Read Hell To Pay Online

Authors: Marc Cabot

Hell To Pay (2 page)

BOOK: Hell To Pay
7.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

“This is what you want, Simon?” she whispered. “You will give me what I want if I give you what you want, yes?”

He could barely speak. “Yes, Irena... I want you so bad... You are beautiful...” He had to take a deep breath and relax after just a few words. She rewarded him with a firmer squeeze and a longer, harder stroke. Simon moaned in ecstasy.

“Good boy,” she said, and lifted up. With one smooth motion she slid his cock into herself. She was very wet and Simon shivered with the feeling of her surrounding him. She gasped with pleasure and her mouth went loose, but she still fixed those black eyes on his. Simon didn’t even think about condoms or anything but trying to push up into her as far as he could. Her eyes grew wide as he lifted his hips and the base of his cock stretched her tight lower lips.


Ooooooh
...” she said. “That is a nice big prick, Simon.” She took a deep breath and her face firmed a bit. “Most men just lie there when I do this. You must want me
bad
.” Her hips moved up and down quickly and Simon moaned again. Normally he would have been fucking her right back but it just felt so good to lie there and look at her.

This time she kept moving. Her hands played with his nipples, teasing and pinching. Then her nails danced over his bare chest, sending little trails of fire over his skin while her cunt slid up and down his dick. He could feel his balls tightening and he fought the orgasm.
No... not so soon... I want more...

She laughed again, more viciously. “Oh, you will get what you want. You will come for me. Then I will get what I want, yes?” Her paced quickened and Simon groaned louder, desperately. Her nails were scratching at his skin now. It would have hurt if he could feel anything besides her hot pussy on his cock, could think of anything but her angel’s face.

Simon let out a long slow breath and felt his cock swelling inside her. Her mouth opened and she took deep breaths as well, watching him, watching his face, watching him fall. She clamped down with her cunt and he would have shouted if he could.  Irena’s face grew triumphant and somehow vicious as he started to come.

Even as his come boiled up into her she kept her eyes locked on his. She shouted, but to Simon’s stunned amazement what came out of her was not a scream of pleasure but a phrase in Latin.

 

“Spiritu tuo, Peto!”

 

At the same time, her nails dug deep into his chest and bright white flashes of pain shot through him. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak. He could only feel his orgasm flaring and fading and his mind sinking into darkness.

Somewhere deep inside a small voice cried out.
This isn’t right... she’s doing something... I feel so weak...
With a great effort he fought off the sleep which was trying to claim him and her eyes widened. She cried out again, the same phrase. Her fingers were claws, ripping and tearing. He was vaguely aware of blood cooling on his chest. She screamed again.

 


Spiritu tuo, Peto!

 

I claim your... spirit... soul? Is she crazy?
Simon could still barely think but his survival instinct had finally kicked in. Struggling for breath he shouted in denial, some long-forgotten tutor’s lesson giving him the word he needed.

 


RECUSO!

 

There was a flash of light and something
pushed
her so hard she flew off him and over the edge of the bed, hitting the floor with a
thud
. Simon’s mind immediately started to clear and he managed to lift up on one elbow, looking down with incomprehension at his bloody chest. It looked like she had been tearing some kind of
symbol
into his skin.

He half rolled, half crawled over to the foot of the bed and looked down at her still form. She was breathing, barely, but she was crumpled into a heap.

“Irena?” No response. “
Irena!
Answer me! What the Hell were you
doing?

Her face turned up to his. Blood was pouring from her nose and mouth, but she answered in a terrifyingly clear voice. “I was trying to take your soul. You have a strong soul. I wanted it.”

Simon’s already clouded mind took a long time to process this. “What do you mean trying to take my soul? Are you
crazy?

Again the clear, emotionless voice. “I am a magician. I was trying to use a spell to take your soul. I can use the souls of strong men for power. I am not crazy.”

Simon didn’t want to believe this but that flash of light, that formless power that had shoved her off him and onto the floor was still crystal clear in his mind.
Go with it... we’ll figure it out... she’ll start making sense eventually.

“So what happened then? Did you take my soul? I don’t feel any different.”
I feel like I’m in some kind of fever dream, but I felt like that before the flash
.

“You have magic power. You resisted. My spell recoiled.”

“So you
didn’t
take my soul?” Much as he didn’t believe any of this he was strangely fixated on this question.

“No. You took mine.”

Simon’s jaw dropped.
I’m not a magician... I don’t steal people’s
souls!
“No, I didn’t! I don’t want your soul. Keep it!”

“You didn’t do the whole spell. You won’t get it, but nothing can stop what’s going to happen.”


What
is going to happen?”

“I am going to lose my soul. It will leave my body, like yours would have, but it will just go on, since you will not be able to hold it.” She seemed remarkably indifferent to this.

“What then?” He couldn’t think about what she was saying, couldn’t approach it logically. He could only listen like a child hearing a dark fairy tale.

“I will die.” She just...
said
it.

“If you’re going to die why are you so fucking
calm?
” he asked, fear and dread giving his voice some real feeling at last.

“When the spell recoiled your will overcame mine, like mine was overcoming yours. I can feel nothing you don’t allow me to feel, do nothing you don’t allow me to do.” She sounded like a robot. The blood had stopped gushing from her nose but her beautiful face was a mask of red horror. Her voice was still clear but growing noticeably weaker.

“How can I stop it? How can I undo this?” Simon couldn’t lie there and watch another person die, even if she had been trying to kill him.

“You can’t. The spell is made that way. I didn’t know you could do what you did or I would have made sure you were in my power before I struck.”

“Dammit, there has to be a way! How do you do magic? Are there magic words? How does it work?” He was panicking even more now. Thoughts of explaining her dead, bloodied body to the Prague
policie
flickered through his head.

“There are books of spells in a box under the bed. It is locked with magic but if you blow across it and say
patefacio in salutis
while holding it in your right hand, it will open. All the spells I know are in the box.” Her voice was little more than a whisper now.

He pushed himself off the bed and rooted under the bed until he came up with a dark wooden box which felt dry and old. He shook it but it wouldn’t open.
This is nuts.
Simon took a quick breath and let it out over the box.


Patefacio in salutis!”

The top of the box fell open without a sound.

Simon didn’t even pause to wonder at this new impossibility. He found three small books bound in old, stiff leather in the box. Frantically, he opened one to see crabbed handwriting in some form of Latin. It was unreadable in the flickering candlelight.

“Irena, which book has the spell? How do I use it?”

There was no reply. He looked over to her body in uncertain fear and saw her eyes glazed and staring into eternity. Her mouth was slightly open and her chest was still.

“Irena! Answer me!”

Silence.

 

#

 

Simon was never sure how long he sprawled on the floor, clutching the books and staring at Irena’s corpse. It had to have been hours, but here was no clock in the room and he wasn’t in the most linear frame of mind. But he never forgot what snapped him out of it. If what had happened before might have been explained away, what happened next couldn’t be. He never again doubted that magic was real.

The bedroom’s curtains were drawn, but after some unknown interval, he became aware that light was starting to filter through them. The sun was rising. He crept over to the window and tweaked the curtain a bit, just enough to let a sunbeam through. It flashed low across the floor and touched Irena’s body. He looked back with renewed dread.
They’ll never believe me, they’ll never...

 

His train of thought was derailed by the fact that Irena’s body was fading.

 

It was dissipating like a mist, becoming less and less solid every second after the sunlight hit it. Transfixed, he knelt there holding the curtain until it was entirely gone. Even the bloodstains on the floor and the bedclothes were no longer visible. It was as if she had never been.

More magic. This must be part of her routine, how she killed people and stole their souls and nobody was the wiser.
A small burst of relief ran through Simon. They couldn’t prove he’d killed her if there was no body. He wasn’t out of the woods, but he’d rather explain breaking and entering than murder.

Letting the curtain drop again, he shakily climbed up to the bed. The candles had burned low, but there was a lamp by the bed on one of the tables. He turned it on and looked at the books. They were handwritten, and hand-sewn. The covers were crudely finished leather, but looked like any other leather. He’d been afraid they might be human skin or something equally creepy. The ink was a brownish black, faded in places but readable.

They had no titles or author pages: they resembled journals with the entries starting on the very first page. His Latin was years rusty, but he could make out the words for
magic
and
power
and
souls
on every page. The books did seem to describe various rituals for using supernatural power to make things happen, just as Irena had claimed. Until yesterday he would have thought they were really well-made props but now they almost seemed to drip evil and menace.

Maybe I should just burn them. She seemed nice enough but she was going to steal my soul and kill me and scatter my corpse to the four winds. Is that what magic does to a person?
He was staring at the box of matches next to the last guttering candle. But while Simon had never been the most devoted student, he had an almost insatiable curiosity. With a shudder he threw them down on the bed, retrieved his clothes, and tried to figure out what to do next.

In the end, he wiped down every surface he might have touched, took the books and the box (but nothing else,) and slipped out of the building quietly in the early morning sunlight. People were about but no one seemed to pay him any special mind and there were more than a few others in rumpled evening clothes doing the Walk of Shame in the trendy neighborhood. Once he was several blocks away he managed to find a taxi and had it drop him off a short walk from his apartment.

He walked the wrong way until the taxi was out of sight, then doubled back and was soon locked behind his own door. Since no one could know -
Could they?
- that anything had happened to Irena, the police would have no reason to investigate for days or weeks. By that time the trail should be quite cold. He had a shower and made himself some breakfast, forcing the food down along with lots of strong coffee. Then he sat at his breakfast table and stared at the box.

Simon got out his laptop and opened a Latin translation page. After a few minutes of fumbling he discovered that blowing on the box and telling it to close would seal it just as the reverse made it open. He opened and closed it several times just for the weird feeling of seeing it work. Then he opened the books and dug in.

“Digging in” was an apt metaphor. After a few hours, he felt mentally exhausted. The books were written in at least five different dialects and hands, none of which resembled “modern classical” Latin as taught in brightly-lit private schools and all of which were hard to read. None of it seemed to be enciphered, but he suspected there were parts missing or metaphors which hid key elements of the work.

The gist of it seemed to be that what magic could accomplish was primarily dependent on the power and determination of the spell-caster. The Latin phrases Irena had used were mostly just means to focus the magician’s will. When he told the box to open and close in English, the first time it didn’t work, but when he tried to draw his mind to focus as he had to to smoothly pronounce the Latin, it popped open soundlessly.

He found what he thought were the spells that Irena must have used after several hours of squinting, swearing, and very cautious translating of some of the phrases. They provided a mental sequence which the caster had to go through to lay a sort of magical trap, which was then sprung by saying the key phrase under the right conditions. There was nothing about another magician being able to turn the spell on its caster, so either whoever had written the book hadn’t known that could happen, or for whatever reason hadn’t trusted it to print.
Probably thought that it would be a useful surprise if anyone ever tried to use it on
them.
It could do all kinds of things, from temporarily enslaving the victim to Irena’s more permanent solution of allowing their soul to be drawn forth and used for the caster’s own purposes. He shuddered anew at the thought of the fate he had so narrowly escaped.

One of the books contained a few spells for healing or otherwise doing generally helpful, or at least harmless, things. There were also several passages on how to hide from enemies, alter one’s appearance, and so forth. But about half of the writing was about how to accomplish
thoroughly
nasty aims, such as giving an enemy a painful and fatal wasting sickness, making a tract of land incapable of supporting crops, and so forth.
No wonder people burned witches. At least some of them completely had it coming, assuming they got any real ones.
All of the spells required various levels of preparation, meditation, and so forth. It seemed unlikely that magicians were much good when confronted with a spontaneous angry mob.
Keeping well hidden is definitely the path of wisdom.

BOOK: Hell To Pay
7.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

One False Step by Franklin W. Dixon
Special Delivery by Ann M. Martin
The Host by The Host
Quest for Honor by Tindell, David
War of the Werelords by Curtis Jobling
Mindscan by Robert J Sawyer
The Secret of Zanzibar by Frances Watts