Taking Back Sunday (8 page)

The Incarnate mixing it up with a coven could be dangerous, Cy.

Take a step back
, Cyrus warned.
Let’s just hold tight for right now.

Cyrus returned to the car when the youngest of the witches stood up and turned on the lights. With little else to report, he quietly slid into his seat and closed the door beside him. For the remainder of the gathering, Sunday had done little more than nod a couple of times and spoken in short sentences when asked a question. She hadn’t participated at all, merely watched, and from her demeanor, she had regarded the event nonchalantly.

“Did you take down the other witches’ plates?” Cyrus asked, knowing the response that would come.

“Of course, man. What do you think of me that you even have to ask?”

Cyrus shrugged. He stared out the windshield and watched as Sunday exited the house with two other women, the blonde from the club and another one. After a short exchange, they waved their goodbyes and went to their respective cars. Angel shifted the car into drive when Sunday drove past them unaware she was being stalked.

“We should just tag her and bag her tonight,” Angel suggested. His eyebrow twitched as he glared ahead. When the Incarnate maneuvered between lanes, Angel jerked the wheel abruptly.

Angel had long been growing restless. When they should have been rushing their target to complete their mission, Cyrus was slamming on the brakes. The sudden shift from urgency to delaying the hunt was aggravating. He wanted to go home to Alaska. He wanted to do something other than drive around on an endless survey of Goth clubs, interviewing people who might, or might not have any answers. Wasting away in a rental car while some woman, evil sorceress or not, went grocery shopping was wearing him down.

“We’re not here as PIs, Cy. Our sole objective is to retrieve the Incarnate and turn her over to the Pastophori. The cult’s paying top-dollar for this.”

Like Angel, and more than Angel could ever imagine, Cyrus was eager to take action. But the thought of retrieving Sunday and dumping her onto someone else brought a sour taste to his mouth. Angel’s proposal was one that he would have made a few days earlier. Even when he’d stalked around the Lair, his mouth watered for a bite of his prey. Knowing they were closer to her than they’d ever been only fueled his hunger. Then, he touched her and looked into her eyes. The unquenchable fires, the unrelenting thoughts of her, and the frustration of a long, fruitless hunt simply washed away.

“It’s too soon,” Cyrus answered. “She’s working with a coven, and she’s far from running. We don’t have any data on her working with a coven prior to this, and we can’t walk into a situation that’s so uncertain.” He had to convince Angel that they needed more time because
he
needed more time. They hadn’t reached out to the pack yet, and he didn’t want to think of the wheels that would be set into motion if they had.

“The Incarnate is
here
, Cy,” Angel challenged. His hands balled into fists around the steering wheel as his eyes focused ahead with increased intensity. “We should
tag her
and
bag her
before whatever she’s cooking gets out of hand.”

Cyrus didn’t need to open a line of psychic connection to his packmate to know that Angel’s agitation was growing close to ripping the steering wheel out of the car.

“We do that, and we walk in blind–”

“Blind?!” Angel interjected hastily. “
Blind?!
Are you warped? The bitch is gathering witches for some shit, and she’s been here long enough that we can only guess she’s been planning some big show.” His arm shot off the wheel, and he pointed to the car ahead of them.

“That woman is the Incarnate,” he barked.

Never before had Cyrus regretted taking a partner along for the hunt as he did then. Angel was a friend to him, but he was also a member of the pack. The pack was obligated to their client, the cult, to deliver a product, and the product was the woman he no longer desired to relinquish to another. A cold shiver shot up Cyrus’ spine. The Pastophori could do to her what the Northwest witch had done to her, or maybe worse. The pack wasn’t concerned with what the Pastophori wanted the Incarnate for, but Cyrus wasn’t operating under the pack’s orders anymore. Not until he could figure out what to do. All he knew was that he
couldn’t
turn her over.

“I may not know as much about her as you do, but I know that, whatever her game, she’s dangerous, Cyrus. She just left an
esbat
. You said it yourself. She just sat there and let them do their thing. No one does that. She’s planning something, and she’s using those women.”

Angel slapped the dash and glowered at his friend. Angel’s glare met Cyrus’, and recognizing that he had just aggressed upon a much more dominant wolf, he looked back at the road and forced himself to relax back into the driver’s seat.

Minutes of silence had passed between them as Sunday pulled up to her house and parked her car. They stopped across the street and shut off their headlights. The pair sat quietly for a few moments. Angel cracked the window and lit a smoke. The tension was palpable, but the more submissive of the two released a sizeable part of the ball he’d been winding.

“Listen, brother,” Cyrus began, sternly. “I’m asking for a few more days before we tell the boys we’ve made her in Columbia. Whatever’s going on, and you’re probably right that something is going on, we’ll need more intel before we can safely acquire her.”

He had to cut Angel a break, give in a little, and accept that, a few days ago, he would have been sitting in the same position as Angel sat now.

“If she’s harnessing the power of a coven, no matter how weak, she’s more than we can handle even now. Bringing our brothers into this would be a risk to them if we couldn’t provide the adequate information to make a safe go of it.”

It was an absolute
fact.
Whatever desire kept him from turning her over to the cult aside, it was stupid to make a move without being certain that they could take her. Sunday posed a threat to them regardless of any allies she acquired in that coven. Though Cyrus wasn’t at the compound to witness it, everyone knew what she had done to Bernadette. People had feared the elder witch, regarding her like a supreme being cut from their same cloth, even before the emergence of the Incarnate at her side. Whatever affinity bound Sunday to her, in spite of weeks of torture at her hands, did nothing to keep Sunday from such an impossible act of depravity. They had been just stories, rumors, and conjecture, but if they were true, then the Incarnate could put up a fight that neither wolves could handle. She only needed to sense a threat, and they were done for.

“You were on site at her capture,” Cyrus reminded him. “You might not have stayed on with Bernadette like I did, or seen all the shit that I’ve seen, but you know that, as a fucking
kid
, she wasn’t afraid of us. You think it’s going to be any different now, Angel? You’re kidding yourself.”

He looked out the window and watched as Sunday turned on a light inside her house. Through the curtains, her uneven shadow moved from room to room. There was a perverse sort of satisfaction gained in watching her like a voyeur. His body tingled with the knowledge that she was so close. It was like so many times in the service of Bernadette when he’d watch her moving across the manor. So close he could touch her, but separated by the abyss of his duty. Then, like now, Cyrus could only watch. For years, he’d stewed with a vengeance for the way she made him feel, unable to bridge that gap for fear he might kill her and earn the ire of Bernadette. Bernadette no longer stood in his way, but duty still did. Duty to his pack and duty to his mission.

The realization sank in his chest before he could truly enjoy their closeness. Rather than beat himself up about it any longer, he stuck out his finger and pressed it against the windshield, directing Angel’s eyes to her silhouette. His brows gathered tensely and his vision narrowed.

“She’s a woman now, Angel. She’s walking around her house, taking care of her shit, and she’s none the wiser to us watching her. If she makes us, even catches a whiff of us on her tail, she could tear this city apart. She could, and the whole goddamn town goes up in flames, and she strides out without singeing her dress.”

“If we wait till she falls asleep and take her by surprise, then she won’t know what hit her,” Angel countered. “The quicker we get her, the quicker we get this over with.”

Cyrus turned back and locked eyes with Angel. After a long, tense stare, Angel nodded once, sharply. Angel wasn’t buying the whole lot of doubt that Cyrus was selling. Cyrus hadn’t lied, but was leaving out the real reason behind his decision to hold off on the capture. He didn’t want to hasten anything about this opportunity he was getting. Time had been his enemy for far too long. Now, it was his only ally.

“A few more days, Angel. Nothing comes up by Friday, and we call Stephen and gather a team. We take her by the weekend, and she’s in the hands of the cult by Sunday.” Cyrus waited until Angel nodded again. Begrudgingly, Angel accepted what Cyrus was saying. It made sense. Having crossed that bridge, Cyrus bought himself a couple of days to do something for himself. He would have to run into her again, orchestrate another encounter that seemed casual and coincidental at face value. The things he’d told Angel had been true. She was undeniably a threat to their safety and to the safety of the people around her, but he didn’t care. Her reaction to him at the club had been anything but malevolent. If they ran into one another again and she responded to him in kind, then he was in no danger of being ripped apart at her hands.

Thankfully, Angel had just given him a day or two to find out. He just had to work fast.

CHAPTER TEN

Vicky and Elisabeth Becker. Constance Smith. Michelle Hampstead, nee Singer. Eunice Johnson. Until Sunday could clear their names, they were all suspects.

The dark magic at the esbat
was precise and potent. Someone was using her friends’ coven to some sinister ends, and Sunday needed to intervene. Sunday didn’t want to think that any one of the women in her friends’ coven was capable of it, but if there was even a possibility then she needed to get to the root of it and stop her.

The research process was slow going. Sunday began compiling data as soon as she got home the night of the coven meeting. Poring over public records, and whatever else her Internet searching retrieved, Sunday investigated each of the women. She started at the top: Elisabeth and Eunice. They were the strongest, oldest witches of the bunch. Age didn’t necessarily equate to power, but these two held court over the others with ease. Nothing she found in hours of searching tagged either women controversial, however, so Sunday crossed Eunice and Elisabeth off her list. They were powerful, but they were caretakers. The genuine article.

By dawn, Sunday was exhausted and cross-eyed from staring at the computer screen.

“Two down, three to go,” Sunday mumbled as she shut her laptop.

She curled onto the sofa and passed out as the sunrise broke through the curtains.

For the duration of the next day, Sunday remained locked in place at her laptop just as she had the night before. This time, she started working on Constance. Constance Smith was, like Sunday, twenty-seven years old. She was born somewhere in Florida. Her name was listed on a roster of Art History graduates on the University of New Mexico website.

Though data gathering on government databases turned up clean, the Internet search hadn’t been so kind to Constance. A refined search of different local interest sites popped up with references to a woman that sounded a lot like her. On a neighborhood watch blog, a woman calling herself Concerned for Cats posted a story about her neighbor whom she identified as Connie Smith.

“She’s a disgusting, satanic animal-killer,” she wrote.

She detailed the sounds of animals dying next door in the late hours of the night and the stench of rotting of dog carcasses emanating from Connie’s trashcans. The outraged neighbor provided uploaded pictures of what appeared to be dried bloodstains on her neighbor’s wooden deck in the backyard of her house. Concerned for Cats reported disturbances to the police. In the days after her initial report, she came home to a police car parked on her neighbor’s driveway.

“The cops didn’t arrest the bitch,” she wrote.

When a commenter replied that Connie Smith could sue her for libel, the neighbor responded.

“Let that murderess try to sue me. Give the cops a reason to search that Satan worshipper’s property and find cat mincemeat in some Devil potion in her house. It isn’t just me talking. I’m not the only one who knows what’s going on.”

At first, Sunday hesitated to believe it. Witches of all kinds, even the innocuous ones, easily aroused suspicion among disbelieving neighbors. Mundanes didn’t understand witchcraft. They immediately consigned witches as slaves of the devil. But the photographs along with the neighbor’s descriptions made the hairs on Sunday’s arms rise.

Using fresh animal blood in spell casting was a uniquely black magic practice. It was an essential element of black magic killing curses or demon rising. The blood of a fresh kill was an extremely potent ingredient. The energy that escaped the body when a spirit was violently ripped from it was volatile. The more gruesome the slaughter, the bigger the target of the curse or the evilness of the objective.

Elementally, all that was sufficient for any dark spells or curses was a cruel intention and specificity of the demand. The stronger the witch, the more masterfully he or she could produce the requisite energy and the more expertly he or she could cast the spell. The rest of the processes could vary according to the objective of the spells or the traditions from where they derived. Not all dark magic required blood to work. However, blood was certainly a common ingredient for most dark witchcraft castings.

The alarm bells blared. Sunday’s body stiffened, and her blood boiled.

“‘
White
magic, not
black
magic’ my ass, Kay!”

People didn’t
kill
for white magic, and it took a certain kind of person even to attempt the kind of magic that involved blood. Bloodletting properly was no easy feat. Intention had to be clear at the kill; there could be no room for doubt, no trepidation. Intention had to be sustained throughout the entire process. It often took time, and various attempts to get the spells right. Even skilled dark witches could fail at it. Black magic was volatile enough to have unintended catastrophic results if the work was incorrectly or if the energy the witch culled displaced.