by Nazri Noor
“We were here for the sealing enchantment’s reagents. I brought Asher to help, but it looks like we’ve missed out on collecting the breath of the dying.”
“Which must be willingly given,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my hackles rising. “What?”
“Oh. The breath of the dying must be willingly given. A sacrifice, essentially. Did I not mention that part? I was sure I mentioned it.”
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t,” I said, gritting my teeth. Asher’s hand tugged on my jacket, a silent, but welcome warning not to piss off the death goddess standing just feet away from us.
“So that rules out murder, which I was certain you wouldn’t have the stomach for,” Izanami said, lifting one of her fingers. She raised more as she continued talking, counting off. “No accidents either, I suppose, and if you really want to go with getting consent from someone who’s dying a natural death – well, you’ll need to be more convincing than you were with old Billy up there.”
“Then we skip the part where we have to explain everything.” I raked at a handful of my own hair. “The arcane underground, the Eldest, all of it. What are the chances we’ll find someone in the magical community who’s both close to death and eager to surrender their last breath?”
“Slim to none, given the urgency of the situation,” Izanami said. “None but the Eldest themselves will know when the next attack will come.”
And something about the extremely negative reactions we got from even asking about dying breath at the Black Market suggested that this wouldn’t be the way to go, either. What were we going to do, strut around asking where everybody kept their oldest, most vulnerable wizards? We were fucked.
Izanami tapped at her wrist. She wasn’t wearing a watch, but the gesture spoke volumes.
“Best get moving, boys. Time stops for no man. Well, except for chronomancers. Bloody chronomancers.”
“Chronomancers?” I asked.
“Time mages,” Asher said. “Carver told me about them. Nasty pieces of work. They can slow you down, speed themselves up, or even freeze time in place. Scary stuff.”
“Not nearly as scary as what’ll happen if the Eldest hit Valero again,” I said. “Let’s regroup for now, talk this over with Carver. Maybe there’s another way.”
I nodded at Izanami as Asher and I sank into the shadows, thinking it was best to go with a quiet, low-key farewell. But entities are entities after all, and she flashed me another grin as she tapped the back of her wrist.
“Tick-tock, Dustin Graves,” she said.
I clenched my fist.
Chapter 19
That same night, when we’d all gone back to the Boneyard, I figured it couldn’t hurt to look into the Dark Room again. Maybe I was hoping I’d trip over another ball of golden string, and find another lead through this gods-moot or that.
But a guy can only get so lucky.
I was spoiled, I figured, as I stepped through the Dark Room, with how much the entities were offering, and had already offered. Sure, it wasn’t in their nature to directly influence our reality – which I always thought was kind of hypocritical, honestly, because clearly Amaterasu could hide the sun whenever she wanted. And I’d never met them, but I was pretty certain that either Zeus or Thor would happily fry someone with a lightning bolt as a passing fancy.
Yet something in my heart told me that there were still answers to be found within – inside myself, or inside the Dark Room. I kept my mother’s amulet clenched between my teeth as I negotiated the tunnels. Juvenile, maybe, but it made me feel safe, having the strange, ambient warmth of the garnet so close by. And like Carver said, it was best to get the object accustomed to the ethereal signatures of my body.
“Then it will more readily accept an enchantment when the time comes,” he’d said. “Which should ideally be sooner rather than later.”
Which was why we planned the thing we planned that night, something I’d think back on and regret, but it had to be done. I didn’t know where else we would acquire the screams of anguish we needed otherwise.
But I digress. Something quiet and unknown was drawing me, pulling on my chest and guiding me through the Dark Room. I wondered if Nyx hadn’t given me one final gift, planting a lodestar in my heart, giving me a clue about what I was meant to discover in the Dark Room.
And then I saw them. At the far end of the corridor were pinpoints of light, only these weren’t steady and blinking, like Nyx’s distant stars. They swirled in midair, vortices of white light that spun like whirlpools. Their appearance – hell, their very existence was ominous enough.
The sound they made was worse. A soft keening, a quiet screeching, not unlike the songs of the Eldest. I crept closer, my fingers curled, prepared to launch shadow or flame as the situation called for. No. That noise really did sound like the Eldest. Surely Nyx wasn’t sending me to my death?
I approached cautiously, my mouth dry, my heart a jumble of excitement and terror. The wheels of light – five of them, that I could see – spun within the confines of a black chamber, a room within the Dark Room. They were spaced evenly from each other, separated only by towering columns of that leathery black stone that made up the Dark Room’s architecture. And in the center of each wheel was a black dot.
My heart fell. These were the gateways of the Eldest, the same ones they used to deliver the shrikes into our world, that Yelzebereth used to infiltrate our reality. I couldn’t understand the geography of it, whether these doors spilled into our world, or out of them, but one thing was clear: the Dark Room was tied directly to the power of the Old Ones, and in turn, to me. To my heart.
In some sense I knew all this already. How many times had I been told that the answer to the problem of the Eldest was my death? Incineration, obliteration, until every molecule of my body was gone. Sweet annihilation. But seeing the portals so close to the seat of my power, to what I’d thought of as my home and my kingdom – this really was the simplest solution. Occam’s Razor.
I rushed for the nearest exit I could find, bursting back into our reality, in the safety and warmth of my bedroom. I sat on the edge of my bed, my hands clasped together. Thinking of the reagents we needed for the sealing enchantment, I scoffed.
It was circuitous, and stupid. If I gave my life to create a sample of the breath of the dying, then the others would have the right ingredients to complete the sealing. But if I did die, then that meant that an enchantment wasn’t necessary to begin with. I looked down at my hands, wondering what my life was worth. I was dust. Just dust, in the grand scheme of things.
I clutched my temples from the sudden stab of pain. “Don’t be stupid,” Vanitas called gruffly into my head. I groaned, never even knowing he could do that – a kind of psychic assault.
“What the hell, V?” I raked my nails against my skull, somehow hoping it would dull the ache. “What the hell was that for?”
“For being stupid,” he shouted, as loudly as a telepathic voice could. “These people you call your family and friends are rallying and doing all they can to help you, protect you. Don’t throw it away with your foolishness. Fight, until there’s nothing left to fight.”
I reached for my end table, scrambling for a glass of water, downing it in one gulp. “Thanks for the pep talk,” I said morosely.
“I mean it,” Vanitas said, his voice ringing with warning. “I’ll kill you before I let you hurt yourself that way. There are many paths. This is not one of them.”
Carefully, I set the glass down. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks, V.” And I meant it that time.
“Dustin?”
I looked up to find Asher in the doorway, giving me a small, pressed sort of smile. “We’re ready for you.”
“Right,” I said, sighing. “Right. I’m coming.”
“Good luck,” Vanitas said, softly this time. Silently, through the link of our minds, I thanked him again.
I followed Asher down one of the Boneyard’s twisting corridors, all the way to Carver
’s laboratory.
We needed to complete the enchantment, and no way in hell was I going to engage in torture to get what we needed. I couldn’t offer my dying breath, either. But the screams, maybe those we could manage.
Asher pushed the door open. Carver nodded at me, gesturing at what could almost pass for a doctor’s examination table, improvised with a flat mattress placed on something that looked upsettingly like a stone altar.
And Herald was there, too.
“What,” I started to say, gawping as I looked between Asher and Carver. “Why would you tell him about this?”
“Because I asked them to,” Herald said, placing a hand on my shoulder. Even through my shirt I could feel the warmth of his skin. “Don’t yell at anyone. Carver and I have a standing agreement. He lets me know if you’re about to do something exceptionally stupid.”
Carver nodded. “All truth.”
I scowled at Herald. “You can’t stop me from doing this. You know that, right?”
“I know,” he said, rubbing his hands together, bathing his fingers in skeins of violet light. “Which is why I’m here to help.”
I couldn’t say anything else after that, though I did vaguely mumble some words of gratitude. So Herald and Asher were supposed to be backup, then. It gave me a little more comfort, not that it completely dulled how I felt about the coming ordeal.
“If you will, Dustin,” Carver said. “Take your place on the dais.” He cracked his knuckles, activating his magics, and his hands lit up with amber flame. “Asher, if you will. Be prepared to gather his pain.”
I swallowed thickly as I pulled my shirt up over my head, the cool air of the Boneyard rushing over my skin. The mattress was soft against my back, not unlike the inside of a coffin. I hated that it wasn’t the first time my brain had ever made that connection.
“Now,” Carver said. “If you’re quite sure about this?”
I wasn’t. Not at all. To either side of me, Asher and Herald stood with their gifts readied and wielded, their faces stony, yet still betraying worry, and fear. But I nodded.
“Right then,” Carver said, placing his hand on my chest. “It’s time to fix your heart.”
Chapter 20
I winced, and I grimaced. I thrashed against the table, my fingers digging through the mattress into to the stone altar beneath me, my teeth clenched so hard I was afraid they were going to shatter.
Carver had only just started, reaching his hand into my chest – into my fucking chest – and already the world was bathed in needles and blood and fire. He gestured with his other hand, and I screamed.
Who knew how he could do it, but I’d heard of how this worked before. From Mama Rosa, of all people. She’d seen Filipino healers who could reach into the bodies of humans, bloodlessly penetrating their skin, digging around within their flesh to retrieve everything from tumors to bullets. Carver might have learned from her, or this could have been some ancient form of healing that he’d studied.
Whatever it was hurt more than anything I’d ever felt in my entire life.
Tears streamed down my face as Carver probed my heart, as his fingers, whether they were solid or ethereal, dug around inside my chest, searching for the shard of the Eldest’s star-metal. Silently I cursed Thea for ever doing this to me, for plunging her dagger in my flesh and planting that first seed of corruption. Carver bent in closer for a better look, his eye glowing amber, and his hand pushed further into my body as he did. I threw my head back and wailed.
A hand made of fire. Imagine that a hand made of fire had reached into an open wound in your chest, placed its searing fingers against your very heart, then pressed, squeezing tighter, harder. But no blood was leaving my body. There was no wound to speak of, only the scorching, raging pain of intense arcane fire burning me from the inside out. I blinked fresh tears away, my vision blurred as I stared at the darkness far above me, at the faces of the three men working on my redemption – or alternately, if this went way wrong, my death.
Asher said nothing, his hands held inches apart, a ball of green energy rotating slowly between his fingers, absorbing the power produced by my anguish. Izanami had said it herself. The gods of death could feed on terror, on pain – it made sense that a necromancer like Asher would play the role of collector. I watched as the orb in his hands filled with a bright green fluid, the very essence of hurt and suffering.
It wasn’t filling fast enough.
“Breathe,” Herald said, his bare hand sweeping at my forehead. “I’ve got you. You’ve got this.”
All I could think of was how he was getting his hands dirty and damp with my sweat. In my delirium, it was almost funny how he didn’t mind. But that was where his magic was focused, violet tendrils of healing energy sinking into my body, designed to mitigate the damage to my insides and dampen the pain. A kind of magical anesthetic, meant to numb.
And it wasn’t working. Not really.
“No drugs,” Carver had explained when I brought up the idea. “That would affect the quality of your suffering.” He pursed his lips when he saw me frowning. “I apologize for how clinical that sounds, but it is the truth. We have one shot at this, and we need to make it count.”
The entire point of this exercise had initially been to retrieve the shard of star-metal, to finally remove it from my heart and somehow destroy it. Maybe then the Old Ones would wander off, leave the earth alone. But the more Carver tugged and probed, the more I knew that the process would end up killing me. This wasn’t the way to go. Hell, there were no other options, frankly, apart from death.
“Enough,” I begged. “Please, stop. The shard isn’t budging. I can’t take anymore.”
Asher’s face cracked, but he bit his lip, focusing on the ball of pain between his fingers. Carver gave it a quick glance, then nodded.
“Just a little more, Dustin. We need to fill Asher’s phial. We’re almost there. Can you do that for us?”
I nodded, hopeful. Then I screamed. I wept.
“Hang in there,” Herald muttered, his other hand clutching mine, our fingers interlaced. I hadn’t even noticed until he squeezed. “You’re going to be fine, Dust.”
I looked into his eyes, watching the reflection of violet and orange and green magic swirling and pulsing in the lens of his glasses. So many mages to do this one job, I thought, and to what end?
No, I told myself. That wasn’t the right way to look at it. All that meant was that I had enough people to support me through this, to literally hold my hand. I grimaced again, clenching my teeth as I stared unflinchingly into Herald’s eyes.
It meant there were people who cared.
Carver placed one hand on my throat. “One last nudge,” he said. “The phial is nearly full. Are you ready?”
Eyes wild, I looked at him, suddenly realizing I couldn’t speak. I nodded instead, then shut my eyes.
Softly, Carver spoke again. “Forgive me.”
Inside my chest, a white-hot gauntlet closed around my heart. My body stiffened, and my back lifted off the table in a horrible, crooked arch. The air left my lungs in one final, deafening scream.
When I opened my eyes again, the pain was gone. My forehead was still slick with sweat, but the rest of me was warmer, covered in something soft, like a blanket. I thought back to the time that Thea had stabbed me with her dagger, putting me into a magical sleep, a kind of torpor. I thought of the morgue.
I sat bolt upright, gasping for air.
“Jesus,” Herald shouted, jerking away from me. He was in a chair, sitting by my bed. My bed?
I looked around myself. I was back in my bedroom. I blinked at Herald, once, twice, until his features fully swam back into focus.
“Water,” I croaked. “Please.”
The glass appeared by my lips, held there carefully in Herald’s hands. He tilted it gingerly until I could take in slow, deliberate sips. It was like drinking for the first time. I choked, then went back for more, the water crisp and cool against my tongue.
; “You passed out,” Herald said quietly.
“Yeah,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “I figured as much.” I looked down at my bare chest, still fascinated by how there was no wound from Carver’s treatment. My scar from Thea’s botched sacrifice, silvery and jagged, was still there, of course. It would always be there.
“The shard,” I said. “Did he get it out of my heart?”
Herald’s lips pressed into a tight line. He shook his head. My insides withered.
“Then this was all for nothing.”
“Hey. We have a phial full of anguish. That matters.” Quietly, he added: “I’m sorry you had to go through that to get it.”
I looked up at him and sighed. “I’m sorry, too.”
He squeezed my hand. “Carver says you just need to rest up for a bit.”
“I don’t think I could go against doctor’s orders if I tried,” I said, straining as I lowered my head back onto my pillow. So soft. I sighed, relishing the comfort of it – the natural, blissful state of not being in excruciating, heart-on-fire pain.
“Cute tiger,” Herald said, gesturing at the plush toy sitting by my pillow.
“Oh, yeah.”
I picked Mister Grumbles up by his fuzzy scruff, wincing and straining as I handed him over to Herald. He accepted with both hands face up, like the toy was some kind of offering. He looked down at it, puzzled.
“I stole that for you,” I said, spreading myself across the bed again.
“You what?”
“Long story,” I mumbled, pulling the covers up over my chest, already feeling the blood creeping its way up to my neck. “Just take it. It’s a gift.”
He looked at me, then back down at the tiger, bemused.
“His name is Mister Grumbles,” I explained.
“Sure it is,” Herald said, studying the tiger’s face. “So. We’re giving each other stuffed animals now? What’s next, chocolate?”
I focused my eyes just past his head, pretending that I saw a bug flying there, whatever, anything to avoid his gaze. “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, rubbing my chest.
