The Witches’ Bane
by Edward Ahern
Gordon Lormor is a defrocked priest and con man. And something more. He walks a precarious path between light and dark magic. When a former lover calls him, pleading that he help free her from a coven, Gordon leaves his business behind and travels to upstate Vermont.
Death arrives before he does, and Gordon is thrown into a worsening spiral of assaults and murders and the threat of an infant sacrifice. He is joined by his assistant, AJ, and helped by a Catholic cardinal in chipping away at the wall around the witches’ conspiracy. He soon realizes he is teetering ever closer to his own spiritual and physical death.
Chapter 11: The Burn-Out
The yard next to Gordon’s cabin was jumbled with fire engines and police cars. The shack wasn’t there anymore, just remnants of the side walls. Got somebody pissed, Gordon thought, and then, And my underwear was all nicely broken in, too.
His reception committee was waiting, with Harrowgate taking the first turn. “Where were you today?”
“Barre, and then St. Johnsbury. When did this happen?”
Harrowgate was wearing a sour look but couldn’t really withhold the information. “Best guess: the fire started a little after dark, 7:00 p.m. Where were you?”
“FedExing a parcel in St. Johnsbury. The clerk can verify that.”
“I’ll bet he can. It went up so fast it looks like somebody used an accelerant. Who doesn’t like you?”
“The list is growing.” Gordon turned toward Wittson, whose stark white hair was flashing like a disco ball in the lights of the emergency vehicles. “Mr. Wittson, I know this is a painful question, but I have no place to stay. Do you happen to have another cabin on the property?”
Wittson’s answer seemed a little too quick. “No, sir, not another spot. Guess you’ll have to go to a motel in St. Johnsbury or Barre.”
Gordon cranked his head back around to face Harrowgate. “Any place you can recommend? At least you’ll know where I’m at.”
Harrowgate appeared to consider the matter. Gordon got the acute sense that he was watching a badly acted play; the two men had clearly talked about this before Gordon arrived. “Well,” Harrowgate mused aloud, “there a little motel in East Philipsville. It’s ten minutes closer than St. Johnsbury. I could call ’em.”
“If you wouldn’t mind, Clifton.”
The nicest thing about the Stay-a-While was its sign. It was a motel with pitiful delusions of grandeur, but Gordon didn’t care. He set the alarm on his watch, checked the room for electronic bugs and the bed for the more mundane kind. He called AJ again.
“I knew one call wasn’t enough for you. What kind of trouble have you gotten into?”
“Somebody burnt me out.”
AJ hissed. “All right, you dark-arts Don Quixote, I know your M.O. You’re pissing everybody off and holding yourself out as bait, then waiting to see who chews on you. It’s a seriously bad idea. Let me pull in a couple of pipe swingers from Newark for you.”
“Defeats the purpose, AJ, but I do appreciate your concern. I’ll be all right.”
“Screw you. I’m going to start tracks on your truck and cell phone.”
“Okay. Another chore for you. Things are so peaceful at Big Eddy because I think that’s where they put on the winter extravaganza. They don’t want any disruption. We’re looking for a large, private but road-accessible property — an estate, maybe, or a secluded burial ground. Have the geeks put a magnifying glass on the satellite maps and also run checks on supernatural-event venues back to colonial times. Focus around three hundred years ago, when the last witch got offed. If we get an overlap of those two things, we might get lucky.”
“Okay. Are you carrying?”
“Yeah.”
“Keep it intimate.”
“Yeah. Night, AJ.”
Gordon took her advice. He pulled the .38, a coil of rope, and a small leather bag from the Xterra, then tied the rope from the inside door handle to a ponderous chest of drawers, and perched drinking glasses on the window sashes.
He opened the leather bag and spilled the bone shapes out onto the bedspread. Gordon made the customary obeisance, cast the runes, and frowned. He repeated the process and frowned again. Not good. He considered verifying the reading using the Golden Wheel or the 900 Answers of Pythagoras, but thought both systems to be artificially constraining.
After stripping down to his mildly funky underwear, he took the gun to bed with him. The door lock smashed through the jamb about two hours later.
Copyright © 2018 by Edward Ahern
