by Nazri Noor
“Yeah, he’s still down there,” he said.
Gil growled from somewhere above us. “If the two of you are done playing with yourselves, I can help you to your feet. But give me the hands that weren’t touching your dicks.”
“It’s fine,” I groaned as I pushed myself to my feet.
I looked around for the others. Carver was standing off to the side, unmussed and unsullied, his hair and suit as perfect as always as he gazed quietly into the abyss. Asher was lying in a wet, salty puddle on the floor. Banjo yipped excitedly as he came down the corridor, pausing to lick at Asher’s face. Sterling followed, avoiding stepping into the saltwater with his boots.
“Did you have a nice time?” he said, offering Asher one hand.
“The best,” Asher said, a dreamy smile on his lips.
Look, I was happy that some of us had fun out there, but I’m not going to lie: we suddenly had some bigger problems. Huge ones. I stepped up to Carver, gazing out into the void beyond the stone platforms of our home, waiting for him to speak first.
“You of all people should know that this doesn’t bode well for us, Dustin.”
I nodded. “Uh-huh. Yep. This is not ideal. Like, at all.”
Carver sighed. “First the All-Father, and now Zeus? That had to have been him. He sent that lightning bolt to save his brother from Belphegor.”
I nodded again. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen gods up against demons before. Not to mention against the Great Beasts, just the other day at Lucero. I’m kind of really worried about what’s coming next.”
Carver finally turned to me, his face flat, at first, until a somewhat forced smile came to his lips. “I suppose we shall do what you do, Mr. Graves, and improvise for the moment. At least we know that the demon sword is secured. That leaves three more. I have some ideas on the matter of the others. Pray, rest for now. You must rest. All of you. Come see me in the morning. I will have more to tell then.”
He swept off towards his offices as soon as he finished, Banjo already chasing after him as he left. I heard the soft, musical noise of Carver’s laughter as he bent down to scoop the corgi up into his arms, but I knew that he was just as on edge as I was. We basically had one of the swords in the bag, sure. But at what cost?
“You’re going straight in the shower,” Sterling said, dragging Asher towards the dormitories by the upper arm. “It’s been a while since I’ve gone swimming, but you don’t want saltwater crusting all up in your nether bits.”
Asher stumbled after him, wet feet padding along the stone floor. “My shirt,” he said, looking around. “I think we forgot it on the island.”
“Right here, buddy,” Mason said, jogging up to them, shirt in hand.
Gil went off in search of a beer, which left me alone in the living area. Well, unless you counted Scrimshaw, who was still working through his huge pile of trash food.
Beer in hand, Gil wandered off to his bedroom. It wasn’t the worst idea – Carver was right, I absolutely need to relax – so I grabbed one for myself and slumped into the couch. Nothing like a beer after a long, hard day of work, even if work meant sucking up to a temperamental demon prince and ending up owing them for saving your hide from an angry ocean god.
The beer was cool, the sofa was soft, and I was content, at least for a little while. I’d snagged a little bag of chips off the counter, too, something to munch on while I sipped my beer. Scrimshaw didn’t seem at all bothered by my presence, and in fact might have been emboldened by it, digging faster and harder into his mound of delights. I watched him with casual interest as I chomped on my potato chips, finding the whole thing oddly meditative.
Scrimshaw’s incessant smacking, chewing sounds were almost relaxing. They should have been disgusting, frankly, but maybe my body yearned to resonate with something mundane, basic, and normal for once, the evolutionary sensation of safety as you share a meal around the proverbial bonfire with someone from your tribe – even if that someone happened to be a bare-ass naked copper-skinned demon that was only a few inches tall.
“I thought you’d be too tired to stick around,” Scrimshaw said through a mouthful of food. “Thanks for hanging out.”
I stretched out on the couch, sighing as I heard some of my joints pop. “No problem,” I said. “I kinda just wanted to unwind, you know?”
Scrimshaw sucked noisily at the tips of his fingers. “Oh, I do, for sure. I don’t know if it’s just my contact with you, but I’ve been drawing a little bit of attention from the demonic courts myself, lately. Seems to me that quite a few of them are willing to pay a fair amount for information on you and your friends.” He smirked at me and tapped the side of his head. “But I’m smart. I won’t ever sell you guys out.”
I chuckled. “Not unless it’s really worth it, right?”
He scoffed. “Well, maybe. But the problem is, when a demon realizes he can’t buy you, he decides the next best option is to beat it out of you. Good thing I’m slippery.” He picked up what looked like a little mound of mashed potatoes. Going by memory, Scrimshaw loved potatoes, in any form. “Speaking of which, how’d things go with Belphegor?”
I sighed. “About as well as they could with demon nobility, I think. She promised to find us a sword. But we were, uh, interrupted by a god, and now I think that I’m in more trouble than when I started.”
“Pssh,” Scrimshaw said, waving one hand limply at the wrist. “So what.”
I sat up, swallowing a mouthful of beer before voicing my question. “What do you mean, so what?”
He raised one eyebrow, giving me a weary look. “Listen. There’s a reason we get along, you and I. Several reasons, in fact, but one of the most critical is how we’re both sneaky, like. Slippery. You deal with all-powerful entities all the damn time, and I have to dodge the demon princes. Did you know I had to cut my contract with that wizard I was working for? It’s been that wild. The point is, that’s our defining trait. We’re survivors. Improvisors. Big old fakers.”
I laughed heartily, feeling oddly at ease around, let’s face it, this tiny demon straight out of hell. “Fakers?”
Scrimshaw burped. “That’s right. Fakers. Charlatans. Rogues. We just fake it till we make it, ’cause that’s what we are.”
I leaned into the sofa, raising my beer to my lips. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to fake my way out of this one, Scrimshaw. Not at all, if I’m honest.”
“Pssh. You’ll find a way. What’s that stupid thing you like to say? Trust in yourself. Trust in Dustin.”
I smiled at him, not even bothering to guess how he knew about my dumb little catchphrase. “You know, I really needed to hear that. I don’t know how much of my situation I can really control anymore, but – thanks, Scrimshaw. You’re good people.”
He nodded sagely, waving a tiny hand. “I know, I know.” He looked up at me with metallic eyes, blinking innocently. “Now what’s a good person like me got to do to get a beer around here?”
Chapter 14
For a gaggle of misfits and mages, you’d think that my friends and I would spend more time in libraries sifting through dusty tomes and ancient grimoires. It’s not that I hate reading. I quite enjoy it, really, as an inexpensive method of learning even more ways to fake and fiddle my way through life.
It’s just that life in the arcane underground teaches you to be cautious and wary about things you never knew to be cautious and wary about, and that includes destructive grimoires that could be lurking in wait. A misplaced scroll of disintegration, maybe, or even a tome left by someone as a trap – the kind that captures you between its covers, never ending no matter how many times you flip its pages, eventually driving you completely insane.
At least that was my excuse for staying out of libraries.
“You’re not going to find any of those here,” Herald grumbled. “And if you want any hope of securing the third sword, you’re going to have to help me look through at least some of these books.”
Drastic times called
for drastic measures, so I let him drag me by the scruff into an actual library. To be fair, Herald was right. You don’t really find any of the more lethal literary works sitting out in plain sight. Stuff like the Tome of Annihilation and the Book of Plagues you’ll only ever see sleeping in the personal library of some crotchety old wizard, or some wealthy yet ignorant collector, or worst of all, as part of the coveted treasures of the demon prince of greed.
But Valero Public Library? That’s not the kind of place where you’ll randomly stumble upon books of shadows, or booby-trapped old grimoires with a taste for human fingers. It was the same library we unsuccessfully searched for the Tome of Annihilation, after all. Incidentally, it was also the first time I met Samyaza.
Valero Public was, however, a good place to start for finding some easily accessible information, specifically the name of any kind of sword that was attached to the human realm. All we needed were some books of fables and mythology, and a willingness to scour through them all afternoon long.
“Ideally, we’d also want for these stories to be true,” Herald said. “Because what the hell is the point of going out to find a mythical sword if it never existed in the first place?”
I rubbed my hands through my hair, groaning as I stared at the pile of books Herald had assigned me to sift through. “Why couldn’t we have just used the internet?”
He gave me the kind of look a teacher might give a student just before he rapped them across the knuckles with a wooden ruler. “You know very well that you can only find some things in books. The internet isn’t the answer for everything, Dustin.”
I scoffed, smearing myself across the table and splaying my arms over the books. “It is for porn.”
Herald smirked, then smacked me on the forearm. “Get to work.”
“I don’t wanna.”
I was exaggerating, of course. We had pretty much everyone we knew on the case helping to narrow down the choice of blade for the hunt. And this meant that I could spend more time with Herald. Every precious day with him counted, the closer we got to completing the reagents for the Apotheosis. Every second with him seemed to be worth so much more.
“I’m pretty confident we’ll find something,” Herald said. “Historically speaking, there have been tons of legendary swords explicitly wielded by purely human users. Kings, knights, heroes, that kind of thing. The trick is finding something that isn’t locked up in a museum somewhere.”
“This one,” I said, stabbing randomly at an image in an open book, mainly because the pictured sword looked so damn pretty. “I say we look for this one.”
He nudged the book closer to himself, narrowing his eyes as he peered at the entry before giving me a disapproving frown. “What did I just say? That’s Joyeuse.”
“Pretty name.”
“I agree. But it’s also locked up in a fancy display in France. Belonged to a French king. Charlemagne? You may have heard of him. They used Joyeuse for coronations and stuff. Keep looking, and no more museum artifacts, unless you like the idea of breaking in to steal them yourself.”
“You’re so smart,” I mumbled lazily, grinning at him. “How do you know so much?”
“Don’t patronize me, Dust,” he said, smiling to himself anyway, visibly tickled by the non-compliment. “Good thing we have Team Borica to pick up the slack for you.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Good thing.”
Borica was the name Herald had started to fondly call the queer little alliance we’d formed between the Boneyard and the friendlier bits of the Lorica – Prudence, Bastion, and all the others. The jury was out on whether Team Borica or Team Loneyard was a better name for our group. It felt right, either way.
“We’ll figure this out,” I said. “If we don’t find something in the old stories, I’m sure that the others will.”
Herald nodded. “What’s encouraging is that we know a lot of them are true, or at least partially so.”
“More like all. Every encounter we’ve had with myths and legends, with the entities? Some of the details might be wrong, but there’s always a grain of truth in there somewhere. There’s a reason those stories exist.”
“Because they’re rooted in something. I like how you’re thinking.” He reached over, squeezed my hand, then went back to scanning his books. And I knew I should have done the same, but it was too distracting, too difficult to do that with Herald so nearby, being so fundamentally – well, Herald.
The way the sunlight streamed in through the windows, how it struck tiny motes of dust that rose from clothbound books as Herald spread them open, how they struck his hair and glasses, made him glint and gleam. That was the biggest part of why I agreed to come along for research. It was Herald in his element, at his happiest, and it was something I could capture in my mind, to hold and to keep.
I watched him work, and stayed completely and utterly useless, somehow believing that etching his image into my memory was a far better use of my time and my eyesight than poring over dead, ancient tomes, than finding the name of a dead man’s sword. Because I knew that finding the answer meant less time with Herald. Finding the solution only meant drawing closer to the problem of losing this, and the dust, and sunlight, and him, forever. I watched Herald, wanting the afternoon to last forever.
He looked up at me suddenly, catching me staring, and a puzzled expression passed over his face. His forehead and his nose crinkled, then he grinned.
“What the hell are you staring at?” he said softly. “You big dope.”
I shook my head, smiling, my heart a painful mix of longing, and joy, and grief. “It’s nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”
Herald rolled his eyes. “Well, I’ve got something. I think we have a lead.”
I perked up, leaning closer to look at what he was reading. My eyes scanned the pages, but all I could hear was Herald’s voice.
“Pack a suitcase,” he said. “Looks like we’re going to France after all.”
Chapter 15
It took a day or so for us to prepare, not because anyone actually did need to pack, but because Carver had very wisely advised us to take along as many members of the Borica as possible. This trip was going to be a scavenger hunt, not a meeting with a demon prince who could potentially save us from the wrath of an intruding Greek god. We needed extra hands, just in case.
Now, I’m not delusional or anything. I knew that this trip was going to be as extensive as the one we took to the Philippines, which was nice and everything – apart from potentially incurring the wrath of a whole ’nother head of a pantheon, of course – but it was brief, scarcely a glimpse. It was like stepping into a remarkably decorated room, then stepping out of it again. The quirks of teleportation.
But those sparse minutes, maybe less than half an hour we spent on Calaguas Island had been stunning regardless. I’m happy to report that the same could be said for the tiny slice of France that the Boneyard boys visited that day. It was somewhere in the countryside, a short distance away from the nearest town, far enough that we didn’t run the risk of attracting unwanted attention. And this time, we made sure to come under cover of night. Calaguas had been different, isolated, and we stood little chance of detection or standing out like sore thumbs.
Granted, we could have picked an even more secluded location, but as Herald explained, where we went didn’t exactly matter. We just had to make sure that we were on French soil. Terra firma.
Plus, it was the best, remotest part of the country that Royce could recall. I should have mentioned that. Carver wanted to stay at the Boneyard, to batten down the hatches – you never leave a castle undefended, as Carver himself might say – plus he wanted to keep an eye looking out for Agatha Black. That left Royce in charge of teleportation duty. He was more experienced than me in that regard, at least enough that he could take more than two people with him without feeling the need to vomit up his internal organs immediately after. And like most teleporters, Royce was at his best when he could work from memory.
“This is the place,” Royce said, as we phased into an empty, grassy meadow, lit only by the moon and the stars. He had a weird, uncharacteristic smile on his lips. “Oh wow, I remember. This is where we – um. Never mind.”
He caught himself too late, and Romira’s eyes flitted left and right as she tried to fit the pieces together. She smacked him on the shoulder.
“Oh my God. Did you have sex with some chick out here?”
“Sweetie,” Royce said, holding his hands up and stumbling backwards. “It was before we met.”
Romira harrumphed, folded her arms, and stamped off. Gil laughed. Prudence tutted and shook her head. “Nice one, Royce. Real nice.”
“Hey,” he said. “It was either here, or the Eiffel Tower. And Igarashi says that we really don’t want anyone watching when whatever needs to happen happens.”
Sterling folded his arms, standing with his feet apart. “Explain,” he said.
“Gladly,” Herald said. “But everyone come around, because I’m not going to repeat myself.”
Mason, Asher, Bastion, and all the others – Team Borica in full, basically – gathered into a loose circle as Herald patiently began his briefing.
“It was Dust who gave me the idea,” Herald started, and the tiny, fleeting compliment made me feel all sorts of important. “We were checking out options, and he suggested Joyeuse.”
“Which is stupid and ridiculous,” Sterling said, blatantly avoiding eye contact when I glared at him. “Unless everyone’s in the mood to break into a high security museum.”
“Pssh,” Vanitas echoed into my brain. “I could have told you that.”
I tugged on my backpack’s straps, hoping in some way that Vanitas could feel my disapproval, and hushed him telepathically.
“Right, right,” Herald said. “But that gave me the idea, see. There’s another sword that’s just as famous, which also belonged to someone, well, French, and famous. Durandal.”