Page 62 of Sinistram
“What are the odds that CHARON will show up?”
“Guess we’ll find out,” Brent replied.
An hour ago, taking travel time from Pittsburgh into consideration, Brent had forced himself to make the phone call.
“Lawson? What the hell do you want?” a voice Brent recognized as Clark Davis answered.
“Shut up and listen. The Sinistram elders have been turned. They’re vampires now. We’re doing a ritual at Moraine State Park in an hour to stop them. You want in?”
“If this is your idea of a joke?—”
“In or out? The magic is starting.”
“We’ll be there.” Davis ended the call.
“If they left right after my call, they should be getting here any minute. And if they did betray us to the Sinistram, they didn’t give them much of a heads up.” Brent glanced at his watch, then looked at Travis. “It’s time to start the party.”
Brent watched Travis take a few deep breaths to clear his mind. Rowan and Aricella had already created a warded circle for them and raised a dome of protective magic to keep him from being interrupted by magic or spirits. A lit candle was placed within reach.
Travis wore a silver crucifix, several saints’ medallions, and had a flask of salted holy water. Brent also wore charms and amulets, along with protective hex bags. Given the powerful magic to be worked, those talismans couldn’t save them from a full blast, but Brent took comfort from them and figured every little bit helped.
Travis opened the steel case and pulled on magically neutral gloves made of a fine silver mesh before he lifted the Precepts grimoire from its resting place.
“Even with the gloves, I can feel the book’s magic, tugging at me. It’s like the power of the lake—so strong,” Travis told him. “The energy goes deep down, and it’s very, very old.” He pulled out a couple glow sticks and snapped them. They’d add enough light to what the candle provided for him to read, but wouldn’t distract the others.
“The ghosts are paying attention,” Brent added. “They’re awake and watching. Curious and skeptical. Here’s hoping they take our side.”
“Here I go. Wish me luck.” With that, Travis began to speak the Latin incantation that Brent knew his partner had silently rehearsed but dared not say aloud before now. Even with his limited abilities, Brent could sense the ancient magic and thought it felt stained and twisted.
A ritual of this power and magnitude took time, and Brent sensed the spell seeping into the land beneath their feet and into their bones, and perhaps into their souls. He felt the strength in the language used, the dark poetry of the phrasing, the cadence of its consonants like clacking bones.
An icy wind swept past as even more spirits gathered, long overdue for rest and justice.
“I call on the power of the lake and the deep places. Scour the rot of undeath away from the elders of the Sinistram and strip away their unholy magic,” Travis said.
Travis looked down at a yellowed piece of parchment, even more discolored in the glow. The Investiture Certificate had been presented to him when he was taken into the Sinistram as a novitiate long ago. Brent had feared that Travis might have gotten rid of it in a fit of pique after he left the Order and felt relief when his friend discovered it in his desk.
There was nothing magical about the certificate itself, but as part of the ceremony, each of the Sinistram elders had signed the paper. He had their names and their signatures. That gave him power.
Travis took a deep breath and began to read aloud.
“Enzo Bianchi, Luciano Cattaneo, Giuseppe Sala, Pietro Lombardi, Elia Bonfante, Cosimo Fanucci, Ludovic Dugoni, you have betrayed your vows, betrayed the purpose of the Order, and sold your souls for the dark magic of the undead.
“I renounce your betrayal, and by all that is Holy, renounce the abhorrent power that has consumed you.” Travis switched to Latin for the next part of the rite, while he carried out the other elements of the spell.
He took a pinch of specially-mixed herbs and dropped them into the candle flame, watching the fire turn colors and send sparks into the air. As he chanted, he drew flaming sigils in the air. Brent felt the tug of the magic on his energy, and perhaps on his soul, deep within.
The air shimmered, a swell of power made Brent’s head ache like a coming thunderstorm, and then seven men stood at a distance from where he and Travis set up the ritual.
“Travis Dominick,” a tall, thin man with sharp features, called out. Brent recognized him as Pietro Lombardi from Travis’s earlier description. “Stop this charade immediately.”
Travis never hesitated, continuing the chant, not even acknowledging the interruption.
Rowan, Aricella, Donnelly, and Peters moved a few steps closer, an unmistakable show of protection.
“This is your last warning. Return to the fold, and all will be forgiven,” Lombardi snapped, annoyed at being ignored.
Brent didn’t believe him, although he didn’t doubt the Sinistram leader would like to have Travis’s magic under his control.
