Bloodbath

by Stephanie Ahn

I stop and squint. “Are you making that sound?”

  No?

  My vibrating phone almost drops off the edge of my desk; I catch it just as it falls. I don’t recognize the number before I take the call.

  “Hello?”

  Junhyun waves and floats airily through the ceiling, giving me privacy.

  “Harry?” says a whispery voice.

  “Nikki, what is it?”

  “Did you get him? The one I marked, the guy who tried to take Isabella?”

  All my excitement over the ward plummets in an instant. I drop heavily into my chair. “He’s dead, Nikki. His own girlfriend got to him before I even thought to make him talk about Joy. I’m so sorry.”

  “He’s… dead?” None of the shock or sadness or even anger I expect are present in Nikki’s voice. “But… no he’s not.”

  My eyebrows do a tango. “What?”

  “The guy who broke into Isabella’s apartment. He’s not dead. I would know if he was. Marked for death, remember? It’s a banshee thing.”

  “Then—what—”

  Jax. Jax is dead. But the man who attacked Isabella and Nikki, the one that led me into a deathtrap in that parking lot and framed Jax by stabbing him in the shoulder—he’s alive. Because it was never Jax who tried to kidnap Isabella. Never Jax who took Joy, or even David, or any of the people who were being targeted for magical capabilities.

  Someone else. Someone else this whole time—Nádasdy didn’t give a flying fuck whether her sacrifices had magical potential. This stranger, this shadow figure, he was the one—

  My cell phone rings again. I snatch it up without checking the caller ID.

  “Hello?”

  “Lee,” says Bautista’s raspy voice.

  “Bautista!” Words spill from my mouth. “It was never Nádasdy who took Joy, it was someone else, it was someone else this whole time and they’re still out there and Joy is still alive—”

  “That’s what I called about,” Bautista says, interrupting me. Her voice is crackling with bursts of emotion, contained only marginally better than my own. “He just struck again. Your demon expert, Samael was his name? He’s been kidnapped.”

  I can’t bring myself to speak. Then my face stretches into a painfully wide smile.

  “How do you know he’s gone?”

  “An employee of his, a man who owns a bar in the East Village, called the disappearance in to the Council.”

  I’m already standing up off my chair, reaching for my coat—whoops, don’t have that anymore. “Is he still at his bar?” I stuff my keys into my back pocket as I hurry across my apartment.

  “Yes. Stacy can give you a ride.”

  I pause next to the kitchen counter. “…Stacy?”

  “Short, baseball cap that changes logos, British accent, sitting outside your door.”

  “Her name is Stacy?” I almost cry laughing right then and there.

  I march to the front door and slam it open “Stacy!” I shout, looking around.

  “What?” The baseball-capped Enforcer hollers back from a plastic chair to my right, throwing an open newspaper to the floor. Then, “How the bloody hell do you know my name?”

  ***

  I push open the door of The River Sticks, hearing the newly fixed bell tinkling as I enter. The bar is empty right now, and the starkness of the daytime somehow makes it look even shabbier. The bartender from earlier is behind the counter, fiddling with something on the shelf with his back turned to me. He’s wearing a black band of some kind that cuts across the back of his head. I stride toward him.

  “Hey,” I say, “you’re the one who called in Samael’s disappearance, right? I’m here to help. Where—”

  The bartender turns to face me, and his face is elongated in a black rubber snout ending in a bulky cylinder. His eyes are almost totally obscured behind huge glass circles, and the sight reminds me of Nikki’s eerie black eyes in banshee form. In his hands is a shiny balloon the size and shape of a ripe apple. I hear him take a long, placid breath through the filter on his face. He holds up a needle with his other hand, and pops the balloon open.

  Yellow gas goes everywhere. A cough rips itself from my throat. And then the coughs won’t stop coming, making mini-explosions in my throat even when I close my mouth. My cheeks run warm with tears. My limbs are growing leaden, and as my knees buckle, I see the bartender calmly adjusting his gas mask.

  My eyelids are sticky. The world around me rattles as my head hit the floor, painlessly. There’s sounds at the very edge of my consciousness—the creaking of door hinges. Then light, happy tinkling, like laughter into the void.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Don't Be a Killjoy

  I wake up chained to a table with my tits out, and not in the fun way. My sigil is blazing like an upended set of headlights, easily outshining the trio of dim, circular lights embedded into the ceiling of whatever dank basement I’m in. Sharp barbs dig into the crown of my head. There’s a repetitive, sssssking noise; blinking through the crusty wetness in my eyes, I turn my head to the source of the sound.

  He’s standing by a counter at the wall, sharpening a small, round knife on a whetstone. I let my head thunk back onto the cold metal table, chuckling weakly.

  “Shibalsekki. Of course it was you.”

  The scraping stops. Samael turns just barely enough for me to see the glint in his eye. Then he goes back to his knife.

  I try to strain upward, but the chain pinning my neck to the table stops me short. When I sink back onto the table, my open shirt creasing uncomfortably under my shoulder blades, the back of my head is assaulted with a dozen tiny daggers arranged in a line. I must be wearing a crown of brambles. Squinting, I see a body slumped in the dark corner, a band of metal glinting on its lifeless left hand. David.

  “Where’s Joy?” I croak. “What did you do with her?”

  Samael’s voice is as skeezy as ever. “Took her blood, as I’ve taken the blood of countless other mages. I would have drained her dry, if I’d been able to replace her with your friend in the wheelchair. But I had to prolong her use over a few more days.”

  That means Joy is still alive—my heart leaps in my chest.

  Samael snorts, like he’s reading my thoughts. “You should be more worried about yourself right now.”

  “Why?” I try to sit up, the heels of my boots skidding against the table’s surface, and accidentally choke myself on the chains again. “What’re you going to do, use me for another half-baked blood power ritual? You know even Nádasdy wasn’t stupid enough to try that, right?”

  Samael doesn’t respond. I lick my chalky lips. Talk, talk, keep him talking. “Did you know what Nádasdy was up to?”

  Samael drops the knife in a bucket; the liquid inside sizzles menacingly. “Somewhat. I knew enough to distract you from my actions by drawing attention to hers—knifing her lapdog to lead you to him instead of me, that was an inspired bit of improvisation. But otherwise, her work didn’t interest me. The Council is shaken, the Council falls, the Council is usurped. None of it matters to me.”

  “Why did you let me go up against her? You obviously wanted me alive, and she meant to kill me on sight. What if I didn’t make it back from that mansion?”

  “But you did, didn’t you?” He approaches with light, easy steps, and I have to resist the urge to jerk away. He tugs on the chains at my wrists, testing their strength. The damp air chills my exposed torso, and that chill becomes a crawling, insectoid sensation every time he reaches for me. “Even if I hadn’t been there, watching out for you, your darling guardian demon would have protected you. I had faith. Besides, my reservoir was running low after that pathetic excuse of a banshee prevented me from taking the sonar witch. Nádasdy, the poor bitch, spilled quite a bit of blood from that bullet hole in her chest. Her magic is really the only thing keeping me going right now.”

  I recall the presence I felt in that underground corridor, the one I correctly identified as not-Lilith. Godsdammit.

  “
Where’d you get a crown of thorns?”

  Rude tugs at the manacles on my legs. “That lovely Scandinavian boyfriend of Nádasdy’s. Jax, was it? What a pitiful death that was. He had so much potential, and he wasted it all on something he believed was love. Live as long as I have, and you know love is a sham.”

  I squint at him as he approaches the side of the table again. “How old are you?”

  He spreads an arm wide, a placid smile on his face. “Take a guess.”

  I run the numbers in my head. “Two hundred years?”

  “Five hundred twenty-three.”

  My eyes widen. “What the fuck are you?”

  “Human. Simply… prolonged.”

  My surprise turns to anger. “Immortality through mage blood,” I spit. “You’re too chicken to die like the rest of us and too proud to go vampire.”

  Samael shrugs, turning back to the counter. “Vampirism doesn’t suit my needs. Why would I choose to live as a shell of myself, suspended in darkness and decay for all eternity, forced to submit to the Council’s monitoring like some petty criminal on parole?” He jostles the bucket where he dropped the knife; I hear the violent popping of bubbles, droplets splashing to the floor. He picks up a heavy, medieval-looking pair of tongs from the counter. “Besides, when I took the demonic contract to acquire the immortality spell, I also agreed not to relinquish my humanity. It was a trap, I realized about a century in. I thought the spell would sustain me forever, making death and damnation a distant, irrelevant prospect. But not even demons can guarantee forever.” He plunges the tongs into the bucket. The liquid hisses like an enormous animal, steam rising up with the odd smell of vinegar. Samael talks and fishes around in the bucket at the same time. “I’ve developed an immunity to the spell. It still gives me life, but not as much as it used to, and it takes more blood every time.”

  I bang my head against the table, this time in deliberate frustration. “The stupid fucking combat trials. You tested every single mage who came to you, to measure their worth as magic fucking Botox.”

  The tongs emerge from the bucket, the dripping, round-bladed knife held triumphantly between them. The silver metal has turned a wickedly golden hue. Samael picks up a cloth and lovingly presses the knife into it, swaddling it the way one would a baby in a blanket.

  “When you first came to me a year ago, reeking of cheap booze and other women’s perfume, I almost put my blade through your eye instead of your hand out of sheer annoyance. Your blood was corrupted beyond all usefulness to me, and you wouldn’t even pay for my services with some light information gathering—by all accounts, you shouldn’t have survived our first meeting. But I let you off the hook because you were interesting enough, and I saw a bit of myself in you. We’ve both been burned by Hell, after all. So imagine my surprise when you showed up again a few days ago, all cleaned up, sober, and scrappy, carrying that wonderfully intriguing tattoo from your… pet.”

  His oil-slick gaze is directed at the sigil on my abdomen. I scowl, even as my stomach turns. “She’s not my pet, asshole.”

  “Isn’t she?” He leaves the cloth-wrapped knife on the table next to my head, where I can’t resist the urge to stare at it. “Trailing you on your errands. Guarding you from strangers. Warming your bed. It would be interesting to employ her as a proper bodyguard. Do you know how claims work in Hell?”

  “I assume you’re about to tell me.”

  “When a demon has rightfully claimed a soul, no other demon can lay their grubby little paws on it without the owner’s permission. Of course, like all laws, this one can be circumvented. Through extended torture or simple death, a demonic owner can be… convinced to surrender their claim over a soul. But if the supposed property could control the owner… prevent them from lowering those protections under any circumstance…”

  “You can’t control demons, Sam-I-Am. Much less Lilith.”

  “I can imprison her. Lock her away from anyone who would try to reach me through her. I would be untouchable.”

  I laugh deliriously, clicking my tongue. “And that’s where you’re wrongity-wrongity-wrong, pal. Lilith can’t be imprisoned. She can’t be warded against. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “And you’ve succeeded.”

  I frown. “I don’t know what you’re—”

  Samael slams a sheaf of papers onto my stomach, making the breath oof out of me. As I cough, ribs aching, the papers shift off of me and I see them for what they are: the blueprints I drew up in my apartment before coming back to the bar.

  “Congratulations on your working model,” he says.

  Now’s when real panic stops up my breath and quickens my heartbeat. “How—how did you get those—”

  People keep coming in past the wards.

  If I weren’t chained down, I’d bury my face in my hands. Junhyun wasn’t worried about Lilith or the vampires being in my apartment, he was watching Samael watch me in my own damn home. I owe him so many apologies… if I end up dead, I guess I’ll finally be able to say them to him face-to-face.

  “Your plan still makes no fucking sense,” I complain too loudly, my voice overexerting. “Lilith is bound to me, and I’m bound to her. She won’t claim your soul, even if you use me as a hostage—she’s stubborn like that. You can’t use her as your forever-bodyguard unless you make a contract with her, and you can’t just force a demon deal.”

  “Certain contracts can be transferred from person to person. Like mortgage debts.”

  I shake my head violently. “That’s not how it works. You can’t just scribble out my name on the receipt and replace it with yours, there’s not even a document to transfer—”

  I stop. Samael just looks at me. My eyes travel down to the glow of the sigil on my stomach. My stupid mouth moves without thinking.

  “Alright, sure, I’ve got the sigil. But how the Hell are you going to claim that? What, you’re just going to—cut it off me and graft it onto yourself?”

  Samael smiles.

  Something THUMP THUMP THUMPs against the ceiling. Samael doesn’t even look up. “That’s the signal,” he says. He walks to another bucket in the corner by David’s body, pulls something floppy and sopping wet out of it. “I asked my good bartender friend to warn me when your pet arrived.”

  I jump at the booming retort of a small cannon, or more realistically a shotgun. The next thump is more muffled, like the sound of a soft, heavy body hitting the floor.

  Samael brings the soaked object over. It’s a bundle made of the leather scraps I painted in my office, and they smell sharply of gasoline. He walks around the table I’m on, dropping the scraps on the floor every few steps. Four pieces of leather, one at each compass point, just the way I designed the ward. Samael does another circuit around the table, this time with a box of matches. Each leather scrap bursts into flame with an extravagant brilliance, like the flames are competing for attention.

  I hear doors slamming somewhere above us. Lilith knows where I am, she’s just trying to find a way down to the basement.

  Samael produces the centerpiece of my ward, the clay tablet, along with a razor blade I recognize as one of my own. He rolls my sleeve up to my elbow and nicks my forearm, letting the blood drip into the grooves in the clay tablet. The blood reflects flickers of yellow light from the four fires as Samael lowers the tablet to the floor, then kicks it lightly, letting it slide under the table.

  The four fires blaze so tall they buffet me with smothering heatwaves. They arc over me again and again, like threads wrapping around a yarn ball. I crane my neck over the edge of the table, watching one of the leather pieces shrivel and tatter and be swept up into the flames. The fires flatten, ribbon-like, like the Northern lights reddened and projected onto a translucent sphere. They swim around me, natural as ocean currents, dazzling as a gilded, jeweled birdcage.

  The door to the cellar slams open. Over my shoes and through the barrier I see Lilith’s unmistakable full figure, bright wisps of stray hair wafting around her head. As she stri
des toward Samael and me, the barrier illuminates the easygoing expression on her face. I catch a smug dimple forming on her cheek. My throat is dry with dread as I watch her raise her hand, ready to sweep the pesky barrier out of the way.

  “Lilith,” I croak, “don’t—”

  There’s a HSSSSS of burning flesh. Lilith lets out a short, startled scream, snatching her hand back and stumbling over her own feet. She cradles her blistered fingers against her chest, staring up at Samael and me with wide, wide eyes.

  Samael chuckles. He picks up and unwraps the knife he bundled up earlier, lets it shimmer in the fiery lights as he admires it, then slides his eyes over to Lilith.

  “Welcome to the operating theater, pet. When I’m done with her, you and I are going to spend a very, very special eternity together.”

  He reaches for me. I start to struggle in earnest, flopping on the table like a fish on a boat deck, trying to at least make this harder for him, but there’s chains wrapped around my body from my hips to my calves—stop him, figure out a way to stop him, it’s not too late—

  He presses the knife in quickly, cleanly, like he’s done this a hundred times before on tougher hides. Before I can even jerk in reaction he’s sliced a clean arc just under my breasts, all the way from one side of my ribs to the other. The sting comes all at once, belatedly—I convulse, a hoarse scream bubbling up in my throat like vomit.

  I hear Lilith scream too—in rage, fear, or disbelief, I can’t tell. I try to surge upward, throw all my pain and fear and magic into the movement—the crown of thorns snatches my strength from me, grips my head in a vice of pure confusion as Samael grabs me by the face and slams me into the table. The brambles yammer away in my head for a few seconds longer as Samael slits my skin down the side of my ribs, all the way to my hip bone.

  Lilith disappears.

  At the corner where the two cuts meet, Samael tugs my loose skin taut and works the knife underneath, getting at that wet, tearable space between the muscle and outermost layer. The fragile strands of fat shred so easily; I feel the agony of each one a half-beat too late, just in time for the next patient, methodical stroke. I watch my skin lift from my stomach like a carpet peeling off the floor.