Demons in the Big Easy
Chapter 1
Shivering in the cold, Cassandra leaned on her staff as she
stood over the snow-covered graves of her husband and four of her five
children. Her long, white hair was loose under her hood, and she stooped with
age. A storm was just over the horizon, and her bones ached. Curse these old bones of mine! The staff
was of heavy oak, so she didn’t know if it were more of a help or a hindrance,
but she didn’t dare leave home without it. One never knew these days when one
might run into a demon. Something had made the veil thinner, making it easier
for them to cross into her realm, and it was Cassandra’s job to send them back
where they belonged.
Cassandra sighed wearily. She was getting too old for this
kind of thing. She should have trained an apprentice to take over years ago,
but she’d never been able to find a young person with the necessary talent.
Arwain, her oldest, had had it, but he’d died before she’d had him half
trained. A demon had come upon the village when Cassandra had been busy playing
the role of midwife. At sixteen, Arwain had been eager to prove his worth and
had taken on the demon on his own. By the time Cassandra heard the news, it had
been too late. Arwain had managed to banish the demon, but only at the cost of
his life.
She patted Arwain’s gravestone. It had been nearly forty
years, but she still felt the loss. “Why, son? Why didn’t you run to me instead
of toward death? The village needs you now. I won’t be with them much longer.”
Cassandra half-smiled at the thought. She’d soon see Arwain again as well as
her husband and other lost children. If only she had good hands to leave the
village in, she would be at peace with the thought of her death.
She looked down at the next two little graves that held the
bodies of her two babes—twin girls. She didn’t want to think about how she’d
failed to save their lives. The twins had come too early, as is common with
twins. If they’d been anyone else’s children, she might have been able to
sustain them, but childbirth had weakened her, and they’d passed before she
recovered her strength. Her daughter Malva came next. Malva had died giving
birth to the twins—Aine and Caronwyn. Cassandra grieved not being able to stop
the bleeding that took her life. She’d helped so many other mothers give birth
safely, but somehow she’d not been able to save her own child.
Cassandra felt eyes watching her and turned. On the other
side of the fence, just off sacred ground, stood a demon. It smiled at her
revealing nasty, yellow teeth and a forked tongue, its cat-like eyes glowing
with satisfaction. “Good e’vn, powerful one.” The demon was short, but bloated,
as if it had just consumed someone’s essence, but it was too small to have
gotten past the wards she had guarding the village.
Cassandra’s lips tightened as she wondered who had been
caught outside the wards. She hoped it wasn’t one of those who relied upon her
for protection. She’d warned them not to be without the village boundaries
after sunset. She readied her staff to perform the ritual of banishment, but
the demon’s behavior was odd. “Why have you sought me out? You know I’ll simply
send you back where you belong.”
The demon laughed. “Today, yes,” it hissed. “But soon there
will be enough of us to overwhelm your wards and devour your village.”
Impossible. The
veil might be thinner, but not thin enough for demons to cross in multitude. It
would take far too much energy. “Your idle threats don’t scare me.” Cassandra
took her staff and began to draw a pentangle in the snow, the first step of the
banishment ritual.
The demon smiled wider as the pentangle took shape; it
should have cowered in fear. “I will feast on you yet, powerful one, and the
meal will be delectable.” It licked its thin lips with its forked tongue and
made no effort to thwart the banishment. Any effort it made would have been
futile, but still, she usually had to do the ritual while fighting them off, a
lapse of concentration on her part would usually be fatal. This demon just
watched as if rather amused by the spectacle.
Cassandra finished drawing the pentangle and stood in the
center. She planted her staff and began to chant in the old tongue. Directing
her will and her energy into the staff, she pointed it toward the demon. The
demon began to fade as she pushed it back beyond the veil. Usually, at this
point, the demon would scream and curse her name. This one just laughed again
and spoke a single word, “Soon.”
When it was gone, Cassandra leaned against the staff; the
banishment had not been difficult, but the behavior of the demon disconcerted
her. Surely the demon’s threats were empty. Still, something was going wrong with
the world, and she was getting too old to handle it.
She tottered to the graveyard gate. As she opened it, a
young woman came racing around the corner. “Grandmother! Grandmother!”
Alarmed, Cassandra looked around for any sign of another
demon. “Caronwyn, what are you doing here? The sun set half an hour ago. This
is outside the wards, and demons are about. I just finished banishing one.”
“Grandmother, it’s Aine!” Tears streamed down Caronwyn’s
cheeks.
Thinking of the demon’s bloated belly, Cassandra grabbed
Caronwyn’s shoulder. “No, it isn’t true. The demon didn’t get her.”
Caronwyn shook her head. “No, Grandmother, she’s fallen
through!”
“Fallen through what?” Cassandra pictured a hole in the ice
over the river and wondered why her granddaughter would come to her instead of
someone who could help. Running water negated magic, and she’d be useless in
such a situation. Aine and Caronwyn were all she had left, and she couldn’t
bear to lose either of them.
“A gateway, a random gateway!” Caronwyn wrung her hands.
“Grandmother, we have to go after her! We have to bring her back!”
Random gateways between Domhan and Earth did occur, but they
weren’t common, and they were so obvious they could be easily avoided. “Surely
you’re mistaken.”
“No, Grandmother, I saw it with my own eyes. I was out
gathering holly for the Solstice celebration when Aine came running up the
hill, followed by Henrik. They were arguing as usual. He was pleading with her
to listen to reason, and she was cursing him and his ancestors.”
Cassandra hoped the cursing would take. Henrik was no where
near good enough for her granddaughter.
“Aine stopped at the edge of the cliff and told him if he
came any closer she’d jump. You know how dramatic she always is. I came out and
told her to step away from the edge. She said she’d do no such thing until he
apologized. He said, ‘Alright, I’m sorry.’ But Aine didn’t think that was good
enough. She told him that he really needed to mean it, and she stamped her
foot. That’s when the edge of the cliff gave way.”
Caronwyn let out a wail.
“She flailed with her arms, but she still went over. Both Henrik and I screamed
her name and ran to the edge of the cliff. That’s when we saw the black light.
She fell straight into it. The air crackled with lightening. Then the black
light disappeared, and she was gone. We searched all around the base of the
cliff, and we couldn’t find her body. She’s gone through. She’s on the other
side. You have to bring her back.”
Cassandra sank down on a nearby stone. Random gateways were
unstable. Aine could have arrived in mid-air and fallen to her death or
materialized inside stone and suffocated, or worse yet, she might not have made
it all the way through and be trapped somewhere between Domhan and Earth in
that dark, formless void forever.
“We’re wasting time. We have to go after her now. Who knows
what will happen to her in that frightful place?”
The same thing that
would happen to any young girl without money on the streets of Earth. Earth
with its racing technology was no easy place for the laid back inhabitants of
the slower moving Domhan.
“Take me to where she went through. I need to get a reading
on the gateway, so I can build one in proximity to when she went through.” The
where wasn’t difficult. Any gate built in the vicinity of their village would
place them in the Earth city of New Orleans. But when was harder to pin down.
Time moved weirdly between gates, and a cross could take a few minutes or a few
years. If there was enough residual energy from the gate, she could likely pin Aine’s
location in time down to within a few months, but that was as close as she was
likely to get.
“This way.” Caronwyn grabbed Cassandra’s arm and start
pulling her after her.
Cassandra’s knees and hips protested sharply. “Slow down,
child. This body doesn’t move like it used to.”
* * *
Cassandra was winded and hurt in all her joints by the time
Caronwyn had dragged her up the steep hill to the spot where Aine had gone
over. Cassandra planted her staff and leaned heavily against it. She could
still feel the gateway’s residual energy. After she’d rested a moment, she
stepped as close to the edge of the cliff as she dared. She focused her energy
through the staff and sent a beam down to where the gate had been. The residual
energy from the gateway was faint, but still strong enough that Cassandra could
read when Aine had gone through. It was a nearly instantaneous gateway. Aine
had come out, if she’d come out, at nearly the same moment she’d left.
Cassandra only wished she could be that precise in building her own gateway.
As Cassandra and Caronwyn came back down the hill, they were
met by Henrik and nearly half the villagers, including Zinna and Yale—Aine’s
other set of grandparents. “Is it true?” Zinna asked. “Has our Aine fallen
through?”
Cassandra nodded and patted Zinna’s arm. “It certainly
appears that way.”
“You will go after her, won’t you?” Yale asked. “You’re the
only one within a hundred miles that could.”
“Of course I’ll bring her back.” Dear goddess. Please let me find her. Let me be in time.
“What can we do to help?” Zinna asked.
“Get me Aine’s hair brush—I’ll need some of her hair to
perform a tracking spell. And bring me all the gold and silver you have. They
have value on Earth.” On Domhan, they were so common that even the poorest of
the poor had them in quantity. “I may need the money to track Aine down.”
Caronwyn stepped forward. “You mean, we may need the money.
I’m going with you.”
“You?” Cassandra, Zinna, and Henrik said at once. Caronwyn
was a timid girl. She’d hardly cross the village street without Aine holding
her hand.
Caronwyn crossed her arms. “Aine would do it for me, and you
may need help.”
“What help could you
possibly be?” Zinna asked, in what Cassandra thought was a tactless manner.
“You have no magic, granddaughter,” Cassandra said more
gently. “It’s best if I do this alone.” Caronwyn would only be someone else
she’d have to worry about.
Caronwyn tried to argue, but Cassandra stood firm. Caronwyn
glared at her. “I’ll fetch Aine’s brush and gather the village’s gold and
silver.”
“Bring it to my house at sunrise. I need light to create a
gateway, and it’s too dark tonight.”
Caronwyn and the villagers scattered, and Cassandra hobbled
home. She went to her old trunk, opened it, and took out the quilts to reveal
the false bottom. She fumbled with the secret catch and opened it. Inside were
souvenirs from her previous trip—most importantly, a thousand Earth dollars,
money to keep her until she was able to sell whatever gold and silver the
villagers donated to the cause. Cassandra had always intended to go back to
Earth or go to the capital and do great things. She was really too powerful for
such a small place. But after her adventure, she’d fallen in love with the
village blacksmith. She’d married and had children. Then she’d used her talents
for the good of the community, protecting it from demons and wild beasts,
helping the crop to yield bounteous harvests, healing the sick. She didn’t
regret her choices; she’d had a good life, if not the exciting one she’d once
imagined.
She’d offered the money to Aiden, her youngest, when he went
off adventuring, but he’d told her he didn’t intend to pass through. She smiled
at the thought of her youngest, most mischievous child. He’d always been
getting into one mess or another. But he’d had a good heart. All would have been well with him, but he
envied the talent his older brother held. He’d always been after her to teach
him more, and she’d tried. Aiden’s magic
had hardly been adequate to light a candle. She sighed as she wondered what had
become of him. She hadn’t heard a word from him since he went off thirty years
ago, but in her heart, she couldn’t believe him dead. If he’d been dead, she
surely would have felt it somehow. She’d always believed he would return. She
still did. She just didn’t know if she would be still be here when he did. At
seventy-five, she was already an old woman.
Cassandra dismissed useless thoughts of Aiden and began
gathering the paraphernalia she’d need for the spells to rescue her
granddaughter: candles, incense, chalk, and a compass. She was powerful enough
that these trappings weren’t strictly necessary, but they helped conserve
energy she might otherwise need. Lastly, she lay her wizard staff by the
bundle. She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but if she had to fight, it could
come in handy.
* * *
When Caronwyn arrived early the next morning carrying a sack
of silverware, candlesticks, and jewelry that she’d been able to gather from
the villagers, Cassandra was dressed in her warmest clothes and had the
thousand dollars and the magical paraphernalia in a pack that had been among
her souvenirs. The storm that had been threatening the night before was upon
them.
Caronwyn collapsed with the sack at Cassandra’s table. She
was trembling. Caronwyn and Aine were twins and had never been apart a day in
their lives. The separation must be terrible. “I’ll find her,” Cassandra said
with an assurance she didn’t feel.
“Let me come with you,” Caronwyn pleaded.
Cassandra shook her head. “We’ve been over this.”
Surprisingly, Caronwyn argued no further. When Cassandra was
ready, Caronwyn—carrying the heavy gold and silver—accompanied her into the
woods behind her house to the clearing where she’d built her first gate all
those many years before. In the clearing were two trees the proper distance
apart to anchor a gateway.
The wind was blowing too fiercely for Cassandra to have any
hope of lighting the candles that would help focus the spell. Fortunately, she
had the energy to proceed without them. She drew a pentangle in the snow between
the trees with her staff. The five points—one for each element (fire, earth,
air, and water) and one for the spirit—anchored her so that she didn’t get
caught between, as Aine may have done.
Then she began the chant in the old tongue—the language of the goddess
herself. She pleaded with the goddess to
allow a rift between worlds that she might step over. At first, nothing seemed
to happen. Perhaps the storm negated the magic necessary to open the gate; rain
would. Snow didn’t usually bother magic. Then, a bolt of lightening ripped
through the air, and the air between the trees filled with a blackness so
absolute it denied the existence of light.
Caronwyn screamed and grabbed hold of Cassandra’s arm.
Cassandra had forgotten just how dark and powerful the gateway was. “It’s
alright, child.” She patted Caronwyn’s hand. “Remember I may be gone awhile,
but that doesn’t mean I have failed. Give me the gold.”
“No!” Caronwyn said, and before Cassandra could stop her,
she stepped into the darkness. Cassandra had no choice but to follow.
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