The Midnight Front--A Dark Arts Novel

by David Mack

  Stefan spat at Kein. “I will tell you nothing.”

  “Not all at once—and not without a fight, I am sure.” With a small motion of his hand, he levitated Stefan from the ground. “Even mountains succumb to the elements. It is merely a question of pressure, and time.” He moved Stefan clear of the tracks; then with balletic gestures he straightened the piece of track Stefan had bent and fused it back into place, as good as new.

  Kein motioned for the train’s conductor to roll on toward Auschwitz. Then he towed Stefan toward a conjured column of fire, with his wounded minions limping close behind. “Let us repair to someplace more private, shall we? We have much to discuss.”

  * * *

  Waves of pain, cold fear, stutters of color and sound—Stefan reeled from the sensory overload of Kein’s torture by magick. More precise than blunt force or the cruel cuts of steel, more insidious than drugs, it plumbed the darkest recesses of Stefan’s thoughts and stirred all his long-buried terrors into the light.

  Sunlight blinded him. He was alone on a barren plain, a child crying for his mother.

  Thunder crashed; the sky turned black. On hands and knees, Stefan was old and broken, pawing at the freshly turned earth of an open grave that he knew in his soul was his own.

  Cymbals crashed, and a thought-piercing shriek of noise ripped through his brain. Then came a cool kiss of air against his spleen, his liver, his intestines. He was flayed and restrained, his body an open book on a steel table. To his dismay, his gutted state was no demonic illusion, no lie—it was his reality.

  Kein looked and sounded profoundly sad. “Herr Van Ausdall, have you not had enough of this? In spite of what your master told you, I take no joy in hurting you. My methods are cruel, but only because you force them to be so.” He pressed a cool, damp cloth to Stefan’s cheek. Wiped the blood and spittle from Stefan’s chin. Refolded the cloth, then used it to mop the perspiration from Stefan’s feverish brow. “The mirror my adept found in your possessions—how do we activate it? And please do not try to trick me into saying ‘discutio.’ Your comrade Niko has already shown us what that word does.”

  Desperation made Stefan want to confess. His body was weak, full of pain, sick to its core. The prospect of another bout of demonic torment clouded his mind with panic. Then he remembered his master’s parting words about the mirrors: Do not let the enemy capture them. And never tell anyone the control words. Unlocked and plumbed with the right charm, one of these could let Kein spy my every move.

  It took all Stefan had left to mutter, “Kill me.”

  Kein looked at Briet and Siegmar. Each of them stood inside a circle of protection. She poured a tipple of brandy into the smoking brazier at her feet; he dribbled camphor into the smoldering brass pot in front of his. Clouds of vapor climbed toward the ceiling and merged into a swirling mass that assumed the shape of something monstrous.

  Stefan looked down. Traced the lines inside the grand circle that encompassed them all. He saw that Kein was inside the operator’s circle, his sword balanced atop his white-shod feet. The convergence of other lines in the room confirmed Stefan’s worst fear: he was in the open, exposed to the conjured spirits under Kein’s control.

  Kein asked, “Shall we continue?”

  “Please.…”

  “You wish to stop?”

  To beg for mercy was to condemn his master and friends to death. But Stefan knew the horrors demons could inflict, the tortures they could impose. Not just violations of the flesh but torments of the mind. Undefended as he was, he would be chum for a demonic feeding frenzy. A swift death would be out of the question: a plaything for spirits, he would be reduced to a broken vessel, a conduit for transient terrors until his body rotted around the husk of his intellect.

  If only I still had a spirit yoked. Any of them would do. I could make one kill me, snap my neck and set me free. But I’m alone—and Kein will never let me go so easily. He will prolong this for as long as it takes to break me. Tears of shame and defeat rolled from his eyes. I can’t fight him forever. How much longer can I resist?

  Kein leaned close to Stefan. The dark master’s whisper caressed Stefan’s cheek. “You know what the Fallen are capable of, Herr Van Ausdall. They can boil your eyes in their sockets. Break all your bones, knit them back together, then shatter them again. Tie your guts into knots that would turn a sailor green with envy. Must we go down that road?”

  All Stefan wanted was vengeance, but it was beyond his reach. Tears of rage and despair spilled down his cheeks; a hacking sob racked his chest. He shook his head. “No.”

  “Tell me how to use the mirror.”

  “I can describe his defenses. Eilean Donan is vulnerable.”

  “I need to see its wards for myself. You understand, yes?”

  A frantic nod. “Yes.”

  “The mirror. How do I unlock it?”

  “To open it, fenestra. To close it, velarium.”

  “How do I focus it?”

  “Attune it to another of its kind … by saying the owner’s name.”

  “Splendid.” From beneath his robes, Kein produced Stefan’s mirror. He held it at his eye level, concentrated a moment, then pronounced in a clear voice, “Fenestra Adair, occulta speculis.” He smiled at whatever he saw. “Good. Very good.”

  Stefan was spent, shattered, beyond resistance. “Kill me.”

  Kein waggled an index finger. “Not yet.” The dark master banished his demons and opened the circle.

  Briet and Siegmar carried Stefan to a cot in the corner of the conjuring room. Up close, Stefan noticed that the wounds he had seen on Briet’s face had almost entirely healed.

  No doubt at my expense, he realized.

  The two adepts tended Stefan’s wounds, bound his wrists, then left him to rest. It seemed as if his tortures had come to an end, but he knew better. This fight was far from over.

  Kein’s revenge had only just begun.

  * * *

  It was alarming to watch how quickly Cade learned magick. Anja had never seen anything like it, in all the years she had lived with and studied under Adair. None of his other adepts had taken to magick like this; not the ones who had come before her—a select group that had included only Stefan, Niko, and a few others—or any of the hundred recruited after the Nazis invaded Poland.

  She sat across from Cade at a long table in the library. He had piled the main table high with old grimoires and codices scribed in languages Anja had never seen before. Several lay open between them, and he pointed from one to the next as he gushed with excitement over his latest discoveries.

  “And here, in the Sumerian Book of the Damned, there’s a binding spell that lets you yoke not just a demon but all the others who answer to it. Picture it: We could yoke one of the lesser dukes and command its legion of spirits against other demons. Why take one power when you can wield an army?”

  The markings on the calfskin pages were unintelligible to Anja. “How can you read that? LIOBOR said it would grant me any tongue I desired, but even it cannot translate this.”

  “These aren’t human writings, this is proto-Enochian script—the alphabet the angels used before the Fall. Among the many things the host of Hell gave up when they rebelled, one was the ability to read this. For them, looking at this is like rubbing lye in their eyes.”

  “So how can you read it without their help?”

  A boyish smile and a look of mischief. “Truth? No idea.” He traced a line of angelic text with one fingertip. “Yoking all of a duke’s legions would hurt worse than anything we’ve ever tried, but we’re still outnumbered by the Thule Society, and the ones that are left are getting stronger by the day. We need a way to even the odds.”

  He was right, but his ambition troubled her. “When I was younger, Adair told me stories. He said Kein saw power in old magick, did things no one else dared. It made him strong, but it also drove him mad. Are you sure you can handle that many demons at once?”

  He met her caution with a foolhardy sm
ile. “I guess we’ll find out.” He snatched up a quill and scribbled notes on a scrap of paper. “I don’t know where we’ll find half this stuff, but I didn’t ask why Adair had a jar labeled ‘nails from a child’s coffin,’ either. If he—”

  A thunderclap blasted in the windows.

  Shattered glass and splintered wood tore into Cade and Anja as the blast threw them across the library with tables, chairs, and dozens of books.

  Anja tucked her arms to her face, but shards of glass scoured the nape of her neck and shredded her clothes. Stony shrapnel ravaged her flank as she landed on the floor. When she looked up, Cade was lying next to her, his hand pressed to the right side of his head. Blood ran from under his palm and down his neck. His arms and hands were bleeding, too.

  She clutched his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded, his breaths quick and ragged. “What hit us?”

  Anja darted to the blown-apart window. Below in the courtyard stood a trio. Kein, the master’s smartly attired nemesis, she recognized from Stuttgart. With him were a copper-haired woman in her twenties and a dark-haired man in his thirties: Briet and Siegmar.

  On the ground at their feet twitched a bloody tangle of black feathers, fragile bones, and spattered blood that had been Kutcha, the master’s familiar.

  How did they know we were here? How did they get past Adair’s defenses? Did the master hear them arrive? She faced Cade. “Kein is here. With his adepts.”

  Cade was on his feet. His hand fell from his bloodied ear. “Let’s go.”

  Reason told her to urge caution, but he was already halfway out of the library, heading for the stairs, charging into the fray. Without protest, she ran after him.

  Demons accosted them on the stairs. He dispelled two with a wave of his hand, banished another with a barked Latin curse. She fended off a pair that attacked from behind, then exorcised another as it reached up through the floor in a mad grab at Cade’s feet.

  A legion of spirits harassed them all the way down to the courtyard, and at every step she and Cade cast more of the nameless fiends back into the Pit with words that were ancient when the world was young. Deadly to laymen, the demons were but pests to prepared karcists, obstacles to wear down their strength and resolve. All they did for Anja was whet her appetite.

  Cade blasted open the door to the courtyard. He and Anja ran outside to face the invaders.

  On the far side of the courtyard, the keep’s ground-level door flew open and Adair strode out, his countenance grave. He taunted Kein. “Come to fall on your sword?”

  “Hardly.” The German cocked one eyebrow. “I must say, old friend—you and yours are looking quite the worse for wear. One might think you found the practice of the Art taxing.”

  There was a cutting truth in his observation. Kein and his adepts were portraits of perfection. Every detail of their appearance—from their hair and complexions, to their shoes and sartorial elegance—expressed pride and power. By comparison, Adair, Anja, and Cade all looked as if they had been dragged through fields of blood and barbed wire. Scorched and scarred, with beards and eyebrows ripped ragged by compulsive hair-pulling, their complexions sallow from months of sleep deprivation and substance abuse, they were a sorry excuse for … well, anything.

  Murderous silence filled the courtyard.

  Then came bedlam.

  Fire and lightning, blasts of light in every color Anja could imagine, roars of fire and monsters. Spectral missiles and ghostly blades. Invisible fists and storms of sharpness.

  A demon threw Anja against a stone wall. She bounded off of it and hit the ground hard. She sprang to her feet and resumed her attack, cracking VALEFOR’s whip and filling the courtyard with hellfire, but none of it could touch Kein or his adepts. She hurled a sweep of demonic arrows at the dark master, but he swatted them away like flies. Siegmar squelched her flames with a jet of water from his wide-open mouth.

  Kein and Adair volleyed barrages of raw energy that prickled Anja’s skin into gooseflesh. An electric tingle filled the air as the masters traded salvos—

  Then Briet—who had vanished while Anja was distracted—reappeared behind Cade. Before Anja could shout a warning, the ginger witch slapped her palms against the sides of Cade’s head. He twitched and went limp in her grasp.

  Siegmar barked a word, and in gouts of fire he vanished with Briet and Cade.

  Anja had no time for regret—Kein harried her and Adair with a cascade of lightning and a lion-dragon chimera that belched a cloud of biting insects, an assault that forced them to their knees in defensive postures, huddled behind overwhelmed shields.

  When the attack ceased, the dark magician was gone.

  A stench of sulfur and burnt wool filled the air.

  Every part of Anja hurt. Her joints ached, her muscles burned, her skin felt as if it had been gnawed by a billion fangs. Nausea swirled in her gut and left her desperate to retch and empty herself of poisons real or imagined. Her strength ebbed and she fell to her knees, her face burning as much from the enemy’s assault as from the shame of defeat.

  All she wanted was to collapse, fall apart, and hide.

  A hand seized her biceps and pulled her into motion.

  Adair’s voice was gruff. “Up.”

  Staggering in his grasp as they raced inside the southwest building, Anja realized rest was the last thing on the master’s mind. “Where are we going?”

  “To strike back.” He shouldered through the door that led to the conjuring room in the basement. They stumbled downstairs.

  “How did they find us? How did they get in?”

  “Don’t know. Doesn’t matter.”

  He pulled her away from the stairs to the middle of the room. “Stand here. Don’t move.” He walked a few paces more, then took from his pocket a large pearl and lifted it over his head. “Eripe me Angeli Dómini a malo!” He smashed the pearl on the stone floor.

  It erupted in a flash that forced Anja to shut her eyes. When she opened them, an eldritch fog rolled around her and Adair. They both had been changed—they were attired in their ceremonial robes. Around their feet, circles of magickal protection had appeared. Beyond them had been described a thaumaturgic triangle inside a grand double circle, but the glyphs and symbols that populated its spaces were ones Anja had never seen before. A gleaming golden sword was balanced on Adair’s feet, and the Iron Codex sat upon his lectern.

  “Stay still,” he cautioned. “Don’t speak. I’m going to yoke spirits to you like you’ve never felt. It’ll burn in ways that words don’t do justice. But it has to be done.”

  For the first time in years, Anja was afraid. “Master? I do not recognize these symbols. What demon are you conjuring?”

  He looked over his shoulder at her. “Demons won’t cut it if we want to see Cade alive again.” He opened the Iron Codex. “You might want to close your eyes.”

  She did as he said. His voice filled the conjuring room with words unlike any she had ever heard. Then came a light so powerful that even with her eyes shut Anja knew it could not have been spawned in Hell. Somehow, Adair was doing what all the scriptures and grimoires ever written had sworn could never be done.

  He was calling down the arsenal of Heaven.

  He was yoking angels.

  26

  “Wake up, Herr Martin.”

  Cade navigated to consciousness by slow degrees. He winced at the pressure in his sinuses; patterns of pain felt etched into his thoughts. His eyes fluttered open to reveal that his perspective of the world had gone blurry and dim. After his vision adjusted, he saw he lay on the floor in a candlelit, circular room of stone. The tapers’ flames cast feeble light on the walls and were unable to illuminate what he presumed was a high ceiling lost in shadows.

  The tiled floor had been inscribed with an intricate magickal pattern. Circles enclosing pentagrams lay within triangles, all sporting symbols from the zodiac and the ancient grimoires, the seals of demons, and decorations macabre and profane. Coals smoldered i
n braziers, filling the room with scents of aloe, resin, cedar, and alum.

  He tested his bonds; he was trapped in place by a short chain connecting a shackle on his left ankle to an inch-thick metal ring sunk into the floor. His heart raced as he grasped his predicament: I’m inside a circle used for sacrifices.

  Across from him, Stefan lay sprawled outside the circles. His clothes were torn and filthy. Blood seeped from wounds on his face and head, and an X-shaped incision on his torso had been stitched crudely shut. The Dutchman cracked open one eye and looked at Cade, but gave no outward sign of recognizing him—unlike their three enemies, who stood watching them.

  Kein was the closest, inside the operator’s circle. His adepts were behind him on either side, occupying the tanists’ positions. All wore white vestments.

  The master noted Cade’s return to awareness with a birdlike cock of his head. “We haven’t been properly introduced. I am—”

  “A dead man.”

  The interruption didn’t seem to bother Kein. “Then permit me to introduce my adepts: Briet Segfrunsdóttir. Siegmar Tuomainen.”

  Cade’s attention fixed on Siegmar. “Oxford. And the pier in Liverpool.” He winced at cruel memories—torpedoes hitting the Athenia; bone-chilling water; the suffocating embrace of LEVIATHAN. Hatred welled up from his darkest places. “You told the Nazis to sink us.”

  Kein shook his head. “I gave that order, Herr Martin. Though it was Siegmar who provided me the name of your vessel, and its destination.” He briefly held up one hand and closed his eyes, signaling a shift in his direction of thought. “I did not bring you here to rehash history. I compelled your presence so that we could discuss the future. Our future.”

  “You don’t have a future. Not after I get free.”

  The threat didn’t faze Kein. “Confidence, bordering on arrogance. I expected no less.” He studied Cade, as if scrutinizing his every reaction. “We are much alike, you and I.”

  “I don’t see it.” Standing up made Cade’s head swirl with vertigo, but he refused to falter.