by Jenn Stark
He bristled. “I can see it, though. I can go with you.”
That wasn’t a bad idea, but Armaeus shot it down with a hard laugh. “Viktor used Detective Rooks’s number on those posters. He knows the detective is emotionally engaged. He will accept him. But in so doing, Detective Rooks will be put at risk of Viktor’s abilities.”
“Right.” I looked at Brody. “No. Armaeus will keep you posted. If something happens that needs to have a legit police action, you’ll be tapped in. If not, you’ll wait here.”
Brody frowned. “He’ll, ah…let me know? Mentally?”
I could tell the moment that Armaeus touched Brody’s mind. The detective sat up straight, blood draining out of his face. Armaeus’s touch couldn’t help but be intimate, it was the way his magic worked, but I’d never considered what that would feel like to a heterosexual male. Apparently, it wasn’t super comfortable. “Christ,” Brody muttered.
I patted him on the hand. “I’ll be right back.”
It took me going outside the bar area and into the casino section for Viktor to get the memo, but he caught up with me soon enough. I recognized the stamp of his men as they rounded the corner beside an enormous Wheel of Fortune kiosk. Very Eastern European, very thick. Very no-nonsense. I didn’t touch them, but I didn’t have to. They were low-level Connecteds. Enough to see and believe, but not enough to cause Viktor any trouble. The perfect psychic minions.
They marched me toward the elevators, and I kept my peace, though my mind yearned to connect with Armaeus again. The Magician, for his part, remained silent. He could be totally stoic when he wanted to be.
I knew without the Magician saying so that Armaeus wasn’t happy about my decision to visit Viktor directly, but he wasn’t unhappy either. I wasn’t on the Council, and that gave me the opportunity to do all the dirty work Armaeus couldn’t do, or wouldn’t do. Technically, Armaeus was mortal now, but that didn’t seem to be relaxing his iron hold on noninterference. At least not direct interference. Indirect, he was all good with.
The doors slammed behind us, trapping me with the Euro goons. We shot up with ear-popping speed to well beyond penthouse level, and the doors whooshed open again.
Right about then, I realized my mistake.
Viktor hadn’t been around anywhere near as long as Armaeus had, but he was a member of the Council, and he presumably wasn’t an idiot. He knew the skill sets in play. He might not be as strong as Armaeus, but he’d had time to study the man and how he worked. The Magician had limitations. Of course Viktor would exploit those limitations.
The Magician’s ability to read minds was always impaired by water. It was why I’d preferred to keep an ocean between us when I’d first begun working with the Council. Now, as the doors of the elevator opened onto a large penthouse domain, I blinked in surprise. The walls of the Emperor’s domain had been transformed into waterfalls.
“Sariah Pelter, it is so good of you to join me, at last.”
My attention snapped to the center of the room.
Viktor Dal was a tall man, but not as tall as I remembered. He stood maybe six feet, his body whipcord thin, his face lean and weathered. He’d ascended to the Council in his midfifties, and his hair was mostly blond, with a few fierce tufts of white proclaiming his age. It was cropped close to his head and contributed to his hawklike appearance along with his aquiline nose and strong chin. His eyes were a curious shade of gray, so pale that you wanted to look away, but you couldn’t. He wasn’t an ugly man, but he wasn’t attractive either. He was…compelling. I thought of Armaeus’s description of him: a mesmerist. Someone able to persuade others with a glance and a few words to do what he wanted. Looking at him here, I could believe it.
I didn’t see the point in wasting time. “I want those kids back, Viktor. Alive and as whole as they can be.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” His smile was gracious, almost affectionate, and I felt the weight of its warmth as a physical touch. I found myself shifting closer to the man, without any reason to do so, and steeled myself to remain where I was. “I was charmed by your attempts to recover them ten years ago and realized the threat you posed. Had you continued on your journey, you would have found them, and that would have been far too soon. Still,” he sniffed, “how quickly you were able to forget all those poor children once a challenge was put in your way.”
An unexpected wave of shame scored through me. Despite knowing this was Viktor’s modus operandi, I was startled at how rapidly I shifted from angry to embarrassed. Because, of course, he was right. I had abandoned those kids. Brody hadn’t, but I’d run and never looked back.
I’d abandoned them.
As if he could read my mind, Viktor continued his genteel condemnation. “Imagine my delight at finding Detective Rooks here as well. Now he I have to commend. He continued to look for the children, to maintain ties with the parents. Ties that grew ever more strained over time, of course, but he persevered as long as he was able.”
I hadn’t known about the parents, Brody had never told me. Still, I could see him doing something like that. All those years. All those birthdays come and gone.
While I had done everything I could to forget.
I tried to regain control of the conversation. “You killed my mother.”
“Oh please, Sariah. We both know she wasn’t really your mother. Surely the detective ran to you with that news the first time he saw you again. He took that death harder than most, felt responsible. And he was. Had he kept Sheila Pelter out of the investigation, she never would have died. Not by any direct attack anyway. Eventually, the alcohol and prescription drugs she was taking would have done her in, but she wouldn’t have been bludgeoned to death and dumped in a river.”
His gaze flickered over me as I blanched.
“Oh my. He didn’t tell you that either? That must be challenging. Knowing that all this information is out there and yet being unable to do anything about it…and knowing that the information you require is being willfully withheld from you. Makes it difficult for you to do your job, I should think.”
I folded my arms, his censure finally reaching the tipping point where it couldn’t hurt me anymore. He seemed to recognize that as well and flashed me another smile. “You must be wondering why I’ve brought you here. Not to torment you with the children you let slip through your fingers, I assure you. As enjoyable as that is for me.”
“Are they dead?”
“Of course not. There would be nothing of value I could offer you if they were dead. And I want to be of value to you, Sar—oh, but it’s Sara now, isn’t it? I may call you Sara, can’t I? It’s such a well-suited name to you.”
Once again, I found myself slipping into the cadence of his words. They created a sort of walled space around me, one filled with comfort and security, keeping everything that was dark and awful out…
I shook my head, forcing myself to stay focused. “I don’t care what you call me. What’s your price to release the children?”
“It’s a tricky subject, that. You see, I can’t release them myself. I can see them, ensure their safety, their growth. But I can’t quite get at them. It was something I didn’t realize, ten years ago, but I was too hasty in my preparations. I didn’t account for the nuances of where I was placing them.”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Forgive me.” He seemed to come back to himself. I had no idea if he was acting or not, but if he was, he was doing a good job of it. “They are quite safe. But also quite trapped.”
He turned to the side, and the panels of the wall split apart to reveal a large-screen TV. The image that immediately came to light brought me up short. Six teens at what looked to be some sort of boarding school, interacting with other students, each other, all of them laughing and carefree. “They believe they survived a terrible accident while on a class trip together when they were children,” he explained glibly. “They were all from the same general area, so their accents and mental touch
points were quite similar, which made the frame easier to accept. Their parents were killed and the state placed them in this school. Distant relatives visited for a while but then flowed away. Now, they have only each other.”
I snapped my gaze to him. “That’s the load of crap you fed them?”
“We all tell ourselves stories, Sara.” His smile remained gracious, but he regarded me with shrewd focus. “Think of the stories you willfully believed your whole life.”
Another queasy burst of shame slid through me as Viktor kept talking.
“This story, however, served its purpose. It kept their minds whole and healthy until the anomalies of their new existence became accepted fact. It was a far more humane approach than letting them believe they were abducted from loving homes and thrust into an alternate universe guarded by demons.”
Oh, for the love of... “Demons.”
Viktor nodded. “Six of the most powerful entities that ever walked this earth. They were banished when Atlantis fell.”
“What?” I blinked at him. “Atlantis?”
He waved his hand. “Yes, I’m aware that you’ve met Llyr. These creatures are nowhere near his level, but they are powerful in their own right. Should they return to this plane, they would infuse the world with magic once more, down to its very core.” His smile flashed. “It will be glorious. You will see.”
“Right. Because everyone associates demons with good times.” I jabbed my finger at the screen images of the children. “Explain to me again why you can’t get them out. You put them there. It shouldn’t matter who you signed up to guard them.”
Viktor sighed, looking a touch abashed, which I immediately distrusted.
“To understand that, you must understand what I was attempting to accomplish ten years ago.” He turned from the screen and looked out one of the windows lining the space, the thin wall of water spilling in front of it turning the skyline of Vegas into a wavy abstraction. “Magic in the world may currently be under attack from groups like SANCTUS, but that is not the greatest threat we face. The Council has ever been consumed with the idea of balance. But if there is no magic, then balance becomes a pointless endeavor.”
I shifted uneasily. I’d made this argument to Armaeus myself. “I thought magic was a self-sustaining force.”
“It is, or it can be. But the Council was not always so diligent about its commitment to the cause of noninterference. There have been times—many times—when it has acted forcefully to remove magic that it considers too extreme to be balanced.”
I thought about Llyr. He hadn’t been ejected once from the earth, according to Armaeus, but at least twice. “And that matters why?”
“Attrition. Extremes promote growth. Pushing all magic toward some homogenous center promotes atrophy. Eventually, magical properties weaken to the point that they can’t transmute into different forms. When an ocean dries to a pond, it has a much harder time reaching the sky to return to ice crystals that then can become rain.”
He gestured to the world outside. “And, too, population explosion has played a role. Magical abilities are not necessarily inherited, but they can be. When one psychically skilled forebear has a child, that inheritance is undiluted. When six or seven children are born, who then go on to have six or seven children, it becomes a hit-or-miss proposition.”
“Nobody has that many children anymore. Especially if they’re psychic.”
“Not anymore,” he conceded. “But the damage has long since been done. Add to that the forced removal of magical creatures deemed too strong for this world to balance, and the gradual weaning away of Connecteds from natural sources of magic, and you create a state in which a war on magic is a lopsided war indeed.”
“Don’t tell me those children were part of your defense against a war on magic, Viktor. I’m not buying that.”
“They were…an experiment, which I neither regret nor have any need to defend. There is a time and a place for balance, and a time and a place for active effort. I grew weary of waiting for the time for the latter to arrive. We must move forward if we are to create a new world order. And the time for movement is now.”
“Sounds like someone got a little too turned on during his stint with the Nazis.”
His lips twisted. “You speak about things you know nothing of. There will always be unbalanced people in the world who are willing to do the things that no one else can fathom. Most of the time, nearly all of the time, their insanity is also their infamy. Hitler was no different. But you also cannot discount the power of a truly focused mind. Look at what one insignificant sociopath was able to do, almost exclusively by the force of his sheer will. Look at what is happening around you with insurgencies throughout the world, militant leaders who command tens of thousands to their cause. The human mind is the most fascinating psychic weapon at our disposal, and all too often it takes a maniac to show us its true potential.”
“Do you have any idea how much of a nutball you sound like right now?”
“And yet, you’re still listening.” He leaned toward me slightly, and I found I didn’t want to lean back. There was something about Viktor’s crazy that truly was compelling, as loathsome as I might find it. “Hitler’s regime was riddled with wrong thinking, but in one particular well-documented area, he had something right. There were forces beyond the understanding of man that existed in this world, forces that he very much wanted to control. The accumulation of occult artifacts and items of magical power was not just some haphazard game to him, an adjunct to his accumulation of precious art. He had a purpose and a plan for those items.”
I thought of all the artifacts buried underneath Neuschwanstein. How many more cubbyholes of the arcane remained around Europe? “And, what? You were part of that purpose?”
“No.” Viktor’s grimace was regretful. “I’d ascended to the Council by the time Hitler truly came to prominence. I could only watch as he moved directly toward his goals.”
Listening to Viktor’s words, I understood more clearly why Armaeus had agreed to accept him onto the Council. His abilities had been cresting and apparently, the Council needed an Emperor. But perhaps more importantly, the Allies needed Viktor on the sidelines, not in the thick of the war…and working for the wrong side. I kept my face carefully blank.
“Okay, Viktor, I’ll bite. Why did you take those children ten years ago and stick them God knows where? Why did you harm innocent lives, destroy families?” I hardened my gaze. “And how many more children did you take?”
He smiled and waved again at the computer screen. It flickered and went black. No, not quite black. There were images there, negative reflections against the darkness of the screen. “What the hell is that?”
“Those are the reasons why I took the children—and there were six, and only six. I took them from the heartland of America, from small towns and cities. The requirements were exact. They had to be linked geographically, they had to be educated, or what passes as educated in this world. But not too educated, not yet. They had to be healthy and well nourished. They had to be pure of heart.” He twisted his lips. “Even six- and seven-year-olds were challenging in this last regard, I can assure you.”
“And in exchange you got…” The answer was obvious, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “Those guys?” I gestured to the screen. “Six demons of destruction?”
“You have a child’s view of psychic abilities.” The words were a sharp rebuke, but Viktor never changed his tone. “There is no ultimate destruction where there is magic. There is only creation. What one man considers to be darkness and loss, another sees merely transformation.”
“Uh-huh. And yet I’m sensing a distinct lack of goodness and light with those guys.” I peered at the screen, sensing the wave of derision that rolled back toward me. Derision and age and fury. I stepped back. The creatures knew they were being watched.
“Because that is how the perspective of this world sees them, and, to be fair, the sentiments they most deeply espouse would
curl the toes of any Sunday school teacher. They house every vice, you could say. Every sin.”
I flicked my gaze to him. “Don’t bullshit me, Viktor. You said there are six demons, not seven. No one ever referred to the six deadly sins. I would’ve heard of that.”
He smiled. “Not at all. But they do figure into that same conversation. In addition to describing what became known as the seven deadly sins, Solomon mentioned another six entities, but he gave no name to them.” He gestured to the screen. “Those six hold the power of pure potential for the human spirit, untrammeled by the need for our petty morality or concern for goodwill.”
“They’re amoral.”
“They were when they were blasted from the earth, yes. They have spent the intervening millennia studying our world, but there remained one missing piece for them, one thing that no remote study could replicate. Before they could return, they required the souls of six children.”
“Their souls?” The word came out on a screech. “You mean to tell me you delivered these kids’ souls for demons to pick apart?”
“For the opportunity to have magic reenter the world, reenergize the planet? For the opportunity to refill the well that we have drained with our wars and creeds and dogma?” He scoffed. “I would have gladly traded six hundred thousand. Six million souls. And if you had seen what I have seen, you would too.”
“I want them back.”
“I know.” He smirked. “I want that too.” He waved at the screen. “You’ll notice, those demons remain on the other side of the veil. They did not kill the children, as I expected, but created the elaborate shell in which they live, drawing upon my abilities to keep the mortals’ minds whole and sane. The demons also did not come through, as they promised they would. Instead, they’ve bonded with the children.”
“Bonded.” My lip curled. “What the hell does that mean?”
“For our purposes, it means that they will not leave without them, nor will they remain behind without them.” His gaze shifted to me. “You want the children back, then go get them. But in doing so, you will also bring six demons into the world. It’s the only way.”
