rafters he’d break the circle — and the protection. Better to let the feathered rodent deal with things on its own and hope that it had sense to become scarce until the ritual was complete, and things had calmed. There hadn’t been a squawk since the ritual began, and that was a good sign.
There were only a couple of pages to go before he would need to tilt his head to the other side of the altar and begin reading from his own book. He wondered fleetingly if he should release the ritual — his ritual — in a more permanent text, once he’d succeeded. Certainly there was room for a new voice in the magical texts, particularly if that voice could debunk so much of the old melodramatic nonsense and replace it with something more practical. For one thing — if you could perform the same magic with a bit of red glass that you could with a ruby; certain suppliers of magical items were not going to be as popular once Alistair ratted them out. It would serve them right for not selling him what he needed.
The flames on the candles rose suddenly, first an inch, then a foot. They blazed, though the wax seemed not to diminish. Alistair grinned fiercely. It was the sign that the first portion of the ritual had been completed, and that it was working. His protections were complete. The next step was the easiest, and he had the entire original text for its completion. It was time to open the door between dimensions — not all the way, but far enough that he could send his summons through into that other realm. At the same time it was the easiest to accomplish, it was the most difficult to control. If he wavered, or if he misspoke a word, he was lost.
Sweat trickled down the back of his collar, but he ignored it. Despite the danger, things were going so well that it was difficult for him to worry. He would get through this, and when he had done so, everything would be different. With the proper otherworldly allies, he could accomplish anything.
He didn’t notice the wavering in the smoke surrounding him at first. His gaze was fixed on the book at his left; his lips moved slowly, and though he didn’t speak loudly, the words rang out strong and sure. When he lifted his gaze to shift it from one book to the other and take up the words he’d scribed so carefully into his own grimoire, he saw the figure standing outside his circle.
Alistair tried not to look. He needed to shift his gaze back to the ritual, and to continue. It didn’t matter who it was; they couldn’t break through the protective circle. If it was someone sent to stop him, or to prevent him from completing his ritual, they were too late. The wards were set and the spirits had been invoked; only he could break the circle as long as he maintained his concentration.
Something caught his eye, though, and he couldn’t look away. The cup sat, forgotten on the altar, the final ingredient still sealed in its tube and the intricately woven oak sapling wand remained untouched.
A tall slender figure in a very dark hooded robe stood outside the circle. Alistair saw eyes in the shadowed depth of the hood, but could make out no features. There was no attempt to enter the circle, no movement, and no sound. The figure stood and stared in at him as if he were some sort of caged animal.
None of this bothered Alistair in the slightest. He’d half expected to be discovered at some point in the ritual, but once he’d passed a certain stage, he knew that there was nothing anyone could do but to wait and to see what would happen. They could set wards and confining spells around the church. They could contain what happened, but they could not enter his circle without his willing it, and no way was he letting any of them in. Not until he had what he was after.
But it wasn’t just the robed figure. There was something sitting on its shoulder, something big and black, sleek and feathered. Dark eyes gazed coldly in at him, and he froze.
Without thinking, he dropped the small pouch he held in his hand and spoke a single word — a word that was no part of the ritual, not what had been written originally, or what he’d added himself.
“Asmodeus?” he whispered.
He saw his error too late. It wasn’t his familiar seated on that shoulder, but a much larger, much younger bird. It spread its wings as he spoke, taking flight. This dislodged the hood from the intruder’s features, but Alistair never saw them. The smoky mist stopped circling him and hung motionless in the air. He dropped his gaze to the second book and searched for the point that he needed to recapture the rhythm, but as he spun, his hand caught the rim of the cup and toppled, it. The thick, murky contents splashed over the page and obscured the words. He reeled back, and as he moved, the stranger outside the circle reached out with the toe of one boot and scraped a small break in the circle.
The smoke billowed and was sucked in through that breach so rapidly that all sound and most of the air were sucked from the cathedral. In that instant, the robed figure reached back and flipped his cowl forward. Without air to hold it aloft, the raven tumbled, but his master stepped toward the door, held out an arm, and the bird thudded to a landing, gripping tightly. Without a word the intruder spun and sprinted toward the back of the cathedral toward the rectory and the street beyond.
The circle had become a white pillar stretching from floor to ceiling. It was impossible to see into the interior, and no sound escaped from within, but the air hummed with energy and then, with a shudder, the remnant of the circle blew asunder. Air and sound raced outward, pounding the windows from the old cathedral outward and sending a shower of broken wood frame and glass shards in a long arc, pummeling the street and homes beyond. The sound was deafening, half scream, and half roar. A cloud rolled out, low to the ground, billowed, and rose until the entire structure of the cathedral was cloaked in cloying fog.
Inside, still standing, Alistair clutched his throat and tried to stagger forward. The breath had been ripped from his lungs in the explosion, and he was blind, but somehow he had the presence of mind to try and move away. Above him he heard Asmodeus cry out, loud and long. He heard the flutter of the old bird’s wings, but he saw nothing.
Near his ankle the air shimmered. At first it was just a darker patch against the polished wood floor, but it widened, and as it did so, something moved in the space beyond — something that glowed sickly green. Alistair staggered in a circle, and his foot came into contact with that dark patch. There was a great cry, and Asmodeus dove from the rafters, riding the thin air in a long, slow arc toward his master. The bird flew all out, making no attempt to land on a shoulder or minimize its own risk — the goal was clearly to knock Alistair clear, but it failed.
As the great old bird soared closer, something reached through that dark patch, touched Alistair’s ankle and groped its way upward. Whatever it was sank into Cornwell’s flesh and dug deep. The crow hit its master hard, knocking him back, but as the body fell, something inside ripped free — something bright white and glowing. The taloned claw that had stretched up out of that darker place gripped it tightly and yanked. It disappeared, and the portal closed with a bright snap of energy. Cornwell’s body toppled to the floor, and Asmodeus soared back toward the rafters, wings flapping madly.
At the door to the passage leading to the rectory, the cowled figure re-appeared. The old church was silent as a tomb. Dust still rose from where the windows had blown out; moonlight and the artificial illumination of streetlights filtered in through the haze. The cleared bit of floor and its broken, arcane circle stood out stark in that void, empty props. Cornwell’s body lay limp and unmoving.
The figure glanced up, spotted Asmodeus clinging to a rafter above, and raised his arm, as if to send his own familiar in pursuit. Then he hesitated, cocked his head, and stood very still. Someone was coming — not the men and women of the neighborhood, or the police, but someone with power. The figure whispered something to his bird, scuttled forward, plucked the oak wand from Alistair’s altar, and then spun on his heel and was gone. Far above, Asmodeus let loose a fierce cry that echoed through the rafters and shot out the windows and open doors into the night.
ELEVEN
Donovan had traveled the streets of the city for many years, and he was no stranger to the barrio. A wide variety of practitioners of strange arts called that area home. There was Martinez, for one, and though Donovan respected the old man’s abilities, he had no wish to renew that particular acquaintance. There was something in the white haired old guy’s gaze that didn’t sit well on the heart, and rumor had it that he was fond of leaving certain dimensional doorways open a bit too wide. He also played a lot of games with the gangs and other parts of the everyday city, and Donovan liked to remain as clear of that world as possible.
Donovan didn’t have the sight, though he knew several others who did, but he could occasionally sense something in another’s aura, a taint of odd coloration, or a hint of impending doom. Martinez gave him that
