by Jenn Stark
Death moved to the right to assault my arm from another angle, and I realized I’d been quiet for too long. “And the other part?” I asked.
“The energy of the interconnections,” she said. “Armaeus has long suspected Eshe of courting darkness, and her reactions to Viktor are important data points for him to gather. Simon and Michael are pure light incarnate, God love ’em, and so they provide a good balance for the twin pools of stank. Then there’s Kreios. Kreios is dark, technically, but he edges toward neutral, which makes him a good buffer.”
She slanted me a glance. “I bet Kreios was standing close to the Magician or between him and the others.”
I frowned, tilting my head as I tried to remember the scene. “He was,” I said. “What’s that mean?”
“Like I said, buffer. So Armaeus can figure out the interplay of the others. They can’t figure him out. I don’t mind him playing his games, but that doesn’t mean I want to be a part of them, you know?”
“But you’re neutral, right?”
“Can be.” Death shrugged. “I’m not great as a buffer, though. Emotion passes through me, but I don’t refract it back to mortals the way Kreios does. I don’t show them what they want, or what they think they want. I’m more like that drain you keep imagining in the floor of this room. Emotions flow through me, but nothing flows back.”
“I think I’ve dated guys like you before.”
She snorted, and for a while, there was nothing between us but the buzz of her gun. It was almost soothing, the same sick sort of way a dentist’s drill could be soothing, the overflow of adrenaline eventually whiting everything out. I looked down as Death shifted again and tried to make out the pattern that was emerging on my skin. “What design are you using? Because if it’s a Nazi swastika or something, I’m not sure I’m going to forgive you.”
“All the good designs, already taken,” Death said dryly. “But no, nothing so obvious. It’s got to twist fully around your arm, with no beginning and no end. That way you don’t simply go find Nikki, you can bring her back as well, home to wherever you’ve designated as sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary,” I said, testing the word out. “I like that.”
“Yeah, well—this band, it isn’t only for Nikki. You can connect to anyone and bring them back, anyone with whom you hold a sacred bond.”
The needle bit into me, and I winced. “Sacred bond is good. Like a secret handshake? Because there are a bunch of people I have secret handshakes with.”
Death said something unintelligible, then bent back to her task, slowly working her way around my arm. Her focus allowed my thoughts to wander back over her own words, and I frowned.
“Why are you telling me about Armaeus? The way he works?” There had to be a reason. Death was never chatty for the sake of putting people at ease. It was generally to put them on their guard.
“He has many threads he’s pulling in the weave of the world. Some he understands, some he only thinks he understands.”
“Spoken like someone who’s lived in the frat house longer than all the other brothers.”
She paused, then quirked me a rare smile. The sight of it was spectacularly beautiful, and heartbreaking as well. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen Death smile before. What would it be like to live one’s existence where so little caused you to smile?
“That’s not a bad way of looking at it,” she said, “But it’s not quite true. Michael outranks me. Though if he gets docked for time he spent off the Council, I have him beat. It’s not the time for my story, though. Armaeus came back changed from his experience in Hell. And not in a good way.”
“Well, he’s more of an asshat, if that’s what you mean. Am I missing something else?”
She nodded, and a sour pain settled in my stomach. “He turned to the darkest forms of magic he found there and plumbed their earthly equivalents,” she said. “Drawing in all that was powerful without concern for any damage to himself.”
I frowned. “I thought he did that to make him stronger. And he is stronger.”
“A stronger Magician is not always what is in the best interests of the Council,” Death said. “Remember what I told you. The Magician and I are neutral, Viktor dark, Kreios is dark edging to neutral, and Simon and Michael light. Eshe plays at neutral but she’s dark at heart.”
“And Armaeus is kind of dark too, now,” I finished the thought for her. “And that means?”
But my question suddenly morphed into a yelp of pain as Death’s needle plunged deep into my skin. She lashed out with a curse. Everything inside me lit up in agony, revolting at the touch of her gun.
“What in—stop it!” Death growled, and I got the impression she wasn’t speaking to me. I arched off the chair, and she rose from her stool, lifting her leg to brace me to the surface. “Jimmy!” she roared. Her voice wasn’t so much of a shout as a command that rolled through the room and out of it, bursting in all directions. It seemed only a second later that the door crashed open, and Jimmy raced into the room, wild-eyed.
“What!” He took in the scene in a blink and ignored his own question, striding up to the chair and laying heavy hands on my torso.
“This is going to hurt like a bitch, and I’m not going to get it all,” bit out Death. “This is what I’m talking about.”
“No!” I twisted in my seat, but Death didn’t let up on the pressure she was exerting on my arm. “I can’t let that power go yet—I can’t.”
“Oh, you’ve got it all wrong, sweetheart. Your magic will stay in you. Once you flip the switch, it doesn’t unflip. But this mess—stay still,” she ordered, and with another plunge of her needle, I gasped, my mind’s eye exploding to reveal a pool of raging darkness that surged round the secret vault of recent memories. Death and Jimmy tipped me, and as my temple pressed to the side of the chair, I squinted and stared at the floor beneath me, not three feet away.
There was a drain, all right, and it was huge. It stood nearly two feet across, the heavy reinforced seal slitted narrowly enough that the chair didn’t buckle it, but the slashes were long and cruel—and currently covered over with the black, seeping goo that drained out of my arm. The whispers of a thousand voices fell with the sluicing liquid, and I groaned, turned inside out.
“You don’t need the Magician to strengthen your magic, you stupid idiot,” Death said, though her voice was heavy with pain, not laced with the rebuke her words should contain. “He’ll have you believe it because you’re a puzzle he needs to solve. He may even believe it himself, but it’s not true. You came from other places, and you are born to live by other rules.”
I wanted to follow her words, I truly wanted to. But the voices clamoring in my head were taking on familiar cadences. The plaintive cry of Mirabel, the sneer of Sariah, the hiss of an eons-old dragon trapped behind the veil between the worlds.
“I don’t understand,” I gasped, and my sight began to dim at the edges, causing Death to curse in a language I’d never heard before.
“Enough,” she barked, and as if following her own directive, she pulled the gun free of my arm and twisted away from me, leaving Jimmy to keep me pinned to the table.
“I’m not going to be able to drain anymore. That’s on Armaeus. I suspect when you tell him that you’ve still got that shit in you, he’s not going to take it well.”
“What?” With Jimmy’s help, I straightened on the seat. “He knows I—he knows. He was there.”
“He doesn’t know. There was a broken binding spell,” Death said, turning around. She lifted my arm to inspect it, turning it over. “He probably told you the magic would go poof once you were done with it.”
I winced as she scraped a trail of black goo off my arm. I didn’t want to look at the floor. “He did,” I said. “But I needed the magic still—I had to make a display during the ceremony today, to convince the others that Soo’s choice was an honorable one…” I shook my head, regretting nothing. “I still needed it.”
“No, you didn’t,” Death
said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Your conjuring abilities aren’t due to the dark power you allowed into your field. They’re due to…something else.” She tapped my arm above the newly inked symbol.
“There’s more I’d like to do to that, but not today,” she said. “Now, you need to go to Armaeus, and tell him to fix what he did to you. Pronto, before we have even bigger problems on our hands.”
Chapter Thirty
I stepped into the cool foyer of the Luxor, trying not to look conspicuous. Night had fallen while I’d been under Death’s tattoo gun, and the lobby was alight with gold and glitz. I still wore the formal clothes from the ceremony, however, and no one gave me a second glance as I clicked across the floor. The elevator panel brought the doors immediately snicking open, and I stepped into the metal chamber with a sigh of relief.
The elevator shot skyward, but when the doors opened again, I stepped out not into Armaeus’s office, but onto a short foyer fronted by large French doors. The space beyond was a large, tiled veranda, partially covered but open to the cooling desert night. The music of the city drifted up even to these lofty heights: traffic, the buzz of electricity, and the endless clatter and chatter of people.
Armaeus stood at the edge of the veranda, leaning against the banister, his back to the city. If the setting for our meet up wasn’t telling enough, his fierce glare was.
“Death told you already. That I’m… That this happened.” I knew I should be angry—at Armaeus, at myself. But I couldn’t seem to harness my emotions. When I drew near the Magician, it was as if my brain was astral traveling again, and I saw him through a million different prisms, the whole somehow infinitely greater than the sum of its parts.
Armaeus scowled at me. “She told me that I exposed you to a dark power that was neither needed nor wise, and that she had not successfully rid you of all of it.
His gaze dropped to my arm, the bandage hidden beneath the sleeve of my shirt. “She said I was to watch you for any signs of residual damage,” he said flatly.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I added unnecessarily as he left his perch on the veranda and moved toward me. There was a bottle of wine opened on the short table in front of the conversationally arranged chaises, as well as a bottle of scotch. I went for the scotch.
Armaeus took the bottle out of my hand, a cut crystal glass appearing in one of his that he splashed the drink into before handing it back. Another glass flickered to life, and he plucked it out of the air.
“You’re doing that more,” I observed. “Using magic for little things.”
“It appears I need to shore up my skills.”
I frowned as he turned and looked at the expanse of the Strip. “So what’s going on? What did she tell you?”
“The same as she told you, I expect. I need to finish purging the darkness from you. In my attempt to learn more than you were willing to reveal, in my need to share the power source I tapped into in Hell, I have set in motion a series of events that can only end in calamity.”
“Calamity… Sounds bad.” Death had not been this forthcoming, and I could understand why. But instead of the fear, the panic I knew I should be feeling, I could only seem to conjure up…giddiness. Anticipation. Even hope.
What was wrong with me?
I tried to re-center. “Look, there can’t be that much damage to my system from my little dunk in Hell’s swimming pool,” I said. “She really drained a lot of it out.”
“There shouldn’t have been any.” The look Armaeus turned on me was tortured and angry at once. “The magic I poured into you was bound. Locked in stasis until you needed it, with an encryption as old as time.” He made a dismissive gesture with his hand, jostling his drink. “As impossible as it is for me to believe, Death said the binding spell I’d placed on that dark power had been broken. Only there is no magic I have encountered in this plane that could destroy what I have made.” He scowled at me. “And you would not have done so willingly.”
“That would be negative,” I said. “And if I’d realized how gross the extraction process was, I definitely wouldn’t have tried it without a tetanus shot first.”
“It should not have happened.” Armaeus set down his glass. “There is no magic on this earth stronger than mine.”
“So fix it,” I said. Seeing the Magician off his game was seriously giving me the heebs. “There’s not that much gunk left inside me. You gotta have a plunger in your conjuring bag somewhere, right?”
He shook his head, a man at war with himself. Once again, I waited for the anger, the outrage to surface. He’d infected me with the muck of Hell. He’d fed me poison to vaccinate against an even greater darkness… Only it hadn’t been needed!
Yet I didn’t feel angry. Or outraged. Or betrayed. Not by this.
I felt…empowered.
Before I could explore that little deviancy too closely, Armaeus spoke again.
“Would you consent to an…experiment, Miss Wilde?” he asked.
“Does it involve electrical shock?”
His lips twisted. “It doesn’t.” He moved his hand, and two pyramids appeared above his fingers, floating in the air. “It involves you taking these two items into your hands and holding them at an equal height.”
“Like, suspended?”
“Nothing so difficult.”
“Then I’m game.” I held my hands out, and the two pyramids dropped into each of my palms. I weighed them evenly, holding up my hands for Armaeus to see.
“This doesn’t seem so—”
The shock of magic sweeping over me was so great that I staggered back, my knees buckling as my hands exploded in a fiery conflagration, one white-hot with magic, the other black with death. I struggled to keep my right hand from shooting up in the air and my left from sinking down, but the strain was unbearable, the combatting forces of heat and cold leaching into my bones.
“I can’t!” I gasped, and no sooner had I spit the words than the pyramids winked out, and Armaeus was there to catch me before I completely fell to the veranda. Catch me—and cradle me close to him.
I didn’t care. I sagged into him, too tired to object. He pulled me to the long couch and sat with me half draped over his body, his lips on my hair, murmuring words that were a quiet incantation. With each line, my body felt lighter, my skin looser, the cells in my body expanding far beyond their normal size. It was almost like I was floating above Armaeus, and I sighed, willing to let him finish whatever it was he started.
“That wasn’t an experiment, was it?” I asked, and his chuckle rolled over me, still containing that curious note of sadness.
“It was, of a sort. I needed you to accept magic onto your person, and this seemed the most expedient way.”
“You know, ordinary people simply ask. They don’t make a game out of it.”
“No one has ever accused me of being ordinary.”
“And now?” I asked, as my feet also left the couch to hover slightly above his body. “What’s this part?”
“This, I’m afraid, is all you, Miss Wilde.”
I opened my eyes and turned my head, then grasped at Armaeus’s shirt. Both of us were floating at least three feet off the couch on his veranda, like Aladdin without the magic carpet. “Armaeus!” I hissed, pulling him closer. “This isn’t funny!”
His smile was lopsided. “It’s kind of funny.”
“It’s not remotely funny. Put us down!”
In response, our bodies dropped like lead, and we sprawled over the couch, our arms and legs entangled in each other’s. As the Magician watched me intently, I struggled upright on the couch.
“I wasn’t doing that, Armaeus. I can’t.”
“You couldn’t before,” he corrected me. “You can now. To take Death’s explanation, the evil you accepted into your body didn’t make you stronger, not in the conventional way. But the seal was broken immediately, long before you actually called on the strength of the darkness. To withstand its force all this time, you had to draw
upon your inner reserves. Reserves you didn’t even know you were tapping.”
“Because it was poisoning me.”
“Would have poisoned you,” Armaeus said. “Would have eaten you alive from the inside out. That’s what I subjected you to. That’s what you had to overcome.”
“You sound like a CrossFit instructor.”
“And you did overcome it—immediately. I never even noticed the battle you were undertaking before my own eyes. A battle you continued to fight. A strength you continued to build.”
“And now?”
“Now we can eradicate what was put within you, but your strength isn’t going away. What you have become isn’t going to change, not easily.” He sighed. “But let us at least do that much. If I…”
He leaned forward, and I nodded, surrendering myself to his embrace. I’d been skewered, burned, frozen, and exploded. Being kissed wasn’t going to break me.
Of course, this was no ordinary kiss.
Armaeus bent forward and smoothed my hair from my face, staring into my eyes. His own eyes seemed—more golden now, less dark, but before I could comment, he dropped his lips to mine.
The kiss started out gently enough, and I arched beneath him, happy for the touch of his mouth, so warm and vibrant against mine. I knew I needed this healing touch, and I told myself my reaction to Armaeus was only a reflection of that need. It was practical. Logical.
Only there was nothing logical about the pull Armaeus had on me. When he moved his lips and spoke the words of another incantation, I could feel true magic leap within me. I didn’t know if that magic was born of my Connected abilities or if it existed simply because of the need I had for Armaeus, a need that trumped reason. Trumped sanity.
Rationally, I understood I was simply a puzzle to the Magician, a mortal he could not command. My every experience on this earth with him was a give and take of power, requiring me to be constantly on my guard, constantly protecting my heart, my mind, my very soul from his never-ending thirst for knowledge.
