Page 144 of Hell Bent

“I’m going to burn the life out of you,” he said happily. “I’m going to eat … you … up.”

His teeth were growing in his mouth, long and yellowing. On the stairs beside them, Darlington’s body was a charred hulk. He looked like the pictures of people in Pompeii, curled in on themselves as the world turned to ash. Too late. No one could come back from that.

But then she realized the jeweled yoke was gone.

His markings began to glow, light shining through the cracks of his burned flesh. Again Alex tasted honey on her tongue.

Anselm hissed, and she saw blue flame racing up his hands, his arms, engulfing him in fire. Her fire. Hellfire. How? It had only existed in the demon realm before.

He shrieked and drew back, seeming to flicker before her, his shape shifting, and she knew she was glimpsing his true form, something clawed and strange, its bones set at odd angles.

“Golgarot.” That growl from Darlington again, but this time she understood the demon name.

The thing that towered over her on the stairs was both more and less like Darlington. His voice sounded right, the echo gone, but horns still curled back from his temples, and his body looked too big, not entirely human. His markings had changed too. The symbols were gone, but there were golden bands around his wrists and neck and ankles.

“Murderer!” shouted Anselm, as his body twitched and pulsed beneath his suit. “Liar! Matricide! You—”

He didn’t get another word out. Darlington seized Anselm in his massive hands and lifted him off his feet. With a single, furious snarl, he tore Anselm in two.

The demon’s flesh gave way as if it were paper, dissolving into a mass of wriggling maggots.

Alex sprang back.

Darlington’s body seemed to shift again, retracting. The horns vanished, the golden bands. He looked mortal. He stood there for a moment, gazing at Anselm’s remains, then turned and started up the stairs.

“Darlington?” Alex stammered. “I … Where are you going?”

“To get some clothes, Stern,” he said, climbing the steps and leaving bloody footprints behind. “A man can spend only so much time without trousers on before he begins to feel like a deviant.”

Alex stared up at him, one hand on the banister. The gentleman of Lethe had returned.

Doom Sparrow (also Bloodfinch or Black-Winged Harbinger); family Passeridae

Provenance: Nepal; date of origin unknown

Donor: St. Elmo, 1899

Whether these sparrows were bred or enchanted, or developed their unique traits in the wild is unknown. The first were identified circa 700 when a sparrow colony took up residence in a mountain village, the population of which subsequently poisoned themselves in an act of mass suicide. World population of the bird is also unknown, but at least twelve exist in captivity.

Notes on care and feeding: The sparrow is kept in a state of magical stasis but should be fed weekly, at which time it should be allowed to fly or its wings will atrophy. It prefers dark, cold spaces and will become lethargic in sunlight. When tending to the sparrow, keep your ear passages blocked with wax or cotton. Failure to do so may result in listlessness, depression, or, in the case of prolonged exposure, death.

See also the Tyneside Canary and Manuscript’s Queen-Moon Nightingale.

Gifted by St. Elmo, who believed they were acquiring a Cloud-Beaked Harbinger, notable for its ability to predict storms in its flight patterns.

—from the Lethe Armory Catalogue as revised and edited by Pamela Dawes, Oculus

Has no one noticed that the societies “gift” Lethe with all of the magic they deem too unsafe or too worthless for their own collections? The leavings, the disasters, the mistakes, the worn-out artifacts and unpredictable objects. Though our armory may represent one of the greatest repositories of magic housed at a university, it also has the dubious distinction of being the most hazardous.

—Lethe Days Diary of Raymond Walsh-Whiteley (Silliman College ’78)

37

Darlington had been asleep and in his dreams he’d been a monster. But now he was awake and brutally cold. And maybe a monster still.

He made his way up the steps, dimly aware that he was leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind him. His own blood. Anselm had no blood to leave. He’d broken in half as if he were filled with sawdust, a facsimile of a man. Each step made a drumbeat: anger, desire, anger, desire. He wanted to fuck. He wanted to fight. He wanted to sleep for a thousand years.

Darlington knew that at some point he would have been embarrassed that he was naked. But maybe he’d spent so long in two places at once that his modesty had gotten lost somewhere in between. He didn’t want to see the damage he’d done to the ballroom. In fact, after so long in captivity, he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to see the ballroom again. Instead he headed directly to his bedroom on the third floor.