by A. H. Lee
Mal was baffled…until the ghost raised its head. The glowing ball had dissolved against its skin and was dripping over its body like paint. Everywhere the paint ran, color and solidity followed. It’s not a ghost, Mal realized. It’s a living person disguised as one.
The face came into focus, and it was a face Mal recognized. So did Jessica. Mal heard her gasp of alarm. Azrael clearly recognized the ghost as well, though with less horror and more bafflement. “Duke Carnobo? You’re not a magician. What in gods’ names have you gotten yourself into?”
Chapter 41. True Names
Carnobo came completely into color all at once, letting the enchantment drop now that his deception had been penetrated. He glanced up at Mal and Jessica, then grinned at Azrael across the pool. “Lord Azrael… Your reputation isn’t entirely undeserved.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t see you there?” snapped Azrael. He’d taken a bone and twine charm out of his pocket. Mal could guess what he was doing. He’d placed a trap on Carnobo with the ball of light, and now he was about to trigger it.
The duke didn’t seem concerned. Mal wondered why the ghosts still hadn’t realized that the duke was alive. “No,” said Carnobo lazily. “I was just waiting for you to call your familiar.” His eyes flicked to Mal. “I know black cats are traditional, but gods above! Overcompensating much?”
Azrael flicked the charm in his hand, and a golden cage dropped down over Carnobo. The ghosts around the duke still didn’t seem agitated. Strangely, neither did Carnobo. Mal wondered if he’d been corrupted by some other entity.
Having contained his opponent, Azrael took the time to turn furiously towards Mal. “You brought Jessica?! What were you thinking? Jessica, stay there. I apologize for my creature’s insanely dangerous behavior. I will send you home in a moment.” He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, spit upon it, and began to fold a complex pattern.
Carnobo had come to the bars of his cage. “What a pretentious ass you are. Lord Azrael... Where did you get that name anyway? A novel? But you were only, what, fifteen? That was probably why.”
Azrael stopped folding. His head came up slowly.
“Oh, I’ve got your attention now,” crooned Carnobo. His face twisted into a snarl. “Did you steal that creature’s name before or after the school was on fire? While we were all fighting for our lives?”
Azrael stared at Carnobo. “Who are you?” he whispered.
“Now you get it,” said the Duke. He said a word that curled in the air like smoke. The cage vanished.
Azrael recoiled in shock, but he didn’t step out of the salt circle. Carnobo began a slow stroll towards him around the pool. The ghosts were still completely ignoring him. “Now who’s in a cage?”
“Wallace,” said Azrael flatly.
“Ding, ding, ding!” crowed the Duke. “Give the man a prize! A free ticket down the river! That’s not my true name, of course. Because I come from a real magical family who kept those things secret. You, on the other hand…”
Mal understood, suddenly and horribly, the situation Azrael was in. The thing inside the bear wasn’t a piece of Azrael’s body. It was his name! That’s why he couldn’t get his defenses quite right. Somehow, Carnobo…Wallace…knows him. He knows Azrael’s true name, but Azrael doesn’t know his.
Mal turned to Jessica and whispered, “This is bad. I am going to have to fight. He’ll tell me what he wants. You stay out of it.”
Jessica crouched beside him and whispered in his ear, “Do you want me to give you energy? I have plenty.”
“Maybe. Not yet.”
Wallace’s voice rose in a snarl. “You were the fucking help! You were a godsdamned charity case! There were brilliant magicians in that school from brilliant lines. You should not have been the one to live!”
Azrael had given up folding the paper. He took out a vial of something from his pocket and swept it in a circle. The droplets fell around him in a much wider arc than the salt. “Mal! Jessica!” he roared. Mal lunged forward before realizing that he hadn’t told Jessica what to do. He was relieved when he felt her skirts whisk beside him. They both slithered down the bank towards Azrael.
The ghosts surged, suddenly taking notice of them, reaching with lengthening claws and teeth. Jessica gave a yelp, and Mal heard the sound of tearing fabric. Then they flashed across the line of droplets and Azrael spoke the words he’d been withholding. Blue fire leapt up in a ring around them, driving back the ghosts, incinerating one. Wallace was still a few paces away.
He didn’t look impressed, but he did stop before he reached the fire. “You’re hard to kill, aren’t you? Like a cockroach.”
“Wallace,” said Azrael, “I could help you. Whatever you’ve done to yourself…whatever you did to survive…it doesn’t have to end like this.”
“Whatever I did to survive,” sneered Wallace. “Let’s talk about what you did to survive. An incubus? Now that fits you. Do you fuck that thing? Probably the other way around. And you keep it as a panther. Gross. I bet you love it, though. I bet you think it’s your friend. Only a pathetic weasel who never had a friend in his life would think something so stupid.”
Azrael was, as usual, impervious to insults. Mal thought, dimly, that he’d given his master a lot of practice with that. Or maybe he was giving himself too much credit. Maybe Azrael had become accustomed to cruel words long before he ever met Mal.
“You don’t know much about keeping an incubus,” Azrael said dryly.
“No, you would be the expert there,” purred Wallace. “Does he give you his magic in the ass?”
Azrael ignored him. “The ghosts don’t respond to you,” he said, as though working through a problem. “You’re wearing poor Carnobo like a coat. He’s dead; that explains the ghosts’ behavior, and you probably don’t have a body anymore. It’s been more than two decades since Polois. If you hated me so much, why didn’t you try this sooner?” He raised his head. “Because you couldn’t. You put yourself…ugh. Did you put yourself in a spirit vessel?”
“Oh, you’re such a smartie,” said Wallace. “So fucking clever.”
Mal was horrified. Spirit vessels were the kind of prison he feared most—trapped in some object, doomed to suffer endless boredom until someone deigned to open the vessel. However, inhuman entities like Mal could at least enter a kind of torpor. Mal had not known that human magicians could put themselves into such a vessel, but he doubted they could slumber like a demon. A human trapped in a vessel, fully conscious for two decades…? He must surely be insane.
Mal stared as Wallace’s leer stretched Carnobo’s poor, jowly face. Insane, Mal thought, and stunted. Wallace, Mal realized, was still the teenage boy who had apparently tormented Azrael as a young person. Azrael had grown up, while Wallace had remained suspended, stewing in his own resentment and rage, until the unfortunate Duke of Carnobo happened to open the vessel in which he was contained.
“You think you’re so powerful and disciplined,” murmured Wallace, “but you have no idea what it’s like to draw the circles and chant the spells and then cut your own throat while soldiers are beating down the door. And then to lie impotent in that vessel for decades…never knowing how long you’ll have to wait…to keep holding yourself together with nothing but memories and determination. That is discipline. That is power. That is what I was doing while you were perverting the world with an incubus.”
“We could make you a body,” said Azrael thoughtfully. “Something that wouldn’t fall apart, something that wouldn’t require anyone to die.”
Why are you still talking to him? wondered Mal. This thing can’t be reasoned with, Boss. He only wants to kill you. But Azrael had spent most of his life in conversation with a creature who kept threatening to kill him.
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” said Wallace. “This body is getting a little frayed, but I already have a new body in mind.”
Azrael rolled his eyes. “Mine, I suppose?” He took out another piece of paper and began folding.
>
“I visited your Shrouded Isle,” continued Wallace.
“Yes, I recall,” said Azrael without looking up. “Mal said something about you. I should have listened to him.”
No, thought Mal miserably, you couldn’t have known. I didn’t tell you enough.
“Your wards are all predicated on people not knowing your name,” continued Wallace. “An amateurish error…but then, you were the fucking janitor, so it’s not surprising that you missed a few lessons. You’ve also been using too much magic from that one creature. A close study unlocks the whole pattern. I rather liked your palace, though…apart from the disgusting panther sex. You’ve got a nice situation there with half the kingdoms in your pocket and the other half afraid of you. So I’m going to cut out your heart and wear your body like a comfy robe.” He said the words almost lovingly. “You built your power on stolen property, and now I’m going to take it back.”
“No,” said Azrael, “you are not. If it makes any difference to you, the school library was on fire when I took the grimoire with Mal’s name. I didn’t grab anything that wasn’t about to burn.”
A roar rent the air behind them, and Mal spun along with Jessica to see the massive bear, rearing on its hind legs at the top of the waterfall. A ball of yellow fire flared to life in Azrael’s palm.
“There’s my own dear familiar,” said Wallace cheerfully. “But before we really get this dance started, I have one more thing to say.”
Azrael was backing up, trying to keep both Wallace and the bear in view.
“Poor Azrael,” crooned Wallace. “There are so many things you don’t know. While I was setting traps for you, someone else was setting traps, too.” His eyes drifted to Mal. “I probably couldn’t bind that scheming beast of yours. You’ve got him locked up tight, and I couldn’t find his name in any case. But he’s brought me something else: another demon—such a pretty one—unclaimed and unbound, and her name was easy to find.”
Chapter 42. Fly Away Home
“Jessica Imogen Charles, I bind you to my will. I claim you for my own as long as you draw breath where mortals walk.”
No! Mal’s stomach did a sickening flip.
Jessica made a sudden jerky motion at his side, and her fist clenched painfully in his fur. Her voice came out high with panic. “Mal…Mal, what’s happening?”
As the long, liquid notes of the spell began to roll from Wallace’s borrowed lips, Azrael turned in dawning horror towards Jessica. She looked back at him, mute with terror, doubtless feeling the spell already at work in her body.
Mal couldn’t breathe. Wallace was going to bind Jessica. He would probably then order her to attack them. She was inside the circle, so the situation would be dire. If she survived, this insane bully would be her master for the rest of his life or hers. “Choke her.” Mal could see the collar forming in the air around her throat in a sickly greenish glow.
All of this was entirely Mal’s fault. She was here, defenseless, available to be claimed, because Mal had led her here every step of the way.
Mal did not think. He simply acted. He used Jessica’s panicked grip on his fur to shut out Azrael completely. Azrael felt it like a kick in the stomach. Mal saw him stagger, but he couldn’t spare a thought for that.
For the first time in his life, Mal was alone with his own magic…and with that thread of Azrael’s still attached to the collar. It spun bright within him—his own power transmuted by Azrael’s sorcery, turned into something that could be shaped and used. For one glorious moment, Malcharius Thardarian Vi’aesha Charn was, indeed, a demon who could use human magic. He took the bright thread and did the only thing he could think of with it: he hurled his own name into the binding spell.
Mal had hoped to disrupt the spell. It was not intended for him and could not properly bind him. The distraction, he assumed, would give Azrael time to concoct something that would shield Jessica.
Mal had anticipated pain, just as he would have expected if he’d stepped in front of a charging bull. He had expected the spell to hurt him. He had not expected it to tear him apart.
* * * *
Jessica fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut as the binding snapped like a taut wire. She had some idea of what Mal had done, and her suspicions were only confirmed when the greenish light that had been glowing around her own skin lit upon him. Instantly, Azrael’s blue fire crackled out of the collar. Mal dropped to the ground, convulsing as the two conflicting spells shivered over his body like lightning.
Outside the circle, Wallace was screaming, but Jessica did not look at him. She looked at Azrael. “Do something!”
Azrael was on his knees, whispering into his shaking hands. Before he could finish whatever he was making, Mal burst into flames—a mingled green and blue fire that swept over him and went out.
Jessica gave a strangled sob. “Oh, Mal! Please, don’t be dead, please.” My fault, my fault, my fault.
The fur and skin of his lower body had been seared away. Jessica could see long swathes of pink muscle and even the flash of a leg bone. The fur around his head and face hung in rags between charred masses of flesh and pink tissue. Mal turned his head. One of his eyes had gone filmy, but the other was so dilated that she could hardly see any green. “Jessica.” His voice came in a rasp.
“I’m here.” She knelt beside his head, but she couldn’t find anywhere to touch him that wasn’t horribly burned. “Mal, can you change shape?”
He tried. She could see him flicker briefly, like a dying firefly. She could also see the panic in his face when he realized he couldn’t. “Azrael?”
Azrael was crouching beside Jessica. He looked like he’d aged ten years.
“It hurts,” gasped Mal. “It hurts so much. I can’t seem to shift. What do I do? Please, please, it hurts.”
“Lord Azrael,” sobbed Jessica, “I am so sorry we kept this from you, but please help Mal. I will do absolutely anything. You can put a collar on me and keep me forever. Just please…” She could hardly get the words out around her own tears.
Azrael’s face looked bloodless and terribly calm, like a marble statue. He was running his fingers very gently over Mal, moving along his body, probing. He looked at Jessica over Mal’s blistered back and said, “I could patch him up enough to fight a little longer.”
“Do it,” groaned Mal.
“But,” continued Azrael softly, “I could never get him back to the tower in time to save him.”
“Worry about that later,” said Mal between clenched teeth.
Azrael was looking at Jessica. She didn’t want to understand, but she did. For a moment, she didn’t think she would be able to force words out. “Mal, I love you. I love you so much. I will never forget you as long as I live. I’m so sorry.”
Azrael had moved back around in front of Mal’s head. Mal had grown too weak to lift his own chin, and Azrael lifted it for him with one hand, so that he could look him in the face. “They say sorcerers are doomed to love things that can never love them back. Mal, you have been a sort of pet and a sort of child and a…” He finally choked, “a constant source of frustration. I don’t think I will survive this fight, but if I do, I will miss you terribly. I hope knowing that is enough revenge.” With his free hand, Azrael flipped the clasp on Mal’s collar. “Fly away home, my friend.”
Chapter 43. Jessica
The collar hit the earth with a noise louder than any collar ought to make—the sound of a great chain breaking. In the same instant, Mal vanished. No time for more good-byes. No time for one last kiss. He was simply gone as though he had never been.
Jessica wanted to scream. She wanted to beat the earth with her fists until she felt physical pain to match the agony in her heart. However, a strength she had not known she possessed rose up within her and slammed an iron door across her grief. I will think about that later. I will feel all of those feelings later. I will weep until I am sick later. Right now, I want to live.
Jessica raised her tear-streaked
face and looked around. Azrael had not moved. He was sitting slumped on his knees, holding the collar like a dead kitten. Beyond him, the circle of blue flame had fallen to barely ankle height. One of the ghosts tried to step across, and the fire flared up briefly to drive it back. However, the flames fell down immediately as though exhausted, and the whole circle burned a little lower.
Jessica saw no sign of Wallace. She had a sense that he had also been injured by the unraveling spell. But not as much as Mal. If he’d been injured that much, his body would be lying on the ground. She didn’t see the bear, either.
“Azrael,” hissed Jessica. “My lord, we have got to get out of here. You can punish me as much as you like later, but right now, we have to move.”
Azrael did not take his eyes from Mal’s collar. “I am afraid that may be impossible, Miss Jessica. My magic is running very low at the moment.” He didn’t sound frightened or angry or even very interested.
Jessica gave him a shake. “I know you loved him. I know you’re in pain. But there are people depending on you. Hundreds of people back at your court who need you, Lord Azrael.”
He raised his eyes at last with a bewildered expression. He no longer looked aged. Now he looked terribly young, lost. You never thought you’d have to live in a world without him. He was supposed to kill you on his way out. But somehow, he’s gone and you’re still here.
“Can you put the collar on me?” asked Jessica. “Can you use my magic to get us home?”
Azrael blinked. He looked down at the collar and shook his head. “It’s got Mal’s blood in it. His and mine. It’s not for anybody else.”
“There must be another way.” Jessica put her hand on his shoulder and tried to push magic at him. It didn’t work. Humans—even sorcerers—weren’t like demons, apparently. Jessica felt immensely frustrated. She had magic in her belly, humming inside her, and Azrael was a sorcerer, so he should be able to use it. How do I get it into him?