Silence in the Flames (The Traitor's Shadow Book 1)

by Ryan Talbot

  “But you’re going back?”

  I nodded. “Nightmare or not, I owe you for keeping Bat-Man from ripping my face off.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” she said.

  “Never said you did,” I snapped. “But you still fucking did it.”

  A flicker of anger flared across her face, and she took a breath before speaking. “They left at night, with the Demons. When they came back, if they came back, they had dead eyes.”

  “Who?” I asked confusedly.

  “The Dolls,” she said. “The girls they chose to be Dolls.”

  “What did they do to them?”

  Rachel fell silent and she shook her head, whispering to herself. I shook my head as I stared at her back. She was losing her mind. Fucking Thorne was breaking her.

  “Tell me,” I prompted.

  “Why?” She snapped, glaring at me. “So you can tell your demon friends? So you can laugh?”

  “Yeah,” I snorted. “Because that’s what we do. Just sit around and poke fun at you. Don’t be dense.”

  “You’re a…” she searched for the right word, her hands gesturing in the air.

  “Dick?” I suggested. “Asshole? Drunk?” I shrugged. “Words are words, Rachel. I want to know because it can be the difference between a shit-ton of pain, or success. I don’t give a fuck that it’s your past; I just need to know for my present.”

  “They were brought to the top floor at night,” she said. “When they came back they had empty eyes. Vacant doll’s eyes. The next night, they moved them to the second floor and we never saw them again.”

  “They weren’t themselves ever again,” I sighed. “They were like husks?”

  “Exactly,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “Because our buddy Thorne’s been talking to your Angel Mothers.” I lit a cigarette. “All of his little Skull-Kids are just…”

  “What?”

  “I was wrong,” I said.

  “You say that like it’s rare,” she frowned at me.

  “First, fuck you,” I flipped her off. “And second, I think I know where the boys are going.”

  “I was only eleven when…” she trailed off. “He can’t have been planning this for seventeen years.”

  “Fifteen years is an eye-blink,” I said. “He’s been planning this far longer than that.”

  “For what?”

  “To end everything? To get his rocks off?” I shrugged. “Who knows? I don’t care why; I just want to kill him.”

  “Why would they work together?” Rachel asked.

  “Again,” I shrugged. “No idea. We can ask while we kill them.”

  30

  The fireball streaked across the dark sky like the fist of a vengeful god. I didn’t pause or wait for movement, I spoke a Word of agony and hurled it through the wreckage at the front of the building. The first Pig to cross the threshold dropped to his knees squealing and clawing at his face. I grinned from my perch on a hilltop fifty yards away. Rachel prayed next to me. Her rich voice rattled through the Lord’s Prayer and a Hail Mary in the time it took me to register that she’d begun to pray.

  The rest of the Pigs decided that doors were a bad idea and charged straight through the brick facade of the building. I pulled my pistol, just in case they got too close. I knelt and incanted a ward against hostile magic. I had no clue what these pricks had up their sleeve. Not to mention who or what was on the top floor of the building was an unknown. It didn’t hurt to take precautions. Rachel, on the other hand, wasn’t waiting. Her voice rose and fell, intoning the prayers with a passion I’d never heard before. For a moment, I envied her faith. It was only a moment. After that, I regained my senses. Only a fool would throw his fate into the hands of a god. I was only a contract employee, let’s not get confused here.

  The Pigs charged across the field, I leveled my pistol, my sights aligned on the chest of the bastard in the center of the formation. He’d had the bad luck to run just slightly faster than his pals. My finger pumped the trigger and he dropped, half of his face sloughing off. I’d taken the time to enchant the remaining rounds in my magazine. Unfortunately, Rachel’s dream version of my pistol only came with two magazines. I had to make them count.

  The dead Pig’s buddies slowed, their resolve shaken. A shriek erupted from the front of the building and they poured the speed on again. The Woman. She was herding them toward us; they were more afraid of her than me. That wasn’t good. Rachel’s prayers shifted gears, her words blurred between Hebrew and Aramaic. She called on her god in the native tongues of the earliest prayers. Lightning lit the night sky anew, and the Pigs screamed again as the vengeance of Heaven tore them to pieces. I took a big step away from Rachel, farther into my wards. One mistake on her part and I was going to be in the sort of pain one doesn’t wake up from.

  The Woman drew the darkness around herself and took to the air. Wings of the darkest shadows surrounded her, and from the shadows horrific mouths appeared screaming foul curses and tearing at the air with their fangs. In my Sight, sorcerous sigils covered her body from head to toe, each one tearing a hole in the fabric of reality. She was wearing the essence of the Shadow Road as a cloak. She shifted through the four mortal dimensions with ease, and being made of dimensional stuff, the fangs of her construct would rend flesh like a celestial blade. I kicked around the loose dirt of the hilltop like a madman. It took me a second, but I found a slender, flinty rock, its side sharpened to a knife edge. Ripping it across my palm, I sliced my right palm open.

  “Rachel!” I shouted, motioning for her to get close to me.

  She stared at my hand mutely for a second, then stepped up beside me. I walked a slow circle counter-clockwise, trailing blood into the dirt. Once we were closed in by the circle of blood, I spoke a Word of warding, and incanted a frantic series of elemental binding spells. The Woman in White, though now in shadow, hit my ward like a creature possessed, tearing at it with the fury of a caged animal. I grinned as I traced a glyph on my forehead with the same blood that formed the wards.

  As the wards began to collapse, and the Woman screamed in furious joy, I spoke a Word of correspondence. I shoved my forehead against Rachel’s and pulled her tightly against me. My left hand knotted itself in her hair, my right hand pinned her hips against mine. With a vicious grin, I stepped backward into the Woman

  .

  31

  The ever-shifting monochromatic glow of the Road surrounded us, pulsing with the echoes of the horrific magic of the Woman. Locked in a lover’s embrace, Rachel and I hurled through the tangent that the Woman’s travel had created. Her green eyes moved erratically, and her lips parted with her hurried breathing. She shivered against me and I pulled her closer to allay her fear. The nightmare that surrounded us was nearly as bad as the nightmare that surrounded it. I reminded myself that to Rachel, it wasn’t a nightmare, but a memory. Her breath came faster and faster as we whirled through the gray void, feral, demonic faces snapping at us with jagged fangs and terrible ferocity. My grin grew wider, more bestial, the longer we rode the waves of darkness, and my body was responding in ways that were hardly appropriate.

  The gray void gave way to the blackness of the deep shadows of the hospital. The storm summoned by Rachel’s prayers roared overhead, a single resounding thunder clap shaking us to alertness. I released her, and for a moment, we stood forehead to forehead sharing a single breath. Lightning slammed to earth just outside the entryway, crackling loudly and charging the air. The anger of the Almighty carried to earth by his fiery messenger.

  “For-forgive me,” Rachel stammered out.

  “Forgiven,” I coughed awkwardly into my hand.

  “I wasn’t speaking to you!” She snapped, stepping back and crossing herself.

  “Right,” I nodded. “Can’t let Dad catch you with a boy from the wrong side of the tracks.” I shook my head dismissively. “Not like I just fucking saved you or anything.”

  “We’re here for the children,” she snapped
. “Let’s just get them and be done with this!”

  “Correction,” I snapped back. “You’re here for the children. I’m here to get back to my fucking life.”

  A shriek sounded from outside, cutting through the fury of the storm. The Woman tore at the massive column of blood-red light that entrapped her on the hillside where we’d jumped through her. Her claws and shadow wings fed the magic that trapped her, sapping her strength to fuel the prison in a continuous feedback loop. I grinned and lifted a finger in salute. She shrieked again and her body toppled lifelessly to the ground.

  “That’s not good,” I said as the column of light collapsed in on itself. “Oh, that is not good.”

  “What?” Rachel asked, looking over my shoulder.

  “Where’d she go?” I looked around outside, wracking my brain for possible escape routes.

  “Did she go the way we came?” Rachel stepped backward, dropping into a fighting stance.

  “No,” I shook my head. “We used her as a gateway, I bound her to the circle with a correspondence loop. The transition would have torn her limb from limb.”

  “Why?”

  “Her body would fold into itself, turning inside out before collapsing into itself like a black hole.” I shuddered. “I used the connection between her and the fabric of the Road itself as a correspondence for you, me and my blood. She would have to travel through herself. And you can’t do that.”

  “What killed her, then?” Rachel turned toward the stairway.

  “Nothing I did,” I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “We better hurry,” Rachel took the steps two at a time.

  I raced up the stairs after her. As we rounded the landing and turned the corner onto the next flight of stairs, high pitched chanting began. Rachel began to pray as she heard the voices rise and fall. I sped up, trying for all I was worth to catch her. Whatever was up there, whatever twisted thing was waiting for us, couldn’t kill her before I got out. My trailing foot cleared the last step a second behind Rachel, and I had to snatch the railing to stop myself before I slammed into her. She stood stock still at the top of the stairs, her chest rising and falling like pistons in an overworked engine.

  “What?” I asked. The hallway was empty. The only light came from a door at the far end of the building.

  “He’s here,” she said quietly.

  “Who?”

  “The Toymaker,” she said.

  “You fucking people and your names…” I grumbled. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the deal with this prick?”

  “He makes the Dolls,” she said. “He breaks the girls and makes them into Dolls.”

  “When you say ‘breaks’…” I cringed.

  “Do I need to spell it out for you?” Her voice broke as she snapped at me.

  “No,” my lip curled in disgust. “You don’t.”

  “They’re Calling another one,” she said. “That’s the sound they make when they Call.”

  “Call what?”

  “Demons,” she said. “They’re summoning another demon.”

  “Lovely,” I groaned.

  32

  I followed Rachel down the hall, our footsteps sounding for all the world like thunder in the long, empty corridor. I dropped the magazine from my pistol and traded it for the full mag in my belt. I tried to imagine the layout of the room at the end of the hall. From the design of the building, I guessed it was an open room, probably twenty-five feet square. With a single point of entry, we were targets the second we opened the door. A Word could tear down the wall in a matter of seconds, giving us both surprise and potentially neutralizing a few of the bastards before we exposed ourselves to them. The chanting began again.

  “Those are kids, aren’t they?” I asked.

  Rachel nodded as she brushed at her thighs and gripped her crucifix. She started a fresh series of prayers. I swore under my breath. We were out of options; with the kids in the room, I couldn’t risk any of my usual tactics. Rachel’s hand closed on the door knob and I realized I was holding my breath.

  I was knocked off my feet by the blast, the shards of sheet rock and shattered studs ripped at my face. I bounced twice, once off of the wall, then ricocheted off of the floor, before sliding to rest with my head hanging over the top step. I groaned as I rolled to my side. I held my pistol just off my chest, canted slight to the side to give the slide clearance if I fired. The Woman in White stood silhouetted in the shattered hole that had once held a door. She wore a new face, this one more hideous than the last. Buttons had been sewn over her eyelids, and staples held the torn skin to either side of her plump, thick lips together in a twisted parody of a smile. My hand shook as I lifted my pistol.

  “Anastasia!” Rachel screamed her name like a challenge.

  “Little Leah,” Anastasia laughed. Her voice cut through the ringing in my ears like a razor through flesh. The hard edge of her voice lilted like an old woman and the cackle that followed was infinitely more terrible. “My pretty little Leah. You’ve come home!”

  “I bring the righteousness of the Lord with me!” Rachel lifted her crucifix and her voice became airy, ethereal.

  I groaned and rolled over, covering my face. A Hymn. Rachel’s voice rang out pure in the vileness of the hospital, the clear note of her benediction driving back the darkness. Unfortunately, I was part and parcel of that darkness, at least by her definition. I couldn’t risk warding myself. Anything that might weaken her wasn’t going to help us now.

  Anastasia threw up her hands and turned her face away from Rachel. She didn’t retreat, nor falter at all. My heart sank.

  “Covenants were made, Leah,” Anastasia croaked. “Binding covenants.” She tore the front of her white dress violently, baring her desiccated left breast. A black mark, deeper than any darkness I had ever seen or imagined, stood out in stark relief to the pale, corpse-like skin of her chest. “You can’t harm me, precious one.” She reached out for Rachel.

  The Word left my lips before I registered it was me speaking, and my pistol sang a song all its own. The bullet struck Anastasia low in the throat, and the Word that followed it blew her off of her feet. I rolled to my knees and staggered to my feet, scrambling for balance as I kept my pistol leveled down the hall.

  “Rachel,” I yelled. “Fall back!”

  Anastasia lifted herself off the floor Lon Chaney style, her torn and jagged finger nails leading the way toward Rachel’s face. Rachel gripped her crucifix and dropped to her knees as I ripped off three more shots. Anastasia’s face ruptured over her left eye and she tumbled backward, gripping her forehead.

  “Master,” I whispered as I closed in on Rachel. “Any fucking time you want to jump in here…”

  “Enough!” Anastasia shrieked. “Mind your own battles, Son of Samael! This one is mine by right!”

  “Beckett!” Rachel clawed at me, trying to drag down my arm, slapping at my mouth. “Don’t!”

  Close enough to feel the wind of her words, I screamed one of my own. My Word of cleansing hit Anastasia like a sledgehammer. Her body, maimed as it was, and full of demonic infection, raged against my magic. She grabbed at her mutilated face, trying for all she was worth to hold in the soul my magic was forcing out of her. At point blank range, I emptied the magazine into her head. Her face sloughed off as her brains ripped through the back of her skull. As her body collapsed, the dead skin mask that was Anastasia fell away, leaving behind a beautiful blond child. A dead beautiful blond girl, her blood pooling around her angelic face.

  “No,” Rachel reached out for the child. “No, no, no…”

  I stepped back and ran my hand over my mouth, as if I could stop the past, wipe away my actions.

  “Jesus,” Rachel whispered as she smoothed the long, blond hair away from the girl’s face and kissed her closed eyes softly. “Bless and carry her from this nightmare, keep safe her soul, and bear her aloft in your divine peace.”

  I stepped back, my eyes seeking movement, seeking anything to kill. Anything to ta
ke away the revulsion I felt for myself. I knew better. I fucking knew. Nothing was ever what it seemed. If it died easily, it would be back for seconds. If it died hard, there was more pain waiting for you on the other side of its grave. This was a new low.

  “I didn’t know…I…I couldn’t,” I stammered.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Rachel carefully laid the girl down. “Anastasia did this, Beckett. She made this girl into that monster.”

  Kneeling, Rachel held the girl’s head between two gentle hands. She leaned forward and kissed her forehead and whispered a prayer. The girl’s body ignited in golden flame ran through with silver angelic script. Rachel stood, wiping the blood from her lips and her hard eyes belied the strength hidden behind her tear streaked face.

  “If you want forgiveness,” she said. “Kneel here and beg the Almighty for it.” She looked back at me, her eyes a study in fury. “If you want revenge,” she growled. “Follow me.”

  33

  Rachel walked through the doorway with her head high, a halo of energy surrounding her. I was significantly more cautious. The Breath of YHWH wove intricate patterns in the aether around her. The rage that boiled within her, gave her purpose, strength. It was at once breathtaking to see her back to herself, and sobering. The memory of something had crushed her so deeply into herself that she had forgotten what she was, who she represented. And that something was in this room.

  I stepped out from Rachel’s shadow. As I’d predicted, the room was massive; it was the size of a small movie theater. In the center of the room, seven red pillars stood in a heptagram, each one of the massive things was covered in glyphs, sigils, and runes. Containment spells in a hundred dead languages, and all of them meant to bind an evil beyond imagining. A small girl knelt next to each of the pillars, outside the containment field, but part of it. In front of each child, a bowl and a knife sat inside an intricate chalk outlined heptagon. I didn’t need to see any more.