by Nazri Noor
“Her memory,” I said. My hand went to my throat, my fingers brushing across the garnet that dangled there. “Mom?”
Something – happened just then. I wasn’t quite sure what. My mother’s amulet began glowing, its red haze suffusing my skin, my body. I felt the grip of the Dark Room loosening, uncurling its tendrils from my mind. The team from the Lorica, Jonah included, erupted in shouts of warning, pointing at me. I looked at my hands again. What had I done?
“Pull yourself back together,” Vanitas said. “There’s work to do.” Satisfied with my docility, he whirled through the air.
“Thank you,” I thought to him. “For knocking me out of the madness. That’s never happened before.”
“And we’ve never been up again this kind of madness before, either,” he shouted. “Look alive. We’ve got company.”
Vanitas flew directly towards, then past the Scion and his cohorts. Heads spun to follow, and my heart sank when I found another group of people at the end of Vanitas’s trajectory. Had they just teleported there? They were wearing the same cloaks from the night at the Ramsey House, too. It was the Society of Robes, and this time, they weren’t content to send thugs. These men and women came magically armed, firing wands at everyone in reach: the Scion’s group, Bastion and the Boneyard, Herald.
Herald?
I wanted to go to him. I wanted to join the others, because who was I without them? What’s a lion without its pride? I walked a step, then immediately crumpled, crying out as the numbed pain of my knife wound came rushing to me all at once.
“Dust,” Herald shouted. If he could reach me, then he could heal me, make me whole, and make me worth something in this fight. What the hell was going on, anyway? First the Scion, then the Society? Were they coming for Delilah? And where was Donovan?
“I’m coming for you,” Herald yelled. But he never made it.
Wisps of bright green rose from the ground, and I was instantly glad that Herald hesitated. What first looked like rapidly growing blades of grass turned out to be plumes of emerald fire – very similar in color to the eyes of a certain demon prince.
In the fires, I found those same eyes set in a face that had been flawlessly reconstructed from its previously mangled form. Clad in its signature ruby regalia, Mammon waved at me, laughing as it bathed in the fires of its own hell.
“Kill me then,” I thought. This was Mammon’s chance, but the demon prince only watched me, cackling, gloating. I finally heard its voice, soft and high-pitched between the sounds of battle.
“Bleed, Dustin Graves,” Mammon said. “Keep your precious playthings if you want – dog, sword, nephilim, it matters not to the courts of hell. Bleed and die now, for you will regret living long enough to see Mammon once more.”
The flames burned hotter, and rose higher. I blinked, and the prince of greed was gone.
Chapter 33
Like a moat between me and my friends, the viridian flames rose higher and higher, until they had become curling spires that I could only just see through. The air wavered from the intense heat. I crawled away as best as I could, as the hellfire licked closer and closer to my feet, growing as high as a wall.
But it was a wall in name only. Between the dancing flames I could still see snatches of the fight, of the Boneyard battling both the Lorica and the Society. My heart lurched when the Scion turned his sights towards me, our gazes locking through the fires. He barked something that looked like an order. His Hands gathered around him, then gestured. They were preparing spells.
Bolts of arcane energy lanced across the lawn: spheres of fire, arcs of lightning, shards of ice, all headed in my direction. Mom’s amulet had protected me from the Dark, but would it protect me from the Lorica? I panicked, glancing at the ground, searching desperately for a shadow to sink into, when I realized that I couldn’t. I stood frozen, wondering when I’d forgotten to shadowstep. The bolts came closer –
Then exploded as a radiant burst of golden light erupted from the ground just in front of me. I thought that one of my friends had put up a barrier, but the protection had come from someone I hadn’t expected to react so suddenly, and so quickly.
My mouth dropped open. “Mason?”
He stood in front of me, grunting as he dug his heels into the grass, the massive, shining shield grasped in his hands planted deep in the earth. His clothes were singed, wisps of green fire only just fading from one of his shirt sleeves.
The back of his neck gleamed with sweat as he held the shield in place, warding off more and more of the Lorica’s attacks, his body shuddering each time a magic missile struck his defenses. Then the others – my friends, my family, the Boneyard – whirled into action, retaliating against the Scion and his men in my favor. My heart clenched with guilt, then gratitude. How could I have ever doubted them?
Mason’s shield flickered, then faded, and he fell to the ground, clutching his chest. I rushed to him, kneeling at his side.
“You didn’t need to do that,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Sure I did,” Mason said, forcing a chuckle, his face dripping with sweat. “Someone had to do something. But I didn’t realize just how powerful those fuckers are. I think I just discovered my limits.”
“You fended off a dozen mages singlehandedly,” I said. “Some of those wands, too. And you punched through a demon prince’s hellfire. Holy shit, Mason. You saved us. You saved me.”
“Yeah, well – fight’s not over.” He pushed himself off the ground, panting, then stumbled again.
“Rest up,” I said. “It’s hot as hell here – literally – but we don’t have a damn choice unless someone puts Mammon’s fires out.”
Someone put Mammon’s fires out. A hail of ice was falling from the sky, pummeling and beating back the flames, until the green of greed’s hellfire was replaced with the green of Luella Brandt’s lawn. Or at least what was left of it.
The Scion shouted for his Hands to cross the not-moat now that the flames had cleared – except that there was a very pissed off werewolf standing in their way. Gil raked at them with his claws, snapped with his teeth, and backed by Romira’s fire, they bought enough time for Herald to make his move. He sprinted across the scorched, muddied grass, his shoes sploshing with every step, and he practically threw himself at me.
“Dustin,” he said, grasping me by the shoulders. “Are you all right? Jesus, you’re bleeding.”
“Help him first,” I croaked, pointing at Mason, pretending I was going to be okay.
Mason forced another laugh. “Is your boyfriend always this dumb?”
Herald chuckled under his breath. “Don’t talk about your father like that.”
Mason grimaced. “Gross.”
Tendrils of violet energy sank through my clothes and into my skin. I couldn’t very well see past all the blood, but I felt the hole in my chest stitching back together, if only a little. The pain was still there, but thanks to Herald, I knew I wasn’t going to bleed to death. I just had to be careful not to rip myself open in whatever was left of this ridiculous fight.
“My hero,” I muttered, pulling on the back of Herald’s neck, planting a tentative kiss on his cheek.
Herald scoffed good-naturedly, then looked me in the eyes with a hard expression. “That stuff that happened just now, with the Dark Room? We’ll talk about that later.”
“I love you?” I said, as if that was enough of an apology and an explanation.
Herald harrumphed.
“You guys are so sweet,” Mason said. “Now fucking help me, please, I can barely breathe.”
Herald placed a glowing hand on his chest. “Exertion. You’ve taxed yourself too much. I don’t know how you celestials work, exactly, but if it’s anything like magic, you’ve probably pushed your limits.”
Mason chuckled. “That’s what I thought.”
Those limits were being tested all across the board. Bastion and the others were only just keeping our enemies busy, and Gil and Romira were making good progress
with taking out the Scion’s Hands, but I’d been spotted.
“He’s alive,” the Scion shouted, his face turning red. What I wouldn’t have given to punch the teeth right out of his stupid face. A Sneaky Dustin Special, I thought – fade into the shadows, then drop on him with a kick to the face or the back of the head – but then I remembered that it was the Dark Room that got us into this whole mess to begin with.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to beat these bastards back. The Lorica basically framed me, and those Society people – I think they want Delilah.”
“None of those words make sense to me,” Mason said, grunting as Herald helped him to his feet. “But point me at something and I’ll beat it senseless.”
“I like this kid. He’s got spunk.” Herald patted him on the back. “Let’s go fuck up some cultists.”
And trust me when I say that I was more than prepared to bring the fire. I went charging in. A little too reckless, you might think, but I was already being careful by limiting myself to the flames, keeping things safe. That was the best thing about the Society – for all the magical wands and artifacts they had access to, it seemed as if none of them had given much thought to how very flammable their uniforms were.
The first cultist I set on fire screamed in a most satisfying way when I hurled a mass of flame at his chest. The second was more restrained, maybe because I started at the hem of his robe, but fire is fire. Everyone burns in the end. If we scared them off, I thought, then all that left was the Scion and his lackeys.
Except he’d been dealt with, too. Herald and the others had taken down the Hands, leaving just the Scion and a couple of straggling Wings. I didn’t know what that meant for Romira and the others, but Jonah was in the wrong. Surely the Heart would listen to Bastion and Royce over a Scion gone rogue.
Bastion roared in frustration as the Wings whisked their master away, vanishing. With thinned numbers, our remaining enemies in the Society turned to each other nervously. I rushed for the last ones standing, my fists bathed in flame.
“It’s done,” one of the cultists shouted as he attempted, then failed to fire a shot from his wand. It was spent. “We need to leave.”
“We must,” said another. “She’s awake.”
I was close enough to hear, and nearly close enough to ask. What did they mean? Delilah had been awake this whole time, probably somewhere in the foyer safe under Luella’s protection. I let out a battle cry as I leapt for the cultists, my fist upraised.
But one of them pulled a glass orb from inside her robes, throwing it at her feet. Thin wisps of pale smoke rose from its broken fragments. Her body – and the bodies of the other cultists – began to fade from the feet up.
A teleportation bauble. I cursed, hurling a last ball of flame, but too late. The members of the Society of Robes had escaped.
Well – all except for one.
Chapter 34
Bloodied and pinned to the ground under the weight of a snarling, extremely angry werewolf, the last cultist lay frozen in the grass, eyes huge, shivering with fear.
“Steady,” I murmured, unsure of how to deal with Gil in his transformation. “Easy, boy.”
Gil’s head snapped towards me, his eyes red with rage, slaver dripping from the edges of his teeth. He continued to stare at me as, for a second time, I watched him revert to human form. I held my breath as he screamed, as the sprouted fur forced its way back under his skin, as his bones and his skull cracked and reshaped back into the guise of a man.
“Dios mio,” Gil growled, shuddering, his entire body drenched in sweat. “It never gets easier.” Slowly, deliberately, he turned his head towards the terrified cultist, then grasped him by the throat. “Why are you here? Why did you come here? What were you degenerates after this time?”
Luella Brandt stepped closer, her hair only slightly mussed from battle. She watched the man out of one eye with palpable disdain, a drink already in her hand. “Whatever the hell you came for had better be so fucking important, because I’m down three windows, part of a wall, and half a lawn.”
“D-Delilah,” the cultist stammered. “We knew she was awake, and something in her m-mind told us to come. To attack. Because this was where the Confluence was meant to happen.”
I stood very still, my hands curling into fists. I didn’t like the way the man said the word Confluence, with its big, ominous capital letter.
Gil shook him, pulling their faces closer. Herald, Bastion, and all the rest had gathered around us, watching, listening with burning interest.
“What. Is. The Confluence?”
The man looked around him, eyes flitting to each of our faces with mounting terror at the realization that only life in the Prism awaited him – or worse. “It was what our masters told us, in our dreams, in our ravings. The Old Ones commanded the worthy among us to come on this day, at this hour, to unleash as much magic as we could afford.”
The stammer, I noticed, had worked its way out of the man’s voice. I didn’t like that at all. He was starting to smile, too.
“The Old Ones, they knew, that right on this very point on this very earth, there would be a meeting of magics. A nexus. The Society’s wands, the Lorica’s magery, and more. Much more. The power of the old gods would be released here as well.”
Chernobog? The Eldest knew that much?
The man grinned, his eyes staring maniacally into the sky. “And not only the old gods. The Eldest, they said that the fires of hell would burn on earth, this very day, this very hour.”
And Mammon, too. Luella eyed her burnt lawn again, but this time with more worry than annoyance.
“That even the forces of divinity, the light of heaven would shine on this very same spot,” the cultist sang, his voice quivering with excitement, with delight. Mason shifted uncomfortably, his eyes glancing towards me, then quickly away. “And lastly, and most crucial of all, the masters said that their own power, that the madness of dark and void would emerge from a chamber hidden within the shadow man’s heart.”
The cultist’s eyes swiveled towards me, his lips drawn so far back, so unnaturally in a horrible rictus grin. “The Confluence,” the man said. “A meeting of the greatest powers that walk the known planet, a crossfire and conflux of the earthly, otherworldly, demonic, and divine. We sensed the dog’s energies, how it was god-touched – thought that we could use it for the ritual. But this? This was better. We should have trusted the Old Ones. They know. They always know.” He licked his lips, still watching me intently. “And now, she awakens.”
“You keep saying that,” I said. “Delilah has been awake for hours.”
The man laughed. “Not Delilah, but the trophy of the Old Ones. Their champion. The lioness.”
Luella gasped, just as a hideous boom cracked across the mansion grounds. As one we whirled towards the mansion, and my heart leapt up my throat as a cloud of dust settled over a demolished section of wall. A figure moved through the dust – no, flew through it. Luella cried out in anguish.
“No,” she said. “Mother?”
It was Agatha Black made whole, her limbs unfused and freed from their former torture, the warped, melted wax of her features restored to their handsome, piercing glory. She watched us with eyes flecked with steel, an empress high above the masses, imperious, powerful. Her silver hair was swept into a mane at the back of her head. Agatha looked exactly as she did in her pictures on the Brandts’ mantle, a legend brought horribly back to life. In the light of the setting sun, her hair burned like fire. Not a candle spent, but an inferno reborn.
The lioness, the cultist said. It lies sleeping. Not truly dead and gone. It waits.
And now, the lioness has awakened.
“Grandmother,” Bastion breathed. “It’s you. But how?”
“Sebastion,” Luella said, running to his side. “It’s not her. It can’t be.”
Agatha Black’s eyes scanned the grounds, then our faces. They finally settled on her family. She watched them coldly, the faintest gl
immer of recognition lingering in her gaze.
“I knew you, once,” Agatha said, her words dull, yet echoing, as if coming from her throat as well as from some unseen, distant place. “The boy is grown.”
“Mother,” Luella said, her voice shaking. “We thought we’d lost you.”
“And you have,” the cultist shrieked. “She belongs to the Old Ones now.”
Gil punched the man in his face, a horrible crunch sounding as his knuckles connected. The cultist cried out, then went silent. Agatha floated closer to the ground, drawn by the commotion. The rest of us rushed back and away.
I tugged on Gil’s shirt, yanking him up and off the cultist. We didn’t know what Agatha was capable of, and any distance was a safe distance. Vanitas – even bloodthirsty, gung-ho Vanitas gave her a wide berth.
“Who are you?” Agatha asked.
The man clambered to his knees, blood dripping from his nose into the ruined grass. He planted his hands in the ground, groveling, almost worshipping.
“Your servant,” the man said. “Anything and everything for you, oh lioness, greatest of witches. For the Eldest.”
Agatha tilted her head, like a snake observing its prey, then straightened out, lifting off the ground and hovering into the air once more. Without looking at the cultist, she spoke again.
“The Eldest have no use for you, and neither do I.”
“Please,” the cultist said, trembling. “Please. I live to serve. I would die for you.”
“Then do so,” Agatha said, a strange lilt in her voice. Above, she gazed at the sky and clenched her fist. Below, the man barely let out a scream before he burst into an explosion of blood and gore – just as if he had been squeezed by a huge, invisible hand.
A finger landed by my feet. I scurried backwards, my eyes huge as I stared up at Agatha Black. Bastion and Luella combined couldn’t have done that, and the lioness had only just awakened.
