Demon Accords 05.5: Executable (34 page)

Rowan West sits on a big trapezoid-shaped property (look at me… using math terms and shit) that sits on the side of Macomb Hill.  The narrow end of the property is by the road, where our parking lot and buildings sit.  The boundaries arrow outward on the uphill and downhill sides to reach the back line, which is the long side of the trapezoid.  The Rowan tree sits almost dead center of the entire one-and-a-half-acre parcel.  It’s fairly flat but does slope slightly (we are, after all, on the side of a hill).  Our property is on the outside arc of a curving switchback on County Route 213, otherwise known to the locals as Macomb Hill Road.  A quarter mile or so up the hill is another, opposite (and nasty sharp) switchback. The cemetery sits on the inside curve of that one, same side of the road as us.  Downhill, the road runs almost straight, past a couple of houses before entering the official village limits of Castlebury.

Our place was originally the site of one of the town’s first inns, but those buildings, except for the old storage barn, burned down in the Fifties.  Our buildings were put up in the early sixties and have housed some form of restaurant ever since, with the longest-running and most successful being Rowan West.  My aunt and mother had left I-89 eighteen years ago and followed Route 117 and the Winooski River till Mom, who was driving, had just decided to take 213 north, arriving over the same hill that Caeco and her mom had.  The restaurant had been empty, its previous incarnation having failed for one reason or another.  Aunt Ash said that they had been drawn to the spot and had prowled around the closed buildings and found the Rowan tree.  Within a day, they had made an offer to the owner, Harold Flynn, who, it turns out, had a soft spot for anything Irish, and pretty women in particular.  He held the note on the property and, using the proceeds from their pawned family jewelry, my mom and aunt had started the business.  Ten years later, my aunt made the last payment on the loan and burned the mortgage in our Spring Equinox bonfire.

I led Chris and my two friends along the road to the downside corner, then turned right and followed the edge of the woods toward the back of the property.  An old stone wall marked the property line, and Aunt Ash’s wards were carved into some of its rocks.  Spaced about ten feet apart, she used various combinations of the more protective runes to establish our supernatural fence.

Chris was able to pick out each rune-marked stone before the carvings actually became visible, which I would have said only a witch could do.

“Well, I can sort of see witchcraft,” he explained, strolling along smoothly over the uneven ground.  Rory, who was tripping every third step, was, for once, listening raptly to every word.

“Does it have something to do with your odd aura?” I asked. 

He looked at me sharply but with a smile.  “You can see that?”

“Yeah, it’s a violet color, very like your eyes,” I said. 

“You can see his aura?” Caeco asked, sounding a little unnerved.

“Yeah, so what?  You can see in the dark,” I pointed out.

“But that’s just biology and physics.  The aura thing is supernatural,” she said.

“I’m not sure it’s supernatural.  Everything has one.  I think they’re just energy fields that aren’t visible in the standard electromagnetic spectrum,” I replied.

“What color is mine?” she asked.

“Mainly blue, like most people’s.  Animals are green,” I said, not telling her that she had little flecks of green woven through her blue.

“What about vampires?” Rory asked. 

“Tanya’s is white.  I never looked at Charles’s.  Or Frank’s either, so I don’t know what weres look like.”

“That’s
exactly
the way I see them, too,” Chris said, surprised.

“What about witches?”

“Blue with specks of flat black,” said Chris.  “Weres have strong currents of green mixed in.”

“So Declan has little dots of black?” Rory asked.

“No, Declan has big splotches of black.  Other witches I’ve seen have much smaller ones.”

“The bigger the splotch, the stronger the witch?” Caeco asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember every witch I’ve ever seen, but I don’t think I’ve seen an aura quite like Declan’s before,” he said.  “On the topic of splotches, what are the little blobs of black that I see buried along the treeline?”

“See those too, huh?” I asked, no longer surprised.  “Those are railroad spikes, somewhere around a hundred or so of them.  About six or seven years ago, my aunt drove Rory and I to an old railroad track and promised us a quarter for every loose spike we could find.  We found about thirty that day. Thought we were rich. Then we started visiting other tracks and picking up more.  We weren’t allowed to try to pry any out of the tracks, just the old, rusted ones.  She had us pound them into the ground every six feet or so, and they’ve become part of the protection spells for this place.”

“Iron?” Caeco asked.

“Iron has been involved in magic since we first dug it out and smelted it.  Found in earth, strong and hard, it’s infused with protectiveness.  We’ve been using iron weapons since we learned to forge.  Plus, it has certain properties which repel malicious spirits and beings.”

We were almost across the full back line when Darci stepped out the back door and waved at us.  She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt yet still managed to look somehow official.

We walked across the yard.  “Ashling needs you inside for the next part,” she said to Chris.  “And
you
need to prepare four bonfires and set a circle over in the ritual space,” she directed at me.

I directed my senses toward the restaurant.  “She put up the
Stay Away
spell?  What about staff?”

“Sent everyone home with full pay and closed the restaurant, although no customers have shown up for the last hour or so,” Darci replied.

“Wait, really?” I asked.

“What does that all mean?” Chris asked.  The others looked just as curious.

“Well, we have some preset spells that either attract business or send it away.  But she didn’t turn on the
do not disturb
sign till just a few minutes ago.  So if no one showed about around lunchtime on a Saturday at
this
place, then something or someone else is keeping them away.”

“Other witches?” Caeco asked.

“I’m not sure who else could do it, so I’d have to say yeah,” I replied.  “Which probably means they can sense the book.”

“I’ll go in. The quicker we get this done and then drag that damned book away, the better,” Chris said, following Darci back inside.  I headed over toward the old barn, my two friends in tow.

“So what does setting a circle entail?” Caeco asked.

“It’s just busy work.  Anyone could do it, and it won’t take long.  It’s more of a distraction than anything,” I said.

“A distraction?  From what?” she asked, a frown on her face.

“To keep Declan out here and away from the spell work,” Rory said. 

“And away from that book,” I added.

“Why?  Shouldn’t you be learning this stuff?” she persisted.

“That book is evil.  I felt it when they opened its container.  It draws witches with promises of power.  It wants us to use it. Aunt Ash doesn’t want me near it.”

“She doesn’t trust you to stay clear of it?” Caeco asked, looking slightly offended. 

I smiled at her for that, then shook my head.  “The book is not really a book anymore.  It’s an object of power, and it almost has its own agenda.  It wants me to use it.  It’s like an itch in the back of my head.”

“You’re saying it’s like the one ring in
Lord of the Rings
?”  Caeco asked, looking incredulous.

“
You’ve
watched LTR?” Rory asked, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

“Just because I didn’t grow up in a house or a town doesn’t mean I don’t watch movies, Rory Tessing!” she said, squaring off in front of him.  Not a good sign, but thankfully one he was able to pick up on.  He held both hands in front of his face.

“Don’t hit the smart kid!  I was just shocked you’d watch a fantasy movie instead of a war flick,” he explained.

“It’s full of fights and battles,” she said, then turned to me.  “But why does your aunt not trust you near it but trusts herself?

“It’s more a matter of the fact that she has experience and discipline, but it’s also because of my potential.”

“Because you’re powerful?” she asked.

“Yeah, it wants the most powerful witch it can find.  It wants me,” I said.

“And think how bad it would be if Declan got all twisted by it and went nuclear,” Rory said.

She looked at me thoughtfully as I opened the shed door.  “Does that hurt your feelings?”

“Listen, my father was basically a rapist.  So half my genes are tainted by that fucker’s bad mojo.  I wouldn’t trust me, either,” I said, heading into the dark interior.

I deliberately left off telling her that part of me, a tiny, twisted part, wanted to grab the book and see what I could really do.

I handed the circle post and rope combo to Rory, who had set his share of circles before.  Being a mathematical perfectionist, he usually did a more precise job than I would.

“Okay, we’ll let the boy genius get the circle marked out while you and I prep the bonfires,” I said to Caeco, leading her further into the barn.  Enough light seeped in from the door, the dirty windows in the back, and the gaps in the walls to see the contents—stacks and stacks of split firewood, rounds of unsplit logs, and a stack of dead, dry pine poles.  My favorite splitting maul and my Estwing axe leaned up against the big round maple chunk that I used for my splitting base.  I handed the Estwing to Caeco, then pointed to the poles.

“We need to build four bonfires about three, three-and-a-half feet high.  I stack the split wood then lean up a whole teepee arrangement with those poles.  So if you would cut a bunch of three-and-a-half feet sections, I’ll get started with the split wood.”

She hefted the ax, which had been my first, a gift from Darci when I was twelve.  It was a twenty-six-inch camper’s ax, all one-piece metal like the hammers Estwing makes.  She twirled it in a loop around her, the stainless steel flashing a silver line in the dim light.

“I like this.  It’s got great balance,” she said with the kind of enthusiasm that most girls reserve for shoes.

Picking up a six-foot pole, I set it on the splitting base so that it was equally balanced and waved her on.  She stepped smoothly forward, the ax blurring up, around behind her, and slamming down on the pole at an angle.  It usually takes me several chops to get through arm-thick pine.  She did it in one—the wood jumping apart into two equal lengths.

“You good?” I asked.  She nodded, smiling, already headed to the pile to get another pole.

I grabbed an armload of the stacked stuff and headed outside.  Rory was using a sharp stick attached to nine feet of cord scribe a circle in the dirt.

I set my first load of wood down at the north compass point of the circle, which already had a shallow, ash-filled depression.  Then I headed back for more, using multiple trips to pile wood at each of the four Cardinal direction points, each in their own fire pit.  Then Caeco and I carried her rather abundant supply of pine poles out and leaned them in teepees around the hardwood. 

Our ritual area is outside the barn on the far side from the restaurant.  Most of it is blocked from view by the barn itself.  We also have another bonfire space for party-type fires.  That one is directly outside the main dining room window and we use it for public events, fundraisers, and various other times. Our public bonfires are popular—people love to say they partied with real witches even if we don’t admit we are.

Rory had finished the scribing and was now pouring white sand from a big plastic jug into the freshly scribed track, making the circle more visible and slightly raised from the ground.

“Is that special sand?” Caeco asked, coming up beside me, the axe on her shoulder.  I studied her for a second, noting the casual and slightly possessive way she held the Estwing. 
Hmm, I know what to get her for a Samhain gift
, I thought.

“No, it’s just sandbox sand from Home Depot,” I said, and then the attack came.

I felt it immediately—a pressure on my mind.  Rory and Caeco both grabbed their rune amulets at the same time.

“What was that?” Caeco asked, looking at her necklace. “It shocked me, a little.”

“Someone just tried out a spell against us… sleeper spell, I think,” I said, turning toward the uphill side of the property and gathering power.

My aunt burst out of the house, running right at me.  “Declan, don’t do it!  Don’t you respond, lad!”  I stood still, waiting for her, clenching my fists but doing nothing else.

“Aunt Ash, they attacked
us!”

She arrived; out of breath (my aunt doesn’t get enough cardio).  Behind her, Chris, Tanya, Levi, and Darci streamed out behind her, all looking puzzled.

“Yes, Declan, and it bounced right off our wards, now didn’t it?  Like as not, it went right back in their own faces.  So you don’t need to be doing any of your own, now do you?” she asked, getting right up close and in my face.  “
Do you
?”

Frustrated, I looked away from her, toward where I felt the attack come from.

“What happened?” Chris asked, his girlfriend by his side.  The others were still coming across the lawn, but Chris and Tanya had kept pace with my aunt without effort.

“Well now, if I had to guess, I’d say someone else has found you and that book.  They tried a coma spell on us.  It didn’t get through our protections and likely reflected back onto them.  Now Declan, why don’t you do something useful with all that you’re holding and dump it back into the wards?” Ashling directed, nodding at my clenched fists.

The ring of iron spikes circles the whole property, including the road front and parking lot, the spikes pounded right down into the asphalt.  Four lines of additional spikes run into the property toward the Rowan tree, like spokes on a lopsided wheel.  The lines run along North, South, East, and West. 

The North line of spikes was closest, running from the restaurant toward the tree.  I found the nearest spike, about twenty feet away, and dumped the overload of power I was carrying into it.

“Whoa!  What was that?” Chris asked, eyes wide.

“Me nephew dumped the response he was carrying into the wards.  It jumps from spike to spike and stone to stone, strengthening all of them,” Aunt Ash explained.

“Yeah, I could see it race around the property.  Why?” he asked.

“Because I don’t want him responding.  They got their own attack thrown right back at them, so we don’t need to be doing anything rash, now do we?”

“Offense is the best defense,” Tanya noted, sounding a bit puzzled.  My aunt whirled on her, completely unmindful of danger, or maybe in spite of it.

“That’s fine for you and yours, my dear,” she said in an arctic voice.  “But I’ll not have me nephew headed down that road just yet.”

Tanya looked honestly baffled.

“She doesn’t want D going over to the Dark side,” Rory said, then blushed bright red.

“’Cause ya know, I’m half there already!” I said, too angry and embarrassed for words.  I spun on my heel and headed back into the barn for more wood.  A soft step behind me told me that someone had followed.   Gathering up more pine, I turned and found Chris gathering an armload of his own.  He wasn’t looking at me when he spoke.

“I’m supposed to be God’s Hammer on Earth.  Supposed to have been one of the Host.  But even if that’s true, I’m tainted.  Tarnished beyond repair.”

I stopped, confused.  Of everything I thought he might say, this wasn’t it.  I just looked at him.

“See, when I first met Tanya, I was injected with demon blood, and it bonded to me.  Or so they tell me, I really don’t remember.  Apparently, it melded with my dark side—the part we call Grim.  So I have to be careful… more careful.  Everyone has a dark side as well as a light side. Mine is a bit more aggressive than most.  The demon blood boosts my dark side, making me want to indulge my abilities.  To let them out and go crazy.  If I ever do, my hope is that Tanya kills me quick.”

I was frozen, eyes wide, trying to process what he’d just said.

He smiled at me.  “Your aunt is worried you’ll get to like using your vast abilities, Declan.  It doesn’t matter whether your father was good or bad, the seeds for evil live in all of us.  It’s part and parcel of the human condition.  Part of free will.  You are a young warlock, and you’ve got a right to be angry with what’s been done to your family and you.  But that anger can take on a life of its own.  Trust me, I know—I know exactly how that works.  So Ashling is trying to protect you, but you, being just about adult, feel you should be trusted to decide when and where to use your abilities.  It’s a struggle that actually goes on between every parent or guardian and their kid.  Most just don’t have the ability to lay waste to a town with a thought or two, though,” he said, chuckling at the end.  “And Declan?  I don’t think it has the slightest bit to do with who your father is or was.  Tanya is a born vampire, the only one ever.  She’s probably the most perfect predator to walk the planet, the product of powerful vampires.  But she doesn’t hunt humans at all.  None.  Just me, and I hardly qualify.  And that’s because it’s her
choice
what she does with her abilities.  And I’ll confess to one last thing, one I’ll deny if you repeat it to anyone,” he said, pointing one finger at me.  I shook my head rapidly.  No way I’d repeat this guy’s secrets.

“Part of me absolutely loves to fight.  To use my abilities to their fullest.  And I’m a really good fighter, Declan, but
I
choose when and who I fight. Me, the thinking, feeling, in-control part.”

“Me too,” I said.  “No so much fighting, but using my abilities.  And she’s right to mistrust me.  I haven’t always made the best choices with my abilities.”

“Who has?” Chris asked.  “Why, not long before I came up to see you folks, I used my abilities to harass a soccer referee.  The bastard was so biased, it was ridiculous.  But I got in a world of trouble with Toni’s mom over that one.”

“Me too,” I said again, feeling like a broken record.  “With the whole referee thing.  That’s one of my bad decisions.”

He shrugged.  “They’re only human, but they’re supposed to be objective.  Pisses me off.”

“But how much trouble could Mrs. Velasquez give you?  She has no powers, does she?”

“Ah, but see, she’s my friend, Declan, and your friends have the ability to hurt you a great deal more than your enemies.  If she’s angry with me, I don’t like it, so I tend to avoid making her angry with me for no good reason, although I’m not ready to concede that that ref wasn’t a good reason.”

He ran out of poles, so he set the stack down and went over to the uncut ones. Picking up a seven-foot length as thick as my upper arm, he casually held it out in front of him with both hands and snapped it cleanly in half with a twitch.  The way I snap pencils, but maybe with less effort.  He snapped five more, added the halves to his already mountainous pile, and headed out.  I followed quietly, thinking about what he’d said.

My aunt was looking over the circle, nodding to herself, but she glanced my way when I came out, a vulnerable look on her face.  I was still embarrassed and maybe a little angry, but much less than before.  I gave her a nod and carried my wood to the north fire.  Caeco met me there to unload.

“If it helps, I think he’s right,” she said with a nod toward Chris.  “Mother and I have had the exact same argument.  I’ve spent my whole life training for combat and spycraft, and she still argues with me about letting me do it.  I think it’s a parent thing.”

“You heard him?” I asked, not really surprised.  She nodded, shrugging.  I laughed.  “Your mom does good work, huh?”  She laughed, too, and the adults all looked our way, startled, except Chris and Tanya, who just smiled at each other.

“We’re done with the book, Chris.   It might be best if it were shut back in its salty pail,” my aunt suggested.  Tanya disappeared, literally there one moment and gone the next, only the wind of her passage and the snick of the restaurant door closing to announce her exit.

“I still don’t know how it’s possible for anyone to move that fast.  Yet they do it,” Caeco muttered, looking peeved.  It took me a second to realize she was envious.

My aunt and Levi headed back inside, probably to get the rest of the spell ready.  Darci headed my way. 

“I’m gonna rustle lunch together for this crowd. Want to help?” she asked, her eyes searching mine.  I nodded. 

“I think we’re all done out here; can you use some more help?” Rory asked. 

Darci looked around and saw Caeco, Chris, and my little buddy all nodding.  “Well, sure.  I think there is both a ham and a beef haunch we can carve for sandwich meat.  I imagine a few of you are handy with knives?” she asked with a chuckle, heading toward the door.