Bloodbath

by Stephanie Ahn

  I peer in, my eyes adjusting to the difference in light. There’s a scramble of movement, like enormous rats scurrying for cover—but a few human faces shine up at me, perfectly still. I clear my throat.

  “Hello?” I say, finding my voice hoarse. “Hi, um—are you guys okay?”

  Dumb question, I realize. Or maybe not, because one of the faces opens its mouth and says, “You’re…you’re not them.”

  “No, I’m not. Actually, ‘them’ is dead. The people who were killing you guys, they’re gone for good.”

  The face’s eyes shine. “Really?” I hear the emotion echoed in a growing chorus of whispers, and more faces show up—Really? They’re gone? Is someone really here for us? Did someone finally come for us?

  I clear my throat again. “Yeah, you’re okay, you’re going to be okay. It’s going to take a few hours to process you guys when I call the authorities, but I promise they’re faster than regular cops, and I promise you’re all going home within a day, okay? You’re all going to be okay. I’m going to find a ladder or something so you can get out— but first, is Aden there? His mom sent me…”

  “My mom?” Someone races into the light. He looks up and there he is, Aden Powers in a white hospital gown, glasses crooked and a few green-black bruises fading on the side of his face, but he’s here and alive and his hopeful grin echoes the one from his photo perfectly. “Did you say my mom sent you?”

  I can’t help smiling back. “Yeah, your mom, Tricia. She’s worried sick, kid, you gave her a really good fucking scare.” I look around. “Hey, just two more people I gotta ask for—Joy and David, are they in there? Joy Gillian, David… crap, can’t remember his last name, but he’s a great cook, his fiancée’s waiting for him, and Joy, she’s my best friend—she’s tiny, bright red hair, have you guys seen her?”

  The survivors look around, whispering amongst themselves.

  “David? Isn’t that you?”

  “No, I’m not David, I’m Dale…”

  “Joy?”

  “No...”

  Some more questions are asked and answered. They all turn to face me, and Aden shakes his head.

  “I’m sorry, the people you’re looking for aren’t here. And none of us have seen or heard of them.”

  Numb. Something in me just goes numb. And then my stomach caves in on itself, and I want to scream just to feel something, anything else—but I can’t, because there are one, two, three-four-five, six survivors staring up at me right now, and they need to know everything’s going to be okay.

  I crack another grin, although this time I don’t feel it. “Alright,” I say, looking around, “now where’s that damn ladder at?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dissatisfaction

  When the Council arrives, they find two more corpses hidden beneath a trapdoor on the other side of the murder-chamber. One of them belongs to Nádasdy’s butler—ex-butler, I suppose. The other belongs to a mother of three who was out walking the dog when Jax’s men yanked her off the street. The dog managed to run all the way home, at least.

  Three cheers for silver linings.

  I’m on house arrest again. Sort of. The Council knows by now that Bautista’s been helping me leave my apartment, but they also know I just saved the Arbiter’s hide. They had their healers fix my stab wounds, but I haven’t gotten anything more in the way of compensation. Oh, and I heard the Arbiter’s fine; she had some bloating over dinner, but it stopped soon enough to be chalked up to bad gas.

  I saved her life—but I guess that just makes us even, given that she saved mine. Even if she hadn’t, there’d be no use in having her owe me; you can’t call in favors from the most neutral party in the world. Pity, that. She could have helped me figure out what the fuck is going on.

  I’m on my knees on the floor of my living room, scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing, my arms burning with the effort. I’ve been at this for at least an hour now, and the rough material of my sponge is probably doing irreparable damage to the hardwood. But the blood’s not coming out. I know, rationally, that it’s been too long since the stuff got between the floorboards, and I’ll have better luck asking Luce to draw it out with magic than trying to get at it myself with dish detergent. But the smell, the smell is what’s been killing me. It didn’t bother me before I came back from Nádasdy’s mansion, but now… I’m keeping my mouth shut but it’s like the coppery tang in the air is crusting around my nostrils and ears, filming over my eyeballs. I just can’t fucking stand it.

  My elbow buckles under me, and I nearly fall face-first into the soapy floor. I flop onto my back instead, arms out to my sides, stress-sweat soaking through my shirt, the ceiling light battering my retinas. Thoughts I don’t want to think are circling around my head like vultures. Is it possible Joy’s body was cremated before I got to the mortuary? No, she was kidnapped just days ago, and the mortician said they hadn’t been toasting bodies since Thursday. So where is Joy?

  Not to mention David is still missing too. The timeline makes it plausible for him to have been killed and cremated before my arrival on the scene… but then the way in which he was taken doesn’t make sense. He was snatched off the street like Aden, but that was way before the night of the first Council attack, and his route from workplace to home was nowhere near Nádasdy’s fake clinic and Lisa’s vampiric grabby-hands. Nothing adds up.

  At least Aden’s okay, I remind myself, awkwardly climbing to my feet. The kid was talking the whole way to the Council safehouse. Most of the other survivors were chattering with him; even the quieter ones were smiling, bundled up in shock blankets with tranquility charms woven into their patterns. It sounded like that murder pit was a real bonding experience for the six of them. I hope the Council lets them remember one another when they get back home and have to really face their trauma.

  There’s tingling static in my right arm, and I can’t feel the fingers at the end of it. I shake it out, perplexed. Oh, right. Freaky nerve damage from Nádasdy’s attack during the trial. I curl my hand into a fist, but can’t feel the movement at all. I walk over to the wall and punch it. No feeling.

  In the movies, they always say that not knowing is the worst part. Gods damn them, the stupid fucking movies are right.

  I punch the wall again.

  The vulture thoughts return. Where is Joy?

  Punch again. I’ve split open two knuckles, and they’re itching vaguely.

  Would it be better for her to be dead? Or suffering, but alive?

  Punch again; there’s blood on the wallpaper.

  Will I ever know, either way?

  My forearm is aching in a weird icy-hot way, but at least I can feel my fingers again. I fish a T-shirt out of the closet and wrap it around my fist. Then I sit down at my desk, put my face in my hands, and scream. Maybe the noise can drown out the questions in my head, let out the pressure threatening to pop open my ribcage. There’s nothing I can do. Nothing but… wait. Hope. Pray. Pray that, maybe in a world where magic does exist, the universe gives a flying fuck about the people you care about. Pray that miracles do happen.

  A pencil nudges my elbow.

  I stop screaming and stare at it. It slides an inch to my left, then rolls off the desk. I sigh.

  “Leave me alone, Junhyun, this isn’t the time.”

  He howls around me like a trapped storm, the intensity of his voice stunning me. He’s never been this loud with me, not since the first time we met. “Go back to your mom, okay?” I say, raising my voice to be heard above the din.

  A face of smoke rushes at me from across my desk—I startle, rearing back. Junhyun puts his hands up in apology, but his agitation shows in the glitching, jerky displacement of his fingers.

  People keep coming in past the wards.

  I wave my hand at him, blurring the outline of his shoulder. “I know, I let the vampires in earlier. And I’m still working on a way to keep Lilith out, okay? Just be patient, I’ll put your mom up at a hotel if you’re so worried, I have other stuff
to deal with right now—”

  He slams the desk with both hands, and every object on it jumps by an inch.

  PEOPLE KEEP COMING IN PAST THE WARDS, DANGEROUS PEOPLE KEEP COMING IN—

  “I know, you stupid son of a bitch!” I scream back in Korean, lurching out of my chair to lob a mug of pencils across the room. “I know! I know everything you’re telling me, so shut up!” Just for good measure, I get up in his face and add in English, “Get out of here or I’ll bind you to the fucking toaster!”

  I’m nose-to-hypothetical-nose with Junhyun, so close that I can see my breath fog as it enters the cold zone of his body. How… how does a face with no eyes look that hurt? Fuck. I’m being way too harsh for no good reason. But as I open my mouth to apologize, Junhyun steps backward, and sinks through the floor.

  The room becomes warmer, but it feels emptier, lonelier. I can’t speak out loud for fear that my voice will echo back at me. So I sit back down at my desk.

  Numbness. The top of my head is all warm and fuzzy, like I’ve managed to push my troublesome emotions up to where my brain won’t have to deal with them. The vultures are frozen like a painting, still there, but I can walk away and they won’t follow me. I could use this headspace to get something done. Be productive. Well, I told Junhyun I’d work on the anti-Lilith ward. It’s as good a project as any.

  I roll my chair around to face the windows behind me. I run a finger along the sill, over the pieces of clay embedded into the wood, the carved sigils in their surfaces black from the blood I used to activate them. Demons can’t hurt humans. Ergo, demons can’t get past wards with fragile chunks of human soul suspended in them like tripwires. Lilith is a demon for sure; her contracts bind me in ways that wouldn’t be possible without the backing of Hell. Lilith can get past demon wards. Lilith can drop bricks on the heads of random humans she’s never met in her life.

  Hang on. Lilith isn’t affected by the “no harming humans” rule. Which means she can hurt humans all she wants. She can hurt me all she wants.

  Which means I can hurt her.

  I sit and stare out the window, completely floored, for a good five minutes. How did I not see it before? There is literally nothing, nothing stopping me from zapping Lilith with the most basic electric fence of a ward. Sure, she might get mad about it and beat the crap out of me, but unlike other demons, she was capable of doing that anyway. And no matter what, it would win me the bet.

  You’re like a goldfish when it comes to trouble… you never know when to stop pissing people off.

  And I’m about to piss her off. Big time.

  But what have I got to lose?

  I get on my hands and knees in front of the bookcase, hauling out brick-thick volumes I haven’t touched in a year. I toss away the ones about self-important English occultists; Aleister Crowley, John Dee… no, Merlin’s not what I need either. I want to go with something classic, something with all-ages appeal. I keep flipping until I find the full, two-page spread showing the Forty-four Seals of Solomon.

  They’re a good start to what I want to accomplish—a good start, but not the entirety. For one thing, the Seals of Solomon are old as fuck, and you can’t apply them to modern contexts without at least some knowledge of Hebrew. But I can use them as a template, along with an ancient language that I do have elementary proficiency in. That’s the kind of stuff Johanna used to do: revamping old magics, having the knowledge with which to blow the dust off ancient artifacts and rituals. As I crouch in front of the bookshelf again, I quietly hope that she’s proud of me.

  The books I pull out next have floppy, plasticky covers with cartoon characters scurrying across their bright surfaces. They’re Korean Hanja workbooks that I first learned from when I was six, Hanja being ancient Chinese characters that were ascribed Korean pronunciations and eventually simplified into Hangul, the Korean written language. I was never good at Hanja; my parents made me take the national standardized test for it when I was in middle school, and I promptly crushed their dreams by failing the first level. I didn’t even think to get back into it until my apprenticeship with Johanna—but why would I chant exorcisms in Latin when there’s an ancient language I’m already familiar with?

  Back at my desk, I pore over a simplified chart of the Seals of Solomon, marking the ones that may prove useful. “Seal Three: protection against enemies and evil spirits lingering around one’s person and home.” Check. “Seal Six: protection against earthly danger.” Ha, that’s a good one, given that I’m making an earthly ward to keep a Hellish visitor out of my home. “Seal Eleven: victory in any kind of argument or battle.” That fits this particular context, as I’m trying to win a bet. “Seal Thirty: protection of the home as well as treasures and possessions.” Yes, thank you. Gotta keep Lilith from going through my sex toy drawer again.

  “Seal Thirty-six: enables the owner to see others as they really are.”

  That one gives me pause. To see Lilith for who she really is… that’s what I wanted out of this whole contract, wasn’t it? To know her real name. I pen three little stars next to that seal. That’s going to be the center of my ward, the keystone that holds it all together.

  I can’t help but laugh a little at this whole situation. Seals of fucking Solomon. Demons have known how to counter this shit for centuries. I just happen to be dealing with the one demon who thinks she’s above all that, and that arrogance is going to be my victory. I love outsmarting people; I don’t get to do it often, which is why it’s such a treat.

  I sketch the bare bones of the seals out onto some printer paper, then open up the Hanja books. The character for fire is easiest to find, and I remember learning it as a kid, being told to think of it as the shape of a campfire. Other characters for simple elements: lightning. Forceful resistance. That’s the easiest part; then comes the combinations of four characters to signify whole new concepts, linking the seals together with those, making one cohesive ward out of them instead of just some pretty shapes.

  I haven’t studied this hard since I was an apprentice. Squinting at the tiny Chinese and Korean letters, marking them, and jotting them down with notes is a mind-numbing chore. But that’s good. I need mind-numbing right now.

  Boy, if I thought finding the right characters was difficult, writing them is worse. I use a clay tablet for the main piece, for Seal Thirty-six. Then I cut four pieces of leather out of some grody old shoes, and I use the leftover material to practice painting the seals with a brush and black acrylic paint.

  Wrong, says a voice on the wind.

  I blink and look up. “Huh?”

  The brush is nudged in my hand, rubbing out the little accent over the rectangle I just painted.

  Accent on other side, another line. Writing ‘big’ instead of ‘loss.’ Want ‘shil,’ not ‘dae.’

  “Oh—thank you.” I chew on my lip. I don’t know where to look, so I look straight ahead, hoping I’m making some semblance of eye contact. “Hey, I’m really really sorry I blew up at you.”

  Junhyun doesn’t say anything, but the shell of my left ear goes cold. I picture him curled up in a slowly spinning ball next to my head, like an ethereal parrot on a pirate’s shoulder.

  “Do you know Hanja?” I ask him, turning slightly.

  Know Chinese. And French, and Russian. Studied to work for UN.

  “And Korean and English. Five languages in total… shit, that’s impressive. Could you help me with this?”

  Sounds fun.

  And he materializes on my desk, stretched sideways in the “draw me like one of your French girls” pose from Titanic. He may not have a face, but the set of his shoulder is definitely conveying a smirk. I flick him on his not-nose for that.

  The work goes much faster with Junyun at my side. We sit beside each other at the desk, him poking me with writing utensils whenever he needs me to flip a page.

  When we finally figure out the design, the blueprint consists of five separate sheets of paper and a whole lot of scribbled notes. I get to work carving
Seal Thirty-six into the clay tablet, then painting the other seals into the leather pieces. Junhyun is a grueling instructor, and he doesn’t hesitate to put a cold spot—i.e., his hand—right through my face anytime I fuck up a character. Once I’m finished, I place the clay tablet in the center of my desk, then the leather pieces at the west, east, south, and north positions, each an exact distance from the clay tablet. I study my work with pride, Junhyun making fluttery distortions in the air from the other side of the desk, just as eager to see the finished product.

  Will it work? he asks.

  “I’ll find out. Eventually, I’ll find out.”

  And then no more strange people.

  “Not unless I let them in, no.”

  For a second, I consider not using the ward. Because it’s… mean-spirited, I guess? But why does that matter? Lilith is plenty mean-spirited. She splashed blood in my eyes for funsies. She threatened to mount my head on a plaque in Hell. She reached for the popcorn while I got ventilated in a parking garage.

  She tried to save an innocent life.

  I scuff my foot against the floor and clear my throat. “Hey, uh, Junhyun? I have a weird question. Do you think I should maybe… not use this?”

  Junhyun doesn’t blink with his eyes, he doesn’t have any. But his whole face shutters open and close.

  …What?

  “I mean—not to discount your help on this, I super duper appreciate it, but… I don’t know, I just—I don’t think Lilith is actually dangerous. So really, if I use this, I’m just doing it to win a bet, and I mean—I don’t know if I should prioritize that right now? It’s kind of complicated—”

  Afraid she won’t fuck you again?

  “What? Nooo, noo-o-o that’s not what I meant—but I mean, actually, that’s a very good point, if I win the bet and she gets sulky about it, she may not want to—”

  Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.