51
We pay an encore visit to the infirmary. Vortex staggers between Kovac and me, his arms slung over our shoulders. Vicious purple bruises dapple his plump white neck, and he’s still breathing in ragged gasps. Faculty and students passing by in the halls turn and stare at us, whispering, wide-eyed with alarm.
Bonwitch strides before us, talking urgently on his cell phone to the custodial staff. He barks instructions on how, exactly, they need to clean up the circle of blood and sanctify the Ceremonies Chamber. “Yes, yes, you heard me. I said syrup of garlic, ground acorns from a Quercus Coccinea, and eucalyptus oil. And post a flaming notice that no one, I mean no one, is to use the chamber for any ceremony till Vortex and I have certified it’s sanctified. You follow?”
Kovac and I help Vortex lie down on a cot under Bartholomew’s watchful eye.
“You didn’t have to do what you did, Abby,” Vortex says in a strangled voice. “Punching a demon in the eye!”
“Agreed,” Kovac says, scowling at me.
“Yeah, but that’s what scuba divers do when a shark attacks,” I say. “Punch him in the eye. In the snout works, too, but that’s getting a little too close to the teeth for me. Trust me, Damian, it was the right thing to do.”
“But you shouldn’t have,” Vortex says. “Now Bayemon has got even more reason to despise you.”
“I’m not afraid of Bayemon.”
“You should be.”
Now Bartholomew turns his attention to me, cleansing the wounds the demon gave me with an antiseptic anesthetic of his own invention that stings but not too much, then crisscrossing everything with bandages.
Bonwitch steps up beside Kovac and me. “We need some fresh air. And we need to clear the air. Will the two of you join me in the courtyard?”
It’s a request with only one answer.
* * *
I am well and truly vexed as I stride out to the teakwood benches on the courtyard patio. Some long-haired demon is scheming to steal my soul? Steal my human power? Steal my magic? With sex? For sex? Excuse me. For a hell of eternally unsatisfied lust in a harem of miserably bespelled women.
I am the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra. Alastor is my tenant. Has he no respect? Has he no shame?
Bonwitch, Kovac, and I help ourselves to iced tea and lime wedges, and I spill the whole story. The second Revel. Crossing through the mirror into Avichi. The ballroom from here to eternity. The weapons hall and the heap of bloody spears and arrows. Spears and arrows capable of inflicting precise puncture wounds. A lot of wounds.
Almost the whole story. I leave out Alastor’s kiss. I still leave out how I happened to have seen Alastor’s tattoo.
“I saw specialized little hells leading off the ballroom. Gluttons gorging on disgusting food and unable to stop eating. Smokers lighting up one after another and choking and hacking with no satisfaction. Women deformed by the fashions of their day who lust for Alastor and refuse to leave him, though he ignores them. Sadists watching butchers slaughter animals, pleading for more torture.” I shudder. “The animals were some stripe of human shapeshifters.”
Kovac bangs his tumbler down on the teakwood table and pushes it away. Not a tea-drinker, I guess. He looks at me with another set of new eyes. Intense new eyes. I’m not at all sure how to read this new intensity. “Do not ever go gallivanting off into an infernal realm without telling me first, Abby.”
“I went. I went twice. It’s my life, Jack.”
“You really should have told us,” Bonwitch chides.
I shrug and borrow another page from Kovac’s playbook. “I’m telling you now.”
Kovac throws his hands up, exasperated.
“Things are difficult to see there. They shift and change, appear and disappear like in a dream. I’m not sure who were the living humans, who the shapeshifters, who the human souls. Who were the other entities. Except for Alastor and his kin, of course. You can’t miss them.” I sip my tea. I wasn’t a tea-drinker, either, till I met Isaac Bonwitch. “When I go back there tonight, I’ll find the weapons hall and–”
“You are not going back there tonight,” Kovac says.
“I’ve got an invite. It’s the Fullness of the High Harvest.”
“What if you run into Bayemon?” Bonwitch says.
“Bayemon won’t dare threaten me. His boss wants to make me his glorious Queen.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Kovac says.
“Actually, I’m not sure.”
“Uh-huh. I will not allow this demon to steal your power or your soul.”
“You want this demon stealing other people’s souls?”
“Of course not.”
“How many people disappear from the world every year, Jack? Unsolved disappearances?”
“Too many.”
“Way too many. Didn’t you tell me that San Quentin comes equipped with special prison cells for holding demons like Alastor? Walls constructed of certain metals or stone, depending on the entity’s vulnerability? Procedures to prosecute him in our human courts of law? Procedures to execute him if he’s convicted of murder?”
“Yes, to all of that. And you’re still not going.”
“Abby,” Bonwitch says, “I must agree with Jack. It’s not wise for you to go to Avichi tonight. Especially if the demons are celebrating some kind of festival with you in mind. For us, it’s the autumnal equinox. A celebration of the harvest, yes, but also a celebration of death.”
“Wise or unwise, I’ve got to go. What is that blood and guts on those spears and arrows? Is it from animals? What if it’s human blood and guts? I’ve got to collect that evidence tonight before the demons claim their trophies and the master of the weapons hall tidies up.”
Kovac is shaking his head. But I can tell from the way he rubs his thumb along his jaw where the scar meets bone, the man is cogitating. And he’s starting to relent. “What do you propose to do?”
“I’ll go to Avichi when the mirror opens, collect the evidence, and then get the hell out of there. Simple. If I wipe a bloody surface with, say, a Kleenex, can your people at the lab work with that?”
“Of course. They can work wonders with DNA analysis.”
“Excellent. Alastor won’t care about a Kleenex in my pocket. If we get lucky, and the blood is human, we’ve got a case against the demon. And if we get really lucky, and there’s any blood from Brand and the girls, we’ve solved Tilden Park, right?”
Kovac eyes me. He’s interested. He’s more than interested.
“You and Supernatural Crimes and your demon-catching experts can take it from there.” I bang my tumbler down, feeling triumphant. “It’s a plan. An excellent plan.”
“If I can’t talk you out of it,” Kovac says, “I’m going with you.”
“You’re not invited.”
“I’ll go as your guest.”
“There’s a doorman. He’s got a guest list. He checks.”
“How much bigger is this doorman than me?”
I have to laugh and take my time appraising Kovac the way he’s forever appraising me. “I’d say he’s about half your size.”
“The doorman will not be a problem.”
“There’s another problem, Jack. A really, really serious problem.” I don’t quite know how to break this last hot news flash.
“I’m listening.”
“Ah. Um. When you cross through the mirror into the ballroom, everything turns into a Sir Patton painting. Or a Richard Dodd.”
“Ah,” Bonwitch says. “Classic fin-de-siecle illustrations of fairyland. Everyone’s clothes turn translucent.” He arches an eyebrow at Kovac. “You can see through people’s clothes.”
Kovac shrugs. “I will avert my eyes like a gentleman.”
“Will you really?” I say.
“Of course.”
“Hmm!” I can’t promise I’ll avert my eyes. “Well. Because of Avichi’s magic, you can’t carry concealed. Alastor will see your weapon. He saw the Beretta in my handbag and took the bag away.”
“Was he afraid you could use it on him?”
“I don’t think so. He likes to play power games. At the end of the evening, he gave my handbag and the gun back. And he gave me this.” I unbuckle my Ghurka bag and pull out the Ferdinand and the leather pouch. “As protection against the vampires at the Garden of Abracadabra.”
Kovac takes the Ferdinand and whistles. He opens the pouch and spills silver shot in the palm of his hand. He even oohs and aahs over the powder horn.
Gee whiz, gun nuts. “Alastor didn’t seem the least bit afraid of the Beretta or the Ferdinand.”
Kovac leans back and muses. “Not vulnerable to steel or silver, then.”
Isaac Bonwitch looks keenly back and forth between me and Kovac, his emerald eyes snapping. “Abby, Jack, allow me to be of service in this desperate enterprise.”
“Yes, Professor?” Kovac and I say eagerly in unison.
“Cavazzacca, what a revelation.” Bonwitch sets his tumbler down, glowing with excitement. “I’ve studied the Overlord Cavazzacca. Decades worth of study, and there is still much more to learn. Like King Solomon, he was a legendary magician in the ancient days of prehistory. Cavazzacca lived in Illyrium, the legendary tragic lands that are now the Balkan states. A mythical magician possessing unimaginable power. And like King Solomon, he’s difficult to trace in the Yonder because of all the hexes and hoaxes shrouding his records. And wardings, powerful ones. Oh, I always believed King Solomon actually lived and pioneered his ceremonial magic at the dawn of time but, in truth, I never quite believed Cavazzacca actually lived. Till today.”
“Long before the Christ,” I say, echoing Bayemon’s words.
“Long before the Christ,” Bonwitch says. “You made a rash but brilliant move, Abby, reaching for the power of your Eye. Now answer me this. Why did your Eye repel the demon?”
“Because the Eye had power during Cavazzacca’s time?”
“Precisely. At the dawn of civilization, the Utchat was inscribed on numerous bronze tablets and magical bronze weapons. You can see them yourself at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, right here on campus. The Hearst owns a fine collection of Bronze Age artifacts. Cavazzacca would have carried a Providential Eye in his war against Alastor. You follow?”
Kovac sits up. “So an artifact from the Bronze Age or a weapon made of bronze will serve as a weapon against Alastor?”
“In my considered opinion, yes.” Bonwitch puffs on his pipe and the face on the meerschaum bowl is solemn but no longer scowls. “I propose an amendment to Abby’s plan now that you, Jack, are determined to be a part of it.”
“Let’s hear it, Isaac,” Kovac says.
“Abby, I don’t think Alastor will simply allow you to wander off on your own if he means to make you his Queen. He’ll keep you close. So you must distract Alastor and his lieutenants with your abundant charms.”
“Don’t go too far with the charms,” Kovac says.
“Not too far,” I say with a smile.
“Meanwhile, Jack, you must find that weapons hall as quickly as possible and collect the DNA evidence. Then you must also search for a bronze weapon there. If you can’t bring weapons into Avichi because Alastor will see them, then you must find a weapon in Avichi. A dagger, a spear, doesn’t matter. Only that the killing edge must be bronze. That bronze weapon should ensure safe passage for you and Abby out of Avichi when your work is done. You may even be able to capture the demon, if the chance arises. You follow?”
“I follow,” Kovac says.
But I don’t follow. I’m puzzled. “Isaac, why would Alastor keep a weapon that could defeat him in his own weapons hall?”
“Because evil always contains the means of its own destruction.”
Bonwitch abruptly stands and strolls around the patio. He stops behind me and smooths back my hair. He circles his hands around my neck as if he’s about to throttle me.
I give a little scream.
Kovac springs to his feet.
“It’s all right, I’m not going to harm you.” Bonwitch presses his fingertips at the base of my throat.
I catch my breath as a dart of his power–electric, electrifying—enters my throat, and the vision of my physical eyes soars. Soars! I can see spiky globes of pollen drifting in the air all around us. And I can see tiny ice crystals floating in the stratosphere high above us.
The vision of my mind’s eye soars, too, and a riot of images flashes before my inner vision. Ocean waves pounding on a beach of white sand. Red-hot magma bubbling up in the caldera of a volcano. A sirocco whirling across an African desert, kicking up sand, shimmering with heat. A thick, mottled python slithering through the tangled vines of a rain forest.
“Isaac,” I gasp, “what did you just do to me?”
Bonwitch slumps back in his chair, retrieves his tumbler, and slurps tea, evidently pleased with himself. “You said things can be difficult to see in Avichi, that they shift and change, appear and disappear. I’ve merely given a little boost to your vishudha. That’s your fifth chakram, the whorl of energy at the base of your throat. The boost will help you see more clearly in Avichi.”
“Thank you!” I reconsider our bold, foolish plan. “Won’t you come with us, Isaac? We sure could use your inner warrior.”
“Abby, he can’t,” Kovac says. “We need a magician of Isaac’s power on the outside when we go into Avichi.”
“As much as I’d love to see this hell for myself, I must agree with Jack,” Bonwitch says. “If you two don’t return by sunrise tomorrow, I’ll lead in a rescue team invested with the authority of the Convocation. I’ll recruit every member of the faculty who can help.”
“And call my office, Isaac.” Kovac takes out a business card, scribbles names and numbers on the back.
The enormity of what Jack Kovac and I are setting out to do finally strikes me. Strikes me hard. We’re setting out into an unknown hell to find evidence of supernatural murders. I ponder the logic of it one more time.
“Isaac, do you really believe Alastor will keep a bronze weapon in his arsenal?”
“I’m sure of it. Evil eventually works its own defeat.”
“Is that always true?”
“It’s a Fundamental of Real Magic I’d like to believe.”
His half-hearted answer hardly inspires my confidence. “You’d like to believe? Or you do believe?”
“I believe.”
But the emerald eyes of Isaac Bonwitch are troubled.
********
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