by Jenn Stark
As Marcus yammered on, Stefan spared a glance at the priest. When they’d first burst through the smoke to the sacred grove, they’d found a small army waiting for them. Stefan had been instantly yoked and spiked to the ground, but the priest had remained unharmed, struck to his knees and held there, but not further abused. He remained on his knees now, and when Stefan glanced at him, the human’s eyes were red rimmed with outrage.
“Did you know this was going to happen?” he demanded. “Because a little warning would’ve been nice.”
Stefan coughed, more weakly than he would have liked. “I knew Marcus’s energy was off the charts, and I suspected he had another plan. Not this, though. Definitely not this.”
“You guys might really want to consider brushing up on your skills in reading witch’s minds. Seems to me that would’ve come in pretty damn handy.”
“I’ll work on it.” Stefan’s attention was drawn sharply back to the center of the circle as Marcus began shouting again and Cressida moved forward. It was in the nature of humans to be shouting all the time, but Stefan made a monumental effort to focus as Marcus dropped his voice abruptly—dropped it, but didn’t stop with his prayer, a prayer Stefan could barely hear above the wailing spell casters.
“No,” he managed, but it was too late. Just as Cressida’s cry to summon Ahriman to the grove was also too late.
Ahriman was already here.
When the ancient demon extended his power over the center of New York City’s most famous park, he didn’t bring fire or pestilence, smoke or death. He could have, Stefan realized with a start. Finally confronted with the essence of Ahriman, he at last understood the ramifications of this demon being so much older than even God’s holy choir of angels. It was easy to bandy about phrases like “the dawn of time” when you’d lived as long as Stefan had, but the essence of Ahriman was formed in the crystalline dust of the solar system, a byproduct of the first and wildest acts of the Father’s creative fury. Ahriman hadn’t existed before God spoke, but he was stirred to life in the exhale of breath after the Father’s first words, from the energy that was left to the side when light was formed and darkness made. His was the domain of neither light nor darkness, but the infinite gray space in between. His was the hollow void of emptiness, with no future and no past, no end and no beginning. This was true despair. Not anger, not fury, not fire, not death. But aching, ceaseless nothingness, a wandering without end. Here in one being was the anguish that had plagued the darkest corners of the earth since its inception, that drove more of God’s children to take their own lives than any rage or fervent cause ever could.
And now Ahriman was here to take corporeal form on Earth, to rule the demon horde in a way not even Stefan could have predicted.
Ahriman wouldn’t incite the masses to turn against one another in fury and fire, Stefan suddenly understood. He would get them to turn against themselves.
Cressida’s head came down with a snap, and she readied her next spell, but she had already lost the attention of the spell casters around her. They’d all been prepared for a fight of bloody proportions against a roiling, furious demon they’d read about for probably most of their lives. But the creature before them had no form. He appeared as a gray and haunting mist, a wail of despair so profound, it reverberated through the bones of the trees. The spell casters staggered, their voices growing hushed, then wholly silent, until only Cressida’s sharp command rose above them. A few looked up, and some opened their mouths once more, but none seemed capable of uttering another sound. She called out the incantations of the sacred grimoire all alone, her voice growing increasingly desperate.
Then Marcus joined her.
At first, Stefan thought Marcus had come to Cressida’s aid, but the moment the male witch started speaking, he knew the truth. Marcus wasn’t challenging Ahriman to battle as Cressida was, he was welcoming him with open arms. He was begging him to take his rightful place on this earth with Marcus and the Scepter Coven as his servants, not his master or destroyer. They would help guide humanity to their honored place, ruling over the horde. They would put Ahriman into a position of power, for he was nature’s force alone. He was not a creature of God or man, but something ancient and powerful and true. He could defy even God himself.
That last bit finally pierced the last of Stefan’s fog.
“No,” he cried, or tried to cry. The spikes through his body were heavily spelled, rendering his voice almost inaudible to his own ears. But instantly, he knew he was already too late. He had failed; he could see that clearly now. All his thousands of years of service to the Syx were as nothing when he couldn’t stand and fight the one time he was asked to by the archangel himself. He was worthless, forever stained—
Beside him, however, Jim Granger suffered no such doubt. He burst out with the roar that Stefan had wanted to claim for himself.
“You dare!” the exorcist yelled, struggling to his feet, now using the enormous spike on his cross as a crutch. “You dare to put yourself above the Father. You dare to summon a creature you believe to be not even of His making? What kind of fool are you to think that any part of the universe is not the result of sure and holy creation? All that is good, all that is bad, all that is right, all that reeks of darkest evil. There is no mistake in this plan, there is neither hole nor flaw, there is only creation in all its grand and glorious chaos. The darkness cannot exist without the light, not in a world of creation. The weak cannot exist without the strong, not in a world that allows for growth. By striking down the hearts of man with this evil darkness, rendering God’s children into husks, you spit in the eye of the Lord.”
“He is not my Lord!” the witch howled back, and with a wave of Marcus’s hand, the priest staggered back, his own hands going to his throat. Stefan once more strained against his bonds, but the magic of the master spell caster had been carefully wrought. As he attempted to rip the spikes out of his skin, it was Cressida who gasped, Cressida whose skin was torn. And as Granger twisted in choked agony, it was another voice that cried out, going from a furious shout to an anguished gargle.
Marcus wheeled around, fixing Dahlia with a stare. “You! Your affection for the exorcist was plain from the beginning, but I allowed it. You know your place as captain of the guard, or I thought you did. But I can’t allow your weakness to be your undoing. I certainly won’t allow it to be the coven’s undoing.”
“Hold, Marcus. You have no authority here.”
Stefan whipped around and watched a white-faced Cressida approach, her arms bleeding from the wounds he’d caused her. Where her blood touched the ground, it sizzled. Something was wrong about that. Something was wrong about all of this. This attack of Ahriman’s was too…static. A haze of gloom was a bummer, to be sure, but it lacked a certain…panache that he simply assumed any battle of primeval forces would require.
Back when the universe was first formed, they didn’t call it the big sigh, after all.
What was Ahriman waiting for?
The answer to that happened all at once. Marcus stood fast as Cressida neared, then at the last minute, swept his arm down. Stefan expected the witch’s movement to set off a chain reaction of magic, but the reality was much more brutal. The foot soldier standing next to Cressida yanked out a knife and plunged it toward her, even as beside him, Jim Granger shouted a warning. Cressida, clearly aghast, halted in her tracks, her hands going up, her own shout half choked in her throat—and only then did Marcus bring in the magic, and the skies opened to allow a rain of unholy rage to come down.
The bastard had simply needed more time.
Now, Ahriman’s army of demons had finally arrived.
Banking that Cressida’s distraction at this new horror would keep her from feeling undue pain at what he was about to do her, Stefan acted. He wrenched his body forward, pulling the stakes out of the ground, and separated his hands, lurching forward under the weight of his bespelled chains. As the witches around him woke up to the real and p
resent danger of them being attacked by an entirely new demon horde, Stefan gripped the chains and started swinging. He could no longer see Cressida, or Dahlia and the exorcist, he could only see the shocked and terrified faces of the humans around him.
This was his place in the world, he understood.
This, he knew how to do.
He bent to the task. The army of Ahriman was not made up of weaklings and castoffs, but of the strongest demons that had ever walked the planet. Stefan knew because he recognized some of them for all that they were moving so quickly that he could barely get a fix on any of their faces. But a moment was all that was necessary. As he struck and twisted and lashed out, sending geysers of black goop soaring into the night sky, Stefan called forth the demons that he recognized by name.
A name is a powerful thing. It always had been, since light first swept through the universe. So Stefan called the demons to him, drawing their attention before cleaving their bodies in two. It would’ve been easier with the other members of the Syx to help, but after their initial shock wore off, the spell casters of the Scepter Coven shook themselves back into battle readiness as well. They were spell casters of no small skill either, and once freed from the enervation of Ahriman’s manifestation of mist and anguish, they also bent to their task with growing fervor.
A particularly fast-moving demon with whirling wings blasted into Stefan from the side, looking like hellspawn on steroids. It bit and scratched and tore at him, and somewhere deep in the thick of the battle, Stefan could hear Cressida scream. He blinked down, horrified to realize that he felt no pain. Had Marcus found some way to twist the link that he and Cressida had begun to forge between them into a weapon against the woman? Could that be possible?
The irony wasn’t lost on Stefan. He’d spent his entire mortal existence—or the significant part that he could remember—paying for his crime against a woman who had bound herself too tightly to him. A woman who’d gone to her death howling imprecations, vowing that Stefan would never be free of her just as she would never be free of the pain he’d caused her. She was more prescient than she ever realized, he suspected.
But how had Marcus discovered that, and how had he twisted it to his own uses? He was a master spell caster, but he wasn’t the sharpest prick in the pack. He couldn’t know anything about Stefan’s deepest, darkest past.
Another demon struck him in his distraction, the force driving Stefan to one knee, but once again, there was no pain. No pain that he felt anyway. He steeled himself against Cressida’s howl of agony, then lashed out with greater anger. His momentary restraint, even thoughts of forgiveness for Zeneschiah and Boltar, was now lost in a blur of fury. Nothing mattered to him other than getting to Cressida and destroying anything that stood in his way. Nothing mattered to him more than protecting her—
“Stefan!” Cressida cried out, and it took a second for Stefan to realize his newest injury. Not feeling pain sounded like a good idea, but it was a recipe for getting your legs cut out from under you before you even felt the edge of the blade. Or the rake of a fire drake’s tail, in this case.
Before him, a small space in the roiling crowd opened up, more out of respect for the creature he faced than himself, Stefan knew instantly. The fire drake slunk low to the ground, looking so much like Zeneschiah that Stefan had to squint to make sure it wasn’t the fiery demon come back to life. But no, this one wasn’t drunk, for one thing, and its attention was focused solely on Stefan as words spilled out of its mouth in a rapid-fire spew of vitriol.
“You will never get what you seek, never escape what you’ve done. That is the way of the demon, which you forget at your peril,” the creature hissed, darting out to slash its fiery talons at Stefan’s chest. The strike missed him but was close enough to singe his glamour, and once again, Stefan didn’t miss Cressida’s stifled cry.
“You seem to have a lot of attitude for a demon who’s about to turn into goop,” Stefan rasped back. He lunged toward the drake, hesitating only at the last second, remembering Cressida. He could take this creature apart limb by limb, but he’d be burned in the process, which meant Cressida would feel that pain even if he didn’t. He couldn’t afford that. The Syx dispatched demons most quickly through hand-to-claw combat, but that wasn’t an option here, not anymore. He cast his glance around, but there were no weapons that weren’t fully in use, and the humans needed them far more than he did. The crowd split and twisted, and he saw Jim Granger spiking a demon in the throat, then turning to deliver a roundhouse punch to another as Dahlia fought by his side.
Then the drake struck again, scoring Stefan along his arm. He jumped back, returning his attention to the creature and steadfastly trying to ignore Cressida’s muted cries.
“The Syx’s reputation has been forged in the same pit as the army of Ahriman,” the drake lisped. “Its demise will be celebrated there loud and long.”
The crowd shifted, and Stefan recognized the silver spike an instant before it nearly struck him, flying at him end over end.
“Demon, stop messing around!” roared the exorcist.
At the last second before the thing brained him, Stefan yanked the holy cross out of the air and plunged it into the fire drake. The demon exploded into a pile of goop—which only served to reveal a new creature that had been standing behind it.
A woman. A human woman.
One he’d ignored six thousand years earlier, not understanding her pain and suffering. Pain and suffering that he alone had caused.
“You!” she cried, launching toward him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“No!” Cressida flung herself toward Dahlia just as her captain freed herself from her attacker and fought back with redoubled fury—which was good because Cressida had her own troubles.
She whirled around, taking stock. First, there was the swarm of demons Marcus had seemed to deliberately dump on them out of nowhere, straining the reserves of the already exhausted spell casters who’d traveled from inside their stronghold, and confusing the spell casters who were waiting for them in the grove. To add to that, every time she moved, another lance of pain sliced through her, though no one got near enough to her to strike. It was as if she was being cut open from the inside—welts and abrasions and outright gashes appeared out of thin air, weeping blood and gore. She could see the edges of some gashes beneath her tight leather clothes and wondered if this was why Stefan had insisted on the ridiculous outfit. It was one way to ensure she would stay physically held together.
Now she pivoted, taking on three coiling demons at once, all of them fire drakes. She hadn’t had much time to talk with Zeneschiah, but under her compulsion, he’d explained with great relish how fire drakes assaulted their prey. All but the mightiest of them preferred to hunt in threes for the express purpose of toying with humans, who somehow felt they would attack singly, giving the human time to recover between bouts. They catered to that belief by doing just that—to start.
Cressida didn’t have time for demon games, though. She’d felt the weight of Ahriman when he’d entered the grove—the weight, but not the person. She didn’t believe that Ahriman was simply a cloud of depressing mist that enervated all he touched. That wouldn’t have evoked the fear that stories of the mighty demon had engendered throughout time, a fear strong enough to last some six millennia without reinforcement. And if what Stefan had said was true and the grimoire had been altered over time to erase the former attempts of witches who went up against the great demon? What would be the point of that if the demon was simply a nameless, faceless ghost? No. The soul-grinding depression wielded by the beast was a mighty weapon, but only a weapon, she was certain. The worst attack of Ahriman was yet to come.
This new barrage of demons proved that. She held her hands out as if to protect herself, and the demons took great delight in her attempt. Though she had clear skills in spell casting and she knew all the ancient enchantments, her power didn’t lie in this art like Marcus’s did. She was among
the strongest in the coven, yes, but not the strongest. She’d been supposed to lead, not conjure, and her energies had been scattered because of it, while Marcus’s had stayed laser focused.
Now she grimaced, seeing the obvious flaw in her education and training.
The obvious…
Another crack of pain sent Cressida sprawling to the side, fortuitously timed as one of the fire drakes struck. It soared over her, then piled into its fellow, while Cressida curled into a ball of misery, gasping as yellow fire played over her hands. She instantly thought of Stefan and wondered where he was in the fight. Surely he would attempt to help her if he could? Surely he wasn’t yet another of her tools who was turning against her in her time of need?
She scrambled to her feet as the crowd parted, and then she did see Stefan, fighting a fire drake four times the size of the ones she’d squared off against. It struck him, lighting his hands up with fire, and a responding crackle burned up the length of Cressida’s arm. She screamed and fell to her knees again, shaking her arm viciously. Once again as she staggered upright, fire danced over her fingertips. Not the yellow-white flame of the fire drake, but the red-and-purple conflagration that had erupted with Stefan’s intimate touch. That fire had bonded them together, not scorched her in agony…
She stared down at her hands, flexing her fingers wide, and felt more than saw the attack of the drakes—this time all in a mass versus one at a time. Without thinking, she flung her hands out, willing the fire from her hands to create a blast of energy. She’d seen Marcus do something similar, though usually with a wand or other amulet of power to focus the weight of his spell, but she had no such tool. She only had the connection between her and the Syx, and it would have to do.