Through her wild struggles, she caught glimpses of visions seen through both their eyes: Father Matthew’s panicked face and the Frenchman’s startling blue eyes. The pale stranger watched and waited patiently, allowing his demonic servant to fight its own battle. And really, he had no reason to intervene, because Aiden was losing her battle with the Soul Eater.
The darkness closed all around her from every side. Gloom enveloped her soul, smothered the fire burning around her. Her struggles weakened further, and the flames dimmed to a mere flicker.
Some external stimulus caught the Soul Eater’s attention. It became distracted and momentarily loosened his hold on Aiden.
A glimmer of self-awareness returned to her, and she fought for every breath. Her blind eyes searched desperately for even a flicker of light. Then her vision returned with startling clarity.
After a hard downdraft, a falling shadow from above, the Soul Eater threw back his head to look up. He caught sight of Magnus as he fell from the sky. The Celt was swathed in a wind-whipped cloak, and two enormous ebony wings, partially furled and folded to facilitate a dive, protruded from his back. He held his arm raised, bent at the elbow, Acerbitas poised and ready to strike.
With a panicked shriek, the Soul Eater fought against the spell holding it immobile with strength born of desperation. It took all of Aiden’s willpower to hold the demon. Fortunately, the struggle was blessedly brief, and Magnus plunged Acerbitas straight into the Soul Eater’s chest, impaling the demon through the heart.
The scream that the demon emitted was not just one of hurt and horror, but a cry that accompanied soul destruction. Through their terrible bond, excruciating pain flowed from the Soul Eater into Aiden, overwhelming the last bit of stamina left in her. Crushing blackness descended upon them both, and as the demon perished, she plunged into a void along with him.
Chapter Twenty
“Are you sure he came this way?” Acerbitas asked in a flippant tone.
Magnus stood poised before the elevator entrance to the Flatbush Avenue subway station. His immense frame was taut with tension, and he maintained a death grip on the sword’s hilt. Frustration and disgust welled inside him for the world beneath the city’s dirty, dangerous streets.
“Positive,” he muttered and stabbed the down button of the elevator.
As a rule, Magnus never ventured deeper than basement level in any of the three districts he claimed as his own. Invisible lines bounded his territory, a mental map that ended approximately twenty feet below street level. Any further and the line grew dashed, then dotted, and then faded away. The city’s underground was not his concern, and if another supernatural entity happened to claim the earth deep below Magnus’ feet, more power to him, her, or it. However, his restriction of subterranean boundaries did not extend in the opposite direction. When he looked to the stars, he claimed them as his own, and he was willing to destroy any intruder in his sky.
When the doors of the lift slid open, Magnus mentally braced and forced down the clamoring fear that came with entering the metal coffin. The Celt’s demeanor never altered during the harrowing ride or gave the slightest hint of his distress, and he exited wearing the same stoic expression he’d adopted since he began the hunt.
The Flatbush Avenue station was the last stop on the route. In recent years, its U-shaped platform had undergone a full renovation. Magnus passed through fare control unnoticed, obfuscated from mortal eyes with a simple trick of magic, a spell he employed so often that its manipulation was second nature to him.
Being forced underground in pursuit of prey left Magnus feeling out of his natural element. Whether the Soul Eater had fled to the subway randomly or purposefully made no difference. For Magnus, it was unfamiliar territory, foreign soil, and not the battleground of his choosing.
On the walls, a blue and white tile mosaic framed a bronze cast relief mural of several spooky figures dressed in flowing robes. They reminded him of Boogie Men.
“My, the resemblance is uncanny. You didn’t mention that you’d worked as a model,” Acerbitas said snidely as he strode past the relief, leather cloak flowing about his large form. Its movements were fluid and supple, possessing an innate grace. The cape seemed more of a living thing than a garment.
Magnus suppressed his irritation and ignored her. Normally, he was not one for theatrical capes and cloaks, but until his flesh healed from the horrific burns he’d suffered, it was a hardship he endured willingly, both for the sake of innocent eyes and his ego. His looks might never recover from the ravages of the sun, but he could not accept becoming the recipient of scorn, ridicule, or worse, pity.
Gaze shifting warily, Magnus scanned the assembled crowd which waited to board a train. The faces of the subway riders were slack, having fallen into a state of ennui, blank and exhausted. They stared straight through him with their dead eyes and tired minds.
From diamond to coal miners, such expressions were an artifact of the subterranean existence. The lack of light and the depressing weight of the soil overhead crushed the souls of those that walked the dark tunnels.
A century or a millennium before, their very existence would have meant nothing to him. Then, he had no care for whether people lived or perished, and the life of one was the same as a million. Humans lived their short, miserable lives and then winked out in the blink of an eye. In the day, Magnus would have exerted more effort to save his neighbor’s cat than the woman in the blue coat currently blocking his path.
His friendship with Matthew had changed all that. Reluctantly, grudgingly, he had come to regard human life as possessing innate merit. Some mattered more than others, and what Matthew wanted to call compassion was really pity.
A capacity for pity might not be worth much as a measure of individual worth, but for Magnus it had been a huge step, a conscious choice to value people and their firefly lives. Still, change left him disgruntled. He was old and set, loath to amend his self-serving ways, and so he evaded human contact with stubborn persistence, allowing only a select few to even become aware of his existence.
The woman in blue remained in his path. Magnus stepped to the right, and the woman mirrored his motion with a sort of eerie prescience, blocking his way as if she were subconsciously attempting to gain his attention. Magnus evaded her with a swift sidestep, sidling past unseen and unnoticed. Within two strides, he dismissed and forgot her.
A blue and silver train departed with a roar worthy of lion or thunder. Magnus stepped out onto the track, carefully avoiding the electrified third rail.
One of the city’s countless homeless crouched up against the far wall adjacent to the tunnel entrance. The man’s head jerked sharply toward Magnus as he passed. Wary brown eyes peered out from beneath furry arched eyebrows, regarding Magnus with fear and suspicion from beneath a gray seaman’s cap. The man had a crooked nose that bore bumps from multiple breaks, and his mouth was an unhappy curve grimace within a thicket of bristling beard.
“YOU DON’T BELONG!” The homeless man bellowed, leveling an accusatory finger toward the Celt.
Nearby, law-abiding citizens looked in the derelict’s direction, and some people retreated from the angry shouts. Uneasy glances followed the pointed finger, but not one of them saw what the homeless man perceived.
“Tell me about it,” Magnus muttered. He passed the man and entered the tunnel, each step forced. His feet dragged as if they were mired in drying cement.
“He saw you,” Acerbitas mused, faintly surprised.
“It happens,” Magnus replied with a shrug. “Sometimes children and madmen, a psychic or an enlightened can see past my glamour.” He wasn’t concerned, because those that could perceive him were usually considered overly imaginative or insane, and they were never believed.
Magnus removed his gloves to hold the sword. His hands were mostly healed. Tissue had grown over the exposed bones, and the charred skin had peeled away, first in scabs and then in fine flakes. The healing hands were soft, stripped of toughened callus
es and fingernails that had only partially grown. They were not hands he recognized, not those of a warrior, not his own, but the only ones he had at his disposal.
The flesh-to-steel contact with Acerbitas allowed him to establish a stronger link with the sword, and hence his ability to track the Soul Eater grew stronger. Contact with his bare flesh permitted Acerbitas to flood his mind with her seductive siren song of possession and power, an enchantment to which he proved to be impervious.
Acerbitas pouted over her failure to enrapture Magnus, and he tolerated the tantrum with amused indifference. It was, after all, her nature to sulk just as it was his to gloat.
“It’s odd, but you seem familiar somehow,” Acerbitas said, voice dulcet and seductive, moving through his thoughts like a warm breeze.
“Do I?” Magnus asked, non-committal.
“Yes, you do, very much so, except that I can’t seem to pin it down exactly why,” she said. “Maybe we’ve met? I’d estimate you to be at least three thousand years old, based on your aura and vibe.”
He chuckled. “I see, so you’re an expert at guesstimating the age of immortals? I didn’t know that enchanted swords got into that New Age hocus-pocus. Do you have much experience at it, love? Do you think you could read my palm?”
She huffed. “Mock me at your own risk!”
“I think I just did so,” he replied, wearing a grin that faded quickly. He was not meant to be here in the belly of the earth, not now, not ever. He resented the task that had taken him away from Matthew’s side in the priest’s final hours. Decades before, Magnus had made a promise: to see to his friend’s final death, to deliver a proper and peaceful ending to the priest’s life.
Determination drove him from the relatively airy station and into the dark and narrow tunnel. Tight knots of tension twisted his gut as he entered the only place he feared. He would rather have burnt in the sun than risk becoming trapped beneath the earth.
However, it was all about choices, and above all else, Magnus contended to be a predator. This Soul Eater, a rival wolf had entered his forest and taken to hunting his humans, and assaulted the one mortal that the Celt regarded as an equal. Magnus had no choice but to address the affront.
“He came this way,” Magnus volunteered, assuring the sword that they were on the right trail. “I can sense him.”
“Good,” Acerbitas said. “Why are you so uncomfortable?”
“I don’t come down here very often,” Magnus replied with another indifferent shrug. The sides of the tunnel he’d been following seemed to get narrower, even though the actual width of the track had not changed. He could feel the walls closing in, and the only relief he found came when they passed briefly through each of the numerous stations dotting the line.
“Are you nervous?” Acerbitas asked, curiosity whetted. She had the tone of a gossip hound sniffing out a salacious tidbit.
“I’m not nervous,” Magnus snapped.
“Hmm, well, you seem awfully edgy for someone who’s not,” Acerbitas replied sweetly. “For one thing, you’re fidgeting.”
“I am not fidgeting,” Magnus denied, though a glance downward proved him wrong. He had been running restless fingers over the sword’s carved ebony blade, stroking the glossy bony surface and tracing the raised silver runes. He stopped and let his hand drop away.
“You’re scared,” Acerbitas replied with pointed snark-casm, smug in her rightness. The tables were turned. She went for his throat. “Imagine that. A big fellow like you, scared...”
“I don’t like tight spaces,” Magnus growled, a low rumbling snarl. The sound swelled and echoed through the narrow passage, increasing the feeling of oppression. His tension grew. Walls closed in. Crushing pressure. No air. He felt dizzy, afraid. His canines emerged and cut into his lower lip, causing blood to flow into his mouth.
“You’re claustrophobic!” Acerbitas gave a hoot of laughter that flitted merrily through his thoughts.
Magnus reigned in his worst impulses. He suppressed another vicious snarl, determined not to make another betraying sound. Shoving the sword into a concrete joint and snapping the blade was not an option. At least, not until after he killed the Soul Eater.
He ignored her and focused his attention entirely upon their quarry. Nothing mattered but the hunt and the kill. Even if the earth opened beneath his feet and swallowed him whole, he would persist. For the sake of the hunt, he would endure whatever was necessary.
The demon they stalked was close now. Through the sword, Magnus could sense the Soul Eater’s proximity. Soon they would catch up, and then the final battle would begin.
Eventually, the sword’s laughter died away. “Oh my,” she said with a breathy sigh. “You’re so sensitive, no sense of humor at all. How come? What happened to you, honey?”
“I was buried alive,” Magnus replied tersely. “As a child.”
“How old were you?” she asked after a moment.
“Four.”
“Oh.” She remained blessedly silent for a while.
“We should be quiet now. Sound carries down here,” he said, hoping she would take the hint. The Celt traversed the subterranean passageway without producing a single sound that would betray his position to the enemy.
“You’re right,” she agreed, surprising him. “No more talking.”
They continued onward in silence. When a train neared, Magnus pressed into a workman’s alcove, enduring confinement in an even tinier space, until it thundered past.
As they passed through the Warden Street station, the magic guiding him pulled his attention upward, and he looked up.
Acerbitas snickered. “He went up here, didn’t he?”
Magnus gazed at the plain white tile interior. Outrage blossomed, and his jaw set. “You’ve got to be kidding!” he exclaimed, mildly incredulous. “He went up?”
“That’d be a yes,” she said. “And so, up we go.”
Magnus took the first exit and emerged in Caesar Plaza near the old Equitable Building. He released a long, slow breath, relieved to stand under the open sky once again. “I can’t believe I trudged through the subway system tracking this bastard, only to have him emerge above ground!”
Acerbitas snorted. “No one made you walk, sweet cheeks. He probably took a train.”
The Celt spit out a very violent and very filthy curse in his native tongue.
“Watch it!” Acerbitas snapped. “You can’t talk-ooohhhh!”
Patience lost, Magnus took to the sky with a powerful thrust of upward acceleration. He poured all of his pent-up frustration into flight, and within seconds, they were hundreds of feet high. At last, Magnus was back in his element.
The sword laughed. She let loose another WOOT of excitement as they banked suddenly to the right and almost clipped the corner of a skyscraper.
Magnus hovered in place like a great bird while he got his bearings. He concentrated on his connection with the sword and excluded all else, including an odd night-flying pigeon that nearly collided with him.
It released a startled Coo and veered away at the last second.
He rotated in slow, graceful circles. Arms extended straight out, Magnus held Acerbitas’ slender blade balanced between his hands, so the sword resembled the spinning needle of a compass. The sword thrummed with power and acquired a fiery red glow as she primed for the final battle.
Sword and swordsman were one, united in purpose: to destroy the hateful creature that had murdered Lilith’s daughter, Thorton Aston III, Troy Anderson, and countless other innocents.
“Got him,” Magnus exclaimed softly once he had a picture in his head to guide his course. Changing his grip, the Celt shifted the sword’s hilt to his hand, then plunged into a sudden, dizzying drop that only vaguely resembled controlled flight.
Acerbitas’ song filled his mind, full of vengeance and bloodlust. Magnus smelled magic in the air and sensed that some sort of mystical conflict was unfolding. However, he failed to discern the nature of the conflict. The magic being us
ed was elusively familiar.
He looked down upon the two people seated beneath him. One of the pair was the Soul Eater, the other was a handsome Frenchman of Magnus’ acquaintance, Guillaume, whom he hadn’t laid eyes on in centuries.
Both men looked up.
Guillaume gazed up at Magnus with an incredulous expression. His lips moved and formed a name. Magnus deliberately ignored the Frenchman and went after the demon.
Sensing imminent danger, the Soul Eater’s legs turned to writhing tentacles, and it attempted to dissipate into a slippery puddle of viscous shadow.
“I can’t move.” The demon thrashed in panic.
“You allowed the girl to bind you, fool,” Guillaume's mouth curled into a sneer.
Aiden. At last, Magnus identified the source of the offensive spell and realized why it felt familiar. He attacked without further delay. Dropping the last ten feet, he positioned Acerbitas straight down and aimed at the Soul Eater’s head. Magnus put his full strength behind the blow.
The demon screamed bloody murder and thrashed about with senseless desperation as the sword plunged through the top of its head and followed the length of its spine on into the Soul Eater’s torso. Straight into the heart of darkness...
Metal screeched in protest as the steel patio chair the Soul Eater had occupied collapsed beneath Magnus’ weight. Black tentacles thrashed everywhere as the demon gave one final cry. The Soul Eater crystallized into a solid statue of glittering obsidian, opaque and impenetrable. His remains were frozen in crystal, features frozen forever in agony.
“Get back to hell!” Magnus snarled . With a grunt, the Celt wrapped both hands around Acerbitas’ hilt and bore down with all of his strength, forcing the ebony blade deeper. He refused to leave any part of the demon intact, not even an obsidian statue that paid final tribute to the Soul Eater’s death throes.
Phoenix Contract: Part Four (Fallen Angel Watchers) Page 6