Devil's Bargain (6 page)

At least, that's what Aaron hoped.

“Sam,” she bit out, her voice sounding as grim as the face he glimpsed when she stepped out from behind him and squared off against the intruder. “Checking up on me already? I thought I had until dawn to run your little errand.”

The devil shrugged and propped one shoulder against the refrigerator in a negligent pose that did nothing to disguise the malevolent power he embodied. “Technically, I suppose you do, but you appear to be a little distracted. I was afraid you might have forgotten why I sent you here.”

“Not likely.”

“Really?” His black, blank gaze shifted from Lilli and Aaron to the bra she had discarded on the floor beside the table and not bothered to put back on in her haste to redress herself. “Funny. I thought you looked quite absorbed.” His gaze shifted to Aaron, focused, glittered dangerously. “Maybe if I gave your beau a few lessons in seduction you'd have better luck next time.”

Aaron's skin gave up crawling and felt as if it were trying to leave the room at a dead run. He would have very much liked to follow it. Straight into a boiling hot shower. The idea of Samael, Prince of Hell, Lord of Deception, and Master of Depravity, teaching him anything about women held even less appeal for him than apprenticing at the hands of de Sade. He didn't think immersing himself in a vat of full-strength bleach until his skin melted off would be enough to remove that kind of filth.

God, he thought suddenly, how the hell would he ever get this kitchen to feel clean again?

Now that he thought about it, Aaron couldn't understand how the devil had even gotten into the house to begin with. Uncle Alistair had the place warded from attic to building site. Aaron remembered teasing him years ago about his paranoia. After all, Alistair was just researching the darker forces, he wasn't offering to show them a good time. All the wards and charms and spells and blessings that encircled the house and gardens had seemed like overkill. Now, he couldn't have been more grateful for them.

Fixing his eye on Samael, Aaron studied the devil closely, looking for a clue as to how he'd gotten past the guards. He didn't appear to be harmed in any way, and he knew several of those wards were strong enough to burn a body to a crisp if they were tripped. He might have suspected that the devil had used magic of his own, but that would have been impossible. No creature could take down a ward specifically designed to keep his kind out. That was what made them effective. So how had he gotten inside?

Aaron craned his head and tried to look around the demon. That was when he noticed it. Despite the uneven light in the kitchen, Samael cast no shadow. The floor and refrigerator behind him remained blank and well-lit, which would have been impossible if the devil were actually in the room. He wasn't; the figure Aaron and Lilli were seeing was a projection, a kind of magical hologram that looked and sounded exactly like the real thing, but had actually been created to be used as a sort of live-action attendee at a supernatural conference call. He could speak to them, and his presence could still cause them the same physical symptoms as if he were in the room, but the projection was essentially powerless. It could not touch them, and more importantly, it could not use magic against them.

Aaron let himself relax. Just a little.

“Unfortunately, your luck doesn't seem to be holding out so well, does it?” Samael continued. He smiled, and Aaron
marveled that a face so beautiful could be so chilling at the same time. “Of course, you are doing better than your dear uncle, but considering he's dead, I don't suppose that takes all that much effort.”

His chuckle made Aaron's blood run cold. Something tickled at the back of his mind, something he'd heard about the
Praedicti
, or something he'd maybe even included in his thesis. Something about the coming of an apocalypse . . .

Lilli just continued to glare at her client.

“I think we're doing just fine without your help,” she snarled.

What had it been? Aaron wondered frantically. Images flitted through his mind—a burning tower, the crack of whip, long lines of rattling chains. Was that why Samael wanted to get his hands on the codex? Did he think it would help him to bring about a war between humanity and the powers of Hell?

“If that were true, he'd already have fucked you, wouldn't he, my dear? But then, I've always found that those who try too hard to resist temptation have the hardest time giving in to it. Or rather, the softest, to be frank.”

Something about an offering. Not raised up to the Gods, but lowered into the abyss.

No, not offerings, Aaron realized, feeling himself stiffen. Sacrifices. Three deaths were required to bring about the war foretold in the
Praedicti
. The one who possessed the book had to sacrifice three people and use their life force to crack the seals that divided the planes of Hell from the ones of mortal reality.

Aaron uttered a word so foul he hadn't even realized he knew it. Throwing up his hands, he stepped forward and sent a stream of rage-fueled energy straight at the projection of Samael.

“
Vade!
” he shouted and watched as the figure of the devil straightened and snarled something in a language Aaron
was glad he couldn't understand. Then, with an ear-popping pressure vacuum and a whiff of brimstone, the projection winked out, leaving him alone in his uncle's kitchen with Lilli.

“What the hell just happened?” she demanded, looking from the refrigerator to Aaron and scowling. “How did you make him leave?”

“It wasn't really him,” Aaron explained, but he didn't wait for more questions. He turned on his heel and headed straight back down the stairs and carefully retrieved the
Praedicti
from where it had fallen during their earlier struggle. He heard Lilli following hot on his heels, still spouting out questions about Samael and Aaron's banishment spell, but he didn't stop to explain. He just flipped carefully through the pages until he found the prediction he was looking for. Quickly, he skimmed the text, located the correct passage and read the Latin with a growing sense of mingled rage and dread.

“You need to forget about upstairs,” he said, cutting Lilli off mid-rant and pointing to the words he'd just read. “We've got much bigger things to worry about at the moment.”

“Like what?”

“Like the world as we know it is about to end, and it looks like Samael will be leading the parade that brings a new and literal meaning to the phrase ‘Hell on earth.' ”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Um, ex-queeze me?”

Lilli felt a bit like she'd just taken a home run swing straight to the stomach. She wondered vaguely if she looked like it as well, since she was having a hard time keeping from bending over as she struggled to get back the breath that had been knocked out of her.

Aaron gave her a sympathetic look and gestured toward the page he'd just read on the left side of the book. “This is one of the most famous prophecies in the
Praedicti
. Scholars have been debating it for centuries. Some of them link it to the same sort of events depicted in the Revelation of St. John of Patmos, but there have always been a few dissenters who thought that this pointed to an entirely different war between good and evil.”

Lilli took a good look at the ancient manuscript for the first time. Before, it had always been just a means to an end for her, but now she could actually appreciate the beautiful illustrations, the colors still vivid and vibrant, even after centuries had passed. Even the pages it was printed on were beautiful, more striking than the finest luxury paper she'd ever seen, still thin and delicate, yet somehow conveying the strength of all those years of survival.

“My Latin is a little rusty,” she said, bending closer and struggling to make out the antiquated script, “and I'll never get used to
u
's that look like
v
's, but this looks like it's talking about exactly the same thing as the Bible—armies of good and evil meeting in a final battle for domination of the world.”

“Okay, so there are similarities,” he said impatiently, and she couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at his dismissive understatement. “What's important is that in this version, there's no antichrist and no certain victory for the forces of good. According to whomever wrote this text, if this book falls into the hands of a leader on the side of evil, three human sacrifices could be used to break the seals that separate the planes of Hell from ours, and thereby unleash every kind of devil or demon that has ever plagued mankind, and every one who hasn't. The population of the earth right now is around six billion, right? Well, there are experts out there who estimate that the legions of Hell encompass at least five times that number, all of whom have powers humans can't even dream of, and the kind of bloodlust that makes Adolf Hitler look like a Girl Scout! And the only way to avert it for once and for all is to do the impossible—to get a righteous child of Hell to spill the blood of both human and devil. Why do they even offer that as an out? It's completely ridiculous!”

Lilli heard every word Aaron was saying, and it wasn't that he didn't make a good point; it was just that when she finished reading the prophecy he was pointing out—which was much shorter than she'd imagined, really—her eyes skipped naturally to the next page, which contained a striking illumination of a medieval knight locked in battle with a huge, serpentine dragon against the backdrop of a lush garden. In the picture, the knight brandished a long, silver sword and wore only a tunic of chainmail over his regular clothes. The dragon, by contrast, appeared to be covered with
thick, heavy scales that glistened almost like steel in the light of the afternoon sun.

The illustrator had made sure to indicate that this battle had not just begun, but had raged on for hours, perhaps even days. The knight's garments were torn and stained. Debris consisting of splintered wooden shields and broken scales littered the ground at their feet, and several less stalwart knights lay dead in a heap beneath a castle wall. Once again, the theme here was good against evil, but this time, the illustration seemed to imply that good might very well win out in the end. The knight's expression was grim and set, while the dragon's head bobbed low, its red eyes narrowed in pain or exhaustion as blood seeped from a wound in its side. The death blow would come soon.

Around the edges of the illustration—above, below, and running down each side—were four brief paragraphs of text that appeared to discuss three different prophecies. They almost resembled the quatrains of Michel de Nostradamus: succinct, poetic, and emphatically honest. It was the one on the left side of the page that caught Lilli's attention. Even with her shaky declensions, she recognized it as a verse and translated in her head as best she could:

 

A valiant knight, the page acquired

with love and brilliant mind,

Shall slight a prince both dark and fair and fat

with kith and kine.

A battle fought, a battle won, a price by both agreed
A knight is fall'n, a prince is fled, the magic's in the seed.

 

Lilli frowned, then repeated the lines over in her head. Typical poetic rambling, she told herself. Most likely it meant nothing. Prophets loved to make their visions as vague as possible so that they could be interpreted to fit any given situation or outcome.

Something about this, though, niggled at the back of her mind. She read it again.

Valiant knight.

She looked back at the apocalyptic page, then back at the verse that intrigued her.

Prince both dark and fair
.

As if in the distance, she could hear Aaron still talking and knew he was trying to get her attention, but she had felt an idea, still amorphous and shaky, grab hold of her and tug her insistently back to the page with the knight and dragon illustration. She quickly skimmed through the other three verses and discovered with a jolt that each of them shared a common theme—a battle between two single adversaries, one dark and one light, who would settle between them a greater dispute between their peoples. The dark warrior would have superior numbers, superior funding, and greater overall power, but the bright warrior would be able to win the battle by paying a kind of forfeit that would not only avert the coming war but would somehow undermine the loser's ability to rise up again.

Lilli felt a sudden rush of understanding. Excited, she turned to look back at Aaron and hushed him with an impatient gesture.

“I think you're wrong,” she said, almost laughing when Aaron recoiled as if she'd just told him she thought he was Jack the Ripper.

“I beg your pardon?”

Then she really did laugh. He sounded so indignant.

“I think you're wrong,” she repeated, “and I'll tell you why. I'm sure Samael would very much like to bring about the apocalypse if for no other reason than to curry favor with Lucifer. He's always looking for a way to suck up to the head honcho, but that's not what I think he's after at the moment. Sam doesn't need the book to bring about the apocalypse. If he wants to do it, all he needs is to perform the
right actions in the right order and, voila! Instant Armageddon.” She shook her head and pointed to the verses on the next page. “I think this is why he wanted the book back. Specifically, I think this is why he wanted the book away from you.”

She waited while Aaron skimmed through the verses, then looked up and shook his head. “I don't get it. Why would Samael care about these prophecies? They have nothing to do with the apocalypse page. I don't even think they were written by the same oracle. They're in a completely different style, almost nursery-rhyme-ish.”

“I know, but just think about the main characters in all of them—a dark prince and a valiant knight?”