The priest took a breath to object, but Madame LeRoux shook her head. “It’s all right,” she said. “They are happy here, and they are hurting no one. Leave it alone.”
“Their happiness is not my concern. We know the boy is involved.”
They had the money, a wire transfer, so they didn’t need Madame LeRoux anymore and never had needed Father Michel. It would be worth it to rid the universe of the annoyance. But Lily liked the house.
Chapter 28
HE WAS IN AN OCTAGONAL ROOM, no doors that he could see other than the entrance from the secret passage. No windows. Evan thought he’d gotten used to Donne’s idea of art but had to turn away from the painting of a man being torn to pieces by a horned devil with Matt Shields’ face. “We know who the devil in this room was, Mr. Donne,” he muttered under his breath, but found no relief from the images of rape and murder on any of the eight walls.
No furniture. All of Grayson Donne’s worldly possessions were sitting in a gallery at Sotheby’s, but Evan saw no indication that this room ever held more than the seal inlaid in parquetry on the floor. A parquetry circle bound the perimeter in black. Not painted, but a darker wood polished to a dull glow. It had been here for a long time. Longer than Grayson Donne. He’d known that going in, but seeing the evidence made those centuries of captivity real.
Inside the circle, the outlines of stars nested like a compass rose, each with a different number of points, each major point touching the circle. Each space held an inlaid symbol—the zodiac on the outer ring, and letters in Greek and Hebrew closer to the center, where the legs of the seal crossed to make a smaller internal ring. At the very center a simple pentagram held a dark, irregular stain. Evan crossed to it, knelt to look closer.
Blood, and not just one stain—they overlaid each other, soaked into the wood at the center of the pentagram. With nothing to give the room scale, he’d thought the space was smaller. Crouching over the bloodstains, he realized that a human could have lain inside the central pentagram. Iron rings were bolted to the floor, aligned with the four lower points—Grayson Donne’s ground zero. Behind him, the secret door snicked shut.
The room gathered power at its bloody center. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck, but he reached out to it anyway. Only the feel of it, solid beneath his fingertips, could make it real, so he brushed his fingers lightly across the bloody stain.
The lights flickered and went out, but he barely noticed them, because a hundred or more screams exploded in his head and no, he hadn’t expected that. His hand went down, instinctive move to steady his balance and made full contact with the bloody center of the pentagram.
“Fuck.”
He was naked, wrists and ankles clamped to the floor at the center of the pentagram. His swollen wrist hurt like a son of a bitch and the cuts on his arms, his body, ached with the deep throbbing pressure of old infections left untreated, as familiar as if he still carried the wounds.
He’d been here, in this room, drugged when they moved him, so he didn’t remember leaving the Black Masque or how he’d gotten here. Hadn’t remembered any of it until now, and he didn’t think the memory was all his—the room fed him more than he could have known, out of his mind from more than the drugs then. But he saw it all now.
A dozen figures surrounded him, shrouded in robes of scarlet and black with bands of arcane symbols embroidered down the front. Each figure held a candle and each watched him avidly as he struggled to escape the iron rings that held him. They were chanting something—there was always chanting. He didn’t recognize any of them, except for Franklin Simpson, who stood at his left side holding the leash of a horned monster with green scales out of his nightmares. Omage, daemon lord of the host of Azmod, wore the form that Franklin Simpson commanded and sat hunched at Simpson’s feet.
Impossible. Not now, not now. Simpson couldn’t be there, couldn’t hurt anybody anymore because Evan had killed him, brought a house down on top of him in Venice and watched as they dragged his dead body out of the ruins. Omage had gone home to the second celestial sphere. He was still an enemy, but he owed Evan for killing his master. And he was still quite mad. So it was impossible. But acid dripped from curved fangs to sizzle pinprick holes in the scales of the creature’s own clawed feet. Evan could smell it, acid and musk sharp enough to cut through the fetid odor of infection and pain. Green fire simmered low in the daemon’s eyes—Simpson had taken everything but rage against his own suffering and the pleasure of tormenting his master’s victims. Evan knew Omage who, in his human form as Mac, owner of the Black Masque, had seduced him with promises and secret knowledge—Evan was different, a lord in his father’s house. And, oh, yes, he could find the father Evan had never known. The answers were behind the door to Omage’s back room. All Evan had to do was walk through it—
Omage hadn’t lied. Evan had found answers in that back room—learned all the forms a daemon lord took on the material plane and all the forms of agony an enraged daemon lord could inflict short of killing him, because Simpson had wanted him alive. In human form, Omage had once told Evan how much he loved him, for the way he screamed. A secret between them. The beast reached out a furtive claw, dug a deep gouge in Evan’s swollen wrist.
Evan screamed. Of course he screamed; that was the point.
“Enough!” Simpson kicked him in the side. He pulled on the leash too, so Evan counted that a win. But Omage grinned around his sharp, curved fangs.
“My beast has trained the half-daemon well.” Simpson was dead, but this was a dream, a memory that bowed to the figure at the head of the pentagram as if he were still alive. “With the proper encouragement, the half-daemon flies to his heavenly home and returns on command.” That was Evan, half-daemon, half-human, wholly mad. But not anymore. Simpson was dead, and so was Grayson Donne. Evan had survived them both, so why was Franklin Simpson still there, in his head?
“He has brought no heavenly treasures back with him yet, but my beast assures me that it is only a matter of time.” Omage, the beast, reached for him again, but Simpson dropped a hand on the daemon’s head, said, “Soon.”
Evan caught his breath, moaned, “Nonono.”
“But can he escape this room?” The question came from the top of the pentagram. Evan didn’t know the voice, hadn’t even considered the possibility. He didn’t control any of it, wouldn’t have known how back then. That came later, but Simpson said, “My beast has trained him, let us try.”
The leader—Grayson Donne—gave a signal, and Franklin Simpson took a step so that he had a foot on each side of Evan’s head. Then he leaned over and lifted him by his hair. Candlelight flashed on the silver knife that curved around his throat and Evan thought, This time, this time, but the knife made only a shallow cut. Simpson caught blood from the wound and dropped him, left him bleeding slowly into the old marks on the floor while he smeared the blood on the beast’s snout. Then he leaned over, spread his hand on the bloodstained floor. “To feed the room,” he said, and returned to Omage, who had begun to whine and thrash at his leash.
“Send the half-daemon home,” Simpson commanded, “bid it return to this room with treasures.” Then he unhooked the leash.
Not here, not now. Evan rolled out of the blood- soaked circle, knew that hadn’t been the last of his own blood spilled there. The room had held him, he hadn’t escaped it then, and . . .
He curled in on himself, wrists held protectively close while he fought the sense memory of Omage’s claws on him, acid falling on infected wounds and Omage’s fangs at his throat, Omage—
Chapter 29
MATT SHIELDS BURST THROUGH THE door, trailing Madame LeRoux’s bodyguards, his eyes snapping fire and a new sports coat flying out behind him. “Evan’s in trouble,” he said, but Brad had already realized that. Suddenly, Evan was gone. Something had sliced through the connections that had tied Brad to his son with laser precision. No frayed ends or dangling attachments. Evan was dead. There was no reason to pretend to be human anymore. H
is duty to his Prince and his own folly was finished; he could go home, leave nothing but cinders behind. But first, and it surprised him that it should be so, he wanted to find whatever had murdered his son and kill it, personally.
Shields grabbed his arm before he could do more than form the thought. “Get Sanchez. Don’t go in the house. It will trap you too.”
Behind him, Lily was escorting Madame LeRoux to the door. “He’s excitable,” he heard her say, “I am sure everything is fine.” The door closed behind them. Gone. Good.
“Why didn’t you warn him?” he asked, and Lily followed with the obvious assumption, “Were you looking for a war?”
“I was looking for a way out of here! Without Evan, what are my chances of that? You figure it out! I thought he’d be safe.”
“Well, he wasn’t.” Brad shook off Shields’ hand, straightened his jacket. Ariton had made a deal with Paimon—Evan’s deal. He didn’t know what would happen to Matt Shields if he destroyed the box, didn’t know what would happen to the daemon lord trapped inside it. But if destroying the wretched thing would work, Shields would have done it. So he had to wait until Shields was free or persuade Ariton to break the deal. They were about due for a war anyway.
Lily had abandoned him to his argument, gone home to the second celestial sphere. He should follow her, except that something had just killed his son.
Evan didn’t need him anymore, but flying to the rescue had become a habit he wouldn’t break now. It was stupid and human and he hated the feeling, but he wouldn’t believe it until his human eyes saw the cold dead meat of his son’s body. Afterward . . .
Well, Evan didn’t need the planet and Brad was well sick of it. Blasting it down to its basalt roots would be a pleasure, but not until he looked into the eyes of the thing that had taken his son. Not until he’d killed it, close up. Intimate. Personal. All those words he’d learned in his time here suddenly took on a clarity of meaning he’d never wanted to feel. He thought Lily might want to play too, but first, he had to find her. He headed home.
In his daemon form, Badad entered the second celestial sphere. He found Lirion easily enough, at the center of a knot of blue flame, a gathering of the host that had not yet reached a quorum in the endless darkness of home. Lords of Amaimon, of Oriens, flickered by in their haste, but did not linger. Azmod counted Evan its personal enemy, but knew to stay away. Evan was Ariton’s problem: who had killed him, and how, were now matters of interest only to Ariton.
His death had resonated through the host, a loss of a part of themselves that the daemon lords hadn’t expected either. That was Badad’s fault. A sane Evan, trained to control his daemon side, had burned as brightly here as any lord of Ariton. Not permanent, he’d always known that, but utterly present. For good or ill, his death was a part of them too.
Blue flames twined and merged as Caramos and Sched touched Badad’s mind—curiosity from the one and acceptance from the other. Sched knew humans, knew the inevitability of their deaths. To her, Evan was just another child lost to time and a cruel planet. Her dead outnumbered the stars, but he’d only had the one to lose. He hadn’t wanted to be the one who killed it, but he hadn’t realized it would matter that much if someone else did. Certainly hadn’t known it would matter that much to Lirion.
At the center of the gathering host, she was arguing for war. Evan was Ariton. Paimon’s soldier had drawn them into his fight and Evan was dead, which made it a strike against Ariton. Anader was there, willing to go to war or to turn the planet into a wobbling cinder for no special reason at all. He didn’t need a reason. Anader the Cruel he was called, cold except when his temper flared hot. Few even among the host chose to attach themselves to Anader. Harumbrub would fight for the pleasure of it. Sched turned her back on him, indifferent to his small loss but Caramos absorbed his sorrow, although he didn’t understand the too-human emotions that passed between them. No lord had ever returned from the material world with such regret for the loss of his captor. Sched’s regret was cold and distant—a failed experiment, all her dead. She understood loss, but she’d never inhabited a dying body, couldn’t comprehend death itself, the pain before and the darkness after. Humans said they saw the light, but Badad hadn’t. He wondered which Evan had seen at the last: a human light, or daemon darkness.
They would require a quorum—a battle between Princes was no small thing even when they waged war for sport—did Ariton want Paimon as an enemy? Was the life of one half-human monster worth unsettling the balance of power across a universe in which by nature he existed fleetingly at best? The debate might last millennia by human reckoning.
Badad would be there at the end, but he had scores to settle in human time, and he’d been right—Lirion wanted in on the kill. They followed the imprint of Evan’s last presence on his world, searching for the place where he had ceased to exist.
Chapter 30
“NO!” Omage was gone. Simpson was dead and so was Grayson Donne. Evan got to his knees, groped in the dark for his flashlight, catching it as it rolled out of his grasp. He’d won. It had taken him long enough, but he’d won and no old memory was going to steal his victory.
He got to his feet and tried the flashlight.
Nothing. Shook it to resettle the contacts and tried it again. Better. The light wasn’t great but it was there, and he turned in a circle where he stood, looking for the door. No door, but in general, he didn’t need one, so he fixed an image in his mind of home.
Didn’t go anywhere.
Tried his father’s home, the second celestial sphere, instead.
Damn. “In general” had just bitten him in the ass. Hadn’t made it out the last time either but he had control now. He knew how to do this. Calmed his breathing and tried to sense what waited for him outside the room. Wouldn’t be able to tell a demented magician from the guy driving the FedEx truck, but he should know if he had company. Except he didn’t. Hadn’t realized how much he’d grown accustomed to the low- level awareness of life around him until it was gone.
His ears popped, air pressure dropping suddenly in the sealed room, and he damped that impulse quickly— didn’t want a tornado in there with him. Another clue, though. Pentacles could contain a daemon’s power, or repel it, depending on the way the spell was cast. Grayson Donne’s room contained daemonic power, pretty much like the pentacle in the ceiling at home, except that Grayson Donne hadn’t given open contracts. So he could use his abilities inside the room—whether he had control of them or not—but he couldn’t use them to leave it, which left his feet, he hoped. Pentacles, Seals, Sigils, none of them held human flesh and Evan was as human as he was anything else. So, find the door, walk out.
He knew there was a door because he’d gotten in, and a door that only opened from the outside didn’t make sense. Grayson Donne and his cronies were human as far as Evan could tell. They couldn’t just vanish at will even if they did own the pentacle. And the bodies—the sacrifices—had to be removed somehow. So there had to be a way to open the door from the inside. Maybe more than one, but the flashlight only gave him a narrow beam of light, which was just as well—the less he saw of the paintings on Donne’s walls, the better.
The catch had to be somewhere within the normal reach of the man who owned the room and it was likely close to the door itself, though it didn’t have to be. He began to sweep the wall with fingertips at light-switch level for a break that might be the door or for any imperfection that might hide a button.
Nothing. He tried the next wall and the next. In the hazy circle cast by the flashlight, robed figures massed around a child bleeding into a chalice while its mother groveled nearby, tearing her clothes in despair. The memories stayed memories as long as he stayed away from the bloodstains at the center of the room. The scars on his wrists ached, reminders of old pain, old losses. He didn’t lose himself in the past again, not even when he saw himself in the claws of the beast painted on the wall, but a familiar rage built inside, burning over his heart.
; He forced himself to move on, but a dim blue light followed him like smoke, growing stronger—he heard the snap of flame, felt it playing with the hairs at the back of his neck. The paint on the wall smoked, turned brown and then black in a growing circle of ash.
He was going to burn the house down if he didn’t get his temper under control. Not a bad idea really, except that he was still in it. He dropped his gaze to the floor, fought the rising flames under control. Not well, though. The light dropped to a twilight fog and he snapped the flashlight off—might as well save the batteries.
The floor was unmarked by his temper.
Circles, compass rose of pentagrams, zodiac. In the spaces forming the center circle, eight Greek and Hebrew letters aligned with the eight walls. He thought about the hidden staircases, one rising from the kitchen to the tower, the other plunging down through the house inside its walls.
Generations of Donnes had filled the house with their pentagrams, but they’d done more. The house was itself a seal marked out in halls and stairways, in rooms and galleries, and he stood at the very center of it, where the blood of a century and more of victims cursed it at its heart.
Chapter 31
EIGHT GREEK AND HEBREW LETTERS aligned with the eight walls. Evan went to the first letter, an Aleph, and pressed with the toe of his shoe. Nothing. But, there, a catch at the center, not the letter but the empty space between the lines. Behind him, a door slid open. And if his theory was correct—he went to the next letter, Rho, found the catch easily this time because he knew where to look. Another door opened, and another. Eight in all. Some opened onto the passage that led to the hidden staircase, some might enter into a hall or the back stair, or the gallery above the grand hall, connecting the house in a complex seal of magic.
Some of that magic was real—he couldn’t escape Donne’s ritual room by calling on his daemon nature, for one thing—but some was just easier to do mechanically, using secret passages and hidden latches. Figuring Donne from his house, he wanted to be center stage, controlling things, mystifying. So he’d probably hidden another catch at the center of the seal, under the blood of his sacrifices, which opened and shut all the doors at once. It didn’t matter. He was getting out of there, didn’t want to go near it again.
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