by Rowan Casey
We walked back down into the party. Suddenly it was so much noisier and uncomfortable. I could smell sex everywhere. Then it hit me. I looked at my hostess, "Your special guest? It wasn’t the dead puppet show was it?"
"No."
"Who was it? Are they here? Has anyone seen them?"
"Nik Devaigne," she said. And I knew it had to be him, because who else was a real star in this town? The kind of star who, if you fed on adoration would have the power to light up the world like one huge mother of a solar panel? Devaigne was a rock star among rock stars. He was Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, and MJ all rolled into one, the ultimate performer. "And no, he isn’t here."
"Call him," I said, suddenly sure that Holm’s PA had already spirited away the A lister and everything that had happened upstairs was pure smoke and mirrors to leave him vulnerable.
I told you, I’m an idiot.
But I learn.
"What?"
"Call him. Call his assistant. Call whoever you set this little visit up with and find out where he is. Because I have a bad feeling about this."
She did as she was told and went paler than she already was the longer the call went unanswered. She kept on calling as we walked through the music and partygoers who drifted around us, sizing her up as much as they were sizing me up, knowing that at some point she was going to make her pick for the night and each wanting to be the chosen one.
"Can you hear that?" I asked.
She shook her head, but kept the line open, the actor’s phone ringing and ringing until it went through to voice mail, then she broke the connection and rang again. I could hear the siren song of Apple beneath the music, and tried to isolate it, but it was like looking for a needle in an aural haystack. I walked around the pool, gesturing for her to call him again. When the ring signal started up again, I saw the light. Well, the glow of the phone’s screen, which was the next best thing. It was stuffed down at the base of a huge ficus. The screen showed her name as incoming. I picked the phone up. "He was here." That’s me, master of the obvious. "Do you have cameras on the door?"
"We have cameras everywhere," she said, like I knew she would.
"Come on, we need to see who he left with, and what car they were driving." I knew the answer to one, not the other, but I wanted it nailed down before I raced off into the night to get myself killed trying to save some actor who’d come out to LA to party. I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. There is a sickness about this place. It’s a city where nothing is real and everything is for sale.
Evienne took me back into the main house, to a room which looked more like mission control at NASA than an audio video suite. She hadn’t been lying, there were twenty screens in there and they showed quite literally every angle, including the unflattering ones. Every celebrity was compromised by this place, and if they knew about it they obviously didn’t care, such was the hold the enchanted garden had over them.
"Show me the front door, and side door cameras, and spool back through the last thirty minutes or so." It took a lot less than that to see Nik Devaigne leaning on Holm’s personal assistant as she led him down the garden path toward a waiting car.
It was a black Lexus–in other words pretty much invisible out on the street.
We got the plate, for whatever good that would do us. We weren’t about to go to Hollywood precinct and ask for help, after all.
"What do we do?" Evienne said, looking at me for answers.
"If you were looking to sacrifice one of the most famous singers in the world, and wanted to tap into the power of their fame and draw all the eyes of the world to you, where would you do it?"
"The sign," she said without a second thought and I knew she was right. It made perfect sense. Kill Nik Devaigne under the Hollywood sign and you had an iconic image, the kind of shocking and tragic photo that would resonate with every star watcher, more so than any studio lot, and it was private land, meaning you wouldn’t be disturbed in the act. I couldn’t think of a better place, but it was still a massive gamble.
"We can’t be everywhere at once," I said. "We’re going to have to split up. I’ll go after the demon, you need to help Grimm. Because if the veil fails it doesn’t matter if I save Devaigne or not, we’re all screwed." She nodded. "But there’s something you need to know…Grimm…isn’t himself. He has lost his magic."
For a fleeting moment I thought I saw the faintest of smiles ghost across the woman’s lips, but her eyes remained black and flinty and whatever I thought I’d saw was gone. "I will take care of him," she promised. "Even without his powers Grimm is a formidable foe. We need his mind as much as his magic to seal the wound in the veil."
"The breach is in Avalon, downstairs, below the nightclub, where Grimm has reconstructed the round table. The others will answer the call, if you make it. This is why we returned. This moment of need. We will not fail you," I promised her. There was no time for stirring speeches, we needed to get out of there.
I ran out of there, not even thinking about the fact I had left the dagger with her. I was focused purely on getting up to the sign. I had two lives to save. Or one to lose. One way or the other it was going to end tonight.
19
I drove like the devil was on my back.
The Mustang’s gears ground and brakes shrieked, and still I accelerated, as all the while the clock counted down on the last dregs of my life. I’m not one for melancholia or thoughtful introspection. I like to think of myself as a man of action. Even so, I wanted to say goodbye to Grimm. It felt important that he know I was going to die trying to make a difference.
I put him on speaker and hit redial.
"Sam?" he said, sounding so far away.
"Grimm," I said. "I need you to listen. Evienne is coming to find you. She has powered up–"
"What are you talking about?"
"She consumed the incubus’s heart and absorbed his magic. She says she knows what Holm was trying to do with his sigils, and between the two of you she knows how to preserve the veil."
"She told you all this?"
"In between saving my skin, yeah."
"Then it must be so," he said, and I could have sworn there was a tinge of sadness in his voice. "Where are you now?"
"Driving up to the sign. The demon wasn’t working alone. They hunt in pairs, a male and a female. Evienne engineered things so I was in a position to kill the male, but I think I, well not to put it too indelicately, I think I may have knocked up the female. I understand everything now, the grand plan. They wanted me, for my seed, to make another you—another half-man half-demon, a creature rooted in both worlds." He said nothing at that. "Look, I know that thing was your father. I’m sorry. I think that is what I am supposed to say in these circumstances?"
"Thank you, but there was no bond between us. Just because that creature gave me life does not mean I owe it anything, and now that it is gone, well, perhaps I am free of the hold my own guilt had over me."
"We can only hope," I agreed.
"Of all the places in this city, why the sign?"
I explained our theory. He listened without interrupting, then asked, "And you came up with this yourself? Or was it her idea?"
"All mine," I said, which wasn’t strictly true. She’d pointed me in the direction of the sign, but I felt like taking some credit. I was busting my ass trying to save the day and I wanted people to know that I was on the side of the angels for once. No more cheap Paparazzi shots. I was one of the good guys. Not that it was going to be enough to save my soul.
"Good. Just be careful, my friend, remember I cannot bring you back again. No matter how much I might want to."
"I’ve got a plan," I said. "And no, you don’t want to know."
"I have lived this night before," he said, which could easily be taken to mean he knew my plan already, but I didn’t think so. I can’t imagine I was good enough last time to come up with this kind of Hail Mary. "My life is such that I cannot interfere with fate, but that does not mean I
have to sit by and just watch it unfurl. I am coming to you."
"I just wanted to say goodbye," I said, but he was already gone.
I tried to think about what he’d just said, but there were so many potential places this could go wrong, like, for instance, I didn’t have the knife I was going to need to cut Holm’s demonic PA's heart out., which was just a minor inconvenience.
I saw lights on the road behind me.
Cops, coming up fast. They were running their siren. I figured they weren’t after me, despite the fact I’d broken just about every traffic reg on the books thus far up the climb. I pushed the Mustang harder, gas pedal flat to the floor as she rattled around an impossibly tight hairpin, and kept on driving, foot flat to the floor.
I could only drive so far, then I had to abandon the car and make a run for it on foot, scrambling up a dirt track that felt like it went on forever before it finally doubled back around and I reached the chain link fence meant to keep tourists who wanted to sit on the famous letters out. I was late for my meeting with death; only ten minutes give or take, but that was close enough for me to know I wasn’t walking down Mount Lee again. I could live with that if it made the difference. Look at me, a proper hero in my own head, willing to sacrifice myself for the greater good.
I could see two people—or their silhouettes, at least—by the first O.
One of them was unmistakably Jonas Holm’s PA, even though the unfurled wings made her look far more demonic than she had back in the hanger when we’d first met.
I scrambled over the fence, and down the steep hill, the dirt scuffing away beneath my feet as I slid.
"I’ve been expecting you," she said, without looking around. I shouldn’t have been surprised. "We share a bond now, you and I," she rested a hand on her stomach, which made mine crawl.
"I don’t think so," I told her, drawing the Colt. "Let’s just say I’m not ready to be a father."
"Ah, you still believe you have a choice? You are too late to change anything, Lancelot du Lac. Look closely, you have already failed this one; he is already dead. I got bored waiting for you and drained him. His heart gave out. It was very disappointing, I must admit. Not everyone has your kind of stamina, after all, but that is why you were chosen. And by the time you get back to Hollywood, your precious Grimm will be as dead as all the others." She finally turned to face me, the reflected light from the city below throwing a chiaroscuro of shadow across her face. For once I wasn’t thinking about if she was beautiful. I was focused purely on the fact that she was a demon, she was carrying my child, and I had to kill her. "You look confused. Do I need to explain it to you? The women. You always underestimate the women. Theomacha has plans for the old man’s heart. As a sacrifice, the offering of a cambion is more potent than the death of any mere actor, no matter how beloved they may be. Oh, yes, you came running to the wrong place. It is back there, down the hill," she pointed toward the bright lights of the big city spread out down below. "That is where the dying is being done. Well, the dying that matters. Up here, this is just a side show."
I’d heard enough. I wasn’t about to be lectured on my shortcomings as a hero.
I pulled the trigger, putting a bullet into her third eye.
It may have lacked the finesse of Carnwenhau, but for a moment at least, it looked like Arondight more than made up for it in terms of demon-killing mojo. The succubus was spun away, leathery wings beating frantically as she hit the dirt.
I watched her crawl a few inches, clawing at the ground.
I thought about putting another bullet in her, which I figured would make me a sure fire candidate for worst demon-father of the year award.
"Don’t," I heard a voice say before I could pull the trigger.
Dante Grimm.
I don’t know how he had made it up Mount Lee in the short time since he’d ended our conversation, but he had. Perhaps it was true, perhaps he could shapeshift. It was no distance at all as the crow flies, after all.
She looked up, bleeding in the dirt, to see him standing there, and for a moment at least he looked more like his demonic father than he did himself.
20
A warm wind blew in from the east, coming in off the sea. Sometimes I forget that we’re only a stone’s throw from the beach–well, if you’re an Olympic athlete.
I stood there, looking at Grimm, who was looking at the fallen succubus, who was looking at something else, off in the middle distance. She crawled away another few inches, fingers clawing at the dry grass. I felt like I should do something: put her out of her misery. But I couldn’t put another bullet in her, not in cold blood.
Talking of blood, there was a long red smear across the ground that was going to take a pretty damned near biblical flood to wash away.
"Where is she?" Grimm demanded.
"Who?" I said.
"The magical queen, where is she?"
"Theomacha? She was going to Avalon to meet you."
"No," he said, "she wouldn’t leave this much raw magic to rot back into the land. Where is she? I can smell her," he said, and for a moment I thought he was doing that Hannibal Lecter thing, sniffing at the air like he expected some fava beans and a nice chianti.
"I left her at the garden," I argued. His next question wasn’t directed at me, it was aimed at the darkness beyond the gigantic letters.
"Show yourself, wych."
I heard the rustle of footsteps and saw indistinct motion in the shadows behind the OOs. I looked into the darkness, and, okay, I’m not exaggerating, I felt the darkness look back into me. And I didn’t like it.
Slowly, a figure, blacker than black, wearing the feathered mask of a raven and a sleek black cocktail dress coalesced in the darkness, taking on shape and form.
All pretense of Evienne was stripped away, she was Theomacha, the wych queen. The air around her crackled with raw pent-up energy, sparking and shimmering with an ethereal blue corona. She held up a hand, and her fingers were wreathed in light bright enough to turn night into day.
She looked from struggling demon in the dirt to the magician she knew had lost his magic, and the hunger in her expression was unmistakable.
He answered her with a song.
Seriously.
I don’t know what was going on inside his head, but the old fool started singing. It was faint at first, like a distant song, but gathering voice as she neared.
"Quaint," Theomacha said, "You have no real magic left, so you offer a charm against evil?" But, dear Myrddin, I am not evil. I am merely driven."
He didn’t stop singing. I assumed this was some sort of old ways druid magic, the song of the earth or something, but to be honest it kinda sounded like the old man was going la-la-la in the face of some serious shit.
"Sing your fucking heart out," I said, full of encouragement.
You ever get the feeling life is a river, flowing out from where you are born up in the mountains to the sea where in churns up whitecaps and rages away, battering at the cliffs of you? At that moment I was somewhere out in the deep, the waves crashing around my head, as close to the end as any man could be, death trying to drag me under. But I was resolute. I stood my ground beside the singing Grimm, content to die for him.
Not that I could do much else in the coming fight.
I hadn’t checked how many rounds there were in the Colt, but I’d fired one, so one less. I raised the gun, but before I could curl my finger around the trigger, she sent it spinning out of my hand with an almost negligent flick of the wrist not unlike how she’d killed that poor sap Merchant simply because he’d been there and had the temerity to see something he shouldn’t. The Colt hit the dirt closer to the succubus than I would have liked. Mercifully the creature wasn’t in any shape to make a play for it.
"Oh, do stop with the dreadful caterwauling, Myrddin, you don’t have the voice for it."
He did. But I could see the battle going on beneath his face, muscles trying to shape the song but unable to make a sound.
&nb
sp; "Better," she said. "All that remains is for you to die alongside your first knight, and then my fellow queens can emerge from the shadows. Now is the time, old man. Out time. It is the age of the sacred feminine, the dark age of man is over."
The blue flame encasing her hand arced across the night, cracking like thunder as it hit Grimm full in the chest and drove him from his feet.
He had no answer.
I didn’t think.
I put myself in between them.
You know what I said about everyone thinking they’re the heroes of their own lives. This was it. My hero moment.
"Oh, how sweet, he’s trying to protect you," Theomacha mocked, even as she stepped right up into my face. I didn’t have a weapon to fight her, unless you counted my fists, and those were about as much use as the old man’s song.
The enchantress reached out, closing her birdlike claws around my throat. All I could think in that life flashing before my eyes moment was that twelve hours ago she’d been teasing me with flirtatious promises of sex, and now she was choking me. So, pretty much a normal first date. I’m not proud of myself, but I tried to hit her. I say tried, the punch was true and should have landed pretty much square on her jaw, but the black feathers of her bird mask parted around my fist and I connected with nothing. The swing left me wildly off-balance. She twisted her fingers into a fist and it felt as though she were pulling the skin from my neck in the process.
I was still pretty screwed up from the ketamine, or I think it would have hurt a lot worse. But I didn’t back off. She touched my cheek, fingers lingering, and for a moment it was intimate, something passing between. "Honor the seed of the new queen," she breathed into my mouth, and it was no kind of kiss I’d ever want, believe me. I didn’t understand what she meant with that at first, until I saw the succubus struggling to stand, hands protectively around her belly, and two and two came together in my head. The age of man was over. That was the mystical queen’s promise. We were entering the age of the sacred feminine. It wasn’t just about creating a new cambion to rival Merlin as a walker between worlds, it was about creating his opposite, a female demon-kind, half-knight, half-succubus. A girl who could, in time, become more powerful than Merlin had ever dreamed of being.
