“Yes, sir.”
“That’s the spirit. Hand me that flashlight, would you?”
One of the men unclipped the light from his gun and handed it over. Sobell took a deep breath and turned the corner.
The light dimmed immediately, the hot white glare dropping to a feeble orange glow. There’s confirmation for you, if the smell didn’t do it. He stared at the wall to his right until his eyes began to adjust. The only sounds came from his breathing and the quiet rustle of his clothes when he shifted his weight. Nevertheless, he felt a presence in the gloom, felt the will of a conscious something concentrated on him as if it were a weight trying to crush him to pulp.
When his eyes had adjusted enough to see the cracks between the cinder blocks in the wall, he turned. This time, he kept his eyes on the floor ahead of him as he moved forward. The sense of presence screamed at him, and at the edges of his vision, he saw the unearthly darkness shrouding the end of the hall.
Cold sweat popped from his skin, wet beads down the length of his spine, and it took an intense effort of will to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He passed a hall that led off to the right, the place where—if his intelligence was to be believed—that ridiculous jawbone was kept. He stifled the urge to run down that hall, to get away from that crushing weight.
Three steps more and he stopped at a line of symbols across the floor. His light had dimmed to a tiny red worm of filament, as though the battery had nearly run down, and the faint illumination it emitted ended abruptly at the other side of the line. Hatred, palpable as pummeling fists, surged from the darkness and boiled the air around him. His stomach churned, and terror coursed through his body—and he had the very clear sense that the hate wasn’t even directed at him.
Dear God. Genevieve had told the truth, he’d known that all along, but he doubted she knew exactly what was down here. Even garden-variety demons were nothing to fuck around with, but this . . . Whoever had conjured this thing up must have been profoundly lucky, and this thing must have been having an unusually stupid day.
He summoned his courage. “Bit cramped, innit?”
Images assailed his mind. A man’s head in a vise, eyes bulging and mouth open in a silent scream as somebody turned the crank. A bat with its wings systematically shattered by tiny hammers. Something he caught only a glimpse of but looked like a grown man folded up and jammed into a very small metal box. Before the image was gone, he saw splinters of smashed bone protruding from nearly every bit of exposed flesh. Others crowded in, most gone too fast to register.
“Ah, nonverbal. Rather old school, as they say, but we can work with that.” A complete bluff, that, but it was never good to be seen weak or uninformed. Although, the thing could plant images in his mind. Did that mean it could also pull things out? Better not to dwell on that. Better just to get what he needed and get out.
An image of a tattooed skinhead, lips sewn shut with black thread, giving him the finger.
“Subtle. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you want out of this charming little cell? I mean, it looks cozy and all, but it does seem like it must get awfully dull.”
Nothing. No images or sounds, just blackness ahead of him. Waiting. He found himself wondering just how good the wards were.
“As it happens, I need some information. You need out of this hole so you can presumably wreak whatever unspeakable vengeance you’ve been plotting in there all this time.”
Another flurry of horrible images battered his mind, grotesque images that made the man stuffed in the box look like a mural on a nursery wall. They were permutations of the demon’s unspeakable vengeance, he was sure. Sour acid rose to the back of his throat. Fuck, don’t vomit here, do not vomit. His mouth flooded with saliva, and he swallowed once, then twice. Then the images were gone. He had a grim feeling that the residue they left behind would stay with him for a long time, probably resurfacing at midnight every night for the next, oh, rest of his life or so.
“Okay, then. In exchange for getting you out of here, I need two things.”
A series of barter images rose to mind. A man that looked like a seventeenth-century farmer trading a chicken for a rake. A woman trading a piece of jewelry for a rug. Two dirty, naked children trading marbles. Each image, he noticed, had the participants trading one thing for one other thing.
Fucking demons. Nowhere to go, no way out, and it was determined to stick to some bizarre set of arbitrary rules it had established for itself. He’d never understood it. Demons were creatures of almost pure appetite, and even the oldest and most crafty seemed hard-pressed to resist sating immediate urges in favor of longer-term objectives, but there were strange exceptions to that general rule. It seemed most had an OCD streak, and certain kinds of rules were inviolable, at least as far as Sobell could tell. This one would surely wait if he wouldn’t deal. Its patience may not have been limitless, but as far as Sobell knew, its time was. Eventually, the wards would decay just enough, or an earthquake would crack them, or something, and if its terms weren’t met, the demon would wait until then, its anger growing fiercer and hotter by the minute.
Still, this wasn’t his first demon-wrangling rodeo. He’d come prepared.
“First, I let you out. In exchange for that, you don’t hurt me or my men.” A stupid thing to have to barter for, but probably necessary. Demons could be unbelievably petty about payment, and this one was likely furious and frustrated beyond measure, itching to wreak hideous violence on the first victims it could find.
A handful of pebbles. The seven of spades. A cluster of seven grapes. The subtext was clear: That’s not one thing, that’s seven.
Sobell sighed. “Fine. You don’t hurt me. What you do aside from that is your business.”
A handshake, a letter signed in blood.
“Done,” Sobell said. “Second, you may have noticed that I am not a healthy man.”
A sense of vast dark amusement surrounded him, and his mind swam with images of a horrid demonic feast, chunks being torn off a living body and devoured by laughing monstrosities. The body, he was not surprised to note, was his own.
“Yes, well. The dark arts are such a wear and tear on one’s soul, and, yes, one day I’ll have to deal with that problem, too. But I’m afraid today’s issue is merely this vessel of flesh that carts around your future dinner.”
Merlin. Methuselah. A thousand-year-old man crumbling to dust, parts breaking off as he took each step toward some invisible goal. And, as if the demon might actually have some kind of sense of humor, a fossil embedded in shale—a skull of some kind, and part of a rib cage.
“Not that old, sadly, though I’m working on it.” Sobell licked at dry lips and wished for a glass of water. “I am in a hell of a bind, though. My body dies, and you bastards get my soul. I use much more magic to extend my life, and you bastards get my soul before I even get to vacate the premises. So, I need you to give me another, say, hundred years or so.”
A man with his pockets turned inside out, a sheepish look on his face.
“You can’t? What the hell good are you?”
At first, there was no response. No images at all, though that oppressive sense of hate seemed to gather its focus uncomfortably close to Sobell. Then, a new set of images: A little girl, whispering something into a little boy’s ear. High school kids passing notes in class. A phone book. A set of encyclopedias, for God’s sake.
Information. It can give me information. Sobell’s spirits sank further. What question could he even ask? What information was any good to him now, other than a straight answer on what to do to extend his life?
Ah. There was an obvious answer. A miserable, terrible, degrading obvious answer, dragged up from his past and fraught with every kind of risk he could think of.
“Forcas,” he whispered, unable to bring himself to speak the name more loudly.
A new image, that of a wolf, sna
rling, muzzle stained with blood. It lunged at another, smaller wolf and tore out its throat, spraying red over snow.
Great. Apparently they’re not friends. “How do you think I feel about it? I’m the guy who fucked it out of a hundred years it never wanted to give me. How I’m going to fuck it out of another hundred is quite beyond me right now.” He wouldn’t, he knew. There would be a full bargain this time. A bargain, and amends. Probably some kind of gruesome payment with interest.
What choice did he have?
“Can you tell me how to contact it? Or find someone who can?”
A pay phone. A gold-inscribed summoning circle, with candles blazing at the points of a pentacle inside. The meaning was obvious. Just call it.
“I don’t do that anymore.” Sobell sighed. “I can’t do that anymore. Can’t risk it.” Summoning was serious business, unbelievably dangerous at the best of times. In his current situation, it would be an open invitation for something nasty to move in. It crossed his mind to subcontract the job—just get somebody else to summon the thing—but he ruled it out immediately. There was nobody he trusted enough to act as an intermediary between him and a demon, and nobody he’d trust with the knowledge of his current vulnerable state. “I just need some information. Some way to get started.”
A little boy, maybe five years old, arms crossed and lower lip thrust out, pouting. A slick-looking salesman, leading a woman from one car to a different one.
“There’s nothing else I need,” Sobell said. “No matter how unpleasant it is for you to send me to one of your rivals, I promise it will be more unpleasant for me. It’s this or nothing.”
Another long pause. Then, at last, a floating, disembodied Cheshire cat grin.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” In five minutes, his hopes had sunk from getting his life extended to maybe getting some information on it, to maybe getting some information on whom to talk to to talk to another demon he’d already pissed off once in hopes of reconciling their differences. This was weak indeed, but the sad fact was that he didn’t have much left in the way of options. If there had been other avenues remaining, he wouldn’t have orchestrated this goddamn foolish episode and be down here in an idiot cult leader’s basement, fucking around with a demon. “Very well. Let’s do this.”
Judas dickering with some Romans. A hand extended, palm up.
“Cute. How’s this for payment?” He opened his satchel and pulled out a bundle about the size of a shoebox, wrapped in black cloth. The bottom shone brightly, silver light tearing through every seam. Sobell was surprised to see that the light didn’t stop at the runes on the floor, but penetrated into the cloud of darkness beyond. For a split second, he almost looked deeper into the darkness—then he recovered his wits.
A sense of vast, deep hunger enveloped him, and something in the darkness moved. He turned around, rather than risk getting a look at it.
“One angel heart,” he called over his shoulder, “for your personal collection. You can eat it, keep it, or fuck it for all I care. In exchange, I need a hundred years.”
More images—an empty safe, a penniless beggar.
It had been worth a try. You could never tell when they were just being cheap. “Very well. I need you to tell me what I have to do, who I have to talk to, deal with, or kill, to meet with Forcas without having to summon the damned thing.”
Bloody fingers held together. A smoldering wax seal smashed onto parchment.
“Done.” He took a deep breath, dreading the next few moments. The demon had to keep its bargains, or so he’d been told. Such had been his experience, as well. Nevertheless, how could one really know? Even his vast experience held only a few nuggets of wisdom regarding these creatures, and if the ones he’d dealt with in the past were bound by their word—or merely abided by it because it amused them to do so—who could say whether those rules applied to the incalculably ancient and powerful creature behind the sigils?
He set the heart on the ground. Then he took a small blob of clay out of his satchel, dropped it on the floor, and used his shoe to smear it across one of the runes, filling the carving and, for all practical purposes, erasing it.
Just before his foot crossed the line, he closed his eyes.
Heat engulfed him, seeming to come from inside rather than out, welling up from a tiny core in his belly to burn his body, spreading outward to his shoulders, elbows, knees, out to his fingertips and toes, so intense that he felt he must burst apart as all the fluids in his body reached a boil. A series of images was burned into his mind as he stood there, bewildering in its apparent randomness. A bony, sharp-faced man of middling age with a scruff of patchy beard. When he opened his mouth, it was teeming with slimy white worms. A woman with serpents for arms. Thirteen vultures circling a stone slab. And lots of blood. Of course.
The last image was that of a seedy-looking man in a fedora and a moth-eaten pin-striped suit, holding three dice carved of dull black bone in his hand, and Sobell felt a shock of recognition. He knew that guy, or had years ago.
That was a place to start, then.
The heat dissipated as suddenly as it had come. Down the hall, men screamed.
Sobell opened his eyes. The heart was gone.
Alone in the corridor, he began to laugh.
* * *
The goggles were amazing, and Anna would have liked more time to simply marvel at them. The fog and smoke were practically invisible through them, while the screaming and scrambling bodies were lit up like billboards outside a car lot. It took almost no effort to avoid the frightened cult members as they caromed off each other and fell down and crawled away from the sudden eruption of chaos. This was gear they should have sprung for a long time ago.
She turned to grin at Genevieve, but the other woman was already cutting a path toward the altar. Anna picked up speed and followed.
Between the goggles and the respirator, she felt weirdly isolated from the scene, as though she were watching a movie or playing an incredibly realistic video game. The only thing tethering her to reality, it seemed, was the irritation of the exposed areas of her face caused by the clouds of tear gas that still hung in the air. If she could just rinse that away, this would be nothing more than entertainment.
Dangerous way to think, girl. None of that shit.
Ahead, a figure approached Genevieve, whether seeking help or accosting her, Anna couldn’t tell. Anna lifted her Taser. Genevieve held out a hand. Nothing happened that Anna could see, but Genevieve’s interlocutor fell back, clutching his face.
A moment later, Anna caught up.
“You OK?” she yelled.
“Yeah. Come on!”
Between the shouting, the screaming, and the chattering bursts of Nail’s machine gun, the noise was nearly intolerable. Anna grimaced and wished she could put her fingers in her ears, but that wasn’t gonna happen. Tough to carry a weapon and fend off the angry hordes of the Brotherhood without using your hands.
Genevieve pushed aside a couple of crouched bodies and moved past to the altar. She looked down at something Anna saw as a huddled gray blob of heat pressed against the stone, then up.
“Shit! Help!”
A second later, Anna joined her. “Is he breathing?” Genevieve shouted, pointing at the body on the slab.
“Jesus, I—oh.” It had been hard to tell through the goggles what she was looking at, but the spreading pool of warmth on the surface of the altar told her most of what she needed to know.
“No. He’s dead.”
“Oh, God.”
Jesus Christ, what a mess. Anna moved toward where she thought the house was, stumbling around a couple of downed cult members. Somebody threw a wild punch, and she dodged, getting all tangled up with the guy and turned around. He went down gagging a moment or two later, but by then she had no idea where Genevieve had gotten off to. Fifteen steps through the crowd, and a fam
iliar voice reached her.
“Come on!”
Tommy. And, sure enough, ahead and to her right, a man-shaped warm spot was taking off like hell after another figure, farther in the distance.
She lit out after them.
They had quite a head start, but Tommy was in no great shape, and the guy ahead of him seemed even worse off. By the time the two of them reached the main house, Tommy was slowing and the other guy was practically stumbling, slowing down with every step. Anna put on a surge of speed as the two men went in through the sliding glass door ahead. Her feet slipped in the wet grass, but she flailed and kept her balance. Moments later, she burst into a huge open space with glass on one side and a wall of stone, still radiating warmth from the day, on the other. Her footfalls were harsh slaps on stone as she pounded through the room, nearly catching up with Tommy by the other side.
Tommy tore his respirator off and let it bounce against his chest as he rushed forward. The other man—Mendelsohn, she guessed—was old and slow, and there was only one way this footrace could end.
“Come on!” Anna yelled, and she sped past Tommy.
Everything was dark in here, and roughly the same temperature, and damn near impossible to see. Anna missed a turn and rebounded off a wall, hard. She pulled her goggles and respirator down around her neck. The corridor she was in was dark, but not too dark, swathed in shades of gray, and Mendelsohn ran toward the far end. She rushed forward, caught up, and lunged, just missing the fluttering fabric of Mendelsohn’s robe as he pushed off the corner and bounced into a large living space.
Halfway across the room Mendelsohn’s foot caught on the edge of the carpet, and he tripped.
Got you! Anna thought, and then a sound like an exploding train, still rushing forward on its tracks, smashed the world open. Something burst from a stairwell near the edge of the room, something shrouded in darkness.
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