The Dark Ones (34 page)

“Yep. The pentagram’s already enchanted. All the required sigils are in place. Think of it like an unlocked door. All we have to do is lure Andras back inside and lock it down again. Your blood will begin the process of calling the demon.”

Jared held out a hand. “Knife.”

Mark dug the folding knife out of his pocket and handed it over. Jared stepped into the pentagram and held his hand out toward the middle of the circle. He applied the tip of the blade to the ball of his thumb and pressed until a dark welling of blood appeared. He then squeezed the bottom of his thumb with a forefinger until the first droplets spilled to the floor. Everyone let out a gasp at the sizzling sound the blood made when it struck the concrete.

Jared passed the knife back to Mark.

Mark stepped into the circle and pricked his own thumb, wincing only slightly at the little stab of pain. The blood sizzled on the concrete again and he passed the knife to Kevin, who took it with obvious reluctance but nonetheless wasted no time in doing as the others had done. Fiona let out an emphatic grunt that caused the rest of them to exchange questioning glances.

Mark shrugged. “Whatever.”

He tugged the gag out of Fiona’s mouth and went to work on removing her bonds. She flexed her wrists as the rope fell in a loose coil on the floor. She snatched the knife from Kevin and, with no hesitation at all, moved into the pentagram and sliced the center of her palm wide open. A thin stream of blood pattered on the concrete. The sizzling sound was much louder this time and wisps of steam curled up toward the ceiling.

Jared squinted at her. “You’re not gonna go on a stabbing spree, are you?”

“Fuck you.”

She passed the knife back to Mark, who couldn’t hide a small, reflexive cringe. He still didn’t trust her. How could he? But now that they were down here, allowing Fiona to participate felt right. Sure, there had been no guarantee she wouldn’t attack them or attempt to flee again, but he’d had a strong sense neither of these things would occur.

A sheet of straight, dyed-black hair fell across her face as she dipped her head to stare at the center of the pentagram. “Say this works. We call Andras and he actually comes. What then? How do we trap him here?”

Clayton looked at her. “Also pretty straightforward.” He pointed at some of the arcane symbols inscribed along the pentagram’s edge. “Again, the binding mechanism is already in place. We just have to reactivate it, a process we’ve started with the blood-calling. We finish it by . . . uh . . . well . . .” He squinted at the papers in his hand again. “Uh, sort of just by telling it to stay put and go to sleep.”

Jared rotated his thick neck, popping tendons. “Like a misbehaving kid. Or a dog. You’re shitting us, right?”

“Nope. You’ve activated the magic with your blood. We’ll increase the wattage of the calling by actually calling Andras by name. He’ll come. When he does, we say the following . . .” He cleared his throat and brought the papers closer to his face. “Foul demon—”

Kevin barked laughter.

Fiona slugged him in the shoulder. Hard. “Shut up.”

Kevin touched his shoulder and scowled at her. “Ow. Jesus.”

“Just listen.”

Clayton cleared his throat again. “A-hem. Foul demon, hear our command. By the power of blood and the will of God, we bind you to this place. Foul demon, now we remand you into eternal darkness. Foul demon, sleep.”

Mark felt another headache coming on, this one fueled by the growing certainty that what they were trying here couldn’t possibly work. There was some level of genuine magic at work here, but it’d been orchestrated by people who’d been dead a long time and Clayton’s father had not been one of those people. The information in his letter could be based on nothing more than supposition and pure bullshit. On the other hand . . .

Fuck it
.

There’s just nothing else to do. This
has
to work
.

“So let’s call him. By name. Right now.”

“Right.” Jared raised his voice and turned his face toward the ceiling.
“Yo, Andras! Get your skeezy demon ass down here. Come on, we’re waiting!”

There was a round of laughter.

Even Fiona cracked a smile.

But Clayton was nodding. “That’s the basic idea. We should all call him to amplify the effect.”

Mark cupped a hand around his mouth.
“ANDRAS!”

Fiona’s voice was just as loud, but shriller:
“ANDRAS!”

Then they all called the name in one thunderous voice:
“ANDRAS!”

They waited.

Nothing happened.

At first.

Then the painted lines of the pentagram began to glow a dull red.

Mark took a step back. “Whoa.”

Fiona cupped both hands around her mouth and screeched his name again.
“ANDRAS! We’re waiting for you in the basement. Where we first met you, you cocksucker. Come here, Andras. NOW!”

The air in the basement grew noticeably warmer. The lines of the pentagram glowed a brighter red. Something was definitely happening in the center of the pentagram.

Air shimmered.

A flickering ripple of light that flared brightly, waned, and flared again.

The Dark Ones called the demon’s name again.

Natasha stared up in rapt wonder at the demon’s face. He looked so beautiful. So perfect. She loved him. And she loved what he had helped her become. She’d known all along the world of men wasn’t set up to nurture the hopes and desires of someone like her. She had lived in dread of a future in which she would be forced to abandon the things she truly cared about in favor of doing what was necessary to fit in and adapt to adult life. But Andras had changed everything. She had abandoned her old dreams, but it was because the demon had shown her a better way, not because she was settling for some drab and uninspiring existence, as she’d once feared. Her new life would be a grand adventure, an exploration of the furthest limits of pleasure and indulgence.

With Andras, the world would be at her feet.

She smiled and stroked his face. “I love you.”

He kissed her palm. “I know.”

She could smell the fires burning in the distance. A dark cloud of smoke was drifting over the entire neighborhood. She also heard screams and the occasional whoop of a siren as various emergency vehicles came screeching into the neighborhood. The screams were nice. They made her wet. People were dying out there. A lot of people. But their deaths served Andras. And knowing this rendered the sounds of their agonies delicious.

The demon began to enter her.

Natasha sucked in a breath, got ready to scream.

Andras abruptly went still.

He lifted his head, turning his face to the sky. Some of the demonic radiance leeched from his features. He tilted his head to the left. And then to the right. He looked like a dog cocking his ear to hear some distant sound inaudible to humans. At first the twist of his features conveyed only confusion. But then his eyes widened and his features went slack. He sat up, pulling out of her.

He looked . . . afraid.

Which terrified Natasha. She could imagine nothing in all of creation that could frighten her demon lover. Unless . . .

Mark
.

Clayton
.

Goddammit. She knew she should have talked him into letting her go after them. Mark had told her Clayton knew something, maybe had some clue about stopping the demon. And now they were out there doing whatever it was.

“Andras. I think—”

She screamed as his whole body went into a violent convulsion. He fell away from her, landing on his back with head hanging over the edge of the roof. He kept shaking and shaking, his arms and legs thumping up and down on the tin roof. Then he sat up with a loud, gasping intake of breath and stared right at her. It was still Andras. For one more moment.

Then he was gone.

She experienced a single moment of soul-wracking grief. And then she was screaming. Because she was herself again. She was free of the demon’s influence. But she would never be free of her memories of the things she’d seen and done.

For the first time in weeks, Derek McGregor was also free. Dazed and barely conscious of where he was, he scooted away from her and tumbled over the edge of the roof.

He hit the ground and didn’t get up.

Natasha kept screaming.

“Foul demon, hear our command. By the power of blood and the will of God, we bind you to this place.”

To Mark, the words didn’t feel right coming out of his mouth. They felt stilted and hokey. He was sure the rest of them felt the same way as they stood crowded around Clayton, craning their necks to peer at the faded writing on the page.

Mark lowered the flashlight. The shimmery glow at the center of the pentagram had intensified, rendering it unnecessary.

Jared tugged at his shirt collar and mopped sweat from his brow with a flannel sleeve. “It’s getting fucking hot in here.” His nose crinkled. “What’s that fucking smell? Is that . . . sulfur?”

Clayton glared at him. “Focus, goddammit. The next part. Again.”

Jared rolled his eyes, but craned his neck toward the page again.

“Foul demon, now we remand you into eternal darkness. Foul demon, sleep.”

“Again.”

“Foul demon, now we remand you into eternal darkness. Foul demon, sleep.”

A rumbling sound emanated from the center of the pentagram, where a shape was taking form as steam leaked from the edges of a hole in the fabric of reality. The hole was a portal and the shape was coming through it. The shape came closer, grew bigger.

Clayton swallowed audibly. “Oh, hell. This crazy bullshit is working.”

Fiona clutched at Mark’s arm and pressed against him. This time he didn’t shrink away from her. Her whole body was shaking. He couldn’t blame her for being scared. He was fucking terrified. It was one thing to talk about demons in the abstract. It was easy to imagine being brave from a distance, especially with enough liquid courage. But being confronted with the undeniable reality of an ancient evil from the literal hell of the Bible was another matter altogether.

The demon emerged from the portal and the lines of the pentagram glowed brighter than ever. The creature loomed above them, impossibly tall, the top of its monstrous head nearly brushing the ceiling. It was humanoid in basic form, but a huge pair of wings unfurled at the center of its back and flapped twice, creating a hot wind that blew back the hair of the human onlookers. The head of a raven sat atop its broad shoulders. The raven head squawked at them, a sound so piercingly loud it made them all cry out and stagger backward. It squawked again and came at them.

Fiona screamed and buried her face in Mark’s chest.

Mark screwed his eyes shut, tensing for death.

The thing squawked again.

Mark forced his eyes open.

The demon was right at the outer edge of the pentagram, straining to come closer, but something was containing it in the circle, some invisible force. The binding magic Clayton had talked about. It was real. It was fucking
working
.

Clayton had dropped to his knees. He gulped and stared up at the towering demon with an awestruck expression. His face was covered in sweat. His puffy cheeks had flushed a deep red. Mark hoped he wasn’t about to have a heart attack. But he seemed to rally when it became clear Andras couldn’t move beyond the containment field. He got jerkily to his feet and stared down at the crumpled pages in his hand again.

“Foul demon, hear our command.”

The rest of them crowded around him again and picked up the chant:
“By the power of blood and the will of God, we bind you to this place.”

Mark felt a weird tingle of disorientation. Something was pushing at the edges of his consciousness, looking for a way in.
Andras
. He remembered how the demon had manipulated them before. How it had used and shamed them. He became much more awkwardly aware of Fiona’s lithe body pressing against him. Fiona clutched at him again, but in a way that was motivated by something other than fear. He felt a stirring at his crotch. He looked at her and saw a lust in her eyes that mirrored what he was feeling.

It was happening again.

Fiona’s eyes glimmered. “Please. Make it stop.”

Mark reached for the snap of her jeans and she arched herself up against him, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him firmly on the mouth. He kissed her back, made a growling sound deep in his throat. He knew exactly what was about to happen. He was going to fuck Fiona right here on the concrete floor. And then the rest of them would take turns with her. And while that was happening, Andras would break free of the incomplete binding and finish them.

Mark screamed and shoved Fiona away from him.

He snatched the papers from Clayton.

“Fuck you, Andras.”

The raven head squawked.

The immense wings flapped rapidly several times.

“Foul demon, now we remand you into eternal darkness. Foul demon, sleep.”

Clayton flashed a raised middle finger at the demon. “Nightie night, you unholy douche bag.”

The demon banged its fists against the invisible field.

Jared approached the edge of the pentagram. “Look at that. He’s
scared
.”

The demon confirmed this by lifting into the air and buzzing about madly inside the circle. He looked like a trapped firefly bouncing around inside a jar.

Pretty soon they were all laughing and mocking the demon. The sound of their taunts appeared to infuriate Andras, who kept flinging himself about inside the circle in increasingly frantic efforts to break free.

“Sleep, Andras,”
Clayton said, investing the words with as much force as he could muster.

The rest of them said it together:
“Sleep.”

They kept at it, impelling the demon back into the darkness that had been its prison for so many years. Its desperate, futile efforts began to abate as the chorus of commands rang out louder and with more conviction. Andras stopped bouncing around inside the circle and drifted slowly downward until his bare feet scuffed the dusty concrete floor. The demon’s chest heaved as he stared at each of them in turn with those disturbing black raven eyes. But the Dark Ones did not falter and the commands to sleep continued to ring out. Within moments the creature was sitting in a cross-legged position on the floor, its beak dipping toward its chest, those bird eyes growing duller by the moment.