Phoenix Contract: Part Four (Fallen Angel Watchers)

by Melissa Thomas

  He turned to leave, and her hand shot out, grabbing hold of his arm.

  “No, don’t go. I’m sorry. That was uncalled for,” she said in a rush.

  “I’ve killed men for less,” he informed her, retaining a dangerous tension that made her acutely aware that she had her hand on a predator. A killer.

  “I don’t doubt that,” Aiden replied and shivered. It went unsaid. She had no doubt that at one time he’d killed not only men but women as well. No longer or Matthew wouldn’t trust him. So when did Magnus stop killing? What changed? What event could have brought about a monster’s redemption?

  “Be very careful how hard you push me, Aiden McLachlan,” he warned, brogue sweet and lilting, a voice better suited to a lover’s promise than a killer’s threat. He removed his arm from her touch.

  Aiden allowed her hand to drop to her side. She’d insulted him, and she suspected that she’d hurt his feelings. The conversation was over unless she could find some way to salvage the tenuous rapport they’d established. She could hardly pose her real questions to him now. Her mind flew, scrambling for a way to make him stay.

  “Your second reason,” Aiden burst out, recalling what he’d said. “You said there are two reasons you’re lurking on campus. What’s the other?”

  “I’m hunting,” he said with all the grudging resentment of a teenager stating the obvious.

  Aiden fought off a grin. He was entitled to his sulkiness so long as he wasn’t leaving.

  “Hunting what?” she asked since nothing on-campus posed a danger. Troy and Katsue saw to the safety and security of the university grounds.

  “A demon,” he explained. “Very old, very powerful. I’ve had one run in with it already, and I have reason to believe that it’ll be back.”

  “Here?” she asked. What on earth, or in Heaven or Hell for that matter, could have attracted an ancient demon to their tiny little enclave?

  “It seems to have a vendetta against Watchers,” Magnus said. “It killed the missing Alastor.”

  “Thrash?” Aiden asked in a hollow voice “He’s dead?”

  Magnus nodded. “Worse than dead really. His soul was eaten, so this demon is in possession of all of his memories and knowledge. It assumed his form.”

  Aiden couldn’t believe what Magnus was telling her even as the implications began to unfold in her mind. It wore Thrash’s body and had his memories. Which meant it knew about all of them. “You say you fought it?”

  “The battle was inconclusive. I hurt it, but got hurt in the process.”

  His burns. “It’s vulnerable to sunlight?” she asked, and he nodded.

  So Magnus had taken a bath in sunlight and burnt off his own skin in an attempt to destroy the demon. Talk about suicidal tendencies.

  Or single minded determination.

  “Why wasn’t I told about this?” Aiden demanded. “If this demon can impersonate Thrash—”

  “I told Matthew.” Magnus shrugged. “I assumed he warned you.”

  “He didn’t,” she snapped, adding another item to her list of reasons to be furious with the priest.

  Katsue and Troy had been searching for their friend for weeks. Father Matthew had known and allowed them to keep searching in vain, to keep hoping...

  “Does Desdemona know?” Aiden asked, her voice distant in her own ears.

  “No, only Matthew,” Magnus replied. “The others don’t even know I exist, so you can see how we don’t talk much.”

  His sarcasm flowed over her like water. “This demon, could it be someone other than Thrash?” Aiden asked, a horrendous sickness growing in her gut. Oh, Troy.

  “It was a shape changer and a natural doppelganger,” Magnus replied. “But it couldn’t impersonate either you or Matthew. I’d know.”

  “As you just pointed out, you don’t have any contact with the others,” Aiden snapped. “So you wouldn’t know if it had… eaten one of them, would you?”

  Magnus stared back at her, unable to dispute her reasoning.

  Aiden’s horror advanced another leap and bound. “Oh God,” she breathed. “Troy. I just passed him in the stairwell. He was on his way to see Father Matthew.”

  Magnus’ eyes glowed golden like luminescent gemstones with only a black slit of a pupil visible. Bridging an impossible gulf, their minds met, and they reached the same conclusion concurrently.

  “It’s him.”

  Magnus beat her to the stairwell and ripped the door open. Racing on his heels, she followed him down the stairs.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A pair of aged brass candelabras sat upon opposite ends of the mahogany mantle. The fireboard was a handcrafted antique carved from white marble in a simple Tudor style, elegant and stately. The flames in the hearth cracked and sizzled with the restless energy of a young fire, licking around the edges of the pine logs placed for consumption. The golden glow enhanced the homey atmosphere of the study.

  A fire at the end of summer seemed extravagant and wasteful, but Matthew preferred natural light to harsh incandescent bulbs. The priest rationalized his indulgence as a medical necessity. The only other source of heat in the vast and drafty Archeology building came from a cranky old dragon of a furnace in the basement. The broiler produced billowing clouds of steam and soot but never enough heat to warm the upper stories.

  The priest sat at one of the study’s two massive oak tables, both positioned parallel to one another. Spread out before him were leather bound tomes stalked in neat piles and the sword, Acerbitas. The black velvet wrapping exposed only the part of the blade bearing angelic runes. The remainder of the hypnotic surface was covered.

  Father Matthew had begun the tedious task of transcribing the runes onto sheets of vellum using a brush and ink well. Transcribing each of the intricate symbols exactly required a steady hand and a meticulous eye for detail. He dared not entrust the chore to the dubious ability of an apprentice or journeyman of a master scribe. The tiniest mistake or ink dribble—a line here, a dot there—could alter the entire meaning of the text.

  The opaque surface of the blade pulsated with ever-changing patterns. Like a black hole, the material absorbed light from the room around it, warping the distribution of illumination throughout the room. More than once, Matthew had to adjust his seating position in order to see properly.

  While he labored, the sword sang its sweet siren song: to hold it, to wield it, to possess it. The priest had to remain alert and aware lest he fall under its spell. It required discipline and willpower to cast off the thrall the weapon continually attempted to impose over his mind, but the priest welcomed the distraction.

  To say that things with Aiden had gone worse than he had hoped would be a vast understatement. Her reaction to the news of her heritage had left him stunned as the door slammed closed in his face, and he’d wondered if the sudden pain in his chest and dizziness were the onset of another heart attack.

  Matthew couldn’t understand either her anger or her sense of betrayal. Hadn’t he always acted with her best interests at heart? He’d doted on and adored her since she’d first come into his custody as a precocious three-year-old with enormous emerald eyes and a mass of burgundy hair that curled into corkscrews. From the very start, he’d been her guardian, her champion, and her father.

  He had told her lies, but parents lied to their children out of love, not malice. He’d wanted to shelter her innocence and nurture her brilliance. He’d expected her to listen and accept and to understand that sometimes secrets were necessary.

  “Have you deciphered those yet?” Magnus’ distinctive lilt filled the room, a disembodied wave of sound that caused both the fire and the candle flames to dim and then brighten. Shadows expanded and writhed in fluttering ribbons. The Celt made light dance with darkness.

  Matthew jumped slightly and then gave an annoyed chuckle. “Magnus, what are you doing here? And what’s with the corny voice tricks?” He checked the rune he’d been copying and was relieved to find that it hadn’t been ruined. H
e made the final stroke and set his brush aside.

  “Corny? Which part exactly did you think corny?” The Celt sniffed. “Really, no one appreciates a flair for the dramatic anymore. It’s one of the great failings of modern society. The poetry has gone out of living. Dying.”

  Sniffed? Matthew swiveled in his seat, eyebrows arched in curiosity tinged with disbelief. The Celtic warrior had just uttered more words in one breath than he usually said in an entire conversation. And he didn’t sound like himself. Something about Magnus seemed off, a certain reticence unusual even for him.

  “Well, I suppose that already having experienced death leaves one with plenty of time to ponder the morbidity of existence,” Matthew retorted.

  Magnus snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “Do you have another?” The priest scanned the room and finally spotted the Celt lurking in a shadowy corner near the doorway.

  “No.”

  Matthew waited, but his friend seemed disinclined to elaborate. He decided to go ahead and change the subject to the thought that had weighed heavily upon him of late. “I always meant to ask you and never got around to it.”

  “Yes?”

  “Is death... remarkable?”

  “Only to those who aren’t already dead.”

  “Ah.” Matthew exhaled, the answer no more or less than he’d expected. Pushing away from the table, the priest scooted his chair out and removed his spectacles. He closed his weary eyes and rubbed his temples, seeking to alleviate a throbbing headache.

  “I passed Aiden on the stairs. I was going up, she was going down. She seemed upset,” Magnus said with the tone of a leading observation. The Celt was fishing.

  “She was upset.” His eyes snapped open to regard his friend with something approaching suspicion. Why had Magnus been coming up instead of going down?

  “Yeah?” Magnus drawled with a provocative intonation.

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Matthew reacted instead of thinking. “She completely flew off the handle. Her response was not only irrational but immature. She didn’t even give me a chance to explain!”

  Magnus chuckled, leaving Matthew exposed and awash in humiliation.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” the priest bit out, unable to believe that his best friend had just laughed at him.

  “All right, whatever,” Magnus replied carelessly. “You brought it up.”

  But Matthew hadn’t.

  “Besides, I thought you were interested in the runes?” the priest snarled defensively. He hadn’t wanted to discuss Aiden with anyone in the first place, and to have his best friend laugh in his face...

  “I am.” The Celt’s shoulders and arms rose and fell in a classic Gallic shrug which dismissed anything else as casual interest.

  “It’s just as well that you decided to drop in.” Matthew frowned, trying to disguise how much his ego smarted, how much his feelings were hurt. He welcomed the conversation’s return to the business of demons and magic, because the fight against evil was a far less touchy topic.

  “It is?”

  “Yes, it is,” Matthew retorted, tone sharp. He knew he sounded grumpy and overly sensitive, but the Celt annoyed him.

  Unlike his usual manner of sheer obstinacy and endearing arrogance, Magnus seemed to take a perverse pleasure in playing verbal and emotional games. Magnus wasn’t normally cruel, and Matthew wondered what bug had gotten up the Celt’s butt.

  “For such a powerful weapon, you’d think there’d be more written about it,” Matthew began, making a staunch attempt to be scholarly and single-minded. “However, I’ve searched high and low, and the only reference I’ve found to a sword matching Acerbitas’ description is a partial inventory from the vaults of the Vatican during the reign of Lotario de Conti, Pope Innocent III in 1190.”

  “Nothing else?”

  He thought Magnus sounded relieved. Matthew considered the Celt with a look and then dismissed the notion as silly, even though it went against his better instincts. He was tired. He had a headache. His game was off. The list of potential failings stretched on and on.

  “There’s more.” The priest carefully watched the Celt, although his reaction was difficult to gage while he was swathed inside of that blasted cloak. “Going back to the sword itself as my only reference, I’ve finished deciphering the runic inscription which reads, roughly translated: Bitterness and harshness, vengeance for my slain daughter, forged from Lilith’s blood and tears, destroyer of the Eater of Souls.”

  “Eater of Souls?” Magnus’ voice twisted around on itself like a serpent. The shadows in the room writhed in undulating coils like fat worms, drawing an image in Matthew’s mind of an octopus flailing about out of water.

  Chilling, visceral terror filled the priest, who’d never once witnessed Magnus demonstrate such an ability. Realization hit Father Matthew, and fear combined with a matter-of-fact certainty. He’d been a fool not to see it right from the start—This isn’t Magnus!

  “I’ve been unable to locate anything called a Nameless Scourge in my records,” Matthew said, rising slowly to his feet. He turned to face the shadowy figure.

  “You wouldn’t,” he replied cryptically.

  “Would you like to hear my extrapolation?” the priest asked. “Call it my best guess as to what it means?”

  “Sure.” The thing pretending to be Magnus snickered, a slithering sound that pierced Matthew’s soul like needles of ice. “Tell me what you think it means, Preacher Man.”

  “Here’s what I think it all means,” Matthew drawled, folding his hands in front of him. He was frightened, but fear did not rule him.

  From what he knew of this creature, he had no hope of escape. His best chance for survival was to keep it talking until help arrived, if and when it did. Most likely, Magnus wasn’t far off. The Celt had been stalking this shape-shifting demon for weeks.

  “As a starting point, I already knew that Thrash had been murdered because he possessed this sword.” The priest indicated Acerbitas.

  “How’d you know that?”

  The doppelganger’s impersonation of Magnus had become transparently terrible following Matthew’s revelation. The priest wondered how he’d mistaken this vile creature for his friend in the first place.

  “Magnus told me.” Father Matthew stared at the demon with an unflinching gaze.

  “Ah, of course.” The demon snickered. “Go on.”

  “The rest is conjecture based upon what I’ve been able to deduce. You’ll have to tell me if I’m wrong,” Matthew said.

  The demon gave no indication that it would tell him one way or another, but Matthew sensed gloating, the type of creature that would not be able to keep its mouth shut.

  “According to written and oral tradition, Lilith was quite prolific after she left Adam and the Garden. Her children were as numerous and varied as their fathers.”

  “That bitch would spread her legs for anything,” the demon inserted with a cackle.

  “The scrolls of Hath tell of numerous conflicts with Lilith and her progeny,” Matthew continued, deliberately ignoring the demon’s attempt to bait him. “From them, it is clear that Lilith possessed a fierce maternal instinct and a blood-thirsty desire for vengeance when thwarted.

  “Taken in conjunction with the sword’s inscription, I’d deduce that Lilith was crossed and one or more of her children slain,” Matthew said. “Lilith retaliated by striking the name of the one responsible from existence. She cursed that one with some decidedly unpleasant fate for the rest of eternity.”

  “Unpleasant?” The demon’s angry hiss swelled through the room, and the shadows around it ballooned outward. “My punishment far outweighed my crime! Because I killed one of her favorite daughters, Lilith erased my name from existence. She eliminated it from all written and spoken histories and wiped clean the memories of those who knew me. She cursed me to dwell in eternal darkness on this earth. I never know rest or respite. I endure endless hunger without satiation. I am dam
ned to the night, to the cold, to the gnawing ravenous HUNGER!”

  The demon’s voice rose to a bellow and struck Matthew as a physical blow. The priest flinched and brought his arms up to protect his face as shadow tentacles lashed wildly, pummeling his body from all sides. With every touch of solid shadow he expected his life to come to an abrupt end.

  Minutes into the assault, the demon’s shout had died away, and the tentacles quieted.

  Matthew took a breath and regained his composure. “You must have a name for yourself or one others have given you since then,” he pointed out philosophically. “It’s true that names have power, and the terror you’ve inspired has led countless cultures to name you.”

  “That’s true,” the demon agreed, somewhat mollified. “Personally, I’ve always liked the name Ernie.”

  “Ernie?” Matthew parroted.

  “Yes, I’ve been using it for a couple of centuries now. Do you have a problem with that?” The demon’s sneer dared Matthew to go ahead and mock the name choice.

  “No, not at all... Ernie,” the priest agreed hastily.

  “Good.” The demon sniggered. “Keep going. You’re doing so well. I want to know if you’ve figured out the rest.”

  Matthew cleared his throat. “I’m guessing that sometime after Lilith cast the curse, something happened that made her change her mind and desire your destruction,” Matthew continued.

  “I discovered how to feed on the souls of the living. To briefly assuage my ravenous hunger.” The demon strode across the room and stood in the full firelight with his arms spread wide in a look-at-me pose. His new form presented a painfully pale figure with snow white hair tipped with metallic blue. His eyes bore bright red irises.

  Thrash.

  Righteous and boundless anger stiffened Matthew’s body into a rigid posture. “You murdered this boy, and now you wear his body like some unholy abomination!” he snarled.

  “Like?” The demon mocked. He looked, sounded, and acted precisely like Thrash. “Oh, no. Am. Make no mistake. I didn’t just murder him. I ate him. His immortal soul, destroyed. His entire essence, eradicated. Gone, other than the part that resides within me.”