"Don't--" But Astrid was already back in the room. And clutching her chest. And falling to the floor. Dropping her hammer, Sabrina took a long step forward and caught the other witch before she crumpled, then hefted her limp form into her arms. The thing in the jar shifted, and a low hiss escaped the seal.
Ducking below the lintel, Sabrina hurriedly carried Astrid upstairs, and a vicious growl came from the direction of the burned-out fireplace as she settled the young woman onto the dust-covered couch in the living room. Sabrina turned, and the specter of a large, liver-and-white hound dog shivered into view, slavering and hackles raised.
Sabrina knelt slowly, breathing measured. She moved her white-out gaze to at a point just beyond the dog, avoiding eye contact. "We don't have time for this," she explained patiently, hoping that whatever the animal had become had the capacity for reason. "I need to get rid of what's hurting this house, and I need you to protect this young woman while I do it." The dog continued to advance, but the growl had receded to a low rumble. Sabrina's eyes moved to its face, "Can you help me? Can you remember what you are?"
Because a dog was a dog was a dog, dead or alive; a friend, a protector.
The ghost sat down, and canted its head to once side. Foamy drool ran in ropes from its flews as it flickered in and out of view, reminding Sabrina of degraded videotape in the way angry ghosts did. Finally, it chuffed once and lay down, watching Astrid.
The struggle in the basement Astrid would experience as a dream.
Ties to its realm severed, Sabrina needed to kill whatever had come through the door Zeus had opened to the Blackness. She could hear it hissing laughter as she descended the stairs, the pull of its darkness a riptide. She picked up her hammer in one hand, stepped through the door, and brought the hammer down on the jar, glowing brick and all.
Absolute darkness exploded outward from beneath the hammer's head, and all the air left the room, leaving Sabrina momentarily choking. When it solidified, the thing in the jar briefly took the form of a black rabbit the size of a puma with eight glowing sodium-yellow eyes, and the rest blurred into brutal, oil-slick horror.
**
When it was over, and the thing lay oozing in the center of the circle that had summoned it, Sabrina cleansed it with fire from the still-burning censer's embers, mixing its ashes with the what remained of the copal and the herb bundle she'd set alight earlier as the Treacle stitched her wounds closed from the inside out. The most prominent of these was a bite to her midsection that slowly leaked too-dark blood, and a set of claw marks across her chest and throat. Scars would remain, but not for long. Her white linen suit, on the other hand, was well and truly ruined -- torn and crusted with blood and salt and other, unnamable substances.
When Astrid awoke, she would find Sabrina in the basement, raspily humming to herself as she sat cross legged on the floor, polishing the head of her hammer with a soft cloth.
