Blood Infernal: The Order of the Sanguines Series (2 page)

John struggled to his feet. The pain in his heart had not lessened. He must finish his task quickly.

He stumbled across the room, closed the door that Vaclav had left open, and locked it. The only other key to this room rested on the floor in a pool of Vaclav’s cooling blood. John would not be disturbed again.

He returned to his duty, running a finger along the glass pipe that ran from the bell toward his desk. He examined its length for any new flaws or chinks, taking his time.

I am too close for any mistakes
.

At its end, the pipe narrowed to a tiny opening, barely larger than a sewing needle, the work of a craftsman at the height of his powers. John drew the thick curtains apart until a ray of morning sunlight fell on the small end of the glass pipe.

The pain grew in his chest, locking his left arm to his side. He needed his strength now, but it was rapidly fading.

With his shaking right hand, he picked up the stone. It glittered in the sunlight, beautiful and deadly. He clamped his lips against the dizziness and used a tiny set of silver tongs to pull the bone sliver from one end of the stone.

His knees shook, but he gritted his teeth. Now that the sliver had been removed, he must keep the stone bathed in sunlight. Even a momentary shadow would allow the smoky darkness inside to escape into the larger world.

That must not happen . . . at least, not yet.

The blackness flattened and ran up the sides of its small prison, reaching for the tiny opening, but it stopped, plainly fearful of venturing into the light. The evil inside must somehow sense that unfiltered sunlight held the power to destroy it. Its only refuge remained inside the diamond’s verdant heart.

Slowly, and with great care, John settled the small hole carved out of the diamond over the open end of the glass pipe. Sunlight covered them both.

He retrieved a flickering candle that rested on the stained desk and raised it above the diamond, letting wax drip over the gem and glass pipe, ensuring an airtight seal between them. Only then did he close the curtain and allow darkness to fall over the green gem.

Candlelight illuminated the dark mass still moving inside the heart of the diamond. It swirled around, creeping up the sides to the opening. He held his breath, watching it flow along the edge. It seemed to probe his seal, and only after discovering no opening into the laboratory did the darkness flow up along the glass pipe. It followed the pipe’s length and continued its inexorable course to where the pipe ended—at the glass bell and the woman inside.

John shook his grizzled head. Though she had once been human, she was no longer a
woman
. He must not allow himself to view her as such. She had quieted and stood still in the center of the bell. Her luminous blue eyes studied him.

Her skin glowed white as alabaster, her hair like spun gold; both had a watery green cast through the thick glass. Even so, she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. She placed one palm against the glass. Candlelight flickered across lovely long fingers.

He crossed the room and placed his palm over hers. The glass was cold against his skin. Even without the pain and encroaching weakness, he had always known that she would be his last. She was the six hundred sixty-sixth creature to stand in that coffin. Her death would complete his task.

Her lips formed a single word, the same as Vaclav.

Why?

He could no more explain it to her than he could to his dead apprentice.

Her eyes went to the blackness that slid ever closer to her prison.

Like the others, she lifted her hand up toward the foul mist as it swept into her glass cell. Her lips moved silently, her face rapturous.

In the early years he had always felt shame at watching this private dark communion, but those feelings had long since left him. He leaned against the glass, trying to get as close as he could. Even the pain in his chest vanished as he watched.

Inside the bell, the black smoke coalesced along the top of the inner cell, forming a mist of tiny droplets that rained down upon the cell’s lone occupant. The moisture flowed along her white fingers and her upstretched arms. She threw her head back and screamed. He did not need to hear her cry to recognize her posture of ecstasy. She rose up on her toes, breasts thrust out, quivering as the droplets caressed her body, touching every part of her.

She shuddered one final time, and then collapsed against the side of the bell, her body slumping to the bottom, now lifeless.

The mist hovered over her form, waiting.

It is done
.

John pushed away from the bell. He stepped around Vaclav’s corpse and hurried to the window. He yanked the curtains fully open, wide enough to allow the morning sunlight to kiss the side of the bell. The girl’s cursed corpse burst into flame inside, adding her foul smoke to the waiting haze.

The black mist—now stoked incrementally stronger by the girl’s essence—fled from the sunlight, retreating toward the only dark path left open to it: the glass pipe leading back to the diamond. Using a handheld silver mirror, he reflected sunlight along the pipe, chasing and herding the foul blackness back into the emerald heart of the gemstone, to its only place of refuge in this sunlit world.

Once it was again fully entrapped, John carefully broke the wax seal, freeing the diamond from the pipe. He kept the tiny opening always in the light as he carried it to a pentagram he had drawn on the floor long ago. He set the stone in the middle, still in the sunlight.

So close now
. . .

Carefully, John drew a circle of salt around the pentagram. As he did so, he chanted prayers. His life was nearly spent, but at last, he would achieve his life’s dream.

To open a portal to the angelic world.

More than six hundred times, he had drawn this same circle, more than six hundred times he had chanted the same prayers. But in his heart, he knew this time would be different. He recalled the verse from Revelation:
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred three score and six
.

“Six hundred and sixty-six,” he repeated.

That was the number of creatures he had imprisoned in the bell, the number of smoky essences he had collected upon their flaming deaths into this one diamond. It had taken a decade to find so many, to imprison them, and to gather together the evil essence that animated these damned creatures. Now those same energies would open the portal to the angelic world.

He covered his face with his hands, trembling bodily. He had so many questions for the angels. Not since the times chronicled by the Book of Enoch had angels come to man without the command of God. Not since then had men benefited from their wisdom.

But I will bring their light to earth and share it with all of mankind
.

He moved to the fireplace and lit a long taper. He carried it around the circle, igniting five candles placed at the corners of the pentagram. The yellow flames looked weak and insubstantial in the sunlight, guttering in the draft from the window.

At last, he closed the curtains, and darkness cloaked the room.

He hurried back and knelt at the edge of the circle.

From the gemstone, inky smoke flowed from the tiny opening, moving tentatively, perhaps sensing the larger world still glowed with the new day. Then it seemed to grow bolder, rushing toward John, as if to claim him, to make him pay for its long imprisonment. But the circle of salt held it at bay.

Ignoring the threat, John’s voice hissed against the crackling fire as he recited words in the Enochian language, a language long thought lost to mankind. “I command thee, Master of Darkness, to show me the light that is the opposite of your shadows.”

Within the circle, the black cloud quivered once, twice, expanding and contracting like a living heart. With each beat, it grew larger than before.

John clasped his hands in front of him. “Protect me, oh Lord, as I look upon the glory thou hast wrought.”

The darkness coalesced into an oval large enough for a man to step through.

Whispered words brushed John’s ear.

“
COME TO ME
. . .”

The voice rose from out of the portal.

“
SERVE ME
. . .”

John picked up an unlit candle from beside his knee and lit it from one on the corner of the pentagram. He held the flame aloft, calling again upon the protection of God.

A new noise reached him as if something shifted on the far side of the portal, accompanied by a heavy
chinking
sound, the clang of metal on metal.

Words returned, worming into his mind. “
OF ALL MORTALS, I HAVE FOUND THOU ALONE WORTHY
.”

John rose and took a step toward the circle, but his foot brushed Vaclav’s outstretched hand. He stopped, suddenly sensing how unworthy he was to look upon such glory.

I have killed an innocent
.

His silent confession was heard.

“
GREATNESS HAS ITS PRICE
,” he was assured. “
FEW ARE PREPARED TO PAY IT. THOU ART UNLIKE THE OTHERS, JOHN DEE
.”

He trembled at these new words, especially the last two.

My name is known, spoken by an angel
.

He teetered between pride and fear, the room spinning drunkenly. The candle fell from his fingers. Still lit, it rolled into the circle, then through the portal to cast its light on what lay hidden on the other side.

He gaped at a figure of incredible majesty seated atop a shining ebony throne. Candlelight glinted off eyes of black oil in a face of stern beauty, each plane seemingly sculpted from onyx. Atop that beautiful countenance rested a broken crown of silver, its surface tarnished black, jagged edges looking like horns. From beyond wide shoulders rose mighty wings, whose feathers were as dark and glossy as a raven’s. They curved high, sheltering the naked form within their embrace.

The figure shifted forward, disturbing the tarnished silver chains that encased his flawless form, securing him to his throne.

John knew upon whom he stared.

“Thou art no angel,” he whispered.

“
I AM
. . .
AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN
.” Though that smooth voice filled his head, the figure’s lips did not move. “
THY WORDS HAVE SUMMONED ME. WHAT ELSE COULD I BE
?”

Doubt fluttered in John’s chest, accompanied by a growing pain. He had been wrong. Darkness had not summoned light—it had called to darkness instead.

As he stared in horror, a link of the chain shattered from the figure’s form. Fresh silver shone brightly from the fractured edge. The creature was breaking free.

The sight cut through John’s trance. He fell away from the circle and stumbled toward the window. He must not let this creature of darkness enter this world.

“
HALT
. . .”

That single syllable of command stabbed a fiery lance of pain through his head. He could not think, he could barely move, but he forced himself onward. With hands like claws, he grabbed the thick curtain and pulled with all his feeble strength.

The velvet tore.

Sunlight flooded the room, shining onto the bell, the desk, the circle, and, finally, the portal of darkness. A piercing scream rose behind him, filling his skull to bursting.

It was too much.

But it was enough.

As John Dee slumped to the ground, his last sight was darkness again fleeing the sunlight, retreating to its place of refuge in the gem. He offered one final prayer to the world as he left it.

May no one ever find that cursed stone . . .

At noon, soldiers shattered the laboratory door with a battering ram. The men fell to their knees in the hall as the emperor himself swept past them.

“Lift not your faces from the ground,” he ordered.

The soldiers obeyed without question.

Emperor Rudolf II walked past their prostrate forms and into the room, taking in the pentagram, the puddles of wax, and the two dead bodies upon the floor—the alchemist and his young apprentice.

Rudolf knew what their deaths meant.

John Dee had failed him.

Not sparing the corpses a second glance, Rudolf stepped into the mystical circle and retrieved his precious diamond from the center. A black mass quivered hatefully inside its leaf-green heart. Cold fury emanated from the stone and clawed at Rudolf’s mind, but it could do no worse. Whatever else he had done, Dee had contained the evil.

Keeping the bright stone in the sunlight, Rudolf stoppered the opening with the sliver of bone that lay abandoned on the corner of the desk, translucent as a snowflake but still so very powerful. He lit a candle and sealed the bone to the diamond using drips of tallow that burned his fingers.

Once done, he sat in the battered chair. With careful movements, he covered the luminous green stone and the darkness that it held with fresh oilcloth. Afterward, he tied the wrapping and lowered the bundle into a cauldron of warm tallow that Dee kept always near the fireplace. Rudolf submerged the bundle to make certain that wax sealed each bit.

He glanced at the men in the hall. They lay as ordered, their faces pressed into the floor. Satisfied that he was unwatched, he opened the secret compartment in the fireplace mantel and tucked the foul object inside. Using the Enochian language, he whispered a quick prayer of protection before closing the secret door.

For now, the evil was hidden.

Weariness dragged at his limbs. It had been long since he had enjoyed a real rest, and he would find none this day either. With a sigh, he fell again into the wooden chair beside Dee’s desk and picked up a scrap of parchment from an untidy pile. He dipped a quill into a silver inkwell and began to write in the Enochian alphabet. Few had been taught the language’s secrets.

When finished, the emperor folded the paper twice, sealed it with black wax, and pressed the seal on his ring into the hot liquid. A trusted man would ride out within the hour to deliver it.