Vendetta (Deadly Curiosities Book 2) (38 page)

“Wow! What a great day!” Maggie said after we had locked up the valuables and closed down the register. “But I’m beat. I’ll see you on Monday – I’m going to go home, put my feet up and order pizza!” With that, she hobbled out of the shop, still on crutches but doing a lot better. Teag and I looked at each other.

“Your trip to the museum lasted quite a while,” Teag said, arching an eyebrow. “And I’m betting you and Lucinda weren’t just chit-chatting. So, spill. What happened?”

“I promise to fill you in over dinner, but I’m starving. And if we’re going to kick Nephilim butt tonight, I need to fuel up.”

I caught Teag up on everything that happened as we ate, and then he dropped me off at my house so I could take care of Baxter and get a quick nap before it was time to go to the Old Jail. I slept on the couch, but my dreams were dark and I woke up to find Bax licking my nose, looking at me worriedly.

“Just bad dreams,” I reassured him – and me. I held him for a few minutes, stroking his silky white fur. Since the trouble with the Nephilim, we had stopped taking our nightly walks around the block, which meant Baxter only had our small backyard garden to explore. We played a lot of Frisbee. I figured that counted a bit for weapons practice, since I now had the
chakram
, but I missed the freedom of a good walk and the conversations with neighbors, and I’m pretty sure Baxter did, too.

“Not too much longer, I hope,” I told him as we came back in from the garden. “Once we save the world, you and I can go back to taking nice, long walks.” I hoped it would be that simple.

Midnight came faster than I would have liked, and Teag pulled up in front of my house with Sorren riding shotgun. I slid into the back seat, with a sack that held all my gear. I guessed that Teag had his weapons in the trunk. We didn’t have too many more ‘special’ bullets for Josiah’s guns, but both pistols were reloaded, and I had a few spare rounds in my pocket. Along with the new weapons Teag and I had gained at the Briggs Society, I should have felt more confident, but I’d had my fill of Nephilim, and I knew the war hadn’t even really begun yet.

We parked several blocks away from the Old Jail and walked. Charleston is a pretty safe city, if you don’t count the ghosts. Our path took us past one of the old cemeteries, and a shower of pebbles reminded us that the ghosts remained terrified of the Reaper threat.
The living would be afraid and angry too, if they knew how much danger they were in
.

The Old Jail is a big, imposing structure in daytime, and more so at night. It’s been a cursed site for a long time, since the land beneath the Jail was used as a hospital and a pauper’s cemetery before the Jail was built back in 1802. The front section is a boxy stone castle, with an octagonal tower in the back. Until it was finally closed in 1939, the Jail held about three times as many prisoners as it was designed to house. Evil, grief, and misery are steeped into the stone. It’s no wonder the Old Jail is considered one of the most haunted sites in a very haunted city.

I had toured the Jail in daylight, and even though I’m not a medium like Alicia, I was sure we were being watched by unseen eyes. The pictures I took were full of orbs, even though it was a clear afternoon without rain or fog. The Jail once housed Charleston’s most notorious prisoner, serial killer Lavinia Fisher, who was hanged in the back courtyard. Many people thought Lavinia’s spirit never left, and her ghost is one of the most frequently seen. Confederate and Federal prisoners of war were held at the Old Jail, along with pirates, leaders of slave uprisings, and common criminals. Conditions were brutal, and some inmates didn’t survive long enough to meet their date with the hangman.

Dark place. Bad ghosts. Chains from the ceiling.
No one could argue about the Old Jail being a dark place. Even now, a lingering sense of doom pervaded its shadowed passageways. Plenty of the people whose spirits might have remained here certainly qualified as ‘bad’. But I knew right away where Harry’s ghost meant when he talked about chains.

There’s a room near the entrance that was once an interrogation chamber. Historians debate exactly how things were done, but many folks believe prisoners were suspended from chains and either left to hang painfully in their bonds or beaten to coerce confessions. It’s one of the most haunted rooms in a spookapalooza building. And that’s where we were heading.

I was surprised when Caliel and Chuck Pettis – Clockman – met us just inside the Old Jail walls. “We’re the cavalry,” Chuck said. I could hear him ticking from a few paces away, which meant he wore hundreds of watches sewn into his military-issue Kevlar vest. He once had a premonition that if his clocks ever wind down, he’ll die. From the sound of it, he was pretty safe tonight.

“Lucinda told me what happened at the exhibit,” Caliel said with a nod in my direction. “Bad stuff.”

“This place is hotter than usual,” Chuck grumbled, and I knew he meant supernaturally, not temperature-wise. Although the grounds around the Old Jail were empty except for us, I felt as if I were suffocating in the press of a large crowd.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s get this over with.”

Caliel opened the lock with a flicker of magic, and the door swung wide. We used the tour entrance, and it led us straight into one of the Jail’s narrow stone corridors. The temperature inside was noticeably colder than the warm evening air, and the hairs on my arms and neck rose with the sense that we were not alone.

Down the hallway, a door slammed shut. A flash of light zipped through the darkness just at the corner of my vision, and I glimpsed a greenish yellow orb in the distance down the long corridor, bobbing up and down in midair as if daring us to chase it.

It sounded like the spirits of the Old Jail were waking up. I could hear the sound of chains dragging across the floor above us, while in the distance, a metal cell door rattled violently as if shaken by a prisoner desperate to get out. Sorren led the way. Teag and I were right behind him, while Chuck and Caliel brought up the rear.

I felt something brush against my arm, but no one had passed by. The Old Jail’s shadows crowded around us, and our flashlights did not seem up to the task of pushing away the unnatural darkness. Off to one side, I thought I glimpsed a woman standing next to one of the narrow windows, but when I turned my head she was gone.

More thumps sounded above us, sending my heartbeat racing. Since we had no idea of what – or who – we might encounter, we came well-armed. I had my athame in hand, and Bo’s ghost already walked beside me, head down and hackles up as if he expected trouble. Teag and I both wore our protective woven vests along with our amulets, and he had both his staff and his
urumi
. The
chakram
Colonel Donnelly had given me hung in a scabbard at my belt. I didn’t want to set the place on fire, so I had left my walking stick at home tonight, but both Teag and I carried Josiah’s dueling pistols. I noticed that Teag had his jack ball out and was twirling it to fend off unfriendly spirits. I pulled my jack ball from my pocket and did the same.

Chuck depended on technology for protection. He had an EMF grenade in one hand and an odd homemade weapon in his right hand that looked like a ray gun out of an old-time science fiction movie. Sorren had a sword in each hand. He had healed already from the wounds he had taken at the Briggs Society. Teag and I still sported bruises.

Caliel was dressed in a black shirt and dark jeans, but when he removed a charcoal scarf from around his neck, I could see that he wore a large necklace made of pieces of mirror set into metal that made a wide collar. I knew it protected him against spirits and witches, who could become trapped within the mirror and lose their power. Around Caliel’s left arm was a black band with the
veve
of Baron Samedi, the keeper of cemeteries. I picked up the scent of rum and cigar smoke, and I bet Caliel had made an offering to the Baron for our protection before he set out this night.

The closer we got to the room with the chains, the more active the Old Jail’s spirits became. For an empty building, the darkened corridors were full of footsteps, the sound of chairs sliding across bare boards, clanging metal and rattling chains. Some startled us, but most were muffled, as if just making themselves heard taxed the strength of these ghosts. Disembodied voices whispered, wailed and screamed, then fell to an indistinct buzz. I was as keyed up as a hummingbird on caffeine, and I wanted to be done and out of there.

Sorren pushed open the heavy door to the chain room and we all braced for battle. Our flashlights shone into the darkness, illuminating several old, rusted chains with manacles that hung from the ceiling, props for the ghost tours. On the worn wooden floor beneath the chains was a freshly-marked circle drawn in salt and charcoal. Four burned-out candles sat melted and sooty at the quarters. Black chicken feathers littered the floor.

“We’re too late,” Sorren said. “The Watcher has made it through.”

“Uh oh.” I pointed to the chains and manacles overhead. They had begun to swing, slowly at first, and then more violently, though there was no draft in the room.

“Ouch!” Teag said as the door tried to slam shut and rammed his shoulder. Those distant voices were closer now, and their tone had changed from frightened and mournful to angry.

Shadows loomed on the walls, and dark shapes took form, stepping away from the plaster and into the room. Bits of stone from the ceiling pelted us. The temperature dropped until it was cold enough that I could see my breath. Orbs danced around the room like a cloud of fireflies, zipping toward us and emitting a nasty shock when they got too close. I ducked as one came right at my face.

Teag cried out as one of the shadows raked his arm, solid enough to tear through his sleeve. Bo’s ghost was barking loudly, running at the wraiths, snarling and snapping his teeth to keep them at bay. Heavy footfalls on the stairs and commotion in the hallway told me the Old Jail’s ghosts were massing. I blasted the wraiths with my athame, sending a cone of cold silver force against them. They parted and drew back, then rushed forward again, as if they knew my strength was limited.

The runes on Teag’s staff glowed brightly as he circled it slowly overhead, jabbing it toward any ghost that ventured too close. Each time he stabbed it into the dark figures, the staff’s runes flared and the ghosts receded as if stung. The room was far too small for him to use his
urumi
or for me to hurl my
chakram
without seriously injuring one of our companions or ourselves, though I thought the silver fire of Teag’s razor whip might give even ghosts pause.

“Let’s get out of here,” I yelped.

“You’ve got that right,” Chuck said. “Everyone get out. I’ll cover you.” We hurried out the door as Teag kept it open.

Chuck pushed to the fore. “Fire in the hole!” he shouted, tossing his EMF grenade and ducking, throwing an arm up to cover his eyes. We all did the same. There was a flash of bright light, a high-pitched squeal, and a burst of electro-magnetic energy that ghosts hated.

“Go!” Chuck shouted, pausing only to retrieve the spent shell of his grenade. We thundered down the stairs, while behind us, the ghosts swarmed in a swirling, green-gray cloud. Faces came to the fore, only to be clawed back into the mass. Skeletal arms reached out of the cloud with clawed fingers and sharp nails, ripping at our clothing and scratching our skin.

“Run!” Sorren fell back so the rest of us could escape, slashing through the ghosts with his swords, which had taken on a faint glow. Chuck took up a firing stance behind and to the right of where Sorren stood, so that nothing could get past them. He aimed his ray gun-lookalike and squeezed the trigger. Thin lightning bolts crackled from the gun’s snub nose, branching again and again until they were as wide as the corridor. The threads of lightning buzzed and snapped with electricity, and the cloud of spirits drew back abruptly.

Once the rest of us were out, Sorren and Chuck ran for the door, and Chuck paused to fire one last lightning net at the cloud of spirits as it massed to come after them again. In a few more steps they were clear, slamming the door behind them. That’s when we realized that we weren’t out of danger yet.

The broad gravel lot around the Old Jail was filled with ghosts. They crowded along the inside of the high wall, shadows and wraiths dark as storm clouds, while others were orbs, bobbing and weaving. One thing was clear: they were between us and the exit.

“I’ve got this.” Caliel stepped forward. “Buy me a couple of moments and shine your lights into my mirrors.”

We did as he told us, and the mirrors lit up, reflecting the light back toward the spirits, which kept their distance from the silvered glass that could trap them in a new and smaller prison. Caliel reached into his backpack and drew out a flask and a cigar. He opened the flask and the heady scent of spiced rum wafted on the air. A second later, he lit the cigar in his other hand.

“Stay behind me, and work your way toward the back gate,” Caliel said in a low voice. Then he began to sing and chant, dancing a slow, swaying salsa toward the ghosts. His chant matched the rhythm of his steps, and he kept his eyes on the darkness as he held up the rum and the cigar toward the night sky.

We edged our way toward the break in the high stone wall as he drew the ghosts off, step by step.
This isn’t going to work. They’re wicked fast. We can’t get out of the gate before they catch us.

Orbs sparkled in the night air like snow, translucent and twinkling. In the deep shadows I could hear heavy breathing and shuffling steps. A woman’s voice rang out in a peal of high-pitched, hysterical laughter, and I guessed Lavinia Fisher was enjoying the outing.