by Melanie Rawn
“Sure. How ’bout you?”
“Oh, just great. What’s with her?” She nodded at Denise.
He turned his head, and found that Denise was swaying lightly back and forth, as far as the spell would allow, a singularly vacant expression on her face. The smeared blood from her nose had dried, giving her a kind of second mouth above the first one. It wasn’t especially attractive. “Busted nose, maybe. He got a little pissed off.”
“Is there some reason you two are sitting there like lumps on a log?”
“Yep.” He would have said more, but the flower was back—hugely purple, dripping black pearls of dew that fell splat onto the stone floor and sent up sparks.
“Evan! Stay with me!”
“Mmm?” His attention, such as it was, returned to Holly. She was crawling toward him, keeping well below the lingering clouds of incense. “Whatcha doin’?”
“Time to open a window. If I was a real Catholic, I’d have calluses on my knees from all that praying and this wouldn’t hurt so much. Not to worry about Noel, by the way. Alec and Nicky are keeping him busy upstairs. With some luck, a wall will fall on him.” Right on cue, the building vibrated again, and bits of loosened cement drifted down to swirl in with the cloudy incense. “Trouble is, I don’t know how much either of them knows about architecture—supporting walls, braces, buttresses, all that stuff.”
“Y’know,” he observed, “your buttress looks pretty cute, stuck up in the air like that.” She threw him a grin, and he wanted to grin back, but something was nagging at him. He wished he could raise a hand and wave away that stupid purple flower; it loomed closer, distracting him. The black pearls were piling up on the floor, and he worried that Holly might bruise a knee or a palm. Or burn herself from the billion dancing sparks. And just how stupid was it, anyway, to fret about a bruise or a singe when Noel would be back any minute to gouge holes in her to get at her blood? Then he reminded himself that Holly was about as real as the monster hyacinth. Which made everything okay. Sort of.
“Evan? Come on, lover-man, keep talking to me.”
For an illusion, she sure was as high-maintenance as Holly. Of course, his experience of her would make an illusion of her just the way she usually was, so that didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t sure what did mean anything anymore. If only that goddamned purple hyacinth would move out of the way. Squinting, he tried to focus on Holly where she crabbed across the floor, and blinked as he saw the twinkling lights sparked from the dewdrops slither up and swoop through the air to loop around her right wrist and swarm atop her left ring-finger.
“Evan, don’t you dare zone out on me.”
Diamonds, they had all turned into diamonds, Susannah’s and Granna Maureen’s, pulsing like a heartbeat. Like that Witching Sphere in her window, the night he’d figured out that Elias Bradshaw was all magicked-up, too.
“Hey,” he asked suddenly, “are you real?”
“I hope that’s not an existential question. Yes, I’m real, Éimhín.” She was very near the bench now. The throbbing light of the diamonds became brighter, timed to the rhythm of his own heart. “I hope some fresh air clears your head. I need your help.”
The diamond glow illuminated all the little black birds. Some twitched their feathers. Definitely the incense was loaded with something outrageously potent. He heard himself chuckle. “Hey, Holly. Guess what? I’m stoned.”
“I figured.”
“No, stoned,” he insisted. “Not just wasted on the smoke. Stuck to the bench. Petrified. Stoned!”
She gave a long sigh. “Terrific. By the way, is there some reason your turtleneck is now a cardigan? Not that I don’t appreciate the scenery, but I gave you that sweater and I was kind of fond of it.”
It was too much trouble to explain, and anyway he was reminded of something else she had given him. “What’d you do to my St. Michael medal?”
“Later,” she told him. “Sorry, but you’re going to stay stuck for the time being. I have absolutely no idea how to un Work whatever Noel did.”
“And here I was hopin’ to get loose before I’m the main event at the ritual.”
“I kinda thought that was what Noel had in mind. I have to tell you, though—as a sacrificial altar, that bench will never compete with Stonehenge.” There was a pause, and he tried to listen for her movements behind him. “Where the hell is the catch?” Holly griped, startling him. She sneezed again, just as the house quivered and more dust dribbled from the arched ceiling.
Glass shattered behind him, the building staggered, cold night wind blew past him, and Denise suddenly keened like a hyena in mourning.
“Where is she?” Noel shouted down the stairwell. “Where?”
“I DON’T LIKE TO BE nosy, Your Honor, but —”
Elias didn’t even glance at Leah Towsley. “It would take much too long to explain. Turn here. Yes, right up the driveway—no point in skulking around.” Alec, Nick, and Holly were already here, and creating grand bloody havoc from the looks of things. The outdoor floodlights showed him dust rising into the breeze from a toppled tower and a smashed glass greenhouse.
“I guess a low profile would be fairly pointless,” the marshal said laconically as something at the back of the house gave way with a resounding boom. Pulling the SUV to a stop, she shut off the engine and continued, “I forgot to mention it earlier — nice robe. Not exactly standard issue for judges, though.”
Bradshaw eyed her sidelong. “Can I trust you to stay outside and not meddle?”
“Depends.”
“I’m armed,” he said, parting the front of the robe to show the pistol tucked into his belt.
“So am I—but what I saw back there probably means a howitzer wouldn’t be much use tonight.”
He grunted acknowledgment, and winced as another muffled rumble came from the rear of The Hyacinths. The floodlights flickered and died. “There’s something I have to do, and I can’t be worried about protecting you from trying to protect me while I do it. Stay here. You’ll be safe —”
“— as long as I don’t go for a stroll,” she finished for him, gesturing to the fallen turret. “Judge Bradshaw, I’m not making any promises. But I’ll make you a deal. You go do whatever it is you feel you have to do. I’ll give you ten minutes.”
“Half an hour.”
“Fifteen.”
“Who works for whom, here?” he snapped.
“I work for the United States Government, which has a vested interest in your continued health and well-being,” she snapped right back. “You’ve got fifteen minutes, and then I come get you—and call for backup.”
“You just said traditional firepower would be absurd in this situation, and you’re right. No backup.”
Dark eyes regarded him steadily. “You’d have so much more explaining to do if others got involved, am I right? Okay, fifteen minutes, no backup—but if some concerned citizen has already called in random acts of destruction, all deals are off.” As he opened the car door, she pointed a long finger at him. “And no messing with me like you did those people back there, Harry Potter.”
Tight-lipped, he got out of the Jeep and slammed the door. The gun digging into his stomach would be completely useless, he well knew, but some of the other things stashed away about his person were not. Extracting one of them from a deep, commodious robe pocket, he muttered a few words, and smiled grimly at Towsley’s magnificently furious face. He watched her yell at him for a moment as she struggled with doors that would not open unless or until he allowed it. After all, she hadn’t said anything about Working on the car.
His wand safely back in its pocket, he strode for the house. Harry Potter, indeed!
HUDDLING BELOW THE WINDOW SHE’D just smashed open, Holly cradled her stunned elbow and wished she could become invisible. She could have done just that, had she a nice-sized opal and an expert Witch to cast the spell, plus a bit of her own blood. Speaking of which—shirt, sweater, and heavy woolen coat had protected her from the glass, but she’d
knocked her funny bone on the frame and she badly wanted to shake the resulting wriggly tingle out of her arm. And she knew she could not move a muscle, not even blink, or Noel might see her.
She breathed as deeply as she could, trying to clear her brain of the incense. As briefly as she had been exposed, she could still sense it dancing like a gleeful demon at the corners of her vision, ready to claw her brain if she relaxed her guard.
The swift breeze through the shattered window had guttered many of the black candles. Swaths of darkness complicated the architectural shadows, disorienting her; she hoped Noel shared the sensation. She couldn’t see him, which meant he probably couldn’t see her where she crouched in the window arch behind the stone bench. On the other hand, how many cats had she watched stick their heads into bags and believe that because they couldn’t see out, nobody could see in?
The sea-scented wind was dispersing the itchy odor of incense. Whole sides of the house must be yawning wide, creating a draft. But Noel had abandoned his quest for whoever seemed bent on toppling every stone of The Hyacinths, and as the building settled again with a rasp and a quiver, he made his demand again.
“Where is she?”
“Je ne sais pas shit, shugah,” Denise drawled, leaning comfortably against Evan’s shoulder. Holly wanted to kick her into the middle of next week.
“Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on,” Evan said all at once. His voice sounded firmer, and Holly hoped the incense was losing its hold on him. “Any other windows break?”
Blessing him—and congratulating herself for choosing a man who had a brain and knew how to use it, even when he was stoned—she tried to make herself smaller and hoped Noel would buy the excuse for the sudden breeze.
He didn’t appear interested in explanations. “She’ll come. She has to come,” he grumbled, his voice echoing weirdly in the stairwell. Holly risked movement, peeking around Denise’s shins. Noel was descending the last of the stairs into fitful darkness. At the bottom step he froze, thin nostrils flaring. “What is that?” he whispered. His fingers delicately probed the wall, as if testing it for validity. He inhaled deeply. Then he wiped his palm with tender care across the corner stones. “She’s here — or she has been,” he chuckled. “Her blood is on the wall.”
Holly looked down at the heel of her right hand. Sure enough, a nasty scrape that only now, when she knew it was there, began to sting a little. There wasn’t much blood. There was enough.
Noel moved to the center of the room. As he passed her line of sight, she noted with relief that his silvery-blue eyes were focused inward. Still, she hardly dared to breathe as he turned a slow circle, widdershins, and ended by facing West.
“I am armed! I am strong! I summon Bayemon, and command the Western Regions and the Waters! The phrase I conjure and command you with is tacere, as all will keep silent and tremble at the touch of my mind! Your power of mysticism belongs to me! Come, Krokar and Kuzgun, Cigfrain and Bran!”
As he spoke, every candle in that Quarter shivered to new light. So did other things, shining iridescent black things—four of them, all in the West, shaking out their feathers. The birds hopped and fluttered toward Noel, black beaks wide as they kawed, throat-feathers angrily fluffed. He pointed to the glass bowl of water, and they bent their heads to drink.
He turned to the South next, as Holly had known he would; Elias would have Worked sunwise, but this was not white magic. From his robe Noel drew a knife — not so small as a bolline, nor double-edged like an athame, nor so long as a sword. Again the candle flames ignited, and again four birds came alive and leapt across the cellar floor, approaching him on black-taloned feet that shifted in a dance of impatience, in perfect time to Noel’s chanting.
“Let Amayon, King of the Southern Regions, and the beings of Fire cower before the Fire of my Sword! The phrase I conjure and command you with is velle, as I have the will to see deep into the Abyss! Your power over Time belongs to me! Come, Korakas and Fiach, Cuervo and Karasu! Come!”
Noel positioned the blade on the floor of the South quadrant. Candlefire leaped and licked along its length and the birds fluttered around it, wings outstretched as if bathing their feathers in blue-black flame.
Cuervo — she finally recognized the Spanish, and belatedly the Irish and the Welsh, for “raven,” and chided her own stupidity. Susannah’s favorite tequila had been Cuervo Gold 1800. Untimely and inappropriate tears welled up, and she almost choked. Damn it, she was getting as loopy as Evan. Incense, it was the incense, she wasn’t really seeing this and it wasn’t real and Noel couldn’t possibly be bringing these raven statues to life.
But his palm had cradled the black glass bowl of water, and the hilt of the blade—his palm that had her blood on it. Not much of her blood. Enough.
Ravens, what did she know about ravens? A mental filing cabinet of odd and generally useless information collected over half a lifetime of research began spewing out associations. If the ravens ever left the Tower of London, England would fall. The Valkyries wore raven feathers in their hair, signifying their role as Choosers of the Slain. Celtic Morrigan, the Death Crone in the form of a raven —
East came next, and the robe yielded another implement: a length of pale polished wood tipped with an obsidian arrowhead. “Let Lucifer of the Air draw back at the waving of the Spear! The phrase I conjure and command you with is noscere, as I will know what it is to hear the music of eternity! Your power of traversing the infinite belongs to me! Come, Kolkrabe and Holló, Corbeau and Gaagii, come!”
The spear-wand was positioned, and white smoke rose from the candles for the quartet of ravens. Two on either side, they whisked at the air with their wings to disperse the cloud upon each other.
Finally the North, where another black glass bowl rested. “I summon Belial, Prince of Trickery, and imprison the spirits of Earth! The phrase I conjure and command you with is audere, as I dare to taste the power of a god! Your power of binding belongs to me! Come, Vron and Fitheach, Corvus and Kruk, come!”
Four more ravens alighted and began to crack seeds with their beaks. The word “trickery” activated a prompt in Holly’s mind: Raven was archetypical kin to Coyote the Trickster. Both were shape-shifters and entirely slippery customers. But they were also teachers, shamans, emissaries of change. What was Noel after? She tried to sort through what Elias had said about Sammael, and power, and now the ravens with their implications of transformation and death, and the widdershins summoning of four sinister Guardians, and could make no sense of it.
Noel stood in the center of his Circle of candles and implements and ravens, raising both arms in jubilation. “I am armed! I am strong! I am more powerful than the Lord of Time! I who was nothing deny all that I was; I who am everything affirm all that I shall be!”
“Good luck,” Holly muttered soundlessly, and got to her feet. She was unconcerned now with being seen. It didn’t matter. Noel stood within his Circle; she and Evan and Denise were outside it.
This suited her just fine—until Noel flung back his head, howled like a bean sidhe, and called out again and again, “Sammael!”
The house shuddered; cement dust rained down. With Noel’s back to her, and with his Circle demarcated by candles and ravens, she could risk moving. So she pushed herself cautiously to her feet.
“I have opened the way! I am come!”
His voice was different. Her musician’s ear heard something deeper, richer, something akin to the low note of a Japanese temple gong. She froze, watching for some kind of physical transformation to match that change in his voice. Nothing happened—not that she could discern, anyway.
Every nerve in Evan’s body twitched as she whispered his name. “Don’t touch me,” he warned. “Get outta here —”
“Can you move at all?”
“Not below the elbows.”
“Oh, then it’s all right, as long as I don’t touch the bench.” She put both hands on his shoulders, caressing powerful muscles through leather jacket and cashmere sweat
er. “It’s all right, a chuisle. Alec and Nicky will be here soon.”
“You’re real?” he asked, rubbing his cheek to her arm. “Really real?”
“Really real. And you’ll be safe, I promise.” She slid her hands down his chest, fingering the chain of his St. Michael medal. “‘Flesh and blood, skin and bone, no harm shall come to thee, my own.’” Hugging him, pressed snugly to his back, she added, “Very bad poetry, but it got the job done.”
Noel cried out again, startling her. “My heart is the heart of Abraxas!”
Evan quivered a bit with laughter. “Isn’t that an old Carlos Santana album?”
“My face is the face of Set! My eyes are the eyes of Eblis, god of fire!My lips are the lips of the Destroying Angel Abbadon! My tongue is the tongue of Baalberith, Canaanite Lord of blasphemy! My teeth are the teeth of Eurynome, who feeds upon corpses!”
“Yeucch,” Evan muttered. “Holly, you gotta get outta here. He’ll want more of your blood—and that wand on the floor, it’s made of holly —”
“My legs and feet are the legs and feet of Shiva, who dances the end of the world! My bones are the bones of the living Gods!”
Holly held Evan tighter. “He’s Calling avatars. Power. Bits and pieces of old gods, to make one seriously bad-ass deity.”
“My arms are the arms of Malphas, the vast black wings of a raven! My kteis is the kteis of Thoth, supreme god of magic! There is no member of my body that is not the member of some God!”
Denise stirred. “I,” she announced petulantly, “am sick of this cochon.”
“Take a number,” Holly muttered.
Thirty
“THOTH, HMM?” ALEC MURMURED. “That’s some schlong he wants for himself.”
“Don’t be vulgar,” Nick reprimanded. They were standing outside the closed stairwell door, having entered through the mess of the greenhouse. Noel’s bellows of triumph were giving Nick a headache. “And don’t underestimate him,” he went on. “Have you heard who he’s Called? He’s done his research; give him that.”