by G. P. Ching
“I’ve never been there personally, if that’s what you’re asking. This is dark magic. Are you sure it’s safe to use in the presence of demons? All dark magic demands a price.”
“Hmm,” he murmured. “A price we will pay with the blood of our enemies.” As Theodor placed the bucket against the wall, he removed his cards from his inner pocket, shuffling them in one hand—the top into the middle, the bottom over the top.
Hope looked toward the connecting corridor. “I hear footsteps. Someone’s coming.”
“That would be Finn,” Theodor said. “Come with me. Let’s invite him in.”
Finn raced toward the end of the corridor where he remembered the entrance to the hive. “Open the door!” he yelled, praying that Theodor had successfully made it inside.
There was a rumble and the panel slid into the wall. Thank God.
“Back here, Finn!” Hope’s voice. He turned the corner. What once was the clowns’ laboratory was now the canvas for a giant symbol. The power radiating from the red pattern on the floor made his head throb.
“In the circle, Finn. The anchor!” Theodor motioned to the tip of the triangle.
A white-gloved hand clapped over Finn’s mouth.
“Eviscerate,” Theodor yelled.
The clown released Finn, its body shredding. Oily black goo sprayed across Finn’s back, coating the shell of his ear in slick filth. He leaped into the circle Theodor had indicated. Instantly, purple light formed a ring of protection around him, a wall of energy that stopped the advancing demons, their white-gloved hands bouncing off the force around him. When he searched out Theodor, he and Hope had manned the similar circles at each point of the triangle, safe within their own wall of protection.
Theodor raised a card. King of spades. Dark magic. Finn held his breath. Gabriel had warned against using sorcery, but surely Theodor understood what he was doing. In all the time he’d trained with his mentor, he never once suspected that Theodor was impulsive or foolhardy. And Finn had relayed the angel’s warning. The magician was aware of the risks. If he was using the king of spades, he had his reasons.
But the magician stopped short as a column of purple smoke formed to Finn’s right, between the symbol and the star. When the smoke cleared, Ms. D appeared, holding Mike in her arms. Mike, who sagged like a rag doll, like he was dead.
“He needs help,” she yelled.
“The anchor will only hold three,” Theodor said, turning his attention toward the advancing clowns.
“Help Mike,” Finn yelled to Hope. “I’ll hold them back.”
Hope left the anchor and rushed to Mike’s side.
Nothing could have prepared Finn for what he faced. He wasn’t a fighter. He could fly and had his stack of cards, but that was it. But as the demons closed in, he reached down deep, inside his shaking, sick-feeling body, and found the courage to do what he had promised. The clowns couldn’t walk through the protective barrier of the symbol, but they could walk around it. They tested the boundaries, one slipping around Finn. “Bind,” he yelled flipping one card, then another through the purple barrier that surrounded him. “Ignite.”
“Eviscerate.” Theodor spun a card, leveraging Finn’s work. It curved, around Finn, tearing the clown into tiny flaming bits. Barely enough to slow the herd behind it down. The magician selected the eight of diamonds from the center of his pack. “Cage,” he yelled. Yellow shingles climbed around the entire group, locking them inside.
Finn cheered.
Until Hope’s clone arrived. Still dressed in her peacock-colored gown, the imposter opened her mouth and began to sing before he or Theodor could react. The effect wasn’t as powerful as Juliette’s—Finn had been right about the clone being rushed—but the song was enough to transport Finn to the middle of a forest. He could still see the outline of reality through the weak illusion, but not well enough to trust himself to throw his next card.
Theodor had no such qualms. “Eviscerate,” he shouted.
The forest tore in half, shredded leaves turning to black blood. The singing stopped. There was nothing left to sing. Nothing left of Hope’s clone but oily strips of peacock-colored cloth. But the collisions of magic had unintended consequences. The yellow cage crumbled.
“Get back inside the anchor!” Theodor caught his card as white-gloved hands closed around Finn’s throat and squeezed. When had he stepped out of it? It must have been when he was lost in the clone’s illusion!
A pulse of magic from Ms. D knocked the clown off Finn, and he leaped back into the protective circle rubbing his throat.
“Theodor, look out!” Ms. D cried.
A blur of red and black came from behind the star and collided with Theodor, knocking him from his circle. Applegate! As a human, she was unaffected by the purple barrier. She straddled the magician’s back, wrapping the crook of her arm around his neck. Theodor fumbled with his cards, but she was too quick. Her dagger landed, slicing into Theodor’s flesh.
“No!” Finn threw the card he’d been avoiding all night. “Eviscerate!”
“Ahhh!” A bloody gash appeared in Applegate’s arm but nothing more. She looked at Finn and laughed. “Is that supposed to stop me, Finn?”
Theodor crumbled at her feet, his blood spilling on the stone. But the magician wasn’t dead yet. Finn watched him pull a card from his deck and flick it at Applegate’s feet. She froze. Another card and the magician’s body turned to mist. He was disappearing, transporting himself wherever he could get help.
“Ravenguard!” Applegate cried through her partially opened lips. Her eyes roved wild inside her immobilized face.
The second admissions counselor arrived from the same direction as Applegate and wasted no time stabbing his hunting knife into the magician’s misty body. Theodor formed around the blade, his cards dropping from his hand as he thumped back into a solid state. The entire deck cascaded into the pool of blood surrounding Theodor. The entire deck except for the king of spades, which flipped from his fingers, arced across the symbol, and landed in Finn’s hands.
Ms. D shoved Hope into a circle, then with a pulse of magic to keep Ravenguard at bay, dragged Mike into the last anchor. More clowns appeared from the direction Applegate and Ravenguard had come. At least eight more, including Paul and Wendy’s clones. They were surrounded.
“Th-throw the card,” Theodor gurgled.
“Victoria, go!” Hope yelled.
With one last glance at Theodor, Ms. D turned into a column of smoke and disappeared.
“Throw the card, Finn. Now,” Hope commanded.
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to use sorcery!”
“We don’t have a choice. My triquetra is gone. I can’t fight!”
The clowns scratched at the purple light around him as Theodor spasmed under Ravenguard’s knife. The admission’s counselors were twitching as the spells they were under wore off. Applegate could move her head, and Ravenguard succeeded in pulling his knife from Theodor’s chest.
Finn wanted to help, but he’d never done this spell. Sure, he’d watched Theodor do it every time they met. He remembered his mentor saying “portate” before opening the portal between the library and his office. But he’d learned enough about magic to know that it wasn’t only about saying the word; he’d have to concentrate his energy. What should he picture in his mind?
The purple light protecting them began to shimmer.
“Finn, now! Theodor is dying. The symbol won’t last. Applegate will be free,” Hope yelled.
“I don’t know if I can do this. Where should I send them?” he yelled.
“The magic will decide. Theodor planned for this.” She looked over her shoulder at Applegate, who had succeeded in sliding one foot toward them.
Finn had to do something. He didn’t have a choice. He concentrated on the symbol, focusing his intent. “Portate!” he yelled and tossed the card at the center of the compass.
Unlike his previous spells, this time the card didn’t come back. It sank throug
h the stone where it seemed to have no effect. The purple light around Hope blinked like a lightbulb on the verge of fizzling out.
Then the compass began to spin, the stone melting into a swirling vortex. A black pit formed at the center of the symbol, bringing about a powerful suction that caused Hope’s hair to blow forward toward the hole. Finn pressed his hands against the purple energy containing him as a laboratory table bounced from the wall into the abyss.
A clown was the portal’s next victim, sending the others scrambling to find something to hold on to. Applegate, freed from Theodor’s spell, grasped the railing of the star’s enclosure and held on tight as his Theodor’s body slid past her, his journey lubricated by his own blood, and tumbled into the vortex. Ravenguard sheathed his blade and grabbed on to the railing beside her. More equipment bent and crumpled before bouncing into the widening black hole at their feet. One clown and then another was torn from their bearings, having clung to equipment that gave way and was swept into the void. The remaining had gripped the railing beside the admissions counselors, who now dangled, parallel to the floor, their legs sucked toward the vortex.
All the weight, the sheer magical force, proved too much. The glass around the star cracked. The earth shook. Finn stumbled, holding himself up against the power of the anchor. If this went on much longer, he was afraid the entire school would be sucked into the depths of the portal, but he had no idea how to stop it.
Applegate slipped. Ravenguard caught her hand but grunted with the effort of holding her. And that’s when Hope’s triquetra flew out from under Applegate’s shirt. It dangled horizontally toward Finn, as if it was avoiding the vortex. “Bind,” he said, throwing his card at his own feet. Bound to the anchor, he bent forward at the waist and snatched the pendant. He yanked with all his might, but the chain wouldn’t give.
With a crash, the glass around the star shattered. The clowns tumbled into the vortex, followed by Ravenguard. They circled in the darkness and disappeared, like spiders washed down the drain.
Only Applegate remained, dangling from the end of Hope’s necklace.
Finn grunted with the effort of holding her, feeling like he might be torn in two by the force of the vortex.
“Finn, let it go,” Hope yelled, tears streaming down her face.
Applegate struggled, her lips drawn back from her teeth. Arms flopping in the rushing wind, she snagged his hand and dug her nails into his skin. How could he be so stupid? With his free hand, he fumbled with his cards. “Unbind!” He tapped the pendant’s chain. The triquetra came loose from Applegate’s neck. Slowly, painfully, her nails tore from Finn’s skin as her body slipped away, her scream echoing through the darkness.
Finn’s upper body was yanked back into the anchor. He was bleeding, but he had Hope’s triquetra.
The remainder of the glass shattered, and Finn raised his arms to shield his eyes from the light of the unconfined star. The brightness didn’t last long. The star exploded. What a moment ago was blinding light turned to inky blackness. He lowered his arms.
“Finn?” Hope’s voice trembled.
He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. Nothing made sense. He blinked again and again. Like a raft on a sea of darkness, the symbol, along with Hope, Finn, and Mike, who was still unconscious in the third circle, floated in space. Everything else was gone.
Mike shivered, pale and sweating. Finn was relieved he was alive but worried he might be in shock. His friend opened his eyes but did not move or speak.
“This can’t be real. This isn’t supposed to be how it works.” Finn flipped through his cards, knowing there wasn’t a spell in his deck that could fix this.
“How is it supposed to work?” Hope asked.
“Whoa!” Finn’s stomach dropped. He blinked. When he opened his eyes again, they were back in the hive, the symbol back where it had been before. Their legs buckled with the impact of returning to reality. Finn was using his knee to help him regain his footing when Theodor’s king of spades kicked out of the floor and returned to his hand.
“That’s how it’s supposed to work,” he murmured. He glanced around the room, afraid to step out of the anchor.
Mike sat up and promptly vomited the contents of his stomach.
“It will be okay, Mike. Stay still,” Hope said.
When nothing else moved, Finn looked around the empty hive and over at Hope. Tentatively, he gave her a smile, which turned into a laugh. “It worked. Hope, it worked!”
Hope’s laugh echoed through the empty hive. “We did it! Oh Finn, we did it. It’s over!” She raised her foot to step from the anchor when a column of purple smoke gave her pause.
Ms. D arrived, hands raised. “Don’t move.”
Hope returned her foot to her circle, smile fading.
“There is a presence in this room I haven’t felt in a lifetime,” Ms. D said. Her eyes widened as the floor began to quake and the bloody edges of the symbol boiled red.
“What’s going on?” Finn asked.
“I don’t know,” Ms. D said. “But it’s not good.”
The boiling blood morphed into bugs, hundreds of insects—roaches, spiders, maggots—that swarmed to the center of the compass, the mass growing into a great bulbous sac of red and black that rippled and twisted. The bleached white of old bones bobbed in the mass, followed by muscle that attached itself to the bones within the churn of insects. Finn gagged.
At a grotesque pace, skin grew on muscle and hair sprouted from a barely fleshed out skull. By the time the infestation of insects returned from where they came, the thing at the center of the symbol looked like a human man, six feet tall, blond, blue-eyed, and wearing a brown military uniform with a swastika banded to the sleeve. Unnaturally straight, the man rose from the floor and cracked his neck. The entire room filled with the smell of sulfur.
Finn covered his nose and mouth with the inside of his arm. Mike tried to stand, but his eyes rolled back in his head. He stumbled out of his anchor and bumped into the hive wall, where he passed out again.
“Mike!” Finn yelled.
The blond man turned to face Ms. D. “Commandant,” she breathed. She looked like she’d seen a ghost.
“Lucifer,” Hope said in response, the name flying from her mouth like a curse. Her lips twisted in disgust.
The blond man rolled his neck, turning from Ms. D to face Hope. He chuckled wickedly. “The one and only.” His voice was a hiss, a cup of water on a raging fire. He dug a finger inside his collar and loosened his top button.
“You can’t be here. You’re b-banned from Earth,” Hope said. “Banished to Hell.”
“Correction, I was banished, before you invited me back.” He coupled his hands behind his back. “God gives you Eden; you eat the apple. God banishes me; you conjure me back. You human beings, you just can’t live without me. What is it you people say? When one door closes, a window opens? You opened a window, Soulkeeper.” The Devil’s mouth twisted into a grin. “You must have missed me.”
“I did not invite you,” Hope said.
“Oh, but you did. Dark magic comes with a price, and you tempted Mr. Wager into dark magic.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“No? You didn’t ask, no, demand that Finn use sorcery to save your life? He even reminded you that it wasn’t allowed.” Lucifer brushed a hand over his hair and smoothed his shirtsleeves. He stretched and rolled his joints as if still coming into himself.
“I… I didn’t mean to!”
“And Eve was hungry when she ate the apple.” He rubbed the corners of his eyes with his knuckles. “Boohoo. Awful how life forces us to make difficult choices, isn’t it? Not only did you beg this boy to use sorcery, you offered me the blood sacrifice of his mentor.”
“Theodor,” Finn said.
“Theodor. Theodor who carried a trace of Hell in his blood from our previous meeting. It was his bright idea to build a spell that would return the demons to where they came. You knew they came from Hell, Soulkeeper. Who d
o you think built this place? The demons have been doing my work for centuries.” He raised one foot and carefully stepped over the boundary of the symbol. “News flash: when you open a portal to Hell, it’s arrogant to believe nothing from Hell will use it in the opposite direction. Theodor always struggled with pride, didn’t he?”
“You cheated,” Hope said. “What you did is against the rules!”
He narrowed his eyes and curled a lip. “Foolish child, evil doesn’t play by the rules.”
Ms. D groaned and grabbed her head.
“See how this works, Victoria? Sorcery has a price. When you take favors from the Devil, it costs you something. Fair is fair.”
“What do you want?” Ms. D asked. “Take me. Leave these children alone.”
Lucifer shook his head and charged Hope, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking. “But it is these children I want,” he spat. “You don’t understand what this girl has done to me. Transformed a legion of fallen angels into useless puppets. Oh no. I will end the last Soulkeeper, and she’ll have no one to blame but herself.”
“Extinguish,” Finn said, throwing a card at Lucifer’s feet. The spell had no effect whatsoever.
Lucifer laughed wickedly and turned his full attention on Finn. “Did you mean for that to hurt me?”
“No. I meant for it to distract you. Hope!” Finn tossed the triquetra at her. She landed a foot on Lucifer’s chest and flipped from his grasp, snatching the silver symbol from the air. She’d whispered into it before her feet hit the ground.
Gabriel formed between Hope and Lucifer, his wings stretching protectively.
“Vile creature. Be gone with you!” the angel bellowed at Lucifer, glowing as bright as the star that once burned behind him.
“You always were such a buzzkill, Gabriel. I hate to disappoint you, but I have a right to be here. She invited me. You can fight me, but don’t expect backup.” His eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “He won’t help you here.”
Gabriel turned his head to look at Hope behind him. “Run!”
48
Battle