by David Mack
Do as I command, demon!
HER WOUNDS ARE TOO GREAT. DEATH IS TOO NEAR.
You will not let her die!
TO SAVE HER, YOU MUST LET ME GIVE HER SOME OF YOUR STRENGTH.
So mote it be.
YOU MUST ALSO RELEASE ME AND MY KIN FROM THY YOKE.
If thou swear one and all to depart in peace, I shall release thee.
BY OUR LORD AND PATRON ASTAROTH, WE SWEAR IT.
It was a steep bargain, but Anja had expected it. Even if BUER hadn’t demanded freedom for itself and the others, sacrificing her own vitality to save Nadezhda was going to leave her weakened to the point that she would have to release them anyway. The worst part of the deal was that it would leave her bereft of magick indefinitely. In the tumult of Stalingrad, Anja had no way of knowing when she would have the strength or the solitude to conduct the ritual to bind more spirits into service.
BUER interrupted her musings: I HAVE HEALED WHAT WOUNDS I CAN. PREPARE THYSELF. I SHALL GIVE THE WOMAN HALF YOUR VIGOR, AS THOU HAST COMMANDED. WHEN IT IS DONE, I AND MY KIN SHALL DEPART.
Anja took a deep breath. Do it.
A profound emptiness struck her. It felt as if half of her blood had drained away in an instant. Balance abandoned her, and the world spun, a riot of color and sound. Then came the narcotic lightness of suddenly being free of demonic soul-passengers. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed on top of Nadezhda.
The wounded soldier snapped to consciousness with a gasp. “Anja? Anja!”
“It’s all right,” she whispered to her friend, relieved that this time she spoke the truth. She smiled and held Nadezhda’s bloody hand. “We’re all right, now, Nady.… We both are.”
* * *
Rain drizzled from shallow eaves above Cade’s head. Hunched against the cold, he stood alone in a sliver of darkness separating two buildings in central Frankfurt and surveilled the front doors of a Masonic hall across the street. A cigarette smoldered in his trembling right hand; his enchanted mirror shook in his left. “Fuck, it’s cold. My fingers are going numb.”
In the mirror, Adair reproached him with a mock frown. “Toughen up, ye gobshite.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re sitting by the fire with a glass of Garnacha.”
“I’d prefer Glenmorangie. We all make sacrifices.”
Four men holding tentlike umbrellas climbed the steps to the hall’s front doors and tapped a once-thrice-twice pattern with its brass knocker. A gaunt, pallid figure dressed like a butler opened the doors. The men closed their umbrellas and handed them to the doorman as they entered. Seconds after the butler shut the doors, five more men in dark suits and trench coats, all hunched under umbrellas, hurried around the corner, climbed the steps, and knocked.
Cade took a drag off his cigarette. “Jesus, more of ’em? They’re packing this place like a clown car. How many people are in this coven?”
“Our spy said thirty, give or take. Why?”
As before, the butler—who Cade suspected was a lamia of some sort—opened the doors, relieved the guests of their coats and umbrellas, then closed the doors behind them. Cade said, “I’ve counted more than twice that many in the last hour.”
Concern creased Adair’s careworn face. “You’re sure?”
“Positive. There must be at least seventy people in there.”
Adair stroked his beard, immersed in thought. When he looked at Cade, he seemed alarmed. “Did you see a crazy tall bastard, bald head, dressed all in white, with a black cane topped by a golden wolf’s head?”
The description was uncanny in its specificity. “Yeah. About fifteen minutes ago.”
The master winced. “That’s Ludwig Konig, leader of the Berlin coven. They must be holding a joint meeting. Everyone the Thule Society has left is in that meeting hall.”
“All of them?” Cade’s imagination reeled. “You’re saying we could wipe them out!”
“What? No! I’m telling you to walk away.”
He recoiled. “Retreat? Are you crazy?”
“Are you? Attacking that many at once? It’s suicide. Bugger off. Now.”
The order was sensible, but still it rankled. Cade had spent weeks skulking through Germany. He’d slept in ditches, stolen food (and more than a few bottles of wine and liquor) from people’s homes, and been forced to slay half a dozen Gestapo who’d had the misfortune of crossing his path. For the past four days in Frankfurt, he had haunted this and half a dozen other trash-strewn alleyways to spy on the Masonic hall and record the comings and goings of its coven members. He had come armed for a slaughter, not a stealthy escape.
Adair cut through Cade’s brooding: “Lad? Are you listening?”
Cade took a pull from his cigarette. “I hear you.” A disgusted sigh full of smoke. “So much for avoiding Berlin at Christmas. On the bright side, maybe I’ll get a shot at Hit—” The Führer’s name caught half-formed in Cade’s throat as he watched a lone figure climb the steps of the Masonic hall. Even from a distance, Cade recognized him.
Lean of build and cruel of face, the Finn toted no umbrella but strode through the downpour untouched by the rain. The doors opened ahead of him before he knocked.
Cade flicked his cigarette over his shoulder. “Siegmar. He’s here.”
“Forget what I said. Don’t walk away—run like hell.”
“No.” As the Finn strolled inside the coven lair, Cade’s memory snapped back to Siegmar on the Liverpool docks, watching the Athenia depart so he could report it to his master. Kein had sent LEVIATHAN, but Siegmar had told him where to send it.
His heart full of wrath, Cade stepped out of the alleyway and marched through the rain, on a direct line for the Masonic hall.
From the mirror in his hand, Adair protested, “Cade, stop! It’s too many! You can’t—”
“Velarium.” Cade tucked the mirror into his coat pocket.
The stairs he took two at a time. As he passed the middle step, a pair of guardian demons swirled out of the mist on either side of the doors. They were chimeric horrors: one with a goat’s head on a man’s body, its flesh rotten and teeming with maggots, black talons curving from four-fingered hands; the other a desecration of the Blessed Virgin, her tongue a serpent, her billowing white robe stained with blood and shit.
Cade struck down the guardians with slashes of hellfire. The sentinels disintegrated as Cade reached the top step. In too great a hurry to knock, he magickally unlocked the doors and pushed them open at the speed of thought.
On the other side, the cadaverous demon butler reached toward a bell on a nearby table, to sound an alarm. Cade vomited hellfire, banishing the lamia in a cloud of sulfur and ash.
Ahead of Cade, wide stairs curved upward on either side of the empty grand foyer. Gilded double doors stood closed ahead of him, and to either side.
They didn’t stay closed for long.
Doors to his left and right flew open toward him. From both sides charged half a dozen dabblers in ceremonial robes, most of them fumbling wands in unpracticed hands while their tongues tripped over curses in bastardized Latin.
The first six Cade skewered with VAELBOR’s spears.
The next three he let JEPHISTO break like twigs.
The last three got shots off—hellfire, lightning, a swarm of wasps. Cade deflected the flames and turned them against the insects, which turned to dust. The lightning he absorbed, then threw back in a triple fork that left the last three dabblers twitching on the floor.
Through the open doorways he saw a library on his left and a sitting room on his right. Other doorways led out of those rooms, deeper into the hall’s social areas. Might there be more dabblers lurking there, either cowering or oblivious? And what about the upper floors? He couldn’t risk leaving his back undefended when he faced such overwhelming enemy numbers.
MARCHOSIAS, send your legions to search the rest of this floor. Tell them to slay any karcists they find other than me.
The demon’s voice in his head had an old man’s rasp.
SO SHALL IT BE DONE.
The great duke’s legion of nameless spirits surged past Cade like a foul breeze. Curtains fluttered and papers twirled in the parlor and library as the invisible horde rushed through them.
Cade climbed the left staircase to the second floor. Scouting the path ahead with the Sight, he saw wards glowing in a chain across a middle step. He summoned a sword of fire as he stepped over the sigils.
A two-headed gryphon shimmered into view, charging at him. He leveled his blade and let the beast impale itself. The burning sword sank into its torso between its necks, and hellfire consumed the fiend from within. Cade wondered if this was the best the enemy had to offer.
At the top of the stairs, a hallway stretched in either direction. Both sides were lined with offices, smoking dens, and the like. All those doors were open, but there was no sign of action.
If anyone’s there, they’d have heard my entrance. So either those rooms are empty, or someone is lying in ambush. He concentrated: MARCHOSIAS, is the first floor secure?
IT IS.
Send your legions upstairs. Bid them kill anyone other than me.
AS THOU WILT.
Another gust of cold stink blew past Cade and washed down the corridor to either side. If anyone was there, he would know in a matter of moments.
The demon was swift in its report. THE UPPER ROOMS ARE EMPTY.
Very well. Cade went downstairs. He stopped in front of the last pair of unopened doors. Guardians had been placed on them to keep the uninvited at bay. Against most intruders, that would be more than enough to guarantee the security of the hall’s inner sanctum.
To Cade they were a formality.
He negated the door guardians and snuck into a dark antechamber on the other side. Voices echoed in what sounded like a large room ahead. Piercing the darkness with the Sight, Cade saw that a double curtain stitched with magickal sigils partitioned the antechamber from the space beyond. Unable to look past the curtain with the Sight, he crept forward and parted it just enough to peek through.
Then he laid eyes on the great hall.
Thirty yards wide. Fifty yards deep. A thirty-foot ceiling. Garish in its decoration. Gold leaf abounded, as did murals incorporating everything from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to Kabbalistic symbols and Goetic circles of protection. Also in evidence were classic Masonic symbols: the compass and square, and an unfinished pyramid topped by an all-seeing eye.
On either long side of the hall stood tiers of seats packed with the assembled members of both covens. The floor of the hall was mostly open, though a grand circle of protection, inside which had been scribed a complex seven-pointed star, dominated its center. Siegmar stood in the operator’s circle. Two older men—including one whom Cade recognized as the man in white Adair had identified as the leader of the Berlin coven—occupied the tanists’ positions. If the Berlin top dog is a tanist, Cade figured, the other one’s probably the Frankfurt boss.
Seated at floor level on high-backed chairs inside other smaller circles of protection were men and women Cade presumed must be high-level members of the two covens. Everyone’s attention was on Siegmar, who was addressing the room.
“For this reason, it is crucial we expand our ranks. Both your covens have excelled, far beyond the expectations of Master Kein. But our ability to defend the Fatherland has waned. So has our power to restrict access to the occupied territories of the west.”
Listening to Siegmar, Cade pondered how he ought to attack this many foes at once.
“Starting over will not be easy,” Siegmar continued. “But we must rebuild our lost covens—first, here in Germany, then … in France, and…”
Siegmar’s voice trailed off as he squinted in Cade’s direction.
What? I didn’t make a sound. He can’t possibly see me. Can he?
The Finn pointed at Cade: “Intruder! Kill him!”
Oh, shit.
The coven members turned toward the antechamber. Lacking a plan but determined not to get cornered, Cade charged into the main hall. Time to improvise.
Six dozen attacks rained down on Cade’s shield, more than he could absorb at once, more than he could deflect with control. Hot and cold stabs of pain shot through his ribs, and an unseen hand clamped like a vise around his throat. Unable to breathe, barely able to keep his shield raised against an onslaught that seemed to fall without end, Cade started to panic.
Prismatic sprays of fire cascaded over his shield, but he felt their heat. Forks of lightning prickled his skin into gooseflesh. Galvanic tingling worsened into the stings of a thousand bees followed by agonizing spasms in his arms and legs.
Cade knew the legions of MARCHOSIAS couldn’t help him here. The coven members, even the ones in the seats, were inside areas of protection.
From the pockets of his bomber jacket he produced a pair of fragmentation grenades. He pulled their pins and hurled them toward the tiered seats.
The grenades bounced across the parquet floor.
The barrage of magickal assaults on Cade’s shield ceased. The Thule dabblers ran for the exit—which meant they’d left their scribed areas of protection.
With the omnidirectional perception of SATHARIEL, Cade watched the legions of MARCHOSIAS flense the retreating dabblers, even as he drew the Colt semiautomatic Trahern had given him weeks earlier and opened fire on the leaders. Three shots in Konig’s center mass, and the Berlin coven master was down. A lucky head shot marred the great circle’s outer ring of glyphs with a spray of the Frankfurt master’s blood and brains.
Then the grenades detonated.
Explosions ripped through the dabblers who’d been too slow to get off the upper tiers, or who’d tripped over their own feet, only to get trampled by their fellows.
Thanks to the grace of unholy gifts, the blasts passed over Cade like a warm breeze. Shrapnel ripped through his clothes but passed through his body without harm.
On the far side of the cloud, Siegmar weathered the blast with the same sangfroid, clearly also impervious to metal and flame.
Behind Cade, a handful of stragglers limped toward the exit, or struggled to raise their wands in his direction to retaliate. He crushed one like a bug, decapitated another with VAELBOR’s blades, and sent a wave of demons to devour the rest.
Flames roared up the curtains, and a stink of sulfur filled the great hall.
Cade faced Siegmar, his last foe standing.
The Finnish karcist was still inside the operator’s circle. His alb was unblemished; his sword was in his hand. “If I’d had my way, I would have killed you years ago.”
“Now’s your chance, you son of a bitch.”
A half-breath hang-fire—then they both unleashed Hell.
Lightning shot from Cade’s hands, then slammed into identical salvos thrown by Siegmar. Violet light flared at the collision point, and the room reeked of ozone.
Dense trails of smoke transformed into serpents that lunged at Cade. He cut them apart with VAELBOR’s ghost blades, then pressed his attack.
Siegmar deflected Cade’s lightning, only to be knocked out of the operator’s circle by a tempest wind. As Siegmar rolled to a stop, he hurled a venom-laced trident at Cade’s chest. Cade dived to the floor as the gigantic weapon soared past him.
He and Siegmar regained their feet and came up attacking. A black cloud of spiders and scorpions shot from Siegmar’s cupped hands and flew at Cade, who charged into the storm projecting white-hot hellfire from his palms, burning a path to his enemy.
Half-cooked arachnids scuttled over Cade’s feet and up his legs under his trousers. Red-hot bites and stings peppered his calves, and then he felt the scratch of hairy legs on top of his head, followed by another vicious bite at the nape of his neck.
Primal instinct took over, arresting his charge while he stomped and swatted the crawling terrors from his body, but thanks to Adair’s harsh training he kept his shield in place.
It did nothing to stop Siegmar’s flamberge wreathed in eme
rald flames.
Cade dodged. The burning blade cut a smoking wound in the floor.
Siegmar hefted his two-handed, wavy-edged sword for another swing. Cade summoned a broadsword and parried Siegmar’s next blow.
CASMIEL’s prowess guided Cade’s hands. The melee moved with such speed Cade barely registered what was happening: feints and parries, blocks and pushes, lunges and thrusts. Both spectral blades spat sparks and fire with each jarring impact. Cade pinned the flamberge to the floor, and MEUS CALMIRON put its strength in Cade’s left hand, to deliver a punch that launched teeth from Siegmar’s mouth in a bloody spray.
An unseen force threw Cade backward halfway across the great hall. As he struck the floor he called down colossal strokes of lightning, which smashed through the building’s roof and upper floors, then through the great hall’s mosaic-covered ceiling, to hammer Siegmar. When the conflagration ceased, Siegmar was on his knees inside a smoking crater in the floor, but still alive, protected by a sphere of defensive energy.
Walls of fire and smoke engulfed him and Cade. The entire building was aflame and collapsing. Blazing pieces of broken furniture tumbled through the ruptured ceiling and fell like meteors, exploding into sparks and cinders as they crashed to the floor, filling the searing air with millions of burning motes.
Cade swung his arm to hurl lightning—only to see the bolt fizzle in his hand. He tried to control the fire raging around him, but it resisted his commands. Shit.
Siegmar smirked as he stood. “Strength fading?” His burning sword reappeared in his hand. He strode toward Cade, his murderous intention plain.
MARCHOSIAS, your legions—
CANNOT TOUCH HIM. The demon sounded almost giddy over Cade’s predicament. HE IS WARDED BY VASSAGO. ONLY POWERS WIELDED BY YOUR HAND CAN DEFY VASSAGO’S SEAL.
No fire, no lightning—Cade had lost his yokes on XAPHAN and AZALETH. He tried to pummel Siegmar with the fists of JEPHISTO, only to feel that demon slip from his control as Siegmar parried its assault and closed the distance to Cade in quick steps.