It was kind of a cute little bird. I didn’t feel all that good about what I was going to do with it, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I grew up around a butcher shop, for Chrissakes. I wasn’t about to get squeamish now.
“This shit stinks,” Lazzaro said, waving his hand at the smoke from the incense. I ignored him. Once he lit the candles, I went out to shut off the light—the switch was outside the room, probably to avoid screwing up the room’s mojo or whatever.
Then I came inside. I pulled the door shut, and it closed with an ominous, heavy sound of finality.
I knelt opposite the diagram from Lazzaro. “Ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
I transferred the irate bird from my right hand to my left, which it also proceeded to bite the shit out of, and got out my pocketknife. I opened the largest blade and set the knife down so it would be ready when I needed it. A Swiss army knife, candles and incense from a New Age shop, and a fucking parakeet. How could we lose?
I began chanting, starting with the words from one of the most likely-looking of the documents we’d unearthed. This part I had more confidence in. If I started in the right ballpark, I was reasonably sure, I could guide myself through the incantation, or maybe the magic would take me there itself. This was the stuff I was good at. Drawings and parakeets—who knew?
The tension in the room built as I chanted, and it seemed as though darkness crowded around us, pushing in on the tiny tendrils of flame coming from the candles, compressing them, devouring their light. Sweat glistened on Lazzaro’s forehead, and his eyes became feverish.
“This is it,” I heard him whisper, and it was all I could do to keep my concentration on the job.
My words picked up a weird echo after a minute or so, like we were in a cathedral, not the room that we’d started in. I couldn’t see the walls, but that meant nothing—the frightened firelight had drawn in on itself, and I couldn’t even see Lazzaro anymore. There was only the diagram and the red-silver gleam of my knife.
Another few repetitions. The echo came back in a strange voice now, as though my words were being repeated back to me by something inhuman. The bird pecked and tore at my hand, though it made no sound. The familiar thrill of magic built in my body, tingling and crackling, and the energy from the spell wasn’t the only thing threatening to discharge. My cock felt like a fence post jammed down the front of my pants, and I had a suspicion that, if this spell came off successfully, I’d need a change of clothes. I shivered, but I kept chanting.
When I’d chanted myself up to a nice fever pitch and the energy level felt like it was starting to plateau, I put the bird in the center of the circle and killed it.
The blood hit the floor, and there was a sudden, intense surge of energy in the room. I felt something rush toward me, an invisible creature rocketing upward from dark depths—and stop. It was a weird sensation, like sliding a key into a lock only to find that it won’t turn. The energy dribbled away, and the light came back up, spreading warmly to the corners of the room.
Lazzaro looked at me, eyes fearful and questioning. “What happened?”
“Something’s not right,” I said. “Don’t know what, for sure, but I don’t think it was the bird. Something tried to come through, but the door wouldn’t open. I’d guess the diagram is off somehow.”
“How?”
“Fuck if I know. We’ll mess with it and try again.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
I sighed. “We’ll give it a few tries, okay? If that doesn’t work—well, I guess we’ll have to go find a chicken somewhere.”
* * *
Fourth time around, and I was about ready to concede my poor choice of bird. I was getting to the good part of the short ritual again. The candle flames had huddled in tiny spheres, and the room was swathed in darkness just a few feet away. The familiar exhilaration had dulled with repetition and failure, though, and the sexual charge, while still present, was tempered by the ache in my balls from the last three frustrated attempts. I sat awkwardly, sure that if I jostled my testicles just a little too hard, they’d detonate and kill me on the spot.
The chant continued, words flowing from my mouth easily. Across from me, somewhere in the blackness of the room, probably within arm’s reach, Lazzaro sat, waiting. He was at least as annoyed as I was, and I was surprised he hadn’t given up on the whole enterprise and gone off to catch a nap. It was just as well, I supposed. He’d made me promise that, if this didn’t work, I’d let him do the next one, after we’d found the requisite chicken. I hoped he was paying attention.
The energy in the room hit its now-familiar plateau. I put the parakeet in the center of the circle and did the deed. Blood from my oft-bitten hand mingled with that of the bird, but I couldn’t complain—I hadn’t exactly gotten the bad end of that deal.
I felt that rushing sensation again, and I braced myself for the inevitable disappointment. Instead, black smoke curled up from the center of the circle. Alarmingly, the parakeet disintegrated to ash in my hand. I jerked away.
Then the candles went out.
The room went black, dark as death, and I felt that crazy energy discharge. A stench, something I’d smelled once before, bellowed up from the center of the floor.
“Jimmy?” Lazzaro’s voice, tentative.
“Shh.” My nerves were ratcheted so tight I thought they’d snap, and my ears strained at the darkness.
I heard a scraping sound, mingled with a rustling, like somebody rubbing two wire brushes together. Then a sudden noise, and—
Something landed directly on my chest. It was covered in coarse bristling hairs and way too many legs, and it stank of death and sulfur, and it wriggled and squirmed inches from my face. I thought I heard tiny jaws clicking and snapping, and, in my mad terror, I batted wildly at the thing. “AHH! FUCK! GET IT OFF!” It fell away, but I heard it scrabble against the floor the instant it landed.
“Get out of here!” I yelled, and Lazzaro and I bolted in the direction of the door. I hit the wall at high speed, and my head bounced off the concrete. I reeled as pain exploded in my head like cannon fire.
Where the fuck was the door? It sealed so well that not a trace of light found its way into the room, which meant we couldn’t find our way out. Lazzaro scratched at the wall, and behind us, something scuttled on the floor.
Light bloomed in a yellow line, then flooded the room as Lazzaro found the door and pulled it open. He was gone in a heartbeat, and I lurched through after him. I caught a glimpse of something like a spider the size of a basketball, its dozen eyes stuck on a small wolflike head, weird mandibles protruding from its mouth, and then the door slammed shut.
Lazzaro and I collapsed against the door while the thing scratched and scrabbled at the other side.
Lazzaro started laughing. “Oh man, Jimmy—you should see your face!”
“Did you see that thing?”
“Yeah,” he said, his laughter doubling. “It was this big.” He held his hands maybe eight inches apart.
I moved one of his hands a couple inches farther out. “More like this big.”
We both looked at the distance between his hands and burst into fresh gales of laughter. Mine had an edge of hysteria to it I didn’t like, but Lazzaro’s seemed genuine enough.
“What the fuck was that thing?” Lazzaro asked, when we’d finally calmed down.
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Think it’s still in there?”
We listened for a moment, but the scratching sound had stopped. “I don’t know,” I said. “Could be just waiting for us.”
“Can you control it?”
I looked at him with honest surprise. “You know, it never occurred to me to even try. I doubt it.”
“I thought it was supposed to stay inside the circle.”
“And that is why Benedict’s old books should never be trusted. Christ.”
We waited for a good ten minutes or so, but no sounds came from inside the room.
“You ready to check this out?” Lazzaro asked.
“Yeah,” I said wearily. “But turn on the light first.”
He grinned, but he turned on the light. I reached for the doorknob. I wondered what would happen if I let the thing escape. For all I knew, it couldn’t be killed, and it would run around terrorizing kids and stray cats, unstoppable until the expiration date on the spell was up and it poofed back to its horrid place of origin. Cheery.
I opened the door a crack, expecting the thing to jump at my face. Nothing. I pulled the door a little wider. Still nothing. Lazzaro crowded against me, trying to get a look. Either it was smart enough to stay against the wall where I couldn’t see it, or it had vanished.
Lazzaro, Captain Caution himself, flung the door open and walked in. “Nothing,” he said, turning a slow circle. “It’s gone.”
Success. I felt the grit of invisible soot on my fingers, and I wondered about the price.
Chapter 13. Going Clubbing
“Come on,” Benedict said. “We’re going.”
I followed dutifully enough, but I couldn’t help noticing that he still wouldn’t look at me. Hadn’t for days. Lazzaro and I had busted our asses night and day, first perfecting the summoning spell, and then figuring out how to reverse it, and Benedict—well, Benedict couldn’t get the hang of it. I didn’t know if it was the booze or if he just didn’t have the mojo or what, but the one time he’d tried the summoning spell, the room wouldn’t even get dark for him. Part of me wondered if he’d botched it on purpose, content to let me and Lazzaro pay the price for that kind of work. I doubted it, but I remembered what he’d said about the insanity of summoning demons to this plane, and I wondered.
In any event, he’d left the room without a word and resumed his hunt for Kelsen. Lazzaro and I, meanwhile, worked out the vagaries of calling up horrible spider-things and sending them away again. That was as far as we’d gotten—we still had no idea how to control the damn things once they were here, so I was leery of calling up anything bigger. Lazzaro was all ready to try, but I wasn’t having any of it. I thought there was a decent chance the banishing spell might be good for general-purpose banishment. After all, a fair amount of magical energy was required to keep the demons here at all, and it didn’t take much more than a little shove to send them right back to where they came from. I hoped that little shove wouldn’t vary too much by creature, like the actual summoning did. Benedict’s books didn’t really back me up on that, but I had long since concluded that the various authors came in varieties ranging from drooling idiot to raving madman, and the absence of any clarification on the banishment issue didn’t bother me. Besides, I was used to winging it.
I snatched up a couple of the banishment sigils—blue ink on copier paper, very mystical—and stuffed them in my pocket before following on Lazzaro’s heels. It occurred to me that I had no idea what the state of the war was. By my best estimate, which was not terribly good given the erratic hours I’d been keeping, I’d been out of it for a week or so, consorting with the powers of darkness and whatnot. It was all I could do to find time for the occasional sandwich, let alone get caught up on current events.
Stiff fell in with us as we left the apartment. He’d held me in pretty high regard since the whole cigarette escapade, and it was good to have another friendly face along.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked him.
“Got a lead on Bennie’s buddy. Kelsen.”
My guts did something unpleasant. “Great.”
“Cool,” Lazzaro said. I felt like putting my fist through the back of his head.
“Not cool,” Stiff corrected him. “We’re gonna take him down, but you mark my words—this shit’s gonna be ugly.”
“Ugly for the fuckin’ Russians,” Lazzaro said.
Stiff shook his head and gave me a look that said Do you believe this guy? “Yeah. Right.”
My phone vibrated against my thigh. I ignored it.
We left the building and piled into Benedict’s Caddy. During the ride, Stiff filled Lazzaro and me in on the progress of the war so far, which seemed to boil down to “could be worse, but not a hell of a lot worse.” Lots of dead on both sides, and the mayor had been making threatening noises. We had more guys coming from Providence, but this had gotten every bit as nasty as everyone had expected. Stiff didn’t come right out and say it, not with Benedict in the car, but Kelsen seemed to be the big problem. If we could get rid of him, that ought to tip the scales.
I doubted Benedict was man enough for that job, but I kept my yap shut.
We pulled up to a nondescript corner in the ass end of nowhere, and Benedict got out of the car, motioning for us to stay behind. I watched him walk to the mouth of an alley, and a figure moved from a shadowed doorway. I started, reaching for the door handle, and then I recognized the guy. Eddie Donnelly. He slipped into the shadows of the alley behind Benedict, and the two of them spoke. Benedict handed Donnelly an envelope, and Donnelly handed back a bundle I couldn’t make out. I saw Benedict’s teeth gleam white in the darkness, though, and I thought he was smiling.
Then their transaction was complete, and Benedict was walking back to the car—and, yeah, he was definitely smiling. It wasn’t a nice smile, either. It was more like the kind of grin you’d see on a wolf right before it opened up your guts for a snack.
Benedict got in the car, and in the brief flash of the dome light, I saw the bundle he clutched in his bony hands.
It was a maroon Harvard hoodie.
He tossed it over the back seat at me and impaled me with a narrow-eyed glare. “Find him,” he said.
I looked the sweatshirt over. “There’s no blood, or—”
“You heard me,” Benedict said, poison oozing from his voice. I remembered him slapping me over that stupid cushion a thousand years ago, and I understood that he’d be much less patient with this issue, and still less so in front of his guys. For the first time, I wondered if Benedict might actually kill me.
I prayed that sweat and maybe some skin flakes would do the trick.
It turned out not to be that hard, to my relief. A couple of glyphs on the sleeves and back, an improvised incantation, and the shirt levered itself to a sitting position on my lap. It filled out, eerily taking the shape of a body, though I could see nothing but emptiness in the blackness of the hood.
It pointed, reminding me of nothing so much as the Ghost of Christmas Future.
“Go left up ahead,” Benedict told the driver, and we were off.
It didn’t take us long to find the place, though we circled the block a couple of times just to be sure.
“Stop here,” Benedict said after the third circuit. “We’ll go in the front.” I think God must have intervened to keep me from groaning out loud.
“I don’t know if this is such a hot idea, Bennie,” Stiff said, giving voice to my thoughts.
By way of answer, Benedict flung open his door and got out of the car.
“Oh, fuck,” Stiff said, but he followed, and Lazzaro climbed out the other side of the car, too. What could I do but go with?
I got out of the car. Behind me, the ghostly shape of Kelsen’s hoodie sat in the car, head cocked in my direction. I could feel its eyeless stare as I walked away.
We approached the place, and I honestly wasn’t sure who was crazier—Kelsen, for showing up at a place like this with a war on and dozens of people gunning for him, or Benedict, for trying to take him on here. If the sweatshirt was to be believed, and I had no reason to doubt it, Kelsen was right now holed up in one of the trendiest, most exclusive nightclubs on this side of town.
The line to get in went halfway down the block. Guys in expensive and ridiculous shirts and women in skirts way too short for the weather glared at us as we walked past them. I hoped none of them would do more than glare. In Benedict’s current mood, somebody would end up eating their own teeth.
Of course we walked straight to the front of the line. A couple of guys so big they’d have
to turn sideways to get through the door stood there, scowling beneath stupid-looking sunglasses with yellow lenses. One of the guys was black and the other was white, but they clearly came from the same genetic stock as far as size was concerned. Their suits would have made very nice, expensive tents for families of small campers. I could already see how this would unfold. Benedict would ask to get in, they’d say no, violence would ensue in front of a hundred or so witnesses. I hunkered down behind my collar, knowing it would do no good.
Anyway, I was wrong. We got within maybe fifteen feet of the big guys, and suddenly they had guns in their hands. I didn’t even see them draw. Somebody screamed.
Lazzaro was the quickest to react. He pulled that goddamn baseball bat from under his coat and, crazy bastard, he threw it at the closest guy. Who the fuck throws a baseball bat? I wanted to yell, but then the guy was shooting. He shot high, presumably startled by Lazzaro’s rampant insanity, but it was enough to send the crowd stampeding.
The other guy opened up at about the same time. I think he was shooting at Stiff, but I couldn’t tell. Nobody got hit, at any rate. Benedict did that thing of his, and there was a bright flash. The second guy dropped to the sidewalk.
The first guy tossed Lazzaro’s bat to the side and turned his gun on Benedict.
Two quick bangs, not even all that loud, and bright spots of blood bloomed on the big guy’s shirt. He slumped against the building, stagger-slid a few steps, and collapsed.
“This is one classic fucking entrance,” Stiff grumbled. Smoke wafted from the barrel of his gun.
I’d pretty much stood there stupidly the whole time. I got knocked and jostled by a handful of people too dumb to run in the right direction, but I kept my feet.
Ahead of me, Benedict strode in through the main doors all death and judgment, like the second coming of Christ returned to blast all sinners to Hell. Lazzaro snatched up his bat and followed close behind him.
The Price Page 12