Shotgun Sorceress

Chapter nineteen

Exorcism

“So, yeah,” I said, stepping out of the bathroom, dressed in charm-clean clothes, toweling off my hair. “About me being possessed by a baby Goad …”

Cooper chewed on his mustache, still not meeting my gaze. He’d put his pants back on, but hadn’t put on his tux jacket. “Well, devils don’t much like being exorcised, so the first order of business is to find some way of keeping you strapped down so you don’t hurt us or yourself. Would you rather be lying down or sitting up?”

At least he was speaking to me in full sentences.

“Um.” I tried to imagine what the devil might try to do to my body if it was intent on hurting me out of spite. “I guess sitting up might keep it from wrenching my spine around quite as much? And it would leave you guys more room in here. But what about my flame hand?”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” the Warlock replied. “I’m pretty sure I can build enchanted fire shielding out of this trash can over here. And I can make a good strong bondage chair pretty quick using the furniture we have in here—I’ve made lots of ’em for play parties and such. Just have to find some material for straps and spend a little extra time reinforcing it with some steel.”

The Warlock and Cooper brainstormed a list of items to look for, mainly steel folding chairs, nuts and bolts, leather belts, plus a few spell ingredients for the exorcism, and we went on a quick scavenger hunt. Once the Warlock and I had collected some items from the residents down the hall, we went back to the room and I helped him build a restraint chair using the wooden pair as a base. The twin black kittens crouched side by side on top of one of the dressers, watching our labor with rapt interest.

After an hour of magic and elbow grease, the chair was complete, and Cooper had returned with a couple of vials of holy water and some other items that he had apparently gotten from the dead priest’s room.

“You ready for this?” he asked.

“Sure.” I sat down in the Warlock’s creation. The apparatus held my arms out at my sides at chest level, my left arm fitting into a steel overgauntlet that the Warlock had forged from the trash can and part of a folding chair. He’d fashioned an upper back and head support from the second wooden chair. When they got me strapped in, I couldn’t move more than to breathe, but the position I was in was actually fairly comfortable.

Cooper held up the football mouthpiece he’d sanitized and adjusted. “Open wide.”

He slipped the mouthpiece in, popping it into place around my upper teeth and gums. It tasted unpleasantly of plastic and felt like I’d just bitten into a huge piece of stale taffy. “You shouldn’t be able to seriously damage yourself with this in, but just to be safe, we’ll strap your jaw closed so the devil can’t make you bite off your own tongue.”

“Or cast any diabolic spells to counter the exorcism,” the Warlock added.

The first prickles of claustrophobic anxiety danced up my spine as Cooper tightened a leather belt around my head to close my lower jaw around the mouthpiece. I wondered if this was what it felt like to get strapped into an electric chair.

Please stay close, I thought to Pal.

“Of course,” my familiar replied. “I wouldn’t think of leaving you at a time like this.”

Cooper sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me, head bowed, staring down at the vial of holy water in his hand. We weren’t Catholics, of course, and I didn’t expect Cooper to invoke Jehovah’s help, but the blessed water holds spiritual purification powers most Talents can tap if they know how.

Cooper looked at his brother. “The doors locked?”

The Warlock nodded, nervously flipping one of the holy water vials through his fingers.

“Okay, then.” Cooper knelt before me, closed his eyes, and began chanting old, old words.

My heart jumped in my chest, and I felt a sudden pain in my head, my guts. I could feel the incendiary ectoplasm jetting from my hand, spilling over the edge of the glove, turning the enchanted steel gauntlet red, smoking like an overheated skillet, but the metal was holding.

Cooper chanted louder, rose to his feet, and poured holy water onto my face. It burned so badly I thought my skin was peeling off. I screamed against the mouthpiece, my muscles jerking spasmodically against the restraints. My vision started to fade, going black at the edges, and I felt myself falling backward—

—I was standing in my old bedroom in the hellement, the floorboards rattling beneath me as if there was an earthquake—

—I was back in the chair, screaming louder, throat aching, but it didn’t even sound like my own voice, it sounded like a couple of cats. My vision cleared. Cooper was standing over me, and past him I could see that the kittens were clawing at the hallway door, howling loud as twin klaxons, fluffed-out black Tesla fur showering blue sparks onto the carpet.

“Keep going, Coop, you’ve almost got it by the balls!” The Warlock tried to pick up the kittens but jerked his hands away as if he’d been burned or shocked or both.

The door boomed as if somebody in the hall had slammed it with a battering ram. The kittens dashed away under the closest bed, and the Warlock stepped back. Another boom, and the cheap steel lock gave, the door slamming inward, the doorknob denting against the cinder-block wall.

Sara stood there in the doorway, Redhawk pistol raised and pointed at the Warlock’s head. “Stop. Right. Now.”

Cooper didn’t stop.

“We can’t—” the Warlock began.

Without another word, Sara stepped forward into the room and fired her pistol at Cooper. I jumped in my restraints. The bullet ripped through his calf muscle. He swore and collapsed backward onto the hard carpeted floor, clutching his profusely bleeding leg.

Oh my God, get me free, get me free! I thought to Pal. I was torn between wanting to help Cooper and wanting to burn Sara right down to her bones.

As Pal moved toward me, the kittens raced from beneath the bed past Sara into the hallway, and my fire went out. Shit. Wait.

“Jesus f*ck!” the Warlock bellowed, raising his hand, whether to strike her or to try to cast a spell, I couldn’t tell.

Sara pointed the pistol at his forehead. “Don’t.”

“We could kill you with a word, lady, don’t you get that?” The Warlock looked angrier than I had ever seen him. “One word, and your crazy ass is nothing but red mist!”

“Go ahead.” Her voice shook, but she looked strangely elated. “Kill me. If you can. But do you think that any of my kitties will have anything to do with you after that? You … you people think you’re hot stuff, but you are nothing special if you can’t work your magic. You’ll die here.”

The Warlock knelt, grabbed one of the unused belts lying on the floor, and cinched it below Cooper’s knee to stanch the bleeding. “And my brother could die, thanks to you.”

“He won’t die.” Sara holstered her pistol. “Dr. Ottaway can take care of him.”

“I’m not letting any goddamn mundane doctor touch me,” Cooper growled through gritted teeth. “Why the f*ck did you shoot me?”

“I can’t have you hurting the kitties.”

“We weren’t hurting them, we were trying to ex—” the Warlock began.

“I don’t care what you were trying to do; what you were doing was hurting my kitties, and I will not have that. Period, end of discussion. And if this happens again, I will shoot to kill. I’m not in the mood to give third chances today.”

Sara turned and left.

“Goddamn it.” Cooper slapped the floor, pain and anger distorting his face.

Pal moved behind my chair and began to undo my straps.

The Warlock got out my Leatherman tool and began to cut away Cooper’s pants leg. “The bullet went clean through; looks like it’s stuck down in the carpet pad over here. We’re lucky it didn’t ricochet and hit anybody else. But I think it pulled some fabric into the wound. Gonna be a bitch to get that out with the pliers on this thing.”

There was a knock at the doorway. Standing there was a young ginger-haired guy in an airman’s battle uniform with a medic’s Red Cross armband. He carried an olive-drab medical kit.

“Y’all need some help?” the medic asked, staring uncertainly at Pal, then at me strapped into the chair, then down at Cooper bleeding on the carpet. “I … I got a radio from Sara saying there had been an, uh, incident.”

“Got a pair of surgical tweezers?” Cooper took the Leatherman tool away from his brother and finished sawing through the seam on his pants leg.

The young man nodded.

“Then come help me get this thing cleaned out.” Cooper picked a fragment off his wound.

“I don’t have no lidocaine or nothin’—”

“Kid, I don’t care, I just want the wound clear so I can get this healed up! Warlock, go find us a damn cat so I can cast a spell.”

Pal freed me from the last of the straps as the Warlock went into the hallway. I stood up, and immediately my head swam and my knees buckled and I collapsed back in the chair.

“You should rest for now,” Pal told me. “Even an interrupted exorcism is quite hard on the system.”

By now, the medic was crouching over Cooper’s gunshot leg, holding a penlight in his mouth like a cigar as he pulled slick bits of dark cloth from the wound. Cooper winced and growled obscenities under his breath.

“I think that’s all of it,” the medic finally said.

The Warlock popped back into the room carrying one of the black kittens in the crook of his arm. “Found this one hiding under the sofa in the common room by the elevators.”

“Groo. Vee.” Cooper gripped his injured calf, closed his eyes, and began a healing chant. The angry red bullet wound shrank, fresh pink tissue growing in concentric rings from the outside in.

He stopped his chant and frowned mightily at his healed leg. “I guess that’s good enough. Thanks for your help, kid.”

The medic stood up, looking awed and a bit nervous. “I have to take y’all to see Doc Ottaway.”

Cooper scowled at the young man. “What the hell for? I’m fine now.”

“It’s a standing order from Major Rodriguez. Anybody who gets any kind of serious wound has to be examined by the camp doc. We had some people who got attacked by dogs … well, they said they was dogs. And they said they was okay and didn’t need medical treatment. But then they … they turned into these things …” The medic trailed off, looking like he was remembering something horrible. “Anyways, it’s a standing order. I gotta take you to see the doc, or the major will kick my ass.”

Cooper blew out his breath and got to his feet, favoring his newly-healed leg. “Fine. Whatever.”

He looked at me, and then at the Warlock. “You guys coming with me, or you staying here?”

“I’m not really feeling up to a walk in the heat right now,” I replied, “but Warlock, please go with him if you want to. I’ll be fine here with Pal. We need to track down the other kitten anyhow.”

“Sounds good.” Cooper stepped toward me and gave me a quick, perfunctory kiss on the forehead. “Don’t get into any trouble while we’re gone.”

He limped out the door with the medic and the Warlock close behind.

Pal blinked his eyes at me. “What’s going on between you and Cooper? His pheromones smell all wrong.”

“I don’t really know. Miko messed with his head. Made him really angry, and he’s staying that way.”

I chewed my thumbnail, pondering our situation. Made my decision. “Strap me back into the chair. I need to talk to my father.”