Vendetta (Deadly Curiosities Book 2) (32 page)

“That’s okay,” Ryan said. “There are plenty more abandoned buildings near Charleston, and more haunts than Kell can shake a stick at. But if you do find anything out about what we saw, I’d love to know.”

The conversation turned to more mundane topics like the weather, travel plans and mutual friends. When we reached the street, Kell and Ryan headed to their cars, and Teag and I walked a couple of blocks back to where we had parked by the store.

“I don’t want our friends getting involved in this,” I said. “Someone’s likely to get hurt.”

“If we warn them off too much, they’ll realize we know more than we’re telling, and they’ll try harder to be involved,” Teag cautioned.

“You know we’re going to need to go out to that power plant and get a look at what’s going on,” I said.

“Yeah, I figured. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.”

“Let’s hope that Sorren gets back quickly, with reinforcements,” I said. “We’ve got to shut Sariel down before more Watchers can get through.”

U
TILITY PLANTS ARE
meant to be brightly lit. No one designs them to be prowled around in the dark. Everything echoes and huge pieces of equipment make for strange shadows and lots of hiding places. But here we were, making our way through the dust and darkness. Faint moonlight struggled through the old plant’s high, dirty windows, but it barely made a difference in the gloom.

“Not too hard to follow the trail,” Teag muttered. Once again, we were outfitted for a small supernatural war. Teag and I each had one of Josiah Winfield’s pistols, cleaned and reloaded and ready for action. I had my athame and my walking stick, Bo’s collar, and a satchel full of everything from witch mirrors to jack balls to some
gris-gris
powder, and I was wearing every protective amulet I owned. Teag had his fighting staff, his
espada y daga
fighting blades, some other nasty-looking knives, and an assortment of magically-charged knots and amulets. Teag was wearing a vest he had made with magical protections woven into its warp and woof, and he had gifted me with one right before we set out. I was happy for any extra protection I could get. I was pretty sure that he also had a few highly-illegal ghost-scrambling weapons courtesy of Chuck Pettis.

Tonight, Caliel came with us, and as a Voudon houngan, he had his own powerful protections. With luck, that included being under the watchful, protective eye of the Loas. Caliel, like Lucinda, was a descendant of Mama Nadege. He could throw down with the big boys. Sorren led the way. We were ready for trouble.

Huge generators the size of trucks loomed like sleeping giants, casting long, dark shadows. Darkened light fixtures hung from the high ceiling, and it did not take much for my imagination to turn them into hovering predators. I’ve seen pictures of old power plants built around 1900. They had soaring ceilings and big windows, resembling huge railroad terminals like Grand Central Station in New York City. This plant was far too new to have any architectural character. It was a big, concrete box, as ugly as it was functional.

Habitation changes the energy of a place, and so does abandonment. It’s like the difference between sleeping, and dead. The power plant had stood empty for decades, and all the energy imparted by the bustle of living beings going about their business had faded away long ago. What remained was a dead husk, energy-wise, but dead things have a way of coming back to life in the most disturbing and dangerous ways.

“Someone’s called up some bad magic, very strong,” Caliel said as we ventured deeper into the deserted power plant. “Can you feel it?”

We all nodded. To me, the taint of dark magic felt like something sticky and foul on my skin. The feeling grew stronger as we moved farther into the bowels of the abandoned plant.

“Kell said that the big generators and the offices are on this floor,” I said, “and the lower floors are mostly wiring and conduits.”

“Unfortunately, that’s where we’re headed.” Sorren led the way. Dressed all in black, he was ready for a fight. He wore two swords, his favorite weapons.

“There are the stairs.” Teag’s voice was flat. He was probably just as frightened as I was at the prospect of going down those steps where Harry had disappeared. Hell, going down into the underground, lightless subfloor was frightening under the best of circumstances, even when black magic and supernatural monsters weren’t involved. We were going in where fallen angels had not feared to tread.

Somewhere in the distance, water dripped and rats squeaked. I tried not to think about the roaches and other vermin skittering around our boots and I wondered if this was the way the guys who explored those old Egyptian tombs felt as they descended into the unknown.

We stopped at the top of the stairs. Sorren turned to Caliel. “What do you sense?”

Caliel closed his eyes and I felt a ripple of power brush against me as he gathered his magic. “On the stairs, nothing. Lower down, remnants of dirty magic, very dark. And...” his voice drifted off. “I don’t want to say until I know for sure.” He shook his head and muttered something in the island language I had heard him use to invoke the Loas. “Some bad shit happened here.”

“But the stairs are safe?”

Caliel gave me a lopsided grin. “Nothing here is safe, but whatever took Harry is gone from the steps. And if you’re right about the Reapers and the Watchers, then the rest of us are safe, unless you’ve got some past sins you’d like to confess?” He chuckled as he said it, but there was truth beneath the humor.

I couldn’t help glancing toward Sorren. He had been a thief before he had been turned, and what he had done in the centuries since then likely went beyond breaking and entering. Sorren gave me a wan half-smile. “Don’t worry, Cassidy. The Reapers aren’t looking for vampires. We’re not on their menu. They want mortal prey.”

Still, I held my breath as we carefully made our way down the steps. Our heavy-duty flashlights barely made a dent in the pitch black darkness. Sorren didn’t need light to navigate, but Teag, Caliel, and I did. While the power plant was ‘abandoned’, I wasn’t sure that meant the shadows that waited for us were empty.

Sorren was in front. I went next, followed by Teag. Caliel took up the rear, chanting and singing to the Loas to ask for their protection.

Nothing happened. I let out a long breath when we reached the dirty concrete floor of the second level. The ceiling was a lot lower than in the generator room. This level held wiring, pipes, and conduits – a maintenance sub-floor to keep the main generator room from being too cluttered.

Harry had vanished into thin air on those narrow concrete steps.

“Someone came this way,” Sorren said, pointing to smudged footprints in the dust. Cobwebs hung from the exposed rafters and the tangle of wires and pipes overhead was close enough that I could have put up a hand and touched them.

We made a careful search of the room. In places, Teag, Caliel, and Sorren had to duck to avoid hitting the low-hanging wires and the pipes that ran just inches over my head. I shivered each time something brushed my hair.

I was afraid we might find Harry’s body in a corner, overlooked by Kell’s ghost hunters. I was hoping that we’d find him holed up, stoned or drunk but alive, but I feared something much worse had befallen him. Unfortunately, Harry was nowhere to be found.

“I feel power, called and dispelled,” Caliel said. He moved up to the front with Sorren. Teag fell back to guard the rear, and I played my heavy-duty flashlight around the room. Sorren would sense any humans nearby, and some types of supernatural creatures, but I didn’t know if that included Nephilim, and I did not want to find out the hard way. Any angel fallen far enough to end up here had a rough descent.

“Someone’s done dark magic, close by,” Sorren agreed.

A strange odor lingered in the air, something I associated with an old, unpleasant memory. Then I knew what I smelled: burned meat and hair. That wasn’t a good omen.

“Look there.” Sorren pointed to a place where the dust had been swept clear. A large area, probably six feet by six feet, had been cleaned off down to the concrete, and charcoal and salt circle of power had been drawn on the stained old floor. The circle had been smudged open in one place, so whatever it was made to contain had either been freed or dispelled. I was pretty sure that anything called up in that circle was something I did not want to meet.

A black chicken feather wafted down through the air.
What’s a chicken doing down here?

“Oh, oh, oh.” Caliel was standing over a blackened lump, and as we drew closer, I wrinkled my nose at the smell of rotting meat.

“What is that?” Teag asked, as our flashlights showed bits of yellow bone amid the blackened, charred surface. I saw a smaller lump nearby.

“Someone’s offered a burnt sacrifice,” Caliel said, “and whatever they used the circle to conjure, they called a Loa to help them.” He pointed to a smudged marking on the concrete. It was a
veve
, the elaborate drawings that were the signature of the Voudon Loa, powerful immortal beings that sometimes meddled in the affairs of humans.

“I don’t recognize that
veve
,” I said.

“Best you don’t,” Caliel replied. “No good reason to call that Loa. Marinette Bois Sech is cruel and powerful, and if she’s involved, we’ve got big trouble, you can be sure of that.”

“Then the things over there –” Teag asked, pointing at the blackened lumps.

“They’re the price Marinette charges for her help. A black pig and a black rooster. Burned alive.” Caliel was already drawing the
veves
for Papa Legba and Damballah Wedo, protective and very powerful Loas. Sorren examined the large circle while Caliel sprinkled salt and chanted, dispelling any remaining dark energy from whoever had called down Marinette’s spirit. “There’s a reason she’s feared. She does terrible things and she’s the patron of monsters. Some say she’s the protector of werewolves,” Caliel replied.

Werewolves have a patron Loa?
I resolved to discuss that further with Sorren, once were well gone from this creepy place.

“What about that circle?” Teag asked. He stood with his back toward us, watching the rest of the floor to avoid being ambushed. “Did someone bring a Watcher through?”

Sorren straightened from where he knelt next to the circle. “That’s exactly what I think happened. We need to be gone from here. The sooner the better.”

“There’s another floor,” Teag said. “Kell’s people were freaked out enough after Harry disappeared and they found the circle that they didn’t try to go farther. But I found the blueprints online. There’s another subfloor, probably used mostly for storage, underneath this one.”

“All right,” Sorren said. “Let’s have a look. But we’ll make it quick.”

The upper floors had smelled of mold and dust, decay and disuse. The smell that rose from the lower floor made me think of fetid swamps in the dead of summer. Not a scent I expected to encounter indoors.

“Stop.” Sorren’s voice made us freeze in out tracks. “There’s a lot of stagnant water down here,” he said. “No idea how deep or what’s in it. But there’s something out there, and I don’t think we want to meet it. Back up slowly. Now.”

We were halfway back up the stairs before things started jumping out of the water like catfish on a summer’s day. I remembered the tentacles of the pool monster at Tarleton. Our flashlights barely cut the gloom, but I got enough of a look to know I did not want a close-up. Black, wriggling things leapt into the air, trying to reach the stairway and us. Slimy and bulbous, they reminded me of individual octopus tentacles or impossibly large slugs, except for their gaping mouths.

One of the things landed on the open metal stairway ahead of me and I blasted it with a shot from the walking stick. It writhed as it shriveled and bits of it flew off, landing in the water with a muted plop. In the next instant, the dark water roiled as the creature’s companions fought over who got to eat the leftovers. My stomach lurched.

More of the things heaved themselves up onto the steps. They looked like snakes without heads. Open, lamprey-like maws were all I could see, no eyes or ears, no skull. Eating machines, hungry for fresh meat.

“What are they?” I asked, sickened and horrified.

“Leeches,” Sorren replied. “Only they’ve been exposed to very powerful magic.”

“Leeches?” My voice rose a note. I’d had an unpleasant, unforgettable encounter with leeches when I was a kid, swimming at my grandma’s pond. These were super-sized. We were going to have to fight our way back up the steps.