Traitor to the Crown (43 page)

The little boy possessed by the demon began to run around the circle with his arms extended like a bird’s. “It’s time it’s time it’s time it’s time. Summon Balfri of the legions, summon Balfri of the blood-red coat!”

Dee turned his head away from Proctor and Deborah, and stepped onto the fifth point of the pentagram.

“My friends,” Dee said. “By this act, we shall all live long enough to see the second coming. By this act, we
shall all stay young forever, until the end of days. By this act, we shall, like Enoch, live to ascend to heaven without dying.”

The five witches at the five points of the star held out their hands. Though they did not touch, a cold blue flame leapt out from Dee’s left hand and ran around the circle until it returned to him. The light ran down his legs and traced the circle and star on the ground, making them all glow with a flickering blue light.

“Living without dying sounds great,” Proctor mumbled to Deborah, “until you realize that they do it only by making others die in their stead.”

“I can’t touch my talent at all,” Deborah said.

He shook his head. He couldn’t either. “I can’t even free my hands.”

Dee tilted his head back and began speaking in a language that neither Proctor nor Deborah could understand.

“Ils diaspert soba vpaah chis nanbazixlai dodsih …”

The air shimmered as he spoke and an oval lozenge of blue light, as large as the entrance to a cathedral, blossomed into being. It floated above the earth, at the center of the star. As Dee continued to speak, it began to spin, and as it spun, it changed colors, from blue to white to yellow to orange to red, bright and twitchy, each one like a flame. The light of the star and circle scratched in the earth changed color with it. When it reached bright red, like a glowing coal, it stopped spinning abruptly. A loud clang sounded, like the chime from a broken bell.

The orphan boy cheered and leapt into the air. “Behold, Balfri!”

Proctor had faced demons before. So they were summoning a demon. He could face one more demon. A human shape, drawn in flame, twisted with horns and talons, tusks and tail, stepped through the oval door. It
carried a cudgel formed from some giant bone. It was much larger than the other demons Proctor had seen, but it could be beaten.

“Is that all?” he said.

The demon marched out of the way, and it was followed by another demon, and another. They carried rough instruments of war—broken swords, spears with shattered shafts, shields with great chunks torn out of them. Demon after demon, they flowed across the lawn and into rows like an army marching. Hundreds. And then thousands.

The orphan boy looked at Proctor. “Balfri’s other name is Legion,” he said.

Dee lifted his hands to the heavens. “Let the words of the angels and of men be the same. O thou, the third flame, beyond the flame of flesh, the flame of spirit, whose wings are thorns to stir up vexation, and who hast twenty thousand living lamps marching before thee, whose God is wrath and anger. Gird up thy loins and hearken to my word.”

Proctor twisted helplessly, looking from side to side. He had hoped that Lydia was still nearby, that she would come and cut them free. But he did not expect it of her and did not blame her for running. He hoped that she was far, far away before this horde was unleashed.

He and Deborah were bound side by side. In his struggle to get free, he had wiggled his hands through the ropes, so that his fingers could touch hers. He pushed through them now and closed his hand around hers. He felt a small, hopeful spark as they touched.

“Accept our humble offering, O Lord,” Dee said. “Let all the rivers of talent flow into a single ocean, which is Your will. Take these soldiers and let the destiny of this country manifest from one ocean to the other. Make the world a single empire, under Your order, on which the sun never sets.”

A final demon stepped through the portal, larger than the others. Its limbs were like the trunks of mighty oaks sheathed in flame, and it wore a red coat. Its eyes were as black as coals, and its mouth was a white-hot furnace ringed by the charred stumps of broken teeth. It carried a two-headed ax in its right hand. Wings unfolded from its back like vast clouds of smoke.

This was it then. This was the worst they could face. Proctor swallowed hard and found the determination to face it. “We have to stop that,” he whispered.

Deborah nodded mutely.

The demon’s left leg seemed to be stuck in the portal. Turning its head, it roared and the ground shook so hard that even the windows in the mansion rattled. With one final jerk, it pulled its leg through. There was a cuff around the ankle and a chain. At the other end of the chain was a second demon.

The second demon came through the gate. She was slender and whip-like, like a summer grass fire. Long black hair tumbled off her head like billowing smoke, and her wings spread translucent as flames torn free in the wind. She wore a long red coat like her mate. In her left hand, she carried a knife with a hilt as black as charred bone and a blade as red as blood.

The two demons connected by the single chain looked at Proctor and Deborah hungrily. Tongues of fire licked the edges of their charred mouths.

Dee held out his hands to Proctor and Deborah. “Let these vessels be a gift unto You. Let them be possessed by Your holy spirits, and by this possession see Your spirits made flesh, to lead this army of spirits and make this army flesh, to do Your will.”

The legion of demons, thousands of them, in line upon line spread across the lawn, roared and stomped their feet.

Proctor could feel Deborah’s fingers trying to push through the rope to take his hand.

Dee turned toward the house. “Bring the child,” he commanded. “When they sacrifice the life of their own daughter, it will make the binding spell complete.”

“Maggie,” Deborah gasped.

The light of the house seemed cold and small and distant compared with the blinding flame of the army arrayed before it. On the top step, just outside the door, stood Abigail in her simple farm dress. She walked like a puppet with a small child firmly in her grip. The child cried and tried to pull away from Abigail, but she wouldn’t let go.

“Maggie?” Proctor whispered.

“Don’t let them have her!” Deborah screamed desperately.

The pair of demons shook as if they were chuckling, as if resistance made possession sweeter, as though any fight against them was futile. The little boy in the red coat—Proctor would not think of him as William; William wasn’t present anymore—danced around their legs.

But Abigail was as stubborn as a mule, as tough to move as an old stump. The sound of Deborah’s voice shook something loose in her, gave her a strength that she did not have alone. With a visible effort she shook off the control that Dee had over her body. She grabbed Maggie and shielded her with her body, turning to leap off the steps.

“Nein,” said the German.

With a simple flick of his hand, he stripped Abigail’s flesh from her bones. Skin, muscle, and organs were splattered in a streak across the lawn while her bones clattered in a pile on the steps. The silent witch licked her fingertips and then sucked on them. Proctor winced and caught his breath.

It happened so suddenly that Abigail’s spirit did not know she was dead. Her dress was now pure white, but otherwise nothing had changed. She stood on the steps
where her living body had been, half turned toward the house. Maggie dropped out of her arms, but she looked up at the familiar face as if that were all she saw.

Run
, Abigail said, and she pushed Maggie toward the ring of trees nearest the house. Maggie toddled toward darkness. Nearby, demons chuckled.

Proctor jammed his hand through the ropes and clasped Deborah’s hand in his. He felt a sharp shock as they touched. Deborah gasped. Alone, they were cut off from their talent, but together—

“Rain is the enemy of fire,” he said. “Let it storm like it has never stormed before.”

“Yes,” she said.

More power surged through Proctor than he had ever felt before. Hours’ worth of clouds rolled in overhead in a second, and the first fat drops of rain were followed a second later by a torrent.

The demons crackled and sizzled like doused fire in the sudden storm. The legions stomped their feet and writhed in agony, like creatures splashed with lye. Balfri, the paired demon, tried to go two ways at once, out of the rain, but was checked by the chain that bound it at the ankles. Angry and frustrated, they lashed out with ax and blade, scattering the witches of the Covenant.

Deborah lifted her head to the sky and cried out. Lightning struck the ground all around them, with thunder louder than the stomping of the demons. Rain fell in waves, as if the river had been channeled into the sky and emptied on them. It fell in sheets so thick that for a moment, Proctor could not see even as far as the house.

Proctor could feel the power flowing through him. He ripped through the ropes. As they fell off, limp and dead, he and Deborah dropped hard to the rain-soaked earth.

It was enough to shatter Deborah’s focus. The rain lessened and Dee stepped forward out of the fog and mist.

“Enough,” he shouted. “Bring forth the herald. Let him proclaim the reign of Balfri and be done with this.”

The demons held their heads up against the lessening rain. Balfri stopped fighting itself and stood its ground with four vast wings outspread. The rain crackled and sizzled as it hit Balfri, like water on a hot skillet. The other four witches of the Covenant formed a line on either side of Dee, the prince-bishop and Cecily to his right, and the priest and the silent woman to his left. The wind whipped the trees into a confusion of green and black.

Proctor struggled to his feet, pulling Deborah with him.

The boy-herald stepped forward. “All hail, Balfri. Welcome, Balfri—”

The last words bubbled out of his mouth, drowned in blood. The point of a cavalry saber protruded from his chest. The boy grabbed at it, trying to pull it all the way through, but his hands kept sliding off the blade. He toppled forward, off the saber, and fell to the ground.

The demon, liberated from the boy’s flesh, hopped from side to side, like an animal looking for cover. Before it could act, it faded and disappeared.

A British officer stood over the dead boy’s body. He was of small build, with a boyish cast to his face. His dark green jacket and black cap blended in with the wet night so that only his face showed clearly in the dark.

“Tarleton,” Deborah said, her voice cracked with sorrow.

He stared at the bloody saber in his hand. “I will not abide evil any longer,” he said. “I will not have an army of men turned into the monster that I saw myself become, not even if that is the only way to win this war.”

The prince-bishop staggered over to William and knelt, cradling the dead body in his lap. “Not you, too, my pretty boy, not you.” The oval portal had faded to a mere line. With the herald dead, and the rain falling steady, the legion began to fade.

“Do something,” Cecily demanded of Dee.

“The blood of an innocent, shed in violence, is a powerful focus,” he said, walking over to the dead boy. Dipping his fingers in blood, he began writing letters in the air, where they hung like shimmering glyphs of fire.

“No,” said Deborah. “I will not allow it.”

She erased them with a sweep of her hand.

Dee’s calm was finally shaken. He turned to Balfri and screamed, “Take them, just take them now.”

Balfri growled and stepped forward. The male half smashed Dee to the ground and stepped over the mage’s still body. The she-demon followed him through the rain, reaching for Deborah.

Proctor did not know if Balfri meant to attack Deborah or possess her. He didn’t care. They weren’t going to touch her. He blocked them with a shield of light. The she-demon struck at him with her knife, and he knocked it aside. The ax fell, and he lifted the shield over his head. The blow shook him to his knees. They attacked him furiously, but they had to come at him together, and he deflected each blow. Finally the knife and ax fell toward him at the same time, and he slammed them aside with a sideways blow of his shield.

The edge of the shield, formed of light and spirit, struck the chain that bound them together and shattered it.

The demons howled in delight and jumped apart. They prepared to attack Proctor from either side, but they shrank in size and power as they moved away from each other.

“What a stupid waste,” the silent woman said. She looked over Dee’s shattered body. “Balfri without the bond is not Balfri. The Covenant is no covenant once the promise is broken.” She raised her head to the demons. “You are free. Go on your way. Seek your own purpose.”

She took the blind priest by the hand, turned to the side, and they both disappeared. One moment they were
there; the next they were gone. The legion of demons broke and scattered into the woods and across the river like an army under rout. Balfri started for Proctor and Deborah, and then both halves turned and fled in opposite directions. All that remained was the sliver of light above the faint scar of the pentagram and circle still glowing in the earth. Proctor and Deborah stood on one side of it. On the other, the prince-bishop cradled the dead boy in his arms. Tarleton stood over them both.

“I’ll kill you,” the prince-bishop said, pushing the dead boy aside. But as he rose to attack Tarleton, the cavalry commander stepped in and sliced off his head with a sweep of his saber.

“I think not,” he murmured as the head rolled one way and the ancient body collapsed to the ground. It imploded on itself, leaving nothing but smoldering clothes behind.

The ring of knives and blades of all kinds, scattered on the ground where Proctor had dropped them to preserve Deborah, rose suddenly into the air. Cecily stood, soaked to her skin, her face contorted with rage. She pulled her arms back to hurl the weapons at Proctor and Deborah.

Proctor tried to summon the power to stop them and felt depleted again. He threw his body in front of Deborah to protect her from the worst of the weapons.

Before they came hurtling through the air, Cecily crumpled to the ground, the blades dropping with her. Lydia stood over her with a heavy piece of wood. Rage contorted her face just as it had Cecily’s. She raised the log above her head again to smash it down on the other witch’s head.