Page 15 of Filthy Little Witch
“What did you find out at the hospital?” I looked from Isobel to Caspian, praying they learned more than we did.
“One survivor is still in a coma,” she explained. “The other was too traumatized to talk about it. He did say that it came on quickly. One second, they were normal. Then he was overwhelmed with desire…like if he didn’t have sex, he would die. Literally die.”
“So a lust demon then,” Leander said. “Wonderful.”
“The farmer was pissed about his sheep,” Bridge continued. “It was a massacre. He’d already cleaned most of it up, but from what I could tell, it had all the signs of a ritualistic sacrifice.”
“What about the woods?” Caspian asked.
“We didn’t find much more than candle wax and leftover salt,” Leander added.
“The magic residue was overwhelming.” Bridge ran a hand over her face and back through her hair. “I brought a few books with me, anything I thought would be important, but there’s nothing like this in there.”
The Harlots had the most extensive collection of metaphysical and esoteric texts in the country. Our grandmothers had been gathering texts for decades, and now we maintained all of that knowledge to pass on to future generations. Bridge had the best catalogue of every book in there, even if I’d spent a large portion of my childhood roaming its shelves myself.
“Someone conjured something they shouldn’t,” Bridge continued.
“The Bloody Femmes?” Isobel raised her eyebrows in expectation.
Bridge nodded. “I think so. The energy was dark. Desperate. Almost…evil.”
“What if it’s THE Deadly Sin demon, the one who created the others?” Wes suggested. “Or maybe Babalon.”
“He’s super old,” Isobel said. “Esoteric. Why would the Femmes haul him outta hell?”
“It doesn’t matter why,” Bridge said.
“Would a liminal even work on him?” I asked. “To create one, we need to know what we’re working with.”
“We’ll do a summoning spell,” Bridge replied, “quickly followed by an exorcism to the pocket world. Once we know what we’re working with, we can adjust the spell accordingly.”
“What about the salt ward?” I shook my head. “I’ve never seen anything that powerful. He might be able to walk right through it.”
“There are three of us,” Isobel replied. “And four warriors. That should be enough.”
Should be.
That didn’t make me feel better.
“Great.” Isobel shook her head, sighed, and glanced at the rest of the warriors in the room. “The moon is conjunct Mars tonight at exactly 9:03 p.m. We’ll go to the same spot where the Femmes conjured the son of a bitch and pull on that power to build the liminal.”
That, too, made sense. We could pull on any residual energy left there to trap this specific monster.
“We leave in twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes? I doubted I’d be ready for a walk, much less a ritual, in that time. Especially with all this warrior energy buzzing around my molecules.
That decided, Isobel and Caspian left, quickly followed by Bridge and Leander, leaving me alone with my warriors. I licked the rest of the chocolate off my lips and swung my legs around to stand, wanting to head to the room I shared with my cousin. But when I sat up fully, my vision swam, and another wave of unease rocked through me.
“Hey, take it easy,” Wes said, grabbing my arm to help me up.
I shrugged him off. “I said I’m fine.”
“Clearly, you’re not,” he snapped.
I glared at him, suddenly irritated with his fussing over me. I didn’t need his help. Either of them. I sensed his frustration and disappointment as I walked outside to ground myself in the earth’s energy before we left.
CHAPTER 6
