Magic Bleeds (30 page)

“Eventually Esau grew fangs and developed a terrible thirst for blood. Years later the once-king put those fangs to a test. He lured Esau’s brother to a meeting under the pretense of reconciliation, and there he unleashed the full fury of the undead on Jacob, letting Esau tear into his brother’s neck. But Jacob had worn an ivory collar and Esau’s fangs failed to sever his jugular.

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“With time, Esau’s body changed. He grew claws. His hair fell out. His body turned gaunt and he scuttled about on all fours like an animal. Roland released him into a cave, where the bodies of his ancestors and his children lay interred. Starving, the first vampire haunted the cave until a brave man finally put it out of its misery.

“Such is the true story of the first vampire.” I got up. “It’s not really all that secret. There are echoes of it in the Bible and in the Jewish scholarly writings. Abe is gone, and so are his children. But Roland, he still lives. Outlived them all, the old bastard. He’s made more undead and he’s rebuilding his power, waiting for a time to resurrect his kingdom.”

I pricked my finger with my throwing knife. A single drop of red swelled on my skin. I leaned toward the golem and whispered so quietly, I could barely hear myself. “And his blood lives on as well.”

I touched the blood to the golem’s chest. It rocked back, as if struck. Stone screeched, dust puffed. The golem spun, backed to the door, grasped the stone with its massive hand, and pushed it aside, revealing a dark room beyond it.

I walked past it into the darkness. Behind me the stone door slid shut.

PALE BLUE LIGHTS WINKED INTO EXISTENCE ON the walls. I counted. Twelve. They pulsed, fading and flaring brighter and brighter, until they finally illuminated the floor in front of me: two circles, the first six feet wide, the next a foot wider, carved into the stone. Twelve stone pillars surrounded the circle, each five feet tall. On top of each rested a glass cube. Within the cube lay a
sefirot
, a scroll.

I approached the circle. Magic pulsed between the scrolls, like a strong invisible current. A ward, and a very powerful one. Wards both protected and contained. For all I knew, stepping into the circle would result in some weirdness manifesting in the middle of it and squeezing me like a juice orange.

I pulled Slayer from its sheath and circled the lines. No mysterious runes on the walls, no instructions, no warnings. Just the weak gauzy blue light of the lantern, the scrolls resting in their transparent cases, and the double circle on the floor.

I’d come this far. No turning back now.

I slid Slayer under my arm, pulled the paper out of the Ziploc bag, and stepped into the circle.

A silver light ignited in the spot I crossed. It dashed along the carved outline of the double circle, igniting it. Magic roiled between the scrolls. A wall of silvery glow surged up, sealing me from the outside world.

All I needed now was for some monstrous critter to manifest and try to eat me.

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Dear rabbis, I’m so sorry, I nuked your circle dude. Here is his head as a souvenir.
Yeah, that would fly.

Magic nipped at my skin in tiny sharp needles, as if testing the waters. I tensed.

Hairline cracks spread through the floor. Pale light stabbed through the gaps. Something was coming. I swung Slayer, warming up my wrist.

Power burst under me. Magic punched through my feet and tore through my body in an agonizing torrent, grating at my insides as if every cell of my body had been stripped bare. It ripped a scream from me and the torrent burst out of my mouth in a stream of light, so bright I went blind. My head spun.

Everything hurt. Weak and light-headed, I clenched my sword.

Breathe. One, two, three . . .

Slowly my vision cleared and I saw the translucent ward and beyond it the scrolls glowing on their stone pillars. Deep blue currents of magic slid up and down within the glow. What the hell? I looked up. The last of the magic torn from me floated above in a cloud of indigo, slowly merging with the ward.

Damn it. The perimeter wall of the circle wasn’t a ward, although it looked and felt like one. It was an
ara
, a magic engine. I’d read about them but never encountered one. It lay dormant until some idiot, like me, stepped inside it and donated some magic juice to get it running. It absorbed my magic and turned blue. If I’d been a vampire, the glow would’ve become purple.

It occurred to me that my feet were no longer touching the ground. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the place where the floor used to be and it wasn’t there. I glanced down. The floor had vanished. In its place gaped a black pit and I floated above it, weightless.

Oh, great. Just great.

I opened my hand, revealing the parchment. A feather of light swept it off my palm and dragged it into the air to my eye level.

The magic buckled. Long veins of indigo streaked through the
ara
and struck at the parchment. It shivered, caught in the spider web of blue tendrils.

It was good that the Temple was shielded by a ward; otherwise anyone with an iota of power would be able to sense these fireworks.

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The tendrils clutching the parchment turned a darker blue. The circle picked up the parchment’s magic and now it spread through the glow.

A powerful magic pulse ripped through the
ara
.

The center of the parchment turned smooth. The worn lines creasing the rough paper vanished. Ink appeared, slowly, like a developing photograph. A magic square formed in the corner. An assortment of geometric figures: spirals, circles, crosses . . .

The magic pulsed again and again, like the toll of a great bell. My whole body hummed with the echo.

Hurryup, damn you.

The ragged edges of the parchment grew as the web built onto it. The parchment must’ve been only a small piece of the original scroll, a top left corner, and now the circle was reconstructing it as it once had been.

Words appeared, written in Hebrew. Between them, smaller lines written in English came through.
I
devastate the land and shatter it to dust,

I crush the cities and turn them into waste,

This was familiar. I knew this.

I crumble mountains and panic their wild beasts,

I churn the sea and hold back its tides,

I squeezed my memory, trying to pinpoint where I’d read this before.

I bring stillness of the tomb to nature’s wild places,
I reap the lives of humankind, none survive,

Come on, come on. Where did it come from? Why was it lodged in my brain? Words kept coming, faster and faster. I scanned the lines.

I bring dark omens and desecrate holy places,

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I release demons into sacred dwellings of the gods,

I ravage palaces of kings and send nations into mourning,
I set ablaze the blooms of fields and orchards,

A final phrase ignited at the end of the scroll. It pierced my mind. Cold bit my fingers.

I let evil enter.

Oh no.

The words glared at me.
I let evil enter.

Oh no, you don’t. I knew this—this was a part of an ancient Babylonian poem, used as an amulet against a man once worshipped as the god of plagues. He’d brought panic and terror to the ancient world and decimated its people with epidemics. His wrath was chaos, his temper was fire, and ancient Babylonians feared him so much, they were too afraid to build him a temple.

I read all about him when I was ten years old. His name was Erra.

But the Steel Mary was a woman. I was absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure she was a woman. I saw her with my own eyes. A huge six-foot-six woman, but unmistakably female. I had a round hole, and no matter how the universe tried to get me to shove a square peg into it, it wasn’t going to happen.

The tendrils curled back, withdrawing into the circle. The scroll snapped taut and disintegrated into a cloud of glowing sparks. The piece of parchment, once again ancient and blank, landed into my hand.

The power of the circle vanished and I dropped to the stone floor.

The door slid open and I saw Peter’s pale face. He wheezed, catching his breath. “We’re under attack.”

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I DOUBLE-TIMED IT THROUGH THE PASSAGEWAYS of the synagogue. Peter jogged next to me.

“What do you mean, there is no way to hide the circle’s magic? You said you keep the circle secret.”

He huffed. “The particulars of the circle are secret. Its power isn’t. One doesn’t hide the power of God.

The light of knowledge must shine through.”

It shone alright. It shone real well. It shone so well that the Steel Mary had sensed the parchment and sent the cavalry to investigate.

A thud shook the walls of the old building. I dashed up the stairs, through the hallway, and to the front.

Several people stood before the door on the stairs.

On the snow-buried lawn a six-foot-tall blood-red man grabbed a golem by the hind leg. He jerked the golem up, swung it, and smashed it on the ground, sending a spray of snow into the air. The golem slid, scrambled up, and galloped away, leaping over the broken body of its twin. All around the Temple crushed clay bodies littered the grounds. At least ten, maybe more. It looked like a war zone and only one side had suffered casualties.

A red aura flared from the man, ruby bright against the white snow. The sun was a pale glow behind the clouds. It was almost five and the night would pounce soon. I didn’t want to fight him in the dark.

“Is he alone?”

Nobody answered.

“Did he come alone?”

“Yes.” Rabbi Weiss swung into my field of vision. “What was on that parchment? What is he?”

You don’t want to know. “In ancient Babylon there was a god called Erra, also known as Nergal. He was the god of plagues and chaos.” And fear.

Except he wasn’t really a god. I would’ve preferred a god, but Erra was something much, much worse.

Another golem galloped from the back and hurled its spear at the man. The man batted it aside.

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“Erra had seven warriors at his disposal.” I flipped Slayer, warming up my wrist. “Darkness, Torch, Beast, Tremor, Gale, Deluge, and Venom. Deluge is dead. The Beast Lord killed him three days ago.”

The golem charged the red man and reared, kicking with its hoofed legs.

I watched the charge. “This would be . . .”

The man stomped. Thunder rolled through the yard, like the sound of a colossal sledgehammer. The ground yawned. He grabbed the golem and thrust it into the forming hole. It sank up to its waist, still kicking. The man swung his huge fist and hammered a punch to the golem’s sternum. The clay chest shattered like an egg shell. The golem’s head fell to the ground.

“Tremor.” Power of earth. Lovely. By all rights, he shouldn’t have been able to make sinkholes, given that the ground was frozen solid, but apparently someone forgot to mention it to him.

Tremor surveyed the grounds, looking for the next target.

“He’ll never break the ward,” someone said to my right.

Oh yes, he will. Trust me on this. “I wouldn’t count on it. Your wards are very strong but your magic is too young for him.”

A gray-haired woman gave me a pitying look, usually reserved for imbeciles. “Our wards are written in a language that was twelve hundred years old before the Common Era began. Even Unicorn Lane can’t breach them.”

I pointed at Tremor. “Twelve hundred years before the Common Era, Erra was thirty centuries young.

He predates your language.”

A bout of hysterical barking came from the left. Idiot dog, making himself a target.

“Open the ward.” I started down the stairs.

“That isn’t wise,” Peter called out. “The spell will hold.”

“Out of the question. It’s too dangerous.” The older woman crossed her arms. “We won’t be held responsible for your death or damage to the Temple.”

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Tremor took a step toward my poodle.

“Open the damn ward, or I will break it!”

Tremor turned away from the dog, swiped the golem’s head off the snow, and hurled it at the Temple. It flew through the air, cleared the ward in a flash of silver, and shattered against the Temple’s door. Of course—the golems belonged to the Temple and the ward was keyed to them, so they could pass through it. He’d pelt the Temple with golem remains, and when he’d run out of bodies to throw, he’d stomp over here himself.

The rabbis stared at the shards of the broken head. Tremor reached for another body.