Dark Strike, page 23
Bingo.
I was running. As I rounded the corner, I saw a door with a faded sticker denoting 6A. Soft yellow light shone from the gap between the floor and the door. I went to the door and tried the knob. It rolled freely.
“Gotcha,” I whispered.
My pulse pounded and I opened the door as quietly as I could to step inside. The air was filled with the stench of blood. The apartment was of moderate size by New York City standards, lit with nothing more than a few candles on the wood floor. The burning candles lit the walls with dark, vague and creepy shadows. Great.
The ceilings were at least ten feet high, and the walls were covered with wallpaper straight out of the eighties. Chairs, tables, and a desk were strewn against the walls, as though to make a larger space in the middle of the apartment. And then I saw why.
A large stone circle lay in the middle of the room. The stones were small, the size of my thumb, and bone white. Six black chicken heads were spread evenly around the circle, and in the middle was a black lamb’s head above a blood-drawn triangle. Strange runes I’d never seen before were written in fresh blood inside the circle, suggesting more of pagan ritual than your modern demon summoning. Creepy.
I took another step forward for a better look.
A girl stepped into my line of sight. Gone was the healthy, happy girl I’d seen in the photo. Her hair hung limp and greasy over her dirty face. Her body was thin, almost gaunt, and her limbs, what I could see of them through her clothes, were stained and dirty. Her jeans and t-shirt were speckled in blood, but I couldn’t tell if it was her own or someone else’s. The flesh on her face was sunken and the bones sharp, leaving her black eyes feral and unsettling. They watched me with unrelenting rage. She was pissed.
That made two of us.
I knew if I didn’t move I was dead. I didn’t have time for small talk. Moving on instinct, I dropped to my knees, pulled out my chalk and began to draw a circle with a seven-point star in the middle—the exorcism sigil.
Exorcisms were the highest level of hard magic. Deadly, if you didn’t do it right. With an inexperienced priest or witch, more times than not the human died in a rivulet mess of blood and guts.
But I’d been doing this for more than a decade now, and I knew my craft. And I was going to kick this demon’s ass back to the Netherworld where it belonged.
There was power in words, magic words, just like there was power in sigils and seals. If you knew how to use them. Not many witches did, though. You needed to be precise in your drawing of them. One little squiggle out of place could send you to the Netherworld or cause you to end up with your head on backwards. Yeah, that happened to a witch down the block before I was born. Since then, witches had grown frightened of the power of sigils. They didn’t trust them, but I trusted them more than I trusted blood magic. Sigils were like math and art. You did your calculations and then you did your drawing.
I’d screwed up a few times in the beginning, but I wasn’t stupid enough to try complicated sigils at first. No, I started with the typical easy sigil, like a hovering teacup sigil or paint your toenails blue sigil. My toenails had disappeared completely the first time I’d tried. Oops. Thank God it had been winter so no one had to know or see me, Sam the toenail-less idiot.
I was now so good at my sigils that I’d scanned them into the computer and printed out copies. Yes. They worked just as well and saved me the time to draw them up when I was in a hurry.
But I had an advantage over the other witches. My grandpa always said I had a knack for them. I was an artist. I loved to draw and paint, so images came naturally to me just like breathing. My sigils were each a piece of art, and I’d put my energy and time into create them. They were beautiful. And powerful.
But I was also lazy.
When I realized that one sigil was the equivalent in power to hours and hours of spell reciting and reading and then some more conjuring, I opted for the sigils. Why spend hours on a transmutation spell when I could draw the transmutation sigil in thirty seconds flat.
Hence came my passion for Goetia. I’d already mastered the sigils—the drawing and the energy that came from them—so it was time to turn things up a notch.
Sweat beaded on my forehead as I drew as quickly as I could without making a mistake. I couldn’t screw up now because a mistake could cost me my life, and Julia’s.
I brought the chalk up and around, adding three smaller stars inside the circle and making the connections. My pulse quickened, and I strained with effort to keep my hand from shaking from the shots of adrenaline.
Next, I spelled out the word exilium, the Latin word for banishment in each of the three stars. Where I should have put the demon’s name, I left it blank. It would have been easier with its name, but I’d done countless exorcisms before successfully without a name. I knew it would work.
The air cracked with electricity. The hairs on my arms rose.
I looked up. Demon-Julia’s lips were moving.
Ah. Hell.
A blast of energy hit me in the chest and I shot backwards, hitting the wall at thirty miles an hour. I heard something crack, possibly my skull, as I slid to the ground.
“Ow.”
I’d yet to meet a slobbering demon polite enough to wait for me to finish setting my banishment sigils.
The girl giggled. No. Not the girl, but the demon that was riding in her body.
“You need to be quicker with your scribbles, you half-breed bitch,” said the demon, its voice harsh and guttural. It sounded disturbingly like a serpentine whisper and had the hairs on the back on my neck rising. That was not a teenage girl’s voice, but I was glad it was using English. My Enochian—the angel and demon language—was a little rusty.
“Thanks for the tip.” I pitched forward on my stomach, sliding to my circle. With my chalk, I wrote exilium in the last triangle, finishing the sigil.
With my heart pounding in my ears, I glanced back at demon-Julia. She stood in the same spot, grinning at me like I’d just finished doing her laundry. The demon hadn’t tried to stop me a second time. That wasn’t a good sign.
I shook my head. “You could at least pretend I’m scary. You know, for the overall dramatical effect that I’m about to kick your ass back to the Netherworld. A little shaking would be nice. Tears are best.”
The demon-Julia crossed her arms over her chest and showed me her teeth. “I’m going to take my time with you,” she sneered. “I’m in a good mood, see. I’m going to start with your arms and rip them off one at a time.” She showed me more teeth. “I’ll let you watch while I eat your arms and your legs. Then, I’m going to suck your brain out through your eyes, witch bitch.”
Nice. Okay then.
I scrambled to my feet and drew upon the energy gathered in the sigil. It grew along with a buzzing in my ears and a prickling along the back of my neck. I was going to fry that demon.
“In the name of our Lord creator,” I chanted, bringing forth the energy and molding it. I shaped it into the effect I was looking for with my thoughts, fiercely picturing the exorcism sigil. “I exorcise you, demon,” I added fiercely, my stance strong. “Every impure spirit, every demonic power, every incursion of the infernal adversary. I command you.” I raised my right palm and said firmly, “Flee this place! Flee this body! May your power issue forth from her. Be not and be gone!”
At the words, the energy poured out of me in a rush. There were no lights, no glowing energy or anything else that would cost a special effects company a crap load of money, just a tingling in the air like tiny electrical currents and a burst of wind.
I staggered as the sigil’s energy roared out of me and almost lost my balance.
It hit demon-Julia.
She stumbled back, shock replacing her smile and her features growing distant. She thrashed, her head shaking as she kept muttering the same word, over and over again—no. She froze with a frightening suddenness, and her body eased into relaxation. Then her shoulders shook as she began to laugh.
“Told you so,” said demon-Julia, a smile in her voice. “Your witch tricks won’t work on me.”
Damn. This was really not my night. I flicked my gaze back at my sigil. It was fine. Perfect, even drawn under duress. So why hadn’t it worked?
Breathing hard, I sagged with a bit of tiredness. Channeling so much energy through me was like running a marathon, and a sudden weakness in my limbs made me sway.
But I wasn’t giving up. Not today. Not ever. And not when a young girl’s life was at stake.
Jaw clenched, I took a step towards the demon until we were but ten feet apart, focusing on the energy I was still channeling through the sigil.
I took a shaking breath and said, “In the name of our Lord—”
A hard burst of energy hit me, sending me across the room. I landed sprawled on my butt with my legs in the air. Not pretty. My head smashed against the ground a moment later, complete with a burst of black spots in my vision and very real pain. My palms curled into claws as I panted through the pain and tasted blood in my mouth. My concentration vanished, and with it, some of my nerve.
Did I mention this was seriously not my night?
“You have no power over me, half-breed,” laughed the demon, a sneer to her voice.
My magic didn’t work. The exorcism that should have released the girl did absolutely nothing. Head pounding like I’d hit it with a sledgehammer, I blinked and rolled over to my side.
Demon-Julia walked over to me and snarled, “I’m going to feast on your flesh, little witch.”
Oh. Shit.
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Okay, so I’m in trouble. Big trouble. I’m broke. Worse, my boyfriend of five years just dumped me. What do I do? I move in with my three eccentric aunts in their family home, Davenport House. Sounds exciting, only this massive farmhouse likes to eat men. Yup. If I were a regular human, I would have run out screaming like a banshee. As a witch—I do absolutely nothing. Hey, maybe they deserved it?
I’m back in Hollow Cove, the flamboyant paranormal community, where nymphs, werewolves, trolls, shifters, witches, and other paranormals live comfortable lives—and away from prying human eyes. As I settle into my new life, I decide to accept my aunts’ proposal and join the family business—the business of protecting our town and killing anything that would want to harm it. But I’ve been away from the paranormal world for quite some time, and my magical abilities are a little bit rusty—heck, they’re practically invisible.
Things soon spiral down the crapper when people in our community start dropping like flies. And when demons start showing up in Hollow Cove, it’s up to me, to take care of them. Permanently.
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BOOKS BY KIM RICHARDSON
SHADOW AND LIGHT
Dark Hunt
Dark Bound
Dark Rise
Dark Gift
Dark Curse
Dark Angel
Dark Strike
THE DARK FILES
Spells & Ashes
Charms & Demons
Hexes & Flames
Curses & Blood
TEEN AND YOUNG ADULT
SOUL GUARDIANS
Marked
Elemental
Horizon
Netherworld
Seirs
Mortal
Reapers
Seals
THE HORIZON CHRONICLES
The Soul Thief
The Helm of Darkness
The City of Flame and Shadow
The Lord of Darkness
MYSTICS SERIES
The Seventh Sense
The Alpha Nation
The Nexus
DIVIDED REALMS
Steel Maiden
Witch Queen
Blood Magic
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KIM RICHARDSON is the award-winning author of the bestselling SOUL GUARDIANS series. She lives in the eastern part of Canada with her husband, two dogs and a very old cat. She is the author of the SOUL GUARDIANS series, the MYSTICS series, and the DIVIDED REALMS series. Kim’s books are available in print editions, and translations are available in over seven languages.
To learn more about the author, please visit:
www.kimrichardsonbooks.com
Kim Richardson, Dark Strike
