The Behaims, Ainsley leading the pack, worked to bog them down, slowing their approach.
“The head!” Ty shouted. “Give!”
Nick stepped forward, piercing the head with the machete’s tip, then stepped back, head skewered at the point.
“Tiff,” Ty said, grabbing the head atop the sword. “Hand!”
Tiff shoved her hand at Ty with enough force she might have knocked the wind out of him.
Huddled together, while the distractions had been ongoing, Ty and Tiff hadn’t been idle.
Scratched out in pen on the back of Tiff’s hand was a diagram.
Holding the head in one hand, Tiff’s hand in the other, Ty murmured something.
Where Hauri’s blood had spilled, the blood flowed out into lines. A sympathetic effect.
The two imps that had been lurking at the back reached the diagram, and they slammed into it. Slow motion, but not hurting themselves any less as a consequence.
Surbas snarled, and seized Naph, swallowing the imp.
We collectively watched in quiet horror as Surbas swelled. Though Naph had only weighed eight or ten pounds, Surbas grew by forty or fifty. His oily black skin failed to grow at the same rate, and started to split at the scenes. Blood leaked out from these fresh wounds.
Tatters came to hang from his mouth, as his fangs tore the skin that was trying to stretch over his mouth.
He cackled, a sound with sharp edges that threatened to slit eardrums.
Rose looked down.
Holding Alister’s hand, she led him over to the center of the diagram, and she used her feet to scuff the lines of the diagram there, where the seal of Solomon was marked down.
Surbas attacked once more.
It took three people, this time, just to stop his charge, each person stepping forward carefully, so as not to interfere with the lines that had been redrawn.
Claws flashed, swinging, and the High Priest blocked him with a gesture. Nick stabbed Surbas’ other claw, while the other Knight went for the throat, only for Surbas to bite the blade and hold it in place instead.
Rose drew a small knife from her pocket, and pricked her hand. She handed it to Alister as she let the blood drip.
Alister added his blood to the mix.
Replacing the sigil of solomon with the power of a Lord. Even a small, temporary Lord.
The choir of the feral reverse the natural order. Here, we reclaim it.
The diagram flared, and the imp was cast out.
“You did offer your help,” Lewis stated.
Rose turned her head.
“I did,” Faysal Anwar replied. “We didn’t finalize it.”
“In all our past encounters,” Lewis stated, “We never finalized it. I’ve almost forgotten why.”
“Call it bad luck,” Faysal said.
He rose to a standing position.
There was a flicker, like an image between two frames of a film, too fast for the eye to grasp.
Rose saw only the afterimage, a great wheel, with lesser wheels within it, a figure with seven arms, a motif of wings. Far larger than this dog that stood before her.
“Faysal,” she said. “Others are coming. If you let this follow it’s natural course, they’ll arrive one by one. You’ve seen what happens, when things are staggered like that. Just before you brought down Hillsglade House, Johannes did it to me. People arrive one by one, precedent is established, someone tries to take power, or there’s conflict. If you want stability, all of the individuals who are coming here need to arrive at once.”
“My kind,” Faysal said, “Is rather misunderstood. I am not good. I’m not even right. Order is-”
Rose’s thoughts flickered through notes.
Grandmother’s theories. Notes on other powers, on the structure of things.
“Order is the antithesis of mankind,” Rose said, interrupting. “Johannes and you tried to establish it, to weaken man’s dominion. A different rule of law.”
“Not because I am of Order,” Faysal said. “But because the alternative is to let man careen down his course, right into the growing dominion of demons.”
Ms. Lewis cleared her throat. Rose looked the woman’s way, but Ms. Lewis wasn’t trying to voice her own piece.
“If you attack, right now, if you wipe us out, they’re going to arrive. They’re going to see this carnage. They’re going to try and address this carnage. They’re going to investigate it. Maybe even go down there. What’s to say they won’t find the library, choice tomes, or the Barber?”
“What’s to say they will?” Faysal asked. “The world is full of possibilities.”
“It is,” Rose said. “But I have only one question for you.”
Faysal quirked his ears up.
“Why the hell are you still a dog?” she asked.
“I could be a gatekeeper, if it pleased you.”
“You could,” Rose said, “But that doesn’t answer my question. Give me a straight response.”
“They’re buying time,” Ms. Lewis said. “Shall I step in?”
“No,” Faysal said. “Please don’t.”
“As you wish.”
“Tell me, Faysal,” Rose said.
“You ask, but you already know the answer.”
“Yes.”
“Because I am still a familiar.”
“You had to know this was possible.”
“That Johannes wouldn’t die? Or that he would die, but the connection would be maintained?” Faysal asked.
“Yeah,” Rose said. “I’m pretty sure he died, but he had an immortal thing inhabiting his body.”
“Yes,” Faysal said. “The demon has his flesh and being, and the Abyss has the demon, in turn.”
“Both abyss and demon have the pipes, which allow the piper to command children, rats, and dogs, among other things,” Rose said. “I imagine you want this situation resolved.”
“And you believe you can give me this resolution?”
“Fuck no,” Rose said. “But I think they can. Bring them here. Let me bargain with them. I swear, I truly believe this will create a better opportunity than letting this become a site of conflict.”
Faysal nodded.
One by one, they appeared in flashes.
The Shepherd. The Astrologer. The Eye. A man I didn’t recognize. A little girl in white. Isadora the Sphinx, with Paige in tow. Paige was dressed nice, though her dress looked a little bit too much like a toga, what with the flowing white drapery, beneath her heavy coat. Her shoes didn’t look like outdoor wear.
“Paige? Bullshit!” Peter said.
Paige raised a hand in a short wave.
“Bullshit,” Peter said, quieter.
“If she’s alive, she’s okay,” Rose said.
“What the fuck do I care, about her being okay?” Peter asked.
A mite too defensively.
The Sisters were last to arrive.
Something about the tone of their arrival…
The Elder Sister smiled in acknowledgement at Rose, as if reading Rose’s mind. The new Lord of Toronto.
It wasn’t a pleasant smile.
The smile faltered as she eyed the imps, counting their number.
The four remaining imps were tense, and lurked, eyes on the new arrivals, moving through shadow, drawing closer as they searched for opportunity to attack.
Rose noted that Murr had yet to do anything. It made her uneasy.
It made me go search for Murr in Rose’s memories.
“It’s not a trap,” Rose said. “Only a bad situation.”