Hell Bent--A Novel, page 40
Mercy had set her red notebook next to her soup bowl and she was drawing a series of concentric circles in it. “So they covered it up. But Lionel Reiter became a vampire. We don’t even know what happened to the other pilgrims or their sentinel. Why leave the Gauntlet intact if they knew how dangerous it was?”
There was silence then, because no one had the answer, but they all knew the truth couldn’t be good. Something had gone wrong on that first journey, something bad enough that the Gauntlet had been wiped from the books and Rudolph Kittscher’s diary had been hidden or destroyed. It might just be that Reiter had been followed by a demon, that Lethe was responsible for creating a vampire. But then why not hunt him? Why leave him to prey on innocent people for nearly a hundred years?
“Could I go alone?” Alex asked. She didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to do it. But they might be down one pilgrim, and the longer they waited, the worse it was going to get. “I don’t need the Gauntlet. Why can’t I just walk back through that circle and find some way to drag our demons with me?”
“That’s awfully self-sacrificing,” said Turner. He glanced at Darlington. “She fall on her head?”
“I’m not doing it to play hero,” Alex said sourly. “But I already got Tripp killed.”
“You don’t know that,” protested Dawes.
“I can make an educated guess.” She hoped it wasn’t true. She hoped Tripp was safely tucked away in his fancy loft apartment, eating bowls of vegan chili, but she doubted that was the case. “I roped him into this, and there’s a good chance he’s not coming back from it.”
“You can’t just walk in by yourself,” said Darlington. “You might pull your own demon with you, but you’ll all have to go through to get rid of the others.”
“What about Spenser?” Mercy asked. “Uh … Not Spenser, Tripp’s demon?”
“If the demon consumed Tripp’s soul—” Darlington began.
“We don’t know that happened,” Dawes insisted.
“But if it did, then the demon would be able to remain in the mortal world and feed on the living.”
A new vampire could be preying on people in New Haven right now. Another bit of misery Alex had helped to create. Mercy had every right not to trust Tripp, to suspect he was a coward. But Alex liked Tripp. He was a dumbass, but he’d tried to do his best for them. I like being one of the good guys.
“We’re going to have to create a tether,” Dawes said. “Open the doorway and pull them back through.”
“The vampire too?” asked Mercy.
“No,” said Darlington. “If Tripp’s demon really did become a vampire, it will have to be hunted on its own.”
“Mercy and I have been searching the armory and the library for a way to lure our demons,” said Dawes. “But there’s only so much we can do if we need to be in the right position to open the Gauntlet.”
“They’re drawn to us when things are bad,” said Alex.
Turner shot her a look. “So every hour of the day?”
“There’s the Doom Sparrow,” Mercy said, consulting her notes. “If you release it in a room, it sows discord and creates a general sense of malaise. It was used to disrupt meetings of union organizers in the seventies.”
“Have you heard that silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?” Darlington quoted.
“I really missed having no idea what you’re talking about,” Alex said. And she meant it. “But I’m not sure we want to start a trip into hell feeling completely miserable and defeated.”
“There’s the Voynich,” said Dawes. “But I don’t know how to get hold of it.”
“Why the Voynich, of all things?” Mercy asked.
Even Alex had heard of the Voynich manuscript. Aside from the original Gutenberg Bible, it was probably the most famous book at the Beinecke. And it was certainly harder to get a look at. The Bible was always on display in a glass case in the lobby and one page was turned daily. But the Voynich was very much under lock and key.
“Because it’s a puzzle,” said Darlington. “An unparseable language, an unsolvable code. It’s what it was created for.”
Mercy shut the cover of her notebook with a loud snap. “Wait a minute. Just … You’re saying the Voynich manuscript was created to trap demons? Scholars have been speculating on it for centuries!”
Darlington lifted his shoulders. “I suppose it traps academics too. But Dawes is right. Accessing anything other than a digital copy is nearly impossible, and taking it out of Beinecke? Forget it.”
“What about Pierre the Weaver?” asked Mercy.
Turner leaned back and crossed his arms. “This ought to be good.”
But Dawes was tapping her pen against her lips. “That’s an interesting idea.”
“It’s brilliant actually,” said Darlington.
Mercy smiled.
“Does anyone want to tell me and Turner who Pierre is and what he weaves?” asked Alex.
“The Weaver was acquired by Manuscript,” Dawes said. “It was used by a series of cult leaders and false gurus to lure followers. Pierre Bernard was the last, and the name stuck. The trick is making sure the Weaver spins the right emotional web.”
“And it will trap the demons?” Turner asked.
“Only for a short time,” said Dawes. “It’s all … very risky.”
“Not as risky as doing nothing.” Alex didn’t want to talk anymore. They couldn’t wait until the next full moon. “I’m not going to let those things chase us around and eat at our hearts until they pick us off one by one.”
“They’re only going to get stronger and more savvy,” Darlington said. “Personally, I would prefer not to see you all eaten and then have to deal with a bunch of vampires wearing your faces.”
“Okay,” said Turner. “We use Pierre the Whatever. We trap them and drag them down with us. I still have a murder suspect who was … encouraged, if not coerced, into helping to commit two horrific crimes and planning another. I can’t get them to ease up on his sentence because demons were involved.”
“He was driven mad,” Darlington said. “That’s how you’ll get him leniency. Whether his monsters were real or imagined, the result was the same.”
“Let’s say I let that slide,” Turner continued. “There are the remains of three missing persons in the Black Elm basement, and someone is going to come looking for those people eventually. I have to believe Anselm’s wife is wondering why he hasn’t come home, even if that demon was out and about, wearing his suits and using his credit card.”
Bag the bodies. Switch the plates on the rental to transport them. Cremate them in the crucible after hours at Il Bastone. Wipe the car. Dump it. Alex knew what they should do. So did Turner. But she also knew he wasn’t going to talk about it. He might have killed Carmichael in cold blood, but he was still police and he wasn’t going to be involved in covering up a crime.
“We’ll take care of it,” said Alex.
“I won’t clean up your mess.”
“You won’t have to.”
Turner didn’t look convinced. “I’m going to take you at your word. Now for all your talk, you haven’t explained what happened out there on the sidewalk in front of this house. I saw a demon tear another demon in half. I saw you covered in fire that shouldn’t exist in our realm and I saw you use it to keep him in check. Anyone want to explain all that?”
Darlington shrugged and reached for seconds of soup. “If we could, we would.”
Alex could tell from Turner’s look that he thought Darlington was lying.
Alex did too.
39
The house was big enough that there was room for everyone to sleep behind the wards. Darlington was back in the Virgil bedroom on the third floor. Dawes would sleep on the couch in the parlor, and Turner had claimed the floor of the armory.
Alex and Mercy set up camp in the Dante bedroom. But before Alex turned out the light, she tried texting Tripp once more. It wasn’t safe to go looking for him at night, but she and Turner would try in the morning.
“I wasn’t very nice to him,” said Mercy.
“That’s not what got him in trouble. And you don’t owe everyone nice.” She lay back on her pillow. “I need you to be ready tomorrow. Dawes said the descent could be different this time. I don’t know what that means for you on the surface, but there’s at least one vampire running around out there. I don’t like putting you in danger again.”
Mercy wriggled under the covers. “But we’re always in danger. Go to a party, meet up with the wrong person, walk down the wrong street. I think … I think sometimes it’s easier if instead of waiting for trouble, you go to meet it.”
“Like a bad date.”
Mercy laughed. “Yeah. But if anything terrible happens to me—”
“It won’t.”
“But if it does—”
“Mercy, if anyone fucks with you, I will teach them a new word for violence.”
Mercy laughed, the sound brittle. “I know.” She sat up, punched her pillow, leaned back on it. Alex could practically see the wheels turning. “To be a pilgrim … you all killed someone?”
Alex had known this conversation was coming. “Yup.”
“I know … I know Dawes killed Blake. I’m not sure I want to know about everyone else, but…”
“Why am I qualified to be on Team Murder?”
“Yeah.”
Alex had told Mercy about Lethe, about magic, even about the Grays, and that she could see them and use them. But she’d left her past good and buried. As far as Mercy knew, she was a kid from California with some gaps in her education.
There were plenty of lies Alex could tell now. It was self-defense. It was an accident. But the truth was that she’d contemplated killing Eitan that very morning, and if she’d been able to get away with it and find a place to stash the bodies, she would have done it and never looked back. And she’d promised she wasn’t going to lie to Mercy again.
“I killed a lot of people.”
Mercy rolled over on her side and looked at her. “How many?”
“Enough. For now.”
“Do you … How do you live with that?”
What truth was she supposed to offer up? Because it wasn’t the people she’d killed who haunted her. It was the people she’d let die, the ones she couldn’t save. Alex knew she should say something comforting. That she prayed or cried or ran laps to forget. She hadn’t had many friends and she didn’t want to lose this one. But she was tired of pretending.
“I’m just not made right, Mercy. I don’t know if it’s remorse or conscience that I’m missing or if the angel on my shoulder decided to take a long vacation. But I don’t lose sleep over the bodies on my scorecard. I guess that doesn’t make me a great roommate.”
“Maybe not,” Mercy said and turned off the light. “But I’m glad you’re on my side.”
* * *
Alex waited until Mercy was snoring, then slipped out of bed and padded upstairs to the third floor. The door to the Virgil bedroom was open, and there was a fire blazing in the hearth beneath the stained glass windows depicting a hemlock wood. Darlington was sprawled in a chair by the fire. He’d changed into Lethe House sweatpants and an old robe—or maybe it was called a dressing gown. She wasn’t sure. She just knew that she’d been looking at him without a stitch of clothes for weeks, but that something about seeing him this way—feet propped on the ottoman, robe open, bare chested, a book in his hand—made her feel like a Peeping Tom.
“Something you want, Stern?” he asked without glancing up from his reading.
That was a complicated question.
“You lied to Turner,” she said.
“I imagine you’ve done the same when necessary.” He looked up at last. “Are you going to hover in that doorway all night or come in?”
Alex made herself enter. Why the hell was she so nervous? This was Darlington—scholar, snob, and pain in the ass. No mystery there. But she’d held his soul inside her. She could still taste him on her tongue.
“What are you drinking?” she asked, picking up the tiny glass of amber liquid from the table beside his chair.
“Armagnac. You’re welcome to try it.”
“But we—”
“I’m well aware my Armagnac was sacrificed for a worthy cause—perhaps along with my grandfather’s Mercedes. This bottle is far cheaper and less rare.”
“But not actually cheap.”
“Of course not.”
She set down the glass and settled herself in the chair across from him, letting the fire warm her feet, acutely conscious of the hole forming in her right sock.
“You sure this is a good idea?” she asked. “Going back to hell?”
His eyes returned to the book he was reading. Michelle Alameddine’s Lethe Days Diary.
Was he wondering why she hadn’t been the one to stand sentinel? “Find anything interesting in there?”
“Yes, actually. A pattern I hadn’t seen before. But a demon loves a puzzle.”
“She did help,” Alex said. “She told us you believed the Gauntlet was on campus.”
“She doesn’t owe me anything. I told myself I would never look at her diary, that I wouldn’t go hunting for her opinions on her Dante and give in to that particular vanity. But here I am.”
“What did she say?”
His smile was rueful. “Very little. I am described as fastidious, thorough, and—no less than five times—eager. The overall portrait is vague in its details, but far from flattering.” He closed the book, setting it aside. “And to answer your question, returning to hell is an abominable idea, but I don’t have any others. In my more futile moments, I’m tempted to blame Sandow for all of this. It was his greed that put this series of tragedies in motion. He summoned the hellbeast to devour me. I suppose he thought it would be a quick death.”
“Or a clean one,” Alex said without thinking.
“Fair point. No body to dispose of. No questions to be asked.”
“You weren’t meant to survive.”
“No,” he mused. “I suppose you and I have that in common. Was that almost a smile, Stern?”
“Too early to tell.” She shifted in her seat, watching him. He had always been indecently appealing, the dark hair, the lean build, the air of some deposed royal who had wandered into their mundane world from a far-off castle. It was hard not to stare at him, to keep reminding herself that he was truly there, truly alive. And that somehow he seemed to have forgiven her. But she couldn’t say any of that. “Tell me what you wouldn’t talk about in front of the others. Why do you still have horns—”
“Occasional horns.”
“Fine. Why did I light up like a blowtorch when you used them?”
Darlington was quiet for a long time. “There are no words for what we’ve done. For what we may yet do. Think of the Gauntlet as a series of doors, all meant to keep the unwary from strolling into hell. You don’t need those doors, Stern.”
“Belbalm … Before she died—”
“Before you killed her.”
“It was a group effort. She said that all worlds were open to Wheelwalkers. I saw a circle of blue fire around me.”
“I saw it too,” he said. “On Halloween. A year ago. The Wheel. I don’t think it was coincidence. And I don’t think this is either.”
He rose and crossed the room to his desk and removed a book of New York landmarks. He moved with the same easy confidence he always had, but now there was something sinister in those long strides. She saw the demon. She saw a predator.
He flipped through the book and held it open to her. “Atlas,” he said, “at Rockefeller Center.”
The black-and-white photo showed a muscular figure wrought in bronze and poised on one knee, bent beneath the weight of three interlocked rings resting on his colossal shoulders.
“The celestial spheres,” Darlington continued. “The heavens in their movements. Or…”
Alex traced her finger around one of the circles emblazoned with the signs of the zodiac. “The Wheel.”
“This sculpture was designed by Lee Lawrie. He’s also responsible for the stonework in Sterling.” Darlington took the book from her hands, returned it to the desk. He kept his back to her when he said, “That night at Manuscript, it wasn’t just a wheel I saw. It was a crown.”
“A crown. What does that mean? What does any of it mean?”
“I don’t know. But when you crossed into hell through the circle of protection, you broke every rule there is. And when you carried me out again, you found another one to break.” He settled himself back in the chair across from her. “You stole me from underworld. That was bound to leave a mark.”
Alex could hear Anselm—Golgarot—screaming thief. She saw the wolf’s lips pull back to form the same word.
“Is that what those things are?” she asked. “Around your wrists and neck? Marks?”
“These?” He leaned forward, and the change in him was instant, the glowing eyes, the curling horns, the broadening of the shoulders. Without meaning to, Alex found herself scooting back in her chair. He was man and then monster in the space of a breath. The golden bands glowed at his wrists and throat.
“Yeah,” she said, trying not to show her fear. “Those.”
“These marks mean I am bound in service. Forever.”
“To hell? To Golgarot?”
He laughed then, the sound deep and cold, the thing at the bottom of the lake. “I’m bound to you, Stern. To the woman who brought me out of hell. I will serve you ’til the end of days.”
40
Her face went very still. Darlington had learned that this was what Alex Stern did when faced with uncertainty. Fight or flight? A survivor’s move was sometimes no move at all. He could see her in the basement on that night so long ago, a girl wrought in stone.
