by Mel Odom
The quiet man grinned. “Didn’t say I was going back to London, now did I?”
They were, Simon reflected, as secretive and directed as the Templar. In a way, it made him respect them more. However, it also made him more wary of dealing with them.
“What about Leah Creasey?” he asked.
The man shook his head. “Like I said, I don’t know anyone by that name.” He looked back the way Simon had come. “You’ve got a long way to go. Good luck and godspeed.”
Simon watched as the man folded his helmet back over his face. The armor sealed immediately and Simon’s own armor registered the slight flicker of the energy signature.
The man offered a brief salute, then turned and walked into the treeline. Within three or four steps, with Simon watching him, the man faded from view and disappeared from his armor’s sensors.
Just like a ghost, Simon thought.
* * * *
Simon carried Macomber back to his ATV. Nathan and Danielle helped take the man aboard. They stowed the professor, still sleeping, in one of the sling-seats.
Leah looked curious, but she didn’t ask any questions. As Nathan wheeled the ATV around, she pulled her helmet up over her face. It sealed and she was once more expressionless.
With a final look at Macomber, Simon temporarily pushed past the problem the professor presented and focused on getting back to London alive. That would be problem enough for all of them tonight.
Nathan contacted him on a private frequency. “So what’s the skinny, mate? Have we got something here, or have we just picked up extra baggage?”
“I don’t know,” Simon answered honestly.
“If this man is for real, what does he have to offer that makes them worth the risk?”
“He claims to know where Goetia is.”
“The book of demons?”
“One of them,” Simon agreed.
“Do you believe it?” “I don’t know.”
“And if it is true, is that book’s existence going to make matters better or worse?”
That was the question, Simon thought.
Nineteen
“What do you know about the demon Fulaghar?”
Warren hunkered under the eave of a three-story building near his destination and waited out the rainstorm that had blown in shortly after they had returned to the city. He had never much cared for the rain even before the demons had invaded. Melancholy by nature, he felt that the rain seemed to make his moods even darker and more desperate.
Now, though, the rain could often be deadly. Tainted by the Burn, rain usually carried harsh and caustic acids that scorched skin and caused rashes that could chafe to the bone. Warren had seen instances of both cases. People and animals had died from the rain.
Fat raindrops splashed pools out in the uneven streets and tapped incessantly against the metal eave. Nothing else seemed to move throughout the city. Warren suspected that even most of the demons, the lesser ones at least, avoided contact with the acid rain as well.
“I’ve heard the name,” Warren replied in answer to Naomi’s question. “He’s supposed to be one of the more powerful demons in the lower hierarchy.”
Naomi pulled her raincoat more tightly about her. During the long walk back from Ponders End, she hadn’t spoken much. That had suited Warren perfectly because he hadn’t wanted to talk. He had spent those hours trying to wrap his head around everything Merihim had commanded him to do.
“He’s evil,” Naomi whispered just barely loud enough to be heard over the rattle of the rain.
“All the demons are evil.” That ability of the Cabalists to distinguish one evil from another had always confounded Warren.
“Some of them are more evil than others.”
Warren didn’t bother to argue the point. When it came to matters like this among the Cabalists, he’d found it to be a losing proposition and a waste of time.
“Fulaghar is dangerous,” Naomi said.
Warren refrained from pointing out that all the demons were dangerous. The fact that the majority of the Cabalists chose not to acknowledge that was sheer stupidity and had gotten more than a few of them killed.
“He’s called the Shadow Twister because of his ability to alter perception, and because he’s rumored to have caused people’s shadows to attack and kill them,” Naomi said.
“Sounds like that would be a good reason to live in the dark,” Warren pointed out.
“How are you going to destroy something like that?”
Warren let out a breath and was relieved to see the rain finally coming to an end. Only a few drops struck the street in front of him now.
“I don’t know yet. I’ll figure it out,”
“But—”
Warren turned and shot her a harsh glance. “I need you to help me, not tell me how impossible this is. If you’re going to do that, you might as well go away.”
For a moment, he thought she might do exactly that. It was what he would have done.
She reached for him and placed her palm against the side of his face. “I’ll help you. It’s just that I feel so… overwhelmed by this. By all of this.”
“But this is what you trained to do.”
Naomi shook her head. “We believed. We had tapped into them over the years. But we never believed that anything like the demon invasion would happen. At least, I didn’t.”
Warren looked closely at her and stared into her eyes. “If this thing becomes impossible—” He couldn’t finish, and he couldn’t believe that it wouldn’t turn out to be impossible.
“Then I’ll leave you and save myself.” Naomi at least had the decency to look ashamed and sorrowful. “It’s the way it has to be, and you need to know that.”
Warren took in a deep breath and let it out.
Naomi smiled a little and took her hand back from his face. “If I had answered any other way/you wouldn’t have believed me.”
That was true.
“I’m staying for now because I care about you, and that’s the truth whether you believe it or not. But I also want a chance to get more power, Warren. You need to know that too.”
Actually, Warren could understand that perfectly. He nodded toward the street. “The rain’s stopped. We can go.” He turned from her and stepped into the street.
* * * *
Warren followed a twisting maze of alleys and dead-end streets. He had memorized the path a long time ago. When he’d been a child, his mother had dragged him all over the London looking for books on magic and spell casting. There had been dozens of small businesses that had catered to the quiet, but ever-growing, section of the city’s population that had gotten interested in arcane matters.
His destination was one of those.
When he reached the place, he found it was far smaller than he remembered. It was a third-story walk-up above a consignment shop and photography studio.
The name of the bookstore, Horowitz Archives, was neatly lettered on the small brass plate beside the stairwell. Memories churned within Warren as he stepped through the broken doors and headed up the stairs.
The stairwell was dark and smelled of urine. That wasn’t new, because those details were in his memories of the place.
He couldn’t remember how many times his mother had hurried him through the hallway. She had always been afraid that her husband, Warren’s stepfather, would find out she was their spending what little money she made on books about magic. The memory of her hand shaking in his was so strong that for a moment Warren felt certain he could close his hand and slow her down the way he had back in those days.
That’s over now. Let it go. Otherwise you’re going to be as dead as she is.
At the top of the stairs, Warren turned to the left and spotted the simple, frosted pane glass door. The glass had been broken out for the most part. A few jagged shards remained in the frame. Beyond that, the room was filled with books.
Nearby, what Warren had believed only to be a bundle of rags stood up and became a man. Th
e man was scruffy and gaunt, and his complexion gone to a grotesque yellow, like he had been jaundiced.
He held a gun, which he pointed at Warren. “You people need to get out of here. This is my place. All mine.”
Warren came to a stop and glared at the man. “I’m not here to take your place. I came to visit the bookstore.”
“Bookstore’s closed for business.” The man cackled madly at his own sense of humor. He waved the pistol meaningfully. “Now I’ll see the backside of you leaving this place, or I’m going to put a bullet in the front side.”
With a slight twist of the power that filled him, Warren changed his vision to night sight to better see the man. What he saw surprised him.
“You’re yellow,” Warren said.
The man shifted defensively. “I’ve been sick.”
“You haven’t been sick.” Warren stared at the man, then shifted to the pile of ragged blankets and quilts lying on the floor.
Long bones, too long to belong to a dog or cat, like partially concealed within the material. Horror twisted Warren’s stomach when he realized what the bones belonged to.
“You’re a cannibal,” Warren accused.
“No I’m not.” The man’s voice turned shrill and desperate. “Don’t say that. You’ve got no reason to say that.”
Cannibalism, though not rampant, did happen within the city. Warren had seen cases of it. The yellow coloration of the skin generally came from the hepatitis infection that was carried through the blood. If the victim did not have hepatitis before getting killed by demons, they often did at the time of death. Most demons carried all sorts of infectious diseases.
The man raised his pistol and in his shaking fist. “No more warnings! Get out bloody well now or I’m going to kill you!”
Warren concentrated for a moment to consolidate his strength, then pushed at the man with his open palm.
The man flew backward as if he’d been hit by a double-decker bus. Bones crunched under the magical impact, and it was all punctuated by the loud bark of the pistol. After he hit the wall, the man hurked and gasped for a moment, then shivered and lay still.
“Are you—” Naomi began.
Warren halted her question with a raised hand. He listened to the silence, straining his ears for the sounds of human feet or demon claws or hooves.
There was nothing.
He let out a tense breath and turned toward the bookstore. A gouge in the wall showed where the bullet had hit. From the angle, Warren knew the bullet hadn’t missed him by more than a few inches.
If he hadn’t been afraid of Merihim and the task that lay before him, Warren would have gone home. He only hoped the trip to Horowitz’s Archives hadn’t been in vain.
* * * *
“What are we looking for here?”
The question irritated Warren. “This is a bookstore, right? We’re here looking for a book.”
The glow from the minitorch Naomi used to search with brightened her features and showed her own disconsolate feelings. “I knew that. I meant, was there a particular book you were looking for?”
Warren reined in his anger. He didn’t want to be alone right now. He didn’t like being alone and had never done well during those times when he had to be by himself. That was why Kelli still rotted in his sanctuary.
“Any book on Fulaghar,” Warren said. “I need more information about him.”
“How did you know about this place?” Naomi kept the minitorch moving and searched the shelves.
Even before the invasion, the bookshop had always been only partially organized. An old man had owned and operated the place. He had seemed to have a genuine affection for kids and sometimes performed magic tricks, actual feats of legerdemain and not arcane efforts, for Warren.
As he went to the shelves now, Warren thought about the old man and wondered what had happened to him. He hoped the old man had died quietly in bed before the demons had come.
“My mother brought me here,” Warren said.
“She was interested in the arcane arts?”
“More like she was obsessed by it. All I remember of her from the time I was small was her reading these books. I didn’t like them. I saw some of the pictures inside and they… scared me.”
“A lot of these books can be quite intense for the younger mind.” Naomi held up a book on sacrifices and shined her minitorch on the cover.
The artwork showed several demons gather around an altar made of black marble. A winged demon with an angelic body and scanty clothing held a stone dripping blood in one hand and the head of a man in the other. Intense fear showed on the man’s face even though he had to be dead.
“Of course,” Naomi went on, “several books written on the subject are pure malarkey.”
Warren remained silent and kept looking. He sorted through boxes of books, and though he found some he wanted to investigate further, he didn’t find what he was looking for. He tried not to feel hopeless, but that was an old unfamiliar feeling that he had never been able to shake. The feeling settled onto him now, ran its tendrils into his bones, at leached away his confidence.
Twenty
Ultimately, only shortly before dawn, Warren gave up the search. When he left the bookstore he saw the dead man’s body still slumped against the hallway wall.
The acid rain had departed, but the coming heat of the day caused by the Burn had already started making itself felt. The streets were muggy and steamy fog filled the city.
Alerted by the grinding sound of ironbound wheels against the pavement, Warren caught Naomi’s arm and pulled her back into the safety of a nearby doorway. He held her flat against the door as the grinding sound came closer.
Farther down the street, a horse-drawn carriage rolled through the steamy fog and emerged in full view. Despite all the macabre scenes Warren had seen played out over the last four years, this one was a total surprise.
Six zombies lurched in the place of the horses that would normally pull the carriage. They held on to the doubletree rigging and stepped mostly in unison. The top was pulled back on the cab and the occupants sat for all to see.
Three Darkspawn demons—broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with impossibly long legs that had two oppositional knees, and a multitude of blue-green eyes set into heads that joined their shoulders without benefit of a neck—sat in the carriage. Their scales looked like striations of yellow, orange, charcoal, and red. That coloration marked them as Diabolists among their kind. As such they tended to use both the arcane and technology.
During the invasion, the Darkspawn had become the part of the occupation forces. They kept regular patrols over areas while other demons hunted.
While watching them, Warren had noted that the Darkspawn were insatiably curious and inventive. Where the other demons tended only to destroy things, the Dark-spawn explored areas, examined things, and tried to make sense of them. They were also inventive, and made their own weapons.
That curiosity made them even more dangerous. While other demons bored easily without stimulus or fixated on whatever it was they were attempting to do, the Dark-spawn thrived on the new and different, and had roving attention spans.
Evidently now the three Darkspawn Diabolists were conducting experiments or amusing themselves.
After they were gone, Warren led the way out of the building and stayed within the deepest shadows as he made his way back to his sanctuary.
* * * *
Once he was inside his building again, Warren started to feel safe. That didn’t last long when he checked the magical binding that tied him to Merihim. The demon was there, just within reach.
“I have a room for you,” Warren told Naomi.
She and looked at him with a hint of surprise. “I thought I would stay with you.”
Warren didn’t bother to explain that sharing the bed with someone while he was awake was a totally different matter than of even thinking of sharing one while he was asleep. He didn’t trust anyone that much.
“It�
��s a good room,” he said. “We both need a good night’s sleep.”
Naomi just stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I am. We both need to be thinking clearly later.” Warren walked her to the room, one of the more upscale rooms in the building. Only briefly did he think about what he was walking away from.
At the stairway, he reached into his shoulder bag and took out one of the Blood Angel eyes he’d cast a binding spell on. He pictured Naomi in his mind as he held the eye in his demon hand.
“Watch,” he commanded. Then he tossed the eye up into the air.
The eye bounced for just a moment, blinked twice, then floated up into one of the dark corners of the hall where it could watch over Naomi’s door.
Warren activated the spell that bound the eye to him. Immediately what the eye saw overlaid his vision. With a little concentration, he shifted his vision to that afforded by the spell. He saw himself standing in front of the door to the room he had let Naomi borrow.
Satisfied, he went up the stairs to his own room.
* * * *
In the large suite, Warren undressed and took a quick shower. Attending to his personal hygiene always made him feel more in command of himself.
Instead of remaining unclothed, he dressed in black khakis and another rugby shirt. He also tossed a thigh-length leather jacket on the bed so he could find it quickly if he had to.
He added two 9mm pistols and a sheathed knife. The pistols wouldn’t do any good against the demons, but not everything out there that hunted and killed was demonic.
Fatigue ate at him and he wanted to lie down but his mind just wouldn’t rest. Thoughts kept banging away inside his skull. The old fear that had always been with him stirred anxiously.
He lifted the heavy drapes and peered outside. Nothing moved out on the streets. A quick check of the Blood Angel eye watching over Naomi showed him that the door was still shut. If it had opened the eye would have alerted him.
“Warren.”
Startled, Warren gazed around the room. No one else was in the suite besides him.
“Warren.”
This time, Warren tracked the voice to the other side of the room. As he walked in that direction, he picked up one of the 9mm pistols from the bed, fisted it, and flicked the safety off with his thumb.
