Dark Moon - Michael Langdon

Part 38 - Power-sharing

"Fuck! I don't think you're doing this right!" Michael shouts as he recoils in pain.

Marie scoffs as she opens her eyes and drops her arms to her sides. "Esmeray isn't feeling any pain right now! Maybe you're the one doing something wrong."

She motions around to the empty salon around us. "We only have 15 minutes before the people who bought this salon after I died show up here to demolish it and build their parking garage on this site. Imagine building a parking garage over the site of an immortal voodoo queen!" she scoffs.

I sigh. "Maybe Michael has some weird thing where you can't siphon him, Marie," I suggest. "We'd better just hurry and complete this spell to change the salon over to be in your name before those contractors show up."

Marie sighs and holds out her arms to motion for us to join her in her circle. "This is a bit less convenient, but I can tap into your powers through sharing blood."

Michael watches skeptically as I join her in the circle. "Isn't that unsanitary?" he questions as he watches Marie pull out an old knife.

She chuckles as she takes my hand and slides the knife across it. "The Antichrist is scared of Tetanus? That's a new one."

He rolls his eyes and holds his hand out for her to cut. "Just do it."

She smirks as she cuts his hand, then her own. We all hold our hands perpendicular to the ground, then join them in a triangle.

"Has this ever been done before?" I question.

Marie scoffs. "There's nothing traditional about my voodoo; I've been making up everything that I've been doing ever since I got back from the dead. I'm just so good that I don't need to follow a certain procedure to get shit done."

"Great, so we're following an old Voodoo Queen who is completely making up what she's doing," Michael scoffs. "Shit!" He winces and holds his opposite hand to his head in pain.

Marie chuckles to herself as he begins to lower his hand. "Next time I'll send you a concussion instead of a headache."

He sighs and decides to not try to argue with her. A surge of power bursts between our hands, and Marie quickly channels it into performing a spell. I feel the energy of the salon change to its normal energy from when Marie owned it.

Michael and I drop our completely-healed hands to our sides.

"A goddamn parking garage," Marie mutters as she steps out from the circle and the candles around the room light up. "I wasn't about to let my home get demolished just for a parking garage!"

"I know that you didn't need mine and Michael's power for performing that spell," I start, "But you just wanted us to join you so we could practice our power-sharing for when the time comes that we need to use it on Devan."

"You are correct," Marie smirks as she takes her seat at her throne. "What point are you about to make?"

"Isn't blood-sharing a bit too much of a hassle?" I ask. "Do you really think we'll have time to do that when we attack Devan?"

She chuckles. "Of course we won't. You see, today was just a test run. Luckily for us, I know of other ways that we can power-share."

She raises her arm and holds out her hand, and three rings fly into it. "We can power-share through talismans. It's a bit difficult on me to enchant the talismans, but I will make it work."

"How do we enchant the talismans?" I ask.

She stands and takes a large candle from beside her throne. "Just a short ritual; it will be easy on you two, but hard on me." She walks to the center of the room and sits with the candle in front of her. "Form a circle around the candle," she orders.