Vintage Soul Part 6

Donovan started.

"Yes! I remember now. The thing looked like it should have taken its last flight a few decades back, but I do remember it. He came to me once wanting a charm that would split the bird's tongue so it could be taught to mimic speech. As I recall, he wanted to teach it to say 'Nevermore.' He used to carry it around on his shoulder, even out on the streets. I warned him against it, but people just saw a crazy old man in ragged clothes and a half-dead bird. In California, who's going to notice something like that?"

"I haven't heard anything from, or about him in years," Amethyst said. "I suppose he might have studied...gained some power here and there? Maybe you and I aren't the only two he pestered. He's been out of the local scene long enough to turn his life around and actually learn something. He did have the gift, just not the patience, or the personality, you know?"

Donovan nodded. It made sense. All the times he'd spoken to Cornwell, the man had seemed harmless enough, but he'd always been seeking. First one spell, then another, then just ingredients, and always with questions about this and that book. Donovan was known as the leading expert in the area on ancient texts, so he'd never thought twice about the queries, but had he ever given away the existence of Le Duc's journal? Could he be responsible for this whole mess, just because he couldn't keep his mouth shut about old books?

"I don't suppose you have any idea where I might find Mr. Cornwell?" Donovan asked.

"Nope," she said, finis.h.i.+ng her second gla.s.s of wine. "I'll ask around. I have to be going. I want to go check the wards on my vault, and to let Lance know there might be a new threat."

She hesitated, then stepped around the table and leaned close. She let her hair drape down over his head and teased her tongue across his earlobe. "You be careful, cowboy," she whispered.

Donovan took a deep breath, fought the sudden rise of heat that flushed through his nervous system, and sate very still.

"I really don't think there's any danger of a break in at my place," she added, "but I'll put some extra effort into security, just in case. I'm sure if Lance and I put our minds to it, we can design something new that will surprise anyone who thinks they have a plan for getting in. I almost hope he tries."

Donovan thought about Kline and the description of how he'd lain broken and battered on the floor. He hoped that their thief stayed far away from Amethyst and her crystals, but if not a he hoped it was Lance who was on duty when the visit took place.

"I'll see you soon then," he said, giving her a hug. Amethyst turned and disappeared into the phone booth in a flash of sun-drenched quartz, and Donovan glanced at the bar a final time. He eyed the bartender, took in the stolid, uninterested expression and the noncommittal tilt of the man's jaw, and then shrugged. Who else was he going to ask?

"Excuse me," Donovan said, taking a seat at the bar, "I was wondering if you'd seen a friend of mine in here recently?"

"Depends," the bartender said, still polis.h.i.+ng the gla.s.s in his hand carefully. "I've seen you with several people today, but it's hard to tell if they're your friends from back here."

"Fair enough," Donovan said. "I was thinking of one person in particular. I think I've seen him here before, but I can't remember when. His name is Cornwell, Alistair Cornwell. I've been trying to find him all day, but he seems to have disappeared."

The bartender didn't look up from his work at all.

"No one is friends with that one," he said. "He isn't welcome here."

"Then you've seen him?" Donovan asked, trying not to sound eager.

"About a week ago was the last time," the bartender said. "Had to have him eighty-sixed."

"I don't suppose you have any idea where he'd be staying, then," Donovan asked.

"I never talked to the guy except to mix his drinks," the bartender said, glancing up at last, "but I hear things. I always hear things. Most of those things I keep to myself. It's bad for business to get a reputation for telling secrets."

Donovan sensed that no response was expected, so he waited in silence.

"This guy, though," the bartender shook his head. "Good riddance, I say. If you're trying to find him, I hope he isn't really your friend."

Donovan continued to hold his silence.

"He has that old church on the east side," the bartender said with a shrug of his own. "Out near the barrio? It's been vacant for years; he bought it and fixed it up some. That's what he said when he came in; anyway, you can take it for what it's worth."

"I know the place," Donovan said, nodding. "I thought it would have fallen down or been demolished by now."

"The city won't do it," the barman growled. "Some kind of historic monument or something. They won't tear it down, and now that your buddy owns it, I suppose it will never be fixed up either. Just an eyesore."

"Maybe I'll see if I can do my civic duty," Donovan said, leaving a ten on the bar and rising. "I think I'll go pay old Alistair a visit."

The barman slid the bill off the bar and into a pocket without seeming to move.

"Give him my regards," he said. "He was a lousy tipper."

Donovan grinned, winked, and for the second time headed through the phone booth and into the alley. This time it was empty, and he made his way to the streets without meeting a soul. Things were looking up.

TEN.

There is a line that divides the city of San Valencez cleanly, though it isn't marked on any legitimate map. Though there is no clear indicator that you have pa.s.sed from one part of the city and into the other, there are rules and borders, and the citizens of both halves of the whole abide by the former and remain on the proper side of the latter.

The barrio begins at the 42nd St. overpa.s.s, caked in dust and decorated in neon spray paint and a wide array of gang colors. The Dragons, and Los Escorpiones, Comancheros and the East Side Kings, all have left their mark at one time or another. No one gang owns the gateway, but they all guard it.

One building stands directly on the line, half on one side, and half on the other, as it has always stood. The Cathedral of St. Elian stares out over the barrio on one side with blank, sightless windows for eyes. The walls are unmarked by graffiti, but ill-treated by time. On the other side the sunlight glares off grimy gla.s.s so brightly it reflects a grimy parody of the outside world back at itself.

In earlier times this Cathedral was neutral ground. Every Sunday families from either side of the odd, cultural line of demarcation that marked entrance to the "other side of the tracks" came to wors.h.i.+p. They sang hymns and harmonized. They t.i.thed and raised funds to buy a larger bell to be housed in the steeple, and funded missionary work. Then, slowly, as the "good" side of the city drew back, leaving empty streets and vacant homes, and the "other" side grew thick with families and children, overpopulated and angry like a swarming hive of humanity, the church faltered.

Without the funding provided by more well-to-do paris.h.i.+oners, the upkeep of the ma.s.sive building became a burden on the community, and on The Church in Rome. Typically, The Church backed out first. For years the building was home to a parade of faith- healers and evangelists, spiritualists and charlatans, and all that time the rot seeped deeper. The walls crumbled a little further, and the bra.s.s bell, once so magnificent in its tower, pealing its call to wors.h.i.+p through the lower east side of the city, hung corroded and silent.

Eventually even the street preachers avoided the Cathedral. An air of decay and rot permeated the air near the building. Rats and stray animals took up residence, and transients peered from the lower level windows in search of prey. Anyone who thinks a city isn't a jungle needs to spend more time in the darker parts later at night. There are hunters, there are predators, and anyone and anything can become the prey, given the right moment.

Then, after the cathedral had stood empty for months, thing s.h.i.+fted again. Inside the cathedral the aisles had been swept, though haphazardly. Some of the pews had been wiped clean, though only to store stacked books and rolled ma.n.u.scripts. The inside of the gla.s.s on the windows had been spray-painted black, blocking out the world. The rectory had been cleared, and a thin, wild-eyed man slipped in and out from time to time, barely visible in his pa.s.sing as if something blocked him from sight, or distracted anyone trying to watch him.

Grandmothers whispered that he was a priest. They believed that MotherChurch was coming home to the cathedral, and that the bell would sing one Sunday morning, calling them back to wors.h.i.+p. The men whispered, spat and made the sign to ward them against the evil eye a and they watched, wondering who was moving in on what, and whether they should be angry, frightened, or trying to form allegiances.

The gangs rolled past in silence. Sometimes Los Escorpiones slouched on the street corner, or dangled from the windows of other abandoned buildings nearby to keep a watch on the doors, and the man who used them. It was noted by both the men, and the grandmothers, that the gangs stayed clear of the cathedral itself, and this caused further speculation, but no one ventured near enough to get a clear answer.

Late at night, strange lights flickered behind the darkened windows. Smoke rose from the ancient chimney, and it was oddly scented. No one knew exactly what the smell was, but it made them uneasy. The smoke dropped to ground level and whirled around their ankles, slipped under their doors and found its way through the cracks in shutters and cracked panes of gla.s.s.

There was a voice, too. At first it seemed like many voices, because it was never the same. The language changed. The intonation changed. Sometimes there was rhythm, and sometimes it might have been the mad cackling of a crazy man. The more they listened, though, the more certain all became that all the sounds and all the voices were really only one, and though they knew it must be the thin, wild-eyed man with disheveled hair a the guy who looked at first glance like a homeless crazy man, and then like some kind of angry spirit, it was hard to believe such a small man could make that G.o.d-awful racket. Harder still to understand why the sight of him made their blood run cold, or why they couldn't sleep peacefully if they saw the lights dancing in that old stone building, or heard the sounds.

Inside, seated cross-legged on one of the half-cleared pews, Alistair Cornwell glared at the book in his hand and concentrated. It was an incomplete copy of a very old grimoire, and he was doing his best to re-create what was missing from other sources. He knew that complete copies of the incantation existed, but they were expensive, and there were only a few places they could be obtained, none of which would have welcomed his business.

He'd gotten this partial tome from one of the collectors, a grubby little worm of a man known only as Chance. It was an apt name, because when you bought things from him, you were certainly taking a chance on quality. The book had been described as "almost complete," but the last three pages of the most important incantation it held were missing, and Chance had no idea what happened to them. In fact, he wasn't willing to divulge his source for the part of the ma.n.u.script he did possess. Cornwell had concluded that it was stolen, and that the pages were lost.

Worse still, with his own shaky reputation, and the fact he'd bought a probable "hot" grimoire, he couldn't ask anyone about the incantation, or even mention he intended to try it. Doing so could implicate him in whatever theft had brought him the book in the first place, and admission that he was going to attempt magic beyond anything he'd ever pulled off in the past, without proper safeguards, would result in ... unpleasantness.

He'd already sc.r.a.ped up the matted, half rotted carpet from the large, flat bit of floor behind the altar. It was no easy task. The rug was ancient, and it had been rained on, urinated on, and pounded into place by the pa.s.sing of thousands of feet. The circle Cornwell cut was large, nearly twice the circ.u.mference he needed to work with. He'd brushed dry dust over the expanse of wood and swept it away, and then cleaned it thoroughly. He treated the wood with scented oil and, following the detailed instructions at the beginning of the incantation, he polished the surface until it gleamed, covering every inch of it in slow circles with a soft rag. He repeated this for seventeen nights straight, one night in a clockwise motion, and the next in a counter clockwise pattern. He hoped that the number was actually 17. It appeared to be the European digit with the slash through the center of the upright stroke, but the paper was old, and the text was smudged. It could have been a 19.

This was the kind of imprecision that had landed Alistair in such dire circ.u.mstances, working on the edge of the barrio by candle light. He knew he should have verified the number. He knew, in fact, that he should have an innate understanding of the ritual itself, which would have rendered him capable of figuring out on his own which number was more significant to the operation at hand, and why the patterns followed one upon the next as they did. It was too late for that. It had been too late for many years.

He'd spent time as an apprentice, and for many years he'd progressed rapidly. It hadn't been enough, of course. There were restrictions, things he wasn't allowed to try, powers he wasn't "ready" to wield, secrets that were barred from him and locked away behind walls and wards and charms he could never break. Shortcuts had presented themselves, and Alistair, invariably, took them. He couldn't stand the thought of waiting, year after year, to be found worthy of things he knew he was ready for now. The t.i.tle of "apprentice" didn't sit well on his heart...he was destined to greater things. That's how he saw it, anyway. Others disagreed, and he'd been banished.

Now he worked in solitude, disgraced and avoided by others who understood the arts he practiced. He didn't know if they were aware of his efforts or if, as far as that dark world was concerned, he'd dropped off the face of the earth. He also didn't care. Alistair Cornwell had one purpose in his life, and he intended to fulfill that purpose with, or without the a.s.sistance or approval of his so-called peers.

There was a raucous cry from the rafters overhead, and a bit of debris dropped to the floor, just to the right of his cleared circle. Alistair started from his seat as if he'd been bitten and scrambled forward. He leaned in close and peered at the circle, but it appeared to be clean. Whatever had dropped hadn't invalidated his monotonous efforts at purification. He swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and then whirled to glare upward.

"d.a.m.n you, Asmodeus," he cried, shaking his fist.

There was a flutter of wings. Another trickle of dirt and dust filtered down through the dense air, and Cornwell drew himself up quickly. He spread the ragged cloak he wore out like the wings of some sort of giant bat, using the material to block the fall of debris from the circle behind him. Moments later there was a louder rustle of wings, and a huge old crow landed on the corner of a nearby pew. The bird glared back at Alistair balefully. Cornwell snorted in disgust, which proved to be a mistake. He breathed in some of the falling dust, and moments later sneezed loudly. He wiped his nose on his cloak and returned to the book.

"We're ready," he announced.

The bird didn't answer, but it eyed him dubiously and looked ready to take off at any moment. Cornwell paid no attention; he was focused. He had everything he would need, or the closest subst.i.tute he could find for each item, laid out on the very front pew. He had colored chalk. He had small, charred braziers. He had incense sticks, candles, several pouches of dust gathered from different sources, a vial of murky brown liquid, and a small test tube of blood. Asmodeus had obtained the tube for him from a local clinic, flying in an open window in a rush of wings and dark feathers. It was a close call, nearly ending the bird's existence on the tip of a nurse's umbrella, but Asmodeus cleared the window sill at the last moment, the vial clutched tightly, and managed somehow not to crush it, drop it, or step on it during his landing when he returned to the cathedral. It was not an approved method of obtaining ingredients, but then, if Alistair had approached this through normal channels he not only would not have gotten the blood, but very likely someone would have come through and stripped away the other things he'd worked so hard to gather.

He could have purchased the blood, of course, but stealing it had been so much easier, and it had drawn less attention. Sure, it made a small splash in the news. It wasn't every day that a crow made off with medical supplies, even if they were s.h.i.+ny, but not all the news in the outside, mundane world made it to those who might figure out the significance. He'd been very careful to gather his materials slowly and from a variety of sources. The summoning he planned hadn't been attempted in many years, and was considered extremely dangerous. If he were part of the "inner circle" of the city he would have safeguards from a dozen others in place, and even if he failed, the damage would be contained.

Here he was not only on his own, but so were those in the surrounding streets. If he managed to summon the demon he sought, he would gain everything he'd been denied by his failed apprentices.h.i.+p, as well as enough riches and power to insure he could no longer be ignored. If he failed, it was impossible to tell what might happen. The worst that could happen, the most humiliating failure, would be if nothing happened at all. With the subst.i.tutions he'd been forced to make with his choice of ingredients, and the incomplete incantation, fleshed out through his own research and intuition to its full length, it was impossible to judge with any certainty what might happen.

Cornwell was willing to take the risk. He was sensitive enough to the powers surrounding him to know that the ritual was only the face of the procedure. The concentration of ingredients, rhythm, proper intonation and form were a focus used to draw on powers one already possessed. He knew he could perform this summoning, and he knew that if he could make the ritual real to himself, it would become self-fulfilling, in a way.

This did nothing to relieve the pressure. With a last careful glance at Asmodeus to make sure the bird had no further notions of creating whirlwinds or contaminating the circle, Alistair began.

He placed the articles he needed to complete the ritual dead center in the cleared area. These included a small altar, a bra.s.s chalice, which according to the incomplete ritual should be gold, a ceremonial dagger with gla.s.s stones where the jewels should have been inset, a wand made of several oak branches twined together and tipped by a very clear, nearly perfect quartz crystal. In the weave of the branches, crystals of other colors glittered. Not all of them were what the book called for, but they were subst.i.tuted by color, red gla.s.s for the ruby, and various types of quartz for other gems.

Each and every shortcut had required its own lengthy justification. He had to convince himself that the color was all that mattered in the crystals, that the gold chalice was just an affectation of a well-to-do magician, and that it was the symbol of the cup that mattered. As long as he could convince himself, he knew it would be fine. The nagging doubt at the back of his mind threatened to topple this flawed fortress of illogic, but he kept it under wraps and silenced it any time it became too loud by imagining the things he would have once he succeeded.

Asmodeus was less convinced than his master, and not too shy to squawk warnings in arcane bird-tongue. Cornwell's failure to train the bird to mimic human speech was one of the creature's most irritating defeats. It was such a simple trick that even normal, everyday humans had managed it. Of course, they surgically split the bird's tongues, which allowed the animals to create sounds that were otherwise beyond them, but with his abilities and insights, not to mention the bond between himself and his familiar; Cornwell should have been able to pull off the task easily.

He knew there were charms that would do the trick. He'd known a witch with a frog familiar, one of the odder combinations he'd encountered, and much too comical to be taken seriously, but even that woman had managed it. When her frog croaked, the small amulet it wore on a gilded collar transformed the words to pa.s.sable English. Alistair had never been able to manage it. He had changed Asmodeus' voice many times, once to that of a pig, and twice to different breeds of dog, but he'd never been able to make the words comprehensible, and over time the old crow had grown weary of his efforts and refused to take part in the ritual again. If Cornwell attempted to bewitch him, the bird took off with a squawk and a flurry of wings that left the air heavy with dark, ratty feathers.

Alistair wasn't thinking about Asmodeus as he prepared his circle. There would be plenty of time to right the mundane wrongs of his life once the ritual was complete. With his instruments carefully placed in the very center of the open s.p.a.ce, he took a large, thick chunk of white chalk and very slowly, very carefully, drew a circle around himself. He had left small marks just outside the range of the outer circle to guide his hand, and he knew that the first circle he drew was exactly ten feet in diameter, five feet to any given point on the outer rim from the center.

Once this was complete, he drew a second circle two hand-spans shorter in radius, leaving about ten inches to a foot of s.p.a.ce between the two concentric borders. He didn't have to make it so large, but he knew the more s.p.a.ce he gave himself to properly draw the angelic symbols and names, the better chance he'd do it without some bizarre spelling error sending him spiraling off into the pits of h.e.l.l. It was a possibility, after all; that's where the door he intended to open led to.

He worked feverishly. Now that he'd begun, he knew he would have to remain with the ritual, safe within his circle, until everything was complete. He needed to get the formula written, the braziers lit, and the initial invocations completed as soon as possible to allow as many hours of darkness as possible for the main ritual. A sneeze at the wrong time, or some weakness of body or mind intruding, and disaster was certain.

He placed the braziers and candles, lit each in turn, and spoke the angelic names, invoking the spirits of north, south, east and west, air, wind, fire and earth, all in their turn. His voice was steady, and he felt remarkably calm. He'd been very careful, and very thorough. Anything that he did not have, he'd replaced with something suitable, and something in the way the air in the old cathedral, normally stagnant and void of energy, crackled along the short hairs on his arms and at his scalp told him he'd been correct. It was the pattern that mattered, the colors and the layout, the focus on his goal.

When all preliminaries were out of the way, he knelt before the small altar. He placed the cup in the center of this, and began, slowly, to add the other ingredients he'd gathered. Particular grave dust, herbs, a few spices that he'd actually gone out to the supermarket and bought, then purified. He mixed slowly, and as he did so, he glanced to his left and read from the text of the old book. He wouldn't reach the point where he ran out of original pages and began speaking his own version of the ritual for some time.

The final ingredient was the tube of blood. He'd removed the name and information on the donor and purified the test tube as well as he could under the circ.u.mstances. It was risky having blood from a relatively unknown source. There was no way to be certain of its purity, not to mention other qualities or chemical additives it might possess. Again, Alistair believed most of what he'd been told, and what he'd read, was there to confuse the issue and prevent more people from attempting the ritual. Blood was blood, after all, and it certainly came from a human donor. Probably it was better not to know whose blood it was a it removed any chance of getting caught up worrying over specific details. He could spend time on vague concerns, but he had no basis for any of it, and thus he found it simple to put the issue aside. Either it would work, or it would not, but whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon.

And it was happening a something, that is. A thick, cloying mist rose from the moldy carpet surrounding his cleared circle. The foggy cloud was drawn to him, but at the same time it was repelled by the protections he'd set. Within a very short time the church was no longer visible. He knelt in a whirling white vortex, cut off from the world beyond, and even from the pew where Asmodeus had been sitting when the ritual started.

Alistair would have kept the familiar with him in the circle, but the d.a.m.n bird wasn't to be trusted. There was no way to be certain of his control, and if the old crow picked the wrong moment to lift off and go flying into the rafters he'd break the circle a and the protection. Better to let the feathered rodent deal with things on its own and hope that it had sense to become scarce until the ritual was complete, and things had calmed. There hadn't been a squawk since the ritual began, and that was a good sign.

There were only a couple of pages to go before he would need to tilt his head to the other side of the altar and begin reading from his own book. He wondered fleetingly if he should release the ritual a his ritual a in a more permanent text, once he'd succeeded. Certainly there was room for a new voice in the magical texts, particularly if that voice could debunk so much of the old melodramatic nonsense and replace it with something more practical. For one thing a if you could perform the same magic with a bit of red gla.s.s that you could with a ruby; certain suppliers of magical items were not going to be as popular once Alistair ratted them out. It would serve them right for not selling him what he needed.

The flames on the candles rose suddenly, first an inch, then a foot. They blazed, though the wax seemed not to diminish. Alistair grinned fiercely. It was the sign that the first portion of the ritual had been completed, and that it was working. His protections were complete. The next step was the easiest, and he had the entire original text for its completion. It was time to open the door between dimensions a not all the way, but far enough that he could send his summons through into that other realm. At the same time it was the easiest to accomplish, it was the most difficult to control. If he wavered, or if he misspoke a word, he was lost.

Sweat trickled down the back of his collar, but he ignored it. Despite the danger, things were going so well that it was difficult for him to worry. He would get through this, and when he had done so, everything would be different. With the proper otherworldly allies, he could accomplish anything.

He didn't notice the wavering in the smoke surrounding him at first. His gaze was fixed on the book at his left; his lips moved slowly, and though he didn't speak loudly, the words rang out strong and sure. When he lifted his gaze to s.h.i.+ft it from one book to the other and take up the words he'd scribed so carefully into his own grimoire, he saw the figure standing outside his circle.

Alistair tried not to look. He needed to s.h.i.+ft his gaze back to the ritual, and to continue. It didn't matter who it was; they couldn't break through the protective circle. If it was someone sent to stop him, or to prevent him from completing his ritual, they were too late. The wards were set and the spirits had been invoked; only he could break the circle as long as he maintained his concentration.

Something caught his eye, though, and he couldn't look away. The cup sat, forgotten on the altar, the final ingredient still sealed in its tube and the intricately woven oak sapling wand remained untouched.

A tall slender figure in a very dark hooded robe stood outside the circle. Alistair saw eyes in the shadowed depth of the hood, but could make out no features. There was no attempt to enter the circle, no movement, and no sound. The figure stood and stared in at him as if he were some sort of caged animal.

None of this bothered Alistair in the slightest. He'd half expected to be discovered at some point in the ritual, but once he'd pa.s.sed a certain stage, he knew that there was nothing anyone could do but to wait and to see what would happen. They could set wards and confining spells around the church. They could contain what happened, but they could not enter his circle without his willing it, and no way was he letting any of them in. Not until he had what he was after.

But it wasn't just the robed figure. There was something sitting on its shoulder, something big and black, sleek and feathered. Dark eyes gazed coldly in at him, and he froze.

Without thinking, he dropped the small pouch he held in his hand and spoke a single word a a word that was no part of the ritual, not what had been written originally, or what he'd added himself.

"Asmodeus?" he whispered.

He saw his error too late. It wasn't his familiar seated on that shoulder, but a much larger, much younger bird. It spread its wings as he spoke, taking flight. This dislodged the hood from the intruder's features, but Alistair never saw them. The smoky mist stopped circling him and hung motionless in the air. He dropped his gaze to the second book and searched for the point that he needed to recapture the rhythm, but as he spun, his hand caught the rim of the cup and toppled, it. The thick, murky contents splashed over the page and obscured the words. He reeled back, and as he moved, the stranger outside the circle reached out with the toe of one boot and sc.r.a.ped a small break in the circle.

The smoke billowed and was sucked in through that breach so rapidly that all sound and most of the air were sucked from the cathedral. In that instant, the robed figure reached back and flipped his cowl forward. Without air to hold it aloft, the raven tumbled, but his master stepped toward the door, held out an arm, and the bird thudded to a landing, gripping tightly. Without a word the intruder spun and sprinted toward the back of the cathedral toward the rectory and the street beyond.

The circle had become a white pillar stretching from floor to ceiling. It was impossible to see into the interior, and no sound escaped from within, but the air hummed with energy and then, with a shudder, the remnant of the circle blew asunder. Air and sound raced outward, pounding the windows from the old cathedral outward and sending a shower of broken wood frame and gla.s.s shards in a long arc, pummeling the street and homes beyond. The sound was deafening, half scream, and half roar. A cloud rolled out, low to the ground, billowed, and rose until the entire structure of the cathedral was cloaked in cloying fog.

Inside, still standing, Alistair clutched his throat and tried to stagger forward. The breath had been ripped from his lungs in the explosion, and he was blind, but somehow he had the presence of mind to try and move away. Above him he heard Asmodeus cry out, loud and long. He heard the flutter of the old bird's wings, but he saw nothing.

Near his ankle the air s.h.i.+mmered. At first it was just a darker patch against the polished wood floor, but it widened, and as it did so, something moved in the s.p.a.ce beyond a something that glowed sickly green. Alistair staggered in a circle, and his foot came into contact with that dark patch. There was a great cry, and Asmodeus dove from the rafters, riding the thin air in a long, slow arc toward his master. The bird flew all out, making no attempt to land on a shoulder or minimize its own risk - the goal was clearly to knock Alistair clear, but it failed.

As the great old bird soared closer, something reached through that dark patch, touched Alistair's ankle and groped its way upward. Whatever it was sank into Cornwell's flesh and dug deep. The crow hit its master hard, knocking him back, but as the body fell, something inside ripped free a something bright white and glowing. The taloned claw that had stretched up out of that darker place gripped it tightly and yanked. It disappeared, and the portal closed with a bright snap of energy. Cornwell's body toppled to the floor, and Asmodeus soared back toward the rafters, wings flapping madly.

At the door to the pa.s.sage leading to the rectory, the cowled figure re-appeared. The old church was silent as a tomb. Dust still rose from where the windows had blown out; moonlight and the artificial illumination of streetlights filtered in through the haze. The cleared bit of floor and its broken, arcane circle stood out stark in that void, empty props. Cornwell's body lay limp and unmoving.

The figure glanced up, spotted Asmodeus clinging to a rafter above, and raised his arm, as if to send his own familiar in pursuit. Then he hesitated, c.o.c.ked his head, and stood very still. Someone was coming a not the men and women of the neighborhood, or the police, but someone with power. The figure whispered something to his bird, scuttled forward, plucked the oak wand from Alistair's altar, and then spun on his heel and was gone. Far above, Asmodeus let loose a fierce cry that echoed through the rafters and shot out the windows and open doors into the night.

ELEVEN.

Donovan had traveled the streets of the city for many years, and he was no stranger to the barrio. A wide variety of pract.i.tioners of strange arts called that area home. There was Martinez, for one, and though Donovan respected the old man's abilities, he had no wish to renew that particular acquaintance. There was something in the white haired old guy's gaze that didn't sit well on the heart, and rumor had it that he was fond of leaving certain dimensional doorways open a bit too wide. He also played a lot of games with the gangs and other parts of the everyday city, and Donovan liked to remain as clear of that world as possible.

Donovan didn't have the sight, though he knew several others who did, but he could occasionally sense something in another's aura, a taint of odd coloration, or a hint of impending doom. Martinez gave him that sensation, and since he had no way to express what he could not quite bring to the surface of his mind, Donovan preferred avoidance.

There were others as well, some respected, some feared, and a few to be avoided at all costs. The Latin wings of the arts were varied, and tended toward darkness. Santeria, various forms of voodoo, and gris-gris flourished on the vermin infested streets. Their symbols lurked in the colorful graffiti and the tiny altars sprouting around street corners.

It didn't surprise him to find that Cornwell had chosen this area of the city to call home. There was less chance of someone stumbling in on him and interrupting his experiments. There were ways to find ingredients and objects of power in the lower east side that existed nowhere else, and that were less likely to draw unwanted attention.