“Now I say the words of the spell—I’ll teach it to you later—and place drops of my blood at the points of power.” She said the last in a rush, trying to throw him off guard as she began to shove the sharp point of the file into the vein at her left wrist. But his hand closed around hers quickly.
“Let me do it.” He held out his wrist.
“Maybe next time.”
“There’ll be a next time?”
“As long as we’re running,” she said. “As long as we’re alive.”
Angelo winced as she jabbed the sharp point into her flesh and twisted to open the vein. She turned her wrist toward the floor and let the blood drop first at each fan of the fish tail, then where the lines crossed and, finally, where they met in a point at the fish’s head. Mouse whispered the words of the spell at each spill of blood.
“And now?” Angelo asked as he knelt down onto the floor beside her in the center of the salt-and-blood fish. He took the rag he’d been using on the scrapes he’d gotten at Podlažice and pressed it against the cut in her wrist. It was already pink with his own blood.
“Now we see what game my father’s playing.” She slid her hand from his and lifted the lid from the ancient box.
The rolled parchment rested on red velvet. Mouse pulled it out quickly, wanting to waste no time in case her spell hadn’t worked and her father had been alerted to the breaking of the box’s seal. Angelo moved closer, his shoulder pressed into hers. Each of them held a side of the manuscript and read. As a seminary graduate, Angelo knew his Latin, but he occasionally pointed at a word for Mouse to translate. Angelo read for the story while Mouse read for clues to her father’s secret.
“Milton has him beat, I think,” Angelo said when he finished.
She smiled at his reaction. Hers had been much the same when she had first read it. But she sobered quickly. There was nothing there. No clue, no hint, no next task to perform. The ancient parchment at her knees looked sickeningly like snakeskin. Her father had most likely been toying with her—an empty game she had no hope of winning.
“The manuscript is just like I remember it. There’s nothing here. Just words on a page.” Mouse gripped the edges of the parchment and watched the corner crumble into a dust too fine to fall.
Angelo bent his head to her ear. “Try again. Maybe it’s not in the words. Maybe it’s something visual, how they’re shaped or—”
“I’ll try.”
Mouse closed her eyes and let the words fall away as she pulled the image of the pages up in her mind and looked at them as a whole, like they were another of her father’s puppets, an enemy that needed to be assessed. When she opened her eyes, the pattern nearly jumped from the parchment. The significant letters were almost illuminated, their uniqueness now so obvious to her. She could see the minor shift of flourish and, most significantly, the stain of the ink. It seemed so clear to her, though she doubted that any normal person could discern the difference that now glared at her.
She looked over at Angelo excitedly. “Can you find me some paper, something thin?”
“Be right back.”
The corners of the parchment he had been holding down now curled toward Mouse and covered the text, but it didn’t matter. She already had the words in her mind, words formed by the letters her father had hidden in the manuscript. And, even better, she knew what they were: a binding spell. She recognized it from an old text she and Father Lucas had once studied but then dismissed as a charlatan’s work. The Aim of the Sage had been a disjointed hodgepodge of philosophy, astrology, and a very sexualized approach to the practice of magic. But in her perfect memory, Mouse could see the words of this spell tucked between some convoluted passage about the spirit of the planets and a grotesque magical concoction requiring semen and brain matter. No wonder she and Father Lucas had paid the text no heed. Even now, Mouse doubted that the words of the spell held any real power—a person could say them all day and likely nothing would happen. The power of the particular spell in these pages written with these special letters came not from the words themselves but from the nature of their crafting.
Her father had scripted them in blood that was almost certainly his own.
She imagined his initial glee at the game he played. Give Mouse a clue that reminded her of her bond to him—a bond of blood, the only one of its kind she shared with anyone in the world. His confidence that she would eventually want to join him after the time they shared at Podlažice must have erased his customary caution. But as the years passed and Mouse never took the bait, he likely began to second-guess the cleverness of his plan and to worry that someone else might discover his secret and use it against him. He had underestimated the agents of God before. Her father must have ripped the pages from the Devil’s Bible and hidden them like a piece of cheese in his Mouse-trap.
When Angelo returned with the paper, Mouse began the delicate work of lifting the letters from the manuscript. She pressed the new paper against the old and grabbed the wet cloth and held it to the back of the parchment. After a few seconds of pressing the dampened pages together, a light trace of the letters appeared on the new piece of paper. They were barely legible, but Mouse didn’t need to read the words. She needed them in her father’s blood and in sequence so they formed the power of the binding spell.
Angelo helped hold the manuscript and bit back his questions so she could concentrate, but when she pulled the last letter from her father’s text, Mouse dropped her head in her hands.
“What’s wrong?”
“It stops midsentence. There’s a final line to the spell.” She recited the spell as she knew it from The Aim of the Sage while she frantically searched each of the three leaves of parchment again. “There should be five more words, but they’re not here.”
“He must have hidden the other part somewhere else.”
Or maybe the rest of the spell was in the same place these pages ought to be, the place they had been when her father first designed his game. Mouse sank back against the cabin wall. “We have to go to Stockholm.”
“Why?” Angelo’s question was full of weariness, too.
“The Devil’s Bible,” she said as she looked up. Then she froze.
A face rested against the window of the door to their berth. Its skin ran like melted wax over sharp cheekbones and hardened at an angular chin. Its colorless eye swept over them. Mouse knew that face. It had come to visit her after the hollow-eyed children had found her at the baby cemetery. Before she learned the spells to protect herself, this creature had come at his leisure. He liked children. His name was Moloch.
Mouse felt the bile rise in her throat as she mouthed the words of the protective spell again. But if it hadn’t worked the first time, she knew it was probably too late now.
Angelo sucked in a sharp breath, and Mouse flicked her eyes to him for an instant, afraid he had seen the face at the window, but Angelo was just staring at her, his back to the door. “It was you.”
Mouse ignored him. She was watching Moloch’s eye dilate, waiting to see if it narrowed its focus on her or Angelo. Her body vibrated with tension as she prepared for the worst.
“It was you. Wasn’t it?” Angelo shifted in front of her. Mouse flinched at the movement, sure it would expose them. She kept her eyes fixed on the window just above Angelo’s head. Moloch seemed to be looking right at her.
Then the face pulled back and moved into the darkness at the other end of the car. The spell had worked.
“Mouse!” Angelo grabbed her shoulders, forcing her attention.
“What?” she asked as she finally breathed.
“The Devil’s Bible. You wrote it.”
“Yes.” She said it without thinking, distracted by trying to figure out how to get the two of them off the train without Moloch seeing them.
“Your father was there, too.”
“Yes.” Had she not been so tired, so afraid, Mouse would surely have heard the spark of awareness growing with each of Angelo’s questions.
> “The rest of the spell is in the Devil’s Bible?”
“I think so.”
“And it’s in Stockholm,” Angelo said as he put his arm around her. “Well, we’ll just have to go there.” He seemed ready for anything.
But he hadn’t seen Moloch’s face.
Mouse stared at the window until her eyes watered. Her mind was full of childhood horrors that were all too real.
“We’ve got another twenty minutes before Prague. You need to sleep,” Angelo said, worried at the look on her face.
“I’m scared I’ll dream.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mouse sent Angelo to buy the tickets to Stockholm while she headed to a kiosk to get a ticket to wherever the next departing train was headed. It didn’t matter what she or Angelo wanted now. With Moloch lurking around, it was too dangerous to have Angelo with her. She would leave him here and then try to lure the demon of her childhood nightmares onto a train going the other way.
Mouse leaned against the wall, bouncing her ticket on her leg as she watched for Moloch. She felt him before she saw him step out of the exchange booth. When she was sure he had spotted her, she spun toward the stairs that led to the upper level where her train would depart.
“Where are you going?”
Mouse jumped as Angelo laid his hand on her arm. He had come back too soon.
She looked past him, searching the crowd of faces. She found Moloch easily. Even in his human form, he towered over everyone else, and he was built wrong—his legs were too short for his body, his head stretched like a Picasso figure. He had a waxy smirk stretched across his doll-like face as he moved steadily toward her. Toward Angelo.
Mouse grabbed Angelo’s arm and pulled him toward the back wall.
“To the bathroom to change,” she said. “Why don’t you do the same?”
“Good idea. I’ll meet you back here.”
They moved down the hall together, and then Angelo veered into the men’s room as she headed farther into the hallway. She kept walking past the women’s room, toward the exit. Moloch’s reflection wavered on the glass doors in front of her. She held her breath as he neared the entrance to the men’s room, but he passed it and started to close the distance toward her. She yanked opened the doors and ran into the poorly lit park in front of the station. Rows of taxis blared horns at emerging tourists. Mouse moved toward the corner farthest from the light and away from any people. As she slid into the dark, she dropped her bag and lowered herself into a defensive position.
But it was too late—he was already on her, draped over her back. A slick, hairless arm wrapped across her chest and a cold hand clamped on her arm. Moloch whipped her around and flung her into the low brick wall that surrounded the park. She kept her balance and spun toward him.
His ruthlessness added to the advantage he had over her in strength, but she never meant to beat Moloch. Mouse had a clock ticking in her head. Ten minutes and Angelo would be on the platform looking for her. He would board the train thinking she had gotten on already. Then Angelo would be gone.
And she, too, one way or another.
“Hello again, my little Mousey. Want to play?” Moloch moved too fast for her, grabbed her arm and pulled it behind her and up, turning her and smashing her face into the wall again. “I so miss our little games.”
Mouse felt the heat radiating from him. The memory of his nighttime visits and the torture he inflicted incensed her. She wanted to spit her rage and hatred at him, but he wrapped his hand over her mouth.
“Daddy said I couldn’t play this time though. He just wants what’s his. He says to give it back.” His voice was high and overbright.
Mouse forced her mouth open and sank her teeth into the flesh of his palm. When he jerked his hand back, the skin tore and her mouth flooded with his blood. He let her go and she rolled onto her back and then pulled into a crouch, blood running down her chin.
“Play nice, Mousey, or I’ll ignore Daddy’s orders. I’m sure he won’t mind in a day or so anyway. Little Mousey won’t mean so much.” He sucked at the wound on his hand. “Now give it back.”
“What do you mean he won’t care in a day or so?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” He giggled. “Now give me what I want.”
“Don’t think so.” Mouse needed to kill another seven minutes for Angelo.
She was ready this time when Moloch came for her. She jumped to the side as he lunged and then slammed her elbow into the small of his back, driving him into the dirt. The sharp crack of teeth bounced against the brick wall as his jaw snapped shut. Mouse heard him gag, but he snaked his arm out, grabbed her ankle, and jerked.
The impact jammed her spine as she landed in a sitting position. Moloch kicked back into her chest and pinned her to the ground. She tried to twist free, but he pushed so hard she could barely breathe. She watched him dig his long, pasty fingers into his mouth and then fling bits of shattered teeth to the ground.
“Give-y, give-y,” Moloch said as he stood over her, pressing his foot into her sternum. She felt it bend with his weight.
A hollow voice pinged against the stone—the train’s final departure call. Angelo should have boarded by now, looking for her. In a few minutes he would be speeding away to safety.
Mouse pointed. “It’s in my bag.”
“You get it. I don’t trust you.” Moloch’s voice whistled through the gaps of his fractured teeth as he grabbed her hair and pushed her toward the canvas bag.
She held the copper box out to him.
“Open it,” Moloch said.
She did. Satisfied by what he saw, he snatched the box and turned to leave.
“I confess I thought you were a tricky Mouse. I thought you’d let the other one take all the risk. Oh well.”
Moloch folded himself into the darkness and disappeared.
Mouse dropped to her knees gagging to get the rest of his blood out of her mouth until she realized what he’d said. The other one. She went cold with horror. She took off for the station, jumping down the stairs and slamming into the block wall as she turned into the hallway of the men’s bathroom.
The man loomed over Angelo against the far wall. He was huge—at least twice Angelo’s size. He had a knife. Angelo was already on the floor bleeding. The man turned when he heard the slap of Mouse’s boots on the tile, but it didn’t matter. She was on him instantly, grabbing his knife hand, pulling it behind him. Blind with rage and reeling with the power swelling in her like it had at the ruins of Podlažice, she meant to kill him. But at the last moment, with the point of the knife already digging into the man’s skin, Mouse looked over at Angelo’s face. Her rage and the power slipped away from her like sweat, and she turned the blade so that it ripped into the soft flesh to the right of the man’s spine. Snarling with a final surge of adrenaline, she thrust the knife outward. A rib snapped as the blade slipped free of the man’s massive body, which fell forward, cracking against a urinal before slamming into the floor. Mouse saw the white of bone shards and the sick yellow globs of fat just before they were drowned in a flood of red.
“My God, Mouse.” Angelo stared at her, his mouth open.
She saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She looked like a monster. Her lips pulled in a bloody sneer like her father. Her eyes almost as dark as his. She wiped her hands on her jeans, then stripped and used her clothes to wipe away most of the blood—hers, Moloch’s, this man who had been sent to kill Angelo. She pulled the dress Angelo had bought her out of her bag and tugged it over her head. It was too soft for how she felt. She wrapped toilet paper around Angelo’s bleeding hand. He kept looking at the man on the floor.
Mouse reached into the man’s pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Blood seeped into the crevices along the sides of the screen as she touched the numbers. Then she turned to where Angelo was crouched at the last stall.
“Tell them you’ve hurt yourself and need an ambulance.” She was hoarse and matter-of-fact. Angelo did
as she said.
“We need to get out of here,” she said as she pulled Angelo toward the door.
Their train was speeding away from the platform as they stepped out of the bathroom. Mouse hesitated for just a moment before taking Angelo’s hand, running to the stairs and out to the front of the station toward a line of people boarding a bus.
“Where are we going?” He sounded dazed, still in shock.
“Airport.” Mouse put her free hand in her bag, fishing for her wallet. She grimaced as her fingers brushed something sticky and still warm. She was afraid that if she pulled out the wallet, the bloody clothes she’d shoved into the bag would come tumbling out, too. She grabbed a handful of loose bills just as she and Angelo stepped onto the bus, and when the driver barked out a ticket price, she shoved the crumpled bills into his hand. He didn’t notice the smears of red covering St. Agnes’s face on the front of the cash.
Mouse nudged Angelo into the open seats behind the driver. She wanted to be able to make a quick exit if necessary, and here she could use the driver’s mirrors to watch the other passengers. Her eyes swept the faces haloed by the dim lights. All of them looked dead.
Angelo stared out the window, his bandaged hand nestled against his shoulder, the other lying on the seat, twisted in Mouse’s, unmoving. In his stillness and silence, he seemed like a statue from one of his pictures. Mouse was just the opposite; she couldn’t stop moving. The seat quivered from her bouncing leg, and her thumb drummed against the top of Angelo’s hand as if she could send her energy into him somehow, make him move, make him okay with what had just happened. But she knew that was impossible.
Mouse started mumbling to herself, snatching bits of lines from one text or another as she tried to build her mental firewall again, but it was no use. All she could think about was what would happen when Angelo recovered from the shock—what he would say, what he would do, where he would go.
She pulled him to his feet as the bus rolled to a stop at the terminal. She wanted to be the first off, but as they neared the glass doors of the airport, she realized she needed to get rid of her bag and the bloody clothes before they went through security. Mouse veered into the shadows beside the wall. When she let go of Angelo’s hand, the blood that had pooled in the soft tissue between her fingers stuck to his and stretched like gum between them. Angelo quickly clenched his hand into a fist, severing the scarlet threads, and then shoved it into his pocket. Mouse winced.
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