The Children of Arnborg: The Prophecy

Chapter Seventeen

Emma marched up the colonnade with Stuart, who was still in somewhat of a stupor at her side, but she had no time for him just yet. The blue varnished doors opened readily for her on her approach, and Stuart noted the slight tilt of her head up toward the security camera to her right.

She entered the large, spacious room bathed in the same bluish light that Stuart had observed back at The Coven's hideout, but this was another hideout of sorts. This was their lair, The Coven's headquarters. Inside the room The Coven had gathered awaiting Emma's instructions.

"Get out!" she spoke quietly, leaving no room for protest.

They did.

Stuart watched her stand in the middle of the massive hall, a singular figure rubbing her hands together, her cold, rigid beauty becoming almost a fixture at the center of the marble room. He gazed around at the dark blue drapes that kept out the sun, at the gargoyle and angel founts that gurgled in the midst of the silence and at the monitors that whirred and buzzed, always scanning for some unknown presence.

His eyes moved across the judge's bench and jury box, each stationed at a far corner, mimicking a human courtroom, and finally across the marble floor and up toward the arches above him that echoed Emma's measured clip-clopping as she finally moved. But he was still anchored near the doorway.

Emma motioned for him to join her in the belly of the hall, but when he did not respond with the expected immediacy she shrugged, left him at the opened doorway and proceeded to retrieve a large black book from a nearby cabinet, leaving Stuart perplexed at her patience.

"Ah!" she uttered with a satisfied smile after running her fingers through pages of painstakingly inked foreign text. "Oh, never mind them, Mr. Morrow," she muttered, reading Stuart's thoughts. She had returned to lean against the door and caught him off guard with her preternatural swiftness. "They would not dare harm you. I'd kill them before they do," she said to the jittery D.A.

He was still perusing the neighborhood for signs of The Coven who had disappeared, perhaps into the surrounding houses, perhaps into the fields that flanked them on all sides. Emma turned Stuart's chin toward her and held the door open in a mildly exaggerated gesture of welcome, waiting patiently as he shuffled about at the threshold before finally making up his mind to enter the hall proper.

She moved from behind him with the same preternatural agility and strength as she had done just moments before and waved a pentacle to the four corners of the room, reciting the chant she had plucked from the pages of the spell book.

"Let no man's feet run hitherto or seek
this sanctuary, lest of whom I speak.
To my companions, bear them no reproach
but whither thou the bones who would encroach
unwelcome, seeking us they would do harm.
Let power rise from pentacle in palm,
and show us favor, Osiris of the deep.
Let Dead Ones rise and Living surely sleep!"

She threw her trenchcoat onto a table and stripped naked.

"What are you doing?" Stuart's voice interjected, he was edging toward the doorway again, appearing ready to run away at a moment's notice.

"No, no, no. Come in. Come in," she whispered hurriedly, teasing him with her body. "You must stay. You must stay," she urged. She was holding an athame in her hand and swung it toward the doors. They slammed shut on their own.

She bit her wrist and watched the blood flow into a palm-sized clay bowl, glancing at a stupefied Stuart every now and then with a sly smile. She drew a pentagram on the floor with the collected blood, setting three black candles evenly apart inside it, repeating with each task, "I call on you, Isis, Mother of the Living. Oh Osiris, god of the Underworld, I invoke thee! Come to my aid. I invoke thee!"