King of Hell (The Shadow Saga)

by Christopher Golden

  "If it works," he said, "I'm not sure I'll be able to come back."

  He hurried away, leaving Lukas speechless behind him.

  Octavian never saw Salzburg again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Westminster, London, U.K.

  Several blocks from the famed recording studios in Maida Vale, the Black Hart stood as it always had. Little about the pub had changed over the past hundred years and those who frequented it presumed the coming century would alter it even less. Why tamper with perfection, the barman often asked. The dark oak of the bar and the booths was buffed to a midnight gleam and the aroma of spilled ale had soaked so deeply into the wood that it could never have been banished, no matter how many times the floor and counter might be washed down. Famed musicians made their way into the Black Hart from the studio, sat on the stools or in intimate corners and drank fruity Belgian beers or red wines or trendy vodka. The locals took their whisky straight and their ales from the tap and they laughed and bragged and flirted with each other's partners.

  Above the pub there were rooms for let, three small flats on the second floor and two on the third. The flats at the front of the building were of course more appealing, as they faced the street and that particular corner of Maida Vale included pleasant façades and shops whose owners decorated them prettily at Christmas time. Much like the Black Hart, the intersection had changed little in the past century, and many took comfort in its quaintness. The front-facing third-floor flat was larger and caught much more of the sunshine, on those days when the sun deigned to emerge from the gray English sky for more than an hour's time.

  But Peter Octavian hadn't come for the quaintness or the warmth or the working musicians who gathered for darts at the back of the pub while the stars made themselves visible at the front. He had rented the flat at the rear of the building's topmost floor, where loud laughter rose up inside the water pipes from the pub below. There had been a tenant, an old woman resistant to the idea of vacating the premises, but Octavian had insisted. He would have used magic if necessary, but instead kept upping the amount of money he was willing to pay both landlord and tenant for just a few nights' use of the place, and at last they had relented. In his experience, cash had a magic all its own.

  The sitting room had two high-backed chairs whose musty smell permeated the air, but he had chosen a Victorian oak spindle arm chair and pulled it over by the window that overlooked the alley behind the pub. The window stood open a few inches, letting in the chill of the October night. A pair of antique smoked-glass lamps, their globes decorated with hand-painted roses, provided only the barest illumination, but he had brought a modern floor lamp in from the bedroom and plugged it in using an extension cord purchased at a shop down the road.

  He set the floor lamp beside one of the high-backed chairs and cocked the lampshade so as to throw a spotlight on the chair that was bright enough to delineate every stain and unraveling thread. But it wasn't the brilliance of the light that concerned Octavian. Rather, he required the light in order to create an effective shadow. The brighter the light, after all, the darker the shadow.

  He had purchased the vintage turntable in a secondhand shop just off of Holborn Street. Nothing like the beauty Julian Buchleitner had owned, it consisted mostly of plastic and dated back to the late seventies or early eighties. Octavian had waited patiently while the shopkeeper had selected a vinyl album and demonstrated that the turntable's needle still worked and then paid for it without dickering over the price. On the way back to Maida Vale he had stopped and bought a liter of thirty year old Talisker Single Malt. Now the turntable sat in the deep shadow behind the chair, with a tumbler of scotch beside it.

  "All right," Octavian said to the murky room, "let's have a little music."

  The album itself had been hard to track down, especially in London. The jacket had yellowed and had a musty odor, but the heavy vinyl seemed in good condition, without any deep scratches. There wouldn't be any skipping. Octavian went to the turntable and put on the record, cuing it up to the track he wanted. Static crackled from the speakers, a hiss that the advent of compact discs and then digital music had eliminated from the experience, and he found that he had missed it. Then the horns kicked in, and he smiled as the memories came back to him.

  The last time he'd played this record it had been in this very room, in the spring of 1979. Even then the music had been ancient, a tune from the 1930s called "Long About Midnight," by Louis Prima and His New Orleans Gang. Now Prima's raspy voice filled the room again after so many years, and it felt right.

  "Don't keep me waiting, old friend," Octavian said as he walked back to his chair, where he picked up his own tumbler and poured himself a drink. "You take too long and I'm liable to drink all the scotch."

  On the small table beside the chair was a Styrofoam takeaway container from which wafted the spicy aroma of his dinner, a five-alarm jalfrezi he had picked up at the curry place across the street. The gentleman who'd taken his order had promised that the dish was so hot it would melt his plastic fork. Octavian liked a challenge when it came to curry and the jalfrezi did not disappoint. He sipped his scotch and ate his dinner and listened to Louis Prima, rising every few minutes to start the track over again.

  He had just played it for the twelfth time, the Styrofoam container set aside and a fresh glass of scotch awaiting him, when something shifted in the deep shadow behind the high-backed chair. Halfway back to his own seat, he froze and listened. A floorboard creaked and something bumped the turntable. The needle skipped, scraping across the vinyl to the middle of another song entirely.

  Octavian scowled.

  "Damn it, Squire, you just scratched the hell out of it," he said as he turned.

  But the figure that loomed in the shadows was not the one he had expected. It stood, rising into the light, and he saw the ragged pits where its eyes must once have been. Some kind of wraith or revenant, tall and skeletally thin, it had jaundice-yellow skin and wisps of white hair. A long black tongue that slithered from its mouth, probing and searching, as if it hunted by tasting the air.

  He'd meant the music as a summoning, but he'd summoned something unintended. It twisted its head toward him, tongue stretching obscenely as it took a single, stalking step in his direction.

  "Son of a bitch," Octavian whispered, as green fire ignited around his hands. The magic that flowed through him surged and ebbed, skipping like the scratched record. Whatever the hell this thing was, its presence seemed to make his magic unpredictable. It would still do the job, but he worried that it might have other consequences as well, like burning the building down or blowing out a wall.

  Fine, he thought, glancing about the room for a weapon. There are other ways to kill.

  The thing threw its head back and loosed an ululating scream that ended in a keening cry and, finally, a hiss. It lunged for him and Octavian leapt aside as it crashed into his chair. A mental catalog of potential weapons passed through his mind — lamp, chair leg, liquor bottle — and he knew he'd have to make it to the kitchen and get a knife if he wanted to rely on something other than himself.

  It flailed and twisted, scrambling to its feet, and he knew he didn't have that kind of time.

  "Enough," he said, and extended a hand, fingers curved.

  Green light erupted around his hand, crackling as he sent a bolt of pure, destructive force at the creature. Its probing tongue lashed out to catch the sizzling light as if drinking it down. Twisting and elongating, its tongue wrapped around Octavian's wrist and slithered up his forearm, yanked him closer as it consumed and absorbed the hex-bolt he'd cast, and he let out a shout of surprise.

  There were a hundred ways to kill it but quick and deadly would be best. He muttered a phrase in German and clawed the air with the fingers of his free hand, meaning to turn the beast to stone.

  Its tongue raced the rest of the way up his arm and its pointed tip speared him in the shoulder, tearing through flesh and bone and muscle. Octavian roared in pain as the
creature grabbed hold of him and slammed him to the ground. Left hand tightly curled, he punched it again and again even as its tongue stabbed deeper. The whole right side of his body felt cold, and that chill began to spread.

  Right arm twined tightly, he used his left hand, grabbed hold of its slick, leathery tentacle of a tongue and began to rake it against the creature's own teeth, sawing back and forth. Spells filled his head, ways to turn it to ice or make it age so fast it would rot right in front of him, but he understood now. The flicker he'd felt in the magic he wielded at his core, the way it had just absorbed his attack . . . the thing was a magic eater.

  Its tongue wriggled inside his wound, draining him.

  Octavian grimaced. A chair leg wouldn't help him, and neither would a liquor bottle, broken or otherwise. Not against this thing.

  "I wouldn't waste the scotch," he muttered. He released its tongue and grabbed its throat instead. "I guess the question is, 'how hungry are you?'"

  Anger boiled up inside him and he let the magic rise with it. At the deepest part of him there existed a well of power, a core unlike his human heart. The magic he drew on came from both within and without. Spells allowed him to pull the threads of the universe, to unravel them and weave them anew, and any real sorcerer could do that. But he had not merely studied magic in Hell, he had accumulated it, transforming a spark within him into a blazing sun. Across infinite worlds there must be other mages with power like his, but not here . . . not in this world.

  "Have at it, then," he whispered as he reached down into his core and tapped into that magic. His entire body shook and he felt it rush through his veins, searing his bones. It ebbed and flowed, grew and diminished as the creature consumed every bit of magic he could provide, nursing as if at its mother's breast. But then it, too, began to shake and Octavian could not contain the power that erupted inside him.

  "Feast!" he cried.

  Its head exploded, spattering gray, stinking ichor on the floor and the table and the rose-hued, hand-painted lamp.

  Trembling on his knees, Octavian ripped the thing's tongue from the wound in his shoulder. Weak, his head pounding, he uncoiled it from his arm and slumped onto the floor, wishing the thing had not broken his chair. He blinked as he remembered the scotch and cast a hopeful glance about the room, only to discover the bottle of Talisker on its side, most of the golden liquid pooled on the floor around it.

  "What a waste," he said.

  Something shifted behind the chair. Octavian cursed at the sound, knowing instantly what it must mean. He turned and saw it — a second one, hollowed out eye sockets, probing tongue, thinner and more ancient-looking than the first.

  It made him feel tired.

  "Okay," he breathed, shaking off the weariness as he started to rise. "Just give me a second."

  A soft, chuffing laugh came from the deeper shadow just behind the thing — the shadow of a shadow.

  "Take your time, old man," said a familiar voice. "I got this."

  A sword cleaved the creature in two from behind, even as it turned to defend itself. Its halves slapped wetly to the floorboards as a short, stout figure stepped into the light, an ugly, gnarled little hobgoblin with a smile that revealed rows of jagged shark's teeth and an oversized orange sweater even uglier than he was.

  "Squire," Octavian said, smiling in spite of himself. "It took you long enough."

  "You . . ." Squire said, pointing the oversized sword at Octavian as he advanced across the room. "You spilled the fuckin' scotch."

  Another World

  Ardsley-on-Hudson, New York, USA

  Riverside Medical Center had been named more for its grand aspirations than for its achievements. The little hospital sat on a tree-lined hill overlooking the Hudson River, its parking lot only half full. It looked more like a generic industrial park than a place where anyone would go looking for help if they were sick.

  To die, though? Phoenix Cormier thought. It's as good a place as any.

  She sat on a bench forty yards from the front entrance and took a long drag on a Marlboro Light pinched between her fingers. She held on to the cigarette with a tight resentment, hating every puff, despising the comfort she drew from the nicotine and the smoke and the simple act of tapping the ash into the metal and concrete receptacle the hospital had provided here in the designated smoking area. Phoenix had smoked all through her years at Boston College — usually Dunhills, thinking they were somehow classier than other cancer-sticks — but she'd quit within a month of graduation and managed to stay off them for nearly three years . . . right up until the day she'd gotten the call telling her that her father was dying.

  Not yet sixty years old, Professor Joe Cormier had stage four pancreatic cancer, and tumors in his liver and along his spine. Two rounds of chemotherapy and radiation at the finest Manhattan hospitals had restored his ability to walk by taking the pressure off of his spine and put him into remission, but pancreatic cancer was a bitch — a fucking monster — and it was going to get him one way or the other.

  So here they were, Phoenix sneaking out for a smoke on a bench and her dad snug in a room in Riverside Medical Center because there was no longer any point in him going into Manhattan to someplace better. They could let him die just as comfortably here as at Mount Sinai, and the professor liked the people here. He had lived just down the road in Dobbs Ferry for seven years — ever since the Uprising — and had done his best to live like a local. Now he wanted to die like one.

  Phoenix puffed on the cigarette again. She felt the urge to flick it into the parking lot, to just get it away from her, but her body wouldn't let her. It was something to hold on to.

  In her pocket, her cell phone buzzed. Switching the cigarette to her left hand, she dug the phone out with her right and saw that it was her mother calling. Joe and Marie Cormier had been divorced for a very long time. His work had made him an absentee husband and an absentee father until Marie had told him not to bother coming home. Phoenix's father had taken the instruction to heart, buried himself even further in his work, and barely seen his daughter except when he came up for air long enough to feel guilty.

  That had changed when Phoenix turned eighteen, the summer before college. They'd made a last ditch attempt to repair their broken relationship, interrupted by the Uprising. The horror of that event might have driven them further apart, but instead it had given them a new start. The professor had been catatonic for most of the day, his psyche locked away in a place that no one living could have reached, but they had still endured the crisis together . . . and both of them carried guilt for some of the deaths that had occurred that day.

  "Shit," she whispered. The cigarette shook in her hand as she lowered her head and bit her lip, trying not to cry. The guilt had been easier to bear when she could share it. Now she would have nobody to lean on — nobody who could really understand.

  The call went to voicemail and she slipped the phone back into her pocket without waiting to listen to the message. Phoenix couldn't talk to her mother right now.

  A silver pickup truck made its way into the parking lot, disgorging a sad-eyed man who carried a small vase of flowers. Phoenix tried to imagine who he might be visiting — wife or girlfriend, mother or daughter, just a friend — but judging from the dullness of his eyes, she figured whoever the flowers were meant for didn't have a lot of time left in this world. Someone else who came to Riverside to die.

  The wind off the river kicked up and she shivered. It couldn't have been much past five o'clock but already the shadows were growing long. Normally she loved October, but not this year. This year all she could think of was the old druidic calendar, in which October heralded the beginning of the season of the dead. She shivered again and reached up with her free hand to turn up the faux-fur collar of her coat. Tight designer blue jeans, slim boots, a snug green turtleneck that cost triple what the jeans had, a dyed-blond slashed bob of a haircut that she thought matched her green eyes better than her natural brown — the look hadn't come cheap
, and she'd topped it with a battered brown jacket that she'd had since high school. Like the cigarettes, it gave her comfort.

  Her father had weeks to live. Days, if he couldn't kick the infection that had settled into his lungs. Once upon a time she had saved his life by killing someone else.

  She flinched, closing her eyes as she remembered the gun, remembered the feel of her finger on the trigger. Could the gunshot really have been as loud as it was in her memory? Maybe not, but Phoenix thought it should have been. Ending a human life — taking a life — should make enough noise that the whole world would take notice.

  In her case, the whole world had.

  "Phoenix?" a voice said.

  Brow knitted, she turned to see a nurse approaching her from the direction of the front entrance. The young black woman wore a thick blue zippered hoodie with Fordham lettered across her chest.

  Phoenix's heart clenched and she started to rise. "Is he . . ."

  The nurse shook her head. "No, no. I'm sorry. I just . . . I wanted to talk to you for a minute."

  Sinking back onto the bench, Phoenix took a drag on her cigarette, the familiar bile of resentment rising in the back of her throat.

  "Please just go away," she said.

  "But you are her, right? You're Phoenix Cormier?"

  Phoenix glared at her, lips already forming the words fuck off. But the pain in the nurse's coffee-brown eyes made her hold her tongue. Instead she flicked the ashes off of the tip of her cigarette and glanced at the river in the distance.

  The nurse sat down beside her. "I'm Ronni Snow. Look, I'm sorry to disturb you but I came out for a smoke and I recognized you and then I couldn't walk away."

  "You couldn't?" Phoenix asked.

  Ronni averted her gaze. "I guess I . . ." she began, and then shook her head. "Actually, no. I was going to say I could have, but that would be a lie."