Blood-Lines

Part 7

Clementine Blue sat alone in the drawing room of the silent mansion; cross-legged with hands lying face up on her knees as she meditated and focused her third eye.

Once she'd fired Cat's forge properly, he'd worked through the night as he'd banged out the perfect circle with an exact nine-foot radius. He'd even managed to properly attach the hexagram as she'd asked; one equal triangle up to rest over another down and beneath, rather than the interlaced triangles of a Jewish star.

The addition of the six-foot long, six-inch wide iron piece with the smaller six-foot radius circle attached, clearly surprised him. Six thin copper lines were also set from one circle to the other; while he hadn't asked their significance, she also hadn't offered.

Some things were just not shared with non-magical folks who wouldn't understand how something like this just might be used.

While Cat had been right about much of what it was that he'd made; she'd simply had him add a transference coil as well, which would allow her to absorb any energy that the demon might try use as she cast it out of their current space and time and into another far, far away.

Although it would be her first time trying it out as the proper weapon that it was, at the same time she was fairly sure that it would work from what she'd read of it long ago, in one of the many books of the darker arts that few cared to practice or learn even among the men of the craft.

Well, other than those who chose to be warlocks, she supposed; they were just too dark to even consider as equals.

There were many valid reasons to have called the practice of such magic the darker of the finer arts as certain death often waited for those who were to make use of them and fail with their application.

Seated as she was on the carpet over the smaller of the two circles, all she had to do now was wait; and wait, and wait some more.

Covering the circles had been Cat's idea, in order to give the demon little to be warned about.

Once she'd finished setting up, he and the others had retreated to just outside the gate, protected as they were by the iron fence.

She began to wonder where the old man had gotten that idea from when he'd had it erected - iron being the one thing that could contain the power of magic with most any amount of certainty.

Although somewhat surprised when they'd entered the mansion only to find the owner's wife as she hung lifeless from the second floor rail; knowledge of the demon's presence only served to make such a discovery that much less of a shock than it normally would have been otherwise.

Apparently, from what Poe had mentioned before they'd cut the woman down, she'd known enough to get the proper drop and hadn't appeared to have suffered any while in the process of executing her rather abrupt exit.

Any search of the rest of the house would simply have to wait considering what may be lurking in wait.

From the double-barrel shotgun that lay open and empty against the wall near the dead woman's feet, they figured she'd probably been the one who'd done the shooting outside and burned the wounded vampire just for spite; how she'd managed to get the jump on something like that was well beyond even Clementine's consideration.

While Poe and Running-Deer had carried the dead woman outside, she and Cat cleared the floor of the drawing room and set her connected rings down before they'd rolled the rug back over them.

Just as he moved to make his way out, Cat took one last look around the room.

"If that demon gives you any trouble, just call and I'll get up here and help as fast as I can."