Harvest Moon

by Mercedes Lackey, Michelle Sagara

  Other than the jinn, I’d never given much thought to spirits. For that matter, even my own sorcery didn’t involve a lot of knowledge. I’d always been able to use magic, and even though Rashan had showed me how to improve my command of it back in the day, I didn’t really know how or why it worked. For a sorcerer, I knew fuck-all about the supernatural.

  I did have my spellcraft, though, and I knew a fair amount of necromancy, including the spell that would return a dead soul to the Beyond, the one I’d used to deal with the pedophile I’d killed when I was a girl. Problem was, I didn’t think Sam was a spirit of the dead. Whatever he was—assuming he wasn’t the Angel of Death, I mean—he was probably something more akin to Mr. Clean.

  I was a gangster, so I did know a thing or two about doing a hit. The key to doing it right was control. You control the situation, the environment, and the timing, and you control the target. Everything that happens or doesn’t happen, it’s because that’s the way you want it. No surprises, no loose ends. The trick was going to be achieving that level of control when I didn’t know exactly what Sam was or what he could do. They say a player can only play the cards she’s dealt.

  They only say that because they don’t know how to cheat.

  When I showed up at the shop, my mechanic told me he couldn’t find anything wrong with the Lincoln. I paid him for his trouble, made a couple stops, and then drove east out of the city as the sun set in my rearview mirror.

  If there’s a list of common mistakes criminals make, returning to the scene of the crime is probably at the top of it. Right up there with leaving your wallet under the body. Still, I had work to do and you could say I was up against a deadline. The cops had a hard-on for me about Mark of Mark’s Garage out of Palm Springs, but I doubted they knew anything about the late Benny Ben-Reuven. At least, I hoped Samael hadn’t gotten around to telling them about it yet.

  The Angel of Death—or whatever he was—joined me in the passenger seat after about an hour of highway time.

  “This isn’t going to work,” he said.

  “What isn’t going to work?”

  Samael turned around and looked at the TV sitting on the backseat. He grabbed the plastic bag and removed the item I’d picked up from the dollar store. It was a plastic angel statuette.

  “This doesn’t look anything like me,” Samael said. The plastic angel had long blond hair, molded wings, white robes, and a yellow harp and halo.

  “Why should it? That’s an angel. You’re just some wannabe bogeyman Benny juiced up out of the desert.”

  “Why do you need your pet devil?” Samael asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

  “Mr. Clean’s not a devil. He’s just some wannabe bogeyman I juiced up out of the desert.”

  Samael chuckled. “You’re sure about that?”

  “He’s a jinn.”

  “You say jinn, I say devil…” Samael shrugged.

  “Well, if you think he’s a devil, I’ll count that as a point in his favor.”

  Samael nodded. “So what’s he for?”

  “He keeps me company.”

  “You didn’t need his company before, when you brought Benny out here to murder him.”

  “Well, I had Benny to keep me company that time, didn’t I?”

  “Only on the trip out,” said Samael. “Speaking of Benny, who takes over his crew now that you’ve killed him?”

  “I’ve got someone in mind. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

  “Carmen Leeds? You were planning to bring her in from Amy Chen’s crew, weren’t you?”

  I looked over at Samael and scowled. “Like I said, don’t worry about it.”

  “Thing is, I don’t think that’s going to work out.” The frown of mock concern on his face made me want to shoot him. “See, someone must have tipped off Benny’s crew, and I guess they didn’t like the idea too much. Seems Jefferson Alexander figured he was next in line.”

  Jefferson Alexander was something of a minority in the underworld, in the sense that he wasn’t a minority. He was a waspy Pasadena kid from old money—at least old by Southern California standards. People from privileged backgrounds didn’t usually find their way into the underworld. I had no reason to think rich white kids couldn’t have juice—it seemed to be completely random. But magic happened on the margins of society, and privilege had a way of keeping you safely away from the margins.

  Whatever the case, Alexander had the sense of entitlement common to his ilk, so it didn’t surprise me he felt he deserved a bump. The truth was, though, while he probably had at least as much juice as Benny, he didn’t have much of a way with people. The guys in the outfit couldn’t stand him, and that included most of his own crew. It also included me.

  “Alexander maybe won’t like it, but he’ll accept it when I tell him how it is.” I wasn’t sure if I was saying this for Samael’s benefit or my own.

  “You think so? Then why did he put a bullet in Leeds’s ear and leave her duct taped to an office chair in that chop shop on Edgehill?”

  I slammed on the brakes and jerked the car to the side of the road. The Lincoln’s tires squealed and it overshot the shoulder, raising a cloud of dust as it shuddered to a halt.

  I turned and grabbed Samael by the throat. “What did you do, motherfucker?”

  Samael grinned and didn’t even try to escape my grip. “I didn’t have to do much,” he said. “Honestly, I could have done it myself and made it look like Alexander’s work, but that wasn’t necessary. He really wanted to do it. Ugly business. Murder comes so easily to you people.”

  I released my hold on Samael, for the time being, and called Chavez. This time, I got a signal. He hadn’t heard anything about Leeds, so I told him to send some of his soldiers to the chop shop. Then I turned back to Samael. He’d gone back into the plastic bag and pulled out the book I’d bought at an occult store in Hollywood. It was titled The Angel of Death, by Friedrich von Junzt.

  “You picked up a biography,” he said, flipping through the pages. “I didn’t know you were such a fan.”

  “Before, I was just planning to smoke you,” I said. “But I can do a lot worse. If you’ve done something to Leeds, I’m going to let my imagination run wild.”

  Samael laughed. “What are you going to do? Put me in a TV and make me answer stupid questions?”

  That hit a little too close to the mark. I slammed the car into gear and left some rubber on the shoulder as I pulled back onto the highway.

  “So what did you read about me?” Samael asked.

  “Nothing much. Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep.”

  “Nightmares? I suppose that’s one of the hazards of your line of work.”

  I wasn’t real interested in therapy, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to see if I could get some information. Samael seemed like the kind of guy who wanted to talk about himself.

  “Actually, I learned a lot. Too much. Seems there are a lot of contradictory stories about Samael.”

  “Such as?”

  “Okay, so maybe he’s the Angel of Death. But maybe he’s Satan. Or maybe an archangel. Or a fallen angel, or…what was it you called Mr. Clean? Oh, yeah, a devil. Maybe he’s just another small-time devil. Seems the ancient world was lousy with them.”

  Samael grinned. “And what’s your theory?”

  “In the stories, there’s a lot of different takes on what he is. Sometimes good, sometimes evil, but always a pain in the ass.”

  “I’ve gotta be me.”

  “And the way I see it, none of it really matters. Whatever you are—whether or not you’re really this cat in the stories—I’m still going to put you down.”

  “Your arrogance is magnificent.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not arrogance if you can back it up.”

  “And you’re convinced you can back it up.”

  “Oh, yeah. See, the scrub in the stories was a coward.”

  “A coward?” Samael grinned and bent an eyebrow at me.

>   “Yeah. He really only had two claims to fame. He slaughtered a bunch of Egyptian children—everyone knows that one. And he attacked Jacob when he was still a babe in his mother’s womb—and he didn’t even win that fight, by the way. So maybe he always wanted to be the badass they called in when a baby needed killing. But he never really amounted to more than a tale mothers told to frighten their children. Like I said, a bogeyman.”

  Samael’s eyes flashed and his face darkened momentarily, and then the grin returned. “Ah, yes, the false bravado of the damned,” he said. “No matter how many times I see it, it never fails to amuse me. I hope you can cling to it, at the end.” Then he vanished, and the book he’d been holding toppled onto the floorboard.

  I enjoyed the rest of my drive in blessed silence.

  The place where I’d executed Benny looked much the same as I’d left it, including the glazed and blackened Benny-shaped scar at the center of the intersection.

  It wasn’t really necessary for me to do what I meant to do at the crossroads. But magic is ultimately all about patterns, about convergences, intersections, and associations. I’d be able to draw more power in this place, and as the site of Benny’s death curse, it should be nicely attuned to Samael. It had other associations for me besides.

  I left the Lincoln’s headlights on to illuminate my work and gathered my supplies. I placed the TV in the middle of the road leading east from the intersection and switched it on. Electricity wasn’t necessary—I only kept the set plugged in at my condo so Mr. Clean could watch the local channels. The jinn surveyed his surroundings, looking from side to side as if peering through a window.

  “Have you decided to release me?”

  “No such luck, Mr. Clean.”

  “My name is Abishanizad.”

  “Your parents must have hated you.”

  “Why have you brought me here?”

  I momentarily considered asking the jinn to help with the manual labor, but finally decided it wouldn’t be worth the negotiating.

  “Hold on to your shorts,” I said. “I’ll let you know when I need you.”

  I began collecting stones from the desert, each about the size of a dinner plate. I didn’t much care about shape or texture—some were round, some were flat, some were rough, and some were smooth. I placed them in four separate rows, each at a forty-five-degree angle between the roads. It took a lot of rocks, but the result was a kind of Paleolithic geomorph like the spokes of a giant wheel, with the hub at the intersection of the crossroads.

  When I’d joined the outfit, my boss, Shanar Rashan, had brought me into the desert not far from this place to summon my familiar. That was the other association I could work with, and it’s why the jinn had been hoping for an early parole when he saw where I’d taken him.

  I had experience with exactly one spirit, Mr. Clean. I had a spell that had given me power over him. I had no idea if Samael was the same kind of entity as Mr. Clean, but I had no reason to think he wasn’t. I was going to work with that.

  I retrieved the plastic angel statuette and half buried it in the center of the crossroads, in the place where I’d killed Benny and burned his corpse. Then I went to stand in the middle of the west road, the same distance from the intersection as the spot where Mr. Clean was positioned. The moon hung low on the horizon, like a swollen yellow eye watching my preparations.

  “Juice up, Mr. Clean,” I called to the jinn. “I need all you can give me.” One of the primary roles of any familiar is to flow a little extra juice for its master. A normal familiar could flow a little extra—Mr. Clean could flow a lot. I expected to need all of it. The real question was whether it would kill me.

  When I’d summoned the jinn all those years before, I’d had no idea what to expect. It was my coming-out party as a young sorceress. It was a way of announcing myself to the unseen world, letting it take its measure of me and commanding its respect. I’d called out blindly to the darkness and Mr. Clean had answered.

  This time, I’d be calling to Samael. That’s why I was performing the ritual in the place where the death curse had manifested him. That was the purpose for the angel statuette. It wasn’t just a subtle jab, though it was that, too—it was a way of crafting a connection, an association, between the entity, the magic, and me.

  I began the chant at a whisper, just as I had when I was a girl. My mind emptied until it was a hollow chamber filled only with the words, and the pattern behind the words. I stretched out my arms and called the untamed magic of the wasteland to me, and it coursed along the four roads like a torrent. The stones of my geomorph began to glow with an orange radiance, like jack-o’-lanterns on Halloween.

  “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night,” I chanted. “What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?” I’d never been much for poetry, but this verse had always held power for me, from the first time I’d heard it. When Rashan had taught me the summoning ritual, I’d known these were the words I would use to master it. When you’re really on your game, magic feels right.

  As the words gained volume, a hot wind blew in from the desert and lifted the hair from my shoulders. The wasteland itself awoke from its long slumber, and it breathed. Dark clouds rolled in and a bolt of lighting flashed down from the cloudless sky. It struck the center of the crossroads and the angel statuette was illuminated with electric-blue witch-light.

  I took that power into me, all of it, and I reached out to Mr. Clean to take his as well. He screamed as I violated him, gorging myself on his magic like a vampire at a soft, wet throat.

  “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,” I shouted into the roar of the wind and the maelstrom of magic.

  And Samael came.

  Black smoke roiled in along all four roads to converge in the center of the intersection. A form appeared, like a hard-edged darkness against the night, a hundred feet tall. I saw a ragged outline, snapping like the folds of a tattered robe, or maybe just a jagged tear in the world that opened onto another place, a place of unrelenting blackness.

  The towering form gained solidity and details began to emerge. The figure held a massive iron sword and wore an iron crown. The face was in shadow, but I could tell that it looked upon me because the body was covered with hundreds, thousands, of eyes, each peering out at me from the darkness when the folds of the cloak shifted, never blinking.

  The maelstrom I had created turned at the center of the crossroads, drawing this being down into the statuette. Like Abishanizad, a spirit of earth and air as old as the world, it would be caught in that relentless pull and be bound to the plastic angel. I would imprison it by my will and power and make it my slave.

  Or not.

  Samael spoke, and hearing his voice was like stroking out. My head exploded, my body lost all feeling, and I collapsed to the ground, utterly paralyzed.

  “I am called Samael,” he said. “I am sorrow and loss. I serve the God on the Mountain and you have no power over me.” He lifted the iron sword and brought it down on the angel statuette. The blow didn’t so much cleave it as vaporize it, and the dust was scattered on the raging wind.

  The figure turned and a thousand eyes looked down at me where I lay prostrated in the dirt. And what I felt wasn’t fear, it was despair. It was the abject hopelessness that one can only experience when death is inevitable and only oblivion awaits.

  Samael was the Old Testament made manifest. My own faith, such as it was, was built upon that ancient foundation, but it was mostly about the possibility of salvation from it, through grace and redemption. There was no redemption here. There was only wrath and punishment. There was only retribution.

  The towering figure of the Angel of Death vanished and was replaced by Samael’s human form. The wind died as suddenly as it had risen and the night sky cleared. Samael walked over to me and crouched on his haunches. Strength gradually returned to my body and I struggled to sit up.

  Samael grinned at me. “Let’s hear it,” he said.

  “Hear what?�
� I gasped, fighting to pull the air back into my lungs.

  “A snappy one-liner. A sarcastic gibe. You know, talk a little trash.”

  I laughed bitterly, shaking my head. “What do you call it? The ‘bravado of the damned’? You’ve heard it a thousand times, and you still don’t understand it.”

  “It’s nothing more than impudence. It’s pride.” Samael paused, and then spat out a single word. “Sin.”

  I shook my head again. “No. You’re stronger than I am. Fine. Maybe you’ll kill me in a couple days and there’s nothing I can do about it. Too bad for me.”

  “At least you’ve come to accept your fate.”

  “But why? Is it because you’ve earned your strength? Is it because you’ve worked for your power? Is it even the luck of the draw? Hell, no. The fucking game is rigged. Someone decided that you’d be stronger than me, that you’d have the power of life and death over me, so that’s the way it is. Okay, no use crying about it. But don’t expect me to be impressed. You haven’t done anything to earn my respect. You’re a fucking tool.”

  “It’s the same in your world. You expected Benny to respect you, just because you had more power.”

  “Bullshit. That’s the luck of the draw. Benny and I are the same. We’re both human. So maybe I’ve got more juice than Benny, and maybe my boss has more than me. All men aren’t created equal, at least in the underworld. We accept that. But at least the deck wasn’t stacked ahead of the game.”

  Samael laughed. “You think it’s random?”

  “I know it is.”

  “And yet, you must know that magic is the pattern within the fabric. You must know this, or you would have no command over it.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, and shrugged. I’d been philosophizing on precisely that subject as I set up the summoning ritual.

  “So you know that magic is pattern, and yet you believe that the gift of it is random, without pattern? Do you not sense a contradiction in that? That everything else about magic is pattern, order, but those who are given to command it are not chosen, but are only a product of chance?”