Queen of wands

CHAPTER ONE

“You okay?” Mark Everette asked as he came out of the bathroom. The executive was already dressed and had a suit coat over his shoulder on a hanger. “You don’t look so good.”

“Thank you for your phrasing,” Barbara Everette replied. Mark’s thirty-four-year-old-one year his junior-wife was sitting on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands. She’d been in much the same position when he started his morning ablutions. Normally she’d have been dressed and getting breakfast ready by now. “I’m fine,” Barb continued, looking up and wincing at the light from the bathroom. “Just a headache.”

“Okay,” Mark said, frowning. “You’ve been getting a lot of those lately. Maybe you should see Dr. Barnett.”

“I doubt that the good doctor could do much for me,” Barbara replied. “You’re going to be late. Allison can fix breakfast.”

“I don’t have time to take the kids to school,” Mark pointed out.

“I’ve got it,” Barb said. “Just…go. And let Lazarus in when you leave.”

Barbara sighed in relief as Mark left the bedroom, then felt a pang of regret. She really should be drawing strength from her husband, not feeling drained. But Mark had never been much of a nurturer. He expected to be supported and comforted, not the other way around. And explaining her current problem as anything other than “a headache” would have the men in the white coats at the house faster than you could say “Mommy had to go away.” Because Barb was hearing voices.

A year ago this never would have happened. Just a year before, she’d been a nice, normal homemaker with, on the outside, the perfect life. Nice house in a nice neighborhood, steady husband with a good job who neither cheated on her nor abused her, three great kids and the respect of her friends and fellow homemakers. Need a hand with the bake sale? Call Barb. Charity auction? Barb’s your gal.

Oh, Barbara Everette had her oddities, anyone would admit. Most of her fellow homemakers did not pack a pistol in their purse. And when the rest of the gals were down at Curves going through a gentle workout guaranteed to raise no more than a glisten, Barb was practicing and teaching a variety of Oriental martial arts and tossing around men twice her size. Both of those oddities were legacies of an Air Force dad who’d dragged his family around to a multitude of Far East postings, as were the occasional loan-words she’d slowly filtered out of her vocabulary. The church ladies of Algomo, Mississippi were unfamiliar with such pejoratives as kwei-lo and gaijin.

But a year ago she’d made either the greatest or the worst mistake of her life. Tired of the endless domestic routine, she had insisted on “just one weekend” alone. She just wanted two days to do whatever she wished, mainly find a nice hotel and sit around reading.

A series of chance happenings, or more likely God-driven choices, had left her marooned in a backwater Cajun town. One that had been taken over by a demon.

That was when Barbara Everette discovered that there was more inside her than she’d ever dreamed. She had been a committed Believer since she was quite young, it was just part of her makeup. She’d inherited the full measure of an Irish temper along with the slightly curly strawberry-blonde tresses. Faith kept that in check.

But in Thibideau she’d discovered there were times for that full-blown rage to manifest in the service of the Lord. Such as when a cult was killing women to feed their demon master. And she discovered that true devotion, faith and service paid off when the Lord gave her the power to not only challenge the demon but blow its lousy ass straight back to Hell.

She’d survived. Police had become involved. Then psychiatrists had become involved when she refused to admit to “reality.” There were, of course, no such things as demons. Yes, a group had been committing serial crimes, but demons weren’t involved, Mrs. Everette. Take the nice pills.

Fortunately, there were people to deal with the police. Barbara was recruited by a group that dealt with “Special Circumstances.” That was the euphemism the FBI had coined, very quietly, for those rare cases where things got “beyond normal activities.” When werewolves stalked the night, vampires drifted through open windows, when demons and their worshippers gathered their powers. When the supernatural intruded on their normal and customary doings.

To fight the supernatural required very special skills, ones that the majority of the populace, much less the police, did not develop. It required not only Belief but a firm commitment and connection to a god.

“A” god was the part that at first surprised Barbara. She was the only member of the Foundation for Love and Universal Faith who was a Protestant Christian. The rest were pagans of various flavors, Hindu, Wiccan, Asatru worshippers of the Norse Gods. The group was in contact with and occasionally drew on support from the Catholic Church, and in some cases, specific rabbis became involved when a Hebrew rite was of use. But she was the only Protestant for sure.

But she had, by then, become able to sense the power of others, its source and level. And the people she now associated with were, unquestionably, on the side of Light. Otherwise, she could not have fed power to her closest friend when a demon drained her soul. Given that Janea was a high-class call girl, stripper and a High Priestess of Freya, the Norse goddess of fertility, joining FLUF had required some reevaluation of the details of her Belief. “Suffer not a witch to live” simply did not compute.

The current problem was just a new development. She knew that, intellectually, and generally she could wrap her emotions around it. But it was a royal pain in the ass. It wasn’t ESP; she couldn’t read minds. She just heard voices. If she couldn’t feel the similarity to her God channel, she’d simply go to the shrinks and get the nice pills to make the voices go away.

The voices were generally simply unintelligible whispers, but sometimes they got comprehensible. And generally when she could hear them clearly, they were negative. “You’re no good.” “You’re not a good mother.” “Everyone hates you.” Sometimes there were positive messages, but those were rare. She could ignore it, mostly. She knew she wasn’t a bad mother, that she wasn’t a bad person. But it was just so constant.

And then yesterday she’d seen something. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it looked like a black snake wrapped around a young woman’s neck. The head, which was more humanoid looking, had its fangs sunk into the woman’s shoulder.

Barb had almost asked the woman about it before she realized that nobody else was noticing the snake. And she’d received a serious “death stare” from the woman, more like a girl, for no reason she could determine. As she passed the woman, the thing had hissed at her quite clearly. Again, nobody in the grocery store noticed. The woman herself didn’t even appear to notice.

But things were getting seriously weird in Barb-world these days.

Mark left the door to the bedroom open, his back set in disapproval, and a black cat oozed into the room and up onto her lap.

As soon as Lazarus curled into her lap, the voices didn’t stop, but they were muted. She scratched the cat on the back of the head and pulled him in close.

“What’s happening, Laz?” she whispered. “What in the hell is happening?”

“Mark, I’m going to have to go out of town,” Barb said as she pulled the half-and-half out of the refrigerator. It had taken her nearly thirty minutes to put on a bit of makeup and a jogging suit. Something had to be done.

“Again?” her husband asked, surprised.

“It’s been nearly two months since I went to a Foundation meeting,” Barb said, trying to keep a combination of annoyance from the voices, annoyance at Mark and low blood sugar from causing a blowup. “It’s beyond time.”

The problem was, okay, in honesty, she’d coddled Mark. She had, throughout their marriage, managed the household. It could, arguably, be other than coddling. Mark was a disaster in the kitchen when they were first married, to the point that she’d thrown him out. And, frankly, it was just easier to pick up after him than get him to do it. So she cleaned the house, she did the cooking and the dishes. Over the years, Mark had gotten to the point where he barely knew where the pots and pans were. So going away before Allison stepped into the breach was a serious problem; the entire household generally fell apart.

The other problem was, no one knew what Barbara did on the side. Mark was not someone she could sit down with and calmly explain that she was now fighting demons. Demons didn’t exist in the world of peanut processing. Besides, the Foundation was as secret as the best mystics in the world could make it. So she had to lie. Lying wasn’t one of those things good Christian wives were supposed to do with their husbands, but there really wasn’t another choice.

“Allison will manage the house,” Barb said, looking over at her fifteen-year-old daughter. A year ago she’d have said that with the greatest of trepidation, but since the night Barb had “adopted” Lazarus, Allison had been an absolute model child. In fact, Barb was fairly sure that Allison knew damned well that Mommy’s trips didn’t have much to do with prayer meetings. Oh, there was quite a bit of praying, but it was generally along the lines of “Lord, please keep the demon from eating my soul.”

“I’ve got it, Dad,” Allison said, looking up from the book she was reading. Normally, there was no reading at the table. Breakfast was generally an exception. “Jason and Brooke will help.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jason asked grumpily. The male twin had his father’s dark looks, as did Brooke. Allison seemed to draw almost entirely from her mother. “Who’s gonna make me?”

“ I will,” Allison said, staring him down. “Or do you really want to take me on, little brother?”

“No,” Jason admitted, bending his head back down to his plate. “Allison’s got it. We’ll help.”

“Fine,” Mark sighed, picking up his suit. He’d finished breakfast and was on his way out the door. “Whatever. Write when you get work.”

“I love you, too,” Barbara snapped as the door closed. “Lord, forgive me for that.”

“He will,” Allison said, handing a bit of bacon to Lazarus. The cat licked it for a moment, then got it into his mouth and disappeared under the table, purring.

“It was uncalled for,” Barbara replied, pouring a cup of coffee. Her hand shook so badly that she slopped some of it on the counter, and when she tried to pick up a spoon to stir the cream and sugar, she dropped it back into the drawer.

“Mom, are you okay?” Allison asked.

“Everyone keeps asking that!” Barbara snapped, then sighed. “I’m sorry, Allison. No, I’m not okay. But I will be. I just need to go…see some people.”

“It’s not cancer, is it?” Brooke asked worriedly. One of her friends had died of juvenile leukemia when she was still in preschool, and it had left a scar. “You’re not dying, are you, Mommy?”

“No, it’s not cancer,” Barbara said, getting the mess cleaned up and her coffee stirred. She could perform a full Swan Drifts Over Mountain Above Clouds maneuver, something that no more than ten people in the world could equal. She could damned well stir her coffee. “I’ll be fine. I just need to go see some friends and get some advice.”

“It’s the Change, isn’t it?” Jason said, not looking up from his plate. “Bobby Townsend’s mom is doing the Change. That’s what he calls it, anyway.”

“It’s not menopause, Jason,” Barbara said, trying not to laugh. “I’m only thirty-four. That won’t happen until I’m in my fifties. You’ll be out of the house.”

“Good,” Jason said. “Because Bobby says his momma’s going crazy.”

Lazarus had finished his bacon and now oozed back out from under the table and rubbed against her leg. Whenever the familiar touched her, the voices became less. But she couldn’t pet him and use both hands. She looked down at him then picked him up and set him on her shoulder. “You. Stay.”

“That looks…really weird, Mom,” Allison said as Barb pulled out the makings of breakfast. The cat had all four feet planted on her left shoulder and was swaying to keep in place. But he wasn’t moving.

“Yeah,” Barb admitted, preparing some instant oatmeal. It was about all her stomach was going to take this morning. “But it works.” She glanced at the clock and shook her head. “Time for you guys to be done. Out the door in ten.”

“Brooke, eat it or throw it away,” Allison said. “Moving it around your plate doesn’t count. Jason, three bites then head for the room.”

“Yes, Mother,” Jason said, sarcastically. She really had sounded like Barbara, who had gotten her parenting skills from a military spouse and her officer husband.

“Mom, what’s really wrong?” Allison asked as soon as the younger kids were gone.

“Not something I can explain, honey,” Barb said, sitting down at the table.

“Mom, I know, okay?” Allison said, gesturing with her chin at the cat still perched on Barbara’s shoulder.

“No, you don’t ‘know,’ Allison,” Barbara replied, tartly. “You suspect some things and you think you know others. If the time ever comes, I’ll explain as much as I can. But you do not ‘know’ anything.”

“I know where that cat came from,” Allison pointed out.

About six months ago, Allison had fallen into bad company. The bad company in this case being a softball coach with almost “magical” abilities. Barb had at first feared that there was hanky-panky going on when the coach started taking the girls off for “team-building exercises.” Then, after using her connections in the Foundation to get background information, her more paranoid side had starting ringing alarm bells. The coach had previously been associated with both Satanic and Santeria sects. And the change in the team had been…demonic. Metaphorically.

Barb had charged in in full demon-slayer mode: battle gear, bell, book and cross, ready to take on demons or acolytes with mundane or magical weaponry.

In fact, the coach had been a poseur. He used the trappings of Satanic rites to convince the girls they had magical backing. When Barb burst out of the darkness he’d literally wet himself.

What had Barb charging in was a “magic rite” involving the sacrifice of a young cat. She’d gotten there just a bit too late to save the black cat’s life, but not too late to save the souls of some young girls. They got the immediate impression that playing Satanist was not in their best interest.

And then God had given her a greater gift than she had ever imagined; the ability to raise that cat from the grave. Lazarus came back not as some sort of zombie but as a fully functional cat, albeit one that could not be far from Barbara. Will she, nil she, Barb now had a familiar. Another thing the Bible was unquestionably dead set against. It got confusing.

And Allison had proof positive, every single day, that Mommy was something special. Barb had been in full-fig down to the balaclava, but there was no way that a daughter wasn’t going to recognize her mother’s voice. And when Mom had turned up at home, there was that same cat. Seeing God’s power manifest tended to change a person, and it had changed Allison immensely.

“I mean, ‘Lazarus’ is a little obvious, isn’t it, Mom?” Allison continued.

“It seemed appropriate,” Barb said, realizing that she was for the first time admitting she had been the battle-armored figure in the night. “What on earth got you to bring that up now, of all times?”

“I think it took me this long to work up the courage,” Allison said.

“What I do on these trips is not open for discussion,” Barbara said and then held up a hand to forestall a reply. “It’s simply not. Among other things, there are aspects that are really and truly legally classified. And there are things I just don’t want you to know. There are things I don’t want to know. But the current problem is…complicated. I’m not going to discuss it with you, but I am going to get help. Okay?”

“Okay,” Allison said, biting her lip. “You are going to be okay, right?”

Barb stopped considering blouses and decided to get it over with. Digging into the back of the closet, she finally found the Black Bag.

The bag had at first resided in the back of the Honda. But as she came to accept that her place was in Algomo, not slaying demons, it had crept slowly through the house and eventually been covered by shoes in the back of the closet. Pulling it out was a wrench, the final statement that it was time to go be Other Barb.

She didn’t like that side of her. It was more than the fear of pride, one of the deadliest sins. It was that that side of her awoke an anger she fought every day. She had tagged that side of her Bad Barb and, at first, she had mentally translated Bad as Evil.

Over time she had come to realize that the words were right, but the meaning wrong.

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,” Barb said, pulling the bag out and setting it by the bed.

“Because He comforts you?” Alison asked, tearing up. “Because that’s not a comfort to me, Mom.”

Barb reached down and slid open the zipper of the bag, throwing back the cover.

Only the top layer of the materials in the bag were revealed but that was enough. One side of the bag held a katana, a long, curved, Japanese sword that had already slain one demon. The other side held an AR-10 carbine that had helped slay another. Between the two were a cluster of stakes, knives, bottles of holy water and a King James Bible.

“No, sweety,” Barbara said, kissing her on the head. “Because I am the baddest bitch in the valley.”

“Sharice,” Barbara said, hugging the woman.

Coming to the Foundation had been a good choice. Apparently the mystical barriers that protected the fortress of the Foundation were proof even against the voices. They’d stopped the moment she drove through the gates.

The Center for the Foundation was located in the western North Carolina hills, not far from Asheville. A collection of buildings from several different architectural styles, it rambled through a fifteen-acre wooded park.

The main parking area was by the administrative building, which was a Chinese pagoda. It was flanked by the Asatru House, a mostly traditional Norse longhouse. There were Swiss chalets, Japanese teahouses, a small Gothic chapel and still more buildings on the rambling walkways.

Sharice Rickels was a plump, bright-eyed, silver-haired woman in her late sixties. She was dressed for work in a paisley patterned dress and wearing her normal collection of gobs of silver jewelry; the woman lugged around at least ten pounds of metal. One of the most notable Wiccan High Priestesses in the United States, she had been a field agent for FLUF for over thirty years before going into semi-retirement. Given that the normal lifespan of a field agent was less then ten years, she was both a survivor and a powerful and fey mystical fighter. She hugged Barbara back then looked her in the eye.

“You are a mass of energy, girl,” the witch said, frowning. “Your aura is out of control. What have you done to yourself?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Barb said, almost crying. The relief at finally having the voices stop, and being able to talk about it with someone who wouldn’t think she was crazy, was almost overwhelming.

“You need tea,” Sharice said, nodding firmly. “Everything else will wait.”

“You’re not crazy,” Sharice said after Barbara’s, to her own ears, unintelligible report of the recent events. “You’re just getting new Gifts.”

“Gifts,” Barbara said with a snort, sipping the herbal tea. “Gifts.”

“Gifts,” Sharice replied, nodding. “Gifts aren’t easy, girl. That’s why the All doesn’t give them to everyone. You already had Channeling and Projection, which is so rare it’s almost unheard of. I had to look it up in some really obscure tomes.”

“Projection?” Barbara said.

“When you shot The Dark One in Louisiana,” Sharice said, refusing to use the demon’s name. “You Projected your White God’s power into the bullets. Very rare.”

“And the sword in Roanoke,” Barbara said, nodding. “But this is…”

“Oh, these are normal Gifts, dear,” Sharice said, chuckling. “I think you might have gotten more than your fair measure, as usual, but they’re quite normal. Sight and The Ear.”

“Sight?” Barbara said. “I don’t see…” She paused and realized that she could see a glimmer around Sharice. She shook her head and it went away. “At least I don’t think I see auras.”

“You’re able to suppress that one, I see,” Sharice said, dryly. “But, yes, you’ve got the Sight. I’ve heard its common for the White God’s acolytes to see the lesser infestations. That’s what you’re seeing.”

“The…things on people?” Barb said. She’d seen even more in the trip to North Carolina. In one restaurant they seemed to be on every shoulder.

“Lesser demons,” Sharice said. “Ever heard the term ‘I’ve been wrestling with my demons’?”

“But that’s…”

“Not always a metaphor, dear,” Sharice continued. “In far too many cases it’s quite real. They are drakni, the lesser demons that possess people all the time. They come in a variety of flavors and can be a real nuisance. They can even be deadly if they work through humans. Ted Bundy was covered with the things, what your people refer to as a Legion. And more had sunk into him. Most serial killers are their playthings. But drakni have to have something to latch onto in the first place. There must be the psychological and mystical equivalent of a shoulder. Most people have them, but for drakni, it needs to be…broad. They can’t work with nothing.”

“And they can’t be stopped?” Barb said, aghast. “I saw dozens of them just in this one trip! Are you saying…”

“Thousands, millions of people who are possessed?” Sharice said, sadly. “Yes. I am. And, no, there is nothing we have found to wipe them out short of killing them one by one. And that requires something that’s very hard to get; full Belief and agreement on the part of the possessed. Try going up to one of those people you saw and saying, ‘You have a demon on your shoulder and it’s getting into your soul. I can get rid of it, but only if you give your soul to the Good Lord Jesus…’”

“Ouch,” Barb said. She was not a proselytizer. She believed in the doctrine of Witnessing, being the best Christian you could be every single day and converting by example.

“I’d suspect that more than one of your Christian screamers truly has the Sight,” Sharice said, sighing. “They are quite serious in their intentions if they do. The problem is separating them from the ones that simply use it as a metaphor. But that is your one new Gift.”

“That I can see demons and not be able to do anything about them?” Barb said. “How is that a Gift?”

“Well, you can see demons, even if they’re not manifest,” Sharice pointed out. “Remolus would have left a visual clue to someone with Sight. You would have been able to detect him in Krake the first time you saw him.”

One of her previous investigations had involved a serial killer who was stalking science fiction conventions. She had had to deduce who it was at one convention by a process of elimination. When the killer decided that she was closing in, the elimination had been of lives.

“You say it’s fairly common,” Barb said. “Why not send someone with Sight on the investigation?”

“Sight is a tricky power,” Sharice said. “All of them are. People, even very good mystics, tend to suppress them. To repeat: Gifts are not easy. Most of the operatives we have with Sight can see auras well enough but have a hard time with demons. Admittedly, as deeply as Remolus was possessing Krake, it should have shown up in his aura. But we didn’t know that at the time. But you’re backwards, as is usually the case with Christians. You can’t suppress the sight of demons yet, but you can suppress auras. You’d have spotted him almost automatically. And when you do get to reading auras? Fully possessed individuals, their auras will be almost black.”

“Nice to know,” Barbara said. “Not. The Ear?”

“The only drakni you’re going to see are those that have attached,” Sharice said, carefully. “There are far more that are not.”

“I’m hearing demons?” Barbara asked.

“Demons, ghosts, which are often associated with demons, psychic echoes,” Sharice said, shrugging. “You’re hearing mystic voices. The good news is that if you learn to tune it, The Ear can do many things for you. You can find out what a demon’s True Name is. There is an undercurrent to the voices, like data in a router packet that tells the system what the origin of the packet is. It repeats the True Name of the demons. It’s also sometimes an audible channel to your God and his servants. You might just be able to hear angels, although they rarely have anything more complicated to say than ‘Wheeeee! Look what I can do!’ We’re going to have to do some serious work on you, girl. I’ll be fascinated to see the limits of your Gifts. If you have them.”