Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice Book 2)

by Ben Reeder

  “Dude's heart's in the right place, it's just his brain that's misplaced,” Lucas offered.

  “I know where it is, and it's a wonder he can sit down,” Wanda said.

  “Guys, chill. Look, Dani, I can protect you from pretty much any spell he can cast. He can't do anything without a circle, I'm betting.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Dani asked.

  “Because if he had more serious mojo going on, he would have been able to fight me when I took his deck last night. But if we're going to find Crystal, we have to find Julian.”

  “I can help you with that,” Donovan said.

  Lucas and Wanda gave him a disbelieving look, while I went more for a skeptical scowl to balance things out.

  “He goes to the same school I do. I asked around. There's a place where the trenchcoat crowd hangs out, near the Square.”

  “All right, then,” I said as I shucked my pack. “I'm gonna make you a protection amulet, Dani, then Lucas and Wanda, I need you guys to get her out of the house for a while, until we can find Julian.”

  “But won't the amulet do the job?” Dani asked, as I pulled the bag from Mitternacht's out of my pack and sat cross-legged on the floor.

  “Between that and your home’s threshold, it'll stop the bulk of the spells he could cast. But he'll probably target the places he thinks you'd be with things other than spells. And this is the safest place you can think of.”

  “But if she's not here, won't he just—” Donovan started.

  Lucas shushed him as I set out the silver amulet and supplies I'd bought from his grandfather's store. Moonstone, a double-terminated quartz crystal, sea salt, sage, and cedar were set on the floor, and I pulled my own tools from my bag. My black-handled athame, my abalone shell, and my white working candle would have to do for a protection amulet on the fly.

  I lit the tea candle with my Zippo, so anything I lit from it would come from a more pure flame, and picked up the silver amulet. I'd chosen a Celtic cross for Dani, an old symbol with meaning for both Christians and pagans. Its true meanings were long lost, at least to most people, so they tended to apply their own. For my purposes, that worked just fine. The circle around the intersection of the arms would provide the right shape for the protective ward symbols, and the ends of the four arms would hold the runes for body, mind, heart and spirit.

  I lit the end of the sage bundle and the cedar needles, then set them to smolder in the shell. The wooden handle of the athame warmed to my hand when I picked it up. I drew on the touchstone in my front pocket and added the other two stones in my hand. Magick surged through my arm and the sound it made in my head was beautiful. For a moment, I just sat there and enjoyed the feel of it flowing through me. But all I could spare was a moment. All that magick needed a place to go, something to do.

  I willed the power through the copper blade of the athame and pulled the protection ward symbols from my memory. In my mind's eye, I saw them as I wanted them to appear on the amulet, blazing with blue light, then tapped the power of the moonstone and the quartz. Both stones had a strong protective energy about them, and by channeling my magick through them, I added a little bit of that aspect to the amulet. My own instinct was to draw it out with pure brute force, but I found that the stones added their own aspects easily enough. My eyes closed on their own as I felt the magick just . . . flow.

  Nothing I'd ever done before could have prepared me for the rush of power that coursed through me. Always before, I had pushed and wrestled with magick, making it do what I wanted through sheer force of will. The words of my spells, the symbols, all of those had channeled power to do what I told it to do. This spell seemed to flow on its own, as if it knew what needed to be done and couldn't wait to get to it. The symbols seemed to reverberate in my head, each one like a note of beautiful music as I imagined it, all coming together to in a melody that brought tears to the eye and made the heart beat faster. My hand moved on its own, and it seemed like the symbols were leading me through their own creation, instead of me setting them in place.

  Magick filled my head and washed over me. I could feel the hair on my arms stand on end as my whole body tingled with the touch of something wondrous. The last of the symbols coursed through me and found its place on the top arm of the cross. I set the athame down, but the spell didn't seem to be done and I didn't really want it to end. My hands cupped the amulet and magick kept flowing into it. The backs of my hands felt warm, as if they were being held from below by a pair of gentle hands. I didn't understand what I was doing, but something did, and I wasn't about to argue with it.

  As if that agreement was all that the outside force was waiting for, I felt a gentle nudge against my palm. My hand opened and I felt the cross lift away from my palm, caressed by an intricate pattern of mystic energy that I could see even though my eyes were closed. A blue-white glow was visible through my eyelids, and I finally opened my eyes. The glow faded and the amulet slowly descended until it lay warm, smooth, and perfect, on my palm.

  Dani was looking at me with a look on her face of disbelief, mingled with hope. Lucas had a huge grin on his face, while tears streaked down Wanda's slack face as she touched her pentacle reverently. Donovan was frowning like he'd just seen a gorilla sing opera.

  “This is yours,” I told Dani.

  She reached for the amulet as I held it out and plucked it delicately from my hand.

  “What's the price of your gift?” Donovan asked as she slipped it over her head.

  “It's not a gift,” I said. My voice felt distant, disconnected from me. “It was never mine to give. It was always hers. I just . . . carried it for her for a while.” The words sounded right, even though I didn't really understand where I was getting them. I had the feeling that there was more to what I was saying than I understood. All I knew was that it felt like my mind was quiet for a little bit, like someone had turned the volume way down on my thoughts.

  “Wow, Chance,” Wanda whispered. “Is it always like that?”

  “No. This was . . . this was different.” I gathered my stuff as I spoke and tucked it away in my backpack.

  “That was beautiful. I could feel it . . . here,” she put her fingers over her heart. “It was like . . . hearing the voice of the Goddess.”

  “I think we all felt it,” Lucas said.

  Dani gave an enthusiastic nod, while Donovan's head inclined reluctantly.

  “I still don't like it, but if the only way to fight dark magic is with more magic, then it'll have to do for now,” he said as I got to my feet. “I've got my bike here. You can ride with me, Chance.”

  Lucas inclined his head at Donovan and gave me a meaningful look. He still didn't like the guy. I wasn't sure about him myself, but he was a lead on Julian. I'd have to take that risk.

  “Take Dani with you, Lucas. Hell, take her to Dante's or something. Just make sure it's some place she wouldn't normally go. Steve and I will go find Julian.”

  Half an hour later, Steve and I were getting off his bike. He'd told me it was an '83 BMW K100, which meant a big bunch of not much to me, but he was proud of it. He'd parked us at the top of the same parking garage Lucas had chosen last night. While he locked the helmets to the bike frame, I went to the edge of the garage and looked out over the Pittsburgh district’s upscale version of downtown, which at the moment was pretty much limited to the theater and the other parking garage.

  “We need to talk,” Donovan said from behind me.

  “When a girl says that on TV, it's usually a break up,” I said without looking at him. “But our relationship hasn't gotten there yet, so you're just scaring me now.”

  “I'm serious. You have to stop using magic. It can only have one source, and we both know it's not a good one. I'm not saying that to judge you. I just have to warn you, that's all.”

  “Gee, thanks. So, when are you gonna stop using yours?” I asked.

  “Chance, I don't use magic. If I did, I wouldn't be saying anything to you,” he said earnestly.
r />   “You really believe you've got room to talk, don't you?”

  “Of course I do. The Bible forbids dabbling in those kinds of things.”

  “You knocked my shield spell down with a freaking baseball bat, man. That thing's tough enough to stop cars, and you're strong enough to drop it with a Louisville Slugger. You can sense 'evil' from people, and that ain't magick?”

  “Well, no,” he said, but his voice wasn't as confident as it was before.

  “Why not? Does it have a label on it somewhere that says 'Made in Heaven' or something? Cuz it sure isn't normal!”

  “Because I use it to fight evil.” He was grasping at straws now, and I started to feel like a heel. I'd gotten him to where he was thinking again, though.

  “So, you don't know where it comes from, but the way you use it makes it right?”

  He hesitated, and I pressed on.

  “Magick is a tool, man. We both use it. I know where mine comes from. You don't. And believe me, I know a lot more about evil than you do.” I turned and headed for the stairwell. His footsteps sounded behind me a moment later. Another thought occurred to me as I took the steps down, and I stopped on one of the landings to face him again.

  “Your parents don’t disappear for a couple of days each month, do they?” I asked. “Right around the full moon?”

  “Wouldn’t matter if they did. I’m adopted,” he answered with a shrug.

  “I was thinking you might be a born Were, but that still doesn’t explain the Spidey sense for evil.”

  “This only started last summer,” he said. “If it was something I was born with, wouldn’t it have started earlier?” I nodded.

  “Just a thought,” I told him as we hit street level.” We can figure it out later.”

  Saturday night was just as busy on the Square, so we skirted around the west side and crossed College near the same alley we'd met in the night before. Steve took the lead from there, heading north down Boonville until he hit the railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill. We made our way along the alley that paralleled the tracks until we saw flashing red and blue lights. Blue and white New Essex P.D. cruisers were parked in a semi-circle, and two silver Essex County Sheriff's patrol cars blocked the street at each end of the arc of PD cars.

  “Cops,” Steve grumbled.

  “Thanks, Doctor Obvious, I would never have known.”

  Steve's pace slowed but I never let mine falter. The quickest way to get a cop's attention was to act nervous as soon as you saw them, I'd learned. Besides, it wasn't like I had anything to hide at the moment. It was an odd thing for me, and I wanted to enjoy it a little. As we got closer, I saw a familiar figure emerge from the crowd of uniforms. An easy six feet tall, with dark brown skin and a lean frame that I knew from harrowing experience could run faster than me.

  The last time I'd seen Demetrius Collins, he'd been standing over the body of the alpha werewolf I'd just killed, ready to tell the police he'd shot the man in self-defense. I owed the man big time for that. His curly black hair was cut shorter now, not much more than stubble next to his skull, and he wore an off-the-rack tan suit instead of an officer's uniform. Light caught the badge at his belt, and I saw the round sheriff's deputy's star instead of the P.D. shield he used to wear. Officer Collins was Deputy Collins now, it seemed. I filed that away for later as my eyes went to a gap in the wall of black uniforms.

  A guy in a blue jumpsuit was taking pictures of something on the ground, and in the flash, I caught sight of a crimson beret on the ground. The photographer stepped back and motioned to a uniformed officer, who covered something on the ground with a white sheet.

  The camera's flash went off again, this time lighting up a section of the concrete retaining wall, and my blood froze in my veins. Sigils in an ancient language crawled across the wall in a circle that almost seemed to move in the micro-second burst of light from the camera.

  “Damn,” I muttered as we kept walking. I could see red starting to stain the sheet on the ground.

  “Who d'you think it is?” Steve asked as he got a better look at the scene.

  “I'd bet it's . . . it was Julian.”

  “Well, then, that solves most of our problems,” Steve said flatly. “With him dead, the spell he put on Dani's friend will be broken, and things can get back to normal.”

  “It's Dani's girlfriend, man, and I don't think it's that simple.”

  “Her . . . girlfriend? As in, you know, girlfriend girlfriend?” Steve's eyes went a little wider as I gave him a nod to confirm what he was putting together.

  “Yeah, but the thing is, someone had to give Julian that Despair Deck, and I'm betting that same someone's behind both Crystal's disappearing act and Julian suddenly getting a bad case of dead. So, no, our problems are sooooo not solved.”

  We got closer to the scene, and I saw a knot of black trenchcoats gathered near one of the cruisers. There were a couple of faces I recognized from the night before, and it looked like one of them recognized me. His hand came up with a finger pointed right at me. Collins looked over his shoulder and I could see his face fall as he reached for his belt with his left hand.

  “So, what do we do now?” Steve asked.

  “Well, you need to look surprised.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I'm about to run,” I told him before I turned and broke into a sprint. Several voices yelled for me to stop, and I could hear shoes slapping pavement behind me as I rounded the corner of the nearest building. Dr. Corwyn had started me on a training regimen almost as soon as I became his apprentice. Aside from a rep-heavy weight routine, he had me run every morning and after five months of it, I was pretty fast. More importantly, I could keep up a sprint for several hundred yards.

  As I poured on the speed on the straightaway, I risked a look back over my shoulder. Collins was pulling ahead of four cops and he was gaining on me. I hurdled a low brick wall and put on a last burst of desperate speed before I got to the end of the building. There was a slap as leather soles hit pavement, then the crunch of someone running across gravel, and only one someone. All I had was a split second to look over my shoulder before I was around the corner. It was Collins, looking pissed, with the group of cops nearly a hundred yards behind him shaking their heads.

  With the building blocking the view of the rest of the cops, I took a few more steps and shucked my pack off. My fingers found the zipper for the small outer pocket and yanked it open. Inside was a neglinom charm that I'd taken from a necromancer a few months ago. I slipped the cord through the carrying loop at the top of the pack and threaded the amulet through the free loop to secure it as Collins rounded the corner.

  He never broke stride as he tackled me, and we went spilling into the dirt.

  “Damn it, kid, now I have to arrest you!” he snarled as he grabbed an arm and pushed my face into the gravel. “You just had to make it harder on yourself, didn't you?”

  “Yeah, it's a teen thing,” I said into the ground.

  He yanked my right arm out and planted a knee in my back.

  “Need to ask you a big favor, Collins.”

  “Now ain't the time, kid,” he told me as the handcuffs ratcheted around my right wrist.

  “Need you to take my backpack and hold on to it, man.”

  He grabbed my left wrist and pulled it behind my back.

  “Why the hell would I do somethin' stupid like that?” he demanded.

  I felt the steel of the cuff start to close around my wrist and I knew I only had a couple more seconds left to convince him.

  “Because it's got everything you need to convict me of Julian's murder in it.”

  My left hand stayed free for another heartbeat.

  “Aw, shit,” he cursed. “Did you do this?”

  “Hell, no!” I said indignantly.

  “Had to ask, kid. Last son of a bitch you killed really needed it.” His knee came away from my back, and he hauled me to my feet. “That whole savin' my ass part didn't hurt either.”

/>   “Kind of worked out good for both of us.” It only took a couple of steps to grab the pack and hand it to him. “The amulet'll keep anyone from noticing it, but it doesn't work on video cameras.”

  “Like in an interrogation room. What if I lose track of it?”

  “It only works on one sense: sight. You've held it, so it's real to other senses for you.”

  “I still have to arrest you.” He took my left wrist and hauled it back behind me again. The harsh scrape of the cuff closing echoed in my ears.

  “Yeah, I know. And Collins? We gotta stop meeting like this.”

  “Can it. You have that whole right to remain silent thing goin' on. I suggest you exercise it, because anything you say can be held against you. You've got the right to an attorney. If you can't afford one, one will be provided for you. You got all that?”

  “I got it.”

  “Good, now shut up and act like a troubled teenager.”

  Chapter 8

  ~ Never underestimate the power of the occasional good deed. ~

  Sammael & Berith employee manual.

  “It doesn't look good for you, kid,” the guy playing bad cop said. His I.D. card read 'Simms, D.' “Lots of witnesses saying you and the victim got into an argument the night before he died. We got the victim telling all of his buddies about this, um,” he flipped through his notes, “whaddya call it?”

  “A notebook?” I asked, pointing at the battered little pad he was holding. What was it about cops and mangled notepads? I wondered if there was a hidden closet somewhere that had them already half beat up and bent.

  “You think you're smart, don't you, boy?” he asked. I gave him a level look.

  “I think I'm innocent. Well, not guilty, at least.” I leaned back and studied my reflection in the two-way mirror that took up most of the wall behind Simms. Collins had given me a couple of scrapes down the right side of my face when he'd tackled me, and the ripple in the mirror made them look pretty crooked.

  The interrogation room was the same shade of gray it had been since the first time I'd been hauled in when I was ten, probably even the same paint. Only the door broke up the wall on my right, and the video camera in the black plastic bulb over my left shoulder gave the only other detail to the room.