by David Mack
The master squinted. Then his eyes widened in horror. “Demonic wards.”
“Powerful ones. And each adds to the next.” Niko shifted the papers to show Adair a grid demarcating where the pyramids had been deployed. “If I am reading this map correctly—”
“There’s no using magick anywhere on Europe’s Atlantic coast.”
Niko nodded. “I have tried to walk to the beach.” He shook his head. “With demons yoked, I cannot come within a quarter mile of the cliff’s edge. Until now, I did not know why.”
The master buried his face in his hands. “Bloody fucking hell.”
Eager to find reason for hope, Niko wondered aloud, “Would this not restrain Kein and Briet, as well?”
Adair lowered his hands, revealing his stricken expression. “It might. But then what’s the point?” He shook his head. “I can’t square it. Why ward the coast from magick but force the Germans to build inferior defenses?”
Niko had no explanation. “I don’t know, Master.”
“None of this makes sense,” said the grizzled Scotsman. “And in my experience, that’s almost always bad.”
36
MAY
A thunderclap shook the villa, and the floor inside the demon’s circle vanished, revealing a vortex of fire. ABBADON plunged, its wings flailing. As soon as it was gone, another stroke of thunder marked the floor’s instantaneous return. A cold wind that smelled of rotten fish and a struck match rocked the flames on the ceremonial candles.
Calling up ABBADON had entailed weeks of preparation. Cade had spent days preparing the circle, the sacrifices needed to placate the spirit, and the quill made with a feather from a female dove. More trying had been the need for Cade to spend a week in mental preparation, followed by a fast that lasted three days. Thrice had he exorcised his tools in the name of safety.
Now it was done; the demon’s name and seal were his to command. Yoking the King of the Abyss promised to be a grueling ordeal, but one that might give Cade a chance of surviving his next meeting with Kein.
Whenever the hell that happens.
Cade put the lid of the brazier into place to smother the embers inside, then left the operator’s circle. He set his sword and wand on a worktable with his other tools. He removed his ceremonial garb. It all had to be washed and consecrated before his next experiment, just as his tools needed to be fumigated and exorcised.
He returned to the circle, snuffed the tapers with pinches of their wicks, then collected his grimoire from the podium and put it in his wardrobe with his other effects. The rest of the cleanup could wait until the next day. I never thought I’d miss the lamiae.
His head felt light but his feet were heavy as he climbed the stairs to the villa’s second floor. As he reached the top, he saw the clock on the wall. It was just after four in the morning. Living on Hell’s schedule left Cade feeling out of sync with the rest of the world. It was becoming rare for him to fall asleep before sunrise, or to stir from his bed before midafternoon.
His only consolation was that Adair had slipped into a similar schedule, though the weeks of preparation had taken a toll on the master. The cycle of research, conjuring, binding, and banishing had become a slog for them both. They were grinding away in search of advantages for a battle they knew to be inevitable, but whose time and place remained unknown.
Cade did his best not to wake Adair. Padding down the hall in stocking feet, he passed the master’s chamber on the way to his own. Adair’s door was half open. The master lay hugging his own torso in his troubled sleep, his blankets in a pile on the floor at the foot of his bed. A cold breeze snaked through an open window and carried all the way to Cade in the hallway. When he looked closer, he saw the master was shivering.
I can’t leave him like that. Cade slipped inside Adair’s room, taking care to avoid floorboards he knew were prone to creaks. He gathered the blankets from the floor and pulled them over Adair, then eased them into place. After a few moments, the master’s teeth ceased to chatter, and his shaking stopped.
Cade stood at Adair’s bedside, disturbed by the damage the master had inflicted on himself in just the past two months. Not only had he been tearing at his beard and eyebrows, he also had plucked out almost a third of his eyelashes, and he had ripped enough hair from the top of his head to give himself an uneven tonsure, like that of a monk except grossly asymmetrical. There were scabs inside and behind Adair’s ears, the result of incessant scratching.
Cade had wrought similar injuries on himself over the past couple of years, but not to such a degree. For the first time he understood how profound an advantage he had in the Art because of his nature as a nikraim. He had grown accustomed to holding nine yoked demons for extended periods. Protected by the angel bonded to his soul, he was sure he could handle up to a dozen for weeks or months at a time before succumbing to their insidious torments.
For all of Adair’s experience, however, the master was still just a man. Holding eight yoked spirits for months on end was wearing him down, killing him by degrees. Cade had urged him to let some of his yoked spirits go, but Adair always refused. “I won’t be caught with my guard down again. Not now, not ever.” That was his refrain whenever Cade expressed concern. And so the master went on, driving himself beyond limits any sane man would respect.
No one can save a man from himself. It was a hard truth, one whose wisdom Cade had come to understand. He had done what he could for Adair. Now he had to tend to his own needs.
He escaped the master’s chambers undetected, returned to his own room, and shut the door. When he switched on his bedside lamp, he was surprised to find on his end table a bottle of absinthe adorned with a silk bow. Next to it was a flat, slotted silver spoon, a bowl of sugar cubes, a low tumbler, and a vial. A tiny card was tucked under the ribbon. He plucked it free and read the message, which had been scrawled in the master’s own hand:
Many happy returns, lad. Sleep well.
—Adair
He recalled the date and realized he had forgotten his own birthday. It was May 9, 1943. He was twenty-four years old. Smiling, he put the card on the table and picked up the vial. It was, as he’d hoped, laudanum.
The traditional method of consuming absinthe, as Adair had taught him, was to pour a small measure of “the Green Fairy,” rest the slotted spoon across the top of the glass, set a sugar cube on the spoon, then pour water over it to dissolve it into the liquor. The sugar was useful for cutting the bitterness from the drink, but Adair had objected to diluting the beverage. Hence his compromise: dissolving the sugar with laudanum, a potent mix of opium and alcohol.
Maybe I’ll get to sleep free of demons and dreams tonight.
A finger of absinthe, then a drizzle of laudanum over a sugar cube. The cloudy mixture in the glass promised Cade black slumbers. He downed it in one swallow, then reclined on his bed. In the space of two breaths, his coiled-spring mood unraveled, and he felt his mind sink into the drug’s blissful fathoms.
Demonic whispers followed him into the deep.
YOU CANNOT ESCAPE US, threatened AZAEL.
VAELBOR’s rasp haunted Cade’s passage: WE ARE IN YOU, EVE-SPAWN.
Silence, Cade warned his yoked horde, and their susurrus abated. Then he submerged into the peace of oblivion, liberated from himself at last.…
Then came a rude awakening.
A callused hand gripped his arm and shook him like a tambourine. Sunlight streamed through the window, whose curtains had been pulled open. Squinting into the glare, Cade recognized Adair only by his voice and brusque manner: “Up.”
Cade sat forward and groaned. His stomach burned with acid, and his brain felt as if it had been smashed on a rock and shoved back inside his skull. “Jesus. What time is it?”
“Half noon,” Adair said. “Chop chop. We have to go.”
“What? Why? Go where?”
“We’ve been summoned to Washington,” Adair said, his manner grave. “And when we get there, I need you with your wits sharp�
��because I’ve a job for you.”
* * *
Even before Cade had embarked on his latest mission to Germany, Adair had dispatched Hell’s newest enchanted mirror to America. Though the looking glass wasn’t breakable by conventional means, Adair had worried about it being lost at sea, collateral damage of the Germans’ ongoing U-boat attacks on Atlantic shipping, so the U.S. Army had conceded to his request that the mirror be flown from Gibraltar to London, and from there to Washington.
The mirror had been expensive and hard to procure, and there wouldn’t be another for two years, but the Allies had insisted Adair provide it to them. Now it would prove its worth.
Through the kitchen doorway, he saw Cade down a cup of tea in one grand swallow. The young man sleeved the dribble from his chin and dragged himself out to meet Adair in the study, where the master had set up his freestanding oval portal glass.
He checked his pocket watch. “Thirty seconds.”
“I’m ready.”
Attuning his thoughts to the vibrations of HAEL, Adair intoned, “Aperite portam.” Reflections faded from the mirror, giving way to a twisting gyre of smoke. He pressed his palms together as if in prayer. As his hands parted, so too did the churning vapors, revealing a dim but tidy office with a closed door.
He motioned Cade forward with a tilt of his head. The youth stepped through the gateway. When he was clear of its threshold Adair followed him.
They stood then in the office, its beige walls bereft of decoration and smelling of new paint, its furniture brand-new but also cheap and clearly mass-produced. Early-morning light bent through the window’s venetian blinds.
Standing to their left was a trim American officer in his early forties. His light brown hair was graying at the temples and shorn to a crew cut, and his dimpled chin almost gleamed it was so cleanly shaven. He stepped forward, his hand extended. “Right on time! Welcome to the War Department, gentlemen.” He shook Adair’s hand. “Mr. Macrae, I’m Colonel Jeremiah Tolbert, United States Army.” He turned and grasped Cade’s hand. “You must be Cade Martin.”
If Cade was surprised to be recognized, he hid it well. He nodded once as Tolbert shook his hand. “Colonel.”
Tolbert released Cade’s hand and faced Adair. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.” He gestured toward the door. “If you’ll follow me, the others are waiting.”
“Others?”
“Secretary Stimson and the Joint Chiefs.” The colonel walked ahead of them, out of the office. “This way, please.”
For once Adair felt the same astonishment as his apprentice. Stretching away to either side of them was a corridor so long he strained to see its end. The hustle of bodies coursing in crisscrossing paths, merging or diverging at intersections, and flowing in and out of office doors on either side, left Adair feeling like a leaf riding a river.
Tolbert seemed to recognize their reactions. “The Pentagon’s the largest office building in the world. Over seventeen miles of corridors on four levels above ground and two below. More than twenty thousand people work here—” A quartet of women in military uniforms diverged in pairs around the men and regrouped behind them without missing a step. Tolbert added, “Most of them women.” He led them down an intersecting corridor on their right. “The whole thing was built in under sixteen months. Amazing the kind of motivation a war can bring.”
At an open passage to a broad concrete ramp they were met by a dark-haired woman in a U.S. Navy uniform. Tolbert made the introductions. “Mr. Macrae, Mr. Martin, this is Warrant Officer Ellen Gallo. Ms. Gallo, Mr. Macrae and I have a meeting with the chiefs and the secretary. Please take Mr. Martin down to the plaza. Mr. Macrae can collect him there when the meeting’s over.”
Cade resisted being led away. “Hang on, what gives?”
“It’s nothing personal, Mr. Martin. The meeting Mr. Macrae is attending is top-secret. Our invitation was for him alone. I apologize to you both if that wasn’t clear.”
Adair set a calming hand on Cade’s shoulder. “I’ll be fine, lad.”
The young man relented with a sullen glare. “All right.” His affect brightened as he shook the naval officer’s hand. “Hi, there. Cade Martin. Ellen, is it?”
She deflected his come-on by ignoring it. “‘Warrant Officer Gallo’ will do just fine. Follow me, please.” She led him down the ramp.
Tolbert beckoned Adair to accompany him to another part of the second floor. Adair fell in beside him and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “A ramp?”
A shrug. “No elevators.”
“Why?”
“Same reason the building’s only four stories tall: to save steel. We couldn’t build up, so we built out.” He led Adair to a door guarded by a pair of armed soldiers. “Here we are.”
Tolbert opened the door. Adair stepped inside a long room. Seated farthest from him at the head of the conference table was Henry Stimson, the secretary of war. Except for Adair himself, Stimson at seventy-five was the oldest man in the room. Nature had graced him with a prominent, almost Gallic nose. His years had left him portly, but experience had given him serious eyes and an unforgiving frown capped by a snowy mustache.
The other men were all in their fifties or sixties, Adair surmised. As he stepped toward the table and Tolbert closed the door with himself on the other side of it, Stimson and the others at the table stood in greeting. Stimson’s cultured voice filled the room. “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce Mr. Adair Macrae from the British Special Operations Executive.”
Nods were made in Adair’s direction.
The secretary gestured at the square-jawed man to his left. “Mr. Macrae, Admiral William Leahy, the ranking officer of the Joint Chiefs.”
Stimson faced the man opposite Leahy—an army officer lean in features and physique, with eyebrows that peaked like tents. “General George Marshall, chief of staff, U.S. Army.”
Beside Marshall sat another navy man, a proud-looking fellow with a long face, rudder nose, and cleft chin. “Admiral Ernest King, commander in chief of the United States Fleet.”
Last to be introduced was the officer next to Leahy—a diminutive man in army colors whose balding pate was ringed by a white tonsure, and whose eyes had a surprisingly gentle quality for a man of war. “General Hap Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces.”
To one and all Adair said, “Good day, gentlemen.”
The secretary sank into his chair, tacitly giving everyone else permission to sit. Adair chose a seat at the near side of the table, opposite Stimson and as far from him as possible. “So, Mr. Secretary. How can I be of service?”
Stimson slid a manila folder down the table. It slid to a graceful stop in front of Adair. “Plans are afoot.”
Adair opened the folder and thumbed through the papers inside. The top page stopped him cold. “Is this right? North Africa’s under Allied control?”
“As of yesterday,” General Marshall said. “A quarter million Axis troops surrendered after General Eisenhower took Tunis.”
Adair flipped through more pages. “Invasion of Italy by July. Bombing raids on Germany.” He paused, skipped ahead and checked the last page. “And the Pacific?”
“That’s being handled on a need-to-know basis,” Admiral Leahy said.
There was something sinister lurking in the admiral’s demeanor, but thanks to anti-magick safeguards the U.S. military’s contractors had built into the Pentagon—on Adair’s recommendation, and in accordance with his specifications—he was unable to peek into the man’s thoughts to suss out the truth. He closed the folder. “Ambitious.”
Stimson smiled. “You don’t know the half of it.” He tapped the ash off the end of his cigar. “One year from now, we want our boys on the ground in France.” He pointed at Adair with his stogie. “I’m told that’s where you come in.”
“I’m sorry, but you were told wrong.” He pulled a page from his folder, one that featured a map of the coastlines in the North Atlantic theater of war. Tracing the shorelines, he contin
ued. “The Germans’ Atlantic Wall isn’t anywhere as tough as they say it is—but it lives up to its billing in one respect: No magick can work within half a mile of these beaches.”
General Arnold suppressed a derisive snort. “I could’ve told you that.”
It was easy for Adair to read the mood in the room. Except for Stimson, these men all thought him a charlatan. “You men have something you’d like to say?”
Admiral King’s reply was cool and measured. “We agreed to meet with you because Prime Minister Churchill insisted we do so. But we’re under no obligation—”
“Gentlemen,” Stimson cut in, “need I remind you General Eisenhower himself vouches for this man? As does the president?” The secretary’s warning was met with silence. He caught Adair’s eye. “Mr. Churchill is in Washington, meeting with the president, even as we speak. They’re hoping to nail down a date for the invasion of France. What should I tell them?”
Adair opened the folder again, flipped to the page headlined “OPERATION OVERLORD,” and skimmed its top-level objectives. “Tell ’em they’re in for a bloody hard fight.”
Leahy cocked one bushy eyebrow. “Is that all? I’m so glad we took this meeting.”
“Don’t blame me, Admiral. I didn’t sign on to fight your war for you.”
Stimson leaned forward and steepled his fingers atop the table. “Then what about your fight? You’ve eliminated the Thule Society.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“What about this Kein Engel person?”
Adair grew annoyed. “What of him?”
The secretary shrugged. “Does he still pose a threat?”
“He does.”
Admiral King chimed in, “Where is he?”
“No idea.” Adair’s honesty was rewarded with frowns.
Stimson resumed his inquiry. “What about his lieutenant? A woman named Briet Segfrunsdóttir. Are you aware of her current whereabouts?”
A shake of his head. “Afraid not. She and Kein are in the wind.”