Demon's Vow: Part 2 of the Final Asylum Tales (The Asylum Tales series) (6 page)

Calling up a ball of white light, I stepped over the threshold with it hovering just over my shoulder. It did little to cast light over the room. The shape of a chair a few feet in front of me and what might have been a table cluttered with books were barely discernible within the gloom.

And then something moved. It crossed from right to left, as if circling me. I didn’t see it so much as felt the movement within the darkness, as if it were nothing more than a ripple of energy. Twisting around to try to keep whatever it was in view, I tightened my grip on my wand. My heart was pounding and my palms were growing sweaty, making me feel as if my wand was going to slip right out of my hand.

The door slammed shut, cloaking the room in darkness. My body tensed, waiting, but the creature didn’t attack. It moved around me again, drawing a little closer as if testing what I’d tolerate. The only sound in the room was my breathing as it broke past my lips in short gasps. There were no sounds of claws on the stone floor, no shuffling sounds of cloth or the rub of fur. I couldn’t even hear it breathing.

That’s when it dawned on me that this was no living creature I was facing. As I had feared, this thing was similar to what I had guarding the basement of Asylum. But even as my heart ramped up with this sickening idea, I was confused as to why it hadn’t attacked yet. The spell at Asylum launched itself at anything that just partially descended the stairs, ripping the poor fucker to shreds. If this were the same thing, I should have been dead before clearing the threshold.

It was watching me. Waiting.

Praying that my shields would hold, I pulled together the same spell I used to disarm the protection spell at Asylum. As I did, the creature in the darkness drew closer on my left. I couldn’t see a shape or any defining features. It was just the sense of a massive force that was a little darker than the unyielding blackness of the room.

Why are you trying to lock me up?

The words drifted through my brain, but it felt as if they had been hissed in my ear. I lurched back a step, trying to put some distance between myself and the darkness. But there was no getting away. The force was everywhere in the room, crowding close but still not harming me. Was it toying with me? Playing with its food out of boredom? That couldn’t be because that would mean this wasn’t just a spell. This dark energy was a thinking, feeling creature.

“Why haven’t you attacked yet?” I asked, trying to make sense out of what I was faced with.

She’s asked me not to kill you.

“She? She who?” I barked.

The thing laughed without making a sound. I could feel its amusement, leaving behind the feeling of oily sludge sliding down the back of my throat. The darkness rippled and the little light I had created winked out. I couldn’t see anything, not even a strip of light leaking into the room from under the door. I wasn’t even sure I was still in Simon’s rooms but was now floating in nothingness.

The one you’ve been promised to.

“Lilith?” I breathed as my hearted threatened to explode in my chest.

It didn’t answer. It didn’t have to. Besides the fact that Simon had handed over a chunk of my soul to the Queen of the Underworld, I had killed two people using magic. I owed magic two years of my life and when it came time for me to pay up, Lilith was the one I went to serve.

The creature laughed again and I fought the growing wave of nausea threatening to send what little I had eaten that day up my throat. Clenching my teeth, I drew in air through my nose and slowly released it, pushing back against my twisting stomach. Puking now would break my concentration and I’d lose all the protective spells I was clinging to. I certainly didn’t trust this thing not to attack me just because Lilith had asked nicely.

“You’re one of her monsters then,” I said when some of the queasiness had passed.

What twisted amusement I had felt from this thing disintegrated in a heartbeat and it was instantly on me, knocking me to the ground. Even without a body, it felt as if the creature was crouched over me, pinning me to the cold hard stones.

Not hers! Demon,
not
monster,
it snarled.

I flinched, feeling as if the thing was grinding my brain cells between its molars. “Fine! Sorry! Demon. Not monster,” I shouted, ready to concede anything so it would give me a little more breathing room.

The demon’s anger receded with my words and it retreated. I was slow to get to my feet. My knees were jelly and couldn’t hold me. Sadly, I think the demon had also fried my common sense, because I still couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “Fine, Demon Not Monster. You’re following Lilith’s suggestion, but she doesn’t control you. Why bother listening to her request?”

If it was going to give me a free pass at breathing, I wanted to know why. The hope was that if I knew the real reason, then I was likely to find the boundaries of its good will. A stupid hope, I was sure, but I was afraid of running into the situation where if it thought too much about its decision to let me live, it might discover that its reasons weren’t all that good after all.

Why would I kill the one who lets me out to play?

A chill ran down my spine, raising the hairs on my arms. I opened my mouth to argue that I had no dealings with demons but something shifted slightly in the creature as it drew away from me and it suddenly felt . . . familiar. The same feeling that had hit me when I first stepped into the room.

“Shit,” I hissed, stumbling backward. The demon moved, closing the distance between us to push against my back to keep me from falling on my ass. I jerked away from it, but didn’t take any additional steps. My head was spinning. The protection spell in the basement of Asylum, the energy I set loose to attack anyone that entered my private domain, was a demon.

I cursed myself and my stupidity for ever trusting a powerful protection spell I copied off of Simon. It should have been no surprise that the warlock has been messing with things no sane person would have used. Everyone said demons couldn’t be controlled. They’d tear your heart out just for laughs and slurp up your soul as a cocktail. All they knew was pain and destruction.

Pushing back the panic, I tried to focus on the fact that the demon that was guarding my basement as also guarding Simon’s rooms, which meant that I could actually put it back into lockdown mode. It would take a whole hell of a lot more energy than I normally needed to use, because it had consumed not only Simon’s rooms, but its energy was also starting to leak out into the hall.

“It’s the symbol,” I murmured, not sure if I was talking to the demon or myself. Any fear I had felt instantly disappeared as a rush of understanding swept through me. Adrenaline pumped through my veins and I nearly laughed. “It’s the symbol. It’s not so much a spell as it is a doorway for you. The only reason you listen to me is because I control whether the door is open or closed.”

True . . . partially.

“And the reason your powers are leaking into the hall?”

The one that lived here, the one that you killed . . . the door has been left open for too long. It has allowed me to push against the boundaries he set for me.

“And if I lock the doorway again?”

I would not be pleased.

Yeah, I could have guessed,
I thought but kept my mouth shut. The key was that the demon didn’t say that I couldn’t close the doorway again. Sure, I certainly didn’t want to piss off a demon, but it wasn’t like I could leave it running around loose in Simon’s rooms.

Or maybe I could . . .

“If I leave this doorway open, will you allow me to come and go in this room unharmed?”

You control my door. I must.

I frowned. That was only partially true. It was hard to believe, but demons couldn’t lie. They could bend the truth. They could tell you partial truths, leaving out key information that would get you killed later. But they couldn’t say “no” when the truth was clearly “yes.” Funny enough, there were also stories that angels could lie to you and did frequently in the name of keeping the balance preserved.

“I control the door back at the tattoo parlor, but I didn’t draw this door,” I murmured. It wasn’t fooling me. I knew exactly where the leash ended for this thing and it was well before I walked into Simon’s rooms.

True. But you could.

The first ripple of temptation washed through me. Setting the door here, I could enter Simon’s rooms without having to worry about anyone else from the Towers mucking around in here. I would have access to all of Simon’s books and notes. I’d also have all the magical items that he’d collected during his life. While I wasn’t keen on the idea of leaving the demon running around the rooms, as long as I strengthened the boundaries again, the only people that it would be a threat to were the witches and the warlocks of the Tower. I wasn’t going to lose a lot of sleep over that thought.

“I need light to work in,” I announced.

Immediately, the lamps in all the rooms came on, filling the chambers with a soft yellow glow. Some of the queasiness returned to my stomach and it had nothing to do with the demon. The chambers were almost unchanged from the day I left so many years ago. The main room held a massive wood table that was about chest high and covered in books, glass beakers and jars, and a sundry of potion ingredients. Papers were scattered everywhere with Simon’s nearly illegible scrawl, where he had been making notes on whatever the bastard had been working on.

Stepping around the table, being careful not to touch it, my eyes slipped over the stuffed chair beside the fireplace. More books were stacked beside it, with one lying open across the arm as if Simon had been pulled from his reading to deal with me.

The main room led into the small kitchen with an old-fashioned iron stove. A fire sprang to life as I passed through and I jumped. The damn thing was still tuned to me, as if Simon couldn’t have been bothered to erase my memory from half the spells that still littered his rooms. There was a complete collection of shining copper pots hanging from the ceiling. Two blocks of knives were on the counter—one for potions and another for cooking. I’d spent most of my time in this room. I slept on a pallet beside the stove and cooked all of Simon’s meals as well as prepared his hot tea throughout the day while he worked.

The final room, off the kitchen, was Simon’s bedchamber. I rarely visited this room during my apprenticeship. I popped in once a day to quickly make the bed and pick up his clothes for the laundry before quickly scurrying out again. Now, there were dirty clothes piled everywhere and his sheets were a tangled mess as if his last sleep had been an uneasy one.

The black mass was gone, becoming invisible to the naked eye, but I could feel it following me from room to room. It hovered close with ill-concealed glee as if excited to have a new playmate as I explored the Tower rooms.

I packed away all my bitter emotions associated with these rooms. Even after all this time, I couldn’t conjure up an ounce of pity or remorse for my old mentor. The world was better off without him and I would soon wipe his memory from these rooms as well.

But the first step was to locate the symbol that Simon had drawn so that I could put some of my own blood into it. It was all part of the agreement you made with what I had thought were the powers of the protection spell. I had been more than a little wrong on that one. Apparently that agreement was made with a demon in return for some degree of control over it.

Unfortunately, after a quick search of the rooms, I hadn’t found the symbol. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever seeing where Simon had placed the symbol. I had stolen it from a book in Simon’s collection. How could Simon have hidden the symbol in his rooms? As far as I knew, the symbol had to be at least five feet across. Not something that was easily hidden. He also couldn’t draw it with his invisible chalk.

Walking back into the main room, I carefully inspected the walls but still didn’t see anything that resembled the demon’s doorway.

You’re getting warmer.

The demon’s voice drifted in a singsong tone through my head, sending chills down my back.

Gritting my teeth, I stood off to the side of the room and raised my hands out in front of me as I slowly summoned up a little energy before sending it seeking the symbol. The only reason I was able to do this was because it was part of the spell that closed the doorway. If you didn’t know the symbol was there or how to close the door, you’d never be able to feel it.

The demon shifted a bit nervously near me, but didn’t give any other indication that it might be agitated by what I was doing, which was a relief.

The energy left my body and instead of flying off toward one of the walls, it went straight down to the floor. I stepped back, staring at the stones for a second before the obvious finally dawned on me. Instead of putting the symbol on the wall and then hiding it from view, the bastard put in on the stones that made up the floor. Crafty. Simon Thorn had always been an extremely crafty devil.

Stepping back toward the kitchen, I gathered up more energy, no longer fearful of the demon that was still hovering close. There was a feeling of gleeful excitement coming from it that did nothing to settle my mind. I wasn’t fond of the notion that I was doing anything that pleased the creature. Of course, I didn’t want to do anything that might piss it off because that might give it a reason to remove my head.

The burst of energy I sent out wrapped around everything that rested on the floor of the main room. Items trembled briefly before rising steadily into the air. Glass tinkled and papers shifted, but nothing fell from the massive table as it rose. When everything hovered two feet above the floor, I waved both hands in a circular motion toward my body as if I were rowing a boat while whispering a simple spell I had used when folding laundry.

Like flipping over dominoes, the stones in the floor tossed over so that they were now lying on the backs. One after another rolled over and resettled into its proper place in a gray wave until the symbol was revealed in the stones. A gasp escaped me and I took a step forward before I remembered that I was holding two spells together and didn’t need to be distracted.