Smoke and Dagger by Douglas Wynne

Author:Douglas Wynne [Wynne, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prometheus
Published: 2019-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

“Sorry. It’s just fascinating stuff. The food is delicious.” For a while, she ate in silence, studying the drawings. Then she wiped her hands on her napkin and touched the corner of a page. “This is a strange god. What’s his name?” It was the black man in the crown and glasses.

Jack shook his head. “Not a god. Maybe a prophet? I don’t know. That was a problem we ran into. Some of these are easy to identify from Abdelmalek’s grimoires, but others were probably…prophetic glimpses of apocalyptic events in the future. That’s the best theory we have so far, anyway. That’s part of the problem of using a psychic and a mirror. You don’t always get a pure evocation. She might see probabilities that the god is related to instead. Glimpses of the future or past.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

He smiled. “I’m not so sure I do, either. It might even be a blessing in disguise that Candy left. We were relying too much on her vision. Now that we’re using the incense instead of the mirror as a manifesting medium, the entities are possessing the physical body more, so it filters that other stuff out.”

“These images are incredible. Horrible…but also…beautiful. You saw these things?”

“Only through Candy’s eyes. I caught glimpses, but I’m not as sensitive.” He searched Catherine’s eyes. “I bet you’d see all kinds of things.”

“Maybe you should test me. You said Kamen is in Long Beach? He’ll probably be gone all day.” She swept her fingertips over the papers, stirring them like an inky pool from which something might surface. Jack didn’t seem to mind. He watched them roam. The eggs went cold. She plucked a sheet of verse. “What’s all this about the Antichrist?”

“You’re having breakfast with him.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re the son of the devil, Jack?”

“Maybe. My father’s name was Marvel. It’s my name, too. Marvel Whiteside Parsons. But my mother took to calling me John after she divorced him for running around on her. So that’s my real dad. But when I was a boy, I tried to summon the devil.”

“I don’t believe in the devil.”

“Then you aren’t a Christian?”

“My parents are. Did he show up? The devil.”

“If you don’t believe in him, why would you ask that?”

“Because I do believe in the power of the mind.”

“Did you see what we conjured last night?”

Catherine nodded.

“That was more than just the power of the mind. Wouldn’t you say?” He lit a cigarette and waved it over the pile of sketches. “What did you see?”

Catherine tapped the drawing of the eel enswathed goddess. “This. In the smoke around the woman.”

“Her name is Salome. She was channeling the goddess. Shabbat Cycloth.”

“People can see what they want to see in smoke or clouds.”

Jack leaned in. “Ah, but you didn’t know what we were conjuring, did you? How would your subconscious mind know to make eels out of ribbons of smoke? It wouldn’t, unless you know more about all of this than you’re letting on. Do you? You came here and drew the sigil of the goddess’ consort in the sand.

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