Elisha Daemon

by E. C. Ambrose

  “The barber will wish to be sure the threat cannot so easily be brought to England.”

  “I will ensure that in my own fashion,” Elisha stepped between the tombs, Jude seated before him, suddenly looking up, eyes wide. “He doesn’t have to die.”

  Jude jabbed his finger against Elisha’s chest. “This is my choice,” he said through the contact, a splinter of anger and desperation.

  “I can’t let you choose death, not when you’ve known so little of living,” Elisha answered, his own choice too near the surface.

  “I’m choosing your life, and everyone you love.”

  “Not everyone,” Elisha whispered back. Jude snatched back his hand as if the thought burned him.

  “I did say it was only the most obvious choice,” Vertuollo remarked. “I presume you have another proposal?”

  “Blood relics. If every mancer among you is marked, I will know when you’re coming.”

  “Marked—with your blood?” Vertuollo tipped his head.

  “So that you have contact at will? Not likely.” Renart drew back stiffly, and a few others murmured around him. The Valley shifted and stirred as one of the mancers fled rather than accept.

  “As would you, contact is mutual. My mark will warn me if you’ve broken the bargain, it will also warn you if I have.”

  “We might not choose to carry it,” said Renart.

  Elisha spread his hands and let his power flow, shifting the edges of his cloak and lighting his eyes with the Valley’s mad swirl. “Anyone who chooses not to carry the mark may travel to England at will—but I am not bound to ignore them. If you come to England, do you think I’ll miss you? Remember what happened last time you came.” He conjured the image of Smithfield, outside London, where they tried to conquer the barons with the vision of the angel’s death, Brigit’s magic turning it back against those who bore witness and forcing them to feel the pain—until Elisha broke their circle and slew every mancer who had not immediately fled for their lives. Renart had been among those who left, and the tightening of his features showed how narrow an escape that had been.

  “I remember,” said a new voice. One of the hooded mancers stepped forward. “He killed two dozen of your friends at a whim,” she continued. “He crushed my mind and barely saved my body.” Brigit slipped back the hood that concealed her face, glowing now with the truth of her testimony, her eyes bright and hands clasped in pleading. “He is the most powerful magus that ever was, just as my mother foresaw, and to defy him is to die.”

  Their eyes met. She claimed that she remembered—was it true? Had her old life returned to her in these past months since she awakened? Her presence felt familiar still, and startlingly, untainted by the void of the necromancer, as if she had preserved herself, refusing the power they must have offered.

  “You remember?” Gretchen hurried toward Brigit, catching her hand.

  “I remember love and loss and darkness. I remember waking to the wonder of the light, lying upon the verge of death, only to rejoin the living.” Brigit smiled with some of that grace she once possessed, and Elisha’s heart pricked with fear, but he forced it back again. Even if she remembered everything and longed for some vengeance upon him, her vengeance would be his own.

  “If you’ve remembered, your majesty, then we should go,” Gretchen urged, but Brigit gently shook her head.

  “I am not through here, Gretchen. You may go if you like.” Brigit dismissed her regally. Gretchen glanced at the mancers all around them and remained.

  “Shall we continue, then?” said Vertuollo. “It is all very touching, but I, at least, have my own concerns to attend to when this business is done.”

  “Indeed.” Renart glanced at the mancers all around them, then plucked a silk kerchief from his sleeve. “Will this do?”

  Elisha sat upon the other sarcophagus. “Give the vial to my man.” He flung back his cloak and began rolling up his left sleeve. Bleeding, the most common operation of the barber, and one he had performed hundreds of times, mostly, truth be told, upon others.

  “Then what guarantee do we have that you’ll actually go through with it—go away, and leave us to our business?” Renart said.

  Count Vertuollo settled his hand on Jude’s shoulder. “The vial is merely a doorway, the passage by which our strength might flow to England. It is not the only one.” He smiled faintly.

  Here and there among the gathering, a sense of excitement escaped the careful deflections and projections. They thought they had Elisha now, a willing sacrifice to their blood-lust, making a promise that could not be kept to hold back the plague from the threshold of England. Renart acted a good role, suspicious of Elisha at every turn, challenging his word, his own smug defiance resting in the slightest crinkle of his eyes. The mancers believed they had won, defeating him at last, by pretending to concede England. The wolves stalked ever nearer to Elisha’s trap. Now, he need only be sure that Jude and Harald were well free before he sprang it. The two larger blades lay waiting at the end of the stone where Elisha sat, but he ignored them. From his medical kit, Elisha drew a scalpel and a strap, tying off the strap at his biceps, holding his blade at the ready, the pulse at his inner elbow throbbing against the pressure. “The vial, or I do not cut.”

  Count Vertuollo revealed it, and Harald stepped up to slip it from his grasp. He briefly pressed it into Elisha’s hand. “Is this it?”

  “Aye,” Elisha told him, feeling the trapped and familiar dread of his brother’s death, and Harald drew back, winding the chain into his hand, clutching it tight.

  “What of your henchmen, the killers you have sent against us?” Renart demanded.

  “They have already been warned.” He shot a glance to Harald who gave a nod. “If they strike you after tonight, they know I won’t defend them.”

  “Very well then.” Renart held out the kerchief between two fingers, almost lady-like.

  Elisha nicked the vein, the slightest prick of pain, then his blood trickled down as he faced the mancers. “By this blood, I swear that, after this night, I will no longer hunt you in your homes, nor encourage any of my followers to do so. And anyone who accepts this blood agrees never to set foot in England.”

  Elisha took the square of silk from Renart and dabbed its corner in his blood, then offered it back, sending the warning of his strength. “Who’s next?” A grinning man stepped up, already pulsing with glee at Elisha’s offering, letting the blood mark his leather purse. As he walked away, giving ground to the next one, Elisha felt the jab of the mancer’s awareness probing him, reaching back, and Elisha answered with a snarl of power that made the mancer withdraw into the web of murders all around as more and more and more of them came up to be marked by the blood that would kill them.

  Chapter 35

  The mancers pushed close, more a mob than a line, shoving their kerchiefs, shoes, thongs of leather and scraps of wool into the thin stream of Elisha’s blood. He endured their glee and their greed though his pulse felt jumpy, his arm trembling already. He had lost much more blood than this before and been all right; he had to trust himself to manage it—the shaky effect might simply be a result of the restless power that lurked deep within, waiting his moment. Elisha divided his attention, concealing his true intent as he warded off the mancers’ awareness, prodding his defenses, reveling in the sense of his vulnerability. With each approaching mancer, who then receded with his or her prize, Jude grew more restless, shifting under Vertuollo’s grasp, whimpering. The count’s determined expression suggested he was trying to coax the boy to stillness, but finally Jude could be still no longer, he howled and thrashed.

  Vertuollo addressed him in Hungarian, sharply, but to no avail, forced to grab the boy with both hands, wrapping him tight, just the sort of messy interaction the count normally avoided.

  “Madame, will you tame this creature?” Vertuollo demanded, and Gretchen ran over from Br
igit’s side, adding her hands to his, her eyes pleading with Jude and her presence urgent.

  Writhing between them, Jude landed a solid kick in Gretchen’s face. She stumbled back, pressing a hand to her nose to stop the spurt of blood. Vertuollo’s presence shifted to ice as Jude broke free and launched himself across the gap to Elisha. The line of waiting mancers pressed close, some already drawing their flensing blades, anticipating the slaughter. Vertuollo parted them with his chill, sharp fury, shades gathering at his hand, and the others pressed after him. Some in the back protested their distance from the victim as others howled and chanted for blood. Jude danced upon the stone, evading the hands in his desperation to reach Elisha.

  “Stop now—he lives, or I’m through,” Elisha shouted at them. He jerked back his arm, encouraging the pulse to slow—still, it took longer than it should, and an ache started at the back of his throat. He could not afford to lose control now, not of his emotions, not of his own blood. Had he marked enough of them to forge the contact he needed, through the webs that bound them together? But if he were to spring his trap, he had to get Jude out of there.

  Elisha thrust out his hand and caught Jude’s arm. “Hush, stop. You have to stop.”

  “It should be me. I should die. I should die for what I am!”

  “No!” Elisha said, mustering whatever comfort he could, rushing to conceal his plans, even from Jude’s sensitive touch. Jude crumpled against his chest, gasping for breath, sweaty and shaking.

  “I’m evil, I left you, I let them hurt you.” Images flashed through the boy’s flesh: Elisha’s trial, the burning of his hands, the anger on Katherine’s face and the despair in Harald’s touch, the soothing chill of Vertuollo’s agreement that he could die. Then, so softly, “If I die, I can kill them, too. The greatest power, you said. If I die.”

  Jesus, that was too close. “I can’t let you,” Elisha said again. He pulled back his awareness, smothering his response even as he tried to comfort the boy. Barely tutored and not yet come into his own, there was no way Jude could control that kind of power, that he was willing to try both impressed and horrified Elisha.

  Gretchen lowered her hands to Jude’s trembling back. “Nobody has to die. That’s why he’s doing this,” she said as the boy buried himself in Elisha’s arms. “He is making it so, Jude, so that nobody else has to die.” Her words were quiet, strong, full of conviction, in spite of the damp fear that lit her eyes.

  For a moment, Jude drew back, eyes round, then he started screaming into Elisha’s flesh. “You’re lying. You’re no better than he was!”

  Gretchen’s eyes flashed up to meet Elisha’s gaze, her touch sending inquiry, then surety. Damnation—Jude and Gretchen both, how long before one of the mancers worked it out?

  “Get out of here, both of you—you have to go!” Elisha pushed Jude away, repelling his attachment, rejecting him.

  Across the tomb, Harald reached out and caught the boy around the middle, prying him back in spite of his flailing. Please, God, the mancers wouldn’t know what Jude meant. He had to act now, with as much contact as he already possessed.

  Jude snatched at Elisha’s left hand, hauling him across the stone as Harald dragged the boy backward. “Me, me, me—I was to die.” Forcing contact, drawing magic from the talisman he carried, Jude strengthened his grip as if it were stone, the magic binding them together even as Elisha conjured the surge of his own power. It had to be done, immediately—now. But what could he do with the child still clinging to him, his wild sorcery desperate to hold Elisha by any means? Jude’s first deliberate sorcery, achieved with Elisha’s teaching, and it could well be his last. Would he now let Jude die, too, just for not letting go?

  Harald’s strength was no match for Jude’s panic-driven power. Though he grappled and tugged, he could not force Jude to release his grasp on Elisha’s hand. Gretchen joined the struggle, beseeching through the contact, her own magic rising, but unable to break the bond.

  Over the boy’s head, Elisha met Harald’s stricken gaze, then Elisha snatched up the butcher’s knife and slammed it down through his wrist. Perfectly honed, prepared for butchery, the blade sliced through skin and muscle, crunched into bone, then carved into cartilage and finally grated against the stone below. Images from medical texts overlaid the reality of what he had done, precise drawings in fine black ink, to be followed by instructions for bandaging the stump. His severed arm splashed blood.

  Jude froze, his magic shattering. He gasped as he dropped the hand, then his wails of fear transformed to a high-pitched scream of sheer terror. Elisha’s stomach clenched, and he tried to fend off the sight of his own hand tumbling like a fallen bird.

  “Get them out of here, open the door,” he ordered Gretchen, sending her a thrust of death that roiled from the spilling of his blood. She stumbled after Harald, then burst into a run.

  Elisha sprawled to his back, gaping at the distant ceiling, at the mancers who clustered all around him: Vertuollo’s towering fury aimed at Renart, Renart’s confidence dancing in his features as he faced down the count, the others pressing close. He felt too weak already, his pain numbed by death, and more. Willow bark. A bitter-tasting pain-reliever, that caused blood to flow free. Christ, they had been a step ahead of him. That’s what he tasted on the wafer, not poison but medicine, one that wouldn’t sicken any member of the congregation, but only spur his own weakness as they maneuvered him into offering his own blood. Vertuollo hadn’t known that part of Renart’s plan when he made his bargain, else Jude would have felt the lie beneath the promise of his death. No wonder the count was furious: he bargained in good faith, believing Elisha would simply move on to become the master of England, while Renart dug Elisha’s grave.

  Distantly, he heard the door slam and Harald’s presence retreated to safety, taking Jude and Gretchen with him.

  Staring at the peak of the arches high above, Elisha mastered his stomach, and opened himself to the Valley. It rushed through him as a flood when the dam had broken, chilling him from fingertips to toes.

  Elisha drew deep into himself and broke the seals he had laid upon his knowledge of death. If ever he had had an affinity for death, let it take him now, him and every person marked by his blood—their willow bark only made it strike all the faster, his life’s blood streaming from his severed wrist. He sent his presence out, leaping to every spatter and stain.

  “Now! Take him down! We can be faster, we are stronger,” Renart cried above the growing chaos. “If he reaches for you, send him back. Trapped in the flesh.”

  “Trapped in the flesh!” others shouted, first in Latin, then Italian, French, German, a handful of other languages too mixed to be recognized.

  Outside the temple, others died, the plague sending on a constant stream of shades, hurting, sickened, terrified, and Elisha swept them up into his own knowledge, an ever-expanding wave of death. He lay upon the knight’s tomb, spread there bleeding on the boundary between life and death, between temple and Valley, gathering the power of the dead to his command and blasting it back down the webs that joined the mancers each to each.

  Mancers screamed and cursed around him. Some fled into the Valley, only to find he was already there. As the chill spread, other mancers sprang upon him, yanking on his limbs, stretching him across the stone as they had held so many others, perhaps thinking, if they worked fast enough, they could avoid the magic he prepared for them. His left wrist throbbed with every heartbeat, the memory of pain that would be paralyzing when the shock wore off: no dose of willow bark could ward off the pain of such an injury forever. But there was one thing that could. Knives bit into him, tearing his clothes and carving into his skin. Already, the cold gripped him, a river of ice flowing to every touch, his vision feathering with frost, and his breath clouding the air obscuring the leering faces of the mancers all around. Panic surged before him as he sent his hunting hounds among these reapers of the dead.

&n
bsp; “Don’t kill him,” Vertuollo thundered through both Valley and air. “Can you not feel what will happen if he dies?”

  “If he plans to die, how the fuck do we stop him?” Renart shouted back, and Elisha’s spirit soared with cold power and deadly knowledge. They could not stop him, not when murder was all they knew, and Death was so much more.

  Overhead, the Valley blazed with brilliant light, as if he gazed into the heart of Hell—or could that be Heaven?—in spite of his death, in spite of his willing this to happen? As it had once before, the Valley spread with welcome, and Elisha felt the spirits of all those who had gone before, as if they joined hands to hold back the horrors and take him home. As the knives slashed at his flesh and stabbed for his throat, desperate to control the power of his dying, Elisha turned from the flesh, already sloughing away that corruption, preparing to slip from knowledge to mystery, to that place beyond the Valley, leaving all fear, all pain, all suffering behind.

  Then a hand caught his face, cupping his cheek, cradling the memory of the angel’s touch. It turned his frosted gaze away from Heaven with unexpected heat. “Elisha,” Brigit said into his flesh.

  He sent her the lashing cold of Death, embracing it, opening his heart to the fate he had so long denied. The brilliant glow of the Valley encompassed them all, open with madness, with comfort, and with fear.

  Brigit cried out, but she did not release her grip. So be it—she would be among the first to die.

  Even as he thought it, she pushed back, as firmly and naturally as if she stitched up his wounds with an expert needle, as if she could guide the very nature of the death-magic he hurled against them. Somewhere nearby, the shock of his assault broke a mancer’s mind and a shriek died to nothing.

  “You would embrace your death and wield it now.” Brigit’s touch tingled, as if she sought to reach deeper, perhaps to do to him what he had once done to her, chasing down the paths of magic and searing away his soul. For so long, she had coveted the power he could wield, the power born of both his knowledge of death and his service to life.