Dark Arts (14 page)

He found what he was looking for, the
grimoire belonging to the Lamonts. Maxwell brought it down and
opened it on the far end of the table, away from the altar objects.
He looked for the ceremony he needed quickly, but was careful with
the parchment just the same. They were a good family, and became
very powerful in France because every generation there struggled to
have sons. Each eventually did, until the last generation was
killed when their ship was sunk. They had plenty of daughters,
however, and the alliances that they made through them over
hundreds of years gave them great wealth and power. He was happy to
see that his father had finished translating most of the pages:
Maxwell’s French was terrible. Each of the translated pages were
sandwiched on archival paper between parchment leaves in the book,
with a full English version of what was on the page.

Maxwell compared the iron symbol in his
pocket with the drawing in the book and nodded with satisfaction.
“Might just be able to get rid of this shard after all,” he said.
“High milk? This requires high milk? What is high milk?” he asked
himself as he read the next paragraph. “Hope I don’t have to fight
something for it,” he muttered as he reached over for a book
published in the modern style, with a square glued binding, and
flipped through the pages. “Oh, that’s easy,” he said after reading
the description of high milk. “Guess milk that pure was harder to
make in the Lamonts’ day.”

Maxwell returned the Lamonts Grimoire to the
shelf and used the basement exit, a narrow door that moved out of
the wall entirely and into the hidden hallway on tracks to allow a
person to pass, to leave. The door could only open from the inside,
from the outside it sealed into a paneled wall, a finished part of
the main house’s basement that served as an extra bedroom.

The basement was quiet, even though there
were cots set up for children down there for a sleepover that would
be an epic event for anyone under thirteen. He made sure the
storage room at the other end was locked, as was one of the
bedrooms where they kept antiques when there were more visitors
than they could keep track of.

Maxwell continued upstairs and ignored two
older people, one in a baseball hat who looked irritated, and
another in a suit who matched the trio he kicked out of the
library. The latter tried to stop him by repeating; “young man,”
over and over again, louder each time.

Max went to the fridge and took a couple
single serving cups of cream, then turned on the taller, old man in
the suit who was hounding him across the first floor of the house
and stared him in the eye. “What?”

“You were very rude to some old friends of
mine a moment ago, and I’d like you to apologize to them. It is
only appropriate.”

“Can you get Hammond to apologize for trying
to steal one of my father’s books? One of the last books he fetched
for him?” Maxwell looked to the kitchen table, where Miranda’s aunt
Gladys had joined the Bridge game. She put her hand down slowly as
she observed him. “Hammond owed my father twenty eight hundred
dollars for the book, didn’t happen to have it on him, so I took it
back for safe keeping.”

“He was a customer of your father’s for a
very long time,” explained the older gentleman. “You didn’t give
him a chance to-“

“Hammond wasn’t in my father’s will, and the
note he left didn’t mention any payment, so he doesn’t get his
book. I’m wondering if he should ever get it, in fact. It happened
to be a book filled with experiments no one here would like to see
repeated, research into imprisoning spirits, creating barriers that
Old Ones would be attracted to so a Summoner could try to
communicate with them. What’s an old car dealer like Hammond going
to do with that? Imprison a few spirits so he can trade with an Old
One? Bring a little good luck his way? A nice young wife, or good
business?”

“You’re accusing a pillar of the community
with something that would get him expelled from the Circle, you’re
not even initiated,” replied the old man, turning pale.

“You in on it?” Maxwell asked. “Interested
in a little dark trading? Did you ask him to steal the book? Go
looking in the library?”

“What?”

“Don’t get in my way, don’t get involved
with this, I’m going to make sure everyone knows there was a thief
in the library, who he was, and what he tried to steal. I don’t
know your name yet, mate, but I could learn it easy enough. Start
asking if you’ve had a run of good luck lately, wondering aloud if
you’ve been fiddling with some darker business. That is, if you get
in my way,” Maxwell said, pushing past him, noticing Gladys’ smile
on his way through the kitchen door.

Before anyone knew what was going on, he was
on his bike, kicking the starter so hard. It started on the second
try and he was down the road, rolling towards the crossroads. No
one was on the dirt roads in that darkness, where the starry sky
could barely be seen between the trees above, and his headlamp
revealed only a precious oval in front of him. He didn’t want to
take the time to retrieve his old edsel from the stand-to at the
back of the barn, he wasn’t even sure if it would start after he’d
been away on tour for months.

He could feel the old remains of the chapel
before they came into view, an old broken thing catching just
enough light to stand out at the back of a field of graves. Maxwell
got off his Harley, and kicked at the inner edge of a pothole
forming in the middle of the crossroads. The sparse clouds
obscuring the moon cleared momentarily, shedding silver light on
his work before being obscured again.

He had the feeling that eyes were on him,
and he turned to look at the broken chapel. For the first time in
his adult life he suspected that that feeling may be caused by
something other than his imagination, and he pulled the small
collapsible shovel from the inside of his jacket, staring at the
building down the overgrown road as he screwed it together.

He stabbed it into the hole, striking hard
through gravel and piled the half shovel of gravel beside. He
almost didn’t hear the sound of shoes stepping on gravel behind
him. He whirled around, shovel in both hands.

A smiling older gentleman held his hands up
casually. Light seemed to cling to him just enough so Maxwell could
make out all his features. “I come in peace,” he said in a
comforting baritone voice. He straightened the front of his black
suit and continued. “Just a friend taking a stroll in the
moonlight.”

Maxwell looked the man up and down. His hair
was cut sensibly, styled perfectly, his eyes were a piercing blue,
and the gentleman smiled easily. He looked robust, but not
overweight, and his shoes were freshly polished. All ominous
feelings about where he was, what he was doing, and that he could
have evil eyes on him were gone. “Long way from the farm, didn’t
hear a car roll up,” Maxwell said, lowering the shovel.

“I’ve never ridden in one of those
contraptions, my boy,” he said. “Always wanted to ride along on one
of those though.” He gestured at the motorcycle. “I find it
remarkable that someone like you, a man who spends most of his time
doing things for other people rides on the back of a steel horse
that can only carry one other person. The bus is more your kind of
beast, or at least that’s what I would think.”

“What do you know?” Maxwell asked, shoveling
another load of dirt out of the hole and piling it to the side.

“I know your father was afraid of this,” the
gentleman said. “He had visions of you, making the ultimate
sacrifice after a very short life of servitude. He wanted you to be
powerful, to be reasonably self-serving. This one for all business
you have with your band, he doesn’t like that, that’s not the path
he wanted for you.”

“Who are you?” Maxwell asked. “What could
you know?”

“I’m the one who can take your burden,
Maxwell. I have made pretenders into masters, paupers into
politicians, and musicians into masters. Samuel may have said
something about me coming to make you an offer,” he replied.

Maxwell stared at him for a moment,
recalling the warning Samuel gave him about a demon, perhaps an Old
One attached to the shard he was about to bury who could offer
bargains. He reached out with the tip of his shovel and touched the
man’s suit jacket, it moved like normal cloth. “Nope, you’re having
me on, mate. Good one, almost had me with the whole ‘deal with the
devil at the crossroads’ story coming true.”

“You can touch me because I am manifest,”
the gentleman said. “Not many people get to see this kind of power,
some spend their entire lives trying to summon a spirit, or a demon
who can appear in the flesh and they never get the privilege. Not
so much as an eerie wisp of mist. You should see their faces when
they die and make it to the other side, how they wish they didn’t
waste so much time trying to get that kind of attention. I never
get tired of their reaction.” He brushed the dirt off his suit
jacket. “This is a miracle, boy.”

Maxwell shook his head and dug a few more
shovel loads of dirt out of his little hole, leaving them in a neat
pile around it. The shovel was dropped to the side as he withdrew
the shard from his coat pocket. He couldn’t help but notice his
companion’s eyes widen at the sight of it. “Trying to trick me into
giving you this by pulling the crossroads prank,” Maxwell said,
holding the shard up. “Not even a fair attempt.”

“I can prove that I am what I claim to be,
Max,” the gentleman said.

Maxwell dropped the shard into the hole and
pulled the iron seal with three hands reaching towards the center
on it from his pocket. He tried to begin the incantation, to pull a
cream cup from his pocket, but could not move.

“Let me show you a piece of your future,
just a little piece of what awaits,” the gentleman said. He snapped
his fingers.

Bernie was at his side, a grin on his face.
The sound of his band filled his ears, with the exception of the
singer, they were playing Proud Mary. It was easy, they were having
a good time playing a cover they’d done a hundred or more times.
The lights heated the right side of his face, and there was no
doubt that he was on a stage, filled with that incredible feeling
that only came with the cheers of a full club and good band
chemistry. A gunshot rang out, and the back of Bernie’s head
exploded in a spray of blood, bone and other soft matter.

By the time Bernie fell to the ground,
Maxwell was somewhere else, the screams of the club goers far
behind in terms of both time and distance. He was sitting in a
diner, older. It had been eleven years since Bernie and Darren were
gunned down, he hadn’t seen Miranda in just as long, and there was
a sadness that went beyond a love lost or dead friends. There was
something he could not do, or somewhere he could not go that
haunted him, and that sorrow had grown old, become a thick crust
atop everything he was like ill-fitted armor. Three old silver
rings adorned his right hand, one was a sigil he knew, but the
other two were alien to him.

This was only a short stop, a break for a
coffee and breakfast before he moved on down the road with no
destination. The waitress, an older woman who offered him a smile
as though she was trying to brighten his morning. “Here you go,”
she said as she placed his plate of eggs, pancakes and bacon in
front of him.

“Thanks, luv,” he replied. His voice was
lower, it sounded as though he had aged thirty years, not eleven.
He caught his reflection in the napkin dispenser as he reached for
the syrup and stopped. There was a thick scar from his top lip just
past the bottom of his nose, and another crossing his right eyebrow
onto his forehead. Those eyes were barely his, aged, sorrowful. A
gaze that was a vibrant deep brown had become hollow and faded.

He was about to turn the dispenser so he
didn’t have to face himself looking back, when a blur of red and
blue crossed behind him. Maxwell was on his feet and spinning on
his heel in a second, facing a young woman in a gas station
windbreaker. She slashed towards his throat with a steak knife, the
strike coming so close that it nicked the collar of Maxwell’s
leather jacket. He effortlessly picked up a chair, took several
quick steps around his table and threw it at her.

The four legs tangled her long enough for
him to step around then lunge forward, grabbing the forearm holding
the knife. He ripped it from her hand. Maxwell put his hand on her
forehead and said; “I command this spirit to depart. I invoke
Sagiras, Keeper Of Tombs, Watcher On The Path, aid me in freeing
this girl from the spirit possessing her. Protect her from
intruders and keep her from harm. I call upon you to become her
liberator, become her guardian.”

By the time he finished, the young blonde
gas attendant was on her knees, thrashing so wildly that it took
both of Max’s hands to hold her head. “You can’t run forever, you
whoreson! Everything you touch is tainted, the further you travel,
the more you taint!” she screeched in her own voice and two others
that did not belong to her.

“Not her,” Maxwell said, feeling as though
his chest and head was filling with energy, a kind of pressure that
he recognized as the power Sagiras had given him more than once. He
released it through his hands, bathing the young woman in light and
illuminating the diner for several seconds.

“I don’t know what I was doing,” the young
woman said, tears beginning to run down her stunned face. “I’m
sorry, Sir.”

Maxwell picked her up off the floor and was
about to comfort her when he saw a torrent of blood running down
her inner thigh. The spirit knew its attempt would most likely fail
like so many others, and cut her just so she’d be dead by the time
it was finished. He’d failed to notice the blood on the floor
during the fight, and while he concentrated to cleanse the girl.
She fell back down, pale.