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Hainted

Hainted

Jordan L. Hawk

Photo © Raisa Kanareva | Dreamstime.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are

products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Edited by Annetta Ribken

To all of my friends who enthusiastically supported me when I announced I was

going to write gay romance. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Chapter 1

Dan walked slowly across the uneven backyard toward the lightning-struck

oak. Clouds covered the moon and stars, and the rising wind brought with it the

scent of rain falling from one mountain over. The only light flickered from the

ring of votive candles he’d set out earlier and the lone bulb shining through the

kitchen window behind him.

He paused to look back at the house, scanning the windows for any signs of

movement. He’d told Bea to take Virgil into the root cellar until it was over, but

his brother and sister were at the age where curiosity might get the better of good

sense.

Virgil had already seen things no nine-year-old ought to, and Dan didn’t

intend to add to the list.

There was no sign of life in the house. Bea had brains, for all that she was

only a couple years older than Virgil. She’d known what Dan was about, while

Virgil just cried and made a fuss.

Virgil cried a lot lately. They all did.

Dan realized he was still staring at the house, putting off what had to be

done. His fingers tightened on the wand in his hand, making the charms tied to it

jingle and clink. Three feet of solid oak, the wand was cut from the very tree in

front of him. Soft deerskin wrapped one end, while the other was capped with an

antler, the longer of its two prongs curving to form a vicious hook.

Forcing himself to face the oak, he began to walk again, his steps slow and

measured. The tiny light of the candles only illuminated the lowest branches, but

he heard the upper ones tossing in the breeze, creaking and rubbing against each

other like something alive, the leaves turning the wind into the whisper of a

thousand voices.

He’d laid out a circle of salt near sundown, complete except for a gap just

wide enough for a single person to pass. Stepping through, he took a handful of

salt from the tool belt slung around his hips and used it to close the circle behind

Hainted

him.

“Let nothing cross this line; let the spirits within be contained. So mote it

be.” The words—and, more importantly, the will behind them—completed the

circle. At least if I fail, Dad—

No. The haint . If he failed, the haint would be confined to the tree for as

long as the circle lasted. It would give Bea and Virgil time to get to the

neighbors, before the haint could get loose and come looking for them.

The wind picked up, blowing strands of his shoulder-length hair into his

face. Holding his wand protectively in front of him, he moved closer to the

massive tree, half of which was twisted and dead from a lightning strike. The

crow skull tied to the wand rattled, independent of the wind or any tremor in his

hand. The other charms started up, too, the sound like a rattlesnake’s warning

buzz. The mojo bag he always carried in the front pocket of his jeans shifted, like

a small animal burrowing close. The silver pentagram around his neck grew ice

cold.

The flickering light of the four votive candles, set in each one of the cardinal

directions, revealed something in the midst of the low branches. Something large

and dark, swinging back and forth in the breeze. There came the creak of a taut

rope rubbing against bark, like the soft cry of a child.

Even though he had expected it, the sight of the figure dangling from the

tree was like falling into an icy mountain creek, shocking him into numbness. For

a minute, he was back on that awful day, before the ambulances had come to take

the body away.

Breathe. The memory of Mom’s voice comforted him, even as it made his

throat tight with grief. Ground. Center. Shield. Concentrate. Focus on what’s in

front of you right now, on the job at hand. The rest can sort itself out later.

The end of the creaking rope was tied into a noose and looped tightly around

the neck of the dangling figure. The stink of rot and shit wafted from the haint,

accompanied by a teasing whisper of Old Spice. As the wind blew, the body

rotated. He saw the face: swollen and purple in death, the tongue protruding

between dry lips, the eyes half-sunk back into the head. In each socket glowed a

tiny, pale light.

The eyes of the dead.

Thin tendrils of black energy uncoiled from the haint, striking like

copperheads at Dan’s aura, which flared indigo under the assault. He’d been

ready for this, his aura slick and hard as he could make it. Most of the tendrils

slipped off like knives against armor.

But he already had part of this haint inside him: in his blood, his bones, his

very cells. Where a normal haint might never reach him, this one found the

cracks made by loss, by grief, by the tiny little voice whispering: please, Daddy,

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