by D. J. Butler
Jim splashed straight to Adrian. His eyes took in the ward on the ceiling as he did.
“Chalk!” he snapped, holding out his hand. Adrian saw now that in his other hand, along with the saber, he held a few links of chain from which dangled a glittering glass bulb.
Adrian handed him what was left of the chalk, a soggy nub the size of his smallest pinky bone. “I admit I don’t get it,” he said. “What are you going to do?” He held up the Third Eye and looked through it to confirm his guess—seen through the Eye, the bulb was a pulsating red rose.
Elaine.
And then his jaw dropped, as Jim began sketching out characters inside the speech bubble.
“You can’t … you … how can you do that?” he asked, fumbling for words.
CRACK!
Concrete dust and chips exploded in a cloud into the room, and the bull head of Yamayol thrust itself in through the enlarged entrance.
***
Chapter Ten
“Jacob!” Yamayol bellowed. He pushed himself forward, his shoulders shattering concrete, and moved into the stock room. He stood, bent over like an adult inside a child’s playhouse, but plenty mobile enough to kill them all. If anything, the lower ceiling emphasized the hugeness of the Fallen, and the great swinging car-sized enormity of their heads in particular.
Jim and Adrian huddled by the name-conduit of Adrian’s warding, on one side of the room. Their band mates retreated warily towards the far side, holding their fire. Adrian watched Yamayol advance, trying hard to gauge his position relative to the ward in the ceiling without actually looking up, but it didn’t escape his notice that Mike pocketed a small bottle of some liquor that floated past him as they moved.
“Jacob?” Mike snorted.
“Call me Jim.” Jim tossed the bit of chalk aside with a wet plunk. He put his fingers inside Adrian’s speech bubble, casually, like he was tired and leaning against the wall. He rested the wrist of his other hand on Adrian’s shoulder.
Like an experienced wizard, establishing a conduit, but that wasn’t the weirdest thing about what Jim had done.
“Jim.” Adrian couldn’t help himself. “Who the hell are you?”
“You know who I am.”
“Do I?”
Behind Yamayol, Ezeq’el the centauress moved into the room. She looked less comfortable than the bull-headed Fallen, because she couldn’t crouch at the knees at all. Instead, she bent forward even further at the waist and neck. Her arms were long, and her fingers nearly trailed in the swirling water.
“I’m Azazel’s son.” Jim had an irritated, wary look on his face. Adrian didn’t know if the expression was play-acting for the benefit of the Fallen, or if he was really provoking a reaction from the singer. For his part, he really was astonished. “You surprised?”
“You shouldn’t be able to read the Primals,” Adrian pressed, in a whisper. “No child conceived in a human womb has been able to for thousands of years, not since the Confusion of the Tongues at Babel.”
Semyaz ducked to enter the room. Ezeq’el drifted past Yamayol to make space for Azazel’s boar-headed rival. She grimaced in discomfort, picked up the ladder from the soupy mess of the floor and leaned on it like a crutch.
Jim shrugged.
“Who was your mother?” Adrian pushed.
“Start the spell,” Jim pushed back.
Adrian felt shaken. He had thought Jim was Azazel’s son, and had assumed that his mother was a human, that Azazel had repeated back in Cromwell’s day, or whenever it was, the naughtiness that had gotten him busted and demoted from the ranks of the angels in the first place. Had he been wrong to think that, being born of a human mother, Jim would be subject to the Confusion?
What other wrong ideas did he have about Jim?
Adrian started chanting. His ka, blessedly, was full and crackled with power, and he pushed the energy through his own body, through Jim’s, and into the ward, whispering words of power.
“You’ve taken my amulet,” Semyaz snarled. He stood smack in the center of the circle, and it took great effort not to look up at the chalk markings that comprised the ward. Adrian knew the circle was intact and functional without peeking, anyway; he could feel the ka-energy crackling back around to him, like the electricity in a closed circuit. The leader of the Fallen trio hunched low over the swirling waters, shoulders hunching massively above his own head, drool dripping from his tusks.
“You noticed.” Jim slouched, like he was leaning on Adrian for support. He didn’t break contact, and Adrian’s ka-power continued to flow. Good man, Adrian thought. Just don’t throw us under the truck, now.
“And what will you do with it?” Yamayol asked. “Whether you hold the bauble or Semyaz does, the bargain is still the same. The amulet only gives you a glimpse, just a taste of the joy that could be yours. You need our help to free your Elaine from Hell. We will give it to you.”
Adrian chanted. He was counting on Jim to step in and say the names of the three Fallen at the climactic moment, but he was only guessing that Jim could speak the Primals—or whichever Primal it was, Adrian couldn’t tell—as well as read them. He didn’t know that for a fact, and though the room was freezing cold and wet, Adrian felt hot drops of his own sweat trickle down his back and under his arms. For that matter, Jim had denied being a wizard. Was he smart enough to understand Adrian’s incantation and step in with the names at exactly the right point? Adrian shut out images of terror and defeat and kept mumbling.
Power. Everything came back to power.
“I don’t need anything from you,” Jim rasped back.
“Foolish!” Semyaz thundered, pounding both fists to the ground and sending up sprays of mud and soggy napkins.
The spell was nearly complete. Adrian didn’t look up, and he didn’t look into the Eye, though it weighed a ton in his hand. He chanted, wishing he’d been able to chalk a stronger ward.
“And if I did need your help,” Jim continued, raising his head defiantly, “I’d rather die than ask for it.”
“Per Yahweh Sabaoth ego vos jubeo—”
Semyaz roared in sudden realization of the deception. He lunged forward, hands open and grabbing—
Ezeq’el shouldered the boar-headed Fallen aside with her greater bulk and charged in, sweeping the ladder like a sword at Jim—
Jim shouted three words that Adrian could not clearly hear; they sounded like rushing water mixed with the sizzle of lighting—
ka-energy flared within and through Adrian, shooting into the ward at the moment that the Fallen rushed beyond its capture area—
wham! Ezeq’el’s ladder slammed into Jim’s chest, hurling him against the wall. The circuit was broken, Adrian staggered away and slipped.
He fell into the cold water.
He’d failed. Darkness swept over his head and veiled his eyes, his skin prickled like he was being hugged by a hundred hedgehogs, and he felt like throwing up. Time slowed for him, and as he drifted down, he used the honey-trickling moments to berate himself. He should have learned more. Maybe he should have stayed with his uncle longer, tolerated what had seemed so intolerable at the time just a little longer so that he could learn more. Maybe he could have drawn a better ward, stronger and less flawed so that the Fallen couldn’t break through, or bigger, so they might have still been in its reach when his spell had gone off.
He hit the floor and bounced slowly back up. He couldn’t tell if the ache in his chest was from lack of oxygen, or the harbinger of sleep taking him, or just pure regret and bitterness. His head broke the surface, gasping—
Jim was alone, beside the ward’s name-conduit. He was bruised and filthy, but standing. In one hand he held his sword, and he looked down into the palm of the other with something like sorrow written on his face.
The world grew dark and Adrian felt himself sinking. Then Eddie was there, grabbing him by the collar of his suit and dragging him to his feet. The water was up to Adrian’s armpits, until Eddie pulled him up onto some higher su
bmerged footing. He felt numb and beaten.
He still had the Eye, though.
“Good job, Adrian,” Mike said, patting Adrian on the back. “I think.”
“Thanks,” Adrian mumbled, unsure whether Mike was being sarcastic. “Is there a Plan B?” He looked around—the level of the water had almost reached the tops of the windows, but he could still hear the wind and the rain outside.
“How long can you hold your breath?” Eddie asked.
A bellow louder than a train whistle interrupted them, and they looked back to Jim and the Fallen.
“I told you not to hurt him!” Semyaz roared, turning on Ezeq’el. “If he dies, we waste our time!”
Ezeq’el backed away a step. “You waste your time anyway, Semyaz. You heard him. He won’t aid you against his father.”
“Won’t aid you?” Yamayol rumbled. He had a bloody furrow up one cheek and the eye above it was swollen shut and purple. “Whom do you serve, horsewoman?”
“I serve Hell!” Ezeq’el cried. The drama of her declaration was undercut a bit by her hunched posture, but her voice rang loud and clear. “As you would not do, Semyaz! Ambition alone qualifies you for nothing!”
“You are Azazel’s?” Semyaz roared and grabbed for a weapon in the water, coming up with a set of heavy metal shelving in both his hands.
Ezeq’el grabbed the ladder again.
“Stop!” Jim yelled.
The Fallen stopped. Their faces twisted into grimaces and snarls of anger, but they froze in their tracks.
“Son of a bitch,” Adrian whispered. His body trembled with cold and also with excitement. “I did it.”
“I don’t believe Ezeq’el would serve Azazel’s ambition any more than she would serve yours,” Yamayol snorted, shaking his bull’s head.
Ezeq’el was silent.
Jim touched his hand to the ward. “Tell us,” he instructed her. It might have been the room, but the natural reverb in Jim’s voice was even more pronounced than unusual. It gave his order such a hard edge that Adrian almost felt compelled to come forward and start saying true things.
The centauress’s eyes burned holes in Jim and she spoke slowly, but she spoke. “You are Lucifer’s weakness, Jacob,” she said.
Mike hunched forward on the submerged artificial sandbar on which they perched, poking between Eddie and Adrian. “Can he just make them do anything he wants now?” he asked.
“He can’t make them do anything they ain’t already capable of,” Eddie said.
“Says the expert,” Adrian shot at him, and then regretted it. Eddie had pulled him from the water more than once today. “Sorry.”
“Did he tell you to kill me?” Jim asked the centauress.
Ezeq’el struggled to clamp her teeth shut.
Eddie shrugged, but the noncommittal gesture was a challenge. “Am I wrong?”
Adrian shook his head. “You got it right. Also, Jim has to put ka-energy into the ward to give them commands.”
“How much?” Eddie wanted to know. “How many commands?”
“It’s like a genie and wishes,” Mike said. It was probably involuntary, but as he said it he grabbed the liquor bottle inside his jacket.
“He didn’t,” Ezeq’el admitted to Jim. “I don’t think he ever would. But Hell needs him, so Hell needs you dead.”
Semyaz growled, a sound like a dumptruck revving up. Yamayol narrowed his one good eye and looked back and forth between the other two Fallen.
“I dunno,” Adrian told them. “There’s three of the bastards, and they’re big and powerful, so I hope Jim doesn’t waste his … wishes … on unimportant shit.”
Eddie looked around at the wrecked stock room and laughed. “I ain’t sure I know what’s unimportant anymore.”
Adrian harrumphed. “Anything that doesn’t get us out of here is unimportant.”
“You were trying to stop Jacob’s quest?” Yamayol rumbled to Ezeq’el.
“Who is this chingón talking about?” Mike asked. “Who’s Jacob?”
“James, Jacob, Jim,” Eddie muttered. “Same name. Mikey.”
“Hey,” Mike objected.
Ezeq’el somehow managed to look like she was throwing her head back proudly, even though she was huddled forward. She looked imperiously at Semyaz, and Adrian was happy not to be standing in the path of her hooves. “I came to stop your quest, Semyaz,” she thundered. “I planned to do it by killing Jacob, so you couldn’t use him against his father.”
Semyaz bellowed and lunged—
“Stop!” Jim roared.
With a great splash, Semyaz lurched to a halt. He stood snorting and flexing his muscles.
“You cannot continue this forever, Jacob,” he grumbled.
Wasn’t that the truth? Adrian thought. The room’s windows were now totally submerged, which meant that even if they dove down to get through them, they’d find themselves in the flooding river. He wasn’t a bad swimmer in ordinary circumstances, but Adrian was tired, numb, and dispirited, and he didn’t really want to drown.
Eddie read his mind. “Let’s get out of here, guys,” the guitar player whispered, and pointed towards the stairs.
Then Jim started talking gibberish.
It couldn’t really be gibberish, because it would take an idiot savant to spew out that much nonsense without missing a beat, but Jim said—shouted—long strings of syllables that not only meant nothing, but were hard to hear.
It was like they slid around Adrian’s eardrums without quite making them vibrate. Or the sound waves made his eardrums vibrate, but they distorted the result, so what Adrian heard sounded slippery. It sounded forgettable, and even as Jim was talking, Adrian instantly lost the words.
“Son of a bitch,” he gasped, splashing softly into cold, muddy water and dog paddling behind Mike towards the flooded hallway. Jim was talking to the Fallen in one of the Primals. He’d have given an arm in that moment to be free of the Confusion himself, and felt intensely envious.
And a little frightened.
Eddie didn’t wait for the singer. He led them swimming up the hall, over unseen debris that Adrian felt with his kicking toes and past assorted floating body parts of the six-limbed creatures that had attacked them in the bar.
At the stairs, Adrian dragged himself out on all fours and climbed to his feet again, teeth chattering. Mike gave him a hand up and he nodded a quick thanks.
“There’s no van,” Adrian told the others.
“Screw the van,” Eddie snorted. “It was junk, anyway. I want my shotgun.”
“Someone could ride Twitch,” Mike suggested, and then blushed. “I—”
“Oh, yes?” Twitch smiled a smile that was haggard but sweet at Mike. “You what?” Not waiting for an answer, the fairy shook her arms to throw off water, then jumped into the air and into her falcon form. With a snap of her broad wings, she propelled herself up the stairs.
“I was thinking you could hotwire a car,” Eddie suggested. He pushed himself forward into a dogged jog up the steps, his combat boots kicking up cold water at every step. Adrian and Mike both lumbered after him.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” Mike jumped to agree.
“Let’s do it fast,” Adrian amended the plan. “I don’t know what Jim’s up to, but I’m afraid it might not go well.”
At the top of the stairs, Adrian forced himself to look at Mouser’s headless body. She had been a good comrade in arms, he thought, and then realized he was confusing the club’s gopher and Jim’s three-hundred-years-dead girlfriend. Elaine had been a good comrade in arms, he thought, sloshing through the wind and the flood of the wrecked restaurant towards the street. Mouser had been a kid with cool toys, in over her head.
A distraction. She’d been a good one.
Outside, the rain continued to fall, but it came down now as a slackening drizzle. Eddie dug his shotgun out of the wreckage, and boxes of shells.
“What about the instruments?” Mike asked.
“Itching to practice a little
more bass guitar kung fu, are you?” Adrian grinned at Mike, and the big guy laughed.
Eddie shook his head, looking up and down the street. The Silver Eel sat among other large buildings, former and current warehouses, factories and other big commercial properties. In the storm, no one had noticed the destruction going on inside the club, and apparently everyone inside had been killed in the initial attack on the band. There were lots of cars of various sorts parked in front of the Eel, including a beamer or two, but Eddie nodded at a beat-up Ford Windstar.
“Really?” Adrian laughed out loud. “We got our pick of rides, and you want the only one that would be a trade down?”
Eddie shrugged. “We all gotta fit,” he pointed out, and continued digging in the ruin of his old van for things to salvage. “We can’t commit ourselves to having to fill two tanks.”
Mike moved over to the minivan. “It ain’t even locked,” he told them. “Huevos, some people. This’ll be easy.”
“Good.” Eddie jammed stuff into his pockets, and Adrian joined him, trying to find his decks of cards, nicotine gum, and the other miscellaneous objects he kept in the back seat. “Assume we have less than a minute.”
Twitch swooped down out of the darkness and lessening rain, touching down in her human drummer form. “Jim’s coming,” she said.
Eddie pumped his Remington shotgun. “Alone?”
The fairy laughed. “He sent them packing, our boy did.”
Adrian felt a profound pang of disappointment. Somehow, Jim had banished three of the Princes of Hell. Not somehow, Adrian thought, he did it using my spell. Still, the fact that the final moment of the face-off had taken place outside of Adrian’s presence made him feel cheated.
Even though he probably wouldn’t have understood a word of what passed between Jim and the Infernals.
The Windstar groaned into life. The passenger side window slid down smoothly at the touch of a button by Mike. “At least we won’t have to crank the windows manually anymore,” he called.
“Shall we get the instruments?” Adrian asked.
“No.”