Endless Knight (Darkling Mage 9)

“I didn’t either,” Vanitas groaned. “How much onion is in here? How much garlic? I’m dying, Dust. I must be dying.”

I shadowstepped all the way from the dumpster back home to the Boneyard, partly to get Vanitas to stop whining so much. It was safer to be off the streets at night, anyway, not that I really had anything to be afraid of anymore. Not thugs, not demons, not entities. I swallowed thickly as I reappeared in the Boneyard and headed for Carver’s offices. Nothing bothered me anymore. Nothing but Agatha Black, and the Eldest.

“Oh my God,” Gil growled from all the way down the corridor. “What the – did you just bring home like an entire bag of raw onions? Dust, what did you do?”

“Oh my God,” I echoed, growing more irritated when I found him with his hand clapped over his nose. “It’s just some leftovers. But I think I might have grabbed the wrong bag. They tossed a whole bunch of raw onion and garlic in there. Like a lot of it. Maybe it was going bad, I don’t know, but how can you even smell when it’s – ”

“Oh my God,” Sterling shouted. “Who the hell is trying to murder me in here? You can’t kill me with garlic. Many have tried, you sons of bitches, and – oh. It’s just you.”

Sterling folded his arms across his chest, the wind knocked out of him by the sight of me. I narrowed my eyes at him, trying not to get any angrier, because I didn’t want either of us to continue having this weird, stupid fight.

“Can the two of you really smell that?” I said. “It’s in an entirely different dimension, guys, how could you possibly – ”

“Gods above and below, Dustin, what toxic hell have you brought into our home?”

Carver came storming out of one of the corridors, his fingers pinched across his nose, Banjo nipping at his heels.

I scratched the back of my neck. “Maybe my sense of smell is just really, really terrible.”

“Get me the hell out of here,” Vanitas shouted.

I flipped open my backpack, dodging out of the way as Vanitas sped out of his dimension, a greenish-gold blur desperate to get out of his onion-y cavern. I got a whiff of garlic as he flew out, and yeah, okay. They weren’t exaggerating.

“The good news,” Carver said, “is that part of the food you’ve collected will be consumed as we summon your devilish little friend. The bad news is that it will take the rest of my immortal life to scrub the smell of so much garlic and onion out of my undead respiratory system.”

“Everyone here is a drama queen,” I said, my eyes watering as I extracted the bag of what I was beginning to understand really was just raw onions and garlic, followed by the bag of bread. Banjo sniffed at one, then the other, then retched before he trotted off to push his face into his bowl of water. I shook my head. “No exceptions. Everyone.”

Chapter 9

Asher and Mason came down the corridor from our living area. Asher was probably doing a better job of hiding his dismay, but Mason winced the very moment he stepped onto the platform that held Carver’s office.

“Oh,” Mason said. “Oh wow. We should – we should get this over with as soon as possible.”

“Agreed,” Asher said, coughing as politely as he could into his hand. “I’ll do the honors.”

He collected a piece of chalk from somewhere in Carver’s desk drawers, quickly and expertly drawing out a makeshift summoning circle on the ground, tracing it around the twin bags of leftovers I’d collected. Mason hauled over the third bag, the one from Mama Rosa’s restaurant, then produced a glowing golden knife from the palm of his hand, summoning it from the Vestments. I bit my tongue, holding back a comment about how frigging cool I still found it that he could conjure just about any weapon he could borrow from heaven’s armory.

Huh. Which gave me an idea. I studied him as he slit each of the garbage bags open, his free hand covering his mouth and his nose. We did need a sword from the celestials to complete the Apotheosis. Mason was probably our key for that. One down, I thought. Actually, with Vanitas, that was two down, and if Scrimshaw gave us the information we needed, it’d be three swords down, and only two to go.

“We’d better get this started,” Gil said, his eyes puffy, his T-shirt pulled halfway up his torso and covering his mouth. “I can’t take this much longer.”

I couldn’t judge. Poor guy had werewolf senses even in his human form, after all. Fine. I went down on my knees, holding my hand out to Mason, who immediately understood. He took my hand, then carefully cut a shallow, surgical line into the tip of my finger. My blood dripped into the circle, hissing as it fell onto the stone.

I closed my eyes, prepared to intone the market

ing copy I’d long ago memorized off of the back of Snacky Yum-Yum packages, when the smell of onions and garlic was instantly overpowered by the horrific stench of farts. I didn’t even get the first word of my incantation out, stumbling back as I coughed, desperate to clear the repulsive odor out of my lungs.

“Oh my God,” Sterling cried out. “This is so much worse.”

My eyes flew open to find Scrimshaw, the misshapen little bronze imp, already swimming through the humongous pile of leftovers we’d acquired for him. Mercifully, just as Carver said, the ritual had consumed the smellier bits of the imp’s meal in a merrily burning arcane fire, which had the lovely side effect of keeping the food nice and toasty for Scrimshaw’s benefit. He was doing some very indecent things to a stale baguette when I finally got myself together and cleared my throat.

“Scrimshaw,” I said. “Dude. Scrimshaw. Stop it. Stop that.”

“Hmm,” he moaned, finding a pile of longganisa – Filipino sausages – to do further awful things with.

“By the gods, imp, pull yourself together,” Carver barked.

Scrimshaw paused midway through molesting a cream-filled donut. He looked gingerly around himself, his metallic eyes reflecting the glow of the summoning fires. He blinked once, then gave us a toothy, impish grin.