The hinges had been hammered into the stone lip of the pit, and the rotting remains of plywood planks covered the gaps between the sides of the doors and the stones.
“I wonder what they kept in there?” I found myself saying. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled; there was some seriously bad magic coming from the pit.
“I wouldn’t want to know,” the Warlock replied, “but I expect you’ll find out. That’s your portal.”
He dug in one of the thigh pockets of his pants and pulled out a small brown leather bag from which he produced a lighter and a lock of hair. “I got this off Cooper a couple of years back. Never knew when it might come in handy, but I had a feeling I was gonna need it someday.”
He paused. “Once we get you in there… you know not to drink or eat anything while you’re there, right?”
I nodded. “I knew that one.”
“Good,” he said. “Breathing the air’s bad enough, but you can’t help that. Don’t touch anything in there with bare skin if you can help it. Stay aware of your surroundings at all times. Don’t fall asleep; that’s even worse than eating. Get in, find Coop, get back here fast as you can.”
“Urn. And how do I get back here?”
“Right. That’d be important, wouldn’t it?” He set his root beer on the floor and used his free hand to pull a pair of corked glass cylinders out of another pocket. Each was about as wide as one of my fingers and four inches long. They looked a bit like test tubes with runes etched on the outsides of the glass.
He bent down, filled the vials with dirt, ashes, and dead leaves that had drifted against the pit wall, recorked them, and handed both to me.
“When you’re ready, break one of these open and say ‘Return.’ It should snap easy as a glow stick. The important thing is to not lose them, or let them both get broken before you’re ready.”
“Seems easy enough.” I took the vials and tucked them between my buttons into separate interior pockets of my dragonskin jacket.
“Okay,” the Warlock said. “Are you ready for this?”
“As ready as I’m ever gonna be,” I replied.
The Warlock heaved the pit’s rusted doors open. The cold, foul air trapped inside swirled out, the interior of the pit black as a bullet hole in a moonlit skull. He closed his eyes and began a chant in Latin; I regretted that I could understand none of the words. The air got colder, denser, and I began to shiver in my stifling jacket. Clouds began to gather overhead, darkening the evening sky. Just as frost began to blossom on the pit’s rocky lip, the Warlock flicked on the lighter and ignited the lock of hair.
Cooper’s lock went up in a purple flash, and a slow shock wave rolled from the pit like a grenade exploding in heavy water. I kept my feet, but the gust blew stinging grit in my face and I had to shut my eyes.
When I was able to see again, the pit was glowing with the same bad magic, the same reflected hellfire as the portal Cooper had opened in Taft Park. Through my good eye, I could see nothing inside but vertiginous blackness. Through my stone eye, the pit was a maelstrom of colors I didn’t have names for.
“If the spell worked right, this thing won’t stay active more than a minute, but it’ll be receptive to your return indefinitely,” the Warlock said. “But you’ve got to go through now, while it’s active.”
“Okay,” I said.
I took a deep breath, and remembered Cooper. Remembered his smile, his laugh, the feel of his warm skin against mine on a Winter morning. I love you, honey. I’m coming for you. Don’t be dead when I get there.
I stepped up onto the lip of the pit, gave the Warlock a trembling wave good-bye, and let myself fall into the portal.
chapter nineteen
Palimpsest: The Sting
From my vantage in the Land Rover, I could no longer see Jessie and the Warlock once they descended into the basement, but I certainly felt the telltale shock wave when the portal to Cooper’s hell was opened. It was simultaneously frightening and elating to see the basement lit in that brief dark flash; I knew she had gone inside. And my slithering bastard of an overseer hadn’t hauled me out of the ferret yet. Whatever happened next was up to Jessie and Cooper. I was determined that I could endure whatever punishment was in store for me with the comfort of knowing I’d done the right thing, done my job, and been true to my mission. My personal sense of honor was one of the few things I had left, and I wanted to preserve it if I could.
My relief was doused like a match in a tsunami:
Somewhere nearby, a stranger shouted a staccato charm I recognized as the counter to a mass hiding spell.
Two of Jordan’s men—the pair that Jessie had briefly set aflame—shimmered into view at the edge of the dead field. They wore pistols in police-duty holsters at their hips and carried pump-action shotguns with pistol grips; the short chromed barrels gleamed dully, reflecting the overcast sky. The guns hummed with fierce enchantments. A second later, a motley assortment of half a dozen Talents appeared in the grass near them. My dread deepened as I recognized Mother Karen and her teen protégé Jimmy among the group.
The air twenty yards above the basement shimmered, and a fifty-foot-long orange firedrake became visible, flapping in an awkward hover as a bald man in dragonskjns and welding goggles pulled back on the steel tow chains serving as reins. The firedrake angrily gnawed the steel playground post bit in its enormous crocodile jaws and clawed the air with its buzzard-like feet. It let out an irritable squawk along with a puff of blue flame.
“Rosko, what the hell are you doing here?” the Warlock yelled from the basement.
“I’m air support,” Rosko yelled down.
“Air support?” the Warlock called back.
“My name is Deputy Titus Wilson,” the first of Jordan’s men shouted. “Warlock, come out with your hands clasped over your head. By the power vested in me by the Central Ohio Governing Circle, you are hereby under arrest for attempted murder, helping a fugitive escape justice, and magical malfeasance.”
“Rosko, you snaky bastard! If I get out of this I’m going to kick your lardy ass to Cleveland!” the Warlock hollered.
“Sorry ‘bout this, man, but they busted me with a shitload of contraband relics this afternoon,” Rosko replied, not really sounding very apologetic. “I can’t do prison again. Just don’t have the disposition for it anymore.”
“Fuck you and your disposition!”
“Warlock, we’re warning you, come out now or we’ll consider you hostile,” Wilson shouted. “Hands up!”
“Don’t make me hafta barbecue you, bro,” Rosko added.
Muttering obscenities, the Warlock did as he was ordered, stomping up the concrete stairs with his fingers laced above his head.
“Get over here to the grass and get down on your knees,” Wilson ordered, training his shotgun on the Warlock’s midsection.
The Warlock goggled at the assorted Talents. “Mariette? Oakbrown? Paulie? Ginger? Jesus, guys, what—Mother Karen? What the fuck, guys!”
“These men came to the house and ordered Jimmy and me to come with them, or they said we’d he arrested for refusing to render aid.” Mother Karen looked deeply distressed. “They wouldn’t tell us anything—still haven’t told us anything, in fact— and I assumed they needed a healer. I never imagined I was supposed to help arrest you.”
“Dammit.” Wincing, the Warlock crossed the dead field onto the grass and got down on his knees, his hands still on his head.
“You,” Wilson said to a woman with a zippered canvas bag slung over her shoulder; I guessed by her red hair that she might be Ginger. “Open that bag I gave you, and put the gag on him. And you two”— he jerked his head at the two men who had to be Paulie and Oakbrown—”put the cuffs she’s got on him. Make sure they’re tight.”
Looking confused and unhappy, Ginger unzipped the bag and pulled out a pair of heavy old handcuffs that hummed with magic-dampening charms. She held the cuffs out to Paulie and Oakbrown, neither of whom approached her to accept them.
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“Sometime today, people!” Wilson snapped. “Don’t make me explain the situation to you all again.”
The man I thought might be Oakbrown by his fringed suede boots and oak-leaf pendant took the cuffs and went over to the Warlock to bind his wrists behind his back. Relieved of the cuffs, Ginger pulled a black leather ball gag out of the bag. Looking deeply ashamed, she carried it over to the Warlock and gently brushed his hair back before she strapped it in place across his mouth and head.
I saw her mouth “I’m sorry, honey” as she tightened the buckles.
“What is the situation, exactly, and why do you need us here?” Jimmy asked, his voice shaky. “Don’t you have your own guys for this kinda stuff?”
Wilson gave Jimmy a dark glare. “The situation is, you’re doing your civic duty in bringing a wanted criminal to justice. More to the point, you will drink a nice tall glass of shut the hell up and do what I tell you, kid, if you know what’s good for you and your foster mom.”
Wilson turned to Oakbrown, Paulie, and Mariette. “You three, get out those spells I gave you.” They obeyed, pulling narrow scrolls of parchment on mahogany sticks out of their pockets.
“Take those down to the basement and get that portal closed for good,” Wilson continued. “I don’t want so much as a bad smell getting through that thing from the other side.”
My hackles rose as I realized that Jordan meant to trap Jessie in the hell. This was no spur-of-the-moment scheme; this had taken careful planning. Jordan had known the location of the ruined, cursed farmhouse well in advance. Who could have told him? Or had Jordan known about it all along? I desperately wished that I could engage my telepathy with the Warlock, but that was impossible.
The trio of Talents let out pained gasps as they stepped onto the dead field; Oakbrown seemed to faint briefly and nearly fell, but the others grabbed his thick arms and hauled him up.
“Shake it off,” Wilson said. “Keep going. Those scrolls will take a dog’s age anyhow; the sooner you get done, the sooner we can all go home.”
Wilson turned to his partner, who had fallen to the back of the group, apparently to block the way if any of the Warlock’s shanghaied friends made a run for it.
“Go check out the SUV Bruce,” Wilson told him. Bruce gave him a casual two-finger salute, picked up a sack at his feet, and headed toward the Rover. I quickly hid behind the backseat where I could keep an eye on what was happening in the front of the vehicle.
Bruce pulled on a pair of disposable latex gloves, leaned in through the passenger window, and laid the sack on the seat. He pulled out a large black device in the shape of a black eyeball. I recognized it as a homemade bomb full of concentrated vitreous humor draco niger; if it had been made to the usual recipe, it was powerful enough to destroy most everything in a half-mile radius. Bruce set the bomb in the middle of the box of pistols and grenades, picked up his sack, and headed back toward Wilson, whistling.
“All clear,” Bruce announced.
I climbed up onto the back of the passenger seat and stared out at Mother Karen and Jimmy through the window. There was no possible reason for Jordan’s men to have brought the witch and her foster son along… unless it was to eliminate possible witnesses who’d seen and heard Jessie’s side of the story
I felt absolutely petrified at that realization. Jordan’s men had rounded up known associates of Jessie and the Warlock on the pretext of needing assistance. When the portal was closed and she was trapped for good, Wilson and Bruce would likely teleport away as they detonated the VHDN bomb. Mother Karen, Jimmy, Oakbrown, everybody else would be killed. Murdered in the coldest blood. Jordan and his men could easily blame the homemade bomb on the Warlock and Opal—who was, no doubt, under arrest back at the bar—and then call the whole thing an unfortunate accident caused by reckless renegades. Nobody would be alive to claim otherwise.
Something had to be done, and quickly. Perhaps I could find a way to warn Mother Karen. But what could she do? She was unarmed, and afraid for her foster son. No matter; I had to try.
I hopped down into the front passenger seat, clambered up the door to the sill, and leaped out, landing painfully on the packed, dried mud of the overgrown roadway. I began to run through the dry grass toward Mother Karen—
—and felt my spirit yanked out of the ferret into the aether, then into my true quamo form in my Overseer’s lair.
The old white wyrm was a knot of indignant rage on his ottoman, his tail stiff as a butcher’s knife. He stared at me balefully, his sapphire eyes glittering.
“We don’t appreciate being lied to, spider. The depths of your subterfuge plumb straight down to rank stupidity I do wonder if you appreciate how very much trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“Wait,” I said. “Jordan’s been lying to you—”
“You accuse Benedict Jordan?” the wyrm replied, his voice caustic. “That’s a fine laugh. I’ve seen the cerebral recordings from his servants. I know what you and the Shimmer girl have been up to. You’re most fortunate the men she attacked have not perished from their injuries.”
“Innocent people are about to die,” I insisted. “If you don’t believe me—”
“Indeed, I don’t believe you, and that’s perhaps the first true thing that’s come from your ugly duplicitous mouths—”
“Come to Earth,” I said, panic scrabbling in my very core, “and you’ll see—”
“No. I shall do no such thing. You’re planning some trick, some escape from your just punishment. I’m not about to be fooled twice by the likes of you.”
“Sir, please—”
“Quiet, or I shall cut those vile flapping calliope valves from your belly! You’re legally entitled to fifteen minutes to say your good-byes; after that, you will be recalled to your true body and returned to prison for intensive reprogramming. I hope to never see your chitinous grotesquery or hear your disharmonious piping ever again!”
I came awake inside my ferret body, swinging limply midair, suspended painfully by my tail. Bruce was holding me at eye level, squinting at me suspiciously. I continued to hang limp, breathing shallowly, eyes half closed and unfocused.
“I found the girl’s familiar,” Bruce called to Wilson. “I think it got recalled. What should I do with the body?”
“Wring its neck,” Wilson replied. “Just in case it gets sent back here.”
Oh dear, I thought. We’re completely fucked now.
chapter twenty
Underworld
I had no idea what was happening to Pal, but I had plenty of my own troubles to deal with. As I traveled through the portal, I was crushed on all sides by an oppressive darkness as I felt a vacuum try to tear the air from my lungs and boil the blood from my veins. At one point I wasn’t sure if I was falling or simply spinning in place, trapped in some horrible spot between worlds and time where I’d go on dying forever.
Abruptly I felt myself jerked sideways, and I tumbled out into chilly moonlit air and hit snowy ground feet-first. I might have been able to stay upright but suddenly something yanked hard on the back of my neck and I fell forward, flailing to catch myself. My right hand jammed into a padded convex surface, and I felt the chain at my neck snap free.
I hit the ground, jolting my knees and wrists painfully. Wrists? I looked down; my good right eye saw nothing but buzzing darkness, but my stone eye showed both my hands before me. My right gloved hand gleamed faintly in the moonlight; it rested on a big upholstered plate the size of a manhole cover.
My left hand was sunk into a few inches of snow, ghostly pale but apparently completely intact. The snow looked normal enough in the half-light, and it was certainly cold, but it felt weirdly spongy The air hung stale and icily humid.
Oh crap, I’m touching the snow bare-handed, I realized in alarm, remembering the Warlock’s warning. I scrambled to my feet, scrubbing my freezing palm furiously on the front of my jacket as I stared around me. I was in a small clearing amid dark woods. The trees looked like larger
versions of the kinds I’d seen near the dead field. I wondered if their trunks would feel as strange and unreal as the snow. Nothing seemed to move within the snow-blanketed woods; as far as I could tell, I was alone.
The full moon hanging in the sky was twice as large as it should have been. The satellite had been shattered in two by some terrible cosmic accident. The ragged halves ground soundlessly against each other, sending a constant stream of meteors streaking down into the atmosphere, flaring red like lunar blood.
Unnerved, but satisfied I was safe for the time being, I raised my left palm up close to my stone eye to inspect it. The skin was uninjured, unscarred, the lines and whorls completely normal and familiar. It was indeed my own hand, though I could still feel pain deep in the bone in the spot where my arm had been bitten off. The jacket sleeve had magically extended to cover my arm to my wrist.
I wiggled my fingers and flexed my wrist. The Warlock had said that hells were realms of the Spirit; had my arm actually regenerated, or had my phantom limb simply become more solid in this place? I stared down at both my hands and blinked through several gemviews. Some views were utterly bizarre and I could make no sense of what I was seeing, but others gave me a fairly normal view of myself. In those, my left hand was translucent while my right remained solid.
I decided my renewed arm was probably just a spiritual extension. Possibly it wasn’t something I should trust to hold me if I found myself hanging for dear life from a cliff or tree limb. But who could tell? I dug out my other glove and slipped it on, just to be safe.
I knelt to examine the object I’d fallen on. Moonlight gleamed on bronze edges. The inside, I soon realized, was padded leather. My hands found straps; I tentatively lifted the object out of the snow, and realized it was a shield. The remains of the silver chain I’d worn on my neck still hung from a fist-width loop at the top. A leather-wrapped hilt stuck out diagonally from the top of the shield: A sheathed short sword was affixed to the front with copper wires.
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