Summoning the Night

by Jenn Bennett

  “Frater,” Lon’s shifted voice rumbled, “what a coincidence.”

  Lon dragged Frater Merrin out of the stall, pinning the man’s arms behind his back. The magician was red-faced and confused. I readied myself to use my ability, but paused when Lon spoke to Merrin in a calm voice. His voice of persuasion. The one Jupe had inherited. Kind of. Lon’s persuasive effect on emotions required touch to work. No problem with that, because he was gripping Merrin like death.

  “We saw your little magick show on the parade float. I’m sure you won’t mind if we ask you a few questions.”

  At the mention of “we,” Merrin’s mismatched eyes darted around the restroom until they met mine. I gave him a little wave.

  Lon towered over the balding, short man as he spoke with soft insistence. “There’s no need for you to use any magick on us like you did last time. We just want a few answers, then we’ll leave you alone. We’re not a threat, and you want to help us, right?”

  “Lon.” Anger flashed over the magician’s face, then faded; his body slumped in submission. “I won’t fight you,” he admitted at length. “I’m sorry about the incident at the Silent Temple. I panicked, you see . . .”

  Lon turned the magician in my direction while gripping him from behind. And there it was, the source of the ball of light that had tipped me off—an invisibility talisman. Now uncharged, it hung around his neck on a rough cord, swinging against the placard of his button-up shirt. I yanked it over his head, nearly catching the cord on his wire-rim glasses, then stashed it in my coat. I checked his pockets for the Heka weapons but found nothing, so I took up a post against the restroom door. The last thing Lon needed was an unwary customer to stumble into the restroom and find a horned demon holding a man hostage.

  “Let’s talk,” Lon said. “Tell us about the grand duke. How did you team up with him in the eighties? And what happened to Bishop?”

  I’d seen Lon use his persuasive powers only a couple of times. Usually they completely transformed the recipient. Turned them into putty. Merrin wasn’t aggressive, exactly, but he wasn’t lying on the floor with his belly exposed, either. His willpower must’ve been strong as hell. A trickle of fear ran down my back. I really didn’t trust this guy.

  Merrin inhaled deeply through his nose, then sighed. “Thirty years ago, I was employed by the Hellfire Club. They paid me well and I enjoyed the work. During my time off, I became friends with Jesse Bishop.”

  “Yes, we found his body in the cannery,” I said. Friend, indeed.

  Merrin nodded in calm resignation. “Bishop was a young Hellfire member who had the rare knack of precognition. However, his ability was weak. His premonitions were hit-and-miss. A lot of Hellfire members didn’t hold much stock in his visions, but they were idiots.”

  “You believed his visions?” Lon asked.

  “I did, especially when he began seeing images of a spell that would open doors between the worlds and allow travel from either side.”

  The spell inside the Æthyric tube.

  Merrin continued. “The idea of being able to cross into the Æthyr was an intriguing one, but it wasn’t until Bishop had visions about the entity in possession of the spell that I became worried. Bishop described it as an Æthyric demon with pale skin, his throat covered in blackened symbols. He was dressed in armor and carried a blade shaped like a serpent. His halo was blood-red. Bishop had seen a demon that I’d conjured for information . . . Grand Duke Chora.

  “I wasn’t the first magician hired by the Hellfire Club, you know,” Merrin continued wearily, as Lon continued to keep the man’s arms pinned behind his back. “There was a magician named Frater Morrow. He was the first person to conjure the grand duke back in the seventies, and the first person the duke asked to aid him with the Buné spell.”

  “The spell to open the doors between the worlds?” Lon said.

  Merrin nodded. “The duke is an old demon with a great deal of power. Frater Morrow made the mistake of refusing to bargain with him, and ended up dead. Chora laid a curse on him. I found that out from another Æthyric demon after I’d already summoned Chora and turned down his bargain. The curse was a tricky one that made it appear the mage had just experienced a simple heart attack—”

  “So the duke had cursed this Morrow magician,” I said. “And you realized after you’d summoned and rejected the duke that he could curse you too?”

  “I didn’t want to die,” Merrin argued. “I realized my error after I summoned him, but I had no choice but to comply and let him ride me. So I called him again and made the bargain. He promised that he’d keep me blind during the possessions, so I wouldn’t be aware of what was happening. All I knew is that he needed vessels to help open the doors. I agreed to invoke him into me eight times: seven to find the vessels, and once more to complete the Buné spell on All Hallows’. The summonings were temporary, a few hours each time, and only at night—he was stronger then. Once the alloted time was up, he would be banished automatically and leave my body.”

  He’d summoned the duke for short periods of time? Interesting.

  “Bishop’s visions of the duke became cloudy,” Merrin said. “Bishop became obsessed with wanting to undergo the transmutation spell to increase his knack, in hopes that he’d be able to see his visions more accurately. He asked the Hellfire Club leaders, but they refused. Bishop begged me to help in secret, but I couldn’t, of course. I didn’t want him to realize that I’d already bargained with Chora.”

  “Because he would have tried to stop you,” I said.

  “The duke told me he needed vessels, but I swear, I didn’t know they would be children.”

  “That means you took all those kids back in the eighties, didn’t you? You bit them and tasted their blood?”

  The accusation pulsed in the air between all of us.

  “Answer her,” Lon urged.

  “I wasn’t conscious during the abductions.” Merrin tugged his shoulder back in a weak attempt to break from Lon’s hold. The top button on his shirt popped out of its hole and a dark tattoo peeked out, black with a blue border. An eagle, I thought. It looked like a military insignia, maybe an army tattoo. “I didn’t even know it was children until I heard it on the news and realized that we had done it, he and I. We were the Snatcher.”

  “You were the Snatcher,” I said. “You.”

  “I didn’t remember anything while I was possessed, but I couldn’t stop invoking him or he’d kill me. You’ve got to believe me!”

  “You also killed Bishop. When you realized that his visions might rat you out, you killed him with magick in the cannery, where you were keeping the kids.”

  Merrin flailed in Lon’s grip, panicking. “I didn’t! I swear! It was the duke! I woke up in the cannery after one of the possessions and Bishop was dead inside one of the duke’s traps. The demon claimed that Bishop had found where we’d hidden the Buné spell. He’d taken a photograph—was going to send it to Ambrose Dare.”

  The Polaroid.

  “Bishop was my friend,” Merrin said softly. “I would never have harmed him.”

  Is he telling the truth? I asked Lon in my head. He looked up from Merrin and stared at me blankly, as if I was distracting him. If Merrin was Earthbound, I could just bind him and know for myself. So frustrating.

  “What went wrong with the first ritual?” I asked impatiently. “Why aren’t the doors open?”

  Merrin blinked. His eyes became glossy with remembered emotion. “The planetary alignments were correct and the veil between earth and the Æthyr was thin on All Hallows’ Eve. Everything should’ve been right. But there was a flaw.”

  “It was the kids themselves, wasn’t it?” Lon said.

  Merrin nodded. “The duke was seeking the strongest pubescent Earthbounds. He assured me they wouldn’t be harmed. He just needed them to harness power and open the doors. But mistakes were made in the selection process. Some of them weren’t strong enough to handle the energy of the spell.”

  Cindy Brolin
was, but she got away.

  “I woke up and the doors weren’t open,” Merrin said. “The spell had failed, and the children were piles of ashes in Sandpiper Park. I could barely see where they ended and the sand began.”

  No bodies. Would Hajo have been able to track them even if we’d given him an object of Merrin’s instead of Bishop’s?

  “Is that why he’s using descendants of transmutated Earthbounds this time?” Lon said. When Merrin didn’t answer right away, Lon shook his shoulders, then spun him around to face him and shoved him against the wall. “I said, is that why he’s using transmutation descendants?”

  Merrin flattened against the wall and turned his face to the side to avoid Lon’s angry gaze. “The duke wasn’t aware of the Hellfire transmutation spell. When the first group of children failed, he thought it was my fault. I was human, and his possessions were taking a toll on my body. Little things, like my blood pressure. But he could tell when he possessed me that I was weakening. When I woke up in the park after the last possession, the duke had gained enough power during the ritual to leave my body and become semicorporeal. He was furious about the failure. I tried to tell him that it wasn’t my fault. Told him about the transmutation spell, and how it strengthened Earthbounds. They would make better vessels. They might survive the ritual. But he didn’t believe me—or he just didn’t care at the time. All the current vessels were ashes, and the doors between the planes weren’t open. He took it out on me physically. Forced himself inside one last time and tried to kill me from the inside out. I barely survived.”

  Lon grunted. “Your ‘accident.’ The reason you quit working for the Hellfire Club and left La Sirena.”

  “I was in the hospital for weeks. My back was broken. I just wanted to leave it all behind and forget it ever happened. Which I did, until I saw the news stories about the Snatcher returning. I knew it was him. He’d found someone else to possess. He’d try again.”

  Fury knotted Lon’s face. He pushed a hand against Merrin’s chest and held it there. “Liar. You’re working for him again. Did you set that fire tonight as a distraction so that he could take another kid? Tell me.”

  “No, you’ve got it all wrong—I was paid by the anti-Halloween group. They wanted something spectacular to get trick-or-treating banned.” His head dropped. “They paid me a handsome sum of money.”

  It made sense. Leave it to a bunch of misguided activists to put on a puritanical front and utilize whatever means necessary under the table to obtain their goals. Political sabotage was a big moneymaker for rogue magicians.

  “You expect me to believe that this duke didn’t come back looking for your help?” Lon said.

  “Why would he?” Merrin said. “I failed him the first time, and he realized that he didn’t need a trained magician to conduct the ritual. I summoned a few Æthyric demons later and inquired about him. Another demon told me that the rumor in the Æthyr was that the duke had managed to pierce the veil between the planes during our attempt at the Buné spell. Not a fully functioning door but a hole. If it was big enough, he could possess anyone in the La Sirena area without being summoned. Human, Earthbound—it could be anyone.”

  Oh . . . God.

  “The person wouldn’t know they were possessed. They wouldn’t be conscious of what they were doing. Trust me, I know all too well.”

  If the Duke could possess anyone, how could we find him?

  Lon let go of Merrin and folded his arms across his chest. “You don’t have any idea where he’d be keeping the new kids?”

  “Somewhere around La Sirena, I suppose,” Merrin said. “Like I told you, the hole in the veil isn’t a door—I don’t think he can venture too far away from that area without losing power, even while he’s riding someone. That’s why I don’t go back to La Sirena. I don’t want him to find me again.”

  So, right at this moment, he could be possessing anyone, and keeping the kids anywhere. We were so screwed. Disappointment crushed any last bit of hope I’d had. No one said anything for a long moment.

  What are we going to do with Merrin? I finally asked Lon in my thoughts. Call the police and tell them that he confessed to us? That he was possessed by a demon?

  “Where do you live?” Lon asked.

  “I abandoned my apartment when you found me at the Silent Temple. I was worried you’d get me arrested. Please, Lon. I was friends with your father—I’m begging you. I don’t want to spend my last few years dwindling away in a prison. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel guilty about my role in all of it, but I was just trying to survive. You’ve got to believe me.”

  Maybe he could help us find the duke, I suggested. Then we can call the cops.

  Lon closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked exhausted. He used his persuasive voice when he spoke to Merrin again, clamping his shoulder. “If you know a way we can track the duke and stop him, you’ll share that with us now.”

  Merrin considered this, then brightened. “I know a spell. It’s one he taught me. The duke keeps himself warded with Æthyric magick, so you can’t find him with the usual methods. But this spell should be foolproof.”

  “What kind of spell?” I asked.

  “It calls him to you. Only takes a few minutes. And if you are able to keep yourself inside a sanctified circle when you perform it, I don’t think he could enter you.” He paused, then finished in a low voice bitter with regret. “If I’d only done that to begin with, I could’ve avoided a lifetime of guilt, but I was young and foolish, and thought I was a stronger magician than I really was.”

  Please. I was young and foolish, and I still wasn’t stupid enough to make a pact with a demon like he did.

  “I’ll need to dig through some boxes to find my old spell books,” he said.

  “Where are you staying now?” Lon asked for the second time.

  “Hotel Guinevere in Eastern Foothills. Room 213. I’ll find the spell. You can pick it up. Just come by my hotel when you’re ready. You probably have other things to do here. Better things than watch an old man dig through boxes, right? Just give me a couple of hours.”

  A couple of hours? Hell no, I thought to Lon. Why don’t we just go with him now?

  “The kids on the float,” Lon said, searching my face with pleading eyes.

  I’d completely forgotten about them. But still—

  “You don’t have to worry. I won’t skip town,” Merrin said. “You have my word. Listen to me, Lon. You know I’m telling the truth.” He reached out and gently touched my arm, staring at me with those strange mismatched eyes. “Meet me in two hours at my hotel, and everything will be okay. You can trust me. I’ve been through so much already. I’m ready for this to be over.”

  A sense of well-being flooded me, and for the first time all night, I felt relaxed and calm. I knew I shouldn’t, but I believed him. Trusted him. He was just a little old man who’d been bested by a demon. I almost felt sorry for him.

  “Maybe we should all leave now. That sounds like a good idea, yes?”

  Yes, it did. It sounded like a good idea. I wanted to leave. My head suddenly didn’t feel very good.

  Lon nodded. “Two hours. We’ll meet you at your hotel.”

  Something pushed against my back. The restroom door. “Lon!”

  Releasing Merrin, he shifted down into his human form while someone knocked, trying to get inside the restroom. Merrin buttoned up his shirt, covering up the army tattoo. When the coast was clear, I opened the door. A man entered, eying me warily as Merrin passed between us.

  “Sorry, dear,” he said, bumping into me as he headed into the restaurant hallway. “See you in a couple of hours.”

  We followed Merrin out the front door, then immediately lost him in the crowd. Loud whoops and laughter echoed off the glass windows of the restaurant as drunken revelers galloped down the sidewalk.

  “Damn, my head is killing me,” I complained as we made our way back to the float. “I feel like I’ve forgotten something. Do think it was saf
e to let him go like that? He was telling the truth, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I guess?’ You don’t know?”

  “I couldn’t hear his emotions sometimes. I could at first, but later it was off and on. And his thoughts were muffled. I could catch glimpses of things, but I—”

  This alarmed me. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Sometimes I can’t hear certain people very well.”

  “But you didn’t have problems hearing him in the Silent Temple.”

  “I don’t think so, but I was pissed, and he was panicked.”

  “Wait, wait, wait—does that mean your persuasive emotional thing was working on him or not, Lon?”

  “I think so.” Doubt clouded his eyes. Embarrassment, too.

  Dear God, my head! Blood pulsed in my temples. What had I forgotten? My mind fastened on a single detail: the tattoo on Merrin’s chest, the one peeking out of the top of his shirt. It was awfully dark for an old military tattoo. And that was no army eagle, it was the top of an Egyptian symbol for strength, and it wasn’t lined in blue ink, it was charged with Heka.

  Shit! He’d constructed some sort of magical seal to ward himself, either from Lon’s ability in particular, or from Earthbound knacks in general. Anxiety cleared a path through my fuzzy head.

  “What?” Lon asked, suddenly panicking right along with me.

  “My weird headache . . . Jesus, Lon. We just let Merrin go. He’s not going to help us. He tricked us! He—”

  “He was using my knack.”

  I glanced around. Thousands of paradegoers were swarming the streets. How would we find him now?

  “You took his invisibility talisman,” Lon said.

  I patted my pocket, then thrust my hand inside. Empty. “Oh, no . . . He bumped into me on the way out. He . . .” I didn’t bother finishing. Lon made a miserable sound. “How much of what he’d told us was true? Was he under your influence at all? Did he tell us enough to shut us up? Or—” I fished out my cell and ducked into an alcove to get away from the crowds.