by R. L. King
Grace looked confused. “She said…she has something we can use for our battle. God told her to pray over it, so that’s what she’s been doing. She says I need to as well—that God will bless our efforts if we have faith in His guidance.”
Abuelita nodded once, walked to the table, and put the bundle down at the end away from the food. She crossed herself, murmured a few words, and then carefully, as if unwrapping a holy relic, she pulled the towel aside.
Stone had no idea what he’d expected to see—perhaps an elaborate crucifix or other religious heirloom—but whatever it was, the item the old woman revealed wasn’t it.
It was a sword—in a manner of speaking, anyway: a Japanese-style katana made of cheap metal, already rusting a little along the blade, its wrapped handle repaired with duct tape where the original stained blue fabric had peeled away. Stone had seen dozens of similar things in junk shops in both the United States and England, beloved decorations for teenage boys’ bedrooms everywhere due in equal measure to their “exotic” nature and low price. He looked at Grace, raising a questioning eyebrow.
Grace wasn’t looking at him, though. She was looking at her grandmother. She said something in Spanish that sounded like a question, and Abuelita replied, gesturing toward the sword again.
Before Stone could ask, Grace translated: “I know that sword. It used to belong to my brother Emilio. He bought it at the flea market when he was like thirteen. Abuelita didn’t want to let him keep it, but he begged her, since he’d spent all his money on it. She finally agreed. I haven’t seen it since before he…before he died. Abuelita found it in his things last night.”
Stone covered the fact that he was searching for the right way to respond by studying the sword. It was of even cheaper construction than he’d initially thought, its blade crooked and chipped as if young Emilio had used it primarily to hit rocks.
“Ms. Ruiz…” he said slowly. “Please thank your grandmother for her input, but—even if I were inclined to go back to pay Archie another visit, it certainly wouldn’t be carrying that.”
“Have you looked at it?” she asked softly.
“Of course I’ve looked at it! It looks like something a junk shop would be embarrassed to sell, and you want me to—”
He stopped.
Grace and Abuelita were both regarding him with neutral expressions, as if waiting patiently for him to catch up.
He let his breath out, turned back to the cheap sword, and switched to magical sight.
Given how closely they were watching him, he expected the thing to be nearly incandescent, glowing with a beatific halo of pure, white light, its form morphed from a cheap teenager’s prop into some kind of avenging holy blade of awesomeness. But no, the sword itself didn’t look any different: all the pits and rust and duct-taped repairs were still there. The blade was still crooked, its edge chipped and uneven.
But around it shone a faint nimbus that he knew he hadn’t seen before. It was neither impressive nor particularly confidence-inspiring—as auras went, he’d seen half-dead cats with stronger ones. But he wasn’t seeing things: it was definitely there.
Stone shifted back and tilted his head at Grace. “You want me to face Archie on his home ground armed with a cheap junk-shop sword.”
She glanced at Abuelita, then back at him. “Flashy things aren’t always the best things, Dr. Stone. Sometimes something old, something loved, is a better choice when you’re facing something that scares you. Don’t you think so?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up the sword. The blade rattled where it wasn’t firmly affixed to the handle. The duct-taped grip felt uneven and too small in his hand. He didn’t feel any different holding it—no sudden sense of confidence or invincibility infused him. All he felt was a little ridiculous.
And yet…
Grace’s words had not been lost on him, despite his tirade. He’d held Archie’s beating heart in his hand last night, before Beal had taken his best shot at killing him. He’d felt the power coursing through the thing—the power and the pure malevolent energy. Even with his formidable mental barriers, he’d sensed its insidious tendrils already trying to worm their way into his psyche. He didn’t know if prolonged contact would have affected him, or if he could have fought it off. He did know, though, that no matter what he and Grace did with it, no matter how they chose to dispose of it, the chance would always remain that someone would find it, either accidentally or through some subtle call the thing put out as it searched for an unwitting accomplice.
It might not happen soon. If he managed to find Beal and reclaim the heart before Archie and his mad old disciple resurrected the demon’s physical form again, it might not happen for a long time—perhaps many years after everyone alive today was dead and buried.
But did that matter? What about the future victims, or those who’d be brought under the demon’s foul thrall if no one opposed him and he succeeded in his plans for mass corruption?
He let out a loud, frustrated sigh. Bloody hell, what am I turning into? He raised the sword in a kind of salute at Grace and Abuelita, who were still silently watching him. “I’ll need some time to prepare,” he said. His voice came out as a reluctant growl. “And I’ll need your help, Ms. Ruiz. No hesitation this time. If you’re not in this one hundred percent, I’m not doing it.”
She smiled. “I’m in,” she said, as if she’d known his answer all along.
Abuelita smiled too, though it was impossible to tell if she understood more English than she was letting on, or was merely reacting to Grace’s own smile. She put her arms around her granddaughter and kissed the top of her head.
Then, to Stone’s surprise, she walked over and embraced him as well. Since he towered more than a foot taller than she was, he didn’t know if she’d intended to repeat the kiss, but she settled for a tight squeeze. Then she stepped back, nodded toward the sword, and said something in Spanish.
“What did she say?” Stone asked Grace.
She chuckled. “She said she wants that back when you’re done with it. And that when we come back, she’s going to feed you up good. She still thinks you’re too skinny.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
Stone sat at his desk and downed the last of his most recent bottle of Guinness. “You know what you’re supposed to do, right?”
Grace nodded. She was on the other side of the room, cross-legged on a pillow, toying with the crucifix around her neck. “I’m going to keep praying for you while you’re gone, and stay here so I can provide a way for you to get back if things go wrong. But they aren’t going to go wrong.” Her voice was serene, untroubled. If she was disturbed by the fact that Stone was once again returning to what she considered to be Hell, she didn’t show it.
“Makes it sound so simple, doesn’t it?” He shoved his hand through his hair, examining the objects he’d spread out in front of him: the junk-shop sword, the handful of dust from Archie’s corpse, and the crucifix on its heavy silver chain.
He still had no idea if any of this would work.
The circle was finished—that was what he’d spent the better part of the day working on, when he wasn’t finding excuses to go downstairs for another bottle. Four of them sat empty on the desk’s far side, but despite his best efforts, he remained completely sober. The enormous lunch he’d had at Grace’s and his own unease combined to make a pleasant buzz unlikely.
In truth, he wasn’t even certain he’d be able to get back to Archie’s dimension at all. With the previous demon he’d summoned dead, he had no others’ names to provide another escort across the planes. All he had was Archie’s corpse-dust, and the vestiges of energy it still held. Setting up the actual circle had taken only an hour—the rest the time since he’d returned home, he’d spent tweaking the ritual to—he hoped—let him cross over on his own. If he had any chance of doing it, it would have to be soon. The energy hovering around the
dust was already fading. Tomorrow would be too late, he was sure.
He’d stalled all he could. It was time to go.
Doing his best to block out the memories of what Archie had done to him before, Stone got up, put the crucifix around his neck and stuffed it under his shirt, then picked up the sword and the handful of dust. The katana still felt cheap and flimsy in his hand, but he’d watched Grace and her grandmother doing their thing over it for an hour before they’d left the apartment, and watched as its faint initial glow grew into something more substantial. By the time they left, he was thoroughly convinced that Grace had indeed gotten her magical ability from her grandmother.
It was so unfortunate that the two of them would never agree to any formal magical training, since neither one believed what they were doing was magic. But Stone supposed they didn’t have to believe it. As long as they believed in their abilities, that was all he needed.
“Ready to do this, then?” he asked.
She nodded wordlessly and crossed herself.
With a couple of deep, centering breaths to stop himself from shaking, he stepped into the circle. It was set up much as it had been before, with the table, the chalice, a mirror (a new one this time, since he’d broken the last one), and the tome. The only thing missing was the knife; since he didn’t intend to summon anything, he didn’t need to use his own blood this time.
Still gripping the sword in one hand and the dust in the other, Stone closed his eyes, then opened them and began his incantation. He read from a modified version of the ritual he’d used last time, which now included bits and pieces of the process for creating a temporary teleportation gateway. When the time came, he dropped the dust from Archie’s body into the chalice and fixed his mind on the demon’s plane, visualizing the flat, arid wasteland where he’d first arrived.
Smoke swirled from the chalice in ropy tendrils, some red, some white, some gray. They floated up and began drifting toward the mirror. At first the reflection showed nothing but the room behind Stone, and he feared his concerns had come true: that he wouldn’t be able to complete the gateway without an anchor to something on the other side to drag him over. But then the smoke swirled higher, the tendrils beginning to join and lose coherence, the three colors blending together as they obscured the mirror’s reflection.
Now or never. Hardly sure whether he hoped more that it would work or that it wouldn’t, he barked out the remaining words of the incantation and spread his hands, pushing the smoke away from the mirror.
The familiar cracked plain with its salmon-colored sky and swollen red suns stretched out in front of him.
No time to waste—already he could feel the strain of holding the gateway open even for a few seconds. Without a backward glance at Grace, he levitated his body up and forward, half-expecting to smash into the mirror and break it.
That didn’t happen. He felt the familiar disorientation, and then landed on his knees on hard ground. Hot wind swirled around him.
He was back on Archie’s home turf.
Quickly scrambling to his feet, he first looked around for potential threats. The area around him was deserted in all directions, as far as he could see.
He was dressed as he had been back on Earth, in his black Damned T-shirt, jeans, and Doc Martens. He still had the sword, and it still looked the same as it had before: cheap and crooked and pitted. It didn’t feel that way, though—oddly, the grip felt solid and steady in his hand. Grace’s crucifix lay warm against his chest. And behind him, he could sense if not see a slim, strong cord reaching from him and stretching off into the distance until he could no longer feel it.
His way back.
“Let’s get this over with,” he muttered. “Come on, Archie—where are you hiding yourself? Let’s finish this, shall we?”
He closed his eyes and turned slowly in place, projecting his desire to locate the demon. If he’d learned anything on his last trip here, it was that perception was as important as reality. Perhaps the place didn’t even technically exist, but was merely some kind of shared hallucination. If that were so, he’d use it to his advantage.
He opened his eyes.
Directly in front of him, perhaps a mile off if standard distances had any meaning here, rose a single building that hadn’t been there before.
He couldn’t make out any detail from this far away, but he could tell it wasn’t the unholy church from his last visit. In fact, it appeared large, blocky, and almost utterly featureless, its shiny black surface at odds with the organic reds, pinks, and browns of the rest of the landscape. He thought he saw figures clustered around it, but couldn’t be sure.
He gripped the sword more tightly and began to walk.
As he got closer, nothing made any effort to impede him. The ground remained dry and barren—no hedgerows or blighted trees this time. No other buildings rose up to join the one he approached. Despite the heat, he wasn’t sweating. All he felt was energized and strangely tense, as if the whole place were holding its breath waiting for something to happen.
Perhaps it is.
Closer still, and the figures he thought he’d seen resolved themselves. He stopped.
This could be a problem.
The figures were demons, and with a certainty he didn’t question, he knew they were the same crew from the church. They weren’t dressed in school uniforms now, though, and didn’t look like teenage boys. Instead, their misshapen, twisted forms ran the gamut from corpulent, naked things with scaly, heat-blistered skin to skinny ones nearly as black as the building they surrounded.
All of them lounged against the shiny black walls, regarding him like a gang of surly teenagers outside a mall. They didn’t, however, make any move to approach him. He didn’t miss that a couple of their gazes flicked nervously toward the sword in his hand.
He moved closer, until he stood about ten feet back from the closest of them. “You lot!” he called. “Remember me?”
They muttered between themselves, but no one answered him directly.
“I asked you a question!” Stone called, more loudly, looking as if he didn’t give a damn if they answered him or not. “You know why I’m here, right? Where’s your boss?”
More mutters.
Stone pointed the sword at one of the larger demons. “You! Where’s your boss?”
“I’m right here, Stone.”
The air in front of the demons shimmered and Archie appeared. Tall, straight, and seemingly uninjured in his red-eyed skeletal form, he smiled and spread his hands. “Welcome back. Ready to pick up where we left off? I’m surprised you were brave enough to even attempt it.”
Behind him, the demons shifted backward, trying and failing to be subtle about putting as much distance between themselves and Archie as they could manage.
“You’re looking much better,” Stone said. “Of course, that’s not difficult, given that the last time I saw you, you were a pile of rotten organs buggered by a big wooden shaft.”
The demons exchanged glances.
“What are you waiting for?” Archie demanded. “Take him and prepare him!”
“Yes,” Stone agreed, raising the sword a little. It wasn’t—nor was it meant to be—an overtly threatening gesture. He didn’t think it needed to be. “Give it a go, if you want to go on listening to him.” He infused contempt into his voice as he cocked his head toward Archie.
“Do it!” Archie barked, his eyes glowing redder. His voice echoed across the plain as he rose a few feet up and loomed over them, spreading his arms.
The demons shuffled and muttered some more, half-heartedly stepping out. They still didn’t get close to Stone, staying at least ten feet away, but they did form a ring around him. As they did, they seemed to gain some confidence, their expressions twisting into menacing leers and glares.
“Well, look,” Stone said. He turned slowly around so he could address the
m all. “You’ve got me surrounded. I can’t watch all of you at once. I should be worried, then, should I? Who’s first?”
He brandished the sword toward one group, and they flinched back. A couple of the others tentatively moved forward, but stopped after a couple steps.
“Take him now!” Archie bellowed. “Or you’ll all suffer the consequences!”
“I think you’ve lost control of your fan club, Archie,” Stone said. Ignoring the ring of demons, he focused on Archie himself.
The floating demon definitely looked none the worse for wear following his previous night’s ordeal. Tall and strong, his eyes like two burning coals, he hovered menacingly over the scene below, his black coat flapping in the light breeze.
Indeed, he looked quite threatening up there.
The demons in the circle, by contrast, looked nervous, like a bunch of children caught between two equally unpleasant potential punishments and unable to decide which to risk. At Archie’s latest command, they’d shuffled forward again, this time moving as a group as if gaining confidence from each other. But they still refused to get within range of the ridiculous, crooked sword.
Stone smiled, and it wasn’t a nice smile. “Why don’t you kill one of them?” he called to Archie. “Teach them a lesson? Show them your power? That might get the rest of them moving.” He swept the sword out in front of him, and nearly half the circle of demons flinched backward, nearly falling over themselves in their haste to get away.
“Or even better—why do you need them at all? Why not have your way with me yourself?” He spread his arms, noting with satisfaction from the corner of his eye that the group on the sword side took another two steps back. Openings were starting to appear in the circle where parts of it fled backward to safety. “Go on, Archie. I’m right here. Burn my skin off. Break my bones. Toss me back in a cage for your amusement. Show this lot that you’re still the Number One Demon in this hellhole!”
He wondered if Archie could hear his heart pounding. He was taking a big gamble, and if he was wrong about what he suspected, he’d end up having to fight his way past not only Archie, but a whole herd of re-energized demon henchmen. He put his odds of success if he had to do that at somewhere between “slim” and “infinitesimal,” even with the sword.