“How did you cross the circle?” the thing demanded, shifting its weight, pressing down harder.
Alex couldn’t even draw breath to scream. She turned her head to the side and saw Darlington watching, his face sad, a rock in his hand. He wanted to
help her, but he didn’t know how any more than she did. She had no Grays to call on here.
“How did you cross the circle?” the rabbit demanded again. It flexed its paw and Alex shuddered. “Not so tough now, hmm? Not so scary. What are you without your stolen strength? An empty little cipher.”
She thought of Darlington’s burned body on the stairs, the old porcelain box lying in pieces, the demons they’d set free. Her ribs hurt; her shoulder throbbed. The thing crushing her beneath its foot was right. She did feel empty. She’d been hollowed out. A cipher, an empty cup.
A shattered box.
Except she wasn’t broken, not where it counted. She was bruised and battered, and she had a bad feeling that rib was poking one of her lungs, but she was still here, still alive, and she had a gift Anselm didn’t know about—
in either realm. You cannot imagine the vitality of a living soul. That was what Belbalm had told her. Alex had only ever claimed the dead. But what if she claimed the living?
She remembered Darlington leading her up the stairs at the Hutch, into the hall at Il Bastone, down haunted streets, and through secret passages.
He’d been her guide, her Virgil. How many times had he turned to her and said, Come with me? He’d promised her miracles and horrors too, and he’d delivered.
She held out her hand, just as she once had to Hellie, just as she had to countless spirits, just as Darlington had to her again and again.
“Come on along,” she whispered.
Darlington dropped the rock. His soul flooded into her like golden light.
New-leaf green. Morning bright. The sweet vibration of the cello’s bow. The ringing, triumphant sound of steel on steel. Her body erupted into white flame, searing, blinding.
The rabbit shrieked, high and helpless, as the fire burned through its body.
Alex’s pain was gone. She leapt to her feet, and before Anselm could recover, she was running toward the glimmer of the circle. She hurled her body through it. The world went white. She closed her eyes against the brightness, then gasped as she realized she was falling.
The floor of Black Elm was rising up to meet her. But she had Darlington’s spirit inside her and it was nothing like the power the Grays bestowed. If the strength of a Gray was a candle lit inside her, this was a thousand searchlights, a bomb blast. She struck the ground on soft feet. She was light, graceful, and the world was ablaze with color. She felt the cold on her skin from a draft somewhere in the house. She saw every bit of broken wood and fallen plaster borne aloft on the air, lovely as a snowfall. She saw Darlington’s body on the stairs, the yoke still gleaming against his neck, though the rest of him was scorched black. He was curled on his side, trying to hide from Anselm, who had followed Alex into hell and back out again.
The monstrous rabbit was gone and Anselm was a man once more, though he was singed where Alex’s fire had burned him. He leapt over her toward Darlington, orange flame streaking from his fingertips—but fell into a crouch, hissing, held at bay.
By Cosmo.
The cat had come yowling down the stairs, his fur on end, aglow with white light. Darlington’s protector. How long had that cat been watching over the owners of this house? Was he a salt spirit or something else entirely?
Anselm shrieked, rocking back and forth on his heels and hands. He had never looked less human.
Alex could hear that singing steel sound, could feel Darlington’s spirit inside her. She knew now the pleasure that Belbalm had felt when she’d consumed the spirits of the living. Greed is a sin in every language.
Darlington’s voice, chiding, bemused. She could hear him, the thoughts clear as if they were her own. She didn’t want to relinquish this feeling of power, this elation. He tasted like honey. But she knew better than to get used to a drug like this. She could only hope she wasn’t too late.
“Go,” Alex made herself whisper.
He coursed out of her, a river of gold. She could still taste his soul on her tongue, hot and sweet. He flowed into the body on the stairs.
“Thief!” screamed Anselm, and Cosmo howled as the demon let loose a torrent of fire that engulfed Darlington.
Alex ran at Anselm, not thinking, just desperate to get him to stop. She should have felt weak in the wake of all that power. But there was no pain.
Her ribs weren’t broken. Her chest didn’t hurt. This was what the power of the living could do. She crashed into Anselm, knocking him to the ground, but he was on top of her in a breath, his hands clamped around her throat.
“I’m going to burn the life out of you,” he said happily. “I’m going to eat
… you … up.”
His teeth were growing in his mouth, long and yellowing. On the stairs beside them, Darlington’s body was a charred hulk. He looked like the pictures of people in Pompeii, curled in on themselves as the world turned to ash. Too late. No one could come back from that.
But then she realized the jeweled yoke was gone.
His markings began to glow, light shining through the cracks of his burned flesh. Again Alex tasted honey on her tongue.
Anselm hissed, and she saw blue flame racing up his hands, his arms, engulfing him in fire. Her fire. Hellfire. How? It had only existed in the demon realm before.
He shrieked and drew back, seeming to flicker before her, his shape shifting, and she knew she was glimpsing his true form, something clawed and strange, its bones set at odd angles.
“Golgarot. ” That growl from Darlington again, but this time she understood the demon name.
The thing that towered over her on the stairs was both more and less like Darlington. His voice sounded right, the echo gone, but horns still curled back from his temples, and his body looked too big, not entirely human. His markings had changed too. The symbols were gone, but there were golden bands around his wrists and neck and ankles.
“Murderer!” shouted Anselm, as his body twitched and pulsed beneath his suit. “Liar! Matricide! You—”
He didn’t get another word out. Darlington seized Anselm in his massive hands and lifted him off his feet. With a single, furious snarl, he tore Anselm in two.
The demon’s flesh gave way as if it were paper, dissolving into a mass of wriggling maggots.
