Die and Stay Dead (26 page)

“Men like you,” the Mad Affliction replied bitterly. “Men who possessed the key that unlocks the door. They summoned me, but they could not bind me. They could not bind any of us. They did not understand the binding spell. But they had other spells at hand. Painful spells. That is how they forced me into this accursed cage. I have been here ever since.”

“Is this part of the key you mentioned? The one that unlocks the door between realms?” Bethany asked, holding up the fragment. The Mad Affliction nodded. “Trent, the men who summoned him must have been the Aeternis Tenebris, Erickson Arkwright’s doomsday cult.” With her free hand, she shone the light around us again, taking in the enormous chamber of bones and cages. “It all must have happened right here, under the library. This was their sanctum.”

The Mad Affliction nodded, his long nose bouncing. “Aye, the Aeternis Tenebris, they called themselves that. They’re the ones who summoned us.”

“You’re a demon,” I said. Sometimes I was a little slow on the uptake. “All the things in the other cages, they were demons, too.”

The Mad Affliction’s bony, nearly concave chest swelled with pride. “Of course I am a demon! Was there any doubt? Did I not strike such terror in your heart that there was no mistaking what I am?” He sighed, his shoulders slumping, his wings rustling against his back. “No, of course not. Not now. Not when I am reduced to
this
. Those men, they had the key, they opened the door, but they did not know what they were doing. They were amateurs. Tinkerers. They summoned the wrong one of us time and time again. Tell me, how long have I been here? A century? Ten centuries?”

“Fourteen years, give or take,” I said.

The Mad Affliction looked shocked. A shocked demon wasn’t something you saw every day. “Fourteen years? Is that all? Time passes so strangely in your realm. I would have thought it much longer, given that all the others have perished. Starved to death. The men caged us, but they left us nothing to eat. Nothing to do. I slept the years away, and now I am the last one. Perhaps that is fitting, as I was the last of their mistakes before they finally managed to summon the one they truly wanted.”

“Nahash-Dred,” Bethany said.

The Mad Affliction cackled. “Indeed! The fools sought the Burning Hand, He Who Puts Out the Stars, the Wearer of Many Faces. Spawn of Leviathan, brother of Behemoth. They sought Nahash-Dred, Destroyer of Worlds!” He glared at us. “Are you so foolish that you do not tremble at his name? Beware, imprudent humans. Nahash-Dred could be anyone, anywhere. He could be listening to you even now, and you would not know until you felt his bare hand tear the dripping spine out of your back!”

“What do you mean
anyone
?” I asked.

It was Bethany who answered me. “The Wearer of Many Faces. Don’t you see? Nahash-Dred isn’t just a demon. He’s a shape-shifter.”

“There are demons that can change their shape?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said, as if everyone knew that.

“Right. Of course,” I said.

The Mad Affliction laughed at my ignorance, his long nose quivering. I was still holding the Bersa. I thought about shutting him up with a bullet between those big saucer eyes of his, but something told me a gun wouldn’t be much use against a demon. I put it back in the holster at the small of my back.

“What happened when they summoned Nahash-Dred?” Bethany asked.

The demon grinned at the memory. “The fools could no more bind my lord than they could me. Nor were their other spells strong enough to overcome one so mighty. And so he slaughtered them. Oh, it was glorious! Nahash-Dred took them apart with but a thought. Some tore like paper. Others burst like overripe fruit. A hand here, a foot there, a loop of gut. Blood streamed across the floor like a beautiful red river.”

Bethany pointed the glowing charm at the floor. The smooth stone was mottled with big, dark red patches of long-dried blood. There were no bones, though; no clothing. The rats must have gotten to them long ago. Rats as big as cats, the Mad Affliction had said. I thought of them dragging the pieces of the dead back to their nests, and shuddered.

“Oh, the hunger! My mouth waters just thinking of all that blood.” The Mad Affliction glared at me again. “Let me have your toe. Even just your smallest toe!”

“Forget it,” I said. “What happened next?”

The Mad Affliction sighed, annoyed. “When the slaughter was done, Nahash-Dred ignored our pleas to be released from our cages. Surely my lord had good reason why, though he did not share it with us. Instead, he left this place. But he will come back for us. I know he will. I thought you were him when you woke me.”

“So Nahash-Dred killed the cult members and went back to his dimension?” I said.

“Back? No, Nahash-Dred did not go back. When he left this place, he did so in the shape of a man. Not through the doorway between worlds, but out into your realm. There he remains to this day.”

“What?” Bethany demanded. “He can’t be.”

“What reason have I to lie?” the Mad Affliction asked. “I wish my lord had returned to our realm rather than stay in this forsaken one, and I wish he had taken me with him. But neither happened.”

“Are you
sure
Nahash-Dred is still here?” I pressed.

“I am as sure of it as I am of the hunger that racks my body day and night,” the Mad Affliction said. “I can sense him in this realm. I would not be able to were he on the other side of the doorway.”

Shit. If Nahash-Dred never went back to his own dimension, then the demon was out there right now, hiding somewhere among the people of New York City. But how was that possible? In the footage Isaac showed us, Nahash-Dred looked a hundred feet tall. How exactly did the principles of shape-shifting work? Did the rule of conservation of mass not apply to demons? Could he be any size as well as any shape? Human? Mouse? Insect? And did it work the other way, too? Could he make himself
two
hundred feet tall? Five hundred? A thousand?

Bethany shook her head. “This changes everything.”

A strong contender for understatement of the year.

“If Nahash-Dred can change what he looks like, then the Mad Affliction is right, he could be anyone, anywhere,” I said. “There are ten million people in this city.”

Bethany shut her eyes, trying to stay focused. “He changed his shape. That explains why no one saw a demon escaping out into the streets.” She opened her eyes again and looked at the Mad Affliction. “Do you remember what Nahash-Dred looked like as a man?”

“Like him,” the Mad Affliction said, pointing at me. “As a man, my lord looked as all men do. I cannot tell them apart.”

“What color was his hair? How tall was he?” she pressed.

The Mad Affliction shrugged. “Man is man is man. Can you honestly say you see any difference from one to the other?”

Bethany groaned in frustration.

“You’re telling me a shape-shifting demon just walked out onto Fifth Avenue and blended in with the crowd?” I asked. “Hailed a fucking cab after tearing everyone to pieces down here?”

“Not everyone,” the Mad Affliction said. “Now that I think on it, he did not slaughter all of them. In the aftermath, one of the men was missing. He was not among the dead.”

“That must have been Erickson Arkwright,” Bethany said. “I don’t suppose you remember what
he
looked like?”

The demon shrugged again. “As all men do.”

“Great,” I said. “How the hell are we supposed to find either of them?”

The Mad Affliction laughed at that. “You cannot find Nahash-Dred. Even I could not recognize my lord in another form. He cannot be found if he does not wish to be.”

“Okay, but maybe you know where he would have gone,” Bethany suggested.

“I have no inkling why he would stay in this awful realm when our home awaits,” the Mad Affliction replied. “But I am sure he plans to return one day. I pray it is soon, and that he takes me with him.”

“How would he go back?” I asked. “I thought you needed the Codex, the—the key to open the door between worlds.”

“Ah, but he had the key,” the Mad Affliction said. “Nahash-Dred took it with him.”

I wasn’t expecting that. I looked at Bethany, who appeared just as shocked.

“Nahash-Dred took the Codex Goetia?” Bethany asked.

“Aye, though how that piece of it got back here I do not know,” the Mad Affliction said. “Perhaps it happened while I slept. I slept many of the years away.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Nahash-Dred took the Codex. He could have used it to go home, but he didn’t?”

The Mad Affliction nodded. “You share my confusion. All I know is he must have had good reason. Nahash-Dred is a prince in my realm. He would not abandon that role for nothing.”

“Can you help us find him?” I asked.

The Mad Affliction laughed so hard I thought he was going to choke. “Why would I? Did you not hear me when I said Nahash-Dred is a prince? He is of royal blood—my lord and master! Clearly he does not wish to be found. I would not betray him for the likes of you. Nor for anyone.”

“But he left you behind,” I pointed out. “He betrayed
you
.”

The Mad Affliction shook his head vehemently. “Never. I would sooner eat the disgusting flesh of this female than go against my lord.”

“Fine,” Bethany said. “Leave him. We’ve gotten everything out of him we’re going to. If he doesn’t know where Nahash-Dred is, there’s nothing else we can learn from him.”

She started to walk away. I turned to follow her.

“No, wait!” the Mad Affliction cried, his voice rising with panic. “You cannot just leave me here! I beg of you! I have no one left to talk to! You are the only ones who have talked with me in years! Please, come back! Do not leave me in this cage!”

Bethany didn’t turn around, but I did. Something about the creature’s desperate loneliness made me feel sorry for him. The Mad Affliction was caged and alone, the last of his kind in this dark and airless chamber. I’d been locked in a cage once myself, not knowing if I would ever get out. It was a fate I didn’t wish on anyone. I didn’t like feeling this kind of connection with a demon, but there it was. I couldn’t ignore it. I went to the side of the cage where the door was secured by a heavy padlock.

“What are you doing?” Bethany asked, walking back toward me.

“He’s right,” I said. “We can’t just leave him here.”

“The lock is weak,” the Mad Affliction said, watching me eagerly. “One good tug could break it. I cannot do it myself. When I touch it, it burns.”

I bent down to inspect the padlock. A pentagram had been etched into the metal. Was that why it burned him? Did pentagrams hurt demons? It was another thing I needed to ask Jordana when I had the chance. I reached for the lock.

Bethany put her hand over mine, stopping me.

“You can’t let him out, Trent,” she said. “He’s a demon, not a stray dog. You can’t just set him free into the world.”

“We could send him back to his dimension instead,” I said. “What do you call it? Banishing?”

“We can’t banish anyone without the other pieces of the Codex,” she pointed out. “And even if we could, it’s too risky. When you open a door between worlds like that, you don’t know what’s going to take the opportunity to sneak through into ours.”

“So what are you saying? We’re just going to leave him here to starve like the others?”

She didn’t answer me. She didn’t have to. I could see her mind was made up. Sometimes I forgot just how coldhearted Bethany could be when she was on the job.

The Mad Affliction’s arm shot out of the cage, grasping for me. I jumped back. His long, ragged talons swiped the air in front of me.

“Free me!” the Mad Affliction cried. He grasped for Bethany, but she backed away, too. “Free me and know the living nightmare that is unending madness!”

“You’re not doing yourself any favors,” I told him.

Bethany grabbed my arm and started leading me away from the cage. “Come on, we can’t stay.”

I went with her, reluctantly. I didn’t want to leave the Mad Affliction in that cage, but she was right. He was a demon. A hungry demon with a taste for human flesh. I couldn’t just let that out into the world.

“Please, do not leave me here!” the Mad Affliction called after us as we walked back the way we came. I tried not to listen. I tried not to think of myself in the cage. We began to climb the stairs back toward the surface. As the secret door in the wall of the library slid open for us at the top of the stairs, I heard the Mad Affliction call out, “You will never find Nahash-Dred if he does not want to be found!”

Then we were back outside. The wall slid closed behind us, abruptly cutting off the demon’s voice.

“I’m sorry,” Bethany said. “There was nothing else we could do.”

“It’s not right, Bethany. I understand the reasons, but there should have been another way.”

She started down the front steps of the library. “Come on. We have to get the fragment back to Citadel. If Nahash-Dred is still somewhere in New York City, we have to tell Isaac. We need a new plan.”

The sun was up as we descended to the sidewalk. There were more people out now, heading to work. In the bleary morning rush, and with our vests camouflaging us as city workers, none of them gave a second glance our way, or at the Codex fragment tucked under Bethany’s arm.

One down, two to go.

I watched people hurry past us on the sidewalk. Any of them could be Nahash-Dred. The gray-haired man in the long coat with the newspaper folded under his arm. The woman in the smart pantsuit drinking from a takeout coffee cup. The young man in the puffy winter coat. I studied everyone’s face as they walked by, but if there was a way to tell if someone was a demon in hiding I didn’t know it. Everyone looked normal to me. Well,
New York
normal, I thought as a man walked by with facial tattoos and stretched-out earlobes.

On the walk back to the Escalade, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Jordana’s number. It rang until her voice mail picked up. I checked my watch and saw it was only seven thirty in the morning. Probably, she was in the shower or getting ready for work.

At the beep, I said, “Hey, it’s me. My hunch was right. We found one of the fragments. But there’s something else I need to tell you, something important about Nahash-Dred. Call me as soon as you get this, okay?” I was about to hang up when I realized there was more I wanted to say. Personal things. But as always, I found that to be a lot harder. “I, um, I’m really glad we got a chance to talk last night. I wish we could have talked longer. Maybe we can get together again soon. Besides, I’m pretty sure I owe you another drink.” I ended the call and put the phone away. Bethany was watching me. “Jordana,” I explained.