The Midnight Front--A Dark Arts Novel

by David Mack

  The medics dampened a cloth with water from a canteen and quickly scrubbed the dirt and blood from Cade’s hands. He approved their efforts with a nod. “Good. Now patch me up. If I bleed on this thing, it might kill us all. So wrap my ass like a mummy.”

  Chapeau started cleaning the wound on Cade’s shoulder. “Whatever you say, Underdog.”

  The other Rangers fanned out into a defensive perimeter while the medics packed, patched, and taped Cade’s wounds as quickly as they were able.

  He confirmed that his grease pencil, compass, and tape measure were still in his pockets, then suppressed a wave of pain as he smiled at his Ranger brothers. “Okay. I’m going in.”

  “Good luck, Martin,” Leagans said. “We’ll be here when you get back.”

  Cade saluted his lieutenant, then did his best to conceal his pain and fatigue as he plodded inside the charred observation bunker. He hugged the wall on his way down the stairs to the bunker’s entrance, and to the mission he had to face alone.

  * * *

  After months of study, practice, and rehearsal, Cade had thought himself prepared for whatever awaited him inside the map room. He had memorized every glyph he couldn’t see and every mark he needed to make, and he could execute each step of his protocol for the alteration of the devil’s trap with his eyes closed.

  None of them had included moving furniture.

  The map room, the bunker’s nerve center, was dominated by a huge plotting table with a map of the coastline and grid references for the section of the English Channel for which its crew had been tasked with directing artillery fire. Two wooden desks and chairs sat against the east wall, between the steel doors at the northeast and southeast corners.

  Every last piece of it had to go before Cade’s work could begin.

  Tides of pain rolled inside him as he struggled to clear the room. The chairs weighed the least, so he removed them first, hurling them out the southeast door, into the communications suite. Next had gone the two desks—one with the chairs, the other through the northeast door, into the officers’ quarters. That left only the plotting table—a hulking slab nearly ten feet long, over three feet wide, and twice as solid as Fort fucking Knox.

  I’ll never get this thing out of here. He considered the room’s dimensions, and where the demonic sigil sat within it. I don’t need it out—just out of the way.

  He crouched and braced his left shoulder under the table’s edge.

  A grunt of effort turned into a roar of agony as he tilted the plotting table onto its edge. Once gravity took over he dodged clear and let the table fall against the wall.

  If my calculations are correct, the table is off the seal.

  Its thick legs still protruded enough to interfere with his work. He stomped the two closest to the floor until they splintered and broke free. He tossed the table legs into the officers’ quarters, cleared the last bits of detritus from the floor, and prepared himself to work when all his body wanted was to sink into unconsciousness.

  He opened his water-resistant pouch and took out his tools.

  A compass. A tape measure. Four pieces of twine, each thirteen feet long, inked with guides at eighth-of-an-inch intervals, and attached at either end to small, flat stones. A small tube of resin adhesive. And a grease crayon.

  With shaking hands he pulled the tape measure along the bottom edge of each wall, confirming the room’s dimensions. Just as Niko’s notes indicated, it was precisely 4.2 meters wide and 5.2 meters long. He marked the center point of each wall for reference.

  He set the tape measure along the room’s north-south axis, just right of the center line. Using it as his guide, he stretched one piece of twine beside it. Then he repeated the process along the room’s east-west axis to locate its center point. There he set the compass and aligned its needle with magnetic north. Step one of the protocol, complete.

  He adjusted his first piece of twine to match the compass’s north-south orientation. Then its partner was shifted to lie on the east-west parallel. The third piece of twine he placed from northwest to southeast; and the last he set from northeast to southwest. After a final check that the lines were precise and correct, he used the resin to affix one of each string’s end stones to the concrete floor outside the bounds of the devil’s trap. The adhesive dried quickly, so that by the time he had fixed the first stone of string four, he was ready to pull string one gently taut and fix its second stone into place. And so it went, until all four strings were locked down.

  Step two of the protocol, complete. End of the easy part.

  Grease crayon in hand, he stepped inside the circle of the trap, taking care not to disturb the strings as he squatted and pivoted. He knew the order of the symbols he had to draw, their shapes, every last detail. He had practiced it so many times that he had dreamed this part in its entirety. Yet now, with his wounds on fire, his muscles cramping, and his stomach in rebellion, he couldn’t see it. He forgot all the rehearsals as he faced the blank slate of the bunker’s floor. Now, the only time it mattered, he felt paralyzed with dread.

  You know the first glyph. One at a time. Do it.

  A check of his coordinates inside wedge one. He found the familiar mark on the twine, and trusted his hand to remember the curve of the arc and the curlicue at the end.

  Adair’s voice haunted his thoughts. One mistake and all the demons fly free.

  The first glyph led his hand to the second, which flowed into the third. In his mind he saw the symbols and characters hidden beneath the concrete. It was painstaking work, superimposing hundreds of arcane shapes over others hidden from sight, but he was sure he could do it—if only his strength would last until he finished.

  It has to. It has to, or the world dies.

  One part of his labor bled into another as he submerged into his task. The further into the process he continued, the more he recognized the mental echoes of demonic taunting. Their voices were little more than whispers at first, easy to mistake for tricks of the wind, their suggestions of surrender possible to write off as his own faltering confidence.

  Then he caught their stink in the air.

  “I know your lies,” he said as he worked, knowing the spirits would hear him. “And I know your tricks. Save them for someone who fears you.”

  Cade caught his breath and wiped sweat from his eyes. Looking down, he saw he was more than half finished. He had superscribed the first four wedges without incident, and half of the fifth wedge was complete. He tried to take a deep breath, only to feel his lungs resist the effort. He coughed into his sleeve; when he finished hacking like a consumptive, it was soaked with bloody sputum. The sigil’s guardian was already starting to strike at him.

  Fuck, that’s not good.

  He settled into place and forced himself to continue.

  By the end of the fifth wedge he felt the demons’ revolt swelling around him. Their malevolence clouded his thoughts with fear and doubt. They blurred his vision, their ancient cruelty amplified the pain of his wounds, and they made his hands shake as if from a palsy—all as he struggled to work blind magick with a grease crayon. He could glimpse the spirits on the edges of his perception, but they vanished when he tried to look at them.

  “I know what you’re doing,” he said, defiant. “You think if you make me hurt, I’ll try to work faster. You think … you can trick me into making a mistake.” He caught his hand a fraction of a second before he did just that. Lifting the crayon from the floor, he forced himself to breathe and clear his mind. “Not. Today.”

  When his superscription of the seventh wedge was complete, a horrible crushing sensation took hold of his head. Spots swam in his vision, and he felt vomit course up his esophagus. He pulled off his helmet and shouted it full of blood and stomach acid. Can’t get any on the seal. When the retching stopped, he hurled his helmet aside, well clear of the circle.

  Time to finish this.

  He knew the worst was yet to come. The scribing of the penultimate glyph would fully release
the trap’s guardian spirit, one whose remit no doubt included tormenting and slaying whoever set it free. Unless he finished the last mark and banished the spirits of the trap in a matter of seconds afterward, this was all going to end badly.

  Four symbols from the end, blood ran from his nose. He sleeved the first drops away, but it rapidly grew worse. He tore two small strips of fabric off of his already ripped jacket and packed them into his nostrils.

  As he finished the third-to-last symbol, the wounds in his side and shoulder bled through their bandages. He felt his blood soak through his uniform.

  He couldn’t feel his hands as he drew the next-to-last symbol. His vision blurred then doubled, and his fingers twitched. When the symbol was complete, a seizure racked his body, and the grease crayon fell from his hand.

  Everything was spinning—

  No, Cade realized. The room’s not spinning. I’m spinning.

  His body had risen from the floor. Now he was turning, revolving facedown above the devil’s trap like the hand of a clock spinning in reverse. He couldn’t breathe, and as a kaleidoscope of horrors manifested around him, he saw it was because a spirit, one whose burning skull was crowned with ram’s horns, was choking him to death.

  The beast’s exquisite torments had only just begun, but even seconds in the hands of a demon felt like an eternity. Cade knew he had only seconds in which to act.

  Barred from bringing yoked demons within half a mile of Normandy’s coast, he had been given no choice but to come without magick in his hands or imbued into a weapon. But he hadn’t been foolish enough to come this far unarmed.

  He pulled out his canteen. Unscrewed its cap.

  And flung a streak of holy water into the demon’s face.

  It roared like all the guns of war—but it let go of Cade long enough for him to fall to the floor. He dropped the canteen. Grabbed the grease crayon. Set it to the floor—

  The demon’s hand plunged inside Cade, through his back. He felt the monster’s talons close around his heart. Panic overtook him, afflicted him with violent shakes—but he forced his hand to scribe the final mark.

  From beneath the concrete, the trap’s intricate design flared, described now in fiery strokes that set Cade’s own vandalizing marks aflame.

  Cade spent his last breaths on a command: “I banish thee! By the … Covenant! And the … names … most holy! OPHIEL, MICHAEL, TETRAGRAMMATON, ADONAI, JEHOVAM! Amen!”

  A cyclone of fire raged inside the map room. With it came a terrible shrieking of wind and the fury of the unholy host plunging into the Flame Everlasting. Cade feared the conflagration was about to consume him, body and soul—

  Silence.

  Wisps of red mist snaked upward from the concrete floor, only to dissipate halfway to the low ceiling. The four lengths of twine smoldered, then collapsed into lines of black ash, which scattered as a sea wind swept over them.

  Coughing blood, barely able to see, Cade staggered out of the map room, then out of the bunker. He squinted, expecting to meet daylight, but found a hazy sunset instead; time’s passage had gone strange while he was locked in the embrace of demons. Across Pointe du Hoc he saw no trace of his brothers-in-arms—only the corpses of friend and foe, and a landscape devastated by bombs and artillery. The air was heavy with the tang of scorched metal, the stench of dead bodies left in the sun, the acrid smell of burnt hair.

  He didn’t know what drew him toward the cliffs. Perhaps it was the sight of the Allied fleet, thousands of ships crowding the English Channel; maybe it was the view of beaches lined with slain Americans and the burning wreckage of boats and tanks, the tide dimmed red with the blood of the fallen, the sand littered with thousands of dead fish and fowl. Everywhere Cade looked, he faced a spectacle of carnage unlike anything he had ever thought possible.

  He turned. Took two weak steps toward the bunker.

  His legs buckled. For a second it felt as if he were flying.

  Someone far away called his name, but by then his sight had gone black. He heard another voice shout for a medic, but by then it was too late.

  Cade surrendered to the darkness, and all he felt was relief.

  His fight was over.

  * * *

  “Appear, damn you! I command thee, appear instanter, or feel my wrath!”

  It was hard for Kein to stand composed inside the operator’s circle. He trembled with a rage that almost shook the wand from his hand, and he felt the quaking of his fury deep in his core. His outrage threatened to consume him like a fire with an appetite of its own.

  Foul vapors roiled outside his circle. The demon was here but refused to show itself. Kein grazed the coals in the brazier with the tip of his wand. He was rewarded by a murderous roar, followed by the tenuous apparition of Hell’s prime minister manifested in the outer ring.

  Yellow eyes full of hatred blazed from the smoky darkness.

  WHY HAST THOU DISTURBED ME AGAIN SO SOON?

  “You know why, damn you!” Kein wanted to rack LUCIFUGE ROFOCALE with torments, but the Covenant required that he give the spirit a chance to answer. “I set the stage for a global holocaust! But morning has come and gone, and my labors have yielded only silence! Where is my black dawn? My heaven aflame? My sea of blood choked with wormwood?”

  ALL UNDONE BY THE NIKRAIM.

  “How?”

  THY SNARE WAS NEGATED GLYPH BY GLYPH, AND ITS LEGION BANISHED BACK INTO MY CARE. The demon tsked. A PITY. I WOULD HAVE SAVORED YOUR DAY OF CHAOS.

  “At least tell me the nikraim perished in the effort.”

  A grin of fangs. THE COVENANT DOES NOT PERMIT ME TO LIE TO THEE.

  Bad enough to be beaten—I will not be mocked, as well. “I banish thee and command thee depart in peace, back to the Flame Everlasting!” Kein shouted the holy names to finish the ritual, his hoarse cry buried beneath LUCIFUGE ROFOCALE’s gales of cruel laughter.

  Thunder rocked Kein’s conjuring room, and the demon vanished—but its sinister chortling echoed in the shadows. Bitter tears of shame stung Kein’s eyes.

  Half a century of planning …

  Nearly two years of work …

  … all for nothing.

  Kein’s self-control faltered. Then it disintegrated.

  Abandoning centuries of discipline, he let slip a scream of frustration, then another. He swatted aside his lectern and grimoire, then sprang from the operator’s circle, a berserker on a rampage. He picked up one of the room’s shoulder-height candelabra and swung it like a quarterstaff at the others. Brass stands clanged across the cement floor. Fragile, hand-cast candles smashed against the walls and broke into bits.

  Kein hammered the floor with the candelabrum until it bent, and then he flung it away. It crashed into his workbench, shattering handblown glass decanters and drenching the table and floor with inks, oils, and exotic chemicals.

  He dropped to his knees in the middle of his now-marred circle of protection. Fists balled, he raged in wordless howls at the ceiling until he gasped for air.

  Spent and humbled, he returned to his senses with a jolt of self-consciousness.

  It cannot end like this. I cannot allow it.

  The master karcist closed his eyes and took slow breaths. In his ears he heard the beat of his pulse slow and soften. He knuckled the tears of rage from his eyes.

  I’ve lost a great battle. But the war is not over yet.

  Kein stood and cast off his ceremonial robes. He brushed chalk dust and motes of glass from his trousers, then smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt. Purged of his imbalancing fury, he took a moment to adjust his cuff links and straighten the knot of his necktie.

  That’s better.

  He collected his suit jacket from the hook by the stairs and pulled it on as he climbed the steps back to his private bunker. Upstairs, a chilled bottle of Riesling awaited him.

  In a few hours he would return to clean the mess he had made. The broken glass he would dispose of; the spilled liquids he would mop up. Tomorrow he would bleach and repai
nt the floor. The day after that he would begin the tedious work of replacing the laboratory glassware, the candelabrum, and the candles.

  That would be his penance for a moment of unshackled temper.

  And when my atonement is done, he vowed to himself, I shall summon the spirit I set to guard my trap—and make it reveal to me exactly how my apocalypse was unmade.

  51

  Neither warm nor cold, wind washed over Cade and coaxed him from the arms of oblivion. He remembered falling to the ground, but now he hovered above it.

  He drank in the desolation of Pointe du Hoc, mystified by its surreal quality of light and shadow. What he had thought was wind seemed not to affect the dust in the air or the leaves on the trees, but it streaked the world’s details into chiaroscuro blurs, as if the earth were a watercolor painting exposed to a tempest. Where wind would have howled, this storm cried like a choir out of tune; the sky resonated with minor-chord lamentations. Stray thoughts circled the earth as if from an endless spring of consciousness, a fountainhead of dread and desire.

  Below him lay a face at once strange and familiar: his own. Not the one he knew from the mirror, but the one he more rarely glimpsed and sometimes failed to recognize in photographs. Sprawled on the ground. Eyes open but sightless. Bruised, bloodied, filthy.

  Like a magnet reacting to its opposite, he sensed another presence. Turning in place, he saw no one at first—and then there was something at his side. A mist, or a shadow. Vapors tenuous and pale. They coalesced and took on a form not unlike that of a man, but without definition, as if an artist’s mannequin could shape itself from fog. Despite its lack of eyes, it seemed to regard him with a reflection of his own curiosity.