Last Rites (Darkling Mage 6)

Asher nodded, but I grabbed his arm, needing to know. “Dad? And Mom? Are they safe?”

“Norm’s back home,” he said. “But Diana disappeared.” He nodded at my amulet. “She should be safe with you. If the shade separates too far from its tether, it can’t maintain its shape in the material world.”

“Excellent lecture, Mister Mayhew,” Carver said. “But now is not the time.”

“Thanks,” I told Asher. As long as I knew she was safe.

The rest of us stood back as Carver and Asher prepared their spell, their voices rising in an ancient, forgotten song above the dreadful hum of the portal.

Behind us, the normals were looking more agitated, their attention finally drawn away from the movie. Some were approaching the portal, phones whipped out to document the curiosity. From out of the trees and the bushes, more people winked into existence: Wings and Hounds sent from the Lorica for crowd control. Knowing Royce, he’d called in a team of Mouths to perform mind wipes as well.

The rift was spinning faster and faster, the black dot at its heart growing. I hated that it meant that they were coming, and that we never knew who was waiting to step through. In every case it always involved an unending mass of shrikes, but sometimes there was a bonus entity in the bargain, one of the Eldest. I tried to imagine the kind of creature that could make the terrible dirge song that assaulted my ears, and I shuddered.

As one, Carver and Asher slammed their open palms against the portal, and the worst came to pass: nothing happened.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Gil said.

“Not this shit again,” Sterling said, his hand at his hip, gripping the hilt of the electrified blade that Susanoo had gifted him.

No, it definitely looked like the same shit again. The only portals so resilient that Carver and Asher combined couldn’t shatter them were the ones that the Eldest themselves used to approach our world. One of their number was coming tonight, a member of their deranged pantheon.

“Not here,” I shouted. “Not now. We have to close this thing.”

“Or,” a woman’s voice whispered in my ear. “You could move it.”

Izanami grinned as I spun to face her, no doubt pleased once again at the small terror she’d coaxed out of me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The amulet you enchanted? The spell that I gave you. It is meant for sealing, for closing portals and gateways. A very clever thing, to use it as a key. Perhaps you can keep this door locked tight enough until you can transport it someplace else.” She looked around Heinsite Park, her tongue darting out to lick her lower lip. “Somewhere that isn’t full of so many witless innocents. So many lives for my kind to claim.”

I looked down at my amulet, at how its garnet was still glaring like a crimson eye. Transport the portal, huh? I held it out towards the rift, willing its closure, forcing my thoughts towards sealing, and breaking.

Brilliant tendrils of red light burst from the amulet. I gasped, but held it steady. Like strands of spider silk they wrapped around the portal, snaring and threading about of their own volition. Within seconds the rift was encased in a ruby cocoon.

“It worked,” I said, unable to keep the smile off my face. “I can’t believe it worked.”

“Not as precisely as we’d hoped,” Carver said, eyeing Izanami warily. “See how the magic isn’t holding? The rift is still spinning. Perhaps the goddess is right. We should move it if we can.”

I couldn’t even begin to imagine how that would work, but Carver had already laid one hand against the cocoon, ropes of amber fire crawling up his arm and across his fingers. In a flash, Royce appeared at the other end, gripping the cocoon himself.

Teleportation, then. I understood, and ran up to the rift. Who knew if we could pull this off – if it could even be done? But we had to try. I placed a hand on the imprisoned rift. The physics of it simply didn’t make sense – but in the arcane underground, did anything truly?

To either side of me, I heard Carver and Royce muttering incantations. I offered what I could: passage through the Dark Room. The only question was, where would we even take it?

“Not too far now,” Carver said, as if sensing my concerns. “But some place where innocents won’t be harmed.”

“Latham’s Cross,” Asher offered.

“Yes,” Izanami said. I hadn’t realized she was still with us. “Nothing but the dead. This would suit your purposes.”

The same place that Thea had been claimed as an offering by the Eldest. It only seemed fitting for us to bring another of their kind there, to slaughter it as it stepped out of the rift and into our reality.

I focused on the image of Latham’s Cross, ordering the Dark Room to obey, willing my body and mind to transfer the rift. Carver and Royce’s voices rose to a pitch, and a scorching blast of energy burst from the ground beneath the rift, swallowing us whole.

As my vision cleared, I saw where we were: headstones, crypts, mausoleums. We’d done it. Asher, Sterling, and Gil looked about them, dazed by the strained combination of such disparate schools of magic, but I knew they’d get their bearings back soon enough. We moved the rift, but we still had to deal with what it held within. And its song was going shriller. Louder.

“Excellent,” Carver said. “Now you have all the time you need to shut this infernal gateway. Do it, Dustin. Crush it. Splinter it to pieces.”