Action Figures - Issue Two: Black Magic Women (9 page)

We run outside. Two cars sit smack in the middle of the street, both of them trailing fresh skid marks. The drivers stand outside their vehicles, looking plenty confused. Our world and welcome to it, people.

First things first, Astrid says, and that’s finding Missy, but that’s the easy part. The imp is throwing off psychic static like it’s radioactive, but Sara’s been in Missy’s head enough times she can maintain a connection — a weak connection, but it’s enough.

“Get gone, girl,” Astrid says. “The longer Missy’s possessed...”

She leaves the thought unfinished. She doesn’t need to fill in that particular blank.

I take off, flying high enough to clear any power lines (hitting one of those in the dark? Last thing I need). Sara enters my head to guide me; through her, I sense the psychic fog off in the distance — a beacon to home in on.

I find Missy sprinting across what the Kingston Middle School calls with straight-faced sincerity an athletic field, really nothing more than a huge back lawn where kids play soccer and flag football. Her speed, combined with her ninja couture ensemble, render her practically invisible until she hits the edge of the field, near the well-lit and, thankfully, very empty parking lot. I give her a shot across the bow to halt her escape. She turns to face me as I touch down.

“Missy, stop.” I throw my hands up, ready to knock her down if she comes at me, but she doesn’t. Maybe the thing inside her is interpreting my gesture as one of peace...or maybe? Maybe I’m right, and the imp isn’t in full control yet. “Missy. It’s me, Carrie. I don’t want to hurt you. You know that. And I don’t think you want to hurt me.”

She grins a vile, crooked grin. Her eyes flash with madness.

“Please don’t do this,” I plead. “C’mon, Muppet...”

That’s when it happens: her face goes slack, and she blinks hard, like she’s snapping out of a trance. Missy is still in there.

NOW!

The air behind Missy shimmers, warps, and spits out Astrid and the Squad. Stuart is on top of Missy before she knows he’s there, seizing her in a bear hug. She screeches like a banshee and thrashes in his grip, her feet pedaling air furiously.

Astrid moves into position. She spares me a glance. Her expression says it all: she’s not making me any promises she can’t keep.

Reluctantly, nervously, I nod. And then I pray.

The thing inside Missy spits curses like a drunk Marine, but Astrid is unfazed. With a calm that definitely qualifies as eerie, Astrid lays a hand on Missy’s chest and speaks, the first time I’ve heard her say anything to accompany her spellcasting.

“
Deus cui próprium est miseréri semper et párcere súscipe deprecatiónem nostram ut hunc famulum tuum teneatur peccati compedibus conceditur misericordia tua
,” she says, the words pouring from her like machine-gun fire. “
Exi ergo impius exi scelerata exi cum omni fallacia tua quia hominem templum suum esse voluit Deus...
”

Missy stiffens, her face twisting in agony. Astrid repeats her incantation, and again, and again, the chant increasing in volume with each chorus.

“
Exi ergo impius exi scelerata exi cum omni fallacia tua quia hominem templum suum esse voluit Deus
GET OUT OF HER YOU SON OF —!”

The roar that erupts from Missy is like nothing I’ve ever heard in my life and, dear God, I hope to never hear again: the dying scream of an abomination that should never have been allowed to walk this world. She goes limp, like someone has stolen her skeleton, but Stuart is there to catch her. His face is a mask of despair. He can’t bring himself to speak for fear that he won’t get a response, now or ever.

Missy’s eyes flutter open. “Stuart,” she says dreamily. “Hi.”

“Hey, Muppet,” Stuart says, tears spilling down his cheeks, mingling with his blood. He hugs her close. She’s too exhausted to respond in kind.

“M’sleepy,” Missy mumbles, and then she slips into unconsciousness.

“Take her home,” Astrid says. “Put her to bed.”

“Will she be okay?” Matt says.

“She’ll be wiped out for a few days. Let her sleep it off, she should bounce back.”

There’s something off about the way she says that. I catch Astrid’s eye. She shakes her head at me. I say nothing.

“Let’s get her home,” Matt says.

“Carrie?” Astrid says. “Hang back a minute.”

“You guys go on,” I say. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” They take off, Missy a softly snoring ball in Stuart’s arms. “And don’t forget to take your costumes off before you get home.”

Astrid lays a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. Then she pulls me into a smothering hug.

“Good call,” she says into my ear.

“I didn’t know what I was talking about,” I confess. “I was guessing.”

“Don’t complain. It worked.”

“Yeah. Is she going to be okay? Really?”

She hesitates. “The documented cases of people escaping possession are few and far between, and from what I’ve read, those who do escape don’t come away totally unscathed,” she says. “Once someone has had such intimate contact with a demonic entity, their soul is forever tainted.”

“But it was only for a few minutes,” I say. Like I know what I’m talking about.

“All that means is maybe the after-effects will be minor. Don’t say anything to her about it, but keep an eye on her. If anything weird happens, if she behaves at all strangely, call me, immediately.” Astrid gives me a friendly slap on the shoulder, the universal sign for
catch you later
, and begins the long walk back to the library. “I’ll take care of Stacy. Get gone.”

“Hey.” She stops. “The
Libris Infernalis.
”

“What about it?”

“It’s not actually in the public library, is it?”

Astrid laughs. “Of course it isn’t,” she says before vanishing into the night. “I have it.”

     Meanwhile...

“
She’s just a devil wo-man, with evil on her mi-ind, beware the devil wo-man, she’s gonna get you...
”

It’s a nice little neighborhood, she thinks as she counts off the street numbers. It’s quiet, cozy, full of quaint, small-town New England charm — not at all the kind of neighborhood she ever expected Astrid to settle down in.

Well, truth be told, she never expected Astrid to settle down, period. But, alas, the wild child has long since been tamed by life as a respected academic. How sad: not even thirty, and she’s already an old woman. Perhaps their parting of the ways was inevitable.

No time for sentimentality, Bets. Eyes on the prize
.

Number forty-two. Black Betty takes a step back to better take in the pathetic sight of That New Age Store, the final nail in the coffin containing Astrid’s street cred within certain circles.

“A friggin’ New Age store, Astrid?” Black Betty mutters. “
Tsch
. What did I ever see in you?”

Oh, yes: your to-die-for collection of arcane knowledge
.

Black Betty slides her hand along the brick wall where, by all rights, a door leading to the second floor should be. It looks real enough and, more impressively, feels real enough. It has texture, and radiates absorbed winter cold like real brick would. She kneels, her fingers detecting an irregularity in the sidewalk. A whispered word causes her hand to glow, and that glow reveals a line of runes chipped into the cement, about the width of a door.

At least you thought to change the locks
, she thinks, bending closer to inspect the characters, taken from a language long dead and forgotten. It’s a decent ward, as wards go, but it’s nothing but camouflage; a glamour on the door, more than enough to deter the average would-be visitor — and, perhaps, lull extraordinary visitors into a false sense of security. Black Betty probes deeper, and yes, there it is, a second ward, designed to repel anyone tainted by black magic.

Anyone — or one specific someone.

This is the first test — the last, too, if the bypass she was given fails to do its job. Black Betty reaches into her jacket pocket, removing a crystal vial no larger than a salt shaker. She turns it in her fingers, watching the dark liquid within ooze about the interior. She removes the stopper and, as though tossing back a shot of tequila, downs the contents.

Tangy. Lightly salty. A hint of spice. A mild zing of copper. A fine vintage, all in all.

Bypassing the illusion, that’s as simple as willing herself to disbelieve the lie. A door appears, a door bearing the number forty-two and a half on it. Black Betty takes a breath, braces herself to learn whether her little bit of sympathetic magic will be enough to fool Astrid’s protections.

If not? Well, it’s been a fun ride.

She lays a hand on the door handle, utters her cantrip to pop the lock. She pulls.

Black Betty stands in the open doorway for a full two minutes, savoring her triumph – the first in a series, collect the whole set.

The spell should shield her from any other wards — that was what her partner promised, but she didn’t survive this long by trusting in others. Black Betty expands her senses and climbs the stairs, scanning for any other traps. Astrid, it appears, has grown a tad paranoid since their parting: every step is rigged with a different ward sensitive to dark magic. Step three is primed to detonate in a spray of splinters. Step seven is set to spontaneously combust. Step thirteen —
Oh, bravo, Astrid
— is tainted with a magically enhanced flesh-eating virus. None of them trigger; the bypass spell, powered by a draught of very special, very unique blood, holds.

It holds all the way up the stairs, into Astrid’s apartment (
Oh, honey, this place is tragic
), but that’s where the spell’s usefulness ends. The next part, the critical step in the plan, is all on her.

Black Betty spends a few minutes studying the door, studying it on levels unknown to those without power, determining its strengths, its flaws, looking for that one crippling weakness that might allow her passage.

There.

Maybe.

“Screw it. No guts, no glory,” Black Betty says, taking a small measure of satisfaction in the knowledge that, if she fails at this juncture, the resulting mess would force Astrid to finally clean up her depressing dump of a home. Or move out.

Yeah, take
that
, bitch
.

The door swings open. The sanctum is hers.

“Bam-a-lam.”

How do you define suckage? I define it as changing out of my costume and into human clothes in the woods near my house, at night, in the middle of a New England winter. I cannot wait for spring to get here.

(Mental note: figure out how to manipulate my body temperature while flying so I never again have to risk turning into a Carriesicle.)

Mom springs up from the couch as I enter the house. Crap, she has the Worried Parent Look going on. That’s never good.

“Where have you been?” she says. “I’ve been calling you for two hours.”

“Oh, nuts, sorry, forgot to turn my phone back on after school,” I say, which is only a small lie; no actual forgetting was involved.

“Carrie, damn it all, what if there had been an emergency?”

I strip off my jacket and, through sheer force of will, pretend I am not still freezing to death. “Was there?”

She plants her fists on her hips. “That is not the point, and you know it.”

“Mom, I’m sorry, I forgot, okay? No biggie.”

Much scowling ensues. “Did you also forget to come home for dinner?”

“We were doing homework at the coffee shop. We lost track of time, then we had to take Missy home because she got sick.”

The anger slides down a notch. “What’s wrong with Missy?”

“Don’t know. Flu, maybe? I heard a lot of kids in school were out sick today...”

“Oh,” she says. “Well, I hope for her sake it’s not the flu.”

Success. Parental wrath: calmed.

“Carrie, honey, please be better about turning your phone on, okay?”

“I will.”

Mom nods. “Dinner’s in the fridge if you want to heat it up,” she says, moving past me. “I’m hitting the hay early. We apparently have a big start-of-the-year staff meeting tomorrow, I don’t want to fall asleep in the middle of it.”

“Good call. Good night.”

Mom heads upstairs; I head into the kitchen. The gut-wrenching terror of the night has released its hold on me, and my God, am I starving.

I wish I could say such tense exchanges with my mom are rarities, but no, they happen on a semi-regular basis. My secret life as a part-time super-hero kicked in only days after we moved to Kingsport, and thanks to a couple of fairly destructive throwdowns in town, including one at school, Mom got it in her head we’d moved to a war zone (she has no idea I was personally involved in said throwdowns, but that’s irrelevant). For a while, she was actively looking around for a new place to live. Granddad talked her down, and the possibility of moving hasn’t come up for a few weeks, but all it takes is me coming home late or “forgetting” to turn my cell on after school, and it sparks a full-on anxiety attack. Man, she’s going to be a total basket case when I start dating again.

To be fair, not-so-little things like a demonically possessed woman blowing up half of Main Street aren’t helping my situation.