Submerging oneself in water, according to the grimoire, facilitated and directed a spirit witch’s movement into the astral realm, aiding her ability to arrive at a specific location quickly.
No more wading through gray aspic. Helen would now do the teleportation the book mentioned earlier. If she got lucky. If she got unlucky, well…
She swallowed a big gulp. Cowboy up, Hell-ster.
“Hail to the four corners and the sentinels of the watchtowers.” Goddamn, saying that aloud make it sound extra hardcore. Far off in the distance, a faint rumble shook the air. Helen flinched. Probably just a car motor. Yeah.
“Sister Water, I, a spirit born, humbly call upon your powers. Please expedite my passage into the astral farther and send me to fight an imposter who loves me not.”
A fork of lighting slashed the sky, lighting gray electric purple. Helen clenched fists. She couldn’t wimp out due to a little rough weather.
“Sister Water, I, a supplicant, bow to you and request your assistance. I must accost a malicious doppelganger and transport its victim to safety.” Allegedly, the spell, if executed right, would empower Helen to pull someone else onto to astral road and teleport them right along with her. In other words, this was her shot to get her nude ass to the doppelganger, collect Brian, and bring him home.
A complex plan with a lot of moving parts, but she did not have a plethora of options.
Thunder rolled through the air in an unmistakable bowling pin crack. Okay, okay, this had to be Sister Water jazzing up the whole ordeal. No sweat. She couldn’t freak. No way would the elemental goddess she begged for help allow her to die by electrocution.
Right?
A foreshadowing note of ozone joined the airborne palate of pollution and autumnal ripeness. Drops of water struck Helen’s nose and forehead in a tepid trio of pats. She had to stay cool. For Brian. Fear raced through her in chaotic spurts but, nevertheless, she persisted.
“Sister Water, please deliver me now. Allow this physical coil to serve as my anchor as I detach and travel to my impostor.”
The sky parted in a godlike roar, a barrage of streams hurdling toward Helen’s upturned face as the storm launched an assault.
Concrete pressed hard against Helen’s skin. Her eyes burned. She lay in the fetal position on the floor of some kind of shed or storage room that smelled of mold.
The space held no packed boxes or crates, but it wasn’t empty. In front of her, hems of black robes grazed bare feet. A pentagram, the inside peppered with items, marked the floor in red. Inside the star sat a business card, a guitar pick, and a miniature tin of mints. The objects she’d taken from Brian’s hotel room.
Kris must’ve somehow pilfered Brian’s items from Helen’s suitcase during the fight with Tilly. Stuck them in her clutch.
Positioned in the center of the sinister drawing, something glasslike caught limited light—one of the clear crystals.
Act fast. Helen clawed her way over on her hands and knees and scooped up the assortment of objects. She leapt to her feet, an attempt to shout Brian’s name, stymied by a burning sensation in her lungs. A violent cough tore up her esophagus, bringing with it a stinging surge of water that she spat.
“Hey, what the fuck?” a man shouted, speech muffled as though an object covered his face.
“Brian.” Her word was a scraped croak. She sized up the scene. Three people in robes and silver masks. One clutched a tome to their chest.
The doppelganger held a knife to Brian’s neck.
“Drop the knife or I swallow this.” Helen hoisted the crystal in the air.
The clone released Brian and stalked toward Helen with the blade pointed. “I’ll cut you open and take it back.”
“You better not, because if you kill the hex generator this ends right here.”
“She’s right, we need her involvement.” One of the robed figures spoke in a tense male voice, putting his hands in the air. Great. She had the motherfuckers on the run.
“Drop the knife,” Helen said.
Snarling, the clone continued her menacing march.
“Jesus Christ.” Brian drew out every hushed syllable.
As if mocking his prayer, a guttural, screeching roar filled the small space, so loud and horrid the air shook in primordial trembles. The clone froze in her tracks. Helen’s bowels quaked with liquid doom.
A funnel of white mist poured from her transparent stone in a continuous, billowing plume. The cloud shot to the ceiling, where it coalesced into something with a sloppy form, but a form nonetheless. Beady eyes, two rows of jagged teeth filling a gaping maw, noodles of endless arms ending in bestial claws that flapped about as if hunting for flesh to tear. The longer she looked, the more the inchoate blob developed into a figure.
The clone dropped to her knees. She set the knife down with a soft tap and folded her hands in front of her chest. “Master.”
The masked men bent their faces skyward and gawked at the floating fiend.
Helen and Brian exchanged glances loaded with meanings. Fright, but not shock. Anticipation. The intellectual part-assembly feeling of hatching an unspoken plan.
Creeping on her tiptoes, Helen snuck up on the clone and snatched the knife.
Deep in reverence, the clone didn’t notice.
The three enraptured men in costume didn’t budge either.
The entity on the ceiling growled again, lowering itself and coiling around Brian. Puffs the color of engine exhaust wafted off the body, twisting around him as the thing raked cloud-claws on a spot above his hip.
“Do you forsake all other masters, both worldly and beyond, giving yourself in joy and supplication to the joining?” Joe spoke, upswing and shakiness in his voice.
“No,” Brian said.
The monster howled as if enraged by Brian’s calm demeanor. A smoky face and hands pressed, poked, and rooted around the same area on Brian’s body while he stood there as poised as a Buckingham Palace
