The Warlock's Curse (54 page)

Gasping, Will opened his eyes.

The reality of the world rushed back in on him—the sanctuary, the mass of chanting faithful, the thundering crash of the organ, the smell of Phleger’s body behind him, the tight press of the preacher’s hot trembling arms against his sides.

Then Will’s eyes met Jenny’s.

And in Jenny’s eyes, he saw the truth. The
real
truth. She had opened the door of the Hotel Acheron, and she had run away from the horrors within—but she had not escaped. And, Will realized, neither had he. They were both still locked inside, trapped together in misery, and they always would be.

He couldn’t do it.

He couldn’t open the door.

Opening the box would not sanctify the power, or alleviate the suffering of the souls, Will understood suddenly. The power would poison the world. The suffering inside would not be let out. No. Rather, all the joy in the world—all the hope, all the love—would be sucked
in
.

Open the door!
Phleger commanded, the organ commanded, the voice of the faithful commanded in unison.
Make the demon suffer in the hell he created!

And oh, how Will wanted to. How he wanted to make Cowdray suffer within that hell. But Jenny’s eyes told him that he could not. That he must not. That he had to find another way.

Returning to the snowstorm room that lay behind his tightly shut eyelids, Will withdrew his hand from the doorknob, retreated from the door. Cowdray, curled up on the floor, breathed like an injured animal—quick and shallow, yet still ready to strike.

Phleger was the room. But Will was Phleger’s ability to act upon Cowdray within the room. Phleger could command—but only Will could
act
.

Will reached down to Cowdray, his hand trembling.

I cannot allow him to open the box
, Will said, and gave Cowdray his hand. Cowdray took it, and as he helped the warlock to his feet, Will hated himself. Despised every molecule of his being.

D
O YOU THINK THIS ACT WILL EARN YOU MERCY?
Cowdray growled, thrusting his face close to Will’s. Will barked a bitter laugh.

Just tell me how to stop the preacher
, Will said, the words soaked in bile.
Stop him so that he cannot attempt to open the box again, ever.

G
ET ME INSIDE HIS MIND
, Cowdray whispered insinuatingly. I
WILL HANDLE THE REST.

With a cry of disgust, Will opened his eyes again, returned to the sanctuary. Phleger was clutching him more tightly now—it was clear that he realized something was going wrong. He was furiously muttering prayers into Will’s ear, his breath hot and moist.

Will’s bound hands hung before him. He inched them to one side. Struggling against Phleger’s tight embrace, Will was able to get one hand into the pocket of his trousers. He carefully withdrew the straight razor. Opening it, he first used it to cut the cord that bound his wrists.

And when his wrists were free, he reached up and placed a hand on Phleger’s arm, feeling for the place where the preacher’s flesh emerged from his starched white cuff. With his other hand, Will brought up the razor. He drew it along Phleger’s skin, slowly, making it hurt as much as he knew how.

The pain opened Phleger’s mind, just a tiny crack. But that crack was enough for Cowdray. With a joyous, brutal cry, the warlock’s spirit slithered into it like a black snake. Tendrils of his spirit probed the crack and stretched it wide.

N
OW YOU ARE SUBJECT TO
MY
COMMAND,
he hissed gleefully.

Phleger screamed.

Will felt Cowdray sending fat, filthy tentacles of control into Phleger’s mind, invading him. Within an instant, Phleger began spewing a vile stream of blasphemous foulness into the microphone before him. He swore, he spat, he raved. He roared every unclean word and sacrilegious profanity that Cowdray had collected in every life he had ever lived.

The shock of recoil from Phleger’s followers was like an icy wave. Where there had been song, now there was silence—the shocked silence of betrayal. Will felt Phleger’s power waver, then crack, then crumble.

Then, clenching his fists around Phleger’s arm, stroking his fingers through the preacher’s warm blood, Will used Phleger’s mind to blast a message out on a wave of magical power:

Invado!

The sanctuary’s huge double doors burst open in a blaze of light.

Warlocks, hundreds of them in black suits, swarmed inside. The faithful, already bewildered and terrified, began to scream and run. They became a stampede, a panicked whirlpool.

The warlocks, operating in Trines, made their way through the frenzy with calm purpose. They separated off small groups of the horrified worshippers, raising their hands to speak words in Latin. Where they did, the worshippers dropped, collapsing upon each other in unconscious, quiescent heaps.

Some of these warlocks began pushing their way toward the altar, where Will and Phleger were still standing, Phleger still holding Will tight within an unbreakable embrace, still mindlessly spewing profanities into the microphone before them.

As the warlocks drew closer, Will saw something.

He saw that they all wore red orchids on their lapels.

Panic iced him. He struggled within Phleger’s arms.

They weren’t
Institute
warlocks. They were
Agency
warlocks.

But it was not the Agency warlocks who reached Will and Phleger first.

It was Ben.

Ben darted up to the altar. Seizing the broadcasting microphone that stood before them, he swung the iron down, knocking the snuffbox out of the preacher’s hands. The magical connection was severed abruptly, in an explosion of ice-white brilliance. Brother Phleger fell backward, unconscious; Will fell forward, into Ben’s arms. But Ben didn’t hold him long. Casting a swift glance over his shoulder, he let Will slide to the floor.

And then, reaching down and grabbing the snuffbox, Ben ran.

Will screamed after him, a wordless shriek of betrayal. He tried to leap to his feet, forgetting that his ankles were bound. He fumbled for the razor, slashed the cord.

And then, he heard Jenny screaming.

People were closing in around her, falling around her—and she was panicking. Her eyes were stark-wide with terror. Atherton Hart had gotten an arm around her, and was sheltering her with his Body trying to muscle a path through the chaos.

And then Will saw Trahern. And Trahern, his face purple with rage, saw Will. He saw where Will had been looking—and a fierce, frenzied smile curled his lips. Pulling a silver knife from his boot, he began pushing his way through the crowd, toward the struggling Hart and Jenny.

“Jenny!” Will cried.

But neither Jenny nor Hart could hear him over the cacophony. And they didn’t see the bodyguard coming.

Clutching the razor, Will ran with unearthly quickness, Cowdray’s magic still surging through his body.

Trahern did not stab Hart—just hooked a foot around his ankle and shoved him to one side. Hart stumbled and fell into the stampedeing swarm around them, and did not rise again. Then Trahern seized Jenny’s hair and pulled her head back. She struggled against him for just an instant before the knife flashed down, sinking into her chest.

Will fell upon Trahern with a brutal cry, pulling him away and slashing his throat in one movement. Blood sprayed, and Trahern’s fingers fumbled helplessly at the gaping wound. But he fumbled only for a moment; then he dropped, gurgling.

Will fell at Jenny’s side. Blood was spreading across the white lace of her dress, spreading very quickly. He pressed his hand to the wound, raised her gently, tried to make the blood stop. But it would not stop.

“Oh William,” she sighed softly. “Everything came out all wrong, didn’t it?”

Fresh hot blood welled up through his fingers with every beat of her heart. He prayed for any kind of guidance, any kind of grace.

I love you, Jenny.

He did not speak the words, but he saw them reflected in her eyes. She placed a bloody hand over his, clasped it tightly for a moment.

Then something very heavy came down on his head, and everything went black.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Alcestis

T
WO DAYS UNTIL THE NEW MOON

W
ill was dimly aware of the sound of his own voice, moaning Jenny’s name. Someone was trying to comfort him, trying to calm and soothe him.

“Where is she?” he murmured. “Is she all right?”

“She is alive,” the voice said. A soft, female voice, one that he did not recognize. “She is alive, Will. She is alive.”

Relief surged through him, and it was enough simply to feel himself breathe.

Feeling his own breathing made him conclude that he, too, must be alive. He tried to open his eyes, but the light sent pain knifing through his skull. He retreated back into darkness.

Jenny was alive, he thought.

Praise the Lord.

He did not wake again for some time. When he did, he found that the room was dark, and he could open his eyes—but only very slowly. He swallowed, his throat dry and scorched. His body ached, but he was used to the aching by now. He now couldn’t even remember a time when his body didn’t ache.

He didn’t know where he was. He was in a room, surely, but he knew he was no longer in the New Faith Seat of Praise. He didn’t know how he knew it, he just felt the difference. There was energy here, power—but a much different kind of power. It ...
tasted
different. Smelled different.

He looked around himself, his eyes slowly coming into focus. The room was luxurious, with high ceilings and carved cornices. It was lit by old-fashioned gas jets, turned down low. He lay under a duvet of fine light silk.

When he tried to sit up, he discovered that he could not move. He was bound even more tightly than when Phleger had held him. He could turn his head though, just slightly, enough to see that there was an old woman sitting at the side of his bed, watching him.

She sat in a high-backed wicker wheelchair, slender and erect, her hands clasped in her lap. She wore all black, in sharp contrast to her paper-white hair. She regarded him through tortoiseshell glasses.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, and Will recognized the soft, kindly voice that had comforted him.

“Not very well,” he managed hoarsely.

“I imagine not,” she said.

“Is Jenny all right?” he asked again. He was afraid the words he remembered her speaking might only have been a dream. But the old woman smiled gently.

“She is alive,” she said. “She was wearing a necklace beneath her dress. A silver coin. It deflected the blade just enough to save her life.”

Will released a long breath. The relief he felt was no less intense for feeling it a second time. He met the woman’s gaze. “Where am I? And who are you?”

“You are in the Stanton Institute in New York City,” she said. “I am Mrs. Zeno, the Institute’s Executive Director.” She paused. “Where is your brother?”

“Which one?” Will did not mean to sound insolent, for at the moment he could not be if he tried. His mind was a muddle and a haze. But Mrs. Zeno frowned slightly.

“Benedictus Coeus,” she growled. “Ben.”

Will stared at her, eyes fixed and blurry as he tried to make sense of his shattered fragments of memory. He remembered the New Faith Seat of Praise ... the Consecration. He remembered the blood spreading across Jenny’s breast. He remembered slashing Trahern’s throat.

And he remembered the last time he had seen Ben. His brother had taken the snuffbox and he had run away.

He was opening his mouth to tell all this to the old woman, but something made him stop. Because suddenly, he remembered something else.