by Ian Fortey
Marchosias had stopped in the hall. It sat on its haunches, watching the two of them with playful interest. Sitting up, it looked more human than it had before. The broad chest and shoulders looked like those of a bodybuilder, albeit one covered in fur.
“Can it hurt us?” Vincent asked, backing down the hall with Selena.
“It’s from Hell, Vincent.”
“I don’t know the rules, Selena. I’m new here,” he said.
“Right, yes, the naïve little necromancer. I forgot,” she said. “My sisters must have been worried about you casting magic. Or, they likely thought this was funny.”
The werewolf stood then, drawing itself up onto its hind legs like a man.
“Your sisters have plans, witch,” the creature said. The voice was smooth and deeply resonant. Vincent could feel it vibrating in his chest.
“Have they?” Selena asked, backing to the next door and trying to pull it open.
“Plans within plans,” Marchosias growled. The sound was laughter, Vincent realized after a moment.
“Yeah, that sounds like my girls,” Selena agreed. She pushed Vincent out of her way and checked another door.
“You might want to start helping,” she said to him. The werewolf pressed its hands against the walls and started running on its hind legs, scratching its claws off the rocks as it did so.
Vincent pushed his weight against one of the doors and the wood gave way, creaking loudly. He slammed his shoulder into it again, and it cracked at the hinges.
“In here,” he said, pushing into the door again and bursting through. He stumbled into the exact same hallway he had just exited. Marchosias stood before him. Drawn up to its full height, it towered over Vincent with the tips of its ears brushing the ceiling.
The beast’s chest rose and fell as it pulled in deep breaths. The faintest hint of a red tongue was visible between its massive fangs. It reached out and took Vincent by his shirt, twisting the material and lifting him off the ground.
The wolf seemed to exert no effort as it pulled Vincent toward its face, holding him at the end of its muzzle. Vincent could smell its breath, like charcoal and old meat. It exhaled into his face.
“You smell like Death,” the wolf said. Vincent turned his face away, trying to avoid the stench. Marchosias took his face in its other hand, squeezing it between meaty thumb and forefinger so that his lips puckered out, and forced Vincent to look it in the eye.
“You are one of many. I see why they fear you,” the wolf growled.
“I don’t—” Vincent began. The wolf squeezed his face more firmly, preventing him from opening his mouth and speaking.
“Do you know what they have planned for you?”
Vincent was unable to speak. The wolf peered into his eyes.
“I’m curious, actually,” Selena said. She was standing behind Vincent. He couldn’t see her the way the wolf was holding him up, but she sounded close.
The yellow eyes slid from Vincent.
“You’re not alive,” it said.
“I’ve noticed,” Selena said. The wolf looked back at Vincent.
“But you are one of his thralls,” the demon said.
“I’m sorry, what? You think I serve this man?”
The marquis chuckled, a sound much like a rolling growl. Vincent tried pulling himself free from the creature’s grip, but it was like trying to move stone.
“I do not serve anyone, dog,” Selena said coldly. The wolf grinned, and wisps of smoke escaped the corners of its black lips. The smell of charcoal grew stronger.
“We all serve,” it said.
“Spoken like a true familiar,” Selena countered. The wolf laughed, and a faint whiff of hellish fire flared at the back of its throat.
“You’ve come here to mete out some torture or another. Have at it and keep your editorializing to yourself, lesser fiend.”
The wolf threw Vincent to the ground. It looked around the hallway in which they were standing, inspecting the stone work and tapping the mortar with the end of one of its claws.
“This place is enchanted,” it said. It took a deep breath and shook its shaggy head. “It is a construct. Nothing here is real. Except him.”
“I assure you, I’m quite real,” Selena said. Vincent adjusted his jaw and got to his feet. All things being equal, the wolf was better than Dalca had been, but not by a lot.
“You are dead,” Marchosias corrected.
“Doesn’t make me fraudulent,” Selena said. Another laugh from the demon dog.
“You are—” it leaned its muzzle closer to her, sniffing about her face and shoulders. Selena held her ground, attempting to look unfazed by the closeness of the monster. “—primal.”
“I am a child of the Goddess,” Selena said. The wolf growled low in its throat. More smoky wisps escaped its lips.
“But you do not command the blood,” Marchosias said. He scratched the wall, its claws digging into the very rock.
“What blood?” Selena asked. The wolf slammed a clawed hand into the wall and broke stones free.
“Blood magic, witch. There is blood magic infused in this enchantment. Blood magic that conjured me forth. Who wields primal and blood magic together, I wonder?”
“No one uses blood magic and primal magic together,” Selena said, her tone close to mocking. “They can’t work together.”
“Yes, they can,” Vincent said. “It’s what we were telling you in the car on the way here. Hell, you even said the magic was impure.” The wolf grinned, pointing a clawed finger at him.
“Yessssss,” it said, its smile too fittingly wolfish.
“What would you know on the subject, Necromancer?”
“I don’t know how it works, but I’ve seen it.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Which part?” Vincent asked. Selena frowned.
“The ‘seen’ part. How do you see the power of the Goddess? How do you see blood bargains?”
“You… look?” Vincent said. The line of questioning was lost on him. Selena, in typical fashion, looked exasperated.
“He can see magic, witch. You might want to be less impatient with your host and start to wonder precisely how it is he has contained your power and spirit all this time,” Marchosias offered.
Selena looked at the wolf as it dug its claws into the walls again. It began pulling handfuls of stone free, tossing them aside in the hallway and burrowing like it was in search of treasure.
“How do you see magic?” Selena said, turning on Vincent. The wolf seemed to have all but forgotten them at this point.
“I see threads of power. At first it was just necromancy. They’re like strings, these white and purple strings that run through dead things. But at the Font I saw more. Red bursts of blood magic. And blue strands of what you use, this primal power. There’s more, too. Things I have never seen before. A dark power that seems alive. An orange-brown one that feels flexible, and—”
“Okay, yes, I understand. You can see it and your friend Desmond can taste the rainbow. You saw primal and blood magic comingled?”
“I saw all magic comingled. It’s what travels on ley lines,” Vincent said. Selena shook her head. Chunks of rock crashed against the walls next to them. Marchosias had dug a hole in the wall deep enough that it could get into it, and continued to burrow, forging a tunnel through the stone.
“Ley lines are conduits to the Goddess. They are veins of her power that give life to the Earth itself. There is no blood magic in them. No necromancy. That’s the stupidest thing you’ve said so far and you’ve said nothing but stupid things since we’ve met,” Selena said, her voice cold and calm. Rocks exploded from the wall at her side.
“I’m just telling you what I saw. Bogdan Dalca tried to use a Font of power to kill and then resurrect the entire world. And that Font was full of power. More than he understood, and apparently more than you understand,” Vincent said.
“You
tell me what I understand now? You know my power?” she said, getting into his face. Vincent backed up as much as he could in the narrow hallway.
“I’m telling you what I saw,” he said again.
“Eyes are easily tricked. Look where you are,” she said. More stones rolled from the tunnel that the wolf was digging.
“It looks real enough to me,” Vincent said. Selena looked down the length of the tunnel that Marchosias was digging. It was already well over twelve feet deep. The monster’s claws pulled through the stone like it was paper.
“Thought this guy was supposed to be torturing me,” Vincent said. Selena offered a half-hearted shrug.
“I don’t understand what it’s doing. Count your blessings, Vinny.”
“I’m not complaining. It’s just making me nervous is all. What motivates a werewolf to dig a hole instead of eating two tasty-looking people?”
“Tasty-looking?” Selena said, unimpressed.
“You know what I mean.”
Another rock tumbled from the tunnel. This time it fell apart at Vincent’s feet. No longer solid and gray like the others, it faded to dust with a puff of red and blue energy that sank into the stones at their feet.
“I can’t escape this enchantment, but what about a marquis of Hell?” Vincent asked. The werewolf continued to dig at a frenzied pace. The crumbling walls were degrading fast, shattering into bursts of primal and blood magic.
“He’s not here to escape. He’s here to…” Selena stopped, watching the werewolf burrow.
“He looks like he’s escaping, right?”
“He does,” she agreed. “But he is a familiar. My sisters summoned him to ensnare you. He has no free will. He is bound.”
“He should be bound,” Vincent said. “If he was whipped up with your primal magic, he would be bound. But what if someone mixed in blood magic?”
“You cannot mix—”
“But what if you could?” Vincent said. “You mentioned the magic of the Goddess and blood bargains. I saw someone use blood magic against Dalca and they had to make a deal with a voodoo god. Is that how this magic works? Deals?”
“Blood bargains, Vincent. They’re not exactly barters at a flea market. And a loa could certainly offer up blood magic of some kind. Many beings of rage and discord could do such things. But no one wields both magics together. It’s like cheese on fish.”
“What?” Vincent said. Marchosias was punching easily through the rocks now. They burst into tufts of broken power around its claws.
“Fish and cheese. They don’t go. If someone did a conjuring with blood magic, then the conjured familiar would be bound to... I can’t even imagine what.”
“Maybe nothing?” Vincent said.
“I have no way to answer that.”
For once, Vincent was feeling the frustration Selena seemed to be lamenting all the time.
“When you use your magic, do you see it? Sense it, somehow?” he asked.
“Of course,” she answered.
“So, look at these rocks. When they crumble, do you see or feel the magic fading from them?”
He lifted one of Marchosias’ discarded stones and held it up. The structure became like talc in his hand, and the blue primal magic drifted between his fingers as the red pops of blood magic went off like limp fireworks.
“I can. The enchantment is being dismantled.” Selena looked from the fading stone to Vincent. “You see it?”
“I see it,” he agreed. “To me it is blue energy. Like water that became electric, or strings of the sky on a clear day. It’s vibrant, but it fades out when the stones crumble. When you got rid of Dalca earlier, it was like a reverse, fiery waterfall, just a huge burst of it.”
Selena’s expression had changed from her somewhat perturbed look of aggravation to something softer. Not happiness, however. She looked upset.
“The Goddess has given you sight,” she said, almost as a question to herself.
“I don’t know, Selena. But do you not see anything else here? When the primal energy fades out, do you see any bubbles? Disturbances?”
He picked up another stone. She watched it crumble in his hands. To him, the blood magic was as clear as day. Selena shook her head.
“I sense primal energies. It is a strange enchantment, I will admit. It feels like there are missing pieces.”
“Not missing. They’re blood magic. I see them popping all over as the rocks fade. If your sisters don’t use blood magic, then someone else made this with them.”
“My sisters would not use such dangerous magic. I can’t even think of anyone in Burnham who has heard of blood magic, much less skilled in its use. No one living, anyway.”
The wolf in the tunnel was growling now. Its clawed hands raked through a slab of stone and the entire basement shuddered. The rock gave way to an emptiness behind; a dark void that was laced with blue energy. The growl rose to a deep laughter.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Vincent looked on as Marchosias pulled the wall free, exposing the edge of the enchantment in full, like a glowing blue window looking out over a vast, empty space.
“Veritatem dicere,” Selena said, winding a primal thread around the werewolf. The blue energy sank into the wolf’s head like rainwater into soil. It looked over its shoulder at her and Vincent.
“Witch, I am unbound. Even your necromancer could see that. The blood bond was not sealed.”
“What fool would…” Selena did not finish the question. Instead, she looked around the hallway frantically, as if searching for something.
Marchosias lifted its hands and pressed them against the enchantment’s edge. Its claws pierced the blue energy slowly, awkwardly. It was like watching a fork pierce very thick Jell-O. The blue energy crackled around them.
“We need some cover,” Selena suggested. She started making her way down the hall again.
“Cover from what?” Vincent asked. The wolf’s whole body tensed. The air grew cold and Vincent felt a nausea sweep up his body from the ground. His feet and legs felt shaking, and then his stomach knotted. He swayed where he was standing and had to use the wall to support himself. His head swam, and his pulse quickened. He had never had a heart attack before that he knew of, but he felt like he might be having one now.
The black fur covering the back and shoulders of the werewolf had thickened somehow. Vincent watched it as Selena continued to search for a door that would open. It took a moment for Vincent to realize it was not the fur he was seeing, but something seeping through the fur. It was the same black, oily energy he had seen in the Font in Alder Falls. The kind that moved like it was alive, forming hungry little tendrils that reached out like tentacles. Only, around the wolf they moved with purpose.
The energy flowed slow and lazy from the core of the creature to the primal energy wall. Where the two powers met, the black tendrils dug into the blue and dissolved it.
The longer Vincent watched, the more he became sure that it was less a matter of destroying or dissolving the power and more a matter of consuming it. The energy of the wolf demon was eating the primal power of the prison enchantment.
“He’s eating the wall,” Vincent said. “Should we... I dunno. Can you zap him?”
Selena was already halfway down the hall. She turned and looked back at him.
“Zap him? I’m not a superhero.”
“Isn’t it going to be bad if he gets out of here?”
“Yes, Vinny. It’s going to be bad. You’re welcome to stop him if you like. I have no doubt a marquis of Hell who commands thirty of the infernal legions will be defeated handily by a nuisance amnesiac and his ability to resurrect the dead rats in this cellar.”
The hallway shuddered violently. The energy surged, and Vincent felt sick again. Whatever the wolf was doing, it was happening quickly.
Steadying himself, Vincent headed down the hallway after Selena. He banged his shoulder into doors but none even budged.
&
nbsp; A snapping sound filled the air. Vincent stopped and looked back the way he had come. The air felt electric and stones sizzled and popped. Oily, black energy rolled across the surface of it all and it vanished. It was eating the hallway like a thing alive now.
“Run, Vincent. If you want to live, you’ll run,” Selena said. She followed her own advice and fled. Vincent did not need to be told twice and followed after. Thin tentacles of black energy dug into the stonework. It moved like worms, in and out, consuming everything as it went.
“Can’t you do anything?” Vincent called after Selena.
“Not against that. An unbound demon is Chaos. It is the opposite or Order. My magic cannot balance that which is made without balance.”
“Why the hell would your sisters send it in here with us?”
Selena did not answer him. She just ran, and Vincent ran with her. The hallway seemed endless, an illusion constructed of magic to serve as a trap. One that could hold people indefinitely. Only now it was being eaten by a demon.
Chapter 4
Dezzy set the poutine bucket under a bush, saving it for later, then took a deep breath. It was time to man up. His plan was simple and efficient. He would break into the house and save Vincent. Maybe it was too simple. But his mother always told him the more complicated something was, the more complicated it was. Sometimes that didn’t make sense, but right now it did. He didn’t need anything elaborate. He just needed to save Vincent. Open the door and let him out. It was like a prisonbreak, only, with no prison.
The hardest part of the plan would be getting around some witches. He’d never dealt with a witch before, but he had met some during his time as the Jeweled Scion. Beyond the Veil, they couldn’t do any witchy things, so they were basically the same as everyone else. And maybe that was the key here. The witches were just like everyone else. Except they could use magic. But so could Vincent and Uncle Stan, and they were okay.
Dezzy had come to think of magic like speaking another language. It was a neat skill that some people had. It probably helped them out a lot. But it didn’t have much to do with him, and when they did it, he didn’t understand what was happening.
