I stood quickly, shoving the table back from myself. “Carmine used that angelic seal to do… something. Yuri used it to find me.” I spoke aloud, knowing Kutkha could hear me, even if I hadn’t heard him. “It’s still active, isn’t it? The seal?”
My Neshamah stirred uncomfortably. My sense of his presence was as gradual as the dawn, but I felt his answer. Yes. There were no words, but it felt apprehensive.
“So, in theory, you could trace it back to the mage that is using it to spy.” I paced agitatedly, an angular course around the small kitchen. “If I draw a summon circle and focus the ritual through something with a Phitonic charge—the Wardbreaker, my father’s hammer or something—I could summon it. Summon it and find him and kill him.”
“We could be deceived,” Kutkha said, after a time. “As I told you. There are no angels, only demons. The creatures and substance of GOD are physical. They cannot be summoned. Demons are formed of the cesspool to which all human minds contribute. They hold dark things—all dark things of which you could conceive. NOthings.”
“I know where they come from. I know it’s a risk.” I breathed in, out, and tried to relax on my feet. “But I am a ritualist, Kutkha. If there’s any place I’m strong, it’s ritual.”
“All summoning is Pravamancy. You will tear a hole in yourself. That is how they are called. You tear a hole. You must hope that you can fill it in once it is done.”
I went to the freezer and pulled out the chalice. It had been days without a water change, and the ice was brown and crumbly, like rust. “If I don’t, we’re dead anyway. If I have nothing to show, Sergei will shoot me like a dog on the street. Don’t you know what he’s like?”
Kutkha nearly said something. I felt him, the pressure of his intent—but he held back. Hiding something, from me? “Very well. If you fail, you will go mad. You know not what you do.”
It was the truth, but I was already on my way to the door. “No. Not really… but I’m about to find out.”
Chapter 17
It took at least an hour to prepare a full circle. There was a particular setup illustrated in the grimoire where I’d found the sigil—the main circle was adjacent to another, smaller figure in which the demon would appear. The main circle featured a spiral it its center, a deceptively simple geometric figure that had to be rendered with great precision. With chalk and string and a two-foot measuring board, I laid down the ring, and then the spiral, a perfect depiction of the Golden Ratio. The shape connected through positioned candles which led to the second, smaller circle. The summoning ring was made to take a beating: the shapes were simple, the lines tight, each border and sigil inscribed firmly and with care. I’d busted enough static enchantments to know how easy it was for imperfection to be exploited by a penetrating force. The fact was, other than a certain ability to sense and work with the currents of energy, I was working mostly from textbook knowledge. My fears had to be put aside, or I would fail from the expectation of failure.
Binah sat near the edge of the room, unnaturally attentive for an animal of her kind, watching me watching her as I wielded my onyx ritual knife through the chanting the incantation at each quarter of the circle. I felt a charge in it build as I went through each invocation, merging into the space through the stately choreography of ritual magic. Every hand gesture, each spoken word, the direction of our pacing—everything had its significance.
Kutkha hung between us like a shadow, and I felt his presence overlaying mine with every step in the rote, every vowel and dripping consonant—and when the last word hung, trembling on the air like a bell, I felt him merge like a wave in the ocean, a drop in the sea… just as we were overwhelmed by a sucking rush of power that dragged my weight into the floor, the same tactile hallucination that you could sometimes experience at the seashore as the rushing tide seemed to carry your feet into the spray.
The lines of the circle thrummed, gathering strength, and then flared a deep vibrant orange. The engraved lead caster wobbled once, twice—and then the metal started to heave and boil, hissing as the entity bound to the seal began to struggle against the magic trying to control it.
“IAO!” I boomed over the sudden noise and movement, staring hard at the seal at the center of the spiral, the spiral that was gaining depth and power as we forced it to activate. I was conduit and controller, summoner and channel, and soon, something unseen began to test and challenge my will, seeking the cracks and holes it could leak in through.
“You, you, YOU… calling ME?!” Its voice crackled through the room like streaks of lightning, ringing off every surface. “You, of all magi?”
The room had gone very cold and smelled pungently of burning wax. I hadn’t expected it to respond with the eloquence and force that it did. My surprise caused the chalk line to jitter on the floorboards, slowly charring it black. I mastered myself, as the extent of the danger I was in dawned in its full weight and breadth. I drew up to my full height, unimpressive as it was, my back stock straight. Whatever had come was certainly not an angel. Invisible, it gibbered frantically in the face of my stony silence. The initial burst of sound was followed by a hush as it pried and poked at my conviction and failed to move me.
“What is this? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” The whispering once built to a shriek and then dropped. Underlying its presence was the buzz of a hundred thousand hornets, a waveform pressure that peaked and then ebbed under my growing control. I was gaining confidence. It was the next step up from the kind of magic I’d been doing my entire adult life, but as I began to verge into cockiness, I felt the entity picking at my mind like a hangnail.
“You! Creature, you will return to your last human summoner before me, and you will deal him agony.” I spat each word with withering disdain, command bordering on but not quite falling into arrogance. “You will do it NOW.”
It hissed at me before slithering into a pile of dancing motes, vaguely resembling the shape of a person, then a wheel, then a protoplasm. “Why not do it tomorrow, to catch the element of surprise? In the meantime, I could find you a lover… the man—”
“You will do it now.” My lip curled as I hefted the hammer. “Or I will torture your seal for days before I lock it in a lead box of salt and holy resin and bury it. Do it NOW.”
The threat caused the room to fill with wailing. The creature’s form manifested in my mind’s eye, a writhing bundle of lashing electric tendrils with no main body. The thing hissed, writhing in the air before being driven from the circle, inward, imploding to fly back towards its original summoner.
I bent my will to the rest of the task at hand—to destroy the seal itself. As I thought on it, the temptation to give into its desire only grew. It knew so much, and its tempting whispers lingered in my mind like cobwebs. The supreme math of the universe was at my fingertips, if only I could stand to listen to its voice. I burned with longing, and my mind was an engine on full throttle as I forced myself past desire, past covetousness—and with unerring speed, the spirit struck true.
It hit the other unseen magus like a Molotov, splashing fire and engulfing them in a roar that reverberated through the core of my being. I saw nothing—only a furious light that filled my eyes with infernal orange fire and sucked me inwards into physical blindness. But Kutkha could see.
Giddily, I realized I couldn’t feel my body anymore. That I didn’t have a body, but that I was moving, and I had no idea where I was.