AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Prudence just kept walking.
Chapter 12
“I can’t believe she’s keeping us in suspense like this,” Bastion mumbled. His mouth was pushed into the collar of his leather jacket, his voice muffled. Couldn’t blame him, it was cold in the alley. “She’s doing this on purpose, I bet.”
I shrugged and shook my head. “She wanted us to scout ahead and make sure the pigeon was here.” I nudged the dead bird with my toe. It was rock hard, from both rigor mortis and the chill of the pavement. “Which reminds me.”
I fired off a quick text message to let Prudence know we’d found the tether. She had sent us ahead to look over the pigeon and make sure that it wouldn’t move again. I took that to mean that she was worried about a cat coming across it and carrying it off. I wasn’t exactly sure how that would work out – what would even happen to an animal that ate an entity’s tether? – but at least we’d secured the damn thing.
My skin crawled as I heard tiny paws scuttling in the dark corners of the alley. Ah. So we arrived just before the scavengers did. I kicked at the ground, scuffing my heels loudly, just to scare the rats away from the pigeon. Valero’s rodents really had gone unhinged since Resheph’s death. I reached for my phone, trying to distract myself from the squirming march of glistening, furry bodies ducking in and out of dumpsters.
There was already a notification on my screen. “K” was all that Prudence wrote in her text. Typical. We all knew she was efficient, almost surgically so, but I would have appreciated more information. She’d gone to do the reagent shopping herself, doubtless to get Bastion to stop whining about the puppy. I offered to go with her, but it became clear quite quickly that she meant for me to distract him while she went about collecting what we needed.
“Not a puppy,” he said again.
Sorry, not distract. I think babysit would have been the right word
. I sighed.
“Listen. I’m as against the idea as you are, but if that’s what we need to do to get the job done – ”
My words hung in the air. I couldn’t say it. I had been more dedicated to my work for the Lorica than I had been to virtually anything else in my life, more than my shitty treatment of my high school education, and certainly more than any of the odd jobs I picked up after. But a dog?
Hell, a lamb, for that matter? Where was Prudence even going to find either one of those at midnight in Valero? And that wasn’t even the point. I realized that part of casting the circle to enter an entity’s domicile or to even attract its attention involved sacrifice. The offerings, like the fortune cookie Thea crumbled, or the drop of blood. They were necessary components for completing the ritual, for closing the circle.
But I still had my limits. “Okay. Fine. I’m with you. Are we sure about what we’re doing here? I mean, a puppy.”
“Stop,” Bastion groaned. “But yes. It’s worse with some of the others. These are ancient gods we’re talking about, remember? Some of them – some of them expect more, um, exotic sacrifices.”
Bumps rose everywhere on my skin, and I can tell you that it wasn’t because of the cold. “Go on,” I said.
He studiously avoided my gaze. “You know how it is. How it was. We don’t work with those kinds of entities. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just that some of the more ancient cultures, certain pantheons, they expect something bigger. Something bloodier.”
“Certain pantheons. Right.” I wanted to know. I needed to know if that was why I’d been killed, if I was meant to be a sacrifice for a being that, according to Thea, was worse than an entity in every way. “Certain pantheons – or the Eldest.”
“Dude, shut up.” Bastion bared his teeth as he shushed me, his breath hissing out of him in a puff of fog. “What are you, crazy? Who told you about that shit?”
“Thea,” I said hurriedly. “Those people who killed me, what if they did it for a purpose? To commune with the Eldest?”
Bastion frowned. “That’s batshit insane and you know it, Graves. You don’t ‘commune’ with the Eldest. You make contact, you die. And that’s if you’re lucky.” He walked up to me, uncomfortably close, his stare menacing. “You could be driven insane just from the sight of them. Or warped – I’m talking proper mutated, and turned into their plaything – just a sculpture made out of flesh and bone. And you can’t move, but you see them always, your eyes unblinking. You live forever. You scream forever.”
I stiffened myself, forcing the tremble out of my limbs. “How the hell do you know that?”
“It’s what they do,” Bastion murmured. “It’s what they are. Get it out of your head, Graves. Never. Mention. The Eldest. Again.”
A sound of movement at the mouth of the alley caused me to jerk – but it was only Prudence, her boots scuffing the ground as she walked towards us.
“Not another word,” Bastion hissed.
I nodded at him, then at Prudence, and as she approached I sighed in relief. All she had in her hand was a paper bag. There was no way she could fit a puppy and a lamb in there. But without those offerings, would the casting still work?
“We’ll have to make do,” Prudence said, as if sensing my question. She pushed the paper bag into my hands and dug into her pockets for a little box of chalk. “And you cast the circle this time. About time you learned to do it yourself.”
She was right. If I wanted to prove my worth to the Lorica, I needed to be able to do things on my own. I couldn’t help feel a thrill, that this would be some of the first real magic I’d ever perform, shadowstepping aside. But I didn’t know where to start. Eh. Monkey see, monkey do.
“Funny, isn’t it?” I said. “And convenient, how all these gods have their tethers in Valero. I mean, what makes us so important? Why do they come here?”
“Actually,” Prudence said, “the gods have multiple tethers, everywhere, mainly places with larger magical populations. That’s probably why they’re so grumpy all the time. Imagine living in a house that had six front doors, and people were always knocking on all of them.”
