Soul Ink

by J. C. Nelson

  Liam shouted, his voice echoing in the mist. “Gather round, folks. Gather round. You—” He pointed to an ice drake. “Come here for a moment.”

  With each step, the chorus of horrors surrounded him. And yet, he remained calm, his voice level.

  “Go,” whispered Ari, bumping me toward the chapel.

  Though I kept one eye on the door, I spent most of my time watching a cluster of nightmares gather tighter and tighter around a man I had no intention of letting go.

  A screaming shriek rose through the chapel as one of the ice serpents whipped backwards, its eyes ruined pits of charred flesh. And the snickers of monsters seeing an easy meal became the shrieks of hunters being hunted.

  For one moment, I caught sight of Liam. Well, the dragon curse that inhabited him. It rose, swiping with stubby claws on a creature with at least a thousand eyes. The cost in contact lenses for that many eyes would bankrupt a small nation.

  I left monster-mashing to my boyfriend and ran for the chapel as fast as I could.

  Strangely, even the denizens who saw us didn’t bother turning to come after us. They simply watched us run with grins on what I hoped were faces. When we reached the stairs, I understood why a parade of horrors waited outside. A shimmering wall of swirling darkness covered the doors.

  “This is what Grimm meant when he said Liam couldn’t enter,” said Ari. “This is the equivalent of a magical turnstile.”

  I hefted the bell and ran straight for it. Either I’d be right or my face would ring a bell.

  The barrier loomed above me, oozing back and forth as I leaped toward it—and beyond. Beside me, Ari choked and sputtered.

  “Your mouth must not have been open.” She spat again. “That was like swallowing spiders.”

  “How many spiders have you swallowed?”

  “I had three older sisters with a nasty sense of humor. Spiders were practically a snack food in our house.”

  I’d never thought being an only child might have advantages. The inside of the chapel couldn’t have contrasted more with the outside. The tile sparkled with immaculate white glitter, and soft elevator music played overhead.

  Ari opened her mirror and called Grimm “We’re in. Where does the bell go?”

  “The same place a princess goes,” said Grimm. “The tower. Don’t fear—you can both observe the ceremony from the loft.”

  “Check on Liam. Is he okay?” I would have tried to contact him by bracelet, but the dragon had never really embraced speech of any sort. Violence and fire were its native tongue.

  Grimm didn’t answer for far too long. “He’s not dead. You may thank him later. Though Haniel may not harm you, I am certain the guests for his ascension ceremony would not be so constrained.”

  Of course not. No wonder Haniel hadn’t minded my presence. “I’ll make it up to Liam. Why is the inside of this place not trashed?”

  “Everything about the midnight chapel was designed to withstand the test of time, except the people who inhabited it.” Grimm pointed to the left. “Up the stairs to the belfry. Though I should warn you—it is unlikely to be empty.”

  I shifted the bell in my grasp. Large, heavy, and metal, I considered it perfect for clubbing in confined spaces. Ari slipped the bag over her shoulder and pulled her gun out. And up the stairs we went. Midway up, the stairs opened to a loft, where I assume a choir once slept through services. The bell rope hung down all the way to the loft floor. We continued on up toward the belfry with caution.

  Grimm said the belfry wouldn’t be empty. Empty can mean good things. “No, there are no monsters in here.” Or mean bad things like “Your gas tank is on E.” Empty in no way described the room at the top of the tower. Though I’d never heard about the siege of the midnight chapel, I had a good feeling I knew how it ended: with brother after brother climbing the stairs, desperate to ring the bell. And brother upon brother killed by knife blade as they entered the room. Their dessicated corpses littered the room, sunken sockets still staring toward the ceiling. And what remained of the last bell lay shattered on the floor.

  I loved Liam. His art was his life, and he could bend and twist metal to make shapes and designs I could only imagine. But bell-work was not his forte. Liam’s bell shone a dull brass color, without decoration or enhancement. Only a thick metal bead at the lip adorned it.

  The original bell, on the other hand, had been made by a bell master, spun from the inside, balanced, and then engraved with runes which no doubt enhanced its power. Even the shards called out to be rung.

  The bell mount waited, a long cord descending to the loft below. With Ari’s help, we lifted the bell into place, letting it rest in the rocker.

  “How did Liam know this would fit?”

  Grimm appeared in the surface of a broken bell shard. “I gave him the dimensions. Since I commissioned the original bell, matching the specifications was trivial.”

  “Ari, you want to give it a try?” I gave the rope a test heft.

  And nearly collapsed as an iron blanket of evil descended on the chapel. Imagine a quilt made of lead, and the inside of the quilt is lined with wiggling roach legs. That’s the feeling that covered me as Haniel entered the chapel. I couldn’t see the chapel sanctuary from the belfry, but instinctively, I knew this was the case.

  Ari sagged for a moment, then stood up, exerting her will. For all the times I made fun of her as a princess, she had an advantage here.

  “Let it begin,” shouted Haniel from below. His voice shook the floors, yet the bell didn’t so much as hum. “Who bears witness to my ascension?”

  “That is your cue, ladies.” Grimm pointed to the stairs. “I wish you luck.”

  What I wished for was an angel-slaying sword, or better yet, an angel-slaying fully automatic rifle. But luck would do in a pinch. We dashed down the stairs two at a time and peeked our heads over the chapel loft railing. “I’m here,” I shouted.

  And that was about the moment where I got a good glimpse at Haniel. If I’d worried about falling prey to his unearthly aura, I feared it no longer. No, from his appearance, there were so many, many more things to fear.

  His once-perfect dark brown skin now played host to a wasteland of cankerous sores, and he’d bloated. Not become fat, but the type of ripening a corpse gets when laid out in the sun for three to four weeks. Where when you pick it up, the arms are going to pull lose, and you wind up shoveling it into a wheelbarrow. I knew this from experience.

  “Bow before my magnificence,” said Haniel.

  As one of the sores on his chest ruptured, Ari gagged, which looked close enough to a bow.

  “Where is my ascension gift?” He looked from me to Ari.

  I tossed the bag, head and all, over the railing, where it bounced to his feet.

  Haniel glared at the dessicated head and hissed, “Where are my guests?”

  The demon we’d seen before stood behind Haniel. I thought Liam had torn him to pieces, but apparently demons were more durable than I thought. “Master, the ritual must be completed soon.”

  “So be it,” said Haniel. “Ring the bells to announce my decision.” Haniel took out the knife I’d seen him hold before and sliced the top off a skull. The glowing eyes went dark, but inside, a puddle of liquid night oozed.

  And Haniel’s body began to glow, shining with brilliant golden runes, even among the sores.

  “Marissa,” said Ari. “We’ve got to get out of here. You can’t see magic, but what’s happening down there is going to stain everything in the chapel with evil.”

  I couldn’t look away as the demon dipped Haniel’s knife in the blackness, and then began to trace a rune, carving into the flesh. As the demon cut, Haniel’s skin blistered and crisped.

  “Marissa.” Ari yanked me by the hair. “We agreed to ring the bell. So do it now.” One day she’d make a great boss. I followed her over to the thic
k bell cord. Ari gave it an experimental tug, then threw her weight against it.

  The answering tone stopped time. Where Aiyn’s Press had made my tattoo burn with fire, the tone of the reforged bell tore apart my mind. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. If the chapel had fallen on me right there, I would never have known.

  Somewhere in my head, a voice began to whisper. A crowd of voices, in a crowd of shapes. That damned tattoo was choosing now to assert itself.

  “M?”

  I opened my eyes to see Ari kneeling over me. “What?”

  “I don’t know what that bell is doing to you, but it’s not good. Thank Kingdom I’m a princess. And if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll say you lied.”

  With a feeble flail I gestured to my purse. “It’s not just the bell. The tattoo.” My lips went numb as the whispers in my head rose to a roar. “Get needles.” Because while the bell had rung a number on me, it’d left the tattoo a puddle of glowing ink just under my skin, a puddle which now stretched out along my arm, twisting and arcing in a mesh pattern. A net, meant to capture me.

  Ari took the box of thorn needles out and stopped. “I’m going to ring it a few more times. Don’t bite your tongue.”

  I steeled myself for a tone that shattered my consciousness. Pain is a word. What it did to me didn’t have words. It had only the end of existence. And then, somewhere in the distance, something pricked me, over and over.

  “It’s working, M.” Ari took out one thorn and stabbed another point. Each thorn dripped with glowing fae ink as she removed it.

  After several seconds, Ari pulled on my arm. “Sit up. I need you to hit something.”

  I gave the floor a punch, and fell over. My fist throbbed, and my arm bled from a dozen punctures. But the floor remained unbroken.

  “Yes,” screamed Haniel. “Finish it.”

  I risked a glance in his direction. Only a few golden runes remained, and Haniel, well, he wasn’t the angel of grace anymore. More like the angel of gangrenous sores. The chapel began to shake, and the floor crumbled in places.

  “What the hell?” Ari looked back at me

  I finally understood. “Keep ringing the bell. I’m going to rain on Haniel’s parade.” I took the thorns, cradling them with care, and tiptoed along the edge of the loft until I stood over Haniel. The thorns didn’t cause pain, said the tattoo artist.

  The ink couldn’t be removed once set, said Grimm.

  Haniel held up his arms as the demon began carving the final runes on his chest.

  I picked up a thorn, throwing it like a dart, right as Ari pulled on the bell.

  If I had to, I couldn’t tell you where the thorn went. As my head cleared, I pushed myself up. This time, I was ready for the next blow. If I held my breath and concentrated, I could almost think. Again, the bell rang its peal of dissonance.

  As the effects wore off, I seized a thorn and hurled it at Haniel.

  Again, and again, I let the noise wash over me and hurled more thorn darts in between. Most missed, but three struck the archangel’s back. I held up a hand to Ari, signaling for her to stop, as the fae ink bled out into Haniel’s skin. It arced and stretched, filling two of the runes and turning another from the sign for “power” into the sign for what I hoped was “surly disposition.”

  “I choose a new name,” roared the thing that had once been Haniel. “I am Belzior, the defiler.” With those words, the dark runes smoked, burning. Locking. When the fumes cleared, a misshapen beast hulked where the angel once stood. The runes that had danced with liquid magic now formed solid black scars against his scaly skin.

  Belzior looked at his claws, then at the demon. “Where is my power? What have you done?”

  “Master,” said Draklor, “there appear to be minor flaws in the inscription of your creed. Fear not, you are still hideous and frightening. So there’s that.”

  Belzior’s roar of rage was our cue to leave. I couldn’t say if he was still bound to not harm us, or if my interference with the ritual had voided all warranties. I crawled along the loft edge till I reached Ari.

  A wet ripping sound filled the room, and I glanced down into the sanctuary. Belzior held the pulsing heart of his guide demon in one claw, and with glowing eyes, he scanned the loft for us.

  “We’ve got to go,” I whispered to Ari as she gave the bell pull one last heave.

  The floor of the chapel exploded as a misshapen beast rose from the depths. A beast I recognized, since I’d smashed its nest. The only thing working in my favor was that alligators worked on a “chomp first, ask questions later” mentality. It took one look at Belzior and lunged for him, jaws snapping.

  Was a demon a match for a mutant alligator? My money was on yes, so the smart plan of action began and ended at “Get the hell out.” After all, I could claim it went either way later.

  Down the stairs we raced, throwing the door to the chapel open. I tried to ignore the roaring of infernal beasts behind us. Looking back would only slow me down, so we sprinted at full speed across the chapel cave.

  “Pit stop!” shouted Ari, as she jogged right and slid to a halt. There, Liam crouched, buck naked, with his hands over his ears. A mutilated ice drake thrashed a few feet away. I pulled Liam to his feet, hoping his lethargic reactions were the result of the bell, not head injuries. Not until after we left the subbasement, the basement, and in fact, were halfway back to my apartment, did I start to think maybe, just maybe, we’d won.

  If not a victory, a stalemate.

  The cabby pulled up at my apartment building, and I opened the door to exit.

  Liam didn’t move.

  Twelve

  In a panicked haze, with Ari’s help, I pulled him from the cab and called Grimm. “I need you. I need help now.” I showed him Liam. In the light of the apartment building doorway, now I could see the bruises and cuts that covered his body. Worst of all was the wound on his back, where the skin lay gray and lifeless.

  Grimm appeared in the glass of a burned-out porch light. “Get him inside. He’s suffering from hypothermia more than anything. Unless you’d like to explain how he has tooth-marks from an extinct creature on his skin, we’ll have to treat him at home.”

  Ari and I dragged Liam to the elevator, which I allowed myself to take this one time. My issues with elevators dated back to a job Grimm gave me early on. Faced with a haunted elevator, Grimm’s solution was to give me a safety harness and let me ride it until the ghost burned itself out trying to kill me. Which took three and a half days. I liked to think of it as loving stairs instead of hating elevators.

  When we got to the apartment, I turned on the shower and flopped Liam inside. And we sat together in the scalding boil.

  It must have been over an hour before he began to shake and convulse.

  “It’s a good sign,” said Grimm, watching from the fogged up mirror. “He’s warm enough to know he’s cold.”

  A few hours later, Grimm pronounced him ready to be loaded into bed, under an electric blanket. I planned to join him, adding my meager body heat, but a knock at the door sent me searching for my gun.

  Outside the door, a young Indian man waited. He knocked again. “Ms. Locks, I have a delivery for you.”

  I opened the door, gun in hand. “Who are you? How did you know where to find me?”

  He looked at the gun in my hand without a care, and took out a bottle that must have contained liquid sun. It shone like a spotlight, throwing shadows behind me. “Call me Gabe. I heard about what happened at the chapel. We didn’t mean for humans to get involved, or get hurt, so give your friend two spoons every three hours. And don’t spill it, or you’ll have a six-thousand-alarm fire before you can blink.”

  I uncorked the bottle and winced as a blast of heat singed my hair. “What is this?”

  “Liquid hellfire. Comes in handy every now and then. And your other question: Your bo
ss? He’s under contract to my boss. Have a good evening, Ms. Locks.” He didn’t wait for an answer, which was just as well, since I didn’t have one.

  I’d seen Haniel. But what Gabe implied was that an angel could look, well, as human as I did. Either way, I wanted to try his medicine. When I got back to the bedroom, I did my best to rouse Liam. He shook and shivered, even with the blanket on high, but with Ari’s help, I sat him up.

  “I need you to take this,” I said. After a moment, I opened his mouth and poured in a swig of liquid fire. Not like I had a spoon I could pour it into without melting.

  Liam gasped and choked, but managed to gag it down. “More,” he said, his voice weak.

  I hesitated until he slipped an arm out and put his hand over mine. “More.”

  This time, he swallowed half the bottle. His skin gradually turned a healthier tan, except for the wide swath of gray on his back, and he sank back to the pillow, no longer wracked by shivers.

  And I waited through the night.

  • • •

  It took three days for Liam to wake up fully. Another two days before he felt like telling me what happened outside. That he’d killed one ice drake and mutilated another, but only after taking several direct blasts from their arctic breath. A true dragon, a cold-blooded creature, would have died on the spot, but Liam’s human side saved him. The waiting guests had either fled or fallen as collateral damage.

  The doctor’s prognosis said Liam would wear scars from frostbite the rest of his life, just below the letters in my name. I went back to work that week, and when I arrived, Grimm already waited in my office mirror.

  “Morning, Marissa. It’s good to have you back.”

  “Good to be back. Any sign of Belzior?”

  Grimm shook his head. “No. And the chapel collapsed in what can only be called a most terrible disaster.”

  “The bell?”

  “Buried under the rubble. Probably smashed beyond recovery. The bell was unimportant. What matters is that my agents have survived.”