Magic Bleeds

CHAPTER 19

THE MAGIC HIT TEN MINUTES AFTER CURRAN LEFT. I grit my teeth, got dressed, saddled Marigold, and headed to the Temple.

All or nothing. Hello, Your Fuzzy Majesty. My name is Kate Daniels, daughter of Roland, Builder of Towers, the living legend, and coincidentally, the man who is trying to eradicate you and your people. If you take me in, he will move heaven and earth to kill you and me, when he finds out who I am. Even now, I’m being hunted. And if you keep sleeping with me, you’ll never be the same.

That was what all or nothing really meant. And I wanted so badly to ignore it and go with him to the Keep. When had I become so attached to that arrogant bastard? It wasn’t last night. Was it all the times he’d saved me from myself? At least, I knew when it started—when he tried to trade the lid wanted by a horde of sea demons for Julie’s life.

I would kill to stay with him. Now there was a scary thought.

The temperature continued its suicidal plunge. Despite all the layers of fabric, I could barely feel my arms, and my thighs were frozen solid. Grendel and Marigold seemed no worse for wear, but then they’d run the whole way.

Bordered on three sides by a low brick building and by a brick fence on the fourth, the Temple looked almost cheerful against the stark landscape of ruined buildings: bright red walls, snow-white colonnade, and equally white stairs perched upon a snowy lawn. Just a few yards to the left, Unicorn Lane lay in wait. An area of deep violent magic, Unicorn Lane cut across the battered Midtown like a scar. Things that shunned the light and fed on monsters hid there, and when desperate fugitives fled there, neither PAD nor the Order bothered to follow them. There was no need.

Unicorn Lane ran straight as an arrow, except when it reached the Temple grounds, where it carefully veered around the synagogue. Mezuzot, verses from the Torah, written by a qualified scribe and protected by pewter cases, hung along the perimeter of the Temple wall. The wall itself supported so many angelic names, magic squares, and holy names, it looked as if a talismanic encyclopedia had thrown up on it.

Four golems patrolled the grounds: six feet tall and red like Georgia clay. The shapeless monstrosities of the early days, just after the Shift, were gone; these guys had been made by a master sculptor and animated by a magic adept. Each had the muscled torso of a humanoid male, crowned with a large bearded head. At the waist the torso seamlessly merged into a stocky animal body, reminiscent of a ram and equipped with four powerful legs with hoofed feet. The golems stalked back and forth, carrying long steel spears and peering at the world with eyes glowing a weak watery pink. They paid me no mind. If they had, they wouldn’t be difficult to kill. Each was animated by a single word—emet, truth—cut into their foreheads. Destroy the first letter and emet became met. Death. An end to the golem. Judging by their slow gait, I could waltz in, take the letter off, and skedaddle before they could bring those big-ass spears around.

Everyone had their own method of manipulating the magic. Witches brewed herbal potions, the People piloted vampires, and rabbis wrote. The surest way to disarm a Jewish magician was to take his pen away from him.

As I approached, a woman stepped out of the Temple and came down to the bottom of the stairs. I tied Marigold’s reins to a rail welded to the fence and jogged up the stairs.

The woman was short and happily plump. “I’m Rabbi Melissa Snowdoll.”

“Kate Daniels. This is my poodle.”

“I understand you have an appointment with Rabbi Kranz. I’ll take you to him, but I’m afraid the poodle will have to wait outside.”

The attack poodle expressed doubts about waiting, and he liked the chain even less, but after I growled at him, he decided it was in his best interest to play it cool.

The rabbi raised her hand and stepped forward. A pale glow clamped her fingers and drained down in a waterfall of light, as the protective ward on the Temple opened to let me pass.

“Follow me, please.”

She led me inside. We passed by the open doors of the sanctuary. Enormous arched windows spilled daylight onto rows of cream pews, equipped with dark red cushions. Soothing cream walls climbed high to a vaulted ceiling, gilded with gold designs. On the east wall, in front of the pews, a pale feylantern illuminated a raised platform and on it the holy arc, a gold case containing the scrolls from the Torah.

The contrast to the bleak outside was so startling, I wanted to sit down on the nearest cushion, close my eyes, and just sit for a long moment. Instead I followed Rabbi Melissa down the hall to a small staircase into a narrow room. A square bath occupied the far end of the room. A mikvah, a place where Orthodox Jews came to purify themselves.

The rabbi approached the right wall, placed her hand on it, and murmured something. A section of the wall slid aside, revealing a passage stretching into the distance. Pale blue tubes of feylanterns lit stone walls. “There we go,” she said. “Just keep on straight, you can’t miss it.” I stepped inside. The wall closed behind me. No way to go but forward.

THE PASSAGEWAY BROUGHT ME TO AN EMPTY round office. I passed through it and kept walking. Another office waited ahead, this one with a heavy stone desk and two men standing behind it. The first was in his forties, tall, thin, with a long face, made longer by a short beard and a receding hairline, and smart eyes behind wire glasses. The second was older by ten years, heavier by seventy-five pounds or so, and had the square-jawed face and the eyes of a cop, skeptical and world-weary.

The taller man came out from behind the desk to greet me. “Hello, I’m Rabbi Peter Kranz. This is Rabbi John Weiss.”

I shook their hands and handed them my Order ID. They looked at it for a while and gave it back to me.

Peter folded his long frame back behind the desk. “Sorry about the dungeon atmosphere.”

“No problem. As dungeons go, I’ve seen worse.”

The two of them chewed on that remark for a bit. I looked past them. Hebrew script decorated the walls of the office, lines and lines of text inked on the wall in thick black lines. It drew the eye. I tried not to stare.

“I understand you wish to access the circle.” Peter folded his long fingers in front of him.

“Yes.”

“We would like to know why.”

I explained about the Steel Mary and produced the bag with the piece of paper.

The two rabbis looked at each other. I looked at the wall. There was something about the Hebrew text. My eyes almost itched when I looked at it. If I squinted just right . . .

“You must understand, of course, we do wish to cooperate with the Order,” Peter said. “However, we don’t advertise the existence of the circle. You might even say we strive to keep it a secret. We’re most curious as to how you learned about it.”

Mentioning Saiman would get me thrown out. “The Order has its sources.”

“Of course, of course,” Peter said.

The rabbis exchanged another look.

The black lines blended, like the old stereograms that hid a 3-D image in an ordinary picture. The impact punched my brain and I saw a word, written in a language of power. Amehe. Obey.

The word sizzled in my brain. I already owned this one, but seeing it written still set my mind buzzing.

It made sense that it would be written on a wall full of names of God. Rabbis specialized in written magic and Yahweh was all about obedience, if the Torah was anything to go by.

“People study for years and years to access the circle,” Weiss said. “Some Johnny-come-lately can’t just waltz in and demand to see it.”

“I’m not some Johnny. I’m the Johnny with an Order’s ID and a sharp sword, who’s trying to save the city from an epidemic.” If they thought their mezuzot would protect them from the Steel Mary, they would be deeply disappointed.

The corners of Peter’s mouth sagged. “What Rabbi Weiss means is that we’re dreadfully sorry, but your lack of qualifications prevents us from granting you access. It’s unfortunate.”

On that we were in agreement. “Would you like me to read what’s written on the wall behind you to prove that I’m qualified?”

Peter gave me a sad smile.

Weiss sighed. “These are the many names of God. Knowing how to read Hebrew won’t get you in, but go ahead if it makes you feel better.”

“It says: ‘Obey.’ ”

A long moment passed and then Peter closed his mouth with a click.

Weiss’s eyes turned cold. “Who told you about that?”

“Would you like me to pronounce the word in the original language?” There was no telling what the word would do to them. I mostly used it to control magic, but it could be used to control people. I’d done it once—to Derek—and I would never do it again. But they didn’t know that.

The rabbis paled. I’d managed to terrify holy men. Maybe I could beat up a nun for an encore.

“No!” Peter raised his hands. “No, that’s not necessary. We’ll take you to the circle.”

THE GOLEM WAS SEVEN FEET TALL AND SIX FEET wide. Unlike the golems outside, who had been shaped with finesse like Greek statues, this brute was pure power. Broad, crude, and hewn together with thick slabs of clay muscle, it stood at the end of a narrow hallway before a door shaped like an open scroll. It wore a steel helmet, an armet with visor removed. The metal guard covered its mouth and a layer of steel shielded its forehead. No scratching off letters here. I wondered what they would do if they ever had to deactivate it. Shoot it with a tank maybe.

Next to me, Peter pointed to the floor, where a small stone fire pit with the fire already laid out waited before the golem. To the side sat a box of matches. “There is a price for using the circle.”

“What is it?”

His voice was soft. “Knowledge. That is the keeper of the circle. You must light the fire and tell it a secret. If your knowledge is worthy, the golem will open the door for you.”

“And if the golem doesn’t like the knowledge?” Was it too much to hope it would chide me and send me to bed without my supper?

“It may kill you,” Weiss said.

“If you lie, it will know,” Peter said. “The flame will turn blue.”

Lovely. The golem’s fists were bigger than my head. All it had to do was grab me and squeeze and my skull would crack like an egg. The hallway was too narrow to maneuver. My speed wouldn’t do me any good.

“We will wait here.” Weiss pointed to a small stone bench a few yards away. It faced the golem so they would have front row seats if it decided to use me as a punching bag.

“It’s not too late to change your mind,” Peter murmured.

And stare into Ori’s dead eyes every time I closed mine? No, thank you.

I crossed the floor, picked up the matches, and struck one. A tiny flame flared. Carefully I brought it to the fire and let it chew on the piece of paper in the center of wooden kindling.

A low rumble started in the center of the golem, a rough grating sound of rock grinding against rock. Two pinpoints of sharp light flared in its cavernous sockets.

I sat on the floor.

The golem shuddered. One huge columnar leg lifted and stepped forward, shaking the floor.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

The golem stopped before the fire and bent down. Tiny flecks of stone or dry clay broke from its shoulders and fell into the fire, igniting into brilliant white sparks. Slowly, ponderously, it crouched, its steel mouth guard only three feet from me.

I looked into its eyes. “Let me into the circle, and I will tell you the story of the first vampire.”

Behind me, clothes rustled as the two rabbis sat on the bench.

I picked up a stick and poked the fire with it. “Long ago there lived a man. He was a great man, a thinker, philosopher, and magician. We’ll call him Roland. Roland once had a kingdom, the most powerful kingdom in the world, a realm of magic and wonders. His ancestors brought people out of savagery into an age of prosperity and enlightenment and he was very proud of what his family had achieved.

“Roland had many children, for he had lived a very long time, but his favorite was his youngest son, let’s call him Abe. He was Roland’s only child at the time. You see, Roland had a habit of killing children when they rose against him, so Abe was the only one left.

“Everything went along splendidly, but the kingdom’s people had pushed their magic too far. They disrupted the balance between magic and technology. Tech came, interrupting the flow of magic. The waves of technology attacked Roland’s kingdom, pulling it apart the way magic now pulls apart our world. He counted on his son to help him. But Abe saw it as his chance for freedom. In the chaos of tech waves, Abe betrayed his father and fought him for power. The war between them ripped their kingdom to shreds. Abe lost, and took his followers into the wilderness, proclaiming he would make his own nation, greater than his father’s fallen realm.

“Eventually Roland failed his people. The mighty kingdom had fallen and its ruler lost everything. He hid from the world, choosing to live alone on a mountain, spending his days in meditation.

“Meanwhile Abe’s nation of nomads grew larger. They lost most of what they knew. Philosophy and complicated magic were no longer important—survival was. Abe had a son and his son had sons, two boys. We’ll call them Esau and Jacob. Esau was the oldest. He prided himself on being a great warrior and a hunter of men and beasts. Truth is, Esau was a thug, but he was stronger and more powerful than ordinary thugs and he made the best of it.

“The older nomads told stories of the wonders of Roland’s fallen kingdom. Rumor had it that when Roland went to his mountain, he took the treasures of his realm with him. Among these treasures was a set of clothes made from the skin of a mythical beast and permeated with the fragrance of a lost valley. A hunter who wore this garment could hunt and capture any animal he wished. Esau, being an enterprising guy, decided to get his hands on these clothes. After all, how much trouble could one old guy be? So Esau got his supplies together and headed for Roland’s mountain.

“Put yourself into Roland’s shoes. Here he was, a man who’d lost everything, and now his own great-grandson shows up and tries to rob him. And more, his great-grandson, the fruit of his family tree, is an ignorant thug. In Esau, Roland saw the reflection of his people’s fate—all of their knowledge lost, all of their achievements squandered, as they reverted to primitive brutality.

“Roland saw red, and Esau died before he could land a single blow. But that wasn’t enough. Roland had a lot of frustration to vent. He raged at his great-grandson, at his fallen kingdom, at the world. He wanted to kill Esau again, and so he dragged him back from the brink of death and murdered him a second time. Again and again Esau died, until finally Roland stopped to take a breath and realized that Esau was gone. His body remained, but his mind had died. Instead Roland found a mindless creature, neither alive nor dead. An undead with its mind completely blank, like a white page.

“Roland discovered that he could control this empty brain with infinite ease. He could speak through Esau’s mouth and hear what the undead heard. A host of possibilities occurred to Roland and he decided it would be convenient for him if people thought that Esau had murdered him. He dressed the creature that used to be his great-grandson into the magic garment Esau had come for and sent the undead back to its family, controlling its every move and spinning wild tales of his own death. He used Esau to torment Abe’s nomads. He wanted to destroy Abe and all of his descendants.

“Eventually Esau grew fangs and developed a terrible thirst for blood. Years later the once-king put those fangs to a test. He lured Esau’s brother to a meeting under the pretense of reconciliation, and there he unleashed the full fury of the undead on Jacob, letting Esau tear into his brother’s neck. But Jacob had worn an ivory collar and Esau’s fangs failed to sever his jugular.

“With time, Esau’s body changed. He grew claws. His hair fell out. His body turned gaunt and he scuttled about on all fours like an animal. Roland released him into a cave, where the bodies of his ancestors and his children lay interred. Starving, the first vampire haunted the cave until a brave man finally put it out of its misery.

“Such is the true story of the first vampire.” I got up. “It’s not really all that secret. There are echoes of it in the Bible and in the Jewish scholarly writings. Abe is gone, and so are his children. But Roland, he still lives. Outlived them all, the old bastard. He’s made more undead and he’s rebuilding his power, waiting for a time to resurrect his kingdom.”

I pricked my finger with my throwing knife. A single drop of red swelled on my skin. I leaned toward the golem and whispered so quietly, I could barely hear myself. “And his blood lives on as well.”

I touched the blood to the golem’s chest. It rocked back, as if struck. Stone screeched, dust puffed. The golem spun, backed to the door, grasped the stone with its massive hand, and pushed it aside, revealing a dark room beyond it.

I walked past it into the darkness. Behind me the stone door slid shut.

PALE BLUE LIGHTS WINKED INTO EXISTENCE ON the walls. I counted. Twelve. They pulsed, fading and flaring brighter and brighter, until they finally illuminated the floor in front of me: two circles, the first six feet wide, the next a foot wider, carved into the stone. Twelve stone pillars surrounded the circle, each five feet tall. On top of each rested a glass cube. Within the cube lay a sefirot, a scroll.

I approached the circle. Magic pulsed between the scrolls, like a strong invisible current. A ward, and a very powerful one. Wards both protected and contained. For all I knew, stepping into the circle would result in some weirdness manifesting in the middle of it and squeezing me like a juice orange.

I pulled Slayer from its sheath and circled the lines. No mysterious runes on the walls, no instructions, no warnings. Just the weak gauzy blue light of the lantern, the scrolls resting in their transparent cases, and the double circle on the floor.

I’d come this far. No turning back now.

I slid Slayer under my arm, pulled the paper out of the Ziploc bag, and stepped into the circle.

A silver light ignited in the spot I crossed. It dashed along the carved outline of the double circle, igniting it. Magic roiled between the scrolls. A wall of silvery glow surged up, sealing me from the outside world. All I needed now was for some monstrous critter to manifest and try to eat me.

Dear rabbis, I’m so sorry, I nuked your circle dude. Here is his head as a souvenir. Yeah, that would fly.

Magic nipped at my skin in tiny sharp needles, as if testing the waters. I tensed.

Hairline cracks spread through the floor. Pale light stabbed through the gaps. Something was coming. I swung Slayer, warming up my wrist.

Power burst under me. Magic punched through my feet and tore through my body in an agonizing torrent, grating at my insides as if every cell of my body had been stripped bare. It ripped a scream from me and the torrent burst out of my mouth in a stream of light, so bright I went blind. My head spun. Everything hurt. Weak and light-headed, I clenched my sword.

Breathe. One, two, three . . .

Slowly my vision cleared and I saw the translucent ward and beyond it the scrolls glowing on their stone pillars. Deep blue currents of magic slid up and down within the glow. What the hell? I looked up. The last of the magic torn from me floated above in a cloud of indigo, slowly merging with the ward.

Damn it. The perimeter wall of the circle wasn’t a ward, although it looked and felt like one. It was an ara, a magic engine. I’d read about them but never encountered one. It lay dormant until some idiot, like me, stepped inside it and donated some magic juice to get it running. It absorbed my magic and turned blue. If I’d been a vampire, the glow would’ve become purple.

It occurred to me that my feet were no longer touching the ground. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the place where the floor used to be and it wasn’t there. I glanced down. The floor had vanished. In its place gaped a black pit and I floated above it, weightless.

Oh, great. Just great.

I opened my hand, revealing the parchment. A feather of light swept it off my palm and dragged it into the air to my eye level.

The magic buckled. Long veins of indigo streaked through the ara and struck at the parchment. It shivered, caught in the spider web of blue tendrils.

It was good that the Temple was shielded by a ward; otherwise anyone with an iota of power would be able to sense these fireworks.

The tendrils clutching the parchment turned a darker blue. The circle picked up the parchment’s magic and now it spread through the glow.

A powerful magic pulse ripped through the ara.

The center of the parchment turned smooth. The worn lines creasing the rough paper vanished. Ink appeared, slowly, like a developing photograph. A magic square formed in the corner. An assortment of geometric figures: spirals, circles, crosses . . .

The magic pulsed again and again, like the toll of a great bell. My whole body hummed with the echo. Hurry up, damn you.

The ragged edges of the parchment grew as the web built onto it. The parchment must’ve been only a small piece of the original scroll, a top left corner, and now the circle was reconstructing it as it once had been.

Words appeared, written in Hebrew. Between them, smaller lines written in English came through.

I devastate the land and shatter it to dust,

I crush the cities and turn them into waste,

This was familiar. I knew this.

I crumble mountains and panic their wild beasts,

I churn the sea and hold back its tides,

I squeezed my memory, trying to pinpoint where I’d read this before.

I bring stillness of the tomb to nature’s wild places,

I reap the lives of humankind, none survive,

Come on, come on. Where did it come from? Why was it lodged in my brain? Words kept coming, faster and faster. I scanned the lines.

I bring dark omens and desecrate holy places,

I release demons into sacred dwellings of the gods,

I ravage palaces of kings and send nations into mourning,

I set ablaze the blooms of fields and orchards,

A final phrase ignited at the end of the scroll. It pierced my mind. Cold bit my fingers.

I let evil enter.

Oh no.

The words glared at me. I let evil enter.

Oh no, you don’t. I knew this—this was a part of an ancient Babylonian poem, used as an amulet against a man once worshipped as the god of plagues. He’d brought panic and terror to the ancient world and decimated its people with epidemics. His wrath was chaos, his temper was fire, and ancient Babylonians feared him so much, they were too afraid to build him a temple.

I read all about him when I was ten years old. His name was Erra.

But the Steel Mary was a woman. I was absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure she was a woman. I saw her with my own eyes. A huge six-foot-six woman, but unmistakably female. I had a round hole, and no matter how the universe tried to get me to shove a square peg into it, it wasn’t going to happen.

The tendrils curled back, withdrawing into the circle. The scroll snapped taut and disintegrated into a cloud of glowing sparks. The piece of parchment, once again ancient and blank, landed into my hand. The power of the circle vanished and I dropped to the stone floor.

The door slid open and I saw Peter’s pale face. He wheezed, catching his breath. “We’re under attack.”