It all happened in the space of three heartbeats.
Aaron’s blood pumped hot and hard inside his veins and pounded against his temples. His jaw expanded to accommodate the elongation of his teeth, he flexed his hands and the nails he had used earlier to gouge tracks in the wooden counter returned, and the muscles in his chest, biceps, and legs ripped and healed with blinding speed to afford him the strength and toughness werewolves were renowned for.
He was ready.
The footsteps were coming down the stairs, sailing, flying. But Aaron was flying too; he was a hammer of muscle and flesh, ready to drive in to the thing coming to greet him. Enemy. Threat. Part of him knew he was rushing at a shadow and about to throw himself into a cloud of smoke, but the animal part of him didn’t care. Didn’t think. And that was okay, because when it came down to it his instincts came from the worst part of himself, and whether there was someone physically there or not, his instincts were right. He knew they were surrounded by enemy.
And then he arrived at the foot of the stairs in a mad, furious dash, swung around the wall to look up—and all he saw was light. Cold, cloudy October light was spilling through the window at the top of the stairwell. Outside, birds were cawing. Crows, maybe? Crows come to watch the idiot werewolf fuck everything up. He wondered in that hot, sweaty moment whether they could sense the danger inside the house too, and if they had come as spectators or as little, black, winged messengers of death.
A cold chill ran through his body then, and the body reacted by returning to its normal shape—nails, teeth, and muscles included.
Aaron turned to look at Damien, whose face had turned an ashen white, and furrowed his brow in the momentary confusion. “I thought…” he started to say. “I thought…”
But he hadn’t thought. He had acted. Aaron glanced up the stairs and saw no one, heard nothing; no thumps, no bumps, no doors opening and closing, and no shadows chasing themselves around in the dim light. The enemy was here, he knew. He could still feel the vibrations, could sense the closeness of… it… but it had disappeared.
Deceiver, he thought, and then, it calls to your blood.
He didn’t know where that second thought had come from; whether it was his cognitive side overthinking something, whether he was answering a previous question he had asked of himself and forgotten about, or whether his animal—worst—side was picking up on the thought form of some external entity in the same way he could sometimes figure out what Amber was thinking if she concentrated on it real hard.
“How long has Frank been up there?” Aaron asked.
Damien checked. “Twenty minutes.”
“How long did he ask us to leave him alone for?”
“He didn’t.”
“So we’re just supposed to wait? We can’t go up there and find out what’s going on?”
“Frank told us to wait, to not trust what we see and hear, not to bother him, and to not leave the house.”
“You heard the things I heard,” Aaron said, approaching—striding—across the room. “None of that was right, Damien, and you know it.”
Damien didn’t say anything.
“Christ, man,” Aaron said, “What kind of dark shit is Frank bringing into my house?”
“I think,” Damien said, after a swallow, “He always carries the darkness with him, only he chooses when to use it and when not to.”
There was something Aaron could respect. He carried darkness within himself as well, but he wore it like a scar. It was a mark that was visible at all times, manifested in the way he would sometimes raise his voice without meaning to, in his sudden urge to go out for a run in the middle of the night, and in the way he could draw his nails along a wooden surface hard enough to leave lasting marks on it. Step right up, folks; come and experience the curse of the werewolf!
If you looked at Frank you could also tell that he carried within him some kind of inner scars, a torment that called to him from the distant past like the father yelling at you to come home right now or else. Aaron hadn’t talked to him about it, but he figured Frank probably had come from an oppressive family and had lived a tough life growing up. Frank reminded him a lot of the weird kid at school; the one everyone would stare and talk about as they came walking down the hall.
In fact, Frank reminded Aaron a lot of Amber; only Frank wasn’t the kind of guy to dip his head low and walk faster when the insults started to come. He was the kind of guy who flipped you off and kept walking with his head high. The kind of guy who would get beaten up after school for looking weird and would then come in the next day looking even weirder, taking strength from the hate dropped on his doorstep. Aaron had never beaten any weird kids up but he had been a jerk to them, and now he kind of admired them.
Hell, he wanted to marry one.
He was one.
Thinking about Amber was like settling into a warm bath after a long day’s work. It relaxed him, turned his muscles to jelly, and allowed him to breathe more easily. But the things that had just happened in the house brought up memories of the time before his transformation, when demons were loose in Raven’s Glen.
And that familiarity unsettled him.
Moments later, like something out of a horror movie, there came a staggering sound rushing down the stairs. Aaron went bolt-upright, tense and alert. Damien too. They waited for a second, two, three. Then more footsteps—someone coming down another set of stairs.
“Frank?” Aaron asked. His heart was in his throat again, beating, constricting.
A shadow cut across the shaft of light falling through the stairwell, and Frank followed it, hobbling into the living room with a torrent of blood rushing over his nose and mouth. It was dripping onto the carpet and some of it was on his hands. It looked like he had been hit on the nose with a baseball bat.
Fuck, that has to hurt, Aaron thought.
“Oh Christ,” Damien said, “Frank! Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his only clean hand. “Just need a fucking cigarette.”
CHAPTER 20
We were on the road again, zooming along the German countryside on the back of a four lane expressway, only this time there were three of us in the car. I may have needed to destroy the magical protection around Luther’s home to get him to come with us, but I could hardly have been called selfish for having done what I did. Of course, Collette would have suggested we try other—less violent—avenues, but I was due a rash action, dammit.
And besides, Collette had made it clear even if she didn’t exactly use the words that we had come to Berlin to get allies, and not contacts.
That was allowed, right?
“Where are we going?” Luther asked.
“We are going to ze Berlin Cathedral to meet some friends.”
In unison, I asked “Some friends?” and Luther asked, “A church?”
Collette cleared her throat. “I should explain,” she said.
“Yes, you should,” I said.
“Very well. Since we are joined by Luther zen it means we are on track with our mission and I may divulge its parameters to you.”
“Shouldn’t you have divulged any secret parameters to me before we flew to Europe so that I knew what we were getting into?”
“Non,” she said, shaking her head, “I suspected your good nature and your tendency to overreact would result in objections, so I hid my objectives from you.”
“I do not—yeah, okay, I guess I do. Continue, General.”
“Luther,” Collette said, pivoting on her seat to face him. “I am sorry we smoked you out of your home, but we needed your knowledge and experience as well as your magick.”
“My magick?” Luther asked, cocking his head. Kinda looks like an older Damien when he does that, I thought.
“You are a Necromancer, non?”
“I am.”
“And you have survived a confrontation with ze witch?”
“I have.”
“Zen your parti
cipation in my ritual is of utmost importance.”
“Ritual?”
The word caught my attention too. My eyes had been drawn to the beautiful German countryside with its tall oaks, bustling pines, and rolling hills until now. Everything was wet up here, the colors of autumn were more vibrant, and the sky seemed to be perpetually gray and overcast; and that was before I had brought Magick ripping into the world and inadvertently caused the sky to roar.
Oh, shit… that.
“Uh, guys,” I said, and the conversation died, but before I could mention my concern about Linezka being able to see us now I caught a whiff of something on the air, something familiar. It was a kind of musk I had smelt before… sweet, manly, but with a touch of femininity. “Do you smell that?” I asked.
Collette sniffed around the passenger side and Luther sniffed himself, but neither of them could smell what I was sure was man’s cologne. Frank? I thought. It sure did remind me of him more than it did the other two. Damien wore a manlier scent, the kind of cologne whose packaging has a picture of a totally ripped guy on it. And Aaron didn’t wear any cologne at all.
A chill like a trickle of ice water ran down my spine when I thought Frank’s name. For a moment I thought I could see him reaching for me, but in my mind’s eye he was being held back by something dark. Frank was screaming, flailing, but I couldn’t hear what he was trying to say because the dark thing kept grabbing for his mouth and holding it shut.
“Hey, Collette, grab my phone and call Frank, will ya?”
Collette dug into my jeans pockets, produced my phone, and dialed Frank’s number. When the number didn’t work she tried Aaron, then Damien. The phone rang a few times with Damien’s number, but then the line went dead. Odd, I thought. I was sure I had registered with one of the German networks immediately after landing. And I had texted Frank back after hooking onto the Hotel Wi-Fi, Aaron too. Why haven’t they replied?
“We must not have a good enough reception,” Collette said, “Let’s try at ze hotel tonight.”
I nodded and Collette stuffed the phone back into my pocket.
“What were you going to say before, ma cherie?” she asked.
“It’s probably nothing,” I said, returning to the moment. “I just… don’t know if she can see us. After what I did in the woods, I mean.”
“Perhaps she can. Zis is why we must hurry, now. We cannot use ze same spell again, and if you weakened it earlier, zen it will only dissolve faster.”
I nodded again, but the thought of being locked in Linezka’s sights again didn’t sit well with me. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so impulsive. I applied a little more gas and watched tachometer rise from a steady 50 miles per hour to a dizzying 70, then 80. Collette urged us to hurry, and hurry we would.
“Anyway, ze ritual I was speaking of,” Collette said, unfazed by the change in our speed.
“And the friends you mentioned,” I said.
“And the church,” Luther added.
“Oui. First, ze friends. I am taking us to meet a group of witches I know.”
“Witches?” I asked.
“From my past. Some of zese witches have flown far and wide to be here today. All of zem have had zeir lives touched by ze devil’s witch.”
The temperature in the car seemed to drop a few degrees, as if someone had just turned the air con on at full blast.
“Touched? How?” Luther asked.
“Zey have all lost someone or something precious to zem but have managed to escape her eye before it fell upon zem. Now zey have a story to tell, but more importantly, zey have a reason for wanting her dead. And zat makes zem allies.”
“I didn’t know you had so much influence, Coll,” I said.
“An advantage zat comes with age. Many of zem are old friends of mine; friends I have not seen in a long time and am happy to see again. But zis is more zan a simple reunion. Zey are going to help us with a ritual; a ritual of trans-location.”
“No,” Luther said. His aura shot out from him, bitter like before, but cold this time to boot. A great fear had gripped him; reached right into his stomach and grabbed it tightly.
“Are you okay, Luther?” I asked.
“I know what she’s going to ask,” he said, “And it’s insane.”
“Is it?”
“Collette?” I asked, “What are you planning to achieve with this ritual?”
“My goal is to bridge a connection between her and us, and zen use zat connection to kill her.”
Kill her.
“Just like that?” I asked. The smile spread across my lips like a brightening horizon.
“No,” Luther said, “Not just like that. The ritual only allows the caster to open a bridge to travel through; the killing part is the hard part. Just how do you intend to do that?”
“I don’t intend to do anything; it’s Amber who will do it.”
“Me?” I should have seen that one coming. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Ze simple fact iz zat we have been relying on our affirmation zat ze Red Witch will be her doom, but we do not know if zat is true; and even if it iz, we do not know exactly how ze Red Witch will kill her. Perhaps she will be adverse to your mere presence.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“Zen we move to plan B.”
“Which is?”
“We tie her up and figure it out later.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“You are under ze assumption, ma cherie, zat killing her must be difficult. But if you are ze one who will kill her, ze deed could indeed be easily accomplished.”
“I don’t like all this talk of killing,” I said, “It’s morbid.” The Necromancers shared a look now, and I could tell what they were thinking by the way their eyebrows went up. Morbid? Do you know who you’re talking to? “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” Collette said, “But zis iz ze only way. She is not expecting us, not expecting an attack. She probably believes she iz impervious wherever she calls home. But we have our conduit.”
“A conduit with a name,” Luther put in.
“Of course,” Collette said, conceding. “Now you are briefed, what do you think?”
“Think?” I asked.
I wasn’t sure what I thought. We had gone from flying half way across the world to find a witch who could tell us Linezka’s weaknesses to being a mere few hours away—I was assuming—from potentially meeting the fabled witch in person. I had my poker face on, but I also had to grip the wheel on the Renault a little more tightly to stop the sweat from making them slip.
Maybe I was a little nervous.
As luck would have it we ran into heavy traffic coming into greater Berlin, so my sweaty palms couldn’t contribute to a fiery, road-related accident even if they had wanted to. Getting into busy Berlin wasn’t a quick affair, and sheets of rain were falling from the sky onto the car by the time we made it to Museum Island and the massive grounds at the foot of the Berlin Cathedral. But we had made it, and there it was.
Despite the haze being thrown up by the rain—droplets of water falling so hard and fast they seemed to bounce off the ground—I found myself marveling at the main church building as if it had been my first time laying eyes on it. It was a tall, wide, beige monstrosity covered in angels, cherubs, crosses, and depictions of holy characters made of brass which had gone green with time. And as we idled beneath the arch leading into the church, listening to the rain fall on the car and looking up at the glorious marvel of classical architecture before me, my mind went hurtling through time, back to my first taste of European architecture.
This was what I wanted from Berlin. If we had gotten nothing else out of our trip to the German capital, what I truly craved was to experience this feeling.
I wanted the warmth of awe to fill me and bring color to my cheeks, to listen to history itself speaking from the lines and cracks and dents in the stone and the masonry, and to reconnect with a past I had almost left behind. A previous part of mysel
f who wanted to learn about Religion and Mythology, to better understand the secrets of the real world as humans understood it. And there, sitting in a red Renault Clio beneath the Berlin Cathedral with its triple green domes, massive arches, and holy icons, I had gotten what I came for.
CHAPTER 21
“The last time my nose bled like this was during a Nine Inch Nails concert,” Frank said, “I did not see that elbow coming.”
When Damien had seen Frank staggering down the stairs—so much blood—his stomach twisted into itself and threatened to empty its contents right there on the carpeted floor. It wasn’t so much that he had an aversion to seeing blood; he had just never been exposed to so much of it in one place, at one time, and in the flesh.
Damien had loved watching scary movies before his family moved into the compound. Classics like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, even the Exorcist, had a knack for burning themselves into his child’s mind and haunted his dreams for weeks after having watched them. This wasn’t a good thing, of course, by any means. But in a way, the movies had prepared him for the truths about life which he would later become intimately acquainted with.
Death.
Betrayal.
Demons.
Dark Fire.
And while Damien could stomach most of the otherworldly horrors which he had faced down to date, it was the mundane ones—like severe nose-bleeds—that turned his legs to jam.
There was one scene particular, in the Exorcist, which chilled Damien even to this day. The scene covered a medical examination of Raegan, which took place after the initial stage of her possession. She was being hooked up to a machine which and part of the exam involved the doctor piercing a line straight into Raegan’s neck and then inserting a tube into it.
The process was simple, but there was a moment—after the doctor pulled on a plunger to make the blood flow, but before he attached the tube to collect the blood—where Raegan’s blood squirted out and all over her gown while her mother watched on, powerless to help her little girl.