Night of the Living Demon Slayer (2 page)

"We've got a problem," I called, motioning her over. She nodded, not questioning. I stepped back to give her a clear view of the mess on the ground as she approached. "I'm hoping maybe you started flinging some crazy enchantments after I went to bed."

She slowed, her mouth forming a tight line as she studied the mess on the ground. "It's not ours."
 

"Damn." That's what I was afraid of. Now that I could focus better, I felt a presence radiating from it, a deliberate sense of purpose. "I think it's alive."

"Yes and no," she murmured, crouching down to study it. "The pentagram holds in the power, it neutralizes the threat and keeps it inside." She held a hand over it, as if measuring the magical force it held. "If you touch the doll, all bets are off." She glanced up at me. "How the hell did it get here?"

Her guess was as good as mine. "Flappy fetched it from outside the wall."

Grandma stood, frowning. "That's the only way it could have gotten past our wards."

"He carried it by the sticks." Thank God. I didn't want to think what would have happened if he'd have bitten down on it. Or eaten it.

Grandma scrutinized the bundle, she could detect a weakness with eyesight alone.

"It feels…dark," I said. It wasn't just the smell or the way it quivered from the inside. There was something else to it. "I want to take a closer look."

She nodded. "I'll watch over you while you do."

I focused my powers. As a demon slayer, I had the ability to draw closer to evil than most would ever dare. I needed to. I liked it, which was another whole level of danger.
 

With Grandma standing guard, I let go. I called my demon slayer energy up from inside until I could feel the hot, churning force radiating up my spine, filling my chest. It built. I opened myself to it and let it flow into my arms. I flexed my fingers, tilted my head, as the heat invaded me. I held off, waiting for it to build to razor-sharp stab of intensity before directing all my energy straight at the bundle of twigs, and cloth, and feathers. It poured out of me, slamming into the twisted mass of energy surrounding the figure inside the pentagram.

At that moment, I saw with sickening clarity the faint grey mist surrounding it, then deeper, to the shard of darkness roiling, colliding, screaming to escape the doll. It panted and fought, hidden from everyone but me. The blood in my veins went cold. "There's a black soul inside this doll."

Grandma cursed under her breath. "You need to be sure," she warned.

"Believe me, I'd love to be wrong." But I wasn't.

My power excited it, made it call out to me.

Black souls were also known as shadow people, wraiths. These were spiritual remains of the truly wicked, those too stained for salvation, the ones flirting with hell.

My mentor took regular trips to purgatory, trying to redeem the ones he could. I did my best to avoid them.

"Okay, then." Grandma said, thinking. "We have to secure it."

"I'm more interested to learn who broke this one out," I told her. Still, she was right. We needed to deal with it immediately, especially since Flappy had crushed part of the pentagram in his mouth. "I don't think we can fix it," I said, unwilling to touch the pentagram. No telling what other kind of magic it held.

"That pile of sticks could break apart at any time," Grandma said. "We need a trap," she hollered over to Ant Eater. "One of the wood ones, with the runes." She glanced at me, worried. "It's double enchanted. We don't have anything stronger. Haven't had time yet."

"You think it'll work?" I trusted Grandma, even if she did tend toward the kind of loosey-goosey magic that made me sweat.

She grit her jaw. "It's the best we've got."

Ant Eater opened a cabinet near the spell tables and carefully withdrew a wooden box.

Grandma blew out a hard breath as she ran a hand over the back of her neck. "At least we're building up our supplies. A month ago, we wouldn't have had the time to make and dry a trap like this, and we definitely wouldn't have had a secure place to store it."

"It'll work," I said. I'd counted on the witches often enough to recognize their skill. Besides, it's not like we had a choice.

Ant Eater hurried over with the trap, giving Flappy's prize a second and a third glance as she did. "You need me to call the rest of the coven?" She asked, placing it in Grandma's hands. It hummed with energy.

The box was no bigger than a Chinese take-out container. The witches had carved protective runes into every surface.
 

Grandma traded a meaningful look with her second in command. "Not yet. Hang tight. I'll need you to watch from a distance. Call the others if we get into trouble. Don't try saving us yourself."

Ant Eater nodded. "Right." She'd been backing Grandma for longer than I'd been alive.

"Thanks," I said to her retreating form. Hopefully I could handle this without backup. All told, I wasn't sure what the witches could do if I screwed up. They might be able to scramble enough power to keep a black soul trapped, but I was the only one who could capture it. Or destroy it.

Grandma opened the box. A blue mist swirled from inside, curling over her fingers. "Looks good from my end."

"Then let's do this," I said, closing in on the doll. The air right around it felt hot, sharp. It settled over me, stinging as if a thousand tiny needles pricked my skin.

The last time I'd touched a black soul, I'd pulled it out of a werewolf's chest and nearly killed him.

This one pounded for release. It was angry. Trapped. Waiting. It needed a place to be, it missed having a body. It would take mine if it could.

I rolled my shoulders, trying to keep them loose.
Focus
.

My palms slicked with sweat. Cautiously, deliberately, I touched my fingers to the cloth, willing myself to stay calm as a tiny, marble-sized knot bubbled to the surface. In a million years, I didn't think I'd ever get used to that feeling.

Now. I tore through the flimsy covering and reached for it.

It skittered sideways.

"Frick." I chased it. For a second I gave in to desperation. I lost control.

But in my job, any loss of focus could be deadly. I forced myself to pull back, all the way out. I held my hands out to my sides.
Not so fast.
It wanted me to make a mistake.

I'd kept the pentagram and the rest of the trap in tact. Tearing the cloth helped me get to it, but the move hadn't allowed it to escape.

"You okay?" Grandma asked, her voice even more gravelly than usual.

"Yes." I opened my mind, forced myself to concentrate on directing my power instead of dwelling on the fear of what would have happened if I hadn't touched this first, if someone non-magical had stumbled across it, if the trap broke, if I let it get away. I braced my hands around it again, brushed the hard knot with my fingers, and gripped it tight, yanking it straight through the cloth.

Holy Hades. It sucked me down. I felt the blackness overtake me, the power of it seep into me. My mind swam.

"Let it go," Grandma ordered.

"I am!" I tried to open my fingers, but they wouldn't move. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton.

"Lizzie!" She gripped my shoulder. It didn't matter.

It called to me.

Another body. Mine!

It feels so
good
.

I'm almost in.

I swayed, but managed to stay upright, harnessed by the tight whisper of fear. But that gave it power—my terror, my emotion. I let it go. I let the negativity fall from me as I reared back and hurled the malignant spirit away from the people I loved.

The air crackled as the black soul caught on the witches' wards. A cord of hot, red power zipped down my arm, driving a stinging shock through me as the black soul broke into a million tiny pieces that soared toward the afternoon sun.

As I came back to myself, I felt my palms, hot on the concrete, my knees scraping against the rough path.

Grandma had me by the shoulders. "Damn it, Lizzie. You scared the crap out of me." She gave me a shake. "How are you feeling? What do you need?"

My mouth and throat felt painfully dry. "Nothing." At least I didn't think so. I was covered in a thin layer of grit. "I didn't kill it, did I?"

Truth be told, I had mixed feelings about shadow people. The expedient thing was to eliminate them so they could never attack again. But I also knew a fraction of them could be saved with the right kind of intervention. Who was I to deny any soul that chance?

The lines around Grandma's mouth deepened as she squatted down next to me. "You didn't kill it. Or hurt it when it went to pieces. That's what they look like when they're…" She waved a hand at the sky.

"Free," I finished. Free to evolve if they so choose, to seek the good.

Free to hunt.

Grandma gripped my wrist and helped me up. I didn't need it, but it made her feel better. I winced at my stiff knees and tingling legs and shook them out, trying to get the circulation back. I didn't like the idea of that black soul out in the world, but it was a hundred times worse to have it in a position where it could infect anyone who touched that doll.

I planted my hands on my hips and looked to the sky where it had disappeared. "I just want to know where it came from." Grandma's wards should have kept out anyone who wanted to do us harm. They sure zapped that soul on the way out.

Before she could answer, the back gate banged open. There stood a man in a long leather overcoat with a black Stetson tipped over his eyes.

"Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the mule." I never thought I'd see
him
again.

Chapter Two

Carpenter strode into the courtyard, his eyes on me. "Where is it?" His steps were measured. His leather duster jacket swirled around his legs. Evan Carpenter was a cutthroat, hard-ass, raiser of the dead who had helped me exactly one time before he'd declared himself a loner and refused to work with me again.

I couldn't imagine what he wanted now, but I had a feeling he wouldn't be shy about it. Necromancers were rare. Their magic gave them special powers in the spirit realm. This one was especially powerful.

He hitched a hand over his belt, displaying the ornate bronze clockwork ring on his right hand. "What did your dragon do with my black soul?"

Way to blame it on the dragon. "Why did you have a black soul?" I asked. Offense is the best defense, right?

He stopped right in front of me and stared, as if he couldn't quite believe I'd asked that. "I need your help analyzing it. I had it secure, until your dragon swooped down and stole it."

"About that…" I glanced down at the ground, to the broken trap at my feet.

"No." He grabbed for it, turning it over in his hands, frantically inspecting it for the lost soul.

"We didn't know it was yours," I said quickly. "We had no idea you were even outside. I had to disable it."

He closed his eyes, pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "I get it. It's fine."

No, it wasn't, but I wasn't particularly interested in pushing the point. "Where did you get that thing anyway?"

He stood slowly. "There's a voodoo bokor down in New Orleans. He's trapping black souls. Hard to know how," he said in that careful, deliberate Louisiana drawl. "He doesn't have powers like yours or mine. I was going to show you the trap I stole, see if you could help me figure out how he snares them. But that ship has sailed."

Indeed.

He stood straighter. "In any case, I need you to come down South with me. Immediately."

"As in right now?" I asked, surprised, and a little galled by his attitude.

His blue eyes blazed hot while the rest of him remained ice cold, controlled. "You do owe me."

Way to bring that up. "I get it."
 

Carpenter had been invaluable on my last adventure. He'd helped me kill a powerful demon and he'd saved my dog's life. He didn't need to hold it over my head in order to get me to listen. But it did show me just how important this was to him.

"I'm having trouble with the dead in New Orleans," he explained.

That didn't sound good. "I sincerely hope you mean ghosts." I'd met a few over the last year or so and I'd had decent luck. Then again, considering he'd brought along a black soul, odds were this would be a lot stickier. Especially if it was something a necromancer couldn't handle.

"A reanimated alligator," he said, serious as a heart attack.

I snarfed. "You've got to be kidding."

He frowned. "Why would anyone joke about reanimated alligators?"

He had me there.

Carpenter glanced at the increasing number of witches gathering in the courtyard, before drawing me a few more steps away. "The undead reptile is the work of the same bokor who trapped the black soul. His name is Osse Pade. They call him "The Alligator Man." The scaly beasts are his personal animal totem. He holds sway over them, you see."

"I think I do," I said, decidedly uncomfortable with the strange and deadly kinds of magic out there, and with what Carpenter might want from me.

He moved in closer, his voice lowering. "Pade has a church on the edge of the bayou. He doesn't associate with anyone outside his circle of followers, but locals say he has powerful magic, that he has a direct line to their ancestors." The necromancer's jaw tightened. "I think he's doing more than talking to poor departed Uncle Freddie. I can feel the kind of power he pulls up. It's dark. And he's done something lately to make it even stronger." Carpenter drew back, glowering. He pulled off his hat and scraped a hand through his spiky brown hair. "Last night, I failed to put down Pade's latest 'experiment.' I need your help to kill it."

I hated to point out the obvious, but, "I'm a demon slayer."

He shook me off. "A black soul is giving the animal life. I can handle the soul itself, but the alligator nearly took my hand off. This is a two-person job."

I understood his point. Still, I had to wonder, "Can't you just get an alligator wrangler?"

He gave me a dry look. "And tell him what? And keep him safe how?" He quirked a brow. "You handle demons. An alligator should be no problem."