Kindling The Moon

by Jenn Bennett

  “Let’s not get cocky.” I twisted up my mouth to hold back a smile.

  His big hand enveloped mine as he grinned back at me. Then he tilted his head toward the door. His halo left a trail of flames in the night air as he moved. “Ready?” he asked. And I guessed that I was.

  He knocked twice at the cave entrance. One of the windows darkened, then a door swung inward. A burst of sound and smoky red light illuminated the doorway as a tall man stuck his head out; his neck was wider than my waist.

  “Mr. Butler, nice to see you. It’s been a while.” He opened the door wider in invitation; my eyes dropped to the gun strapped to his side.

  “I’m sure you’ve managed without me.” Lon herded me inside, past the beefy doorman, who shut the door behind us without saying another word.

  We meandered through a narrow tunnel strung with white lights. After a few sharp turns, it ended and opened into an enormous cavern. The low, rounded ceiling was populated with stalactites hanging only a few feet above our heads, but the room extended in all directions, as big as a gymnasium. Strings of grapefruit-sized globe lights illuminated everything with a crimson glow while casting deep, ominous shadows in dark corners.

  Rock walls, eroded with holes and crevices, divided the room into smaller sections; each of these areas was covered in throw rugs and dotted with intimate groupings of antique armchairs and sofas. And between these lounging zones, the jagged stone skeleton of the cave wove around small pools of water.

  It smelled of damp stone, stale cigarettes, and alcohol. Another low-note scent mingled below those, spicy and herbal, and it rose like incense in a soft haze from metal braziers that swung from the ceiling.

  A long, uplit bar carved from stone stood against one wall, a couple dozen stone and leather seats lining the front of it. Heavy red velvet curtains hung toward the back of the cavern, blocking two dim passageways. Three long, wooden banquet tables surrounded by red tufted Louis XIV dining chairs sat in front of a medieval tapestry woven with Bosch-worthy scenes of debauchery and near-comical torture.

  An opera reverberated softly around the space, competing with the hundred or more Earthbounds who were laughing and talking throughout the cavern. Dressed to the nines, they were drinking and smoking, clustering among life-size stone statues of Æthyric demons with curling horns and tails, massive wings, and muscular torsos; some were quite beautiful and seductive, others were menacing.

  My eyes trailed around the room. Trays of beautiful bites of food and flutes of sparkling wine circulated through the crowds, carried by voluptuous women and men wearing togas or pleated Egyptian shendyt kilts. The fabrics were white and sheer; they might as well have been wearing nothing at all. I did my best not to stare.

  I was used to seeing halos in the bar, but not nearly as many as I saw now. Earthbounds, all of them. And in the mass of green and blue, it was easy to spot the transmutated ones. Golden flames sprang from the horned heads of a middle-aged man at the bar, an elderly man on a couch, and a tall, young woman who was fondling a much younger, possibly teenage, boy sitting on her lap.

  “This is the ballroom,” Lon said in my ear, as I caught a glimpse of several transparent imps milling under the stools around the bar. “Things get worse in the back rooms and the grotto.” I lifted an eyebrow and he added, “Don’t use your full name. I don’t want these people bothering you later.” I glanced at a long-haired man pissing in a dark corner against one of the cave walls; I was pretty sure I didn’t want them bothering me later either.

  Another fiery-haloed man approached us with outstretched arms. In his seventies, perhaps, he had short, gray hair and drooping wrinkles below his eyes. He was dressed in a black three-piece suit with a red tie. His horns were short, knobby, and ashy-looking, not half as lovely as Lon’s imposing spirals.

  “Lon,” the elderly man purred as he enthusiastically shook his hand. “Two years is too long. Your father, rest his soul, would be glad to know you’ve returned to the fold.”

  Lon acknowledged these comments with a brief nod. “David.”

  David’s gaze lit on me. He was stoned out of his mind. Through slitted eyes, he looked me over from bottom to top, then jerked his head in surprise when he spied my halo. “Well, now. Who is this, son?”

  “This is … Cady. Cady, David. He’s one of the original members of the Hellfire Club.”

  “Cady? Charmed. Delighted … and quite surprised.” Bringing my hand to his lips, he flipped it over, smelled my wrist, and planted a lingering kiss that radiated a strange heat up my arm. “Lon always had excellent taste in women.”

  Lon wrangled my hand away from David and slid a shoulder in front of mine, blocking David’s access to me. “No,” he commanded. By the tone of his voice, I could tell that he really meant to say “Mine.” Frankly, I wasn’t offended. Especially under the circumstances.

  David pursed his lips and frowned, then moved his head to look around Lon. “My apologies,” he told me. “We’re not used to seeing Lon with anyone significant since Yvonne. How is she, by the way? Still in Miami?”

  Lon grunted an affirmation.

  “She was a little much to handle, even for my tastes. Passion without joy is so draining. Shame we didn’t recognize that before, well, you know.” He shrugged and looked up at my halo again. “May I ask about you? I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you undergone some sort of initiation elsewhere? Where are you from?” He squinted his eyes at me in curiosity.

  “No, it’s natural,” I said with a light smile. “I’m from the city. Morella, I mean.”

  “Natural, eh? What kind of demon are you, chickadee?”

  As he spoke, I began to feel lightheaded. Why? I glanced around us. Everyone was either drunk or high. Manic laughter, roaming hands, comatose stares, stumbling gaits. If they were in Tambuku, I’d be worried about a fight breaking out any minute. Well, what did I expect? Hellfire Club, duh.

  “Something regal and quite special, I’d guess,” David continued babbling. “Higher echelon. Can you trace your blood-line back to the Roanoke colonists? Or maybe descended from one of the strays that popped up during the Middle Ages?”

  “Not Roanoke, no. My family is originally from Europe,” I said. That was true enough, but I certainly wasn’t going to offer up anything more.

  “Fascinating,” he said before waving his hand toward the bar. “Would you like anything? Wine? Food? Drugs? Please, come meet the others and tell me more about your ancestry.” He tried to move around Lon, but he wasn’t budging.

  People were starting to stare and murmur, mostly at me. I was used to being the only human in a room. Days often elapsed in Tambuku without another human in sight. I was also accustomed to Earthbounds staring at my halo, so I wasn’t sure why it made me so uncomfortable all the sudden. Perhaps because they were all eyeing me like a piece of meat …

  “We need to speak with Spooner,” Lon said. “Is he here yet?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s here. A little indisposed at the moment back in one of the gypsum rooms. I’m sure he’d love company, if you two would care to join him.”

  “It can wait,” Lon said.

  David shrugged as if it were our loss, then turned to me. “What’s your knack, dear?”

  I smiled. “You first. What’s yours?”

  “Temperature control.” The air around my legs warmed considerably. That explained the earlier heat from the wrist kiss. It felt pretty good, admittedly. The cave was cool and damp and I regretted not bringing a sweater.

  “David,” Lon scolded.

  “Pooh.” The gray-haired man frowned in disappointment and the heat faded. “Let me get you both drinks and find the others. I’ll be right back.”

  He sauntered off, swaying a little as he walked. I took a step and swayed myself. Then I eyed the braziers. “What the hell am I inhaling?” I whispered.

  “Ketynal.”

  He gave me a questioning look, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. Ketynal is a mixture of two powdered roo
ts, one of which grows only on a couple of islands in the Philippines. That particular root is expensive and hard to come by, but I use it in one of my medicinals as a calming agent. However, when combined with the second root, it synergizes to create a compound that gets you buzzed and lowers inhibitions.

  “Try not to get too close to the braziers,” he warned.

  Too fucking late for that.

  27

  We spent almost an hour in the smoky ballroom rubbing elbows with various members of the inner circle, The Thirteen as they called themselves. To my dismay, I was left unattended for a small chunk of time and fell prey to David again, along with a couple of city councilmen who tried to grab my ass, and an heiress in her fifties who did. I had to get out of this place before things got worse.

  After all the freaking out I’d done earlier about Lon’s enhanced abilities, I genuinely hoped that he was monitoring me now. Distress signal! I thought. Mobbed by smarmy demons trying to cop a feel … where the hell are you? I had no idea how well he could hear my thoughts in a crowd like this, but it was worth a try. In the meantime, I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for him to rescue me. I made an excuse and shuffled off into the melee, navigating my way between chattering cliques and underdressed servers. The occasional transparent imp ran underfoot, making me itch for my portable imp portal.

  As I made my way toward the back of the room, I slipped out of the crowd and edged around a stone wall. Without warning, an arm grabbed me around my waist. I squealed as I was yanked behind the wall into the shadows. Panicked and furious, I rammed a clenched fist back over my shoulder and struck a hard blow on my assailant’s face.

  “Oww!”

  Released, I twirled around, ready to fight … only to find Lon holding his hand over his eye.

  “Goddamn!”

  “Oh, Lon—I’m so-o-o sorry. I didn’t know it was you.”

  “Jesus, that hurt.”

  I shook out my hand. It hurt me too. “Why’d you grab me like that? I thought it was one of the drunk perverts.”

  He rubbed his eye. “You asked for a rescue. Next time, I won’t bother.”

  “You heard me?” I moved his hand away from his face to inspect it. His left eye was shut. After a couple of squints, he finally relaxed it.

  “I told you I could. Are you ready to talk to Spooner?”

  “What?”

  Lon leaned down, his horns nearly touching my forehead. He lifted my chin with his fingers and studied my face. “Are you already so high from the ketynal that you forgot our mission?”

  I slapped his hand away. “Not too high to injure a man twice my size.”

  He chuckled, then leaned closer and spoke in a low voice near my ear, “Come on, then … Cady. Clock’s ticking.”

  We made our way through the noisy cavern, his hand warming the back of my neck as he guided me forward. For a moment, my mood improved. But when I figured out where we were headed, I wasn’t all that keen on going to the back rooms, where Lon said things “got worse.” Awesome.

  An armed guard nodded at Lon and parted thick red curtains that obscured a dim passageway beyond. We stepped through, and the red ballroom lights changed to blue. Water-etched lines ran the length of the narrow stone tunnel. Below our feet, the flooring was gouged and uneven. The sounds of the party faded behind us, replaced by a variety of grunts, groans, and moans that echoed from small chambers lining the corridor.

  “Jesus, it smells like a brothel back here,” I whispered.

  “No money exchanges hands.”

  “That’s a shame. Someone could be making a fortune.”

  “Don’t get any ideas. Turn left up here.”

  We yielded to an even narrower passage guarded by a chubby college-age Earthbound who was too busy browsing the Web on his cell phone to pay us any attention. We continued past him, and after three small chambers, we turned into a larger one curtained off with a threadbare piece of green fabric.

  Inside was a spacious, round room lined with gray rock walls; the ceiling was so low at the entrance that Lon was forced to duck his head to clear it. Dull, opaque veins of crystallized gypsum hung from the ceiling and trellised down the walls like crystal rosebushes.

  Toward the back of the room, a single showerhead hung straight down over a round pit carved into the floor; water steadily dripped down and drained into a hole at the base of the cavern wall. The left side of the room was occupied by three thick mattresses pushed together on the floor. Tumbling off the mattresses were dozens of pillows, most that had seen better days. Dozing among them were two nude bodies, a male and a female.

  A wide stone bench was carved into the wall opposite the mattresses. A padded cushion sat atop it, and sitting on it was—I surmised—Spooner, smoking a cigarette.

  He was hard to see in the shadows until he shifted to face us, allowing the blue light to illuminate the side of his face. Middle-aged and awkwardly tall, he had pale skin, stark orange hair, and matching freckles. Only a plain green halo, so not one of The Thirteen, then.

  He studied me with an unsettling smile. Freshly showered, his pumpkin hair was slicked back, his cheeks pink. He wore an odd, crumpled suit; the jacket was brown and the vest beneath it cheetah-spotted, and topped with a green ascot instead of a tie. The man at the evidence room in Portland was right on the money; this guy really did look like a giant leprechaun. A badly dressed one.

  “Hello, Lon … and friend.” He took a long drag off his cigarette, lazily crossed his long legs, and leaned back against the stone wall.

  “Spooner.”

  “And friend?” he prompted again.

  “Cady, this is Spooner. He doesn’t have a real job, but he’s wealthy, if that impresses you.”

  It didn’t. Lon must have been reading my thoughts, because he lightly pressed his thumb against my neck in acknowledgment.

  My eyes settled on Spooner’s socked feet. They were mismatched, brown and black; the black one had a hole in the toe. His shoes rested on the cushion beside him. He moved them to the floor and patted the fabric. “Please, Cady. I wish you had come back here sooner.” He waved a pointy finger toward the couple on the mattresses. “They’re momentarily exhausted, but they’ll recover fast. If not, there are others.”

  The dozing nude male rolled to his side, eyes closed. That’s when I noticed the gray scales on his shoulders and the tiny blunt horns on his head. No fiery halo, so he wasn’t transmutated. Then I spotted the purple patch of skin at the top of his sternum.

  “Incubus,” I said in an even voice.

  “And succubus.” Spooner exhaled smoke in my face. Rude. I waved it away. It wasn’t valrivia. It smelled like a stimulant, which was the last thing in the world anyone in these caves should be using.

  “How do you have …” My words trailed off when I spotted the narrow channel that ran along the floor. A binding triangle inside a larger circle. The channels were lined with thin glass pipes containing a thick, dark substance. “Not red ochre,” I said, inspecting the glass. It was hard to tell much of anything in the dim lighting. “It looks like oil paint … a mineral bound in oil. Cinnabar?”

  Spooner gave me another unsettling smile. “Close. Vermilion. You can enter freely without breaking the binding.”

  Huh. I thought it was used mainly when you wanted to ensure that nothing could inadvertently break the binding, not to allow the magician free passage in and out of the binding area. Most magicians go to great lengths to protect themselves from contact with summoned Æthyric demons, and with good reason. A lot of demons don’t like being summoned out of their plane. Would you like being ripped away from your life unexpectedly by some wheezing, power-hungry magician who only wanted to get information out of you or use you for your knack? Probably not.

  Like humans, Æthyric demons vary in intelligence and physical prowess. There are plenty of docile demon classes, but just as many wild ones. And if you summon a demon who’s pissed off and ready to rip your head off, given half the chance? Well, that m
ight not be someone you want to lock yourself up with inside a small, contained space. Honestly, the Pareba demon that Riley had summoned was only the second Æthyric demon I’d ever witnessed who’d been allowed to roam free without containment.

  Granted, succubi and incubi aren’t really dangerous; in fact, they readily enter pacts with magicians, willingly exchanging sexual favors for bits of earthly information or temporary use of a magician’s guardian. But considering the elaborate binding in front of me, it was pretty clear that these two were being held here against their will.

  This setup is kind of repulsive, just FYI, I thought to Lon. He squeezed my neck lightly.

  Spooner cut his eyes toward Lon. “Don’t tell me you’ve brought her here to skip ahead in the initiation queue.”

  “No one’s taking your place in line. Don’t be paranoid.”

  “Good. Because I think one crazy wife is enough for this club.”

  “Don’t test me, Spooner,” Lon replied.

  “I’m not here to join,” I confirmed.

  He studied my halo but made no comment about it. “What are you here for, then?”

  “We want to buy something you’ve recently acquired,” Lon replied. “The glass talon.”

  Something dark crossed Spooner’s face, but he remained composed and relaxed.

  “Why would you want that?”

  “Why would you?” I asked.

  “I’m a collector.”

  “And an opportunist. How much?” Lon asked.

  Holding the cigarette in his mouth, Spooner settled the shoes in front of him and tugged at the laces to loosen them, slipping one on. As he tied it, he said, “I don’t have the talon.”

  Lon toed the second shoe and kicked it aside. “Yes, you do. I talked to the person who sold it to you in Portland. I know how much you paid for it.”

  Spooner leaned forward to hook the heel of the shoe with his fingertip. Scooting it back into place, he stuck his hole-y toe inside. “I sold it already.”

  “When? To whom?”

  “A week ago, and none of your business.”

  Lon sat down next to Spooner and clapped his hand on his shoulder. Spooner cried out and tried to move back, then robotically stopped. A confused look flittered across his face. Then he smiled and laughed. “I always liked you, Lon.”