by Briana Snow
“Penelope?” Verity breathed. “That is the Archon. That is what killed the security guard, and your colleague.”
“Leonidas killed Simon?” Penelope’s terrified brain tried to catch up with what her subconscious senses were attempting to tell her. Don’t look at it! A part of her brain was screaming at her, in the same way it might if she stood on the very edge of a deep drop. Don’t see it! Don’t look down!
“No. The Archon killed Leonidas,” Verity breathed. “Oh, and…” the woman started to unfreeze, a hand sliding into one of the deep pockets of her coat.
“Run?” Penelope hazarded guess.
“Yeah, run!” Verity drew something cylindrical out of her jacket in one smooth move, pulling at its cap and releasing a cloud of red-plumed smoke into the densely-packed central space. In that same instant, Penelope saw in horror as the form of the security guard stretched, the skin on its face lagging behind as the thing inside of it moved forward at an almost impossible speed, flickering into a blur straight towards the crowd assembled there.
Penelope didn’t need any encouragement to run, her feet choosing her direction for her as she swiveled on her heel and sprinted towards what she knew would be the nearest emergency exit, with the strange Verity Vorja just a few steps behind. Behind them, the room filled with the dense, powdery red plume of smoke, obscuring all sight for anyone—but not, unfortunately, muffling the screams.
Chapter VIII
The two women ran as fast as they could, Verity following Penelope unthinkingly and unquestioningly as she ducked into one corridor, and then another of the Library as the overhead alarms whirred and pealed.
“Get out! Just get out!” Penelope shouted at the few bookish members of the public that they ran past, before her hands met the unresisting metal bar of the emergency exit door, which swung open and they burst out into the plaza beyond.
“That wasn’t Leonidas,” Penelope was wheezing as she doubled over.
“No, it wasn’t. Or it was, once…” Verity said, casting a look around them briefly, before pointing across the white stone square to a side street. “There. Go!”
“What do you mean, it was, once?” Penelope said as they staggered across the street to the squeal of traffic and the honking horns of the yellow cabs all around. Dimly, somewhere in the distance, she could hear the sound of approaching police sirens, but wasn’t certain that even the New York SWAT team would be able to do anything to stop the creature.
Verity was leading them now as they ran down the side street, pushing past pedestrians who were turning around at the red smoke pouring out of the front doors of the New York Public Library behind. “Demons don’t have a form on this plane, so they have to borrow one,” she wheezed. “It seems as though Leonidas is the one that it chose.”
Another street crossed, and Verity slowed to a fast-paced walk, constantly throwing worried glances behind her in case the beast suddenly emerged for them. “It can sense the grimoire,” she said. “But all of those bodies and blood in the way will have confused it for a while, but still—we could do with getting as far away as we can.” Penelope saw her savior look around, and then step boldly out into the traffic, standing to one side to let the swearing, horn-honking city cars edge around her until she saw the target that she wanted: an approaching yellow minicab, halting it with just one severe look.
“What the hell, lady!? All you had to do was stick out a thumb like everyone else!” said the Indian-looking young man on the other side of the glass.
“45th and Weston,” Verity threw a fold of bills into the taxi drivers lap, momentarily making his eyes goggle at the generosity.
“Yes, ma’am!” he stuttered. Verity had over-payed him by at least a hundred dollars, and he wasn’t about to say anything at all that would contradict his best paying customer to date.
Verity and Penelope slid into the car, nervously looking behind them as they sped through the busy New York traffic, as the block started to fill up with the sounds of police sirens.
“Borrow a body?” Penelope breathed. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”
“Well, if you are thinking possession then yes, I do mean that,” Verity said. “Demon’s aren’t born to a mother and father, so they have to inhabit a host until they get their job done.”
“Their job?” For some reason, the very idea that demons might have jobs seemed absurd to Penelope. “You make it sound so mundane.”
Verity tssked with her teeth. “Not at all. That’s the only thing saving us all right now, and the only thing saving humanity. The demons can’t just break into reality at any point that they want to, they have to wheedle their way in somehow, and then, they can only stay to fulfill a purpose—otherwise it will take more and more energy to keep them alive here. Imagine a fish trying to live out of water.”
“So, what’s the Archon’s purpose?” Penelope asked, not really wanting to hear what she knew must be the answer.
“To retrieve that book that you are holding, and make sure that no one comes along and does what we have done—close it,” Verity said darkly. “The Archon will stop at nothing to fulfill its purpose, and, when it runs out of its natural energies that keep it alive here it will start feeding on people, and using their souls to sustain it instead.”
“So, we have to stop it, we have to kill it…” Penelope said.
“Well, good luck with that,” Verity muttered. “I have never heard anyone fighting off an Archon and living. All we can do is hope to get to the other books and destroy them all before the Archon does.”
“The other books?” Penelope looked down at the grimoire that she was holding in her hands. “Can’t we… Can’t we just throw it under a bus, right now?” The librarian even made a move to wind open the window, but before she had even raised her arm she found Verity’s hand holding her elbow in a vice-like grip.
“I wouldn’t. Every time someone has tried to hide the Luminaire or destroy it, they’ve met with a sticky end. There’s a powerful curse laid on that thing, and it’s only being nice because it’s still figuring out whether you are an ally or not.”
“An ally? Archons?” Penelope shook her head. “You talk like the grimoire is alive!”
“Some say that it is,” Verity countered, as the taxi swung through the New York traffic.
“So, either the book gets me or the Archon wearing my friend’s skin does, is that what you are saying?” Penelope almost shouted.
“Or the satanic cultists of course, they’re bound to show up sooner or later.” Verity shrugged. “And then there is the matter of the portal to hell. That’s what the Luminaire does, it opens a portal, the second volume connects to Hell, and the third volume floods our world with the demonic horde.” Verity leaned closer, her voice low and crisp. “That is why the Archon is so hell-bent on protecting the book. When all three volumes of the Luminaire minus Clavem are opened, then the walls between the planes finally come down, and demons don’t need a purpose to be here. They can just flood into our reality, and cause as much mayhem as they like, forever.”
“Hell on earth…” Penelope breathed.
“Exactly. Hell on Earth,” Verity said, as their conversation was interrupted by a nervous cough from the taxi driver in front.
“Uh, ma’am? Excuse me, but I think that we’re here…” he said, indicating the fact that the car had stopped on a corner, outside of a small, but very elaborate shop window that read ‘Dante’s Inferno!’
“Thank you, keep the change,” Verity said, already getting out.
The librarian followed her a moment later, throwing an apologetic stare at the young taxi driver.
“Ah, but ma’am?” he said. “About all that stuff—hell on earth, right? Does it also mean me? I’m a Hindu.” He looked worried and nervous.
Penelope winced as she remembered the look of insane rage that had tortured the features of Leonidas for a moment back in the Library. “To be honest, I don’t know if it matters, I’m sorry. Maybe leave the city for
the weekend?”
The taxi driver nodded, looking gratefully at his lap full of dollars, and roared off into the traffic. Behind him, his two passengers were left standing outside of their destination—what appeared to be a very over-enthusiastic pawnshop.
Chapter IX
Dante’s Inferno looked to Penelope like a dump. Its faded black and red paintwork was peeling and cracking from its façade, revealing semi-rotted wooden boards underneath. At first the librarian had thought that its windows were tinted, but then realized with horror that they were in fact covered in grime, dust, and petrol smoke from decades of passing street traffic.
“What is that?” Penelope murmured, seeing odd, hidden shapes behind the murky glass. She thought that she saw a suggestion of a doll’s head, or perhaps it was a mannequin; an old display of rings, hats, and books.
“Come on, Dante will know what’s what.” Verity opened the door to the jangle of a brass bell.
Inside, Penelope found herself in a room that was as crowded as the windows outside had suggested. A narrow avenue of shelves stretched in front of them both over a dirty linoleum floor. The shelves were crowded with seemingly any and every possible item, but almost none of them were objects that Penelope could imagine someone considering to be valuable. There were old snuff boxes (their hinges broken) stacks of Time magazines with ripped and stained covers, singular leather gloves who had lost their partner, tarnished metal jewelery that could have been made of precious metals or could just as equally have been made of brass for all that Penelope could see.
The vast majority of the items all around them seemed to be, for want of a much harsher word that the special collections librarian could think of: tat. The sort of things that filled thrift stores and discount bargain shops, and handed out at Christmas like penny sweets. Glow-in-the-dark Santa Clauses, or mugs with ‘I Love Albuquerque’ on it, maps of every Starbucks café in North America, Vulcan phrasebooks, bumper-packs of TDK90 cassette tapes, super-rugged watches circa nineteen ninety.
“It’s like the sorts of things that only the most desperate people would have left, after they have pawned everything else,” Penelope whispered, picking up a gentleman’s comb with two broken teeth.
“No! Put that back!” Verity turned and almost batted the black plastic comb out of her hand.
“Okay, okay, jeesh! I wasn’t really going to buy it!” Penelope laughed. “Why on earth would I want that piece of trash?”
“Possibly because it has someone’s soul attached to it,” Verity said darkly.
Penelope put the comb back hurriedly. “What? Really? Are all of these things...?” She saw a pack of much-thumbed playing cards, an old Nokia handset, a fountain pen.
“Not intentionally, I’m sure—but this is the price that Dante pays.” Verity turned a corner in the labyrinthine pawn shop, leading her accomplice down deeper and deeper into the bowels of the establishment. “You were right the first time. Every item here is the very last thing left of any meaning or value for the poor souls who use Dante’s. As such, they have the wishes, hopes, and fears of the person who owned them—their very souls.” Verity looked with obvious disgust at the collection of wigs next to a small personal lipstick mirror. “Any spirit or black magician can walk in here and pick up the soul of those poor unfortunates, and then trade or lever them into doing whatever they want. It’s a terrible thing.”
“But, why then—why doesn’t the Order—the Sisterhood, I mean…” Penelope whispered. She had just realized that there was no noise in the room apart from their own voices and footprints.
“What—Put a stop to it?” Verity sighed, for once looking at least a little ashamed of herself. “Because we are a very small Sisterhood, and we don’t have the sorts of powers that the underworlds and hells do. We can’t snap our fingers and call in a swat team or an F.B.I. investigation,” she growled. “And despite that, Dante is useful.”
Penelope was about to point out that keeping a terrible person around just because they were useful was pretty much exactly the same as doing the awful things that they did in the first place, but her argument was cut off by a dry, hacking cough, and the corridor up ahead filled with the smell of heavy and bitter cigarette smoke.
“Dante,” Verity greeted the small figure that was emerging from the darkness ahead of them.
The owner of the emporium was no bigger than Penelope’s shoulder, which made him almost dwarf-like when compared with Verity Vorja. He wore a small peaked flat-cap of the sort favored by the British, over a bald head. His face reminded Penelope somewhat of a shrew for its long nose and small wire-rimmed spectacles. He wore a tweed suit which would have been fashionable about a hundred years ago, and in one hand he held a small Cherrywood pipe from which curled a heavy blue smoke.
“Sister Vorja, come to moralize at me again?” Dante scowled at the tall woman, before looking Penelope up and down. The Special Collections Librarian at least had the foresight to hold the Luminaire behind her back as she was scrutinized. “What’s this?” the small man said. “Not another recruit is it, Vorja? When was the last one again? 1980, was it? What happened to that slip of a girl, I can’t seem to remember.”
“Never you mind, you meddling old goat. Dante, as much as I hate to say it, we are not here to reminisce and trade pleasant memories,” Verity almost spat at the man. Penelope didn’t think that the woman looked old enough to have had an apprentice in the nineteen eighties. Verity looks, what, early forties?
“Then why did you come here?” the diminutive man asked as he turned back around to the counter that Penelope could see was behind him. Dante then addressed Penelope as he hopped back onto his creased-leather stool to clean out his pipe. “You should ditch this mad broad, if I were you, love. You don’t want your face eaten off by a werewolf in Central Park now, do you?”
A werewolf? Penelope thought. She didn’t even know that such things existed in the new and dangerous world that she inhabited. But, considering what else does, it’s hardly surprising.
“I’m good, thanks,” she said through pursed lips. It was obvious that, despite how much he might be ‘useful’ to the Sisterhood, there was definitely no love lost between Verity and Dante.
“Penelope? Show him the book, will you?” Verity sighed.
Penelope drew out the large grimoire from behind her back, and held it across her chest like a shield. The effect on Dante couldn’t have been more dramatic. He dropped his pipe. Appeared to choke, and fell off of his stool.
Chapter X
“Is that…? Really...? It’s been found!” Dante’s head reappeared at the edge of the counter as he peered over the wooden top with hungry, terrified eyes. Penelope thought the small man looked about as close to the character Golllum from the Lord of the Rings that she had ever met in a living, breathing person. “Can I look at it?” He started to straighten up, reaching over the counter towards her.
Penelope knew without being told that this wouldn’t be a wise idea, and so she stepped back as Verity slapped her white gloves on the counter, as if scolding a child.
“We’re not that stupid, Dante. Now you’ve seen it, you know what is at stake. Yes, it is the Luminaire, and yes, it has already been opened!” Verity said.
“What!? Who by?” Dante’s face did a surprisingly fast double-take, looking at Verity and then at Penelope. “It can’t be you—the Archon would have ripped you to a thousand pieces by now if you had. No…” His face lit up with mirth as he regarded Penelope. “Oh my, oh my dear girl—it’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one who opened the Luminaire minus Clavem?” He started to shake and jiggle, as he held his sides in bouts of laughter. “Oh dear. What else is next, the Rapture?” He shook his head in near-hysteria.
“Dante! Get it together! You know what this means. It means the end. The end for you and for your torrid little business here, and the end of all of the rest of us,” Verity said. “So, yes, the Luminaire has been opened, and that means that we’re all in danger and that an Archon is p
robably heading right here, right now. And I am sure that it is going to find your little collection of souls very, very tasty indeed!”
“By the heavens and the hells,” Dante spluttered, looking first at Penelope, and then at his shop all around him. “But I have spent years, decades, lifetimes collecting these.”
“I know, which is why I was sure that you wouldn’t want to lose it all in a flash of claws and teeth,” Verity pointed out. “So, Dante. You’re the only human on earth who has traveled through the underworlds and back. I am sure that will make you qualified to tell me a bit of information.”
Traveled through the underworlds and back… Penelope suddenly felt very silly indeed. “Wait a minute, are you the Dante Alighieri? Dante’s Inferno? But how can you still be alive?” Penelope looked to Verity beside her. “I thought Dante was supposed to be a nice, god-fearing man?” she hissed.
“I heard that, thank you very much! I was, once, some nine hundred years ago. You don’t travel through Hell and Purgatory and then get kicked out of heaven and not have that change you, is all that I can say.” He scowled, returning to his stool, but the librarian saw the way that his eyes never left the Luminaire that she held clutched between her hands.
“Dante here embroidered the truth somewhat in his account,” Verity said loudly, in a tone that Penelope was sure she used to cause annoyance and shame to the small businessman, who blushed furiously. “He might have been very pious once, but no one gets a travelcard to Hell and back for free. He went because he was one of the foremost black magicians of Florence, in the thirteenth century. He opened a portal to Hell, and managed to bind enough poor hapless souls that he could trade his way through the other planes before the people upstairs noticed, and kicked him out.”