Pushing back the panic, I tried to focus on the fact that the demon that was guarding my basement as also guarding Simon’s rooms, which meant that I could actually put it back into lockdown mode. It would take a whole hell of a lot more energy than I normally needed to use, because it had consumed not only Simon’s rooms, but its energy was also starting to leak out into the hall.
“It’s the symbol,” I murmured, not sure if I was talking to the demon or myself. Any fear I had felt instantly disappeared as a rush of understanding swept through me. Adrenaline pumped through my veins and I nearly laughed. “It’s the symbol. It’s not so much a spell as it is a doorway for you. The only reason you listen to me is because I control whether the door is open or closed.”
True . . . partially.
“And the reason your powers are leaking into the hall?”
The one that lived here, the one that you killed . . . the door has been left open for too long. It has allowed me to push against the boundaries he set for me.
“And if I lock the doorway again?”
I would not be pleased.
Yeah, I could have guessed, I thought but kept my mouth shut. The key was that the demon didn’t say that I couldn’t close the doorway again. Sure, I certainly didn’t want to piss off a demon, but it wasn’t like I could leave it running around loose in Simon’s rooms.
Or maybe I could . . .
“If I leave this doorway open, will you allow me to come and go in this room unharmed?”
You control my door. I must.
I frowned. That was only partially true. It was hard to believe, but demons couldn’t lie. They could bend the truth. They could tell you partial truths, leaving out key information that would get you killed later. But they couldn’t say “no” when the truth was clearly “yes.” Funny enough, there were also stories that angels could lie to you and did frequently in the name of keeping the balance preserved.
“I control the door back at the tattoo parlor, but I didn’t draw this door,” I murmured. It wasn’t fooling me. I knew exactly where the leash ended for this thing and it was well before I walked into Simon’s rooms.
True. But you could.
The first ripple of temptation washed through me. Setting the door here, I could enter Simon’s rooms without having to worry about anyone else from the Towers mucking around in here. I would have access to all of Simon’s books and notes. I’d also have all the magical items that he’d collected during his life. While I wasn’t keen on the idea of leaving the demon running around the rooms, as long as I strengthened the boundaries again, the only people that it would be a threat to were the witches and the warlocks of the Tower. I wasn’t going to lose a lot of sleep over that thought.
“I need light to work in,” I announced.
Immediately, the lamps in all the rooms came on, filling the chambers with a soft yellow glow. Some of the queasiness returned to my stomach and it had nothing to do with the demon. The chambers were almost unchanged from the day I left so many years ago. The main room held a massive wood table that was about chest high and covered in books, glass beakers and jars, and a sundry of potion ingredients. Papers were scattered everywhere with Simon’s nearly illegible scrawl, where he had been making notes on whatever the bastard had been working on.
Stepping around the table, being careful not to touch it, my eyes slipped over the stuffed chair beside the fireplace. More books were stacked beside it, with one lying open across the arm as if Simon had been pulled from his reading to deal with me.
The main room led into the small kitchen with an old-fashioned iron stove. A fire sprang to life as I passed through and I jumped. The damn thing was still tuned to me, as if Simon couldn’t have been bothered to erase my memory from half the spells that still littered his rooms. There was a complete collection of shining copper pots hanging from the ceiling. Two blocks of knives were on the counter—one for potions and another for cooking. I’d spent most of my time in this room. I slept on a pallet beside the stove and cooked all of Simon’s meals as well as prepared his hot tea throughout the day while he worked.
The final room, off the kitchen, was Simon’s bedchamber. I rarely visited this room during my apprenticeship. I popped in once a day to quickly make the bed and pick up his clothes for the laundry before quickly scurrying out again. Now, there were dirty clothes piled everywhere and his sheets were a tangled mess as if his last sleep had been an uneasy one.
The black mass was gone, becoming invisible to the naked eye, but I could feel it following me from room to room. It hovered close with ill-concealed glee as if excited to have a new playmate as I explored the Tower rooms.
I packed away all my bitter emotions associated with these rooms. Even after all this time, I couldn’t conjure up an ounce of pity or remorse for my old mentor. The world was better off without him and I would soon wipe his memory from these rooms as well.
But the first step was to locate the symbol that Simon had drawn so that I could put some of my own blood into it. It was all part of the agreement you made with what I had thought were the powers of the protection spell. I had been more than a little wrong on that one. Apparently that agreement was made with a demon in return for some degree of control over it.
Unfortunately, after a quick search of the rooms, I hadn’t found the symbol. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever seeing where Simon had placed the symbol. I had stolen it from a book in Simon’s collection. How could Simon have hidden the symbol in his rooms? As far as I knew, the symbol had to be at least five feet across. Not something that was easily hidden. He also couldn’t draw it with his invisible chalk.
Walking back into the main room, I carefully inspected the walls but still didn’t see anything that resembled the demon’s doorway.
You’re getting warmer.
The demon’s voice drifted in a singsong tone through my head, sending chills down my back.
Gritting my teeth, I stood off to the side of the room and raised my hands out in front of me as I slowly summoned up a little energy before sending it seeking the symbol. The only reason I was able to do this was because it was part of the spell that closed the doorway. If you didn’t know the symbol was there or how to close the door, you’d never be able to feel it.
The demon shifted a bit nervously near me, but didn’t give any other indication that it might be agitated by what I was doing, which was a relief.
The energy left my body and instead of flying off toward one of the walls, it went straight down to the floor. I stepped back, staring at the stones for a second before the obvious finally dawned on me. Instead of putting the symbol on the wall and then hiding it from view, the bastard put in on the stones that made up the floor. Crafty. Simon Thorn had always been an extremely crafty devil.
Stepping back toward the kitchen, I gathered up more energy, no longer fearful of the demon that was still hovering close. There was a feeling of gleeful excitement coming from it that did nothing to settle my mind. I wasn’t fond of the notion that I was doing anything that pleased the creature. Of course, I didn’t want to do anything that might piss it off because that might give it a reason to remove my head.
The burst of energy I sent out wrapped around everything that rested on the floor of the main room. Items trembled briefly before rising steadily into the air. Glass tinkled and papers shifted, but nothing fell from the massive table as it rose. When everything hovered two feet above the floor, I waved both hands in a circular motion toward my body as if I were rowing a boat while whispering a simple spell I had used when folding laundry.
Like flipping over dominoes, the stones in the floor tossed over so that they were now lying on the backs. One after another rolled over and resettled into its proper place in a gray wave until the symbol was revealed in the stones. A gasp escaped me and I took a step forward before I remembered that I was holding two spells together and didn’t need to be distracted.
When all the stones were flipped over, I gently lowered everyth
ing back to the floor and knelt down. Simon had been intently focused on the protection of himself and the items in the room. The warlock hadn’t merely painted the symbol on the stones. He had chiseled it in so that there was no removing it short of destroying the stones in the floor.
Add your blood. Make it yours.
As the demon hissed the words through my head, a dagger shot across the room and landed point first between a pair of stones less than a foot from my hand. I jumped back, watching the blade shiver there in warning. That could have very easily been my chest or the back of my skull.
I wasn’t crazy about the idea of closely tying this demon to me a second time, but putting my blood in the symbol in Simon’s rooms meant that I could more easily close the doorway. I could control the demon in a manner of speaking, though I knew I was lying to myself if I thought I could control a demon. The only concern was that if I didn’t agree to make this doorway mine, then there was a good chance the demon was going to kill me for the irritation. I might let it sulk in the basement at Asylum, but it had a lot more free range in Simon’s rooms.
Unfortunately, what won out in the end wasn’t the idea of being able to lock the demon away more effectively. It was the notion that Simon’s rooms would now be mine and I could use the demon to keep out the warlocks and the witches who might want to take over this space. My gig as a guardian wasn’t going to last. They’d reach a point where they’d tire of the game and finally kill me for using magic. But before that, they’d revoke my right to visit the Dresden library. I was easier to kill if I knew less magic than they did.
With Simon’s rooms, I could study in secret. I could review his notes and read his books, expanding my knowledge and finally getting the one thing the bastard owed me—an education in magic. I’d give the demon a little bit of my blood if it brought me one step closer to gaining control over my life, a step closer to evening the score at last.
Picking up the dagger, I sliced the palm of my left hand, pain drawing a hiss of air through my clenched teeth. The pain was good. It cleared my head, brought me out of the past and secured me in the present. I held my hand open, waiting for the blood to well up, before squeezing it into a fist over the outer line of the symbol. The symbol didn’t need to be entirely filled with my blood, just three key lines required a small smear.
As my blood dripped into the last of the lines, a surge of power jumped into my body, knocking the breath out of my lungs and causing my heart to skip a beat. I shook my head as if to clear it, but the buzzing wasn’t in my head. It was the energy in the room and I was suddenly tapped into it all. But the energy wasn’t coming from some old spell that Simon had created. It was from the demon.
“Gage!” Gideon shouted outside the door. “Gage! Are you in there?” His hard-soled shoes echoed across the floor as he ran toward Simon’s old rooms.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
The demon snarled in my brain and I could feel it gather up its energy as it launched itself across the room, slamming into the door with enough force to make the thick wood barrier shudder in its frame. While I couldn’t see the creature, fresh gouges appeared in the wood as it fought its way toward the other warlock.
“Stay out, Gideon!” I shouted back. “I’m alive! Stay out!”
Not trusting my companion to listen to me, I tried to use the same spell I used in the basement at Asylum to lock the demon back in the symbol, but the creature was stronger in these rooms than I was accustomed to. It turned the energy it was using on the door toward me. I raised my shields at the last second, but it still plowed through. Pain slashed across my cheek as it tore three long slashes through my flesh with its talons.
“You’re not touching him!” I snarled, putting more energy behind the locking spell as I dropped my shields completely.
Glass exploded on the table and the lights winked out again, but I didn’t need the light. I couldn’t see the demon with the lights on, and the darkness actually helped me focus my magic. As the demon turned, preparing to rush me a second time, I changed tactics. It was lost in a rage, determined to hurt something now that it had been denied access to its prey. When it crossed above the symbol toward me, I directed the energy to reach up from the floor and grab it as if the hands of the dead were trying to pull it back toward the Underworld.
No!
It shrieked in my head, the sound so deafening that I didn’t hear the glass breaking, but I could feel it raining down on me from around the room.
“Enough!” I bellowed. I halted the spell, but didn’t disperse the energy releasing the demon.
“Gage? Are you all right?” Gideon shouted from the other side of the door, but I ignored him.
“We need to come to an agreement. You attack who I say or I will close the doorway and destroy the stones,” I said in a low voice.
You need me, the demon howled.
“But you need me more,” I said. “I can find another way to get what I want. Are you willing to wait for someone else to come along to set you free?”
I have an eternity ahead of me.
“Yeah, or you can make a deal with me now.”
The silence stretched for several seconds. Sweat beaded on my brow and my arms started to tremble under the weight of holding the spell in a state of limbo. I was giving this thing another two seconds and I was shutting the doorway down. If I had any sense, I’d do it anyway. Dealing with demons was too dangerous and I was beginning to wonder about my own sanity if I was willing to go down this dark road. But it was right. I did need it.
What are your requirements, Master? the demon hissed at last, surprising me.
Master? This was a development that I wasn’t expecting. Master couldn’t be a word demons tossed about lightly. It couldn’t actually interpret this bargain I was trying to wring out of it as my beating it. But then, maybe I was beating it. I was forcing the demon to do my bidding.
“You will attack only who I say,” I commanded softly, trying to be careful in the event that Gideon was listening at the door. “You will not attack Gideon.”
Anyone else forbidden?
“Trixie, Bronx, and Sofie as well.” I didn’t expect my companions to walk through the door in the Towers, but I had to cover my ass in the event that some fucking witch or warlock got crafty. Besides, Sofie might be stuck as a cat, but the old witch did pop back to the Towers on occasion for information. I didn’t think she’d ever dare come into Simon’s rooms, but I didn’t want to risk her life.
Any other wishes?
“Back off. These rooms are mine now.”
The demon was quiet for a moment as if pondering my requests. The fierce, ruthless anger I had felt coming off it just seconds ago had diminished completely and all I felt was a kind of pensiveness.
Am I to be locked up completely like in your other rooms?
It was referring to the basement. The spell down there kept a much tighter leash on it, but then I’d been afraid of the power creeping up through the floorboards and attacking a client in the middle of a tattoo. Unexplained attacks and gruesome deaths were always bad for business.
“If you can agree to not attack me or those I have listed as untouchable, I will allow you to remain freer than at Asylum.”
Agreed.
As if to show that there were no hard feelings, the lights popped on around the room. Glass that shattered in the face of the demon’s rage drifted gently across the room, and reassembled into beakers, vials, and other sundry items as if nothing had ever happened. Not allowing myself to be distracted by the elegant display of power, I completed part of the closure spell I had started, trapping some of the demon’s powers. In comparison to what I had erected at Asylum, I was willing to estimate that the demon was now operating at only half power. Or rather, I hoped that it had access to only half of its powers.
My legs wobbled when I released the energy and I started to collapse toward the floor, but a cushioned ottoman shot across the room and caught me before I could hit the floor. This was
just too weird.
“Gage?” Gideon called, reminding me that the warlock was waiting in the hall.
“I’m alive,” I shouted back. My body ached as if I had pulled several muscles trying to lift something I had no business lifting. But then, I guess that was only natural when you went a couple rounds with a demon. No, that was wrong. You go a couple rounds with a demon, and your intestines get strung up around the room like Christmas lights. This was what it felt like when you went a couple rounds with a demon that needed you alive.
I heard the rattle of the door handle as the warlock tried to open the door. My hand shot out and I reinforced the lock, keeping him barred from the room. “Don’t come in. I can’t shut down the spell. Simon still has it tuned to me so I can be in here, but anyone else coming in will be shredded.”
“What kind of spell? Maybe I can help unravel it,” Gideon offered.
“I’m not sure. I need to dig through his notes and try to find it,” I lied. Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep breath, pushing down the self-loathing that rose up like bile in the back of my throat. “I’ve got it so it can’t leak out of the room anymore. Go down to the library and I’ll meet you in a few minutes.”
I waited in the tense silence, listening to the pounding of my heart in my ears. I was terrified that the warlock was going to force his way in. The demon might say that he wasn’t going to attack Gideon, but I could still feel it coiled just past my shoulder as if waiting to launch itself across the room. Demons couldn’t lie, but they were great at half-truths and finding loopholes in agreements.
“Five minutes, Gage,” Gideon warned.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard his footsteps retreating as he headed back toward the open shaft in the far wall that would take him to the basement level where the library was located.
You’re sure you don’t want that one killed?
“Yeah,” I snapped. “I’m sure.”
The demon chuckled and I shook my head. Exhaustion was taking its toll and the bed in the next room was starting to look appealing. Of course, I’d have to burn the sheets first, but I had a feeling my new little friend would be only too happy to help with that task. Fuck it. Even with fatigue leaving me trembling where I sat, I wasn’t sleeping here. I had a bed waiting for me that wasn’t watched over by a demon.
Demon's Vow: Part 2 of the Final Asylum Tales (The Asylum Tales series) Page 7