John Ringo: Princess of Wands

With that she slipped into the underbrush like a gray phantom.

“Lord Satan, bring to us your strength!” Coach Sherman intoned.

Allison bit her lip and tried not to cry. She had a hard time figuring out how the whole team had gotten this far into nightmare. It had happened so slowly, so subtly, that she couldn’t tell exactly where they’d all crossed the line. At first the “team-building exercises” had been just that. Going out on walks and sitting around fires and getting to know each other better. Coach Sherman had said that that was just the first step to being a really winning team and there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with that. Then the talks had gotten deeper and stranger and the coach explained that there was only one way to be sure they would win. That it was secret and that they’d all have to take oaths not to talk about it.

The coach had told them that the power he was calling would make them better players, make them a better team. And it seemed to work. Without much more practice than she’d already been doing, she’d just done better. She could catch better, she could bat better and she could keep concentrated better. Everybody talked about it, quietly. It had to be an external power, they all knew that. And it didn’t seem wrong . Then.

But, when Corine and Cheryl and Shelly left, they’d gotten deeper into the “mysteries.” The coach had finally told them where the “power” was coming from. Now there didn’t seem to be any way to turn back. She was a good Christian girl, well, okay, a fairly good Christian girl. She wasn’t like her mother that damned saint, but she didn’t fool around and she tried to be nice to people. And here she was trying to call in the power of the Devil to help them win some stupid softball game.

And the coach had brought a cat. She’d thought it was, like, his familiar or something. But he was going to sacrifice it. He was just going to cut the poor little kitty’s throat to “raise the power.”

It wasn’t right. But try as she might, she just couldn’t open her mouth to protest. Nobody else was, either. They’d said too many things, made too many oaths. She felt like her soul was already lost. They might as well just do it and get the power. If her soul was already lost, winning the softball game was at least something to show for it.

The coach was babbling in some language, maybe Latin but a lot of it sounded like Spanish or even just gibberish. He’d tied the feet of the cat together and had it pinned on a log.

She had to turn her eyes when the knife came down but she could hear the squall that was cut off in a horrible gurgle and the crunching of the knife.

“The way is opened,” Coach Sherman said, raising the bloody knife to the full moon. “Let the power flow through this circle, Lord Satan, that your powers can bring us victory over our enemies!”

Barb paused at the edge of the clearing, letting her eyes adjust to the firelight without looking directly at the fire. The girls were in a semi-circle vaguely facing her. Which was problem one. Oh, not tactically, magically . She’d studied enough rites at this point to know that anything that Sherman was going to do using this type of rite would require a full circle. The whole team was there though, and she saw Allison’s head, as well as others, turn aside as the knife came down.

She could see what was happening but what she couldn’t do was feel a thing. And that was problem two. There was a miasma over the whole group, but she’d come to realize that was more on the lines of empathy through her channel than anything. There wasn’t a touch of power. Nothing. This guy had just killed a poor little black cat for nothing .

She froze as the coach raised the bloody knife and then said something to the girls. Some of them shook their head but a few came forward hesitantly. When he dipped his finger in the blood, though, she had had enough.

“This stops right now,” she muttered, striding into the red firelight.

Allison’s eyes flew wide as a ghostly figure just seemed to appear in front of them. The person, a woman from the voice, was clad from head to foot in some sort of camouflage that just seemed to blend her into the background. It was hard to even look at and she felt her eyes start to water.

“In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ this farce will end now !” the woman said, striding determinedly up to the “altar.”

“You have no power here!” Coach Sherman said, but there was a quaver in his voice.

“That is what you think, you impostor,” the woman said. “You don’t know the first thing about power! There is no power here. You’re no more a High Priest than I am the Virgin Mary. This isn’t a rite, this is just some idiot butchering poor defenseless animals!”

The girls started to back away from the fire but Allison stood rooted. She could swear she knew that voice…

“What do you know about power, Christian,” Coach Sherman spat. “Your God is weak ! All you do is sing hymns and-”

“Weak?” the figure hissed. “I have fought demons from Hell manifest upon this Earth, you poser . I’ve defeated monsters that would freeze the blood in your veins , you loathsome imbecile. And I’m not about to let you use your pretty stare and seducer ways to twist these girls!”

Allison could swear there was a blue glow forming around the woman as she stepped to the altar and picked up the still dripping cat.

“Lord,” the woman said, dropping her head and holding the cat in front of her, “this is as much a battle for the souls of these innocents as any that I have performed for you in the past. I ask You, Lord, for the power you have given me in battle. Fill me, this night, Lord, that these children can see the light and the beauty of God and His only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let the Holy Spirit fill me, Lord, as it has filled me in battle against Almadu and Remolus.”

There was no question about it, now. The woman, her mother ? was surrounded by a blue-white glow that was beginning to wash out the light from the fire. Allison turned her head away as the glow became too bright to look at.

Barb cradled the cat to her chest, unsure even of what she wanted. She just knew that she had to show these girls, and Allison especially, that God was stronger than any machinations of the Enemy. She could feel the power flowing through her and it seemed that she could feel every vein and sinew in her body straining in the rush of power to do something . She could also feel the cat, not as a light weight, but as a live thing that… could be again.

Something seemed to ask a question in her mind, an important question. She wasn’t sure of even the nature of the question, just that it was terribly important. She was being asked to give up something, something vital. She was asked for a sacrifice. But in this place, with the example of the Lord and Savior, she could do no more than acquiesce.

She felt every part of the cat now as something reached through her and knit flesh and veins, closed the gaping wound and even cleaned the blood from the fur. Then she felt more as life seemed to flow from her veins into those of the cat. Last there was a terrible wrenching, as if something had been pulled out of her heart, her head, her whole body, a bit of her very essence, the central core of her soul, and flowed out of her and into the creature in her arms.

She opened her eyes and looked across the tree stump at the “High Priest” as the recently dead cat in her arms first sat up, then mewed quietly, then climbed up onto her shoulder.