Promise: Caulborn #2 (17 page)

Pain jolted up my arm as electricity arced from the metal door and into my body. I was thrown back down the stairs and left a second indentation in the blue mailbox. I twitched for an eternity and a day until the world went completely black.

Chapter 8

Twelve will come. Twelve will open the gates of Hell, and all will burn.

—From the Dodici Prophecy, as translated by Stranger Wolfram

I heard sirens for a moment, then nothing.

Then there were two men arguing.

Nothing.

Then a few whispered words in Latin.

Nothing.

The world grudgingly came back into view. I was on a bed in Medical. I groaned and tried to raise my head.

“Easy, Vincent,” came a gentle voice. “Take it slowly.”

I blinked my eyes until Galahad XI’s face finally came into focus. The dark hollows under his eyes spoke of a man who hadn’t slept much. Just the same, his steely gray hair was neatly combed and he was clean-shaven. “Hey, boss,” I said. “How’re you doing today?” The boss is the eleventh man to hold the title of Galahad, a name that goes all the way back to the Round Table. I’ve never learned his real name, and what little I know of his life before the Caulborn comes from Glimpses. He’s a champion of truth and justice, and there’s absolutely nothing cliché about that.

“A bit better than you, by the looks of it,” he said as he pressed a squeeze bottle of water into my hand. As I took a long pull from it, my Glimpse kicked on.

Galahad XI stood in a dark cement room; a sub-basement, by the look of it. Ahead of him, twelve demons wreathed in flame struggled against chains of black metal that held them to stone pillars.

“We will triumph over you, human. You are but a fallen man of faith. You cannot hope to defeat us. The combined power of the Twelve—graah!”

The demon cut off with a shriek as Galahad summoned a sword of light from thin air. Its luminescence bathed the room in a gentle white light. Holy light. Holy light, which burns demons like acid. All twelve of them recoiled and screamed in pain. “The sword of the bastard!” one of the demons cried.

The sword in question also went back to the Round Table, having been wielded by each of the eleven people who held the title of Galahad, including Sir Galahad himself, a.k.a., the Blessed Bastard. I’ve never learned exactly how the boss acquired the sword, or the full extent of its powers, but I’ve seen it in action enough to know I’d never want to be on the receiving end.

Galahad pointed the sword at the demon that had spoken earlier. “I have heard enough from you.” His voice boomed, and I wondered if the holy sword did something to augment its wielder’s voice. “This is your punishment for standing against God all those years ago. You suffer as the souls you corrupted suffer.” Galahad dismissed the sword and turned to leave.

“Foolish human,” the lead demon spat. “The prophecy states that twelve will come. That twelve will prevail. Your time grows short, mortal. When we are freed, yours will be the first soul I consume.” The demon let out a terrible, hissing laugh.

The Glimpse faded. I choked on the water I’d been swallowing. Galahad hurriedly grabbed a small blanket from the foot of the bed and helped wipe me up. “Drink slowly, Vincent,” he said. “Easy, now.” Once I had the coughing under control, he looked me squarely in the eye. “What did you see?”

I blinked at him as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “How’d you know?”

Galahad smiled. “Your eyes go just a bit distant for a moment when you Glimpse something.”

Damn, even when he was exhausted, the boss didn’t miss anything. That’s why he’s the boss, I suppose. “I saw you speaking with demons. One of them said something about a prophecy. Boss, those things looked pretty bad. What can I do to help you with them?”

Galahad sat back and gave a weary smile. “Ah, Vincent, if only we all had the resolve and resources that you do.” He shook his head. “No, those demons are my particular cross to bear.”

“And that prophecy?”

“It’s one of the Strangers’ prophecies. The Dodici prophecy, to be precise,” he replied. “It tells of twelve demons who come to our plane. They stand against the forces of light.” He fell quiet for a moment. “And it looks like they win.” There was a heavy moment of silence between us. “But,” he said, raising a finger, “prophecies are not always what they seem; particularly those that come from the Strangers. Their purpose on this Earth is to ensure prophecies are fulfilled, but
how
those prophecies are fulfilled is another story entirely. And faith, as you well know, can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Even Lucifer himself could be defeated, and I sincerely doubt these twelve are in his league. If you’re interested, I’ll let you read the full text of the prophecy sometime. But not now. Now we have other priorities. First and foremost—”

“Galahad,” Leslie’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “The Care Taker is on line one and needs to speak with you immediately.”

Galahad sighed and stood. “We will talk later, Vincent.” As he left, Doc Ryan shuffled into the room.

Doc gave the sensors and monitors next to the bed a quick once over. He swiped a thermometer over my head. “Your fever’s broken,” he said, and began removing the electrodes. “You’re good as new, you lucky punk bastard.”

“Love you, too, Doc. Hey, did you learn anything from that ball of amber I brought in earlier?”

Doc nodded as he checked a few of the monitors. “The tests just finished. Whatever that amber stuff is causes unstable mutations in the worms. I’ve fed some to a couple of them and their size, mass, and DNA structure changes radically.” Well, that explained why Daimin’s family had undergone such horrific changes. After tapping one of the monitors, he flipped to another page on his clipboard. “As for you, you’ve recovered from a mild case of electrocution and minor head trauma,” he said. “The guys at Mass General did a pretty good job of diagnosing your condition and administering the first phase of your treatment. Took a bit of persuasion to get you released into our care. For some reason, they didn’t want to give up a patient who was running a hundred and thirty degree fever.” He shrugged. “In the end, they saw things my way.”

“How exactly did you manage that?” I asked.

“The head of the hospital owed me a favor. Now then, you’re going to need to take it slow. No fighting, you hear? Research. Think. Learn. Use your brain for a change. Healing fever or no, I’m getting tired of spending so much quality time with you.”

“No problem, Doc.” I smiled at him. “In fact, I think I’m going to start by going to the library.”

Before I went to the library, I wanted to take one more look at Keeper Central. Part of me was hoping I’d catch Laras walking in or out. As tempting as it was to just march in there and pull him out of one of his nondescript conference rooms, I didn’t relish the thought of another confrontation with Judo Julie. I froze when I got to the building. My eyes were already relaxed, but instead of seeing a freshly refurbished building beneath an illusion of dilapidation, the building really was dilapidated. The windows were boarded up, faded posters advertising concerts months old peeled away from a big sheet of plywood covering the door, and the place just felt empty and hollow. There was nothing to indicate that some sort of business had ever been here, let alone in the last few days.

I didn’t like this at all. Now I really needed to get to the library.

The Athenaeum is an old establishment in Boston. It’s sort of a private library with tons of resources. But calling it a library is like saying the Smithsonian is just a museum. In addition to original historical documents that go back hundreds of years, it’s also home to a being called the Loremaster. He’s an expert on all things occult, and knows tons of the movers and shakers in the paranormal underworld not only in my dimension, but across nine or ten others.

I made my way past shelves filled with books and stopped just before a short bust of the Greek philosopher Thales. I relaxed my eyes, letting my caul filter out the illusion that covered the entrance to the Loremaster’s sanctum. It was an unassuming door, made of plain brown wood with a brass handle. I took a quick look around, and when I was confident I wasn’t being watched, I opened the door and stepped through.

The air in the Athenaeum had been warm and dry. The chamber I stepped into was cool and even drier. Dim, too. I blinked a few times to get my eyes to adjust. The room was shaped like a hexagon, and the floor bowed slightly, like the bottom of a bowl. On four of the walls were other doors similar to the one I’d just passed through. Each of those connected to another dimension via its version of the Athenaeum.

The last wall had a set of French doors inlaid with frosted glass. Next to that door sat a little girl, maybe six years old. She was wearing a pink and white dress with lace around the hem, and her dirty-blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail with bright pink ribbon. She swung her legs lazily in the chair, her little Mary Janes coming short of the floor by about a foot. She patted a well-loved teddy bear as she regarded me.

“Hello,” I said. This was new. The Loremaster rarely had unattended guests. Maybe this little girl had accidentally wandered into the sanctum. “My name’s Vincent. What’s yours?”

“Evelyn,” the little girl replied in a voice that sounded like something out of a Disney movie. She was focused on the teddy bear and making it dance. If she was scared or frightened, I didn’t see it. Still, the best thing to do was help get her home. The Loremaster would be able to divine which library she’d stumbled through and then we could get her back there.

“Okay, Evelyn,” I said. “I’m going to find the man who lives here, and we’ll see about getting you back with your mommy and daddy, okay?” I moved toward the double doors and was reaching for the handle when her hand shot out and caught me by the wrist.

“You do not have permission to enter.” The little Disney princess’s eyes glowed red and her voice sounded like something drudged up from the bottom of Tartarus. Her tiny hand latched onto me so tightly that I could feel the bones in my wrist grinding together. I tried to break free and couldn’t. I forced my eyes to relax and my caul let me see through an illusion I hadn’t even realized was there. Evelyn was nearly nine feet tall, with mottled black and green skin, and had a face that looked like it was a cross between an alligator and a demon. A pair of onyx horns curled back from her head, and two rows of razor-sharp teeth lined her mouth. She clutched the teddy bear in six-fingered hands that ended in ragged talons. “You do not have permission to enter,” she repeated, a forked tongue flicking between her teeth as she spoke.

I swallowed. “I meant no offense or disrespect to the Loremaster,” I said, somehow meeting those glowing coals of eyes. “I would like to speak with him on a matter of importance.”

“And you bring the fee?” There were two versions of her voice: the Disney version and the demonic version. I focused on the Disney one. Hearing a chipper little voice coming from something out of my worst nightmares helped keep the fear down.

“I have the fee, yes.”

“And you will make no move to destroy any of the knowledge contained within?”

“I will not.”

She released my wrist. “Then you may proceed, Vincent.” I let her illusion return, and the little girl smiled sweetly at me as she hoisted herself back up in her chair and began singing softly to her teddy. I filtered it out again and saw the twisted nightmare sitting on the chair, still singing to the bear. I’ve seen some weird things before, but this ranked pretty high on the screwed-up-o-meter.

I swung the doors open and stepped into a second hexagonal room. It was easily a hundred feet across and the ceiling stretched sixty or seventy feet above me. There were dozens of dark mahogany floor-to-ceiling-bookshelves, each one laden with leather-bound books. Brass ladders affixed to the shelves gleamed in the light, and leather couches and recliners adorned the room. The ceiling and floor were made of glass, and this afforded a fantastic view of a mountain range, which the room appeared to be floating above.

I’m not sure where the mountain range was, or if it was even on Earth. The Loremaster’s sanctum exists at a nexus of many worlds, and this terrain could’ve been part of any one of them. In contrast to the seemingly frigid landscape outside, the study was warm and dry and seemed to sparkle as words made of light whizzed about the room. They streamed through the walls and the furniture, and ultimately drilled into open, blank books on pedestals, where they inscribed themselves on pages. As the pages filled, they turned, until the books were filled. Then they shut themselves and floated over to shelves, as new blank books took their places.

A man seated in a leather recliner at the center of the room called out to me. “Vincent Corinthos,” he said warmly. “It has been some time since I last saw you.”

“Yeah, last time you didn’t have a demonic first-grader working security,” I said as I hung my bomber on a coat rack by the door.

“These are troubled times, old friend,” he said as he stood and crossed over to me. “One cannot be too careful.” The Loremaster was dressed only in a pair of black spandex bike shorts, and he moved with a cat’s grace. His only other piece of clothing was a leather cuff over his left wrist. Tattoos swirled on his dark skin, and piercings on his nose, ears, and eyebrows glimmered as he moved. I don’t know all the details, but my understanding is the piercings and tattoos conduct raw knowledge from the world around him and focus it into his mind, which he then transcribes into these books.

The Loremaster was close to seven feet tall and built like a weight lifter. For someone built like he was, the need for security seemed overkill to me. His hand nearly swallowed mine as he shook it. “To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”

“I need information,” I replied.

The Loremaster’s grin split his face and his hazel eyes sparkled. “Of course you do. But you know the rules. A story for a story, and you must go first.” He poured a glass of water from a crystal pitcher and handed it to me. The glass felt as if it had just come out of a freezer, despite the fact that it was sitting out on a table. The water was invigorating. Surprisingly so.