Contents
CHAPTER ONE The Last Night
CHAPTER TWO The Devil's Breath
CHAPTER THREE The Armory
CHAPTER FOUR The Rising Flames
CHAPTER FIVE Black Water
CHAPTER SIX Stars
CHAPTER SEVEN The Flame
CHAPTER EIGHT Angelic Letters
CHAPTER NINE Casting Shadows
CHAPTER TEN Blood
CHAPTER ELEVEN Our Little Secret
CHAPTER TWELVE Trouble, Everywhere
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Enemy Lines
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Reckoning
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Lovely Carnage
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Homecoming
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Hell and Bulletfire
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Secret Names
CHAPTER NINETEEN In Ancient's Name
CHAPTER TWENTY Epilogue
CHAPTER ONE
The Last Night
Everyone with any sort of name for themselves in Daelan City had come out to the Ninth Gate to celebrate the turn of the year in style. Collared imps poured drinks and quietly pressed harder diversions into the palms of patrons that knew the right words or had enough sigils to get them.
Madame Haywood walked among the party goers, all smiles in her short beaded dress with a long cigarette holder perched between her fingers. Shoeshiners, hellhounds and the aristocracy alike were mingling tonight, half of them zozzled and most of the other half rosy-cheeked. Dancers had kicked up the black and gold confetti on the floor and it glittered in streaked spirals underfoot.
And of course, Callum Trezza was starting a fight.
“Do you have something you want to say to our faces, Hellhound?” he asked, folding his arms. The man eased himself to a stand and turned around to face him. Callum was about 5’8”, a little on the short side, with broad shoulders and a lean torso that looked good in a suit. This man had almost two feet on him with arms the rough thickness of young trees and hands Callum would fully believe had been used to crush metal.
“I didn’t think it was anything to make a fuss over,” the man said. He sounded perfectly calm and that only made the whole thing worse.
“You start talking about my mother and you don’t get to decide if it’s worth making a fuss over or not,” Callum said.
“Your mother had a life long before you, kid,” he said, an edge coming into his voice. Even out of armor, the Hellwatch Captain was intimidating. His hair had gone prematurely grey from the stress of the job, but he was in better shape than any man his age had the right to be. Callum didn’t know his name, everyone just called him Barghest.
“And water is wet,” Callum said, narrowing his eyes. “It’s still rude to talk about people who ain’t in the room.”
“She had every chance to be here same as everyone else,” Barghest said.
“Oh, she will be,” Callum said. “Watch yourself, don’t think she won’t find out.”
“Well good, because I wasn’t saying anything bad about her,” Barghest said, raising a brow.
“Like hell you weren’t,” Callum said. The whiskey he’d been pounding all evening burned in his veins like gasoline in one of those Charonese street cars. His right hand curled into a fist, and he didn’t remember making a conscious decision to do it.
The fire he was building in his arm went out in a second as a soft, small hand wrapped around his fist.
“There you are, Trezza,” a woman’s voice said. “Come on, some old school friends want to talk to you.”
He looked over to see a familiar face. He and Tess Cassander had been friends as kids, in the same year at school before they’d graduated and she’d gone on to the summoner’s academy. They still lived in the same neighborhood but it had been a long time since they’d talked every day.
Callum vaguely heard Barghest grumble something as he sat back down. The anger churned in his chest, but Tess already had him and she was pulling him away to the other side of the crowd.
Her hair was a fall of coal black curls that fell just past her shoulders and her eyes were so dark he could barely tell where the pupil ended and the irises began if he was really looking hard. She released his hand as they slowed to a stop outside, near the doors.
He could feel the bite of winter in the alley outside, but it hadn’t started snowing, yet. They stood in a pool of light cast by a wisp lantern. Tess gave a little shiver as she buttoned her fur-lined coat.
“Butt me,” she said, leaning against the wall. Callum obliged her, fishing a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and passing her one. He snapped his fingers, a plume of flame appearing over them and Tess lit her cigarette off of that. “You shouldn’t go picking fights with the Hellwatch, they’ve got enough reasons not to like you already.”
“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Callum asked, lighting his own cigarette and tucking the pack away.
“Oh, of course none of the rumors are substantial,” Tess said, raising a delicately shaped eyebrow, “but no doubt the Hellwatch has heard them? You know, those rumors that your family are in the shoeshining business?”
Callum glanced around before returning his eyes to her under furrowed brows.
“That’s what I thought,” Tess continued. “It isn’t wise to go picking on him.”
“He was talking about my mother,” Callum said.
“Didn’t he used to work with her?” Tess asked.
Callum grumbled and took a long drag from his cigarette.
“Alternatively you could quit being so reasonable and let me be angry,” he said. “I’m all geared up for it.”
“And you’re going to get yourself in trouble,” Tess said. Her dark eyes glittered, reflecting the wisp light. “Be good. Be better.”
Callum took a moment just to puff on his cigarette and watch her. Tess took a casual hit and watched him. Her face was passive, calm, and completely unyielding. He could feel his neck turning red.
“I’ll try,” he said. “No promises.”
“All I can ask,” Tess said, laughing. She looked like she was going to say something else when another man came up behind her.
He was in a suit, too, but a nice grey one that brought out the blue in his eyes. His hair was cornsilk blond and cut short, combed back out of his face. He eyed Callum with disdain. At least Callum could enjoy watching him try to pretend he wasn’t cold; bastard had forgotten to grab a coat on the way out.
“What are you doing, Tess? I thought you said you’d be right back,” he said. His eyes never left Callum’s. Cal, meanwhile, felt that knot of anger forming in his chest again.
“Having a conversation with an old classmate, Alban,” Tess said, looking at him over her shoulder. “How kind of you to come looking for me after…”
She checked her wristwatch.
“Ah, ten minutes. You waited longer than I expected.”
“You came here with me,” he said. “What are people going to say if they see you talking with this…?”
“This…?” Tess asked. “You didn’t finish your question, Alban.”
His face burned scarlet.
“You know what I meant,” he said.
“I don’t,” Tess said.
“He’s a criminal,” Alban said. He at least had the decency to lower his voice.
“Standing right here,” Callum said. “And my house is bigger than yours.”
Alban pursed his lips for a moment and went to hook an arm around the small of Tess’s back.
“You’re going to take your hands off of me before my hand slips and I put this cigarette out on your collarbone,” Tess said.
“Isn’t she just the funniest?” Alban asked, dryly.
Tess moved for him with the lit cigarette and Alban withdrew, taking a quick step back away
from her.
“I’m sure your father will love hearing about this,” he said.
“Are you threatening her?” Callum asked, raising a brow. Smoke was starting to rise from the cuff of his sleeve.
“Go ahead and tell him,” Tess said. “He probably wants to see you more than I do right now anyway.”
Alban’s eyes narrowed. Callum pushed off of the wall and started for him. He took a step back and started to walk away, glaring sidelong at the pair of them.
“Who was that joker?” Callum asked.
“Alban Geist,” Tess said. “His family are moving up in the world and thinking linking themselves with mine would be a good move politically. He was charismatic enough to charm my father, but he overextends his reach at every turn and that does not make for a good businessman or a good mayor. Money will only take you so far. Don’t worry about it, I’m not having him.”
Callum snickered.
“Yeah, you just let me know if you want his ass handed to him,” Callum said.
On the other side of the room, Cal could see through the glass that Alban was having a word with Henri Cassander, who looked over at Callum and Tess with a dark expression. Tess had inherited his dark coloring, skin hair and eyes, but her face looked nothing like his. Tess’s eyes glanced that way, but she didn’t turn her head or give any other sign she’d noticed at all.
“For the time being though maybe it’d be best if I got out of your hair, it looks like Papa’s on the war path,” Callum said.
“When is he ever not?” Tess asked, chuckling. She took one last drag of her cigarette and leaned over to put it out on a tray, taking the moment to whisper to Callum as she did so. “You stay out of trouble, you hear me? I’ll be in touch.”
With that, she stepped away and walked leaving the lingering scent of hyacinthe and honey in her wake. Callum put his own cigarette out and moved away from the door before he could get into trouble again. Something about the combination of that cigarette and all the whiskey wasn’t agreeing with him, anyway.
With the door closed, the roar of the party sounded distant and dull. Wisplight lanterns set the street outside the Ninth Gate aglow in a pretty blue cast that made the red bricks almost mauve in the night air. It was one of the few streets in Daelan City that would have been wide enough to drive a car through. That kind of space was rare enough here that the wealthy settled for the suspended tram system along the rooftops while the poorer people of the town crammed their bicycles and motorbikes along the outer walls of buildings plastered with bold-lettered posters proclaiming the dangers of unlicensed summoning.
The smell of burned rubber clung to the air and sent Callum’s stomach swirling even harder as he stumbled into one of the alleys across the street.
A tumble of stomach acid and whiskey spattered the bricks running in sickly orange rivulets in the mortared cracks between them. It tasted foul, and he could feel the burning sensation in the back of his soft pallet where some of the vomit had tried to come up through his nose.
It was disgusting, and he hated it, but he had felt worse before it happened. The sounds of footsteps behind him broke him out of his thoughts, and he whipped around to face whoever was approaching him. He expected to find Alban, or maybe even Barghest. What he got instead was a hooded figure with a gleaming sigil-inlaid knife.
He barely noticed when the knife went in. The pain came on slowly, flaring between his ribs. The heat he’d felt only moments before that fueled his anger went out in a rush of cold.
“The hell?” Callum breathed. He looked down at the hilt sticking out of his torso.
This wasn’t right.
He pulled for fire, shoved out at the person, and the next thing he knew the brick floor had come rushing up to meet him. He could feel something warm against his face, a pair of lips whispering into his ear.
“You have to trust me,” the woman said. “You’re going to be fine but you’re going to have to sleep for a while, okay? Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
As the world swayed and lurched around him, he realized he believed her. Everything went black.
There was a little fenced in patio behind the Ninth Gate, and with all of the fuss inside bringing in the new year, it was practically deserted. The cherry of Sam’s cigarette burned silver with seraph’s fire, and he and Corvin stood amid the trampled confetti and black and gold balloons hovering at half mast around the yard.
“It’s been too long since we’ve seen each other,” Corvin said, smirking. His skin was just a little bit too pink to be a natural human color, betraying the drop of imp blood in his veins. His hair was dark brown and his eyes a warm riverstone black. “Remember how we used to hang out every day?”
“Harder to find the excuses now,” Sam said. Corvin still had an inch or two on him in height, and Sam had always had a slim build. He and his brother both did, and they got it from their father. While Callum and Joey Trezza both had red-black hair, and hazel eyes, Samael’s coloring favored his mother instead.
He had olive skin, and silver hair that fell long, well past his elbows. He had it gathered in a low tail for the occasion, but it had fallen over one shoulder and he could see it catching the wisplight in his peripheral vision.
“The way things are going it feels like this is going to be a better year,” Corvin said. “Less of a reason to keep an eye out, less bad blood. Maybe we’re even hitting the point that we can start trying to make peace.”
There was a beat of silence and both of them laughed.
“Right,” Samael said. “Maybe my father will be elected mayor this year.”
“More likely than mine,” Corvin said, with a smirk. “Afrite can at least kind of pass for human, can’t they?”
“You say that like everyone doesn’t know his lineage already,” Sam said, taking a drag from his cigarette. “We’ll just be careful like we always are. Catch up when we can. If it’s the best we can do, it’s the best we can do.”
“To old wounds and bitter feuding,” Corvin said. He grabbed a bottle of champagne off the table already opened and half full and held it up to Samael. “To being friends against all odds.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Sam said, dropping his cigarette to the bricks and grinding it out with his heel. Corvin took a swig directly from the bottle and passed it to Sam, who did the same. The champagne was still a little bit fizzy and it tickled his nose. It reminded him of being fourteen and sneaking beer under the docks. It wasn’t the only thing they’d been hiding that summer.
For a second, he thought he’d accidentally smashed the bottle when he put it down and then he realized the breaking sound had come from inside the bar. He and Corvin exchanged a look.
“What the fuck did you do you bitch?”
Samael would have known his father’s voice anywhere. He didn’t pause or speak, he just ran into the bar where the party had ground to a sudden halt. A string quartet of four armed demons--asura with blue skin and silver runed bracelets around each wrist--had ceased their playing. Every eye in the room was on the bar.
Sam shoved his way to the front of the crowd to find his father holding Vivi Verida by the collar of her shirt.
Vivi was a tall woman. He could not say the same for Joey, who was only five foot eight but brought with him the kind of black fury one might have expected from a rhakshasa.
“Take your hands off of me,” Vivi said through clenched teeth. He had her half bent backwards over the bar. Her pinched face was contorted in anger, dark brown hair mussed beneath her feathered headband. Her bony hands clutched at Joey’s wrists, trying in vain to pry them off.
“What did you do to my son?”
For a moment, Samael’s blood ran cold. His very first thought was that he and Corvin had been seen together and that the response was going to be more dramatic than he thought.
Then he realized he didn’t see Callum anywhere.
Two massively broad figures were shoving their way through the crowd, then. One was Barghest, the Commande
r of the Hellwatch, and people moved aside for him with mildly worried but respectful looks on their faces.
People practically dove out of the way of Alric Kessel. Both men were over seven feet tall but where Barghest carried himself with practiced efficiency and calm, Alric strode hard with hideous rage on his hatchet features.
Alric was half imp and had the crimson skin to prove it. His mouth was large all the time, but Sam had had the misfortune to see how wide he could make it go in the past. He reached for Joey’s shoulder and Barghest got between them, smacking Alric’s meaty hand away with ease.
It was Barghest that pulled Joey off of Vivi. Alric stepped forward and gathered her into his arms, a protective hand between her shoulder blades.
“Get off me, mongrel!” Joey snarled, trying to wrench himself out of Barghest’s grip. Sam had never seen a look like that on his face before.
“Someone start casting shadows,” Barghest said.
“Callum!” Joey barked, stopping to look up at Barghest. For a moment, his rage slipped and his expression showed bare grief. “My son is dead out there and I know she had a hand in it, I fucking know it.”
Joey clawed at the air in the direction of the front doors.
Barghest’s face went a strange blank and it took Samael a moment to catch up with the conversation. He took a step back first and then took off at a feverish run for the front doors. The crowd parted for him as easily as it had for the tall men coming toward Joey.
He spilled into the street. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the low light but when they did, they fell on his mother. She was on her knees in the brick road with Callum’s head in her lap and both hands pressed to the flower of blood that had bloomed on his once white shirt.
“Hang on, baby, please,” Ophelia murmured.
“Cal?” Sam asked. His voice sounded shaky even to him. His first step trembled, and he threw himself across the road. He wasn’t sure how he managed to stay upright until he reached them but when he dropped to the ground he hit hard. He had never seen his little brother this pale before.
“Ancients, Sammy,” Ophelia whispered, her voice breaking a little bit. “He’s not moving and I can’t get him to wake up. I can’t find his pulse, I need you to look for me okay?”
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