Devil's Gambit

by Nicholas Woode-Smith

  Cornelius nodded, sadly, and then turned to me.

  “So, find anything?”

  “I need to see some footage from the front entrance.”

  Cornelius looked shocked. “Do you think the monster could have gotten through the door?”

  “I see no alternative, besides a spirit. And I guess that spirits cannot pass through these void black, otherworldly walls.”

  Cornelius nodded, confirming my suspicion. The Citadel was impervious to spirits. That left the front door.

  “Who could open the front door?” I asked.

  “Charlotte, Stephen, and myself,” he answered, walking back to his desk and pouring some water from a steaming kettle into two cups.

  “Tea?”

  “No, thanks,” I replied. I had tea with Pranish just before this. He needed some help with his developments in codified enchantments and he rewarded me with rooibos tea and gingernut biscuits.

  He stopped pouring and sat down. He didn’t continue making his own. I suddenly felt a bit guilty. Just because I didn’t want any didn’t mean he shouldn’t have.

  “Don’t let me stop you,” I said, indicating the kettle.

  “No, no. Tea is a social thing. I don’t really feel like it. Just a pleasantry.”

  He smiled, faintly. He was an odd fellow, but likable. Seemed as if he wanted to please people, but not desperately. He wanted to please people for their sakes, not his.

  “So,” he continued. “Security footage?”

  “Yes. I need to see if there is anything out of the ordinary. If spirits can’t pass through the walls, and there are no vulnerabilities besides this door, then I can only think that if there is a monster, it came through the front.”

  Cornelius paled. The thought of a monster coming through the door he stared at all day must be terrifying.

  “Could a spirit pass through the front door?” I asked. I was concerned that he was unnerved, but I had a job to do.

  “It…it is normal metal alloy. It may have some silver, but I’m not sure,” he said, colour returning to his cheeks.

  “Anyway, show me the footage, please…”

  “None of that, Cornelius. The hunter here is being paid to track down the fiend, not rifle through our sensitive records,” Stephen interrupted us, entering the room with a gust of his latent sorcerous energy.

  Cornelius looked about to respond, but then looked down at his lap. It was as if he had no will against this sorcerer. Well, I’d need to argue for myself then.

  “You are paying me to find a monster. Tracking it may require I look through more than the security footage you have provided me.”

  “Correct, Ms Drummond. We are paying you. That means that you play by our rules.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Even if that means the case goes unsolved?”

  “Be creative, hunter.” He looked at me if I was a child, meant to be scolded.

  I sighed. Was he really going to make this more difficult? Regular wage or not, I wanted to be shot of this case eventually.

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Wizard,” Stephen spat, as if it was an insult. “Explain the protocol to the hunter and remind yourself of it while you are at it. I have a meeting with the purifier in my office.”

  He left as suddenly as he had arrived.

  “I don’t like him,” Treth said. I agreed wholeheartedly.

  Cornelius was still looking sheepishly down at his lap, his hands unmoving on the computer keyboard on his desk. He looked beaten. Not physically, but mentally. Was this every day to him? Was this the worst or the best of it? And why?

  “Most mages are sorcerers,” he whispered. “Me? I’m a wizard. Not much use to them. They channel their energy into keeping the Titan asleep, while I use incantations and rituals to keep the dust away.”

  “My friend is a wizard,” I said. “And he’s a better magic-user than any sorcerer I’ve ever met.”

  Cornelius didn’t smile at that, as I expected he would. Perhaps, I was used to it being easy to cheer people up.

  “It isn’t about what is better magic. It is about serving the cause. Always the cause. Keep the Titan asleep. Keep him asleep so we don’t all die. But, as they constantly remind me, I’m not contributing to the cause. I’m their errand boy. Easily replaceable. Unskilled. Unpowerful…”

  If I was in his position, I would have quit a long time ago. But, keep in mind that I work for myself. Not a team player. I don’t like bosses. Conrad has only survived so long because he keeps my leash very loose.

  “Why stay, then? They obviously don’t respect you. Why keep working with them?”

  He looked up suddenly, into my eyes and I saw a fire I hadn’t seen in his blue eyes before.

  “For the cause, Ms Drummond. Damn what they say. I was put on this Earth by God for a reason.”

  Silence. I, finally, looked down. Cornelius coughed into his hand.

  “The protocol that Mr DuPreez reminded me that I have forgotten is that there are many confidential visitors to the Citadel – yourself included. Their anonymity is important to the functioning of this entire venture, so we cannot risk you finding out their identity. Monster or not. I am sorry.”

  I nodded. “Well, I’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Stake-outs, Kat? No matter how far one rises, one must always wait around sometime,” a familiar voice said. I turned and saw Cindy Giles, a top-notch purifier and healing mage from Drakenbane and the world-renowned Association of Heiligeslicht. She had helped me save my campus from some rabid necromancer months back, and then testified to get me off for killing said necromancer. She was a good person, as far as I could tell. She was dedicated to her work. So, dedicated that her arms were scarred with the runes she needed to channel her powers.

  “Cindy! Didn’t expect to see you here,” I said, unable to contain a smile. Her presence immediately distracted me from my case. Her funky hair, magically scarred arms and sense of power could do that. I remembered. “I still need to thank you for helping me…with that thing.”

  Cindy laughed. “It was nothing.”

  “About that – I heard that you were helping purify an archdemon. How’d it go?”

  Cindy’s smile waned and was replaced with a furrowed brow and a frown. “Not exactly well.”

  Cornelius was staring at Cindy with a sense of awe. She wasn’t exactly pretty, with her scarred arms, exhausted eyes like mine and lack of make-up, but she was, in a way, awe-inspiring. She was wearing her Heiligeslicht uniform today – a white and gold vestment with the image of a caduceus on the front and the symbol of a lamp hovering over a cross on the back. Heiligeslicht was not a religious organisation, but many of the religious supported them. They were an international association of purifiers, specialising in eliminating curses, demons and dark magic. They were also dedicated to saving orphaned and abused children with spark, to ensure they weren’t pressed into magical slavery. Despite my reservations with religion and the religious among their ranks, they were definitely some of the good guys. Cindy being among their ranks made her someone special. Heiligeslicht didn’t just accept anyone. You needed to be totally dedicated to purification magic to even become an acolyte within their ranks.

  “My business is done here, Kat,” Cindy said. “How about we go for coffee? I know that I need some. We can catch up and share some of our tricks of the trade. I heard you exorcised the spectral horseman of Tokai manor.”

  I waved away the compliment in her tone.

  “He was on the edge of the abyss already. I just reminded him that he was dead. On the topic of coffee – that sounds wonderful.”

  “Great!” she said. She turned to Cornelius and her tone shifted to business. “Let the Meister know that I will be back in two weeks for another inspection.”

  Cornelius closed his mouth, nodded, and then muttered some incantation that caused his keyboard to start typing all by itself. Must say, that impressed me. I’d like to see t
he raw and untamed powers of sorcerers be able to do something that delicate and sophisticated.

  “Bye, Cornelius,” I said, giving him a smile. I wanted him to have some pleasantry in his life. Being surrounded by bullies was not anyone’s idea of fun.

  Chapter 6.

  Coffee

  Cindy and I drove to a small coffee shop on the slope of Table Mountain, near Old Town. It was a quaint café with a wrought-iron, cursive sign written in French. Cindy ordered a latte. I ordered a black coffee. We had started speaking in the car and continued after we sat down. The café smelled of lavender.

  “…so, after we lost Bernard to spell-shock, the creature broke free of the net and flew away. I hate the ones with wings. They’re much harder to contain.”

  She was explaining the battle with the archdemon at Pinelands. Heiligeslicht, and almost every purifier of some status in the city, had been called out to contain the fiend, but he had overpowered them and escaped. He was now running amok – hopefully, away from the city.

  “What could an archdemon do to the city?” I asked, taking a sip of coffee. Cindy didn’t look too concerned, so I didn’t think it could be too bad.

  “It really depends. Demons, and archdemons, all have their own MOs, behaviours, cultures, goals…”

  “Know anything about this archdemon?”

  She shook her head. “He, she, it…hid themselves in a shroud. They looked vaguely humanoid within the fog but can’t be sure. It was powerful, though. Very powerful.”

  She took a long sip of latte.

  “But…we’re all still alive. So that means something.”

  It did. I didn’t like the idea of an archdemon running around my city, but could it really be worse than what we already had? With the undead in the slums and the necromancer controlling them…

  I caught myself staring into the black of my coffee. So, did Cindy.

  “So, I’ve told you about my recent failures, only fair that you share what you’ve been up to.”

  Where do I start? The vampires, the abductions, the mimic – or the necromancer. I’ve been busy…

  “You know the undead,” I said, avoiding eye contact. “They rise up, I cut them down.”

  I took a long drink of coffee to punctuate the statement.

  Cindy snorted in amusement.

  “Brett tells me you’ve been acting odd.”

  I raised my eyebrow. Brett said what?

  “I don’t think Brett knows me well enough to know what odd is for me.”

  Cindy laughed, but then leaned forward, serious. I noticed that the shaved part of her head had a small tattoo of a stylised sun on it. It was small. Her hair had been combed over it last time I saw her.

  “I know about the vampires. I also know about what you didn’t tell him in detail. About a voice on the telephone.”

  Her face was stern. Sterner than I’d ever seen it before, and I’d seen her lips and mouth caked in vomit from spell-sickness. This was a woman who sacrificed so much for her craft and mission. She drove herself to sickness to incant spells. Some, like Pranish’s bastard older brother, would think her weak for that. I knew better. Cindy was strong. And she was staring me down.

  “How…how did you find out?” I asked.

  “I used to freelance for Conrad, you know?”

  I did not. That explained it, though. Conrad was the only other person who knew about the necromancer on the phone.

  “I know you were desperate, Kat, but you should know better than anyone not to make deals with necromancers.”

  “I didn’t know they were a necromancer until it was too late. I haven’t spoken to them since then.”

  That was true. The necromancer hadn’t contacted me for months. Last call I’d had from them, they had said that, “this friendship had only just begun.”

  Ominous and stupid. I’d never be friends with a necromancer.

  Cindy gestured at the waiter to bring another latte, and then turned back to me.

  “I don’t think you’d go dark on us, Kat, but best to be careful. Greater heroes than you have turned to villainy thinking they were doing the right thing. Don’t get into bed with necromancers. I’d listen to Conrad on this, as much as I’d not listen to him on many other things. He has experience with making deals with the bad guys. He’s learnt from his mistakes. At least, I hope so.”

  “Some people would say that Conrad is one of the bad guys,” I said, trying to change the topic. Thoughts of the necromancer often sent shivers down my spine. There was not much else that could do that.

  “Many people do think our dear old Conrad is a villain. Many people are also wrong. I know Conrad’s face, and it isn’t the face of evil. Evil is much vaguer. Harder to discern. All of Conrad’s misbehaviour is out in the open. He is sincere about it. He is a scumbag, but he is, at his core, a good man,” she said the last part almost reluctantly.

  My coffee cup was empty. Cindy called the waiter to refill it without asking me.

  “The Pinelands archdemon is not the first that I have faced,” Cindy said, seemingly changing the topic. “Years ago, when I was still a hunter for Conrad, I was asked to investigate one of my fellow co-workers. A man who worked as Conrad’s resident demonologist. Keep in mind that this was a different time. We don’t understand a lot about demons now, but we knew even less back then. We didn’t really understand the extent of corruption that studying demons could bring about. This man, who worked for Conrad, was named Pumpernickle.”

  I almost spat out my fresh coffee. Cindy was not amused.

  “Not a name to inspire fear, I know. But, I soon learnt to fear the man.”

  She paused and drank her new latte.

  “I hate rats,” she continued, in almost a murmur. “Used to like them. Had two as pets when I was ten. But Pumpernickle kept rats. Had them crawling throughout his tweed coat. They spoke in tongues and Aramaic. He used to use them as spies. I found out later that they weren’t just rats. He’d trapped lesser demons in rodents. I’m not sure how much you know about demons, Kat, but you must know that they never come to this world willingly. Seldom, do they ever come here willingly, at least. But, this man had ripped demons from their plain to put them in rats. Without their normal bodies, the demon-rats were easy to control for him. Yet, think of the audacity. He put a creature of pure primal energy and cardinal hatred, into the petite furry body of vermin.”

  “He sounds like a real piece of work.”

  “He was more than that. He was deranged. Completely and utterly. Conrad, to his credit, was too busy hiding from Goldfield spies to notice that Pumpernickle was murdering swathes of people to use in his rituals. When he did suspect something was wrong, he sent me after him. What I found made the pain of the scarring on my right-arm worth it.”

  She paused, contemplating her next words, while rubbing the scars on her arms.

  “What are they for?” I asked, to keep the conversation flowing, while I gazed at the cursive-like scars across her right-arm. They looked like elvish from Lord of the Rings.

  “This one is Turn Undead, as you saw at UCT. The other is a banishment spell.”

  My questioning look prompted her to explain.

  “It allows me to channel my spark or the local weyline into driving a demon back to their realm – be it Hell, Raz’ed or the Damned Domains. The only thing that it requires is a name. A name, as we all know, is a vulnerability. For a demon, even more so.”

  I knew that much. Names were more than just an identifier on post-Cataclysmic Earth. They held a sense of true identity. With knowledge of a person’s true name, you could hold power over them. You could target them with spells, mindwarp them and tether their souls to the world. True names were so important that most people had secret middle-names known by as few people as possible. I have one, and no, I’m not telling you.

  “Pumpernickle had been acting strangely, according to Conrad. The Spell-Axe, the Brick, and myself, had all thought he’d always been odd, but Conrad believed something even
more sinister was happening. He sent me to Pumpernickle’s apartment. I found it abandoned. Not just abandoned recently, but for months. It was in a border slum, which explained why no one had noticed. As soon as I arrived, I could smell the rotting flesh. Pumpernickle was no necromancer. He didn’t know how or care enough to stop the decay of his victims. He just left them there and used them to feed his rats. Well, he fed them what he didn’t need. And for this, he needed a lot. Blood, limbs, skulls. Everything a demon of carnal violence may desire. Pumpernickle was used to brute-forcing demons. It’s the typical way of summoning them. You trick them or force them into being summoned through sheer will. It works for lesser demons. For greater, like an archdemon, you need to make a deal. He made his deal. Fortunately, I was there to stop him.”

  “What was the deal?”

  “He offered blood, sacrifice, death and destruction, and his body from which to do it. He brought an archdemon into this world and sacrificed himself to do it. But he made one error. He didn’t know I was present and didn’t think I’d have recognised the prominent archdemon he was in the process of summoning. I spoke its name, while engraving this spell into my arm and my memory. By doing so, I avoided risking it possessing me as well. The archdemon was banished for my efforts.”

  I hadn’t touched my coffee. When it was clear she had stopped speaking, I asked.

  “Why? Why did he do it?”

  I understood summoning demons to feed one of the cardinal sins. To sate one’s greed, lust for vengeance, to gain power – but what could drive a man to sacrifice his own life to bring evil into the world?

  “I don’t know, Kat. And I don’t want to know. Those who try to understand evil can’t help but become a little evil themselves.”

  I frowned. What did that mean for me? I had faced evil so many times before. I liked to think I understood it.

  “Pumpernickle is dead,” Cindy finally said. “And that’s that. He is my rival, to a degree. He is dead, but we are still fighting. Every demon is his work. A symbol of his maniacal goals. After I put him and his archdemon down, I left Conrad and became a full-time purifier, and now a part-time healer.”