Tomorrow Wendell (White Dragon Black) (25 page)

“Finally, I became like a psychic, ghost hunter . . . thing,” Jonathan said, unable to keep the bitter humor from his voice.

They had switched to Bourbon when the tales got personal and painful. Jonathan had drained his glass and refilled it to gain the courage to continue his tale. He offered to top off Wendell’s, but the man declined.

“Then I got a case that wasn’t a ghost. A young boy was infected with something. Something I feared was a sort of demon.

“I had no idea what to do. That was, at the time, out of my league. So, finally, I called my father. Anglicans don’t usually do exorcisms, but they can, and he came.”

Jonathan took another drink.

“You don’t have to,” Wendell said.

“I was never allowed to keep it to myself. Twelve good men and women and a whole lot more circus performers,” Jonathan replied. “And perhaps it’s time I spoke of it more.”

He shrugged then went on. “My father came. Despite not having talked much over the years. He didn’t like that I had gotten involved in what he considered ‘the Lord’s work’ as a secular boy . . . hell, he didn’t like that I grew up a secular boy.

“But still, he came. And the four of us, the boy’s parents, my father, and I, did what we could to rid the boy of the thing riding him.”

“The boy died, didn’t he?”

“No, the boy lived. He currently resides in San Diego. He’s a lieutenant in the Navy.”

He took a drink, lit a fresh smoke, and as he blew out the first puff, Jonathan continued the tale. “After thirty hours, my father finally forced the thing out of the boy, but only by taking it into himself.”

Wendell hung his head.

“The thing didn’t want my father, though. He wasn’t going to be an easy pawn. It wanted the boy, something easier to manipulate and corrupt. So, it was fighting to get free and my father . . .”

Jonathan paused, drained off half his glass, and took another long drag on the cigarette.

“My father knew—once it was in him—the only way to stop the thing from getting back in the boy was to kill it, but . . .”

“That meant your father . . .”

“Yeah.” Jonathan looked many years into the past and nodded.

“Anyway, I couldn’t do it, not at first. My father, though, he started begging me to do this thing. He said there was nothing more right than defending the innocent—no matter what the cost.”

Jonathan ran his hand through his hair. “But I don’t know if he was right. I still don’t know if the cost is worth it.”

“I’m sorry, Jonathan.”

“Because of the testimony of the parents and the boy, and the diagnosis of a couple of psychiatrists, I served three years in Saint Dymphna Institute for Mental Health. I used the time to research and, when I convinced them of my sanity, I started doing this. Maybe it’s a calling; maybe it’s just misplaced vengeance.”

“Thank you,” Wendell said.

“For what?” Jonathan asked, confused by the man’s sincere comment.

“For sharing. Just that,” Wendell looked at the ceiling, “and maybe for putting a little perspective to my life, see?”

“Your life is far from over,” Jonathan said firmly.

“Yeah. Of course.”

After that, they fell into silence. The night crawled into the early hours of morning and they smoked, ate, and drank, with only the most perfunctory of words exchanged.

It wasn’t until near three in the morning that anything broke the quiet. It started with a tingling at the base of Jonathan’s neck and transformed into a feeling of dread.

Jonathan sprung from his chair, startling Wendell, who also started to rise.

“Sit down! Don’t leave that circle!”

Jonathan closed his eyes. He tried to orient himself to the cause of the sensation. To figure why his hackles had risen.

He touched malevolence; the energy of malice, woven with the sucking sensation that he associated with poltergeists. These sensations didn’t help. They only served to bewilder him.

He spun and looked out the window towards the source of the malignancy.

At first glance, he failed to see anything peculiar. However, off in the far west, what he had thought just a layer of clouds began to angle in against the wind towards them.

“We have company coming. I don’t know what it is yet, but it sure the hell ain’t Glinda the good witch.”

Jonathan turned away from the window and spun around the desk to his accumulation of spell components. He ruled out the grave dirt right off, but grabbed the sulfur, some rue, and the silver flask of holy water before going back to the window.

Whatever was coming was eating up the distance fast.

It almost looked like a large flock of birds. Jonathan’s mind went to the ravens from earlier. It took him no time to discern that what approached dwarfed the largest of ravens.

Something about the scene caused alarms to sound in the dark storehouse of knowledge lodged in his head. What the klaxon signified regretfully eluded him.

Jonathan checked to make sure the salt across the window bases hadn’t been disturbed, while trying to haul the cause for the alarm into the light of conscious thought.

Every time he thought he’d gotten a hold on it, it scuttled out of reach.

For a moment, he stopped to scan westward. Jonathan thought the dark swarm to be comprised of Harpies. He leaned closer to the glass and watched the approaching cloud. After studying the phenomena carefully, he realized whatever approached, they moved completely wrong for Harpies.

The things comprised in this mass swirled and swooped like a murmuration of starlings. They were clearly too large for any bird native to this area, however. Jonathan thought they might be too big to be birds from any area.

“All that damn work and they’re still targeting you. Shit!”

The simple hope that the weasel from Apatedyne might also get visited by what approached now comforted Jonathan through his failure to mask Wendell’s energy against attack.

He would never know for certain.

The little trick he’d done with the mirror should be bouncing a lot of Wendell’s essence toward the other man.

If the shmuck did get harassed, even by just a small portion of the force coming at them, then Jonathan could find a reason to smile.

The fact still stood that the spell he had cast should have confused anything searching for Wendell.

That his client was still being targeted scared Jonathan on a level he was unwilling to acknowledge. All he would let his mind admit was they were up against something serious and he had better be on his toes.

Jonathan looked at Wendell. All too clearly, he could see the strain in the man’s face.

It had to be hard to just sit back, literally, and do nothing when it was your own life at stake.

Jonathan couldn’t worry about his client’s stress right now, though. He had to be focused on the threat coming from the west. And like that, Jonathan knew what he had been looking at.

The knowledge left him momentarily flabbergasted.

H
e turned to watch the cluster of shapes spinning and swooping towards the building. They were now no more than a half-mile away.

And he knew them to be the Sluagh.

Even in their homelands on the Isle of Britannica, to have contact with such phenomena was rare. Here, in North America, Jonathan had thought such a gathering impossible.

In the lands of the Bretons, the Sluagh had originally been a Celtic curse. Jonathan knew only too well that with the spread of people and their beliefs came the creatures from their myths, and the monsters from their mountains. Yet he still couldn’t wrap his mind around this fact.

“Sluagh,” Jonathan spoke the word aloud. He hoped hearing it would solidify the reality and dredge up what little he knew about them.

“Pardon?” Wendell asked, and although Jonathan answered, it was for his own benefit more than Wendell’s education.

“Myths similar to the wild hunt but not as powerful—not ‘wild magic’ as it were. Spirits made from the tattered soul of sinners. Most likely powered by entropy or, perhaps, chaos energy.”

He watched the swarm get closer and closer. “Come on, come on—think, man.”

He wasn’t even sure if the salt he had so carefully laid out would stop them. They were far from normal ghosts.

“They come from the west and try to enter a house where someone is dying to steal the soul and . . . and, for that reason, people kept their western windows shuttered. Okay, but was it the shutter stopping them . . . or . . . or the wood?”

Jonathan cursed. Although he didn’t want to leave his post, he thought it might be wise if he got some wood just in case.

The question is, if I dare leave this station—what wood?

The next moment nullified the debate. The hideous mockeries of human forms slammed against both windows.

Wendell yelled and Jonathan wasn’t surprised. Monochromatic faces pressed against the glass, all in various states of decay. Rot would probably be impossible, for they appeared to be made of less substantial material than flesh.

The malignant shapes were clearly non-corporeal. Another boney-fingered hand slammed against the glass, rattling it in the old wooden frame.

Jonathan amended his opinion to mostly non-corporeal.

Long, ragged nails scratched across the glass and Jonathan saw the faintest of grooves left behind.

“Wood.”

Again, Wendell spoke up. “Wood?”

“It must be the wood that keeps them out,” Jonathan continued to extrapolate out loud, “But what wood?”

“Um . . . maple?” Wendell ventured.

One of the Sluagh smashed its head against the glass. Between Jonathan and its melting eyes, torn cheeks, and charred lips, a tiny fracture appeared.

“Shit! Can’t let them keep this up.” Jonathan yelled over his shoulder. “You in that circle, Wendell?”

“Damn right, I am!”

“Good.” Jonathan flicked the latch on the window. The dead patchwork remnants of the malicious souls renewed their attack like leprous locusts on a tree of rotting fruit.

Jonathan didn’t dare open the bottom sash for fear that the salt, which might be doing something, would be disturbed. He felt relatively safe opening the top sash, however.

Jumping up on the low bookshelf in front of the window, Jonathan slipped the silver flask from his back pocket. He spun the top open and let a large mouthful of the holy water contained in it fall into this mouth.

A few of the closest Sluagh retracted slightly, but others mindlessly crowded in.

Jonathan grabbed the top of the upper window sash and, lowering it three inches, spewed the water from his mouth like a child blowing a raspberry.

The effect was immediate. The wretched souls that had gibbered forward in elated glee now shrieked and fell away. The swarm, as a whole, dropped off the building, putting as much distance between themselves and that window.

Jonathan slammed the sash shut, thumbed the latch closed, and ran to the next window.

He stood on his chair and, with as much precision as possible considering his tactics, repeated the process. However, the creatures had already learned from the previous attack. He caught far fewer of them with his second spray of blessed liquid.

He had less than half a flask left now. Though nearly a full gallon sat in the closet, Jonathan knew he couldn’t just keep doing this.

The grim figures had already shown an ability to adapt, and quickly. If he just continued to do the same thing over and over, they would figure out a way to avoid him and enter the room anyway.

“Okay, what else? What else do I know about the Sluagh?” he asked his reflection in the glass. Behind the image, the twisted mass of tormented spirits began to swirl back up the building.

Jonathan noted with relief that they at least approached more warily this time than when they had first struck.

“Um—myths said the Sluagh were those turned back from the heavens and all the hells.” Jonathan continued to ramble his thoughts out loud. “Welcome neither in the Underworld or Otherworld. The gods and even the . . . earth. Earth! Even the earth itself rejected those who became the Sluagh.”

Jonathan ran to get the grave dirt he had at first rejected.

He caught it up with one hand and, filling his mouth from the flask once more, opened the sash.

The Sluagh moved just out of the range which he had managed to spray the previous time. Though Jonathan had no intention of trying to burn their rotted spirits with what was in his mouth, he was grateful for the leeway their reticence allowed him.

He dropped the sash lower than he had previously, but just enough to get his head and one arm out.

This time, instead of aiming for the misshapen spirits, he sprayed the water from between his lips on the outside of the glass.

It could have been impatience, or simply seeing his mouth empty, but the beasts closed in again. He didn’t bother to spare a look—their fevered hatred swelled with their approach.

He could feel the things swarming in from all around. He could smell rot, smoke, and blood.

He tossed the handful of dirt on the window. It stuck, in a mottled splatter, to the holy water. Wasting no time, Jonathan ducked back in and slammed the window.