Mathieu (2 page)

“I’ll deal with you later,” it said, as it pivoted back to the humans. “It’s been a long time, and I’ll enjoy reminding you of your place.”

Fear
darkened Mathieu’s vision, but Gadreel could be hurt, couldn’t he? “
Sed libera nos a malo
,” he said, as he flailed and grabbed the Demon’s leg. Gadreel stumbled and turned back, fist raised.

It was a calculated risk, but what else could he possibly lose that had not already been stolen from him long ago? Choking down the fear, Mathieu yanked the armor-clad leg with all his strength and rolled away as Gadreel went down. The Demon howled with rage, as it hit the ground.

Gadreel sprang to its feet, its face completely transformed with unthinking wrath. Mathieu rolled up into a crouch and dodged as Gadreel tried to snatch at his hair. With a howl of fury, the Demon grabbed again. Its hand scrabbled across Mathieu’s naked skin, leaving bleeding gashes that closed and healed as he darted away.

With a roar, Gadreel lunged forward and caught the only thing left to it—the rusted chain around Mathieu’s neck. “I am going to suck out your soul and devour it in front of your eyes,” it hissed. “It only wastes space in that pretty little body of yours, and I don’t remember why I let you keep it this long. It is of absolutely no use to me.”

Sheer terror filled Mathieu, and he knew that the Demon could see it. Gadreel tightened its grip on the chain, causing the links to pinch and tear skin. Blood trickled down Mathieu’s chest as it pulled him closer and whispered, “And then you will be soulless, just like me.”

With a wordless cry, Mathieu scrabbled at the cruel hands at his neck. Gadreel laughed, its face transforming back to the beautiful mask it normally wore. “You won’t get away, little bastard.”

“No,
you
won’t get away, Mestre,” Mathieu ground out between clenched teeth. His scrabbling turned into a strong grip, trapping the creature’s hands tight around the chain. He wrenched wide the gate that kept the dark power contained in his body and sent a fragment of a prayer up to the heaven he didn’t think existed anymore. “
Sed libera nos a malo
.”

Power is like a living creature in that it craves freedom above all else. The darker the power, the deeper the craving. This power was the
darkest
of all, born of pain, blood, and death. It had been harvested over eons of war and suffering, and it wanted out. Mathieu felt it pour out of him, into the chain that kept both of them enslaved and into the Demon’s body.

Now Gadreel was the one frantically scrabbling to get away. Mathieu tightened his grip around the Demon’s hands and repeated, “
Sed libera nos a malo
,” through gritted teeth. The smell of his own burnt flesh filled his nostrils as the chain grew hotter and hotter around his neck. He used the pain to focus, as he held the evil creature in place.

Gadreel made another sound that Mathieu had never heard before, a whimper of fear as it struck out at him, wildly hitting him in the face and chest in a desperate attempt to escape. But even if he could have reined in the power, it would not be restrained. It ran over and through him and into the Demon, filling it with more than it could ever hope to hold.

In that moment, he met Gadreel’s terrified gaze and sneered. “
Podrit en Infern, Mestre
.” The power leapt, and the world turned into fire. The Demon came apart in front of him, turning red, then black, and then to ash, as the power consumed it. The chain of Mathieu’s servitude melted through his fingers, taken away by the darkness that filled him and roiled around him.

The power erupted in a column of white light and all that had been Gadreel was absorbed. Mathieu was lost in sensation. Every nerve sang with pleasure, and he allowed it to pull him up and out and into the world, where it could roam and be free and consume.

His eyes flew open, and he remembered what he was and what the power was and what he had to do. He pulled. The power fought, but he clawed at it, forcing it back, back, back and inside. It finally, reluctantly, came back to him, and he clamped down on it, closing the gate he wrenched open. It was calm now, but he could feel it waiting, a wild animal pacing and waiting for an opening to leap and be free once more. Mathieu felt the world around him again, the dirt floor beneath his feet and the air on his skin. “
Sed libera nos a malo
. Amen.”

And
then the world was dark and silent.

C
hapter Two

Jenn Bartlett—Jennifer Leigh only to her parents, and then only when she had done something deserving severe punishment, like the time she’d summoned a Kelpie into the swimming pool at her big sister’s graduation party—sobbed into Marcus’ shoulder as silence fell over the room like a shroud.

Marcus shifted, held her tighter and whispered, “It’s over. At least I think it is.” He was shaking too, but attempting to hide it as to not let her know how afraid he was. She knew how sensitive he was, how he could sense the slightest eddy and flow of occult energy when she felt nothing. He knew better than anyone how closely they all had just skated to the edge of death.

Jenn clutched him for a moment more, then pushed him away so that she could try to lean up against the wall. Her throat was on fire, and every breath hurt. She rasped out, “I think so too,” and instantly regretted speaking.

Marcus stood with her, steadied her while she composed herself. After a moment more, she tried again, “There’s light…too much light for the room.”

She felt him turn around to look where the shattered remnants of their painstakingly drawn circle would be. “Damn.” In that one word, she heard awe and dread mixed together in his flat Midwestern lack-of-an-accent accent.

At that, she looked where she had last seen the… whatever the Hell that thing was… that had been about to kill them all. What she saw now made her repeat Marcus. “Damn,” she croaked out.

The
sun shone weakly down into the basement from directly overhead. The sunlight wasn’t what was shocking, though. It was the perfectly circular hole that had been cleanly burned through the ceiling, and then through the ceilings of the three floors above that, and then the roof above all of that. It let the watery sunlight into what should have been a pitch black basement.

The hole was the exact circumference of the circle they’d drawn out and powered at 3:00 AM local time. She shook her head and blinked as she realized just how long they’d been down there.

She almost didn’t notice the naked body in the middle of the circle.

He was young, she realized when she finally saw him there. Not so young as a child or teenager, but certainly not old either. Maybe early twenties? It was hard to tell. He was curled up in the fetal position, arms crossed in front of his chest. His shoulder-length brown hair fell in loose curls across his face, but she could see his brown eyes staring blankly ahead between the strands. He was breathing slowly, deliberately, as if it took effort to remember how.

“Son of a bitch, it’s still alive,” Marcus whispered next to her. She looked up at him and then nodded. Still clutching her bruised throat, she started to say something and then simply shook her head and rushed over to the duffel bag that Eddie had left open on the floor in the back corner of the room. She had to check Eddie for a pulse before she pushed his limp body out of the way.

“Holy water, no. Shotgun shells, no. Grenade, no. Silver knife, no,” she whispered as she dug through their emergency back-up kit, which had been no help at all against whatever the hell that thing had been. Then with a choked “Ah-ha!” she found the canister of salt.

She showed it to Marcus who read the label aloud with a questioning look. “This salt does not supply iodide, a necessary nutrient. I don’t think it’s got thyroid issues, Jenn.” She barely checked the impulse to throw the canister at his head, and instead wrenched open the spout and ran over to the edge of the dim circle of light.

Pouring
a circle was harder than drawing one. You had to be careful to use just enough salt and get it perfect the first time. Not enough salt or a gap and whatever you were trying to contain could get through and do nasty things to you. Too much salt at once and you’d run out before your circle was complete, and whatever you were trying to contain could do nasty things to you without the effort of breaking through an imperfect circle. Neither of these options made Jenn happy, so she measured out the salt very, very carefully and traced the edge of sunlight.

She glanced back to Marcus, who stood there watching the—she hesitated to call it a “person” because she wasn’t quite sure what it was—creature lying in the center of the room. His blonde hair gleaming softly in the dim light, Marcus looked every inch the corn-fed all-American quarterback—if corn-fed all-American football players dabbled in the occult. He glanced over at her and made a gesture to hurry up.

Drawing the circle closed, she dropped to her knees and started tracing sigils into the dirt floor. Her lips moved as she silently sounded them out. She straightened up and frowned. She wasn’t especially pleased with improvising. She often said that improvisation had no place in the occult, that exhaustive preparation was the only thing that would save them from something going wrong.

Of course, now something had gone very wrong, and she needed to learn how to improvise quickly. It didn’t mean she had to like it, though.

She felt Marcus come stand behind her in that close but not-quite-close way he had of doing things. It would have been annoying if anyone else had done it, but she never minded him. It helped that he never did it to anyone else, either. She was the only woman—or man, for that matter—who received his attentions. She closed her eyes and leaned against his legs for a moment, soaking in his body heat before tackling this challenge.

After a long moment, she leaned forward again and spoke. Her voice rasped but she powered through the pain so that she could be
heard
clearly by the circle’s occupant. “I evoke and conjure thee, O Spirit, by the Supreme Majesty—the true God who is known by the names of Yod Heh Vav Heh, Adonnai, Eheieh, and Agla to appear before me in a fair and comely shape.”

Of course, she thought, the creature had already appeared in a fair and comely shape. What had that thing called him? “A pretty slave.” He certainly was pretty in a masculine way. She peered at the creature who was even now peering back at her from beneath his brown curls. Good. She had his attention.

“In peace I welcome you, O Spirit, and in the name of the Most High I command you to stay within this circle until you are dismissed, to speak honestly, to answer all questions I put to you, and to do as I bid you.” Gods, it hurt to talk. “Name yourself.”

The creature lifted his head to flip his hair out of his eyes, gracefully rolled up to his knees and then gained his feet. He looked up at the opening above and then smiled with what she could only call grim satisfaction. Then he looked at her and cringed.

C
hapter Three

Human. They were only human. Mathieu took a deep breath and repeated that mantra internally. Gadreel was gone, and these humans could not harm him.

“Name yourself.” The red-haired woman’s voice was hoarse as she repeated her command. He could see the bruises blooming around her neck from where he stood. She was lucky she’d gotten off so lightly from her encounter with Gadreel.

He looked around the room, now weakly illuminated by the afternoon sun. There were three slumped bodies in the room, one each on the east and west cardinal, and another in the far corner near a bag of some sort. On his right were rickety wooden stairs that led up and out of this place and into the world above.

He made to move to the stairs and the tall blonde man bellowed in a language that was not the Lenga D'òc. “Name yourself and be bound!” Mathieu understood him perfectly. Dread coiled in his stomach in tandem with the sickening feeling of power that bided its time.

Mathieu wrapped his arms around himself. The man resembled Gadreel’s favored form, and his voice sounded much like Gadreel in a rage. He took several deep breaths, repeated the fact that they were all human, very much human, and they could not hurt him. At least, they could not hurt him as much as Gadreel had.

It took a great effort, but he put his arms down and turned to face them. The woman looked at him, and he was suddenly aware of his nudity. Of course, he thought. He should not be surprised. After all, he’d spent the last eight hundred years that way. He closed his eyes, and something twisted under his skin.

When
he opened his eyes, the world was framed with the edges and nasal guard of his old helm. Another quick glance down confirmed that he was now garbed as he had been the day Gadreel had taken him. His rusty mail gaped where the lance had ripped out his guts, and his surcoat was bloody and torn. The blazon was still visible despite the damage—a dull red background with a gold three-towered castle on the upper quarter, a white bendlet sinister, with a gold lion on the lower quarter.

He automatically shifted his weight to accommodate the sword on his hip, placing his hand on the pommel. Running his gloved hand down to the hilt, he gripped it tightly as he looked back up at the waiting humans.

The red-haired woman was staring at the blood on his surcoat. She then glanced at his sword and then up at his face. “Spirit, I command you again to name yourself.” Her voice was raspier this time.

Mathieu squeezed the sword hilt for reassurance and then sighed. None of these things were real. Not the sword, the helm, the mail, the surcoat. None of it. All of those things were destroyed long ago, stripped away from him along with his innocence. It was not fitting that something as ruined as he would wear the kit he’d worn when he followed his king to the Holy Land to gain absolution for the stain of his birth.

He closed his eyes and felt the power shift under his skin again. When he opened his eyes this time he wore an old threadbare tunic and breeches. He rocked forward in his favorite soft boots, as he brought his arms up to run his hands over the familiar scratch of the rough fabric woven by his mother’s own hands.