by R. L. King
Or perhaps she’s out playing Bingo or something, he thought.
No such luck. As soon as they got inside the living room the old lady was coming in from the back hall, launching off into rapid-fire Spanish before they’d made it three steps. The way she glared at Stone, whose arm was draped over Grace’s shoulders, he was glad she wasn’t holding any sharp objects. The metaphorical daggers shooting from her dark eyes were quite sufficient.
Grace said something sharp in Spanish and made a get out of the way gesture with her free hand.
Abuelita’s eyes widened in shock—it didn’t take an understanding of the language to tell that her granddaughter had never spoken to her that way before—but she stepped aside and allowed Grace to shepherd Stone over to the sofa.
“Lie down,” she ordered him.
“Ms. Ruiz—please. I can—” If they’d just leave him alone for a few minutes, he was confident he could heal himself sufficiently that he could function.
Mostly confident.
Halfway confident, anyway.
“Please don’t argue. Just lie down and let me take a look. I have a little first aid training.”
Stone did as he was told, after letting Grace slip his coat off and toss it aside. She said something in Spanish over her shoulder to her hovering grandmother, who nodded grudgingly and headed off to the kitchen with a final sharp admonishment.
“What…was all that about?” Stone asked through his teeth.
“She’s gone to get tea. She doesn’t think it’s proper for you to be so close to me, but I told her you were injured and needed help.”
“I can…take care of it. I just need a few uninterrupted minutes.”
“You can take care of it? You mean…?”
He nodded toward his arm, where the scar from the slash he’d gotten at Mr. Juarez’s house had already faded to near invisibility.
She looked troubled, but nodded. “All right. But let me take a look. Where does it hurt worst?”
He pulled up the side of his T-shirt. Already, bruises were flowering all up and down his left side, from his chest to just above his waistband.
Grace stared. “What did he hit you with?”
“That was with the shield up,” he said, with a chuckle that quickly turned into a wince.
“I think you’ve got cracked ribs, or worse.”
“I concur.”
“And you can…fix that?”
“If you let me concentrate, yes.”
She glanced toward the kitchen. “Okay. I’ll try to keep Abuelita busy.”
“Ms. Ruiz?”
“Yes?”
“I know you don’t believe me…but humor me, please. Stay here and pray. Do what you did for Father Reed at Mr. Juarez’s house.”
“Do you think that will help?”
“I do. If you do. You saw what happened with the Father.”
She looked dubious, but pulled up a floral hassock and sat down next to where he lay. “Is it…okay if I touch you? Abuelita won’t approve if she sees us, but it sometimes helps.”
“Do what you need to do,” he said, wincing. “Just…try to keep your grandmother from distracting me—or chucking anything heavy at me—for the next ten minutes or so.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said with a nervous chuckle. “Just lie back…relax.”
Stone did as instructed, closing his eyes and focusing on directing the magical energy inward. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to fully heal something as bad as cracked or broken ribs, but at least he could encourage them in the right direction. It was getting bloody inconvenient to be as rubbish as he was with healing magic. Perhaps he should consider heading down to Ojai to see if he could convince Edna Soren to give him a mini-course in the techniques she was teaching Verity. Even if he didn’t have his apprentice’s natural affinity for that kind of magic, Edna could probably show him a few things that would make it easier to patch himself up when he ran into trouble. If he planned to keep up his more active use of his magic—and really, it wasn’t whether he planned it, but rather more whether circumstances planned to let him stop—better healing magic wasn’t something he could afford to be without in his toolkit.
As he settled into the meditative state that helped him focus on the area in need of healing, he felt Grace’s hands, sure and gentle, settle on the bare skin of his side, and heard the low murmur of her prayers. He shivered a little despite her hands’ warmth, but quickly shifted his thoughts back to the pattern. He couldn’t let it slip now, or he’d have to start over and he didn’t think he had that in him.
The warmth increased. Was he imagining things, or did it seem to be flowing from her hands, first into his skin and then into the bones and muscles beneath it? The throbbing pain lessened, and he gradually found the pattern easier to visualize and hold as he directed the magic where it needed to go. He realized he was holding himself stiff and tense and let the tension flow out of him, allowing his body to sag back into the sofa’s soft cushions.
The pattern shifted and began to drift away, but this didn’t trouble him—it felt right somehow. The pattern was just a framework, like a form you poured concrete into. You didn’t truly need it if you already knew what you wanted the finished product to look like. His mind drifted with the pattern as it floated like dancing light on a gently flowing creek. How good it was not to feel the pain…
“Dr. Stone?”
He snapped awake to the sound of Grace’s soft voice. “Wha—?”
She’d backed off, no longer touching him but instead watching him from her perch on the edge of the hassock. “You fell asleep.”
“So I did.” Experimentally he sat up and took a quick inventory. She’d pulled his T-shirt back down and covered him with an intricately embroidered quilt. His head still hurt a little, but the spiking pain in his side was gone. He probed at it with care, and when nothing flared, lifted his shirt for a look. The bruises were gone.
That was unexpected—no way could he have done that on his own. He didn’t have that kind of control.
He sat up the rest of the way, looking at Grace with new respect. Whether she wanted to believe him or not, she was definitely a wild talent—and likely a strong one. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I know. God did. But—thanks to both of you.” He glanced up and spotted Grace’s stern-faced grandmother lurking in the doorway from the kitchen. “How long was I out? And why do I get the feeling she wants me dead?”
“Only a few minutes. And she just wants you out,” Grace said. “She still doesn’t trust strange men around me.”
“Yes, I think we’ve been over that,” he conceded, looking around for the leather bag. “But tell her I’m leaving. I’ve got a long night ahead of me.”
“You should rest. You’ve been through a lot tonight.”
“Nothing I haven’t been through before. You should rest. I can’t even imagine how difficult this all must be for you. You saved my life—or at least kept me from quite a lot of trouble—twice tonight. Don’t think I’ll forget that.”
“Just let me know what you find out,” she said, nodding toward the bag. “And please—call if you need me. I’m holding you to that promise.”
“I will.” He stood and picked up the bag. “How do I say I’m leaving in Spanish?”
She chuckled. “Me voy.”
Stone waved at Abuelita. “Me voy. Gracias.”
The old lady muttered something Stone couldn’t hear. He didn’t ask Grace what it was. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to know.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Stone considered it a triumph over his pathological curiosity that he managed to make it home before checking out the contents of the leather bag. It wasn’t easy—three or four times during the trip, he wanted to pull into the nearest parking lot and start reading. Archie
had attacked him for the information in that bag, and Grace’s wards hadn’t wanted to let it through. Before he even started looking at it, he suspected there was more in there than the Goodwins’ account of how they’d vanquished the demon.
This time, he didn’t take chances. He carried the bag, along with an industrial-strength cup of coffee, upstairs to the townhouse’s attic, which he’d converted into a heavily warded ritual space. Whatever nasty things were in that package would have a much harder time getting away if they became problematic. He closed the door on a curious and indignant Raider, who’d followed him upstairs even after he’d put a bowl of food down for the cat. “Sorry, Raider,” he said. “If I need a familiar, you’ll be first on my list for the job. I suggest you start working on your CV. But not tonight.”
He cleared off the space on his work table and pulled the oilcloth-covered package out of the bag. Whoever had wrapped it had done a good job of it, overlapping the cloth and then tying it up tightly with twine. By now the twine had nearly rotted away; it broke easily with barely any pressure. Stone carefully unfolded the cloth, feeling not unlike a child with a long-anticipated gift: he simultaneously wanted to rip the cloth away so he could get at what was inside, and to make the suspense last as long as possible.
The last fold fell away, revealing two sturdy envelopes made of heavy cardstock. Both were yellowed with age, and neither had any writing on the outside. One was significantly thicker than the other. Stone separated them and switched to magical sight.
The thicker of the two was the source of the malevolent energy. It glowed with a dull red hue, shifting and squirming, making him almost queasy to look at it. The glow was familiar: a much stronger, more concentrated version of what he’d sensed in Dennis Avila’s apartment.
Whatever this thing was, it had a strong connection to Archie.
Stone got up and walked the perimeter of the attic, double-checking the wards for weak spots. Between the more powerful versions here and the normal wards around the house, he doubted Archie and his crew could get inside even if they found the place, but this wasn’t the time to take chances. If Archie could hit hard enough to crack ribs even through Stone’s protective shield, that probably meant that gaining a physical body had made him even more powerful and dangerous than he’d been as a spirit.
Satisfied that he was as safe as he was likely to get, Stone sat back down and regarded the two envelopes. Which one should he open first? Finally, unable to decide, he levitated an ancient coin on the edge of the table and sent it spinning into the air. Heads, the smaller one. Tails, the nasty one.
The coin spun end over end and clattered to the table. When it settled, the stern, bearded profile of a centuries-dead mage regarded him.
Before his mind could offer up any reasons why that was a bad choice, he grabbed the thinner envelope and unwound the string holding it closed.
Inside were two sheets of fine, heavy parchment, each covered on both sides in handwritten text and carefully drawn diagrams and figures. His hands shaking a little with anticipation, Stone set them next to each other and began by examining the figures, which had been drawn by someone with considerable artistic talent. He knew he was on the right track because he recognized most of them.
The first depicted a wooden cross, carved with the same Enochian script he’d encountered in the photos from Dennis Avila’s suicide scene.
The second obviously represented the stone box. It showed only the end and one side, but the figures on it matched up well enough with those from the one in the picture to leave Stone no doubt he was looking at the same thing.
The third was a map. This one was more difficult to read as the area had changed since Goodwin’s day and Stone wasn’t even very familiar with its modern-day counterpart, but it appeared to indicate where something had been buried. He noted the word Penitencia written in tiny script near the marker showing the location of the burial.
The fourth was the one Stone spent the most time staring at. It was an accurate, anatomically correct drawing of a heart, done in black ink with rusty red highlights. Blood? Possibly, but far too old to retain any magical aura.
So he was right—this confirmed it. The Goodwins had placed Archie’s heart in their consecrated protective vessel and buried it, probably beneath or near the long-destroyed penitencia. He turned the pages back to the first one and began reading, occasionally using his magnifying glass or jeweler’s loupe to make out particularly illegible or obscured text.
This account was written on the seventeenth day of November, in the year of Our Lord eighteen seventy-two, by Robert George Goodwin.
Last night, Father Eustace and I were at last successful in defeating the demon which has entered into our midst and corrupted so many of the people in the area. Father Maltby is dead as well, God rest his soul. Father Eustace attempted an exorcism, but both the demon within him—a minion of the Corruptor—and the Father himself resisted with great violence and the process proved too taxing for Father Maltby’s ravaged flesh. I regret to say that his earthly body was torn asunder by the demon’s resistance, and the vision will, I am certain, haunt my nightmares for the remainder of my days. We have buried him in an unmarked and unconsecrated grave, as there is no doubt in either my own or Father Eustace’s mind that Father Maltby chose his fate, and in fact invited the demon’s minion to enter into him.
My studies, along with Father Eustace’s prayers and rituals, have finally proven effective, at least to an extent. I fear that there is no way to truly destroy the demon on this, our earthly plane. The most we can do, and all we were able to accomplish, is to imprison that most central and indestructible part of its earthly remains, the thing that tethers it to our plane, in the hope that it will lie beneath the consecrated earth, undiscovered and undisturbed, for the remainder of days. I fear what might occur if our efforts were to be discovered and unraveled.
I leave this account only for the benefit of my son and his sons after, in case such an eventuality were to occur. The stronger the demon is permitted to become, the more vile murders it is permitted to perform and innocent souls it is permitted to corrupt for its unholy ends, the more difficult those who come after us will find it to do what is necessary.
Again, I stress: both Father Eustace and I believe that it is not possible to destroy the demon permanently on the earthly plane, but even in all my research and study I have not succeeded in discovering a method for traveling to its home domain. Father Eustace, of course, distrustful of my methods even as he is forced to depend upon them to aid him in his efforts, believes it would be sheerest folly to even attempt such a thing, since his faith assures the demon’s domain certainly to be Hell itself. As I do not believe in Hell and have been privy to far greater mysteries of the universe in the pursuit of my Art, I am not of this mind, but it is of no matter since I do not have the means or knowledge to investigate further. I believe at minimum the demon’s true name would be required, and the wily fiend has never seen fit to reveal it. Perhaps my descendants will discover more, should the need arise. I pray they will not be required to do so.
For now, I believe it is safe to lay down this burden for a time. I will remain in the area and keep a watch for unusual behavior among the local population, but if God is willing, I pray this puts an end to the fiend’s dominion.
The rest of the pages contained detailed descriptions of the spells, prayers, and enchantments both Goodwin and Eustace placed on the box and the cross, a translation of the Enochian script (Stone’s own translation had been largely correct) and a write-up of the ritual the mage and the priest had used to remove Archie’s heart from his physical body, seal it in the box, and bury the box in the consecrated ground near the Penitencia. Also present, though maddeningly in considerably less detail, was description of Goodwin and Eustace’s battle with Archie—Goodwin didn’t seem to feel that was the important part of his account, and described the process as simply “a meld
ing of my Art and Father Eustace’s holy faith.”
Great. Did that mean he wouldn’t be able to take Archie down without joining forces with someone slinging faith-based magic? He was fairly short on those right now—Grace was the obvious choice, but from Goodwin’s descriptions, Father Eustace had been fully on board with, and well versed in the use of, his abilities. Grace had neither the training nor the inclination to pit herself against a foe of Archie’s caliber, and he suspected whatever the demon’s plans were now that he had an earthly home, he wasn’t going to stand around and patiently wait while Stone figured out how to get her up to speed—assuming she was even willing.
So the bottom line was, he knew what he needed to do—but wasn’t sure he could do it.
Frustrated, he slipped the papers back into the envelope and pulled the thicker one to him. Maybe getting what Archie was up to straight from the horse’s mouth might give him some more insights, assuming he could even force himself to study it long enough to gather any. Even holding the envelope in his hands made his skin crawl, as if he were gripping two handfuls of writhing, bloody maggots crawling over sheets of flayed skin.
Where the hell did that thought come from? Before any other thoroughly disgusting mental images put him off the idea, he unwound the string and opened the envelope.
Inside was a stack of—what? Not exactly paper; whatever it was, it was too thick to be paper. Pale tan in color, it resembled heavy parchment, each sheet mostly rectangular but with a certain roughness around the edges as if perhaps it had been cut by hand with a knife or dull scissors. He slipped his hand inside the envelope and prepared to pull the stack gently out.
As soon as he touched it, he knew what it was. It took an effort of will not to recoil, to yank his hand back and toss the envelope to the other side of the desk. He didn’t do that, though. Instead, he pulled the sheets out and laid them down in front of him, staring down in horror at the precise sigils and diagrams that covered their every inch, written in rust-colored ink.
