Equinox
Chapter Twenty Two
Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.
If I had to summarize the last week, then that would be the word to use.
After Ari's revelation about our familial bond, I had turned without a word and locked myself in my room. A girl could only take so much in one day. I had accepted that my father was dead, and yet now he's miraculously alive and I've got a secret big brother to boot?
Then there was the light matter of a whole hoard of dangerously powerful paranormal beings converging on the approaching equinox and the uncertainty surrounding the measure of their strength.
As if a teenage girl needed to contend with any of that. I was still trying to establish control over the butterflies I got in my stomach every time Fang looked at me a certain way. How was I supposed to address my screwed up family and figure out what was going on in the supernatural world?
The vampire that had almost sucked Dylan dry had wasted his last breaths to warn me that this was only the beginning. But the beginning of what?
"We snuck into Anne's office. Hell, we went cross country to the School and snooped around the science department. Nothing's there but the vague notion that paranormals are growing more powerful without the solstices."
I was addressing a group that had grown considerably since the Winter Solstice. It had always been Dylan, Gazzy, and I … but now we had allowed Fang, Iggy, Nudge, and Angel into our confidence. Mostly that meant a lot more noise and a wider range of opinions on food and fashion (coughNudgecough). But in this instance, the faces upturned to me bore serious expressions.
"What do you suggest we do, then?" Dylan asked, his knee bouncing restlessly.
I paced the length of the lounge room. In the background, the same loop of intro music was playing on the video game Gazzy and Iggy had abandoned. "I think we need to be a little more … proactive in our search."
"Which means?" Fang asked, features impassive.
"Well … we haven't been getting much help from any humans, so maybe we have to extend our hunt to more supernatural means."
My recommendation was met with the loudest silence I had ever encountered.
"Look, I talked to Sam. He's pretty close to the Carlisle family."
Dylan interrupted me with a loud groan. Gazzy's head dropped to his hands and I heard him muttering 'no, no, no, no, no' beneath his breath. Iggy perked up, a maniacal glint in his piercing blue eyes. He tended to react enthusiastically to other people's hesitation or misgivings.
"Who are the Carlisles?" he queried animatedly.
I chewed my bottom lip a bit before answering. "They're a very respected group of hunters who specialize in ghosts."
"So what does that mean for us?" Nudge asked, eyes wide. She was sitting directly between Dylan and Gazzy, and seemed none too enthusiastic about the identical way they shook their heads at me.
Dylan massaged his temple, looking resigned but no longer disagreeing. "It means we're having a séance."
-o-o-o-
"I don't like this. I don't like this. I really, really, really don't like this." Nudge's voice quivered as she spoke.
Dylan and I were leading the way through the woods. The weather had begun to warm, but in the pitch black of night, there was no respite from the cold. I tugged at the zipper of my jacket, trying to block as much of my collar from the bitter slither of the wind as I could. Our combined footsteps mingled into a steady crunch over the decayed debris that still lingered from the ending winter season. We weren't hunting, though. Anything that heard us would likely slink away into the shadows, which is what I preferred for once.
Despite this, everyone remained on guard. Dylan scanned the trees ahead with precision, filtering through the skeletal branches and waving foliage. Nudge was practically wringing Iggy's hand as she guided him along behind us, her brow puckered in a mixture of worry and trepidation. Iggy himself kept craning his head from side to side, listening intently to the noises of the forest that none of the rest of us could quite hear. Fang was bringing up the rear and making sure nothing snuck up on us from behind.
Angel and Gazzy had remained at headquarters to cover for us.
I stepped onto the mossy lichen carpeting the wide circumference of a fallen log. Dylan slowed as I reached over and ran a finger over the rough bark of a neighboring tree. A large 'X' had been carved into the trunk. Adjusting the pack slung over my shoulder, I hopped to the ground with a thump that was muted by the thick blanket of wet leaves beneath.
"This is it," I announced, my voice ringing through the encroaching darkness. The moon was a thin crescent held aloft in the sky, and sparse gray clouds obscured the twinkle of stars.
"What is 'it' exactly?" Iggy asked. Uncertainty trembled at the edge of his words. Now that we were really out in the forest in the middle of the night, preparing to invoke the spirits, he wasn't so zealous as he had been before.
I was busy emptying the contents of my bag, so Dylan took my silence as his cue to speak.
"We're in an area of the woods that a large number of hunters have died in," he explained.
I was assembling a four-point circle of candles, but I had to pause and muffle my guffaws at the strange yelp Iggy emitted.
"You're telling me we came purposefully, in the dead of night, to a place where many of your highly trained and skilled hunters died? Again I repeat, purposefully?" he squeaked.
I finished my candle placement and stood, brushing browned pine needles from my knees. Then, I struck a match and lit the wicks. The flames flickered and jerked in the air, but remained alight. They'd act as a beacon for lost souls aimlessly wandering the subspace between here and whatever afterlife existed.
"They didn't die from ghosts, so there's nothing to worry about. We're safe enough. We're here because there's a good chance we'll find at least one of them lurking around in spirit form." I hoped my nonchalance would ease his nerves, but apparently my judgment on what was and wasn't safe wasn't very assuaging.
Who would have thought?
I extracted our final material and placed it in the middle of the circle. Dylan was already seated cross-legged at the western point, and I joined him at the north. Nudge huddled close next to me. I had already instructed her to simply take notes on any interactions that followed. I think she was relived to not be directly involved.
"Are you kidding me?" Fang's expression was deadpan.
I raised my eyebrows. "What?"
"Seriously? You've got a super sophisticated compound and limitless resources designed around the goal to exterminate the paranormal population … and the best you can do for a séance is a Ouija board?"
If I squinted I could see the scowl marring his features. His silhouette was outlined in impenetrable darkness, but the front of his frame was dimly suffused with light from the candle at his feet. So he was skeptical? I got that. But we had to work with what was available.
"It's an imprecise science, okay?" I grumbled. "Just sit down, we're wasting time."
He blew a stream of air from his nose, but conceded to help Iggy into position. Then he folded his legs and sat to my right. He looked less than thrilled … not that he ever really seemed jazzed about much else.
Nudge pulled her knees to her chest and shivered. She had a pad of paper and a pencil clasped between her fingers, ready to scribble down whatever information was relayed to us through the board. After a brief nod from everyone present, I rested a finger on the planchette and indicated that the boys should do the same.
The board itself was wooden and old, tossed in a corner of the weapon's room and dusty with disuse. Hunters didn't generally have a desire to communicate with the dead, and seeing how ghosts couldn't exactly be killed, it was very hard to get rid of them in the first place. People like those of the Carlisle family were the few exceptions. Some dedicated their entire lives to passing over ghosts and exterminating the danger of poltergeists. Most everyone that passed through our branch of the CSM were interested in more tangible game, though.
The letters scribed along the surface were of a reflective gold hue and spelled out the alphabet, the words 'yes' and 'no', and the numbers from zero to one. In fancy calligraphy, the phrase "goodbye" was scrawled along the bottom of the scarred wood. Cue uneasy shudder.
"I summon the wounded specters of hunters past that haunt this land. Are you present?" I felt slightly self conscious speaking in such a way, but Sam had described in detail how to address the spirits in order to attract the right attention, and I wasn't trying to screw that up from the get go.
A passing breeze lifted my hair and scattered a few tendrils in the breeze. Nudge, for all her attempts at showing a brave face, whimpered slightly as she watched the planchette slide haltingly to 'yes'. I released a mouthful of air that I hadn't realized I was holding in.
"What is your name?" I asked, struggling to maintain my composure. Beside me, Fang hungrily regarded the tablet, his mouth slack and his dark eyes reflecting eerily the candlelight.
The speed in which the planchette moved increased with each letter next indicated. The sound of lead scratching against paper as Nudge hurriedly copied the symbols was the only sound to be heard for miles. When both she and the ghost were finished, the word ARGENT was scrawled in block print along the pad.
I shared a look with Dylan. The Argent's were a legendary family amongst hunters. Their lineage stretched to early centuries and their legacy was well regarded between even the uppermost members of the CSM. It was very plausible that one had perished nearby.
"When did you die?"
Slowly, our fingers moved to the one, then nine, nine, seven. 1997.
"How did you die?"
WEREWOLF. Pause. SOLSTICE.
I took a shaky breath, swiping at a drop of sweat at my temple. Despite the relative chill of the night, I was beginning to heat up from head to toe. Across from me, Iggy's head was bent and his eyes were clasped tightly shut. Nudge was whispering each answer for his benefit.
"Do you sense a shift in the paranormal world since the previous solstice?" Hysteria bubbled just beneath the surface of my words. Now we were getting to the important stuff, and I wasn't prepared for my own unstable reaction. Perspiration tickled at my neck, but I directed all my attention to the board.
Yes.
"Oh God," Iggy mumbled after Nudge had relayed this to him.
"Do you know why paranormals have maintained their solstice strength?" My pulse thrummed like the beat of a hummingbird's wings.
Yes.
"Can you tell us?"
Yes.
"Why is the supernatural community still so powerful?"
Following this question there was a pause so long that I began to suspect that the ghost had, for whatever reason, abandoned us. I shifted uncomfortably, but never removed my hand from the board. The seconds that ticked by melded into the silence bubbling around us. Finally, the planchette inched toward a letter, and then it was blurring over the tablet so fast that I'm surprised Nudge managed to scribble even a single full phrase.
EQUINOX. CEREMONY. ETERNALSTRENGTH. ISLAND.
The planchette moved down to the numbers and began indicating what I assumed was a set of coordinates. Then it returned to the letters and slid from P to H before suddenly halting. I had been watching with bated breath, and now any oxygen entering my system hitched even further. PH? The ghost clearly wasn't finished. What was going on?
With surprising force the planchette scraped across the board, gouging deep lines in the wood. It didn't stop, though. It merely paused at the word 'no' before swooping back and then landing on it again.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
Dylan snatched his finger back and grabbed Iggy's arm so that his hold wrenched from the board as well. Fang quickly followed suit. I was the last to pull away, and it was just as I lost contact that I felt a plummeting sensation in my gut and a painful squeezing in my chest and head. I wheezed for air, but my breaths only rattled in my throat. Seconds later, my consciousness felt suddenly detached from the rest of my body. I tried to move my fingers or even divert my eyes in a different direction, but despite my brain's orders, my body didn't respond with even the slightest twitch.
"Get back," Dylan roared, grabbing a fistful of Iggy's shirt and shoving him bodily away from the circle of candles.
Iggy stumbled, tripped over the log that I had previously stood on, and disappeared with a muffled oof. With a prickling sensation, I felt my neck jerk toward Dylan, while the rest of my body stayed facing south. At some point, I had stood. How had I not noticed myself standing?
"Max," Dylan called urgently, but his fists were drawn defensively. "Max, can you hear me? Listen, you have to pull through. Take back the power, Max. Max."
What was he yapping about? Of course I could hear him. As puzzled as I was, my facial features were smooth and didn't remotely reflect my confusion. I couldn't feel the crinkle of my brow or the purse of my lips- everything I should have been expressing. It's like I had no control over-
I lunged, but it wasn't really me. I had made no decision toward such a movement. The poltergeist possessing me had.