Target Acquired

By Colleen Foley

I’d nearly broken my thumb on Seth’s jaw and I was pissed about him using my blood again. But silently fuming wasn’t productive.

“OK Salem, help me out. There was a webpage and a loom, some ugly-ass music, and now we’re gonna kill something. What I don’t know is where that something is. Do you? ”

His grin was merciless.

“I do. I traced the IP address of the website. We’re going to a new age shop called The Brightest Lamp, in Detroit.”

Punching him again would result only in a pair of nearly broken thumbs.

I kept driving.

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Same Old Song and Dance

by Colleen Foley

Coming back had been …turbulent, at best. The music had changed on the way down, from piano to something like a wheezy organ. It played the same phrase over and again, like a tape loop. There’d been a voice beneath it, shouting like a carnival hawker, and it had pissed me off.

I forgot to tell Seth about it when he mentioned that someone was trying to kill us.

“Oh goody, something new and different for us."

He hauled me off the floor, shrugging in resignation. “Don’t look now, Nate, but I’m beginning to think that’s our legacy. Let’s go.”

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Hit Between The Eyes

by Colleen Foley

I glared at Seth, then at the webpage. An image of a stone loom, glowing with blue symbols, sitting under a wooden arch was both cool and supremely disturbing. Soothing yet weird and ugly piano music began issuing from the laptop’s speakers. Seth either didn't hear or notice, but I felt it drain me like a leech, intellect and will slipping away.

"Nate, what's wrong with you?"

I figured I had half a minute before slipping into a vegetative state. I slid to my knees.

"You can't feel that? Lucky you, bro. Must be your magic. That thing's active."
Then...nothing.

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Testing the Faith

By Colleen Foley

Belief is a strange thing. I never wanted to believe in monsters. I have always needed to believe in my brother. And now I wasn’t sure I should. I was about to find out.

Seth sat at the rickety card table in what passed for the kitchenette of our hotel room, his face bathed in light from the laptop monitor and the hotel’s horrific red and green striped neon sign, blinking just outside the window.

Between all that and his shorn head, I barely recognized him. That seemed both appropriate and horrifying.

“So Salem, about that new mojo of yours.”

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A Work In Progress

[or what Nate did on his time off]

By Colleen Foley

Kaia was not sated. But for now I was sweaty, bloody, and on my knees before her.

Her chocolate silk accent washed over me like balm, soothing welts on my back and mind.

“You, Nate, are but one thread on a loom. Every thread that interweaves with yours touches your life in some way. Your brother, your uncle, friends long dead and even people and …things you have yet to meet. Some of that tale can be seen by such a one as me. The tapestry you are weaving is dark, indeed.

She gestured to the dish of food.

“Eat.”

Slow Your Roll

By Colleen Foley

The next small town boasted only six streets, but it had a garage and a diner. The mechanic checked the dents in my bumper.

“1970 Dodge Charger. Four door! They got popular again after them Vin Diesel movies come out. Now, tell yer tale. What happened?”

Seth explained, leaving out the weirdness.

“So….you Tokyo drifted into a snow bank?”

One dirty look and two hundred dollars later, we were sitting in the Deep Dish Diner.

“Listen, Nate. Right before the crash, a small patch of frost formed on the windshield…some weird symbol. Looked like cloth on a loom”.

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Stone Cold Sober

by Colleen Foley

I staggered a bit as I followed Seth to the edge of the road.

“The lunatic who did this is so gonna die.”

“Wasn’t a person, Nate. It was a thought form, a magical creation. It was never alive, really, and it’s gone now. But we have to go.”

“What? I can’t even…wait, go where? Dude, look at my car!”

“The car will start. I promise. Look, this was a dice roll. Whoever did it hoped to catch us off guard and I screwed them on it. Someone’s out for us. We have to keep moving.”

Son of a bitch.

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What next?

by Colleen Foley

“Nate. Nate!”

I opened my eyes, caught sight of the windshield. It was shattered, the jagged edges furred with blood and snow.

“Shit. What…did we hit something?”

I tried turning the key. Nothing. Seth was already shrugging out of his seatbelt .

“No, something tried to hit us. Something not physical. And please don’t wish me into eternal damnation, but I spelled us out of its way, which is the only reason we’re not dead. Also, I’m really, really, sorry about your car. I’ll be right back.”

With that, he got out of the car and headed toward the road.

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Wheel of Fortune

 by Colleen Foley

Seth blinked twice and shot me a look that could’ve frosted the windows.

“How…does…she…know?”

“I don’t know, it was weird. She was reading tarot cards. Turned over, what was it? The six of batons. Then she spouted some poetry. Insecurity brings the storm. Cry in fear…HE is awoken.”

I sighed before continuing.

“Then she screamed, said it was your father, and passed out. Took her two bloody hours to come around . I don’t know, man, but add it to the list of freaky shit we gotta deal with.”

Like we'd summoned doom, the car swerved, spun out, struck, died.

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Ignorance Is Bliss

by Colleen Foley

I wasn’t ready to be spending a lot of time with him yet, but I agreed with Seth that Jim asking for a thing was good enough reason to do it. The result was several hours of speculation about might be causing the “problem”.

We’d been driving in silence for a little while when something occurred to me. I casually slipped my hand into my jacket pocket and fingered the small ivory amulet nestled there. It was a parting gift from Kaia, and it was ice cold.

I pressed my lips together hard and kept driving.

Son of a bitch.

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Who’ll Stop the Rain?

By Colleen Foley

When I’d exhausted every foul word I know, I gulped the last of my coffee and whistled for the check. The waitress gave me a look that could’ve withered my balls to ashes, then slapped it on the table. I left a twenty in apology and headed for the door.

“Great. Whacko weather and witches, with the ashes of a vodun. Let’s go.”

The car spewed torrents of gravel behind it, as I gunned out of the parking lot.

“All right, genius. What kind of weather is so weird that we’re the only ones Jimmy trusts to check it out?”

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Never Take the Bait

By Colleen Foley

“C’mon, really? Funky weather? That’s low rank crap. Tell Jimmy to have Ronny Sparks check it out.”

Seth raised an eyebrow at me, but otherwise didn’t move a muscle. I know that look. He wasn’t going to give an inch. It occurred to me that the whole thing might be a convenient excuse engineered by Jimmy, to get us talking again. If it was, he and I were having words.

I sighed heavily and pointed at the other chair with my fork.

“Fine. But this apple-rum pie is rumored to be legendary around here. You can talk while I eat.”

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Avoidance

By Colleen Foley

Cider Mountain is a “quaint” little ski town in Vermont. It’s so quaint the only people who ever ski there are the locals and they like it that way. I’d spent the last few months going from one end of New England to the other staying in backwaters and back of backwaters Seth would never think to look in.

I needed time to sift through the BDSM and catharsis scented powder my mind had become after Kaia.

I had a forkful of apple-rum pie, mounded with whipped cream, halfway to my lips when He walked in the door, grinning.

Damnit.

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Bone Tired

By Colleen Foley

I came to with Marie kneeling over me, whispering a short verse in French, over and over again. I rolled to my side, coughing more blood, and saw Seth.

“My brother?”

“He wake soon. His mother protect him, give him a final gift. ‘Dis is over now. The blame is mine. I make it right as I can. You take him away from here. Go back to earthy things for a time. Eat, love…rest. You be needed again soon enough.”

Her touch on my face faded.

I sat in the gently falling rain and waited for Seth to wake up.

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Take Down

By Colleen Foley

Laveau’s words were music to my ears. Seth reached for the jar in my hand. Almost too late, I batted it away.

“No! Help her. I’ve got this.”

For once he actually listened. As I steeled myself, one mark flared. I howled in pain, launching myself forward. She dropped her hand, her power guttering, as I plowed into his chest, driving us both to the ground.

“Thanks for playing, douche bag. Here’s your souvenir.”

Grinning down at him, I shoved the bottle into his open mouth, slamming my other hand under his chin. Teeth and glass shattered onto his tongue.

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The Final Countdown

By Colleen Foley

Marie Laveau appeared as Seth’s magic petered out. She held a bead, large, red/black and pulsing. It shot from her hand to hit the houngan in the chest. He screamed as it rooted into him like a parasite.

“You dare take da power I give you and use for it for dis? For petty revenge? And you call me whore? I …made …you.”

Everything slowed then, like viewing interactive performance art in some bugfuck mad gallery.

She never took her eyes from her son, but she spoke only to me.

“You are both out of time. Do it now, boy.”

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Maestro

By Colleen Foley

I palmed the vial, taking care that the Houngan not see. Seth seemed a bit more stable as my marks bled…into him?

Now I needed to elicit a chain of particular responses, one instrument at a time, building, becoming a symphony, or this was all going to go to hell.

“Why drag us back here? You could have finished this at the house. I know you were there.”

He smiled indulgently.

“So that capricious whore could see the end, of course. Because she denied me.”

An outraged shriek pierced the sounds of wind and driving rain.

She was coming.

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Eureka

by Colleen Foley

I grinned, shaking my head as I watched him rise.

“Dude. Floating? Isn’t that kinda grandiose?”

Seth looked sharply at me as the thing chuckled softly.

“You will learn respect. Mother and son will be together again, her soul inhabiting his body. Their talents, hers tainted by what she did, his so pure, will struggle against each other. That perfect discord will create such power as you have never seen. It will be mine to control and this time I will not be stopped.”

In that instant, I understood everything.

“All this talk has become cumbersome. Give me the jar.”

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Opening The Gate

By Colleen Foley

I'd explained as Seth drove. We were back at the cemetery, wending our way through rain-sloppy paths to Marie Laveau's grave. The storm started as we'd arrived, a fabrication of the priests, no doubt.

Every muscle tensed, just enough, as I ticked off reasons, in my head, for destroying him. The bottle. The zombies. Seth's poor goddamned mother. The manipulation and murder of so many innocent people. That fucking dog. My...rape.

Cold, comfortable rage knifed into my gut. I let it in, let it bloom, and kept it contained, let it anticipate its release.

It was time to end this.

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On The Road Again, One Last Time.

By Colleen Foley

“Really?” I reached behind the seat, grabbing something to swipe the blood from my left brow, exceptionally pleased that it was Seth's favorite shirt.

Magic snapped through the car; a deranged symphony of tiny whirlwinds.

“Listen. I just meant...I know touching that thing is killing you.” I gestured to the lump in his jacket pocket.

“I get it. But the blend of you and it is like a magical beacon. He's coming for us, and we're not where we need to be. Now, get out. You're driving. I can't see. And don't fuck up my car.”


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