by D. J. Butler
Mike jammed rounds into his .45 as fast as he could and Adrian turned to look up the stairs. The foremost of the monsters rasping down the stairs fell under Eddie’s bullets, but there were more behind.
“What do you want?” Jim barked. He looked like the statue of a Viking hero in some Scandinavian port, standing upright and determined with his sword in his hand and the rain crashing off his body. His voice echoed like he was standing on a reverb plate.
“To reign in Hell!” hissed the boar-headed giant, and smashed his lizard’s tail into the water, stretching wide his wings to their full span, so they filled the restaurant. That would be Semyaz, Adrian thought. Big shot in Hell, and troublemaker.
“Better to reign,” he muttered, “et cetera.” Damned if it wasn’t a thought he’d had himself, a thousand times.
“Screw you!” Jim hissed.
Semyaz flicked his arm and smashed Twitch into the ceiling. The fairy’s blood spattered down in a fine mist, mixed with concrete dust. She yelped, but it was a muffled sound, and after the impact she shifted through several shapes then ended in horse form. Semyaz still held her in mid-air like she was a doll. She whinnied softly, shaking her bloodied head.
Squeeeeeeeal!
B-rap-p-p!
No time for Twitch now.
Adrian whipped around, facing up the stairs just as Eddie’s pistol clicked loudly, the clip empty. A trio of windmilling monsters leaped into the air, crashing down upon the band like comets. Sleep grabbed the base of Adrian’s brain and choked him, dragging him away from the conflict, but he shook it off.
He fell to his knees in the water, raising the candle stub and the lens and aiming up the stairs.
“Per Volcanum ignem mitto!” he shouted again, and loosed his entire ka-energy reserve into the candle. The coruscating burst of flame stripped paint off the cement walls, shattered fluorescent tube lights and reduced the leaping creatures to a rain of falling muddy ash—
he passed out—
felt himself plunge into water and rebound off the hard floor—
he came up spluttering. And with empty hands.
“Shit!” he yelled, and plunged back into the water. He heard gunfire around him, but it was muted by the water in his ears, and by the shock. The stream rushed past him, and he realized that, as deep as it was, it was still flowing downstairs and into the lower level of the building. That was an awful lot of rain.
A whole dead mantis-thing bumped against him, charred black from the waist up. He cursed and kicked it away.
“Adrian!” Mike yelled. “You got ’em, cabrón, you got ’em all.”
“Screw that!” Adrian shouted. “I lost the Eye!”
Somewhere, Jim was shouting. “I wouldn’t be Heaven’s plaything, Semyaz! I won’t be Hell’s, either!”
“Why do you care?” Ezeq’el the centauress asked. Yamayol and Semyaz just sounded angry and menacing; she sounded curious. Adrian didn’t pay all that much attention—he kept pulling up bits that felt like the Third Eye, but turned out to be fragments of crockery, broken plates and glasses.
He chanted his own true name silently under his breath as he groped, slapping himself over and over on the neck with wet hands, and forced his mind through memories, trying to reinforce his body, name, and ba against the shadow, to have something to hold him together and awake. He was a superconductor of a sorcerer, he told himself, but he felt like someone had yanked his plug out of the wall.
He tried to avoid memories of his uncle, and champed his teeth in silent rage when he couldn’t. He felt helpless, powerless, bound.
“I’ll have nothing to do with Hell!” Jim spat.
“Even to save your friend’s life?” snorted Yamayol. “Even if we have … other things to offer you?”
Even if he found the Eye, of course, Adrian didn’t have a plan. With his ka spent, there was nothing he could do magically. Unless, of course, he had another power source. He needed another socket to plug the superconductor into. He spat gritty water from his mouth and let that idea germinate in his brain.
“Humans,” Semyaz grunted. “They all belong in Hell.” He fingered the object on his chest.
“I’m not human.” Jim ground the words out through clenched teeth. “Good-bye, Twitch.” He turned to walk away, splashing through the mud past Adrian.
Twitch, in humanoid shape now, grunted.
Yamayol lunged forward. He was gigantic, but he was quick as a snake.
Jim spun, bringing up his sword—
but the bull-headed Fallen rushed past the singer and snatched Mouser.
B-rap-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p!
She emptied the Ingram into his head. Good girl, Adrian thought, but of course it didn’t hurt him. He was material, all right, and the bullets must have stung, but if she inflicted any kind of real injury, the giant didn’t show it. Crappy small-caliber gun.
Eddie threw himself forward, but the bull’s knuckles punched him in the chest and threw him against the wall. Yamayol raised the club gopher into the air and leaped back, brandishing her like a torch.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Adrian didn’t know where Mike’s bullets landed, but they did no visible damage.
“Aaaagh!” Mouser squeaked, and dropped the machine pistol.
Jim spat into the water and raised his sword.
“Jim, don’t!” Adrian shouted. His hand closed over something round and hard and he knew in his heart it had to be the Eye. Even with fingers numbed by the cold water, he could tell it was more circular, and much smoother, than any of the china shards he’d picked up before.
Jim glared down at him, fury raging in the ice-blue eyes.
“Be cool,” Adrian hissed. He wanted to say stall, but with ears the size of tent flaps, he was pretty sure the Fallen would all hear him. Instead he thought the word really hard, hoping Jim had latent ESP or that some unseen shred of Adrian’s ka would carry the message to him.
Maybe it worked, because Jim turned slowly and faced the Fallen. “Which one of you reigns, then?” he challenged them. “Hell has only one Satan.”
“But it has many Princes,” Semyaz snarled, milk-jug-sized flecks of yellow slobber raining from his lips and tusks.
“That’s the consolation prize you offer mighty Yamayol?” Jim laughed, and turned to the bull-headed Fallen. “Yamayol, slaughterer of the Five Kings, victor of the Plains of Shinar … will continue to play second man, only to a new … and even uglier … master?”
Yamayol growled. “I am second to none.”
Adrian pulled his hand up to the level of the water and peered into his palm. He had the Eye, all right, and his heart skipped a beat from joy.
“We have come with more than just threats,” Ezeq’el said, with all the placating charm of a cement truck shifting gears.
“Ezeq’el, the great pacifier!” Jim snorted. “I didn’t take you for a rebel.”
“The most effective rebels are the unexpected ones,” the centauress said slyly, arching an eyebrow at Jim. “Like Azazel was.”
“Was … but is no longer?”
Adrian tried to remember how the lines of power wrapped around the room, and prepared himself mentally. It would be like taking the batteries out of the taser and wiring it into the wall socket instead, only he was the taser and the lines of the arcane trap in which the band had been caught were the power lines of the house. Adrian felt in his pocket and found string—that was good—and some chalk that was damp but might still write. He shook his head, trying to get out of his mind the image of young, dream-state Adrian walking docilely into his uncle’s arms.
“Heaven is weak!” Semyaz bellowed. “If your father weren’t such a coward, he’d rule two great kingdoms by now!”
“Only two?” Jim chuckled. “Why not more? Why not everything? Could Mab and Oberon stand against the combined armies of Heaven and Hell? Could the squabbling nations of Earth?”
“Join us!” Yamayol thundered. “We will release your friends.” He pointed at Semyaz, and Mouser fainted.
Ya
mayol stamped in the water, sending up small tsunamis of mud and cold grit, and Adrian raised the lens to his eye. He saw the lines of the wards again, and he was close enough to the wall that he could even see how they’d been drawn—pricked with a pin into wallpaper to keep them discreet. They were wards of restraint and domination, a trap, but he could use the ka-energy pulsating in them. Enough power to blow the entire club into a crater if he wasn’t careful—one of the Fallen was an accomplished wizard, or they had someone in the wings doing their dirty work. He imagined how he’d run the lines of power through a new configuration, without touching the trap. The trick would be to take the energy and turn it around, use it to open the trap from which it came.
As quietly as he could, Adrian took that bit of string from his pocket. It was a couple of feet long, which was plenty. He took one end of the string between his lips and swallowed it, getting it down into his esophagus and willing himself to neither gag nor swallow the rest, which trailed out of his mouth and lay floating on the stream of water.
It scratched in his throat. Adrian shut out images of his uncle-wolf’s long pink dream-tongue and tried not to think about what would happen if he screwed up this spell. What if he only pulled the noose tighter around them?
“Why not just kill me and take what you want?” Jim asked.
“Don’t think it isn’t still an option,” Yamayol rumbled.
“We want you, James,” Ezeq’el said, shaking her tail and flicking dirty water in all directions. “With you on our side, Azazel won’t have the will to resist.”
“You make him sound like he has no power anyway,” Jim pointed out.
“Enough!” Semyaz thrashed his tail again in the water, sending up a loud crack and spray. He shouldered into Yamayol and, while the bull-headed Fallen struggled with his balance, snatched Mouser from his hand.
No! Adrian yelled silently. By a supreme act of will, he managed not to swallow the string.
“Don’t!” Jim shouted, but too late.
Semyaz raised the unconscious girl to his mouth and bit her head off in one quick motion. Enraged, lips spraying blood, he hurled her body against the wall. It hit like a wet rag doll and bounced into the flood, blood spattering like shaving cream from an exploding water balloon. Her corpse twitched and jangled for several long seconds in the water.
“Damn!” Adrian gasped, choking on the string.
Jim hurled his sword. It wasn’t a weapon made for throwing, but Jim was really, really good with it, in some surprising ways. He drew his arm back like an atlatl’s throwing-stick of flesh and bone, pommel cupped in his palm, and then launched the blade forward.
Semyaz bellowed, mouth open and blood and hair on his tusks—
and Jim’s sword hit him right in the mouth.
Ichor squirted from the wound and Semyaz staggered back, thumping Twitch against the ceiling again in the confusion. He choked and spat, and Jim’s sword shot from his mouth like projectile vomit.
Ezeq’el the centauress leaped forward, plunging her hooves into the muddy water to trample Jim.
The singer threw himself to one side, scrambling from pillar to table to pillar and groping in the water for his weapon.
Adrian saw his chance and took it. He jumped to the nearest large nexus of ward lines on the wall, pinned the end of the string to its center with his thumb and chalked four quick glyphs around it. “Per Mercurium vim extraho,” he murmured, gagging on the string and jamming the Eye over the top of his thumb for good measure. He had to charge his battery before he could use it to get them out.
Fire coursed through him, making the walls shudder and all his flesh pimple up into tingling prick-points of limbic agitation. He felt his ka fill and then flood like the room around him, and he struggled to direct it, raising the Third Eye and pressing it against the chalk marks against the wall and, for good if somewhat irrational measure, against the candle stub.
“Per Proteum,” he choked, hearing gunfire and seeing Twitch fall into the water with a large splash out of the corner of one eye. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted from the spell, which was a bad deficit when you starting throwing magical power around. Really, he’d be a lot more comfortable if he could be attempting this operation with a little less pressure on him. He needed something shape-changing; something that would transform the trap so that it would restrain the Fallen but not the band would be ideal.
Jim lunged at Semyaz, swinging a length of timber in both hands, and the boar-headed giant snatched him off the ground.
Adrian’s own shadow loomed up large, jaws gaping like it wanted to swallow Adrian whole. It was swollen, too—somehow in refilling his ka, he had poured power into other parts of him. In Adrian’s head, it was hard to tell apart his looming shadow and the giant Semyaz, holding Jim pinned in his grip.
Adrian chanted his name, trying to catch his balance among the five parts. “Per Proteum …”
Mike slammed into the wall next to him, losing all the breath in his lungs in a single whoosh that was painful to hear. The big guy dropped his gun and then sank into the water with it.
Adrian’s shadow seemed to him to be another Adrian, only taller and stronger, and grabbing him by the throat.
“Per Proteum insidias,” Adrian tried again. He imagined the lines of the wards moving across the wall, reforming to create new wards—
with a sick feeling in his stomach, he realized that the shadow looming large over him, his own shadow, had the head of a cartoon wolf and a long, dangling tongue—
and then the darkness took him—
“Insidias muto—”
And he fell.
* * *
Dream-Adrian stumbled through the house of flesh wearily. He’d been up all night on the roof, reading Pliny’s De Occultata Historia again and comparing it to his copy of his uncle’s pages. He’d finally managed to ignite the wick of a devotional candle he’d stolen from his uncle’s private chapel, but only after soaking the wick in oil first, and that seemed like cheating. Or if not cheating, then useless—you couldn’t go into combat hoping your enemy would coat himself in inflammable liquid beforehand.
His uncle certainly wouldn’t, and his uncle was the enemy that Adrian imagined defeating, over and over again. Crushing, decapitating, mutilating, and above all, burning to a crisp.
He dropped the pull-down stairs slowly, stopping to give the hinges a touch of oil, as he always did. Only in the dream-state, the hinges were muscular, like the hinges of a jaw, and Adrian oiled them by rubbing them down with his hands. He felt unclean and violated.
Part of him, tucked away, knew that he was dreaming. That part wondered if Adrian was under the river of filthy water on the restaurant floor and beginning to drown. A dream might seem eternal in the few seconds it would take his body to fill its lungs with water and slip into brain death.
The carpet on the floor in the upstairs hallway felt like meat underfoot, squishy and wet, and where his bare feet depressed it, he left behind little puddles of blood. He pushed the pull-down stairs back up into the ceiling and shivered a bit when he heard a click that sounded like teeth chomping together. The walls sagged in towards him and ran with rivulets of warm moisture, puddling at the bottom and draining, somewhere, but very inefficiently. The air was thick and humid, and felt already-breathed. Light came from a globe hanging from the center of the ceiling that Adrian knew should be an incandescent bulb behind frosted glass, but instead it looked like a swaying uvula. Adrian ducked to avoid touching it.
Adrian knew to step carefully around the wardrobe, because the floor under it was prone to creaking. It caught him by surprise that the wardrobe doors snapped open and sprang at him, biting with long yellow teeth—
snap! Snap!
He stumbled away and caught himself on the banister around the stairwell down. The wardrobe stayed rooted in its spot, but it gnashed teeth at him and tried to bite, exhaling a nasty mothballs-and-dead-mice smell. The piece of furniture had scaly skin like old, cracked wood that
badly needed oiling, only tufts of hair grew out of the cracks.
“Son of a bitch,” Adrian muttered, and crept past. The wardrobe hummed, but didn’t follow.
The bathroom at the top of the stairs was Adrian’s safe place—it was the only room in the house so small that when he was in it, his uncle didn’t fit. It was the size of a closet, with the shower head directly over a smallish toilet, and no sink. The loose brick behind the toilet was warm and soft to the touch, so Adrian didn’t look at it, folding his precious pages and tucking them inside quickly. It was a damp space, which forced him to recopy his pages every couple of weeks, but it was a hidden one.
Inside the bathroom, he could hear for the first time that it was raining outside, cats and dogs. That made him nervous—he had thought from the light in the attic that dawn might still be an hour away, but with the rain cloud cover it might be imminent. And at dawn, the wards of sleeping that kept his uncle from discovering him would end.
It hadn’t been raining when he’d been on the roof, he mused. Sudden storm.
At the top of the stairs he looked where there should have been a window, and saw a membrane. Like an eardrum, he thought, or maybe an eyelid. It was red and thinly veined, but there was definitely grayish light beyond it. The membrane trembled with each raindrop that hit it, and Adrian felt sick. Body, body, everywhere.
“The more things change,” he muttered, “the more I still hate them.”
He nearly slid down the stairs to the ground level, and there he stopped, his heart pounding. Someone was in the kitchen, with a light on. He turned and crept softly down the hall, not looking into the kitchen door on the dream-magic logic grounds that if he didn’t see who was in the kitchen, the person in the kitchen wouldn’t see him.
He smelled blood as he passed, and heard the snuffling of beasts.
At his uncle’s door he stopped, and his heart stopped with him.
He’d built the wards of sleeping over months, carefully writing lines and glyphs behind furniture, inside closets and even between the sheetrock panels of the walls to keep them out of his uncle’s sight. The final line of the wards was a piece he had to put in fresh each night, a length of spider’s web that he collected from the basement—he shared his space with many spiders—and painstakingly stretched from post to post in the frame of his uncle’s bedroom door.