Pure Blooded (12 page)

“It would be nice if Juanita would explain what’s going on in more than two or three words. An actual phone call would be nice,” I grumbled as we climbed across dead, broken tree roots, trying not to stumble. “Have you ever tried to call her?”

“And how exactly would I call her?” Marcy asked, tripping behind me but catching herself before she tumbled through the roots. “I don’t exactly have a coverage plan that includes friend-to-friend calling with ancient supernaturals. Plus, I’d need her number and she killed my phone. The only thing this phone is good for anymore is her ticker tape messages. She doesn’t leave any traces behind. Nada.”

I stopped for a moment to assess the area. “I feel like we’re going around in circles. It all looks the same. How do the zombie wolves run through this stuff?” The cypress trees were tangly and hard to maneuver around. “It wouldn’t be easy on four legs.”

“Maybe we missed a path?” Marcy said. “I’m thinking there must be a trail of some kind and she’s not letting us see it.”

We’d followed the wolf out of the clearing and into the trees. I knew the actual acreage the bokor inhabited couldn’t possibly be that big. I couldn’t track any scent, because everything smelled like decay, death, and rot. “My guess is she’s either blocking the way to her lair or this realm extends wider than we think.”

“Wait a second.” Marcy held up her hand. “My backside is ringing again.” She reached around and plucked out her phone.

I leaned over to read it with her.

SOUTH.

I sighed. “Seriously? That’s it?” I called into the trees. “I have no idea where south is. We can’t even see the sun from here.” I glanced at the sky to get a sense of our location, but only a sliver of light filtered through the thick overcast.

“Hey, look.” Marcy pointed. “She’s giving us helpful hints.” A tree began to glow off to our left. It was a soft yellow light, radiating outward like someone had turned a nightlight on inside the trunk. “She’s a tricky one, you gotta hand it to her.”

“Tricky, and much too secretive for her own good.” I moved toward the glowing tree, and right as we reached it, another tree in the distance blinked on.

As we picked our way through, Marcy shook her head. “I wish I knew more about this kind of magic. Being able to create an alternate reality is heavy-duty. It’s extremely old magic. This bokor must worship lots of loa to gather that much strength.”

Right as Marcy uttered the word
loa
, something swished by my face. I batted the air. “We’ve got company.”

There was a short pause, and then a soft voice purred next to my ear.
We’ve been waiting a long time for you… female wolf…

I glanced back at Marcy, my eyebrow arched. “You heard that, right?” I asked.

“Heard what?”

“The hot gusty cloud of air that just said, ‘We’ve been waiting a long time for you, female wolf’?”

“Nope,” she said. “But all my hairs are on end again. See?” She held up her arm. “I can sense a presence, but that’s it. I guess those words are only for your ears.”

“But Naomi heard them before. I don’t get it.” I pondered that as another gust blew by me. If I had to guess, it felt like this thing was trying to push me back the way we’d come. “I think the spirit, or whatever, is pissed Juanita is leading us in the right direction. I think it wants me to go back. Something tells me we’re jumping the bokor’s timetable. Maybe she’s not ready for us?” I angled my head up at the treetops. “Is this an inopportune time for you, sorceress?” I called. Hot wind assaulted my body and I stumbled backward, tripping on low-lying branches. “I guess I’m right.”

Marcy was propped against a tree. “If this bokor is indeed trying to steal Naomi’s power and stuff it into a fetish, she’d need to perform some kind of ceremony to do it. That’s a huge magic transfer. It can’t be rushed. If changing Danny into one of her zombie wolves is on the agenda as well, who knows how long that will take? But my guess is she has to prepare some kind of mumbo-jumbo potion first. So maybe you’re right. We are interrupting her and she’s not happy.”

I shuddered, and my arms prickled as thoughts of harm coming to Danny or Naomi washed over me. “I guess that means we double our pace and hurry. Juanita wants us to get there or she wouldn’t be leading the way. Let’s go.”

We maneuvered through the trees as fast as we could manage. We made it about fifty yards when something slammed into me from the side. I was caught completely off guard, and grabbed on to a root to steady myself.

At least I thought it was a root.

When it moved with me, and I fell to the ground, I knew something was wrong.

Marcy shrieked, “It’s unraveling quickly! Let go before it wraps its slithery, awful body around you!”

The thing hissed, its forked tongue inches from my face. I was on my back, but thankfully I had a tight grip on it behind the neck. Its red eyes pulsed, but there was also something else there. “Marcy, I bet we can kill these zombie snakes just like the wolves. Get your knife out!”

She was beside me in an instant, her hand steadily gripping her new best friend. “That thing reeks of magic. It might not work.”

The bottom of the python’s massive body slithered around my legs. It was getting ready to strangle the life out of me. “Marcy, use one of your spells at the same time you stab it. It can’t hurt.” The muscles in the snake’s body were heavy and rigid, like they’d been reinforced with steel. And Marcy was right—there was powerful magic attached to it.

“Okay, but if a verbal spell isn’t strong enough, we’ll have to use one of the dark ones.” Marcy began chanting, and the air around us tingled with power. The snake’s gaze slid toward her as it began to vibrate under my grasp. “Marcy, it’s working! Now stab it and see what happens.”

Marcy was clearly in a zone, but she moved forward, her eyes glazed in concentration as she expertly struck the snake right behind the eyes. She used so much strength, the knife lodged into its brain and she couldn’t pull it out. The red eyes above me began to blink like Christmas lights on the fritz.

Marcy kept yanking at the knife, trying to get it out. “Leave it in!” I shouted. “I can feel the thing weakening. Just keep doing whatever you’re doing with the spell.”

She immediately let go and stepped back, closing her eyes,
bringing her hands up in front of her. To my surprise, her hair began to lift at the ends as the air shifted around us.

The snake began to shake like a tuning fork, vibrating so fast I had no choice but to let go of it.

A few seconds later the thing exploded.

Right on my chest.

I managed to look away in time, shielding my mouth and eyes with my hands a few seconds before it erupted. Snake guts had exploded everywhere. They were sticky and putrid. This thing had been good and dead before it had been reanimated by the bokor.

I ran a hand over my neck and chest as I glanced up at Marcy, coughing. “I think we can safely say that you just bested the bokor and her stupid snake. What kind of spell was that anyway? Good lords, woman. That was nothing short of amazing.”

Marcy’s eyes were bright as she extended her hand to help me up. “It was a tricky one. It was part null, to combat the bokor’s magic, and part boil.” Once I was up, she actually clapped her hands together excitedly. “I wasn’t sure I could do it, because it’s actually a dual spell, but I’ve been practicing them lately. You take a piece of one spell and combine it with another. It’s extremely hard to master and usually takes a young witch years to hone. But I only started doing them a month ago. Yay!”

I whapped the biggest, stinkiest bits of carcass off my body, trying to clean it the best I could with my hands. The smell was putrid. “Yay is right. You rocked it out. But now I hope you have a hose-me-off spell. In the Underworld they had these amazing showers that washed you and your clothes on the spot. I would kill for one of those now.”

It was really the only good thing about the Underworld.

“I have a cleaning spell, but it’s more of an ‘incinerate the crap off you’ spell. I don’t think a bathing spell even exists. That would
be handy, but too risky. The spell would have to attack your actual skin. Lots of ways to backfire.” She smiled as she aimed her fingers at me. She said a few words and the bloody snake guts sizzled and burned up like ash and fell to the ground.

I glanced down the front of my shirt. “You took some material with it.” I put a finger through a hole on the hem and wiggled it.

“Good grief!” Marcy said with exasperation. “You can’t expect perfection a hundred percent of the time, O Grand Taskmaster.” She steepled her hands and faked a bow. “I just defeated a possessed python the size of five kindergarteners end to end. My brain is completely fried. You’re lucky your shirt is still attached to your body.”

I laughed. “Well, the guts are gone, so that’s all that matters.”

“Of course that’s all that matters. Now, let’s get out of here. That carcass is making me gag and we need to get to Naomi and Danny. Plus, I want out before any more possessed reptiles slither out of the woodwork.”

I started after her. “After your impressive display of magic, and how handily we took care of the wolves, I don’t think the bokor will risk any more of her precious pets. We’re systematically reducing her flock of terror one creature at a time. I’m betting she won’t pull any punches till we show up at her front door.”

As we made it to one glowing tree, another would light up.

We quickened our pace, meaning we continued to stumble over roots and knotted growth as fast as we possibly could, mostly jumping from tree to tree. The only positive thing was there wasn’t any water. In the regular world this place would have water everywhere, seeping in between the trees. “I wonder how she filters the water out,” I pondered as we went. “Seems like too much hassle and energy to keep it dry here.”

Marcy grunted. “She must live in a house or something, so she needs land to operate. My guess is it’s just easier to spell the entire
area the same way, rather than pick places to drain it. That’s what I’d do.”

“I wonder why the loa has left us alone. It must be able to do more than catch me off guard so I’m forced to grab on to a snake.”

“I have no idea, but I do know a loa is strongest right after it has a ride in its host. It siphons energy while it’s inside. So maybe this one wasn’t primed on enough bokor juice?” I made a face. “That was the best explanation I had.”

“Well, I hope that’s the case, because I’d prefer to fight a tired bokor—”

A scream rent the air, followed by a strangled howl.

It sounded like a cross between a wounded cub and an anguished siren. “Oh my gods, that’s Naomi!” But before I could move more than five paces forward, something crashed into me from the front, bowling me over.

You won’t get to her in time
, the voice said in my ear as I hit the ground.
Your blood will taste deeeelicious. We will devour it gladly. But you must wait your turn
.

I punched the air in front of me but came in contact with nothing. And just as quickly it was gone. “You’re not getting her!” I shouted to the sky. “You’ll have to kill me first!”

“Jess.” Marcy stood over me, her voice quaking slightly. “The air smells like black pepper and lavender.”

“So?” I stood up and brushed myself off. “Did you finally hear what it said? It’s going to drink Naomi’s blood. We have to stop it. It doesn’t want us to get to her and it’s trying to slow us down.”

“No, you don’t understand.” She grabbed my arm, pulling me up short. “That is a very
particular
scent, and once I smelled it, it triggered something that was taught to me a long time ago, like clicking the last cog into place.”

“What does it mean?” I asked. When she didn’t talk immediately I urged, “Marcy, spit it out!”

“If what I was taught is correct, the loa harassing us is the spirit of Marinette.”

“Who’s that?” I asked as I dragged Marcy along with me. “Come on, talk to me while we move.”

She followed, frowning. “How can you
not
know who that is? She’s renowned in the lore as one of the most powerful and vicious spirits around. The rumor, at least for the witches, is she started out as an extremely powerful goddess, who was killed or punished for her wrongdoings—which is almost unheard of. Then she came back as a spirit to seek revenge and wreak havoc on the supernatural world.” We scrambled over trees, trying to make up for lost time. “Honestly, when you learn things as a child, it’s in one ear and out the other—until you see, or in this case smell, some kind of real proof. Well, that scent is enough proof for me. It’s a huge part of the story. No one else smells like black pepper, much less coupled with lavender. But there’s one more key piece—” Marcy stumbled over some roots and I grabbed her arm to steady her.

“What is it?” I stopped, turning to face her. “I know I’m not going to like it, so just get it over with.”

“Marinette is the patron of werewolves.”

I processed that bit of information. Werewolves?

Marcy was impatient. “Do you understanding what I’m saying? She’s a former goddess—the goddess of werewolves. As in, she was the first one to create them.”