Tempting The Dark. Michele Hauf

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СКАЧАТЬ choice warding incantations.

      In the inky darkness, there was no way to count their numbers as they spread across the field and whisked through the air above the men’s heads. Standing center of the freshly laid salt circle, Certainly Jones began to recite a spell. Ed swung above his head a black bone lariat bespelled to choke and annihilate demons.

      For his part, Savin could recite a general reckoning spell that would reach about a hundred-foot circumference about him and send those demons back to Daemonia. So he began the chant composed of a demonic language he hated knowing.

      “There are hundreds,” Ed said as a curse as he avoided the salt circle with a jump. “We’ll never get them all. Savin?”

      He couldn’t speak now, for to do so would shatter the foundation of the spell. Raising his arms, palms facing inward—but not touching—and exposing the demonic sigils on the underside of his forearms, Savin expanded his chest and shouted the last few words. And as he did so, the power of those spoken words formed a staticky choker between his fingers. He spread his arms out wide, stretching the choker in a brilliant lash of gold sparks. Then, with a shove forward, he cast the net.

      Demons shrieked, squealed and yowled as they were caught by the sticky, sparkling net. Like a fisherman hauling up his catch, only in reverse, it wrapped up dozens, perhaps a hundred or more demons, and wrangled them back through the rift in the sky.

      “I expel you to Daemonia!” Savin recited, then immediately prepared to begin again.

      “That took care of at least half!” Ed called. “But some are getting away. Jones! How’s it going getting that damned door to Daemonia closed?”

      “Soon!” shouted the witch.

      Savin’s net, filled with yet more demons, wrangled another gang and whipped them back through the rift.

      The dark witch, a tall, slender man dressed in black, stretched out his tattooed arms. Using specific tattoos as spells, he shouted out a command that gripped the serrated rift in the sky and vised it suddenly closed.

      The night grew intensely dark. Not even a nocturnal creature might see anything for the few moments following the closure of the rift to the Place of All Demons.

      Savin dropped his arms and shook out his entire body like a prizefighter loosening up his muscles. He felt the air stir as a few creatures dashed above his head. None dared come too close, or try a talon against his skin. They could sense his innate warning.

      No demon dared approach a reckoner.

      Ed tugged out his cell phone from an inner suit-coat pocket, and the small electronic light glowed about his face and tattooed neck. The thorns on his knuckles glinted like obsidian as he punched in a number. “I’m calling the troops in Paris. We’ll head to town. Certainly, will that seal hold?”

      “For a while,” the witch said. “But I’m not sure how it was opened in the first place. Had to be from within Daemonia. Which is not cool. Something wicked powerful opened it up.”

      The witch cast his gaze about the field. Dark shadows flitted through the sky, black on black, as the demons that had avoided Savin’s net dispersed. The cool, acrid taste of sulfur littered the air.

      Savin thought he heard someone walking across the loose gravel back by his truck. He swung around, squinting his gaze. He didn’t see motion. Could have been a demon. More likely a raccoon.

      “The energy out here is quieting,” he stated. For the hum in his veins had settled. “I think we’re good for now. But Ed will have to post a guard out here.”

      The corax demon nodded to Savin and gave him a thumbs-up even as he spoke on the phone to organize scouts.

      Savin slapped a hand across Certainly’s back. “Good going, witch.”

      “I can say the same for you. You took care of more than half of them. I don’t know anyone capable of such a skill.”

      “Wish I could be proud of that skill, but...” Savin let that one hang as he strode back to the parked cars with the witch.

      His system suddenly shivered. Savin did not panic. He knew it was the Other expressing her thanks. Or maybe it was resentment for what he had done tonight. He’d never mastered the art of interpreting her messages. So long as she kept quiet ninety percent of the time, he couldn’t complain. Some days he felt as if he owed her for what she had done to help him. Other days he felt that debt had long been paid.

      “I’m off,” Ed said as he headed to his car. “I’ll post a guard out here day and night. Thanks, Savin. I’ll get back to the both of you with whatever comes up in Paris. If my troops find any of the escapees, we’ll gather them for a mass reckoning. Okay with you?”

      “I love a good mass demon bash,” Savin said. But his heart could not quite get behind his sarcasm. “Check in with me when you need my help again.” He fist-bumped Ed and the dark witch, then climbed into his truck and fired up the engine.

      Alone and with the windows rolled up, Savin exhaled and closed his eyes. His muscles ached from scalp to shoulders and back, down to his calves and even the tops of his feet. It took a lot of energy to reckon a single demon back to Daemonia. What he’d just done? Whew! He needed to get home, tilt back some whiskey, then crash. A renewal process that worked for him.

      But first. His system would not stop shaking until he fed the demon within.

      Reaching over in the dark quiet and opening the glove compartment, he drew out a small black tin. Inside on the red velvet lay a syringe and a vial of morphine that he kept stocked and always carried with him. He juiced up the syringe and, tightening his fist, injected the officious substance into his vein. A rush of heat dashed up his arm. A brilliance of colors flashed behind his eyelids. He released his fist and gritted his teeth.

      And the shivers stopped.

      “Happy?” he muttered to the demon inside him.

      He always thought to hear a female chuckle after shooting up. He knew it wasn’t real. She had no voice.

      Thank the gods he no longer got high from this crap. The Other greedily sucked it all up before it could permeate his system. A strange thing to be thankful for, but he recognized a boon when he saw it.

      Flicking on the radio, he nodded as Rob Zombie’s “American Witch” blasted through the speakers. Thrash metal. Appropriate for his mood.

      Savin was the last of the threesome to pull out of the field. He turned left instead of right, as the other two had. Left would take him over the Seine and toward the left-bank suburbs of Paris. He lived near the multilaned Périphérique in the fourteenth arrondissement. Driving slowly down the loose gravel, he nodded to the thumping bass beat, hands slapping out a drum solo on the steering wheel.

      When the truck’s headlights flashed on something that moved alongside the road, Savin swore and slammed on the brakes.

      “What in all Beneath?”

      Was it a demon walking the grassy shoulder of the road? He’d felt more incorporeal demons move over him during the escape from the rift than actually witnessed real corporeal creatures with bodies. But anything was possible. And yet...

      Savin turned down the radio volume. СКАЧАТЬ