Endless Knight (Darkling Mage 9)

Mason sprang off the floor then, sticking his hands in his pockets then traipsing off down the corridor leading back to the common area. It was hard trying to think back to what bugged me about him so much when we first met, though I suppose I could have said that of many of the friends and allies I’d made in the arcane underground, even the entities. What started with fear and hatred turned into solidarity, whether out of convenience or actual affection.

“So you do think of us with affection?”

My blood ran cold, though no colder than the skin and flesh of the hand that had looped itself around my wrist. I stared in rapt horror at the wetness of it, how it had emerged directly out of – out of Banjo’s dog bowl, of all things. I wanted to scream, but nothing came out of my throat.

“Don’t be afraid, fleshling,” the voice said again, this time from my other ear. I gritted my teeth, squeezed my eyes shut, then steadied my breathing. When I opened my eyes again, there she was, all three of her, one copy sitting to either side of me, the other clambering slickly, wetly, impossibly from out of Banjo’s dog bowl, like some hellish apparition from a well.

The third copy of the goddess slithered her body whole from out of the bowl, then arranged herself on the ground in front of me, smoothing down her dress, squeezing water out of her hair. She was drenched, like she’d actually gone swimming. I refused to even attempt to make sense of the physics of it all – as with most things when it came to understanding Hecate and the vagaries of her magic, that meant taking a sharp turn down the road to madness.

My fingers dug into the stone floor beneath me as I calmed myself. “There are far less terrifying ways to make your presence felt, Hecate.”

“Ah,” Hecate said, three voices speaking out of three grinning mouths. “But we like this way. This way is fun, fleshling.”

“Not fun for me, it isn’t.”

Hecate tittered, then her face fell, her expression more serious. “We are here for a reason, Dustin Graves. Do you remember our last conversation, when we told you of the little things you must do to win your battle?”

“The little sacrifices,” I said, the word like bitter, rotting flesh on my tongue.

“Yes,” she said. “It is time to decide. We can tell you such stories, show you such horrors. We can tell you all about the ritual, fleshling, all about the things you will need to ascend.”

There was the word again. Ascend. Just the sound of it made my insides tremble, set my flesh quivering, my blood at once turning to ice and shooting through my veins with curious, excitable fire. Slowly, I nodded.

“Tell me,” I said to her. “Tell me everything.”

Hecate spoke. As she told me her stories, as she shared the ritual, my heart swelled with terror, then awe, then despair.

Yet above all things, despite it all – my heart filled with hope.

Chapter 6

“Tell me everything,” Carver said. “Everything she said.”

I sighed. “Where do I even begin?”

I wasn’t sure how long I stayed in that little alcove under Carver’s desk, how much time transpired between Hecate leaving me to my thoughts and Carver coming home to the Boneyard to discover me still huddled there. It felt safe, like a place of security for me, compared to the vast, cold emptiness of the Boneyard. Carver was the closest thing to a father I had, a proxy for Norman Graves. In some sad, pathetic way, just the presence of his desk, its enormous jewels, had shrouded me with the warmth of something like a blanket.

But it wasn’t where he wanted to converse with me, for some reason. Every single grave and serious discussion we’d ever had was conducted at the same desk, always with the strange, business-like air of contractual magic, of the exchange and interplay of power. When Carver gently pulled me to my feet, when he quietly asked if I would like to join him for a coffee, I knew he wasn’t speaking to me as my boss or my mentor. He was speaking to me as family.

I didn’t even mind when Carver swept wordlessly into the living area and gestured for Sterling to come with us. And for whatever else Sterling’s arrogance and terrible attitude brought him, he was fiercely loyal when it came to the matter of Carver, and I liked to think, when it came to me as well. If Carver called, Sterling would split heaven and earth to answer, to follow. And as much as Sterling loved to tease and torment me, I knew he would do the same, for me, for any of the boys of the Boneyard.

Asher and Mason didn’t even protest this time, when Carver arranged Sterling and me into a tight circle, then cast a teleportation spell. He took us to a coffee shop somewhere near Central Square. We sat at an outdoor table, somewhere that gave us a full view of Lorica headquarters, that squat, nondescript – okay, extremely ugly building that served as a disguise for the most powerful magical organization in the Americas.

Sterling sat hunched over a tiny, untouched espresso in its own adorable little demitasse. He fidgeted with his lighter in one hand, the steady, incessant click-clack of it once an annoyance, but now an oddly comforting rhythm, its metal case flashing in the coffee shop’s moody lighting. I could tell that Sterling was avoiding my gaze. I wanted to know why, but knew that I already had the answer, anyway.

Carver blew across the top of his own Americano – a practiced gesture, as far as I was concerned, because he was immune to any kind of damage that boiling hot coffee could inflict on seemingly fleshy, vulnerable human lips and organs. It was sweet, in a way, how Carver had deigned to listen to me and the rest of the boys, to find ways to blend in with humanity. He took a tentative sip, then set his cup down, his saucer clattering.

“The Apotheosis,” I said. “That was what Hecate called it.”

I dipped the end of my finger into the latticework of caramel across the top of my macchiato, sucking on the little dollop of rich, sticky sugar. To my surprise, it made me elicit a tiny, approving moan of delight. It was the little things, you know? The little things between everyday life and the end of all existence – or at least of mine.

“The Apotheosis,” Carver repeated. “As I recall, Hecate once told you that the Coven of One was a ritual of her own design. Curious, how the goddess of magic has so many of these stockpiled among her secrets.”

“It’s that giant book of hers,” I said. “The Enchiridion. She’s a goddess of magic, of mysteries. It’s like she takes pleasure in seeing people pull off her rituals, like it feeds her, in a way. I don’t know that it makes her stronger, but it certainly makes her happy. And whatever it is, the Apotheosis is meant to – to change me, too.

To help me ascend.”

“Is that what the Apotheosis is supposed to do to you, then?” Sterling said, his words flecked with more than a little bitterness, a slight edge of anger. He still wouldn’t look at me. “Twist you and corrupt you so that we don’t even recognize you anymore?”