part0020

“Can you ground it?” Travis yelled back. Derek considered the genius loci to be “undead,” and his goal was to use his power to bleed off any energy he could to weaken it.

Travis had begun Hazel’s ritual. The words did not flow quite as naturally as did the Latin, but Hazel’s litany was both a binding and a banishment, if not quite an exorcism. He kept one hand out, palm open and forward like a conduit for the magical and sacred powers that he called; his face rigid with concentration, eyes narrowed.

Derek murmured to the swirling mists, bidding them to rally to the cause. He roused from his trance and glanced toward Travis. “I’m trying. It’s…slippery.”

The mine opening was sealed, but the woods around the abandoned tunnels had grown thick over the years, a perfect hiding place for the kinds of creatures drawn to the dark energy of the hell gate and the genius loci.

Aricella maintained the invisible wardings that protected the gas wells and pipelines and secured them in case the two nearest wells went up close to the Carmichael Mine entrance. Travis felt her power like an odd shimmer of bells at the very edge of his consciousness.

Derek’s magic felt earthy by comparison, like a flowing river, a force of nature. Travis wondered how his own abilities—he still wasn’t comfortable thinking of them as magic—felt to them. He’d never thought to ask.

Somewhere out there Michael had a sniper’s roost while Doug, Jason, and Brent were ready for a repeat of the onslaught at the mausoleum. That left Travis with the ghosts, Danny, and the hell gate, while Derek held back the genius loci.

Danny’s spirit was strong, familiar. In the weeks since Travis and Brent had partnered, Danny had shown up several times, and Travis figured he was lonely for someone who could see him more easily than Brent. He hadn’t felt comfortable recounting those conversations with Brent yet, but he would when the time was right. Danny was a good kid, a lot like his more care-worn brother, and their chats gave him insights into his new partner that made him more patient when Brent got prickly.

Now Danny waited for orders.

Travis had gone over the plan with Danny, answering all his questions. The toughest one, he didn’t have an answer for—whether Danny would be trapped within the hell gate, free to move on, or able to come back. For all his time in seminary, any answer Travis had learned was really just theoretical when the rubber met the road. Despite the uncertainty, Danny stood firm, and so Travis had guided him toward where his clairvoyance suggested there might be a weak spot, a place where Danny might be able to slip in among the vengeful ghosts and minor demons in the sway of the genius loci’s power to help Travis shut the hell gate from the inside.

Go , Travis told him. In his mind’s eye, Danny gave him a jaunty salute and then vanished.

The genius loci pulsed deep within the Carmichael Mine like the heartbeat of an ancient god. No, Travis corrected himself. Not a god. Something more powerful than a man, but just another predator that had become invasive without a natural enemy. The energy felt tainted, not merely hungry, but cruel. The genius loci gorged itself on pain, death, and grief until it had taken in enough to slumber for another fifty years. Travis knew they couldn’t stop the cycle, but if they kept it from its grim harvest, perhaps when it did reawaken, it would be weakened and easier to fight.

He felt the genius loci stir, a frisson of energy that sent a shiver down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold autumn air. The entity—or whatever it was—shifted, and Travis felt awareness wash over him. Their prey had noticed the arrival of the hunters and understood itself to be their target.

Derek must have felt the shift as well. “Incoming!” he shouted, as good a term as any, Travis supposed, for the psychic wave that thundered toward them.

The wall of spirits Derek had called as an extra layer of protection rallied, and a thick, gray fog surrounded the living fighters, clammy as it slipped against their skin. Travis—and Derek, he was sure—heard voices and glimpsed forms and faces, as the ghosts held their position.

From one side, Travis heard a howl like a wolf, and from the other, the guttural groans of zombies and ghouls. He heard a shotgun blast and the crack of Michael’s rifle and Brent’s Glock, firing over and over again to pick off attackers. Streaks of fire burst across the night, proof that Jason was on the job. Travis could not spare his attention from the task, sending his power toward the weak point where the hell gate would form, and finding a way to shut it down.

Shots rang on every side, and Travis fought the urge to duck or run for cover. He, Derek, and Ryan stood in the middle of a war zone as their protectors fired and reloaded. The smell of gunpowder and rot was so thick it seemed palpable. Behind him, Travis heard Father Ryan saying a litany for protection against evil, but Travis feared that this time, they might be out of luck.

The ghosts moved across the land between them and the mines like a tide, doing their best to interfere with the creatures the genius loci sent as its first wave. Derek’s magic increased the spirits’ strength, and the more powerful among them tore at the ragged clothing or grabbed at the dead limbs of the zombies and ghouls as they ran forward, slowing them enough to give the shooters a chance to aim, or deflecting the attackers from their targets.

Derek couldn’t keep up that kind of defense for long, and Travis hoped Danny had been able to get into position. The notes in Hazel’s journal speculated that an uprising of ghosts and a “traitor” who stopped the hell gate from opening could prevent the genius loci, in its full power, from emerging for its final, catastrophic feeding. All the details she provided, Travis passed on to Danny, hoping that Hazel had a solid basis for her ideas. If Hazel had decided to take up writing fiction, they were all well and truly fucked.

Travis hadn’t told the others that he’d had two visions, one of them forcing the genius loci into early hibernation, emerging bloodied but victorious, and the other—in the other, there’d been fireballs and explosions, scorched earth, and charred corpses. He took that to mean that both futures remained possible and that it would come down to a choice, an action, a split-second impulse that would make all the difference.

But who might be the deciding factor, Travis didn’t know.

Now . Danny’s thoughts stretched across the distance, just as Travis felt the lurch of the genius loci’s dark energy.

“Now!” he told Derek. Behind them, Father Ryan shifted to the Rite of Exorcism, authorized or not, Vatican be damned. Derek gave a cry, and Travis felt a push as the necromancer lent his magic to the storm of ghosts, sending them back toward the hell gate to spend their remaining vengeance helping to push the doorway closed from this side.

“It’s getting through!” Travis grated. In the distance, a loud explosion echoed, and seconds later a pillar of fire rose high into the air. Aricella’s protections were weakest the farther the wells were from her, and Travis was just grateful that the two nearest them hadn’t gone up instead.

He’d seen a vision. He’d called the ghosts and sent Danny. Now, as Travis moved into the banishment portion of Hazel’s ritual, he felt helpless. What good were the psychic abilities for which he’d been ostracized from his family and badly used by the Church if he couldn’t do something truly useful with them? And as he said the words of the litany, and listened to Father Ryan’s exorcism voiced with full-throated belief, something inside Travis shifted. He reached into his core self with all the resolve he possessed and pulled .

Hazel’s ritual held real power. Travis felt the magic—this had to be magic—rise within him like fire in his blood, terrifying and powerful and barely within his control. The night was cold—frigid after the ghosts appeared—but he was sweating, drops running down his back in rivulets and plastering his hair to his forehead.

Another of the wells exploded, a little closer, and Travis set his jaw and hardened his will. His heart thudded and his head pounded, pain throbbing behind his eyes and in his temples. Travis kept on reciting the words of the banishment. But as he spoke, he fixed his focus on the place where he had sent Danny, where the legion of their ghostly protections had gone—to the hell gate between there and here that the genius loci entity needed to escape. He called to his psychic gifts and pulled from what he thought might be his life force itself, willing to give everything he had to stop the cataclysm.

The ground around them shook, and he felt the dirt slide under his feet. Brent and Doug cried out, and as Travis watched, he saw a sinkhole open between them and the blocked up mine entrance, a chasm stretching into the abyss.

He felt the touch of the genius loci, sliding over him like dirty oil, trying to latch on to use his power for itself. Travis pushed back with everything he had, roaring the final words of the ritual like a rebuke of every betrayal, of all the ways he had been manipulated by the Sinistram, and of the times he had tried and failed to save someone. This time, this fucking time , he would do it right, and make a difference.

Even if it killed him.

Travis tasted blood in his mouth and blinked bloody tears from his eyes. His lungs burned as he hyperventilated, and his body felt like a human torch, aflame from inside with the magic awakened by Hazel’s incantation. Nothing in her notes said that the one who worked the ritual became a sacrifice, but if that was the case, Travis willingly offered himself.

His pulse thundered ever louder in his ears, blocking out Derek’s chant and Father Ryan’s rite, the gunshots, the screams of the monsters. Nothing mattered—nothing existed—except the magic, and Travis opened himself to the strange surge, letting it flow through him, following the channel he had opened to Danny and the other ghosts, a willing conduit.

He saw the ghosts more clearly than ever—probably a sign that he might soon be among them. The ghostly horde on this side of the hell gate pushed back to keep the genius loci from coming through. Travis sensed Derek’s magic in the struggle, and together they poured all of the power that they possessed into the effort. In the distance, another muffled explosion told Travis they were losing the fight.

Hike! Danny’s voice called out the football play, and suddenly, the hell gate wavered.

“This is it!” Travis shouted, though whether he said the words aloud or silently to the ghostly legion, he couldn’t tell.

The ghosts swarmed forward, a tide of soul energy and the strength of memory, as the insurrection on the other side also gained momentum. The genius loci, caught between both sides, let out a psychic shriek that made Travis reel, and he fell to his knees. Derek grabbed for him, but Travis pushed him away, staggering to his feet, intent on his objective.

Bit by bit, he felt the hell gate close. The genius loci thrashed and screamed in fury, but Travis could tell it was weakening, overspent by the creatures it had sent against them and the power it expended fighting off a rebellion it never expected.

Travis’s breath came in harsh, wet pants. He spat out blood, but his mouth filled with it again. A crimson haze covered everything. His body felt numb, distant, as if he could step away and leave it behind. Nothing mattered except closing the hell gate, and doing that could claim all of him, body and soul.

He lurched forward with his power, reaching deep inside and finding a final vestige of strength, adding it to the effort of the ghostly defenders, who had become nearly solid. And then, just as Travis was certain they had come so far just to fail, the last resistance yielded, and the hell gate snapped shut.

Sealing off the genius loci for another fifty years, ending the deadly cycle.

The magic he’d called up faded and his body felt burned and raw from the inside. Travis called out to Danny but got no response. It’s done , he thought, as he fell forward. As he drifted, he felt a faint glimmer of warmth and reached out to it, because the darkness was so very cold. Perhaps it would carry him onward; maybe it would take him home. Travis didn’t care. They won. The battle was over. And he was done.