Page 47 of Sinistram
That drove the witch back, but Brent knew it couldn’t hold her long, and Travis wasn’t done yet with his incantation.
The spirits swarmed toward the witch, a wave of gray figures powered by anger. Travis kept chanting, and Brent dug a witch-banishing mark into the ground with his knife, then blasted it with fire.
The witch screamed again, hemmed in on all sides by the ghosts. The fire and sigil took a toll. She looked translucent, no longer solid, and her piercing scream no longer deafened everyone in range.
Two of the ghosts that made themselves visible to Brent surged toward the witch, one from each side. They plunged through the witch’s water form, and when they met in the middle, both the ghosts and the witch vanished.
“Go in peace,”Travis told the haunts, then he turned to his partner.
“Brent? You, okay?” Travis gently shook him by the shoulder.
“Yeah. Just…concentrating really hard,” Brent replied. “I zoned out. I could actuallyseea couple of them.”
“She’s gone,” Travis said. “No sign of the witch or her magic. If she was compelled to come here or stay against her will, I guess she went back to wherever she came from.” Travis went still, listening for the ghosts. “A few of the ghosts stuck around, some moved on, and some just disappeared. I don’t think they’ll be bothering anyone.”
Something drew Brent’s attention to the edge of the forest. A dark form with red eyes stared out from the shadows before vanishing. “Do you see that?” He pointed.
“See what?” Travis looked in the same direction, but the manifestation was gone.
“I thought I saw something with red eyes under the trees,” Brent replied.
“Certainly wouldn’t be the first time we had multiple hauntings at the same place.” Travis scanned the shadows warily. He laid down a fresh salt circle around the two of them, lit a candle, and pulled his flask of holy water from his pocket. “Be gone from here, all infernal and evil spirits. Depart from this place and do not return. Harm no one and take your eternal rest. Your presence is not wanted here. Go, and trouble this place no more.”
A cold wind rose out of nowhere, sending a chill down Brent’s back. Then mournful howls sounded from deep in the woods, feral as a wolf, a sound his hindbrain recognized as a mortal threat.
Three beasts burst from the tree cover, running at full speed. Despite their speed, Brent knew they weren’t regular wolves, too large, too rangy, and with red eyes. They came at Brent and Travis with teeth bared and claws ready.
“Shit. I’m so done with this,” Brent muttered.
Travis drew his Glock and fired a barrage of silver bullets that tore into the lead creature’s chest, dropping it in its tracks and spraying black blood across the grass.
Brent still held the souped-up torch. He brandished the weapon, swinging the flame in an arc to keep the second and third monsters at a distance, but the tank was nearly empty, and it wouldn’t last much longer.
The two creatures growled and bared their teeth, wary of the flames. Instead, they separated, circling in different directions, making sure Brent couldn’t fend off both of them.
Travis shouted words of power that sent the two wolves flying backward. Before they could regain their footing, Travis blasted one with his shotgun, and Brent put a silver bullet right between the eyes of the third.
When the creatures fell to the ground and lay still, Travis and Brent approached warily, guns ready.
“Pretty sure they’re dead.” Brent took in the bullet-ridden bodies. “But what the hell were they?”
Travis walked around the corpses while still keeping his gun trained on them. “Not a normal wolf.”
“Doesn’t look like a werewolf,” Brent mused. “At least, not the sort we’ve seen. The body and muzzle are all wrong.”
“And they aren’t shifting back to a human form,” Travis noted. “Maybe cryptids of some sort got powered up by the spell that made the witch more dangerous.”
“Might be the basis for the Ol’ Red Eyes stories,” Brent said.
“Maybe.” Travis lifted his face to the wind, as if he were listening for the ghosts.“Do you know what they were?” he asked the spirits aloud.
“The ghosts think something drew them out of the deep woods,” Travis told Brent a few moments later. “The only reason I can think of is to be a hunter trap, like powering up the witch. Trying to cause enough trouble to be sure hunters would come out to deal with it, and hope that it got them.”
They thanked the ghosts and dragged the wolf-creatures to the edge of the tree line, hoping forest scavengers would deal with the bodies.
“I think we’ve overstayed our welcome,” Travis replied. “Let’s fall back before anything else charges out of the forest and figure out what the hell is going on.”
They stayed on high alert, guns ready, and retreated to the car. Nothing tried to follow them, but Brent couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. Travis told him the ghosts had dissipated but remained nearby.
