Fantastic Hope

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “No, I’m fine,” I said, turning to look at her for the first time. The resemblance to Anna was strong, and not just in the eyes. There was a similarity to her nose as well, but the auburn hair was all her own, and she was a little heavier than Anna. Pleasantly curvy, I’d call her. “I was just thinking about someone.”

  “Someone you lost?” she asked, and I dropped my gaze.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “It’s who I think about when I sit here at night and look up at the stars. I . . . had a lot of family in Europe. Not many of them made it here. I . . . don’t know what happened to everyone, but some . . .”

  “They didn’t make it there, either,” I said, my voice soft as the breeze.

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Were they Jewish?” I asked, trying to find a way to steer the conversation around to who her family was without being horribly insensitive to her loss. But I had to know what the connection was, or if there even was a connection.

  “Yes. We are. I am. My family . . . my father owned a store. He sold antiques. He did very well for himself in Stuttgart, buying from estates and selling to private people. He was very fair, but everyone assumed because he was a Jew, he was cheating them somehow, even though he often changed the terms of an agreement in their favor if they didn’t ask for enough money for something they sold him, or if they offered too much for some trinket in his shop window. But it didn’t matter. He was a Jew, so he was cheating them.”

  “You said he was . . . ?”

  “Yes. He died. Fighting the Nazis. We moved here after one of the local businessmen bought his shop. He was offered a fair price, of course.” I could tell by the twist of her mouth that the price wasn’t fair at all, at least not to her mind. “After Papa sold his business, we moved here. When the Americans joined the war at last, he enlisted. He was killed in a forest in France. France was not very good for our family . . .”

  “What else happened in France?” I asked, my voice as gentle as I could make it despite my heart trip-hammering inside my chest.

  “My aunt and cousin died there. Murdered by Nazis. My cousin Edgar was sent to one of the camps and no one ever heard from him again, but my aunt Anna . . . she was murdered. My grandpapa in Stuttgart received a telegram from some man he’d never heard of telling him what happened. He wired the news to Mama. She was devastated. They were very close, even closer than most sisters. She had begged Anna and Gerald to come with us, but they didn’t want to leave Europe. Anna loved Germany, and France, and Austria, and Edgar studied with some of the best music teachers in the world before . . .” Her voice trailed off and she let out a soft, embarrassed chuckle.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m rambling like this to you. I haven’t even introduced myself Mr. . . . ?”

  I shook myself out of the trance I’d been in ever since she mentioned her aunt Anna, and looked dumbly at the hand she held out in front of me. After an awkward pause, I took it and shook. “Harker. Quincy Harker. And you are?”

  “Rosalyn. Rosalyn Reismann. Harker . . . that name is familiar . . . oh yes! Like the character in that book. The one about the—”

  “Vampire,” I said with a slight sigh. “Yes, that’s the one. No relation, of course.” Unless you count being the literal son of the man in the aforementioned book, but telling people that usually led to all sorts of uncomfortable questions about when the book was written, when I was born, and then landed on why I looked like I was still in my early thirties when I should be in my midfifties. I generally try to avoid those conversations with people I meet in public parks. Very little good ever comes from them.

  She laughed, her voice a merry tinkle through the night. “Of course not, silly! That’s just a story. That kind of stuff isn’t real.”

  But the way she cut her eyes to the side when she said it made me think she knew exactly how big a pile of manure that was the moment she said it. “Well, maybe not vampires, but this old world could certainly use a little magic,” I said, leaning back on the bench and looking up at the stars. “Something to maybe soften the pain of life’s punches, or maybe just something to make the world a little bit better.”

  I watched out of the corner of my eye as her mouth opened and then closed as if she wanted to tell me something but wasn’t sure she could trust me. She just looked at me for another moment, then stood up.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Harker, but time really has flown. My friends will be waiting for me. It was very nice meeting you.” She held out a hand.

  I stood and took it. “It was very nice meeting you as well, Miss Reismann. I hope you and your friends have a good time with whatever it is you’re doing out in the park in the middle of the night. And maybe if I’m lucky you’ll spy me on a park bench and decide to chat with me again some evening. I live just up York Street, so I’m here most nights.”

  “Maybe I will, Mr. Harker. Have a good night.” She gave me a little wave, then turned and hurried off down the trail into the park. I sat there for a moment thinking over what she’d said, trying to make the connection between this nice young girl and a dark magic ritual. Something didn’t make sense, but I knew exactly where to go to get my answers.

  * * *

  —

  I cast the same light-bending spell around myself that I’d used the night before, then followed Rosalyn down the path into the middle of the park. Just like before, she stopped by a tree and pulled her robe out of her bag, slipped it on, hid her face with the long fabric, and tucked the bag under a nearby bush. Then she stood and walked toward the bandstand. The major difference tonight was the glint of steel I saw at her waist. This time she carried what looked like a ceremonial knife at her side.

  “Well, crap,” I muttered under my breath as I slid between the shadows. My spell mostly masked me from sight, but it was always best to give the magic as much help as I could. A few more minutes and I was within sight of the bandstand. This time I wanted to get a better vantage point, so I leapt into a spreading oak tree and pulled myself up onto a wide branch. I walked out as far as I safely could, using other limbs to aid my balance, and took up a position about ten feet off the ground and twenty feet from the bandstand. My line of sight was just right to see under the roof so I could tell what kind of circle they were drawing, and when I saw the symbols on the floor, my worst fears were confirmed.

  The circle they’d drawn on the wooden floor of the bandstand was not just a summoning circle, it was doubly warded and ringed with serious glyphs of protection. Whoever or whatever they were trying to call, at least they understood that it was heavy-duty.

  The cabal was arranged just like the night before, in concentric rings of four hitting the eight major compass points. The only change this time was that tonight, the robed figure I recognized as Rosalyn was standing at the northeastern point, and the first at the north point had its arm in a sling, giving his identity away as clear as a signal beacon.

  “Lord Raguel, Angel of Justice, hear our plea and come to us!” The Bronx accent of the demon-touched leader with the bad wing rang out through the night. I looked around to see if there was anyone else in the park to hear the ritual, but it seemed we were alone. At least for the moment.

  “Lord Raguel, we beseech thee to come unto us,” the other seven members of the creepy chorus intoned in unison.

  “Raguel, Angel of Justice, come to us this night to set history aright!” the leader cried.

  “Lord Raguel, come unto us and fix what is broken,” the chorus called.

  A slow chant of “Raguel, Raguel, Raguel” came from all the participants but two: the leader and Rosalyn, who drew the knife from her belt and stretched her arm out over the circle. The leader began to chant in Enochian, just like he had last night, beseeching the lord of justice and vengeance to come unto them and set the past to rights.

  Rosalyn pushed up the baggy sleeve of her robe and
held her closed fist out over the circle. The knife flashed up in her right hand, then came down across her left forearm, drawing a bright line of blood that dripped onto the symbols inscribed on the wood, binding her blood, the chanting, and the incantations written in and around the circles together and bathing the bandstand and everything in the vicinity in a deep purple light.

  “Lord Raguel, come to us!” the leader shouted, and a voice darker than anything I’d ever heard answered.

  “I am here, my child. You have called, and I have answered. I am here, what would you have me do?” The form in the circle was hidden in a column of smoke nearly six feet in diameter, but the few glances I could get through the shifting mist told me with some pretty solid certainty that this was no angel. That, and the fact that you don’t use a demonic summoning circle to call an angel. Those were dead giveaways.

  The leader’s hood fell back and he reached up with his good hand to rip the cloth down from his face. Yep, those were some demon-touched eyes. There was no question in my mind that he knew exactly what he’d called up, even if the others in the circle didn’t. I slipped on my Sight, taking a look at the situation in the magical spectrum, and was stunned to see that four of the eight coven members wore the taint of the demon-touched, and one was a lesser Pit Dweller, not human at all. The other three were human, and probably innocent dupes, but the magic coming from the smoky shape in the circle wasn’t just bad, it was evil the likes of which I’d never seen before, and more powerful than anything that had any right to be walking the earth. This was about to turn into a very bad evening.

  “It is time, my lord. It is time to unleash your wrath upon these pitiful mortals and raise me up to sit at your right hand. It is time for us to bathe in a river of their blood and make me immortal!”

  “What is this, Jacob?” one of the men in the circle asked, pulling his own hood and face covering away. “This was supposed to be a ritual to go back and stop Hitler before he could kill our people, not summon some cloud of smoke and make you immortal.”

  “Be quiet, Hiram,” the leader, apparently Jacob, replied. “Lord Raguel is here to answer our call. He has come from Heaven above to set things aright.”

  Oh shit. My conversation with Rosalyn flashed into my head, and I suddenly realized what these poor idiots had done. They wanted to fix the past. They thought they could get an angel to travel back through time and kill Hitler, or at least keep him from rising to power. They wanted to save their families. My heart sank to my shoes, not just because of their mistake, but because I knew every feeling that drove it. I’d felt that same anger, that same sense of wrongness in the world since Anna died. That sense of guilt at being alive when the woman I loved, and so many more, were dead in the camps at the hands of the truly evil.

  I knew what they were feeling because I’d wanted to do the exact same thing. I didn’t. Not for lack of trying, but mortals, even long-lived magical ones, can’t travel through time without some serious mojo. There are a few artifacts that will allow it, but I’d never laid hands on one, and wasn’t sure I wanted the responsibility. These people had been offered a chance to right the greatest wrong of the twentieth century, and to take away probably the greatest loss they’d ever suffered. They took that chance, and now they were going to die for it, and if the demon in that circle was as powerful as I feared, everyone within a hundred miles, including all the souls in New York City, might join them.

  Jacob reached over and backhanded Hiram, a tremulously thin man who must have been in his seventies. The frail man tumbled to the wooden planks, looking up at Jacob in shock. The other members of the circle took an involuntary step back, except for Rosalyn, who knelt by Hiram’s side and tried to help the old man to his feet.

  “What are you doing, Jacob? This is not what we are working for!” she yelled up at the grinning man.

  “It’s not what you fools are working for, but it is exactly what I’ve been planning. My lord Raguel shall lift me up from this mediocre vessel and give me the power of the heavens! I shall make men bow before me! They will give me money, women, influence . . . whatever I desire will be mine!”

  I’d heard enough. I dropped down from the branch to land about ten feet from the bandstand and started walking toward the circle and the accidental demon summoners. “There are just two problems with that, friend.” I stepped onto the bandstand across the circle from Jacob. “One, that’s not Raguel. And two, I’m not going to let him stick around on this side of the Pits.”

  The demon charged forward, just enough of him pushing through the smoke to let me see his face, and it was not something I wanted to ever see again. Horns, yellow eyes with vertical cat-slit pupils, a triple row of needlelike teeth, and a forked tongue slavering across its chin made me take an involuntary step back. I raised my voice above the demon’s growls. “Time to go home now, pal. I bet there’s a lovely Mrs. Hungry Demon right down there in Hell just about ready to call you in for supper. So piss off back to the eternal fires while I have a brief chat with your little friend here.” I cracked my knuckles on the word chat so there would be no mistaking exactly how unpleasant I intended for that to be.

  “NO!” screamed Jacob, charging forward with his eyes on the outline of the circle.

  “Ventus!” I shouted back at him, calling wind to slam him through the air into one of the beams holding up the bandstand’s roof. Heard the wood crack under the impact, but Jacob was up almost immediately. Damn demon-touched. He would barely feel pain now, unless it was something intense like the broken arm I gave him the night before.

  “Stop him,” I called to Rosalyn. “Don’t let him break the lines of the circle. If he does, there’s nothing to contain the demon.” I turned to punch the yellow-eyed man coming up on my left in the jaw, spinning him around and knocking him to the floor. As I whipped my head from side to side, I saw that the other two demon-touched humans were coming my way, while the demon in their midst had shed his human disguise and was trying to get through the circle from the outside. Being an infernal creature, he couldn’t manipulate the circle directly, so after a few seconds, he turned his attention to me as well.

  Great. Counting Jacob, I now had four demon-touched humans and one lesser Pit Dweller coming for me, with two innocent civilians lying on the floor staring at the whole mess with their eyes wide and their mouths agape. I looked around for the last member of the coven, and offered up a quiet prayer of thanks that all I saw of him was his back as he beat a hasty retreat down one of the park’s shady paths.

  I called power and hurled two orbs of purple force at the nearest cultists, striking them full in the chest. One went down flat on his back, but the other dodged my blast and stepped in close to engage me. Shit. The longer I was tangled up with these minions, the more time Jacob had to erase the circle and set this demon free upon the world. I ducked a clumsy punch and worried a little less as I dropped the zealot with one punch. A spray of long blond hair as she fell told me I had just decked a woman, but I didn’t have time to feel unchivalrous, because the demon was upon me.

  “Die, human!” the Pit Demon hissed, leaping for me. It was a hair over five feet tall, with unnaturally long arms ending in long clawed fingers. Its horn speared the air in front of my face, and it snapped at my throat with gaping jaws as it bore me to the trembling floor of the bandstand. I landed hard, but rolled sideways and got on top of the creature, rearing back and sheathing my fist in a nimbus of pure white light. I focused the magic into a spike of power and punched the demon between the eyes, driving a piece of my soul’s energy into its skull. The demon shrieked in agony, and I watched the light blaze from within its head out its eyes. Then the creature burst into a blast of energy, throwing me against the railing of the bandstand, and its earthly form was destroyed. The demon still existed, but it was gone from this plane, at least for now. And for now was all I was worried about.

  I scrambled to my feet, looking around for Jacob. Ros
alyn was struggling to hold him away from the edge of the circle, but she was obviously giving up too much weight and strength. I couldn’t get to her in time, even with my enhanced speed. I watched helplessly from across the bandstand as he forced her back closer and closer to the circle, until her back foot hovered less than an inch away from it. I ran toward them, knowing it was futile, and froze in midstride as a black shadow blurred through the night and slammed into both of them, knocking them to one side and keeping the circle intact.

  “Duck!” a familiar voice called out behind me, and I dove for the floor. My elbows scraped painfully across the boards as a shot rang out in the night. There was a heavy thump from behind me, and when I got to my feet and looked around, Renfield stood about twenty yards away, a Colt 1911 pistol in his hand. The demon-touched cultist beside me lay on the floor, clutching his thigh and screaming in pain, the knife meant for my back lying forgotten a few feet away. I nodded to Renfield and turned my attention back to Rosalyn, my chest relaxing at the sight before me.

  Uncle Luke stood over a toppled Rosalyn and Jacob, his fists clenched. He turned to me. “We’ll handle the human rabble. You take care of the demon.” The cavalry had well and truly arrived.

  I turned my attention to “Raguel.” “I know you aren’t an archangel, and you’re not getting out of that circle, so you can either clear off the smoke and tell me your name so I can send you home, or you can wait there with your thumb up your arse until dawn when you’re banished anyway.”

  The smoke dissipated, and a well-dressed man of middling height and athletic build stood in the circle. He wore a navy suit, a gray fedora, and black wing tips. He even wore a pocket square that matched his red tie. All hint of demon was gone, until you looked in his yellow eyes. “Quincy Harker,” he said, his voice more a rumbling purr than speech. “If I’d known you were nearby, I would have worked harder to get free in time to kill you. Lucifer isn’t happy with how you spoiled his plans in France a few years ago.”