Chapter 32
Chapter
Thirty-Two
“He’s a ghost,” Devon stammers, putting himself in front of me. “How the fuck do we fight a ghost.”
“My dagger,” I say, not taking my eyes off the map.
Heart racing, I try to will the herbs to hurry the fuck up.
Amanda’s lanyard is on the table next to the map.
Come on…work! Devon picks up my dagger and throws it at the spirit.
The blade slices the man in two, and he dissipates into a swirl of gray smoke. The herbs start to move again.
“He was blocking the spell,” I say.
“Why did the dagger work?” Devon asks.
“Iron,” Xavier says, picking it up. “There’s iron in the blade.”
The spirit reforms and Xavier lunges at it, slashing the dagger through the air. It disappears again but another moves in through the open window, bringing with it a whoosh of air that scatters the herbs across the map.
“No!” I cry and splay my fingers over the map, using magic to keep the herbs from completely blowing off. Xavier stabs that spirit, temporarily vanquishing it. I desperately sweep the herbs back into the middle of the map and pick up the lanyard, holding it tight in my right hand.
“Ad te clamo. Te ipsum revela. Ostende mihi locum tuum.”
Another spirit rises through the floorboards, right behind me. It reaches out, hand going on the back of my head. I grunt in pain, suddenly paralyzed.
“Wren!” Xavier calls and throws the dagger. It whizzes through the spirit, and Devon catches it.
“There’s too many,” he says, whirling around, brandishing the dagger through the air, passing the dagger through another spirit. “And we only have one weapon.”
“Fire poker,” Xavier says and Devon nods. He throws the dagger at a spirit that just materialized and speeds out of the cabin. Xavier pulls the dagger from where it got lodged in the wall and stands behind me, slashing the dagger through the air.
Blood drips from my nose and I wipe it away with the back of my hand. Devon is back, holding a fire poker like a baseball bat. He and Xavier keep playing supernatural whack-a-mole and I try to recenter myself.
The demon doesn’t want me to find him—which means my spell is going to work.
“Ad te clamo. Te ipsum revela. Ostende mihi locum tuum.” I tighten my grip on the lanyard. ‘Ad te clamo. Te ipsum revela. Ostende mihi locum tuum!” The herbs vibrate and move into a circle. “Got it!” I say, bringing my finger down on the map, pressing the herbs and ashes onto the paper to mark it.
“They’re not stopping!” Devon shouts and the darkness coming from the spirits is starting to make me feel sick.
“Wren!” Xavier moves his arm over my head, stopping a spirit from materializing right before me. “How do we stop them?”
“Sage,” I say, slipping the lanyard around my neck and grabbing the map before anything can happen to it. “There’s sage in my bag.” My hands shake as I quickly fold the map, shoving it inside my shirt. Xavier pulls out the bundle of herbs from the bag.
“It’s laced with Vesta powder,” I tell him. “As soon as it lights, you have to drop it. Then we run.”
Devon swings the iron fire poker through the air as he moves back to me, picking up the bag. Xavier holds the sage in front of him and I throw out my hand.
“Ignis.”
The sage stick lights on fire and immediately starts to sizzle from the Vesta powder.
Xavier slips his arm around me and effortlessly picks me up, speeding me out of the cabin.
Devon is right behind us, still waving the fire poker through the air.
We stop in the pathway going from the cabins back to the main building.
“Holy shit.” Devon whirls around, fangs drawn. “That’s what demon hunting is like?”
“Sometimes.” I let out a breath and Xavier takes my chin in his hand, tipping my face up to his.
“You were bleeding.”
“I’m okay.”
He licks his finger and then gently wipes a smudge of blood from my face. Devon stops dead in his tracks, eyes wide as he stares at us.
And he retracts his fangs.
“She’s in the woods,” I tell them and reach inside my shirt, pulling out the crumbled up map. “Those spirits can communicate with the demon. We need to move.” I open up the map and give it to Xavier, which he exchanges for my dagger. I slip it back into the sheath hanging on my waist.
“There’s a path along the lake,” he says. “It’ll be the fastest and easiest way to get there.”
Devon steps up next to Xavier. “Not to be a party pooper, but you marked a pretty big area on the map.”
“I know,” I say. “Once we’re close, I have one more spell to cast and it’ll help us go right to her.
” I wipe my nose again when I swallow and taste blood.
“I thought we’d be finding a body, but judging by the way those spirits tried to stop me from locating her, wherever she is… there’s something bigger.”
Devon zips up the backpack and puts it back on. “Lead the way,” he tells Xavier, who folds the map and sticks it in his back pocket. We jog around the main building, not stopping until we get to the lake.
“Do you smell that?” Xavier asks Devon.
Devon inhales, tipping his head up. “It smells like roadkill.”
“It’s human.” Xavier pauses, eyes narrowing as he looks at the boathouse on the dock. “There’s something else.”
“A person?” I ask, hopefully. Maybe we can get some of the workers out alive after all.’
“No. Some sort of monster.”
I pull the dagger from the sheath, fingers sparking with magic that travels down the blade, electrifying it like a taser. We creep forward on the dock, and the old wood creaks under our weight. Xavier holds out his hand, stopping me so he can take the brunt of an attack.
The wind blows, carrying with it the scent of death. It does smell like roadkill, and how Xavier can tell the difference between what’s a dead human and a dead deer, I’ll never know. We take a few more steps and I look down into the dark water on either side of us.
One of the canoes that’s tied up bumps into the dock, and pulls my attention to it. My heart is in my throat, adrenaline surging through my body. Keeping a tight hold of my dagger, I look into the next boat, eyes trying to adjust to whatever’s inside.
“The fuck is that?” Devon exclaims right as something jumps out of the boat and growls at us. It’s clutching what’s left of a rotting and festering human arm.
“Scrapper demon,” I say. “They’re fast and have a nasty bite, but they’re easy to kill.”
With a snarl, Xavier speeds forward, grabbing the scrapper demon and ripping its head clean off its body.
He drops both parts onto the dock. Two more scramble out of the boat, snarling and hissing at Xavier.
He goes for the one closest and Devon zooms forward, taking hold of one.
He snaps its neck and then quickly drops the body, looking a little unsettled.
Other than losing control and biting me, Devon hasn’t done anything overtly violent. I suppose you could call demon hunting a gray area when you’re killing monsters like scrapper demons, but decimating any sort of creature can change you.
“I think that’s it,” I say, whirling around. The dock’s movement throws off my balance, and it’s hard to focus on anything in the dark. I blink rapidly, trying to steady myself. The wind blows again, gently rustling beach towels that are hanging on the dock’s railing along the shore.
I lost my flashlight inside the cabin, so I have to get closer to the canoe to see what’s left of the body. From the smell alone, I know this person has been dead for several days, probably killed whenever everyone went missing a few days ago.
“How’d the cops miss this one?” Devon asks.
“The body was dragged,” Xavier tells him, pointing to something I can’t see along the shore. “That’s the trail.”
“Scrapper demons follow along behind bigger, badder demons, eating the scraps they leave behind. Hence the name,” I explain. “They wouldn’t be here for just one body.”
“I’m sorry,” Xavier says, which surprises me a bit.
“How did you know?” I ask, thankful he’s aware enough to know that I had hoped to save them.
“You have a good heart. Of course you wanted to find everyone alive.”
“Yeah. They have families. People who love them and miss them and just want them to come home.”
“Killing the demon who did this is the next best thing.”
“It is,” I agree and turn my head, trying to breathe in fresh air that doesn’t smell like rotting bodies. I walk in between Xavier and Devon, getting off the dock and back on the path. We trek on, moving quietly and cautiously, not stopping until we’re close to the spot I’d marked on the map.
I get a quartz crystal from the backpack and hold it out in front of me.
“Ostende mihi viam,” I chant, remembering what Amanda looked like from the picture on her lanyard. “Ostende mihi viam.” The stone glows bright yellow for a second as the spell takes effect and then fades to a softer, muted light. I cup my hands around it so the light doesn’t give us away.
“The closer we get, the brighter the light gets,” I tell Devon, who hasn’t seen me work this spell before. “Even if she’s moving, we’ll know if we’re getting closer or farther.”
“That’s pretty fucking cool, Wren.”
I smile. “Magic has its perks,” I say, echoing his same words from earlier.
Holding my hands out in front of me, I slowly turn, waiting for the stone to glow and lead us in the right direction.
We pick our way through nearly half a mile of woods and the whole time, it’s silent.
The light gets brighter and brighter, until not even my hands clasped around it can contain the light.
“Wren,” Xavier whispers, putting his hand on my shoulder. I’ve been looking at the light, which was a huge mistake. Because now my eyes are out of focus and I blink rapidly, trying to get my vision to adjust to the dark forest.
The trees around us are dead, and the ground looks as if all the weeds and underbrush have been burned. I drop the crystal when twigs snap in front of us and the smell of sulfur fills the air. The dark shadow of a person slowly comes into view, moving out from behind a tree.
It’s Amanda. Her throat has been slit, and a flap of skin hangs down, crusted with blood and stuck to the top of her chest. The crystal radiates bright, yellow light, illuminating everything around us.
Xavier draws his fangs and snarls, moving in front of me before charging at the demon possessing Amanda’s body.
But he only makes it a few steps before the demon throws out her arm, sending a pulse of dark magic through the air, knocking Xavier right off his feet.