Page 171 of Hell Bent

“You are destined for hell, Galaxy Stern. You are destined for me.” He bit down on her wrist, and Alex screamed as pain lanced through her.

Blue flame erupted over her, over him. But he didn’t burn.

You are destined for hell.

He was drinking from her in great gulps, his cheeks hollowing with every draw. She could feel her blood being pulled out of her, feel her strength lagging.

You are destined for me.

“Okay,” she gasped. “Then come with me.” She tightened her own grip on his arm. “Let’s see how you fare against us in the mortal realm.”

She reached out to him with her power, drawing his spirit into her. It was like sludge, a river of misery oozing into her, a profound agony coupled with obscene pleasure, but she didn’t stop.

Alex saw fear in his eyes and it was like a drug to her. “All is well.”

Anselm released her wrist with a furious roar. She could see her blood coating his chin. Alex thrust the dreck of his spirit out of her and plunged into the water, terrified that at any minute she would feel his grip on her ankle, dragging her back.

Her lungs ached for air, but she kept kicking, kept swimming, desperate to see light ahead. There—a spark, then another. She was soaring upward through a sea of stars. She burst through the surface and breathed in the cold air of a winter night.

Alex tried to get her bearings. They were in the courtyard at Sterling. Tzvi was gone—probably chased away by the sight of Darlington in full-horned demon glory—and Eitan’s body lay facedown in the mud. She heard the ticking of the metronome come to an abrupt stop.

Something was blurring her vision—flurries of white. It had started to snow. She counted her friends—Mercy, Turner, Dawes, and Darlington, her gentleman demon. Their ramshackle army, all of them soaked and shivering, all of them safe and whole. Above them the Weaver’s web glimmered still, fragile in its architecture, weighted with frost and sorrow.

Dunbar dragged a tramp in from the railway station last night, sooty as a coal can and dressed in clothes so dirty they could stand on their own. Claimed he had the Sight. Rudy said it was a waste of time and I was inclined to agree. The man stank of cheap gin and had all the markings of a charlatan. He babbled on about long journeys and great wealth, the fortune-teller’s usual stock in trade. His speech was so slurred I could barely make his words out, until at last Dunbar got bored and put us out of our misery.

I wouldn’t even remark on the whole sorry business, only—and I put this down so that I may laugh at my own milk-livered hand-wringing later—when Dunbar told him it was time to go and slipped a fiver in his pocket, the tramp claimed he’d not yet said what needed saying. His eyes rolled back a bit—base theatrics—and then he said, “Beware.”

Rudy laughs and asks, quite naturally, “Beware of what, you old fraud?”

“Them that walks among us. Nightdrinkers, moonspeakers, alls them that dwell in the dead and empty. Best watch for them, lads. Best bar the doors against them when they come.” He wasn’t slurring then. His voice was clear as a bell and it boomed through the hall. Raised the hair on my arms, I’ll tell you.

Well, Rudy and Dunbar were done with it. They hauled him outside, and sent him packing, and Rudy gave him a kick for good measure. I felt badly about it and thought I should slip him another fiver. No doubt we’ll laugh about all of it tomorrow.

—Lionel Reiter, Skull and Bones Commonplace Book, 1933

45

Darlington couldn’t quite put together the moments after the descent. He remembered snow falling, the dreary weight of his sodden clothes on his body. They were all tired and shaken, but they couldn’t simply drag themselves home. There was too much evidence to dispose of. When he’d stepped into the mouth of the hellbeast, he’d been a man who followed rules, who believed he understood his world and its workings. But as he was not quite human any longer, he supposed a more flexible approach to morality was called for.

There were books scattered around the Linonia and Brothers Room. One of the tables had been knocked over. The demons had crashed through the eastern-facing windows, destroying an image of St. Mark at work on his gospels in the process, then smashed straight through the windows leading to the courtyard. There was nothing to be done about the damage. There was restoration magic they could use, but all of it was long and painstaking. It hurt Darlington to leave Sterling in such a state, but when the university reported the vandalism, Lethe could offer use of the crucible and whatever else they could find in the armory. For now, they just had to remove any sign of the uncanny.

It was easy enough to return the spiders to the spindle with another prick of Mercy’s finger, but the web above the courtyard still hung thick with melancholy. It took them the better part of an hour to pull it down with a broom they borrowed from the janitor’s closet, and transfer it into the waters of the basin, where they watched it dissolve. They were all weeping uncontrollably by the time they were rid of the damned thing.

They had left the body for last. Eitan Harel lay facedown in the mud and melting snow.

Turner retrieved his Dodge and waited for them by the York Street entrance. The tempest Dawes had brewed was still hot enough to manage the cameras, but there was nothing magical or arcane about the act of putting a corpse in a trunk. It was a cold act, ugly in its transformation: the body made cargo. Mercy hung back, clutching her salt sword, as if it might ward against the truth of what they’d done.

“You said you weren’t going to help clean up our messes,” Alex noted when the work was finished, and they piled into the Dodge, damp and weary, dawn still hours away.

Turner only shrugged and gunned the engine. “This is my mess too.”

The door to Il Bastone sprang open before they reached the top of the steps. The lights were on, the old radiators pumping heat through every room. In the kitchen, Dawes had lined up thermoses of leftover avgolemono that they drank in greedy swallows. There were plates of tomato sandwiches and hot tea spiked with brandy.

They stood at the kitchen counter, eating in silence, too tired and battered to talk. Darlington couldn’t help but think of how rarely the dining room at Il Bastone had been used, of how few meals he’d shared with Michelle Alameddine or Dean Sandow, of how few conversations he’d had with Detective Abel Turner. They’d let Lethe atrophy, let its secrecy and ritual make them strangers to each other. Or maybe that was the way Lethe had always been intended to function, toothless and powerless, bumbling along with a sense of their own importance, a sop to the university while the societies did as they pleased.

At last, Mercy set her mug down and said, “Is it done?”

The girl was brave, but tonight had been too much for her. The magic, the spells, the strange objects had all been a kind of play. Now she had helped to kill a man, and the weight of that was no easy thing to carry, no matter the justification. Darlington knew that well.