by Jamie Wyman
“Grey has the veil,” she said. “He took it with him. He’s trying to call and capture a god.”
Flynn tossed me a glance but asked her, “Grey said that?”
“No, but the kids who sleep in here were talking about some ritual. They’re a cult, Flynn. Mages looking for power from Belial.”
I blew out a breath. “Shit.” Sometimes I hate being right. “Where’s Father Calvert?”
Her brows knitted together. “I haven’t seen him.” Her weary eyes widened with a haunted expression. She turned her full focus on Flynn. “You have to get the veil from Grey.”
“I don’t care about the veil,” he hissed. “I want to get you out of here.”
She clutched his shirt and gritted her teeth. “No! Look, I don’t know who they’re trying to god-nap, but I do know that’s some bad shit. These people work for Hell. Like, seriously, the Devil and shit, Flynn. They’re talking sacrifices—human fucking sacrifices! Stop them.”
Flynn hung his head. When he spoke his voice was featherlight. “What about you?”
Gently, she stroked his cheek, his face so pale beneath her dark skin. “Baby, it’s not just me. If they keep the veil, it’s everybody.”
My friend clenched his eyes shut and forced protests I knew were there down his throat. He looked terrible, the anguish on his face tearing at my heart. He leaned into Karma’s touch. Brushing his lips against her thumb, he nodded. “I’ll get it,” he croaked. “And you. Okay?”
Karma’s eyes glittered with tears. “Okay.”
“I mean it, Karma. We’re both walking out of here. Soon.”
Flynn’s fingers tightened into her curls as he pressed a burning kiss to her lips. I looked away, stomach tangling in uneasy knots. I caught a glimpse of Marius in the doorway. He watched Flynn and Karma, and for an instant I saw something on his face I’d never seen before. The satyr’s features were soft, his mouth slightly open, his brows knit together. Was that…confusion?
No. He studied them, as though trying to decipher hieroglyphs. Pensive and curious, Marius gazed at the mages. A moment later, his stare flicked to me. Holding my attention, his jaw worked with frustration. But he said nothing. Did nothing. Then, as if it had never fallen, the satyr replaced his aloof mask and turned to the metal sentinel. He kicked at its knee then flinched in pain at the impact.
As he hopped on his good foot, silently cursing, I snorted. At the sound of my stifled laughter, he lifted a finger in warning. Then something stole his attention, and his head darted up.
“Bugger,” he hissed. Marius dove into the makeshift bedroom and found a comfortable shadow. “Someone’s coming.”
Flynn jumped to his feet and bounded over to stand between Marius and me. He fixed his stare on Karma. “We’re walking out together,” he said.
Then, as it had in Polly’s hotel room, a curtain of energy fell over the three of us. Orange light danced in filaments around us, a protective barrier that cloaked us from view. Karma closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall just as a pair of bodies walked into the room.
I recognized both of them. Hector Chu wore a hoodie and baggy pants. As he drew closer I could see red, angry burns marring one side of his face. Prowling in front of Chu, Baldy leered at Karma. The maimed pyromancer’s skin puckered with scars and glistened baby pink where he’d begun to heal. My breath caught in my chest, though, at the sight of his hands.
He shouldn’t have any, a shrill voice protested in my mind. I watched Marius cut them off.
And yet, the pyromage stood before me with a pair of metal fists. The wan, flickering light of the furnace glinted over the silver surface of his new appendages.
Fuck, I thought. Can’t this guy just stay down?
“Rise and shine,” he rasped, voice scorched.
Karma lifted her head. “Fuck off.”
Pride swelled in my chest. She was awesome, and I wanted her as a friend. And for that, she’d need to be alive.
The pyromage leered, showing broken teeth of jagged obsidian. “There’s a party, honey, and you’re on the guest list.” He lifted her off the floor as if she weighed little more than a scrap of paper. “Well,” he added, rethinking his words. “More to the point, you’re the appetizer for the guest of honor.”
Baldy jerked Karma to him and grasped her shoulders. Beside me, Flynn tensed, a low growl emanating from his chest. His amber eyes followed Chu and Baldy as they guided Karma out of the room.
“Get the priest,” Baldy said, turning right toward the flickering light of the furnace. Chu dutifully padded to the left.
Beneath my skin, Loki’s gift pulsed and called to me. Eihwaz whispered in my ear of protection, of preparation. I felt…thirsty. The amber light of Flynn’s shield played in front of my eyes and may as well have been a sweating glass of lemonade in July. Though I’d never drawn power from another mage, my body seemed to just know what to do. Using that knowledge, I reached out and tapped into Flynn’s power. It manifested in my mind as a vast wellspring, glittering with synapse-quick bolts of citrine light.
I sipped at first, carefully. Flynn twitched beside me, and I darted a furtive glance at him. Had I just been caught with my hand in the cookie jar?
His mouth turned up, and he nodded.
“What about you?”
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Take it.”
With his permission, I drank up the power in great draughts. It coursed through me, filling me like air in a balloon. My limbs felt lighter, yet stronger. The haze of exhaustion fell away from my senses, and the world around me bent into sharp focus. The energy hummed from the soles of my feet, up my legs, and into my hands. My hair even fluffed up with static electricity.
Feeling charged, I let go of Flynn’s well. And a veritable lake of power still remained for Flynn to use at his leisure.
Where’s Nate? I wondered. I hoped he had the sense to hide. If he didn’t…? What would they do if they found him? Or us?
Seconds yawned by, silence threatening to erupt into chaos if anyone discovered us. The only sound that came, though, was the scuffle of feet as Chu pushed Father Calvert out the door and around into the main space.
To the furnace.
You’re the appetizer for the guest of honor.
I squeezed Flynn’s hand. His returned the grip with cold, steel strength. As if I could pass my thoughts to him through our touching skin, I pushed the words through my being. We’ll get her, I said to him. She’ll be okay. We all will.
I glanced at Marius to find his expression as unreadable as ever. He stared out the door, eyes glued to the statue. Balanced on the balls of his feet, shoulders forward, the satyr was coiled tight and ready to spring.
As if someone had shut off a television, the air popped when Flynn dropped the cloaking spell. He tugged at my hand and led me out the door, Marius following warily. We padded along the outer wall of the room and skirted the nimbus of light that the furnace provided. Huddled in the thin shadows, I took it all in, stomach twisting with terrified disgust.
The furnace blazed at the far end of the room, set into the bricks about eight feet off of the floor. Rows of black-robed figures knelt before it, solemnly keeping watch. My eyes drifted up from their ranks to the wall around the furnace where some industrious and twisted Bob Ross wannabe had taken it upon himself to paint a grotesque mural.
It was a face. Red-brown mottled skin made of chitinous scales on the skull of a bull. Black horns and cherry-red eyes stared with unblinking malevolence, while the inferno itself formed the creature’s eager maw.
I recoiled, thinking of the beast that had been chasing me toward the church. Of the phone message for Muriel and the mangled voice urging Polyhymnia to sing. Moloch.
The mages had built him an altar.
And Baldy dragged Karma right for it.
Though she struggled, her voice growing high and thin with pain, Karma could not escape Baldy’s literal iron grip on her arms. He barked something, and one of the knee
ling figures jumped to his side. A needle winked in the firelight, and Karma fell limply against Baldy’s chest. He tossed her down onto the slab and proceeded to bind her to it.
Flynn bristled beside me, his energy buzzing and popping in the air between us. His eyes focused lasers on the pyromancer, and I could feel a bloodlust churning inside my friend. He went rigid, prepared to bolt forward and plow through anyone between him and Karma.
I tore my eyes away from Flynn to watch Baldy. Finished with his task of restraining her, he glided to where Hector Chu held a whimpering Father Calvert. Baldy swept his boot across the priest’s ankles, and Calvert felt to his knees.
“Welcome,” a familiar voice crooned, its velvety purr echoing in the foundry.
Francis Grey stepped out of the shadows. He held the veil in his hands, sliding the sheer fabric under his nose and over his lips as he strutted around a circle of three masked figures. This trio knelt around something in the floor, their bodies marking all but one of the cardinal points on a compass.
“Father Thomas Calvert, yes?” Grey asked.
Straightening his spine, Calvert lifted his chin with pride. “Yes.”
“Tell me, Father Calvert, have you ever found yourself questioning your faith?”
“No.”
“Never? Never a sliver of doubt like that of your namesake, Thomas?”
Calvert shook his head. “My faith is well-placed in the One True God, the Lord Almighty…”
While the priest set off into a litany of titles and honorifics, Grey spooled his finger through the air and rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, that will do. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”
Grey prowled to where Baldy and Chu held the priest on his knees. With a flippant gesture, Grey waved away his minions. Chu receded into the shadows while Baldy retrieved a mask from his pocket. Tugging it over his mangled face, the pyromancer joined the other three masked individuals on the floor before Grey.
Gently, with obscene care and a slow reverence, Francis Grey draped the wispy veil over the priest’s shoulders in a mockery of Calvert’s typical vestments.
“Hey.”
I jumped, my heart a lump in my throat and hands turned to claws, as Nate materialized behind me. At the sight of the angel, I let out a sigh and tried to will myself into a state of calm alertness. It didn’t work very well.
“Dammit, Nate!” I hissed.
Marius punched the blonde’s shoulder.
Despite the dire situation, Nate grinned. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” While Grey continued to speak to Father Calvert, Nate tilted his chin toward the group of mages and their prisoners. “What’s the plan?” he asked.
I rose out of my crouch. “We stop this. Nate, can you go around the right side and come up to flank that group?” When Nate nodded, I turned to Marius. “I want you to go up the left.”
“The opposite side of the room from the veil, I notice,” Marius groused.
“You catch on quickly. Keep to that side and come in dancing once the music starts, okay?”
Flynn provided his own council. “I’ll head up the middle and take care of getting Karma.”
“There must be close to two dozen people up there,” the satyr said. “Mages sponsored by Hell. You think we’re going to just ambush them like we’re action heroes or something?”
Flynn scoffed. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Yes,” Marius replied bluntly. “Run.”
Nate rolled his eyes at Marius. “Coward.”
“Shut up,” I said, calling their attention back to me. “Flynn, I’m heading up the middle with you.”
His hazel eyes were sad. “No, I’ve got a better idea. There’s a set of stairs over there. Get up onto that catwalk and cover us from up there.”
“You’re trying to shove me out of the way,” I growled.
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“By not letting me help? Are you crazy?”
“Dammit, Cat!” He stopped himself as his voice rose dangerously. After taking a moment to calm down, his took my shoulders into his hands and gazed into my eyes. “I should have taught you more. I thought we’d have more time… I promise,” he said, voice cracking, “when we get out of here, I’ll teach you anything you want. I’ll make you a techno-badass that doesn’t need to hide or run, but this one time, please, just stay back.”
My eyes filled with traitorous tears. “You want me to just watch while you guys fight?”
“Stay up there. If things get crazy, you can cover us from your perch, but please, Cat, just stay. Up. There.” Desperation poured off him in waves. I opened my mouth to protest, but his eyes begged me. “Please.”
I dipped my chin, looking away, and gave the slightest of nods. I’d go, but I’d be damned if I was just going to sit and watch my friends go diving into danger.
Flynn sagged with relief. He pulled me to him in a fierce embrace and placed a chaste kiss on top of my head.
“We’ll all get out of here,” he said. “I promise.”
I stepped out of the circle of his arms and moved numbly toward the steps to the catwalk. In my periphery, Flynn brushed up to Marius’s shoulder, and I heard the mage mutter, “Take care of her while you’re over there. Make sure she doesn’t get hurt.”
I didn’t hear the satyr’s response over my own pulse thundering in my ears. I mounted the corrugated metal stairs and padded along the catwalk itself. Though I tried to keep my steps light, I felt about as loud as an elephant. I shook, sweaty hands trembling over the guardrails.
From up here, I could see Marius skulking to a position just below me. Flynn crept up the middle of the foundry floor then disappeared beneath his shield. Across from me, Nate skirted the edges of the building to put himself in the shadows near Grey and Father Calvert. I saw, now, more of the ferromancer’s plan. He’d set himself into an alignment with those four masked figures. As I’d suspected, they formed the four points of a compass. Sort of. A thick band of silver laid into the floor formed a circle. There were glyphs, too, arcane symbols I had no hope of understanding that followed the ring of silver. Their dripping, flowing forms looked nothing like my Norse master’s runes. Two more circles of varying thickness nested inside the ring of those shapes. At the center of it all, another glyph scarred the floor. This one was unlike the rest. All harsh lines and wicked angles, this sigil radiated malevolence like an obsidian thorn.
They plan to call and capture a god. Is this the cage?
I’d read about magic circles containing critters from the other side, but surely that was just fiction. Then again, I’d dated a faery and was—at that moment—on a rescue mission with a satyr, a technomage, and an angel.
The rune beneath my flesh writhed with icy strength. Oh yeah. And there was Him.
Loki had told me not to come, and I’d essentially told a god to fuck off by doing it anyway. What would he do when he found out where I was? My brand flared with heat, and I had the dreadful feeling that he already knew. A rock of terror fell into my stomach.
I was already here, though. Couldn’t exactly back out. Not now, not when the four of us were committed, when there were innocent people in danger.
Something winked in the shadows, and I looked to see Nate’s spear aimed at Francis Grey. On the floor below, Marius readied himself. His sword appeared in his right hand, the blade’s wicked curve a gleaming smile tucked against the back of his arm.
Was Flynn inching his way through the small crowd toward Karma? She lay unconscious on the slab, flames casting angular shadows over her exhausted body.
And here I sat, perched above it all and useless.
I had to do something. But what? Maybe fling more ice like I had in the church and freeze the inferno writhing near Karma’s slab? My brand flashed a painful warning but was quickly doused by the horrified chill in my blood.
The resonant sound of Grey’s voice shattered my thoughts like a blast from a gong.
“We have guests!”
Chapt
er Twenty-Nine
“Sing for Absolution”
I couldn’t breathe, not with my heart lodged in my throat the way it was. I sat in frozen panic, eyes on the ferromancer.
Grey leered at his strange cult, his hand tight around the scruff of the priest’s neck. “These two are the first to come to our party today, but they will not be the last,” Grey intoned. “Together, we will summon others. We will force the Oppressor out of hiding and bring him to judgment. We will call upon our master’s wrath and execute the god of the slaves. Together, my friends, we will right a wrong done long ago and bring in a new age of freedom. An age without sin or fear.”
He threw out a hand, gesturing to the ranks of kneeling figures before the furnace. “You!” he called. “You will bear witness to our awesome works. You will see firsthand the power granted us by Belial as they, the best among you”—with a flourish he motioned to the four masked figures—“bind the Oppressor. Together, you will be the rock that He Himself cannot move.”
Like a trapped bunny, I breathed shallow, quick gulps of air. Paralyzed by fear—and, admittedly, sickening awe—I watched as Grey began his ritual to trap God.
He’s going to be here, I realized. They’re going to use the veil to call Him, and you’ll see—once and for all—the truth. That He exists. What will he look like? Will he have the long hair and beard made popular for centuries? Will he look like Nate only…bigger?
“I call upon the powers of Creation!” Grey bellowed. “Sentinel of the North, with your mastery over strength of Earth, I command you to forge the foundation of our cage. You may shift, but you will not crumble despite all the ages. None may escape the pull of your fingers.”
The floor and windows rattled under the weight of his invocation. One of the masked mages reached out and placed his bare fingertips to the silver circle. With a whipcrack of energy, a green light burst up from one section of the glyphs and stretched into the murky darkness of the ceiling. Tendrils of black, brown, and silver wound through it, slithering along the translucent surface of a magical wall.