“Blood has been spilled in Its name. It is awake.”
I’d felt the stirring before he announced it. Damned mortals always stating the obvious, as if I couldn’t feel the ground trembling and the old roots tensing – tensing, like a body preparing to be hit. As if I couldn’t hear the whispers growing louder in the dark, tendrils of ancient, incomprehensible thought reaching out and prodding for vulnerabilities.
The concrete surrounding me – burying me alive – couldn’t hide the disturbance. I didn’t need Kent’s pompous ass strutting in here, making declarations as if I was supposed to grovel at the news. Seated cross-legged in my wretched binding circle, sharpening my nails against the concrete floor, I barely gave him more than a glance when he came into the room with his cronies in tow. At his declaration, I merely grunted, and that hardly seemed to satisfy him.
“Did you hear me, demon?” he snapped, and his fingers tightened upon the leather surface of his grimoire. That damned worn-out book was always in his grip, the hammer he had raised over my head. A non-magical man like Kent couldn’t control me without his little spell book.
“I heard you.” I sighed heavily, and leaned back so I could tap my nails upon the floor. “Pardon me for not jumping in joy, Kenny-boy. The fact that you’re here to gloat about your old God stretching Its limbs only tells me It hasn’t woken up enough to give you all that delicious power you seek.” His expression darkened dangerously, and I knew I was walking the edge of enticing him to hurt me.
Captivity was so endlessly boring that seeing how far I could push my master before pain resulted had become a real thrill.
I shrugged. “So, you’re here with a task. Here to send me off on some petty errand before locking me in the dark again. Thrilling.”
Kent’s knuckles had gone white. He had a certain aristocratic look about him; he would have been just as at home in Victorian London as he was mingling among Seattle’s business elite. Dark gray suit, a subtle pinstripe on his black tie, perfectly cut and combed gray hair. He was as muted as Washington’s cloudy skies, and about as unpredictable in his moods.
“I would save your strength for the work ahead, demon,” he said, his voice tight, rage barely restrained. “Rather than wasting it on that petty tongue of yours. Unless you’d like me to rip it out again?”
There was a snicker from one of the white-cloaked figures behind him, and I glowered but kept my mouth shut. Kent had them wear the cloaks and the stag skull masks, but I knew the two faceless beings that accompanied him down here were his adult spawns. Victoria, smelling of bitter artificial vanilla fragrance and all the chemicals in her makeup. And Jeremiah, reeking of cheap body spray and hair gel.
“Tonight, at midnight, you will go to Westchurch Cemetery. You will go silently and ensure no one detects you along the way. There, find the grave of Marcus Kynes. Dig up his body, and refill the grave. Then bring his body to White Pine. Is that understood?”
I rather liked my tongue in my mouth. Growing a new one was nasty business. “Understood.”
There was no clock in that wretched little room, but I could feel midnight arrive nonetheless. The world changed slightly, moving just a little closer to the boundary separating it from Heaven and Hell. Midnight always made me feel good, as did finally stretching my legs and leaving the binding circle.
Kent kept me in that circle so often he’d had it carved into the floor. Like his father, and his grandfather before him, Kent feared that if he released me from his service when he had no immediate need of me, I would somehow manage to escape from him forever. A lovely thought, but an unlikely outcome. Kent had the grimoire, the only remaining record of my name on the Earth. He alone could summon me because of it.
I suppose he also feared that, in my considerable amount of hatred for him, I’d bend the rules and seek vengeance by murdering him and his entire family after being dismissed from his service. Again, a lovely thought, and a far more likely outcome. I’d risk the wrath of my superiors in Hell if it meant being able to demolish this whole family.
But it had been over a century, and in all that time I’d been in service to the Hadleigh family. It was impressive, honestly — no one else had ever managed to keep me in captivity for so long without losing their lives. There was a good reason there was only one remaining record of my name. Summoners throughout the years had learned quickly that I wasn’t an easy one to command, and thought it best to discourage summoning me at all.
I’d left a trail of dead magicians in my wake, and was eager to add a few more.
The night was cold and foggy, the pines dripping with dew. Westchurch Cemetery was surrounded by trees, all but invisible from the quiet road that ran alongside it. Rows of headstones, some over a century old, lined the wide untrimmed lawn. It didn’t take me long to find Marcus. The plot of disturbed dirt gave him away, his grave freshly filled. A flat, simple headstone marked him.
Marcus Kynes. Twenty-one years old. The “spilled blood” that had awakened Hadleigh’s God. Odd that Marcus had been buried at all. A sacrifice was meant to be done in the cathedral, with the corpse offered up immediately – or offered alive, if possible, for God to toy with at Its leisure. The fact that Marcus had been buried seemed messy.
It didn’t take me long to dig down to him, using my bare hands and claws to wrench up the loose dirt. The coffin was a plain wooden box, utterly unadorned. The moment I tugged up the lid, the stench of formaldehyde rushed in my nose. Marcus had been buried in a cheap suit, his youthful face waxen with the amount of makeup that had been coated onto it.
“Wakey, wakey.” I hauled him over my shoulder and crawled up from the grave, dumping him beside the pile of dirt I’d just dug out. “Just give me a minute here, buddy. Can’t have your mother knowing her son’s grave has been desecrated.”
I quickly filled back in the grave, then, with the corpse over my shoulder, began to make my way toward White Pine. The area of forest, and the mine shaft that lay within it, was a quick enough run to make, but cumbersome with Marcus flopping over my back. Still, running through the trees with a corpse was preferable to my concrete prison.
The witching hour neared as I reached White Pine. A misting rain had begun to fall, and Marcus was smelling worse by the second. But beyond his stench and the aroma of wet earth, I could smell smoke. A bonfire somewhere in the woods.
Deep in the trees, and a little way up the hillside, I found Kent and his merry band awaiting me near the flames.
They’d all donned their white cloaks and stag masks. There were at least two dozen of them scattered among the trees, speaking softly beneath black umbrellas. It was no wonder this little town was booming with cryptid sightings. Thanks to Kent’s little cult, who called themselves Libiri, nearly the entirety of Abelaum’s population had some fantastical story about seeing a monster in the woods.
They weren’t exactly wrong. They were seeing monsters, but of the human variety.
The only one not in uniform was Everly, Kent Hadleigh’s bastard daughter. A few months older than her half-siblings, Victoria and Jeremiah, Everly was blonde, willow-y, and garbed in her usual black ensemble. The fledgling witch looked absolutely petrified to be there, and when her blue eyes fell on me and the corpse I came bearing, she looked as if she would vomit.
“Brothers, Sisters, the sacrifice comes,” Kent spoke in a bizarrely theatrical voice when he was in front of his band of zealots. Somewhere between a fire-and-brimstone Southern preacher and a Kindergarten teacher who had bodies buried in his garden. It grated on my nerves, that voice, as did the way he snapped his fingers at me and pointed to the ground at Everly’s feet. “Here. Put him down.”
I let Marcus flop down unceremoniously at the young witch’s feet, and a flicker of pain went across her face. Had she known him? A fellow student at the university perhaps? Or had her heart gone suddenly tender when all her father’s preaching about the beauty of death became a very ugly reality?
“Remove his clothes,” Kent said, and I promptly stripped the corpse down, ripping the cheap suit like paper. With his chest laid bare, I found the wounds that no amount of mortuary makeup could have covered: multiple stab wounds were gashed haphazardly across his chest, and scrawled among them were the lines and runes of the sacrificial offering.
Messy. Very messy. Unplanned, if I had to guess. Spontaneous even.
I tweaked an eyebrow at Kent, a silent question I knew he wouldn’t answer. He gave Everly a brisk nod, and the young witch, looking sickly pale, knelt and began to examine the marks across Marcus’s chest.
“They’ll work,” she said at last. She hurriedly got to her feet and averted her eyes from the body. “The marks are crude but efficient.” Her eyes flickered among the crowd in a brief moment of worry. She thought what she’d said might offend, and offense could bring consequences.
“Very good,” Kent said softly. Then, louder, all theatrics once more, “Long have we waited for this day, my children. Long has the Deep One waited for this, waited with utter patience and mercy. Today, the first of three go to Its depths. May two more follow.”
“May two more follow,” the crowd murmured, save for Everly, whose lips were pressed into a thin, hard line on her pretty face.
“Servant, bear the sacrifice up to the mine,” Kent said. Servant. Fucking hell. I wanted to gag him with his own tongue. “Jeremiah will accompany you. This sacrifice is his to offer.”
A figure stepped forward, reeking of body spray. Jeremiah, of course. This messy, unplanned, absolute botchery of a sacrifice was all thanks to Kent’s dear son. I rolled my eyes, but hauled naked Marcus up off the ground and, without a word to Jeremiah, stalked away into the trees, away from the fire’s light.
Jeremiah tried to make a point of walking ahead of me, but I kept my pace just fast enough that he couldn’t. The boy had even less patience than his father.
“Slow the fuck down, Leon,” he said. “Or I swear I’ll have Dad rip your balls off next time.”
“Temper, temper.” I shook my head, but slowed. I’d let the asshole lead, let him revel in his little power trip. Staring at the back of his head at least let me fantasize about cracking it open. “So, this one’s yours, eh? Have a little trouble with him?”
“Bastard tried to run,” he said, then laughed darkly. “He didn’t get far. Squealed like a pig. I think I understand why you enjoy killing so much, Leon. It’s a fucking rush.”
I grit my teeth. “Don’t think you understand death from one messy murder. Just wait until your God wakes up. It’ll teach you a thing or two about death.”
I’m sure he would have loved to snap back at me, but we’d arrived. There, in the shadows of the trees, was the White Pine mine shaft. Boarded up for nearly a century, the stained wood framing of the entrance had been covered with numerous runes: some carved, some painted, some branded. A metal sign dangled from the wood on a broken chain, reading, CAUTION: OPEN MINE. DO NOT ENTER. The ground was mossy, and numerous white-capped mushrooms grew in thick clusters around the shaft’s opening.
The ground itself was vibrating. The trees were restless. An odd smell, like deep water and rotting algae, permeated the air. Somewhere, deep in those flooded tunnels beneath our feet, an ancient God was stirring.
I didn’t spook easily, but I still got a chill.
“Well, here you go.” I shoved Marcus into Jeremiah’s arms, who leapt back with a yelp and let poor Marcus thump down into the mud.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” His voice shot up in pitch. He wasn’t sounding so cocky anymore. “I don’t want to touch that!”
“It’s your sacrifice.” I shrugged. “You really want a demon to claim your offering to the Deep One by tossing him in?”
Jeremiah wavered, his eyes flickering between the corpse and the mine. His throat clenched as he gulped. I really didn’t give a fuck how the damn body got down there, but if I had the opportunity to make Jeremiah squirm, I’d take it.
Finally, with a groan of disgust, Jeremiah hauled Marcus up into his arms; no easy task, considering the dead man was nearly his same size. He trudged toward the mine, and stopped just outside the entrance, peering into the utter blackness beyond.
How much would I suffer if I just shoved him in? Two sacrifices for the price of one. Kent should consider it a real bargain.
But I resisted. Vengeance would come, someday.
Or the Deep One would wake and kill me first.
With a grunt, Jeremiah threw Marcus down into the darkness. His body hit the ground with a thud, there was a shuffle as he rolled, and then a splash as he hit the water in the flooded tunnel below. The smell of sea water intensified, and the wind picked up, rattling the pine needles above. My stomach lurched unpleasantly, and Jeremiah quickly stumbled back from the mine, wiping his hands on his cloak. He didn’t say a word to me, just marched back down the hill.
I stayed for a moment, staring into the darkness. My toes curled at the rumbling below, my skull vibrating with the force of it. The tides would be high tomorrow. These trees would begin the long, slow process of trying to pull their roots up from the dirt, as if they could walk away from the thing below that felt so wrong.
Then, from the darkness, there came a howl. Like the scream of a fox, but drawn out into such an agonized cry that it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
It was time to leave. I didn’t feel like dealing with that now. Or ever.
The God wasn’t the only thing waking up.
