by Butcher, Jim
“Lea. It’s short for Leanandsidhe, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I don’t know her real name. She takes blood from mortals and gives them inspiration in return. Artists and poets and things. That’s how she amassed most of her power.”
Michael nodded. “I’ve heard of her. This bargain you have with her. What is it?”
I shook my head. “It isn’t important.”
Something shifted in Michael, became harder, more resolute. “It is important to me, Harry. Tell me.”
I stared at the babies for a minute, before I said, “I was a kid. Things fell out with my old teacher, Justin. He sent a demon to kill me, and I went on the run. I made a bargain with Lea. Enough power to defeat Justin in exchange for my service to her. My loyalty.”
“And you broke faith with her.”
“More or less.” I shook my head. “She’s never pushed it before now, and I’ve been careful to stay out of her way. She doesn’t usually get this involved with mortal business.”
Michael moved his hand to Amoracchius’s empty scabbard. “She did take the sword though.”
I winced. “Yeah. I guess that was my fault. If I hadn’t have tried to use it to weasel out of the deal . . .”
“You couldn’t have known,” Michael said.
“I should have,” I said. “It isn’t as though it as a tough one to figure out.”
Michael shrugged, though his expression was less casual than the gesture. “What’s done is done. But I don’t know how much help to you I can be without the sword.”
“We’ll get it back,” I said. “Leah can’t help herself. She makes deals. We’ll figure out a way to get it back from her.”
“But will we do it in time,” Michael said. He shook his head, grim. “The sword won’t stay in her hands forever. The Lord won’t allow that. But it may be that my time to wield it has passed.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps that I am no longer worthy to serve Him in this way. Or that the burden of it has passed on to someone else.” He grimaced, staring at the glass, the infants. “My family, Harry. Perhaps it’s time they had a full-time father.”
Oh, great. All I needed, now, was a crisis of faith and bad case of career doubt from the Fist of God. I needed Michael. I needed someone to watch my back, someone who was used to dealing with the supernatural. Sword or no sword, he had a steady head, and his faith had a subtle power of its own. He could be the difference between me getting killed and defeating whoever was out there.
Besides, he had wheels.
“Let’s get going. Time’s a-wasting.”
He frowned. “I can’t. I’m needed here.”
“Michael, look. Is someone with your kids at home?”
“Yes. I called Charity’s sister last night. She went over. Father Forthill was going to get some sleep, and then stay on.”
“Is there anything more you can do for Charity here?”
He shook his head. “Only pray. She’s resting, now. And her mother is on the way here.”
“Okay, then. We’ve got work to do.”
“You expect me to leave them again?”
“No, not leave them. But we need to find the person behind the Nightmare and take care of them.”
“Harry. What are we going to do? Kill someone?”
“If we have to. Hell’s bells, Michael, they might have murdered your son.”
His face hardened, and I knew then that I had him, that he’d followed me into Hell to get at whoever had hurt his wife and child. I had him all right—and I hated myself for it. Way to go, Harry. Jerk those heartstrings like a fucking puppeteer.
I held up the book. “I think I’ve got a line on the Nightmare’s name. I’ll bet you anything that Kravos recorded it in his book of shadows, here. If I’m right, I might be able to use it to make contact with the Nightmare and then trace his leash back to whoever’s holding it.”
Michael stared at the glass, at the kids beyond it.
“I need you to drive me home. From my lab, I might be able to sort out what’s going on before things get any more out of hand. Then we go handle it.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Michael.”
“All right,” he said, voice quiet. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Back in my lab, it felt a little creepy to be working by candle-light. Intellectually, I knew that it was still full daylight outside, but last night had brought out the instinctive fear of the dark that is a part of being human. I had been wounded. Everything, every shadow, every small sound made me twitch and jerk and look aside.
“Steady, Harry,” I told myself. “You have time before sundown. Just relax and get it over with.”
Good advice. Michael and I had driven around most of the morning, collecting what I would need for the spell. I’d read through Kravos’s journal while Michael drove. Sick stuff. He’d been careful about listing out every step of his rituals, complete with notes on the physical ecstasy he’d experienced during the killings—nine in all. Most of them had been women or children he’d killed with a cruelly curved knife. He’d roped a bunch of young people into his fold with drugs and blackmail, and then thrown orgies where he’d either participate or else channel the energy raised by all that lust into his magic. That seemed to be standard operating procedure for guys like Kravos. Win-win situation.
A thorough man. Thorough in his efforts to kill and corrupt lives to acquire more power, thorough in the documentation of his sick pleasures—and thorough in the listing of his efforts to secure a familiar demon by the name of Azorthragal.
The name had been carefully written, each syllable marked for specific emphasis.
Magic is a lot like language: it’s all about stringing things together, linking one thing with another, one idea with another. After you establish links, then you pour power into them and make something happen. That’s what we call thaumaturgy in the business—creating links between small things and big things. Then, you make something happen on the small scale and it happens on the large scale, too. Voodoo dolls are the typical example for that one.
But simulacra, like a voodoo doll, aren’t the only way to create links. A wizard can use fingernail clippings, or hair, or blood, if it’s fresh enough, or just about any other body part to create a link back to the original being.
Or you can use its name. Or maybe I should say, its Name.
Names have power. Everyone’s Name says something about them, whether they’re aware of it or not. A wizard can use that Name to forge a link to someone. It’s difficult with people. People’s self-concepts are always changing, evolving, so even if you get someone to tell you their full name, if you try to establish the link when they’re in a radically different mood, or after some life-changing event that alters the way they see themselves, it might not work. A wizard can get a person’s name only from their own lips, but if he doesn’t use it fairly quickly, it’s likely to get stale.
Demons, however, are a different matter. Demons aren’t people. They don’t have the problem of having a soul, and they don’t worry about silly things like good and evil, or right and wrong. Demons are. If a demon is going to be inclined to eat your face, it’s going to eat your face then, and now, and a thousand years from now.
It’s almost comforting, in a way—and it makes them vulnerable. Once you know a demon’s Name, you can get to it whenever you want to. I had Azorthragal’s Name. Even though it was a ghost now, instead of a demon, it ought to respond to the memory of its Name, if nothing else.
Time to get to it.
Five white candles surrounded my summoning circle, the points of an invisible pentacle. White for protection. And because they’re the cheapest color at Wal-Mart. Hey, being a wizard doesn’t make money grow on trees.
Between each candle was an object from someone the Nightmare had touched. My shield bracelet was there. Michael had given me his wedding ring, and Charity’s. I�
�d gone by the station, and grabbed the hand-lettered nameplate Murphy had kept stubbornly on her office door until the publicity last year had driven the municipal politicians into getting her a real one. It lay on the floor beside them. A visit to a grateful Malone household had turned up Micky’s retirement watch. It completed the circle, between the last pair of candles.
I drew in a breath, and checked my props. You don’t need all the candles and knives and whatnot to work magic. But they help. They make it easier to focus. In my weakened condition, I needed all the help I could get.
So I lit the incense and paced around the outside of the summoning circle, leaving myself enough room to work with inside the circle of incense and outside the circle of copper. I put out a little willpower as I did, just enough to close the circle, and felt the energy levels rise as random magic coalesced.
“Harry,” Michael called down from the room above. “Are you finished?”
I suppressed a flash of irritation. “Just getting started.”
“Forty-five minutes until sundown,” he said.
I couldn’t keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Gee, thanks. No pressure, Michael.”
“Can you do it or not, Harry? Father Forthill is staying at my house with the children. If you can’t stop this thing now, I’ve got to go back to Charity.”
“I sure as hell can’t do it with you breathing down my neck. Hell’s bells, Michael, get out of the way and let me work.”
He growled something to himself about patience or turning the other cheek or something. I heard his feet on the floor above as he retreated from the door leading down to my lab.
Michael didn’t come down into the lab with me because the whole concept of using magic without the Almighty behind it didn’t sit well with him, regardless of what we’d been through together. He could tolerate it, but not approve of it.
I got back to work, closing my eyes and forcing myself to clear my thoughts, to focus on the task at hand. I started to draw my concentration toward the copper circle. The incense smoke tickled at my senses, and swirled about inside the perimeter of the outer circle, not leaving it. The energy grew slowly, as I concentrated, and then I picked up the knife in my right hand, and a handful of water from a bowl on my left.
Now for the three steps. “Enemy, mine enemy,” I spoke, slipping power into the words, “I seek you.” I passed the knife over the copper circle, straight down. I couldn’t see it, without opening my Sight, but could feel the silent tension as I cut a slit between the mortal world and the Nevernever.
“Enemy, mine enemy,” I spoke again. “I search for you. Show me your face.” I cast the water up, over the circle, where the energy of the spell atomized it into a fine, drifting mist, filled with rainbows from the surrounding candles, shifting shapes and colors.
Now for the hard part. “Azorthragal!” I shouted, “Azorthragal, Azorthragal! Appare!” I used the knife to cut my finger, and smeared the blood onto the edge of the copper circle.
Power surged out of me, into the circle, through the rent in the fabric of reality, and as it did, the circle sprang up like a wall around the band of copper in the floor. I felt the cut as an acute, vicious pain, enough to make me blink tears out of my eyes as the power quested out, fueled by the energy of the circle, guided by the articles spread around it.
The spell quested about in the Nevernever, like the blind tentacle of the Kraken scouring the deck, looking for some hapless soul to grab. It shouldn’t have happened like that. It should have zipped to the Nightmare like a lariat and brought it reeling in. I reached out and put more power into the spell, picturing the thing that I had been fighting, the results of its work, trying to give the spell more guidance. It wasn’t until I hit upon the sense of the Nightmare, for lack of a better word, the terror it had inspired that the spell latched onto something. There was a moment of startled stillness, and then a wild, bucking energy, a resistance, that made my heart pound in my chest, the cut in my finger burn as though someone had poured salt over it.
“Appare!” I shouted, forcing will into my voice, reeling back in on the spell. “I command thee to appear!” I slip into the archaic at dramatically appropriate moments. So sue me.
The swirling mist of rainbows swayed and wavered, as though some kind of half-solid thing were stirring the air within the summoning circle. It struggled like a maddened bull, trying to tear away from my spell. “Appare!”
Chapter Twenty-four
Michael parked his truck on the street outside Bianca’s mansion. He put the keys in his leather belt pouch, and buttoned it with the silver cross button. Then he straightened the collar of his doublet, which showed through the neck of the mail, and reached behind the seat for the steel helmet that slipped on over his head. “Tell me again, Harry, why this is a good idea. Why are we going to a masquerade ball with a bunch of monsters?”
“Everything points us this way,” I said.
“How?”
I took a breath, trying to be patient, and passed him the white cloak. “Look. We know that someone’s been stirring up the spirit world. We know that they did it in order to create this Nightmare that’s been after us. We know that the girl, Lydia, was connected to the Nightmare somehow.”
“Yes,” Michael said. “All right.”
“Bianca,” I said, “sent out her thugs to take Lydia. And Bianca’s hosting a party for the nastiest bad guys in the region. Stallings told me that people have been going missing off the streets. They’ve probably been taken for food or something. Even if Bianca isn’t behind it, and I’m not saying she isn’t, chances are that anyone who could be is going to be at the party tonight.”
“And you think you’ll be able to spot them?” Michael asked.
“Pretty sure,” I responded. “All I’ll have to do is get close enough to touch them, to feel their aura. I felt whoever was backing the Nightmare when they helped it get away from me. I should be able to tell when I feel them again.”
“I don’t like it,” Michael said. “Why didn’t the Nightmare come after you the minute the sun went down?”
“Maybe I scared it. I cut it up a little.”
Michael frowned. “I still don’t like it. There are going to be dozens of things in there that have no right to exist in this world. It will be like walking into a roomful of wolves.”
“All you have to do,” I said, “is keep your mouth shut and watch my back. The bad guys have to play by the rules tonight. We’ve been given the protection of the old laws of hospitality. If Bianca doesn’t respect that, it’s going to kill her reputation in front of her guests and the Vampire Court.”
“I will protect you, Harry,” Michael said. “As I will protect anyone who these . . . things threaten.”
“We don’t need any fights, Michael. That’s not why we’re here.”
He looked out the truck window and set his jaw.
“I mean it, Michael. It’s their turf. There’s probably going to be bad stuff inside, but we have to keep the big picture in focus here.”
“The big picture,” he said. “Harry, if there’s someone in there that needs my help, they’re getting it.”
“Michael! If we break the truce first, we’re open game. You could get us both killed.”
He turned to look at me, and his eyes were granite. “I am what I am, Harry.”
I threw my arms up in the air, and banged my hands on the roof of the truck. “There are people who could get killed if we mess this up. It isn’t only our own lives we’re talking about, here.”
“I know,” he said. “My family are some of them. But that doesn’t change anything.”
“Michael,” I said. “I’m not asking you to smile and chat and get cozy. Just keep quiet and stay out of the way. Don’t shove a crucifix down anyone’s throat. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I won’t stand by, Harry,” he said. “I can’t.” He frowned and said, “I don’t think you can, either.”
I glared at him. “Hell’s bells, Michael.
I don’t want to die, here.”
“Nor do I. We must have faith.”
“Great,” I said. “That’s just great.”
“Harry, will you join me in prayer?”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“A prayer,” Michael said. “I’d like to talk to Him for a moment.” He half smiled at me. “You don’t have to say anything. Just be quiet and stay out of the way.” He bowed his head.
I squinted out the window of the truck, silent. I don’t have anything against God. Far from it. But I don’t understand Him. And I don’t trust a lot of the people that go around claiming that they’re working in His best interests. Faeries and vampires and whatnot—those I can fathom. Even demons. Sometimes, even the Fallen. I can understand why they do what they do.
But I don’t understand God. I don’t understand how He could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea.
I guess He’s just bigger about it than I would be.
“Lord,” Michael said. “We walk into darkness now. Our enemies will surround us. Please help to make us strong enough to do what needs to be done. Amen.”
Just that. No fancy language, no flashy beseeching the Almighty for aid. Just quiet words about what he wanted to get done, and a request that God would be on his side—on our side. Simple words, and yet power surrounded him like a cloud of fine mist, prickling along my arms and my neck. Faith. I calmed down a little. We had a lot going for us. We could do this.
Michael looked up at me and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’m ready.”
“How do I look?” I asked him.
He smiled, white teeth showing. “You’re going to turn heads. That’s for sure.”
I had to smile back at him. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s party.”
We got out of the truck, and started walking toward the gates around Bianca’s estate. Michael buckled on the white cloak with its red cross as he went. He had a matching surcoat, boots, and armored guards on his shoulders. He had a pair of heavy gauntlets tucked through his boots, and wore a pair of knives on his belt, one on either side. He smelled like steel and he clanked a little bit when he walked. It sounded comforting, in a friendly, dreadnought kind of way.