by Nazri Noor
Carver sighed a second time. “I will transport the three of you there with a sending spell. It really isn’t that difficult, Dustin.”
Asher cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind, Carver, I’d really, really like to go, too. A lot.”
Mason got up off the floor, dusting off the back of his jeans. “If it’s a matter of how many people you can send with one spell, I’m happy to back down if it means Asher gets to go.” It was quick, but the smile Asher gave him was full of warm gratitude.
Carver waved his hand. “A field trip it is, then. I shall send the four of you. Dustin, I trust you will manage well enough to shadowstep everyone back home.”
My eyes went as huge as saucers. “I’m sorry – halfway across the world? How many thousands of miles is that even? I can’t do that. I could die.”
For the third time, Carver sighed, which was starting to get annoying because I was pretty sure he was only doing it for effect – the man didn’t actually need to breathe.
“Very well. A quick afternoon jaunt with the five of us. Sterling, you will remain here and keep guard. And do keep Banjo company.”
Sterling kicked at the ground, sticking his hands deep inside his jacket pockets. “Fine. Come on, you little mutt. Let’s go run you around the Boneyard, get you some exercise.”
Banjo barked happily, taking off and nipping at Sterling’s heels.
“And I’ll stay here,” Scrimshaw said, burping. “Where it’s safe. Far, far away from demon princes.”
Carver nodded in amicable agreement, then looked worriedly down the corridor that Sterling had taken.
Gil patted him on the arm, tutted, and shook his head. “He’s being a huge baby about all this, but I’m sure he’ll get over it.”
“Yeah,” Asher said, clapping one hand on my shoulder. “Sterling doesn’t like being left out, but he’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
I happened to lock gazes with Carver just then, which was when I understood. Sterling was the only one at the Boneyard who knew about the true nature of the Apotheosis. The others had no idea what was in store for me, much less why Sterling was being so pissy. Carver very subtly shook his head, and I bit my lip.
“Yeah,” I echoed. “A baby. He’ll be fine.”
Like a pro – impressive, considering he got fairly nauseous the last time – Mason herded the five of us into a tight circle on the stone floor. Carver muttered softly to himself in a dead, ancient tongue, and wisps of orange fire licked up from the cracks between the stones, bathing us in both warmth and the unsettling, staticky sensation of teleportation magic.
Carver snapped his fingers, and little by little, I felt parts of me vanish. “Time to go on an adventure, children.”
Asher beamed at us, his eyes almost wet as they reflected the flames of the sending spell. “Time to go home.”
Chapter 11
It was hot. Not stiflingly so, but just enough to know that it was hotter than what I was used to, brighter than the California sun. The air was different, too. Moister, if that made sense. It was the humidity. But all of those sensations paled to the sheer visual majesty of Calaguas Island.
Bright sand, white and powdery, greeted us, the long, generous stretch of beach only interrupted by the tallest, greenest coconut trees I’d ever seen. I know the sky is meant to be one size, that same canopy that covers any span of earth you’re standing on, but my God, it seemed so much huger. The biggest, bluest sky I’d ever seen, and beneath it, pristine waters, sparkling like liquid sapphire, flowing off into forever.
Well, hot damn. Welcome to the Philippines.
“Oh my God,” Asher said.
“Okay, chill,” Gil said, placing one huge hand over his shoulder.
But Asher was faster than that, more slippery. He wriggled out from under Gil’s grasp, ripped off his shirt, then went running straight for the water.
“Oh my Goood,” he shouted, his voice trailing off as he plunged into the crystal blue.
“Damn it,” Gil grunted, sprinting off after him.
Carver looked unperturbed and only shrugged. “A quick dip can’t harm the boy,” he said. “It’s his first taste of home, after all. Now, the question is: has the imp deceived us?” He placed a hand over his eyes, scanning the beach. “I see no signs of a demon prince.”
“Aww, come on, you guys,” I said. “Scrimshaw hasn’t ever steered us wrong. Well, except for that one time.”
“Over there,” Mason said. “Just one recliner, and just the one lady in it.”
Carver’s false eye pulsed with light as he observed the lone figure. “Well spotted, Mason. That is indeed our quarry. The two of you, follow. Tread lightly.”
It was odd seeing Carver negotiate a sandbar in classy leather shoes, yet doing a good job of it. I was having a hard enough time in sneakers, and no matter how carefully I stepped, sand was getting into my socks anyway. Mason didn’t seem to mind, quietly enjoying the view for what it was worth. Said view, between you and me, happened to include the woman in the recliner.
She wasn’t unfamiliar with the concept of tanning, that was for sure. Or regular exercise, for that matter. The demon prince of sloth occupied a body that could hardly be considered sloth-like. In fact, she was built like a supermodel, wearing an incredibly flattering and incredibly skimpy white cut of fabric that, I suppose, could charitably be described as a swimsuit.
Yet it all made sense. Sloth could manifest in different shapes, after all, and in some sense, luxury was just another form of it. In an enormous wide-brimmed hat and equally enormous sunglasses, Belphegor looked like she belonged in a magazine ad for some high-end resort. On a tiny table beside her, a pink cocktail glistened, dew dripping down its side, a tiny yellow umbrella poking over its rim. Picture perfect.
I nudged Carver as we approached. “I think I have an idea of how to handle this,” I muttered. “Flattery should work wonders.”
He gestured towards the recliner. “Well, Mr. Graves. Be my guest.”
I whistled loudly, trying to draw her attention. The woman lowered her sunglasses, her eyes glinting with bored annoyance as they fixed on me.
“Dang,” I said. “Sorry, ma’am, we were just looking for the demon prince of sloth. My mistake, seems we’ve found the prince of lust instead.”
The woman’s eyes trailed up, then down my body, and she chuckled, pushing her sunglasses back up her face. “Save your flattery for someone else, darkling mage,” she said, her voice languid and lilting, the exact sound a slant of sunbeam might hypothetically make as it streams through a window and makes a warm puddle on a parquet floor. “We know all about you and your monogamy. So boring.”
I felt myself redden even more in the hot sun, and I tugged on my collar. “Uh, you know about me, huh?”
Belphegor stretched out even farther on the recliner, as loose and relaxed as limp spaghetti. “I know all about you, baby. Everyone does. And I know that you’re here about a sword.”
Silence fell over us. How much did Belphegor really know? That must have meant that the other demon princes had word of what was happening on earth as well. Did she know about Scrimshaw, too? Was he in trouble?
Asher’s distant laughter and the splashing of water broke the quiet. Belphegor lifted her head, pushed her hat off, and raised her sunglasses again. She smiled as she caught sight of Asher.
“Look out for jellyfish and sea urchins,” she yelled out, before leaning into the recliner again. “Cute kid. You should let your pet necromancer out of your little mausoleum more often, lich.”
I could feel the contempt rising off of Carver’s body in waves. I knew that there wasn’t any prior history between him and the demon prince, but Carver, more than anyone, understood the value of information. Belphegor having that tiniest little edge over us put us at a disadvantage, as far as bargaining was concerned.
“I find,” Carver said, “that it is extremely prudent to protect my students. They are most precious to me. They are valuable.”
�
��Indeed,” Belphegor said, sitting up as she removed her shades. Her eyes were a startling brown, like a tiger, too beautiful to be completely human. “Your students are valuable. But they are not valuables. Not jewels to be kept in a box.”
Beside me, Mason flinched. Those were his exact words, once, the way he described how Carver had a tendency to keep him and Asher locked up tight in the Boneyard.
“Don’t look so surprised, nephilim,” Belphegor said, chuckling as she squirted something white out of a little tube into the palm of her hand. “Mammon was so pissed off about not being able to acquire you for their collection. Imagine that, a menagerie, just so Mammon has something to look at.” There was something mesmerizing in the way Belphegor rubbed the lotion into her sun-kissed skin, how the corner of her mouth curved with the laziest little smile. “Imagine that, spending the rest of your life in a zoo.”
“And Mason will be always be spared such a fate,” Carver said, stepping decisively between demon prince and nephilim. “Unless what is left of my body is obliterated. Now. About the sword.”
Belphegor groaned, then leaned back in her recliner, rubbing more lotion into her neck, down the crevices of her chest. “Yes, yes. The sword. I don’t care what you want it for. I don’t care what you need it for. All I know is that you need a demon-forged blade for – well, something. And you’ll get it.” She tilted her head towards me, addressing me directly. “I’ve got the perfect one, too. Duskfang, once wielded by a powerful demon general, forged from the gore of a thousand men by history’s greatest bloodsmith.”
Bloodsmith?
“Oh wow,” Mason muttered. “Is that true?”
Belphegor waved her hand vaguely. “Sure. Why the hell not. It’s going to take a while for me to acquire the damn thing, though. I know you guys are on some stupid deadline to save the world or whatever, but it’s going to take me a couple of days to find it. A week, tops.”
“We don’t have a week,” Carver growled.
“Ugh,” Belphegor said, reaching for her drink. “Are you humans always this annoying? I don’t remember you people being so annoying.”
“Dustin Graves!”
The voice boomed from far across the water, and my heart leapt up my throat as I recognized who it came from.
“No,” I muttered, scanning the shore and, to my dismay, finding a silver-haired man standing waist-deep in the water. “Poseidon? Again?”
Chapter 12
“Meddlers,” Carver hissed. He threw out his hand, a lasso of orange fire racing towards the shore as he gestured. With deadly precision, the rope of flames looped around Asher’s body, catching him tight. Asher yelped as Carver gestured again, pulling him directly towards our huddle. Gil followed in his wake, running like the devil himself was chasing him. Carver turned his head slightly, then murmured. “Duck.”
Asher went sailing over my head, making a soft, bodily thump and a confused “Oof” as he fell into the sand. Mason just had enough time to check on him before Poseidon’s voice rang out across the dunes again.
“Traitor,” he shouted, brandishing his trident, a slab of glistening muscle and wet hair. “Blasphemer. First you consort with the Great Beasts, and now I find you striking bargains with a demon prince of hell?”
I clapped both hands to either side of my mouth. “It’s not what it looks like.” Actually, to be fair, it was exactly what it looked like. “Leave us alone. You don’t know what you’re getting into, Mr. Poseidon, sir.” That’s how you treat entities with respect, right? Nailed it.
Poseidon’s face twisted with fury. It must have been the wrong thing to say. He didn’t speak again, only raising his trident, pointing it directly at our group. I thought it was a vague, idle gesture, until I noticed the waters rising.
“All I wanted was a tan,” Belphegor moaned, speaking more to herself than anybody else. “I just wanted to hang out on my own. White sandy beaches, crystal blue water. But does Belphegor ever get what she wants? Ugh. So annoying.”
“Shit,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Not until we complete the bargain,” Carver barked. “We defend ourselves, show this entity that we are not to be trifled with.”
“Easy for you to say,” Gil said, wiping sweat off his brow, “but we’ve been trifled with twice now. Poseidon means business. Also, unrelated, but I’m not the best swimmer.”
Carver didn’t even look at Gil when he responded. “Head inland.” He lifted one hand, a tremendous plume of amber fire dancing from his fingers. “Allow me to handle this.”
Belphegor swatted Carver’s hand out of the way, much to his very obvious displeasure. I hadn’t even noticed her peeling herself out of the recliner. “Let the grownups handle this one, lich,” she purred. “Honestly, I take a day off, and do I even get to relax? No. Of course not. Do you people know what’s more annoying than humans? Spoiler alert: gods. It’s gods.”
Sibilant, stuttering noises left her lips, words stranger still than anything I’d ever heard Carver use in his incantations, a language that instinctively sounded as if it was built on hate, and deceit, and pain. I winced and flinched as Belphegor kept speaking the infernal tongue, every small syllable resonating with something inside me that told me it was evil, and wrong, yet powerful. Ancient and enormously powerful.
I was right. The ocean kept on rising under Poseidon’s command – but now it was boiling, too. His eyes went huge with surprise as he looked down into the waters, his skin already turning red from the immense heat. As bubbles frothed and roiled to the surface, forced there by the power of Belphegor’s horrible prayer, Poseidon threw his head back and screamed.
The flash of lightning was sudden, as was the crack of thunder that followed. It struck Poseidon’s trident at its tip, setting his entire body ablaze in a pillar of blinding electricity. Then, just as quickly as the lightning came, it was gone – along with Poseidon.
“Oh,” Belphegor said. “Oops. What was that about?”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Wait. What? You boiled the sea. Didn’t you summon that lightning bolt, too?”
She raised her hands, shrugging. “That wasn’t me.”
It felt like my entire body had been plunged into a tub of ice. Dread and sweat poured out of me in buckets. I knew where that lightning came from.
“Listen,” Belphegor said, laying one delicate, bronzed hand on Carver’s shoulder. He glared at her, and at the streaks of suntan lotion she left on his suit. “Sorry about all that stuff earlier, swatting you out of the fight and what not. It would have gotten you into more trouble with Poseidon if you’d fired any shots. At least this way, he’s only pissed at me. Right?”
I looked from her to the empty ocean, then up to the clouds, then back. “You do realize that you’ve drawn someone else’s attention, right?”
Belphegor blinked at me. “Sorry. I don’t follow.”
I threw my hands up. “One of Poseidon’s brothers? Lives on top of a mountain, likes to throw lightning bolts? That was an emergency rescue.”
She chuckled. “Oh, you mean Zeus? Is that what that lightning was about?”
Gil pushed his fingers into his eyelids, massaging his eyeballs. Carver cursed to himself in what might have been Arabic. Asher stared at the sky, his skin raw from being dragged through sand. “We’re dead, aren’t we?” he said to no one in particular.
“Ugh,” Belphegor said. “Listen. That spell I used made me burn like a million calories. That’s more than I’ve used in the past decade. You’d think I’d get some thanks for saving your butts, but whatever. Not my problem. Anyway, the sword. Duskfang. Are we still on or what?”
Carver’s hands were curled into tight balls, shaking, but his voice was even as he spoke. “What have we got to lose now?” he said through clenched teeth.
“Sweet. Okay, cool. What I want in return is a favor.” She cocked her hip, rubbing her chin as she cast her gaze over us. “From you.”
Mason stared at her in quiet bafflement.
&nbs
p; “Absolutely not,” Carver snarled.
“What? What! I’m not going to hurt him. Don’t be so annoying. Just, I’ll have a favor to ask, something for the future.” I could see Belphegor’s eyes rolling from behind her sunglasses. She raised one hand, then placed the other over her heart. “I swear I’m not going to put him in harm’s way. Sloth’s honor.”
Well, we all knew what that really amounted to, I thought. But I said nothing.
“I’ll do it,” Mason blurted out.
Carver could have exploded right out of his skin. “Gods above and below, Mason, I – ”
“I know what I’m doing,” Mason blustered back. “I’m not an idiot. I know exactly what she is. We’ve lost enough time here. We need to keep moving, figure out the next blade.”
Belphegor patted him on the shoulder. “You see? Smart boy. Exactly why I asked him specifically. Now all of you get the hell off the island. It’s still my day off. I want to catch more of these sweet rays.”
I knew I shouldn’t have said anything else, but I just had to. “Isn’t – isn’t every day your day off? Prince of sloth, I mean.”
“Very funny,” Belphegor said, lounging back down on her recliner, putting on her sunglasses, then pulling her huge hat down over her head. “Now get the hell off the island.”
Belphegor snapped her fingers. As her demon magics whisked us away, I heard the very last thing she said.
“Ugh. So annoying.”
Chapter 13
I blinked, looking up into a near-total darkness broken only by the wavering of small, fiery lights. My back was cold, pressed against stone. Oh, good. We were back in the Boneyard.
I patted myself down, running my hands over all the regular spots to check that all of my pieces had been teleported to the same location. Granted, I’d never actually heard of someone leaving their wiener behind in a teleportation accident, but you never know. I turned my head to find Mason doing the same. He sighed in relief.
