Cassandra Case Files Page 5

  “How do you know all this?” Mrs. Durand gasped.

  “Well, for me, I was given what’s called ‘Cassandra Protocol’ training when I was in the Marine Corps,” Mack replied. “Basically, a Program agent briefs a bunch of high tier operators of various ranks on what kind of crazy to look out for and how to let the Program or a designated Cassandra Protocol civilian agency or private contractor know. Because I’m a werewolf, I was given additional instruction on how to be a Cassandra Protocol responder.”

  “And I’m a super nerd with access to the Paraweb and lots of free time,” KC grinned.

  “Alrighty then,” Mr. Durand chuckled. “Proceed, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, sir,” KC acknowledged. “So, once I’d laid out my information requests to the monster community in general, I started hitting up the online libraries that I have access to. There are a couple of really good English translations of DeJonker’s Compendium Daemonicium that have been made available online in the last decade. My mother claims that when she was a girl, you actually had to find either a rare book dealer or a physical library with a rare book collection in order to get a copy of DeJonker, and it wasn’t always in English. He was Dutch, but he wrote in an archaic form of Latin.”

  “You’re chasing rabbits, hon,” Mack prodded.

  KC flushed. “Sorry. Anyway, DeJonker’s Compendium, even in English, is a difficult book to just browse and quickly find the information you need, so I was pretty frustrated until I got an alert from one of the forums. The poster, uh, ‘TeacherJRQS’, said that I needed to look up a paper by some guy named ‘Dr. GD Shaw’ who taught a class on Myth and Folklore at some little college called Mercy University. The main gist of the paper was about werewolves and all the other kinds of shapeshifters found in folklore. There was an addendum where he discussed the ‘Louisiana werewolf’ also known as the ‘rougarou’.”

  “Babe, what does a Cajun werewolf have to do with an undead bigfoot?” Mack grumbled.

  “That’s the thing. See, although ‘rougarou’ is a corruption of ‘loup-garou’, the French term for werewolf, it’s also used in Native American cultures from that area to refer to something completely different, an evil spirit or demon, something like a wendigo.” KC paused as if to savor the moment. “Babe, this Shaw guy actually made a passing reference to DeJonker’s Compendium with a footnote that indicated a specific entry and where to find it in the book!”

  “And what did you find?” Mack prompted.

  “I found the rougarou! In the Compendium! It’s like some kind of bizarre cross between a wendigo and a barghest, and it can create itself!” KC was practically bouncing in her seat in academic excitement.

  “Um, what’s that mean?” Mr. Durand asked.

  Mack motioned for KC to settle down before he answered for them. “Okay, undead creatures are created by a type of wizard called a necromancer. It’s not like the zombies in the movies or on TV where they bite you and you become one them. Instead, your basic zombie is a human corpse that this wizard has reanimated by summoning a servitor spirit into it. It’s not intelligent, has no will of its own, no drive, no ambition. It’s dormant until its creator gives it an order, sets it some kind of task. You tell it, ‘chop this wood’ or ‘bust those rocks’, and it will do that until you tell it to stop or it rots completely away.

  “Even the higher forms of undead, made with more powerful spirits, require a necromancer to get started. So, for instance, the first vampire didn’t just spring into being. A wizard prepared a host body, summoned the type of demon spirit that we think of as being vampiric, installed it in that body, and voila, you have a vampire. Vampires, barghests, wendigos, and so on can, then, sort of reproduce themselves by preparing a human body to host one of their kind through a ritual, and about half the time it works.

  “Then, there are the kings of the undead, liches. A lich is a necromancer who turns himself into an undead, rips his own spirit out of his body, stores it in a prepared vessel, and effectively becomes immortal. You destroy his body? He doesn’t care. He has undead minions still under his control and uses them to prepare himself another host, and he’s back in business again. Only way to kill him is to destroy the vessel holding his spirit.”

  “Yeah, well the rougarou is sort of the other side of the coin of a lich,” KC blurted. “It’s a demon that can summon itself into our world by merging with something alive that isn’t sapient like an animal, usually something small like a bug or rat or even a small snake. Once it’s in the animal it can build up soul energy over time and jump into progressively higher orders of animal, sort of like its own guided form of reincarnation, until it finds a host ‘worthy’ of the full glory of the rougarou. When it does, it transforms that host body into what we fought last night.”

  “Why’s it been pickin’ on us?” Mr. Durand demanded.

  “Ah, that’s how it feeds. Magically, I mean,” KC said. “It’s a soul feeder, but instead of using a physical medium to draw your soul energy out, it uses a psychic wavelength. In this case emotions like fear, nervousness, despair. That’s why it’s never attacked you physically. To the rougarou, killing you both would have been like killing the goose laying golden eggs.”

  “What about the goats and the chickens?” Mrs. Durand asked.

  “Ah, secondary sustenance! You see, they’re not entirely undead. Their host bodies are still alive, so they need to actually feed, and they are pure carnivores in that respect. When they kill and mutilate your animals, you don’t find all the remains, do you?”

  “Nope,” Mr. Durand confirmed.

  “That’s because they’re eating what you don’t find, and the inner demon is feeding on the fear and despair you feel when you find your dead pets and livestock.”

  “Okay, babe, as fascinating as this all is, and it is fascinating, what’s the best way to kill one of these things? Gold?” Mack rubbed his thumb against his forefinger and middle finger indicating how expensive that sounded.

  “Oh, no. See, that’s why the silver didn’t work, because a rougarou is as much a living demon as it is an undead one. That means gold won’t be as effective either because it’s also undead. The only metal that’ll work, according to DeJonker, is naturally occurring electrum. Not man-made, natural.”

  “Dang it.”

  “The Inquisition Method is recommended...”

  “Which we did,” Mack interrupted.

  “Not as thoroughly as is suggested. The heart and brain are the rougarou’s phylactery. As long as they still exist, the demon can jump to another host,” KC said, chewing her lower lip.

  “You put that thing’s heart and brain into a mason jar and a coffee can,” Mr. Durand ground out. “We ain’t safe, are we?”

  “Oh, from that one you are,” KC assured him. “I placed a binding spell on both containers as a precaution.” The Durands stared at her blankly. “Um, did I forget to mention that while my dad isn’t a dhamphir, he is a wizard, and I inherited that from him? I can cast spells when I need to.”

  “You wrote those spells with a Sharpie on duct tape. They won’t last,” Mack sighed. “We’re gonna have to burn ‘em up.”

  “Not necessarily. Now, while electrum is the only metal that can effectively end a rougarou’s ongoing existence, it’s not the only substance that’s lethal to them. DeJonker listed a number of rare herbs that can be used to create a poison and one other thing: obsidian.”

  Mack sighed heavily. “Dang it, woman! I just got those!”

  Chapter Five

  Lewisburg, West Virginia

  Tuesday, October 30, 2018

  AS A YOUNG BOY, MACK’S father had started him collecting stone arrowheads. Then, Mack’s parents had been killed. Among his father’s belongings that fateful day had been an obsidian arrowhead that Al MacDuff had been bringing home for his son. Mack had become mildly obsessed with obsidian blades after that. He owned a little over a dozen arrowheads, five spearheads, and three obsidian knives.

  The knives were the
newest additions to his collection, purchased from a Cherokee craftsman who knapped the blades himself and set them into bone or antler hilts. The smallest was a little over seven inches in overall length, and the biggest topped out at ten inches. The craftsman had even fixed six of Mack’s arrowheads to sockets that would allow them to be attached to modern arrow shafts for use with modern bows or crossbows.

  “I should probably make a run to Walmart and buy some arrows and a bow,” Mack sighed as he laid out his collection of obsidian blades on the Durand kitchen table.

  “You won’t need to do that,” Mr. Durand declared as he jumped up from the table and disappeared into the living room. He came back a few minutes later with a carrying case shaped like a giant “D” and set it on the table. As he unzipped the case he explained, “Our ex-son-in-law left this here over a year ago. He used to come deer hunting here all the time, even after our daughter divorced him. Well, I figure he must’ve run into our monster out there in the woods ‘cause he came back one day, white as a sheet, handed me this and informed us that he’s never huntin’ again long as he lives.”

  Inside the case was a SAS Rage compound bow with a Kwikee Kwiver Kompound 6-arrow attached quiver and six Carbon Express Maxima RED fletched arrows with Rage Extreme 4 Blade hunting heads attached. The former son-in-law had abandoned nearly four hundred dollars’ worth of archery equipment, not including the cost of the very nice hard-sided case.

  “Well, that’s certainly convenient,” Mack mumbled to himself as he picked up the bow and gave it a test pull. “I am not a very good archer to be honest, but I think I can do alright with this at close range.” He put the bow back in the case and took out one of the arrows. The hunting head unscrewed from the shaft, and Mack put one of his obsidian heads in its place. “The obsidian head’s a little lighter. Not quite sure how that’s gonna affect the arrow’s terminal ballistics, though.”

  “You could always put the loose heads in a shotgun shell,” KC teased.

  Mack blinked once as he stared at his wife for a moment. “Or I could sacrifice my remaining arrow- and spearheads, shatter them down into smaller flakes, load them in a shell with rock salt and some silver pellets, sort of a take on a kitchen sink shell...”

  “Good, good, I like where your head is right now, babe, but we’ve got one quick test we need to do,” KC said.

  At the other end of the table were the mason jar and the coffee can. Mack sighed and picked up the smallest of his three obsidian daggers. “Let’s start with the brain.”

  He stepped down to the end of the table. KC came with him. She carefully peeled the rune inscribed duct tape off the lid. Then, in one quick motion, as she pulled the last of the duct tape free, she pulled the lid off the coffee can. Mack stabbed down into the can through the rougarou’s brain.

  Everyone in the kitchen stumbled back a couple of steps, knocked off balance by a psychic shock wave that emanated from the coffee can with a high pitched screech.

  “That’s a first,” Mack quipped. “Um, how long do I leave the blade in?”

  A look of confusion crossed KC’s face followed by a flush of embarrassment. “I don’t know. Let me check the Compendium real quick.”

  “You do that,” Mack snorted. “I’ll just stand here stabbing a demon’s brain in a coffee can.”

  “Is this a typical day at work for you guys?” Mr. Durand chuckled.

  Mrs. Durand stifled a giggle.

  “Typical? Yes. Routine? Never,” Mack snickered. “If you stab a vampire in the heart, for example, you can just let the stake or the knife go. Pull it out, and the vamp starts regenerating. Cut out its heart, after you’ve decapitated it, and it’ll burst into flames. Dribble some blood on that heart, and the body will reconstitute itself. That’s why the Spanish Inquisition recommended impalement, followed by decapitation, followed by immolation, separately, of the body and the head, and the ashes to scattered, again separately, on holy ground.”

  “That sounds like it’d do the job,” Mr. Durand mused.

  “It’s overkill. Destroy the heart and the brain with fire, sunlight, and/or magic, and the job is done. Silver counts toward magic,” Mack said. “Barghests run about the same. Silver in the heart, cut off the head; body bursts into flames on its own leaving the head, which transforms into the barghest’s ‘true’ wolf-like visage if it wasn’t already in battle form.”

  “Alright, it says here that once you’ve heard the rougarou’s death scream, you can remove the obsidian blade,” KC declared without looking up from her laptop. She read a bit further. “Okay, the brain is the phylactery for the rougarou’s intellect, and the heart contains its... ‘anima vitae,’ which I’m guessing is Latin for its life force. Oh, okay, stabbing the brain permanently kills the rougarou, but the heart’s energy can be used by another rougarou to strengthen itself.”

  “Do I stab it now?” Mack asked, hand poised over the lid of the mason jar.

  “No, not yet.” KC stood back and crossed her arms. “Rougarou mate, like, they actually couple up romantically, and if their host bodies are compatible, they can even reproduce sexually, although their offspring are more like animals than intelligent creatures.” She pointed at the screen. “According to this when a rougarou’s mate is killed, it will go to great lengths to acquire the heart of its deceased mate to use the life energy stored within to either make itself more powerful or to summon a new mate.”

  “Sounds to me like you wanna use that thing for bait,” Mr. Durand said.

  “Yes, I do,” KC said. “Why go hunting for it, when we can make it come to us?”

  Mack shrugged. “Alright. In that case, I’ve got work to do. Tonight’s the start of Halloween, and I wanna be completely ready.”

  “I thought Halloween was tomorrow night,” Mrs. Durand interjected.

  “Technically, October 31st starts at midnight tonight,” KC said, “but you’re correct about when Halloween is celebrated. The thing is, though, that from midnight to midnight tomorrow is a sort of... ‘soft’ time. What I mean is... Well, okay, Earth, the world we’re on right now, is at the center of a multiverse of parallel realities. Some of those realities are what you might think of as ‘Faerie’. The rest are either ‘heavenly’ realms or ‘hellish’ realms. There’s a sort of barrier, the Veil of Shadows, that protects Earth from all these other realms. You can only travel to or from these other realms, physically, via certain geographic locations, and there’s often this weird time dilation that goes with it. Anyway, four times a year, on or near either Solstice and either Equinox, the Veil gets, like I said, soft. It’s easier to open portals to other realities from anywhere. Halloween falls near the Autumn Solstice and during that day, it’s easier to travel to the Faerie realms that represent Spring and Autumn, and it’s easier to access the hellish realms due to it being Halloween.”

  “Sometimes, during these times of the year, during certain special years, the rules of magic can be... bent,” Mack added. “If not outright broken.”

  “Is this a special year?” Mr. Durand asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mack admitted. “Everybody thought 2012 was supposed to be a special year, but nothing happened. It was just an ordinary year, no better, no worse than any other.”

  “On the other hand, though, 2018 had been very interesting,” KC sighed. “One of our busiest since we hit the road and started this mission of ours, and I’ve been hearing from other hunters and slayers that they’ve noticed an upswing in activity.”

  “Well, with that pleasant thought in mind, we’d better get to work, KC,” Mack said. “Mr. and Mrs. Durand, would you care to join us for lunch today, say one o’clock? On Busster. I’ve got a mean Salisbury Steak recipe where I substitute a venison/bison mix for the ground beef, and I like to serve it with a side of skin-in garlic mashed potatoes, butter roasted carrots, and a nice green salad.”

  “We’ll be there,” Mrs. Durand blurted. The look she gave Mr. Durand dared him to gainsay her.

  “Yep, we’ll be t
here,” Mr. Durand confirmed with a smile.

  MACK TOOK A MOMENT to appreciate his own handiwork. Affixing the obsidian arrowheads to the Maxima RED shafts had been a simple matter of unscrewing the Rage steel arrowheads and replacing them with the obsidian heads on their modern mounts. He’d been equally pleased to see that the affixed quiver easily held the primitive volcanic glass heads within the protective shell. Once the arrows were readied, he’d set aside the compound bow and gone to work on making shotgun shells.

  He had seven unfixed arrowheads and three spearheads. The spearheads pretty much were just narrower versions of the smallest of his three knife blades. Mack had watched videos online on how to knapp stone and glass into functional tools, but he lacked the proper tools for that task. Instead, a hammer and chisel served to shatter the spearheads into piles of sharp flakes and obsidian dust.

  Mack noted that four of his seven remaining arrowheads could fit inside a three-inch shotgun shell. The other three were too wide, but some precise hits with the hammer and chisel narrowed those down. He divided the shattered spearheads into six piles and placed a single arrowhead with each pile. The remaining arrowhead he set aside. From his reloading supplies, Mack grabbed a small bucket of silver pellets. The individual pellets were .330 of an inch in diameter, the same size as double aught buckshot. Mack counted out seven pellets for each pile of obsidian flakes. Normally, he loaded fifteen pellets in a 3-inch magnum shotgun shell.

  In short order, Mack mixed the silver pellets with the obsidian flakes. Then, he placed an arrowhead into each of six 3-inch shells. Next, he packed the space around the arrowhead with the mixture of silver and obsidian. A fine powder of rock salt filled in the gaps, and, at last, he sealed the ends of the shells to keep everything in place. The remaining arrowhead got packed into a lone shell with fourteen double aught silver pellets and rock salt.