25
OF ROMAN DESCENT
Kneeling on Greyson’s jacket, Dru did her best to block out the world around her and focus on her breathing. She slowed it down, concentrating on the sensation of the cool country air traveling in through her flared nostrils, filling her lungs, and then flowing out through her gently parted lips.
Against her will, her mind filled to overflowing with anxieties. The wraiths chasing them. Rane losing her powers. Salem corrupted by dark magic. Her shop reduced to rubble. She couldn’t simply ignore any of those worries. She could only acknowledge them and then mentally set them on a shelf to deal with later. Right now, her mind had to be completely clear and sharp. She couldn’t afford any distractions.
Although she’d been using crystals for years, it was only since she’d met Greyson that her abilities had truly risen to the levels of a genuine sorceress. The more adept she grew, the more careful she had to be about staying steady and poised as she called up her inner magic. As her spells grew ever more powerful, the margin of error shrank until it was razor thin. She couldn’t afford to take a misstep and end up like Salem. Or worse.
That was particularly true with this new spell. The energies involved were both incredibly powerful and pinpoint specific. Unlike most of her crystal magic, which used combinations of crystals to balance and harmonize various magical energies, this spell depended entirely on the chunk of carnotite sitting on the grass in front of her.
The problem was that it wasn’t actually a single crystal but rather a cluster of tiny canary yellow crystals, thousands of them, all crusted into a triangular piece of sandstone. Most of the crystals were no larger than a grain of sand, and some were as small as dust. Her success or failure would depend entirely on how she modulated her magical power over thousands of individual crystals at once.
No pressure or anything.
She flexed both hands wide open, stretching out her fingers. She could almost hear the magic humming through the tiny crystals, a blur of white noise punctuated by sharp cracks, like the first threatening strikes of icy cold hailstones during a rolling thunderstorm.
The last thing she really wanted to do was touch the carnotite, and not only because she was afraid of casting this spell. Carnotite was radioactive. Not enough to kill, but enough to give her the creeps. In the mountains, it was commonly mined as uranium ore.
As slowly as she could, Dru reached toward the carnotite. The closer she got, the louder its energies grew in her mind, until it practically roared inside her skull. The moment her index fingers made contact with either side of the dry, cold rock, her magic poured into it. A wave of vertigo washed over her as the carnotite splintered her soul in thousands of different directions at once. Each thin sliver of energy reflected and broke apart over and over again, pulling her consciousness out of her body and scattering it through the mists of time.
Part of her wanted to scream out loud with the sheer animal terror of losing her own sense of self. She felt like she was falling, and she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t feel her own body. She had no idea which way was up or down. As she teetered on the edge of losing her mind completely, she used all of her strength to clamp down and focus on where she wanted the magic to take her.
The Shining City.
She had seen it only once, seemingly long ago, but its memory was indelible. Scintillating towers soared up out of the eerie fog of the netherworld, like the monuments of some long-vanished age. As she thought of it, it materialized before her, as if she was actually there.
Her mind raced through the netherworld, crisscrossing long causeways built of dark stones bound together with luminous magic. The Shining City grew brighter as it towered over her, blinding her. She had the fleeting impression that she was seeing it not as it currently was but as it had existed for thousands of years. The centuries blurred together before her. She was losing her sense of time.
Decimus, she thought. She had to find a way to zero in on the evil sorcerer’s journey to the Shining City. It would help if she had some possession that had belonged to him, so she could focus on that. She had once owned his amulet, although it was long gone. She tried to picture it in her mind. It had a heavy gold chain with thick, squared-off links. It was the size of her palm, built up of golden rings inscribed with magical glyphs that surrounded a single eyeball-sized painite gemstone the color of dried blood. Being powerfully evil, it had always left a particularly sour taste in her mouth. She concentrated on recalling that sensation.
The glare around her flickered, leaving her nauseous, and then came into sharp focus on the amulet. Suddenly, she could see it hanging in front of her, every detail exactly as she remembered it. She could practically reach out and grab it. Except that it hung at the open collar of a sun-bleached tunic, swaying with the gait of the man who wore it.
Decimus the Accursed.
She had always thought of the evil sorcerer as a bent and twisted old man, with a long gray beard and gnarled fingers. But as it turned out, Decimus the Accursed was exactly the opposite of what she had imagined.
He strode alone through the blinding glare of the Shining City, marching through the netherworld like a conqueror. His every movement radiated strength and capability. His eyes were deep-set and dark, his nose hawkish, his broad chin bracketing a fierce frown.
Instead of the long flowing robes Dru had imagined, Decimus was dressed for battle. In a Roman sort of way.
Over his knee-length tunic, he wore banded iron armor that encased his torso and shoulders. Each strip of articulated metal was engraved with magical protective sigils. His helmet was chased with polished bronze, with flaps that protected the back of his neck and the sides of his scowling face. He carried a tall rectangular shield and a long spear. An earthenware vessel was slung over both shoulders on a length of rope, like a backpack.
Dru knew he couldn’t possibly be here, now, since he had died nearly two thousand years before. He seemed almost real enough to touch, although he continuously swam in and out of focus, disappearing occasionally into the blinding glare.
A colossal archway rose overhead, peaked at the top, a crack of darkness in the eternal light. With purposeful strides, Decimus marched through and was swallowed up. Only his amulet glowed softly, lighting the way.
Dru followed his descent deep into a chasm of raw black rock. It could have taken hours or even weeks. She had lost all sense of time. It grew hotter as he descended, because he glistened with sweat as he discarded clothing and armor. But he never gave up the strange clay vessel strung across his back, nor did he ever open it to take a drink.
A ruddy dawn emerged in the distance, along an invisible horizon that split the endless blackness. Dru lost track of Decimus then, overwhelmed by visions of a world of black rock and fiery torment. In this desolate place, everything burned and seethed. The smoking rock underfoot splintered and fell away into pools of lava that flashed like liquid gold and rubies.
Tartarus. The deepest abyss of torment.
Dodging among plumes of fire, winged demons came to roost on ribbons of dark rock that jutted up from the hungry flames. Plumes of white heat burst up from the lava, twisting into more of the diabolical creatures. Newly formed skeletal arms clawed blindly at the eternal darkness of the dead sky overhead. Their eyes burned red, and their snapping jaws dripped with liquid fire.
To Dru, all of it happened in an eerie silence from which she could hear only the rasp of her own awed breaths. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t help but watch endless legions of demons spawned while others were consumed by the eternal fires of Tartarus.
In the scorching heat, Decimus labored across the broken land until he reached the bare slope of a black mountain. He trudged onward, step by heavy step, until he had reached the desolate mountain peak. There, with a wolfish grin, he raised his hands and cast an elaborate spell.
In a blinding flash, the mountain peak before him turned red-hot, then gold, then white as the summer sun. Ponderously, it collapsed in on itself, leaving a seething crater of lava. Heat waves shimmered around Decimus as the mountain peak sank away, leaving a smoking pit that gaped down into the center of the underworld.
Only then did he shrug off the clay vessel he carried on his back. It was an amphora, a traditional Roman vessel with a body the shape of a wasp’s stinger, and two long handles stretching up on opposite sides. Decimus’s amulet crackled with magic. His hands rippled with flickering blue flames, which licked the surface of the clay amphora until it cracked open.
A sickly curl of mist unspooled through the cracks, snaking across the ground as if heavier than the air around it. Gradually, it coalesced into a serpentine shape with a definite head and blazing red eyes. The cloud of mist coiled and shifted, suggesting a canine head, then bat wings, then a scorpion tail.
Decimus hadn’t come here alone, Dru realized. He’d been carrying a captive demon with him the whole time.
As the demon tried to slip away, Decimus abruptly pinned it in place with crackling streams of power from his hands. The thing writhed beneath his spell. He shouted at it, the same words over and over again, but Dru couldn’t make them out. She held her breath, waiting to see what would happen next.
Decimus didn’t release the demon until it caught fire. But rather than harming the demon, the flames only made it even more powerful. It was now a mass of writhing, living fire. With unsettling calm, it gathered itself up and stood on four long legs. Its long tail swished sparks and smoke. A powerful neck loomed over Decimus, terminating in an equine head. The demon unmistakably became a horse composed of red-hot fire.
It reared up on its back legs. Sparks flew from its hooves, and gouts of flame shot from its nostrils.
Decimus pointed to the seething pit where the peak of the mountain had once stood. Rippling with heat, the demon turned and galloped toward it, leaving behind a trail of burning U-shaped hoof prints.
When it reached the edge of the precipice, it didn’t hesitate. It leaped into the fiery abyss and vanished.
With the demon horse gone, Dru expected Decimus to finally turn and retreat from the heat. But instead he squatted down and coldly regarded the pit, an expectant look on his cruel face. Dru wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but she soon found out.
The demon horse emerged from the depths, leaping up out of the flames as easily as jumping over a fence. Trailing sparks and smoke, it trotted up to Decimus, carrying a gleaming object in its teeth. With a start, Dru realized what it was.
The apocalypse scroll.
It looked just as ancient then as it did now. Wrinkled brown parchment, spiked silver tips, and seven wax seals as red as blood. The demon lowered its massive head and dropped the scroll into Decimus’s greedy outstretched hands. His gloating face lit with a wicked grin.
The muscles of his face tensed. He sensed danger. He cast about, then turned and looked directly at Dru.
According to everything she knew, it was impossible for him to see her, but he did.
Immediately, he turned and snapped out a command to the demon horse. She was close enough to read his lips, but she could make out only the last word.
Infernotoris.
She knew that name. Knew what it meant. With a wrenching gasp, Dru broke the spell. She lurched to her feet in fear, stumbled backward, and fell into the grass. Greyson caught her before she hit the ground.
“Easy, easy.” Greyson whispered reassurances in her ear. “You were out for a long time.”
She wasn’t listening. A few yards away, at the side of the road, the hulking black shape of Hellbringer gleamed silently against the darkness of the night. Its angular black wing stood high in back, like a blade. In its pointed nose, twin yellow parking lights burned like the eyes of a hungry carnivore, watching her. As if it wanted to pounce. Run her over. Crush her. Feed on her soul.
Out of sheer panic, she fought against Greyson, trying to get away. “It was a demon. Decimus was helped by a demon,” Dru choked out, the words running into one another. “It obeyed him.”
On arms and legs still half-asleep from her trance, she tried to scramble away from the possessed car until her back was pressed up against a rough wooden fence post. She tried to picture the demon horse trapped in the car, the burning-hot spirit bound into the cold steel by sorcery and agony.
Greyson stayed with her. “What’s going on? You’re not making any sense. Talk to me.”
She tried to calm down, but she couldn’t. “The demon that brought Decimus the apocalypse scroll, he called it by name.” Her voice quavered with exhaustion and fear. It wouldn’t stay steady. “He called it Infernotoris.”
Greyson frowned. “That sounds familiar.”
She finally tore her gaze away from the car and looked up at Greyson. “That’s because Infernotoris means…Hellbringer.”