Authors: Anne C. Petty
Hands trembling, he took hold of the girl. Pulling her head back in a hellish mockery of Abraham slaughtering the sacrificial ram, Dee cut the big artery in her throat. Bright blood spattered over his hands and quickly bathed her shoulder. For good measure, he slit the veins in her wrists as well. Breathing in shallow jerks Dee completed the task, holding up her torso as she bled out over the stone. Somewhere in the maelstrom that threatened to cleave his skull, he heard the rough commands of the sorceress, bending the ancient elemental to her will. The roiling form of the banshee coiled and uncoiled around the slight form of Radha Ó Braonáin, obscuring her from sight.
A sharp thunderclap directly overhead was so loud Dee feared his eardrums had been blasted to ruin. For moments he could hear nothing at all. He let the dead girl’s body fall where it would. Featherlight, he felt the touch of C’s hand on his shoulder, and his hearing returned.
“Orin!” the witch cried, falling to her knees beside the youth. His eyes fluttered. The
bain-sídhe
was nowhere to be seen. Dee’s gaze raked the clearing. Had the creature been trapped inside the stone?
Then dread fell on him like a shroud. The Black Coach sat still on the ridge, even though the girl was dead. For one terrified moment he entertained the thought that it had come to collect him as well, but then the witch spat out a howl. Her body began to stretch toward the stone, blood seeping from her eyes and nose and ears. In disbelief he watched as the flesh was shredded from her body. Then her muscles and finally the skeletal remains all disappeared into the stone in a carmine smear.
C leapt forward lightning-fast, grabbing Dee’s blood-coated right hand and pressing it to the stone’s surface. Dee screamed at the shock, feeling as if he’d pushed his palm with all his weight onto a hot anvil. His skin smoked and blistered, his field of vision narrowed and began to go dark as pain flowed over him.
“Claim the stone!” C’s command vibrated through every nerve and sinew of his body.
Past rational thought, he repeated the words he’d rehearsed. “I, John Dee, do lay claim to this
buachloch,
bought by blood and
sealed by fire. I bind myself to it and it to me until such time as I may pass it to another.
Go raibh amhlaidh
. So be it into eternity."
Immediately, the burning under his hand ceased. Shakily he inspected the skin, but saw no evidence of damage. He brushed the stone with his fingertips and found it shockingly cool to the touch.
“W-wherefore…?” He shook his head, unable to articulate his thoughts into a coherent question.
C reached down and took him by the elbow, lifting him to his feet. “Did I know the hag would be sucked within the
buachloch
alongside the elemental? Indeed not. Unplanned, but not nonfortuitous.”
“The horses…”
“Waiting for us at the wood’s edge. Come, we’ll walk.” C scooped up the stone as if it weighed no more than a cabbage.
Dee turned unsteadily and looked back over the carnage. The Coach was gone. On the rain-soaked ground, the boy who had been dead struggled to sit up. He clutched at the bloody shawl that had belonged to his mother and looked from Dee to Monsieur C with wild, uncomprehending eyes.
Dee whispered his name. “Orin.”
“Aye, but…who be
ye
?”
Friday, 6:30 P.M.
The mage crossed the darkened study, his scholar’s robe pooling around his ankles. On the corner of a massive writing desk, a foot-high candle swathed in ripples of wax cast a yellow sheen over tumbled books and papers. Harried, he ran his fingers through his hair and turned to face the silent figure seated in shadow across the room.
Clearing his throat, the mage crossed his arms and hugged his thin frame. The seated figure regarded him with focused attention, and waited.
The mage wiped his brow. “Say to me again your master’s words.”
Low laughter, then a voice soft as powdered snow, but colder. “He said I should do for you whatever you wish. In other words, I’m yours to command.” The seated figure stretched its long legs and made as if to stand. “It will cost you, of course—”
“Yes, yes, I know that.” The mage waved his hand, a gesture of impatience. “One could hardly expect less. The nature of the spells you’ve taught me are unhallowed, by anyone’s standard.” He paced the narrow study, its vaulted ceiling lost in gloom. Satin bands on his sleeves and hem, emblems of his academic status, caught the candlelight.
His companion rose, tall in a hooded cape of blood-red velvet. “More is required than simply your word. You knew this, of course?” He stepped into the pool of light fronting the desk, his eyes bright sparks, boney hands pushing back the hood. Sharp creases ran jagged down his gaunt cheeks. Corpse-white fingers reached toward the desk and extracted a sheet of parchment, spreading it flat.
“You must write it out for me—your promise. My master requires the physical evidence, you see.”
The mage hung back in the fringe of shadow that ringed his study. The specter tapped its booted foot.
“If you’ve changed your mind, I’ll take my leave and not bother you again.” He raised his hand as if in summons.
“Wait!” The mage lurched forward, stopped, took a breath, then stepped toward the desk. “Don’t go. Tell me…what does your master want with someone like me?”
“You’re a brilliant protégé, a valued accomplice. An enlargement, if you will, of his kingdom.”
“And what about you? You don’t mind being used this way? You appear to live well and act like a lord, but you do exactly what he tells you, like a common slave. You’re quite willing to help me damn my soul forever, but what am I to you? Just another recruit? I had enjoyed your company these long months.”
The velvet-clad shoulders shrugged and a smile split the pale lips. “Misery enjoys a companion.”
“So you really are miserable? I thought you said your master would give me a life more incredible than anything mere men could imagine. Was that a lie?” For silent seconds, the two faced each other. At last the mage looked away. With eyes averted, he took the parchment, dragged a heavy, high-backed chair with clawed feet into the pool of light, and sat down. His writing quill lay beside an inkpot, but he left it untouched.
The emissary bent his tall frame over the desk, impatience in his voice. “Do you intend to sign or not? If you will do that, I can give you more things than you know how to ask for. I will be your slave in whatever schemes and adventures we two can conjure. If that is not what you want, then I’ve been wasting my time here.”
The mage lowered his head and studied his hands. “I am yours,” he said finally.
“Hah! Those are the words I want!” The tall figure reached an arm around the shoulders of his charge, enveloping him for an instant in a shroud of crimson.
“How…shall I do it?” The mage’s head remained bowed.
“With your blood, of course,” the figure said in a stage whisper. His white hand slipped inside his doublet and drew out a long, slender knife, its silver-white blade flashing. Its handle was pearl, its design from another time. He held it out in his open palm.
The mage stared, seemingly hypnotized by the blade. He wiped his brow again. “Then the old myths are true…it really must be done this way. I hadn’t thought I would actually have to spill blood to bind myself to you.”
“Just do it, and with the unleashed power of your vast learning, you may become as great as even my master. Anything is possible, after you sign.”
“I’ll do it for you, then”
“Nay, not for me. For the one I serve. Make no mistake.”
“Give me the knife.” The mage pushed back the folds of his robe and rolled up his linen shirt sleeve, exposing the skin of his forearm. He laid his arm, wrist up, across the sheet of parchment, put the point of the knife over the largest vein, and said, “Tell me what I am to write. Once I make the cut, I don’t want to stop.”
The figure jackknifed its long legs and knelt beside the mage’s knee, one hand on the corner of the page. “Write, ‘I give my immortal soul to Lucifer’ and sign your name.”
The mage hesitated yet again. “Should I use a pen to make it neat, or just dip my finger in and scribble the words?”
“What you will.”
“Then hold the quill there ready for me.” The mage put the blade again to his wrist. “So be it,” he said and pressed down. Immediately, a bright red tracery rolled over his fingers and onto the page.
“SHIT!” The knife clattered to the floorboards. “Nobody told me the goddamned knife was sharp!” he screamed, tearing at the black robe and wrapping it around his dripping wrist. An oversized T-shirt and faded jeans showed beneath the folds of his scholar’s gown as bright lights flooded the set. “Bayard! Where the hell are you?” he shouted at the lights.
Behind him, the spectral figure pulled off its cape and flopped into the high-backed chair. “Does this mean the end of rehearsals for the night?” he asked irritably.
A red-bearded man came swiftly down the aisle and climbed the low steps onto the stage. Kit Bayard, Mummers Theatrical Company director and owner of the aging Janus Theatre, took command of the scene. Solidly built and barrel-chested, he stood in a natural actor’s stance and looked from one player to the other.
“What’s happened?” he demanded and took the mage, now revealed to be a genuinely frightened young man in his twenties, by the shoulder. “How badly have you cut yourself?”
“It was supposed to be a fucking stage prop!” the actor yelped, his voice caught between anger and fear. “Who sharpened it like that? I’m bleeding to death, Bayard!”
“Calmly now,” said the older man, unwrapping the actor’s wrist and placing a folded handkerchief over the slice. “No one dies on my stage.”
A young woman in Army-Navy fatigue pants and a faded green hospital smock came to the stage apron. “Should I call 911?” She put her copy of the script down and pulled a cell phone out of the holster on her belt.
“Everything’s under control. But thank you, Claire, for your concern.” Bayard turned to the stunned cast and extras seated in the front row.
“Rehearsal’s over. Danny’s all right, but if anyone knows how the weapons props got tampered with, I’d like to hear about it privately.”
“What if he stabs himself on opening night, will the show go on?” asked the figure in red, smudging the greasepaint lines of his stage makeup with long fingers.
“Why is it that you make such a perfect Mephistopheles and such a shitty person?” Danny snapped.
“If you’d stop being such a drama queen for once I’d be happy to explain it to you.”
“Stop this! I won’t have fighting amongst the cast.” Bayard glared at Morris, veteran company member, experienced Mephisto, and general pain in the ass.
Morris unfolded his lanky frame and stood up. “Hell, I’m going home.”
Bayard’s eyes tightened in his fox face. “Six-thirty Thursday evening,” he called at Morris’ retreating back. “Act three, all four scenes. Be prepared.”
“I’m quitting this damn play,” said Danny, tears glistening at the corners of his eyes. “You can find yourself another Faustus.”
Bayard reached out and took the young man by the arm. “Shhh. It was a regrettable mistake, and luckily no lasting damage has been done. Come with me, I’ll get you a drink and a bandage.” He led the young man down the steps beside the wings and toward the double doors at the back of the auditorium. Claire followed at their heels, wearing an expression of concern. Bayard sighed and stopped, waiting for her to catch up. “Was there something else, Miss Porter?”
“Are you sure it doesn’t need stitches?” She took Danny’s arm in her hands and unwrapped the wound.
“Lucky break, us recruiting an EMT into the company, huh?” Danny said. “You wouldn’t let me die, would you, Claire?”
She held his arm expertly. “Do you want me to bandage that properly—”
“No need,” said Bayard, steering Danny toward the door. “I have gauze pads and tape in my office.”
“I could use that drink. Jesus, I can’t believe I cut myself.” Danny cradled his right arm close to his chest. Slim-hipped and slightly built in just his T-shirt and jeans, he was no longer the imposing necromancer of Christopher Marlowe’s invention.
Out in the lobby, the theater was dark and cool. Two yellowed bulbs over the front door marked the exit to the city street. Bayard gave Claire another careful look as she stood at the base of the wide curving staircase that led up to the second floor mezzanine. She was taller than average and lean but strong, from lifting people on stretchers, he supposed. Her thick straw-colored hair, caught at the nape and falling in Botticelli ripples down her back, was lovely, and there was a certain charm to the dusting of freckles beneath those earnest blue eyes. But he had no time for such niceties. He held her gaze, willing her away. A moment later, she turned toward the exit, following the rest of the cast and crew.
Kit Bayard led his Faustus to the mezzanine, which housed a local ballet company’s rehearsal studio in a cavernous open room that occupied half the second floor. On the other side of the landing were the theater’s administration and wardrobe storage rooms. His own cramped office and apartment faced the busy street below.
Unlocking the door, he motioned Danny inside. A jumble of the business and the personal rubbed shoulders in the narrow room: modern executive-sized desk, rollaway bed covered in a green velvet spread, liquor cabinet the size of a small refrigerator, a carved high-backed chair that appeared to be the mate of the one onstage, bookcases along all four walls. Leather-bound volumes, piles of aging scripts, hundreds of playbooks from Aristophanes to Shakespeare to Pinter crowded the shelves. In the far wall, a narrow open door revealed a white-tiled bathroom.
“This is some place.” Danny sank down on the rollaway, his eyes wide.
“It’s my retreat,” said Bayard.
“Do you…live here, in the theater?”
“That I do.”
He went to the cabinet and took out a tarnished silver goblet and a bottle of Irish Mist, an intoxicating blend of whiskey, honey, and natural aromatic spices. Pouring three fingers’ worth into the goblet, he held it out. “Drink up. Steady your nerves.” He leaned against the desk and watched as Danny emptied the cup in a few gulps. “Another?”