by Jenn Stark
The tiny glowing lights curved and flailed, and I understood with sickening clarity that they were human in shape, arms cartwheeling, legs churning, not the sight of men and women going peacefully, but racing in terror from a cataclysm they could not escape—and not only adults either. Some of the embers were barely wisps, their tiny forms spinning without ceasing.
“Stop it,” I moaned, and I realized my hands had lifted up to my ears again, though I could do nothing to shut out the caterwauling of the women. “Make them stop.”
“The cries of the banshee are necessary to pave the way of the dead. That way, the dead can reach their next step in the journey more easily.” How I could hear Death over the incessant keening, I didn’t know. Her voice sounded in my ears clear and cold, though her tone was no louder than a whisper.
“But there are too many—far too many. There’s no way they can predict this many dead. They don’t know this is going to happen. No one can know. There are too many variables!”
That seemed to get through to Death, at least enough for her to halt the incessant roar from the banshee brigade. She issued a few more orders in the strange language, at once harsh and melodic, and the women instantly moved into three distinct groups.
“Based on what we can expect, there are three options,” Death said, her voice still and cold as winter. “The first is that the veil holds, and only the forces on earth go to war against each other, Connected against non-Connected.”
She gestured to one of the small subsections of banshees, and they let up another howl—mournful and dire, but with a certain jadedness to it, the sound of battles fought many times over, where the weak of both sides were sacrificed for the glory of the strong. I watched with fascinated horror as the fire leapt again, throwing up a huge spurt of tiny human-shaped embers, every one of them a deep rose shade. The fire blazed in a devastating rush until these embers winked out, then retreated back to a low-lying sizzle.
“Connecteds,” I croaked, my throat tight. “The Connecteds will die in that scenario. Most of them all at once.”
“The rest in a slow march toward their ultimate destruction. The world will never be the same,” Death intoned. “The second option is that the veil tears wide, and humanity is faced with the reality of the gods rushing back to earth. It won’t be all the gods, but it will be the fiercest, the most betrayed. The carnage will be…swift.”
She gestured again, and a second group of banshees sent up a howl, this one far more frantic. Up rushed the fire once more, and the leaping embers were once again heavily tinged with rose, but there were blue embers in the mix as well—not many, but they were there. Instead of dropping, however, the fire raged on and on, and over time, there were barely a handful of rose embers, but ever-increasing waves of blue.
“The Connecteds will be separated out early by the gods themselves for servants or to be killed as threats, then they’ll be hunted as in the first scenario. The gods will not content themselves with only one subset of humanity, though. Their thirst has not been slaked for far too long, their need for power unending and honed to a razor’s edge. First will fall the men and women of power, then the captains of industry and science. It will take decades to undo all the learning the world has amassed, but not as many decades as you might imagine.”
“And then?” I swayed as I stood, mesmerized by all the sparking embers, rising and falling as the fire flared and ebbed.
“And then those who remain will wish they were dead, and eventually, there will rise an opposition. And if we are very, very lucky, that opposition will defeat the gods. The gods who are now prepared against such an attack, however, gods who learned from their mistakes all those millennia ago. It won’t be so easy this second time, not with so many of them.”
“But we put them back,” I protested weakly. “The Houses of Magic, the Council.”
“Child,” Death whispered, her voice as cool as a February dawn. “The gods will rain down upon the earth like a torrent, bringing fire and flood and chaos. The world will roil and churn, but they will not be foolish. They will know this work all too well, and they will know who must die in order for them to survive. Who do you think they will kill first?”
I nodded, beginning to turn away, but Death stayed me. “There is a third option,” she intoned, gesturing more banshees forward. “The veil rips…but just a little…the forces of earth converge…but not all at once. And the Connected…the Connected are made strong with nascent magic, like the kind contained within the scrolls Kreios wants so much for you to return. The Connected take up the fight, the fight for their very existence.”
Despite knowing—knowing—it was a trap, I straightened, my heart beating more quickly, my fingers tightening into fists. Yes. This, I wanted to know. This, I wanted to see.
“Be careful what you wish for, Sara Wilde,” Death whispered in my ear.
The third group of banshees stepped forward, and the cry they sent up to the heavens was exultant, not at all the mournful dirge of the others, but whipped with fire and ferocity. Death swept her hand in a sharp, cutting arc, and into the fire leapt a surge of white current, sparking with electricity as it raced through the flames. And then again, the fire surged skyward, and though with it came a rush of tiny rose and blue embers, so too were there bursts of purple fire, something I’d not seen before.
“The banishment of the gods,” Death said simply.
I widened my eyes, but for every larger burst of purple flame, there was a corresponding burst of rose and blue embers, until the fire seemed almost to rage out of control, one conflagration leading to the next, and then the next, and then the cycle starting all over again, endless burning, endless death.
“No,” I said, standing forward, so close to the spectral flames now that I could feel their heat on my face. “No, there must be another way. The magic in the hands of the Connecteds doesn’t have be flung so far and wide. It could be directed, it could be—”
Without really knowing what I was doing, I plunged my hands into the flames and caught hold of the streaking bursts of white light. My skin blackened and sizzled, but I did not let it go, and the frantic wails of the banshees shifted as well. Out of nothingness, bright embers appeared once more, first only rose, but then blue as well, and those numbers continued to fly and whirl as above them exploded more bursts of purple flames, bright into the darkness, as god after god burst into spectral fire. The banshee chorus lifted and spun as I lifted and spun, directing the magic to the farthest edges of the fire, rooting out the gods in their shells of purple fire, scattering the bright and undying embers of mortals as they tumbled away and around the carnage, some still winking out, yes, but far more of them growing brighter, stronger, feeding on the magic I was funneling through my hands.
Then, unexpectedly, another swell of fire burst up, a column of bright golden flame shot through with black, and the banshee chorus turned to a new level of keening horror. But unlike the other attacks, this burst of gold didn’t direct itself at the gods or the Connecteds or even the non-Connected mortals. Instead, it turned itself on me, tracing the network of the electrical fire back to its conduit—my hands. Pain exploded through me, pain and something more, an outrage so deep that it shook me to my toes, a betrayal so harsh that I wanted to cry out at the injustice of it.
But I couldn’t cry out, I couldn’t speak, I could only double down my intensity and pour all my strength, all my hope, all my heart into holding the line of white magic still and sure and right, until finally—finally—there was no more singing, there was no more howling, there was no more wind pounding in my ears. The fire sputtered and died again, once more returned to a sparking river, and the embers floated away, not in the throes of death but in a strange, drifting whorl.
The gold light, however, was gone completely, and I slumped forward, pulling my hands back and hanging my arms low to the ground, as if I’d run a race while standing still.
“See?” I moaned, my voice a hoarse cough, the taste of fire and smoke on my tongu
e. “With intervention, with care, the magic can be managed. The Connecteds can remain strong, safe, no one…no one needs to die.”
“And yet they still sing,” Death said, not unkindly.
And she was right. The haunting melody of the banshees lifted in the most beautiful and tragic twisting symphony I had ever heard, as if singing away all that was good in the world, all that was great and true. And there were more of them. So many more, my eyes tearing up as I realized they’d nearly tripled their number in a moment’s breath.
“Who,” I whispered, “who are they singing for?”
“The banshees come in numbers like this only to carry a true leader to his final journey,” Death said. “They give the deceased their highest honor in that way.”
“But I don’t…” I squinted, trying to see, but there was too much smoke, my eyes too filled with tears.
“Armaeus, Sara,” Death said quietly. “If you become so powerful in the war on magic that the Magician decides he must set himself against you…it is he who will not survive.”
Chapter Eight
It didn’t take long for the banshee horde to clear out after that, leaving Death checking the hallway again for the librarian. At this point, I would have welcomed the creature returning. Even that seemed preferable to the idea of confronting Kreios’s scrolls.
“You don’t know,” I muttered, swallowing my nausea at the banshees’ revelations as Death motioned me back into the hallway. A half-dozen hamsters were gathered at the far end of the corridor, looking around nervously. “Any psychic who’s been reading for three minutes knows that. Predictions aren’t static, they’re a question of probability. Any of a thousand factors could turn out differently than you expect. Armaeus might not react at all the way you think he will, or me either, for that matter.”
“I’m not the one making the predictions,” Death said with a shrug. “The banshees are. You want to go against the word of creatures whose entire existence is predicated on identifying who’s going to die and who isn’t, then, you know. It’s your funeral.”
“Was that a joke?” I demanded, staring at her. “Because that sounded like a joke, and I’m here to tell you, it’s a really bad one.”
“I don’t get paid for my humor.” Death angled into the scroll reading room again, and sure enough, three scroll cases were waiting for us there. Three, not two. Kreios had distinctly said two scrolls, clad in amber and jade. I glowered at the third one, wondering if that one held toxic gas. Or a bomb. Or maybe just a fortune cookie. I could use a good fortune cookie right about now.
“Or my predictions, it should be said,” Death continued.
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t recommend it as a side hustle. You suck at it.”
“Noted.” She took up sentry duty at the door and gestured me forward. “I don’t think the librarian is planning on coming back anytime soon. You can review the scrolls at will.”
“The scrolls can hang on for a minute,” I grumbled. I didn’t want to open those scrolls. I didn’t even want to be here anymore, and I especially didn’t want to think about the possibility of Armaeus’s fears actually coming true. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—force him to face me head-on…or if he did, I couldn’t freaking destroy him in the process. There had to be another way. “What do they pay for if it’s not your predictions or your ability to sweep up the dead? Because, no offense, but I haven’t seen you playing undertaker too often since I arrived in Vegas.”
“You don’t know?” Something in Death’s voice made me turn and look at her, her gaze softer now as she took me in. “I forget that you’re not one of us, sometimes. One of us and beyond at the same time.”
“Please, no more doublespeak,” I said, though something in her words rang unavoidably true. The same way the little fireside demonstration she’d just shown me had rung true. “I’ve had my fill for this millennium. You’re Death. Death is transformation, that’s great. But how does that actually play in the world of the Council?”
“Death is about transformation, yes,” she said, her gaze not leaving me even though I turned away to scowl at the scroll cases again. “But in terms of the Council, it’s specifically about the transformative path.”
“Right,” I said. “The ink. The fast cars. The disappearing into an oubliette where no one can find you. It’s all about following your path?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s about creating paths for others to follow, paths that lead them away from their intended destination in order to help them reach their ultimate goal.”
“My ears,” I groused. “They’re starting to bleed.”
“In this case, I’m not talking about you, Sara.” Once again, Death’s voice was low and almost gentle, so unlike her usual gruff strength that every one of my nerves flared to almost painful alert.
“Then who? Kreios? He can’t follow you here—or he could, I guess, but he doesn’t know how. And he’s not telling the Magician about this place for some reason.”
“You know the reason.”
“So everyone keeps insisting,” I said, suddenly bone weary. As much as I cared for the Magician, he could be…distressingly pedantic. “Because Armaeus would rather blow the place up than let the little people have access to it. Just freaking great.”
“Considering the possible outcome you saw to that happening—” Death began, but I turned around on my heel.
“I get it, okay?” I snapped. “If I let the information out and it gets into the wrong hands, or hell, even the right hands, and shit goes out of control and the Magician is called in to restore balance, then he and I end up facing off in the process. And that super sucks, because one of us has to lose, and chances are that’s going to be him and not me, because nobody seems to have figured out what the upper level to my abilities are, least of all me.”
I pointed angrily toward the scroll cases. “But that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t release these scrolls, does it? Because that’s not what you said. Not that I wouldn’t take these scrolls with me, but that I wouldn’t want to.” I blew out a long breath. “Well, you got that right. But why are there three?”
My question seemed to cut through her gentle serenity. “Three?”
“Yeah—three. I’m pretty sure that’s how many are on the table. But Kreios only needed two scrolls. Spells of great and terrible power, blah blah blah. That accounts for the jade and the amber cases. The gold one wasn’t supposed to be on the menu.”
Death frowned, leaving the door to step forward and peer at the table. I noticed she didn’t get any closer to it than I did. “The librarian left three out, but the two you sought were in the original jumble on the table?”
I nodded. “I noticed several cases that could have fit the description after I shook off my awkward landing. These definitely do. The gold one I didn’t pay any attention to, because it wasn’t on my list.”
“Interesting. Those scrolls haven’t been moved once since I arrived, same pile, same location.”
That surprised me. “The librarian doesn’t come around routinely to tidy up?”
“She does not. I get the feeling she makes it to disturbed areas in her own sweet time, unless she’s summoned by undue noise.”
I barely missed stepping on a scurrying hamster, wincing at the tiny creature’s terrified yelp. “And you brought your warning brigade with you?”
“They were already here. Just…not quite in this form.” She shrugged as I lifted my brows at her. “They looked more like a hundred Baby Groots. I found that unnerving.”
“And you thought hamsters would be the better way to go.”
“You try walking in on a forest of plants who whimpered every time you moved. I think a previous artifact finder smuggled them in and, well…they sprouted.” She grimaced. “I didn’t want to think about that too much, frankly.”
“What are you doing here, exactly, anyway?” At this point, I was reaching for anything to delay the inevitable, but I was in no hurry to inspect the scroll cases. I had a sinki
ng suspicion they wouldn’t be empty.
“There’s a few different ways I could answer that, but probably the most honest is practicing avoidance until I have learned all that the banshees wish to tell me.” Death shrugged as I glanced at her. “You saw what they foretold. What you haven’t seen is that that chorus repeats in ascending frequency. When it first happened, I was still topside, and Jimmy was so freaked out, his hair started falling out.”
I frowned. “Jimmy?” I recalled what Kreios had said about him, and hesitated, not knowing how to frame the question.
Death waved me off. “He was a demon, yes. He’s not any longer. He’s paid his tithe long since.” Before I could fully process that comment, she kept going. “And Kreios doesn’t have him on the payroll, though he likes to think he does. He knows the truth about Jimmy, or at least what Jimmy used to be. But he doesn’t know that Jimmy shook free of those bonds about two hundred years before Kreios charmed his way into existence. I’ve known Jimmy for a thousand years. We’re good.”
“Good,” I said, blowing out a breath. “And the new ink he gave me?”
“Well, we’re not completely good,” Death said wryly. “Every once in a while, he wants to influence the way things are going a little too obviously. He’s got a good heart, though. A real one.”
I lifted my brows at the distinction, and she shook her head, giving me a lopsided smile as she pointed to the scroll cases. “Just look at them, Sara. Handle them. It’s your path.”
“I can’t read them,” I grumbled. “There’s no point in my handling them.” Still, I’d delayed long enough. Before I could come up with another reason to stall, I stepped forward and reached for the jade-encrusted scroll case.
As my hand neared the surface, an arcing swell of electricity lifted along the length of it, warming my palm. I held my hand steady, skirting the surface, and as it passed over the latch, I heard the successive clicks. One…two…three.
And then the case was opened.
“Eep!” I glanced down to see I had an audience. At least twenty hamsters had gathered around the table, their eyes wide. Death stood behind them, a grin playing over her face.
