sensation, and since he had no way to express what he could not quite bring to the surface of his mind, Donovan preferred avoidance.
There were others as well, some respected, some feared, and a few to be avoided at all costs. The Latin wings of the arts were varied, and tended toward darkness. Santeria, various forms of voodoo, and gris-gris flourished on the vermin infested streets. Their symbols lurked in the colorful graffiti and the tiny altars sprouting around street corners.
It didn’t surprise him to find that Cornwell had chosen this area of the city to call home. There was less chance of someone stumbling in on him and interrupting his experiments. There were ways to find ingredients and objects of power in the lower east side that existed nowhere else, and that were less likely to draw unwanted attention.
Donovan stood for a while on the corner of 42 ^ nd Street and watched the old cathedral. There was no doubt that something was wrong. Several windows were shattered, and he saw from the larger shards that remained they had been blackened from the inside. Whether this was something Cornwell had done on purpose, prior to the breakage, or whether it had happened as the result of some out-of-control arcane explosion was impossible to tell from where he stood.
Energy crackled in the air. Something was happening, or had happened very recently, and it shivered over Donovan’s scalp and down his spine in an electric tingle. Before advancing, he turned seven times in place and muttered a charm of protection. He had no idea what he’d be walking into, but he had no intention of finding out unprotected. He didn’t fear Cornwell, but there were things Cornwell could have unleashed. Also, there was something not quite right about the entire scene. Donovan didn’t know the renegade from any close association, so it was difficult to sort out the energies that rippled around him. He thought he sensed two distinct patterns.
There was no sense in lingering on the street. From the look of things, something had happened in the church, and it hadn’t been very much before Donovan’s arrival. If that were true, and whatever had happened had been loud or intrusive, there could be others arriving any moment. There would be police, and there would be locals. Even if they feared the place, they would come, and some of them, followers of Martinez, and others, wouldn’t fear the place at all.
Donovan crossed the street to the front of the church. There were wards in place, glamours and cheap charms meant to cause ripples of fear and to start shadows dancing at the periphery of any intruder’s vision. It was meant to frighten mundane visitors, or to distract those of incidental power. Donovan’s protection charm deflected these easily, and he frowned.
The amount of energy he sensed in the cathedral wasn’t in line with the level of magic he was encountering on the street. Whoever had set these protections was not particularly talented. In fact, he was downright sloppy. If Cornwell was behind them, then there was no telling what Donovan might face inside. Either someone else was involved, or Cornwell had gotten in way over his head. If he had, there was no way to gauge at what point things had gone south on him, or what forces might lurk within the shadowy cathedral.
Donovan hesitated at the door. He wished he had Cleo with him, or had thought to ask Amethyst to accompany him. He took a deep breath and crossed the threshold, quickly dodging to one side as he stepped through the door. As his eyes adjusted, he noted that there was still dust in the air from whatever had broken the windows. The light was dim, but adequate, and after a moment he was certain that no one was moving. Drawing the green crystal pendant from around his neck, he clutched it in one hand and inched forward slowly.
The carpet down the center aisle was worn, and the dust on it wasn’t as thick. Someone had walked that way often. Most of the pews were clotted with debris and there was a musky, animal scent in the air that tasted of rot when he breathed. Most of the windows had blown out, and a light breeze wafted across the cathedral. It helped. Donovan wondered briefly how Cornwell, or anyone else, could have breathed in the place when the windows were still sealed.
In the rear, a hallway led back to what must have been the rectory. As Donovan approached the front row of pews, he noted that there were supplies stacked to either side of the center aisle. There were books, scrolls, vials and crates. Most of it had already gathered a light coat of dust, but there were signs that some of it had been used recently.
He snorted as he saw a pile of what looked like everyday Tupperware. With a glance at the back wall to be sure no one watched from the shadowed hall, he stepped closer. The plastic containers were labeled with the names of various common roots and powders. Donovan shook his head.
“Tupperware?” he asked no one in particular.
Turning from the supplies in the pews, he stepped forward and stood before the kneeling rail at the altar. Cobwebs dangled between the once polished wooden slats. The carpet had been scarlet, he thought, but had faded from moisture and ground in dirt to the color of dried blood.
Something lay sprawled on the floor beyond the altar, and Donovan was about to mount the short steps and have a look when the air above him exploded with sound. A high-pitched, keening cry rang out, accompanied by a rush of heavy wings. Donovan ducked left, spun, felt the wooden altar rail crumble under his weight and toppled to the side. Something sliced the air cleanly where his face had been, and without thought he etched a symbol in the air with the forefinger of his right hand and breathed a word through it.
There was a screech, a second flurry of sound, and then a heavy thump. Donovan braced himself on the floor with one hand, felt the damp, rotted carpet seep between his fingers and recoiled in disgust. He staggered upright and looked down at his attacker. It was a crow. It wasn’t as large as the bird that had invaded his office, or as young. There were feathers missing here and there, and it was scrawny. It was either very old, hadn’t eaten regularly, or both.
“Asmodeus,” he said. He remembered what Amethyst had told him about Cornwell’s familiar. If this was it, then Cornwell wasn’t his man. No way was this the bird that had invaded his home and made off with Le Duc’s journal.
He let his gaze slide up from the bird to the floor beyond the altar, and he stopped, standing very still. There was a body on the floor. It lay across the lines of a large circle of protection, arms stretched out to either side, and one leg bent at a nearly impossible angle.
Donovan stepped over the stunned bird. He was careful not to touch the body, or to cross the lines of the circle. The body had broken the plane those concentric lines represented, but the circle itself might still be active. He needed to study it and be sure. If he stepped in and whatever had been summoned was trapped on the other side, he might not be able to escape with his life.
There was something odd about the inert form, and Donovan frowned. He stepped closer and reached out with the toe of his boot to turn the face upward. What should have been a light enough tap to show him the fallen man’s face sent the body sliding sideways and flipped it. Donovan stared.
Skin wrapped tightly around a framework of bone was all that remained of Alistair Cornwell. The empty sockets that had held the man’s eyes glared up at Donovan sightlessly. Within moments, as if the stress of being moved was too much for it, the body began crumbling in on itself. First the flesh fell away, then, with a jittery vibration that might have been the wind catching something very dry and very light, the bones shifted and fell away to dust.
The bird fluttered weakly on the floor. The tiny gust of wind its wings stirred up caught the dust and sent it swirling up in a tiny spiral. It should not have been enough of a breeze for this; Donovan stepped back and watched carefully. The whirling cloud glinted in the illumination from a streetlight peeking in through one broken window, and then, with a sound like one of the tiny pockets of air in bubble wrap being popped, it disappeared into the shadows. Nothing remained but the circle.
Donovan examined this, and found that his fears had been unwarranted. Whatever had been contained by this circle, or kept at bay, was gone. There was a clean break in the white chalk like, as though something had been dragged across it. He frowned. Such a breach of another’s protections was unthinkable. Even if the ritual had been a particularly dangerous one, the thing to do would have been to set up a second circle and contain the possible damage.
There was a small altar in the circle, and Donovan knelt to examine it. He took in the toppled brass cup, the colorful and worthless blade, and the two books, one on either side. One was older, and he picked this up first. When he realized what it was, he frowned. He thumbed through it to the point where the text ended.
He glanced down at the other book, where the cup had spilled its contents. He reached down gripped the tome gingerly by one corner and shook off the excess moisture. Walking back down to the first pew, he laid it out
