The Midnight Front--A Dark Arts Novel Read online

  9

  Another bolt of lightning flared against Cade’s shield of REJECH. The bolt raised the hairs on his arm. He circled left to keep Adair in front of him, and relied on SATHARIEL’s disorienting 360-degree vision to watch for minor spirits under the master’s control that might appear behind him.

  Adair taunted, “Don’t hold back, you gutless prat!”

  “I’m not.” He threw a jet of fire at his master, who dodged it with ease. Then he launched a fireball, only to see it be absorbed into Adair’s demonic shield.

  The master cracked a knowing grin. “How’s your head?”

  Cade grimaced. “Same as yesterday.” In truth, it was worse. The pounding in his noggin was half hangover, half demonic malice. He was sure that one morning soon his skull would split open, his pulverized brain would spill out, and he’d be grateful for the release.

  Electricity leapt from Adair’s hand, struck Cade’s shield with enough force to knock him back a step, then ricocheted off the keep’s stone walls.

  “Concentrate! Shields don’t just deflect. They can also scatter, absorb, and bounce back.”

  “I can send your attacks back at you?”

  “Or scatter them into a group of enemies. Trust me, that can be handy.” Sparks danced on Adair’s fingertips. “En garde.” He threw a fistful of lightning at Cade.

  Racing to keep pace with the mock duel, Cade let his imagination run free. He pictured his shield reflecting the incoming burst, then summoned a wall of flames between himself and Adair. The lightning ball rebounded off Cade’s shield and shot back, through the fire, straight at Adair. Using the Sight, Cade saw the reflected attack knock the master off his feet. With a thought, Cade banished the flame wall.

  He smiled at his supine mentor. “Like that?”

  “Exactly.” Adair looked pleased as he rose and slapped mud and snow from his coat and britches. “You learn fast. Pairing a bounced attack with a wall of fire as a distraction—very smart. Tonight you’ll yoke a few more spirits. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to combine their powers. Putting XAPHAN’s fire on VAELBOR’s weapons, for instance.” Perhaps noting a change in Cade’s expression, he frowned in concern. “What’s the matter, lad?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.” Cade had never had much use for self-pity—not in prep school, not at Oxford, not now. He pretended that his head didn’t ache as if it were trapped in a vise, and that his guts weren’t churning from heartburn and diarrhea, all of it demonically induced. “How many spirits am I yoking tonight?”

  Despite Cade’s feigned confidence, Adair clearly sensed something was amiss. “Been a long time since I was an apprentice, but it’s not something one forgets.” He struck a sympathetic note. “How’ve you been sleeping?”

  “Like shit.”

  “Nightmares?”

  “Not every night. Just when I sleep.”

  “Whisky’s not helping?”

  “I ran out a few—” He raised his shield to absorb Adair’s surprise lightning attack and funneled its energy into himself to mitigate his fatigue.

  The master gave an approving nod. “You’ve learned not to drop your guard.”

  Cade touched his chest. “I still have the scars from your first two lessons.”

  “The words you seek are ‘thank you.’” He tilted his head toward the steps to the keep. “’Senough for today. Let’s head in, get supper, find you another bottle of Oban.” He started up, but Cade lingered in the courtyard. After a few steps, Adair turned. “I know that look. Something else is on your mind. Out with it.”

  It was hard for Cade to overcome his self-consciousness. “It’s Anja.”

  “Had another one of her turns, did she?”

  “She talks like she wants me dead.”

  “Bothers you, does it?”

  “It does if you expect me to go into combat with her. How can I trust her to have my back when it’s obvious she hates my guts?”

  A weary frown. “It’ll pass.” Under his breath he added, “I hope.”

  “Niko and Stefan said that, too. But what if it doesn’t? That’s a lot to take on faith.”

  “Listen to me: You can trust her. Anja’s nothing if not loyal. You will never have an ally as trustworthy or as brave as her. On that, I give you my word.”

  His assurance satisfied Cade. “All right.” Wind off the loch sent a shiver down his spine. “As for yoking more demons—you got anything stronger than scotch?”

  Adair cocked a ragged eyebrow. “You mean like opium?”

  “Do you have any?”

  “A wee bit. But I don’t plan on giving it to you.”

  The bait and switch irritated Cade. “Why not?”

  “I’m saving it.” He plodded up the steps to the keep, with Cade close behind. “Yoke six spirits and you can crack on with absinthe. If you want laudanum in your cocktail”—he shot a smile over his shoulder—“show me you can yoke nine.”

  * * *

  Morning arrived too early for Cade, as it always had. He was roused by voices from the keep’s second floor. Groggy, he considered returning to sleep until he remembered the date: Stefan and Niko were leaving that morning. He got up, dressed in a hurry, and scrambled down the spiral stairs, hoping to catch them before they left.

  All the doors on the second floor were closed save the one at the end of the corridor, the room beneath Cade’s. He moved closer and recognized Stefan’s courtesy and Niko’s chiding.

  “Mon Dieu! How long does it take to pack a bag?”

  “Longer with criticism than without, I should think.”

  Cade stood outside the half-open door. The room looked much like his; it had the same floor plan, but the window was farther to the left, near the wardrobe alcove, and had a deeper sitting area with a pair of padded benches that faced each other. Niko was splayed across an armchair in the corner, one leg draped over an arm. His overcoat and scarf were piled in his lap. “Perhaps you hope to postpone our departure? Until summer, for instance?”

  “I will soon be done.” Stefan stood at the foot of his bed, his back to Niko as he folded a pair of suit pants and then rolled them up.

  From behind the door came Anja’s voice, surprising Cade. “Not everyone packs a bag the way a butcher stuffs a sausage, Niko.”

  “Maybe they should. It is faster than this, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Faster it may be.” Stefan pushed the rolled-up trousers into his shoulder bag, then started folding a dress shirt. “But I would rather be slow than live as a walking wrinkle.”

  Anja laughed, and Niko stuck his tongue out at her. Then he noticed Cade and beckoned him with a long sweep of his arm. “Entrez-vous!”

  Stefan and Anja turned toward the doorway as Cade stepped into the room. The young Dutchman greeted Cade with a dip of his chin, but Anja regarded him with suspicion. Unsure what to do or say, Cade lifted his hand in a halfhearted wave. “Morning.”

  “Goedemorgen,” Stefan said.

  Cade looked at Niko’s duffel, then Stefan’s bag. “Leaving without breakfast?”

  “We ate before dawn,” Niko said.

  A sympathetic nod from Stefan. “Master Adair has us on strict schedules.” He packed his last shirt and then laid his folded neckties atop his impeccably folded clothes. Cade noticed the ties were ordered by color, from brightest to darkest.

  Anja drifted into the wardrobe nook and stared out a window.

  Cade watched Stefan close his bag. “Where’s he sending you?”

  Stefan sighed. “The master loaned a grimoire to a circle of Kabbalah masters in Poland. He has charged me with securing its safe return.”

  “And I,” Niko said, “am to find shelter in Paris, then set to work destroying all Thule covens in the zone libre.” He checked his watch, glanced at Stefan’s bag, and cleared his throat. “If I can get to France before the war ends, that is.”

  “Enough. I am ready.” Stefan picked up his overcoat and hat from the bed. The gray fedora he settled onto his head; his coat he draped ove
r his arm. Niko groaned as he got out of the chair and shuffled into his winter coat and scarf.

  Their imminent departure coaxed Anja out of the wardrobe. She moved to Stefan’s side and clutched his arms, prelude to an embrace. “Be safe. And come back to me.” She hugged him and pressed her head to his chest. He hugged her with equal affection.

  Stefan let her go and stepped back. “I will miss you, Anja. Be well until we meet again.”

  She pushed a stray lock of his hair into place, then straightened his tie. “You, too.” She aimed a faux scowl at Niko. “And you: Stay out of trouble!”

  “But that is where all the fun is!” Anja lifted her hand to smack him. He retreated, and she chased him, both of them laughing like children. She got in one last good slap before he grabbed his duffel and hurried out of range. “Arrêter! I already have a sister!”

  Niko followed Stefan to the door. They paused at the threshold and turned to face Cade. Despite the Dutchman’s relative youth, there was a calm wisdom in his eyes. “You have much to look forward to, my friend. Adair is a fine master, and you will find no better guide to the Art than Anja. Soon you will find the world is made of wonders.”

  Niko added, “Just take care those wonders do not kill you.”

  The older apprentice waved away Niko’s pessimism, then shook Cade’s hand. “Feel no fear. The universe shall bend to your will.” A conspiratorial gleam. “And it will be beautiful.”

  He let go of Cade’s hand and led Niko out of the room and down the hall to the stairs. Cade stood in the doorway, watching them leave. As they rounded the corner at the end of the T, he felt the weight of Anja’s stare. He looked at her. The sisterly affection she had shown to Niko and Stefan was gone, replaced by an unforgiving aspect. “You could not even let me have this to myself.” She shouldered past him and disappeared down the hall.

  He noted her departure with dread.

  She’s gonna kick my ass worse than ever.

  * * *

  The passage out of Eilean Donan Castle was short and steeped in shadow. Daylight bled in from the courtyard on one side and from the outside world on the other. Stefan walked ahead of Niko, his bag tucked close behind his shoulder. This was the first time in five years that either of them had left Eilean Donan for anything other than a short jaunt out. Ahead of them, the castle’s three-arch stone bridge stretched east toward the mainland.

  Adair’s voice echoed through the passage behind them. “Wait!”

  They turned to see their master hurry out of the castle. He wore a patchwork flatcap, a dingy overcoat, and a long scarf decorated with his clan’s red-and-black tartan pattern. His shoes crunched on the gravel as he caught up to them. “I can’t believe I almost let you go without these.” He reached into his coat’s pockets and pulled out two small metal hand mirrors. He handed one to each of them. “Both made in Hell. They’ll never break unless you want them to.”

  Niko admired his mirror. “Very nice. What are its control words?”

  “Hold it and say ‘fenestra,’ then the name of the person you want to talk to. Stefan, if you want to talk to Niko, say his name. If you want to speak to him and me, say both our names. To close it, say ‘velarium.’”

  Stefan turned his mirror over and saw the glyph etched on its back: the sigil of HAEL, a spirit that served as an Infernal messenger. “Magickal radio.”

  “Better. Just like my large mirror, we can pass small objects between them. Anything that can fit between its edges—a key, a note, a bullet. They work over any distance, and they’re immune to eavesdropping.” He rested his hands on the men’s shoulders. “Do not let the enemy capture them, and never tell anyone the control words. Unlocked and plumbed with the right charm, one of these could let Kein spy my every move. If you think there’s even the slightest risk he or his people might get their hands on your mirror, hold it in your left hand and say ‘discutio.’ Think you lads can remember that?”

  Niko tucked his mirror inside his coat. “Fenestra, velarium, discutio. Simple enough.”

  “Thank you, Master.” Stefan opened his bag just enough to slip the unbreakable magick mirror inside, then zipped it shut. “I’ll contact you in a fortnight, as agreed.”

  “Watch your steps, both of you. Europe might seem familiar, but under Nazi control it is terra incognita, I guarantee it.” Adair spread his hands in a gesture of blessing. “Let the wind be at your backs, and may the hand of God stand between you and harm.”

  Stefan and Niko overlapped each other as they answered, “Thank you, Master.”

  Adair waved to the two men as they turned away and walked over the bridge. They were halfway across when Stefan heard the gears of the castle’s portcullis, followed by the ringing of iron against stone as the barred gate dropped into place over the main entrance.

  He glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were alone, then said quietly to Niko, “Thank you for not telling Adair my secret.”

  “The truth would have done more harm than good.”

  As a specialist in divination and truth magick, Niko had long ago discerned Stefan’s hidden agenda, the personal mission he intended to pursue while he worked to recover the Iron Codex for Adair: Stefan’s lover, Evert Siever, was one of the Kabbalah students who had gone missing and silent after the Nazis’ invasion of Poland in September 1939.

  The master would not have sent me to find the Codex had he known how urgently I need to find Evert. How many times had Adair railed against the folly of risking many lives to save one? It was a lecture all his adepts endured sooner or later: the cold arithmetic of wartime moral calculus was a lesson of which Adair seemed never to tire.

  At the end of the bridge, Niko offered Stefan his hand. “Here we part ways.”

  Stefan pulled Niko into a tight embrace and fought the urge to shed tears. “You have been my good friend, Niko Le Beau. I shall never forget you.”

  “We will meet again, when this is over.” He slapped Stefan’s back, a hearty affirmation of their camaraderie. They faced each other. “And you will find him.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Love, eh? It will not be denied! Trust me. Love is stronger than hate. It is the wellspring of hope. And hope will carry us.” He kissed Stefan’s cheeks in that rough but affectionate way only the French can commit with panache. “God be with you, brother.”

  There was nothing left to say. Stefan watched Niko walk west toward Broadford, from whence he would seek passage to France. Meanwhile, a boat had been summoned to meet Stefan in Inverness, and from there it would carry him to Europe by way of Malmō, in neutral Sweden.

  Stefan walked east. He feared that Adair’s warning would prove prescient. There was no telling what the Nazis and their cult of overzealous amateur magicians—the Thule-Gesellschaft, or Thule Society—had wrought in Europe. Stefan’s inner pessimist feared he might not recognize places he once had called home. The Nazis had made no secret of their anti-Semitic rhetoric in the years leading up to their invasion of Poland. He feared it could only have grown worse in the years since he had left the Netherlands to study with Adair, and the loss of contact with the Kabbalah masters seemed to confirm his most dire suspicions.

  As for what would come of the master’s new adept—who could say? Cade had seemed unremarkable when first they had brought him to the castle. Just a youth frozen in the stone grip of death, more a likeness of a person than a flesh-and-blood human being. Yet the master had been willing to defy heads of state and postpone many of his own grand designs for the war in order to bring that one young man back from the edge of oblivion.

  Mine is not to question, Stefan reminded himself. I am a soldier, and I have my orders.

  His feet carried him eastward, toward an appointment long overdue and a quest too long delayed. He knew his duty was to find Adair’s missing grimoire, but in his heart, he knew his courage served only one objective: to find Evert and spirit him to safety, at any cost.

  Niko’s words echoed in his memory.

  Lov
e, eh? It will not be denied.

  10

  Knee-deep in snow on the lowest portion of the island, beneath the crenellated seawall, Anja focused on shattering large stones with a demonic whip, then melting the fragments in midair with blasts of hellfire. A single stone caromed off the wall of the keep’s guardhouse and ricocheted over the lower seawall toward the loch. She split the fist-sized piece of falling rock with one arrow from the bow of LERAIKAH.

  A voice at her back halted her practice: “Nice shooting.”

  The master shed his invisibility and faded into view, hovering a few feet above the ground. Anja sulked at the intrusion. “I could have killed you.”

  “Fat chance. But I’m glad you care.” He drifted to the ground. His feet sank into the churned-up snow. “Up with the sun, are you?”

  “I never went to bed.”

  The master nodded in understanding. “Can’t sleep?”

  “Not for a few nights.” She massaged her right temple, then looked his way. “And yes, I tried absinthe. And no, I don’t want the opium.”

  “You’ve got eight spirits yoked. A touch o’ the poppy could take the edge off.”

  Anja shook her head. “It does bad things to me. And it took me weeks to quit last time.” She studied Adair. “This is not what you came to discuss.”

  “No.” He seemed uncomfortable. “You’re supposed to help me train Cade.”

  She searched the grounds for a new target against which to unleash her fury. “He does not need my help.”

  With an invisible hand, the master spun her to face him. “I need to know I can trust you in battle.”

  The implications of his demand stung her. “How can you ask me that? After all I have done? All I have lost? You would question my loyalty?”

  “I don’t fear for myself, lass. I’m worried you won’t protect him.”

  Her denial soured into contempt. “Let him save his own skin.”

  “Not good enough, my dear.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I—” He stopped himself, regrouped. “Because we need him. And he needs us.” He trudged through the snow to hold Anja by her shoulders. “This is bigger than you, or me. Cade’s our best hope of winning this war—but not if we fail him.”