Iron forge crossroads, p.22
Iron-Forge Crossroads, page 22
“What?”
“It’s the best option.” I shrugged. “It’s hexed but not like the other entrances. It’s the obvious entry point so it’s the least heavily protected against burglars. As for anyone that actually knows what they’re dealing with here, there are much worse things inside that house to worry about.”
Adrian nodded. “Fair enough. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a good old-fashioned heist.”
I appraised the door. “Breaking the hexes would alert her that we were here so we’re just going to have to deal with them.”
“What are they?” Adrian asked, wary. He probably thought I would just shove him through the front door like a sacrifice and let him take the brunt of the magic.
Out of the question, I could never do something so underhanded… but if he pissed me off at any point, I’d be sure to keep that in mind on the way back out.
I cataloged the various afflictions for him. “Temporary paralysis, blindness, and speechlessness.”
“Sounds fun. You still using those shitty little talismans to counter hexes, or have you upgraded?”
I rolled my eyes. “Seems like beggars with sad, chaotic demon magic that’s not good for much other than sloppy destruction shouldn’t be choosers, but since you asked so nicely.” I chanted a much more robust curse breaker than those talismans would have ever provided back in the day. “There you go.”
Adrian scowled. “It was just an observation, you didn’t have to add the insult.” We stood for a minute in awkward silence. “So, are we good?”
“Yeah, should be fine,” I said with a smirk.
“Should be?”
“No, no, don’t worry, it’s fine.” I flapped my hands in dismissal. “You go first.”
“Evyn—” Adrian started with a warning tone.
“It’s fine,” I said firmly. I pushed him out of the way and manually picked the lock. It clicked and the door swung inward on silent, well-greased hinges. I stepped through and said pointedly over my shoulder, “Ladies first.”
As I crossed the threshold, I could feel the hexes reaching for me, trying to latch on to something they could sense was there but failing to find purchase. I was glad I upgraded my defenses from those “shitty talismans.”
Derfael may have been the one to design this place, but the marks of other mages and sorcerers were everywhere. Nothing against Derfael, but he’s always been the type to work magick that does the most effective job in the quickest time frame. Not the best for robust, long-lasting defense without constant renewal.
I could feel the High Order magick here. The living, breathing thing that permeated the air itself, constantly shifting and changing as the situation called for, finessed and honed to such a point that a simple hex almost had sentience. I was kind of jealous and more than a little tempted to go back to studying the Brotherhood of Levi’s grimoires.
Adrian followed and noticed nothing, although he swatted at something like he’d walked through spiderwebs. This place was spotless, so he wasn’t completely oblivious.
I felt a pang of sadness at our loss of connection. In the past he would have been just as attuned to the magick around him as I was. We shared our strengths and mitigated each other’s weaknesses; that was the whole point of being familiars. But all of that was so faded we could really only feel each other when we were called or when emotions were riding high.
Once the door closed behind us with a heaviness that made this place feel like a tomb we stood still and reached out with every sense, searching for any threats that might be hiding. We found nothing.
I lit a ball of witch fire and let it hover above us. The place was full to bursting with all sorts of priceless artifacts that had been lost to history.
I moved through the house, picking my gaze over everything and recognizing cuneiform tablets from Sumer, a ritual cartouche belonging to a long-lost Egyptian queen, an Iron Age golden torque with boar’s heads and what looked suspiciously like King Arthur’s seal, a scimitar engraved with the goddess Kali’s epithet, even…
“Is that a freakin’ crystal skull?” asked Adrian, seeing the object at the same time I did.
“Looks like. There’s another one.” I pointed to a shelf on the left, the gleaming quartz flanked by two other skulls that very clearly had been part of a living creature at some point. One had the characteristic sharp cheekbones and subtly elongated cranium of some fae creature that had been bound over with iron bands and covered in runes and goetic seals. The other was blackened from fire and had two stumps of broken horns as jagged as the multiple rows of pointed teeth. I’ll let you make your own guesses as to where that one came from. I was awestruck. “Quite the collection. I’m almost sorry we’re here for a job, I’d like to take the time to look around.”
“Once she’s dead we’ll know the first place we need to visit,” said Adrian, giving me a sideways smile, which I returned.
We kept searching, keeping an eye out the entire time for some internal defenses, mundane security systems, even trip wires, but there was nothing.
Derfael marked the wards and traps he’d put in place on the blueprints but even with the upgrades from the new magicians I couldn’t find any sign of security other than on the exterior of the building.
“Am I the only one that’s starting to get really uncomfortable with how easy this has been so far?” asked Adrian.
“No,” I murmured. “Something can’t be right here.”
The farther into the house we moved I could feel a growing presence, something just at the edge of my mind that was purposefully staying there, taunting and elusive. To bury my nerves, I tried to keep the conversation going. “I am glad that you’re with me on this.”
Adrian eyed me with suspicion.
“I’m serious. We always made a good team, we always made it back alive.” I nudged him. “And you were more than gracious in the after-actions with the Council in giving me more credit than I deserved. Our ops were far less dominated by me than people were led to believe.”
“I seem to remember there being certain sexual favors on offer before those after-actions, so I was more than happy to oblige.” Adrian’s smile turned more wolf-like, and a hungry glint lit his eyes as he remembered.
“Oh, yeah,” I reminisced, getting a little hot under the collar just from the thought. “We weren’t the first ones to use the torture room as a sex dungeon, but we made damn sure we were the ones that everyone talked about.”
I turned and found him standing directly behind me. He closed the distance until he was inches away, looking down at me with the full power of that infamous smile. My knees got weak.
He put his hands on my hips and jerked me forward, our bodies touching. I became aware of the bulge in his pants as he pressed against me and heat pooled between my legs as I remembered all the delicious things he could do with it.
Adrian leaned in and brushed his lips against mine. “I don’t recall you complaining when my ‘sad, chaotic demon magick’ made you writhe with pleasure and scream my name.”
He ran his fingertips up and down my side in silence, but it was heated with memories of moans, heavy breathing, and sweat.
“You certainly weren’t complaining when I drew up my incubus magick and ravished you over every inch”—he ground his hips into me—“of your body.”
His magick licked across my skin, igniting desire within me. With nothing more than fingertips skimming my body I was ratcheting quickly toward climax. Then everything halted and I opened my eyes to his smug face staring back at me. “What the hell?” I spluttered breathlessly.
“Just admit that it was a petty insult and I’ll finish you off any way you want.”
I shoved him away. “Forget it.”
So we mounted the stairs instead of each other and made our way slowly upward after clearing the first floor. Adrian seemed a little disappointed but just shrugged it off and I had to resist punching him in the dick.
The second floor was completely open, organized as an exhibition hall with a long promenade down the center. And at the end of that promenade was what we were here for.
“This is a joke, right? How obvious of a trap could that be?” Adrian asked.
“I think it’s a safe assumption only completely idiots would try to steal from her, so she probably doesn’t feel any need to hide it.”
I was visibly on edge at this point. The lack of opposition, magical or otherwise, combined with a heaviness in the air that was getting worse by the second was torturous. A smell started to permeate the space, the rank, acrid scent that belied magic of the darkest caliber.
Adrian voiced the words I’d just been thinking. “Where’s it coming from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think she already knows we’re here?”
I shook my head. “If she had goons on the way they’d be here by now.”
“This has to be a trap. Has to be. So where—” He stopped. “Evyn, stop walking.”
I stopped dead, not even turning to look at him. “What is it?”
“Look down.”
Unsure of what he could have seen, I studied the floor beneath me. It took me a second to make them out, but when I did a shock spiked through me. Among the intricate patterned wooden tiles on the promenade floated ancient runes that I barely recognized from my studies centuries ago.
They were visibly moving with a sense of purpose, entwining with other runes and reforming into a new shape before detaching and going on their separate ways. More of the living, sentient spells. And beneath them was the ebb and flow of the eternal, ephemeral waters, the otherworldly sheen on the soft waves undeniable.
“S-styx.” The word came out of my mouth in a barely audible croak.
I could feel Adrian’s fear notch up in my own gut as he whispered, “What do we do?”
“Say hello to Hades?” I said grimly. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen him.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Did it sound like I was joking?” My stomach twisted in knots. “I’m not sure what I’m looking at here, but I’m in it either way.” As if to further drive home the point that I was contending with sorcerers far more devious than I, a face swam up from the current and appraised me.
“So we figure it out, we always do.”
“Adrian,” I said, watching the face as it stared back at me with white, pupil-less eyes. He didn’t hear me.
“Good thing you’ve got my outside-the-box brain, right?” Adrian tried to force some humor into his voice.
“Adrian,” I said, looking over my shoulder as best I could without moving my feet. I met his eyes, tight with anxiety. “We’ve got company.” I looked back around at the face. I heard him curse behind me.
“Do we make a run for it? Regroup?”
I shook my head. “You heard Derfael. If we don’t get it now, it’ll disappear.”
“If we keep going, we might disappear,” Adrian hissed.
Lorraine’s words made plenty of sense now.
“We’re not good to anybody if we’re dead, pretty sure Derfael would agree. At least in your case,” he blanched.
I heard him and agreed with him, but running and regrouping when we were this close to the artifact wasn’t something I was ready to consider yet. Even with the creepy floating face staring at me from a bespelled mirage of the Dark's most infamous body of water.
“What if we freeze it?” I asked Adrian.
“Freeze the noncorporeal smoke river?” he asked, monotone and unimpressed.
“Not exactly. What if I create a sheet of ice on top of it?”
“Where are you gonna go then? The only way to that artifact is by stepping on this damn pathway.”
“If I can at least get free of the immediate danger we can figure that out with a bit more breathing room,” I snapped.
Adrian started to say something but bit off his response and huffed out a breath. “Okay, fine. I don’t have anything better.”
I looked back at him for—I still don’t know what. Reassurance or encouragement, maybe? Whatever it was I was looking for, I didn’t get it. Instead, just a distant, worried glance before he went back to studying the floor.
I crouched down carefully, not moving my feet an inch. I hovered my hand over the floor and started to speak the words that would put a sheet of ice between me and whatever doom lay under my feet. Ice started to spread from my fingertips and crystalline shards arced in fractals across the floor. The face was still staring at me, and I could have sworn—
“It winked at me.”
“What?”
“The face. It winked at me.” I was trying to figure out what that meant but got my answer quickly.
A rattling growl like a million hungry ghosts rumbled through the house, a sound deep enough to set my heart palpitating. My feet slid out from under me on the ice sheet and I collapsed to the ground.
Everything was shaking now, priceless artifacts falling from the walls and sliding off shelves to shatter into pieces. I struggled to get up, succeeding only in dragging myself toward the edge of the ice.
I could sense Adrian was shouting at me but couldn’t actually hear any of his words. My vision was blurry, and my head buzzed with what felt like an electric shock. I looked up, every inch of movement an entire battle waged until I finally caught sight of him.
He was on his knees, reaching for me, frantic. I could see him looking at something over my shoulder and just then the noise cut out and the room settled, returning to normal, not a thing out of place. All my faculties came rushing back and I whipped my head back to see what had Adrian so panicked.
There was nothing there.
We both collapsed back, sitting heavily on the floor, and trying to catch our breaths.
“What just happened?”
Adrian was just as puzzled as I was. “No idea. Was that some kind of hallucination?”
“With the level of spellwork we’re seeing in this house, I wouldn’t doubt someone found a way to mess with our heads that badly.”
“So do you think it’s safe? Maybe they were counting on people getting the fuck out of dodge after that experience.”
“Doubtful. That’s too kind for Griselda.” I looked below my feet and found the ethereal Styx had disappeared. It was just your everyday plain tile.
I took a baby step toward the edge. Nothing happened, nothing moved, even that pungent smell was gone. I took a larger step and still everything remained quiet.
The way the room was designed the artifact was set into an alcove that was about eight-feet square embedded into the surrounding wall, the entire width of the pathway. Even if I walked alongside the now tile promenade, I’d still have to step back onto it to reach the artifact. Sigils set into the corners of the alcove made it apparent that going through the wall from the outside wasn’t an option.
“Evyn, I know you aren’t thinking about walking down that floor. That’s a kill zone no matter how you look at it. If you won’t leave without it, at least let me call Derfael and get his input.”
“Why, so you can be absolved of his wrath for not completing the mission?” I asked, a bit harshly.
Adrian scowled. “Maybe he has some ideas that we’re not thinking of. Maybe we’re a bit more out of practice than we thought,” he spat back.
“He’ll have to come down here himself to get a look at it and that’ll take too long.” I only half believed my own bullshit.
Truth was, I would risk whatever this was if it meant not having to call Derfael in for help. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but he would certainly think less of me, and that was just as bad in my estimation.
“Evyn, don’t.”
I ignored him. Throwing up the strongest all-purpose shield around myself as possible I turned on my heel before he could stop me and sprinted down the tile walkway. I was inside the alcove, the magick of the place beating down on my shield from all sides, my fingertips grazing the artifact when I was thrown backward a good twenty feet.
I landed hard on my side and my shield broke as the pungent smell returned. If I had any color left in my face, I’m sure it all left in the next moment.
A giant wave of vaporous water and ghostly faces rose from the alcove, gaining momentum and changing shape, first into a giant version of the face that had watched me, then into a wave of serpents, finally settling into the grizzled and smirking visage of Charon, the ferryman.
I leaped to my feet and started to run toward Adrian but the ether was already lapping at my heels. The only way out of this one was going to be through, and of the two of us, I had the best chance at making it back alive, Lorraine’s prediction not withstanding.
Adrian couldn’t follow me where I was going. His outstretched hand was inches away, but I lurched forward, shoving him in the chest and sending him stumbling backward and off balance, landing several feet away.
He was pissed, but I’d only have to ask forgiveness if I had the gall to survive.
I stopped running. Adrian twisted around and crouched, ready to leap toward me. “Evyn, no!”
But the wave was already closing around me, and I felt myself start to fall through the ether. If anyone had been there to witness it, they would have seen Adrian jump after me, trying to follow, not willing to let me fight this alone despite the hate for me he still held so close to the surface.
The part of the story he doesn’t like to constantly remind me of however is where everything disappears and he hits the floor facefirst and skids on the last remnants of the ice sheet. But I’m sure it was a very heroic skid.
My fall didn’t come to an abrupt end, rather a slowing before I found myself suspended, upside down in midair. I couldn’t see anything past the gray haze and hear the now very corporeal waters of Styx writhing beneath me, sensing a new sacrifice had arrived.
“Shit.” My voice bounced and reverberated in different pitches and tones all around me and then cut off into abrupt silence. I hung there for what might have been years for all I knew. Waiting.
Finally I heard noise besides the blood rushing in my ears. A soft splashing, as of an oar dipping in the water at a slow rhythmic pace. An eerie whistling started up, a tune that sounded vaguely like a sea shanty but if a humorless, two-star, half-dead, all-asshole ride-share driver was the one singing it.
