Mark of the Witch (6 page)

“No, you’re not. And we both know it. It’s going to get worse
for you, Indy. I’ll help you. Even if you refuse to help me, all right?”

I squinted at him, delivering my patented “Who the fuck do you
think you are?” look, proudly made in Brooklyn.

But he just turned and walked back the way we’d come, moving in
long, powerful strides as I noticed the breadth of his shoulders. He had to be
cut
underneath his black priestly clothes. I
wondered if Gnostic priests from the Leaders of the Pack sect took vows of
celibacy, then shook the thought away. It didn’t matter. I was never going to
see the man again.

However, there was a certain high priestess who was going to
get a fucking earful as soon as I got off work. Because if this guy was her idea
of a confidant, she was the most messed-up witch I’d ever heard of.

Then I looked down at my forefinger and wondered if I had
really made that phantom whirlwind kick up, and whether I could do it again.

3

H
ours later, my workday finished and
another long night alone the only thing on my to-do list, I figured I had
nothing to lose. If I had somehow tapped into a power beyond everyday
witchcraft—which was really not a lot more than positive thinking, focus and
luck, or so I’d always thought—then I might as well use it.

I put an old coffee mug I wasn’t overly fond of on the counter.
It was a putrid yellow shade and had come with a set of four that someone had
given me. I’d already broken the other three. Time to get rid of this one.

Standing back a few feet, I focused my eyes on the cup, my arm
bent at the elbow, forefinger aimed at the ceiling. When I felt ready, I bought
my arm down fast, aiming right at the mug and willing it to explode to
smithereens.

It didn’t even wiggle.

Huh. Okay, reload and try again. This time I used a sideways
sweep of my arms. But nothing. Drawing like a gunfighter didn’t work, either. I
sank onto a stool for a break, and quickly flipped open my BlackBerry and
searched for that video of me, found it, played it, reviewed my moves, tried to
find a pattern.

Okay, okay, I had a little more flourish, a little more flair
and a lot of anger in my black alien eyes, in the vid. I set the phone down, got
to my feet, shook my arms and shoulders to loosen the muscles, cracked my
knuckles. “All right, I got this. You’re going down, cup.”

I attacked again.

And again, the cup just stood there. I think it was looking
defiant.

“Well, shit.”

I heaved a giant disappointed sigh and decided to resort to the
more mundane forms of magic. Maybe I had been just a solitary, but I’d still
been a witch. “And a witch knows how to deal with unwanted nightmares and hunky
priests poking their nosy noses into her problems. Even if she can’t explode
innocent coffee cups at will.”

I got busy moving furniture.

An hour later I stood back and surveyed my work.

The living room of my three-room apartment was no longer a
living room but a temple. I’d pushed the love seat—love seat, what a joke—and
chairs past the countertop that divided the living room from the eat-in
kitchenette. They filled that tiny space. My psychedelic print love seat had my
retro lime-green rocker recliner balanced precariously on top of it. I’d dragged
the coffee table I’d rescued from the curb out of the way. It had started out
ordinary, but I’d sanded it down, painted it yellow, and then added swirly vines
and leaves and blossoms with teeth in them to cover its entire surface. The only
thing that I’d paid for, besides the paint, was the custom cut piece of
Plexiglas I’d screwed onto the top to protect it.

My living room was bare now, except for the contents of my old
treasure chest. I’d laid out seashells and tumbled stones on the beige
carpet—God, I hated beige—in a circle big enough to enclose the entire room. I’d
set votive candles in tiny clear glass holders at the four cardinal points. I’d
placed a black one in the center, inside my old iron cauldron.

I didn’t believe in magic anymore. I reminded myself of that
over and over again. I was just doing this as a sort of…precaution. As a “just
in case I’m wrong” thing. All the lights in my small apartment were turned off,
except for the little bulb in the tall floor lamp whose base was a tarnished
copper mermaid. I’d found it in a thrift store and scored it for ten bucks. It
was worth a million to me. I had just enough light to work by, and I would turn
even that off once I lit the candles.

My drapes were drawn, door locked, phones turned off. I was
naked. I’d taken a quick shower to rinse away any negative vibes that might have
been clinging to me from the day. It was tradition, and while I didn’t expect
any of this to work,
because I didn’t believe in
magic,
I also wanted to do it right. When the spell failed, I didn’t
want to wonder if it was because I’d done a slipshod job of casting it.

I took a few deep breaths, and stepped into the circle of
shells and stones, lifted my hand and imagined a beam of light drawing a magic
circle of energy. I led it backward, following the outline of shells and stones.
Counterclockwise. Widdershins, in witchspeak. I opened the quarters in reverse
order, too, lighting candles as I went. This was a banishing spell, after all. I
didn’t have formal coven training, but I knew my shit. I’d only half believed,
even when I was practicing. But tonight I was going full throttle. Giving magic
one final chance to prove to me that it was real.

I guess seeing myself on that video, wielding what looked like
invisible power from my own two hands, had shaken my disbelief. Or maybe I was
just wishing it was real. ’Cause, hell, who wouldn’t?

With all the candles dancing and sandalwood incense filling the
entire place with its exotic scent, I reached for the mermaid lamp and turned it
off.

Soft yellow candlelight threw shadows around my feet that
danced like little fairies and shadowy gnomes. I inhaled the scent of hot wax
and dusky smoke. My body and mind responded instantly.

Because these are all psychological
triggers due to repeated use in the past, shifting my brain waves into alpha
rhythm. It’s not magic, it’s post-hypnotic suggestion.

Every ounce of tension left my muscles, my eyes went soft, and
my lips pulled into a relaxed, easy smile. My heartbeat slowed. My breathing,
too. Every part of me felt easier, lighter. And there was a tightness in my
throat and a hotness behind my eyes.

Okay, okay, I miss it. Doesn’t make it
real. Just makes it…nice.

I knelt in front of the black candle inside the cauldron in the
center of the room, my eyes getting lost in the flame until it went out of focus
and became a blob of light. “I call upon the darkest form of the Mother. I call
upon the Lady of Death and Transformation. The Guardian of the Crossroads. She
whose cold hand leads us from this life into the next. Goddess of the
Underworld, of the dead, of the past, of every witch who ever lived, and those I
have been before. I call you.” I closed my eyes, opened my arms, tilted my head
back and waited to feel the presence of the Goddess, who I never called by any
specific name.

But then, for some reason a name whispered from my lips without
my consent. “Ishtar,” I whispered. “Ishtar, heed the call of thy priestess.” My
eyes popped open.
What made me say that?

A sudden crash spun me around as my big living room window
exploded. I fell to one side, reflexively raising my arms to shield my face from
the flying glass. The wind, on what had been a perfectly calm night, whipped my
drapes inward and swirled through the apartment like a twister. The mermaid lamp
slammed to the floor. My Warhol print soared off the wall and hit me in the
forearm—aiming for my head.

The candles blew out, and the whirlwind kept raging.

I jumped to my feet to try to deal with it, though I had no
idea how—turn on the light? cover the window? call 9-1-1?—but something stopped
me. I held steady, somehow knowing I had to ignore the chaos and finish what I’d
started.

I sank onto my knees once again, the windstorm still raging
around me, my hair blowing into tangles that would rival Medusa’s, and resumed
the goddess pose, arms up and outstretched. “Nightmares have plagued me. But
they will plague me no more. I banish them!”

The wind seemed to grow even stronger.

“This priest who follows me, thinking I am some relic of a past
life, I banish him, as well. He will plague me no more! By the power of Ishtar,
I command it!”

Hell, that doesn’t even sound like my own
voice....

Rising to my feet, I stood in the circle’s center, and spun
widdershins, slowly at first, then faster and faster. “I banish the dreams, I
banish the priest, banish the dreams, banish the priest, be gone, be gone, be
gone,
be gone!
” With the final words I let myself
sink to the floor, releasing the spell into the universe as the wind kept
whipping around me. I closed my eyes to stop the room from spinning and
muttered, “So mote it be.”

Something growled at me, long and low, like a wolf about to
spring.

From my position on the floor, feeling almost too shocked to
move, I opened my eyes. “What the fuck was that?”

The cauldron in the middle of the floor was swirling with
colors that glowed and shifted and moved. It was the only light in the room. And
the growl… It came again. From that cauldron.

I crawled closer and looked at the impossible.

The swirling, hazy colors inside the cauldron were real. I
stared into them, through them. A shape formed. A torso—nude, male, muscular.
And then a head, a man’s head, except that it wore a demonically twisted grimace
of anger, and its eyes blazed red with an energy that blasted me with pure pain.
It hit me hard, and I couldn’t look away. And as I stared unwillingly at the
image of the beast inside the cauldron, it opened its mouth and released a roar
of anguish and rage. It had fangs. Cloven hooves. A tail?

The Devil himself?

But I don’t believe in the
Devil.

I jerked backward, but it held my eyes. I tried, I really did,
to look away, but it was like this thing held me.

And then the image in the cauldron changed. The colors swirled
again, overtaking the beast, hiding him, and then changing from oranges and reds
and yellows to soft blues and gentle greens as a different face formed. A
woman’s face this time, a black-haired beauty in flowing robes. Her brows were
thick and dark, her eyes like shining chunks of coal.

I know her! She’s one of the women from my
dream!

Her full lips parted, and she whispered two words.
“Help him.”

“Who? The priest?”

The beautiful woman lowered her eyes to look down, into the
swirling orange and yellow depths at the demon I’d just seen.

“Him?”

“Help him.”

“But I don’t…I don’t know how. I don’t know what I’m supposed
to do. How am I— Wait. Wait!” I reached my hand toward the iron kettle as if I
could grab hold of the image inside, but it was fading. The cauldron turned
slowly black again. “At least tell me your name!” But it was useless. She was
gone.

Lilia.

The wind died with a soft sound that might have been nothing
more than its final gasping breeze. I stayed on the floor, lowered my head to
the carpet and tried to hold back the crying jag that was fighting to bust
out.

* * *

Great. I’m being sacrificed
again.

I stood near the cliff, not on the edge yet, but tied between
two posts nearby, arms raised and stretched to either side. The goddess position
again. Memories—yeah, memories, not illusions—flooded my brain. I heard a crack
and felt the brutal slash of a whip slicing my back, and it was as real as
anything I’ve ever felt in my life. And far more painful. It went on until the
cutting, burning pain was everywhere all at once. I was shaking all over in
agony. It was unbearable, and I longed to pass out, but I didn’t.

I screamed until my voice was gone and I could scream no more.
My faith went with it, severed along with the ropes that held me as the soldiers
cut me down and retied my hands behind my bleeding back. Then I—no, we—were
marched closer to the edge of the cliff. I’d seen him again, that other man near
the rocks, where soldiers held him. He was more battered and beaten than we
were. He’d been forced to watch as we’d been whipped, and he was being forced to
watch still, as we were about to be sent plummeting to our deaths on the rocks
far, far below. He struggled, though he had to be near death. Hell of a man,
that one. Too bad they probably killed him right after us.

I looked sideways at my sister Lilia. She was the youngest, and
I was amazed at how straight she stood. How proudly she held her head. She
looked like royalty. I was crying softly, almost silently, unlike my other
sister, Magdalena, who was loud and sloppy. But little Lilia, the one we’d
always thought of as the weakest of us, had been as cruelly tortured as we had,
and yet she was the strong one now.

We were at the cliff’s edge.

Wakeupwakeupwakeup!

I felt those warm, familiar hands at my back. And again I had
that totally fucked-up feeling of liking his touch. His palms warm on my skin,
carefully not touching the raw ruin of my flesh. My toes curled instinctively to
grip the smooth stone beneath my feet, trying to hang on.

I was going to die on those rocks down there. With my
sisters.

Again.

4

T
omas had parked his Volvo across the
street from Indira Simon’s apartment building, where he had a beautiful view of
her windows, and spent the entire night there, trying to keep watch, hoping he
would know if something went wrong. He saw other tenants come and go, and at one
point, while out stretching his legs, he caught the door before it swung closed
and jammed the latch, so he could get in if necessary.

Yes, he’d thought Father Dom was two-thirds of the way to
insanity with his obsessive predictions about this demon and its witches. Until
he’d seen that subway video. And met
her.
That woman
was something else. He could feel it just by looking into her eyes. And when
she’d swung her arm in anger, a burst of genuine power had erupted from her.

She’d been as surprised by that as he had.

And now everything he’d been so sure was just the outrageous
exaggerations of an aging priest with delusions of grandeur seemed like it just
might be real, after all. Which threw everything else he thought he’d known into
question.

His crisis of faith, his decision to leave the church, all of
that, he’d decided, had to be put aside until this was finished. Because if he’d
been wrong—well, he couldn’t undo that. But he could carry out this mission for
Dom, at least far enough to make sure it really was just part of an old man’s
ramblings. Maybe generations of old men. The rest…the rest could wait.

He knew already that some things Dom had told him were utterly
false. Things about her. She was not evil. No demon’s whore. Not that one. She
hadn’t tried to seduce him or ensorcell him as Dom had predicted she would.
She’d run from him instead.

But he’d followed. Because he had a feeling that just wouldn’t
leave him alone. Clearly some of the things Dom had believed in for so long
were
true. Were, perhaps, unfolding as had been
predicted. And the most important thing that meant to Tomas was that she might
be in danger. So while this would be his final mission as a priest, it was still
his mission—and he
was
still a priest. And he
intended to do it right. Maybe that would assuage his guilt over leaving the
collar behind, and for not believing in Dom’s obsession until now.

He had expected that he might catch a glimpse of Indy moving
around behind her apartment windows, though the drapes were drawn. He had
not
expected to see her on the building’s rooftop just
before dawn.

When he caught sight of her up there his heart almost stopped.
She was standing near the brick safety wall, which reached almost to her bare
shoulders, her hands along the top of it, the wind blowing through her hair. It
looked as if she was getting ready to climb up.

“God, save her,” he whispered.

He was out of the car instantly, racing to the building’s door
and yanking it open, glad he’d thought far enough ahead to disable the lock. He
took the stairs two at a time all the way to the roof. Then he slid to a stop.
She was standing on the wall now, completely naked. Wobbling dangerously, she
held her arms behind her back as if they were tied there, even though they
weren’t. It was still dark, but there was something staining her
back—crisscrossing stripes with scarlet rivulets running from them. And
something else, a tattoo on her lower back. Three rows of symbols.

Was that
cuneiform?

God, what had happened to her? And what was he supposed to
do?

Waking a sleepwalker was a bad idea—especially when they were
standing seventy feet off the ground. But he couldn’t just let this play out and
hope she didn’t plummet to her death.

Quietly, he approached from behind. She was standing still, her
short hair riffled by the wind, her skin pebbling with goose bumps in the cold.
She had to be freezing. It was the second of November, for crying out loud. As
he crept slowly nearer, she leaned forward, arching her back. No more time.
Tomas lunged, snapping his arms around her just above hip level, which was as
high as he could reach. The momentum of her body tried to pull him over with
her, but he braced one foot against the brick wall and jerked her backward,
hard. He landed on his back on the rooftop with her butt on his chest and her
lower back against his face. No sooner had he begun to release his pent-up
breath in a sigh of relief than she was scrambling off him and onto her feet,
turning to look down at him, stark accusation in her huge black eyes.

“Atta balṭata u anāku mūt amât!”
she shouted.

Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed
straight down, as if her legs had dissolved beneath her.

Tomas got onto his feet. She’d bled on his clothes. On his
face. Her back was cut to ribbons. Bending, he gathered her carefully into his
arms, then turned to carry her back down to her apartment.

* * *

“Owwwww.”

I was facedown on my bed and hurting like hell, and when I
tried to roll over, a strong male hand on my shoulder kept me lying where I
was.

Who the hell is that, and what is he doing
in my apartment?

I twisted my head to see. It was him. Of course it was him.
Hunky Father Tomas was sitting on the edge of my bed. His face was twisted with
what looked like worry, and his hands held gauze and a bottle of something
aromatic.

“Father Tomas? What happened? Why are you here? And why the
hell am I hurting so bad?” I craned my neck a little farther and got a nice
clear view of my own bare ass. “I’m naked!” I tried to roll over again, but his
hand held me still.

“It’s all right, I’m a priest.” He wasn’t trying to be funny.
He tugged the bedsheet up a little to cover my cheeks. “Lie very still or it’ll
hurt even more. If you’ll stop trying to roll, I’ll show you what’s hurting in
the mirror.” The bed moved as he got up and walked to my dresser. I tried to
remember whether I’d left anything embarrassing on it. Tampons, undies. I wasn’t
exactly an immaculate housekeeper. He was back in seconds, holding my silver
hand mirror at an angle that allowed me to see my back. And when I did, my
stomach heaved and I closed my eyes. My back was covered with deep, long cuts.
Stripes. Like a whip would leave behind if—

A whip.

“Shit.”

The nightmare or memory or hallucination or whatever the hell
it was came back to me so hard and fast I had to jam my face into the pillow to
muffle the sob that lurched inside my chest. I was pretty sure he heard it
anyway.

“What happened last night?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I turned far enough so my words could emerge
unmuffled. “I was…I was trying to work a spell. You must have seen the living
room.”

“I saw the circle. The candles. Figured that much out.”

Frowning, I twisted my head a little farther. “The circle. The
candles…that’s all?” He hadn’t mentioned the shattered window, broken glass,
toppled lamp, tangled curtains.

“Furniture piled in the kitchen?”

I blinked. “There was a storm. It smashed the window to hell
and gone.”

He was staring at me, silent.

“Didn’t it?”

He shook his head slowly. “It must have been part of another
nightmare,” he said. “I spotted you on the roof. You damn near went over the
side, but…”

“But you saved me.” I no longer cared if he saw my tears. He’d
seen my bare ass and my living nightmare. What were a few tears?

“I was across the street in my car. I saw you up there and—
They’re going away.”

“What?” I was confused by the sudden change of subject.

“The wounds, they’re…they’re going away.” He held up the mirror
again.

I ignored it. Pushing past him and his mirror to get to my
feet, dragging the sheet with me and holding it in front of my body, I turned my
back toward the large mirror on my dresser and looked over my shoulder at my
reflection.

The stripes across my back were closing up, forming small pink
lines, like battle scars, but then they started fading, too. There was a tattoo,
as well, on my lower back, and I knew damn well I’d never had a tattoo in my
life. Odd little symbols in neat rows. But they, too, were fading fast. Ten
seconds, I stood there. Tomas came and stood right beside me, staring into that
mirror. I didn’t even care that my ass was exposed again. Ten seconds, and at
the end of them nothing remained of those ghastly wounds except for a few smears
of blood Tomas must have missed in his ministrations.

I looked at the floor, belatedly pulling the sheet the rest of
the way around me.

“This thing—it could have killed you tonight, Indira.”

It was true. I shivered with the knowledge that it was
absolutely true.

“Next time I might not get to you in time.”

“What can you possibly do about it?”

“Take you with me to Ithaca. I’ll help you solve this thing.
I’ll make it go away, I swear I will, if you will just help me keep the demon
where he belongs in return. Please, Indy. Before he can hurt you any more.”

“Why Ithaca?”

“It’s where we need to be. I’ll explain more on the way. All
right?”

I hated to admit that I was losing my skepticism. I hated to
even
think about
believing any of this. But it was
real. I’d seen it, right there in my own mirror. I’d seen it. I was still
shaking, and it pissed me off. But I ignored that and nodded, a quick, jerky
motion that was anything but graceful.

“All right,” I said. “You win.”

* * *

Tomas had told me to take the day to get ready, and to
phone if I needed him. I didn’t. I made arrangements at work—I had five days’
vacation time coming, and if that wasn’t enough, I could tack on a few sick
days. I didn’t need to tell them I was actually talking about my mental health.
I packed up my things, enough to last a week, got some cash out of the bank and
tried to call Rayne. She didn’t answer, so I had to settle for leaving her a
snotty voice mail message asking if she’d lost her mind, sharing my most
intimate confessions with a demon-fighting priest.

That night, I took an antihistamine along with cold medicine,
and for once, I didn’t dream. Slept like a rock, in fact. And damn but I needed
it.

Next morning I showered, dressed and met him out front as
planned, even while wondering if I’d lost my freaking mind to be buying into any
of this.

Of course, the bloodstains on my sheets said I wasn’t crazy at
all. What was happening to me was completely insane, but I wasn’t imagining it
or dreaming it or hallucinating it—it was real. And who the hell else was going
to help me figure it out? Who else would even believe me?

Rayne, maybe. But I’d gone to Rayne. And she had basically
handed me off to this priest. As angry as I was at her for that, I trusted her.
She wouldn’t set some lunatic on my trail. She must believe he could help.

He pulled up right on time to take me off to Neverland in his
sagging chariot.

Father Tomas’s car was an aging, once-white Volvo station wagon
that looked as if it had been through a series of natural disasters. Its color
had yellowed to a sort of dull cream that was flaking off in places. He stowed
my gear in the back, like he was a gentleman and I was a helpless little female.
I stood on the curb just staring at the car, sort of in awe that anything that
ancient could still run.

He caught my expression and smiled. “It’s a classic. A 1967
Amazon.”

“Looks like you
found
it in the
Amazon.”

His smile didn’t falter. “I’m restoring it myself. It’s
a…hobby, I guess.”

“Heaven help me. My savior is not only a priest but a motor
head.”

He opened a door that looked as if it weighed a ton and held it
for me. “Trust me, she runs like a dream.”

“She looks like a nightmare.” Still, I got in and dutifully
buckled up, surprised that the inside looked pretty nice. Definitely a lot
better than I’d expected.

In seconds he was behind the wheel, turning the key, smiling at
the sound of the engine. “Hear that?”

“Sounds like a car, all right. So it only
looks
like it’s going to fall apart on the road, then?”

He rolled his eyes. “Mechanics first, comfort second, cosmetics
last of all. It’s the unwritten motor head code.”

It was comfortable, I had to give him that. There was enough
room in the back to transport a small sofa. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but it
was big. Despite the super-soft leather and the ultracozy seat, though, I still
felt like shit, no matter how I sat.

“Your back?” he asked.

I sent him an almost irritated look, though I was secretly
impressed and a little surprised by how much attention the guy was paying to me.
“It doesn’t really hurt. It’s like a phantom pain, every time I remember—” I
stopped there, because giving voice to anything more would only conjure it
again. The brutal lashes of the whip. Oh, shit, too late. “You don’t miss much,
do you?”

“You’re my calling, Indira. I’m not likely to miss a thing now
that I’ve found you.”

“Hell, Tomas, if you weren’t wearing that collar, I’d think you
were about to propose.”

He looked at me briefly, then pulled away from the curb. I
could have sworn a hint of panic appeared on his face, but maybe I’d imagined
it. And that was another reason I wasn’t worried about going off with the guy.
He was a priest, and he hadn’t done a single thing out of line. I was the one
having impure thoughts, not him.

I figured I’d give him a break and change the subject all the
same. “So tell me about your demon fighting thing. You do it often?”

He smiled a little. “Never. And it’s just the one demon.”

“Does he have a name?”

“I’ve only heard him called ‘He Whose Name Must Not Be
Spoken.’”

“Are you shitting me? He doesn’t even have a name?” I looked at
him, waiting for the punch line. But he only smiled and shook his head.