Magic Bleeds kd-4 Page 21

  I looked into its eyes. “Let me into the circle, and I will tell you the story of the first vampire.”

  Behind me, clothes rustled as the two rabbis sat on the bench.

  I picked up a stick and poked the fire with it. “Long ago there lived a man. He was a great man, a thinker, philosopher, and magician. We’ll call him Roland. Roland once had a kingdom, the most powerful kingdom in the world, a realm of magic and wonders. His ancestors brought people out of savagery into an age of prosperity and enlightenment and he was very proud of what his family had achieved.

  “Roland had many children, for he had lived a very long time, but his favorite was his youngest son, let’s call him Abe. He was Roland’s only child at the time. You see, Roland had a habit of killing children when they rose against him, so Abe was the only one left.

  “Everything went along splendidly, but the kingdom’s people had pushed their magic too far. They disrupted the balance between magic and technology. Tech came, interrupting the flow of magic. The waves of technology attacked Roland’s kingdom, pulling it apart the way magic now pulls apart our world. He counted on his son to help him. But Abe saw it as his chance for freedom. In the chaos of tech waves, Abe betrayed his father and fought him for power. The war between them ripped their kingdom to shreds. Abe lost, and took his followers into the wilderness, proclaiming he would make his own nation, greater than his father’s fallen realm.

  “Eventually Roland failed his people. The mighty kingdom had fallen and its ruler lost everything. He hid from the world, choosing to live alone on a mountain, spending his days in meditation.

  “Meanwhile Abe’s nation of nomads grew larger. They lost most of what they knew. Philosophy and complicated magic were no longer important—survival was. Abe had a son and his son had sons, two boys. We’ll call them Esau and Jacob. Esau was the oldest. He prided himself on being a great warrior and a hunter of men and beasts. Truth is, Esau was a thug, but he was stronger and more powerful than ordinary thugs and he made the best of it.

  “The older nomads told stories of the wonders of Roland’s fallen kingdom. Rumor had it that when Roland went to his mountain, he took the treasures of his realm with him. Among these treasures was a set of clothes made from the skin of a mythical beast and permeated with the fragrance of a lost valley. A hunter who wore this garment could hunt and capture any animal he wished. Esau, being an enterprising guy, decided to get his hands on these clothes. After all, how much trouble could one old guy be? So Esau got his supplies together and headed for Roland’s mountain.

  “Put yourself into Roland’s shoes. Here he was, a man who’d lost everything, and now his own great-grandson shows up and tries to rob him. And more, his great-grandson, the fruit of his family tree, is an ignorant thug. In Esau, Roland saw the reflection of his people’s fate—all of their knowledge lost, all of their achievements squandered, as they reverted to primitive brutality.

  “Roland saw red, and Esau died before he could land a single blow. But that wasn’t enough. Roland had a lot of frustration to vent. He raged at his great-grandson, at his fallen kingdom, at the world. He wanted to kill Esau again, and so he dragged him back from the brink of death and murdered him a second time. Again and again Esau died, until finally Roland stopped to take a breath and realized that Esau was gone. His body remained, but his mind had died. Instead Roland found a mindless creature, neither alive nor dead. An undead with its mind completely blank, like a white page.

  “Roland discovered that he could control this empty brain with infinite ease. He could speak through Esau’s mouth and hear what the undead heard. A host of possibilities occurred to Roland and he decided it would be convenient for him if people thought that Esau had murdered him. He dressed the creature that used to be his great-grandson into the magic garment Esau had come for and sent the undead back to its family, controlling its every move and spinning wild tales of his own death. He used Esau to torment Abe’s nomads. He wanted to destroy Abe and all of his descendants.

  “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.

  “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.

  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 fel
t 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.

  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. Hurry up, 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,

  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.”

  CHAPTER 20

  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.

  “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.”

  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, cl
eared 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.

  The gray-haired woman looked up. “Peter, open the ward!”

  White light streamed down. I stepped through, and the ward surged shut behind me. I started toward Tremor, pulling on the clasp of the cloak.

  Tremor turned to face me. He wore the face of Solomon Red. Surprise, surprise.

  The cloak slid off my shoulders and fell on the snow. I kept walking. Nice and slow.

  Solomon regarded me with a condescending grin. He never smiled. Like a drunk straining every muscle to appear sober, Solomon did his best to hide the fact that he couldn’t read behind a mask of grave importance. But now he smirked at me with obvious contempt. An agile intelligence lit his eyes. Erra’s intelligence.

  Solomon opened his mouth. A familiar female voice spilled forth. “You again. This is the best the priests can do? Or are they trying to entertain me?”

  I swung my sword, warming up my wrist. “Why are you a woman?”

  “Why can’t I be a woman?”

  Because it fucks up my family tree. “Because Erra’s poem says you’re a man.”

  Solomon shrugged. “You shouldn’t put your trust into the ramblings of senile temple rats.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Any other pearls of wisdom?”

  “None that would help you live through the next minute.” Solomon spread his arms and pulled them together as if pushing a great weight before him.

  The ground shook beneath my feet.

  I leapt up and to the left. A sinkhole gaped where I’d stood. I landed and jumped again, barely avoiding another pit. All around me holes opened, like greedy black mouths in the snow, and I hopped between them like a chicken on hot tin. I dashed right, then left. Unless I learned to fly, I’d never get to him.