Trio of Sorcery (16 page)

She was done with the casting by the time Marshal said, “Well, when are you going to make me the Invisible Man?”

“I already have,” she replied. “Be careful.”

“I will,” he replied fervently, and slipped away, leaving them all in a huddle in the dark.

She tried to sense what was in the house, but other than the general aura of inimical magic, she couldn't get much without pushing. And right now, she didn't want to push. Tamara, though powerful, was not very skilled—or had picked up her knowledge piecemeal and had never
been formally trained. Still, there was a lot of emotion fueling her power, and it wasn't just Chris Fitzhugh's anguish. Di realized that she had better tread very cautiously. Tamara might be the proverbial blunt instrument, but an untutored lout with a sledgehammer could kill you just as dead as an assassin with a stiletto.

Di didn't sense anything outside the house, but that didn't mean anything. There could be physical traps. There could be things that were hidden from her, the same way she had hidden Marshal. Maybe Tamara was conserving her magical resources.

Or maybe, just maybe, Tamara was arrogant enough to think that she wouldn't be found.

Di was used to waiting, though the others began fidgeting long before Marshal came back. The whip-poor-will whistle preceded him and he slipped in beside them in the shelter of their bushes with only a little rustling of dead leaves.

“The side facing us is the front. There's a wooden porch covered with Virginia Creeper which looks like a death trap; half the supports are busted and I wouldn't be any too sure of the floor. The windows are all boarded up, and I couldn't see any sign of anyone fighting through the weeds and the Virginia Creeper to get to the front door. Around left is that cellar door you were hoping for and someone
did
use that; the weeds are all busted down. There are a couple of windows on that side where the boards have been taken off, but the windows are dark. There's a
car in the back, an old beater Buick. There's a back door with cement steps going up and the windows back there have light. It looks like a Coleman or a kerosene lamp, not electricity. The last side is all boarded up, and full of blackberry bushes, I didn't even try to get around it.”

Di let out her breath in a sigh. “All right then. We're hitting this blind, and I'm sorry. My best guess is the kid is in that cellar. It's where I'd stash her if I was hiding her. So what we need to do is provide a distraction at the kitchen door while we snatch the kid from the cellar—”

“And we provide the distraction,” Emory interrupted, and started to stand up.

“Oh,
hell
no!” Di whispered sharply, and pulled him down again. “If she's got the kind of juice I think she does, she'll be able to bring in stuff that will make that dybbuk look like Captain Kangaroo! No, I want you guys to put the grab on the kid, while
I
do the distraction! Chances are the kid's nowhere near the cellar door. She might even be locked in another room. The door's probably old enough and the frame's dry-rotted enough you can bust it off the hinges, but
I
can't. And I'm leaving you with the guns. If there's a confederate, he'll be down there.”

“Oh,” said Emory.

“All right. I'll go hit the back door and start a ruckus, while you wait at the cellar. As soon as you hear the noise start, break in and try to find Melanie. If she's not there, head up into the house but stay clear of where the noise is. Zaak?”

“Yep. Got the kit.” Zaak sounded steadier than she thought he would. Excellent.

“Remember, blessed salt and holy water will probably chase off anything she's left on guard. If that doesn't work, try the horseshoe nails. If that doesn't work, try brute magical force and bullets. And if
those
don't work—try what worked on the dybbuk. It's worth a shot, and un-holy things usually will at least react to the holy backed by faith.”

“Gotcha. Give me a sec…” Zaak rummaged in the bag and came up with the salt container, which he proceeded to empty into one pocket of his jacket. She nodded with approval. “Got the squirt gun of holy water in the right pocket, and the horseshoe nails in a bag on my belt.”

Horseshoe nails—better make sure they all had them. “Yeah, wait a sec, give everybody one of those. Stick them in your pockets. Cold iron is pretty effective as a repellant for the things I can think of she'd have as guards—they can still lob stuff at you, but they won't be able to get close enough to slash at you, and claws and teeth are generally their weapons of choice.” She took a deep breath. “All right. Let's do this.”

They did their best to slip through the brush and weeds in Marshal's wake, though only Di was as quiet as he was.

Their eyes had adapted to the darkness while they'd waited, flashlights off, for Marshal to return. The house had probably been white, and probably was now the silver-gray
of bleached wood, so it stood out pretty well—and it helped that there was a vague haze of light at the back of it. Di left her friends all at the cellar door, an old-fashioned double door that she hoped had stairs behind it and not a coal chute. There was a padlock on it, but Marshal was already at work on it. Now, more than ever, she was grateful that lock-picking was included in his set of useful skills. She made a mental note to tell other Guardians it might be a good idea to start picking up stage magic tricks.

“Whistle when you get the lock off,” she whispered; he nodded, and she moved quietly on to the back of the house.

Sure enough, there was a chunky old car back there, something from the fifties, not iconic enough to be cool, too lumpy to be good-looking. She couldn't tell the color.

She scooted around so that the car was between her and the house and studied the area around the back door. She could now detect wood smoke; the light wind had probably been carrying it away from them before. So there was some form of lantern in there, and a wood fire.

There weren't any moving shadows. Did that mean anything? She peered in the car windows; the backseat was loaded with dark bundles. Smart; the house was probably stuffed with rats and mice; anything Tamara wanted to keep safe—like food—she was better off keeping in the car. Carefully, Di tried the closest door; it opened easily, letting out a whiff of apples and salami.

The whistle she'd been hoping for sounded softly from the side of the house. All right. Time for the fireworks.

Tamara clearly was not expecting anyone to find her here. Chances were she hadn't locked the back door.

After all, it would be a nuisance to have to unlock it just to get into the car for breakfast.

She brought up all of her defenses and walked quickly around the car and up the cement stairs. Bringing power into both hands, she kicked at the door.

As she had hoped, it flew open and smashed into the wall, sticking there. She jumped across the threshold before Tamara could do something to block her—

Most of the light in the room was coming from a Coleman lantern in one corner and a woodstove on the opposite wall; this was a kitchen, but there was no furniture in it—and the reason she had not been able to see any moving shadows was because Tamara was kneeling on the floor, naked, with her back to the door, in the center of a piece of canvas. Painted on the canvas was a ritual circle, though Di didn't recognize the signs painted around and inside the circle. Tamara leapt to her feet and whirled as Di crossed the threshold.

And that was when Di froze, because the very last thing she had ever expected Tamara to have was a penis.

It was a good thing her defenses were already up, because otherwise that moment of paralysis would have cost her dearly. As it was, when Tamara screeched an obscenity
and blasted her, it pretty much all splashed off her shields. The attack steadied her, though, and she gave back as good as she got.

Tamara's shields were not as well made as Di's, but they were insanely strong, so the result was the same—nothing got through. They battered at each other for at least five minutes, when a volley of gunshots under their feet startled them both for a moment. The sound rattled Tamara more, though, and Di got in a hit that sent the kidnapper staggering back, narrowly avoiding the stove.

Tamara pushed off the wall and snatched something out of the old zinc sink under the window, then lunged for Di, an enormous butcher knife catching the light from the lantern as it passed
way
too close to her eyes. It was Di's turn to flinch back, her concentration broken. Then Tamara was on her again, and it was pretty clear that no matter what other skills the kidnapper had, Tamara was a solid knife fighter.

It was all Di could do to keep out of reach of that blade while she tried to refocus her power. But as she had pointed out, shields didn't do squat about material things, and that knife was as material as you could get. All she could do was fall back on the half-dozen jujitsu lessons she'd had….

Which seemed pitifully few now. Her side hurt, she was panting and sweating, while Tamara was just as energized by rage and insanity as when this fight had started.

And then—a miracle.

Tamara made a stab at Di that was identical to some
thing the jujitsu instructor had taught her to counter. Everything snapped into place, as if it were all preprogrammed. With focus and complete confidence, Di moved out of the line of Tamara's stab. She grabbed Tamara's wrist at exactly the right moment to catch the kidnapper off balance. She pulled, ducked under Tamara's arm, and flipped the “woman” over her shoulder and into the wall.

There was a shuddering
whump
as Tamara hit the wall, followed by a strange, gurgling noise.

Di straightened, as Tamara slid down the wall, flopped over—

And revealed that the knife had been driven into Tamara's chest. The kidnapper's hand was still clenched on the hilt even though “her” eyes were already glazing over with death.

There was a strangled little sick sound at the door. Di whirled to see Marshal and Emory moving to block the sight of the body from the child in Zaak's arms, and Em holstering her gun.

“Um—we came to see if you needed—guess you didn't,” Marshal gulped.

“Thirty seconds ago I did,” Di replied, feeling as sick as Marshal and Emory looked. “Move. Out. Over by the car. Quick.”

She started for the door, which got
them
moving. Her mind raced; she needed to figure out a plausible scenario, and she needed to figure it out fast and make sure it was simple and that they were all letter-perfect in it.

By the time they were all in a huddle at the car, she had it.

“Okay, we need a story that is going to hold up enough to get us off. Marshal, go get your car and bring it to the front of the house; you and Emory and Em will take Melanie back to the last town we passed and get hold of the law. Wait!” She held up her hand at their shocked expressions. “Wait and hear me out. We can't turn up with a kidnapped child and a dead body unless we've got a good explanation, one the cops will buy.

“Here's ours. We came out here because we heard the place was abandoned and we were gonna scout it out for a party. Confess to the lesser crime they can turn us loose for, see?” She paused. “Okay, give me the guns. What were you shooting at, anyway?”

“There was something guarding the kid,” Emory replied, his voice a little shaky. “Something bigger than me, and hairy. We emptied on it, it went down, Zaak hit it with water and salt and it just melted away.”

She nodded. From that description, she had no idea what it was, only that it was a good thing they'd
had
all that weaponry. She took the guns, including Zaak's squirt gun, and shoved them all into the bag Zaak had been carrying.

“So the story is, you three got here and heard the kid screaming and crying. You busted into the basement and got her and ran. Zaak and I will go back to where we all got out of the car and wait for you. The cops will want you to take them to the house, and when you do, they'll assume
Tamara was too late to stop you, so she killed herself. Himself.” She paused, thrown for a moment, then shook her head to clear it and continued. “While you're gone, Zaak and I will get rid of anything that looks occult and set up a bucket or a tub or something and put some water to heat on the stove in there, so it looks like you interrupted Tamara in the middle of bath time. Got it?”

They nodded, but Marshal asked hesitantly, “But why—I mean getting rid of—”

“Because this is freaky enough without starting a big old satanic witch scare,” Di said bluntly. “
I
want to figure out what the hell she—he—was doing and why, and for that
I
need to grab the evidence. But the cops don't need to know any of that. Because if they did, sure as anything, they'd start looking for a cult, and there isn't one. Tamara was just one lone lunatic, but looking for a cult will start them sniffing around anything from Halloween supplies on up, and none of us need that kind of scrutiny.”

She looked directly at Zaak when she said that, and he nodded.

“So, are we straight?”

They all nodded. Marshal took the best of the flashlights and went off at a run and Zack handed the little girl to Di. The poor thing was so exhausted by all she'd been through that she'd actually fallen asleep while they were standing around talking. She was heavy and more than a bit smelly, but Di didn't care—she was alive and safe. They'd completely beaten the odds on this one.

Marshal came back a lot sooner than any of them had expected, headlights blazing with welcome light. The tire tracks would give veracity to their story. Emory and Emily got in, wrapping the little girl in a blanket from the boot of the car. She didn't even wake up. And then they were gone, Marshal revving the engine as hard as it could go.