Black Magic Woman (9 page)

"Nobody home," Morris said finally, "but then we knew that. Come on."

"Wait," she said, grasping his forearm for a moment. "It occurs to me that we'd best keep our wits about us while we're in here—at least until the warding charms are back in place."

"Why? What's bothering you?"

She sighed once, softly. "Quincey, you've got the LaRues stashed over at the Holiday Inn. For their safety, you said, right?"

"Yeah, sure."

"And you did that for what reason?"

"Because it looks like the magical attacks are aimed at places the LaRues are known to—oh."

"Known to spend a lot of their time," she finished. "Exactly. So the spell that's causing all this trouble is directed toward places, not people. Which means the damned thing—and I mean that literally—may not be able to distinguish between the folks who live here and a couple of visitors."

"Like you and me, you mean."

"You got it, Sherlock. So we stay together, we watch each other's back, and we keep alert. All right?"

"No argument from me."

A smile lit her face briefly. "That
will
be a first. Oh—one more thing."

"Yes, mother."

"If, at any time we're in here, you hear me say
'out"
—and if I say it at all, I'll probably say it loudly—you get outside just as fast as you can. Door, window—whatever's closest, that's what you use. You don't ask questions, you don't hesitate, you don't worry about me. You're in a track meet, and that word's the starting gun. You hear it, you
go.
Understand?"

Morris looked into the gentle gray eyes, only a few inches lower than his own. "Libby, we've worked together, what, five, six times now?"

"Six, if you count this one," she said.

"I've never seen you like this before. We've always been careful, that's only good sense. But this little speech of yours—what the hell is
that
about?"

She held his gaze and shrugged. "Just a feeling. I get them, sometimes." A crooked smile. "Sort of witches' intuition."

Morris did not laugh. He had more respect for intuition than most. "And your feeling is—what?"

"There's a lot of power being used here, I can sense it." She extended her right hand, palm down. It trembled slightly. Morris realized that this was the first time he had ever seen Libby's hands anything but rock steady. "This is a bad one, Quincey."

"Scared?"

A nod. "Uh-huh."

"Want to go home?"

"You bet I do," she said.

"Yeah, me, too."

"So, what are we waiting for?"

They turned and slowly walked, side by side, into the LaRues' living room.

"It's ancient Aramaic," she said.

"When did you start using that? Used to be, when you needed an ancient language for casting, you'd go with either Latin or Greek, right?" Morris had studied both, reluctantly, at Princeton.

She nodded. "I've been working on Aramaic for the last couple of years. Tough going sometimes, but worth the effort. It's got a lot of power associated with it, more than most of the other dead languages."

"Why's that?"

"Mainly because it was the language spoken by a famous Jewish preacher a long time ago. A guy called Joshua bar-Joseph."

Frown lines appeared on Morris's forehead. "Is this somebody I've heard of?"

Libby Chastain produced a small smile. "I expect you have. He's pretty well known, but mostly by his Greek name, for some reason."

"Which is—"

"Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth."

"Oh. Him."

She considered briefly. "The kitchen. We haven't put any in there yet, and it will give us a nice balance of forces with the other charms."

As they walked down the hallway toward the stairs, things were already happening in the LaRues' kitchen. Drawers were slowly opening, seemingly of their own volition. Faced with an empty house, the spell cast by black witchcraft had lain dormant for a whole day, and it had gathered strength in that time.

It was strong enough to open drawers, certainly. But not all of the kitchen drawers, no indeed.

Just those containing the knives.

Her eyes narrowed in concentration, she shook her head slowly from side to side. "I don't know," she said, and Morris could hear the tension in her voice. "Something—there's something stirring that wasn't here before, or maybe it just wasn't active earlier."

"Somebody else is in here?"

"No, it isn't human. It isn't even alive, not really."

"'Not really' isn't too helpful, Libby."

"I know, sorry. It's just that the impression I'm getting isn't well defined."

"Is it time for us to bail?"

She was silent for several seconds before giving vent to a long sigh. "No, we're almost finished. Getting the last warding charm in place may solve the problem all by itself. Even if it doesn't, we'll still be in a stronger position to deal with it." She looked Morris in the eye, and whatever she saw there seemed to give her some measure of comfort. "Come on," she said. "Let's go and do it."

She walked to the kitchen door, waited for Morris to join her, and opened it.

The first thing he noticed as they entered the kitchen was four or five of the drawers on the far side of the room.

Open.

The second thing to get his attention was the faint sounds coming from those drawers.

Utensils rustling, moving, rubbing against each other.

What would the LaRues keep in there?

Spatulas. Forks. Whisks. Spoons.

Knives.

Because of these curious noises, Morris was looking right at the open drawers when something burst out of one to fly toward them with terrible, blinding speed.

Knives!

He sensed rather than saw the object's trajectory, identified its target by instinct rather than conscious thought, and was only just quick enough to snap his open right hand out to one side and block its path.

Which is why the razor-sharp paring knife did not bury itself in Libby Chastain's throat, as it seemed intent on doing.

Instead, the four-inch blade stabbed clear through Quincey Morris's right hand, stopping only when the plastic handle was jammed flush against his palm.

Throughout the kitchen, the sounds of metal rubbing against metal quickly grew louder.

Libby hooked one foot behind the kitchen door and slammed it shut with a powerful movement of her leg. After a moment, she sat up and twisted around until her back rested against the door. Then she looked at Morris, whose hand was bleeding all over the carpet. "Can… can you sit up?"

"Yeah, I guess," he said through gritted teeth. A few seconds later, he was sitting next to her, his back supported by the kitchen door. They could both hear, and feel, the thuds as more knives struck the door from the kitchen side, like hungry animals eager for release.

"Let's see," she said, gently taking his impaled hand in both of hers. After a quick examination, she said, "We can't stop the bleeding unless we bandage it, and we can't bandage it with that knife in here." She looked at him and said quietly, "It's got to come out, Quincey."

Morris, whose face had gone the color of dirty milk, nodded slowly. "Do it, then."

"All right," she said. "But first, let me make it a little easier for you."

Still cradling his injured hand, she began softly reciting something in the language she had identified as ancient Aramaic. This went on for half a minute or so. After that, looking down at Morris's hand, she made a cryptic sign in the air just above it and said a two-word phrase. Then she gripped the handle of the paring knife and pulled the blade out in one quick, smooth movement.

Morris looked at her. "That should have stung like a bastard," he said. "But I didn't feel a thing." He looked at his injured hand in wonderment. "In fact, I still don't feel a thing. It doesn't hurt at all, now."

Libby nodded. "I've temporarily blocked your nerves from sending pain signals. It won't last long, though, so we'd better get you—"

They felt the bone-rattling impact behind them a fraction of a second before the crashing, grinding sound of it reached their ears. As they looked at each other, identical expressions of shock on their faces, they felt it—and heard it—again.

Something was battering against the kitchen door from inside—something that was a hell of a lot bigger than a butcher knife.

Libby Chastain was suddenly going through the voluminous pockets of her jacket, which she had not taken off since arriving in the house. As she searched, not quite frantically, through the objects she had in there, she said to Morris, "Brace yourself as well as you can! Dig your heels into the carpet, if that helps.
We have got to hold the door!""
Another smashing blow from within the kitchen followed hard upon her words.

Morris made his position against the door as secure as he could, trying not to think about the blood he was losing from his injured right hand. Libby's impromptu magic had stopped the pain of his wound, but had not done anything about the bleeding. "Not to argue with you," he said, "but why don't we just high-tail it out of here?"

"We wouldn't get far," she said, removing two small bottles from a pocket. "We move, the door's smashed open, and we're pincushions a few seconds later, believe it!"

"I do!" Morris said, as another splintering crash shook the door and its surrounding structure. There were cracks in the doorframe now. "But if the door comes down on top of us, we're pancakes
and
pincushions, right?"

"I'm working on it!" she snapped. "Be quiet and let me!"

Each of the bottles contained a fine powder, one gray, the other green. She poured a small quantity of the gray into her right palm, and an equal amount of the green into her left. Then she passed them back and forth between her hands to combine them. Another blow to the door at her back almost caused her to spill the stuff, but she held on. After nine such passes, she let the roughly mixed powder trickle out of the bottom of her fist onto the hall carpet.

She used the thin stream of powder to make a small circle on the floor, with an inverted triangle inside it. The remainder she let fall into the center of the triangle, where it formed a mound an inch or so high.

In the meantime, the assault against the kitchen door continued. Morris thought the blows were getting stronger, and there were cracks in the door itself now. Despite his desire not to distract a witch when she was working, Morris could not help what came out between his clenched teeth:
"Libbyyyyy…"

"I know, I know!" she said tightly. From her left-hand coat pocket she pulled a disposable lighter, held it just above the small mound of powder, and flicked the ignition.

The powder caught fire immediately, but it burned slowly, with a flame of deep blue. Libby held her hands, palms down, an inch or so over the flame.
"Benedic Domine creaturam istam ignis,"
she chanted.
"Clarifica in me hodierno die, licet igno filio tuo…"

Morris knew enough Latin so that he could have followed what she was saying, but his attention was distracted by the crashing impacts, behind him, each one a blow from a giant's fist. Every collision was bringing splinters and plaster dust down on them now, and he figured the door was good for another minute, tops.

Morris wondered whether he possessed enough grit to throw himself on top of Libby when the door went down. He would then most likely become what Libby had termed a "pincushion," pierced by every sharp object in the LaRues' kitchen. But Libby would survive, would be able to make the house safe again, and would then seek out whoever was responsible for inflicting this evil on the LaRue family.

And may God help you, whoever you are,
he thought,
when this good, gentle woman catches up with you. For in her righteous anger she will be pitiless.

Morris was working out the move in his mind, calculating the fastest way to knock Libby flat and cover her completely with his body when she suddenly cried,
"Finis!"

Morris noticed that the oddly colored blue flame had gone out, seemingly of its own accord. The sudden silence was like balm to both his ears and nerves. There was no sound from the kitchen, no more blows against what was left of the door. There was nothing but blessed quiet, broken only by Libby Chastain's labored breathing.

Quincey Morris spent several seconds reveling in the sweet knowledge that he wasn't going to die, after all. Suddenly he said, "Latin!"

Libby looked at him.

"You cast that spell in Latin," Morris said. "What happened to ancient Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and all that?"

She shrugged. "Under stress, you go with what you know best. I've been working with Latin for a long time, and I'm not likely to make mistakes with it."

"Stress?" Morris grinned crookedly. "Were you feeling stressed about something?"

Libby started replacing her magical ingredients in her pockets. "I'd whack you one, if you weren't already bleeding," she said, with a smile of her own. "Come on, let's get that last warding charm in place, so the LaRues can come home. But first, I want to bandage that hand of yours."