Vendetta - Vendetta Deadly Curiosities 2 Page 0,156

of a bullet, what hit Watcher One made him light up like a Christmas tree, waves of blue electricity running up and down his body. It only lasted a few seconds. That’s all it needed. He collapsed to his knees from a dose of high voltage electricity that would have fried a mere mortal.

“I am so done with this shit.” Daniel Hunter was holding something that looked like a cricket bat studded with obsidian blades. A maquahuitl, the weapon ancient Aztecs used when they were severely pissed at someone. He swung the maquahuitl with all his might, and it took the Watcher One’s head right off his neck, smashing in one side of it for good measure. The severed head stuck to the blades, as if Daniel were batting a gory home run. The fallen angel’s body collapsed to the blood-soaked ground.

Sorren, Lucinda, and Caliel still battled Sariel, while Donnelly made sure the fifth Watcher didn’t come through the portal. Sorren had a sword in each hand, bloodied to the elbows and spattered with gore. His shirt and jeans were soaked with his own blood from deep gashes. Sariel had Marinette’s strength to bolster him, and I wondered if the Loa was the only reason the nephilmancer was still on his feet.The Angel Oak’s roots twined around his ankles, as if the old tree knew it was Sariel who had lit the bonfire. Sariel was bleeding heavily from deep gashes on his arms and thighs, and the belly wound alone would have put a regular fighter on the ground. Mad resistance glittered in Sariel’s eyes, and I knew neither he nor Sorren would yield short of destruction.

We didn’t have that kind of time.

I grabbed the chakram from the ground and made a Hail Mary throw, aiming at Sariel. The razor disk missed his neck but lodged in his shoulder. It was the distraction Sorren needed. One sword split the nephilmancer from shoulder to hip, while the other severed his head, just for good measure. Sariel wasn’t getting back up from that, even with a Loa possessing him.

Marinette’s spirit shrieked in rage as Sariel’s body failed. She tore loose from the corpse, rising like a destroying angel above the blood-soaked ground. Lucinda blasted her with the green-lit power of her staff, and Caliel struck with his blessed swords, but the malicious Loa wheeled on them, a frenzy of teeth and claws.

The Angel Oak was still against my back, and my hands gripped its rough bark. I listened to the images that my touch magic unlocked, and I knew that the Angel Oak was not happy at having its long slumber disturbed. It despised the death and blood; it feared the fire.

The reading I got from the Loas was different. Lucinda’s power had called them, and they came, observing before they decided whether or not to intervene. Marinette’s involvement troubled them, but I feared they would see the struggle as mortal business, and thus beneath their interest to intervene.

If I could sense the tree’s perceptions because I was touching the Angel Oak, maybe the tree and the Loas could hear me, too. I tightened my grip on the tree and opened my mind to the Oak, feeding it images more than words. The stairway disappearances. Reapers. So many deaths. Sariel’s desire for vengeance – and what he intended for Charleston. The information passed out of me at a breathtaking speed, and I felt drained when it ended, but I had the definite feeling that I had been heard.

We can’t defeat Marinette by ourselves. Please, please help, I begged.

I felt the ancient power of Gran Bwa and Damballah Wedo rouse. Marinette Bois Sech was one of their own, and she had overstepped.

Gran Bwa’s spirit sank into the Angel Oak, and the branches shook as the tree’s limbs began to move. One huge limb lay on the ground. Now, animated by the Loa, it swept the bonfire aside, scattering the brands and obliterating Sariel’s warded circle. Abruptly, the portal winked shut, trapping the fifth Watcher in the Netherworld where he belonged.

The spirit of Damballah Wedo, the great white snake, slipped down the Angel Oak’s many branches, spreading out over the limbs and twigs, out into the leaves. The breeze stirred and the Angel Oak bent as if from a hurricane’s force. As its limbs came close to where Marinette’s spirit raged, I saw the snake’s thick coils reach out from among the leaves and wrap themselves around Marinette like an anaconda. Marinette bucked and

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