by R. L. King
Ward examined the page he was looking at for a moment longer, then tossed it back on the table. “So—you talk to old Desmond lately?”
“Not this time. I thought of asking his advice on this, but I had Aubrey check—he’s away on some extended trip.”
“Relieved, then, are you?” Ward gave him a sly smile.
Stone chuckled. “A bit, perhaps. Though I shouldn’t be, I suppose. He’d probably take one look at the sigils and give me one of those looks he used to give me when I buggered up some spell—that sort of ‘remind me again why I took on a gibbon as an apprentice’ one.”
“And then read them to you like the weather report,” Ward agreed. He leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile. “We should get together more often, Stone. And not just when you’re trying to save the world from something. Just having a pint or two like the old days is good too.”
“The portal goes both ways,” Stone reminded him. “And it ends up in an excellent Indian restaurant, by the way, if that’s any incentive.”
“Tempting. We’ll see, though. Once I’ve worked the bugs out of the new apprentice. He’s quite bright, but lazy.” He shook his head. “So many of them are these days. They’ve got so many distractions from their studies, and most of them don’t want to do more than learn basic magic. How’s yours doing, by the way?”
“I’ve sent her off to study with another teacher for a while. She’s brilliant, but her style and mine don’t mesh as well. For the best, I suppose, though I miss having her around.”
“She’s coming back, though, right? If not, you could always take on someone else if you’re missing the thrill of teaching proper magic.”
“Oh, don’t you start,” Stone said with mock annoyance. “I got enough of that from Desmond.”
Ward held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, no offense, mate. At least you’re teaching in your field, after a fashion. Unlike me.”
Stone was about to answer when Eddie came bounding back into the room. “I knew I remembered seeing something like those symbols somewhere!” he announced, tossing a pair of large tomes and an armload of rolled-up scrolls on the table in triumph.
“You found it?” Stone asked, astonished. He reached for one of the books.
Eddie slapped his hand. “Now, just you wait a tick. Let me show you what I found, and then we can ’ave at it.”
The books appeared quite old, and didn’t look as if they’d been opened, prior to today, for several decades at least. A series of yellow slips of paper poked from various sections, each one scribbled with something in Eddie’s arcane shorthand that Stone had never learned to decipher. The librarian snatched up the top one, opened it to one of the marked pages, and spread it on the table for the others to see.
“See, it was the demon bit that gave me the answer,” he said. He pulled Stone’s photocopy from inside the front cover of the second book and placed it next to the open pages. “Take a look.”
Stone leaned in for a closer look, his gaze flicking back and forth between the copy and the book. Damned if the symbols didn’t look similar enough that they had to be related. He pointed at the book. “What is this?”
“Bloody old, is what it is,” Eddie said. He opened the other book to another marked page and put it down above the first one. “This language is several thousand years old, at least by anyone’s best guess. Predates written ’uman language by a fair bit. It’s one of the languages used in the spirit realms—specifically one where the residents, when they turn up on Earth, usually get slapped with the label ‘demon.’ The only other copy of this book I know of is supposed to be in the Vatican library, though there’s rumors that some mage in Russia somewhere ’as one.”
“So this is a demonic language?” Stone asked. “That doesn’t surprise me, and it fits, given what I know of the entity. Can you read it?”
“Nope. I’m not that good.” He indicated the materials on the table. “But I think we’ve got enough here that we can take a good shot at sorting out your little messages, at least enough that you can get the general thrust. I’m not sayin’ we’ll get pristine translations, mind you.”
“At this point, I’ll take anything I can get,” Stone said. “You’re brilliant, Eddie.”
“I know, I know,” he said with a broad grin and an exaggerated bow. “Come on—let’s get started. I ’ear a pint callin’ me and I’m not missin’ out on a trip to the pub tonight.”
They adjourned down the hall to another, larger room with a massive table in the center surrounded by chairs. It had probably been originally intended as a formal dining room, but had long ago been repurposed as a research area. Bookshelves lined the walls, as overstuffed as the ones in Stone’s own library, thought these had powerful illusions on them to make them appear as mundane tomes. The good stuff, Stone knew, was downstairs, and Eddie almost never let anyone into his domain down there. A large chalkboard, similar to the one in Stone’s library, dominated most of one wall.
He barely noticed the time passing. The three of them alternated between studying the tomes and scrolls separately and breaking periodically to compare notes on what they’d found. Each time one of them thought he’d found something relevant, he would go to the chalkboard and add it to the growing list of notes, scrawls, and sigils. Finally, this maddening puzzle was beginning to come together. The language was vile and imprecise, and even merely looking at it brought to mind dark and disgusting things that hadn’t seen the light of day in thousands of years, but at least it was beginning to reveal some semblance of sense.
Finally, Stone jotted another note and looked at his watch: nearly seven hours had passed since they’d entered this room.
“Right, then!” Eddie said, still as full of energy as he’d been when they had started. “I think we’ve got enough of the syntax to be getting on with ’ere. Like I said, it won’t be an exact match, but at least it’ll get you closer. Let’s see those photos again, Stone. We’ll look at them in order.”
Stone shoved the first crime-scene photo across the table, and he and Ward moved around behind Eddie so they could all examine it at the same time.
“It doesn’t look like a spell, exactly,” Eddie said after several moments.
“No,” Stone agreed. “More like a sort of…prayer?”
“That’s my guess too,” Eddie said, nodding. “Like the sigils are supposed to be an offering to something, or an invocation. Too bad the one thing they seem to ’ave left off is the name. You didn’t see anything that looked like a name, did you?”
Both Stone and Ward shook their heads. In truth, that was the main thing that concerned Stone. If this were some sort of demon-spirit thing, having its name would make dealing with it a lot easier. “Perhaps if it used the constructs to commit the murders, they didn’t need to include a name because they contained enough of its essence that it wasn’t necessary.”
“Good point,” Eddie said. He used his pen to indicate one group of the symbols. “Now, don’t ’old me to this translation, but based on my knowledge of similar languages, I think what this is saying is that it’s making an offering to…whatever it is. Sort of… ‘’ere’s another part of the whole.’”
“That makes sense,” Stone said. “But then, all the messages around the bodies are different. If it’s nicking body parts to build something, wouldn’t the messages be the same, except perhaps for the name of whatever specific part it is?”
“Hmm,” Eddie said, leaning in for a better look. “I’m not sure it’s exactly building something. You said it’s draining blood, skinning the victims, and taking body parts? I’ve never ’eard of all those together before.”
“And dismembering the corpses—at least most of the time,” Stone said. “Though that doesn’t seem to be a constant.”
“Could it be a diversion?” Ward asked. “The skinning and bloodletting is unsettling enough, but even experienced police
men are likely to be put off by dismembered bodies. What if this thing is trying to mislead them?”
“Possibly,” Stone said. “Although if the call I got really was from the demon, it hardly seems concerned about the police. So far I don’t think they’ve got any decent clues about how to find it.”
“Well, they wouldn’t, would they?” Eddie asked. “Since they’re not willing to take the supernatural evidence into account.”
Ward was examining the crime-scene photo next to two of the other inscriptions from Stone’s notes. “There are similarities,” he said, pointing out a few of the sigils. “I keep coming back to what you said, Stone, about the vision you got from the cat. This Avila bloke dug up something that someone had carefully buried, and the whole thing started when he opened it and removed the cross. So whatever was underneath the cross had magical power, but was dormant because of the warding. And you said it looked like a heart?”
Stone nodded. “It was hard to tell because Raider didn’t want to look at it—and the kinds of visions I get aren’t like watching a film at the cinema. But the way it glowed and pulsed in Avila’s hand, it bloody well looked like a heart to me.”
“Right, then,” Ward said. “So if a heart got it started, perhaps it’s gathering more bits to create a body for itself—either physical or metaphorical.”
“Gaining power with each new part,” Eddie added, nodding.
“Interesting thought,” Stone said. “Seems odd that any old parts would do, though. I wonder if the thing was dismembered itself, and its parts scattered around. Since it can’t reclaim the original equipment, it’s shopping for aftermarket stock?”
“Not a bad idea,” Eddie said. “So maybe there won’t be too many more murders, then. ’Ow many parts does this thing need before it’s got a full body? You said there’ve already been six murders, right?”
“I’d prefer that there be no more,” Stone said. “And who knows how many bits it needs? Perhaps it’s taking the important parts first, but are we going to start seeing murder victims missing big toes and gall bladders?”
“What about the blood and the skin, though?” Ward asked. He studied the notes they’d made on the blackboard. “Are those part of its new body too? Seems to be quite a lot of skin for one demon.”
“Maybe it’s using it for its constructs,” Eddie said. “But I don’t think so. Look at this.” He pulled another sheet of notes to him, and unrolled one of the scrolls. “This is another imperfect translation, but it looks to me like it’s got its lackeys consecrating the skin and the blood to be used to create something else. See ’ere? Something very loosely like ‘the force of life will bring completion to that which I started.’”
That tweaked Stone’s memory about something he’d seen earlier. He rifled through the scattered papers until he found another of the crime-scene photos. “And this one here—something about ‘the vessel for my power.’” He shoved his hand through his hair, struggling with a half-formed thought that skittered maddeningly away every time he tried to settle on it.
“The force of life…” Ward said. “That could be the blood. Could be magical power, but in this case…”
“Yes!” Suddenly the thought solidified in Stone’s mind. He leaped from his chair. “Yes! That’s what I’ve been trying to remember! I don’t think the blood and the skin have anything to do with creating the constructs—or with forming this demon thing’s body.”
“What, then?” Eddie regarded him with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism.
“I think he’s got plans once his body’s finished.” Stone stabbed a finger down on one of the pages, fighting to keep his words coherent as his thoughts whirled so fast he could barely contain them. “—‘Bring to completion that which I started.’ It makes sense. What if he’s using the skin to create pages, and the blood as ink?”
Eddie and Ward both stared at him. “Bloody hell, Stone, you could be right,” Eddie said at last. “There’s certainly precedent for black mages using ’uman skin and blood to inscribe spells. It’s not common nowadays, but in ancient times it ’appened more than you might think.”
“So the question now,” Ward said, “is what he’s planning to do with it. Had he already started it when he was destroyed, and now he’s picking up the job again? Was it a single elaborate spell, or a series of them? And what’s he planning to do with them when he finishes?”
“Damn good questions,” Stone said. “I don’t think we have the answers to any of them yet—at least not in what we’ve got here.” He tossed his pen down on top of the papers in frustration. “I was hoping this would give us a way of finding him—an invocation that included his name, or even a clue to which one we’re talking about. If he’s that old and he’s been here before, I’m betting there are references to him in the old texts.”
“Almost certainly,” Eddie agreed. “But you’ve got to give me more to go on than that, mate. Do you know ’ow many so-called ‘demonic entities’ I could put my ’ands on in the library, given enough time? Even if you narrowed it down by geographical area, it would still take me weeks to turn anything up without more solid information.”
Stone sighed. He knew Eddie was right, but that didn’t make him any happier about the fact. He had no idea how he was going to find out anything else about the entity—perhaps if Maria turned up anything about the box, it might be a good place to start, but until then, he was stuck once more. A little further along the path than he’d been before, but nonetheless still stuck. How many more people would be murdered while he spun his wheels?
“You know,” Ward said, holding up one of the pages. “This one looks a bit different, did you notice?”
“Different how?” Stone recognized the sheet instantly: it was the photocopy Flores had given him, showing the sigils that had appeared at Johnny Cheng’s murder scene. He’d focused more the first few, figuring that if he could decipher the early ones, it would make the later ones easier to read. Even so, though, it hadn’t looked that much different when he’d examined it.
“A couple of these sigils are unique,” Ward said. “I don’t see them in any of the other arrangements. Even though the others are all different, they all have the same sort of look. This one isn’t quite the same.”
They all leaned in for a look. Stone focused on the two sigils Ward had pointed out. Captain Flores had obviously obscured the part of the image showing Cheng’s body before he made the photocopy, so the symbols arrayed themselves in a semicircle around the large white spot in the middle. The two odd symbols were at the endpoints of the semicircle, one on each side of the redacted section, and separated from the rest by more space than any of the others. Almost as if the writer had meant them to stand out or be examined separately.
Eddie flipped through one of his books and pointed at the one on the right, then laid the book down and indicated a passage on the page. “This one…” he said slowly, “looks like some kind of accusation. Sort of a ‘this is on you’ or ‘this is your fault.’ Do you agree?”
Stone flicked his gaze back and forth between the two and nodded. “I think you’re right. And that wasn’t in any of the others?”
Ward riffled through the remaining sheets. “I don’t see it in any of these.”
“But this other one is harder. It looks like a simple word, not a concept. ’Ang on a tick…” Eddie shoved the book aside and grabbed another, then slammed it shut and unrolled one of the scrolls. “This one’s a tough one. Best I can do is…I dunno…Cliff? Canyon? Rock? Summat like that?”
Stone gripped the table.
Ward stared at him. “Hey, you all right?”
“Bloody hell, mate, you just went pale as a spook,” Eddie added, wide-eyed. “What is it?”
Stone swallowed and took a couple deep breaths. “Not rock,” he said. “Stone.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Stone allowed himself to be dragged t
o the pub an hour later after they’d put away all the research material, but only because Eddie insisted. He did his best to participate in Eddie’s and Ward’s conversation on the way over, but his mind stubbornly refused to stop returning to the two sigils on either side of Cheng’s body.
This is your fault, Stone.
It wasn’t even new information, not really. He’d suspected it before, of course: why would the demon single out Johnny Cheng, of all the people in the area it could have chosen as its next victim, except to send a message to the man who was getting too inquisitive about its activities? But to have it written there plain as day in ancient demonic script—to have it directly addressed to him, as if the thing were taunting him—had sent him reeling as even the telephone conversation hadn’t. It was one thing to have an enemy threaten you; it was another entirely to have the same enemy commit a horrific crime and make sure to include a taunt that the victim would almost certainly still be alive if it weren’t for your involvement.
His friends, perhaps realizing that no matter how hard they tried to get his mind off the subject with their banter, at least had the good grace to wait until they were seated at a scarred table in the back corner of the Dancing Dragon Inn before bringing it up again.
“So what’re you gonna do?” Eddie asked. “You got a plan?”
Stone shrugged, staring into his half-finished pint of Guinness. “I’m going to find it, and find a way to sort it out. What else can I do?”
“You could leave it alone,” Ward said. “Who says it’s down to you to deal with this sort of thing?”
“He won’t do that,” Eddie said. “Our Alastair has taken up a second career as some sort of magical avenger, looks like.”
