Mark of the Witch. Maggie Shayne

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СКАЧАТЬ Bic.

      I smoothed the wrinkles out of the slightly bent cig and put it between my lips. It felt good there. Lighter in hand, I speed walked to the bedroom window and wrenched it open. Then, sitting on the sill, illuminated by the moonlight I used to dance beneath, one leg dangling outside, the other holding me firmly in, I cupped my hands at the far end of the cigarette, like any smoker does when there’s likelihood of an errant breeze.

      But before I could flick my Bic, I went very, very still, my eyes glued to my wrists, which, I suddenly realized, really hurt. They’d been quietly hurting ever since I’d awakened from that stupid nightmare. The pain had seemed like part of the dream, like the pain all over my back and the impact with those rocks. I’d been waiting for it to fade, like the rest, but clearly it wasn’t going to.

      Clearly. Because there were angry red welts on my wrists, welts that had been bleeding, and that still bore the twisted pattern of rough-hewn rope.

      My jaw dropped … and my one and only cigarette fell from my lips and fluttered down, way down, to the sidewalk below, looking a bit like a girl in white, plummeting from a friggin’ cliff overlooking the desert in Bumfuck, Egypt.

      Not Egypt. Babylon.

      I turned around so fast I almost fell, looking to see who had just whispered the correction. But that was stupid, because it had come from inside my own head.

      Father Dominick St. Clair led the way, and Father Tomas, his chosen successor, followed with his heart in his throat. He was nervous, and not ashamed to admit it. It wasn’t every day a man was asked to assist in an exorcism. So far, it had all the markings of a made-for-Hollywood production. Creepy old house sadly in need of a paint job, check. Careworn mother, old beyond her years, dressed in clean but faded clothes, check. Narrow staircase that creaked when you walked on it, check. Big wooden door with unearthly moaning coming from the other side, double check.

      He stood there and told himself he was a twenty-nine-year-old man with a first-rate education—Cornell, for crying out loud—and a left brain that ruled him. Practical. Intelligent. That part of him did not believe this could be real.

      And he suspected that was the part of him Father Dom was trying to stomp out. The doubting side. The doubting Tomas.

      The older priest couldn’t know it was already too late. Tomas had made his decision. He couldn’t keep living something he didn’t believe in. He was only waiting for the right time to explain that he couldn’t keep living in service to vows that no longer meant to him what they once had.

      Dominick paused outside the old wooden door. It had an oval brass knob that had probably been there for two hundred years. “The job I’ve been grooming you for is coming soon.”

      He was being “groomed” to keep a witch from releasing a demon from its Underworld prison. Great. He’d often wondered if the Church elders knew about Father Dom’s obsession with the ancient legend of He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken. All Tomas had wanted was to be an ordinary priest, to help the poor and hungry and misled, to offer faith to the faithless and hope to the hopeless, to pay back the kindness shown to him by the Sisters of St. Brigit and Father Dom himself, who’d raised him from the age of ten after his faithless, hopeless, addicted mother’s suicide.

      He’d studied. He’d excelled. College, then the seminary. But unlike every other seminarian, he’d been yanked out of school early and personally ordained by Father Dom. He’d been given special dispensation with regard to Tomas, the old man had said, because of the importance of the mission.

      “Did you hear me, Tomas?” Dom asked, sounding impatient.

      Tomas snapped out of his thoughts and looked the old priest in the eye. Dom’s face was like a white raisin, his body stooped. Yet his eyes were sharp and his perception sharper. Sometimes Tomas thought the old man could see right inside his brain, read the thoughts going on there. But then, he should. He probably knew Tomas better than anyone.

      “Your faith isn’t strong enough yet to do what will be required of you, Tomas,” Dom said, and Tomas realized that he’d already said it once while he’d been lost in thought. “Faith ought not need proof to sustain it. But time is short, and you need to know. Demons are real. And powerful. See for yourself.”

      He opened the door, and Tomas looked inside. The girl in the bed might have been twelve. Maybe less. She was thrashing, arching her back, grunting and moaning. He froze in place as his mind tried to process what he was seeing. And his initial feeling was that he ought to yank out his iPhone and call 9-1-1.

      Dom pushed past him, his black bag already open. He pulled out a crucifix and a bible, small and black and worn, its pages edged in gold. “Get the holy water. Bring it here.”

      Tomas pushed his doubts aside to be considered later. He took the bag from Father Dom and rummaged inside until he found the vial, pulling it out and uncorking it.

      “Use the water and draw an X on her forehead whenever I tell you.”

      Tomas moved up to the other side of the bed. The girl stank of urine, and it made him want to gag. She was foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog, thick white bubbles erupting everywhere.

      “Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde …” Dom nodded at him, and Tomas wet his forefinger with holy water and drew an X on the girl’s forehead. She was hot to the touch, and Dom was still praying. “In nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis …”

      He kept going. Tomas stopped listening. He found himself pulled into the girl’s eyes until they rolled back, and he shot Dom a look. “She needs an ambulance. A hospital.”

      Dom stopped what he was doing and glared at him. Then he lifted one long arm and pointed his arthritically bumpy forefinger at the door. “Get thee behind me.” He didn’t say “Satan,” but it was in his tone.

      Tomas didn’t argue. He didn’t want any part of this. He left the room, head down, and walked down the stairs and out of the house. His trusty old Volvo wagon was waiting at the curb, behind Dom’s boat-sized seventy-something Buick. He got in and drove, and he didn’t look back.

      I sat at the Coffee House. That was the name of the place, the Coffee House. Its stylized Formica tables were kidney-shaped and orange, with half-circle bench seats curving around the widest side. Stainless steel “pipes” twisted and curved overhead, lights affixed to them, aimed in random directions. Someone once said it was supposed to be retro, but it felt more like “Jetsons Chic” to me. The colors were perfect—today was Halloween, and I was at an orange Formica table waiting to meet with a Wiccan high priestess.

      I was feeling awkward as hell as I waited for Rayne Blackwood to arrive.

      She was one of my best friends, or had been until I’d renounced my witchhood and handed in my pentacle. (Okay, figuratively, not literally. The pent was still in my treasure box, along with all my other witchy stuff.)

      I’d started studying the “Craft of the Wise,” otherwise known as witchcraft, several years earlier and, being an independent type, I had preferred practicing alone to joining a group. Besides, they still called them “covens,” and I just couldn’t stop sniggering at the word. Call me a cynic. Whatever. So I’d been what was known in the Craft as a “solitary practitioner.” Even now, when I was no longer a believer, Craft holidays still felt like my holidays. But there was a lot to be said for celebrating the holidays with others. Banging on a djembe drum alone in my apartment just wasn’t the same as sitting СКАЧАТЬ