent had forced himself to make the phone call.
“Lawson? What the hell do you want?” a voice Brent recognized as Clark Davis answered.
“Shut up and listen. The Sinistram elders have been turned. They’re vampires now. We’re doing a ritual at Moraine State Park in an hour to stop them. You want in?”
“If this is your idea of a joke—”
“In or out? The magic is starting.”
“We’ll be there.” Davis ended the call.
“If they left right after my call, they should be getting here any minute. And if they did betray us to the Sinistram, they didn’t give them much of a heads up.” Brent glanced at his watch, then looked at Travis. “It’s time to start the party.”
Brent watched Travis take a few deep breaths to clear his mind. Rowan and Aricella had already created a warded circle for them and raised a dome of protective magic to keep him from being interrupted by magic or spirits. A lit candle was placed within reach.
Travis wore a silver crucifix, several saints’ medallions, and had a flask of salted holy water.
Brent also wore charms and amulets, along with protective hex bags.
Given the powerful magic to be worked, those talismans couldn’t save them from a full blast, but Brent took comfort from them and figured every little bit helped.
Travis opened the steel case and pulled on magically neutral gloves made of a fine silver mesh before he lifted the Precepts grimoire from its resting place.
“Even with the gloves, I can feel the book’s magic, tugging at me.
It’s like the power of the lake—so strong,” Travis told him.
“The energy goes deep down, and it’s very, very old.
” He pulled out a couple glow sticks and snapped them.
They’d add enough light to what the candle provided for him to read, but wouldn’t distract the others.
“The ghosts are paying attention,” Brent added. “They’re awake and watching. Curious and skeptical. Here’s hoping they take our side.”
“Here I go. Wish me luck.” With that, Travis began to speak the Latin incantation that Brent knew his partner had silently rehearsed but dared not say aloud before now. Even with his limited abilities, Brent could sense the ancient magic and thought it felt stained and twisted.
A ritual of this power and magnitude took time, and Brent sensed the spell seeping into the land beneath their feet and into their bones, and perhaps into their souls. He felt the strength in the language used, the dark poetry of the phrasing, the cadence of its consonants like clacking bones.
An icy wind swept past as even more spirits gathered, long overdue for rest and justice.
“I call on the power of the lake and the deep places. Scour the rot of undeath away from the elders of the Sinistram and strip away their unholy magic,” Travis said.
Travis looked down at a yellowed piece of parchment, even more discolored in the glow.
The Investiture Certificate had been presented to him when he was taken into the Sinistram as a novitiate long ago.
Brent had feared that Travis might have gotten rid of it in a fit of pique after he left the Order and felt relief when his friend discovered it in his desk.
There was nothing magical about the certificate itself, but as part of the ceremony, each of the Sinistram elders had signed the paper. He had their names and their signatures. That gave him power.
Travis took a deep breath and began to read aloud.
“Enzo Bianchi, Luciano Cattaneo, Giuseppe Sala, Pietro Lombardi, Elia Bonfante, Cosimo Fanucci, Ludovic Dugoni, you have betrayed your vows, betrayed the purpose of the Order, and sold your souls for the dark magic of the undead.
“I renounce your betrayal, and by all that is Holy, renounce the abhorrent power that has consumed you.” Travis switched to Latin for the next part of the rite, while he carried out the other elements of the spell.
He took a pinch of specially-mixed herbs and dropped them into the candle flame, watching the fire turn colors and send sparks into the air. As he chanted, he drew flaming sigils in the air. Brent felt the tug of the magic on his energy, and perhaps on his soul, deep within.
The air shimmered, a swell of power made Brent’s head ache like a coming thunderstorm, and then seven men stood at a distance from where he and Travis set up the ritual.
“Travis Dominick,” a tall, thin man with sharp features, called out. Brent recognized him as Pietro Lombardi from Travis’s earlier description. “Stop this charade immediately.”
Travis never hesitated, continuing the chant, not even acknowledging the interruption.
Rowan, Aricella, Donnelly, and Peters moved a few steps closer, an unmistakable show of protection.
“This is your last warning. Return to the fold, and all will be forgiven,” Lombardi snapped, annoyed at being ignored.
Brent didn’t believe him, although he didn’t doubt the Sinistram leader would like to have Travis’s magic under his control.
“You can’t win,” Cosimo Fanucci, a short blond man, told them. “Put your toys away and stand down.”
If we don’t pose a threat, why are they here? Brent felt certain that Travis’s plan and the Precepts incantation were just as dangerous as they believed, and the Sinistram elders knew it.
Brent heard Donnelly and Peters murmur quiet words of power. Lombardi laughed in response.
“Your necromancy won’t work against our magic,” Lombardi told them. “We are no longer mere vampires.”
Flashes of light and the clatter of distant fighting drew Brent’s attention toward several spots along the edge of the park where he knew the Logonje were stationed.
Elsewhere, along one of the moraine mounds, he heard raised voices and saw shimmers in the darkness as power was traded and countered.
“You’re too little, too late,” Lombardi gloated. “Everything that must happen has already occurred. The wheels are turning. They cannot be stopped.”
A dozen black-clad Sinistram priests poured from the shadows, and Brent hoped the Logonje and Occulatum could keep them at bay long enough for Travis to work the spell.
Heavily-armed newcomers dressed in camouflage fatigues burst from beneath the trees and met the Sinistram advance, and Brent knew CHARON had kept their promise.
Ninja-priests clashed with special forces-trained operatives, both sides well-versed in magic. The Sinistram rushed the fighters, chanting spells as they drew their knives.
CHARON opened fire with a small arsenal of weapons. Magic deflected most of the bullets from striking the priests, but the fusillade stopped the Sinistram’s advance and forced them to switch from offense to defense.
It’s a bit like Mothra vs. Godzilla, Brent thought, firing into the melee whenever he got a clear shot at one of the warrior-priests. For today, at least, CHARON operatives were allies.
He didn’t dare lob any of Travis’s enhanced flash bangs, given the number of uncapped oil and gas wells just beneath the ground, so he made do by laying down rounds of defensive fire with a semiautomatic rifle to keep the priests away from the spelled dome where Travis worked the incantation.
“You can’t prevent what has been foretold!” Fanucci shouted, features animated with anticipation for the grand finale, the end of all things.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Brent countered. “But with the Precepts, we can stop you.”
“Don’t believe the traitor from the library.” Lombardi’s expression twisted to a snarl. “He has been dealt with.” Brent knew he meant the Keeper who had brought Travis the grimoire.
“It begins.” Lombardi looked up as a brilliant light streaked across the dark sky, and Brent recognized it as the comet Travis had been tracking.