Page 79 of Filthy Little Witch
With facing through my veins, I grabbed my pistol and pointed it at the demon’s face…my brother’s face. My hand shook as I hovered my finger over the trigger, willing myself not to pull it. I wanted this fucker out of my brother, but I desperately wanted my brother back more.
Footsteps broke my focus, and I glanced up as Marta walked down the aisle between the pews. She’d been crying, her eyes puffy and wet, and I lowered the gun at the resolution on her face.
“Did you figure it out?” I asked when she climbed onto the dais next to me.
She nodded. “Yes. We’re going to banish him.”
That made the demon cackle harder, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Banish me?” The demon rolled his eyes. “Pretty little idiot, you can’t do that.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I roared and shifted my focus back to Marta. “How? I thought banishing it would hurt you, would make you lose a piece of yourself.”
Marta took a deep breath and steeled herself. “Sacrifices are always painful. But we need him back, and I’m willing to do it.”
I didn’t like the sound of it. I didn’t want her to lose anything else to this wretched place. It had already taken so much from her…from all of us.
“Marta,” I said, reaching out to cup her cheek so she had to look at me. “We can find another way.”
“The veil opens at midnight. That gives us four hours. We don’t have time.” She leaned into my touch and stepped closer so she could press her forehead to mine. “I’m not leaving here without him.”
“Me neither,” I said. “That’s not an option.”
“So we do the banishment,” she said. “We get the demon out of him, banish it to wherever it came from, complete the soul binding with Wes, and step through the veil. Easy peasy.”
Don’t let him go.
Fine. Fucking fine.
“That doesn’t sound easy,” I retorted. “But I’ll go with it. Where do we start?”
“I don’t know the spell,” she said. “But witches have done more with less, so we’ll have to wing it.”
“Wing it. Right. Feeling so much better about this.” I forced away my frustration and exhaustion to turn to Wes, who had a shit-eating grin on his face that made his obsidian eyes even more sinister.
Marta grabbed the chalice from the altar and set it down at the top of the circle, right near Wes’s head. “First, we’ll need to cleanse ourselves.”
“I didn’t see a bath anywhere.” So much for ritual oils and protection enchantments.
“Washing our hands will do.” She walked to the holy water basin and dipped her hands in, scrubbing them a few times before wiping them on her jeans. I did the same. After that, Marta grabbed some herbs from her satchel and dumped them in the incense burner before lighting a match to set them on fire. She walked around the circle three times, muttering to herself in a whisper too low to hear.
But her thoughts were clear. She was praying, asking God, the Virgin, and Saint Michael for help. She called to Saint Marta, the dragon slayer, for strength. She called to the ancestors to guide our work. She called to her parents for wisdom and love. She called to my father, to my ancestors, to Wes’s, for their power and protection.
“I invite you to use me as a channel,” she said, closing her eyes and holding her hands above her head. “Let your power run through me. Guide me. Hail and welcome. Hail and welcome. Hail and welcome.”
I took a deep breath and stood next to her. When she lowered her palms, she grabbed mine with one hand and interlaced our fingers.
“If you’ve ever had faith in God, I need you to bring that with you into this,” she said.
God and I had never had a heart-to-heart. Monsters, demons, and vampires lived among us, and I didn’t trust an omnipotent being that would allow such evil to exist. But… After everything I’d seen, after all I’d been through, how could I admit that such a thing wasn’t possible? If we needed God on our side for this, could I set aside my skepticism? Could I pray to someone…something…I’d long since questioned?
Wes writhed on the floor in the middle of the circle, testing the restraints, yanking and pulling his wrists and ankles.
Yes. I could do this for him.
I would do anything for him.
Gods were just another form of magic, another power source. They were real, and they had influence, and if Marta had placed her trust in her God, I trusted her to know it was the right thing to do.
