Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) (28 page)

I picked up the stool and
firmed my
resolve.

She pushed the door inward.
It made a
hissing sound. No, the hissing was from me. At her raised eyebrows,
I said, “I know, I know. The daddy long-legs aren’t
poisonous. Do they have to
surge
like that, and
does there
have to be so
many?
”

“They like cellars and
other dark
places.”

“Yeah, moonlight madness.
There
must be hundreds!”

She chuckled and hit the
light switch
wisely located on the greenhouse wall. No one would reach a hand
inside that room to turn on a light.

The light bulbs were
covered with
cobwebs, preventing the bulbs from doing more than dispersing the
worst of the shadows.

I bent to fit through the
doorway. The
shelves along the length of both walls towered over me, waiting. A
desk and an old, stuffed leather chair were crammed into the far end
of the hallway.

Who in their right mind
would curl up
in a chair in here?

As I crabbed inside, I
forced slow
measured breaths; too bad they sounded like a glorified wheeze. The
giant daddy long-legs scrambled up and down one side of the wall at
the end of the bookcase.

“’Ware the fiddlers and the
brown spiders,” Granny said softly. “Fifteen minutes.
I’ve been in recently myself, and can’t accompany you in
any case.”

No one was allowed to be
exposed to the
books for any length of time. They contained
power,
which
influenced and attached to almost anything given enough time.
Sunlight was exempt. And spiders.

I set the stool down and
scanned
titles. What should have been alphabetized, wasn’t. In the
dark, when no one was watching, books rearranged themselves, keeping
score in an elaborate game of vying for the best space.

“Fifteen,” Granny repeated
as the door swung shut.

I shuddered, but it wasn’t
because of the spiders. The door closed on a tomb, and I was on the
wrong side.

Although I was more
interested in cats
than binding spells, Granny was too wise to ignore. “Bindings.” There
were several promising books, even a couple dedicated to the
subject.

“Pentagrams...demons...”
Probably close enough. Whatever Claire was calling could be
considered a demon. Gifting the sand paintings ahead of time was a
unique twist, but the rest of the spell wasn't exactly standard
either.

According to the text, most
demons
required a blood sacrifice. Sarah had certainly paid dearly. Then
again, if she had been devoured by a demon not even her ghost would
survive.

“Callings, sacrifices for
demons...transfer of power...” Hmm. Now that was interesting.
If one coveted the power of a certain demon, but didn't want to bind
the demon itself, the demon’s power could be drawn out using a
like power.

“Was Sarah your sacrifice
in an
attempt to capture the power of wind? And when she didn't yield
enough power, you went after White Feather? Or did you go after them
simultaneously, but Sarah proved easier to manipulate?”

The book couldn’t answer
that. I
skipped over the spell cantations. Not only was such knowledge
anathema to me, Claire was distorting a different form of magic.

The next paragraph was
offset by a row
of skulls and contained a very compelling warning on improperly bound
demons and improperly bound power. “The demon may attach itself
to a host, but if not properly bound, it will roam and feed on its own.
Improperly bound power may require a new host.” I flipped the
page, but the section ended abruptly.

What did that mean? Did the
demon
destroy the first host? Or did the demon roam unharnessed in search
of a worthy vessel? Was it out there hunting a juicy morsel such as
White Feather?

I chose another book, set
it on the
shelf ledge and began searching for information on how to send leaked
power and beings back where they belonged, but the text only verified
my suspicions: “The pentagrams require exacting standards. After the
spell is completed, they must be obliterated.”

In that respect, pentagram
rules were
exactly like sand painting rituals. Both spells required proper
collection and dispersal on the night or day they were drawn.

“Doesn’t the cabin blowing
up count?” Or had that been the result of massive amounts of
uncontainable energy? Claire had summoned something, been unable to
bind it to herself or anything else and had then failed to send it
back. “It will feed. It will search out like powers.”

I turned the page. The
crinkling sound
of old parchment echoed. Instead of quieting, the noise magnified
and then repeated. It finally ceased, but just as I was about to
continue reading, the rustling of papers sounded again.

If I wasn’t turning pages,
who
was?

I ripped my eyes away,
wondering if the
book would flip pages on its own, lure me into its black depths and
force a demonic spell into my memory.

I held my breath and
waited, but even
from my peripheral vision, the pages remained completely still. In
fact...the noise wasn’t emanating from the book at all.

Like a puppet on a string,
my head
swiveled. Books lined the shelves from floor to ceiling. Could
spiders make that much noise?

“Moonlight--!” The largest
scorpion I had ever seen scrabbled across the top of the desk, headed
for the side. Its clawed feet scraped the surface, sounding exactly
like old parchment as it scuttled.

The scorpion had no problem
clinging to
the side of the desk on its way to the floor. A floor I shared with
it.

“Aeii!” As screams went, it
was short on air.

As if the scorpion wasn’t
horrific enough, from under the lip of the desk a large black spider
bolted across the front. White spots dotted its large black abdomen.
Or maybe the white spots were dancing in front of my eyes due to lack
of oxygen. My lungs were stuck somewhere between a screech and
leaving, with or without me.

I stomped my feet down on
the concrete,
the better to kill anything coming my way. Dizziness made me feel
faint. Or maybe I had fainted because from one blink to the next, the
lights, the beautiful lights, shut off.

Nothing was visible, not
books, not
spiders, not scorpions. I couldn’t even see the stool I found
myself desperately waving as an inept weapon.

Instinctively, I reached
for Mother
Earth, but the floor was concrete and hitting the barrier reminded me
that magic was against the rules here. Magic called magic and the
books were dangerous. No magic in here. Ever. Bad things would
happen.

Unfortunately, it seemed
bad things
were happening.

My body trembled with the
need to feel
Mother Earth.

I slammed the stool back
onto the
concrete and climbed on top of it. “I can handle this.”

Before I lost it worse, a
light near
the door came on, and my head spun around in relief. Had I not
climbed atop the stool, I would have run for the door and hugged
Grandma Ruth until she made me stop only...the door wasn’t
open. There was no Granny Ruth. There was nothing but a single light,
shining from around the corner of the bookcase.

I blinked. The room was
only one long
corridor with bookcases on either side. No side hallways, no other
rooms. So what was the light doing there?

My hands went clammy. I had
no silver
on my arms. No way to protect myself. The dim glow near the entrance
beckoned.

One foot inched near the
ground, ready
to run.

But....I checked the desk.
The single
light wasn’t enough to determine if the scorpion or spider was
creeping closer. I yanked my foot away from the floor and searched
frantically.

Nothing but gaping
darkness. I'd go to
the light. It was away from the spider and the scorpion. If nothing
else, underneath the light I'd be able to see better.

I slowly lowered one leg,
studying the
concrete under the stool. The light pulsed a gentle approval,
shedding a direct beam as though it sensed my movement.

“Moonlight madness.” I
hauled my leg back up, just in time to see at least one spider shadow
cross under the stool. The light was alive. Or magic. The only magic
here was from grimoires, books that had to be kept warded against
their dangerous power.

I forced my hand out until
I found the
book I had been reading and slammed it shut. I counted to three.

The old lights didn’t
suddenly
illuminate and the new light didn’t go away.

I was naked. No Mother
Earth. Just me
and the spiders.

I huddled into a tiny ball,
listening
to blood pound against my ears. My only defense was to do
nothing
.
If I used my magic, whatever had gotten loose would latch onto me.

“I am not here. Nothing
here,
move along.” I wrapped my arms around my legs and stilled my
thoughts. With my luck, the thing probably fed off of fear, the one
emotion that, right now, was attached to me like a beacon.

“The door is five or six
steps
away. The spiders in this room are not interested in me.” The
door was right there—the real one, not the one with the dim
light. If I bolted for it, I could make it. Unless that light caused
me problems.

I could create my own light
with a
spell.

No spells allowed.

My sympathy for White
Feather's plight
grew tenfold. He wanted to fight, but his wind meant a victory for
the enemy. If I so much as tried magic, the spiders—or worse,
the scorpion--would be on me like a flash. Scariest of all, whatever
had been loosed in here, whatever was in that light, might notice me
anyway.

More scraping claws broke
the silence.

Would I feel the spiders or
would they
swarm over me so fast I’d never know? I rubbed my arms. My
jeans would protect me. Well, unless a lot of them bit me. Right?

Before the whimper in my
throat became
a scream, lights blasted the backs of my eyeballs.

“Adriel?”

I didn’t budge. My eyes
stayed
locked in the direction of the desk.

“Adriel! Time’s up!”

The large black spider had
been busy.
It perched next to an even larger bundle of cocooned webbing. At
least two legs worked away on that bundle, packaging it up tight.

“It got the scorpion,” I
whispered hoarsely.

“Put the book away and come
out.
Your time is up.”

I peeled my fingers from my
arms. The
book could put itself away. I grabbed the stool and flew out of
there, ducking through the doorway in a mad sprint.

Granny slammed the door
shut and locked
it. “What happened? You’re as white as if you’d
been bitten!”

I collapsed on the floor
and came face
to face with the silver web spinner attached to the pot on wheels. My
harsh breathing turned into a wail until I ran out of air. Sweat
drenched my face, but I was chilled as though with fever.

“The emergency generator
light
came on—my God, were you in there in the dark? The lights are
supposed to come on immediately!”

I just kept breathing. That
was enough
for now.

Granny hustled me outside
into the
fresh air where I sat on the bottom porch step and put my hand on
good old Mother Earth.

She bustled in and out a
few times
before reappearing with fresh tea and demands. “Tell me what
happened!”

It took a while, but
eventually I
managed a stunted, almost intelligible answer.

She dismissed the part
about the
scorpion and spider, narrowing in on the light. “That light is
an emergency light over the door. It comes on when the generator
kicks in. But all the lights should have come on, not just that one.”

“It wasn’t over the door.
Not unless it was almost completely covered by webbing or spiders.
I’m positive it was
behind
the bookcase. There was
no
bulb, and it wasn’t over the door.”

“The spiders wouldn’t stay
on top of a light once it came on,” she said.

I thought she was merely
humoring me
with her questions, but then I noticed she was mindlessly dropping
sugar cubes into her tea. After the fifth one, I hauled myself from
the steps to the chair and grabbed her hand.

She jumped and then folded
her fingers
around mine for a few seconds. “Here. Your tea.” She
pushed a cup my way.

Since she hadn’t spiked my
cup
with sugar yet, I added two cubes and sipped the fresh mint. It did
little to soothe me. “There was another door or corridor. I saw
it. I
knew
it was there. It felt like freedom and
safety;
anything to escape the scorpion.”

“Spiders do eat scorpions.
They
prey on each other. Sometimes the scorpions eat the spiders and
sometimes it’s the other way around.”

We had already discussed
the scorpions I'd seen lately. “This wasn’t a simple
coincidence!”

“A hallucination?” Her
little foot tapped the porch. “Those books are inhabited, you
know. The spells, the magic, it often seeps out, forming its own
message.”

“It looked real.”

“The room has always been
full of
risks. Good thing you didn’t lose your head.”

But according to her, I
had. Because
otherwise, the light would have registered as nothing more than the
emergency light. Instead, I had been nearly panicked enough to recite
a spell. “Maybe you should limit time in the room to ten
minutes.”

To my surprise, she took me
seriously.
“Good idea. Something caused the lights to go off. And with
everything else you’ve told me, we can't be too careful.”
She shook her head, her fingers tapping nervously. “It should
have been very obvious it was an emergency light above the door.”

Granny abruptly stood and
went inside.
When she returned, she carried two books and a large bundle wrapped
in cloth. “Here's my best reference for Indian legends.”
She set it on the table and unwrapped the cloth bundle, which
contained two individually wrapped packages. “This spell is one
of mine. The instructions for use are tucked inside, but you’ll
devise your own way of using it once you understand the properties of
the poison.”