Chapter 4 #2
Nathan looked at Alex, who shook his head regretfully and closed the laptop. Nathan sighed quietly, rubbing his forehead.
“I want proof of life,” Nathan finally said. “I want to talk to them.”
Sloan laughed. “Make some progress with that demon. Then we’ll see. I’m told it wears a hood and has orange eyes. Should be easy enough to make sure it’s the right one.”
The line went dead, and the room descended into silence. Ashmedai looked at each of them in turn. Even the bright shine of their souls seemed subdued. They were devastated by what had just happened. He’d never seen anything like it.
“What do we do?” Luke’s voice trembled.
“I know a tracking spell,” Valac said. “If you can get me hairs from their heads, it should show us where they are on a map.”
“I’ll go back to their house,” Talon offered.
Nathan lurched into motion, going to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room. “We have paper maps in this drawer here.”
“Their dad isn’t going to let you into their bedrooms to collect hair,” Alex said.
“I don’t intend to ask for permission,” Talon replied. “I’ll just appear inside, get what I need, and get out. He’ll never know I’m there. Odds are he’s already three sheets to the wind again.”
“Already?” Julian said with exasperation, looking down at his watch.
“There’s a reason they spend all their time here,” Nathan said somberly.
Talon disappeared.
Ashmedai didn’t understand what he was feeling. An urge lay below his skin, wanting to burst free. Like restlessness but not. He wanted to do something. He wanted to help.
“Should I… stop killing?” he asked haltingly. “For now?”
The group looked around at each other with uncertainty. Julian spoke first. “Does it bother you not to? Do you get hungry if you haven’t had any sins in a while?”
Eventually, yes, but he didn’t need sustenance daily like humans and other living creatures did. “At some point,” he replied. He didn’t know how long he could go on the surface without eating, but if they needed him to stop for a while, he could.
“He could always travel somewhere far away to hunt if he needed to,” Storm said. “He can teleport like the leviathans. As long as no more bodies turn up around here, the paladins will think he’s gone.”
Ashmedai nodded once. He could do that.
“It’s kind of you to offer to do that for us,” Julian said, and Ashmedai’s head tilted. The words made him feel strangely warm inside. “Before we decide, I think we should see if Valac’s tracking spell will work.”
Talon reappeared seconds later, frozen in a half-stoop and with his brows raised.
“What?” Alex asked.
“Close call,” Talon said, straightening. “He came into Zach’s room right as I disappeared—and he was holding a vodka bottle.”
“Jesus,” Alex muttered. “Has he even filed a missing persons report?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Maybe he’ll get around to it when the next hangover hits.”
“Fucking asshole,” Isaac murmured.
“It works out for us, though,” Talon said. He carefully handed the hairs pinched between his fingers over to Valac. One long and curly, one short. “It’ll be easier for us to find them if the cops aren’t crawling around and sticking their noses in our business.”
“They can be paid off,” Shadrach suggested.
Talon grimaced. “Yeah, but it’s always a pain finding the right one to pay. You offer payment to the wrong one and they want to make your life hell.” He rolled his eyes. “Not that they could.”
Ashmedai lingered at the edge of the group as Valac spread a map of the city out on the floor and knelt beside it with a bowl.
He lit a candle, rumbling out a Latin incantation as he let the melted wax drip into the bowl filled with the hair and a splash of black blood.
He swirled the mixture together with his finger, then held his finger out over the map.
Ashmedai could see the swirl of magic in the air, dark like Valac’s powers but shot through with a rainbow of colors.
It petered out, though, fading before it was meant to.
When the dark liquid dripped from Valac’s finger, nothing happened.
Valac frowned. “It didn’t work.”
“What? Why not?” Talon demanded.
“It worked,” Ashmedai said. He pointed to his eyes. “Saw magic.”
“But it didn’t find them,” Julian guessed. “Why not?”
Ashmedai shook his head. “Hidden.”
“They’re hidden from a tracking spell?” Shadrach asked, sounding skeptical. He folded his arms, cocking one hip out.
“Behind magic,” Ashmedai said. It was the only thing that made sense.
“They’re holding them behind wards, maybe,” Nathan said thoughtfully. “They have them on the wall surrounding the guild.”
Ashmedai shook his head. “Holy. Different.” Holy wards only kept out hellish things. It wouldn’t hide someone from regular magic.
“He’s right,” Valac said, pushing to his feet with a sigh.
“The holy blessings they use to protect the guild wouldn’t hide them from a magical spell.
It just prevents anything demonic from crossing over.
In order to hide them from a spell like this, the guild must also be using magic in the wards wherever they’re hidden. ”
“It’s forbidden for paladins to use magic spells,” Luke said.
“Sounds like Sloan’s playing dirty,” Talon said.
“Rules for thee, not for me,” Isaac crooned. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“What do we do?” Luke asked, folding his muscular arms tight across his chest. He was taking this hard.
Julian took a breath, paused, and then forged on. “Maybe I should reach out to Nicolas. He came to me once. I could ask him if he knows anything. I can’t imagine he’d be okay with the guild holding children hostage.”
“He might not know anything, then,” Talon warned. “Sloan only keeps the ones who agree with him close.”
“It can’t hurt to try,” Ira said. “If that doesn’t work…
maybe Ashmedai could hold off on hunting for a few days.
Long enough for us to convince them that we’ve killed him.
Demons disintegrate when killed, so Sloan won’t be able to ask us for any proof.
He’ll have to take our word for it, and he’ll have no choice when the killings stop. ”