by Nazri Noor
I peeled off my shirt, just then realizing how I was still sweaty and probably a little bloody from the scuffle with the demons. I sighed as cool air rushed over my skin, my tattoos faintly glowing as I did. Though calling them tattoos is pretty inaccurate, really. Generally, a person asks to be tattooed. A person picks the stuff that goes on his skin.
My grimy full-length mirror showed me the eerie collection of swirls and runes and glyphs that marked my body, from my stomach all the way up to my shoulders. At times they just sat there in their odd, pale shade of yellow. Sometimes, especially when I was excited or agitated, they glowed gold. And when they did, my skin would get hot in all the places the sigils occupied. Never enough to hurt, mind you. They never did burn as badly as the first day they showed up on my body, scarring me forever, that first day that the angels visited.
I know now that the glyphs came to me shortly after my father died. I never knew him. It explained why my mom could never give me a straight answer about our family. She never really knew him, either. It was a one-night thing. That was all she told me, when I was old enough to understand. And that just happened to be the same year she died, when I was almost seventeen. Time had passed, but I still thought about her. I always would.
It was a strange way of passing on his power, but Samyaza, king of the fallen, had his own assortment of glyphs, or so I was told. And that was how it worked with us fallen and nephilim. The sigils were meant to seal away our divine abilities, a punishment from heaven itself for our taint on all of existence, for the sins of our fathers.
My eighteenth birthday was the day I awakened to all things supernatural. When the glyphs appeared, they appeared with golden fire. I thought I was dying, the way the sigils felt like they were being seared into my skin. It was like being branded by intricate invisible irons, like a suit of white-hot armor was pressing forcibly into my body, leaving its imprints there.
A small squad of angels came that same day to kill me for the abomination I was, my soul suddenly a huge, flashing signal on the map due to my awakening. I cut off one of their arms in self-defense, using a sword that miraculously appeared in my hands. That was when I discovered my command of the Vestments.
Raziel explained how. Not the why of it, exactly, only enough to inform me that I had some kind of bizarre mystical access to the armories of heaven. That sword I used to kill the three demons, that was borrowed from the Vestments. I could call on different things depending on the situation, all of them armaments used by the celestial host in battle. Generally I preferred the sword, and most times a kite shield when I wasn’t feeling like cutting people open. Never together, though. I’d worn myself out trying to retrieve more than one thing at a time from the Vestments, hence the dependence on the good old improvised garbage lid.
And yet, for all of the battle-readiness the Vestments afforded me, none of it exactly translated into a marketable skill. Was I really going to hire myself out as a killer, or a mystical mercenary? Like I needed even more heat on me. I sighed, watching my glyphs shift as my chest rose and fell. Okay, so maybe I was flexing a little, too. Daily exercise never hurt anybody. I tilted my head, wondering if my little joke with Florian had any merit.
“Maybe I should just sell my body instead,” I grumbled miserably. I stared at myself in the mirror, my fringe of hair falling over eyes that I’d repeatedly been told looked so much like my father’s. I flexed my muscles a little more, turning this way and that. “I’m pretty enough. I think.”
I sighed again. I had a burnout dryad for a roommate and an angel with no real understanding of the modern world for company, one who either had access to some really impressive designer knockoffs or secretly had the power to magic them into existence for himself. Nothing for it, then. I had to do something to make rent. And I really, really had to find some way to keep myself hidden from all these demons and angels and entities.
That settled it. I needed to drop by the Black Market.
6
There are certain parts of the world accessible only to those who know where to find them. Past the horizon, between strangely-angled corners, and in the layers of reality just behind our own, that’s where the supernatural is hiding. The normals don’t need to know about that stuff, all the tethers that link the domiciles of bizarre, terrible entities to the city of Valero, or the weird and wonderful interdimensional shopping center everyone in the arcane underground has come to know as the Black Market.
Somewhere near Valero’s central business district is what’s known as Silk Road, a painfully high-end shopping strip that attracts the city’s wealthy along with tourists in search of wildly expensive designer goods. I sauntered among the richies, my hands in my pockets as I ignored the sidelong glances of people who clearly didn’t think I belonged there. Silk Road was beautiful, admittedly, lined with trees on either side of the boulevard. The air itself smelled expensive, this lingering scent of orange blossoms and geraniums. It smelled like money, and power, and privilege.
Somewhere along Silk Road itself is a manhole surrounded by caution tape. This manhole has always been open, and it’s always been bewitched to ward away the normals. Non-magical people passing by will know it for the nuisance it is and give it a wide berth. Admit it. Do you ever give a construction site or any kind of public maintenance work a second glance?
That’s how the arcane underground thrives in the modern world, by hiding in plain sight. The manhole is a portal to the Black Market, and all you have to do is hop in. I’d been a couple of times, accompanied by my same old buddies who showed me around town when I was still new to Valero, the boys that everyone had come to collectively call the Boneyard. A ragtag bunch of misfits if ever there was one, and it was a miracle that I was welcomed at all. Actually, maybe I belonged better than I thought. You had a vampire, a werewolf, a lich, a necromancer, a shadow mage, and me, one half of a fallen angel.
I scratched under my shirt as I stood over the open manhole, my mind foggy with reminiscence. I was right at home with the Boneyard, in a sense. But I couldn’t stay with them. I missed my friends, sure, hadn’t been in touch with them since I left, but I had to leave to protect them, because of what happened.
Belphegor, specifically. Belphegor was what happened, him and his damn favors. And bad things wanted me. Bad people, bad entities. I’d taken some artifacts that didn’t belong to me, and their owners were going to catch up with me before long. Leaving the Boneyard forever was the best way to protect my friends from the things that wanted to find me: from the trickster god, the demon prince, and the archangel that were bound to have Mason Albrecht on their shit list.
But now I had to keep myself safe, and I could only hope that the Black Market would have what I needed to help me disappear, put me into my own private witness protection program. I held my breath, walked out into thin air, and fell through the manhole.
I kept falling for what felt like minutes. The first time I came to this place, my heart pounded with sustained panic at the thought of being caught in some eternal, ever-plummeting tunnel. But just as I thought that the descent was going to go on forever, my feet landed lightly on the uniformly black pavement underfoot. I blinked at the surrounding darkness, comforted by its familiarity. Black buildings, black booths, and black streets, the darkness only really broken up by odd scatterings of neon lighting, or magical firelight, whatever sort of flashy signage the bazaar’s residents could scrounge up. And the biggest sign of them all hung from some arches above the promenade, right where the entrance of Silk Road would have been.
“Welcome to the Black Market,” I read out loud, the electrifying pinks and yellows of the enchanted lights searing my eyeballs.
The best way to describe the Black Market is to frame it as the negative equivalent of Silk Road. Here, everything was constructed out of an odd black material, something like velvet midnight. And as the name suggests, this was where the denizens of the underground went whenever they needed something you couldn’t exactly pick up from your c
orner bodega, especially if acquiring that something was more than a little bit illegal. Eye of newt, some magically prepped rolls of blank parchment, a miniature pet dragon, that sort of thing.
But I was in the market – aha – for a special kind of acquisition. I paced among the stalls and the stores, making sure my hood was pulled up over my head as I perused the bazaar’s many bizarre wares. I wanted two things, specifically. One was a way to disguise myself and hide my spiritual signature from anyone who wanted to hunt me down for whatever wicked purpose, be they gods, angels, demons, or the Lorica itself. I had friends at the Lorica, sure, but even they couldn’t know I was still hanging around in Valero. It’d put them at risk.
The second thing was quick cash. There had to be something I could do for work in the Black Market. I knew they had a notice board for odd jobs and errands somewhere. Maybe that could give me some leads. I could probably count on Florian for some extra muscle as well. At that point, just the thought of sleeping in a cardboard box out in Valero was enough motivation for me to do just about anything to earn enough for rent, anything short of mugging an old lady. Unless she was a witch. Like a bad one, you know? The kind that eats children.
But where to start? I had to hope that at least one of the enchanters working there would be happy to trade favors in exchange for the right kind of magical artifact I could use to functionally disappear from the world. I just wanted to be left alone. And yes, I definitely realize that my plan of exchanging favors sounds exactly like the kind of thing Belphegor would do, infernal contracts and all. Please don’t remind me.
I turned down a side street that was known for renting space to the underground’s very best enchanters, that is, mages who specialized in imbuing mundane objects with unique magical powers. Surely someone could help.
“Help me, please, someone!”
Or be helped, apparently. The voice had come from a young woman who was doing her level best to chase someone down in a pair of clacking stilettos. That someone was a man in a hooded jacket not unlike my own, running at top speed towards me, clutching what looked like a leather satchel in one hand.
Okay. A textbook mugging, then. I sighed. The last thing I expected to do at the Black Market was help someone out myself. I clenched my teeth, parts of me fighting the impulse to be a decent human being and help the woman in the painful shoes, but maybe that kind of thing went with being part angel. It was irritating, but damn it, I knew that helping was going to be the Right Thing to Do.
I pressed my teeth gently into the surface of my tongue, focusing my mind and my magics on that distant, amorphous place that was the source of all the stuff I could dimensionally borrow. Heaven’s armory, as Raziel liked to put it, but whatever. Where the weapons came from didn’t matter, just that the Vestments responded at all.
A flash of golden light emanated from my hand as the very thing I needed appeared in my grasp: a blunt, heavy object, perfect for smashing people’s faces in. It was a nice, healthy alternative to swords, because sometimes you had to hurt someone without actually terminating them.
I gripped my weapon tight as the man approached. He hadn’t even seemed to register me, and was still sprinting in my direction. Perfect, then. I took my swing, aiming for his chest, the bludgeon in my hand whistling through the air as I brought it around in a wide, glittering arc.
The crunch my weapon made against the man’s chest was satisfying, as was the loud, painful thud of his body crashing onto the black pavement. He cried out twice, his back arching as he struggled to process which bit of impact had been more painful. I looked down at the mace in my hand, wagering that it was probably just a little harder and much more agonizing than slamming into the ground. I lifted the mace to my chest, smiling as it returned to the ethers. Just in time. The Black Market’s roving enforcers were arriving.
Hey, they didn’t nickname me Mace for nothing.
7
The gathered crowd of lookie-loos parted as the Black Market’s enforcers sternly and politely shouted for them to get the hell out of the way. The thief’s face was ashen when the guards clapped him in magical irons and led him off. I was a little relieved to learn that I hadn’t roughed him up too badly. Maybe a fracture in a rib somewhere or something, nothing too permanent. Like I said, I wasn’t planning to kill the guy.
One of the guards nodded at me gruffly as he left, and I nodded in return. Sure, the Black Market had its share of extremely dangerous and extremely illegal goods and services, but we weren’t animals. You still needed guards there, some people to keep the law, and maybe some able-bodied, leanly muscled dudes like me to help out in times of actual trouble.
I picked up the leather satchel that the thief had failed to abscond with, meeting the stiletto lady halfway as she click-clacked towards me, her hands clasped together in gratitude.
“Thank you so much,” she breathed, one hand squeezing my forearm, the other already wrenching the satchel out of my clutches. I didn’t put up a fight. Her fingers ended in some very sturdy-looking nails, painted to disguise the fact that they held their own special enchantments. I knew ensorcelled press-on nails when I saw them. I’ve met my share of magical drag queens. Cool people, hella strong.
But this wasn’t one of them. The woman must have been in her early twenties, her bangs cut straight across her forehead in a lush fringe that framed a deceptively innocent face. Her eyes studied me with quiet intelligence, sweeping across my body, as if gathering information. She wore a severe, high-collared white blouse and an equally severe pair of high-waisted gray trousers. Her outfit was fashionable, in short, but, if the stilettos were any indication, not exactly very functional. And I won’t even get into the assortment of jewelry festooning her fingers, wrists, and throat.
“You’re a lifesaver,” the woman breathed again. She seemed like the type who would breathe all her words, which I didn’t very much mind. But I could tell that this damsel bit was all an act. Here was a woman who was only playing the role and going through the motions. I was going to have to play right back, I realized, when she turned right around and started clicking her heels in the opposite direction.
“Hey,” I called out, as the crowd gathered around us started to thin. “That’s it? No kiss on the cheek, no big reward?”
She turned over her shoulder to answer, but never stopped walking. “The kiss I can afford, but no rewards. Sorry. No dice.” Her voice was normal now, clear, confident, resolute. Those words hadn’t been breathed that time, that was for sure.
Now, I promise I’m not that kind of douche, but the way stiletto lady had just dumped me on the street without so much as a “Here’s five dollars, thanks for caving that guy’s chest in” was bugging me. Call me desperate, but I knew that whatever she had in that satchel was precious, and that she was more than capable of offering me a tidy reward. I knew that because her face was splashed right onto a massive billboard above her own shop. Beatrice Rex, the sign read, next to a magically animated winking portrait of her face. My hunch was right. She was an enchantress.
I wasn’t just going to let her off easy. She threw evil glances over her shoulder as I followed her, my hands still turned up in a questioning shrug. She huffed as she swept through the open French doors of her atelier, making a beeline for her counter, then placing the satchel gingerly on its surface. I stepped in, giving the shop a casual glance, whistling as I took in the sights.
Rows and rows of mannequins of all shapes and sizes shifted positions as they posed like models on a runway, Beatrice’s creations pinned lovingly to their bodies. More garments hung from racks or sat idle on neatly stacked shelves, waiting for the right owner to come along and pick up, say, a flameproof caftan, made for the fashion-conscious dragon slayer, or a shawl magically enchanted to warm up in the winter and keep you cool in the summer. There was just one other shopper in the store, a man checking out a rack of coats towards the back. Beatrice seemed to pay him no mind.
“This is a fancy place you’ve got here,” I
said.
Beatrice cocked an eyebrow at me, shooting me another of her patented dirty glares. “It really is,” she said, giving me a sticky smile. “And I’m really so, sooo grateful that you helped with my little predicament, but I’m just sooo busy. I need to get back to my work.”
I shook my head. “Look, normally I wouldn’t be so pressed about this, but I’m pretty certain I did you a solid by retrieving your satchel for you. Whatever’s in it is clearly valuable and probably costs a bomb. And pro tip, maybe invest in sneakers for the next time something like this happens.”
Her nose wrinkled. “This never happens here. Not in all the months I’ve run this store, okay? Nobody just waltzes in and snatches raw materials right off the counter. It’s so barbaric.”
“I agree. Which is why I think you’ll agree that I deserve a nice, handsome little reward for my trouble.”
Her face scrunched up a little more, the peaks of her cheeks going red.
“What’s in the bag, Beatrice?”
She went just a little bit redder.
I nodded at the satchel. “What’s in the bag?” Still no answer. I sauntered up to the counter, placed my hands to either side of the satchel, and gave her my smarmiest smirk. “Riddle me this, Beatrice. You’re a pretty established enchantress. I can tell. Some of those rings you’re wearing probably have dangerous spells chambered in them. Why didn’t you just blast the guy who stole from you if the stuff in the satchel wasn’t so important?”
She rolled her eyes, then stamped her foot. “Ooh, you’re so annoying. I almost wish that stupid burglar had gotten away with it. Fine! Here. You can look, but don’t touch.”
With all the reverence of a holy man handling the relics of a saint, Beatrice unclasped the satchel and lifted out a wooden box. Nothing about the box itself was spectacular, because it was all about the contents. She lifted the lid, and I had to stop myself from gasping.