Black Majik Woman

*** Takes place from roughly Evanescence 8 until present day.

It’s taken more time than I’d have liked for the better part of the pain from getting shot in the leg to fade. Majik’s a wonderful thing but getting hurt it can really suck. There’s only a few types of mages that self heal well and I am not one of them. Plus I’ve a nice scar from the Demon Rapture shooting me with the .357 his meat-sack was wearing.

Once I got home I summoned the Abatwa and prepared them this feast. The little jungle warriors came here from Africa and I took my offering out of my freezer and fridge. A pork hock cooked slow in bbq sauces, a microwaved sweet potato, a dish with my jumbo in it and a beer in a bowl with a teaspoon of molasses added to it and seven shots of dark rum a cigar and three large chunks of sugar cane.

I passed out trying to rest after that waking to the planting on tiny feet on my nose. I focused on the little chieftain a western African type of spirit. Never call them or mistake them for the fae, they aren’t.

I’ll gloss over the rest save I provided him with the lavish feast and the rest of the bottle of rum in exchange for my healing. They're powers are rough but they work fast, fast for me is more important than anything. I couldn’t afford to be lamed up.

They partied and fixed my leg while I had a few drinks myself and slept. Yeah, I was safe and under their protection while they were healing me. They might be small but size doesn’t matter not with majik.

***

It was about a week after that when Raine reached out to me and touched my mind. We’ve been in contact once before and she saved my butt and you gotta respect anyone that green facing down an asshole like Rapture. That little girl doesn’t remember anything but this older girl keeping the bad man away. She took all the girl’s hurts too, sucked them all into the aura as part of the price.

Shea…I know who and what he was and he was a bastard but he wasn’t hooked up with a seed of evil like that green essence stone. I didn’t like the hell stink off of him I got and the green color shining in his eyes.

***
It took another five days driving around the country sides and different towns meeting other spell workers and checking out private libraries held in secret by their owners and trading potions and charms as well as going through several cases of really old, really good rum and tobacco. It’s a very good thing I take my services in trade, it keeps me in goods.

I’m in Beauregard Parish in an old basement joined to other basements underground library where I discover a drawing of the damned emerald. The eye of Asmodeus…

(Cut from a secret quarry in the Zagros Mountains, this was a gift to her husband the demi angel Asmodeus from Lilith, in an effort to consecrate his rulership over the Eastern world and to aid him in his defeat of Solomon. It was used to contain vast powers that he took from his thousands of sacrifices and fallen foes in battle and not just a battery for mana but shaped with pure majik and heavenly essence as well as the demonic in equal measures.)

There’s a drawing of it and it looks just like the thing around Shea’s neck. That’s such bad news. If he’s got that then he’d at least be able to talk to Asmodeus through it given his fae immortal nature.

I take out my pack and take out blank sheets of paper and transfer the information by copying the shapes of what’s written on the pages onto the blank papers. It won’t harm the books; I sacrifice a vial of gall mixed with sepia into the majik to provide my own ink for the spell.

The owner knows I can do this and my price for permission is a dinner that night with the local casters and covens in a witch’s gathering. I’m a bit of a celebrity in the community and since I rarely leave Miami it guess it’s a big deal.

I was casting spells and have had the knack of it since I was a kid. It doesn’t help that my first time at a gathering was at Mardi Gras in N’Orleans and Marie Laveux came to me during the partying in the streets. Apparently that’s a sign and a bag of chips in the realms of southern majik and voodoo.

I’ve had people treat me like royalty and wanting to kill me at the same time. Harry Potter can kiss my ass. I’ve faced things that eat all his enemies for lunch.

Innsmouth still gives me nightmares.

It’s a nice gathering and as much as I love Miami and everything there there’s something about partying in the real south. A bunch of local guys playing stuff like Mountain, Confederate Railroad, Black Sabbath and AC/DC while there’s a bunch of drunk off their ass wiccan’s doing the boil and bubble chant over a huge but very real cauldron full of Crawdads and Andouille sausage and corn cobs with a whole bunch of lemons and other spices in it.

‘Tater salad and deep fried catfish and whole pig cooked low and slow with a sweet rub under mesquite.

The beers taste too good and are way too cold and after a feed like that I’m into the southern comfort and a few mint juleps to be polite and my fingers itch to play so I join in with my Yamaha and play some old and good old fashioned soul music.

I’m well lit by the time I retire to the bed and breakfast that I’m staying at and was well into a good nights sleep when I head sounds.

It took me a few minutes to wake up and slip on my Led zeppelin over sized t-shirt of houses of the holy and then I felt something break my alarming wards. Hey; Grandma Lattimer didn’t raise no fools.

I feel around and the owners aren’t here and the door’s open. To the front door of the place. Not a good sign.

I slip into my jeans and there’s a creak on the floorboards as I button them and the windows smash open and there’s three men in dark clothes with shimmering green eyes. They hiss and then vamp out on me looking angry and hungry and pissed.

Garan-fucking-teed there’s more waiting for me to bolt through the door. Vamp logic’s pretty stupid really. One of them smiles around his fangs and says with a hint of a French accent. “You should not have been looking in places where you don’t belong Cherie.”

“I’m not your Cherie, and as far as me looking where I shouldn’t be looking vamp, I think you just trumped me there.”

“How’s that then.”

I smile. Then there’s an inhuman growl out in the hallway of a cat, a very big jungle cat. The door bursts open revealing a seven foot tall semi humanoid feline holding one of the demon juiced vampires in one clawed hand. The were-panther shakes the thing in his hand like a rag doll and pops its head off like the way we used to pop the heads off of dandelions as kids. The vamp screeches and turns into dust as it’s decapitated.

I give the three demon-vampires my best coquettish smile. “Gentlemen meet Colton, Colton meet the guys who want to kill me.”

They snarl and jump him. I step back out of the way and let him work. There’s nothing like watching a were in its element. Unless it’s watching them do it using Capoeria. Colton makes quick work of two of them and the third one came over the bed at me and I throw up a shield.

It hammers at it with supernatural strength but it’s doing little. I’m a voodoo sorceress, I do majik right on the edge of darkness sometimes and I’d have been dead long ago if I couldn’t raise a shield that’s proof against the undead.

“You better tell Michel that if he’s going to send his lackey’s after me then he had better really know who he’s dealing with. So I’m curious, what happens when you die? Do you go to hell where your new master resides or does the beast get to roast you on its spit?”

Colton grabs it and slams its face into my shield. I reach through and grab its face and feel. I dump power into its form; the vampire’s already invaded by Asmodeus’s energies mine slip in between the cracks like I’m hacking its essence. I reach inside and feel…dig deep inside and feel why…why this union….

He want’s them to fail, he wants them to die. The vampire essence and majik is being hijacked by his essence and once they come to him in hell he’s got a soul thing that’s got the powers and strengths of a vampire melded with his own breed of demon spawn. He’s creating an army and in return he’s letting them keep their powers free of The Beast on earth…like any hell trapped douchebag it’s all about the fine print. They’re going to be a whole new kind of demon and while that army is building he’s using them to do his dirty work.

I can feel The Beast raging on the other side of the link to its creature. Hmm, I change my majik into a banishment spell. It’s not going to affect the vamp at all but it casts the demon energy link back into hell. The vampire thing screams and I pull out as The Beast surges forward back into its turncoat minion. I don’t have to do a thing as I see its eyes fill with blood and then the thing turns to dust as it rips the power and its minion’s soul back to its embrace.

“Well now it knows what’s going on. I doubt that the vampire community is going to be pleased with what Michel’s been doing.”

Colton growled and shifted down changing into his human form of this dark brown haired guy with really, really hazel eyes and broad shoulders but dressed in black biking leathers and a smile for me.

“They got to the owners of the place before I could get here Jo.” He gave me this sort of sorry shrug. I know Colton; as long as it wasn’t me he didn’t care much. I lean into him and kiss him loooooooooooong slow and deeply passionate kisses. He does this cat like purr rumble as I’m pressed into him as he rubs his head against mine and the whole effect raises good goosebumps all over my body and those vibrations sinking into my breasts just about make me go all melty. Okay truth be told it’s got me gooey but I have things to do…dammit.

I pack my things and he helps to carry them down to my black painted soft- top 58 Chevrolet convertible and I pull out with him following me on his motorcycle. Before I leave town I follow the feeling of the demon energy to the source of the person who turned me into Michel or Asmodeus.

I stop outside of Rupert Lamberts home the man who had organized the little fete last night and I get out of the car. I take out a can of red spray paint and I pop the truck and look at Colton. “There’s a bag of rock salt in there.”

“Yeah, I’ll Circle the house.” He leaves and I walk up the steps and start spraying leaving a series of hex marks and writing proclaiming his ass a demon’s humptoy. I don’t need to mete out vengeance here; the locals will do that themselves especially after they find the vampire ashes and the bodies of the Sutherlands.

I walk away and start the binding spell with essence instead of mana and I burn that binding into reality. If he’s demon touched he won’t be able to pass the salt line. There’s enough power in the salt it won’t be able to be damaged for a week before the power even begins to break up.

I step over the line and I hear him scream from inside as he rushes out and he slams into a wall of power and bounces back on his ass. I stare at him as I slide into my car.

“You chose the wrong side Rupert, you reap what you sow asshole, That's the three fold law you maggot.” I get in the car and pull out my cell phone. “Hello 911, yes there’s a fire at 1238 Lambert Lane at the Lambert house. Yes it’s pretty bad…who am I?” I hang up.

They’ll be here soon. People will see it. I start the car up and give him the finger as Colton and I drive out of town and head north. I think Raine’s in Michigan.