She trailed off because I put my fingers to good use. A few moments later the rest of my body got into it. Afterwards I fell into what should have been a peaceful sleep, though it was anything but.
**
I stood upon a shelf of fire, and fought demons by the dozen. They came at me from above and below. I hurled ice, lightening, and even a form of witch’s fire I’d seen Glenda wield. I dodged, ducked, and jumped, but there were just too many of them. My fork was nowhere to be found and all the power that had been stored in my shield had been long expended.
The room had a dome far above, but it was so high I barely got a sense of it as the haze of the cusp tried to obscure it.
Then two came at me, but I was unprepared. They had long hooked beaks and dirty feathers. Their body was a patchwork of leather and skin. I tried to get a spell off but they snatched me by my robe and sped into the air. Wings stretched meters in each direction and beat at the hot air relentlessly, leaving me gasping for breath. I was tossed between the two while I fought for words, but the horror of being taken by these foul smelling beasts, like a pair of cats with a play toy, ate at my willpower.
Then a third came straight at me and there was nothing I could do. I screamed as its beak pierced my robe, armor, skin, and then my heart.
I woke to the sound of my own howling, sat up, and found Ashley staring at me with huge eyes. I folded her into an embrace and assured her it had been a bad dream. That was all. She settled against me and, like that, we spent the night together.
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning was anything but doom and gloom. Ashley woke in a pile of auburn curls that were just as cute as they sound. She stared at me then at the clock, uttered a few choice words, and flew out of bed and into her clothes so fast it nearly made my head spin.
“Class. This was great. Talk later.” She kissed me and was down the stairs like her pants were on fire.
I tossed on an old robe. One that was hidden so far back in my closet I’d forgotten the thread bare thing even existed. It was covered in old runes that would glow if I’d spent a few seconds channeling into them.
When I went downstairs, I caught her sliding into knee high black boots. “Was it something I said?”
“No way. I liked the things you said, and especially the things you did.”
“That makes two of us.” I kissed her when she popped to her feet.
“Call you later. I have class, and then work, and I’m late. Oh god, why didn’t I set an alarm?”
I walked her to the door, thinking of her scent and touch. I wished she could stay but understood, of course. When I opened the door for Ashley, I gulped back a curse.
Detective Andrews had her hand once again raised to knock. She had a cardboard container with a pair of coffees and a brown bag. There was a large brown envelope between her teeth. She took that out and stared between Ashley and I.
“Detective!” I said and suddenly felt my face flush. Not two nights ago we’d flirted, and here I was with Ashley.
“Oh,” she said.
“Hi, Detective,” Ashley said. Her eyes were dark under her bangs. She turned to regard me, nodded cordially, and when I made to lean over for a kiss she shook her head and stormed off the porch.
“Ash, wait.”
“I brought copies of your signed reports, Phineas.”
I moved past the detective and followed Ashley as she went to her car.
“Wait, please.”
“Is this how it is, Phin? Got ’em lined up at the door? This was so stupid. I mean, what was I thinking?”
I took her by the arms and spun her around to face me.
“Ashley, it’s not like that at all, I swear. I had no idea she was stopping by and there is nothing between us. It’s work, I assure you. Only work.”
“You better not break my heart, you idiot warlock.” She my hand shook loose and got in her little Toyota.
She was gone a few seconds later and I was left to deal with the detective. I wished I had a handy portal to the abyss to hop in.
Detective Andrews had put the coffee and bag on the porch and was also moving down the stairs.
“Detective, wait.”
“I just stopped by to drop off this crap, Phineas. Have a nice day.” She brushed past me.
A few seconds later, all I saw were her departing taillights. “Two women in one morning. How much worse could my day get?”
Turned out – a lot worse.
**
I nursed a headache with the coffee the detective had left. In the bag were a half dozen bagels and a couple of cream cheese smears. I ate a bagel and sipped lukewarm caffeine while staring into space. I should call Ashley, except for one small problem. I hadn’t managed to get her phone number.
Someone banged against the back door.
“Jesus, Frank,” I muttered after peering through the blinds.
I opened up and threw a towel his way. He stared at it for a few seconds, gave me that flat look, and wrapped the towel around his waist.
“You should invest in clothing,” I said.
“You white men and your fear of--”
“Stow it, Frank. I have a favor to ask, so why don’t you wrap that towel around your waist and come in?”
“Do you have beer?”
“Only the best.” I led him to the kitchen.
Ashley. She had been here not so very long ago and I thought I could still smell her scent. Clean, with hints of cloves or vanilla. Now I had a demonic dog and a naked Native American.
“That girl was pretty hot. What was she doing with you?”
“She likes me and stayed the night.”
“I meant the other one. You need better curtains upstairs.”
I shook my head and took a local microbrew out and tossed it at Frank. He caught it in front of his face then used his hand to twist the pop-off cap. Show off.
“It’s always nice to see you in the middle of the day, Frank. What brings you around?”
“Bored. I like the other girl too. She’s the one from the coffee shop, right?”
“Yeah. I saved her and she stopped by to thank me.”
“Some thank you. I was there too, you know.”
“You were, and thank you. I mean that.” I slapped his bare shoulder.
“Girl must be hard up, dating a pasty skinned warlock like you. Does she know what you do for a living?”
“A gentleman doesn’t talk.”
“I don’t see any gentlemen in the room,” he deadpanned.
“I have a favor to ask, Frank.”
“I suppose.” He leaned forward as I spoke.
Peaches wandered into the room and looked at a bowl of water I had left on the floor. She looked at me, then at Frank. What did she want? A glass? The dog/demon didn’t even have digits, and I was not about to hold a glass to its lips.
“Didn’t know you had a dog.”
“She’s possessed by a demon.”
“You picked a Pomeranian. What do you expect?” Frank belched and drained the beer.
Peaches stared at the bowl of water then leaned over and stuck her whole face in.
“Did you pick up one of those special needs dogs? No three legged beasts available?”
“Very funny.”
“Want anything to eat, you mongrel pooch?”
“The body requires sustenance, but I do not. I suppose meat, lightly cooked. Keep it bloody.”
Frank jumped off the chair, nearly knocking over his beer bottle.
“Your dog is talking.”
“Okay, birdman. Is that really the strangest thing you’ve ever seen? I told you she was possessed.”
“What’s her name?”
She made a series of noises that made me want to take up the cooling teapot and bash in my teeth to stop them from buzzing.
“Don’t do that.” I clenched my teeth. “Peaches, her name is Peaches, and if she doesn’t behave I’ll rip her spirit out, pack it in this teapot, and drop it over the Mar
ianas Trench.
“Nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones”
“Oh yeah. She likes Shakespeare.”
“Sounds more like a he, but that’s a good trick.” Frank moved away from his chair and steered clear of the demon. “You should get on one of those talent shows and make a million dollars.”
I moved aside packages of frozen goods in the freezer until I came across a small box buried in the back. Pulling a pack out, I ripped the plastic open and extracted a frozen hamburger. I followed the directions and microwaved it to perfection. It wasn’t fillet mignon but it would have to do.
“We have a deal. The demon stays put and I don’t send it back to the wards. I’m pretty sure she just wants to wait until my guard is down and then try to kill me again. Is that right, Peaches?”
“We have a deal.” Peaches sniffed.
“Oh, so I offend your sensibilities?”
“Mortal, you would call our deal a sham? Unlike the race of little men, demon’s keep their words.”
“Right. I saw The Exorcist. Never bargain and you don’t get a face full of split pea soup,” Frank said.
I tossed the half cooked burger into a bowl and deposited it in front of the little Pomeranian. She sniffed at it then looked at me with beady black-eyed intelligence. A chill race down my back.
“Yummy,” Peaches said.
The meat was in the bowl one moment and gone the next, along with part of the ceramic. The demon belched a puff of steam and went to find a place to lie down. She paused at the entrance to the kitchen and lifted a leg and shot a stream of pee all over the doorframe.
“Hey!” I cried.
“The body is of a female, but I am closer to a male. Remember that.”
“Christ. I have a possessed Pomeranian with gender issues.”
Frank sat back down and laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks.
Chapter Fourteen
Leaving the realm of men is easy, if you know the trick.
I went hours before nightfall, because I didn’t want to waste the day. I’d sat on the couch thinking of the night before. Ashley. Her smile, pert little nose, auburn curls, and cuteness piled on top of cuteness. The way she stood and shifted her feet. How she was confident at times and then unsure at others, the hints of which always quirked the corners of her mouth. I thought of the way she had folded into my arms, her chin near my chest, breath on my neck. I thought of our love making and considered calling off the entire trip to the underworld.
Later, the little demon dog wandered in and found a spot right in the middle of the floor, rolled onto her back, and stuck her legs straight up in the air. A few hours after, she hadn’t moved. When I stepped over her to visit the bathroom, she jumped up and followed me in. I held it a minute longer and took her into the backyard.
Peaches looked around for a few moments then found a nice rhododendron and pissed all over it. The plant immediately wilted.
I should’ve really gone back to the guild and gotten my chest piece, but that would be dangerous, not to mention stupid. I also pondered calling Glenda to meet me somewhere with it, but I didn’t want her to know my plans. The key was no longer at the school, so no one could get into the secret room, and I wanted to keep it that way. I’d had enough of demon’s trying to kill me.
I flew to the east and scanned the skies. The clouds were an unholy bitch but there were always cracks and slivers, and that’s all I needed. At last, I spotted a break and headed toward it.
It’s easier at night. When a star’s light hits the atmosphere, it’s easy to pick out because the glimmer becomes diffused. There are a lot of ways to find the right size shimmer, but I’d picked up a few tricks over the years. Daylight made the trip harder, so I took the device out of my pocket and blew on the lens to clear away any specks of dust. I had to hold it by the ends for a few minutes so the brass and glass could cool to the outside temperature.
Fog gathered on the first lens, but I wiped it away on the inquisitor’s robe. Then I held the device, which looked like a pair of optometrist lenses, up to my eyes until I found a ray of starlight that was pure. What is a pure beam, you ask? I couldn’t explain it if you put a gun to my head. All I knew was that when one fell into my view all I had to do was veer right through it – and that’s just what I did.
One moment in this world, then with a soul sucking pop I was accelerated into the next. I was near the cusp. But making the crossing was never easy and there was a price. I’d glyphed myself against the tug, but it wasn’t enough and nearly all of my power was drawn from my body. It was more a rending, like someone had taken me out of my skin (something I was intimately familiar with thanks to the battle with Balkir a few days ago), bashed me against the side of a building, then poured my remains back inside the sack that had been me.
I had to hold the link with my fork as I made the jump. Had to hold on, even though every fiber of my being begged me to let go and surrender even that trickle.
Something rushed into me. A feeling of dread and then elation. Then there was an expanding consciousness, a link to the ground below. It bloomed, and for a few seconds I filled with power. So much power that I could do anything. I could raise or destroy a mountain. I could summon a third or forth ward demon and maintain control. I could fly an entire skyscraper around the planet.
Then it was gone, and I was left feeling like I’d woken from a three day drunk.
**
You’ve probably seen pictures, artist’s interpretations, of the place, but I assure you it needs to be experienced. The cusp was designed to keep the hells separated from the real world. Over time the cusp grew and the wards were drawn farther and farther apart. What was once a nearly imaginary line in the sand had become miles of barren land.
But you just don’t have a big-ass place like the cusp without some enterprising men and women to commercialize it. It’s also where the first major guilds sprouted.
This wasn’t hell but it was the next best thing. Most of the time it was hot, but like the seasons above it tended to change based on some immeasurable timetable. At the time of this visit, it was closer to Seattle cold than Sahara hot.
There were endless trees below but they looked like skeletons. A road traversed the ground and even branched off on occasion to lead to a home or shop of some kind. I could spend a week graphing the place then come back in a year and it would have changed, stretched, become a whole new world. Maybe a river of lava would have escaped from the other side and turned huge rafts of desert into a giant parking lot, or a new mountain may have sprung up where once a pit existed.
I sped across the blasted landscape, marking South of Heaven as I passed, and made a mental note of its current location in case I wanted to stop on my way out and get that drink.
There was a shimmer to the east, but it was miles away. That was the curtain that hung over the hells and kept it separate. Who or what built it? I couldn’t say. Salazar once told me he knew how it had been created, but I was half convinced he was full of crap.
I swept toward the ground, but not in an involuntary manner. Trees even older and more decrepit than something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale stood at attention, looking like burned kindling. A hill rose but it looked uprooted, like an asteroid had tried to burst through from the other side. The crest was covered in soot, while the other side was slimed like a giant Godzilla sneezed there.
I steered clear of the mess. There was no telling what bizarre creature might burst out. Not that it wouldn’t make a dramatic end to this story: ‘Warlock devoured near the cusp. Film at eleven.’
**
The necropolis rose bitter and decrepit. The squat structure sat like a knuckled fist, surrounded on all sides by hoary towers. Decay and rot hung from those, emphasizing just how badly the place had fallen into disrepair. It was said that the home of the necromancers had once been a beacon near the cusp, a
place of great men that made an art of death. Now it looked like it belonged in some lost village in Eastern Europe.
It was truly the epitome of bad taste.
I would like to say that it was great to be back home, but it wasn’t.
There was a moat, but it wasn’t the kind with shallow water and spikes in the mud. When I studied here it had been a nightmare of discarded corpses, body parts, internal organs, and countless empty heads. Not to be confused with a self-absorbed teenage boy, we are talking brainless craniums unattached to bodies.
I didn’t have enough energy to do a controlled landing, so I swept low then circled a few times in a spiral until I was about ten feet off the ground. I tore away my concentration and severed the thread connecting me to my fork, then took the rest like a paratrooper, feet pumping as I made contact with the gravelly surface. I hit a half exposed branch and went flying, tucking my chin as I did my best to somersault in a mildly professional roll. I puffed as dust rose around me. Then I tried to cover my mouth, but still managed to get a throatful of soot. I didn’t even want to consider what it was comprised of.
I dusted my robe and was surprised to see dirt and detritus fall away, leaving the silky material just like they day Collin presented it. The inquisitors got all the cool toys.
It was a hell of a lot warmer than Seattle, pun intended of course.
The sun was there, but its light was wan as it did its best to break through a miasma of half finished clouds and rising condensation. The water hung around as it tried to decide if it wanted to be a fog or just evaporate. A curious effect of the cusp. Did the lamentations of the newly dead depress the atmosphere around purgatory?
I crunched over rock, some exposed but dry dirt. Over white chips that looked like old wood, but were more than likely crushed and broken bone. There was always the soot because they ran a crematory on the other side of the old towers.
A series of bone white trees stood along the path, with massive branches hanging over the walkway. I half expected to see corpses dangling from them, but to my relief the only hangers-on were scrawny ravens that dropped like birds of war as I strode the path. Some called out and others just fled, but at least none of them used me as target practice. Something that Frank seemed to relish.
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