Summoning the Night (26 page)

“You're bleeding.” Lon bent to inspect my leg, pushing back my torn jeans. Blood and mud swirled over pale skin. The cut was a couple of inches long and it throbbed. “We need to clean this.”

We could both be dead right now, trapped underground. What would Jupe do without his dad? My heart clenched painfully at the thought of him being left alone if something
happened to Lon. Things were simpler when I had only myself to think about.

Cold wind bit through my damp clothes while the distant sound of a solitary car chugged along on the deserted highway. “Can we please go home now?”

I limped to the SUV. Lon cranked it up and turned on the seat warmers. While the engine idled, he retrieved hand wipes from the glove compartment and helped me gently clean the mud from my cut. It stung something crazy, and it was sore. A bruise was already blooming on my shin.

Lon took the silver tube out of his pocket and turned it in his hands.

“Huh.”

“What is it?” I leaned over the armrest for a closer look.

The tube was beautiful, engraved with a floral pattern that wound around hidden sigils. In the center was a single word constructed from the same foreign alphabet used on the mandalas in the cannery. Apparently Bishop's Polaroid really
had
been a threat to somebody.

“Look,” he said, pointing to one end of the tube.

A small keyhole.

Lon opened the armrest compartment and dug through it, retrieving the box that held Bishop's key, which looked to be the right size.

“Is your leg okay? Can you make a few more minutes? I want to open it here,” Lon said. “If it's got some weird spell attached to it, I'd rather it not destroy my house and kill my kid.”

Outside the SUV on the rough parking lot I drew an antimagick spell, then kindled Heka with electricity that I pulled from the power lines above us. I couldn't feel any
residual magick inside it, so Lon inserted Bishop's key. The lock snicked open. We backed up and waited for a few seconds. Nothing happened. No magical crack in the parking lot. No giant magical cockroaches.

Lon lifted the unlocked cap and cautiously peeked inside the tube. Inside was a scroll of parchment paper. Old paper, old ink. Lon's obsessions. He carefully withdrew it for inspection.

I whistled. “Look at that.”

He blew out a long breath. “Vellum.” He took one glove off to feel the paper, then sniffed it. “Iron gall ink, probably. See where it has caused the paper to disintegrate?” He unrolled the top of it with delicate precision, wincing as it crackled. We studied the handwritten text together.

It was a spell, written in a strange language, but not the same as in the mandalas and on the tube, and peppered with crude drawings of sigils and seals.

“Well, well . . . what do we have here?” Lon murmured.

My heart raced. “What is this? Do you know this language?”

“Looks like Old Nubian or Coptic. Maybe I can translate it at home.”

“Most of this looks foreign to me, but this symbol here is a key,” I said, pointing. “It's used with other symbols in spells to unlock doors.”

Lon peered at it and tried to make sense of the surrounding symbols.

“I wonder if this is part of Merrin's bargain with his demon.”

“I don't know, but the alphabet engraved on the tube isn't earthly,” he said, “it's Æthyric. And we need to translate it.”

“How?”

“Don't know. But if it means we've got to ask for help, then we ask.”

“If I still had my guardian spirit, I'd just summon it and find out,” I lamented, scraping my shoe across the asphalt to rub out my chalk marks.

“What about your caliph?” He carefully rolled the top of the vellum back in place and inserted it in the tube. “Could you call him and ask to borrow his guardian?”

“Maybe, but he's been having some issues with it since San Diego. When he sent me the check, he mentioned in a letter that he thought the spirit might be going senile. It might not be reliable.”

Lon scratched his eyebrow and pursed his lips. “All this talk about bargains . . . what if we summon something ourselves and bargain for a translation?”

Summon a demon and barter for information? Great. That's the last thing I wanted to do.

Then a thought struck me. We might not have to barter at all. A demon owed me a favor. I'd saved his ass from the Hellfire caves. His ass, and other serviceable parts of his Æthyric body.

“Ha!” I cried out.

“What?”

“Mr. Butler,” I said, suddenly energized, “how would you feel about summoning an incubus with me tonight?”

Lon watched me prepare the summoning circle. My aching leg was bandaged, and I'd changed into clean clothes, but it was nearly dark outside and getting colder every minute. I wanted to get this done pronto so we could head back to his warm house and watch monster movies with Jupe. It was also taco night. Lon's grilled
carne asada
would make everything better.

“If you really want to be impregnated by demon seed, I'd be happy to comply,” he joked. “There's no need to call up an incubus for that.”

I glanced up from a photocopy of the incubus seal. “Lord knows you're good at impregnating, but I'm gonna have to pass, thanks.”

I'd already finished drawing a double-strong Æthyric-level binding triangle onto the floor of an old open-air workshop in the woods of Lon's property, a half-mile away from his house—a half-mile away from Jupe. It was really just a glorified carport on a concrete pad, with one full wall of metal siding that sheltered our work from the dirt road, and two half-walls. It housed a tractor that he used for clearing land and some miscellaneous tools locked up inside metal cabinets.
Not fancy, but it had the electricity I needed for kindling from a row of fluorescent lights above us.

The circle was finished. Lon let me borrow a full-sized caduceus. Good thing, because the miniature one I'd been carrying around all day in my pocket would have likely blown to smithereens with the amount of Heka I needed to kindle for securing this thing. I brushed off my hands and double-checked that everything was correct: the binding triangle, the summoning circle, and the incubus seal. All good. Time to start charging the triangle.

“Ready?” I asked.

Lon inclined his head and gestured for me to begin.

I took a deep breath and reached out for electrical current. It was nice and strong here, readily available. I pulled it inside and kindled Heka for several seconds. A firm push, and it rushed from me and ran through the caduceus. White light seared the chalked markings, solid and steady, no cracks or static. I didn't have time to fully appreciate it. The post-magick sickness came on the heels of the release, dropping my stomach to my feet. I closed my eyes for several seconds and counted breaths until it abated. Not too bad, but it would get worse after the next round.

“You could just do it with your ability. It's dark now. Moon's out.”

“I've had about all the strange magick I can handle today.” This way might take longer, but at least there wouldn't be any surprises.

The binding triangle had been charged. Next up was the circle. This time I had to focus harder to kindle more Heka. Summoning requires a big, big charge. When I pulled from the current, all the lights buzzed and flickered. Too big a pull and I'd short everything out; not big enough and I'd have to
start all over again. I strained, carefully seeking the breaking point in the electricity. A sharp pop cracked the air on the other side of the shed when one of the fluorescent bulbs gave way and sent tiny shards of glass tinkling onto the floor.

Raw energy coursed through me, standing the hairs on my arms on end. Making my skin itch beneath the surface. Firing up every nerve in my body. My cells were rubber balls, bouncing off each other, erratic and frenzied . . . just a
little
further.

Lon murmured anxiously from the side. I ignored him.

The caduceus tip was poised at the chalked border of the summoning circle. Kindled Heka swirled inside me, begging for a release—I hadn't pulled this much current in a long time, and I couldn't hold it any longer. With a groan, I pushed it out in a smooth, heavy stream. Sweet, holy relief. The circle fired up so bright and strong, it hurt my eyes. I tried to laugh in victory, but it came out like a warped yelp.

If I'd been a surfer on a board, nausea would be the thirty-foot wave that broke too soon and knocked me down. The fall was surreal. Slow motion. I crumpled to the side, away from the circle. My shoulder hit the concrete. Pain ripped through me, but I didn't care. I was too busy trying to roll over before the vomit came . . . and it did. I retched violently. Mostly water and the crackers I'd eaten when we returned from the putt-putt center. I'd planned for it, so my skunk-striped hair was twisted up into a loose knot on the crown of my head: I'm a pro.

Lon's hands pulled me up, setting off a flare of pain in my injured shoulder. A cry broke from my lips. He jerked back, apologizing, then shifted his grip to my waist.

“Water and towel,” I croaked, coughing from the stomach acid burning my throat. White terry cloth appeared in front of
my face. I wiped my mouth, then swished bottled water and spat it out as Lon silently unrolled yards of paper towels. “I've got it,” I complained. “I can clean up after myself.” I briefly wondered how Frater Merrin managed to go through this every week at the Silent Temple. Maybe the nausea wasn't as bad when you were used to pulling that much Heka all the time. Or maybe he was just stronger than me, Moonchild or not.

Lon dropped the paper towels in a pile over the vomit. “Leave it. Go finish.” His hand emerged from his pocket with a pack of gum. He offered me a piece with a whisper of a smile on his lips. I snatched it out of his fingers. “I'll brush my teeth before kissing you, don't worry.”

“Small favors.”

The circle was perfect. The binding was perfect. The seal inside the binding was perfect. All I had to do was call the incubus. There are several ways to do this, several calls in multiple languages. Some work better than others, depending on exactly what you're attempting to summon. But I always try their name first, without all the extra bells and whistles. For something as simple as an incubus, it should work.

“Voxhele of Amon!” I called out, pushing my will through the summoning circle as I paced around it. My legs were rubbery, still fighting the last waves of Heka-sickness. I anxiously smacked Lon's gum. Fiery cinnamon. It tasted like him; he loved cinnamon, hated mint.

A soft light pulsed in the middle of the binding triangle. It grew, filling out with the form of the incubus. Sallow-skinned and black-headed, the demon was the height of an average human, his body lean and wiry. His pleasant face featured heather eyes weighted with thick gray lashes. A
matching patch of pale purple skin tipped his sternum. Rows of tight, gray scales trailed over his shoulders. Overall, fairly appealing, if a little feminine for my tastes.

He was sitting cross-legged inside the binding triangle, yawning and naked, like the first time I'd seen him. Not surprising—he
was
a sex demon. His head rotated in all directions when he realized he wasn't in Kansas any longer.

“Voxhele of Amon,” I said in a mustered cheerful greeting, still fighting waves of nausea. “Remember me?”

A smile spread over his face. “Mother of Ahriman, a pleasant surprise. These aren't the Hellfire caves—how wonderful! Where are we, exactly?”

“Not far from the caves, geographically speaking.”

He made a noise of disapproval and scratched the scales on his shoulder. “I owe you a favor, don't I?”

“Yes—”

“Oh, wait. I remember you, too,” he said, speaking to Lon while looking him up and down with a lewd grin. “If this favor involves all three of us, I'm fine with that.” He leaned back on the palms of his hands, displaying his wares. I wasn't sure if he was pierced in several places, or was naturally bumpy. I tried not to stare.

Lon mumbled something derogatory under his breath as he picked up the engraved silver tube and a stack of photos, enlargements of the cannery mandalas.

“I need information, not sexual favors,” I said to the demon.

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “Depending on what it is . . .”

I held up a hand. “I'm obligated to inform you that you are bound by me now, and must answer honestly.”

“Yes, yes.” He waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Ask
your question, and I'll weigh it to decide if it's an even trade for the favor I owe you.”

From outside the circle, we showed him the silver tube and pointed out the engraving. His eyes widened. A few seconds passed as he glanced between us, then said, very carefully, “And wherever did you find that?”

“Can you translate it and give us the meaning?” I asked.

His eyes darkened as he considered, then he sighed heavily. “It's the name of a demon from my plane.”