The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil

by Heidi Cullinan

  Hamilton Elliott’s mouth smiled. “So weak you need not bother with me, hmm?” The demon shifted again, and now it wore Martin Smith, alive once more in all his cocksure glory. The demon held out Smith’s hands in proud triumph. “While you were building empires, little fool, I was building armies. I even lured this one in from outside the blood, letting him believe he could control me. While you have beaten and enslaved your clan, I have yielded to mine, and they have nursed me into what you see before you now. They give themselves to me, Perry! I must enslave none with madness or pain. I need not kill you to prove my superiority. It is all around me! And now that the Lord is returned to me, all his talismans gathered at my side—now I am stronger than ever! I am not bound by body, but I may choose to form one from a dazzling palate as it pleases me, a variety which increases by leaps and bounds every moment. Now I am the Lord! And with these bodies I will reclaim the world we have lost, and I will take vengeance on those who caused this pain.”

  “The world we knew is dead,” the Perry demon spat. “The Old Ones are dead and gone. They are nothing but ghosts.”

  “They are not dead.” The demon shook Smith’s head, but it was not smiling. “I have kept them. I have kept them all. I did not let their stars go back to the sky. I kept them safe with me. They cannot die. I will never let them die again.”

  It changed once more. Now it was one of the witches, the one who had lowered her veil and who had been so cool to Jonathan as she dismissed his love for Madeline. She still appeared icily serene, but there was something off about her too. The demon wore her as easily as it had the others, but she looked especially wrong somehow. Even Jonathan, for all he hated the twelve that had killed Madeline, felt pity for the noble and powerful witch, now reduced to be the demon’s puppet.

  “I have all their power too—the strength of the Twelve Sisters of the witch’s Council,” the demon said through the cool, smooth tones of the High Witch. Her lips curled in a placid smile. “Their bodies were gritty, but their souls were like sipping a sunset or a cloudless sky. Such a pity to have them first, but there are other witches, and they will re-form Council after Council to defeat me once they comprehend what I have done, what I am. And I will drink them all, hoarding them in my cellars like treasured wines, indulging at my pleasure. But now I shall drink you—slowly, painfully, so that your life is drawn out as long as you might enjoy it, if you can enjoy it while writhing in pain. I want the hulking little equerry on the other side of the door to spread the news far and wide of my terror, for the whole world let my charges die horribly and alone, and so the whole world will answer in kind. And I want them to know it is coming, to fully understand what heaven and hell awaits them in my mouth. But first—first you, my old friend.”

  “You won’t take me so easily,” the Perry demon said, but Jonathan could feel its fear and uncertainty.

  The witch’s mouth curled again. “But I will. I will take you so easily it will make you weep, and I shall use my cup to catch your tears and drink them one by one.”

  The witch held the cup before her and changed once more. Both Jonathan and the demon recoiled at what they saw in the demon’s aspect now.

  “No,” Jonathan whispered and tried to shut his eyes, but he could not close them, for the demon wanted them opened. He could only watch as Andrea Carlton walked forward and placed her cool hand against his body’s chest.

  “This is how I will beat you,” she said, her voice full of the same innocent, sultry teasing that had lured Jonathan to his destruction in the end. “I will destroy you in the skin of the child you raped with that sword. I will drink you down through her mouth, the one you defiled with your agent’s lust. And I will swallow you with her thighs, the ones you cut, the ones you burned, the sex you ravaged only to please yourself. I have made her whole again. I have made her stronger. I have let you destroy me so that I could make myself immune to your blood, to your weapon, to any harm you might inflict upon me. And now I shall return it all to you, each and every molecule of pain you have inflicted upon my House. I am the Lord now, and you and all the world will answer to me.”

  “The sword,” the Perry demon sputtered, but its terror was plain now.

  Andrea’s mouth smiled, and she slid her hand up the demon’s chest. “The sword will not save you, Perry. Nothing will.”

  Her fingers turned to knives, and both Jonathan and the demon screamed as the Elliott demon dug them into Jonathan’s fragile chest.

  It pulled back before the Perry demon could swing Jonathan’s arm around and stop her. It ducked the blow, then rose again, making Andrea’s eyes impish as it suckled Jonathan’s blood from the blades that were now fingers once again. It licked her lips, and Jonathan shuddered, remembering, remembering, remembering…

  “Just the start, Johnny. Just the start.” She drove his thumb into her mouth and suckled hard. Jonathan recoiled as he felt the demon remember what it had done to her, as it forced him to remember. He tried to climb away, tried to leave, but he could not escape it. He saw it all, over and over and over again.

  Andrea laughed. “Oh, but this shall be better than the Twelve. Nothing shall ever match this sweet blood of my victory. I wish I dared to keep you alive longer so as to extend your suffering.” She tipped her head to the side, looking vaguely sad. “I shall miss you. How extraordinary.” Then her eyes went dark, and she extended her claws again. “But not enough to stop. Now I shall know you, Perry, as you have known so many of me. I shall know all of you. All of you.”

  The Elliott demon leaped.

  The pain was beyond anything Jonathan could ever have imagined. He felt it in his body and in his soul, felt it echoing in parts of him he did not know he had, strange deep wells within himself. But the physical quickly became the least of his torments. The Elliott demon tore at his body—his arms, his legs, his chest, his face, his withered sex, brutalizing him in every way his family had brutalized everyone else—but it also raped his mind, flooding those images back at him, making him relive every sin performed by the Perry and Whitby Houses for two thousand years, every indignity, every cheat, every slight. Hale, healthy, and not possessed, he might have simply grieved his family’s weakness, but in that close and terrible space flooded with pain, Jonathan lived those horrors, each and every one. He was Perry. He had not yet joined with the demon, but the demon was nothing more than the collected consciousness of his House. And the demon was evil—pure, terrible evil. And as Jonathan writhed in the dark, he knew with sickening clarity that so too was he.

  He woke from his terrible trance at a nudging, an insistent poke. “Come,” the demon rasped. “I am dying. The Elliott has nearly taken me. I kept you there to punish you, to make you feel what you made me feel, so impotent and trapped, but now I am too weak to claim you. Give yourself to me, last of our House. Give up your glory to me and know your energy will be the last that it fights, your endurance the last thing it consumes of all that we have been.”

  Jonathan said nothing, and he did nothing. He only curled tighter within himself, pushing the demon out as much as he could.

  “Yield!” the demon cried. “You fool, you cannot beat it any more than I can, and the death he offers you will be terrible compared to the compassion I will show you.”

  Here, at last, Jonathan felt a spark rise within him again…of anger. “The compassion you showed so many others?”

  “They were not of our House,” the demon hissed. “They were not worthy.”

  “I have known nothing from our House but torment and pain and death. Any goodness I knew came from all those you dismiss as so unworthy.” He pulled himself tighter and tighter and tighter, until he was nothing more than a speck of dust, hard and fast inside his body’s skin. “I would rather die by inches over a thousand years at the Elliott’s hand than give one moment’s allegiance to you.”

  The demon roared and beat against him, trying to break him down, but Jonathan knew this foe too well, knew it even better than it knew itself. He held fast,
waiting, simply waiting, then felt the beating stop. The Elliott demon made a final strike, and in a rush Jonathan felt their places shift: the demon, alive now only by tatters, fell into the narrow prison in the scar inside Jonathan’s thigh, and Jonathan himself slid back into the full presence of his skin.

  He faced the Elliott as himself now; he wore his own wounds, and he controlled his own hands, aching and bloody as they were. The first thing he did was drop the sword; it clattered against his toes, but he didn’t flinch. Bleeding, shuddering, shaking, every bit of him throbbing, he only stood as straight as he could before Andrea’s untouched face. But he was standing.

  “I am ready,” he said.

  Andrea smiled and touched his cheek. “You, I would almost like to keep. You did not harm this body. You betrayed my House inside it, but this body went willingly. You protected us and gave her an easier death than the others would have taken. And you worked so hard to save the traitors to my House—not because they worked against me, but because you loved them. And yet you were not done! Even now, here at your last hour, you will not submit to your House, the darkness you carried without submitting as your father did before you. Even with all the pain you saw me deliver to it, which you know I could give to you.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Jonathan Perry. For this you have earned an easy death. I will cherish you, as so many of my House have done.”

  “No.”

  Both of them turned toward the sound; Timothy stood in the doorway calmly, his hands resting lightly on his hips.

  No, Jonathan wanted to cry. Not you too.

  Andrea’s head lifted, surprised. Then she smiled and waved at Timothy. “Yes, I’m sorry, I quite forgot you. I thought you would have run by now.” Her face fell. “Oh no. You aren’t coming to die stupidly and nobly in a vain attempt to save him, are you? But you have heard, and now you see! Look at him! He is ravaged! He is only standing because I took such care to leave those muscles undamaged!” She pouted. “I wanted you to tell them what you had seen. How can you do that if you are dead?”

  “Look at me,” Timothy said. “Look at me, daemon. See me.”

  The demon did, blinking in irritation. Then it faltered and drew back as if it were seeing Timothy truly for the first time. “No.”

  Timothy came calmly forward. He was unarmed, but he moved with ease and quiet command, more than Jonathan had ever seen in him before. “I claim the right of equerry on behalf of Jonathan Augustus, Lords Perry and Whitby, and I hereby submit myself to accept his punishment in his stead.”

  “No,” Jonathan croaked, blood foaming on his lips as he forced his injured throat to speak.

  “No,” the Elliott said, but it was whispering now, almost whimpering. “It cannot be. You are lost. This is a trick—it cannot be.”

  Timothy lifted an eyebrow. “You deny me?”

  Now the demon was panicking. “No! No, I—” It shimmered, then shifted back to Hamilton Elliott. “No. I would never deny you, my Lady.”

  Timothy nodded. “Good. Then I repeat, I submit myself in place of Jonathan Augustus—”

  “But you can’t!” The demon was back to Andrea again, shrieking in her girlish voice. “You can’t! You are the Lady!”

  “Yes,” Timothy said, his voice going dangerously soft. “And you have taken my Lord.”

  Lady? Jonathan thought, growing dizzy now. Lord? But he did not speak, only listened.

  “The Lord was broken,” Andrea’s voice whispered. “So many pieces!”

  “The Lord cannot be broken, only temporarily separated from himself. He came back to me on his own, came together on his own, and you took him from me.” Timothy’s eyes began to flash, and Jonathan thought he must be hallucinating, because they seemed to be glowing as well, the dark pupils radiating a soft, rich gold. “Your insolence will not be tolerated.”

  The demon was back to Hamilton again. “But my Lady, I protected you! I kept you safe! I kept all your children safe!”

  “You kept them from death, which has kept them from life. You have made them wraiths. You kept me prisoner, the aspect you could catch, and you made me wait in the darkness, listening to their cries, unable to help them.”

  “I kept them safe—”

  Timothy waved his hand angrily at the windows. Jonathan startled as they all flew open at once, and he shrank as he saw, at long last, the ghosts—all of them, thousands and thousands and thousands of them, hovering in the air. The room seemed to expand to accommodate them yet stayed the same size at the same time. They were legion, these ghosts. But they were terrible things—jagged and wan and pale, their faces dull. Wraiths. Jonathan shuddered. Worse than wraiths. They were nothing, nothing but shells. No emotions. No hopes. No fears. No hungers. No desires.

  No life. No love.

  “This is what you have made them,” Timothy hissed. “You have called them back to this world by your ascension, by your coming through the door that I have opened, but there is no life left. This is all that you have saved. They are nothing but darkness now.”

  “Timothy?” Jonathan croaked. “What—” He coughed, then could speak no more.

  “Hush,” Timothy said to him gently, then turned back to the demon again.

  But the demon had seized on the distraction. It was Smith now, and it pointed gleefully to Jonathan. “I have done what I was meant to do. I alone have protected you. This one is of the House that betrayed you. His blood is mine. That is law.”

  “You must first drink mine,” Timothy said, “As I have now twice told you.”

  “No!” Jonathan cried hoarsely.

  “You must obey the law,” Timothy went on, ignoring Jonathan. “All the laws, the mortal as well as the divine. To do otherwise is to become a betrayer yourself. And then what will you do?”

  “But you will destroy me!” the demon cried.

  Timothy’s eyes glittered again. “Yes. I will give you death. You have enjoyed life; now you must taste the darkness again and return to the cradle. Then you may be reborn.”

  “But not as this! Not like this!” the demon cried, and then it shifted to Charles.

  Timothy went rigid with anger, and the emotion seemed to pulse like fire against him. “You will not wear his skin before me.”

  “I am a better Lord than he would be!” Charles’s voice cried out. “I am stronger! I am more intelligent! I am—”

  “You are foolish and small,” Timothy said sharply. “Worst of all, you have no heart. You have suffered nothing. You have only controlled and manipulated the suffering of others. You are ego and vanity. Even in his darkest days, his lowest moment, even then he was ten thousand times greater than you are now.”

  The demon was sobbing. “I only did what I was made to do!”

  “Yes,” Timothy agreed with some empathy. “Yes, you did. And now it ends.” He held out his arms. “Take it. Take my blood, and you will at last be free, loyal servant.”

  “Thirteen!” the demon wailed. “Thirteen!”

  “Yes,” Timothy said. “Come. It is time.”

  “No!” Jonathan cried, and he tried to reach for his friend to stop him.

  But he could not move, and so he could only watch. The demon was still weeping, but it came forward like a little child. As it walked it became one, small and sobbing. It rubbed its eye with the back of its hand, blubbering, drooling, wailing, but it went to Timothy without hesitation, growing smaller and smaller as it went.

  Timothy knelt down before it, and as Jonathan watched, he saw his friend begin to change. He blinked, knowing it could not be real, but as he stared at Timothy, he saw him change, back and forth like a flickering star: man, woman. Man, woman. When the squalling infant that the demon had become crawled before him, Timothy knelt down and lifted it gently from the floor. The infant screamed, and then it sharply bit Timothy’s thumb.

  Timothy did not flinch, but as he rose he changed one more time. He smiled as he lifted the now tiny babe squalling into the air, holding it high above his he
ad. Except Timothy’s head was now a mass of dark, wavy hair, his waist was narrow, and he wore a great golden dress that looked as if it had been woven out of stars.

  Timothy laughed, then brought the baby down and kissed it. The baby laughed too, a soft, sweet coo, and it reached for the shining Lady’s face. Jonathan saw a veil appear, swathing them both, and then they burst into a pulsing and blinding ball of light, and they were gone.

  Jonathan, bleeding and dying, was alone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  D’lar

  Lord

  The Lord is the masculine incarnation of the Goddess and the Consort to the Lady.

  He does not end life; he cannot.

  He cannot create life alone, but neither can life begin without him.

  In the beginning, there was darkness and nothing more.

  The darkness swelled and pulsed, a silent heartbeat in the Void. There was no sound, no breath, nothing but that heartbeat filling the space, rising and falling, marking the slow, silent beats of Time. There were no stars, no planets, no animals, and no people. No angels. No demons. No spirits of life or death, for there was no life and no death: there was only this. On and on, endless, forever it beat: no variation, no alteration of even the slightest measure, just beating without sound. For what would measure in a human life as millions upon millions of years, the universe did nothing more than keep Time.

  And then it didn’t.

  Why did it stop? Why did it change? Some say the darkness exploded, sending life into fragments out into an ever-expanding universe. Some say it gained consciousness. Some say it gave birth to itself. Some say it was nothing more than a compressed rock blowing itself apart, that life had never been intended by anything and was little more than an accident. As many stories can be told to explain the origin of life as there are grains of sand on all the worlds in all the universes put together, but they all trace back to this point, to this place, to this moment, when a small human male appeared, naked, disoriented, and terrified in the dark.