The Infernal Heart

by R. L. King

  The sigils were familiar—more carefully written and refined than those from the recent murder scenes, but nonetheless clearly the same language.

  And now Stone knew what Archie had been doing with all the skin and blood he’d had his henchmen collecting from their victims—and why he was so motivated to get his slimy hands on the contents of the bag that he’d risk showing himself in public.

  To finish that which I have started…

  These pages represented his efforts the last time he’d been on earth—efforts that had been interrupted when Goodwin and Eustace had finally managed to defeat him. Stone had no idea how much of Archie’s work these pages amounted to, but no doubt if the demon could get hold of them, it would put him that much closer to whatever his ultimate plan was.

  Stone’s first impulse was to destroy the pages. It was difficult to resist the temptation to simply burn them. From the feel of the magic around them and even the crawling sensation he got when he touched them, he was sure they were too evil to be allowed to exist.

  He couldn’t do that yet, though. For once, it wasn’t because of his insatiable curiosity to learn about everything that came within his sphere—not much, anyway. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to read these things, to allow the vile rituals they no doubt depicted to pollute his consciousness. He had no idea how Archie had managed to corrupt Father Maltby and the other people in the area, and no illusions that the demon wasn’t frighteningly powerful. He’d have to be very careful.

  But he couldn’t destroy them yet—for two reasons. The first was that he had to have at least a general idea of what Archie was planning, if he had any hope of interfering with it. The second, and more dangerous, was that if he could figure out Archie’s plans, perhaps he could use the pages to bait a trap, to lure the demon somewhere when he was prepared. He was tired of Archie jumping him at unexpected times and places. It was time to go on the offensive.

  His mind went back to the words from Robert Goodwin’s document: his speculation that, since Archie’s heart was indestructible on earth, the best way to deal with him would be to go to his own home plane, if he had any idea where it was located and how to get there. Perhaps Archie’s foul work would contain such a thing—something that might suggest where to start, at least. He didn’t expect to find Archie’s true name buried in the bloody sigils, but the demon had never expected anyone else to see these writings. Anything was possible. Magic was a very personal thing—it was, at least in Stone’s experience, impossible to create this kind of intricate spellwork without putting a piece of yourself into the effort.

  He retrieved his notes from his meeting with Ward and Eddie, along with Beal’s research, spread it all out on the table, and pulled the first page of Archie’s document toward him.

  It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Friday morning, Stone called the Stanford department office and got Laura. “Listen,” he said, “I’m going to need to take one more personal day. I was up all night working on a project, and I’m hoping to finish it up this weekend. Can you ask Kendra to take my one o’clock today?”

  “Of course,” she said. Her tone changed to one of concern. “Are you all right, Alastair? You sound odd. I can’t blame you, though, with people getting murdered right here on campus—”

  “I’m fine,” he assured her. He liked Laura, but when she got up a head of steam it was hard to get a word in. “As I said, just tired and quite busy on something time-sensitive. I’ll see you Monday.”

  “All right, then. Have a great weekend.”

  We’ll see if I’m even alive after this weekend. Then I’ll let you know.

  Before he headed to his lunch meeting with Beal, he gathered up Archie’s papers and Goodwin’s, put them back in their respective wrappings, and stowed them in a double-warded safe he kept in his attic workspace. The documents wouldn’t be as secure there as they would if he took them home to England, but Archie or his henchthings would have to get through four levels of warding and the safe itself in order to get at them. He hoped Simon Beal’s new information would prove useful somehow, but didn’t expect it would. If it didn’t, he’d have to study the material he had with even more care and see if he could get something else out of it. Perhaps he could come up with some kind of ritual that would let him tie the writings to Archie, especially if the demon had written them himself. If nothing else, it might lead him to Archie’s earthly location. For now, that might even be more practical—aside from the Overworld that connected the teleportation portals, he’d never traveled to another plane. He knew the theory and had some good reference material on the subject, but the practice was difficult, dangerous, and almost never offered sufficient benefit for him—or anyone else, as far as he knew—to attempt it.

  Not for the first time since he’d gotten involved in this whole Archie situation, he wished either his old master Desmond or Stefan Kolinsky were available for a consultation. Of all his mage associates, those two were probably the ones most likely to know about interdimensional travel. Well, them or Trevor Harrison, but he was even more unavailable than Desmond or Kolinsky.

  He was on his own with this one.

  So what else was new?

  He verified that his mobile phone was charged up, made sure Raider had food, water, and a clean litter box, and headed out. It was a good thing the cat genuinely seemed not to mind being alone a lot—he felt a bit guilty for being absent so often, and made a mental note to see if he could find someone else who might give Raider a better home after all this was over. He didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but he actually might miss the little beast. He’d never understood the appeal of pets before—Aubrey had a cranky old beagle who never did anything but sleep, which seemed rather pointless to Stone—but his time with Raider had shown him that having another living creature in the house, especially one who made few demands on his time, was self-cleaning, and who provided a handy sounding board when his human confidants weren’t available, wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

  Beal was waiting when he arrived at the hotel. He was dressed in his usual fuddy-duddy style and carried the leather briefcase, as always. Stone wondered if he slept with the thing.

  “How are you?” Beal asked. “Did you find Mr. Goodwin’s papers? I was so excited when you told me you might have a line on them. After all these years, it would be like finding hidden treasure!”

  Beal’s enthusiasm amused Stone—the gnomelike old man was like a little kid when it came to anything to do with his pet subject, which really seemed a bit strange given that his pet subject was an ancient language supposedly created by demons. Still, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. He’d once known a professor who practically emitted visible rays of happiness any time someone showed the slightest interest in a particular obscure species of prehistoric mollusk that he’d dedicated his entire professional career to studying. Academics could be like that.

  Even so, he couldn’t very well tell Beal that he’d broken into someone’s home and cracked a magical safe under their kitchen floor to obtain the papers. “I’m afraid it turned out to be a bust,” he lied. “They weren’t where they were supposed to be. But I’ve still got a couple more leads, so I’ll let you know if I turn anything up.”

  “Oh, that’s unfortunate,” Beal said. “You must have been so disappointed.”

  “It happens. I’m sorry I don’t have anything new to share with you, but I hope you’ll still show me what you’ve found about the demon.”

  “Of course, of course. And you must let me buy lunch today, since you did yesterday. What’s good around here?”

  “It’s quite all right—I’m happy to do it. Have you got a preference?”

  “I’ll eat anything,” Beal said. He clutched the briefcase. “I’m just excited to show you this new information and see what you make of it. I’ve even made you a copy.”

 
They ended up at a little bistro off University. Stone picked it partially because the food was good, but mostly because it wasn’t a popular lunchtime hangout for the student crowd and therefore wouldn’t be as packed. He slipped the hostess an extra twenty and asked her for a larger table in the back so they’d have more room to spread out their papers.

  Beal had barely sat down before he was digging in the briefcase. “I’d completely forgotten about this,” he said. “I’m sure I must have read it at some point, but as Patricia probably already told you, up until your call I’d put this research on a bit of a back burner since I wasn’t finding any new material. It was misfiled, which is why I missed it the first time when I was looking for information about the demon legend.” He frowned as he held it up, peering at it through his owlish glasses. “Also, to be completely honest, most of it doesn’t make a darned bit of sense to me.” He pushed it across the table. “This is the original, in case it matters, but as I said, I’ve made a copy for you.”

  Stone pulled it over and glanced at it, expecting to see either more mostly useless bits of speculation about the demon or repeats of accounts he’d already read. Instead, his gaze sharpened. This one was different from the ones Beal had shown him before. For one thing, it wasn’t written in the old man’s crabbed, precise script. It also wasn’t in English. He picked up the two sheets; on a quick skim through he identified bits in Latin, other bits in an obscure Latinate language used by some mages, and some of the sigil-based demonic language. The sheets also included a diagram which looked very much like a crudely-drawn ritual circle. He looked up at Beal. “Where did you get this?”

  The waitress came by at that moment. Beal waited until they’d given her their orders before replying. “I don’t even remember, to be honest. I think it came with some other material I got a couple of years ago, but I put it aside since, aside from the sigils, it wasn’t the direction I was looking to go. I can read the Latin, of course—I assume you can too?”

  Stone nodded distractedly, still fixed on the papers.

  “But I don’t know what that other language is. It looks rather like Latin, but it’s different enough that I can’t read it.”

  “It’s an occult language,” Stone said. “Used by so-called magicians, mostly back in the middle ages, to keep their spells and rituals from falling into the wrong hands.”

  “Indeed? Fascinating!” Beal perked up and pulled out the second copy of the pages. “Can you read that too?”

  “Yes.” Stone could barely keep his mind on the conversation as his gaze darted back and forth across the pages. “It talks about the demon coming to earth, and his plans to corrupt as many humans as he can manage when he gets here. Something about…how he gains more power as he gathers more worshippers.” That fit with what he’d learned from his study of Archie’s spells last night—as nearly as he could tell, it appeared that each spell in the collection was inscribed on the skin taken from a single victim, and written in that victim’s blood. So if that were true, then Archie was doing double duty with his murders: he was killing the victims to harvest their skin and blood to provide raw materials for his little project, and to collect their body parts to construct his custom-made earthly vessel. That meant it was possible he wasn’t done with his killings yet—even though he had a body now, he might not have enough blood and skin to supply him with materials he needed to complete his work.

  “Fascinating,” Beal said, trying to follow along. “This really is fascinating.”

  “It is indeed,” Stone said. “I’m beginning to think I might get quite an impressive paper out of this. Naturally I’ll give you all proper credit, Mr. Beal. I—”

  He stopped.

  “Dr. Stone?”

  Stone didn’t answer. He’d been focusing on the text, but suddenly a bit of detail in the crude ritual circle diagram had caught his eye. It included a word he didn’t recognize, repeated several times around the outer edge of the circle and once in the center. It wasn’t a word he was even sure he could pronounce, but as he pictured it in his mind, he could feel its magical resonance. He didn’t have to pronounce it. Visualizing it would be sufficient.

  Had he just discovered Archie’s true name?

  “Dr. Stone, are you all right?”

  “What?” He’d forgotten Beal was there. “Oh. Sorry. Sorry. Give me just a moment, trying to work something out.”

  He’d seen that word before, somewhere in the text. He flipped through it twice before he finally spotted it near the bottom of the second page, buried in a long paragraph of the magical Latin.

  …he, the one whose name we do not speak, and they who attend him, and he who betrayed him, the demon—” followed by the name he’d seen in the circle.

  Well, damn. Disappointment washed over him as quickly as the excitement had. It looked like it wasn’t Archie’s true name after all (he was sure that designation had to go along with ‘he, the one whose name we do not speak’), but apparently that of one of some demon that broke ranks with him thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, though, the circle didn’t look useful. Stone had seen hundreds of ritual circles in his magical career, and this one didn’t look like a summoning circle or even one used to contact the demon in question. If anything, it looked like a layman’s idea of what a “magical circle” might look like, complete with mismatched symbols, incorrect markings, and flourishes added for no other reason than to make it look more impressive. Junk-occult-shop stuff, good for nothing but fooling the rubes.

  But even so—a demon who had betrayed Archie. If the name were correct…

  “Dr. Stone?” Beal was looking at him with a mixture of concern, curiosity, and frustration. “Do you see something you’d like to share?”

  “Er—no. No, sorry.” He pointed at the circle. “I got a bit excited for a moment when I saw this, but on closer examination it’s not a proper circle. It doesn’t mean anything. Clearly drawn by someone who wasn’t familiar with occult practices. Pity, because the rest of this is bloody interesting.”

  Beal chuckled. “Not to worry, Dr. Stone. Believe me, I’m quite familiar with the thrill of discovery. In fact, I’ll let you keep the original if you like, since it’s not helpful to my own research.” He began gathering his other papers and carefully filing them away in the briefcase. “I want to thank you again for getting me excited about my research again, and I’m so glad I could be of some small help to you as well. I think I’ll probably head back to Los Angeles today or tomorrow, but you have my contact information. I’d love to hear from you, especially if you locate Mr. Goodwin’s papers.”

  “Of course,” Stone said. “And I’ll send you a copy of my paper when it’s finished. Thank you for everything, Mr. Beal.”

  He dropped Beal back off at his hotel after they finished lunch. After the old man assured him he didn’t need a ride back to the airport, he headed back home.

  Already, the beginnings of a plan were forming in his mind. It was a reckless, dangerous, and potentially suicidal plan, but given that he had no way to locate Archie, didn’t want to give him time to commit any additional murders and, if Goodwin’s description could be believed, couldn’t destroy him even if he managed to find him, it might be the only option he had.

  Chapter Fifty

  Grace Ruiz stared at him in horror. “I’m sorry, Dr. Stone. I know I said I’d help you. But I won’t help you do that. I can’t.”

  They were at the park across the street from St. Joseph’s, where she’d agreed to meet him late that afternoon. She sat on the picnic table near the Quetzalcoatl sculpture; he paced back and forth like a caged cat in front of her.

  “Why not? I’m not asking you to help, anyway. Just to sort of—monitor things. In case anything goes wrong. You’re the only one around here I trust to do it. I have other friends I could call, but it would take too long for them to get here. It needs to be done soon, before Archie kills anyone else. I want to
do it tonight.”

  She crossed herself and met his intense gaze with her own adamant one. “There’s got to be another way. You shouldn’t be doing this either. Do you realize what you’re saying?”

  “I know exactly what I’m saying. And no, I don’t think there is another way. If you’ve got one, I’d be happy to hear it. I’m not exactly over the moon about this myself. But something’s got to be done.”

  “You’re talking about summoning a demon. A real demon. And if that’s not bad enough, you want to…do I understand this? You want to bind it and force it to guide you to wherever Archie is in Hell so you can…fight him?” She gripped the edge of the table. “Do you realize how insane that sounds?”

  He let his breath out in a long, slow sigh. “Yes. I know exactly how insane it sounds. But I also know it’s my best chance of dealing with him. I don’t think he’ll expect me to show up on his doorstep. If I’m lucky, I can hit him before he realizes what’s going on. I can hit hard when I’m prepared. If I can destroy him on his own plane, it won’t matter that he’s here. He’ll either die, or we’ll be able to take out his physical form much more easily here as well.”

  She shook her head, looking first down at her lap and then back up at him. Her voice shook. “It’s blasphemy. It goes against God’s will. It goes against all of His teachings. I said before that I believe whatever you’re doing isn’t magic—that you’re fighting magic, and you’re on the side of good. I still believe that. But…this is just wrong. I can’t be part of it. You’re putting your immortal soul at risk, Dr. Stone.”

  “I do that three or four times before breakfast every day.”

  “Don’t joke about it!” she said with sudden vehemence, her eyes blazing and brimming with shimmering tears. “It’s not funny. This is as serious as it gets. If you commune with demons, use them to help you, they’ll destroy you. That’s what they do. They’ve been corrupting humans since the beginning of time. What makes you think you’re any different?”