by Jenn Bennett
Lon took a couple of quick turns, and traffic became sparse. We sped through the edge of a residential neighborhood, then the four-lane dropped to two. Woods lined either side of the road. It was a straight shot, but hilly. My stomach lurched. Memories of Jupe speeding up the Halloween ride at Brentano Gardens filled my head.
As we headed toward a short bridge that stretched over a dry riverbed, one car flew past us in the opposite direction. Then we were alone. Just us and the green sedan. Lon could outrun it in the SUV out here on the straightaway. Easily. You don’t pay six figures for German engineering without some perks. So when he yelled, “Brace yourself!” I didn’t expect him to stop.
Brakes squealed on asphalt. Both my palms hit the dash. The green sedan sounded like a flock of screeching harpies as the car slid across the pavement behind us. Time slowed. I saw Lon watching the rearview mirror intently. I silently thanked providence that we were in a vehicle built like a tank and not in my tiny car.
Without warning, Lon hit the gas and whipped into the opposite lane. He stopped on a dime, right before the bridge. The green sedan rotated sideways as it skidded past, their front bumper missing my door by an inch. An angry face stared back at me through the windshield. The sedan’s back wheels flew off the pavement and it slammed into the concrete road barrier, then careened backward over the bridge into the dusty riverbed below.
Lon jumped out of the car. I hustled out to join him and peered over the siderail. The drop to the riverbed wasn’t far—ten, fifteen feet, tops. The green sedan sat at the bottom, haloed by a cloud of dust. It was too dark to see much, but I was pretty sure the engine was smoking. The back end of the car was smashed against a concrete girder below the bridge.
The driver’s door opened with a squeal. A short figure stumbled out.
“Merrin, you demon-fucking piece-of-shit warlock!” Lon shouted, then pulled up the shotgun, nestled the butt against his shoulder, and took aim.
I lurched sideways a couple of feet and covered my ears as the blast went off. All this time we’d been trying to find the magician and now he was hunting us down? That figured. When I peered down into the riverbed, he was ducking behind his car door. I knew Lon wouldn’t really shoot him. We might need the guy. Or maybe not . . .
The golden thread caught my eye. It wasn’t pointed above the treeline anymore. It had lowered and leveled out, and it was much, much brighter. Jupe was close. They must have landed just ahead. I squinted at the quiet intersection in the distance.
“Monte Verde!” I shouted at Lon, maybe a little too loudly, because my ears were ringing again. First the damn wards, and now the shotgun blast. I was going to be deaf before the night was over.
Lon glanced where I pointed, then gauged it against the gold thread.
We both peered down at Merrin. He was drawing something on the hood of his busted-up sedan. “He’s doing magick,” I said.
Lon racked the shotgun and blasted it over Merrin’s head. He flattened against the ground. Good enough. Someone would be calling the cops after hearing all that. Lon and I retreated to the SUV and took off. I knew which way to turn on Monte Verde due to the line of gold light, and there was no need to check house numbers once we got closer. Situated at the end of cul-de-sac in a heavily wooded lot, the small two-story home stood out like a circus tent, striped yellow and red. And the golden thread was heading straight for it.
Hiding in plain sight. No abandoned cannery, no deserted warehouse—just a house in the suburbs, tented for pest control. Brilliant.
Lon sped down the block and braked hard in the short driveway, slamming the SUV into a plastic trash can as we came to a sliding stop. I threw off my seat belt and pushed the door open. A tall wooden fence lined with trees shielded Ms. Forsythe’s backyard from the neighbors on either side, one of which had a For Sale sign staked out front. Big lot. Lots of trees. Very private. A great place to hide kids. Even better when you’d traced out spells over the tent to keep things quiet and ignored—I could see the Heka all over it.
Now that we were here, the golden thread was much tighter, and the angle wasn’t as level as I thought it should be. I dashed to the side of the house. Lon unlatched the gate. The hinges squeaked when it he pushed it open. We craned our necks, looking upward in the night sky, searching the trees. No, not there. The roof.
We crept inside the fenced backyard and skirted the house. Streetlights provided little illumination here, casting lacy shadows on the damp grass. At the back of the home, where it was even darker, Ms. Forsythe’s possessed body stood on the edge of the sloping tent-covered roof, one broken arm wrapped around Jupe’s shoulders. Blood soaked through her poncho and stained Jupe’s shirt. Her free hand—the one that wasn’t damaged in the free fall onto my lawn—was clamped over Jupe’s mouth.
A single loud sob escaped my mouth when I saw him.
He was conscious, standing on his own, to my great relief. And a bright golden light shone from beneath the waist of his jeans, just over his hip. My golden line of magick was connected there. He squirmed and tried to break away from the demon, who bent to speak into Jupe’s ear. Whatever was said, it stilled him.
I held up my finger and showed Jupe the golden thread, smiling tightly. I tried hard to sound braver than I felt. “You left bread crumbs, Motormouth.”
Lon raised his shotgun. The ghoulish specter of Ms. Forsythe shifted position, just slightly. Enough to show us that she could snap Jupe’s neck. “Please lower your weapon,” the demon said in the teacher’s voice. It didn’t sound quite right. The accent was rough and stilted. But it was English, not the Latin that he’d spoken to Merrin inside the Silent Temple.
Lon hesitated, considering for a moment, then lowered the gun. He spoke to the demon. “That’s my son. I know you want him for the ritual. If I bring you a substitute, will you release him?”
Lon’s attempt at negotiation surprised me, but I didn’t comment.
“I am not able to make such allowances,” the demon said stiffly.
“He’s afraid,” Lon whispered against my hair.
At first I thought he meant Jupe, and wondered why he was telling me something I’d already guessed, but he meant the demon—Chora was afraid. He certainly hadn’t seemed frightened when he punched Jupe’s lights out in my bedroom and spirited him away into the darkening sky. But I had to trust that Lon could hear the demon’s emotions. I just didn’t know what to do about it. Maybe the neighbors were home. Surely someone down the block had heard Lon’s shotgun blasts. I quickly scanned the house and looked for a way to climb, but the striped tent made that idea an impossibility. Nothing to hold on to.
Lon whispered to me again. “Can hear the children, too. Inside the house.”
Before I could process any small bit of comfort over that good news, the gate creaked. Merrin’s silhouette limped our way. He was panting and sweating. Running down the block must have been a feat for him. I shifted my position, moving into a shadow with the golden thread. Two steps and it wasn’t glinting quite so brightly in the dim light that spilled over the roof. If Merrin hadn’t noticed it, I wanted to keep it that way.
“I’d advise you to drop that gun if you value your boy’s life. The duke is stronger than he appears.” Merrin might be gasping for breath and limping in pain, but his mood was giddy.
“Why would he kill someone he needs for his damned Buné spell?” Lon asked.
“I didn’t say the duke would kill him.”
“Do not speak for me, mage.”
I looked toward the roof, surprised to hear the demon again. Surprised to hear a sharp note of animosity under Ms. Forsythe’s strained tones. Then I remembered how the demon had spoken to Merrin in the Silent Temple. This was not a happy partnership.
Merrin ignored him and spoke to Lon. “I’m guessing that the boy could withstand an incredible amount of pain and remain alive for our purposes. Put the gun down, if you would, please.”
Lon measured his options and tossed the shotgun on the grass. Mer
rin smiled and canted his head politely. Then he held out his arm, revealing something round and shiny in his grip—the metal instrument he’d used to throw Heka against us in the temple, maybe, or some other magic weapon. He stepped toward us and hastily retrieved the gun and with a grunt, heaved it over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Lon groaned under his breath.
I knew he was probably panicking about losing his weapon, but it didn’t matter to me—I was trying to keep my eyes on both Merrin and Jupe while I considered my options. How could I use the Moonchild ability to bind the demon inside Ms. Forsythe’s body without binding Jupe along with him? “How much of what you told us was true?” I asked the magician, stalling for time.
Merrin shuffled back a few steps and pocketed the metal disk as he glanced at the roof. “In the restaurant? Almost everything. It was a close approximation of the truth, anyway. I’m betting that you’ve already guessed the white lies.”
“You’re the one who killed Bishop,” I said. “Not the demon.”
“First Bishop stole the key to the capsa, then he took a photo of me hiding it.”
“The silver tube at the putt-putt course?”
“Bishop was planning to blackmail me with that photo. He was running to Dare and Butler, trying to get me stripped of my Hellfire paycheck. Chora had taught me some new magical skills, so I practiced them. You found the body at the cannery, so you already know how well they worked.”
I wondered if I could sneak a phone call to Dare. Probably not. “Other lies . . . you were conscious when the duke was riding you?” I guessed.
“Quite.”
“Grace Forsythe is not.” Lon said.
“No, not Gracie. She’s a vegetarian who insists on organic pesticides. Do you think she’d agree to kidnapping children?”
“The termites aren’t real,” I said.
“Of course not. Termite extermination doesn’t take two weeks. I just moved some things around in her brain.” He adjusted his glasses, rehooking them over his ears. “I’ve known her since she was a teenager. She’s a gentle soul but a strong vessel. Ideal for possession. We take her for a little ride every night, and she has vivid dreams. No harm done.”
“The demon’s broken half her bones,” I argued.
“She can go to a healer.” He glanced at the roof again and stepped back a couple of paces. “If she makes it through the night,” he amended.
A wave of nausea hit me and the tent’s stripes swam in my vision. Crud. There wasn’t an unlimited supply of Heka, so I knew it had to come sooner or later. Maybe I could hold on a little longer. The golden thread was becoming dull—not good. I steadied myself and considered pulling electrical current to fortify my Heka, but I was more than a little worried that it would flow into Jupe and fry him.
“You aren’t afraid of Chora,” Lon noted.
Merrin grinned. “Why would I be afraid of a demon bound to serve me?”
“And there was never any curse,” I guessed. “You were never afraid of him, were you?”
“Why should I have been? Chora is the Æthyric James Bond,” Merrin said with a smile. “He can move in and out of wards, set traps, elude capture. He flies by night and steals secrets. He’s no terrifying general or gifted warrior—he’s a demonic spymaster.”
Merrin unzipped his jacket. “I asked around the Æthyr. Discovered that he was in possession of the Buné spell. He’d stolen it, apparently, on one military mission or another. I trapped him, and we made a deal—I wouldn’t sell his secrets to his enemies, and he would help me with the ritual. We would be partners. A simple pact. Everything was going smoothly, up until the last child chosen for the ritual. She was tricky.”
“Cindy Brolin.”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember her name. I went on with the ritual anyway, hoping it would work with a substitute, but it failed.”
“What were you testing for, biting the children?”
“Ratio of demon to human. Chora can taste it in the blood. Demon is sweeter.”
“Oh,” I said weakly, my vision blurring around the edges again.
“We made a couple of errors,” Merrin continued, “but I’m not one to just give up on something this big. And my deal with the demon was contractually binding until the doors between the planes were open. Once we got past our disagreements—”
Chora swore indecipherably from the rooftop, giving Jupe an earful of Æthyric curses intended for Merrin.
“—we made better plans. I kept Chora bound in the gap between the planes until we were ready. And now we are. Because this time, I’ve gone to great lengths to ensure our success. And wouldn’t you know, the biggest mistake thirty years ago wasn’t merely the substitute vessel. The stronger the vessels, the longer the doors stay open, you see, but they never opened at all—not even a crack. The vessels just turned to dust. Over the years, I realized the real problem. Timing.”
“Timing? You mean the overlapping alignments?”
“Conjunctions, alignments . . . here and in the Æthyr. It only granted a short window of time, and I was a few hours too late. I’ve never been very good at calculations.” He nodded to the roof. “Luckily, Ms. Forsythe is mad about astronomy. She’s far too knowledgeable for a junior high teacher, she just never had the drive to do anything more. But when I gave her the problem to solve, she was more than happy to help, even without magical coercion or understanding why I needed it—imagine that!”
What did he want? Applause?
“It was a long wait,” he said, “but once the doors are open, I will be able to cross into the Æthyr.”
“And what will you do there?” I asked. “What’s worth waiting thirty years for?”
“I’ve learned the secrets of possession, my dear. I will ride Chora like he’s ridden me. Do you know how old he is? Nearly a thousand years. And he’s barely hitting the middle of his life span. I can either die here in this miserable excuse for a body—bald, short, and half crippled—or I can live for decades inside the body of a demonic knight.”
“I thought you said he nearly killed you when the ritual went wrong the first time? What makes you think that you won’t do the same when you’re inside him? Bodies weren’t designed for two separate occupants, Frater.”
“I’m willing to take that chance. And if he can’t hold me, I will find someone else in the Æthyr who can. You can sit around demurely and wait for your reward in heaven, if there is one, but I’m seizing mine while I’m able.”
Merrin ripped open his shirt, baring his withering chest and paunchy gut that ballooned below the blue ink of the tattoo I’d spied when we cornered him in the restroom. It wasn’t the only one. A smaller tattoo was etched on the sagging skin over his heart; God only knew what other tricks he’d learned, and this smaller seal was already dimly glowing with charged Heka. Not a good idea to have two tattoos charged at once. I knew this from experience. Merrin didn’t seem to be worried, though. He retrieved the metal disk from his pocket and sliced it across a palm. Blood welled. He pressed the Heka-rich fluid over the tattooed sigil on his chest. It lit up with a bright blue charge, then sank back into an ink tattoo.
“No need to be frightened of me,” he said to Lon. “How I pity you, being forced to hear all this emotional garbage, day in and day out. A useless knack, much like your father’s.”
Lon was a patient man, but lately I’d seen him reach his snapping point more times than I could count. He barreled toward Merrin before I could stop him, charging the elderly magician like a bull. But it was pointless. Merrin wasn’t lying—he had no interest in Lon’s knack. He wanted Chora’s ability, and with his tattooed sigil now freshly charged, he absorbed it.
The magician leapt out of the path of Lon’s charge and floated into the darkness just above us. Lon jumped and swatted at the magician’s feet, but they were already out of reach. His shirttails fluttered behind him as he rose to the roof and landed near Jupe and Ms. Forsythe. He stumbled, not quite competent with the whole flying thing, then righted hi
mself.
“Now, this is a knack!” Merrin shouted breathlessly. “And your son’s new ability isn’t half bad, either. Thank you for telling Gracie about it, or I never would have guessed,” Merrin yelled down to Lon, yanking Jupe away from the demon.
Jupe, God bless him, wasn’t going gently. He kicked the living daylights out of Merrin and the volume of his muffled shouts increased, but then the magician hissed something to him that I couldn’t hear. After that Jupe went quiet. Merrin kept one hand clamped over Jupe’s mouth, just as Chora had done.
Come on, Chora. Take one step back, I thought, watching the three of them on the roof. I calmed myself and searched inside for the Moonchild power, willing it to the surface.
“What’s this?” Merrin peered at the fading golden glow emanating from Jupe’s tattoo. The trailing thread was becoming difficult to see in the darkness, but the mark itself still pulsed with Heka. “Have you warded the boy?” he yelled down at me. “You’ll tell me the truth.”
“No,” I answered, before I could even consider an answer. I covered my mouth in alarm. Jupe’s damned knack! But I’d only told the truth—I hadn’t warded him. Jupe had put that mark on himself.
“It doesn’t matter. The duke can break it later.” He turned to the demon. “Chora, right now you will kill both of them below. Quickly, if you would, please.”
The demon didn’t hesitate. Still wearing Ms. Forsythe’s skin, he glided to ground, heading straight for us. I yelped and turned to Lon, but he wasn’t there. Gone! Any crumb of calm I’d accumulated in readying myself to wield the Moonchild power dissipated as panic seized my chest. I whipped my head around, searching the shadows for him, and the demon landed several yards in front of me. Ms. Forsythe’s crushed arm hung limply beneath her poncho, and her hair was matted with blood. But the demon didn’t seem to care about her injuries. When her leg quivered as if it might buckle, he just groaned and hobbled toward me.
