by Tricia Owens
Vale caught my hand in his and brought it to his lap. "What's wrong?" he asked. With the music blaring, our conversation was private if we spoke quietly enough.
"You ever think that maybe the Oddsmakers' end goal is to beat up Las Vegas until it can no longer resist?" I said, half-jokingly.
"It's not the city they need to worry about but the magickal beings within it," he replied. "We'll resist them until the last one of us falls."
"It was looking pretty hairy not so long ago."
He nodded and absently rubbed at his chest with his free hand. At my insistence he'd shown me the burn marks where the beams of sorcery had struck him. No lasting damage, but I could tell the attack had hurt and continued to hurt him. I tried not to focus on it because each time I did I grew enraged with the need for revenge.
I grimaced. "I'm worried that there's something big that we're missing. Something we've already seen that's right in front of our faces."
Vale indicated Lev, who sat up front with the driver. "Maybe he'll show us." He squeezed my hand again before looking out the side window. "Or maybe this is a trap."
The possibility of this being a trap had entered my mind. Lev had once been commanded to attack the city by something from afar. He could be following orders again.
"Why aren't you worried?" I asked Vale.
He shot me a wry smile. "Why aren't you?"
I kissed him because he was just like me. He understood that the time for squeamishness was over. If we chickened out, the world might end. I also kissed him because I hoped that some of his bravery rubbed off on me.
"I love you," I whispered against his lips.
He rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand. "Say that again when I really need you to."
I thought it was an odd thing to say, but before I could question it, Lev said urgently, "Stop. Stop here."
I looked past Vale out the window. We had stopped at a single-story building with large, colored letters spelling out Jump 'n' Gym on the side. Vale and I exchanged dubious looks but climbed out. I gave our driver a wave before he headed off.
"Are we taking a break for exercise?" I asked Lev as he began leading us to the front door of the place.
"Maybe you will want to run after seeing, yes," he mumbled ominously.
My nerves grew jittery. "So this is like, what, one of those places where people jump around on giant trampolines? End to end throughout the entire place?"
Lev nodded, but it wasn't as obvious because his shoulders had raised, given him a turtle-ish look. "Was once that. No more. Now something much different. Not fun."
"Damn," I murmured. "I could really use a shot of fun right about now."
Lev led us around the side of the building. The parking lot on this side was as empty as the front lot. The likely reason for the lack of customers was the paper sign that had been tacked to the front door's tinted glass. I hadn't been able to read it, but it probably ran something along the lines of: Closed for evil until further notice.
There weren't any cars in the back lot, either, and I was more than okay with that. Two run-ins in one night were enough for me. Vale and Lev stood guard as I used Lucky to open the back door. When we slipped inside, I couldn't help an extra glance back, searching for signs that in the end, Lev had indeed led us into a trap. But if it was a trap, I doubted it would be as obvious as a bunch of shady dudes hiding in the shadows. I needed to expect a more sinister approach.
It was dark inside. Big surprise. It was also extremely cold, as in, supernatural cold. I kept Lucky at the ready, a gently glowing streamer of gold behind us, as we exited a short hallway and emerged into what must have been the primary space of the place. It was just one big room.
Lev flipped on the lights.
I'd only seen pictures of facilities like this where the trampolines, as large as pools, covered the entire floor space so you could, if you wanted, jump from trampoline to trampoline and never touch the floor. But those big, black bouncy squares had been shoved up against the walls of the place, leaving the majority of the floor open.
But not empty.
Bodies were everywhere. Each was covered with a black cloth, otherwise, well, I didn't know how I would have reacted to such a scene. As it was, I covered my mouth with my hand and shook my head in denial.
There must have been a hundred or more, lined up in neat rows, each body encircled and then capped by a triangular occult symbol drawn in what might have been powdered charcoal. Melted candles peppered the floor here and there, many surrounded by more symbols drawn in blood. I hated that I was becoming familiar with such a sight.
Hanging above the scene was a faint cloud of gray smoke. The air stank of sulfur and meat.
"Oh, god," I groaned, stepping nearer to Vale.
He curled an arm around my waist as he demanded, "Who did this?"
Lev, hunched over and pale, replied, "I don't know. Voice tell me do this. But I would say Oddsmakers. Too much for simple person to perform. This was major sacrifice. Was something big and powerful, nothing sane person would do."
"Sanity is overestimated when it comes to the magickal community," I grated out. "Are these people—" I had to clear my throat. "Were they like us or were they ordinary people?"
Lev shook his head. "No magick. I saw when they brought in." He swallowed hard. His expression turned bleak. "I helped, Anne. I herd them. I never forgive myself. I-I bit one man. I don't know if he's here…"
"You didn't have a choice," Vale snapped, his voice hard. "You were under compulsion and probably would have been killed had you resisted. At least you're here to show us this."
"Still," Lev went on, his voice and eyes hollow. "I did this."
I wanted to hug him and talk him down, but there simply wasn't time. None of us knew what had been invoked by this sacrifice. It could have been unfolding while we stood there.
"We need Orlaton." I disengaged from Vale and stepped forward, walking along the first row of covered bodies, careful to avoid disturbing any of the occult trappings. It was awful being so close. I could all but feel the suffering these people had endured, their sorrow. With trembling fingers, I pulled out my phone and shot some photos of the scene and took video, too. "I have the feeling whatever he tells us about this won't be good," I murmured, heartsick.
"Any knowledge is helpful."
Vale again, always trying to be the optimist. At that moment, though, I was over it. This moment sucked and I wanted to wallow in how terrible it was.
"Damn these guys," I snapped. "What else is there left for them to do? Drown babies in unicorn blood? Burn grandmas on a pyre?" I put my phone away and took a deep breath. "I'm fine," I said in a calmer voice because Vale was watching me intently and shaming me by example. "This is good that we're here and seeing this. Orlaton will know what this is. It's another step closer to stopping the Oddsmakers."
I emerged from the grid of bodies and rejoined Lev and Vale.
"It might help—" I began hesitantly, unwilling to say it.
"I'll do it."
Vale didn't give me time to argue with him or try to stop him. He took my phone from my hand and strode forward. He passed the first row of bodies to kneel beside one in the second row. He deliberately came around to the other side of the body so that when he lifted the cloth neither Lev nor I could see what he saw.
But I watched his face, that handsome, caring face that I loved so much and I knew what he saw even though he tried to shield me. I saw the shock, the disgust, the anger…and the sadness. He took a couple of photos and let the cloth fall gently over the body again.
When he handed me back the phone, I squeezed his arm in sympathy. Then I used Google to find Tomes, afraid that the place wouldn’t be listed. Somewhat amazingly, it was. It even had two Google reviews. One was two stars, which I would have found hilarious on another day.
I called the listed number.
"This kid better pick up," I muttered as the line rang.
"You have reached Tomes, Occ
ult bookseller. Leave a detailed message, including date and time of requested appointment. Nothing is guaranteed."
"Orlaton, pick up!" I yelled into the phone, even though I wasn't speaking into an answering machine that he would be able to hear from across the room. "It's Anne. Call me back as soon as you get this. It's an emergency."
I ended the call and looked around. "I don’t like leaving things this way."
"No burning," Lev told me with alarm. "Their family deserves to know. They need burying."
"I wasn't going to burn them," I said, bothered that he thought I could be that heartless about it. "I thought about cleaning up all the occult stuff and—"
My phone buzzed with an unfamiliar local number. "Hello?"
"What is it, Miss Moody?"
"Orlaton! Thank god. Listen, we just came across this awful scene that you need to look at. We need you to tell us what the purpose of it was. I'm going to send you some photos, okay? Hold on."
I hung up and sent him the photos that Vale had taken as well as the video clip I'd recorded.
"Some candles are still burning," Vale pointed out quietly, probably so neither Lev nor I would panic. "And the blood I saw was fresh. This all happened within an hour or so."
"Jesus." I spun around, searching every corner of the building. "This might still be going on."
"Your friend will know, yes?"
I nodded to Lev. "He'd better."
Waiting for Orlaton to call back made me want to crawl out of my skin. Nervous, I called up Lucky so his reassuring golden light beat back the shadows.
Finally, my phone buzzed. I put it on speakerphone.
"Tell me you know what this is," I blurted as soon as I answered.
"I wish I didn't," Orlaton replied, sounding tense and unhappy. "What you've sent me are photos of a significant and ancient sacrificial ritual."
I exchanged a grim look with Vale. "Yeah, we figured that much. But what's the point of it?"
"The presence of the Sigil of Lucifer, among other sigils, is the key. Working on the assumption that all of the sheets are covering bodies which met their fate in identical fashion…I'm afraid you're looking at a mass sacrifice to the Devil."
I absorbed that for a moment. "Not a major demon or just any demon. We're talking the big guy. Satan. Lucifer. That's who you're talking about, correct? So I don't misunderstand anything here."
"You are not misunderstanding anything, Miss Moody. The Oddsmakers seem to have decided to appeal straight to the top. My guess would be that the Oddsmakers themselves are demonic. It would explain their persistence in bringing Hell to Earth."
"There is no such thing as Devil," Lev said fiercely, glaring at my phone.
I was slightly surprised. I had figured Lev was an Orthodox Christian, as many people with Eastern European roots were. Then again, he was a wolf shifter. Human religions were often viewed very differently by creatures and beings who were persecuted by them.
"A very real darkness exists which Man has tried to label in various ways," Orlaton told him over the phone. "Call it what you like it; it remains the same: the source of all evil. The impetus for terror and mayhem. A force below which seeks to turn all beneath His whip."
"Great." I closed my eyes and heaved a deep sigh. "So what are our options here? Do we have any, or is it time to book flights to Tahiti and pretend the world as we know it isn't about to end?"
"Orlaton, the candles are still burning," Vale spoke up, unfazed my dramatics. "Are we sure that this ritual is complete?"
"All of the candles or only some of them?" Orlaton's voice sounded different now. "Were any of them snuffed?"
The three of us swiftly looked out over the room. It was easier to focus on the accoutrements of the ceremony rather than on the bodies.
"I think the majority of the candles are still burning," I said tentatively. "The ones that went out seem to have done so on their own because they drowned in wax. Why? Is there significance in them still burning?"
"I would have expected the Oddsmakers to have remained behind to ensure that the ritual was closed by snuffing the candles." He hesitated. "I don't want to raise your hopes…"
"What?" I demanded, exasperated.
"It may be possible to amend what has been done there."
"How?" Vale asked sharply. "Give us specifics."
Orlaton began to read off several steps involving rearranging the candles—while keeping them lit—as well as redrawing the charcoal lines around the bodies into different occult configurations.
"Tell me when you're ready with the charcoal," he said, "and I'll walk you through the design."
It wasn't easy scooping up the charcoal with only our hands, but we were determined. It took nearly an hour to re-set all the candles and collect the charcoal.
"Okay, we're ready," I told Orlaton.
"I'm going to text you an image. You need to replicate this design around each body, beginning at the head and working counter-clockwise, starting with the eastern-most body and again, working counter-clockwise. Start at precisely nine minutes after the hour."
"Geez, anything else? Should I rub my belly and the top of my head at the same time, too?"
"Rituals require rituals, Miss Moody. If you'd rather not have the cloven hoof of the Devil stomp on your head, you'd be wise to take this seriously."
"That's a threat if I ever heard one," I mumbled, suitably chastised.
So we waited, and at nine minutes after the hour, we got to work. It wasn't easy. Thankfully, Vale possessed some artistic talent, so he was given control over drawing the designs, but when we realized it was going to take us until after sunrise to complete them all, Lev and I tried our hand at it, too. Orlaton assured us the designs didn't need to be pretty, only fully complete with no breaks in the lines. That, at least, Lev and I could handle. And with the dawn quickly approaching, we finished up.
We were a mess, sweaty and with our hands and arms smeared with charcoal. But I could tell the guys were as proud as I to have finished the massive task.
"Now what?" I asked Orlaton after calling him back.
"Now put me on speakerphone."
Orlaton raised his voice so that it did an impressive job of filling the room, and then began to speak words I couldn't hope to understand. Funny thing about ancient rituals was that they were never in understandable English. My arm grew tired holding up the phone, but in time the candle flames began to flicker, and the charcoal designs on the floor began to dimly glow red.
"There we go," I breathed, my blood pumping with excitement. "Something's happening, Orlaton."
The air grew heavy, and I swore I felt an enormous door in the room above our heads slam shut. Maybe it was symbolic. Or maybe a real supernatural door had just closed. I simply had to trust that Orlaton knew what he was doing and that Vale, Lev, and I had done a competent job of changing the ritual.
Orlaton, through the phone, trailed off, though his voice continued to echo throughout the room.
"We need fire, Miss Moody," he told me, his return to English startling me. "Please set the charcoal alight."
Before I could order Lucky to do so, the door that we had used to enter opened and then quickly shut before any of us could turn to see whom it had been.
"Uh oh," I murmured. "That can't be good."
Immediately after I said that howling could be heard from outside. The Hell hounds had found us.
"No!" I caught Lev's arm as he moved toward the door. When he snarled at me, I snapped right back. "If you try to fight them you'll only become one of them, remember? Besides, you can't fight off an entire pack. Hell, there may be multiple packs from the way it sounds. We need you here. Celestina needs you here."
The mention of his girlfriend was probably the only thing that stopped him. He took a deep breath, lips twitching as though they longed to pull back off his teeth in a wolfish snarl.
"Yes. Yes, you are right," he said with effort, as though it pained him. "For Celestina. I must see Celestina. Tha
t is only thing matters to me. Matters most."
"And you will see her. We just need to hold off these guys for a little while." I looked around quickly for heavy furniture or anything to shove in front of the door to block the Hell hounds' entrance, but the place was empty of all but the easily ripped trampolines.
I mentally shrugged. "We'll make a new door later."
I order Lucky to heat blast the door.
The metal turned bright red beneath the intense heat of his fire breath. Then it began to turn white. My dragon used his nose to nudge the door frame, warping it and melding it with the door itself so that as it cooled it would all become one solid piece. Nothing would get through that short of another dragon. Maybe.
The Hell hounds continued to howl, and the door, even though it was superheated and would have burned any who touched it, rang loudly with the sounds of the creatures head-butting it. It made me sad more than it alarmed me, for it told me that the wolf shifters had lost all control over themselves. They were hurting themselves on behalf of the Oddsmakers. They'd probably kill themselves, too. I was grateful that we'd been able to free Lev from that cycle, at least for the moment.
"Okay, Lucky, get on with the ritual," I told my dragon anxiously.
He flew away from the door and back to the occult scene. Showing a surprising delicacy considering how he'd just flame-throwered the door, he breathed a tendril of flame over the nearest edge of the charcoal sigils. Though they weren't connected, the flame raced around the first body and then jumped to the charcoal design surrounding the next body in the row as if by magick. That was exactly what it was. And on it went, the flame searing the charcoal, sending out puffs of smoke around a cloth-covered body, and then jumping to the next design to repeat the process.
By the time the flame died out, the air was dense with smoke and my throat hurt from inhaling it.
Orlaton spoke more funky words and then fell silent. Weirdly, the relentless banging of the Hell hounds outside also stopped, as if they somehow knew that it was too late to stop us.