by Deck Davis
“You’re not just a driver, are you?” I said.
“You know who I am.”
“What?” said Wren.
“Molly worked it out, too,” said the man.
That did it. I knew now.
“You’re the grandmaster,” I said.
He gave a weak nod.
“No,” said Wren. “A cab driver? You can’t be him.”
“It was a great cover, for a while,” said the Grandmaster. “An excuse to get around. A way to live without being noticed. Nobody really looks at the man driving them to and fro. Strangers would climb into my cab and they would have no idea who I was, and sometimes I would sense things from them. Dark feelings, light feelings. Demons, prospective hunters.”
“And Molly told Alastor who you were,” I said.
“He has kept me here for days. He wants to learn where the other chapters are. After that, he’ll kill me to destroy my wards. The only thing I don’t understand, is why Molly did it.”
“She worked out who you were,” I said. “She said she wrote down everything that you ever said to her. Over the years, you gave enough clues for her to piece it together.”
“It’s a lonely task, being Grandmaster. Sometimes I was a little too casual. I shared too much. But I don’t understand why she would do this.”
“She blames you for Capgrove’s death,” I said.
“But a demon killed him.”
“She blames you for sending them on the banishment. She said they’d only just come back from one, and they were beaten and tired. That you shouldn’t have sent them out again.”
He hung his head. “Then she is right.”
Wren climbed up on to the ring and stood at the side, holding on to a rope. “What have you told him? I couldn’t contact the other chapters.”
“I had a choice,” said the grandmaster. “the more pain he inflicted on me, the less I could focus on my wards. My choice was to give up the chapters or give up my wards. A lesser evil over a larger one.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I said.
“We need to get you out of here,” said Wren. “That’s the most important thing. We can think about Alastor later.”
“It’s too late. He’ll be back soon. You can’t run from him, and you can’t free me.”
“We have to try.”
“No, Wren. Joshua has to banish Alastor.”
“How?” I said. “He’s a Mighty. Molly said he’d broken one of your wards. Or forced you to remove it. And Trickier said Alastor had come through whole, not as just a shard.”
“And you trust a demon? A demon with a name like Trickier? He was lying. He had orders, just like the rest of them.”
“He lied to scare us,” I said.
“That’s right. Alastor is here as a shard. He has taken a vessel. He is just flesh and blood. A nemesis demon he may be, but in a vessel, he has his limits.”
I heard a noise then. A whooshing sound. It lasted just a split second, giving me no chance to see what it was until it was too late; until a rod of sharpened iron rushed past my head, smashing into the Grandmaster’s chest, thrown at such a speed that it crushed through his ribcage, splintering bone and boring deep into his flesh.
Then I heard footsteps. Loud, booming ones, but without a figure to put to them.
“A vessel might have limits,” said a voice, a German voice, “but I’m not just a vessel, am I?”
A figure stepped out of the shadows and approached the ring, and when I looked at him a shower of ice spread through me.
It was Franz Huck. The last man I’d fought, the man who’d ended my career. Only, this wasn’t him. The old Franz as gone, and I didn’t need to point the eye on my palm to know that a demon was wearing his flesh. Franz’s face was a ruin; his skin bloated and reddened, a maze of blood-smeared scratches on his cheeks, his chin, his forehead. He looked like he had aged beyond human limits, that he’d become ancient, that the demon in his flesh had turned this man into something other, something sickening. A smell wafted from him; the nauseating aroma of graves and worms and flesh gone bad.
Wren reached into his pocket and I heard the rustle of his ward stones, and he pulled out a fist of them, and in his carelessness, some rained on the ground and scattered over the dusty floors of the hall.
Franz walked toward us, a wicked smile on his face. But this wasn’t Franz; the boxer wasn’t the enemy - the thing inside him was. To banish him fully, I knew what I had to do. I had to call him out of his vessel.
“Alastor,” I said.
In speaking his true name, I dragged him from the skin and bone he wore like a suit, and I saw the nemesis demon separate from his human vessel, and I looked on him properly.
Chapter Thirteen
Alastor’s true form was hideous to look at. Humanoid in shape, but with legs longer than should have been possible compared with his smaller body, which was a mass of black, cracked flesh. He had an impish face, wicked in expression with a mouth that opened to wide and revealed rows of small, sharpened teeth, a piranha-like mouth with thin lips, where a thick green bile seeped from the corners. Rags hung around his torso, covering his groin.
He approached me then, taking long strides with his long legs, sticking a long, slug-like tongue out of his mouth and slathering up the leaking bile.
I tensed my fist. The demon flesh felt warm, and an energy pulsated from it.
“Josh,” said Wren.
He pointed to the edges of the atrium, to the shadows, and when I followed his finger I heard noises, and I saw shapes moving. Little feet scratched over the wood, and I began to make out tiny forms, hundreds of them, squirming bodies with chalk-white eyes and long snouts.
Rats. Hundreds of rats.
“Come out, Trickerie,” said Alastor.
And he did.
A man stepped out of the shadows, wading through his carpet of rats. It was the other cab driver this time, the old sea captain who’d asked me about the fight last night, who’d swore at the red lights, who’d brought us here, to Harbinger Hall.
“How?” said Wren. “We banished you.”
“And I brought him back,” said Alastor, his voice almost a cackle. “Trickier has many agreements with many people.”
Wren picked through the stones in his fist. He cast most of them on the ground, holding one back; a thumb-sized knob of green rock. He muttered at it, and a green light shimmered over him.
“I’ll deal with Trickier,” he said.
Wren jumped off the ring and took after Trickier. The demon, seeing Wren rush at him with the green light pulsating over his body, turned and fled, disappearing out of the double doors and into the halls.
That left me with Alastor approaching the ring, and the Grandmaster beside me, suspended by beams of misty red light, his chest not moving, his head still.
Alastor was just a shard, I reminded myself. But he was a powerful shard at that. Too strong for me, I guessed, but what choice did I have?
Wren’s lessons flooded back to me then. A rush of them, piercing the mist of my knockouts and the hundreds of blows I’d taken to my skull.
One lesson hit harder than them all. Anchors. Powerful demons, when they took a vessel, created anchors to strengthen themselves on Earth. Alastor would have an anchor, I was sure of it. But what was it, and where was it?
As Alastor approached the ring, I looked around. There was nothing I could see.
The anchor would be protected. He wouldn’t leave it vulnerable.
The safe! The old safe at the edges of the hall! His anchor would be inside it.
I crossed the ring and climbed over the ropes and then jumped down onto the hall floor. I darted over to the safe.
“It’s no use trying,” said Alastor. There was a patience in his voice, a sense that he could take his time, that he knew I wasn’t a great Banisher, that I was nothing compared to Capgrove or the Banishers in the other hunter chapters, the ones who were silent, who hadn’t answered Wren’s calls.
&
nbsp; Focus, I told myself. That was something I was good at, something I’d trained for. Ignoring distractions, ignoring the way some fighters would try and provoke a reaction from you, to force you to make mistakes.
The safe was as tall as my chest and made from steel. Golden writing was engraved on it, but the words were too worn to read. There was a black dial on the front, with a hundred numbers etched around the sides.
I couldn’t crack the code to get inside, but I wouldn’t need to.
In my mind, I imagined the energy of Melt building in my fist.
Alastor climbed into the ring now. He stood in the centre. He clapped his cracked hands.
“You can come out, my dear,” he said.
I heard footsteps. Two sets of them, one loud, the other quieter. A sense of dread built inside me, and I knew Alastor was distracting me from the safe but at the same time I couldn’t help but watch and listen, because the feeling was upon me again; the sense of something dark, or some terrible presence, something even worse than Alastor, if that were possible.
Alastor tipped his head back and laughed now. The noise echoed all around me, assaulting my ears from every direction.
The footsteps grew closer, and then closer still.
And then I saw them. Two faces.
“No,” I said, cold shock freezing me in place, my stomach liquifying, my legs unsteady.
It was Glora and Ruby. My ex-wife and my little girl. Glora had her hand on Ruby’s shoulder.
But when they got closer, I saw that it wasn’t Glora. Not really. Her face was disfigured, her flesh marked with sores and cuts, her color that of concrete, her skin lifeless and rotted. She her hand wasn’t just on Ruby’s shoulder, I realized; she was gripping her, digging her fingers into her shoulder blades and holding her tight.
“Dad!” shouted Ruby, and she tried to squirm away, but Glora held her tight.
An intoxicating mix of emotions assaulted me, a flurry of love and fear and utter, utter helplessness.
Glora was a vessel. A demon’s vessel. They hadn’t gone to her mother’s. I already knew that. She hadn’t gone to her boyfriend’s house, either. That was why she didn’t answer her phone; a demon had already taken her, it had already stepped into her skin.
Now, this demon, this monstrosity in my ex-wife’s flesh, was beside my little girl. Touching her. The thought flared anger in me, a storm of fury that washed away the fear.
I wanted to destroy her. Forget Alastor, forget the hunters, forget everything. Just free my little girl from this thing’s grasp and then run.
No. I couldn’t. Glora was a vessel, and to hurt the demon was to hurt her, unless…unless I spoke its true name.
“Wren?” I shouted.
I needed my Loremaster. He’d know its true name. He’d know the word to say to drag this thing from Glora’s flesh.
Alastor crossed the ring and leaned lazily against the ropes. “You can leave,” he said. “Take your little creature and leave.”
“Let Glora go,” I said. “Whoever is inside her, make her go.”
“I offer this one chance, hunter. You can take your girl, and you can leave.”
Part of me wanted to do it. To take Ruby and run away, to leave Manchester, leave England, to find some forgotten, lonely corner of the world where nobody knew me, where nothing could hurt us.
But Glora. None of this was her fault. Not this, here and now, and not everything I’d put her through after the Babe. We’d loved each other. She’d loved me, once; she told me, over and over again. When I’d descended into my pit of guilt and self-pity she’d offered her hand countless times and tried to pull me out, but I’d pushed her away. There were three true victims in all of this, but I wasn’t one of them. The Babe was a victim, and Glora and Ruby were too. They hadn’t died in the ring like Babe had, but our family had died, our love had, and it had all been my fault.
I’d abandoned Glora once, and I couldn’t do it again. Even if I left now, if I got Ruby to safety, how would I ever look at my girl? As she’d get older she’d replay this night in her head again and again, and she’d know that I let this demon stay in her mother’s body, corrupting it further and further until there was nothing left to corrupt.
I needed its true name.
The lessons. Wren’s lessons. They had to be there somewhere, the demon’s faces and names buried somewhere in my head.
Was it Jonas? No. It wasn’t the forest demon.
Then who? What were the names?
“Wren!” I shouted, but there was no answer.
A name teased on the tip of my tongue. A vague form of a word, the sound of it almost clear.
“Your choice, hunter,” said Alastor. “You have but a single one.”
He was right, but not about the choice. I’d get just one try at this. One chance to say the demon’s true name and free Glora from it.
The name. Come on, what was it?
Alastor had a demonic bride, didn’t he? Wren had told me about it.
And then I had it.
I faced Glora. I looked into the ruin of her face, and I felt some of my old love for her well inside my chest.
I cleared my throat. My nerves flared, and a rush of adrenaline hit so hard I felt like I could just collapse.
“Cosmortoph,” I said.
The word echoed around the hall, bouncing from each side, a word full of evil and power, a word fixed to a demon’s face, one that Wren had showed me in the bunker.
But a new sound met the echoing of the name. It was Alastor, his head tipped back once more, a horrible laughing escaping his throat.
When he faced me, his face was a picture of mirth.
“This is Harpalyce,” he said.
The word stabbed deep in my gut.
“No,” I said. “It’s Cosmortoph. Your bride.”
“I have more than one bride, hunter.”
For the second time in my life, I sank to my knees. Just like I had the last time I’d fought Franz Huck.
I’d guessed wrong. I’d wasted my one chance. There was no way to banish this thing from Glora now. Nott without ruining the vessel, not without killing Glora.
Harpalyce, the demon in Glora’s skin, held a knife to Ruby’s throat. “Watch your child drink her own blood,” she said, her voice a mix of two intertwined; the pathetic, soft voice of Glora, and a deeper, demonic tone.
There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t get to Glora now, not before she plunged the knife into Ruby’s throat. Even if I did, my only choice would be to kill her.
Was it too late to take Alastor’s offer? Or should I destroy his anchor and destroy him, even knowing what would happen to Glora and to Ruby? To myself, too. Seeing something happen to Ruby would be the last push to send me into the chasm I’d stared at for years now.
“Dad?”
Just one little word from a scared little girl. A burst of warmth in my stomach.
I’m sorry, Glora.
With a run, perhaps I could reach her before she used the knife. One hit from my fist, from Blast…
A shape loomed behind Glora now. A man. Short and skinny and with black hair, a man who crept toward her silently. A man with a rock in his hand, a stone that glowed green.
Wren.
He carefully pressed the green stone against Glora’s skin.
The demon flinched. She dropped the knife from Ruby’s throat.
“You know what this is, don’t you?” said Wren.
Glora screwed up her face, twisting into a picture of demonic fury.
“You wouldn’t.”
He pressed the rock closer to her cheek. “Just one word is all it will take,” said Wren. “You know the word.”
The look in her eyes said that she did. Alastor, too, looked unsure now. He no longer leaned lazily against the ropes. Instead, his cracked, impish body was tensed, his hands curled into tight claws.
“An entrapment ward?” said Alastor. “Really, hunter? You’d lock a part of your own soul into the rock? You’d lock
Harpalyce’s soul with your own?”
What was this? It was a ward, that much I was sure of, but Wren had never told me about it. But, then, I guessed he’d never trusted me enough. Demon names, demonic lore, sure, he’d been free enough in telling me that. He hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me about his own weapons, though.
Wren looked beyond Glora, beyond Alastor, and to me. I knew what that look meant.
I raised my hand and felt the energy of Melt burn through me. With a rush of adrenaline and a grunt of force I smashed my fist into the safe, feeling the metal burn and dissolve. The steam rose into my face, hot, blinding. Sweat poured from my forehead and the metal dissolved further and further until the safe was just a shell. Inside it, there was a belt. Golden in the middle, joined by black leather. It was a championship belt, like the one I’d seen in Stopwatch House. In Franz Huck’s house, I realized.
The lessons flood back. Anchors, Wren told me, made a demon stronger, gave them more time to stay on Earth, gave them more power while they were here. And an anchor was always an item that meant something to the original vessel they’d taken.
Wasting no time, I gathered Melt in my fist again, and I punched the belt, this time burning through it much easier than I had the safe.
Alastor’s form flickered now. A haze gathered around him, almost like a fog, and it seeped over his cracked skin, drifting into his pores. He took a step, but his movements were blurry and out of focus.
Glora suddenly pushed Wren away. The Loremaster had been watching Alastor, he’d lost focus, and with one shove he landed on his back.
The demon in my ex-wife’s skin rushed into the ring, clambered up, and rolled under the ropes. She grabbed Alastor and steadied him.
She uttered words in a guttural voice, dark words, and even though I didn’t understand them, they provoked a reaction in my body, something that shook me. It was demonic language, words dripping with sinister meaning.
A circle of crimson light swirled in the ring. It hissed and crackled like fire, and it spread wider and wider.
Alastor stepped into it, disappearing beneath the ring, as if sucked into a vortex.
With a sickening realization, I knew what would happen next.
