A Flash of Hex

by Battis, Jes

  Glowing purple vapors drifted from the gap in its skull. They curled and sparked around the Iblis, flickering silently. I thought of a steaming cauldron. The vapors seemed to pool behind its eyes, transforming them into chilling stained glass, before rising up to vent into the air. Were its insides on fire? I didn’t want to know. That same energy coursed along the tangle of veins on the left side of its face.

  “I knew someday,” the Iblis said, “you could be useful. Like your brother, Lorenzo, was useful to me.”

  His brother? The one who died?

  “Don’t you fucking say his name!”

  The tattoo on Lucian’s neck began to glow. He cried out, grabbing at the flesh as if it burned him.

  “That day has come.” The Iblis smiled. “And now you are mine.”

  Lucian turned to me. His eyes had gone pale and blank. He opened his right hand, and I felt him drawing power.

  “Tess . . .”

  Petals of green fire swirled between his fingers.

  “Lucian, he’s controlling you . . .”

  “Tess.” Something flickered behind his eyes. The light in his hand grew brighter, and I saw black flecks swirling inside it. The same flecks of dark nothingness that Miles had seen in the hotel room. Void. The power of decreation.

  I took a step backward, raising my athame. It burned my fingers.

  The Iblis laughed. “Dance with her, Lucian!”

  “Tess—I . . .” Pain gripped his face. Then a strange calm. “You have to shoot me. Right now.”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “It’s using all of my power, all at once.” Blood trickled down his nose. “This fire will unmake anything it touches. Cell by cell, it will tear you apart.”

  “Not if you fight it!”

  He couldn’t even shake his head. Green flame poured like rich, alien wine down both of his arms, pooling in the air before him, swirling and crackling. I could feel a pressure building in the back of my head, a pinprick of agony.

  “Shoot me,” he whispered. “Aim for my heart.”

  There was spittle on the corners of his mouth. It was taking every fiber of will left in his body just to talk to me.

  “Lucian . . .”

  “If I’m lucky, I’ll come back,” he said. His eyes had gone black.

  My hand trembled on the Glock. Fumbling, I switched out the ammo pack, removing one of the incendiary rounds and replacing it with a jacketed bullet. I was crying. “Fuck. Oh fuck—”

  “Do it now!” He raised both hands.

  Even in agony, he was beautiful. So fucking beautiful. That face.

  My lips on his caramel skin.

  His scent. Burnt herbs, cinnamon, sweat.

  His mouth on mine. His tongue caving me in.

  The dark silken embroidery of ink on his back and shoulders. The newest tattoo on his right thigh, the one I’d wondered about before, and then finally seen.

  It was script. Eskame. Merciful. Just like the Iblis had said.

  The feel of him hard in my hands, moving, a lone bright hunger.

  You looked good before, he’d said to me. You always look good.

  And so did he.

  I squeezed the trigger.

  The recoil slammed into my shoulder, and I stumbled. Lucian took four rapid steps backward. His mouth opened. Then he sat down heavily, his arms going limp. Blood spread rapidly across his shirt. He looked up at me. His eyes were soft and brown again, and his head lolled to one side.

  “Good,” he slurred. “Good . . . shot. Tess . . .”

  His head fell forward. Blood pumped steadily from the wound. His body gave a long shudder, and a thin trail of black spit leaked from his mouth.

  Then he was still.

  “Shit,” I heard Derrick whisper.

  “Wasn’t that unexpected?” The Iblis grinned. “I’m—”

  I squeezed the trigger again, this time aiming at its head. The incendiary round hit with a flash of cherry red light, and fire bloomed. The Iblis staggered.

  “Wolfie!” I screamed.

  He stepped forward, raising his hands. An arc of flame lit up the air, bathing the Iblis in red and white-gold. I smelled burning cloth and flesh.

  “Derrick!” I leveled my gun. “Aim for its legs . . .”

  I didn’t have the chance to fire a third time.

  The Iblis stepped forward, raising both of its arms. Two circles of light, almost coin-shaped, glowed in its palms. Wolfie’s flame guttered and died. He tried to summon another burst of thermal materia, but the Iblis closed its right hand into a fist. Wolfie screamed, sinking to the ground, as if something was strangling him.

  Derrick fired, aiming for its hand. The bullet ricocheted with an unexpected clang as it struck metal. Grinning, the Iblis flexed its hand, and I realized that iron bolts had been driven through its palms. The surface of the metal was etched with bizarre engravings, uncannily glowing the same red-purple color as deep tissue.

  I couldn’t look at Lucian. He’d ceased to exist for me.

  He’s gone. You have to focus.

  If I’m lucky, I’ll come back.

  His last words haunted me. What did luck have to do with it? Why would the Iblis go to the trouble of marking him—possibly even nurturing him—if it only planned to let him die? Had the Iblis killed his brother? Nothing made sense.

  Wolfie was still choking.

  That was something I could deal with.

  I concentrated, staring at the space between Wolfie and the Iblis. I could see the tendril of materia flickering in the dim light, wrapped around Wolfie’s throat. Drawing my athame, I leapt forward and slashed with the blade. It gleamed as it cut through the strand of power, and I heard ringing in my ears. Touching its power—even just a stray thread—was like hitting a rock wall. I blinked to clear the spots from my eyes. Wolfie rolled back, gasping, curled on his side.

  “That’s lovely blade work, Tessa.” The Iblis reached behind it, drawing something that shone darkly. “I have one, too, you know. I borrowed it.”

  “You stole it from Marcus, you mean.”

  It shrugged. Marcus Tremblay’s athame looked like a coal black sliver in its right hand. Nothing about it was sacred anymore. Flows of materia warped and shredded around it, gleaming like deadly abalone. It was a mote in the eye of the universe now, a weapon of avulsion and unmaking.

  “Is that what you used to kill them?” I asked. As long as I could stall it, we might be able to think of another plan. I touched the earpiece.

  The radio was dead.

  Oh hell.

  “Of course.” It twirled the corrupt blade between its fingers, like a circus performer doing tricks. “I used it to cut their throats. All but Caitlin.” Its look went distant. Its form seemed to shimmer, the skin going translucent, and for a heartbeat I saw the curled gray smoke creature, tall and thin like a spearhead, that had sniffed the air in my dream. Without the meat suit, it was like a pillar of smoke with two winking eyes, pits that led into the white-hot flame of another world.

  “You tore her apart.”

  It nodded, smiling. “She smelled so good when her flesh came unbraided, when her bones snapped. When she screamed. Her blood was . . . intoxicating. The power and the weight of all those years, and it gushed out of her, into my hands, my mouth. Oh, I could kill her again and again, and never tire of it.”

  “But why? She wasn’t like the others.” I tried to signal Derrick with my eyes. If that sensor on his gun was really emitting radio waves, it might be able to boost the signal on my earpiece. I could get a message out to Selena.

  And what would I say? We’re seriously humped.

  Realistically, there was only one solution. Only one message to send.

  Burn the house to the ground.

  We’d all die. But hopefully we’d take the Iblis with us.

  “Why did you kill her?” I was startled to hear Patrick’s voice. He’d been so still in the background, I’d once again forgotten that he was here. But he was standing n
ext to me now. I couldn’t see what color his eyes were. I wasn’t even sure it made a difference. The Iblis had made short work of his tutor, a far more experienced vampire with centuries of training. It could probably eat the boy whole.

  But it entertained him with a look. “That’s an interesting question, night child. Why do you think I killed your dam? She who gave you rich, dark blood, and all the power and the fury of a new unlife?”

  Patrick drew a step closer. “I think it was part of your ritual.” Obviously, he’d been following our conversations more than I gave him credit for. “It was messy and violent—not like the others—but it was still part of the design.”

  “And what design is that?”

  “You’re trying to become flesh.” Patrick flexed his own hand for emphasis. “That way, you won’t have to live on those other shores. The darkling plains. You want to live here, on this world, where the mortals are plentiful, and the power is hot and bloody and alive all around you. Whatever they call it. The materia.”

  The Iblis inclined its head. “I did develop a taste for it the last time I visited this world.” It looked at me. “Your father had told me how lovely it was, the power that you mages could feel beneath your skin, in your veins, but I didn’t believe him until I felt it for myself.” It closed its eyes. “Like honey and blood. Like the screams of all the dead in all the worlds. It tasted so good.”

  “And that’s why you killed them?” I asked incredulously. “You killed the children of mages to become a mage? To be like us?”

  “Not like you, Tessa.” It smiled. “Much, much better than you.”

  I shook my head. “You can’t do that by murdering people.”

  “Ah—but I’m not just murdering them. I’m freeing them. Making them so much better.” It ran fingers along the charred surface of Marcus Tremblay’s athame. Cords of green light slithered across it, hissing, crackling. “Your Hextacy is what does it. The drug is made from materia, ground from the bones and the blood of the world. When they die, it opens a glowing doorway in their flesh. An ingress that leads along the shadowed paths, into the secret chambers that drive the universe itself. That last flare of power—the agony of their death—is like God’s fingernail splitting the skin of an orange, fraying the fabric of the real. And then the universe bleeds. For me.”

  I shook my head in disgust. “You’re using their souls to rewrite your own existence. To give yourself corporeality so that you can channel more power, and still more, until—”

  “Until nothing in this world moves, or twitches, or breathes unless I make it so,” the Iblis said. “And trust me, Tessa. It’s far more than the power I enjoyed in that realm between the worlds. Even the flesh, the encumbrance of it, the sickening feel of blood simmering in my veins, knowing that my cells are rotting, one by one, even as they come into being—it’s all very much worth it. There, I was a guardian.” It spread its arms wide, as if it would rise into the air. “Here, I can be God.”

  “But why them?” I stared at it. “Those innocent kids? Their power wasn’t even in full bloom yet. They were practically normates.”

  “They were the only ones that let me get close,” it said, eyeing me with cool interest, as a crocodile might eye a water bug. “My form was incomplete. But they didn’t care. They just wanted the drug.” It smiled. “And their power wasn’t unfinished—it was ripe. They crunched like hard strawberries in my mouth. Their hearts were snap peas. Fresh green beans, cold and hard and delicious, ripped from the pod. Leaving only a husk behind.”

  I closed my eyes against the image. “They were estranged from their families. Jacob was a runaway, and Henry was an orphan.”

  “Yes. After I orphaned him.” It grinned at my outrage. “There was nothing else to be done. I needed another, and he was cute as a march hare, that little one. Sweet little bobbin.” It breathed in, as if inhaling some phantom scent. “His father already beat him, while his mother looked on. Killing them was doing the world a favor, really.”

  I tried to imagine the Iblis feeling compassion. It seemed impossible.

  “You started in Ontario,” I said finally. “With—”

  “With the one that Sabine gave me.” He smiled. “Beautiful Sabine. So treacherous. She was the one who gave me the dagger . . .” He flicked the athame, and multicolored sparks hissed along the tang of the blade. “And then the girl. So perfect in her terror. Stolen from her safe, middle-class home. And it began.”

  Sabine must have gone through Marcus’s notes. Somehow, she’d known about the Iblis. She’d known how to call it. Which meant that only she knew how to destroy it.

  “Did you rape them all, too?” I was startled to hear Wolfie’s voice. “Was that fun for you? What you did to Henry?”

  “What I did to him?” It frowned. “You mistake me for my minions. The vampires that you dispatched outside.” It shook its head. “They did get much too excitable, especially with poor Henry, who could knit his own flesh and bones back together. What a marvelous power that was.” It blinked. “But I didn’t touch them, at least not that way. I needed cold, hard flesh for that. The vampires provided it. That was my agreement with Sabine.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t the only one,” I countered.

  His eyes came back to me. “I followed an old myth,” the Iblis said. “Something I heard long ago. Do you know it, Tessa? In the twilight of the world, there existed a race of giants. The children of the sun, the moon, and the earth.”

  It was the old story of Aristophanes. I cursed inwardly.

  “The hermaphrodites,” I said.

  “Yes! Vast beings, joined eye to eye, face to face. Two boys, two girls, and a boy and a girl fused together. The gods feared their power. And so they were riven, cut in twain with lightning. And they became the sexes.”

  I thought of the mural on Duessa’s wall, realizing, then, that she must have copied it from somewhere long ago. Someplace that both she and the Iblis had visited.

  “You saw a mural of it,” I said quietly.

  “Yes.” Its eyes danced with sparks. “When I met Caitlin for the first time. She ran a venal house, you know, a long time ago. And she had that mural painted on the wall, right near the entrance, so all could see. To her, it represented all the infinite forms and possibilities of desire.”

  The Iblis smiled. “I can remember her leaning against that wall. The hot stone beneath her long, splayed fingertips. Her jade bracelet. Hmm. She was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I knew then. I knew that she’d be useful. And when she wasn’t looking, I found the spot on the wall, the spot where she’d been leaning.” It licked its lips with a forked tongue, black, like a dried piece of leather. “I stole her essence. What you call her print.”

  “That was tricky,” I said, trying to signal Patrick, who seemed to hover just on the edges of my vision. “Saving that for over a century. You planned ahead.”

  “I planned this for longer than you could ever conceive of.” The Iblis kept me in its gaze. “To me, that mural hinted at something much better. The key to something vast and shattering. And I remembered—it was very far back, but I’d heard of it, whispered somewhere. I remembered a curse. A curse that could only emerge from desire. From drug-fueled ecstasy.”

  “You killed them in a pattern.” My voice fell.

  “Two girls,” it said with a lilt to its voice. “And two boys. And then, finally, boy and girl together. Caitlin and her pup.”

  Its eyes fell to Patrick.

  He was the missing piece. The final aspect to the ritual.

  “And then,” the Iblis said, “there was one.”

  It raised its arm. Patrick’s body spasmed. He rose jerkily into the air, his sneakers trailing a foot off the ground. The Iblis twitched its finger, and Patrick floated toward it, clutching at invisible threads around his neck.

  “Caitlin was no longer the magnate,” it growled. “But you are. And your blood will be the sweetest of all, boy. I’ll be licking you off my lips for days, li
ke a smear of warm chocolate, decadent and fine.”

  I reached deep, as deep as I could, and felt the earth materia slumbering feathery and dark beneath my feet. Drawing as much of it as I could hold, I marched forward, holding the athame before me.

  I heard Derrick’s voice in my mind, clear as a struck bell. The connection between us was still there.

  I got through to Selena. Reinforcements are coming.

  We don’t have time for reinforcements. There’s only one move left.

  A pause. Then I felt an overriding wave of sadness as he understood. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at Lucian’s body. I could only stare straight ahead.

  Aim for the gap in its skull, Derrick thought fiercely. That’s the link between the worlds, the spot where it isn’t quite real yet. Miles can see the nexus where all the materia is swirling. It’s like a pinhole-sized universe. If you strike it there, the chain reaction might destroy it.

  And us with it.

  But I was past worrying about that.

  I raised my blade. The Iblis turned to me. Before it could move, I fired the Glock with my left hand. I held on to the trigger, firing again and again, the sound deafening me as I aimed for what I hoped was its face.

  I saw a flash of blazing purple light. I stabbed with the athame, channeling all of my rage, grief, and boiling heart-ache into the blow.

  Something exploded in front of me. I felt myself turning over and over in empty space. I was airborne. Then I struck the wall. Sparks burst white in front of my eyes, and I felt instantly sick. The athame dropped from my nerveless fingers.

  The Iblis was kneeling in front of me. Light dripped from its eyes.

  “Really, Tessa? Shooting drunkenly—that was the plan?”

  I couldn’t speak. There was a pinching coldness in the back of my neck. I was too stunned to be horrified by it. I couldn’t feel my legs. Only something hard and surprisingly sharp digging into my left arm.

  The Iblis picked up my athame. It examined the blade coolly, then tossed it, out of reach. “These things will get you into trouble,” it said.

  I strained to look past the creature, but I couldn’t move my head. Patrick was facedown on the cement, unconscious. Derrick and Wolfie were approaching from behind, but I had no idea what they planned to do. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be quick enough. The Iblis already had what it wanted. And that had never been me. Patrick was its missing prize, not me. I’d simply been the bait, the shiny toy that it dangled in order to force the boy out of hiding.