Heart of a Dragon

Chapter Twenty-Five

Donovan bent over the keyboard of his computer, and Amethyst sat on the wooden arm of his chair, leaning on his shoulder and scanning the screen. The program he had open was the viewer he used to browse the documents he'd archived. He'd been working on the project so long that, when he's started, he'd needed a huge mainframe computer. As machines grew faster and programs grew more efficient, his system had evolved as well.

Now he had a small room off of the library, concealed behind several movable shelves, where arrays of water-cooled hard drives and blade servers maintained terabytes of data. He'd been scanning, recording, indexing and studying the manuscripts in his collection for decades, and unlike many of his peers, he embraced technology and all that it offered rather than denying it. One shelf in his den held stacks of recent technical publications and volumes on database design and administration. He liked to tell visitors that computer logic, programming, and magic weren't so far removed from one another.

Programming wasn't really much different than ritual magic. There were exact sequences of numbers and precise patterns of syntax and data required for each operation. Taking a manuscript, converting it to tiny pixels on the screen, and then recording it on an array of data drives that could reproduce it in multiple formats, and even recover it if it became corrupted, was just magic of a different kind.

At the moment, he was very glad to have that particular magic at his fingertips. There must have been tens of thousands of references to Voodoo in his files, and those were only among the documents and volumes he'd recorded. He glanced over at the boxes and books piled along the wall and shook his head.

"Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever even begin to catch up," he said. "I have deposit boxes in the vaults beneath the bank downtown. You know Joel?"

Amethyst nodded.

"I've done business with them myself. Their security is top-notch."

"If I'm right," Donovan said, "what we need is going to be among the documents I've already recorded. I started with the oldest, the most dangerous, and those most difficult to handle without causing damage. In some cases I had to photograph them carefully because I couldn't pick them up, or touch them with my skin for fear of their crumbling away and being lost.

"A large number of those earliest and most fragile documents came out of Africa. Others were collected from the islands, Jamaica, and Haiti. I don't remember them all, there's no way that I could, but I've at least scanned everything once, and there's something I'm forgetting — something I've seen."

Cleo leaped from the floor to the desktop, walked to the edge nearest Amethyst, and arched her back, purring. Amethyst laughed, stood, and lifted the cat into her arms. She scratched Cleo's ears and pressed her face into the warm fur.

"I know," she said. "He gets like this around books. But what are we going to do? He's cute."

Donovan grunted, but didn't look up. He continued scanning documents and indexes. Amethyst carried Cleo over to the bar, set her down gently, and reached for a bottle of deep amber liquid. She poured two fingers each into two tumblers and carried one back to Donovan, who took it gratefully, but did not look up from the computer screen.

"What is it?" Amethyst asked.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I think I may have found something, but it's slow going. I scanned and archived these documents, but there was no way I could translate them all, so I'm having to wing it as I go. It's a little easier now — I have software that can perform OCR text recognition in nearly a thousand languages — but even computers take time for this sort of thing."

"You say OCR and I hear yada yada yada," Amethyst said. "Seriously, what is it you think you found?"

"This," Donovan said. He sat up so that she could see the screen better. What appeared was a very old document written in spidery, difficult script. It was even harder to make out because the paper it was written on was a dark shade of tan.

"Couldn't you whiten the paper in the image?" she asked. "I can't make out a word of it, but even if I knew that language, this would be hard."

"I did what I could," Donovan said. "It was darker before. That manuscript is written on human skin. It was a tattoo. When the original — owner — died, they preserved it. When I got the manuscript, it was rolled around a femur and sealed in a tube made of tree bark and sealed with sap. I'm not sure of the age, but it was brittle. I had to use special oils — a formula I got from the Egyptians, as a matter of fact — to work the skin so that it could be unrolled, and then it took another week to photograph it in parts and piece the images together."

Amethyst stared at the document a moment longer, and then turned to him.

"You have got to be kidding me? A spell so powerful — so important — that it was preserved on live human skin?"

"Apparently. I wouldn't have hit on this connection at all, but it cross-references to an entry I found to something resembling your amulets. I think they came from the same area of the world, and I think they are more connected even than Anya Cabrera knows. If I'm correct, the moment she set this plan of hers into motion, they were attracted — that they were meant to find their way here."

"The amulets, you mean? They are part of the spell?" Amethyst asked. Her face wrinkled in disgust.

"Not exactly," Donovan said. "What I've read seems to indicate that they are part of what was originally used to control, or combat it. I think they are here because they were attracted by need."

"What does it say?" Amethyst asked.

"I don't have all of it yet," Donovan said. "Translation programs are still pretty rudimentary, and as you can imagine, those dealing with ancient languages are even worse. I know this much — Anya Cabrera is not summoning the Loa we are familiar with. She isn't hoping to see Papa Legba; it's something darker she's after. There are apparently levels of spirits that can be summoned and these are one of the lowest. They can possess worshippers just as the more powerful Loa can, but they don't assume control. They don't have the intelligence for it — they're elemental powers, and it's the summoner who retains control. In this case, that would be Anya."

"But the Loa don't remain beyond the ritual," Amethyst protested. "I've seen the ceremony."

"True," Donovan said, leaning forward as another bit of text spit out of the translator. "But this is a different ritual entirely. It's a matter of repetition and degree. These spirits linger for longer periods the more often they are summoned. If they return to the same hosts repeatedly, the forces binding them to the underworld weaken. Eventually they can be ripped free, snapping the bonds holding them in their own realm and remaining in their hosts."

"Like powerful slaves," Amethyst said.

"Exactly. They don't belong on this plane, and they are desperate to return, but they can't fight the summoning any more than those possessed can free themselves. Only the Houngan behind the spell controls their captivity, and by a series of rituals intended to promise a freedom that will never come, they are tricked into subservience and trapped in human form forever."

"There has to be a backlash," Amethyst said. "You can't just drag a power from one realm to another without repercussions."

"That's why the amulets exist," Donovan said. "This document explains how they were first created, from the residue of the bodies of those possessed. They exist in both realms, and when worn prevent those who have been displaced from seeing those who bear them. At the same time they apparently provide a conduit for spirits on the other side to assist. We didn't know about that little tidbit, or we might have made use of it."

"I don't know," Amethyst said. "You know how the things make your skin crawl, and feel — sort of unclean? That is probably the touch or influence of the powers you're talking about calling on. I'm not sure it's an improvement."

"Whoever wrote this believed it was."

The program finished its rough translation, and Donovan clicked the icon to print it.

"We need to get back to the Barrio," he said. "We have to find Martinez and show this to him, and we have to find out when Anya might be planning another ritual. If I understand this correctly, and it's entirely possible that I don't, since the translation is very weak, she hasn't performed the ritual enough times to make it permanent. There is time to stop her, but we have to find out if she's planning to repeat that ceremony, and if she does, we have to stop her. If she gets her army of spirit warriors in place, we're going to need a lot more horsepower than we have locally to put an end to it, and even with help we might be in over our heads."

"That powerful?"

"Powerful enough to tattoo the preventive ritual on a man's back, and to create amulets that are — at the most basic level — pacts with demons to prevent it from happening. I'd say it came close at least once in the past, and someone stopped it. Let's just hope that what they left us is enough that we can do it again."

He shut down the computer and rose, downing his cognac.

"Sorry, Cleo," Amethyst said, giving the cat a final scratch on the ears. "I guess you're on guard duty again. I'll try to bring him back in one piece."

Cleo meowed once, then curled up on Donovan's now warm and vacant chair and laid her head on her paws as if in resignation.

Moments later they were out the door and on their way, the printout rolled and tucked into a deep fold of Donovan's jacket. When they hit the street, the sun was low in the sky, dropping toward evening.

"I think we'd better split up for a while," Donovan said. "We need to know when Anya will hold that next ceremony, and where. You think you could track that down?"

"Of course," Amethyst said. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to see Martinez. The more I think about this, the more I believe he knows exactly what Anya is up to. You saw those jackets, and how the men wearing them moved. They were holding their own, maybe a little better. I noticed something about their dragons."

"What?"

"There was no red in either one. The paint was blue and green on Jake's jacket, and the dead man's was ice blue. The paint that Martinez wanted to create so badly — it was Rojo Fuego. Fire red. If his boy Salvatore could create the kind of power he did without that color…what's going to happen when he paints a red dragon?"

"Let's hope we never find out. I'll find you later, as soon as I know something.

They split, and Donovan disappeared down the side street behind his building. Amethyst stepped out onto the street and disappeared into the crowds.