by Jim Butcher
“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “It’s just stuff, right? I should be glad to be alive right now.”
“But speaking of stuff, do you have any of Alice’s I could use to try to track her?” I asked. “Like a brush with her hair, or some piece of clothing she’s worn?”
“Sure, yeah. Come on in.”
I followed him into the living room. His battered thrift-store entertainment center was empty and toppled in the thieves’ haste to leave, as were the makeshift bricks-and-boards shelves that had held his movie and game collection. The rest of the room looked okay, or at least okay by college-bro standards. In some guys’ places, you’d be hard-pressed to know if they had been ransacked or not.
But a red gleam on the floor by the bricked-up fireplace caught my attention. I stepped closer and saw a glittering ruby surrounded by dark, faceted onyx on a shattered fragment of bronze. It was maybe as big as the lid of an Altoids tin and looked to be part of Santa Muerte’s dress. And it was lying in a puddle of dark ooze.
“Did anyone throw or drop the statue over here?” I asked Kai.
He shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t remember.”
I grabbed a ballpoint pen from off the cluttered coffee table and used it to flip over the fragment. The edges of the metal looked pale and twisted, as though something had wrenched the bronze apart. On the floor where it had lain, I saw a shred of grayish, leathery membrane, and I caught a strong whiff of amniotic brine and brimstone from the ooze.
Well, this is unexpected, Pal whispered.
“There was an egg inside the statue,” I said to Kai. “And whatever hatched was strong enough to tear the metal apart.”
“Whoa,” he replied. “So that’s what was making that scratching noise we were hearing. We thought we had a mouse someplace.”
What could have been hiding in there? I thought to Pal. My knowledge of Mexican magical lore is pretty rusty, but I don’t remember anything about Santa Muerte’s figures containing any icky little piñata surprises like this.
My guess is it’s some kind of devil larvae that survives through spiritual parasitism, he said inside my mind. It can slowly grow inside the statue, feeding off the prayer energy directed toward it by worshippers.
That’s pretty sneaky, I thought back. Even for a devil.
The question I’m most concerned with is, Where did it go after it hatched? Pal said.
Yeah. We don’t want whatever was in that statue running around loose, I replied to Pal before speaking to Kai. “Maybe the guys who grabbed Alice took the hatchling with them, but maybe they didn’t. Let me try using some of the fragments to track it. . . .”
Kai lent me a pair of pliers to pick up the gooey bit of membrane. I’m not squeamish, but you just don’t want to touch fluids from any diabolic creature unless you know for sure what it can do. I’d been possessed before and it’s not fun.
I closed my eyes, focused on the membrane, and started chanting old words for find. I’d done tracking spells before to find devils; generally all my trouble came after I found them. As the words spilled from my lips, I started to get a hazy image of a two-story house—
Wham!
The blocking magic felt like an armored fist smashing into my forehead, and for a moment my vision went entirely white. I came awake sprawled on my back on the dirty wooden floor. Pal had leaped off my shoulder when I fell and was safe on the nearby ottoman.
What happened? my familiar asked.
“Junior’s protected,” I croaked, hoping the room would stop spinning sometime soon. “We gotta try for Alice.”
Kai peered down at me, looking worried. “Can I get you anything?”
“A Coke or Pepsi would be great,” I replied. “And some of Alice’s hair if you have it. Head hair, please and thank you.”
Kai jogged into the kitchen and brought back a cold can of Faygo cola. “It’s all we got, sorry.”
“Thanks.” I sat up and took the drink, hoping he wasn’t secretly a Juggalo. Drug dealing and dark magic I could handle, but terrible taste in music might make me question our friendship.
Are you okay? Pal asked me, as Kai went upstairs to look for Alice’s hairbrush. You’re quite pale and rather sweaty.
“I’m fine. Just feeling kinda shaky from the spell block. Sugar and caffeine should fix me up, though.” I took a long swig from the can, then let out the inevitable belch.
Kai soon returned with a foofy ball of ash-blond hair. “Will this work?”
“It should.” I cupped the blond wad in my hands and began the chant. Soon, that same mundane-looking two-story house came into my mind, sharpened. I saw a street sign: Kilmuir Drive. I knew the area; it was in the Hilliard suburb a mile or so to the south of Tuttle Mall. A far nicer neighborhood than the one Kai lived in, the kind of ’burb young professionals with kids settled in because of the modest home prices, nice parks and good school system.
The kind of place an unleashed devil could do a whole lot of damage in a hurry if it had the chance.
I looked at Kai. “You wouldn’t happen to have a gun around here, would you?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I got a nine under my bed. Ammo, too.”
“Go get it. And put a shirt and some real shoes on.” I pulled out my phone and started texting Mother Karen and Cooper to let them know where I was going. “Better get some food if you haven’t eaten, because this could be a long night. . . .”
We got to Kilmuir Drive well after sundown. I slowed the car, scanning the houses, looking for the one from my vision. And there it was, sitting innocently in the middle of the block. Developers probably built it sometime in the late eighties; it was the kind of two-story, two-car-garage place you could find in most any suburb in America. White aluminum siding. Picket fence. Red decorative shutters. Manicured lawn with a freshly mulched flower bed of chrysanthemums (white or yellow; I couldn’t tell in the near darkness). The porch light was on, and a fluorescent glow from the kitchen illuminated the first-floor windows. Everything else was dark.
The more I stared at the entirely pleasant-looking place, the more dread I felt. Something was desperately wrong, but there was no physical sign of it. I blinked through to the ocularis view that would show me hidden magic and enchantments.
Wham!
“Shit!” The kick was to my eye socket this time, and I quickly blinked to a more mundane view.
“What’s the matter?” Kai and Pal asked, nearly simultaneously.
“That’s a heavy block. No tracking, no viewing. For all I know, we’ll get fried the moment we set foot on the porch.” I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Riviera Jordan’s number. It was only for emergencies, but this was starting to feel like one. Or it would be an emergency once we got inside.
The call went to her voice mail. I left her a quick message explaining the situation, and gave her the street address.
“Feel free to drop on by. Probably we’ll need help. Thanks, and good-bye.” I ended the call and shut off my ringer.
I’ve never known you to willingly call for Circle assistance, Pal remarked. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?
I’m pretty sure I don’t feel like having my arm bitten off again, or getting my other eye burned out of my head, I thought back, irritated. Besides, if something happens and she finds out I could have warned her but didn’t, what do you think the odds are that she’ll kick us out of Columbus?
Rather high, Pal admitted.
“Okay, so let’s do this,” I told Kai. “Quietly. Follow my lead. Keep your gun holstered until I tell you different.”
He nodded, white faced. “You’re the boss.”
Kai shouldered a black nylon backpack laden with rope, flashlights, kerosene, a first-aid kit and sundry tools. I retrieved my twelve-gauge Mossberg 590 shotgun from the backseat. It was fully loaded with cartridges that contained eighteen
pellets of mixed silver and iron buckshot: a little something for any sort of hostile creature I might encounter, magical or mundane. Ubiquemancy wasn’t ideal for rapid attacks. I had done a few offensive spells often enough that I could get them to work with a fast phrase—trip and shove were good quickies, and I was still tweaking zap to change Pal—but killing words were considered one of the worst kinds of necromancy by pretty much everyone. As much trouble as I was in with the Regnum, I didn’t want to make my situation any worse with serious dark-side stuff.
We shut the Toyota’s doors as quietly as possible and crept toward the front door, hoping none of the neighbors would see and call the cops. There were very few magical combat situations that mundane police forces couldn’t make two hundred percent worse.
Should we wait for Riviera to show up? I thought to Pal as we reached the cover of the front porch.
I am quite concerned about this newfound prudence of yours, he replied.
No, seriously. Should we wait? Or will waiting get Kai’s girl killed?
“Do we go in?” Kai whispered, his voice shaking.
There’s no guarantee that Riviera checks her voice mail promptly, Pal thought to me, and I doubt any of her people are as effective at killing devils as you are. Our lack of apparent support may lull our opponent into a false sense of complacency.
He paused. Or it could get us killed. One or the other.
Wow, you’re a help, I thought to him.
I knew he meant his words to be encouraging, but they made me feel a little sick. Because, if I was honest with myself, I knew he was right. I was very, very good at killing devils. And I might have felt okay if my destructive talents had stopped there. But it seemed I was pretty good at killing damn near anything. Way better than I was at keeping people alive. My avoiding murder words had nothing to do with the Regnum’s rules. It was because I really didn’t need them.
I hated being good at something so fundamentally rotten. And I hated that I lived in a world where those particular skills came in so very handy. I wanted to be a good person, and I wasn’t sure that was really possible once I got enough blood on my hands. Even if most of it was ichor. But I didn’t feel right walking away from people in trouble, either, and I wasn’t about to back down from a fight someone else started.
“Yes, we’re going in,” I replied, voice low. I leaned my shotgun against the white vinyl porch railing and pulled off my opera glove. Shoved it in the pocket of my jeans. I stared at the doorknob. “Odds are the house has some kind of protection, but maybe not. Pal, go to Kai, just in case.”
He hopped over onto Kai’s shoulder. I took a deep breath and gently touched the front doorknob with my flesh hand.
A hot blue bolt of magical electricity arced through me. My muscles spasmed painfully, and I peed myself a little. And then I dropped like a sack of potatoes onto the Astroturfed porch boards.
Kai knelt beside me. “Are you okay?”
“Crap on a cracker, that hurt.” I sat up, trying to shake the buzzing numbness out of my fingers. I didn’t see any new lights coming on in the houses around, and nobody seemed to be peeking through blinds. “No surprise, though.”
“What do we do?”
“Get insulated.” I looked around. “You got a candy wrapper? Something made of plastic or wax paper?”
“Lemme check.” He dug through his pockets and found a wadded-up cough-drop wrapper. “Will this work?”
“It should. I need it to work for only a minute or two.” Heck, I wanted it to work for only a minute or two. I held it in my hands and began my chant, as quietly as I could, and as the old words began to summon magical forces, I felt a plasticky film start to shroud my skin.
Still chanting, I got to my feet, motioned for Kai to follow, and grabbed the doorknob. Locked. I switched up my chant and spoke an ancient word for rust. The metal crumbled when I gave it a third hard twist.
And then we were standing in the dimness of the living room.
“Stay behind me,” I whispered to Kai. Already I could feel the filminess disappearing. “I can see in the dark; try to leave your flashlight off.”
Adrenaline surged in my bloodstream. Being pretty good at killing didn’t mean I wouldn’t get killed myself. I took a deep breath, blinked through to the night-vision view and stepped into the living room. My flesh eye showed me only the rough details of the dim room, but through my ocularis I saw a drip of blood spotting the pale carpet. The dark trail led to a door beneath the stairs.
You see that? I thought to Pal.
The basement, he replied. Of course it’s in the basement.
We did a quick sweep of the first floor and upper floor, stepping as gently as possible to avoid squeaking the floorboards. Kai followed close behind me, quiet as a ghost. The rooms were mostly empty; what furniture was there seemed like the kind of stuff Realtors placed to stage houses for sale. There were few signs that anybody was actually living there.
I went back to the basement door and tried the knob. No jolt. Not locked. I pushed, and it swung inward with a creak that seemed far too loud. Immediately, the stench of decaying flesh made my eyes water. The bloody drip continued down the carpeted stairs; it and the stairs ended at another door. I held my breath, listening. Nothing.
“What now?” Kai whispered, barely audible.
“We go down,” I whispered back. “Get your nine out. Don’t shoot me in the back.”
His “Okay” was an anxious exhalation, syllables swallowed by dread.
We descended.
At every careful step, I wondered if I should ease the basement door open or kick the thing in. If they didn’t know we were there and weren’t watching the door, a stealthy opening would give us an advantage. But if they knew we were coming, kicking it open might work better. Assuming the slam didn’t startle someone into firing a weapon. Assuming they wouldn’t just start firing at us whether they were startled or not. Shit. I hated this part.
Instinct took over when my hand was on the knob. I swung it open, fast and hard enough to bash anyone lurking on the other side. Nobody was.
I took in the whole scene in just two heartbeats. The basement was unfinished and had no furniture or appliances besides the furnace unit in the corner. Someone had smeared a yards-wide, complex necromancy diagram in the middle of the concrete floor with blood. It looked to be the kind of thing you made to open an extradimensional portal. To either side stood a pair of gangly figures in dark clothes; their faces had a shiny, unformed fetal look, and their arms and legs seemed just a bit too long for normal human proportions. A hairy, naked middle-aged guy, blindfolded and ball-gagged, lay crucified in the middle of the diagram, his hands and feet staked to holes in the floor with rebar. I couldn’t tell if he was still alive or not.
Above the crucified man stood a pretty blond girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen, also naked. . . . And her eyes were the inflamed purple of the recently possessed. Alice, but not really. Not anymore.
And all around us were a dozen reanimated dead guys. The source of the terrible stench. Some of them were maybe just days dead, bloated and crawling with maggots, but others had been gone a long time, their desiccated flesh stretched and ragged over dry bones.
Not-Alice hissed and made a “Get them!” motion. The zombies lunged toward us with surprising speed; I had to admire the necromancy. The gangly figures pulled pistols from their waistbands but hung back, waiting.
Take ’em! I tossed Pal up in the air and spoke an ancient word to trigger my electroshock spell.
A tiny, bright bolt of lightning sprang from my fingertip and hit him in the flank as he approached the apex of my throw. His fur went poof!—I’d worked the spell to steal the required energy from his hair. His tiny naked legs and tail windmilled in the air for the briefest moment. In the space between two of my own jackhammering heartbeats, his tail shrank, his legs and body lengthened and thickene
d faster than gravity and a new, thick pelt of heavy brown fur sprouted on his expanding hide.
His entire transformation took less than a second. When his paws landed on the concrete floor, he was no longer a slinky little ferret but a grizzly bear. Eight hundred pounds of muscle and bone and righteous fury. He reared back, thunderously roared and took the head off the nearest rotter with a single paw swipe.
I started blasting the zombies with my shotgun. Aimed for the neck and not the head. Decapitation’s what stops zombies if the brains are already rotted away. The boom of my weapon made my ears ache. The air filled with a choking haze of smoke and stinking rot.
In seconds, my shotgun was empty. Kai had drawn his 9 mm and was plugging away at the zombies still standing. Pal swiped the head off another of the creeps.
In the back, the ganglers were taking aim with their pistols. I dropped my spent shotgun and shouted an ancient word for shove as I pushed into the empty air. I felt the slam in my arms as my spell connected and they stumbled backward, their gun arms shoved to their sides.
This was my chance. I sprinted forward, sprang over the crucified guy and slapped not-Alice on her shoulder with my cold white hand. And dragged us both into my personal hell.
This was what remained of the nightmarish world my boyfriend Cooper had been enslaved in when he fell into a trap laid by a powerful, pain-consuming devil called a Goad. It was a pocket dimension, an extradimensional space whose reality I controlled completely ever since I’d killed the Goad that had created it and rescued Cooper. The hellement became a permanent part of my magical landscape.
I’d tried to mask the evil of the place by turning it into a perfect replica of my childhood bedroom. Perpetual late-afternoon sunlight streamed in through the mini blinds, my stuffed animals lined up at attention on the dresser, my Buzz Lightyear comforter draped the bed. Beneath the pink dust ruffle, a thousand horrifying memories from the Goad’s many victims slept in glass jars.
