by K. N. Banet
“Then explain the Board,” Cassius countered, raising an eyebrow. “Actually, don’t.” He shook his head and turned away from me to look at the house. “I don’t think we should go in together.”
“Of course not,” I said, chuckling. “That would be stupid. If there’s any memory protections, whoever is on the outside can try to get us fixed when it fucks us up. You and I are going in. We’ll leave Raphael and Sorcha out here.”
“Again,” Raphael muttered.
“She wants to protect those of us who aren’t in the Tribunal’s employ,” Sorcha said lightly. “Let her. They get covered by their bosses if they get hurt, or the Tribunal gets revenge for them if they die. We don’t.”
Raphael only snorted. I looked at Cassius, and he looked back. We knew the stakes. He nodded, and together, we walked up to the front door. I unholstered my sidearm and clicked the safety off, keeping myself ahead of him. I heard the soft shing of metal coming out of a sheath and knew he’d called in his blade.
I didn’t knock. Testing the doorknob, I found it locked. Cassius stepped away from me as I got in position. It took two solid kicks, but the wood gave way and swung inward. I pushed it open the rest of the way and was met with nothing of interest.
A simple gesture of my hand let Cassius know to follow. I entered the building first, taking in every detail of the simple and clean entry hallway, which ended in an apparent living room. To the right was a narrow staircase, and to the left, a smaller hallway. I ignored the stairs for now, looking down the small secondary hallway. It had three doors, two bedrooms and a bathroom, all open where I could see inside them. Uninteresting. I continued and reached the living room, which was attached to the dining room and kitchen. An open door in the kitchen showed the laundry room and access into the house’s garage. I turned around, Cassius right beside me, and pointed at a door I had passed heading into the kitchen. He shook his head and mouthed a word.
“Basement.”
I nodded, then pointed up. He nodded in return.
We would try upstairs first, then go down.
Upstairs was just as uninteresting as the main level. There was no one home, and nothing seemed out of place in a home meant for humans. It was too clean, and I hated that. When we went back to the basement door, I tried to open it and glared at the knob as it grew warm in my hand. I pulled my hand away before it became blazing hot and started to melt.
“Shit,” I muttered. “Basement experiments. Of course.”
“Let’s hope that didn’t trigger anything else to self-destruct,” Cassius said, annoyed. He kicked the door open, and it flew off the hinges down the staircase into the basement. His long sword was better for the staircase, so he went first this time while I kept aim over his shoulder.
The basement wasn’t empty.
“Oh, yeah. He was definitely using this as a hub for whatever fucked up shit he was working on,” I mumbled as we rounded a corner and found the bookcases and desks. There were shelves and shelves of potion ingredients and filing cabinets filled to the brim with paper. Two tables were shoved together in the center of the room, one with leather straps positioned to hold someone down. The other was covered in writings, liquids, and more books.
“We know it’s empty, so let’s head back out before we do a more thorough search and see if there’s going to be a memory problem.”
I nodded, and we walked back up the stairs and out the front door. We walked the entire distance to Sorcha and Raphael, but I could still remember everything from inside the house.
“If he had an area memory block on this place, it’s worn off,” I said, feeling confident in my judgment.
“Agreed. Sorcha, Raphael, we’re going to need you two.”
I stiffened. “We only need—”
“What’s in there?” Raphael asked, cutting me off. Sorcha snickered, and Cassius smirked at me. They had both known what I was going to say.
“He was doing some form of research here. A couple extra pairs of hands are always nice. If there’s anything that might worry you, or you don’t know what it is, call for me or Kaliya.”
Raphael nodded, looking determined. I knew he wanted to help, but I only wanted to lock him in the SUV. This wasn’t a brawl where I knew he could fight, and I didn’t worry as much. This was dark shit, and I didn’t want him accidentally blowing himself up or anything. I wasn’t a witch, so I didn’t know what most of those things could do.
We headed back to the basement and looked through the books—dozens of spell books and notebooks full of handwritten research. Cassius catalogued what was on the shelves. Sorcha was doing something, but I didn’t really know what, considering I didn’t know what her abilities were all that well. Raphael just stayed by my side and looked through the books with me.
“Kaliya?” he said in a whisper. “Are pentagrams as bad as humans think they are?”
“Um…no,” I answered carefully, looking over at him. “They’re used for a lot of spells, both good and bad. Depending on how well it’s drawn and what it’s…decorated with, I guess, it does different things for the spell.”
“A plain pentagram doesn’t do anything,” Cassius added from across the room. I wasn’t surprised he’d heard. We’d been silent up until now. “Kaliya, do you know specific pentagrams?”
“No, do you?”
“Some. Only the bad ones. Let me take a look.” He held out a hand for the book Raphael had in his hands. It only took a moment, but I saw on Cassius’ face, this was bad.
“Oh, no,” he said softly, flipping to the next page. “Okay, this…this changes things.”
“How bad?” I needed to know what he was looking at or what he was learning from it, at least.
“This book was banned centuries ago. Every Investigator is given a general packet of things to look out for and expected to memorize it. These are…this book is…” He closed it and put it down. “This book is full of summoning rituals.”
My heart rate picked up, and I could hear the beat of my heart in my ears as he looked me in the eye.
“Summoning what?” Raphael asked. Sorcha was suddenly there as well, her eyes wide.
“Demons,” I answered. “Angels?” The second was a question.
Cassius nodded. “We might be dealing with a sorcerer. Might. We need to tear the house apart and see if he tried summoning one of them here.”
“Cassius, if we are…that means Mygi Pharma is dealing with a sorcerer. Do you think we can get the Tribunal to finally give us access to the company?”
“Maybe,” he said softly. “Hopefully.” He put away his sword, and I watched it dissipate into light when he let go of it as if he had put it into a sheath on his back. In the same fluid movement, he reached for his hip, and a dagger came out of nothing.
“What’s a sorcerer?” Raphael seemed exasperated. “Is it different from a witch?”
“Sort of,” I said, clicking my tongue as I considered the best way to explain. “Squares and rectangles. A witch would be the rectangle, and a sorcerer is the square. Everything with four sides and four ninety-degree angle corners is a rectangle. A square is a rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares. All sorcerers are witches, but not all witches are sorcerers.” I met his gaze, and he nodded, showing he understood. “A sorcerer is a witch who summons powerful beings to make deals and gain power in some way. They’ll summon demons, angels, gods…it doesn’t matter. If they can summon it and bind it, they’ll make deals with it. Sometimes…very rarely…they’ll become a host, all to achieve their own personal goals. The act of summoning these things is banned, even if it’s someone’s personal god and they just want advice. We don’t play around with these forces because they can end the world. They’re damn near impossible to kill…if they’re killable at all.”
“Remember what we told you. If you hear of someone summoning a demon or angel, you run the other way,” Cassius said, shaking his head at the book in front of him. “I’m going to cut up the carpet and move the rugs to see
if this witch drew a pentagram anywhere in the house. Grab what you can and take it out to the truck. We can’t leave these books. Grab his notebooks, too.”
I grabbed everything I could carry while Sorcha opened her clutch and started shoving books inside of it.
“How much can that hold?” Raphael asked, frantic and astounded.
“Not as much as people think,” she answered, and I watched sweat form on her forehead. Putting one more book in, she headed up the stairs. I followed her with Raphael on my heels. He had three times the number of books and journals, but he couldn’t see where he was going. I heard him fumble and drop a couple, but now wasn’t the time for teasing.
We dumped everything in the trunk, and Sorcha threw in her clutch, weighing down the SUV.
“Oh, that’s why. You can feel the weight,” I said, nodding appreciatively. It was a neat bit of magic. “You carry swords in there?”
“Not as many as you think,” she said with a small smile. “I only have the one now, and I make those light for a reason. They aren’t as heavy as your typical sword. Another bit of magic.”
“You can literally alter physics,” I said, shaking my head slowly. “Okay, let’s get another load. We’ll spend days getting through all of this.”
Heading back in, I picked up the books Raphael dropped and added to it while Cassius cut through carpet and ripped it up. It took forever, but eventually, we cleared out all the spell books and journals.
“I think we should burn it down,” Raphael said, looking at the house as he stood beside me.
“Yeah, with Cassius in it,” I said, an obvious tease that made Sorcha reach out and pop my shoulder. “I’ll do one more walkthrough. You two stay out here. If Cassius comes out before me, tell him I’m still in there.”
I went in without them and headed for the basement again. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I felt the need to keep looking. Sometimes, a gut feeling was all anyone had in these sorts of situations.
I didn’t let myself get distracted by the stuff around me, as I had earlier, focusing on the walls and floor. The walls were finished, painted white but uncleaned. I went to them and found the seams between the drywall panels, but everything seemed normal.
Frowning, I wondered why I wanted to be down there so much. I considered leaving when I couldn’t find anything, but I couldn’t let go of the thought I was missing something.
I slammed a fist through the drywall, deep enough to create a hole, and tore it open. It led to nothing interesting. I moved around the room, looking over the bookcases, now stripped bare. If they had been covering a secret door, we would have already stumbled on it. That was too human. The bookshelf trick was in every movie, and no supernatural was silly enough to try it out.
What is wrong with me? We found a lot of good stuff here. What am I forgetting?
I closed my eyes and used my other senses. I had pits like a pit viper. While I appeared human in my ‘human’ form, I was still a naga with special anatomy. The fangs were the obvious thing, but the pits allowed me to have a sense of thermal vision. I looked for anything out of the ordinary. The basement was cool, but finally, I caught a heat signature beyond a wall under the stairs and opened my eyes. There was no door, but I wasn’t foolish to think there wasn’t a space under there. Now that I considered it, the basement we saw upon entering was only under half of the house.
I walked quickly to the space and started tapping, narrowing my eyes as I found the drywall was, in fact, a disguised door.
“I fucking knew it,” I muttered, pushing the drywall and hearing a click. It popped out an inch, and I was able to slide it to the side, revealing a real door. Why there was a heat signature here, I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out.
I unlocked it quickly, glad it didn’t require keys, and opened it to a room of terror. I had to stop myself from making any noise, terrified of what it might cause.
There was blood on concrete walls, and I could clearly see pentagrams drawn on every surface, even in the dark, since they gave off a faint glow. There were five I could see, but I guessed there were six—the four walls, the ceiling, and the floor. It was dark shit, and someone bled a lot to offer the amount of blood needed to draw the pentagrams.
I also figured out the warm signature of the room. It was the still active magic of the circles, warmer than the air temperature. I didn’t enter the room, just looked at it for ten seconds, then decided I needed to leave. My instincts were screaming at me to leave, to turn around and never look back.
Don’t go further into this room.
I stepped back slowly and closed the door, locking it again quietly as if I was going to disturb something, even though the room appeared empty. Trying to remain calm, I walked out of the basement and looked for Cassius. When I couldn’t find him in the house, I left, and by the time I made it out the front door, I was running.
“Cassius!” I screamed, finally letting my terror escape. “I found it!”
He looked up from the book he was reading. He tossed the book inside the trunk and shadow-stepped to me, using the shade of his SUV and the darkness of the house to create the bridge.
“Where?”
“Secret room, basement,” I said, pointing at the house. “I’ll go with you—”
“Do you have any experience with this?” he asked, frowning at me. “You don’t need to risk yourself.”
“No, only general education,” I answered, swallowing my own fear. That education was from Hisao, who told me that it was in my best interest to run. It became the advice I gave everyone. I certainly had never to break a pentagram or potentially fight a demon. I killed things that could be killed. “But you need to have backup in case this goes bad.”
“Thanks.” He seemed genuinely appreciative, and I followed him back down, opening the door I found. He walked into the room slowly, careful to stay in the small corner space the door opened into and wasn’t in the line of the pentagrams.
“Do you think he kept people in here or just summoned things?”
“Both,” Cassius whispered. “I need to break these. Is there a light?”
“Do you know how?” I glared at him. “Cassius, you and I both know these could be holding something back right now. If you break them in the wrong way, we could release something.”
He stepped in further, looking around. I didn’t move, glaring at him as he observed the dark room.
“Cassius, I will one hundred percent leave you here to die,” I hissed.
“No, you won’t,” he murmured with a confidence that couldn’t be questioned. He was right.
My feet stayed where they were.
“I know how to do this,” he said softly. He was staring at the wall above the door, but I couldn’t crane my head enough to see what he was staring at. “But I don’t think it will help anything now.”
“Why?”
“Run,” he whispered.
13
Chapter Thirteen
I turned on my heel as he disappeared. As I made it out the door, I heard something thump behind me. I made it to the stairs as something clattered into the shelves. I was at the door as something roared.
I found Cassius upstairs as if he was waiting on me for just a moment. He fell into a run beside me as I tore down the hallway toward the front door, letting whatever it was behind us chase.
When we got outside, Cassius screamed for our friends first.
“DEMON!” he roared.
That had been what I was afraid of.
“Cassius! How?” I asked, screaming at the top of my lungs as I raced for the SUV. Sorcha had her sword out and a glare on her face as she waited for us to reach her. Raphael was already beefing up and running toward me. “NO!” I ordered, still screaming.
He didn’t listen. We passed each other, and I heard a bone-breaking crunch behind me as I skidded to a stop and let Cassius keep going. I turned to find Raphael holding the monstrosity in a lock, keeping it from chasing.
I stood,
stunned for a minute as the black veins on Raphael continued to spread as he shoved it into the dirt. I didn’t move as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
The demon had a large gaping jaw with massive, sharp fangs, and there was something animalistic about it. What should have been drool was like black tar falling from its mouth. Horns grew out of its head and down its back, devastating claws at the ends of its four limbs, and it was covered in what I thought was fur. It wasn’t any sort of animal I had ever seen, but there was something slightly earthly about it. I didn’t know if it was a canine or a feline. It could have been a fucking mongoose, for all I knew. I had no fucking idea beyond it was like an animal.
And its eyes.
They were blood-red set in black.
No. I can’t think about that right now.
I unsheathed my sword and ran to help Raphael, finally breaking out of my fear. The demon saw me coming and roared, surging back to its feet and throwing Raphael off. I dove to the side as it jumped for me. Before it reached me, bindings grabbed its legs and held it in place. Cassius strained with his hands out as if he was holding it with his bare hands.
Sorcha screamed as she ran for it, blade held high. It was fucking something, that war cry with fae magic backing it up. It invigorated me, and I got to my feet, keeping the demon’s attention as she shoved her sword into its side. When she pulled it loose, black blood poured out of it like a fountain, then slowed and stopped completely. The demon acted as though it hadn’t even felt the attack.
It surged again, this time going after Raphael, who met it with a brutal hit as it broke free from the shadow bindings Cassius had employed. As Raphael grappled with it, I ran and jumped, grabbing a handful of its strange fur, and pulled myself on its back as though I was trying to get on a really pissed-off horse—easier said than done. I drove my talwar into its back between the spine and made it roar and buck harder. With a swipe of one of its front feet, it sent Raphael ten feet away, rolling in the dirt and hitting a tree. I held onto the hilt as it tried to knock me off. I grabbed my thigh dagger and stabbed it with my left hand. Black tar-like blood poured for a second then healed.
