Black Magic Woman (36 page)

Hissing?

Christine Abernathy spun around to face her work table, just in time to receive a bite from the King Cobra on the side of her neck.

She stumbled backward in surprise, but not before the Black Mamba coiled atop the pentagram delivered two quick strikes to her face.

Another step backward, and suddenly she tripped on a big Bushmaster that was coiling around one of her ankles and then fell heavily among the other snakes which, until very recently, had been slithering around Quincey Morris's hotel room. She received twenty-three more bites in the next few seconds, and even more as she struggled to rise from the floor.

The massive infusion of venom was already starting to work on her, but she still had plenty of time for a long scream full of pain and fear and rage—the kind of sound, so legend has it, that is so often heard just the other side of the gates of Hell.

He was glad to be provided with a copy of the newspaper; it would save him the trouble of hunting one up somewhere. Over the course of the long night, Morris had formulated a plan for dealing with Christine Abernathy. He did not know if it was the best plan possible—only that it was the best he was able to come up with.

The main thing he needed was a gun, and getting your hands on one these days usually poses problems. He had a couple of pistols at home, but bringing one on a plane from Texas, even in checked luggage, would have required either a badge or the equivalent of an Act of Congress. Despite the stereotypes about his native state, Morris generally approved of the laws that made it difficult for someone to buy a gun on impulse. But at the moment he regarded them as a damn nuisance.

There are, of course, people who will sell you a gun illegally, but Morris figured there weren't many such folks hanging around Salem, Massachusetts. Boston, maybe—hell, almost certainly. But even there, you'd have to know where to go and who to talk to. Gunrunners don't advertise in the Yellow Pages, and Morris had no contacts in the Boston underworld.

He figured his best bet was to check the classified ads, look under "Sporting Goods," and find someone looking to sell an individual gun for ready cash. In a pinch, a shotgun or rifle would do, but Morris was hoping to get his hands on a pistol— a .38 or .357 revolver, or, better yet, a .45 automatic.

Then, once he was armed, he was going back to Christine Abernathy's house. With Libby's mirror to protect him against Abernathy's magic—at least, Morris hoped it would still be good for that purpose—he was going to do his best to blow Christine Abernathy's pretty little head off.

Even if he succeeded, there was a good chance he would be arrested for murder, but Morris was past the point of caring about that. After the last twenty-four hours or so, he knew how the LaRues must have felt for all those weeks, under the threat of a supernatural force they could neither escape nor fight, and he was well and truly sick of it. Christine Abernathy had to be stopped, and for good.

Morris fetched the paper from the floor and brought it over to the bed. He unfolded it and was about to turn to the classifieds when something on the front page below the fold caught his eye.

A teenage girl was found dead in her Salem home last night, and police have not ruled out murder as the cause of her death.

The body of Christine Abernathy, 18, was discovered by police in the basement of the house, located at 328 Chestnut Avenue. Officers were responding to calls from neighbors who said they heard screams coming from the residence around 10:30pm.

A police spokesperson said that the girl's death was considered "suspicious," but would give no further details. An official ruling on cause of death will have to wait for the results of an autopsy, which has been scheduled for later today, sources said.

Ms. Abernathy had been living alone at the Chestnut Avenue address since the death of her mother last year, according to neighbors. They said the young woman usually kept to herself and had little contact with…

He had already seen the magic that Christine Abernathy could work with a newspaper. Could this be a trick to lull him into doing something careless?

After a moment he picked up the telephone, tapped in a single number, then waited.

"Could you connect me with the hotel gift shop please? Thanks."

He waited some more, then:

"Good morning. Listen, you carry
The Salem News
there, don't you? Do you have any of today's left? All right, I have kind of a strange request to make. I haven't seen the paper, but somebody told me that there's a story on the front page this morning about some woman who was found dead here in town overnight. Yes, that sounds like the story. My friend said he thought he remembered the victim's name, and it sounded like a niece of mine, and before I let myself get all upset, I wonder if you could… sure, thanks. Abernathy? That was her name? Chestnut Street? No, that's not my niece, thanks be to God. I appreciate you humoring me, ma'am, that was mighty kind of you…"

Quincey Morris hung up the telephone, then let out his breath in a long sigh.

Three minutes later, he was asleep.

It took him only a moment to locate the bed where he had last seen the unconscious form of Libby Chastain.

The bed was empty.

Have they got her back in the operating room?

The bed was made up with what looked like fresh linens. The monitors, which had been registering Libby's vital signs, were disconnected and turned off. The IV drips, on their tall stainless steel poles, were gone.

Okay, they've just moved her to a regular room. That's a good sign, it means she's doing better. That's good news. Nothing to worry about.

Still, he wasted no time walking back to the ICU nurses' station, where a young woman in starched whites was typing at a computer keyboard.

"Excuse me," he said. "A friend of mine was in Intensive Care yesterday, but now it looks like she's been moved. I'm wondering if you can tell me her new room number."

"Certainly, sir. What is the patient's name?"

"Elizabeth Chastain."

The nurse's face froze for just a second, but that was enough to start a glacier forming in Morris's gut.

Without bothering to check her computer, or a list of rooms, or anything else, the nurse looked at Morris and asked, "Are you a family member, sir?"

"No, it's like I said: I'm her friend, I was here yesterday. What's the problem?"

"Well, it's just that… uh, perhaps it would be best if you talked to Doctor Melling. I'll see if he's still in the building." She reached for the telephone.

Morris leaned over the counter. He was about to grab the young nurse's crisp lapels and start shaking information out of her when a familiar female voice said from behind him, "Or perhaps you could just talk to me."

Morris whirled around and found himself looking into the broadly smiling face of a woman who bore no trace of bruises, bandages, or injury of any kind.

It was the face of Libby Chastain.

"Come on," she said, the smile still in place. "Let's go downstairs. I'm just dying… for a cup of coffee."

"Be glad you're not going in fucking cuffs," Fenton snapped. He didn't say anything for the rest of the drive. For that matter, he hadn't said much to Van Dreenan since that night on a lonely stretch of road outside Salem, Massachusetts.

Fenton used his FBI credentials to bypass the long line at the security checkpoint. Once Van Dreenan had picked up a boarding pass and checked his bag, Fenton insisted on walking him to the departure area. The flight for London, with a connection to Johannesburg, would start boarding in forty minutes.

They sat side by side in the half-empty departure lounge for a while, not speaking, until Fenton suddenly said, "I had this speech all prepared about how I don't hold with vigilante shit, about the rights of criminal defendants, and about the need for due process to avoid turning this country into a fucking police state."

"If you feel you must deliver it, I will listen," Van Dreenan said. "I will not even argue with you."

"Like I said, I had this little speech all prepared. But then it occurred to me yesterday to call a couple of guys I know who are pretty high up in the South African Police Forces."

"So, you've arranged to have me fired, instead?" Van Dreenan did not appear particularly dismayed by the prospect.

"No. Like I said, I talked to 'em. About you. One of them knows you personally, and the other one has access to all kinds of official records."

Van Dreenan's face had grown tight. "Yes. And?"

Fenton's voice softened. "And I heard about your daughter. I mean
all
about her."

After a long, aching moment, Van Dreenan sighed deeply. "Yes, well, that was all some time ago."

"Uh-huh. Well, I thought some about what I'd heard. Asked myself what I'd do, if one of my little girls… well, you know."

Van Dreenan just nodded.

"Like I said, I don't hold with vigilante shit. But sometimes… ah, hell, I don't even know what I'm trying to fucking say."

"You don't have to say anything, my friend. It is done now."

"Yeah, well…" Fenton turned to Van Dreenan and stuck out his hand. The South African took it, and squeezed firmly. It was the closest thing to an embrace either of them was capable of having with another man.

The FBI man stood up. "One more thing I wanted to say, Van Dreenan, and this comes from way upstairs at the Bureau:
don't come back."

Fenton took a brisk step away, and another, then stopped. He turned back and stood there, hands in his pockets, looking at Van Dreenan impassively before he said, "Unless I call you."

"Waiting for you, naturally. I knew you'd show up here as soon as you could, and I didn't want you to get a fright when you found me gone."

"I appreciate your faith in me. And, yeah, a fright is exactly what I
did
get, once I saw that empty bed in the ICU."

"I know. I'm sorry, Quincey." Libby shook her head ruefully. "It figures. I'd been sitting where I could keep an eye on both the nurse's station and the ICU, then I leave for just five minutes to go to the bathroom, and sure enough…"

"Yeah, your timing always did suck, Libby."

They both laughed, then he went on, "Your magic still works pretty well, though."

"The mirror spell, you mean? Yes, I'm quite pleased with that one. I'd planned to tell you about it on our way to Massachusetts, but… circumstances intervened."

"I thought you said that white magic couldn't be used to hurt someone. Christine Abernathy, wherever she is right about now, would probably take exception to that."

"I told you that white magic could not be used to
initiate
harm," Libby said patiently. "But it does allow you to protect yourself, as you've seen several times already."

Morris nodded. "That's for sure."

"Well, a mirror spell is one form of self-protection. It deflects the evil intent of the black magic and turns it back upon the user. Sort of like judo, where you take the force of your opponent's attack and use it to throw him on his ass."

"So Christine suddenly found herself hosting all those reptiles she had sent to visit me."

"Exactly. She probably could have saved herself if she'd been prepared for the possibility, but she was an arrogant bitch—I could tell that by the kinds of spells she used against us."

"Having met the lady, I think I can confirm your opinion."

"Arrogant, but powerful, no doubt about that. In fact, her magic was so potent, I was able to divert some of the energy as it was transformed by the mirror spell, and use it to heal myself—the results of which you see before you."

"And damn glad to see them, too."

"I was able to manage that little trick because my injuries had been caused by Abernathy's magic in the first place, indirectly. That allowed me to transmute the energy waves along lines of— ah, don't get me started with the mechanics of it. It's boring, to anyone but another adept."

"I bet your doctors aren't bored by it," Morris said.

Libby matched his smile with her own. "Oh my God, you should have seen them! They couldn't decide whether to contact the
Journal of the American Medical Association
or the Vatican. I didn't like causing all that confusion and distress. But if I tried to tell them the truth, I'm pretty sure I'd have found myself transferred posthaste up to the fifth floor."

"Which is—?"

"The psychiatric ward, of course. So, I played dumb. Said I had no idea what had just happened, but since I seemed to be fine now, there was no reason to stick around."

"No wonder they want more tests. You would have made one hell of a journal article, Libby. Or a whole series of them."

"I know. It's very perplexing for the staff, and I feel kind of bad about that. But on the plus side, I think I may have been responsible for at least three religious conversions."

"Well, before they start canonization proceedings, what do you say we get out of here? We'll get your luggage and stuff back to your place, then how about you let me buy you dinner at the best restaurant in town—whatever it is this week."

"You've got yourself a deal, cowboy." She stood up and stretched. "It'll be good to sleep in my own bed again."

Morris nodded. "At least for tonight."

She looked at him quizzically.

"Did you forget?" Morris asked. "We have one more stop to make before this is done."

It took Libby only a second to grasp his meaning. "That's right," she said. "So we do."