Bounty: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Solumancer Cycle Book 3)

by J. C. Staudt

  “Where?”

  “Zug Island.”

  “That industrial zone downriver from the city center?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “How’s the tadpole situation?”

  “Haven’t touched it yet. We’ve got all our focus tied up on the crossing.”

  “How much time do I have?”

  “The first portal opens in about forty-five minutes.”

  “You couldn’t have given me a little more warning?”

  “I’ve been trying to call you. The network kept telling me you couldn’t be reached.”

  I guess there are no cell towers in the underworld. “You said the first portal. The first of how many?”

  “Mazriel claims there are going to be at least six.”

  “Six? Are you joking?”

  “The place is a hotbed of paranormal activity all of a sudden. This could be the biggest crossing we’ve ever seen. We need you, Cade. Baz is still out and Fremantle won’t leave his side, so we’re down two bodies already.”

  “I wish I could drop what I’m doing, but I’m onto something here. If I pull it off, you’ll be up a lot more bodies than two. I won’t be much good with a gun anyway. I’m running on zero sleep.”

  “Multiple portals could mean multiple species crossing over. There’s no telling what kind of a mess we’re going to have on our hands, especially if Irys shows up.”

  “She’s going to show up, Ryovan. Maybe you guys should sit this one out.”

  “I keep thinking about what you said the other night in the train tunnels. We’re the Guardians of the Veil. This is our calling. Our purpose. We can’t back down from our enemies no matter how powerful they are. If we let fear drive us, we might as well take up knitting. Innocents will die tonight if we’re not there.”

  “There’s no shame in choosing your battles, Ry. You said as much yesterday. Lay low for now; take care of the flickerfrog tadpoles and let what happens tonight happen. You can’t save everyone.”

  “It’s about more than saving people. It’s about standing up to Irys, and by extension, Elona. Showing them we won’t go down easy. Is Githryx with you? Des told me you left here together earlier today. Mazriel has been trying to call him home, but—oh, wait. He’s back. Never mind.”

  I jerk my head toward the stand of bushes beside the house. Sure enough, the imp is gone. I’m stranded here in wet dirty clothes with under an hour to summon Malanx and get to Zug Island. Thanks a lot, Githryx. Just when I felt like we were starting to understand each other. “Gotta go. I’ll be in touch when I can. Good luck out there tonight.”

  “Same to you. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I hope it pans out.”

  I hang up and reenter the house. “Sorry about that.”

  “Everything alright?”

  “We’re on a time crunch. To answer your question, my name is Cade Cadigan. Now tell me everything you can remember about the night you summoned that demon.”

  Chapter 26

  “The guy’s name was Jenz. He was using this thing he called a symbol of power. It was this flat triangular disc, slightly concave, made of glass or polished crystal or something. He rested it on one of those tea light holders and lit a candle underneath it. Then he added a few drops of this clear liquid from a plastic flask beneath the table. When I added a drop of my blood—”

  “You put your blood into it?”

  “He told me the emotional bond would help us find my sister. I was hopeful.”

  “Hope. The bane of the weak and the nourishment of the stubborn.”

  “Huh?”

  “Hope is what makes people keep going, even when they shouldn’t. Anyway, you were saying…”

  “When I added a drop of my blood to the crystal triangle, the candle started casting all these weird swirly shadows on the ceiling. Jenz kept muttering to himself, making these little movements with his fingers over the disc. You know, like spellcasting stuff.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “That’s when I started to feel the presence. The dark swirly stuff was spreading across the ceiling, way further than the candle flame should’ve been able to send it. It was like drops of ink in clear water; the stuff took on a life of its own. Jenz said my sister was there. In the room with us. I was so happy I got choked up. I ignored that dark sinking feeling because I couldn’t believe I was about to speak with her. It was like a weight on my heart, but I figured it was normal for that sort of thing. I was terrified and ecstatic at the same time. Then the weird stuff started happening.”

  “Tell me about the weird stuff.”

  “Jenz started talking, but the voice and the words weren’t his. They weren’t my sister’s either. I don’t remember all of what he said, I just knew it wasn’t Sarah speaking through him. It was someone I didn’t know, thanking me for bringing them there that night. For inviting them. Does that sound weird?”

  “It sounds about right. Summoning demons to the mortal realm is like inviting them to an exclusive party. They wield incredible power, but they can’t get in without a mortal to call them forth and host them during their stay. That’s what’s happening to you. You’ve created a blood bond with a demon, and you’re now playing host to her. This Jenz guy apparently has the technique down but doesn’t understand what he’s actually doing. I want to meet him.”

  Steve hesitates. “If I introduce you, will you help me get rid of my demon?”

  “Deal.”

  Steve takes me outside to his Porsche, where he lays a fresh towel across the white leather passenger seat and drapes a new trash bag over the backrest. He drives us to a neighborhood in a rough part of town where most of the houses have been bulldozed, their naked lots overgrown with trees and tall grass. Parking along a narrow street, he points to a century-old house with boarded windows and a rusty junk-filled shopping cart leaning against the front porch.

  “You gave a drop of your blood to a guy who lives in a house like this?” I ask. “What’d he prick your finger with, a used needle?”

  “I brought my own razor blades,” Steve says, reaching for the glove box. He pulls out a package of straight razors and slides it into his pocket. “I assume we’ll need these.”

  “Count on it. You make the introductions, I’ll guide the conversation. Ready?”

  Steve nods.

  A weed-strewn sidewalk leads to a covered porch with a set of creaky stairs. Before Steve can open the battered storm door and knock, a light winks on behind the yellowed curtains. The inner door swings open. A man in round frameless eyeglasses with long gray dreadlocks leans out and bares his worn teeth in a smile. “Steve-O, my friend,” he exclaims in vapid tones. “I sensed your nearness. Who’s our guest?”

  Steve hesitates.

  “Cade,” I offer, along with a handshake.

  “Jenz Kalecki. Welcome in, man. Much love.” He stands aside to let us enter.

  The house’s interior carries a musty smell. Smoke hangs above nicotine-yellowed drapes and sagging furniture in the cramped living room, where a matted area rug lies over a pitted hardwood floor. Walking across the rug gives me a strange feeling of unease as I follow Jenz down the narrow hallway toward the back of the house. We pass a staircase and enter an eat-in kitchen with peeling linoleum where a small flatscreen television sits on a revolving countertop stand. Two guys in white sleeveless undershirts, both around Jenz’s age, are watching Jeopardy while ice melts in their whiskey glasses and cigarettes smolder in an ashtray on the round fiberboard table.

  “What are greenhouse gasses?” shouts one of the two, a crook-shouldered man with a long beak nose and a graying ponytail pulled back from his receding hairline.

  A buzzer sounds through the TV’s speakers.

  “What are greenhouse gasses?” asks an uncertain contestant.

  “Right,” Trebek exclaims.

  The crook-shouldered man laughs and smacks his tablemate on the arm.

  “Lucky guess,” says the other man, white-bearded and rotu
nd, as he frowns and rubs away the sting.

  “These are the roomies,” Jenz tells us. “Bob and Chuck. You guys remember Steve-O, don’t you?”

  “Oh, sure,” says Bob, the long-nosed one who knew the Jeopardy answer. “Hey, Steve-O.”

  “Howdy,” says Chuck.

  “He brought his friend with him tonight,” Jenz explains. “This is Cade.”

  “Hey, Cade,” says Bob.

  “Howdy,” says Chuck.

  Both men stand to shake hands with us and try not to grimace in disgust at my damp stained clothes and lingering odor.

  “Pull up a chair and have a seat, guys,” Jenz offers. “Can I get you a glass of rum?”

  Steve and I both decline.

  “I’m a bit crunched for time,” I say. “Steve was telling me you know some stuff about the spirit world.”

  Jenz’s face lights up. “Yeah, man. We’re all nature’s children. Nothing’s impossible for Mother Earth, Father Sky, and Spirit Tree, man. You dig?”

  “Totally. I totally dig. I want to learn how you talk to the spirits of the dead.”

  Jenz puts a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “Have you lost somebody close to you?”

  “Yeah. A friend of mine passed recently. Can you help me contact her?”

  “Absolutely,” he says. “Absolutely. Steve-O brought you to the right place, man. How about it, Steve-O? You want to help me facilitate tonight’s session?”

  Steve hesitantly agrees.

  “Cool. Why don’t you guys have a seat in the living room while I grab my stuff?”

  Jenz goes upstairs while we make ourselves comfortable on the couch in the front room. I check the time on my cell. Twenty-five minutes until the first portal opens. If I don’t make this happen quickly, Ryovan and his diminished crew could have a bloodbath on their hands.

  “Here we go,” says Jenz, taking a seat in the armchair beside the couch and spreading his implements across the coffee table. Among them are the flat triangular piece of crystal Steve mentioned—the symbol of power, he called it—along with its stand, a tea candle, a small glass oil bottle, a cigarette lighter, and a small fabric-bound journal with a vertical elastic strap. Jenz lights the tea candle at the bottom of the stand before putting a few drops of the oil into the crystal plate and resting it on top.

  “What kind of oil is that?” I ask.

  “Lavender. Gather in close, now.”

  Lavender. Demon blood smells like lavender. Is this why? Does the blood of every demon carry the scent of its past summonings?

  “Now, Cade, we’re going to get right into it. Let’s begin communicating with the spirits on the other side. What’s your friend’s name? The one you lost?”

  “Malanx.”

  “Last name?”

  “Just Malanx. That’s it.”

  Jenz is dubious, but he goes with it. “Malanx. Okay, then. We’re going to need—and I hope you’re okay with this, Cade, for the sake of this session—communication with the spirit world is easiest when there’s a strong emotional connection between you and the person you’re trying to reach. What we need to do is create a link. A way to cross the barrier that’s keeping your friend Mal—Malanx away from you in death. So we’re going to need a drop of your blood. Is that something you feel comfortable with?”

  “Not really. Do I have to?”

  He pities me with a look. “The chances of us reaching your friend without a blood bond are real low, man. We can try, but I can tell you right now it’s a long shot. So do you think you could give us just—even just a drop?”

  Jenz’s understanding of how this works is cringeworthy. It’s like listening to a construction worker explain rocket science. He’s trying to play on my emotions and sound like he knows what he’s talking about, but the process he’s describing is literally the basis for a blood sacrifice. He doesn’t know how to speak with deceased spirits from beyond the grave. These are demons he’s calling, and most demons are sly enough to make you believe whatever they want.

  “Alright, you can have my blood. Give me the thing.”

  Steve slides a razor off the stack he brought and hands it to me.

  “Drip it onto the symbol there,” Jenz instructs, picking up his notebook and cracking the spine.

  I prick my pointer finger and squeeze a fat red drop onto the crystal triangle. The oil separates it, and the ceiling darkens to a flickering crimson color. As Jenz flips to the requisite handwritten page and begins muttering to himself, I nearly fall off the couch in shock.

  He’s casting a spell. A legitimate magic spell.

  Drawing from the demon blood I slurped off of Malanx’s platform, I direct every ounce of focus I’ve got left on raising a detection spell. The spell pulses and fizzles out, but not before outlining Jenz’s body in a bright flash of glowing blue.

  He’s an othersider. A sorcerer from the old world. That’s how he’s able to do actual magic without harvested components—he’s using his own energy. The notebook he’s holding is most likely the sum of every spell he’s been able to remember or dig up on this side. Scraps of magic, cobbled together over time. That means most of the spells are incomplete, or they contain blanks which need to be filled in. He isn’t helping people like Steve and I call upon our old friends—he’s using us as guinea pigs to relearn his spells, consequences be damned. If Jenz can call upon Malanx as promised, he’s about to face some consequences of his own.

  Chapter 27

  After finishing the spell, Jenz closes his eyes and sways as if to a song only he can hear, dreadlocks making soft thwopping sounds against his neck and shoulders. He hums, altering his pitch in a slow, bending note. I look at Steve, who nods, wide-eyed.

  Jenz opens his mouth and starts to speak, but he breaks off with a hiccup at the first word. “I am here, Cade Cadigan,” he says in a voice not his own. “I am bound to you, my blood sire. As promised, I will enter the mortal realm to do your bidding. For three days hence I shall remain. Grant me a vessel. Give me a host. Free me into a mortal body, that I may dwell for a time in the land of the living.”

  Malanx needs a host, and it ain’t gonna be me. Or Steve. I couldn’t do that to him after the promises I’ve made. It would be too cruel. If I’m a good wizard on a full night’s sleep, then currently I’m Picasso painting with the hand of a five-year-old. I draw from the demon blood in my gut, gathering its power into my chest, knowing any spell I try to cast is going to fizzle.

  Clarity pierces my muddled thoughts. That familiar, enticing thrill washes over me as the demon blood invigorates me with its hunger. This euphoria is false, and it won’t last. I only lapped up a mouthful, and what’s left of it is going into my next spell.

  I look Steve’s dreadlocked friend in the eye. “Jenz. If you’re in there, it’s time to come clean. A few months ago, you summoned a demon and bound its spirit to Steve. Now I need you to tell me how you did that, because we’re going to do the same thing now.”

  Jenz’s mouth spreads into a wide, hollow grin. “It worked.”

  “Yes, it did. How did you do it? There’s a demon in this room with us. Show me how to summon her in physical form.”

  The grin on the old sorcerer’s face is plastic, unyielding. He stares at me, then gets up from his armchair and yanks back a corner of the area rug. Beneath it is a wide circle, at least six feet in diameter, painted onto the wood. I recognize some of the runes inscribed around the circle’s outer rim. They’re ancient and cruel and full of power.

  I look at Steve. “Is this how you invited the succubus in? Why didn’t you mention this?”

  Steve stares in shock, his face blank. “I don’t remember anything like this.”

  Jenz scans the notebook in his hands, flips the page. “A manifestation of the demon’s primary vice must be performed by the host who carries it through the barrier.”

  Now I remember what Malanx said she needed. An act of extreme pride. An act of grandeur. I remember the orphanage, the director with his devices and those po
or children he took advantage of. My scrying spell from the Book of Mysteries, when I pushed myself past the breaking point in search of my father. Selfish acts. Heinous acts. Invitations.

  In order to summon Malanx, I’ll have to do something terrible. Why did I think I’d be okay with this? Because the Demon Princess is the only ally powerful enough to battle a combined force of fae and dhampirs, that’s why.

  “Step into the circle, Cade,” says Jenz. “Step into the circle, and she will become you.”

  “That’s what happened,” Steve says, remembering. “I was standing on the rug when I got that weird feeling. I wasn’t sitting here. I was standing there. Right there.”

  I look at Jenz. “You did this without telling Steve what you were doing to him. You put a demon on his back and he had no idea. You’re a sorcerer from the otherside, aren’t you? You came into this world from another. Didn’t you?”

  Jenz only smiles.

  “Didn’t you?” I shout.

  “Step into the circle,” he urges.

  “You step into the goddamned circle.”

  I raise both hands and release the demon blood’s power in full measure, a spell backed by rage and euphoria and sudden revelation. A wall of force shoves Jenz into the circle, knocking the notebook from his hands. He crawls for the border, but his fingers stop short at the circle’s edge. He mimes the barrier, pressing his palms flat against it. When Malanx’s will takes hold of him, beams of bright red light erupt from his eyes and mouth. He throws his head back and screams.

  Footsteps creak down the hallway from the back of the house. Bob and Chuck rush into the room, only they’re not Bob and Chuck anymore. The former is a four-foot tall hunchback with three thick fingers on each hand and a big fleshy nose the size of a yield sign. The latter, a squat scaly troglodyte with one bulbous eye in the center of his face and a round protuberant belly. They’re not Jenz’s roommates. They’re his homunculi; the sorcerer’s dark servants.

  I’ve got no magic and no gun. Only one thing left to do.

  I turn to Steve. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I follow him to the door, bending to scoop up Jenz’s notebook along the way. We hit the street, where Steve fumbles out his keys and hits the remote start button. The Porsche’s engine roars to life.