Demon Moon (Prof Croft Book 1)

by Brad Magnarella

  Sathanas’s laughter died off. “Alone,” he rumbled. ‘The poor wizard is all alone.”

  I eyed the bishop, who had begun to stir. Had the demon pulled enough power from her to break the cathedral’s threshold? The million dollar question. If I managed to escape with the bishop while the demon remained entrapped, I could alert the Order, bring in Elder-level magic.

  Assuming they listen, I thought.

  Sathanas’s fiery red eyes tracked mine. Bones crunched under his hoofed foot as he stepped over the bishop, separating us.

  “Alone,” he repeated. “All alone. How does that make you feel, wizard?”

  His words penetrated my mind, cracking like flint against my resentment toward the Order. Dark sparks kicked up inside me.

  “Yes, angry,” Sathanas said, hungrily. “And rightfully so. You have been threatened, dragged over jagged stones, abandoned like a pathetic pup. And by the same ones you have so dutifully served.”

  I struggled to suppress my crackling rage.

  “And what about those who prattle of cultivating knowledge, delivering justice, and yet who gleefully deny you both?”

  He was speaking of Midtown College now, the NYPD. Despite my efforts, the sparks inside me swelled and broke into flames. I watched them climb the administration wing of the college, the walls of One Police Plaza. And as the flames blackened the institutions and pulled them down, an ecstatic energy beat with my surging heart. I was becoming the powerful wizard I knew myself to be. Before I could recoil from the dark fantasy, Sathanas spoke again.

  “And this holy place,” he sneered. “You know what they did to your forebears. Rounding them up like animals. Beheading them. Burning them at the stake while they screamed for mercy.”

  Fresh images of the Inquisition slashed through my mind’s eye, too horrible to watch, too horrible to look away. I witnessed a woman I knew to be a direct ancestor pursued and hacked to death, her head paraded on a pike. Fury roared through me, searing my injuries closed, shaking hot tears from my eyes.

  “Make no mistake, they hate you, wizard. Hate you. They will come for you again.” I didn’t recoil as Sathanas extended a grotesque hand toward me, horned wings looming above. “I feel your power,” he said as he pulled me to my feet. “But it can be so much more, wizard, if you would only claim it.”

  Ugly or not, Sathanas was speaking to emotions that had been swirling inside me like combustible fuel. I was sick and tired of being marginalized and threatened. Take the Order, a bureaucracy with a God complex. Everything I had learned since my earliest training had come from my own initiative, not the Order. They hadn’t assigned me a mentor in Chicory, but a goddamned warden. Now the Order was threatening me with death, and for what? Being a wizard? Why should I feel any allegiance to them? Why shouldn’t I seek power elsewhere? To defend myself—and, if it came to it one day, to overthrow the Elders?

  “Yes,” Sathanas hissed, “you know it to be true.”

  Whoa, cowboy, I thought from a distance. This is a demon talking, a master manipulator. And you’re letting him inside your head.

  I took a step back, but Sathanas quickly closed the space, his nightmare face bowing low. “There is no sin in passion,” he insisted, his eyes like stoked coals. “No sin in righteous anger. I will teach you to cultivate it, bring it to its glorious expression. You have no idea the power, wizard. All who once stepped on you will come to cower at your feet.”

  Over the years, I had resorted to wisecracks and self-deprecating humor to deflect my anger. But the anger felt so much richer. So much more … redemptive. I ached now to punish those who had wronged me, even if it meant destroying them. I burned for them to know my terrifying power. A malicious smile broke across my face. Yes, that was true redemption.

  And yet…

  “What do you get from the deal?”

  “What do you mean, wizard?” Sathanas demanded.

  The flames inside me began to thin, as though reason were pulling oxygen from them. “A demon does not give selflessly,” I said, my voice strengthening. “There’s something you want.”

  Huge black knuckles cracked inside the clenching fist he held out. “Like you, wizard,” he boomed, “I wish to exist according to my nature.” Fire breathed inside him. His body turned an incandescent red, and smoke plumed from his horrid wings. “I wish to be free.”

  That’s all? I thought dryly, the anger guttering lower, the fire it had stoked leaving me. Mortal pains broke throughout my body, and I staggered against my cane.

  But why is Sathanas appealing to me?

  My gaze slid from the demon to the bishop, who remained down. Her faith, twisted from her, had given the demon form. But because I had ended the ceremony prematurely, he must not have acquired the power to break his confinement. He needed fresh fuel. He was trying to stoke my wrath into a force he could command. He would use it to free himself, then he would destroy me.

  Unless I used that wrath to destroy him first.

  I met his blistering gaze.

  “Tell me more,” I said.

  48

  I listened as Sathanas stormed above me, recounting the times I had been slighted, shoved aside, stepped on. I opened myself to the dark, manipulative fingers writhing through my mind, twisting my thoughts. I nodded at the rush of charges and insinuations he leveled—some against those I loved. I allowed the flames of indignation to rear up again, to roar through my compassion, my reason.

  And with the frothing wrath came power. God, the power. It didn’t require a mental prism to channel. It was already raging inside me. The demon Sathanas hadn’t lied about that.

  But amid the exhilaration, I clung like sin to a single mantra:

  He’ll use you and then kill you. He’ll use you and then kill you. He’ll use—

  “Drink in the power, wizard,” he said. “Let it become you.”

  At the potent suggestion, something withered to ash inside me. The last of my will. Flames gushed into the space, and I lost the mantra. A beautiful weightlessness overcame me. I was levitating, phantom fire roaring around my flapping coat. I’d read of magic users becoming demigods, but holy hell. Why would someone not elect this power, already latent inside him?

  Sathanas cackled in delight as he poked a single talon against my shoulder, rotating me until I was facing away from the grotto. “Now, train your vengeance on those who wronged you.”

  Their faces flashed through my mind’s eye—Professor Snodgrass, Detective Vega, Chicory, others from my past—and yes, I hated them all. I drew my sword and staff apart. The steel blade glowed red hot, orange flames licking up and down its length. I would break from the cathedral, climb into the red-lit night like a glorious archangel, and rain hellfire on my enemies.

  But there was something I was supposed to remember.

  “Go now,” Sathanas said. “Break the hold of this wicked, wretched place.”

  I flew forward several feet, then wheeled with a thundering “FUOCO!”

  The forces that roared down my sword and staff were more concentrated than anything I’d ever commanded. Like jet fuel, they merged into a single column of fire that broke against Sathanas’s chest. In blissful release, I watched him blast across the grotto. Flames plumed as Sathanas’s form drove into the rear wall, bones and skulls erupting around him.

  When the catacombs fell still again, Sathanas was buried, save for a black flap of wing and his serpentine tail, which lay limp beside the bishop. My wrath spent, I fell to the grotto floor, weary smoke rising from me. But I couldn’t rest. I sheathed my sword and crawled to the bishop’s side.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. “Can you walk?”

  She looked from the demon’s tail back to me, her face creased with fear. “I believe so.”

  I helped her up, wrapping an arm around her waist, even though I wasn’t in much better shape. Her first few steps were uncertain, but by the time we reached the grotto entrance, she was walking under her own power. By some miracle, the candle in the
skull’s socket had remained lit, and I removed it and handed it to her.

  “You lead,” I said. “I’ll watch our rear.”

  I followed her from the grotto. As we turned the corner, I saw that Sathanas’s impact had jarred the bones from the corridor walls such that we were facing larger drifts than when I’d arrived. With her short stature, the bishop had to crawl over the first pile. I peered nervously over a shoulder.

  “Father Victor brought me down to the basement,” she said in a gravely voice, “allegedly to show me something. Then he pressed a cloth over my nose and mouth. Chloroform, I suspect.”

  “That wasn’t Father Victor,” I said as I helped her over the next drift. “In trying to exorcise a malevolent presence from these grounds, he became possessed. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know what he was facing. The creature back there is an ancient demon lord. He murdered Father Richard and was preparing to do the same to you. Were it not for the will that remained in Father Victor, the demon would have succeeded and escaped. So please, remember him in that way.”

  As had happened with my parting words to Malachi, another layer of my prism seemed to harden. More of my magic-born power returned.

  “And who are you?” the bishop asked.

  I thought for a moment. “Father Vick was a teacher and friend.”

  We were halfway to the staircase when the catacombs began to shake again. A roar erupted from the grotto. Even as I tried to speed our pace, the bishop peered behind us, eyes huge.

  “Wizard,” Sathanas’s voice boomed.

  “Go,” I told her. “Those stairs lead to the basement. Climb them and get out of the cathedral. Then put all of the faith you have into the sanctity of this place. It will prevent him from escaping.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I drew my cane apart and called light to my staff. “Delay him.”

  A hand, strong and maternal, pressed between my shoulder blades. “I’ve never met you,” she said, “but I recognize you now, Everson. Father Victor spoke of you. He praised your benevolence. He said you would become a powerful ally one day, and he was right.”

  Her warmth and words undermined my fear. For a moment, I glimpsed Father Vick beside us, a white robe swimming around him. When I turned to look, though, the illusion vanished, and there was only a mound of skeletal remains.

  “Stupid wizard,” Sathanas boomed over his growing footfalls.

  The warmth between my shoulder blades swelled with a gentle pressure that lingered even as I heard the bishop climbing away behind me. Cinching my grip on sword and staff, I stepped forward.

  “I hear you, demon,” I said.

  With any luck, my blast had weakened him. I couldn’t destroy him, but with the power I now possessed, I could offer a large enough speed bump for the bishop to escape. The demon would have nothing to draw on following my death. He would remain trapped. What happened next would be up to the Order, but hopefully I’d stirred up enough dust to get their attention.

  When Sathanas rounded the corner, I staggered back. What I’d just said about him being weakened? Forget it. He was larger than ever, his horned and ripped physique radiating fiery power. He stooped into the corridor, bones smoking to black dust around him.

  “Yes,” Sathanas said. “I saw into your feeble mind. I turned your wrath into mine.”

  Feeble, indeed. Believing you could outwit a demon was like believing you could best the guy on the subway platform at three-card Monte. Sathanas had laid a trap inside of a trap. First by manipulating my wrath, then by getting me to believe the power of that wrath could harm him. Instead, he absorbed it. Now he commanded the strength to break the cathedral’s hold.

  And I was all that stood in his way.

  “Stop,” I shouted, setting my spent legs apart, sword and staff held out.

  Sathanas stormed closer. “Do you wish to make me stronger still?”

  Before I realized he’d thrashed it, his tail was driving toward me. I grunted out a “Protezione,” but my summoned shield shattered before the barbed tail. The hooked tip, diving for my heart, sunk beneath my left clavicle instead. With a sick crunch, it punched out my upper back.

  I screamed, hands wringing my sword and staff, forearms hugging the tail.

  Sathanas laughed as his tail lifted me from my feet and slammed me into the corridor wall. Remains tumbled around me as the pain cast me into a gray world between excruciating waking and bone-aching sleep. From far away came the piercing cries of shriekers.

  “Do your hear that?” he asked. “My legion is circling.”

  With another lash, he slammed me into the opposite wall.

  “Soon, your world will belong to me.”

  Into another wall I went, the corridor flickering in and out.

  Sathanas curled his tail around until I was struggling to hold his looming horned face in focus. “You will be gone in a moment, wizard. But be reassured, when I emerge into the world, it will be known that Everson Croft freed me. What power you lacked in your pathetic life, I will grant you in death. A demon may not give selflessly, but he gives.”

  In my hazy state, I could see the ley energy coursing up around us, warping the air. Any attempt to channel it would be suicide. The flow was too pure for me, too potent. It would blow my prism before destroying my mind. But if I wanted to slow Sathanas, it was the only option left.

  Anyway, I thought with a wince, I’m already toast.

  But first I needed to forgive all those I had sworn vengeance and death upon. Detective Vega, Chicory, the Church, even Professor Snodgrass. I would never wish on them what would befall humanity with Sathanas’s escape.

  I also thought of my friend and fellow professor, Caroline Reid. A woman who, I could freely admit now, I was kind of, sort of in love with. If I somehow managed to get out of this, I would tell her. But whatever happened, I hoped Caroline would have some sense that I tried. That I never gave up.

  That determined, a pervasive calm settled over me. It was time.

  “Hey, Sathanas,” I mumbled, holding his blazing eyes, “Take your gift…”

  I drove my sword arm forward and watched the blade plunge into the demon’s throat.

  “…and choke on it.”

  I threw open my prism to the torrent of ley energy. It smashed through me, white and raging, like dam waters. I strained with all I had to contain it, to channel it into the demon, whose angry eyes flared wide. But my prism was breaking up like a paper straw. I didn’t know how much longer—

  Silence hit me.

  I was a young boy again, sitting in the middle row of pews, looking on the great stained glass window. Head titled, I had come to a stop at Michael. He was depicted as an angel, but I knew that wasn’t quite right. He had been an elemental, a First Saint. Someone occupied the seat beside me, but not my grandmother. I tried to turn my head, but I was in the stained glass now, light pouring through me.

  Sathanas’s horrid scream wrenched me back to the present. Or maybe that was my own cry, the final expression of a blown mind, because I felt myself crashing into a blackness of collapsing bones.

  49

  I woke up to a cliché, which was to say in a hospital room. I did blink around, but no confused murmurings leaked from my lips. The antiseptic smell, sounds of distant monitors, and blue curtain that encircled my raised bed cued me in immediately.

  I looked down to the right, where a pair of IV tubes fed blood and saline into the crook of my arm. On my left side, thick padding hugged my chest and shoulder, a spot of red striking through its center.

  I remembered Sathanas’s tail piercing me and struggled to sit up, but something restrained my left wrist. I pulled the cover away. I was handcuffed to the bedrail.

  “Do you know the punishment for imprisoning a cop?”

  Someone stood from a chair beside the head of my bed. A second later, Detective Vega stepped into view. I looked her up and down. Same serious face, pulled-back hair, and black suit as just about every time I’d ever
seen her, but man did she look stunning. Maybe it was just the fact she was alive.

  “You’re all right,” was all I could think to say.

  “Are you?” she asked.

  Except for a little pounding in the back of my head, I wasn’t in nearly as much pain as I should have been, considering. “Just foggy,” I said. “How in the hell did I end up here?”

  A corner of her mouth smirked. “Your buddies brought you in.”

  “Buddies?”

  “Dempsey and Dipinski. The acolyte at the cathedral called my office late last night and spoke to Hoffman. When Dempsey and Dipinski arrived to pick the kid up—in a taxi, for some reason—the whole cathedral shook. Like a bomb had gone off, they said. This kid, Malachi, insisted on going back inside for you. They dug you out of a boneyard in the subbasement. Boy, the officers just loved that.”

  “And the…?” I almost said demon, but stopped myself. That Detective Vega was alive—that I was alive—told me all I needed to know. Somehow, someway, Sathanas had been destroyed.

  My body relaxed into the mattress.

  “Do you want to tell me more about my visitors last night?” Vega asked. “Or should we save it for another time?”

  “Definitely another time,” I said wearily. “But you were … protected?”

  She looked at me a long moment before nodding. “Around the same time the cathedral would’ve been shaking, those screaming creatures fell apart, evaporated. And then that field, or whatever you put up, disappeared.”

  “And your son?”

  “Safe as can be.”

  I nodded at her softening expression. The dissolution of the shriekers occurred when their source, Sathanas, was destroyed. The subsequent breakdown of the shield was me tumbling into la-la land—and under a pile of bones, apparently. I remembered the centipede I’d seen crawling out of the ear canal of one of those skulls and fought the urge now to check my own.