The Initiate

by James L. Cambias

  Sam kept his hand on Isabella’s shoulder. “Why don’t you and I get breakfast?”

  “Are you going to talk to me about Todd?”

  “I might bring him up, yes.”

  She shook her head. “You can talk all you want but you can’t make me get rid of him. Not yet, anyway. I need a grown-up to do things for me—he can drive, he can get a credit card and an iPhone, and airplane tickets. Stuff like that. He’s going to take me to Disney World!”

  “Look, Isabella—can you trust him? What if he figures out some loophole in your orders?”

  “If he tries to do anything to me, my other friends will rip him up. I’m totally safe. Watch: Todd, wet your pants.”

  After a moment Sam saw a dark patch appear on Todd’s khaki pants, and a stream of urine trickled down one leg onto the pavement, steaming in the morning chill. Todd looked horrified but did nothing to hide what was happening. Isabella laughed again. “He’s going to be stinky all day. Stinky baby Todd!” She turned back to Sam. “See? Now if you promise not to talk about him at all, you can take me to George’s for breakfast. I want banana raisin french toast with ice cream.”

  Chapter 17

  Sam spent the first part of December helping Moreno track down a computer-game designer in Brooklyn who had somehow managed to drop a mostly accurate Apkal banishing ritual into a cutscene in a shooter game. Once the two of them figured out who he was, they got his full name and Moreno compelled him to create and release a patch which replaced the Sumerian ritual with some utterly useless dog Latin. Sam went through the designer’s reference library and eventually found the source: a shabby old softcover book printed before the Second World War, with the alarming title Mystic Secrets of the Hidden Masters.

  “Ah, crap. Another copy? I swear, this thing must have had a print run like the phone book,” said Moreno as he leafed through it.

  “You’ve seen this before?”

  “Yeah. Back in the twenties a couple of Apkallu were running an occult group—you know, the usual Aleister Crowley bullcrap with just enough real stuff to hook anyone with real knowledge. But one of the marks turned out to have the right bloodline. He figured out that they were keeping back the good stuff, so he tracked them home, busted into the ritual space and stole a bunch of notebooks and texts. Went off to Chicago, started selling these little books through the mail.” As he spoke, Moreno carried the book into the game designer’s tiny kitchen, cleared some dirty dishes out of the sink, then set fire to the book. “I thought we’d gotten all of them.”

  The two of them returned to the cluttered living room, where the designer sat at his desk, feverishly writing the update, oblivious to their presence. Moreno spoke the words of command and told him, “Forget you ever owned a copy of Mystic Secrets of the Hidden Masters, and forget you ever read it.” He turned to Sam. “I guess we’re done. Want dinner?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got an appointment this evening.”

  “An appointment or a date?”

  Sam didn’t have to pretend to be flustered. His dinner engagement with Taika Feng wasn’t quite a date, but she had encouraged him to let everyone think it was…and Sam still suspected that perhaps Taika thought so herself. He was the only one who thought otherwise, and had to keep his opinion secret.

  * * *

  He met Taika for their totally-not-a-date at seven, at her West Village house. The weather was mild, so he rode the subway and walked the four blocks from the station.

  Sam hadn’t been sure what to wear to a private totally-not-a-date at someone’s house. In the end he decided on a sport coat and no tie. Casual, but not sloppy. He did wear his seven rings—not so much because he was afraid of anything Taika Feng might do, as that he wanted to show her he had resources of his own.

  As he reached the top of the stairs he heard her voice speak from the air next to his ear. “Come in, it’s unlocked.” The door clicked open as he touched the knob, and he heard it lock again behind him.

  This place was definitely Taika’s—pale gray walls and burnished steel light fixtures in the front hall; blond wood Scandinavian furniture and a rough-cut stone fireplace in the living room holding a blazing pile of logs. Somehow the firelight looked chilly. Taika was curled up in an armchair, dressed simply in black tights and an enormous white turtleneck sweater.

  “Were you followed?” she asked.

  “I didn’t sense any spirits,” he said.

  “What about people?”

  He shrugged. “No one I recognized. Why are you worried? I thought you wanted people to know about us.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “If you were followed I want to know who’s taking an interest.”

  “Well, I’m here,” he said. “Let’s talk. I was thinking about who might have wanted to kill your husband, and I remembered something. When Moreno and I were doing our investigation, we talked to Charles White.”

  “Revolting man.”

  “That’s him. When we met him—up in the Bronx, by the waterfront—he was very suspicious of Moreno. He even called up some walking corpses from the river to threaten us.”

  “Animated by some of his demon servitors, no doubt.”

  “I guess. Anyway, at the time I didn’t really know what to expect, so I thought it was just, you know, macho posturing or something. But now I wonder—he probably burned some serious magical juice and took a big risk trying to threaten Moreno. Why would he do that if he wasn’t involved?”

  She looked into the fire, then nodded to herself. “I see what you mean. Perhaps we should dig deeper. In the meantime, I think dinner’s ready.”

  The meal was pale smoked fish on squid-ink pasta, with a sprinkling of black caviar on top. They drank white wine and finished the meal with mint sorbet. Taika didn’t speak while she ate, and Sam was happy to remain silent.

  Sam actually had no idea if White had been an ally of the Count, or an enemy, or utterly uninterested in the man. The magical display in the Bronx probably had been just posturing on his part. But any suspicions Sam could spread would help keep the Apkallu fighting among themselves, which was exactly what he—and Lucas—wanted.

  Besides, after encountering White at the Goblin Market, Sam now entirely understood why even the other Apkallu thought he was beyond the pale. Killing him, or at least ruining his double-ended mystical slavery operation, would be a positive good.

  After dinner they returned to the living room and Taika poured him coffee from a silver carafe. It was hot and fresh brewed, and Sam didn’t remember seeing the carafe before dinner.

  “Better living through necromancy,” he said, toasting her with his coffee cup. She looked puzzled for a second before glancing at the carafe.

  “I’ve decided,” she said. “I want to find out if Charles White had a hand in my husband’s death, or if he knows anything. I can drop a few questions in conversation with some of the greater magi in the area, and you can do the legwork.”

  “I’ll be happy to help,” said Sam, politely maintaining the fiction that she hadn’t just issued him orders.

  “He spends most of his time on North Brother Island in the East River,” said Taika. “I doubt if anyone—Roger included—knows much more. You’ll have to put him under surveillance.”

  “I have ways to look around the place without him seeing me,” said Sam. He was thinking of the drone, but if Taika wanted to assume he had some stealthy spirit at his command, that was fine, too.

  Perhaps it was the coffee, but Taika got more talkative as the evening went on—listing various Apkallu she thought might know something, bringing up all the times Charles White had done or said something disgusting, analyzing how other people reacted to him. At first Sam found it almost homey; for more than a year he’d been living alone, maintaining a secret identity and always on guard. It was pleasant to sit by the fire and listen to her unguarded chatter. Taika must have thought so, too, as he caught her smiling more than once.

  But as the clock struck ten Sam found himself looking f
or excuses to leave. Taika had been a widow for six months, and her daughter had moved out. Apparently she hadn’t had anyone to talk to either. Which meant she wasn’t stopping. Alice had had the gift of self-sufficiency. Sam could remember evenings when the two of them had sat together in comfortable silence for hours.

  Taika’s chatter made him pity her a little, and that was worrisome. He couldn’t let his guard down.

  Finally at quarter to eleven he simply got up and shook her hand. “I’ve got to be going. Tomorrow night’s the solstice and I’ve got a working to prepare. I had a very nice time tonight. I’ll tell you what I can find about White.”

  “You know, I’d be willing to aid in your ritual,” she said. “I’m sure I can give you some pointers.”

  “Thanks, but…I want to see what I can do on my own.”

  “You could even use the workroom here. It’s very well equipped.”

  “Some other time, maybe.” He got his coat and pulled on his gloves.

  Her face flashed from disappointment to anger before settling in her accustomed icy half amusement. “Well, off you go, then. Let me know if you learn anything.”

  On the way home Sam made sure to pass through some consecrated ground and cross both running water and salt water, just in case Taika had some invisible observers following him.

  * * *

  He hadn’t been lying about the magical working he had planned for the night of the solstice. He had the only other scrap of carpet with claw marks made by the anzu, the binding ritual he had bought at the Goblin Market, and a whole box of symbolically powerful items. He was going to summon the thing that had killed his family, bind it to obedience, and learn everything it knew about whoever had sent it to his house.

  Then he planned to trap it in a bottle and throw it into the sea. An eternity of darkness and solitude seemed like a fair punishment for killing Alice and Tommy.

  For added magical oomph Sam had picked Floyd Bennett Field as the site of his working. What better place for a bird-headed demon to pass between worlds than an old airport? The site was National Park Service land now, but the police and various government agencies still used some of the buildings at the south end of the park. Sam selected a spot along one of the hiking trails at the north end, screened by trees and safely remote.

  On December 21 he drove a rental car out to Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn, and parked at the marina just across Flatbush Avenue from the historic old airport. He waited until ten before he locked up the car, shouldered his gym bag loaded with magical equipment, and hustled across the avenue to the park entrance.

  Fortunately it was a very warm night for December, cloudy and humid but not raining. Not yet, anyway. He got through the gate in the iron fence with the help of his gremlin key, and then crossed the open expanse of concrete to the concealment of the wilderness area in the northern half of the property. Trotting with a heavy load on such a mild night left him hot and sweating by the time he got to the site he had scouted a week earlier.

  He found himself humming “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” It was certainly true that night: All the Apkallu would be in their ritual spaces, or at places of symbolic power tonight, doing workings. The winter solstice—the time of death and rebirth, feast and sacrifice—was a time of power, and Sam meant to tap into it along with the rest of them.

  He laid out a tarp with a magic circle drawn on it in Sharpie, and poured coarse-ground wheat flour over the black lines. With a trowel he scooped little hollows in the dirt around the tarp and kindled five fires, scenting the unseasonably warm night with cannabis, sandalwood and lavender.

  After one final nervous glance around to make sure he was unobserved, Sam undressed, stowing his clothes in the gym bag in case he needed to make a quick getaway. He rubbed himself all over with mandrake-root oil, then put on a robe of cobalt-blue goat’s wool. At an hour before midnight he took up a wand of rowan wood and a calabash rattle decorated with crow feathers, and began to chant in Akkadian, slowly circling the tarp widdershins as he did so.

  He had walked around the tarp forty-eight times when he sensed a presence in the circle, and caught a familiar carrion smell overpowering the scented smoke. Sam continued his chant, focusing all his will on making the anzu come to him, commanding it to appear.

  Between eyeblinks it appeared, standing in the circle, taloned hands ready, head cocked as it surveyed the surroundings curiously.

  “Who calls?” it croaked.

  “I call you,” said Sam. He stuck the wand in his sash and took out the vellum sheet he had bought at the Goblin Market. “I bind you to serve me and obey me,” he said, and began the ritual in Enochian. “Niis, zamran ciaofi caosgo, od bliors, od cors i ta abramig…”

  The anzu cowered back as Sam spoke, pleading in a whisper, “Do not bind my will, I beg you, great Master. Ask any service of me and it shall be done gladly.”

  Sam reached the end of the binding. “Let this be done, in the name of Nabu, and of Mendial, and in my own name Samuel Simon Arquero.”

  The cowering Anzu let out a shriek of mingled rage and glee as it leaped at Sam. “No power! That name has no power! Die, deceiver!”

  Sam ducked aside and spoke to the duppy in his lead ring. “Antoine, come forth!”

  A skinless man with two heads appeared between Sam and the anzu, crouched on all fours. The duppy gave a howl and tackled the anzu, pushing it back from Sam. The two monsters grappled and fought—Sam could see the anzu’s great talons raking across the duppy’s sides, slashing through muscles and nerves down to the bare bones. Meanwhile the duppy’s two heads sank their pointed teeth into either side of the anzu’s neck.

  They went down, rolling and wrestling across the tarp, scattering meal and burning sandalwood shavings everywhere. Sam watched, wishing he had a pistol or something. Then the anzu grabbed each of the duppy’s skinless heads in its great talons and pulled, ripping the living-dead monster in two. The halves dissipated to fog as the bird-headed demon tossed them aside and got to its feet.

  As soon as he saw the duppy torn in half, Sam turned and ran, crashing through bare limbs and dead leaves to the cracked concrete of the old northeast runway. South of him, half a mile away, he could see the visitor center, dark and locked at midnight. Equally far away from him to the east, past another patch of trees and the old north-south runway, he could see the lights of the NYPD heliport.

  To hell with keeping secrets. He needed help. Sam sprinted across the runway and dodged through the trees. Behind him he could hear the cawing laughter of the anzu. “Flee, O foolish Wise One! Run like a beaten dog!”

  Branches lashed Sam’s face and arms as he dodged through the second patch of woods between the two runways. By the time he emerged onto the defunct north-south runway, Sam had a stitch in his side and his lungs felt raw. The anzu came crashing through the wilderness area behind him.

  To the south he saw moving lights. A car was driving up the runway toward him. Park police or NYC cops? Right now he didn’t care. He sprinted toward the lights. They flicked to bright as he closed the distance, and Sam risked a look over his shoulder. The anzu was no more than ten yards behind him, claws extended and beak wide as it shrieked like a jet engine.

  About forty yards ahead the official SUV screeched to a stop and both front doors swung open. Two Park Police cops got out, staying behind the open doors, weapons drawn. “Both of you halt and put your hands up!” one shouted.

  Sam knew that the anzu wouldn’t heed them, and if he let it catch him it would tear him apart with less effort than it had shredded the duppy. So he flung his hands up, screamed, “He’s got a gun!” and veered right so that he wasn’t running directly at two armed men.

  They got their first clear look at the anzu, and for an eternity of five seconds the two officers just gaped at the bird-headed monster running at them with its huge claws open.

  “Freeze!” shouted one cop and immediately opened fire. The second followed suit, and for the next few seconds the old run
way was a free-fire zone as the two officers emptied their pistols at the monster.

  If the bullets hurt it at all, the anzu showed no sign. They did draw its attention, though. It charged at the car with a cackle of horrible amusement. The officers ducked back inside and slammed their doors. As the driver struggled to put the SUV in gear the anzu ripped his door off with one hand, yanked him out with the other, and bit through his neck with a single snap of its beak.

  The other officer in the car had reloaded his gun and let the anzu have another eight rounds, point-blank. This gave Sam enough time to call forth the blindness spirit from his gold ring. He didn’t really think it would have much effect, but any distraction for the anzu would help.

  To Sam’s surprise the anzu staggered away, slashing at the air with its great claws. Apparently it couldn’t hurt something it couldn’t touch.

  “Get away!” he yelled at the park policeman, but the guy had grabbed a riot gun from the back compartment of the SUV and heroically resumed banging away at the monster.

  Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then began shouting a banishing ritual. He struggled to keep his will focused on the anzu despite all the noise.

  “By Ninurta and Nabu, I banish you! By Menqal and Mahashiah and Nergal I bid you begone! Return to the place from which you came, I command it in the name of Marduk!” Sam shouted.

  The monster turned uncertainly in Sam’s direction—the blindness spirit had destroyed its vision, but of course it had an Inner Eye of its own. It couldn’t see Sam but it could feel his presence. It stepped toward him, cautious but not afraid. Black blood dripped from the ragged shotgun-blast wounds in its body, but the anzu didn’t seem to care.

  Sam tried to oppose the demon by sheer willpower as he repeated the banishing ritual, but exhaustion and terror made it impossible for him to dominate it. Rather than subjecting the demon to his will, he felt a momentary impulse to just give up and rush forward into the embrace of those claws.

  Sheer instinctive self-preservation made him step back instead, and then another step, and another. The anzu kept coming, but since it couldn’t see anything it couldn’t come very fast. Sam retreated toward the cover of the wilderness area between the old runways. Maybe he could lose it among the trees.