Chapter Text
Mississippi, 1932
The road was dusty and bone-dry, cracking beneath the weight of the Ford pickup's wheels. Evening was creeping real slow, the sunrays melting across the fields and slithering through trees. Spanish moss hung low like tongues, and the breeze rolled through with the hush of that goddamn eerie scent.
She sat in the passenger seat, her right leg tucked beneath her, boot tapping lightly against the rusted door. Her hat was pulled low, but her eyes didn't stop scanning the land. Every so often, she caught that scent again. Not rot, no. Something... sweet, with the underlay of bitter dread. It was like daisy's blooming over the unmarked grave of someone nobody ever came back for.
"Land still looks the same," she said, voice low and rough from too many incantations spoken in Latin these couple months.
Her uncle grunted, keeping one hand on the wheel and the other resting near the half-cracked window. Smoke curled around his fingers as he muttered, "Well, it sure as hell ain't Rome."
The lake came into view just as the sun hit the trees, gold spilling like blood across the surface. The water barely moved and that unnerved her.
Aunt Del sat in the truck bed, knees draped in her black skirts, fingers worrying the edge of her rosary. Her eyes didn't blink nor waver.
"It don't sleep," Del said. "That lake. Never has."
Aunt Del didn't receive a response.
She stepped out before the wheels even stopped, soles hitting the soil hard. She needed the land to feel her again.
The scent hit stronger now, and she could taste the sacred texture of sage and steel - but it wasn't nostalgic. It felt more like the anticipation of doom.
She moved to the back of the Ford and flipped open the truck bed. Her hands reached for a dark leather case with ageing cracks and stains from things that, if said out loud, could form a curse.
Inside, her revolver lay waiting. Blackened steel. Six chambers. Carved with wards and Catholic Latin.
She picked up a silver bullet between thumb and forefinger, holding it to the last smear of sunlight like she could read the wind through it. Her breath steadied as she slid them in:
One. For the priest in Florence whose mouth wasn't his own.
Two. For the child in Vienna with snake eyes.
Three. For the thing that wore her friend's face in Marseilles.
Four.
Five.
Six.
When the final click echoed, she kissed her fingers and pressed them to the barrel, whispering a prayer learned beneath a crypt in Rome.
She reached into her satchel and pulled out a small clay jar, rim cracked, inside thick with salve. The smell hit first, a mixture of clove, salt, and burnt rosemary. She dabbed it onto her wrists, her chest, the nape of her neck. It tingled deep, as if it was just remembering the job it had to do.
The ointment only lasted a few days at best. After that, the magic dulled. She'd have to make more soon.
Her uncle, cigarette hanging loose on his lips, started to remove items from the truck, placing them carelessly on the ground as Aunt Del moved towards the trees - most likely to carve runes of protection in the area of stay.
She holstered the gun, making sure her belt was tight. Her eyes scanned the land once more, feeling the tension pull like a string through her chest.
"Sun's setting," she rasped. "It's almost dark."
Her uncle didn't flinch.
"I know," he said, cigarette flicked into the wind. "Better get the tents up."