The Cornerstone (26 page)

Claire’s mind was spinning. Orin? Who the hell? The script in her lap fell to the floor as she slid off the stool. She stared speechless at the stage, engulfed in fire, then turned to Bayard, but there was no one. She looked back onstage just in time to see Tom push against his adversary and break into a run, heading straight toward her, his scholar’s robe billowing behind him.

“Tom! What…?” But he ran past her like a hound after the fox, oblivious to his surroundings. In total confusion, she looked back where Morris has been standing, only now he was a crumpled form swathed in a voluminous cape lying near the footlights. Fire roared over the stage and across the ceiling of the theater. The audience was transformed into a shrieking mob, panicked beyond all reason, shoving and knocking others down to get out into the lobby.

Claire’s emergency training kicked in and she ran to Morris. She shook him and felt for a pulse. His arm was cold, but gradually he began to wake up.

“Claire?” he looked her uncomprehendingly, then took in the inferno that was the stage.

“Get up! We have to get out of here!” She was pulling on his sleeve, dragging him toward the wings.

Morris staggered to his feet. “B-Bayard…”

Claire grabbed him by the arm and tugged. “Forget him! We have to get out!”

Morris seemed to wake suddenly, as if a light had been turned back on in a dark room. “Holy fuck, the building’s going to burn to the ground—it’s all century-old heart pine.” Morris grabbed her hand and they felt their way through the dark backstage to the dressing room hallway. “C’mon, we can get to the lobby this way.” They were both coughing and broke into a run as the narrow corridor filled with cast members and crew who’d been backstage.

Claire felt panic rising in her chest as smoke blinded her eyes and filled her lungs. She clung to Morris in the press of bodies pushing toward the red EXIT sign ahead. There was a momentary bottleneck as he wrestled with the door and then they all spilled, choking, into the smoke-filled lobby.

The lobby was utter chaos. Five-hundred theatergoers had shed their sophisticated civility as easily as their raincoats, shoving and screaming and stepping on or over those who fell under the blind panic of the herd. The single front door was barely wide enough for two or three at a time to escape.

Morris, his Mephisto cape torn off and his makeup streaked, dragged Claire through the crowd toward the door, but then a sudden surge from the side pulled them apart.

“Claire!” She heard him over the din, but another voice called to her more clearly, inside her head. It came from the basement. She fought her way across the lobby, falling, losing the dress shoes she’d only worn once, scrabbling to her feet again, and then running down the basement stairs into the dark.

Friday, Opening Night

Bayard leapt down the basement stairs in the dark, heedless of his footing. He’d recognized that arctic, echo-chamber voice coming out of Morris’s mouth and needed to get his hands on the cornerstone as fast as possible. Confronting the banshee, or the witch, with all his will could not wait. He knew betrayal when he tasted it, and this might even qualify as a full-fledged mutiny. As much as he’d railed against the way he'd been tricked into taking possession of the stone, and just as often complained to himself about the things he was forced to do to maintain his suspended life, these were nothing compared to the presence that had just revealed itself on the Janus Theatre stage. The probability that the real Mephisto had come to collect him, body and soul, trumped everything.

He knelt in front of the alcove at the bottom of the stairs but was tackled by a body coming full-tilt down the steps after him. His breath nearly knocked out, he grappled with the fury that was Orin Ó Braonáin.

“You’ll not have her!” the boy shouted and landed the hard heel of his motorcycle boot in Bayard’s face. Lights exploded in his head.

“Whoreson!” Bayard shook his head and scrambled on his knees for the stone. Orin pulled him back, but Bayard was quicker. The athame, concealed in the secret pocket of his sleeve slid easily into his palm. He sliced blindly without thinking and connected with Orin’s forearm, severing the big veins and tendons just above the wrist. Orin let go for precious seconds as blood spurted over them both.

The light came on at the base of the staircase and a woman’s scream tore through the basement. Bayard jerked his eyes away from his attacker for a second and saw Claire pressed against the wall, her eyes wide with shock and disbelief. He cursed under his breath, forcing his attention back to what needed to be done. He grabbed Orin’s bloody arm, bathing both their hands in the steady red stream.

“I name thee my sacrifice,” Bayard shouted as the first red drops hit the stone. “
Ecce signum!
As master of the
buachloch
I command—” A spiral of mist rose from the cornerstone, coalescing into the shrouded form of the Irish witch. Quick as thought her spectral arms speared Bayard’s body through the abdomen to grab hold of her son Orin struggling behind him. The floor was slick as the wound across his arm bled out. Pinioned, Bayard spasmed in horror as he felt the banshee squeeze through the witch’s arms and outstretched fingertips. It sprang free with an ear-splitting shriek. A loud crack like controlled thunder shook the Janus Theatre to its foundations. The cement pillars began to crumble, wiring fried and shorted out, and the Black Coach began to materialize through the walls, impossibly huge within the confines of the basement. The witch gripped her son with all her strength as Bayard struggled to see behind him.

The Black Coach, drawn by beasts that resembled dragons more than horses in spite of their wild tangled manes and tails, partially materialized into the basement space. Its driver, the headless
dullahan
,
rode high in the coach-master’s seat, cracking a whip fashioned from the bones of a human spine. It held its severed head aloft by the hair, its bright black eyes like those of a raven scanning the assemblage. The head gave off a faint luminescence like a will o’ the wisp. Bayard felt the subsonic rumbling of the coach’s arrival in his bones, punctuated by the thumping crash of walls and ceiling timbers falling in the fire above. A smoky stench invaded the air and combined with a deeper scent of the grave that surrounded the carriage. Under his feet he sensed the grinding of the earth’s very bones against each other, spawning earthquakes Hell knew where.

Death’s carriage loomed over his head. Hewed of ebony that seemed to have been aged underwater, covered as it was in wormholes and barnacles, the coach bore door hinges and undercarriage axles of red bronze, and the giant wheels, taller than a man, were shod in black iron that struck sparks wherever it touched the floor. The black silk curtains over its door windows billowed like tattered sails in the vortex of energy that was pulling it into the earth plane. The carriage resembled nothing so much as the magnificent wreckage of a great ship. Its dragon-steeds clawed at the air, shrieks rending their foam-flecked mouths. Bayard took in the sight, knowing it could well be the last thing he would see in this life.

Then, in an eyeblink, everything went still, freeze-framed into utter silence.

Bayard saw the tall figure step out of the gloom, his elegant black tuxedo now claret red. Golden hair framed his head like an infernal halo, the individual strands lifted as if by static electricity. Sparks from his summer-blue eyes revealed the hellfire banked within. “How convenient, all the players in one scene together.” His voice stilled the tumult of the fire raging upstairs and the terrifying wail of Death’s Herald as she celebrated her release.

He turned his gaze to Claire, frozen in mid-scream. “Lady Claire, the ultimate bystander. As much as I’d like to include you in our little charade, you sadly have no part in this morality play. You’ve lived your life in a safe little shell where nothing
outré
ever happens and there’s no compelling reason to believe in things you can’t explain. Stand out of the way, where you belong, and observe.” Claire staggered backward as if pushed and fell against the basement wall like a pile of sticks.

The prince of devils then turned his attention to Orin. “You, however, are a different case. Unlike poor Claire, who cannot get invited to the party, you have crashed its merriment in your own unique way.” He stepped closer, so that Bayard could not mistake the baleful gleam in his eyes. As he stretched out his graceful hand, all the hairs on Bayard’s body stood alive with the energy crackling off the demon’s alabaster skin. If there were such a thing as a force field, he was feeling it now.

The demon reached around Bayard to Orin and laughed softly. “Oh, I would so love to present this one to my Master. I would, indeed. But that unpleasant image inked on your skin and infused with spellcraft from my old partner in crime prevents me from taking you.” Bayard felt Orin’s defiance flowing through them even though his lips were frozen shut.

Mephistopheles stepped behind Bayard, and although he could not see him grasp the Irish witch, he felt her venom as her limbs remained speared through his own body.

"We come now to Radha Ó Braonáin, a wicked witch if ever there was one." Mephistopheles chuckled. “I can hardly absolve you of your many sins, even if I wanted to. And I don’t, of course. I claimed you as mine long before you raised the spell that called the
bain-sídhe
. Shall I be merciful and give you the death you crave, alongside your dutiful son? Alas, I am afraid that was not in the mission statement I received from the One I serve. So sorry, but you’ll be coming along with me and Master Marlowe.”

Bayard trembled at the sound of his name in the beautiful man’s mouth. The sensations that played along his paralyzed nerves were an unfathomable combination of ecstasy and pure horror. So, it was as he’d feared…he would not be spared.

Mephistopheles turned to Claire again. “Don't look so terrified. You won’t die. Not here, anyway. That little gold pin from your sainted mother is quite distasteful to my driver and I’m afraid he won’t let you in the carriage. Don’t understand? Google it.” His grin was so bright Bayard had to shut his eyes—it was like looking into the fiery heart of a star going nova.

Mephistopheles damped down his powers to a tolerable level and addressed Orin. “You should be happy. You accomplished part of your mission. Your mother will be set free...she just won't be allowed to accompany you into the afterlife. Sure you won’t come along with us? My Master would accept you in a heartbeat, if you had one.” Bayard felt waves of silent fury beating against his back.

The demon from Hades laughed softly. “No? Well, my loss, I suppose. I hadn’t factored you into the bargain from the start. But it all works out in the end, eh?” He stepped up to the coach and snapped his fingers. Instantly, all bonds of silence and movement were loosed.

With hands still affixed to the cornerstone, Bayard looked up and saw the banshee hovering above him in her fully humanized form. He saw her first as a beautiful Irish maid with glossy black hair and a rosy flush over her cheeks, but instead of the emerald eyes one would expect to find on a fair colleen, hers were red—pupil, iris, the entire eyeball. Her fair features then slid into the decaying flesh of a rotting corpse. She leaned her head back and shrieked twice more. Three deaths in all.

From the
dullahan’s
head came a chilling voice with a thick Irish brogue, like the sound of screeing wind over the moors: “Orrrin Ó Brrraonáin.”

Bayard felt, but could not see, the flesh suit worn by the witch’s son quiver and fade until its presence was gone. Craning his neck with great effort, he saw the source of the summoning voice. The
dullahan
cracked its bone whip with a dry, clacking snap and again held up its glowing head. It called out the witch’s name,
r
’s tumbling out like rocks in a landslide. “Rrrradha Ó Brrraonáin.” The door of the coach flew open and her essence was sucked into its black maw, leaving a raw wound gaping in Bayard’s midsection as she passed through. He stared down at the hole where his heart should have been. It did not bleed.

Once more, the
dullahan
lifted its head. The brazen voice called out a third name. "Chrrristopher Marrrlowe." In the space of a thought, he found himself inside the coach, seated beside the Shining One. The essence of the witch as a young girl of no more than fifteen cowered naked on the horsehair seat opposite them, whimpering. Marlow was shocked at her guise, but then realized this must have been the age at which her sorcery had turned wicked. Had she sealed her infernal fate while dancing skyclad?

The demon beside him pointed at her. “Stop that sound. I’ve no tolerance for weepers.” Her lips sealed tightly shut, of her free will or the demon’s command Marlowe could not tell.

He understood he must be dead, but inside the coach, facing the cowering figure of Radha Ó Braonáin, he felt every bit as corporal as ever he had. He smelled the musty confines of the carriage, felt the hard upholstered seat beneath his legs. He was still clothed…and looking down realized he wore not the fancy outfit of the play’s Chorus but the very clothes he’d had on the night his soul had been taken.

Three names had been called, yet there were but two newly dead in the carriage.

Marlowe dared to find his voice. “Where is Tom? Is he not dead as well?”

The Right Hand of Satan smiled, showing perfect white, sharp teeth. “Quite dead. But the shield knot made from ink infused with the bloodspell of a certain Dr. Dee and his dutiful daughter forbade me from claiming him. He’d died once already in any case, and his path elsewhere was already set. Still, I might have beguiled him with a bit of glamour into making a last-minute bargain had the charm not protected him.”

Marlowe dared yet another question. “What’s become of the
buachloch?”

The demon’s musical laughter floated around the confines of the coach, lifting the stringy dark hair of the young witch and caressing Marlowe’s cheek. “
Das macht nichts
. It has served its purpose.”