I just nodded. I’d be dead in two, if Hartley didn’t like what she saw, and this wouldn’t be about poor Andy anymore.
I felt like I should at least say something to Sunny, about how I wished I’d been a better cousin, mended the fences with Grandma, teased her less growing up—even though the part about Grandma would be a bald-faced lie—something for her to hold on to if I indeed didn’t make it back with all of our parts attached, but the doors rolled shut before I could say anything at all.
The drop of gravity as the ancient elevator began its slow progress upward made me flinch. I was on edge, swore I could feel and smell the stale air passing over my face.
I’ve had a few bad moments before—the first man I ever shot lying on his filthy bathroom floor, the overwhelming magick of Alistair Duncan, standing breathless at the crest of the Siren Bay Bridge, prepared to jump to keep a blood witch from blowing most of the city to kingdom come.
I’d had dozens of moments when my life was at risk on the job, and a handful when I knew death was there, standing next to me just out of my line of sight, watching and waiting.
But I’d never had the real certainty before that I was going to die. The were wouldn’t let it in—it would fight and survive even when the human in me had long given up.
The were was quiet now, and I felt alone as I ever had. I looked at my distorted face in the walls of the elevator, rippled and monochrome in the brass, and then shrieked as a second pair of eyes flamed to life behind me.
“You’re not wrong, Insoli. You face death,” Asmodeus purred. “Your bone and your blood know this even if your mind refuses to admit the darkness of the truth.”
“Leave me alone,” I snarled. “I don’t want any more daemons. I’ve had enough.”
“If you go to the sisters of Thelema with your empty hands and raging heart you will not emerge,” Asmodeus said. “The magick of the Maiden cannot be funneled or undone. You have no protection.”
I knew that, of course, but far be it from me to admit that a daemon was right about anything.
“Let me guess,” I said instead. “You’re here to offer me another deal.”
“Far from a deal, Insoli. You and I already have business that will be attendant in the future. What I am offering you is a choice between flinging your body onto your sword and turning the blade on your enemy.”
I turned and looked at him, the gold halo around his smooth too-perfect features flickering under the fluorescent bulbs in the elevator car. We were passing through the fifteenth floor, the small red R of the roof creeping closer on the dial.
Asmodeus pulled back his full lips in a smile, his pure black eyes never wavering. “You are thinking about my offer. I can see it.”
“I don’t need to owe you anything else,” I told him. “I’d rather the Thelemites killed me.”
“You lie, Insoli, and poorly.”
“I’d have to repay you,” I said, jabbing a finger at him. He felt like a static shock, like a disturbance of air.
“You would have to allow me to work through you, Insoli. I have no love for those who reach into my realm without permission. It is a harsh place, hot and dry and full of stinging wind, but it is my own and the few inhabitants my charges.” He twitched his lion’s tail irritably. “After the Descent, so few left … and now these humans presume to tear my only home to pieces. It cannot be allowed.”
“And if I let you … work through me … what would I have to do?” I said. “Spill my blood? Sacrifice a memory, or something worse?” The elevator slowed, the brakes groaning.
Asmodeus reached out and laid a hand on my shoulder, and I made a heroic effort not to flinch away. His touch spread cold through me, like snow on bare skin. Like drowning in cold water. “If you require my aid, Insoli … all you would have to do is speak my name.”
The doors rolled back with a ping of the bell, and I was alone, on the rooftop.
I shook off the vestiges of the daemon’s touch and put his words out of my mind. They lied. Daemons could be good or evil or anywhere in between, but they all lied.
They all seduced, needing the feed of human emotion to sustain them. It was why the first caster witches had banished them to a shadow place, caused the Descent, and rid the blood witches of their avatars, to keep the great rising black power that they offered out of human hands.
It wouldn’t come to that. I’d get Andy and get the hell out of there, and Nocturne City could throw a couple of heavily armored squads of SWAT at the Thelemites.
And SWAT would be decimated, because Hartley and her sisters were too powerful. They’d die screaming, eight widows made in one night.
“We were beginning to think you wouldn’t come,” Grace Hartley said. Speak of the devil. She and six other Thelemites were arrayed at the far end of the roof, the heartstone at their center. It gleamed and threw off deep blue-purple sparks in the low glow of the emergency lights strung up along the roof.
I calculated that with both of my weapons I probably didn’t have enough bullets, and I sure as hell didn’t have enough time to get them all down before someone slapped me with a working.
“Let’s see your weapons,” said Hartley, as if she could read my mind. Maybe she could. Damn witches.
“Let’s see Andy,” I countered, my voice surprisingly strong over the sound of the rooftop wind.
“We’ll get to that,” Hartley said, as if I were a small child demanding ice cream. “Guns on the ground. Now. Or you can forget about any negotiation.”
I unstrapped my holdout and threw it, and took out the Sig and laid it down gently, feeling a pang of regret even though guns were next to useless right then.
Hartley watched me with bright eyes, her lips curling up. “Good. Now the codex.”
“Demanding bitch, aren’t you?” I said. “No wonder your husband left you.”
“He didn’t leave,” she said pleasantly. “I killed him and fed him to a scavenger, a carrion hound from the Realm.” The way she said it, I sensed the capital R. It’s always a bad sign when the fanatics start tossing around the proper nouns.
“Ah,” I said. “So you’ve been at this for a while, then? Testing devil’s doorways? Calling creatures?” When in doubt, get them talking.
“I have been Thelemite my entire life,” Hartley said. “I have existed upon the grace of the Maiden. She took me to her bosom, raised me as her own after my talents obliterated my own parents. Helped me care for poor Milton.”
“Up until you had a harpy slaughter him,” I said, drawing out the codex and holding it up. “You have some screwy priorities, lady.” I tossed the codex to the gravel. “There you go. Now give me my detective.”
Hartley sighed, as if I were being intractable. “Get that odious little man and let him go.”
A Thelemite woman grabbed Andy from behind the HVAC unit. His hands were cuffed with his own handcuffs and his face was streaked with moisture.
“Lieutenant!” He gave a huge shudder. “They made me call; they made me bring you here—”
“Oh, shut up,” said Hartley crossly, and Andy’s voice cut out, his mouth working uselessly. “I never met such a man for idle talk,” she said.
The Thelemite shoved Andy at me and I caught him. His face was purpled with panic.
“Andy. Andy!” I gave him a hard shake. “I need you to listen, now. Go down the elevator and go to Agent Fagin and my cousin. They’re waiting for you. Run, now!”
Andy took off running, panting in fear, and I pointed at the codex. “A deal’s a deal. Are we done here?”
Grace favored me with a thin smile. “You upheld your end admirably. You have honor that is hard to find in such a time as this.” She bent and scooped up my Sig. “However, I don’t think you stupid. You must know we can’t leave you alive.”
I expected posturing, magick being flung, Hartley declaiming her grand plan to me. Crazies usually love the sound of their own voice. But Hartley said nothing else, merely flicked the safety off of my SIG, aimed, an
d pulled the trigger.
Really, it happened inside of a second. Even with my reflexes, I had no chance of avoiding the bullet, and it slammed into me with the force of a truck, blood misting into my eyes and my left side shredded with pain. I saw the hole, with remarkable clarity, smaller than I’d expected, just above my heart.
Then I swayed and fell, my cheek cut on the gravel that covered the rooftop. I could hear my heart in my ears, a small rhythm that grew fainter with each thud-thud.
“That’s that,” Grace said, turning her back on me and tossing the Sig away from her like it was an unsavory magazine she’d discovered under someone’s mattress.
She’d shot me. I’d expected arrogance, because witches were almost always arrogant, thinking they could use their power against me because I was something weaker. But someone with as much juice behind her as a Thelemite didn’t need arrogance.
I’d been wrong. And now I was lying there bleeding to death because of it. Nice work, Wilder. Your finest hour.
Grace strode back to the heartstone. From my skewed vantage, the Thelemites appeared terrifying and asymmetrical, purple-veiled creatures that floated around the gathering power of the stone.
“Begin,” Hartley said crisply, and the women joined hands. There was no chanting this time, nothing except the rush of magick that swept over the rooftop like a hurricane and coalesced at the heartstone. The Thelemites dropped hands and Grace snapped her fingers.
Were my five minutes up? Would Will and Sunny be coming, to walk into the same mistake I had?
“Come forward, child,” Hartley said. “Don’t dawdle. Who knows what sort of wild plans that policewoman made to bring the truth-and-justice cavalry down on our heads.”
The veiled figure stepped out of the circle and laid her hands across the heartstone. “I don’t know about this.”
“The Maiden commands it,” Grace snapped. “You are her vessel, blood of my blood. Now stop your whining and take her into you!”
Sophia pushed back her veil, her pale hair spilling around her face. “Mom, I don’t want to.”
Grace’s face curled itself into a fearsome glare. “Young woman, you are blessed. Touch the stone and receive the Maiden!”
“I’m scared,” Sophia protested. “This has all gone so wrong, Mom … The cops know about Annemarie, she’s dead, and that troll you sent out didn’t stop them from coming here and finding us! This isn’t going to work.”
“This city is going to be a paradise,” Grace gritted. “A place where all those reviled can walk in the sun. Open your eyes, Sophia—that cop is dead and she could do nothing even when she was alive.”
I wasn’t dead yet, but I stayed still, waiting for my legs to start working again. My blood was warming the gravel under me, hot and overpoweringly dense, a smell that stuck to my throat and nostrils.
“It’s not going to work,” Sophia said again. “You think the devil’s doorway will let those things through and everything will be a paradise? They and all of us with the blood just live side by side with plain humans? It doesn’t work that way, Mom! Human beings are afraid of us.”
Grace slapped her across the face. “I led the sisterhood my entire life, waiting for the Maiden to return from her eternal walk. She chose you.” She grabbed her daughter by the neck. “Hold her arms.” Three Thelemites, plus Grace, forced Sophia’s cheek against the heartstone.
“I am opening a gate to paradise,” Grace whispered. “This city, a haven from humanity, from pain and from fear for the sisters and brothers of the blood. No one will stop me, Sophia, most especially not my own daughter.”
Sophia’s skin touched the heartstone and she gave a scream. A great flare of power sprang up, a column of light that blinded me. I shut my eyes, feeling the slow eddy of my last minutes of life pull me under.
“Maiden, we offer you a vessel,” said Grace, and I felt the Thelemite’s magick focus through the heartstone. It was like a knife in the brain—so huge and obliterating that a human mind couldn’t comprehend. The heartstone ripped through the layers of energy in the air, drinking it all in and transmitting back something that covered all of us in blackness.
“I offer you my only child, the flesh begot of my loyal flesh,” Grace said. “She receives you into her and carries you in her heart for all days.”
“So it will be,” the Thelemites echoed.
Sophia gave one last agonized gurgle, and then she went still, her pale torso sprawled across the heartstone. Still for a long moment, like a broken doll, I watched her stare at nothing. Grace touched her forehead, reverent. “Come to me,” she whispered.
Sophia jerked and gave a gasp. She shook herself, like she was just waking up after a long night, and blinked at the world through new eyes, blue and dancing with fire.
“Grace,” she intoned, and reached out to stroke Hartley’s cheek.
Grace let out a joyful sob, like we were at a wedding instead of the end of the world. “Maiden. I serve you always.”
“Your vessel is so fragile,” said the Maiden. “Could you not have found one of stronger constitution?”
Grace dipped her head. “Forgive me. In our new city, you will have your pick of any vessel you wish.”
The Maiden gave her a cagey smile. “You have never given something for nothing, my child. What is your price for returning me to my flesh?”
“A doorway,” said Grace. “A way through the woods for all those who suffer as we have suffered, alone and in the dark. We offer you the power from the hunger god and the fealty of Thelema for all time, in our new city, of those who are one and the same, free of human influence.”
The Maiden tilted her head at me, and I swore she smiled. “This notion pleases me. You will have your doorway.”
She placed her hands on the heartstone, her movements jerky. She reminded me of Lucas when Wiskachee had been riding shotgun—not quite real. Sophia was gone, I knew in that moment. Only the Maiden remained.
I shut my eyes as the power spiked, and hot wind blew sand and rock into my face. Touching the other realm was like putting my hand in a fire, the absolute, searing agony that nothing could stop.
I opened my eyes again as the Thelemites cried out. The air around us shimmered, power struggling to manifest, and then it was sucked backward into the heartstone with a sonic boom as the air filled the space. The Maiden threw her head back, running her hands down her body, writhing in ecstasy. “It’s done.”
As the Thelemites bowed in reverence, I saw it. The devil’s doorway was a simple thing, an arch of dark against darkness, faint white smoke wavering at the outline.
The sound was the worst thing—a high, constant shrieking of wind over barren plains, cries and snarls from the inhabitants, and a faint, sharp whispering against my mind that felt the same as when Asmodeus spoke to me. The language of daemons.
How many existed beyond that tear, the opening in the rift Wiskachee had made?
A bird’s cry split the night, and three winged creatures erupted out of the doorway, bare breasts and wild hair and talons all taking to the sky. Harpies, like the ones that Hartley had sent after her brother.
Next came things with the heavy heads of bulls and the scarred bodies of men, their horns dripping with blood, and a parade of oil-skinned, yellow-eyed creatures maybe three feet tall, all tooth and claw. They came for me, chattering, and I was reminded of the carrion hounds that had eaten Hartley’s husband.
The devil’s doorway was open, and things that should stay in nightmares were walking. I could do nothing. I was dying, plain and simple. It was colder and more painful than I’d imagined it, and a lot less dignified.
I opened my mouth and used the little bit of energy I had left to say the name. I didn’t debate it, didn’t let myself think what sin I might be committing. I just knew that I couldn’t die, not yet.
I spoke the name aloud. “Asmodeus …”
Gold closed over my vision, light that made my eyes water. It was a child’s fantasy of Heaven, the light
lifting me up and on to my eternal reward.
“I knew you would call me, Insoli,” Asmodeus said, and my dizziness disappeared and my vision cleared.
Asmodeus wasn’t visible, but I could feel him, in the blood in my veins and in the air I was breathing and in the squeeze as my muscles knit and the bullet in my lung landed on the gravel with a clink, darkened with my blood.
“Don’t get too excited,” I said. “It wasn’t my first choice.”
“Close the devil’s doorway, Insoli,” Asmodeus whispered. “Trap the maker in her own machine.”
“Could you be any less helpful?” I wondered, making it to my knees. A harpy shrieked and bore down on me, claws swiping at my shoulder. My shirt tore, but the wounds knit, fading to scars with pink edges before my eyes.
Asmodeus gave a low chuckle. “I can indeed withdraw my aid if it is not required.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” I said. I felt light, lighter than air, and the rush was addictive—it was a hit running wild through me, a clean, pure high that would never drop me down. I felt a small shiver of panic underneath the euphoria, but I shoved it down.
The feeling lasted until I came up against one of the bull-headed creatures. He bellowed at me and then lowered his head and charged. I jumped out of the way, but one of his horns still snagged my side and he threw his head back. I rocketed toward the HVAC unit and slammed into it, leaving a Luna-sized dent in the top.
Two Thelemites came to me, their diaphanous costumes managing to look more like the shrouds of the dead than ritual wear. “Guess she’s not dead,” one said.
The other looked toward the parade of inhumans spilling through the devil’s doorway—horses with glowing red eyes and hooves of iron, great green-skinned hounds with yellow teeth, hags who tore at their hair and shrieked so loudly that I felt my eardrums start to bleed. The sky above us cracked with lightning as a pair of winged, skeletal creatures took flight, stirring the clouds to a boil.
“Wait for it,” she said. They smiled at me, the thin mean little smiles of children torturing animals.
“Get up, Insoli,” Asmodeus hissed at me.
Witch Craft Page 25