Page 150 of Hell Bent

“All right,” said Alex.

Dawes gave a short nod.

“How exactly did you get Darlington out?” Turner asked a little too casually.

Alex was tempted to ask if he wanted her to write up a statement. But Dawes and Mercy and Turner were owed an explanation, or whatever answers they could patch together.

So they ate, and they talked—about Anselm who was no longer Anselm, the bodies they’d left at Black Elm, the murders of Professor Stephen and Dean Beekman, and the third murder that would have been committed if Turner hadn’t arrested Andy Lambton.

When they were done, Turner pushed his empty bowl away and scrubbed his hands over his face. “You’re telling me Lambton is innocent?”

“He was there,” said Alex. “At least for Beekman. Maybe for Marjorie Stephen. I think Anselm enjoyed making him an accomplice.”

“That’s not his name,” Darlington said.

“Well, whatever you want to call him. Golgarot, the demon king.”

“He’s a prince, not a king, and it would be unwise to underestimate him.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mercy. “The … demon prince or whoever … he ate Anselm. Shouldn’t he be a vampire now? Why is he messing around with getting some guy to commit random murders?”

“They weren’t random,” said Darlington. His voice was bleak, cold, something left at the bottom of a lake. “They were a puzzle, steeped in New Haven history, a custom lure for my mind, for Alex, for Detective Turner. A perfect distraction. He was having fun.”

“But not drinking blood?” Alex asked. She’d tussled with Not Anselm, and aside from being able to create fire out of thin air, he’d been physically weak, nothing like Linus Reiter.

“Golgarot is not like your demons or the demon that devoured Lionel Reiter. He tortured me in hell. He had already fed on my misery, and when I tried to come through the portal you opened at Scroll and Key, he was able to follow.”

“When the circle bound you to Black Elm,” Dawes said.

“But not Golgarot. He hadn’t fed enough on me to be trapped by Sandow’s spell.”

“And the horns?” Turner asked.

“You were all travelers, moving between this world and the demon realm while your bodies remained here. That wasn’t true for me. I walked right into the mouth of a hellbeast, and when I entered the demon realm, I split.” He kept his words steady, but his gaze was faraway. “I became a demon, bound in service to Golgarot, a creature of … appetites. I became a man who fed his keeper with his own suffering.”

“Right down the middle, huh?”

Darlington’s smile was small. “No, Detective. I think you well know that one can be both a murderer and a good man. Or at least a man who tries to be good. If only the evil did terrible things, what a simple world it would be. Both demon and man remained in hell. Both demon and man were bound by the circle of protection.”

“Anselm followed me into hell,” Alex said, “when I crossed the circle.”

“He had to in order to fight you. Golgarot is both more and less powerful than your demons. As long as I was bound to the circle, he could move freely, consume victims as he chose, but he remained weak. He couldn’t enter this realm completely, not without killing me or pushing me back into hell forever.”

“But … but he’s dead now, right?” Mercy asked.

Darlington shook his head. “I destroyed his mortal body, the one he’d constructed. But he’ll be waiting for me in hell. For all of us.”

Dawes frowned. “Did he know we’d found the Gauntlet?”

“No,” said Darlington. “He knew you were searching, but he had no idea you’d found it or that you were trying the ritual to free me on Halloween night.”

“He said he came to Il Bastone and saw our notes,” said Mercy.

“He told us that,” Alex said. “But it’s impossible. He’s a demon. He couldn’t get past the wards. It’s why he didn’t take us to the Hutch the night he banished us from Lethe.”

Darlington nodded. “He’d set up an early-warning system. Hell is vast. He couldn’t guard every entry. But he knew where you were headed, and once the alarm was tripped, he knew you’d found me.”

Turner drew in a breath. “The wolves.”