Chapter 2 #2
“Because not all of us have downplayed the severity,” came Bittenbinder's clipped voice. “The new Master Sciomancer does not understand why mages cannot know the extent of the demon threat. Lazlo’s replacement, that loathsome priest Carpathia, has certainly not kept his opinions on the London Nightmare to himself.”
Master Lazlo Lyter, Hungarian knowledge mage and Mal’s oldest friend, had died peacefully in his sleep, as Cora had said he would.
For decades, Malachy had watched Lazlo grow from Ghose’s gawky apprentice into a respected Master, then he had watched Lazlo’s eyes cloud with age, and listened to his steps creaking with the song of weary bones.
But Malachy had not said goodbye. Detained by the Tribunal, he had not even been permitted to attend Lazlo’s funeral in Budapest. Punishment, indeed.
The cracks in Malachy’s composure barely contained his tide of anger. Mages everywhere feared their imminent discovery by humans after the London Nightmare, and the Tribunal was covering up the escaped demons in their midst. How many more people would die from the Masters’ smooth hypocrisies?
By now, all the Masters knew that Ghose and an untold number of demons had escaped through Ikelas’s rift in the veil between Realms. Yet they still insisted that demons had been relegated to history. Admitting otherwise would only flaunt their own incompetence at enforcing the Covenant.
The medieval Covenant would not survive in the frantic pace of the twentieth century.
Mages couldn’t hide for long in the harsh fluorescent lights replacing gas lamps.
With telegraph cables and telephone lines spreading information like a global cancer, mage secrecy had an expiration date.
And Malachy would likely still be rotting in a Tribunal cell when it happened.
“Stay the course,” Bittenbinder said behind the door. “The hysteria will subside, as it has before.”
“Respectfully, Otto,” came the deep, not-so-respectful voice of Kabir, the Master Bestiamancer. “Months have passed since the London Nightmare, and the hysteria shows no signs of subsiding.”
Malachy craned his neck for another glimpse through the door crack. The Master Bestiamancer’s head whipped in his direction.
Fuck.
Malachy froze, but the beast mage’s heightened senses had already honed on him. It was too late to run and there was nowhere to go anyway. He managed to retreat several steps before the door flew open.
Four irate faces greeted him.
“What is he doing here?” Bittenbinder said. “Where are the guards?”
Malachy leaned against the stone wall. His gaze slid over the Masters.
“You fuckin’ hypocrites. You think the demon problem is bad now?
Imagine how much worse it will get with me locked down here.
Not even you, Nastassja, the Master Choromancer, can traverse demons into the prison of the Demon Realm. ”
Nastassja glanced away.
Bittenbinder’s mustache twitched. “The only prison you should be concerned with, Mr. Bane, is the one you presently find yourself in.”
He regarded Bittenbinder under his lowered brow. “Ghose, the nucleus of this conspiracy, is still out there, biding his time, and the Tribunal is complicit. Who knows how many other demons are roaming free while I’m trapped in a bloody cell.”
Bittenbinder gave a slow blink. “If you are displeased with your accommodations, Mr. Bane—”
“Fuck the accommodations. Imprisoning me on a technicality is a stall tactic. For what purpose, I wonder?”
Malachy expected a blustering denial, or a lengthy discourse on the specific bylaws he was violating by even mentioning demons.
Instead, the Masters remained silent. But Malachy already knew the answer.
The only reason the Tribunal would keep the solution locked up was because they didn’t want the problem solved.
He must have been close to something for them to detain him this long. But who was trying to keep him from getting closer to the truth?
One thing was for certain: Ghose had spun a web of conspiracies they were all caught in.
“When will I be released?”
“Not soon,” Bittenbinder replied.
Not fucking likely, Malachy translated. He tried to keep a tight lid on his temper.
Tried, and failed. After three months underwater, his temper was a lit fuse.
“You saw for yourself just how real demons are. You were in my office in February when time slowed, then stopped, and that abomination waltzed in.”
Encased within the sap like time bubble, only Malachy had been unfrozen when Alastair Ghose had glided through the still-life portrait of his office.
The late Master Chronomancer had a man’s body in the right shape but the wrong pieces.
Down his middle ran a puckered seam where his mismatched halves had been crudely stitched together.
With only half his corrupted spirit, Ghose was not as powerful as he’d been as the Master time mage.
But with the Doomsday Watch now in hand, he was invincible sixty seconds at a time.
“What do you want, Ghose?"
“You owe me, Realmwalker.” The demon smiled. “I’ve come to collect.”
Time had congealed around Malachy. In a moment, slow and syrupy, Ghose had sidestepped his former apprentice and glided towards Cora. She stood beautiful and vulnerable and unmoving in a turquoise dress that matched her eyes, a pinch of concern frozen on her face.
A terrible sound had emerged from the demon’s throat, crude and grating, the bastardization of a laugh.
“My prophecy came true, eh, lad? Twin mages born of death shall bring your death to life. You are not the only one your Necromancer will resurrect. She shall return the missing half of my spirit you so cruelly scourged from your Master.”
The symmetry of their lives—Master and crime lord, time and space mage; the demon Malachy had torn in two and the apprentice whose heart Ghose had crushed in the cage of Koschei’s Egg.
This time, Malachy would make sure the demon stayed dead.
His hand had reached for his revolver, loaded with bullets made from the Sephrinium shards Anita had pried out of him after Ikelas’s attacks. The magic-draining bullets, the doom of mages, had been manufactured by an ignorant human.
“Ad infernos, Ghose.” Malachy had fired at the demon’s black heart.
Time had oozed around the Sephrinium bullet.
Ghose dodged, and the bullet grazed his neck.
A spurt of blood. A shriek of pain. The time bubble wavered, but remained sap like around the demon.
Malachy and Ghose had stared at each other in a moment of stunned astonishment.
The Sephrinium hadn’t drained an ounce of Ghose’s demonic magic. But it was a sufficient distraction.
Malachy traversed his hand and pistol-whipped the demon. The time bubble burst, and the still-life portrait of his office stirred back to movement. Startled gasps and screams erupted as their gazes landed on the demon.
When Ghose’s black-on-black eyes had locked onto Bittenbinder, the saber-rattling Memnomancer hadn’t looked shocked or horrified like everyone else; he’d looked pissed.
Then Ghose was gone, with the Doomsday Watch in hand, slipping through time and out of Malachy’s grasp.
As chaos unfurled in his office, Bittenbinder had dragged Malachy to Rome for a hearing that still hadn’t concluded months later.
Although the Master Memnomancer had been on a one-man crusade to siphon the memories of everyone that had encountered a demon, including Rune Borges and Julian Morro who had both seen Ghose for themselves in Malachy’s office.
That had likely been the right move—those two couldn’t keep their mouths shut if their lives depended on it.
“Do you deny the time demon that you saw with your own eyes, Bittenbinder?” Malachy pressed now in the stone corridor. “Do you deny seeing the demon that was once Master Ghose?”
“Guards,” Bittenbinder called out. “Escort Mr. Bane back to his cell.”
The next knock on the door was not on schedule.
When the door swung open, it wasn’t the usual guard to escort Malachy to the Tribunal’s tedious torture. The grim countenance of Master Virgil Carpathia, decked out in severe black robes as dark as the moonless night blooming outside, greeted him.
For weeks the Tribunal had bickered about Lazlo’s successor. Appointments were more political than talent-based, and the new Master Sciomancer had been a contentious selection.
Malachy had crossed paths with the controversial Master back when he was calling himself Father Carpathia.
The former Vatican exorcist, secretly using his Sciomancy to detect demonic magic, had been a mercenary under a mask of righteousness.
Carpathia would sell his skills to anyone; the Vatican just happened to pay better. Until recently, it appeared.
The new Master Sciomancer swept into the cell in a rustle of heavy black fabric. He stood in the center like an oppressive shadow, grimacing down his hooked nose. The door he left slightly ajar.
“Bane,” rasped Carpathia, as if it pained him to speak. It was concealed now, but Malachy had glimpsed the angry scar over his throat beneath the priestly white collar. Someone had nearly beheaded the Sciomancer before he pretended to be an exorcist or a Tribunal Master.
“Carpathia.” Lighting a cigarette, Malachy braced himself for what could only be an unpleasant conversation.
“I am here to deliver the Tribunal’s sentence,” Carpathia said at length, each word its own hellscape of ravaged vocal cords. “For failing to notify the Tribunal of the dream demon before acting, you shall receive five years imprisonment.”
The bottom of Malachy’s stomach dropped out.
Five. Fucking. Years. Without Cora.
“However,” Carpathia said. “We shall waive your sentence if you return all the escaped demons to their Realm without drawing attention. Discretion, Bane, or execution.”