Cunning Devil

by Chris Underwood

  “Help me with this,” I said. I grabbed the open grimoire off the top of the trunk, putting it aside to look at later. Lilian and I took the trunk by either end and dragged it away from the wall a few inches.

  “Jesus,” she grunted. “What’s in here?”

  I had my suspicions, but I didn’t want to voice them yet. There was a heavy padlock on the front of the trunk, with more silver detailing running over it.

  “I don’t think I can pick that lock,” I said, chewing my lip. “Hand me that blowtorch. Maybe we can melt—”

  Lilian stepped forward, aimed the shotgun down at the lock, and pulled the trigger.

  I slapped my hands over my ears. It did nothing to stop the ringing.

  “Goddamn it!” I snapped. “Didn’t you complain about me not giving you any warning before doing something like that?”

  She shrugged, racking the smoking shotgun and resting it against her shoulder. “Now we’re even.”

  I gave her a scowl, but it was hard to maintain. The shotgun slug had torn the lock to pieces. I tugged it free and threw open the trunk.

  A sharp smell of inhuman sweat reached out and slapped me in the face.

  The hag was stuffed in there good. She was more Alcaraz’s build than Lilian’s: big, heavy, and not particularly suited to being contorted into tight spaces. Even looking at her, I couldn’t quite see how she’d managed to fit.

  She was in a bad way. Her skin hung loose from her bones, like she’d been starved. Her clothing was tattered. I couldn’t see any obvious wounds from where I was standing, but something about her screamed suffering. How long had she been kept in that box?

  Lilian breathed a curse. “We have to get her out of there.”

  Even now, I didn’t really want to get involved with a hag, but Lilian was right. I sucked it up, grabbed the hag under the arms, and hauled her out of the trunk. She felt lighter than she looked. Maybe a sign of her confinement, or maybe hags just weigh less than humans. I didn’t know. I’d never tried to pick up a hag before.

  Lilian swept a couch clean and I dumped the hag on the cushions, sending a thin cloud of dust into the air. The hag’s eyes were closed, her face frozen as if in death.

  It was only then I noticed that her left hand had been severed at the wrist. The flesh around the wound was ragged and black, as if burned. I recognized the signs. A silver blade had been used for the cut.

  The curse we were dealing with was hag’s magic. It could only be wielded by a hag’s hand.

  “She alive?” I asked.

  Lilian crouched at the hag’s side, examining her. The hag had the look of an old woman, short and hunched, with great sagging breasts and a spare tire around her waist. But even to the untrained eye, there was something off about her, something not quite human. Something ancient.

  “I don’t know,” Lilian said. “I need to—”

  The hag’s eyes snapped open and swiveled to meet mine. She opened her mouth and let loose a long, haggard cackle that came with a particularly pungent brand of morning breath.

  I tried to jerk back, but her one remaining hand snaked out and grabbed me by the arm, holding me tight.

  “You’re too late, cunning man,” she rasped. “The witch is gone. Gone to collect the blood. But I’ll have the last laugh. When it’s all over, you tell her, cunning man. You tell her what she did to get her vengeance. See the moment her heart breaks in two.”

  The hag cackled once more, a sound that sent shivers down my spine. Then her head lolled to the side, and she was out again. Or dead. I didn’t know. I was no expert in hag first aid.

  Her gnarled fingers still gripped my arm. I shook her by the shoulders. “Hey! Hag! What did you mean? Gone where? Where has the witch gone?”

  But there was no response. I damn near shouted her face off. Nothing.

  “Let me try,” Lilian said.

  I pried the hag’s fingers off me and stood, scrubbing at my face with my hands. Too late again. Hell. Hell!

  While I fretted, Lilian closed her eyes and pressed her palm against the hag’s cheek. The muscles in Lilian’s jaw tensed, and the air around me felt suddenly cold.

  “She’s alive,” Lilian said after a moment, settling back on her heels. “I think. She should recover in time.”

  There was relief in her voice, but I was having trouble summoning any optimism. I mean, great, the hag wasn’t dead, but I’d be long gone before she was any damn use to us. We weren’t done yet.

  “Ozzy,” Lilian said.

  I ignored her. I had to think.

  The hag had said something about blood. If I could figure out what kind of blood, maybe I’d be back on the trail.

  I grabbed the grimoire I’d set aside earlier and scanned the page that had been left open. But my hopes were dashed immediately. It wasn’t written in English. Nothing even close to English. Tall, scratchy symbols crawled in spirals across the page. The alphabet—if it even was an alphabet—was completely foreign to me. It could’ve been an alien translation of Fifty Shades of Grey for all I knew.

  With a growl, I hurled the grimoire across the room.

  “Ozzy!” Lilian said.

  “What?” I turned, and she was standing right in front of me.

  “This witch she mentioned. Who is it?”

  I glanced at the wheelchair in the corner. Maybe… But no. It couldn’t be. She was too frail. Mills’ mother’s body was probably around here somewhere, killed by the same person who’d cut out Brandon’s heart. I’d been half-expecting to find her inside that trunk along with the hag.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never heard of a witch powerful enough to challenge a hag, let alone do this to her.”

  I waved my hand at the hag’s limp form, then turned to the pool table, trying to think. There was no doubt about it: this curse went beyond simple witchcraft.

  It was hag’s magic. But the hag hadn’t been the one working it. Not willingly. Someone—something—even more powerful had bent the hag to their purpose. Kidnapped her, brought her here, used her knowledge and skill.

  So if Mills was only an accomplice, and the hag a victim, then who was the mastermind? Who was this witch who could wield so much power?

  I stared down at Brandon Mills, willing him to come back to life and spill his secrets. My gaze fell on his left hand. He was wearing a wedding band that was etched with a pattern of tree branches. He hadn’t been wearing that when I first met him. But I remembered seeing another ring just like that around a different finger.

  Something clicked into place in my head. I stood bolt upright, the implications hitting me one after another.

  The last time I’d seen Mills’ mother she’d been wearing the same kind of wedding ring. Maybe it was a family heirloom, something that Mills’ ex-wife had given back to him when they divorced.

  Or maybe there was another explanation. Maybe Brandon and the old woman both wore the same type of wedding ring for the obvious reason. They were married.

  She was Mrs. Mills, yes. But she wasn’t Brandon’s mother. She was his wife.

  A wife who had suffered just like Brandon had when her son was ripped from her life. A wife, a mother who had let her grief turn to fury. A mother willing to sacrifice anything to get answers. To get revenge.

  A mother willing to trade away her youth. Her sight. Her legs. Her husband. Willing to trade all that to anyone who could give her the power she needed. The Dealer, or another of his kind.

  “Dealer,” I whispered. “You knew, didn’t you? This whole damn time, you knew.”

  I looked again at the wheelchair by the stairs. Mrs. Mills must’ve bought herself a hell of a lot of power for everything she’d traded away. Maybe even enough power to abduct the hag and force her to help prepare this curse.

  And if what the hag said was true, she was about to complete the ritual. All she needed was blood.

  But what blood? It all came back to that. Even if I was right, even if Mrs. Mills really was the o
ne responsible, I was still no closer to finding her before she could complete the curse. And by the time I brewed up a tracking potion, it’d be too late.

  I turned to Lilian. She’d moved back to the bar. Unbothered by the flies, she was examining the hobgoblin’s remains. Her head, specifically. I suppressed my revulsion as Lilian picked up the hobgoblin’s severed head by her hair.

  “Lilian?” I said.

  “Yeah?” She seemed distracted.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  She ignored my question, putting the head down and turning suddenly to a set of cupboards set against the wall. She threw them open and began rummaging. With a satisfied “A-ha!” she pulled out an old lamp that had been left behind.

  “Hey,” I said. “Earth to Lilian.”

  “Do people still say that?” She yanked on the cord coming out of the back of the lamp, ripping it out. Tossing the lamp aside, she turned back to me, holding the frayed end of the cord. “I need nails.”

  “Nails?”

  She nodded. “Metal nails. For hammering into things, you know.”

  Frowning, I reached into my bag and pulled out a handful of the iron nails I’d scattered in Alice’s basement a lifetime ago.

  “Will these do?”

  Lilian’s eyes lit up. It was a crazy kind of light, like fairground lights viewed through broken glass.

  I kind of liked it.

  “I think,” she said, “I know how we can get some answers.”

  34

  I was having second thoughts.

  The hobgoblin’s severed head was sitting upright in a thin dish of water. Lilian had driven three nails through the poor dead creature’s skull. She didn’t even flinch, she just did it.

  And now she was winding the bared ends of the frayed lamp cord around two of the nail heads, like some kind of mad scientist.

  I started off voicing my concerns gently. “You’re fucking crazy if you think this is going to work.”

  Lilian just smiled. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Osric Turner.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I noticed. But hell, Lilian. This…this isn’t right.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Early.”

  She thought she could wound me with that, and she wasn’t half wrong. But I shrugged it off. “Even if you can do this—and I’m not convinced you can—I don’t know if you should. The poor hobgoblin’s suffered enough, thanks to me. She’s dead. That should be the end of her suffering.”

  “I’m just sparking a dead brain,” she said. “Not bringing her back to life.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Lilian sighed, stopping her work for a moment to turn to me. “Do you want answers?”

  The witch—Brandon Mills’ wife—was out there somewhere. Seeking blood to complete her curse. A curse of genocidal vengeance. And I didn’t have a goddamn idea where she was.

  “Of course,” I said.

  She met my eyes. “Do you trust me?”

  I hesitated. As she’d just said, there was a lot I didn’t know about her. She’d been stabbed through with a redcap’s spear and survived without even a scar. She’d done…something…to me at Early’s place after the conclave, touching me like the black hand of death.

  And now here she was, trying to reanimate the dead, Dr. Frankenstein style. That was seriously off-limits magic. Way beyond the darkest stuff I’d ever done. She wasn’t exactly the good and wholesome girl next door.

  Hell, that’d never been my type, anyway.

  “Yes,” I said. “I trust you.”

  “Good,” she said.

  Then she grabbed hold of the hobgoblin’s skull and jammed the cord into the wall outlet.

  There was a spark and a hum, like fluorescent lights coming to life. Lilian went straight-backed and rigid, her eyes rolling back in her head. Her mouth snapped open in a silent scream.

  “Lilian!” I reached for her.

  “The blood!” she shrieked. Except it wasn’t just her voice coming from her throat. Overlaid with her voice was another, sharp and high pitched.

  I froze, looking down at the hobgoblin’s head. Its eyes were open too, open and staring. The creature opened its mouth, but when it spoke, it spoke through Lilian.

  “No, no, no. Don’t! Don’t kill me! Not the curse!”

  I swallowed. A cold chill was running up my spine.

  I’d been right to be dubious. This was wrong. In every sense of the word. The dead shouldn’t speak. The dead shouldn’t feel terror.

  “Hobgoblin,” I said. “Listen to me.”

  “Not the curse,” Lilian sobbed. “Please.”

  “Listen! I’m trying to stop the curse.”

  The creature mewled. “Going to cut off my head. Going to scoop out my insides. Don’t want it. The blood!”

  “What blood?” I said. “Whose blood?”

  Lilian cocked her head to the side, as if becoming aware of me for the first time. Her sobs faded. “The blood. The blood that powers the flesh.” She howled. “It hurts!”

  “I know. I know it hurts. Where did the witch go? Where is she getting the blood from?”

  The hobgoblin’s chin waggled as Lilian spoke in its voice. “Hag told ’em. Told ’em where the hunter would take the changed. House on the hill. Blood, blood of the changed. Blood of pain.” She wailed. “I heard ’em talkin’. Tried to stop it. Took the shiny, tried to run. But the hunter caught me! Now they gonna bring the mountain down!”

  The hunter? Was that me? She was talking so fast I could barely understand her.

  “The mountain?” I said. “The goblins, you mean?”

  Smoke was beginning to trickle up between Lilian’s fingers. The hobgoblin’s skin was growing black around the nails.

  “Hobgoblin!” I said.

  “Down on their heads.” Her voice was fading. “Hurt ’em all, for what one did.”

  “What did you mean, blood of the changed? What is that?”

  The hobgoblin’s jaw bobbed open and closed, but nothing came out of Lilian’s mouth. The smoke was really billowing now. Lilian’s face was pulled tight. I could see her veins bulging through her skin.

  “Shit!” I yanked the power cord from the wall. It came away with an arc of blue lightning.

  Lilian let out a small noise of surprise. Suddenly limp, she toppled backward.

  I caught her before she hit the ground. She slumped in my arms, as light as a baby. Her eyes were closed.

  “Lilian,” I said. “Lilian, are you okay?”

  Her eyes fluttered open. She gave me a weak smile as she focused on me.

  “Harder than it used to be,” she muttered. “Should’ve figured that.”

  I took a shaky breath. “What are you?”

  “Uh-uh. You still have to guess.” She reached up and tugged gently on my beard. “Tell you the truth, part of me wants you to win the bet. I like the beard.”

  “That’ll be the fatigue talking,” I said. “Can you get up?”

  She shook her head, looking at me through half-lidded eyes. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere for a while. She was more challenging than I thought.” My concern must’ve shown on my face, because she patted me weakly on the chest. “I’ll be fine. Just need to rest for a while. Did you get anything?”

  I thought it over, my mouth growing dry. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

  “Then go. Take my car. I’m not going to be much use to you. I’ll stay here with the hag.”

  I hesitated. If the witch came back, Lilian wouldn’t be able to defend herself.

  But the witch wasn’t coming back. She just had one last thing to do.

  Lilian pulled herself up and brushed my cheek with a kiss. “Go,” she said.

  “Okay. Okay.”

  “And Ozzy?”

  “Yeah?”

  She slid the shotgun over to me. “You might need this.”

  35

  “This is Early,” came the old man’s voice through the phone.

 
“Early,” I said, turning the key in the ignition of Lilian’s car. “Listen—”

  “I can’t come to the phone right now,” Early continued. “Leave a message after the beep.”

  “Son of a bitch!” I threw the car into drive, pulled a U-turn, and raced off down the street. With one eye on the road I hung up and redialed Early’s cell. It started to ring again.

  “Pick up the phone, Early. Pick it up.”

  “This is Early. I can’t come to the phone right now…”

  “Shit!” I nearly hung up again, but at the last second I brought the phone back to my ear. His voicemail beeped.

  “I swear to God, you better not be ignoring my calls, old man,” I said. “Listen. I’m on my way to Alcaraz’s now. You need to get the hell out of there. You and Alcaraz and Rodetk. You need to leave right now.”

  Another car pulled out in front of me at an intersection and I had to slam on the brakes to avoid T-boning him. I leaned on the horn and shouted a litany of swear words out the window. I got a few back in return.

  I took a deep breath. “Brandon Mills wasn’t the witch,” I said to Early’s voicemail. “His wife was. And she’s packing some real power, Early. She didn’t just trade away one little thing, like you and I did. She traded it all. Her limbs, her youth, her senses. Some Dealer stripped her to the bone. And in exchange, she got enough power to subdue a hag and work this curse.

  “The two of them forced the hag to reveal her secrets. Forced her to tell them how to create the Blackheart. They already had sentimental silver, but they also needed a hobgoblin. So they set a trap. But somewhere along the way they screwed up. The hobgoblin found out about the curse. She slipped the trap, took the rattle, and made a run for it, trying to prevent the Blackheart from being created. That was why they hired me. They needed the hobgoblin, and they also needed to get the rattle back. And that was exactly what I gave them.”

  I gripped the steering wheel tight. I’d been such an idiot.

  “Brandon Mills is dead,” I continued. “He let himself be sacrificed. Let his heart be cut out of his chest. My guess, it’s going to be part of the Blackheart, along with the roggenwolf’s eyes and whatever’s left of the hobgoblin. It’s nearly finished, Early. All the witch needs is the blood to power it. And she’s on her way to Alcaraz’s to find it.”