Chapter 11 A Taste
A Taste
In the hallway, screams filled his ears. A woman’s shrill cry of pain and a man’s shout were drowned out by an inhuman roar, deep and echoing.
The Moroccan lamps in the silk-draped room were nearly doused by shadows that roiled and seethed. Most of the revelers had fled, leaving behind clothes, empty glasses, and questionable stains. Inky tendrils of shadows crept along the walls, pressing in close.
The woman screamed again. Malachy’s head shot upward. Sloane was suspended above, pressed against the ceiling and devoured by darkness. By the terror on her face, the shadows circling the petite Umbramancer were not her own.
Shadows grew closer, salivating for a taste of Sloane. They wrapped their fingers around her with a physicality that stunned Malachy to the spot. Never had he seen shadows… manhandle.
There was no time to ponder the chilling impossibility. A man shouted beside Malachy, close enough to blister his eardrums. Peering through the darkness, he glimpsed Julian Morro, naked and pinned against the silken wall, his face purpling from the shadowy tendrils constricting his throat.
“She is mine,” snarled an inhuman voice.
The shadows released Julian. He dropped to his knees, coughing and gasping.
“Sloane said you two never actually discussed exclusivity—”
An otherworldly roar silenced Julian. “You are dead to me!” Shadows latched around Julian and tossed him bodily down the stairs. The thud of bone on wood sounded each step down. “Dead!”
“Pl-please,” Sloane whimpered, held captive midair, limbs pinned by roiling darkness. “I wasn’t thinking, just feeling!”
“You are mine.”
Malachy scanned the room, every muscle tensed with the promise of violence. His gaze latched on the shadowed outline of a form, the heart of ravenous darkness. He looked into the shadows, and something looked back.
A demon?
That foreboding voice was much larger than the form it had clawed out of. Malachy peered closer. His Phytomancer-enchanted rune tattoo enabled him to see shadow-cloaked Umbramancers. In the corner crouched a man.
Malachy strode across the room and hoisted the man up by his collar until they were eye-level. The churning shadows disbanded. Sloane dropped from the ceiling and onto a mound of silk cushions. She scrambled to her feet and fled.
Claws of elongated shadow reached up the walls as the man struggled against his hold.
Shorter and leaner than Malachy, the man had thick hair the color of a desert shadow and dark eyes that flickered like trapped flames.
Above his full lips, peeled back in a growl, was a trim mustache.
He wore an outdated suit rather than his Egyptian Expeditionary Force uniform, but Malachy recognized him.
“Ari Razaq.” He rolled the Umbramancer’s name around his mouth like a shoddy vintage. “Time to fuck off.”
Dark eyes shot to Malachy. Flames danced in their lightless depths.
Then Razaq drew a stuttering breath, and the cold fire burning in his gaze extinguished.
Horrified recognition swept over his tanned face, followed by crushing self-awareness.
He almost looked embarrassed, or a convincing semblance of it.
“Mr. Bane.” His accented voice was as smooth as the mask that slid over his features, a portrait of polite disinterest while Malachy held him by the collar.
“I, ah, lost Sloane to the powerful magic here. I was acting out of concern for her and do apologize if I caused a scene. This is a private matter that I should have handled privately.”
Malachy’s eyes narrowed in assessment. More was off about Ari Razaq than he had time to quantify. On top of everything else, the Umbramancer’s shadow was… wrong. Its movements didn’t quite match his, following a slight delay behind him as if it were mimicking him rather than part of him.
“You were so concerned for your girlfriend that you attacked her with your shadows, eh? We will have a lengthy discourse on how the fuck you did that later. For now…” His voice lowered, a silky threat. “Coming into my territory to attack my gang was a unique form of stupidity.”
The cold rage in Razaq’s eyes reignited with a breath like the banked coals of a fire. “She belongs to me.” There was a serrated edge to the scrape of his voice.
“You fucked that up well and good, lad. The only thing that will be yours is a severed spine if you lay a fuckin’ finger on Sloane again.” His fist cracked against Razaq’s jaw, and the Umbramancer’s head snapped back. “Is your gang responsible for the mayhem here tonight?”
Razaq rubbed his jaw, blinking in confusion. “No. We came because you wanted to meet with us. It was madness when we arrived.”
Malachy studied him. Razaq’s befuddlement seemed genuine. It was also unlikely that shadow magic had incited the ruckus he could still hear pulsating downstairs.
Ari Razaq might not be guilty of this crime, but his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde gobshite stretched Malachy’s already limited patience to breaking.
“Yeah, it’s time to fuck off.”
Grabbing him by the lapels of his outdated suit, Malachy traversed the Umbramancer to a distant park in Suffolk and unceremoniously dropped his arse in the mud, watching with no small amount of satisfaction as Razaq hunched over and boked the entire contents of his stomach.
Razaq looked up through a fall of dark hair, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. “The future belongs to us, Realmwalker.” There was an edge to his voice, a spark in his eyes. “As he foresaw. He, the eyes, and we, the hands.”
Malachy gazed down at the man with an impossible shadow.
Sloane had mentioned Ghose’s visit to Razaq at a Protean Society meeting while he was preaching the late Chronomancer’s gospel of mage superiority.
Ghose had once glimpsed through the veil of time and seen this version of heaven, ruled by mages.
An obsession the demon and Razaq apparently shared.
“You speak of the future as if you’ll see it.” Malachy leapt back before the lashing shadows could get a taste of him. “What other lies has Ghose told you?”
“Ghose,” Razaq hissed. Then, a shudder wracked his body. The raging turmoil of shadows stilled. He blinked in confusion, glancing around the park, then up at Malachy. “Ghose?”
“I don’t have time for this. Come into my territory again and I’ll scatter pieces of you in this muck.”
He left Razaq in Suffolk, screaming and roiling with shadows beneath a night sky dusted with stars.
Malachy traversed into an alley behind the club, a safeguard against curious eyes. He took a steadying breath before rounding the corner.
The earlier rain had softened to drizzle, hazing the gas lamp’s glow and rippling the puddles like oil-slicked portals into a strange underworld. Revelers smoked and groped on the sidewalk, enthralled by the club’s strange magic and oblivious to the rain and spectators.
Malachy needed to know what the hell had induced the club’s madness to stop it.
It had to be a demon, perhaps another one he had encountered before.
He tried to gather the disarray of his mind and remember, but exhaustion muddied his thoughts.
At least Cora was still safely, if unhappily, tied to the bed upstairs.
A prickling awareness crawled down his neck a moment before lightning lit up the night sky. His eyes screwed shut at the searing flash of light, then flew open when a woman’s scream tore through his ears and wrapped around his heart in a vise.
Cora.
Sparks danced in lethal arcs on the periphery of his vision. There were too many witnesses to traverse; he ran.
At the end of the alley, Guy Haviland stood before Cora. She must have rotted off the restraints and gone looking for Malachy. Instead, Guy had found her.
The Electromancer’s eyes were overly bright beneath the flickering ring of a gas lamp. The drizzle had plastered his curly hair that usually stood on end like a personal cloud to his skull.
Guy held up her wrist and exposed the scars, white vines thick with thorns, slashed across her flesh. “Couldn’t even do that right, could you?” he sneered. He tapped the pulsing artery on her neck. “Next time, cut here.”
Black veins webbed up her arms and death magic dripped from her fingers. Cora swiped her fist at him, but Guy leapt away. An orb of electricity grew between his splayed palms, lighting the gleeful smile that stretched his face, cast in deep shadow. She stepped back into a rain puddle.
“Cora!” Malachy called out.
He was almost upon them when a bolt of electricity struck the puddle. Electricity shot up from her feet, burst across her illuminated skeleton, and sparked out the tips of her frazzled hair.
A bullet of anxiety shot through Malachy’s chest.
He ran and knelt beside her. Sparks shocked him as he checked for her pulse.
After he ensured she was still breathing, he gripped Guy by the throat and hauled him off his feet.
Electricity crackled off his clammy skin.
The Electromancer’s eyes, nearly black from the enlarged pupils, rolled in their sockets before settling on his furious boss.
“M-Mal,” Guy stuttered. “I—She—”
Guy’s skull made a sickening thump when Malachy slammed it against the brick wall. Blood blossomed on the back of his head, dripping down the coils of his curly hair into the puddle he had nearly electrocuted Cora in.
Rage beat like a second pulse in Malachy’s veins but his voice was menacingly soft. “I warned you what would happen if you hurt her again. I am a man of my word.”
“Sh-she attacked me first! That murderer has had it out for me since day one. Killing my fiancée wasn’t enough for the bloody Unweaver. No, she—”
Malachy lifted him in a chokehold, and Guy thrashed, his feet kicking helplessly in the air. “Try again.”
“Someone’s gotta stop it, Mal! How many more people does that abomination need to murder before you—” Guy began and never finished.
The Electromancer’s final words were lost as Malachy twisted his neck until it snapped.
The twitching corpse slid from his hands and splashed in a puddle with the faintest spark of electricity.
Shadows passed the mouth of the alley. Malachy’s head shot up and met the curious glances directed his way. Too many witnesses to his dark silhouette hunched over a dead body.
He turned to Cora, raking a critical eye over her. She stared at the corpse sprawled at an unnatural angle, her clothing faintly smoking.
“We should get rid of the evidence,” she said in a faraway voice.
“Cora.” He took a tentative step towards her. “Are you all right?”
“He was going to kill me.” Her gaze lifted from the corpse. In the gas lamp’s spectral glow, the blood splattered across her face gleamed like hellfire. “I was going to kill him first.”
Malachy didn’t know whether to be proud or chilled by her conviction.
He drew her into his arms. Static electricity crackled as they embraced. His hand smoothed her frizzy hair, stroked down her back. She buried her face into his neck, shaky hands clinging to what was left of his shirt.
“You’re safe.” His arms tightened around her. “I have you.”
A bloodcurdling scream tore through the night, cutting through the din of revelry like a knife. They stiffened but didn’t pull apart.
Later, Malachy would regret leaving Guy’s body in the alley. But now, his only concern was for Cora. Arm locked around her waist, he traversed her into his office, thankfully devoid of occupants, and instructed her to use the Portal Key to his house.
“Stay there, Cora. Take a healing potion. I’ll find you after I banish this fuckin’ d— when this is over.”
Another scream ricocheted through the club. Malachy plunged back into the pandemonium.
In the short time he’d been gone, the club had descended into a bacchanal. The lustful craze had spilled in a tidal wave, sweeping up sweaty bodies in a sea of twining limbs. He could barely hear himself think over the moaning and groaning and unhinged jazz.
He couldn’t risk traversing; the likelihood of someone seeing him, or him landing in the middle of something he didn’t want to see, was too high.
It took Malachy agonizing minutes to shove his way through the pulsing crowd towards the center of the commotion.
The closer he drew, the surer he was that another escaped demon was making itself known, and in a very personal manner.
Emblazoned in the middle of the crowded dance floor was an eight-pointed star that flickered with an eerie phosphorescence, permeating the air with wrongness.
The symbol stirred a distant memory that floated to the surface of Malachy’s murky recollection. He had seen that eight-pointed star before, but where?
A lioness, but… not. With yellow eyes and a woman’s voice telling me she’d fulfill my desire... Francis’s words rattled the bones of a memory without flesh. A memory of another too-wild party in the British Raj when Victoria had still sat on the throne. A memory that flooded Malachy with dread.
He had met this demon before.
But his memory of the night the demon had crashed a Victorian masquerade ball was corrupted like bad film, leaving only flashes of disjunct images blurred into senselessness.
Dimly, he recalled that the last Master Memnomancer had siphoned the memory as punishment for a crime he couldn’t remember committing.
Something to do with the so-called Queen of Rot.
Why had the Tribunal gone to such lengths to ensure Malachy didn’t remember this demon or the late Necromancer she served? Perhaps it was the priceless relic they had stolen that Calcutta night that the Tribunal didn’t want him to remember.
Malachy gathered his breath and concentration. For Cora, for everyone in the club trapped under the demon’s thrall, he needed to remember how to banish this demon back into the darkest depths of hell.