Gods. They’re a pain in my ass, I thought as my cell phone chirped in my pocket, alerting the four college kids inside the apartment that I was crouched on their balcony, watching them summon gods-knew-what from the underworld. It had to be a god calling me—too many millennia had given them the worst sense of timing.
The kids spotted me through the glass and bolted, falling over their array of ritual paraphernalia. If they scattered out of the apartment, it’d make scaring the shit out of them a whole lot harder.
I kicked the balcony door in, whipped my sawed-off shotgun free of its holster, and fired at their exit, peppering the door with lead. The kids yanked up short and whirled.
“Oh shit—oh shit—oh shit, we didn’t know, man!” Hands up, they wailed in one long tirade. “We weren’t doin’ anythin’. Don’t shoot us.”
On and on their whining went, and on and on my cell tinkled, vibrating against my leg. Ignoring it all, I came to a stop at the edge of the elaborate summoning circle. A candle had toppled over, spilling wax across a papyrus scroll. The little flame licked at the scroll’s upturned edge but didn’t catch. Switching the shotgun to my left hand, I crouched, righted the candle, and flicked the papyrus around. I scanned the hieroglyphs scrawled from edge to edge. The penmanship was superb, more art than writing. Swirls and pen strokes danced beautifully, almost as though they were alive. Whoever had written this knew how to craft the ancient words in powerful and mostly forgotten ways. A sorcerer. A sinking sense of dread darkened my already somber mood.
“It’s him,” one of the kids hissed. “I told you… I told you he was following us. You didn’t fuckin’ listen, Jase.”
“Shut up. Just shut up!” Jase snarled back, and then to me, he sniveled, “We were just messin’ around.”
Puffing out a sigh, I pinched the papyrus by its edges. The spellwork it contained was authentic. Kids these days. They had no fear and no clue. The spell nipped at my fingertips, trying to escape its bonds. I dangled it over the naked candle flame. A ripple of fire raced up the paper; fire liked volatile spells, especially those sanctioned by the underworld.
“He’s gonna kill us,” Jase whispered.
I snapped my gaze up. I could do worse than kill them. It had been a while since I’d indulged, but I could make an exception for spoiled, rich kids with too much time on their hands, especially since that one—Jase—and I already had a chat some weeks ago when I’d found him buying canopic jars.
He gulped loudly and made a brave attempt at staring back at me before dropping his eyes. Few could look me in the eye for long.
Finally, my cell stopped its incessant ringing and the quiet settled. Too quiet. New York didn’t do quiet. I should have been hearing the endless whine of sirens or the bark of car horns. I’m too late.
I straightened. “What happened to kids screwing around with Ouija boards? This here”—I flicked a hand at the well-crafted summoning circle—“this will get you killed.”
“It’s just some ancient Egyptian stuff.”
My lips twitched dangerously close to a smile. Holstering the shotgun inside my coat, I reached behind my shoulder and curled my fingers around Alysdair’s grip. The sword slid free from its leather scabbard with a satisfying gasp. There was something to be said for a two-handed sword, particularly the kind etched with spellwork exactly like that found on the scroll I’d just burned. Alysdair sang with magic. These kids wouldn’t hear or feel it, but it wasn’t meant for them. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t meant for this world either—a little like me.
“Shit, man! You can’t fuckin’ do this!” They all started up again, bleating like penned sheep, all but one. The quiet one hadn’t said a word since I’d kicked in the door and was doing a fantastic job of trying real hard to keep me from noticing him.
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“C’mon, you’re the Nameless One, right? The coat, the sword?” Jase spluttered, hope gushing through his words. “You’re s’posed to be good.”
I wasn’t sure what surprised me more: the fact he’d heard of the Nameless One, or that these dumbass kids thought I was good.
“The Nameless One is an urban legend.”
Pointing the sword tip at the floor, I scanned the apartment. The door was ten paces away; the balcony was closer. Two possible exits and I was in the middle, positioned exactly where I wanted to be.
“Besides,” I drawled, “if he was real, you really wouldn’t want him saving you.”
Any hope of saving these kids had fled long before I arrived. The spellwork, the papyrus—heavy magic came at a high price. My job now was to contain the fallout.
My cell buzzed. “Poison” by Alice Cooper started playing from my pocket.
Quiet Guy kicked the glass coffee table, sending jagged pieces of glass raining over me. I flung up an arm too late to stop the shards from biting into my cheek. It only took a second, but the distraction lasted long enough for the summoned demon residing in Quiet Guy to snatch up a blade of glass and plunge it into his pal’s neck. Things got messy real fast after that.
A hail of screams erupted. Blood sprayed in a wide arc as the kid dropped. The demon inside Quiet Guy let out a triumphant howl, and the two remaining kids did the only sensible thing: they bolted out the door.
I lunged at the demon, Alysdair aglow, but being free, probably for the first time in its long life, the demon wasn’t about to let the sight of Alysdair frighten it. Scuttling back—its movements broken and twitchy inside its human host—the demon clawed its way up the wall and onto the ceiling. Its human mouth split impossibly wide, and a long, whip-like black tongue lashed out.
It expected me to fall back. Those tongues were barbed. Any sane person would have run out the door with the kids, but I snatched the tongue out of the air, flicked it around my wrist, and yanked. I wasn’t any sane person. Technically, I wasn’t a person.
The demon heaved back, jerking me forward.
Wrestling with a demon’s tongue wasn’t how I’d expected this evening to go.
“Give up now—” I started, but the tongue knotted back on itself, reeling me closer. “And I’ll let you live.”
My boots slipped. Tighter and tighter the tongue coiled up my forearm, bicep, and shoulder, until the demon had me dangling, my boot toes scuffing the floor.
The demon chuckled, the sound of it like metal grinding against metal—an abhorrent, not-of-this-world sound that set my teeth on edge.
“Lost your bite… Namelesssss One…” it hissed around its tongue, outside my mind as well as burrowing the words deep inside my thoughts.
“I know a girl like you.” I tightened my dangling grip on Alysdair. “All tongue.”
The demon had begun distorting its victim’s body. The face was swollen and flushed purple, as though Quiet Guy had been run through a trash compactor. The eyes, so fragile, had been one of the first things to go. They had turned to mush and were dribbling from their sockets. Crimson flames danced inside the dark, hollow sockets, seemingly deeper than a human skull could account for, as if reaching right into the soul. The eyes really were the windows to the soul, and Quiet Guy’s was no longer home. Soon, there would be little left of the kid. Once that happened, the demon would become virtually unstoppable and the no-bullshit New Yorkers would have more to worry about than the alligators in the sewers, like the type of problem that ate small children and used their bones to pave the way for more of its ilk.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I pushed the words through my teeth, “there’s a lot the right girl can do with her tongue, but my friend’s is as sharp as a dagger and cuts like one too.”
“Join me… Soul Eater…you were powerful once…could be again…”
I pretended to think about it while locking eyes with those glowing red coals. The deeper I looked, the deeper the creature’s needs and desires clawed into my mind. There was no light in this one, only poisonous, devouring darkness.
“I don’t do demon.”
I heaved the sword around and thrust it upright, sinking it deep into the demon’s gut. The demon screamed the way only otherworldly creatures could, as though the sword had cleaved its soul in two. I drove Alysdair right up to its damn hilt. A familiar spell pushed from my lips, which would have been the perfect end to this little dance had the demon’s tongue not unraveled and dropped me like a stone. I fell, dragging Alysdair down with me, and landed in a crouch.
The demon scuttled along the ceiling, down the wall, and out the door, leaving a trail of bubbling blood behind it.
I spat a curse and dashed after it, my ringtone still belting out Alice Cooper and how his girl’s lips were venomous poison.