“If you go into the graveyard with me?” the Saint asked.
“Yes.”
“The man dipped in darkness, birthed from sterile soil, has woven a wicked way,” the Saint replied, quoting the rambling prophecy the dead always spoke in. “Beware the one with dominion over death, and seek him not. If you wish to wrest his darkness from him, leave yourself open. Only in the place of life can the dead man die.”
“Is that all?” Blackheart asked.
“No,” the Saint replied with a saccharine twist of her lips. “If misfortune favors the death that is, then he will fall.”
Blackheart rubbed his chin, and frowned at the scattered fortune. “I take it you have a plan?”
“Of course.”
The Saint pushed the teeth to the side, and laid out her tools. There were vials that sloshed with dark, freshly collected fluids. A pair of red silk underwear, stained with lust and stretched at the seams. A small packet of sea salt scraped from stone hollows where it had never seen the sun. An aged scalpel with rust and blood mingled along the blade. Finally, to tie it all together, a length of pig iron chain brushed with silver and inscribed with the unconfessed secrets of a hundred suicides. Every object was a symbol, and each held its own energy. The magic in those items could be much more than the sum of their individual parts. Applied properly, they might even be enough to give one of the little gods pause.
“All right,” Blackheart said. “I'm listening.”
The Saint laid out her plan, and her flat, toneless voice made deicide sound as simple as drawing blood. Find the vein, cut the connection, and ascend to the boneyard throne with no further complications. The sorcerer leaned back, arms folded.
“So you want me there to hold him down for you?” he asked.
“Will you, or won't you?”
“Sure.” Blackheart stood, hefting the chain before sliding it across the back of his neck and around his waist. It was heavier than it should have been. “Do you have a car?”
“I do,” the Saint replied. She glanced at the envelope, but Blackheart made no move to take it. “Going to leave that here?”
“You hang onto it,” he said. “When the job's done you'll have no need for money, one way or another.”
“One way or another,” the Saint agreed. She tucked the teeth into one pocket, the cash into another. She replaced the rest of her tools, and stood. She floated through the gloom with the grace of a sleepwalker. Blackheart came behind, a dark man bent on dark deeds.
***
The abandoned necropolis was an old and tired horror. Grass grew wild over broken tombstones, and spray paint ran together with the stains of aging animal sacrifices into an unintelligible mess. An angel lay sprawled in the dirt with its wings snapped off, though whether it was an accident or not was impossible to tell. The pond that formed the back border of the boneyard bore a thick crust of algae like a witch's cataract. The night wind whistled through the gaps in the cemetery's fence, chastising the Saint and the sorcerer as they entered.
The Saint wasted no time. She pulled a vial from her pocket, and tugged the cork with her teeth. The ripe scent of monthly blood wafted into the night air. The Saint tipped the glass, and several heavy drops spattered on the ground. She walked on, laying her trap's foundation. Blackheart followed, keeping one eye in the world of the living, and the other in the world of the dead as they trod the unhallowed grounds. Neither spoke; the night had ears as surely as it had eyes.
The Saint laid her trail between faded monuments, and across sunken stones. She walked hither and yon, dripping careful lines through the disheveled corpse-yard. Blackheart followed in her steps, careful not to put a foot wrong. She was following an old formula; circles and lines walked thrice in darkness, salted with blood, and seeded with the potential of new life. It was a honey trap; the smell would draw the Hook Man in, and keep him bound inside the graveyard until the next moonrise at the earliest.
They came to one of the only intact stones in the whole cemetery. It was tipped over on its back, sunk deep into the lush, well-fed earth. The names and dates were lost to the elements, and it looked like nothing so much as a granite mortuary slab. The Saint tossed away the empty vial, drawing a butcher paper packet from an interior pocket. She poured a thick line of sea salt round the stone, then bent and dragged her nails through the brine-smelling circle. She moved quickly, the calligraphy of the spell coming easily to her practiced fingertips.
“Something's coming,” Blackheart said. He stepped behind one of the tumbled tombs, crouching in its shadow. The Saint smiled, and stepped onto the stone.
“Yes,” she whispered.
She moaned, and the single word became an invitation filled with cool, congealed lust. Her voice rippled along the lines of the spell, stroking the dark, secret places in the earth where old things went to slumber. The Saint shook down her hair, and peeled back her dress one layer at a time. Her skin was crisscrossed with scars, the flesh scribed with a razor blade until it had become a transcript of secret texts whose names wise people didn't speak aloud. Her breasts were deflated sacs, seamed with ropes of healed tissue. She wiggled the cloth over her bony hips, and pale light played over the wide crescent that seamed her belly. She'd removed the things that made her a woman, and murdered every child she'd might ever have birthed or nursed. She lay on the stone, trembling like a virgin.
The Saint called, and the Hook Man came. No lightning rent the sky, no winds blew from the north, and none of the mausoleum doors blew open. One moment they were alone in the boneyard. The next moment, they weren't.
The figure appeared with the sound of shuffling leaves, and the harsh, hollow breaths of a starving man outside a sidewalk cafe. Tall and thin as a split rail, he swam in a scarecrow coat that barely reached his bony wrists. Crazed, cornshuck hair dusted with leaves and dirt jutted out in all directions. He walked bent over, with his right hand tucked inside his coat and the knuckles of his left hand dragging along the bloody trail the Saint had left. He bent and snuffled like an animal scenting a mate's musk. When he looked up, his eyes filled with moonlight. There was no soul behind those windows, only a mass grave that could never, ever be filled. He saw the Saint, and smiled a wet lunatic's smile.
“Yes,” the Saint crooned again. She opened herself, breathing hard as the object of her desires came closer.
The creature stumbled closer, circling the stone and staring at the Saint. He closed his eyes, breathing in the smell of her. His nostrils flared, and something too keen to be anticipation splashed over his face. He licked his lips, and pulled his right hand out of his coat.
The hook was a terrible thing. Made from machine steel, it was bent and curved, exaggerated into a serpentine sickle lashed to a raw stump. The hook was a tool warped and hammered into a weapon, until it was incapable of performing any duty other than its singular, murderous task. The Hook Man grinned, and dragged the hook across the air. The silver steel screeched across the Saint's spell like fingernails on sanity. The Saint jumped, and the Hook Man howled. He slashed harder, faster, slamming his will against the charms scattered around the stone. The salt jumped, but the pattern held. It wouldn't hold for long, though.
Blackheart rushed from his hiding place, and brought his stick down hard across the back of the little god's head. The blackthorn cudgel, varnished in blood and weighted with gold from the teeth of executed men, fell like a hammer. The Hook Man stumbled, and swiped the air with a razor-sharp fist. The hook gouged a line in Blackheart's dark leather, and tore through his runes of protection like they were made of wet paper. The Hook Man shook his head, lips writhing. It had been a long time since someone had hurt him, and he'd nearly forgotten what it felt like.
The little god charged, his arm cocked for a killing blow. Blackheart ducked and weaved, laughing as he struck back. The Hook Man roared, slashing wildly. Blackheart stepped inside his enemy's guard, and swung a loop of th
e heavy, silvered chain around the Hook Man's arm. The sorcerer dodged the flying sickle, but the Hook Man's fleshy fist slammed into Blackheart's ribs. Blackheart coughed, spat blood, and pulled tighter on the chain. He drove an elbow into the Hook Man's throat, and smashed his forehead into the creature's nose. Bones cracked, and blood ran.
They battled like heroes of old. They struck and snarled, gouged and grappled, each refusing to give ground to the other. The Hook Man raked Blackheart's face, tearing furrows along his flesh with grimed nails. The sorcerer drove his heel into the little god's knee, and bone popped like pine knots. The Hook Man faltered, and Blackheart crashed his knuckles into the side of the little god's head. The Hook Man went to his knees, and then fell like a cliff tree whose roots had finally lost their grip. Blackheart put a knee in the thing's back, grabbed the ensorceled chain, and bent its right arm out straight. The hook gleamed like Excalibur ready to be claimed.
The Saint leaped off the grave, dragging her feet through the salt circle as she snatched up the ancient scalpel. The knife was a relic from the institution the Hook Man had escaped from when he'd been more flesh than faith, and the blade was stained with the godling's blood. She ran naked, a woman who had forsaken her youth so she could crawl into the grave and whisper with the worms. She fell to her knees in the grass, and reverently cupped the hook. She stroked it tenderly, just as if it were a lover's flesh.
“Hold him, sorcerer,” she said, taking a grip on the hand that wasn't a hand. “Hold him tightly now.”
The Saint's fingers caressed the hook's shank, sliding over the iron cup at its base. Her fingers trembled as she peeled back the stained sleeve and touched the leather straps holding the sickle in place. Breath quivered in her mouth as she took a tight hold of the little god's connection to this world. She pressed the edge of the scalpel against the old leather. Then Blackheart stood up, and let go of the chain.
The cemetery went still. The trees held their collective breaths, and the wind died like a cancer patient debating if he had one more breath left in him or not. The Saint crouched over the Hook Man, her death-mask face stricken. Blackheart picked up his stick, turned on his heel, and walked toward the remnants of her circle.
“What are you doing?” the Saint hissed.
“If you hadn't been so pleased with yourself, you'd have realized Gideon was playing you,” Blackheart said over his shoulder. “The first part of his prophecy had nothing to do with the Hook Man.”
“What are you talking about?” the Saint demanded. “You can't—”
She never got to finish telling Blackheart what he couldn't do. The chain slithered onto the grass, and the Hook Man pulled the Sterile Saint to him. She writhed and fought, struggled and clawed, but she hadn't been prepared for the worst. The little god of murder held her down, and examined the strange creature who had bearded him in his den. Blackheart didn't look. He picked up the rags of the Saint's dress, and fished the wizard's teeth out of the pocket. He slipped them into his jacket, and walked back the way he'd come. All he needed was a mallet and some running water, and his business with the late Gideon Fallwell would be concluded. He left the money where it was. He hadn't done the job for the Saint, after all. The dead couldn't lie, but all too often people heard what they wanted to hear rather than what was being said. Gideon made sure the Saint brought just the wrong man with her. No one lived forever, and Blackheart wasn't going to help anyone cheat the butcher's bill.
The Saint cried out, a wordless sound like a child woken in the night would make. Blackheart heard the hook being used for things it had never been intended to be used for. The sorcerer smiled a bloody smile. The reaper came for them all, but with some he took his sweet, sweet time.
Drawing Flame
Misty Massey
“Hello, Amsterdam.”
I hated that name. The first time we met, Davis declared he’d be calling me ‘Amsterdam’ because my real name was too complicated for him to remember. He’d managed it well enough during the summoning ritual, so I knew he was lying. It could have been a ploy to diminish me—crime bosses always prefer that their servants feel small before them. Or perhaps he feared to say my real name outside the confines of ritual, in case that might release me from his control.
A meaty hand slapped a leather cuff tight around my wrist. Said hand was attached to a fairly standard seven-foot goon in a Hugo Boss suit, standing just outside the edge of the summoning circle. I glanced down at my newly encumbered wrist. The leather was fully salted, stinging against my skin like hundreds of frozen needles. Brass plates inscribed with numerous tiny lines of writing, in several different languages, were bolted onto the cuff. I didn’t have to read them to know what they said. I could feel every pulsing word. The leather would have been enough, but to add the writing, and on brass, so it drew my attention with its warm glimmer...that was just cruel.
The cuff was closed with a silver lock, one that burned with a cold too blistering for me to stand. It rattled against my skin, and was attached by a silver chain to a matching cuff around the goon’s massive wrist. I raised my arm to let the silver dangle away from me.
“Yes, I took more extreme measures this time, but I knew you’d fight the binding, and I can’t have you slipping away before I have the chance to talk with you. I know how...inconstant you can be.” Davis stepped forward, smiling as if he was honestly happy to see me. It had only been a year since I’d seen him last, but he looked much older. Smaller. Grayer. His face was drawn, with deep crags in his cheeks, and he’d lost a significant amount of weight. His once-blue eyes had a shadow behind them. Even criminally wealthy men can’t run away from time and illness. The cancer had caught up to him.
Davis pressed two fingers along his temple, as if he had a headache. “You’ve noticed. Good. I’ve been feeling my mortality lately. The doctors say a few months, at most. Imagine my joy when I tracked down my old friend Amsterdam.” He frowned, leaning closer. “My old friend who ran away and left me to die all by myself.”
“Sorry about that, oh master.” I wasn’t, not even a little. I’m not the kind that feels sorrow, or empathy. I have feelings, but most of the time I don’t act on them. Feelings get in the way of all sorts of things I’m asked to do. “I granted your wish. Exactly as you asked. If you wanted a different result, you should have asked for that instead.”
Davis’s voice was still as calm as ever, but the fury in his eyes was unmistakable. “Exactly, yes. Only you knew good and well what I wanted. You chose to fulfill my words in the most limited way you could.”
I didn’t answer his implied question. Contrary to legend, it’s not in my nature to cooperate with humans, especially when I’ve been drawn from my home without even a polite invitation. If he left his request open to other interpretations, that was not my fault.
“The cancer came back.”
“I did tell you to choose carefully, oh master.”
“This time you’ll complete what we started, or I’ll force you into a jar of rotten sauerkraut and bury it under a parking lot, and you’ll never be able to go home to the hell I yanked you out of.”
The leather and silver cuff kept up a continual irritation, reminding me that even if I tried to escape, I couldn’t get far. Traveling on the air took a moment of utter clarity, just a few seconds to release my corporeality. Any stimulation of the senses—a feeling, a strong smell, even a loud radio—would keep me from releasing into the air. The stinging of the leather was enough to keep me distracted and tangible. Davis had played things smarter this time.
I should have taken offense at his comment about the jar. He was, like most men, confusing my kind for common djinni. I could not be compelled so easily as one of those lapdogs, and besides, even the lowest of the djinni had stopped living in bottles centuries ago. I didn’t bother pointing all that out to Davis. He’d spent time (and probably an impressive amount of money) on locating a ritual that would s
ummon me from my home in the fire. Ordinary human beings come up with nightmarish imaginings of what hell must be like, and those imaginings are usually vague reflections of my home. Where I’m from, rivers of flame flow down from mountains of glowing red ash, and the clouds are billows of steam that would roast human flesh right off the bones. I’m created of those very things.
I am ifrit. My skin, when I take corporeal form, is the golden-brown of liquid copper, and my eyes flicker with the fire that burns inside me. I can light a lantern with one touch of my finger. I dance in the midst of bonfires. I swim in the hearts of volcanoes. I can set whole cities ablaze with a shout, should the mood strike me to do so. I am the creature the djinni warn their masters to fear. I am fire’s child.
I suppose I can understand why humans might equate the torment of flame with eternal punishment. The fire imps who run about in the streets of my home tell tales of humans burning other humans for imagined slights that make little sense when logic is applied. It doesn’t surprise me that they should fear the flame. I don’t even know if there is a real hell, in the way humans believe, but Davis clearly feared going there himself. He’d spent his adult life hurting others in order to increase his own wealth and power, and now he stood on the brink, staring into a void so terrifying he couldn’t think of anything except what lay on the other side of his impending death.
On the day we first met, I was wandering the streets of mighty Yangin, the city of lava, enjoying the rippling waves of heat in the air, when the call came. At first it was a discordant tone in the distance, just loud enough to catch my ear. Someone singing, perhaps, or the fire imps at play. But the tone became louder, and louder, until I recognized it as the words of an ancient ritual I’d thought long forgotten by men. Cold surrounded me, a net of chill that startled me into immobility. My jaw clenched shut, and the light faded around me. Suddenly I was standing in a circle of flickering candles melting on a concrete floor. There was no furniture, no windows, nothing flammable save the candles and the man reading the words.
The Big Bad II Page 33