Devil's Bargain (2 page)

She swallowed hard, counted the strands that made up the golden curl, and waited.

“It was mine,” he said, anger and avarice tangling in the rough silk of his voice. “I keep what is mine, and I do not allow it to leave me. No one steals from me.”

Chains, hot and black and heavy, rattled in the back of Lilli's mind. She pushed the sound away and closed her nostrils to the smell of brimstone. Suddenly, only one more question mattered to her, so she asked it without artifice.

“And if I get it back for you, our bargain will be fulfilled?”

“Once the book is in my hands, you'll never have to see me again, dear Lillith.” A smile slithered across his face. “Unless, of course, you discover you miss me.”

Lilli caught the snort before it escaped. Fat chance. She'd miss a cancerous tumor before she'd miss this dysfunctional little relationship of theirs. The glimpse of freedom he dangled before her tempted her like nothing she'd ever seen, and he promised all she'd have to do was return his book to him.

Just a book.

It was too easy, a voice inside her whispered. Much too easy, and too uncomplicated. Why would he be willing to use
his last favor on so trivial a task? And for something as mundane as a book? No matter how old or rare, could there possibly be any book valuable enough to matter to Samael this much? But did she really care? After all, if she did this, her bargain would be fulfilled. She'd be free of the devil and the weighty stain their association left on her conscience. Could she afford to overlook that opportunity?

Was she overthinking this?

“Fine,” she said, pushing aside the doubts and straightening away from the counter. “I'll get your book back. And when it's done, I'll expect to see our contract dissolved. Burning it works for me.”

His smile taunted her. “You know how I feel about fire, sweetheart. It always turns me on.”

Lilli grimaced against the wave of nausea that rolled in her stomach and turned toward the exit. “I'll contact you tomorrow for the details on when and where the book was last seen and who else might be interested in it. You'll have it as soon as I can get my hands on it.”

“Excellent.” His voice followed her as she pushed open the door and gulped the fresh, un-devil-tainted air. “You have three days. Always a pleasure doing business with you, Lillith.”

He tossed something at her, and she caught it reflexively even before his words managed to sink in.

Lilli stopped dead, her feet seeming to sink into the pavement as if it had turned to quicksand. She shrieked out the words before her brain could catch up with her mouth. “
Three days?!
”

Eyes wide, she spun around and pushed hard at the nail salon's etched glass door, determined to let Samael know what she thought of that ridiculous deadline. The only problem was that the door refused to budge. Probably because it no longer existed.

In the place of the nail salon's entrance, Lilli found herself
facing a solid brick wall with a rather crude and physically implausible suggestion scrawled across it in bright blue spray paint. The door, the salon, and the devil were nowhere to be seen. She cursed a blue streak.

In her hand, the thing he'd thrown at her seemed to throb mockingly.

Lilli looked down. She'd caught it when the devil had thrown it, more out of reflex than intent. God knew she didn't like to take gifts from Hell-spawn like that, but when she studied the small pewter pendant suspended from a thin, silver chain, she knew this was most definitely
not
a gift. It was a hangman's noose.

Formed in exquisite detail was a miniature hourglass. The pewter casing had been etched to look like scales on every surface, but the clear glass inside was pristine and perfect, showcasing every single grain of crimson sand that fell from one chamber to the other.

A line from her favorite movie musical popped into her mind, and Lilli guessed her expression probably mirrored the one she'd seen a dozen times on Marlon Brando's as she slipped the chain around her neck and let the clock start running.

“Daddy,” she quoted on a groan, “I just got cider in my ear.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aaron Bullard's hands shook as he turned from the photo in the text on his left, removed his glasses, and polished the lenses on the tail of his rumpled shirt. They continued to shake as he shoved his already mussed brown hair away from his forehead and replaced the rectangular frames before his wide, bewildered, muddy-green eyes. They didn't even stop when he stared down at the delicate ancient volume spread out on the desk before him.

Could it possibly be true?

For a minute he wondered frantically if he'd just been working too long, as usual, poring over lists and catalogs and books for an hour or four too many. He couldn't possibly have just made the discovery of his obscure and geeky career in the basement of his Uncle Alistair's dilapidated old house.

But he had.

His secret hope and worst nightmare had just been simultaneously confirmed—the leather-bound tome he'd found secreted behind a collection of inconsequential eighteenth-century herbals on the bottom shelf of his late uncle's occult library was indeed the world's only surviving copy of Valterum's
Praedicti Arcanum
.

Arcane Prophecies.
The legendary playbook for the end of the world. The script that told how the devils of the underworld would start a war that would bring humanity to its knees and enslave the mortal population into eternal torment.

Wow, didn't that sound like fun.

Blowing out a breath, Aaron rubbed his hand over his face, scrunched his eyes closed, and mumbled another curse, but when he looked back at the table, nothing had changed. He really had found the
Prophecies
, and Uncle Alistair had had it all along.

Christ.

Aaron tried to remember if his uncle had ever mentioned anything. He didn't think so. After all, Aaron had been obsessed with the text for almost fifteen years; surely he'd remember if Alistair had ever said anything about owning it. He'd have leapt on the chance to examine it like a terrier on a barn rat. Provided, of course, that he'd believed the story.

Alistair Gerrald Eratosthenes Carruthers had been a remarkable storyteller. As a child, Aaron had begged his mother's eccentric older brother to tell him stories every time the man had come to visit. He'd thrilled to the tales of Alistair's occult experiments, his magical discoveries, and his adventures as a demonologist and defender of mankind. Of course, at the time, Aaron had been about seven, tops. By the time he hit the ripe old age of ten, his parents had taken him aside and explained to him in words a child could understand that his beloved Uncle Alistair was a total crackpot.

Oh, the man had been a renowned occultist, a gifted sorcerer, and a devoted researcher in the field of demonology, but he'd also possessed a wide streak of dramatics. He'd often become so caught up in his own stories that he forgot which parts of them had actually—
technically
—happened. An embellishment here or there was completely understandable,
but in the most exciting of Alistair's stories, the embellishments tended to obscure the facts of the matter. In fact, in the best tales, there was very little fact at all. Once Aaron understood all this, he had treated those stories very differently. He had still asked Alistair to tell them when they were stuck inside because of rain or snow or childhood groundings, but at some point, he had stopped really listening to much of what came out of his uncle's mouth. Could that be how he'd missed something like this?

Well, he had no intention of missing anything now. Aaron leaned forward, reached for the corner of a fragile, vellum page, and cursed under his breath. In his excitement, he'd nearly forgotten all the years of his training and touched the manuscript with his bare hands. Some curator of rare books and manuscripts he was acting like. A wave of his hand and a tweak of his will and white cotton gloves appeared on his fingers.

He'd heard of the
Prophecies,
of course; he couldn't think of a single witch, wizard, sorcerer, demonologist, or occult historian who hadn't. Written by a ninth-century magician living somewhere in what was now Germany, the codex was reported to contain a record of prophecies that had been spoken ages before by a greatly respected oracle of the ancient world. Most experts had long assumed it had been lost or destroyed centuries ago, though rumors of it popping up in esoteric collections or middle eastern caves did crop up occasionally, only to be almost immediately disproved. Aaron himself had written an undergraduate thesis on this very book during his days in the Yale history department. Never, not in his wildest dreams, had he ever expected to see it, to touch it. To own it.

The knowledge hit him like a shot of single malt, heating his belly with excitement that spread faster than the glow of a good scotch. Uncle Alistair had left Aaron not only his house and his modest life savings, but also his extensive
and eclectic collection of occult items. From the skull of Ezekiel of Bramley (a well-known magician, anatomist, and unfortunately poor alchemist who had been killed when the iron demon he'd summoned with the intention of transmuting it into gold had burst into flame and ignited the cottage around them), to the brass dog bowl owned by Pope Eugene III and supposedly blessed by St. Bernard himself, Aaron had inherited it all. Including the library.

Including the
Prophecies
.

God, he couldn't wait to read them.

He swallowed a sudden mouthful of saliva and turned to the first page of the codex to stare in wonder at the sight before him. The first quarter of the page was filled by an intricate drawing of a serpent, huge and thick and crowned on each of three massive heads by a pair of wickedly sharp horns and sets of razor sharp teeth. The detail in the illustration almost made him see the gleam of venom on each curved fang and smell the taint of blood and death in each gaping mouth. The serpent's red-and-black body coiled around an enormous capital letter
C
, twining in and out of the open curve. Dark smudges of black appeared to spread from its body to stain the vivid blue of the letter. In the background, lush greenery sprang up from bloody soil, but rather than looking alive and fertile, the vegetation managed to embrace and oppress the viewer as if drawing him into the page and suffocating him in moist, humid decomposition.

As his eyes moved across the page, they caught the first few Latin words, and he could almost hear them echoing in his mind in a deep, rumbling, oily voice. The imagined sound of it made him feel somehow compelled and tainted all at once. It hissed in his ear, until he could feel something inside him shrink back in horror . . .

Caveo rex malefic—

Blinking, Aaron drew back from the page and shook his
head to clear it. Sheesh. He really had been working too hard. The words were just words, the picture just color and lines on tightly stretched and conditioned sheepskin. If he could read sinister intent into any of that, he clearly needed a break—a few hours of sleep, maybe a shower, and a cup or seven of coffee.

He pushed back from the desk, a huge, tall affair he imagined his uncle had gotten from either a British headmaster's office or the Jolly Green Giant. It offered more space than any one person could possibly need, but the lack of drawers on both sides indicated that it wasn't meant to seat two. Which was a good thing, Aaron decided, since currently every square inch of it was piled with books and papers and mostly empty mugs of the coffee he'd just decided he needed.

“Good idea,” he muttered to himself and headed up the stairs into the kitchen of the old Queen Anne–style mansion. He would put on a new pot of coffee, stretch his legs for a minute, let his eyes focus on something other than dense reference texts and oddly compelling illuminations. Maybe he'd even check the answering machine or bring the newspaper in from the front porch, just to make sure the rest of the world was still out there. When he was working, he tended to lose track.

Reaching the top of the stairs, he turned the lights on with a flick of his will, but lit the ancient gas stove and assembled the makings for coffee by hand. There was no rhyme or reason to his use of magic for mundane tasks. He used it when he remembered, or maybe more when he
didn't
remember, but he didn't neglect to use it for any particular reason. He filled the kettle with water and the French press with coffee grounds manually because he liked the ritual of it, but if he'd been in a hurry, he might just as easily have conjured a full mug of brewed coffee with magic. Neither method broke or obeyed any rules; he'd always figured the
Elders who made and administered the Laws of Magic had bigger things to worry about than whether or not people with power chose to tie their shoelaces by hand or by wand.

Aaron raised his hands high over his head and linked his fingers together, gloves disappearing as he pressed his palms toward the ceiling. While he waited for the water to boil, he stretched cramped and tired muscles until he felt his vertebrae realign themselves with a series of satisfying cracking sounds.

God, that felt good. He let his arms swing back to his sides and reached for the kettle just as the spout began to whistle. The scent that rose from the mingling of water and coffee nearly made him weep with gratitude. Just the fumes infused him with a renewed burst of energy. In a few swallows, he figured he'd be ready to head back downstairs and translate some pages. As he recalled, the last time the
Prophecies
had been compared to actual events for accuracy had been just after the martyrdom of Joan of Arc. It would be fascinating to see if anything since 1431 had happened the way the oracle had predicted—

Thump.

Aaron froze, mug just inches from his lips. What the hell had made that noise? He had heard a noise, hadn't he?