Nariah tied a colorful headband over her forehead and pressed it gently back to contain her tightly coiled hair. The chill in the night air prickled along her bare arms, bringing an electrifying awareness along with it. There were spirits on the rise.
Just over an hour ago Nariah had felt the call, a pressure under her breastbone, a yearning that couldn’t be satisfied with mortal pleasures. The call of the grim. She followed it here to Magnolia Cemetery and looked out at the gently rolling grounds from the safety of the parking lot.
The magnolia tree at the caretaker house, older than Nariah at least, stretched over graves and ground alike, its stiff white blooms open in the moonlight, glowing like stardrops. Its soft scent permeated the grounds, pressing an ancient healing into the spirits who rested here. A magic older than the city itself. But something had disturbed that old rest. Spirits that should have been sleeping moaned in the darkness.
Nariah grabbed the bone-chain around her wrist, her eyes sharp on the rows. Spirits were mostly harmless, it was whatever disturbed them that kept Nariah on alert.
A dog wuffed. A deep, huffing greeting, the sound only a large creature could make. Nariah scanned the shadows until she spotted two glowing yellow eyes and a mouth of shining teeth beside the magnolia tree.
The grim stepped into moonlight, like a shadow come to life, his claws digging small furrows in the dirt that closed again behind him. He wuffed again and Nariah released her bone charm. The grim had called her to this place.
“Hey, who’s a good boy?” Nariah asked softly. She stepped off the pavement of the parking lot and onto the manicured grass. From the mortal world into the domain of spirits. The grim wiggled his docked tail and bounded toward her.
He was the size of a great dane, but stocky and wide like a rotwiller. A small tank of muscle and teeth and sloppy tongue. He put his head down and charged. Nariah braced herself for impact. She took his hard head against her hip and slapped her hands on his shoulders to wrestle him onto his side where she could scratch his belly and squish his cheeks.
“Grim is a good boy, aren’t you? Yes you are.” His hair was short and black like the night. Nariah’s dark skin almost glowed by comparison.
The animal snorted at her and wiggled himself free. He bounded deeper into the cemetery, then looked back and wiggled his whole butt, his ears tall and attentive. Come. Come with me.
Nariah put a hand to her chest where the pressure built and checked her belt. Two bone charms in case of emergency and a ball-peen hammer all in their place. She followed the grim.
He led her between the headstones, down a slight incline, and around an old oak tree. Nariah paused to rest her palm on the stout trunk of the tree and whisper a prayer for strength.
A spirit moaned nearby. Nariah watched the transparent wisp rise out of a grave, like smoke or steam, unformed. It curled in on itself and moved within the rectangle confine of the grave, disturbed, but still tethered to the bones beneath.
The grim approached, ears forward, nose sniffing. The spirit reached out with equal curiosity. The grim sneezed suddenly. The spirit darted to its headstone. The grim huffed and moved on. This spirit, at least, posed no threat.
Deeper into the cemetery, the more agitated spirits formed pieces of their former human selves. A hand, an outline of shoulders, or a suggestion of a head. They twisted over their graves and their moans sounded more like words. Warnings to turn back.
Nariah set her mouth in a line, kept her eyes sharp, and moved deeper. Spirits didn’t rise up like this on their own, especially those settled in a graveyard as old as this one.
The grim led her to a crypt set into the earth. Pockmarks in the old stone dotted the face like liver spots and the decorative climbing vine that had been trained over the doorway now covered the entire upper facade, obscuring the crest and name of those buried within. Once upon a time, Nariah would have worried about a vampire rising with all this spirit activity. Not anymore. The vampires lived in high-rises and estates like wealthy bankers, now, dipping their claws into human activity whenever they saw fit, offering protection from rival clans for a price. A mafia that demanded blood tribute instead of money.
The crypt might still hold a zombie or two, but she and the grim were used to handling the walking dead. It was the living Nariah struggled to understand.
A low, rhythmic chant caught Nariah’s attention and she put a hand on the grim’s head, willing him to stay at heel. She crept around the side of the crypt and crouched at the corner.
Two rows of graves further in stood a cheap folding table decorated with a dozen dark candles. A torn fabric acted as the alter surface, fluttering longer on the left than the right. Several ritual objects, likely bone, sat on the table, and the person chanting in front of the whole setup held one overhead long enough for Nariah to recognize the glint of crystal.
She wrinkled her nose. Nothing involving ritual in the middle of the night in a graveyard ever came out good. She should know, Nariah had dedicated her childhood to slaying zombies and her adulthood to settling wayward spirits.
The grim growled deep in his chest and Nariah put her hand on his head again. His desire to charge in, bite legs and ask questions later spun up under her breastbone. What other solution could there be?
Nariah took a second to breathe through the grim’s emotions and separate herself. He was just as much a spirit as the others rising out of their graves here, a being not quite of the mortal world any longer. He had the run of the entire graveyard, tasked with protecting the dead from the living and, should they rise, protecting the living from the dead. In thirty five years, Nariah had seen a lot of weird things with a variety of strange powers, but she only had one: to see and speak with the dead.
So when the vampires rose out of their crypts ten years ago, Nariah had been there, standing with the grim, ready and willing to stop them.
She’d nearly died that night. Swore off spirit-work for almost two years before she answered another grim call. Everything and nothing had changed. Now the city was run by vampires, but spirits still needed soothing.
The chanting suddenly picked up and the person at the alter lifted another, larger crystal overhead. Energy, crackling like lightning, burst from the crystal and struck the ground, a tree, a headstone near Nariah. The headstone burst into dust and fragments and the disturbed spirit roared. It swelled over the grave, gaining form and voice in seconds, and its hollow eyes fell on Nariah.
The grim barked. The spirit sprouted two massive arms with long claws that sank into the earth and dug furrows several inches deep. Its growth became jerky. A blue spirit flame ignited in its eyes, burning excess power to keep the form stable. The wavering edges of the beast steadied. Antlers sprouted from the spirit’s head, wider than Nariah’s car and decorated with sharp points. It bent forward, eyes locked on Nariah and horns at the ready.
Nariah couldn’t keep the grim at bay. The dog lunged toward the much larger spirit, snarling and snapping. He tried to bite the form but got nothing but smoke for his trouble. Nariah stumbled backward, hand against the old crypt for balance while she tried to catch her breath.
The idiot at the alter was going to raise an entire graveyard of monsters and then what? Did they think they could control an enraged spirit?
Lightning struck across the dark graveyard and burst against the solid stone of the crypt, leaving a charred slash and a chunk missing.
The spirit roared. It seemed to pull itself out of the grave, forcing itself free. A leg with four claws on the foot slammed onto the ground. The grim dove in, trying to bite it, and the spirit snarled. It slapped its palm down and struck the dog like an errant pest, throwing him twenty feet with ease.
Nariah’s heart tripped and she braced herself on the crypt wall. She clawed at her own wrist, dragging the snake-spine bracelet off with an elastic snap. The bones clicked against each other as she held it up between herself and the monster spirit like it might do some good.
For several seconds nothing happened. Nariah’s breath skittered away and her arm trembled, making the spirit she’d bound impossible to call. She needed to collect herself and calm down.
A thready laugh spilled between her teeth. Sure. Just calm down. It was so easy.
Nariah turned and ran around the opposite side of the crypt. She pressed her back to the cold stone, held the bone bracelet in both hands, and tried to breathe. The enraged spirit was still bound to its grave, she was safe for a moment. She closed her eyes and counted breaths in, then out. She noticed the age-rough stone at her back, the cool night air, and the fluttering beat of her heart. The next breath came a little easier.
Then the snake spirit emerged from Nariah’s bracelet and wrapped gently around her wrist.
Nariah opened her eyes. It had been a small garter snake in life, hit by a car and left for dead on the side of the road. With a little time and attention, Nariah had given the body a proper burial so that the spirit could heal. Most injured spirits walked into the woods at the back of her house and she never saw them again, but a few, like this snake, decided to stay. She’d cleaned the bones, strung them together, and carried the spirit with her. Now it perched on her wrist, it’s tiny eyes trained on her.
“I have a big thing to ask of you,” Nariah whispered.
The little snake dropped off of her wrist, wiggled through the grass around the crypt, and paused at the corner, looking back at her. The grim sat under her breastbone, throbbing like a second heartbeat, but the snake’s connection ran through her veins instead, contracting and loosening as it moved.
Nariah pushed off the crypt wall and followed the garter snake around the corner.
By the time she caught up, her little snake had grown. It stretched two feet long. Three feet. It was growing with every gentle sin wave through the grass. The length of a cobra. A cottonmouth. A python. Larger!
The ground trembled and Nariah knew they were out of time. The enraged spirit had freed itself from its grave.
The snake shot forward and Nariah chased. She slid to a stop at the edge of the crypt. Her garter snake had grown to match the monster, bigger than an anaconda with fangs to match. It darted under the monster’s sweeping arms, wrapped itself up one beefy leg, then tangled around the torso and neck of the beast. The monster roared. The snake had trapped one arm and it struggled to free itself until its legs tangled and it crashed to the ground.
The snake constricted.
Nariah had seen this once on a nature documentary. Snakes the size of trees wrapping around their victims and tightening slowly with every breath out until their prey died hours later of asphyxiation.
But spirits didn’t have to breathe. And her little garter snake wasn’t powered by unstable crystal lightning. Just the care and love Nariah had given its mortal body some months ago. They didn’t have hours.
She had to find the grim and stop this ritual. Fast.
Nariah darted away from the titian struggle, following the pull of the grim under her chest. She nearly tripped over the black dog several rows away as he limped toward her, a front leg held up and dangling the way front legs should not. Damn. He also sported a series of cuts and scrapes from his flight through the yard. He chuffed at her.
Nariah bent and took his head in her hands. She kissed his big muzzle and pressed her love into the link they shared. “You did good, old boy. Go rest.”
The grim whined, his nubby tail twitching, but Nariah insisted. “Go rest,” she said again, pushing him around to the southwest corner of the graveyard where she had parked the car. The grim licked her chin and went. He would shoulder his way into a pile of freshly turned dirt where he had been buried two hundred years before and heal to rise again tomorrow.
It was up to Nariah to stop this ritual.
Nariah set her shoulders and checked the small ball peen hammer hanging from her belt. She wasn’t much of a fighter since the zombies stopped rising, but she still had a mean tennis arm. She just had to get close enough to use it.
She jogged between gravestones, eyeing the way bluish lightning continued to snap across the field. She couldn’t afford to let it strike another grave. One enraged spirit was more than enough to handle.
Near the crypt, Nariah’s snake had the monster spirit under control. But for how long?
Nariah circled the alter and wrinkled her nose at the charred smell of stone and ozone. Several candles burned on the folding table, casting weak light across the crystals and bone of the ritual. And a small lump of something, fur maybe.
The next bolt of lightning lit the entire graveyard with shallow blue light. A man performed the ritual, his face still, his eyes focused on the cluster of crystals in hand as he chanted. He transferred the crystal to one hand and stretched the other forward, palm down, to rest on the pile of fur on the table. Energy surged all around the alter, sweeping past Nariah with the tingle of static.
She tried to creep closer, but the static condensed. Pushing through it became more and more difficult until at last the resistance snapped her backward, sliding Nariah along the ground into the sweep of the energy. She stumbled back and kept her feet.
Lightning sparked from the crystal in the man’s man to the table, where he focused. Excess energy scattered through the static wall and darted into the tree branches overhead. Sparks lingered in the static, flashing as the energy grew, a ring of wind and power rising up to tear at the trees.
That was more than enough.
Nariah hefted her hammer, measuring the weight of it. It wasn’t a weapon made for throwing, but Nariah had been throwing it anyway for years. It wasn’t a precision instrument and it didn’t need to be. Nariah aimed for the man’s chest, hauled back, and threw.
The hammer swung through the static wall like it didn’t exist and crashed into the man’s shoulder. He cried out, dropped his crystal, and grabbed at his shoulder, head swinging around to find Nariah. His pale face pinched. “I was almost there,” he shouted as the static swirl began to lose cohesion. Energy burst and popped. “I almost had it!”
“Had what?” Nariah backed up several steps to avoid stray sparks, her eyes flicking from the alter to the dropped crystals and back to the man. Interrupting a ritual was generally a bad idea. The energy called had to go somewhere and this idiot had called up a lot of energy. When Nariah had to dissipate a ritual she tried to send the energy into the earth where it could settle, but this whirlwind had nowhere to go.
“I almost had the answers. I’m trying to save us.”
There was no accounting for crazy. Nariah shook her head, watching the pulsing energy fade into and out of this plane as it became more unstable. A blast of it arced into the sky like a spiritual solar flare. It sheared right through an oak branch, bringing the entire limb crashing down. Half of it landed inside the swirling static and the exposed leaves curled, blackened, and were blown away like ash. The bark dried up next, flaking away as if the tree were on fire. Decay ate away at the branch until the weight of the base rolled it out of the static toward Nariah. It crunched against a tombstone, stopping close enough for Nariah to see small sparks of blue power still eating away at the branch.
Inside the whirlwind, the man reached for his crystal, but power crackled around the formation, then sparked into a bolt of lightning that struck the man’s chest. He crumpled to the ground.
Nariah snatched her only other option off her belt. Two bone charms she had built with sage and salt. They were meant for dispelling small spirits—dogs, cats, the occasional raccoon—not for bringing a growing tornado under control.
Another flare of power burst through several gravestones as it ran across the grounds. It arced and lightning struck overhead.
Nariah ducked. She had to do something.
She threw both charms into the whirlwind. Unlike the hammer, the power snatched both charms immediately, sending them spinning and swirling. Nariah could feel the energy now, the huge weight of it drawing more power on its own. Her two little bone charms couldn’t hope to contain it all. She needed a hundred.
Lightning flickered and snapped against the crypt, throwing broken stone in all directions. It snapped again to the tangled spirits nearby, the monster risen from its grave and the once-garter snake now wrapped around it. Power sliced through them both like a knife, bleeding them of energy so the whirlwind could feed itself.
The snake contracted. Nariah felt it shudder in her veins. Then it released all at once and both spirits were dragged by the rising power into the swirling static.
Nariah gasped and clutched her hand to her chest. Her very blood seemed to pulse in time with the whirlwind as it flashed and sparked, throwing strange blue light across the grounds. Both of the spirits were dragged around the rising tornado and Nariah grit her teeth against the sensation of snake scales being dragged through her veins. She was still connected to the snake spirit as it whipped around.
Something struck the snake and it flexed around the object instinctively. Power drained, like a sinking sensation in Nariah’s stomach.
The snake had grabbed one of the bone charms.
Nariah snapped her head up, squinting at the flashing whirlwind. Her second charm whipped by, the bone and sage and salt carried by violent spirit energy. The charms alone weren’t enough to fix this, but maybe her snake could help.
Nariah knelt on the grass where she was, straightened her back, closed her eyes, and let her hands rest in relaxation on her thighs. Cold dampness seeped into her jeans as she took a deep, steady breath and focused on her connection with the garter snake spirit.
It had wrapped its tail around the first bone charm and the snake’s own energy slipped down into it, dripping away. Nariah felt the whirlwind dragging her along, a vortex she couldn’t control. A half-formed shape, a hand with claws, swiped nearby, the remains of the agitated spirit, still trying to survive as the swirl stripped it of all form to feed itself.
A small pinprick whipped by, a disturbance in the power, like a tiny drain attempting to suck down an ocean. The second bone charm.
Nariah pulled the snake’s attention to it, tracking the gap like a black-hole in space. And the next time it spun past, the snake struck with quick fangs and grabbed the charm in it’s mouth.
The snake flexed. More of its energy dripped away and Nariah had to force herself to breathe deeply. She reached for the power in the whirlwind itself, pulling, teasing, gently feeding the smallest thread of energy into the garter snake where it dripped, dripped so slowly into the charms.
Channeling energy was one of the most basic forms of working and Nariah fell confidently into a deep breathing cycle, a meditation of power. She couldn’t control the whirlwind and she didn’t try, but from within, through the snake spirit, she sipped at the fountain a little faster, drank a little larger.
And the snake grew.
Spirits didn’t have weight, just like they didn’t need to breathe, but the snake bulged with wild power, became bloated with it, and sank in the whirlwind until it brushed against the bare ground where power had scoured away the grass.
The whirlwind slowed. It released a final pop of lightning that fizzled like static.
Nariah breathed. The snake moved under its own power now, slithering sedately around the circle to pick up the final whispers of stray energy. Only when Nariah couldn’t feel any extra power did she finally open her eyes.
Her snake towered over her, glowing ethereally blue in the predawn. Its head wove through the lower branches of the oak trees and its body stretched for yards, a massive and intimidating creature wider around than Nariah could hug.
The snake dipped its head and opened its mouth. Two pairs of fangs the length of her arm flashed, then the bone charm, barely half the size of her palm, dropped into her lap. Nariah held it tight and grinned up at her not-so-little garter snake.
She stood up, leaning on a gravestone to let the feeling come back to her feet as she massaged her right knee. Bent like that for too long, in the wet and cold had made her stiff.
The snake circled her and offered the second charm, still wrapped on the end of its tail. Nariah took it and tied them both back on her belt.
The graveyard was a wreck. Charred stone, blackened grass, and half-turned graves littered the entire area. More than one gravestone needed to be replaced entirely. And at the center of the devastation stood an alter, a dead man, and a cluster of low-burning candles.
Nariah rolled her shoulders. Time for cleanup.
She blew out the candles, collected the crystals, and stacked the bones and herbs. She grabbed the fur lump.
The fur lump grabbed back.
Sharp claws, long fangs, red eyes, it was a tiny kitten and it was pissed. It sank its claws into Nariah’s hand and tried to bite her. She wrenched it off her wrist before those fangs could make contact and it yowled. The kitten twisted in her grip, spitting mad, and those red eyes narrowed on Nariah.
Cats didn’t have red eyes.
Vampires did.
“Are you shitting me?” Nariah held the cat at arm’s length, at a complete loss. Nariah’s giant snake darted close, translucent blue head inching near. It flicked its tongue at the kitten and cocked its head. The vampire kitten squirmed and hissed and yowled.
The dead man groaned.
Nariah jumped, turning on him with a startled yelp. He groaned again and Nariah helped by planting her boot on one shoulder and shoving him onto his back. His entire chest was black, the shirt there—formerly a button down—vaporized by the lightning strike. His skin appeared to be overly tanned and he wore business slacks and office shoes. He didn’t look good but his eyes fluttered open—not red—and he blinked up at Nariah. Who did this guy think he was, working in the middle of a cemetery at night?
“What happened?” he croaked. He tried to sit up but before Nariah could knock him back down he hissed in pain and lay back himself. “Oh, that hurts.”
Nariah was surprised he was alive at all.
She shoved the spitting kitten in his face. “What the hell is this? What were you trying to do here?”
The man blinked slowly, confusion drawing his eyebrows together as he focused on the tiny dervish of claws and fangs.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen.” He licked his lips. His eyes focused over her shoulder and she saw his face pull back in fear. “What is… don’t eat me, please?” The snake flicked its tongue.
Nariah snorted. She turned back to the alter and, one-handed, began to wrap the contents up in their own torn tablecloth, some piece of red velvet. She wouldn’t let the tools he used go to waste. Her snake leaned over the idiot on the ground. If he had thoughts about getting away, he wouldn’t get far.
The man groaned again but Nariah didn’t hear him try to get up. Smart of him.
She put the bundle of ritual supplies down and knocked over the folding table. It was awkward work, but between her one free hand and her foot, she folded the legs in.
The man croaked again. “I was trying to save us.”
“From what?” Nariah grumbled. “Idiots raising spirits in the graveyard?” She snapped the table closed a little harder than necessary.
“From the vampires.”
Nariah marched over to him, one hand on her hip, the kitten held out like an example. “And I suppose the kitten is going to save us all.”
“Hissssss,” said the kitten.
He winced. “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said again. “I was trying to make a werewolf.”
Nariah blinked at him, then blinked at the red-eyed kitten, trying to fit this ungangly piece of the puzzle together. “Excuse me?”
“You know, werewolves. Transform during the full moon. Mortal enemies of vampires—” The man coughed, a deep, wracking sound that left him winded and his face screwed up with pain. “You gotta help me.”
Nariah wrinkled her nose. “I have to do nothing. You almost sent a spiritual tornado ripping through town. I barely got it under control, and I’m taking your table and supplies because no one pays me for this shit.”
Werewolves. Honestly. If they existed at all they would have come out with the vampires years ago, maybe even fought with them to take over the world. Monsters had full reign of the cities now. Humans weren’t on the top of the food chain anymore. They probably weren’t even in the middle.
The temperature, already chilly thanks to a long, dark night, dropped precipitously. Nariah stiffened and spun in a quick circle. The snake darted through several gravestones and hissed at a misty figure by the nearest tree. Nariah groped at her belt for her hammer and found the space empty.
Shit.
She hadn’t picked it up after throwing it at the man and now she couldn’t afford to take her eyes of the coalescing vampire to search for it.
Her snake circled the heavy shadow as it regained physical form, flashing long fangs.
Nariah scowled as she recognized who had come to visit. “Darius,” she said flatly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
The vampire firmed into the mortal plane, his gray skin more ash than black, his coiled hair trimmed tight against his head. He smiled gently, not quite enough to show fang, and bowed his head just a little. “We’d be more than happy to pay you for your work,” he said, proving he’d been lingering around like the spook he was before deciding to show himself.
Nariah bared her teeth. She didn’t have any fangs, but she knew enough about vampires to speak their body language. They were just like any other animal. Posturing, threat displays, territorial.
Darius laughed. He stepped forward, passing right through the snake spirit and showed no sign of being disturbed by it. Maybe the dead weren’t disturbed by fellow dead. Nariah couldn’t say. She tried not to hang around vampires long enough to understand them.
Nariah did her best never to intersect with a spirit. It left her clammy and with the distinct sensation that something had brushed against all her internal organs. She’d seen people puke at the feeling and she understood that completely. The fact that Darius didn’t avoid it just proved he was every inch the monster he seemed. Human-looking, perhaps, but no human at the controls.
When Darius took another step forward, Nariah spread her stance a little wider and wrinkled her nose. She couldn’t take a vampire, but turning and running was worse. Darius could probably hear her heartbeat speeding up, could smell the sweat that formed on her back. He was a predator that occasionally deigned to act civilized.
Darius stopped in the scoured stretch of ground where the whirlwind had killed the grass and tore through the graveyard. A few feet away. More than close enough to lunge forward and kill Nariah before she could blink.
The man on the ground groaned.
Darius put his hands behind his back as if that made him look less intimidating. It just reminded Nariah he didn’t need hands to kill her violently. Teeth were enough.
Nariah licked her lips. “What do you want.”
Darius glanced at the man on the ground and the kitten in her hand. “These two,” he said. “The human for questioning, the kitten for containment.”
Questioning. Sure. Violent bloodletting and torture, more like.
Nariah resisted the urge to glance down, weighing how much she cared about protecting a human life against risking her own skin.
She didn’t like the idiot on the ground, but that didn’t take away his humanity.
The kitten, on the other hand, she was happy to give up. She couldn’t begin to care for a vampire creature. She didn’t even know animals could be turned into vampires, but clearly that was a thing. If Darius wanted to take it off her hands, she was happy to be rid of it.
“You take the cat. I take the idiot,” she offered.
“You don’t want to deal with him. He’s dying anyway.”
Nariah believed it.
“Let me pay you for your trouble. As thanks for cleaning up this mess.”
“Oh, no,” Nariah said, despite her earlier complaint. “I don’t need anything from the coven, thank you very much. I like to stay independent.”
Darius smiled a little wider. “You already pay us for protection.”
“Because I’m not an idiot.”
“Of course…”
Nariah never saw Darius move. She didn’t blink and miss anything. But there was a moment, a fraction of time, where he flashed and suddenly he stood with the lighting-struck man in his grip, one arm around the man’s throat, holding him up without any effort.
His smile shrank. “Let me make this easier for you. I’m taking the human. You don’t want to keep the cat.” He made a hand-it-over gesture with his open hand.
Nariah wasn’t about to get any closer. She tossed the creature underhand and Darius caught it. He pointed at her with the red-eyed kitten. “Smart. That’s why I like you, witch.”
“Don’t let the rising sun hit you on the way out,” Nariah said. “I hear it’s a heck of a hangover.”
Darius smiled again and that same flicker of nothing occurred. One second he stood there, cat and idiot human in hand. The next he was gone as if he’d never been there at all. Not even a scuff of ash or dirt to mark where he stood.
The spirit snake returned to her, circling around to lower its head to hers and flick its tongue. Nariah felt its confirmation in her veins. The vampire was gone.
Her shoulders slumped. Exhaustion washed over her all at once. She gave the snake a scratch on its nose and hunted around until she found her ball peen hammer. That went into her belt.
She grabbed the bundle of ritual supplies under one arm, the folding table’s carry handle in the other, and marched toward the parking lot. The table and supplies were useful and she was determined to take something beneficial away from this. The snake slithered along beside her, passing through gravestones, trees, and bushes as necessary.
Nariah piled the supplies into the back of her car and faced the snake with her hands on her hips. It was so long it could wrap around her car twice and tall enough to stick it’s head into a second story window. “So what am I supposed to do with you, then? You’re a lot bigger now, aren’t you?”
The snake flicked its tongue. It bent down far enough to nose at the bone bracelet on her wrist.
Nariah held her hand up. “You think you can fit back inside?” In her veins, the snake flexed in a way she understood to be humor. “Of course you can,” she said.
With a bit of power, the snake flowed from the parking lot into the vertebra bones wrapped around Nariah’s wrist. A waterfall of spiritual energy poured into the bracelet until the bones themselves glowed ghostly blue and Nariah could see right through them. Concentrated spiritual power at her disposal.
Perhaps the night hadn’t been a total waste of time after all.
Nariah closed up the car and climbed in. The first rays of morning sun glanced across her windshield, casting everything in gold, and she smiled.