“Seven shoe laces say otherwise.”
“Whatever.”
They proceeded to carefully follow steps until they were ready for the actual rite. They lit the fire. When the entire circle was aflame, Harm placed Mallach’s invocation on the fire. They each took hold of an end of shoe lace and began moving clockwise around the fiery circle.
“As soon as we have him, envision an invisible impenetrable cylinder with a top and bottom,” Wolfram said. “And remember, if anything goes wrong, jump in the water.”
“How do we know that will work?” Rally looked at the water.
“We don’t,” they all said in unison.
“Did everybody remember to say goodbye to loved ones?” When there was no answer, Rally shrugged and grinned. “Life is for learning. Let’s do it.”
Mallach recited his words then the other six joined in repeating the last four lines together.
Air and Water, Earth and Fire
Bring the demon we require.
To Witch Gods, we give reverence,
Call the demon, Deliverance
The flames in the wall torches leapt outward like kerosene had been poured on them. The warlocks continued moving and chanting. The pool water began to slosh as small waves made their way toward the rock rim. But the warlocks continued moving and chanting.
Each of them felt the indescribable tingle of magic at work as the power began to build. It was the first time they experienced the unique potency of a core coven working together with a single purpose in mind.
Deliverance was drinking petuil with satyr friends. He didn’t drink often, but the occasion called for it. The occasion being the profoundly empty victory of punishing the witch who’d cursed him. It had not only given him no satisfaction, but had left him with a sour feeling about himself and his life in general.
He was committed to erasing the discomfort with the help of mind-altering substances when he was suddenly sucked away as if by a giant vacuum.
His first reaction was alarm, which naturally it would be, but within a couple of seconds he matched the experience to something from his past. He was gods damned being summoned! By a witch!
He appeared in the midst of a fiery circle, looked around, recognized the warlocks and almost smirked, thinking they would have been better off without the fire. Didn’t they know he was a fire demon?
They’d stopped chanting and moving about and were staring at him like they were surprised he’d shown up. Amateurs.
“Harm,” Deliverance said drily as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“What have you done with my sister?”
“She committed a sin against me and it wasn’t a little one. Retribution is my right.”
“Taking care of my sister is mine.”
“And that is why it was foolish to summon me.” He glanced around. “And endanger your new playmates.” The remark was intended as a barb, but Aodh and Mihai both laughed. Deliverance was disappointed that he hadn’t been able to needle them, but forged on. “We’re at an impasse.”
“That’s not the way I see it, because you’re in there and we’re out here,” said Harm. “Where’s my sister?”
“I gave her some choices about where to serve out her sentence. She chose a desert dimension. Not very hospitable, but if it was fun it wouldn’t be a punishment.”
Wolfram leaned over and whispered something to Harm.
“What will you take to give her back?”
Deliverance laughed. Serious fucking amateurs. “What could you possibly have that I might want?”
“Well,” Harm pointed to the circle in which the demon was imprisoned, “your freedom.”
The demon sighed. “Here we go again. You think I can’t get out of this.” Harm looked around at his companions, who all nodded and murmured in the affirmative. “I’m pretty sure I can get out of here. And if you make me prove it, it won’t leave you in a very good bargaining position.”
Harm looked at Wolfram then at the demon. “If you can get out, why are you still there?”
Smiling like he was enjoying himself too much, Deliverance said, “Perhaps you caught me when I was bored and I’m enjoying playing with you.”
“That’s one possibility,” Harm agreed. “The other is that you can’t get out.”
Deliverance’s smile faded. His attempt to intimidate the youngsters was losing its fun factor. He surreptitiously pushed against the invisible barrier of the circle. It held.
He blinked and tried again, pushing a little harder. Not only did it hold, it gave no indication of weakening and he wondered if the little brats might have managed to pull off a bona fide summoning. He raised his hands and tried to break the shield. It didn’t even ripple.
What was he missing? He looked around at the faces watching him and was puzzling it through when an idea hit him. He looked up and counted. Reaching the number seven was the sort of, “Oh shit!” moment that demons rarely confront. After all, there is a reason for their arrogance.
The kids, and he thought of them that way even though their ages ranged from ninety-three to four hundred and twenty, had managed to form a warlock coven. He wasn’t sure it had ever been done before. As in ever. Because getting seven warlocks to work together was thought to be not just improbable, but impossible.
Harm smirked. “You want out? Give me my sister.”
Deliverance crossed his arms again and set his jaw. “Okay. You win. I was going to go get her in another day or two anyway. Let me out. I’ll get her and leave her at home.” He shook his head slightly. “Her home, I mean.”
“Right. We don’t have any get out of jail for free cards to hand out today.”
The demon’s nostrils flared. “Look. I’ve been amiable about this so far, but I only have so much patience for little warlocks getting too big for their britches.”
“We’re not letting you out of there until we have your vow that you’re going to get her,” Wolfram whispered to Harm. “And that there will be absolutely no reprisal for her, for us, for our families, our friends, our pets, our homes, our stuff, or anything else that relates to us in any way.”
“Okay.”
“Say it.”
“I will get her and deliver her home. There will be no reprisal against her, you, your families, your friends, your pets, your homes, your stuff, or anything else that relates to you in any way.”
“What’s the book say, Aodh?”
“Book says that, if you call a demon by name and ask him directly if you have a deal and he says yes, he can’t go back on it.”
“Deliverance,” Harm said. “Are we agreed on a deal that you will get my sister, take her home so that she is there waiting when I get back, and that there will be no reprisal whatsoever against her, us, our families, our friends, our pets, our homes, our stuff, or anything else that relates to the seven of us in any way?”
The demon glared at Harm. “Yes.”
“Speak the terms out loud.”
A muscle ticked in the demon’s jaw. He was thinking that it was a good thing that he’d pretty much decided to let Sixt go regardless of the antics of the little gang of warlocks.
“Yes. I agree to the deal that stipulates I will get Sixt and deliver her home so that she is there waiting when you get back, and that there will be no reprisal whatsoever against her, you, your families, your friends, your pets, your homes, your stuff, or anything else that relates to the seven of you in any way.”
Harm grinned and clapped his hands. “Excellent.” He looked around at his cohorts. “Let the barrier drop.” Turning back to Deliverance, he said, “You’re free to go. No hard feelings.”
Deliverance gave a small push and realized that he was, indeed, free. He walked through the fire and stood directly in front of Harm. He held Harm’s gaze for a few seconds, said, “Until next time,” then he simply wasn’t there.
Harm looked at the others and barked out a laugh. “We summoned a demon!” Honestly, they couldn’t believe they’d summon
ed a demon, made a deal, and lived to tell about it. They were going to be named in the Annals.
The warlocks broke into raucous laughter and self-congratulations.
When the euphoria began to fade, Rally said, “We’ve come all this way. We can’t leave without a sacred swim. Even if it’s a short one.”
Without waiting for agreement, he jumped in and the others followed, whooping and hollering like the boys Deliverance thought they were.
“Oh man,” said Turf. “This water feels good.”
“I could get addicted,” said Mahai.
“We’ve got to clean this place up before we go,” said Mallach.
“What do you mean?” Turf looked around. “It looks fine to me.”
“There’s going to be a ring of ashes where the fire’s burning. You should always leave a place better than you found it,” Mallach said with authority.
Rally snickered. “Isn’t that the Girl Scout motto?”
Mallach flushed. “That doesn’t mean it’s not a good policy.”
Wolfram shot up out of the pool from having been submerged, drops of water flying from shaking his longish hair. “Will you shut up? For fuck’s sake I’m trying to immerse myself in a spiritual experience. We’re here at the top of the world, in one of the most sacred places on Earth, and you dickwads are arguing about who’s going to clean up.”
Everybody stopped and stared at Wolfram for a full three seconds before commencement of a spontaneous pile on.
As Harm was finishing dressing for the trek home, Rally leaned toward him and said, “Is it just me, or just my imagination, or do you feel sort of, uh, more powerful?”
“Yes. I feel it, too. I don’t know if it’s the water or if it’s the seven of us together. Either way, I’m feeling like I’ve had my vitamins.”
Sixt spent her day talking to birds and rearranging the house. Literally. She moved walls, expanded and retracted square footage, redecorated, ate like Henry VIII, and added thousands of full-flowering New Guinea impatiens to the garden. Fuchsia. Orange. Red. It was a riot of color. Oh. And she built a swimming pool shaded by overarching palms and surrounded by tiki torches.
Remembering a video journalism piece that she’d seen, she wished for an African gray parrot. A handsome specimen flew through the open door and landed on the arm of the sofa where she sat.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” he mimicked, in the same tone.
She laughed. He laughed in a voice that was almost disturbing in the closeness of its mimicry.
“Well, that will teach me to laugh out loud,” she said.
The bird did not answer, but cocked his head as if waiting for her to say something that interested him.
“I’m Big Bird.”
He obliged and said, “I’m Big Bird.”
“I like Sixt.”
He repeated that faithfully as well.
“I hate Deliverance. He’s not a demon. He’s a scoundrel, a pig, and a villain.”
Hearing the bird repeat that sentiment delighted her to the point where she had to laugh out loud and was willing to hear the bird copy her laughter. But when she heard her laughter coming back to her, which she hated, she blurted out, “Fucker,” before she caught herself.
It was the sort of mistake owners of gray parrots live to regret.
She went through the library and wondered if her subconscious mind had catalogued all that many books without her awareness of having seen them. As busy as she tried to be, she was aware of the ever-present fear of night approaching. By late afternoon, when she felt the panic of being alone beginning to take hold in earnest, she decided she needed to do something about it.
She was a witch. If she could control her exterior world, and it was clear that she could, she should be able to influence processes in her interior world as well. It was logical. It was reasonable. And it was untested.
Judging by the light, she estimated that she had two and a half hours before total darkness. She came up with a set of mantras designed to convince herself that she feared nothing and cherished time alone, especially at night.
She knew the recitations needed to be out loud or they wouldn’t work as well.
“You will not remember or repeat my mantras,” she said to Big Bird.
He bobbed his head in birdlike fashion in a way that could have been an acknowledgement or a quirky coincidence. But since the entire environment and its occupants sprung from her mind, she reasoned that she may have created a parrot capable of obeying commands.
She went out and sat by the pool to begin the process of convincing her subconscious mind that she was not afraid to be alone at night. The bird flew through the open door and sat on a nearby wrought iron chair. Though he occasionally copied the tweet patterns of other birds in the garden, he never repeated a word of her verbal meditations.
“Good bird,” she said.
He replied immediately. “Big Bird is a good bird.”
She laughed out loud. And was sorry that she did.
CHAPTER Fourteen INTERVENTION
He left the little warlock terrorists and stepped into the dimension of Kore, far, far from Loti. The only reason why he wasn’t overly miffed was he’d already, more or less, concluded that he would suspend the witch’s solitary confinement.
When he’d left her to the desert dunes, he’d thought that he was going to be free of addiction, free from a contract that controlled his whereabouts, and essentially carefree. But instead he’d begun to feel an emptiness that hadn’t been there prior to his year and a day blackmail payment. No. He was sure it hadn’t been there before.
Then there was that kiss.
For two and a half centuries he’d been forced to seek out sex with five women a day. That was half a million, at least, but who was counting? It felt like it had been a fast-moving, faceless never-ending blur of women. No one memorable. Nothing noteworthy. In all that time, with all those females, he could recall only one kiss that stood out in memory.
Sixt.
The thought still made his lips tingle.
Now and then, he’d unconsciously reach up and touch his mouth before remembering that his body had demonstrated a propensity for its own agenda where the witch was concerned. He’d slap the regret away and chastise himself for moments of weakness.
There was a right and wrong to things. He was right and she was wrong. End of story. Period.
He drank petuil with satyr friends and it was good to be free. But he couldn’t drink himself free of the sensation of emptiness.
Deliverance figured that he had two days before Harm could get back to New York, to figure out how to retrieve the witch and redeposit her in her posh pad without looking like a tool. Not that he cared how he was perceived by the witch.
He was on a rooftop veranda overlooking his favorite elemental hangout, lost in his own thoughts, when he realized he wasn’t alone. He looked over his shoulder to see Kellareal standing there with that annoying look of accusation he so often wore. Worse, he was wearing that stupid Irish elf guise. That one was getting old, but the angel claimed that it got a lot of attention from women.
“What do you want?” Deliverance asked.
“I want you to clean up your mess.”
“Which mess are we talking about? According to you the worlds are full of my messes.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
Deliverance turned around to face him and leaned back, elbows resting on the railing behind him. “Sixt.”
“Duh. Why are you punishing her?”
“You honestly don’t know?”
“I know you think that you were wronged.”
“I WAS WRONGED!”
Kellareal shook his head. “You brought this on yourself by leading the young witch on.”
“Leading her on?”
“Don’t act ignorant. You know what you did. Your short attention span hurt somebody. What did you expect? You can’t treat people like that.” The demon considered t
hat and had to concede that the angel might have a point. “She lashed out, but regretted it.”
“I was easily distracted!” Deliverance knew his defense was thin, which was why he was yelling. It was a trick he’d picked up from human males. The more uncertain the position, the louder the volume. “And. This is none of your business.”
“At the moment, you are my business. You’re in the process of locking in an eternity in Hel.”
“What are you talking about? If this is angelic double speak, I don’t have time for it.”
“You don’t have time? Because you’re busy headed to a game of maraglia or a drinking bout with satyrs?” The angel was making it sound like Deliverance’s life was empty. The demon frowned. He didn’t like what was being said. But he didn’t have an answer for it either. “You can afford to spare me the couple of minutes it might take to mean the difference between happiness or misery.”
“Whose happiness? The witch’s?”
“Yes, idiot. It just so happens that her happiness is eternally tied to yours.”
The demon raised his arms and let them drop to indicate exasperation. “Again. What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t noticed that she’s near perfect for you in every way?”
Deliverance had noticed that, but intentionally suppressed those thoughts because he had a larger purpose. “Any interest I might have had in Sixt was made null, by her, when she hexed me.”
“You know what humans call self-sabotage? Shooting yourself in the foot.”
“Do. You. Have. A. Point?”
“Of course. I always have a point. Unlike you, I’m clear eyed.”
Deliverance began shaking his head. “You don’t have anybody else to aggravate?”
“Will you stop being an ass long enough to hear what I’m telling you? She’s yours, demon. Or she could be. If you haven’t already screwed it up beyond repair.”
“Look,” Deliverance felt the beginnings of anger as his blood started to heat, “you need a recalibration. She’s not anything to me… except somebody who did me a grave wrong.”
Deliverance (Knights of Black Swan Book 12) Page 19
