by Debra Dunbar
“Wait.” Reynard had dropped the bags and was rummaging through his billfold. He yanked out two long, narrow pieces of metal and got to work.
“I thought you were ambivalent about breaking and entering.”
“Ambivalent, not averse. Damn, these deadbolts are such a pain.”
Ten minutes. “Get it open now or I’m busting out the window,” I warned.
“And have the cops on us in the middle of the ritual? It’s your funeral, girl, not mine.”
With a twist of the knob, the door popped open. We both gathered up our bags and ran, Reynard taking a quick second to turn the flashlight on his phone to light our way. Once down the stairs, we both sprang into action, pulling supplies out of our bags, and nearly knocking each other over in our haste to get things set up.
“Where’s Raven? Do you have Raven?”
“Yes, that bag over there.”
“Where’s the black candle? Oh, there it is. Did I mention this is an amazing circle? I might need to come hang out at your house regularly.”
Three minutes. “Shut up and hurry.”
We finished, taking a few seconds to double check that everything was in the right place. One minute. That was cutting it pretty close.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” Reynard said, scraping a match along the edge of the box.
He lit the candles while I chanted, then I smudged as he sealed the ritual space and marked the quarters with his knife. Raven’s fox figurine quivered in the south quarter, the white board next to her. She hadn’t said anything since we’d stuffed her in the bag back at my apartment, but I was pretty sure once this was all over with, she’d be scolding me for the disrespectful treatment.
“On this night when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, we seek to break the ties that bind us to the netherworld, and establish protection from the minions of hell,” I began.
“Chalk and sage, light and smoke, the energy of our spirits all form a safe space and concentrate our power to sunder bonds.” Reynard’s energy joined mine and Raven’s in the circle and he sat, closing his eyes to concentrate.
“Balsur, I command you, the spirit of ill-will, to leave this world completely. As a warrior of God, I command you to take your mark from my soul, as creatures of evil have no hold over me. Mali spiritus expellas. Vade. Vade.”
The room shifted, as if the ground under the building had suddenly moved two feet to the right. I concentrated and began to chant, feeling the mark on my ribs begin to burn.
“Vade. Vade. Vade.”
The boiler suddenly roared to life, an orange glow visible through the sooty window that looked into its depths. I kept chanting. I kept chanting even as a dark figure came from behind the furnace. He was fluid, like smoke come to life, and his eyes glowed red in a misshapen face.
Balsur. Still I chanted. Minutes. I only had minutes left until the hour of midnight was well past. I could hold on that long no matter what he did.
It wasn’t what he did, it was what he said. Balsur floated around the circle, hovering over me and brushing against my skin with tendrils of smoke. I shivered but didn’t falter.
You’ll miss me, little Templar. You think I haven’t helped you these past few months? Kept you alive? Helped bring your enemies to their knees—and to their deaths?
He hadn’t. In fact, I was pretty sure he’d thrown every obstacle in my way in an effort to box me into a corner where I’d need to call on him, where I’d have to barter my soul away, where I’d make a decision that would chip away at my grace. I was chipping away at my grace on my own. I didn’t need him helping with that. I kept the chanting steady, watching Reynard out of the corner of my eye. I’ll give the guy credit, he was clearly rattled, but he was holding it together.
There will be loss in your life. Your mother and father are not young. I can help ensure they are here for you for decades more. How do you think your great-grandmother has lived so long? I can grant them the same.
Essie? No! Gran might be a bit of an odd duck, the granny-witch black sheep of our family, but I refused to believe she’d bartered her soul for immortality. Had someone else? Had Tarquin made a deal rather than see her die from something horrible? Had her parents?
Mine would never forgive me. Yes, they were getting old. I’d be wracked with grief when the inevitable happened—but it was inevitable. This was a grief that every human must experience in their lifetime—over and over and over. I was strong enough to go through what all my pilgrims must endure.
Little ones sometimes die too. Those nephews of yours. That little baby niece you are so fond of.
Was he threatening them, or just painting a grim future? Did he know something? I chanted through gritted teeth, determined not to break my concentration. When demons were desperate they threw everything they had at you, and they lied.
Vampires die too. There are ones besides Simon out there who would love nothing more than to rip your lover’s head off while you watch. Some of those vampires are right here in Baltimore, in his own family.
Now that just pissed me off. If there was someone disloyal in Dario’s Balaj, he’d deal with it. And with both of us working together, we’d make sure any rotten apples met their final death.
Balsur suddenly changed tactics. You love that vampire. I could return his soul. I could give him life. Say the word and he’ll be human once again. I’d even make sure you had children—beautiful, healthy children. Yours and his.
My voice grew husky at the thought of Dario and me, kids running around us. Dario in the daylight.
As twisted as it might seem, the thought was repugnant. He was a vampire. I got the feeling that while he wasn’t ecstatic with the deal he’d made, he’d come to terms with it and built a worthwhile life. He was now the Master of the Baltimore Balaj. What was he supposed to do as a human? Work retail? Mow lawns on the weekend? It was an absurd thought. Two minutes left. I had this.
Balsur must have realized this wasn’t working either. He slid over to Reynard, who just looked more determined than ever as he chanted.
I can give your friend back her life.
Could he do that? I got the feeling he wasn’t lying. My heartbeat increased. Raven had died because of me. As much as that haunted me, I couldn’t let her death be in vain. As if in agreement, the little fox figure at the circle’s edge trembled.
She will have a physical body, healed and whole, just as she’d been before. She can live out a normal life. It will be as if she never died.
I kept chanting, but Reynard stopped. It was the one thing he couldn’t say no to. He was throwing my soul into the fire by withdrawing his energy and letting the ritual fail. It was all on me now—me and Raven. I shook with the added effort of holding the circle on my own.
“I’m sorry, Aria.”
I didn’t blame him. He’d chosen the woman he loved over me, a virtual stranger. I didn’t blame him at all. There was no anger in my heart at his betrayal, if anything, the sorrow of his grief, the pain of love lost, only made my voice stronger.
One minute. The final countdown. Balsur again shifted around the circle, and this time he reached down to pick up the fox figurine.
My eyes widened and I struggled to hold my concentration. Smoky fingers caressed the lelek rakban and I heard a scream—a woman’s scream.
“No,” Reynard protested. I got the feeling that he would have physically assaulted Balsur, maybe even me, but the energy of the circle had grown to the point that we were all rooted to the line of white. We were part of the web of silver and gold that was spinning around us, forming a mandala.
I won’t let you go, my Templar. I’ll never let you go, Balsur hissed, his fingers tightening on the figurine.
He would let me go, because I wasn’t his to have. The clock ticked to five past midnight and I broke my chant to stare directly into the demon’s red eyes.
“Vade.”
Balsur’s screams were a jarringly different note than Raven’s as he crus
hed the little fox, dust spilling to the ground. His smoke form sucked into the center of the mandala of energy and light that was our circle, vanishing, pulled through a hole in the veil.
Then he was gone. The air in the room lightened, the mandala of light fading until we were just two people sitting on a basement floor, a cold unlit furnace in the corner, dust from what had been a resin fox figurine glittering white on the gray cement.
Epilogue
I stood in front of a row of cages filled with meowing occupants. One of the unexpected perks of my new place was that it allowed me to have a pet.
Tremelay had gone all bad-cop on my former landlord, the management company for the new place had kindly allowed me to move in early, my friends had rearranged their schedules and assisted with the late-notice transportation of my boxed belongings and furniture. Dario was busy stabilizing the Balaj and getting adjusted to his new role, but he still came by every evening to spend at least a few hours with me. My neck was healing, the bruise on my hip was almost gone, the hospitals were no longer filled to capacity with epidemics of food poisoning and mysterious intestinal ailments.
Raven was gone. I’d returned armed with Tremelay to force the landlord to let me in and immediately went to each of the lelek raktarban hoping one of them was warm to the touch with glowing eyes. Nothing. Reynard wouldn’t speak to me, and I wasn’t sure if it was guilt over his willingness to damn me to hell to bring Raven back to life, or anger that I hadn’t agreed to the exchange of my soul for my friend’s life. I’d lost him as a friend. And I’d lost Raven twice. She’d died twice for my soul. And that weighed heavily on me.
An orange tabby in front of me pawed at the cage and I reached out a finger to touch her soft paw. I’d lived with animals my whole life down in Middleburg. Maybe the addition of a cat to my house would help me get past this grief, this guilt.
A commotion caught my attention and I turned to watch three shelter attendants racing after a dog. It wasn’t big, the dog’s head would probably come to just above my knee, but this boy was built like a tank. He looked to be a bull terrier mix, with a chisel-shaped head and a black spot above his eye. He was also scarred all over his white body, with a tattered ear and a diagonal pink wound just healing across his muzzle.
The dog ran, knocking over metal tables and crashing into throw rugs as it dodged the attendants. The volunteer next to me caught her breath. “How did…? That’s one of the dogs from the fighting ring they busted up this week. He’s…we had him in the back room.”
The back room. Where they euthanize dogs and store them in the freezer for bulk pick up and delivery to the pet crematorium. He looked like a fighter rather than a bait dog, and the fact that this low-kill shelter was about to put him down meant he wasn’t suitable for adoption. It meant he couldn’t be trusted as a pet.
And he was coming straight for me.
The dog’s narrow dark eyes fixed on me, and he put on a burst of speed. The volunteer shrieked and hid behind me. I wished for a moment that I’d brought my sword, even though I don’t think I could ever have used it on an animal, vicious or not.
The dog jumped, nearly knocking me over as he slammed into my leg. Yeah, this guy was short, but he had to have weighed nearly a hundred pounds. Crazy thing must have the density of lead. And he was humping my leg, balls bouncing as he thrust. I could swear the dog was grinning.
The attendants ran up. One went to snap a leash on the dog and he growled, showing sharp teeth in a powerful jaw. Then he went back to humping.
“I thought you did it,” the one attendant hissed to the other.
“I did. I checked with the stethoscope. It was done.”
Oh, God. They’d killed this dog, but for some reason it hadn’t worked. How did that happen?
“It clearly was not done. I’d even put him in the freezer. If I hadn’t heard the commotion, he would have frozen to death in there.”
“Guys? If someone doesn’t get this dog off me I’m going to need to run to the pharmacy for a morning after pill.”
“Sorry, sorry!” The attendant went to grab the dog and he growled again before dropping from my leg and sitting by my feet.
“Was it good for you?” I asked him.
The dog took his front paw and dragged his nails across the floor. Dog nails shouldn’t be sharp enough to cut through cement, but for some odd reason, this one’s were. I bent down and saw the mark he’d made with his dremel-like paw.
It was a check mark. It was a crude, stylized bird.
“Raven?” I whispered. Grief was doing more than plunging me into a depression, it was making me crazy. Was I going to go through life, thinking I saw signs of Raven’s continued existence everywhere? She was gone, she was dead and gone. Twice. And I needed to get it through my thick, overly optimistic head that she wasn’t coming back.
The dog nodded, long tail like a whip as it swung back and forth. Again he made a check mark in the concrete.
I might be crazy, but even if this wasn’t Raven, I had to take this as some sort of divine sign, my own personal burning bush.
I reached out a hand to the attendant and took the leash, bending down to snap it on the leather collar that was still around the dog’s neck. “I’ll take this one,” I told them. I looked over at the sweet orange tabby, still extending a soft paw from between the cage bars. “And her too. The dog and the cat.”
“But he’s not safe,” the attendant protested.
“Clearly not. He’s a menace to every bitch in heat in the city. I still want him. I’ll sign a waiver, whatever. I want him.”
Acknowledgments
A huge thanks to my copyeditors Kimberly Cannon and Jennifer Cosham whose eagle eyes catch all my typos and keep my comma problem in line, to Meredith Bond at Anessa Books for her formatting expertise, and to my brother, Frank, for lending me his Photoshop brilliance in cover and ad design.
Most of all, thanks to my children, who have suffered many nights of microwaved chicken nuggets and take-out pizza so that Mommy can follow her dream.
About the Author
Debra lives in a little house in the woods of Maryland with her sons and two slobbery bloodhounds. On a good day, she jogs and horseback rides, hopefully managing to keep the horse between herself and the ground. Her only known super power is 'Identify Roadkill'.
@debra_dunbar
DebraDunbarAuthor
www.debradunbar.com
Also by Debra Dunbar
Dead Rising
Last Breath
Bare Bones
* * *
A Demon Bound
Satan’s Sword
Elven Blood
Devil’s Paw
Imp Forsaken
Angel of Chaos
Kingdom of Lies
Exodus
* * *
Demons of Desire
Sins of the Flesh
* * *
No Man’s Land
Stolen Souls
Three Wishes