The Darkest Gateway Read online

  THE DARKEST GATEWAY

  Copyright © 2019 by Jeri Westerson

  All rights reserved.

  Published as an eBook in 2019 by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

  ISBN 978-1-625674-23-4

  Cover design by Mayhem Cover Creations

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

  49 W. 45th Street, 12th Floor

  New York, NY 10036

  http://awfulagent.com

  [email protected]

  For Craig, who always says, “Write the bestselling book!” no matter how wacky the idea.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Author’s Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jeri Westerson

  PART ONE

  “You mortal men know nothing of, whose name we loathe to utter. You will need to dig down deep, so deep, to come on them. Who got us into this fix? You’re to blame.”

  ―Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Chapter One

  The thing about the Booke of the Hidden was its vicious element of surprise. You never knew what would come out of it or when, and I think the Booke took pleasure in the chaos it created with maximum terror potential.

  In other words, the Booke was a dick.

  I’d never heard of it until I’d moved to Maine, to the little village of Moody Bog. When I tore into that wall in my eighteenth-century shop, I had no idea I’d find it. And what it meant to open it. And that I’d had a history here in Moody Bog that I hadn’t remembered until the spell making me forget was broken. How screwed up was that?

  But here I was. Proud owner of Strange Herbs & Teas and pretty sure that it was all for nothing because of this Booke literally hovering over everything I did. Demons, gods, creatures of the night causing terror and death—and my job to put it all to rights. There was no instruction manual for this.

  At least I wasn’t alone. There was the demon of the Booke, my coven, an ex-boyfriend now turned werewolf because of me, and a few other supporters, but that was it. We were on our own. And Halloween was coming.

  I was told that it would all be worse on Halloween night. Awesome.

  Yesterday we were fighting zombies and maybe getting Doug’s biker gang a wee bit on our side. But all that excitement had faded. My hunger had not. I was aware by now that it wasn’t natural, that it was related to whatever got released from the Booke of the Hidden, because nothing in my life was normal anymore. It all had to do with that stupid Booke…

  And I was growing closer and closer to it, thinking its thoughts, having its feelings. It was weird. And weirdly comforting. Which was weird in itself, because I knew—intellectually—that this wasn’t right either.

  Erasmus the demon was my anchor. And he kept looking at me with concern. I wanted him to go with me to Ruth’s, our local Mayflower queen. But I also wondered if it wouldn’t make things worse.

  I must have looked pretty nervous because out of the shadows I heard, “I will go with you.”

  He often stood in the shadows. I didn’t know if it was a demon thing or an Erasmus thing. Maybe some from column A, some from column B.

  “You don’t have to,” I said, sounding a bit unconvincing even to my own ears.

  He moved forward and postured, chin up, hands behind his back. “I will.”

  Boy, when he looked at me like that…

  * * *

  We drove. He could have transported me with magic, but we needed the appearance of a car. When we got out, I looked up at her mansion and started up the flagstone walkway. Erasmus joined me on the porch. We were both aware of the protection mandala, a mosaic designed to keep evil away, hidden under the doormat. Erasmus couldn’t cross it but he found ways around it.

  Stella, Ruth’s majordomo, answered the door. By the way she eyed me, I got the impression that Ruth told her everything. But when her eyes fell on Erasmus, she seemed to soften. He had that way with women, the devil.

  “Please come in,” she said reluctantly. “If you can wait in the foyer…”

  Stella left and I walked in. But Erasmus stood on the porch and stared down at the mandala. And like the last time we were here, he side-stepped it and hugged the wall, inching by, making sure he didn’t touch the mat or what was under it. When he was close enough to the door, he leapt over the threshold.

  I half-expected Ruth would kick me out. I kind of hoped she would, then I wouldn’t have to make up some half-assed apology that I didn’t want to give—

  “What do you want?”

  Ruth, her inviting self in the flesh, stood in the doorway between her living room and foyer. She was wearing another smart dress and sweater suit combination without her ubiquitous gold locket…which I had stuffed in my jacket pocket. She pruned her mouth as she glared at me, arms tightly folded over her chest. She glanced at Erasmus without one bit of the fawning I’d come to expect from most women.

  Before she could throw me out, I walked boldly into her living room, past Stella, who seemed poised to do the dirty work of tossing me out.

  “Ruth, we need to have this out.” I pivoted and faced her.

  She seemed startled that I was standing where I was, and she dismissed Stella with a subtle nod of her head.

  Ruth walked forward and squared with me. “I can’t believe you have the nerve to come to my house after you called me a witch and accused me of murdering a man for—what was it? A ritual?”

  “I don’t know. But there is something you aren’t telling me and I want to know what it is. No, I need to know what it is.”

  “What you need is a good doctor and possibly an institution.”

  “If I live that long. Look, Ruth. You’ve got to tell me the truth.”

  “I don’t have to do anything. Get out of my house!”

  I dug into my jacket and pulled out the clump of handkerchief balled up around the necklace. I still couldn’t bring myself to touch it directly. More Booke of the Hidden bullshit, no doubt.

  “Here!” I grabbed her hand and shoved the bundle into it.

  She snatched her hand from my grip and stared at the handkerchief. When she unwrapped it and found her necklace, she made a little squeak.

  “Yeah, we stole it. Just to examine it. You must know it’s Babylonian.”

  Actually, this looked like news to her, if her surprised face was anything to go by.

  “And it does open,” I cont
inued. “‘Within the hurasu gates, the enemies of man shall fast remain.’ That’s what it says inside. What does it mean, Ruth?”

  Now she stared at me, open-mouthed. So that’s what it took to shut her up.

  She examined it again, turning it. “I don’t see…I can’t see where it opens…”

  “That’s because it has to touch the Booke of the Hidden to open it.”

  She looked at me steadily with just the tiniest of twitches. Was that recognition in her eyes? Had she ever heard of the Booke? I wanted to shake her, make her tell me.

  But she said nothing. She slid her gaze toward Erasmus. “I think you’d better leave.”

  “Come on, Ruth! I can see you know exactly what I’m talking about!”

  “I don’t.” She turned away. “Please leave.”

  “Stop the killing, Ruth. I mean it.”

  Erasmus made some sort of grumbling noise before he stepped forward, pushing past her.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked. He ignored her and headed for the stairs. Sputtering, she took off after him, race-walking to the stairway. “Come down from there! I’ll call the police!”

  Stella came running out from whatever cubbyhole she stashed herself. “Madam?”

  “Stella, call the sheriff.”

  Stella pulled a cellphone from her frilly apron pocket.

  “Don’t bother calling the sheriff, Stella” I told her as I rushed by to follow after them. Erasmus was making a beeline for the double-doored master bedroom, with Ruth hot on his heels.

  “Stop! Get away from there!”

  Before he even got there, the doors slammed open for him. He took two steps inside and stopped.

  Ruth came up behind nearly running into him and I took up the rear. He was staring at the portrait of Constance Howland, the last Chosen Host before me. And, incidentally, my distant cousin…as well as Ruth’s.

  Constance was painted from life in that flat, eighteenth century style. She appeared to be wearing a gold necklace, but whatever was on the chain was cut off by the painting’s perimeter. Gee, I wondered what it could be.

  He turned his head toward Ruth who was panting and clutching the locket in her hand. “She looks the same,” he said quietly.

  “The same…as what?” she asked.

  “The same as I remember her.” He looked vaguely around the room. “I smell nothing here.” His gaze settled on her. When he walked forward, she took a step back. He leaned in and sniffed her. Even with that terrified look on her face, Erasmus didn’t seem to notice. “No, nothing,” he muttered before he turned on his heel and marched out.

  Ruth looked from the portrait to him then back again to the painting.

  I scrambled to follow Erasmus as he stomped down the stairs.

  Ruth stood at the top of the stairs, glaring down on us.

  “Both the sheriff and the deputy are on my side,” I told her. “Whatever you’ve got planned won’t work.”

  It was very satisfying turning my back on her and even more satisfying slamming the door closed.

  * * *

  I maneuvered the Jeep back toward Lyndon Road and my shop. When we arrived, I just sat in the car, staring at my front door—with its axe marks and twisted hinge. “That achieved nothing.”

  He gazed at me mildly. “What did you want it to achieve?”

  “I wanted her to acknowledge it all. To stop doing her black magic. To…help us.”

  “That was an unrealistic expectation.”

  “Thanks, Erasmus. I can always count on you to state the obvious.”

  “Oh. Did you not want me to state the obvious?”

  “No. Yes. No. I don’t know.”

  He sighed.

  “You were literally sniffing around…”

  “For charm pouches. None were present in the house or on her person.”

  “But that doesn’t mean anything. We saw her get graveyard dirt from her husband’s crypt and I could swear there was something in her eyes when I mentioned the Booke of the Hidden. Do you think she knows?”

  “I am uncertain. The more I mingle with humans, the less I understand them.”

  He was looking directly at me when he said it. And I knew what he was referring to in his roundabout way. I looked away. “I wish you could read her mind or something.”

  “I am not capable of that.”

  We sat staring out the windshield. And I had no choice but to look at my ruined door again. This would be the third door in so many weeks. The first was destroyed by Doug’s biker gang. This door was hacked at by zombie Vikings. What next?

  “My poor door,” I sighed. “I have to get that fixed again.”

  Erasmus gazed at the door with steady concentration and then waved his hand. Before my eyes through my car’s windshield, the wood knit itself together. Each hack mark enmeshed with the grain, and missing pieces flew back into place, smoothing out the face of it until it was as if nothing had happened.

  I stared at Erasmus. “I seem to have the power to repair it. I have many new powers I did not know I possessed. I suppose it has more to do with my…my being in love with you.”

  He said it again. More plainly this time.

  “Oh,” was all that managed to come out of my mouth. He slid his gaze away from me and got out of the car. Belatedly, I did the same and without looking at him, I unlocked the door.

  Inside the shop, Erasmus said, “I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

  “No. I just… It was all so abstract before. And now…”

  He toyed with a handful of honey sticks displayed in a small vase. “Yes. Well…” He shrugged and looked around the room as if inspecting it. As if he hadn’t looked at it almost more times than I had.

  “Look, Erasmus…”

  “You need say nothing. I expect nothing.”

  “It’s just that…it’s not that simple.”

  “What a very human thing to say.”

  “There’s no need for insults.”

  He strode forward and then seemed to change his mind, pivoting and heading for the door.

  “You don’t have to leave.”

  “I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

  “Mostly I’m just…hungry. What could it be that’s making me so hungry?”

  He stopped, his fingers paused on the door handle. “It could be any number of creatures. I don’t know the entire inventory of the book.”

  “Well…maybe I should go hunt it.” I raised my hand and the chthonic crossbow sailed across the room and slapped itself into my waiting palm. “I could use your help.”

  He rolled his shoulders and stared at the door he’d only just repaired. With love magic. Because he loved me.

  And even though I’d thought about it, laid awake even when he was beside me and turned it over in my mind, I still didn’t quite know what to think.

  “If I must,” he said in his most put-upon voice.

  We plunged into the woods, which made the cloudy day seem just a dream. In between the trees, the light was cut in half, and I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes. I kept the crossbow ready, though it hadn’t yet armed itself.

  “Tell me about the whole Samhain thing again, and the convergence of power at the Winter Solstice,” I said quietly, trying to tip-toe over the crunchier parts of the forest.

  He gazed at me mildly, making no sound as he walked. “I thought it was self-explanatory.”

  “Well hit me again.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I mean, tell me again. I don’t know that I was listening all that closely the last time.”

  He sighed. “How very gratifying that the important information I impart is only so much noise to you.”

  “Erasmus…”

  “Very well. The time of the solstices has great power, but that power fades away. Fall is the in between time. The Winter solstice is ahead but not close enough. That makes it dangerous for mages and beings of power, as their power wanes and the evil power rises. The exception is Samha
in, which seems to concentrate the magic for the one day.”

  “Yeah, that last part. Concentrating the magic.”

  “I don’t make this stuff up, you know.”

  “I know. But…it’s hard to wrap my mind around.”

  “It’s simple. The power fluctuates. It grows as the solstice gets closer, but Samhain—or what you quaintly refer to as ‘Halloween’—grabs hold of this wayward power for just one night. It focuses the magic.”

  “Like a magnifying glass.”

  “Precisely. It is at its most powerful at midnight.”

  “But not for powerful magical people. The bad magic rises, the good magic fades. Is that it?”

  “Essentially.”

  “What would that do to the Booke?”

  He shrugged. “I dread to think what would be released on Samhain.”

  “You mean it could dump its whole, uh, inventory?”

  “It’s possible. I have never been awakened near Samhain before. The creatures grow stronger and mages grow weaker, Kylie. A very dangerous time.”

  “I’m not a mage.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  The thought overwhelmed me and my stomach—even as hungry as I was. “We’ve got less than a week, then, to stop the Booke for good.”

  “Kylie, I have told you before that this is impossible.”

  “No, it isn’t. You said there is only one being who can stop the Booke.”

  Erasmus halted, and I looked back to see if he’d caught sight or scent of the new creature. But instead, he looked pale and…frightened.

  “Kylie, I told you we must never speak of that.”

  “He’s the only one who has enough power. The only one who even the Powers That Be are afraid of. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “I also said that I am terrified of Him myself.”

  I lowered the crossbow. “Look, I know you said you’re scared, but…I think if we go together—”

  “Are you insane? I will not bring you into the presence of…of Him.”

  “Satan. It’s a name I’ve said countless times.”

  “But you have no idea what you are saying.”

  “I do. I—” The snap of a twig out in the forest caught my attention, and a sudden wave of hunger roiled in my belly. I cocked my head and listened. There was definitely something walking out there. When I lifted the crossbow, it was armed with yet a different quarrel I had not used before.