by Nazri Noor
And just as suddenly as the pain had shot through my body, as she had grabbed me to kiss – to feed – Layla shoved me away. Not with the playful push of a temptress concluding her seduction, either, but like someone burned. Her breathing was hoarse as our mouths came apart, her eyebrows creased in fury. She spat and wiped at her lips, stabbing one finger at me, the blood drop of her nail glinting in accusation.
“Poison.” She pointed at Prudence, then at Bastion in turn. “You’re trying to poison me.” She hissed, her teeth gleaming. They were nowhere near as sharp as the vampire’s, but it still made me take a step back.
Prudence stepped in, elbowing me out of the way. “We don’t know what you’re talking about, demon. We filled our end of the bargain. You took part of his soul. Now give us what we need.”
The bartender showed up just then, gingerly placing Layla’s Brandy Alexander on the counter, then looking between us, deciding whether to call on one of the club’s many bouncers. I couldn’t be sure if it was a glare from Layla or Prudence that did it, but he lifted his hands in placation and backed away, slowly.
Layla brought the glass to her lips and drained the cocktail in one gulp. It might have been my imagination but I swear her mouth went wider then, like a snake with its jaw unhinged. I still didn’t know enough about demons to tell if I was just seeing things, but it wasn’t the time to ask. And poison? She picked up a napkin and dabbed at her lips, the anger mostly gone from her face, but her eyes still cold, murderous.
“Maybe it wasn’t deliberate,” she said. “But this one is different. There’s a darkness inside him. His soul is tainted.”
Bastion slung his arm over my shoulder and chuckled throatily. “Didn’t need to kiss him to know that, Layla.”
I shrugged him off and puckered my lips, blowing a mock kiss the way he did to me just the other day. “Night’s still young, sweet cheeks. Never too late to find out.” Bastion slunk away, his neck turning a subtle shade of red. I guess he hadn’t expected me to fight back. Hah. Small victories.
Layla snapped her fingers, summoning another bartender. I wasn’t sure if I should have been offended at how she was draining even the remains of her used-up cocktails, like kissing me had been the most disgusting experience.
“Nothing personal, new boy. It’s just – there’s something wrong with you.” Her eyes narrowed, then flitted towards Prudence. “The deal’s off.”
This time it wasn’t the strobe lights. There was definitely a flash of blue luminescence as Prudence clenched her right fist. I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be an intentional threat, but Layla shifted visibly in her seat.
“Like hell it is,” Prudence growled. “You agreed to provide information in exchange for a kiss. A kiss that claimed part of a human soul, you scum-sucking hell beast.”
Layla bared her teeth and hissed, a feral display that would have made me jump back, but Prudence held her ground.
“An arcane soul too, may I remind you. I know your kind, succubus. You demons may have your own ways of doing things, but you hold to your word.” Prudence folded her arms across her chest, raising her chin triumphantly. “An agreement is an agreement.”
Layla slammed her fist on the counter. Empty glasses jiggled and clinked at the impact. I steeled myself and didn’t dare show my reaction when I noticed the hairline cracks spidering from the point where her punch had landed.
“Back alley of the Phat Pharm. There’s a dead pigeon on the asphalt, by a dumpster. The pigeon is the locus. Cast your circle there. Now leave me alone.” She turned to the bar again, pounding her open hand against the counter. “Whiskey sour. And can you make sure it gets to me some time this decade?”
Layla threw me one last accusing look, then turned away, and I knew we were dismissed. Without a word, Prudence grabbed me by the forearm and tugged me out of the club, with Bastion following along behind us.
I thought I’d done something wrong somehow. We got out on the street, the wet sidewalk now the only sign that a freak thunderstorm had passed through. Prudence clapped me on the back, her expression something almost approaching pride.
“You did good in there. Didn’t flinch when she asked to take a bite out of you.” She looked to Bastion expectantly. I thought she was going to start tapping her foot.
Bastion turned up his lip and stuck his hands deep into his jacket pockets, pretending to be disinterested as he looked up, then down the street. “Yeah,” he mumbled grudgingly. “Took one for the team. Good job, I guess.”
I grinned. I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to gloat right in Bastion’s face, so I took my shot. “Hey,” I said, spreading my arms out. “You just have to believe in me. You just – you just have to trust in Dustin.”
Prudence snorted. Bastion groaned.
Still, what the succubus said lingered like a bad smell. “That taint Layla was talking about, though. The darkness inside me? What did she mean?”
“Beats me. Consider yourself lucky she didn’t latch on for much longer.” Prudence shrugged, tapped at something on her phone, then took off down the sidewalk, boot heels clicking at the rain-slicked pavement.
“Yo,” Bastion called out. “What’s the hurry?” I thought much the same as I tried to match her stride.
“Twenty-four-hour supermarket this way,” Prudence said, barely missing a beat. “We have the tether’s location, but we still need to shop for reagents. To open the gateway, remember?”
Bastion smoothed his hair back, adjusting his jacket as he caught up. “Relax. How hard can it be to crack the entity’s domicile?”
Prudence brought her phone closer to her face as she walked, her expression stony in the pale blue glow. “For Hecate? Some honey.” She grimaced. “And a black lamb.” Her features darkened further. “And maybe a dog.”
Bastion stopped in his tracks, but when he noticed Prudence was still walking, made double time to catch up again.
“Wait, you’re kidding, right? Not a doggie.” There was a quality to his voice that I’d rarely ever heard, something with an edge of a desperate whine to it. His tone kept thinning as he talked. “Prue? Not a puppy. Right?”
Prudence just kept walking.
Chapter 12
“I can’t believe she’s keeping us in suspense like this,” Bastion mumbled. His mouth was pushed into the collar of his leather jacket, his voice muffled. Couldn’t blame him, it was cold in the alley. “She’s doing this on purpose, I bet.”
I shrugged and shook my head. “She wanted us to scout ahead and make sure the pigeon was here.” I nudged the dead bird with my toe. It was rock hard, from both rigor mortis and the chill of the pavement. “Which reminds me.”
I fired off a quick text message to let Prudence know we’d found the tether. She had sent us ahead to look over the pigeon and make sure that it wouldn’t move again. I took that to mean that she was worried about a cat coming across it and carrying it off. I wasn’t exactly sure how that would work out – what would even happen to an animal that ate an entity’s tether? – but at least we’d secured the damn thing.
My skin crawled as I heard tiny paws scuttling in the dark corners of the alley. Ah. So we arrived just before the scavengers did. I kicked at the ground, scuffing my heels loudly, just to scare the rats away from the pigeon. Valero’s rodents really had gone unhinged since Resheph’s death. I reached for my phone, trying to distract myself from the squirming march of glistening, furry bodies ducking in and out of dumpsters.
There was already a notification on my screen. “K” was all that Prudence wrote in her text. Typical. We all knew she was efficient, almost surgically so, but I would have appreciated more information. She’d gone to do the reagent shopping herself, doubtless to get Bastion to stop whining about the puppy. I offered to go with her, but it became clear quite quickly that she meant for me to distract him while she went about collecting what we needed.
“Not a puppy,” he said again.
Sorry, not distract. I think babysit would have
been the right word. I sighed.
“Listen. I’m as against the idea as you are, but if that’s what we need to do to get the job done – ”
My words hung in the air. I couldn’t say it. I had been more dedicated to my work for the Lorica than I had been to virtually anything else in my life, more than my shitty treatment of my high school education, and certainly more than any of the odd jobs I picked up after. But a dog?
Hell, a lamb, for that matter? Where was Prudence even going to find either one of those at midnight in Valero? And that wasn’t even the point. I realized that part of casting the circle to enter an entity’s domicile or to even attract its attention involved sacrifice. The offerings, like the fortune cookie Thea crumbled, or the drop of blood. They were necessary components for completing the ritual, for closing the circle.
But I still had my limits. “Okay. Fine. I’m with you. Are we sure about what we’re doing here? I mean, a puppy.”
“Stop,” Bastion groaned. “But yes. It’s worse with some of the others. These are ancient gods we’re talking about, remember? Some of them – some of them expect more, um, exotic sacrifices.”
Bumps rose everywhere on my skin, and I can tell you that it wasn’t because of the cold. “Go on,” I said.
He studiously avoided my gaze. “You know how it is. How it was. We don’t work with those kinds of entities. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just that some of the more ancient cultures, certain pantheons, they expect something bigger. Something bloodier.”
“Certain pantheons. Right.” I wanted to know. I needed to know if that was why I’d been killed, if I was meant to be a sacrifice for a being that, according to Thea, was worse than an entity in every way. “Certain pantheons – or the Eldest.”
“Dude, shut up.” Bastion bared his teeth as he shushed me, his breath hissing out of him in a puff of fog. “What are you, crazy? Who told you about that shit?”
“Thea,” I said hurriedly. “Those people who killed me, what if they did it for a purpose? To commune with the Eldest?”
Bastion frowned. “That’s batshit insane and you know it, Graves. You don’t ‘commune’ with the Eldest. You make contact, you die. And that’s if you’re lucky.” He walked up to me, uncomfortably close, his stare menacing. “You could be driven insane just from the sight of them. Or warped – I’m talking proper mutated, and turned into their plaything – just a sculpture made out of flesh and bone. And you can’t move, but you see them always, your eyes unblinking. You live forever. You scream forever.”
I stiffened myself, forcing the tremble out of my limbs. “How the hell do you know that?”
“It’s what they do,” Bastion murmured. “It’s what they are. Get it out of your head, Graves. Never. Mention. The Eldest. Again.”
A sound of movement at the mouth of the alley caused me to jerk – but it was only Prudence, her boots scuffing the ground as she walked towards us.
“Not another word,” Bastion hissed.
I nodded at him, then at Prudence, and as she approached I sighed in relief. All she had in her hand was a paper bag. There was no way she could fit a puppy and a lamb in there. But without those offerings, would the casting still work?
“We’ll have to make do,” Prudence said, as if sensing my question. She pushed the paper bag into my hands and dug into her pockets for a little box of chalk. “And you cast the circle this time. About time you learned to do it yourself.”
She was right. If I wanted to prove my worth to the Lorica, I needed to be able to do things on my own. I couldn’t help feel a thrill, that this would be some of the first real magic I’d ever perform, shadowstepping aside. But I didn’t know where to start. Eh. Monkey see, monkey do.
“Funny, isn’t it?” I said. “And convenient, how all these gods have their tethers in Valero. I mean, what makes us so important? Why do they come here?”
“Actually,” Prudence said, “the gods have multiple tethers, everywhere, mainly places with larger magical populations. That’s probably why they’re so grumpy all the time. Imagine living in a house that had six front doors, and people were always knocking on all of them.”
Ah. Well that made more sense. I could only hope that Hecate wouldn’t be that unhappy to see us.
I got on the ground and traced the best circle I could make, the way I’d seen Thea do it. I glanced up every so often, checking on both Bastion and Prudence’s faces, but they were impassive. Whatever I was doing seemed to be up to standards.
“Do I – I saw Thea drawing sigils.” I scratched the back of my head. “Should I put, like, stars and stuff?”
Bastion snorted. I ignored him. Typical of him to try and pull his schoolyard bully schtick here, but this was too interesting for me, something I didn’t want him spoiling with his casual dickery.
“It isn’t necessary,” Prudence said, getting down on her haunches. “A lot of it has to do with belief and effort. Some fundamental knowledge of arcane imagery helps, sure, but what really fuels magic is whether you think you’ll be able to make it happen.” She grinned – it was more of a smirk, really – and scratched the side of her nose. “If you think a couple of moons and stars will help strengthen your circle, then you should go ahead and add them.”
And I did just that. Whereas Thea’s circle had looked like a precise mathematical formula, the magical chalk equivalent of the Vitruvian man, mine looked like something a kid would draw in the playground after they got bored of hopscotch.
Still, it made me proud. I capped it off with what I thought looked like a cool little flame, and a smiley face. I risked another glance at Bastion’s face. He had one eyebrow raised, and what I thought looked like a mingling of both ridicule and approval in his expression. Eh. Good enough.
“That works,” Prudence said. “Okay, bring out the reagents.”
I sifted through the paper bag, glad that we didn’t have to sacrifice anything living to access Hecate’s domicile, when my fingers came across something clammy and cold. I lifted it out of the bag and grimaced.
“A lamb chop?”
Bastion scoffed. “Really, Prudence? You think that’s going to work?”
“You got a better idea?” Prudence snapped. “You try and find me a black ewe this time of night. Besides, Thea keeps talking about how the kid has potential. What matters is how well he can pull this off.”
Maybe that put a little bit of a lift in my chin, but it was good to know that somebody at least had some faith in me. “I mean, the entity Thea and I visited just wanted a bunch of fortune cookies.”
“Yeah,” Prudence said. “Hecate’s more of a traditionalist. You can imagine why we don’t make more of an effort to seek her out, but she knows things we can’t really learn anywhere else. Of course, communing with her comes with its own obstacles, but we’ll get to that.”
I nodded and kept digging through the bag. The only things left in there were a bottle of honey shaped like a bear, along with a little baggie of dog biscuits. I held them both up.
“Cute.”
Bastion shook his head. “Seriously.”
“I swear, Brandt,” Prudence said. “Not another word.”
The lamb chop went next to the dead pigeon, two cold bits of meat literally chilling on the pavement. I tipped out a couple of dog biscuits onto the ground, crushing them underfoot for good measure, then uncapped the bottle and drizzled honey over the entire mess. I looked to the far end of the alley, grateful that it was so dark, because how the hell were we supposed to explain all this to anyone who walked by?
I stared at my hands dumbly, then realized that this was the last part of the trick. This I wasn’t so keen about.
“Needs to be done,” Prudence said, somehow always mindful of the processes going on in my own brain. “Brandt,” she said, holding up a hand.
Wordlessly, Bastion pulled a switchblade from out of his jacket pocket. I didn’t question why one of the Lorica’s most powerful Hands needed to have a knife on his person, but mayb
e it made him feel safe. Or, knowing Bastion and his fondness for that leather jacket, cooler, a bit more dangerous.
“Just a nick,” Prudence said. “Just prick the end of your finger. That should do it.”
I took out the blade, testing the sharpness of it against my palm when I remembered. “I saw Thea mumbling things, too. That I don’t know how to do.”
“Again, doesn’t matter,” Bastion said. I had to admit, I was surprised he was even contributing. “Make up the words as you go. Recite a poem, or the lyrics from a song. Doesn’t matter. The point is that your voice declares your intent and conviction. What the words are, that’s immaterial. The entity needs to know that you want to see her badly enough.”
“Right,” I said, nodding at his instructions. “Here we go.”
The knife’s point didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, a bead of blood welling up where I pressed it against my skin. It hissed as it hit the center of the circle, and a thrum of energy rushed through me. It was working.
Shadowstepping was one thing, but this was another entirely. I was opening a door to another world. I mean, okay, functionally I did that when I shadowstepped too, but hush. This was actual ritual magic. I tucked the knife into my jeans pocket, still transfixed on the smoldering spot on the asphalt that was once a drop of my blood.
“Puppy Yum biscuits are the perfect anytime treat for your furry friends,” I droned, reading off the back of the packet. “Made with only the best organic beef and lamb, Puppy Yum biscuits also contain mutt-friendly grains and fiber, for – ”
Something – I couldn’t tell you what, exactly – shifted in the air around me. Which was strange, because the only physical change I noticed came from the ground. A crack in the center of the circle grew larger and longer, at a speed alarming enough that I stepped back. The pigeon, the raw lamb chop, the biscuits, all of it slipped into the earth as the slit grew bigger, then formed into a shape that was all too familiar, and eerie. A mouth.
