She didn’t know where he had drawn the blade from. One moment he was empty handed and the next he had six inches of steel and was slashing for Vivi’s throat. Somewhere between one instant and the next, she lost her spell, and a line of red appeared across the top of her chest.
She drew a sigil in the air and Joey’s next blow came up against a shield that flashed bright red against the blow. Fire engulfed his free hand, his left hand, to the elbow and he went to reach around it, but Vivi was quick enough to move her shield in the way. In doing so, she forgot about the knife and the cost was another cut, this one across her upper right arm.
He drove his knee into her stomach. Vivi rammed the hard part of her forehead into his face and he barely tilted his head back in time for her to get teeth instead of the soft part of his nose. He came away bloody.
She started whispering another incantation. The shadows of spikes began to appear along Vivi’s body as her magic swelled around her. Joey punched her in the throat. While she was getting her breath back, she kicked the back of his knee out and Joey dipped.
“You’ll answer for Alric,” Vivi said, acidly. “And when I’m done with you, your whelp is going to answer for my daughter, too.”
Joey didn’t say anything. Ely had seen that look on his face before. It was pure focus. He wanted her to answer for someone too, she thought, but he wasn’t going to let her get a rise out of him.
Most people would have been an emotional wreck. Vivi was. Joey, though, kept his head. Maybe this was where she got it from.
While Vivi was talking, Joey brought his blade around and made another cut, this one in the side of her neck. She bled like mad, and clutched at the hole with one hand while the other frantically started to trace a sigil in the air.
Joey grabbed her by the forearm and put his switchblade right through her palm.
“You are never,” he said, emphasizing every word, “going to touch my girl.”
He forced Vivi’s hand down and stepped in close, almost touching. They were the same height.
“Alric had it coming. Lissel had it coming. Maybe,” he said, releasing the switchblade and bringing up a right hand sheathed in flickering hellfire, “you should have thought about all this before you started tormenting the dock district. Maybe you should have called it off before shit got too deep between your people and mine. Maybe you shouldn’t have sent one of your goons to put a dagger in my son and maybe you shouldn’t have shot my brother.”
Vivi stared at his hand, her eyes wide and reflecting the firelight.
“But it’s late for that now. You did. And you know what happens to people who mess with my folks,” Joey said.
He put that fiery hand in Vivi Verida’s hair. The stench was terrible. Burning hair gave way to burning flesh, and Joey didn’t let go until she was a writhing mass on the floor. Ely never looked away.
When she stopped moving, Joey turned to look at her. Ely met his eyes.
“Is it always that easy for you?” she asked.
“It wasn’t easy. It was necessary,” he said.
“It’s amazing how often one looks like the other,” she said. She gave one last lingering look at the burned body and started to walk again.
“…it’s not really easy for you either, is it?” he asked.
“Never,” she said. And in that moment she wasn’t sure if that was true or not. It was what he wanted to hear from her, she knew. It was the thing that made her sound more human, the thing she uncomfortably thought she ought to say. But at the same time…perhaps she only thought she was lying because that was who she thought she was.
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was just strong like her father.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Secret Names
“Hello Daelan City, this is the Voice of the Night broadcasting from a darkened room as lights all over the city have blinked out in response to whatever strange happenings are going on under ground.
If there was a time to leave, we have long since passed it. The best you can do is stay indoors with your families and hope in Ancient’s name it passes without much more incident than this.
Every wisp in Daelan has gone out. I don’t mean vanished back to their own planes, either. I’ve never seen a wisp die before. If we survive this, it’s certainly something I’ll be telling my grandchildren about.
Hang tight and whatever you do don’t buy into whatever nonsense the upper crust wants to feed you about what’s happening down there right now. This was not a mass dismissal. This was not a shadow creature or a mass hallucination.
Remember that what you are feeling tonight is real, and it’s history in the making.”
The walls of the side chamber were lined with cages, some empty and some crammed with people. Ophelia came up beside him with her brow furrowed and her arms folded.
“If she’s going to be anywhere,” he said, “it will be here.”
“These people need help too,” Ophelia said. “Someone has to get them out in case we fail.”
“If we fail it isn’t going to matter how far they run. It’s too late for that,” Barghest said. He stepped forward anyway. He had to try and Ophelia had a bigger fight ahead, and onethat couldn’t wait. Behind him, he could hear Ophelia as s he continued walking, and the rest of the group followed her.
At the end of the day, his first duty was to the people of this city. Not just the ones on the north end.
And she might be here.
A cultist started to walk toward him and Barghest grabbed him by the face and shoved him into a nearby wall.
“Keys,” Barghest said.
The man’s response was a garbled mess against his palm. Barghest sighed and peeled his hand back.
“I don’t have them,” the man sobbed. “Please.”
His pinstriped pants were darkening with urine.
“Where?” Barghest asked. His voice came out softer this time. Apparently that only made it worse because the man started blubbering. He didn’t have that kind of time. He smacked his palm against the wall and the man’s eyes returned to his. “Tell me where the keys are and you can go.”
“Agora has them,” he said.
“Know that if you are lying to me, death will be the least of your concerns,” Barghest said. He stepped away from the cultist, who took off running. Barghest rolled his shoulder and headed for the door on the other end of the chamber.
The door snapped open and the being he had to assume was Agora turned its head to look at him.
This was not one of the big seven. This was not something a sane human would have ever considered mating with. It was seven foot tall with a body covered in course black fur and a skeletal head with razor sharp teeth that extended to the back of the jaws.
Agora tilted its head in a canine fashion, twitching every step of the way as if its own spine were trying to prevent the gesture. Barghest drew his claymore.
“The bottom of the jaw,” a voice called out. He glanced past the horror. Augury was in a hanging cage, her fingers clutching iron bars, blue eyes burning.
The dogskull demon whipped a clawed and padded hand back at the cage where she hung and Augury thrust her bandaged left hand out to catch it by the thumb. They’d taken her index finger.
Her right hand caught a handful of fur and conflagrated. Barghest came charging up behind the demon and planted the point of his claymore right between its furry shoulder blades.
It stopped dead like he was trying to hack through six inches of steel.
Agora’s furry head turned around and the pinprick red lights in its eye sockets fixed on Barghest. He barely had time to get his claymore up to block its claws.
He remembered Augury’s warning. He’d heard it the first time, it just hadn’t sunk in until he tried it first hand. Agora ripped its smoking arm from Augury’s grasp, sending her cage swinging. As it turned on Barghest, he could see the key glinting from a chain around its neck.
Agora swung.
Barghest blocked the blows wi
th his claymore but each one sent him skittering back over the floor. It was all he could do just to keep his footing against the onslaught.
Behind the beast, he could see Augury calling up hellfire. Just a little longer, he promised himself, and kept focusing on the defensive.
The mote of flame hit Agora in the back, and it peeled itself away from Barghest to start to turn around. That was his opening. He drove the point of his claymore up into Agora’s chin and something crunched, giving way. One twist, another crunching sound, and the beast dropped.
He took the key.
Now there were dozens of eyes crowding their bars and staring at him. Going around and tending to every other person in these two rooms first was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. He was patient. Unlock the doors, point them in the direction of the exit, move on to the next one.
By the time he got to Augury, they were alone.
She climbed down out of the iron birdcage that was too small to really fit her, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
“I knew you’d come through,” she said, grinning.
Barghest took her hand and ran his thumb over the back of it, eying the dried brown part of the bandage. Augury tried a smile and it came out more a grimace.
“Yeah,” she said. “It could have been worse.”
“It shouldn’t have been this bad,” Barghest said.
“Yeah,” Augury said, “but on the bright side we’ve got plenty of time for payback. I trust you’re not going to stop me from ventilating some of these morons, officer?”
He chuckled. “Not a chance. Have at it.”
There were a dozen cultists, at least, that had decided to make their stand in the massive chamber before them. Sam held an arm out to stop them and they peeled back into the corridor before they were noticed.
“That was a stupid place to stand off,” Sam said.
“Well,” Ophelia said, “not all of those cultists are from Gate Street.”
“Corvin and I can take them,” Sam heard himself say before he realized it was coming out of his mouth.
“What?” Corvin said.
“No, really, we can,” Sam said. “Those are normal guys and gals out there.”
“I’m a normal guy,” Corvin said, brow furrowed.
Sam grinned at him.
“You’re really not,” he said. “I’m sorry, I knew what you meant. But you’re a decent knife fighter and I can disrupt their bullets. Nephil are hard to shoot around. Mom has to go on here. She’s the best combatant we’ve got. Tess has to go on because she’s the one that knows how to summon. And this is personal for Callum.”
“Thanks,” Callum said, dryly.
“We’ll cut down as many as we can on the way over,” Ophelia said.
Sam nodded and darted in the door before anyone could say anything else. The next few minutes were a mess of ineffectual gunfire, sprays of blood and shouting. The thing about wings, is that they were flashy.
As Sam dove around the canopy of the room, his mother moved around the perimeter with Callum and Tess. Sam strafed the crowd and as they lifted their guns to aim at him, beat his wings once hard to disrupt their fire.
Once his family was clear, he joined Corvin on the floor. It wouldn’t have taken as long if there hadn’t been so many of them. He and Corvin cleared them out a little at a time.
Everything was quiet for a moment as they met eyes over the corpse-strewn floor and Sam started to walk toward Corvin.
Corvin lifted his pistol.
This time, Sam stopped, and waited, trusting him. There was a bark of gunfire. A body hitting the floor. Sam glanced back over his shoulder to find a cultist with a bullet hole in his forehead.
This time, Corvin closed the distance between them.
“What happens after this?” he asked.
Sam brushed his palm over Corvin’s too-pink cheek, met those dark eyes.
“That’s really up to you, isn’t it?” he asked.
Corvin was quiet for a moment, dropped his gaze to the bodies around their feet.
“My parents are dead,” he said. “My sister, dead. Most of Gate Street, gone.”
Sam stayed quiet and listened. He knew that deep down he felt like all of it had been justified. He also knew how he felt about what had happened to Uncle Danny and how tight his chest got every time he thought about that. Corvin had lost so many more people.
And it had been at the hands of Sam’s family.
“And it was my family’s fault,” Sam said. “So no, I can’t ask you to stay or look at those faces every day and remember what they caused.”
“They didn’t,” Corvin said. He exhaled. “I hate this so much but they didn’t cause any of it. I can’t have lived with my family for this long and not known what they were, Sam.”
“It doesn’t make it hurt less,” Sam said. He was remembering Danny putting that gun in his hand. Asking him to shoot an unarmed man. None of this was simple.
“No,” Corvin said, resting his forehead on Sam’s shoulder. “It doesn’t. But we can’t get into that right now, there are still enemies. We could still get swarmed at any moment and I can’t break down right now. The only thing I’m sure about is that I want you.”
“We’ll make this work,” Sam said. “When this calms down we’ll sit down and talk about everything we need, both of us, and we will find a way to have all of it.”
“I need out,” Corvin said, looking up at Sam. His face was uncertain for a moment. “No more guns, no more bodies.”
“Alright,” Sam said. “No more guns. No more bodies.”
He wasn’t sure how he was going to keep that promise.
The sounds of chanting were very close now. Ophelia stopped in the ante chamber and assessed the boy standing in the middle of it with a crystal vial of blood perched between his fingers. He looked familiar in that vague sort of way.
“Alban,” Tess said.
“Tess,” he countered. His voice was a light drawl. Ophelia dropped her eyes to the summoning circle he was standing on. It was detailed for something big, and most of those glyphs were old enochian. He meant to call down an angel. “You shouldn’t be here. You weren’t invited. When you’re my wife, you’ll stay where you’re told to be.”
“You’re going to have quite a time telling me anything with no teeth,” Tess said in a deadpan tone. “See, the joke is that I’m going to punch them out if you keep speaking to me that way.”
Alban chuckled and brought his vial close to his chest. Ophelia could see him working the stopper free.
“Callum,” she whispered, “go on, we’ll meet you in there.”
The chanting was growing worryingly loud. Callum didn’t need to be told twice. He moved around the outside of the room, casting one glance over his shoulder at Tess before he vanished into the chamber beyond.
“You’re an amazing summoner but your arms are never going to be strong enough to punch out teeth,” Alban said. “Just accept that. Accept my guidance. I can take care of you, it doesn’t have to be this hard. You can still turn around and leave.”
Ophelia eased her claymore into her hand and charged. There was a moment where she was sure she’d won. Alban made a distressed sound and shifted his body to try and block her. The vial fell from his hands, stopper still in place.
Her claymore cut him along the forearm. The blood ran down his wrist, his elbow, and started to drip.
“No,” she said.
Alban Geist laughed.
All Ophelia could do was grab him around the waist to pull him clear.
“Don’t look at it,” she called to Tess. “Take care of him but don’t look at the angel!”
She wasn’t sure how she knew. There was something hard and intense in her chest in that moment, but with a flash of light, a seraph appeared before her.
Ophelia glanced to make sure Tess and Alban had covered their eyes. Tess had. Ophelia got to watch in real time as Alban’s eyes bubbled and flickered out, leaving him blinde
d.
There was a reason seraphim were called ‘the burning ones’.
“Do not be afraid,” he said. He was six wings attached to a facsimile of a face. The feathers blocked out the rest of his body. There was nothing male about his voice; he was inhuman to the last. Ophelia lifted her chin.
“I’m not,” she said. She wasn’t sure how she knew. Her throat was dry. “I didn’t expect to finally meet you like this, Father.”
The seraph dipped in the air, almost like he was bowing to her. So Ophelia manifested her quartet of wings, spread them, and bowed back.
The door shut behind him. Callum stood on a stone mezzanine looking down at the assembled cultists below. There were fourteen of them, chanting in fever pitch as Lena stood at the head of the altar with her arm raised and her stump trying to match it. The look on her face was almost beatific.
The vaulted ceiling of the chamber was so high he couldn’t see the top. The floors and walls were carefully laid brick. The whole cistern smelled like mildew and stagnant water.
There was nothing he could do to stop the cultists from plunging their daggers into the slots in the stone altars in front of them. None of their altars were anything compared to Lena’s, but they had been perfectly spaced and sat at the points of the star inside their circle.
The rush of air in the upper chamber made it impossible for Callum to hear anything above the white noise of their chanting, but he could see Lena’s lips in their perfect red moving against her pale face. They formed one word, like a blessing on her lips. He felt it ripple through his veins.
‘Lazrael’
Lena shifted her sacrificial dagger into a reverse grip, and slashed underneath her stump of an arm. Blood dripped down and trickled into grooves along the alter. She kept bleeding.
Blood touched the circle, and it began to glow. Liquid that was no longer red but iridescent violet stretched around bends in the grooves, expanding without stretching thin by virtue of the magic surrounding it.
He clutched the frigid top of the unforgiving stone wall in front of him. The brickwork thrummed with the echoes of magic. For a moment, he was unable to make himself move.
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