A Savage Spell (The Nix Series Book 4)

by Shannon Mayer

  We stopped in front of the church, the tall wooden doors closed and locked tight for the night. I stepped up and knocked hard three times, paused, and knocked three more times, then a third round.

  “Three?” Cowboy asked.

  “Witching hour,” I said.

  “Three, three, three,” Dinah sang. “Six, six, six. All the numbers mean something. How can you not know that?”

  Cowboy stiffened as the door unlocked and slowly slid inward. I stepped over the threshold and was hit with a blast of cold air that had nothing to do with any heating or cooling system. I blew out a slow breath and watched the air mist up around my face.

  “Ornias,” I called out the demon’s name, “we need to have a chat, you and I.”

  An impossible wind snapped through the church and slammed the door behind us, the lock settling into place with a loud click. Cowboy jumped, but otherwise was quiet.

  I headed toward the main part of the church, moving easily in the dark. The lights of the city streamed through the colored glass windows, and while it didn’t exactly illuminate the place, there was enough light to navigate. I headed straight toward the front of the church where the cross was set up high behind the pulpit, and then turned my back to it. Cowboy had all but glued himself to my side as if he were taking Ruby’s place.

  “Ornias,” I said his name again. “Stop fucking around. You have a problem that I think you’re going to want to hear about.”

  The pews ahead of us flickered, faces fading in and out as that unnatural wind raced around and around the room.

  Cowboy’s swallow was audible. “Are those ghosts?”

  No point in trying to explain how the souls had come to be here, or that they were feeding the demon.

  “Yes.”

  “Mary mother of God,” he whispered, and I winced.

  Ornias roared an answer to Cowboy that filled the air in an echoing blast. “NOT IN MY HOUSE!”

  I tucked Cowboy behind me, just a half-step. “Not another word.”

  From the back wall of the church, right where we’d walked through the doorway, a thick shadow detached itself from the wall. A long cylinder that moved like sludge, slow and unstoppable, it lacked anything approaching a human shape. As it passed the ghosts sitting in the pews, it touched each of their heads, sucking down some of their energy.

  The shadow sludge stopped at the front pew and circled upward, still not forming into anything recognizable. Behind me, Cowboy was shaking hard enough that he bumped me more than once.

  “Ornias. Ornias the annoying, apparently. That’s what the books said about you when I looked you up finally. You know, I had no idea you were a demon when I came here last.” I smiled at the shadow that undulated in front of us. The ghosts behind us had all slumped in their pews as if they could barely remain upright.

  “You insult me in my house.” The demon’s voice was a growl, a rolling thunder that rippled outward. It slid over my skin and brought with it fear. A demon gift.

  “You have a problem, Ornias. And perhaps I can help you,” I said.

  Laughter flowed from him. “I have my pets, and new pets arrive every week in this devil-spawned city. I have no problem.”

  “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. I think your brothers are coming to pay you a visit.” I was taking a gamble, but surely the hellish tableau from Carlos’s front yard confirmed we were dealing with the fallen. And while the fallen were different from demons, they had to know one another.

  The thick shadow slowed its movement. “I have no—”

  “Those angels that have fallen, are they not related to you? Do they not become demons if they fall?”

  The rumbling hiss that blasted out of him sent a literal icy wind around us, and Cowboy grabbed my hip with one hand. I didn’t blame him. My first real encounter with a demon had about sent my mind into a spiral.

  I held up a hand. “I want to make sure you are not with them,” I said. “If you were, you and I would no longer be friends. You know, like I’m no longer friends with Bazixal.”

  Bazixal was the demon I’d killed to save my son. The cost had been high, but I’d done it.

  The wind died down. A bell chimed somewhere high in the church, but I knew for a fact that no one was manning the bells at this hour.

  The thick shadow slowed further until it barely moved, just a twitch here and there. “You have become less afraid of the darkness, Phoenix. That is interesting to me.”

  When a demon knew your name, you should be afraid, but I felt nothing as I stood there, waiting him out. He might be a lesser demon, but he had knowledge that I needed. “You’re finally catching on. I am not like the others who come to you,” I said. “I need information, Ornias. Don’t make me call on Bazixal. Neither of us want that.” I curled up my lips like I’d smelled something rank. “Killing” the demon had sent him back to Hell, but there was no actual death for a demon, any more than there was death for a ghost.

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Tell me about the fallen angels. I studied demonology after my run-in with our mutual friend”—Dinah snorted and I put a hand to her, shushing her before I went on—“but I have a feeling I’m not going to find out how to kill them on the internet.”

  The demon let out a long laugh that echoed through the church, a cold snapping wind rising with it. “The fallen are not demons, not by our standards. Many of them chose to fall, others were cast out of what the humans would call heaven. And I have no idea how to kill them. That is . . . as the humans say . . . above my pay grade.”

  “What would they want with abnormals?” I adjusted my stance, crossing my arms. Cowboy’s hand had not moved from my hip.

  Ornias curled around himself like a languid snake, shadow looping in on itself. “Nothing.”

  I stared into the smoky darkness. “That’s a lie. You forget I can hear them, even from a pro like you.”

  The darkness swirled harder. “How the fuck would I know? They don’t talk to me!”

  Cowboy’s hand tightened until it was painful and I dared a look back at him. His eyes were closed and sweat slid down his face. Jesus, it wasn’t that scary. I turned back to the demon. “You would know because I’m betting you keep tabs on what fallen angels you can. You don’t like them, correct? They have more freedom than a weak demon like you. And I bet they could cast you out of your church. A church you can’t leave without being cast back into Hell.”

  He lashed out at me, and the cold snapped across my face like a slap, leaving the left side of my face numb. “Bitch, you mock me in my own house! Bringing with you a half-spawn!”

  I changed tactics, ignoring his cryptic shot at Cowboy. “How can they be killed?”

  His movement slowed. “You truly wish to hunt the fallen?”

  “Sure, let’s say that I want to hunt them. They are coming for the abnormals, Ornias. Aren’t the spirits of abnormals your favorite meals? The ones that last the longest?” I tipped my head at an older man in the middle of the church. He’d been a priest, judging by the way he was dressed, but the slightly gold aura around him indicated he was an abnormal.

  Ornias sighed. “I don’t know how to kill them. But they aren’t all on the same side. Perhaps you need to find a fallen and have a conversation with them.” He began to pull back, taking the shadows and the cold with him. I watched as he slid up the back wall and melted into the wood beams of the church.

  “Where could I find a fallen that is . . . friendly?” I asked. Eligor would have been my first choice, but as long as he was stuck with Easter, that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Look to the heights,” he said. “They think themselves still able to fly even without wings.”

  The demon’s voice faded; minutes ticked by, and the natural creaks and groans of an old building settled around us once more. The cold wind was gone. “Let’s go.” I took a step and Cowboy stumbled after me, still not letting go.

  Once we were outside, I knocked his hand free. “First enc
ounter with a demon, I take it?”

  “No,” he whispered. “I didn’t want him to recognize me.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. “Say again?”

  “My mother dabbled in the dark arts. She—” He shook his head and finally opened his eyes, and what I saw there would have set me back on my ass if I hadn’t been already braced for something bad.

  “You’re part demon.” So that was what Ornias had meant by the half-spawn comment.

  He gave a slow nod. “That’s the source of my power surges, the glow you saw back in the facility before they knocked me out.” A slow breath slid out of him. “The demons are looking for me. Or at least my father is.”

  “And you just walked in there with me?” I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice, but I made my feet start moving again.

  “I didn’t think there would be an actual demon in there. My mother taught me that churches were safe places. I thought . . . you were wrong.” He jogged to catch up to me. “Can I still come with you?”

  “You’re an idiot,” Dinah said. “You thought she was bullshitting you? About a demon?”

  I glanced at Cowboy. “Demons can be anywhere that they are called. Someone called this demon here at some point, for some reason.” I wasn’t going to explain to him more than that. As someone who carried demon blood in his veins he should in theory know more than I about his own kind.

  Diego made a raspberry noise. “I can see you have no way with the ladies. Maybe I should give you lessons? I could do that. It might take me years to teach you, but I’ve always liked a challenge.”

  On the way back to the car, I thought about the next step. We needed to ditch the vehicle, find a place to crash, and then work out a strategy for finding a “friendly” fallen. Too bad I wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep.

  And maybe see my boy again, to assure myself he was okay. Tell him I was sending someone to help keep him safe while I dealt with the monsters.

  Ruby’s barks caught my attention from up ahead. My jaw ticked and I hurried my footsteps.

  The car was out of sight around the corner, but I could tell Ruby was pissed. Her barks were interspersed with the deep growls of a dog who meant business and was done with the fucking warnings.

  We circled the corner to see four young men around the car. Their tattoos were visible under the streetlight, their street colors clear.

  “Hey, shoot the dog!” one of them said. “I want that shit in the car. Boss says—”

  The young man caught sight of me as I yanked Dinah free. He drew his weapon too, but I squeezed off a round first. He died as he went down, and I shot three more times, clean shots before the others could even react.

  I kept walking, unperturbed by the fact that Cowboy had stopped walking. Dinah sighed. “That was good. Those little fuckers were trouble.”

  I tucked her back into her holster on my left side, stepped over the bodies and got into the car. Cowboy stood on the sidewalk, frozen for a moment, then slowly made his way to the passenger side and got in.

  Ruby gave him a woof and he reached back to touch her. “You just shot those kids. They were human,” he said.

  “Those kids were murderers,” I said. “Those tats on their necks? They indicate how many people they’ve killed.”

  He swallowed audibly. “How did you know that from far away?”

  “I just did.” I wasn’t about to explain to him that the bad ones were obvious to me most days, loud and clear. Sure, I’d been fooled here and there, but rotten humans were easy to pick out. They weren’t as clever as they thought they were. My intuition became more powerful the longer I was away from the facility. In some ways, it felt stronger than it had been before all of this had gone down.

  That was why I hadn’t killed Eligor and had in fact tried to take him with us. Because, despite all of the brain-picking he’d done, he really wasn’t one of the bad ones.

  That made me smile as I backed out of our spot and drove away.

  “Aren’t you worried about getting caught?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  I fought not to roll my eyes, reminding myself that these were all the same questions I’d asked of my mentor once. Mind you, I’d been a hell of a lot younger. And far more eager to learn. I’d known even then that I wanted to survive, and that meant learning everything I could.

  “Because the human police have files on many, many bad people. Those four will have records, known beefs with other gangs, and the police, for good or for bad, will turn their eyes the other way. They’ll say it was a gang-related hit, that they are looking into it, and then the files will get buried. They have better things to do than look for the person who took out four known thugs, making their lives easier and the streets safer.”

  I took a turn and headed north into my old neighborhood, in the hopes that there would be a few of my old contacts left. Not all were abnormals, so there was a chance. My eyes drifted to the high-rises around us, then shifted toward the Empire State Building. That would be one of my next stops.

  Look to the heights? I could do that.

  “Dinah,” I said, “you remember that friend of Barron’s? The one he worked with from time to time?” Barron had been a part-time lover of mine when I was young and stupid. I’d thought he’d run away with me, help me start over. But, ultimately, he wasn’t that interested in giving up the money he made working for the different mob bosses. In the end, it had killed him. Which was a shame on many levels, but especially because I needed to get in touch with his contact.

  “What was his name?” Dinah mused. “Harold something, wasn’t it?”

  “Harden, not Harold.” Though I suspected he’d changed his name to Harden to look tough in a world where being tough started with how people perceived you. On that note, I pulled into a twenty-four-hour pharmacy.

  “What are you doing?” Cowboy leaned out of the car while I went into the store. I left Diego behind, but kept Dinah in her holster, still partially hidden by the long button-down shirt.

  The clerk looked up, took note of the gun, and went back to reading his paper. “No money in the till.”

  I moved up and down the aisles and finally asked.

  “Where’s the hair dye?”

  17

  I drove the car down near the river, parking it under one of the bridges. I threw the keys into the water and left the doors open. A pair of homeless men eyed me up. “Great place to sleep if you ask me,” I said. I pulled two of the bags out, and Cowboy took the other. Ruby hopped out and paced around, eyeing up the men. She lifted her lips over her teeth but didn’t make a sound.

  They waited until we were a good fifty feet away and then went for the car.

  “They could tell someone we were here,” Cowboy said.

  “Doubt it. I just gave them a place they could sleep in relative safety for a few nights.” I set out at a jog, despite the weight of the bags. The exertion felt good on my muscles and I relished in the way my breath shortened and my lungs burned.

  I led him and Ruby back into the city. I suspected a few of my hideouts would still be safe. Or safe enough.

  The first was my family residence in Queens—or I should say my mother’s residence. It wasn’t that big or fancy. Just an apartment in an okay part of town. It had been my mother’s before she died, and she’d used it as a retreat when things got too tense between her and my father. Which had been often.

  I hadn’t been to it in years. Hadn’t needed a refuge until now.

  Daylight kissed the sky before we made it to the apartment building, sweaty and aching. Cowboy muttered something about his boots not being made for running. “We’ll get better clothing today. After we sleep,” I said.

  I let myself into the building through the back door, not surprised the code hadn’t changed in all these years. Up the back stairwell, up five flights, and then through the door that led to the fifth-floor apartment hallway. The last on the right was ours, a corner apartment.
Better views of the city, plus an extra window to exit if need be.

  I walked up to the door and put my ear to it. No noise.

  “You sure it wouldn’t have been sold?” Dinah asked quietly.

  “The lease was paid for twenty years, along with maintenance and cleaning,” I said. “Still a few years left on that contract.”

  I punched in the numbers on the keypad and the door clicked open. I dropped the bags and motioned for Cowboy to be quiet as I slid through the door in a crouch. The keycode worked and the place was supposed to be maintained, yes, but both those things meant very little in our world.

  The two-bedroom apartment was a good size for New York, close to eight hundred square feet. Huge, really. My walk-through showed me that no one had been there for years other than the cleaning crew, and they’d been doing a piss-poor job, at best. I swiped my hand through the dust and rubbed my fingers together.

  Cowboy dragged in the three bags and Ruby trotted ahead of him and went straight to the couch where she plopped herself down. A poof of air sent dust particles up, which sent her into a bout of rapid sneezing.

  “You think we’ll be safe here?” Cowboy did a slow turn. The skyline had brightened and the room was already heating from all the windows. I went to the far right of the couch and pulled the cord that slid the blackout curtains shut, sending the room into instant twilight.

  “Safe for now. Door on your right is your bedroom. It hooks to the bathroom so shower, shit, shave, whatever. I’ll take the first watch.”

  I motioned for him to go, then waited for the door to close before I pulled up a chair and sat. Twenty-four hours ago, I’d woken in the facility with Eligor’s fingers in my mind and no idea when I would have the chance to make a break for it. Now, I sat in my mother’s old apartment in the city I’d left behind trying to figure out which step to take next.