by David Mack
magick—n., when spelled with a terminal “k,” a shorthand term for Renaissance-era ceremonial magick, also known as the Art. Not to be confused with theatrical or stage magic, which consists of sleight of hand, misdirection, and mechanical illusions. All acts of true magick are predicated on the conjuration and control of demons or, in rare cases, angels.
nadach—n., a human being whose soul has been spiritually bonded prior to birth with the essence of a demon; such a union persists for life and often confers one or more special abilities.
nikraim—n., a human being whose soul has been spiritually bonded prior to birth with the essence of an angel; such a union persists for life and often confers one or more special abilities.
operator—n., in the Art, the adept or karcist leading or controlling an experiment.
patient—n., an antiseptic term of the Art for the intended subject (often a victim) of a demonic sending (see below) resulting from an experiment.
rabble—n., karcists’ nickname for the world’s non-magickal majority of people.
rod—n., in the Art, a wand; used to impose punishments on demons and direct magickal effects.
scrying—n., a term for remote viewing, or clairvoyance (i.e., witnessing events in faraway places) by means of magick.
send—v., in the context of magick, to dispatch a demon by means of an experiment, with orders to perform a specified task. Such actions can include, but are not limited to, murder, assault, recovery of valued objects, and the acquisition of information.
succubus—n., a low-level (i.e., nameless) demon, a creature of pure meanness and spite, whose function is to seduce mortals or, in some cases, act as their sexual servant; a succubus can take any of a variety of feminine forms. When so desired, it can assume a masculine form; in such an event, it is referred to as an incubus (see above).
tanist—n., a karcist, adept, or other person who acts as an assistant to the operator during an experiment. Most experiments are designed to be performed either by a lone operator or by an operator with two or four tanists.
ward—n., a glyph, seal, or other sigil, whether temporary or permanent, that serves to protect a person, place, or thing from demonic or magickal assault, detection, or other effect.
yoke—v., to force a demon or angel into the conscious control of a karcist. Yoking a demon often incurs deleterious side effects for the karcist; such effects can include, but are not limited to, headaches, nosebleeds, nightmares, indigestion, and a variety of self-destructive obsessive-compulsive behaviors.
THE INFERNAL DESCENDING HIERARCHY
SUPERIOR SPIRITS AND MINISTERS OF HELL
Mortals cannot strike pacts with the Emperor of Hell (SATAN MEKRATRIG) or the other two superior spirits (BAPHOMET and BEELZEBUTH).
A karcist makes his/her first pact with one of the six ministers (governors) of Hell; subsequently, his or her future pacts are limited to the subordinate spirits of that minister, and no others. It is possible for a minister to act as patron to many human karcists at once. None of the six ministers (aka patron spirits) can be yoked by a mortal karcist.
The ministers, ranked in terms of power and influence, from most to least, are:
LUCIFUGE ROFOCALE (666 legions)
PAIMON (200 legions)
ASMODEUS (72 legions)
BELIAL (50 legions)
ASTAROTH (40 legions)
SATHANAS (38 legions)
The fortunes and influences of the spirits fluctuate as the demons vie for power in the Infernal Hierarchy. A karcist most often makes compacts with his/her patron spirit for such benefits as wealth, longevity with slowed aging, and immunity to disease.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As has long been my custom, my first thanks go to my wife, Kara. She has been my sounding board, cheering section, brainstorming partner, and my rock throughout what proved to be a longer and more arduous process than I’d dared to imagine.
Next up for plaudits are the members of my Twitter-based demon-naming club: Cherie Priest, Niko Nikkilä, Chuck Wendig, Marianne Larsen (aka @danishwolf), @Xolus, John Marte, Dash Cooray, Michelle Belanger, Alana Ní Loingsigh, Luso Mnthali, James the Former (aka @AbsurdlyJames), @allyanncah, Jenifer Rosenberg, and Julianna Kuhn. My thanks also go out to Monica Valentinelli, who provided me links to pages about Enochian mythology and symbols, and to Jeff Willens, who helped enlighten me on some obscure details of Jewish demonology.
A heaping helping of gratitude is due to my friend and fellow author Ilana C. Myer and her husband, Yaakov, who helped me devise the faux-Hebrew terms nikraim and nadach to describe my humans who are spiritually bonded to, respectively, angels and demons.
I also want to acknowledge Twitter maven @GeekGirlDiva, who provided the name Silver Sadie for the B-17 that ferries my main character into Germany. Thanks also to all the other fine Twittizens who offered helpful suggestions I elected not to use.
Of course, this book would have suffered without the sage insights and advice of its story consultants and beta readers: Una McCormack, Aaron Rosenberg, Ilana C. Myer, Kirsten Beyer, Lucienne Diver, and Scott Pearson. I offer my deepest thanks to you all.
Last but certainly not least: I would be lost without the guidance of my editor, friend, and literary senpai, Marco Palmieri. Thank you for still having faith in me, brother.
READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THE DARK ARTS SERIES.
THE IRON CODEX
AVAILABLE WINTER 2019
Copyright © 2018 by David Mack
1954
JANUARY 8
Anja’s knee kissed gravel as she leaned her motorcycle into the turn at speed, and the demons inside her head sniggered at the thought of her imminent, sudden demise. Jagged rocks kicked up by the front tire pelted her riding leathers and bounced off her goggles. The edge of her rear tire scraped the dirt road’s precipice, sending pebbles down the cliff into the fog-shrouded jungle far below. Around the bend, she straightened her stance and twisted open the throttle.
Far ahead, through drifting veils of mist, her prey accelerated and widened his lead. Anja’s 1953 Vincent Black Shadow had been touted by its maker as the fastest motorcycle in the world, but that didn’t matter much on Bolivia’s infamous and aptly named Death Road. The one-lane dirt trail snaked along a mountainside covered in tropical forest. Waterfalls often manifested without warning and filled the road with lakes of mud, and the jungle below was said to have been blanketed with fog since before men had first set foot in South America.
Condensation clouded Anja’s speedometer and tachometer. She had to trust her feel for the bike as she pushed it hard through an S-turn, and she prayed for a straightaway on the other side so that she could close the gap between her and her escaping Nazi target.
Bullets zinged past her right shoulder. Bark exploded from slender tree trunks. Stones leapt from the muddy earth and tumbled into the road behind Anja.
She glanced at her right mirror. A line of four motorcycles—souped-up BMW touring bikes, the same kind as the one she was chasing—were pursuing her.
They knew I’d go after him, Anja realized. This is trap.
The quartet was closing in. They were only seconds behind her now.
Anja berated herself for getting careless. She shifted her weight with the direction of the next curve and got so low that she felt the road grind against the side of her leg. More bullets ripped past above her and vanished into the mist. Swinging into the back of the S-turn, she plucked her last grenade from her bandolier. She squeezed its shoe in her left hand. “DANOCHAR,” she said to her invisible demonic porter, “take the grenade’s safety pin—and only the pin.” In a blink, the safety pin vanished.
She let the grenade fall from her hand, onto the foggy road.
After she rounded the next turn she heard the explosion—coupled with the screams of riders caught in the blast or thrown from the road with their broken bikes into the haze-masked treetops far below. Men and machines crashed through the branches with cracks li
ke gunshots. Then there was only silence on the road behind Anja.
Ahead of her, the man she had come to kill fought to open up his lead.
The roar of the wind and the growl of the Black Shadow bled together as Anja pushed the British-made motorcycle to its limits. The bike slammed through a deep puddle and parted it like Moses splitting the Reed Sea. Anja used what little mass she had to pull the bike through a close pair of perilous turns, and then she bladed through a wall of fog to see a straight patch of road with her prey in the middle of it. She twisted open the throttle and ducked low to reduce her wind resistance. Her long sable hair whipped in the wind like mad serpents.
Just have to get close enough before he makes the next turn.…
At last the Black Shadow lived up to its reputation. It felt like a rocket as it brought Anja to within five meters of the fleeing Nazi. She followed him through the next turn—then dodged toward the cliff wall on her right as he flung a hunting knife blindly over his shoulder. The blade soared past her head and then it was gone, out of mind.
Enough. I came for the kill, not the hunt.
Calling once more upon her yoked demonic arsenal, Anja conjured the spectral whip of VALEFOR. A flick of her wrist sent the massive bullwhip streaking ahead of her. Its barbed tip wrapped around the neck of her target, and Anja squeezed the Black Shadow’s brake lever.
Her bike skidded to a halt on the dirt road, and her whip went taut. It jerked the Nazi off his ride, which launched itself off the cliff into the gray murk between the trees. As the Nazi landed on his back, his bike vanished. From the impenetrable mists came the snaps of it crashing through heavy branches, a sound that made Anja think of a hammer breaking bones.
She shifted the Black Shadow’s engine into neutral, slowed its throttle to a rumbling purr, and then lowered its custom side stand. Her magickal whip remained coiled around her target’s neck as she prowled forward to lord her victory over him.
A jerk of the whip focused his attention on her. “You are Herr König, yes?”
He spat at her. “And you’re the Jungle Witch.”
“Only by necessity.” She found it amusing that the Nazis whom she had spent the better part of a decade hunting throughout South America had somehow mistaken her for a local. It was understandable, she supposed; her prolonged exposure to the sun and weather had tanned her once-pale skin, effectively masking her Russian heritage. She drew her hunting knife from its belt sheath and leaned down. “Move and I’ll cut your throat.”
He remained still, no doubt in part because the demon’s whip was still coiled around his throat. The strap of the man’s leather satchel crossed his torso on a diagonal. She sliced through it near its top, above his shoulder and close enough to his throat to keep him cowed.
“Don’t move,” Anja said. With a spiral motion of her hand, she commanded VALEFOR’s whip to bind the German fugitive war criminal at his wrists and ankles. Certain he was restrained, she picked up his satchel and pawed through its contents. Most of it was exactly what she had expected to find: extra magazines for the man’s Luger, which was still in its holster on his right hip; a few wads of cash in different currencies, all of which she pocketed. An ivory pipe and a bag of tobacco fell from the bag as she shook it upside down, along with a pencil, an assortment of nearly worthless coins, and a battered old compass. The bag appeared to be empty, but it still felt heavy to Anja. She muttered, “What are you hiding in here?”
With her hands she searched the interior of the satchel. She found a hidden pouch concealed under a large flap. Her prisoner squirmed on the ground as she untied the laces of the flap and pulled from the satchel’s clandestine pocket a leather-bound journal. “Well,” she said, flipping open the book to peruse its handwritten contents, “this is interesting.” The few full words and sentences it contained were scribbled in German, but her yoked spirit LIOBOR made it possible for Anja to read any human language with ease. Unfortunately, the spirit was of no help when it came to parsing the acronyms and abbreviations that littered most of the pages.
She showed the open journal to her prisoner. “Care to explain your acronyms?”
“Burn in Hell, witch.”
“Inevitably, yes.” She flipped another page and admired its high-quality linen paper. “I know your Thule Society dabblers have reformed under the name Black Sun, as a nod to Herr Himmler. But what is Odessa? Is that your expatriate network here in South America? The one that brought you all to Argentina when the war ended?”
He maintained his silence as a faint growl of motorcycle engines echoed in the distance.
It was evident to Anja that Herr König was not going to provide any useful intelligence. At least, not in the limited time she had remaining before more of his cohorts arrived. Normally she would not have feared a confrontation with his ilk, but she had been holding yoked demons for too long. Any hour now she would need to release them, spend a week or so recovering her strength, and then yoke them or other spirits all over again. It was time for her to withdraw to her safe house in La Paz. There she could plan her next move.
But first she needed to address the problem of Herr König.
A flourish of her left hand released him from the demonic whip. Free but still on his knees, König smirked at Anja. “We’ll find you, Jungle Witch.”
“Your minions will try. But before I send you to Hell, I want you to know my name.” She made a fist with her right hand, and the unholy talent of XENOCH racked the Nazi with torments worse than the human imagination could conceive. She raised his body off the ground with the telekinesis of BAEL and savored his contorted expression of agony. “My name is Anja. Anja Kernova.” She flung him high into the air as if he weighed nothing, and as he plummeted toward the jungle she blasted him in mid-fall with a fireball courtesy of HABORYM. His burning corpse vanished through the fog and jungle canopy and was swallowed by fathomless shadows.
An eerie quiet settled over the valley. Anja took a moment to enjoy the solitude of North Yungas Road. Rugged mountains towered around her, but the jungle’s misty atmosphere had imbued them all with the quality of fading memories.
Then she heard far-off motorcycles drawing ever closer.
She tucked the Odessa journal inside her jacket and got on her bike. The Black Shadow roared as she shifted it into gear, and she sped south, Hell’s dark rider alone on Death’s Road.
JANUARY 9
Like most gentlemen’s clubs in metropolitan London, The Eddington was defined by its subdued ambience. Its interior looked as if it had been hewn from the finest mahogany and black marble, and the only things in the main hall older than the leather on its chairs were its founding members’ portraits, which lined the walls and looked down with perpetual disdain on those who had been cursed with the misfortune of being born after the Industrial Revolution.
Tucked in a semiprivate anteroom, Dragan Dalca stood to greet his three smartly attired guests as they were ushered into his company by the Eddington’s chief steward, Mr. Harris.
“Gentlemen.” Harris gestured toward Dragan. “Your host, Mr. Dalca.”
“Thank you, Harris,” Dragan said. The Yugoslavian gestured toward the open seats around his table. “Please, have a seat.” Noting an unspoken prompt by Harris, Dragan asked the three briefcase-toting businessmen, “You must be parched. What can we bring you?”
“Gordon’s martini,” said the Frenchman. “Dry as the Gobi.” Harris nodded.
The American asked, “Do you have bourbon?”
Harris tried not to look put out. “I’m afraid not, sir. Can I offer you scotch whisky?”
“A double of The Macallan Twenty-five,” the American said.
Harris approved the order with a nod, then looked at the Russian. “Sir?”
“The same.”
Dragan caught Harris’s eye. “Double Smirnoff, rocks.”
In unison, the businessmen tucked their briefcases under the table.
Harris stepped back, pulled closed the anteroom’s thick maroon
curtain to give the men some privacy, and departed to fill the drink order, leaving Dragan alone at last with his guests. The trio greeted Dragan with faltering smiles. The Frenchman was the first to speak. “Your message implied this meeting would be private.”
“I disagree,” Dragan said. “And I am not responsible for your inferences.” The ever-present voice nagged at him from behind his thoughts, «Get on with it.» Dragan ignored the criticism, settled into his high-backed chair and folded his hands together, his fingers interlaced. “I invited the three of you here to present you with a business proposition.”
“Your telegram said as much,” the American said, his impatience festering. The Brit and the Russian both adopted taciturn, wait-and-see façades.
«Skip the small talk,» needled the voice in Dragan’s psyche.
Very well; just stay quiet and let me do this. Dragan sat forward and plastered an insincere smile onto his face. “I invited you gentlemen to meet with me because the three of you represent aircraft manufacturing companies that recently have fallen behind in the race to secure clients on the international market. And I’m sure you all know why.”
“Those pricks at de Havilland,” groused the American.
The Frenchman nodded. “Indeed. The Comet 1, to be precise.”
“It is the only thing my clients talk about,” the Russian said. “They overlook its weaknesses and see nothing but its jet engines. ‘This is the future,’ they tell me.”
“It is,” Dragan said. “Unchecked, de Havilland will dominate the market for at least another decade, if not longer. Assuming, of course, that nothing … unfortunate happens.”
This time his unsubtle implication drew raised eyebrows from his guests. The Russian leaned forward. “What sort of misfortune could derail such potential?”
Dragan reached inside his jacket and pulled out a slender gold cigarette case. He opened it, plucked out a Gauloises, and lit it with a match stroked against the table’s edge. Waving out the match’s flame, he took a deep drag of the rich Turkish tobacco, and then he exhaled through his nostrils. “If you gentlemen are interested in reversing de Havilland’s fortunes, not to mention your own, it might interest you to know that the Comet 1, despite its early success, is plagued by two fatal flaws, both of which de Havilland has worked hard to conceal.”