Ollard draws one out of the holster: it’s about fourteen inches long, mahogany-colored, tapering to a point no larger than the pink eraser on the end of a pencil. He holds it up to Billy’s face.
“Fuck you, Dumbledore,” Billy says, his mouth all slack, drool running down to his chin. Ollard’s eyes narrow and flash with what Billy recognizes as genuine hatred.
“Okay,” Ollard says. “Let’s see.”
He places the tip of the wand just inside the rim of Billy’s nostril. Billy tries to rear back but ends up just squirming in the air, splaying his limbs helplessly. Ollard pushes the wand in maybe another half an inch and something seems to happen to it; it seems to develop distinct segments, points of articulation, and then it begins moving, it begins to goddamn wriggle in his nose, chitinous and feelered, like a centipede, burrowing deeper into his nasal cavity. He suddenly remembers a grubby, friendless kid from his high school years who had to undergo merciless abuse because, as the rumor went, he had once been taken to the hospital to get a cockroach removed from his ear canal. For the first time, he understands that kid as someone who deserved his truest sympathies.
“Ngh,” Billy says. Ollard’s face is fixed with an expression of deep focus, a certain grim contemplation that is not quite perplexity, the sort of expression one might wear if one found a dead bird on one’s doorstep. He holds that expression for a long moment and then finally it gives way to a sly grin.
“Very clever,” says Ollard. “He’s given you a Model Eight Demonic Ward. Not a bad choice, actually. Tough to detect; effective; tricky to get rid of because of its mercurial spin. Tricky, but not impossible. Let’s just get that dispelled—now.”
The wand up Billy’s nose seems to fatten and discharge, and Billy feels a sensation like something intricate exploding in his head, a Christmas ornament shattering in his brain, dusting his consciousness with silvery particles, sharp and toxic. He feels the urge to sneeze, and he simultaneously feels a dawning awareness that he’s about to die.
“Wait,” Ollard says. His face reverts to the nearly-perplexed expression. “There’s something else. Older. Deeper.” The centipede scuttles a bit further in. “A second ward.”
A second ward? That doesn’t make a ton of sense to Billy, but he doesn’t really have the mental real estate to attempt to figure out what it might mean, as he’s too busy thinking about dying. He thinks about the book he’ll never get to see finished. The first box of books he’d get from the publisher. Cutting it open. Inhaling the smell. Seeing his name on the cover. Giving the first copy to Denver. He would have liked to be able to do that.
“It’s strange,” Ollard says, in the slightly absented voice of someone working through a crossword. “It has a signature that I don’t recognize. It’s sophisticated, but it doesn’t resemble most traditional wards. It seems … handcrafted. I don’t quite get what it’s for but I should still be able to remove it—let’s see, here.”
He slowly draws the wand back out of Billy’s nostril, and something distressing happens deep in Billy’s head. The sensation reminds him of how it felt to have his braces pulled off by his orthodontist, back when he was fifteen. The event is happening in his brain instead of his mouth, but otherwise it’s identical: a series of wrenching pops, wired together; a relief of an old restraint; a kind of forceful, violent loosening. Finally the wand is all the way out of his nose. Billy feels completely drained.
“So how about now,” Ollard says, almost murmuring. “Can I hurt you now?”
He draws a longer wand out of the holster, a twisted black number studded with thorns, and gently touches it to Billy’s sternum. Billy’s body jerks as tendrils of pain loop and coil through his chest. It doesn’t quite hurt as much as getting Tased last night—he’s still able to think—but it still hurts like hell. He makes a mental note to kick Lucifer in the balls if he ever sees him again, for getting him involved in this bullshit. Assuming he survives. Which he probably won’t.
Ollard lifts the wand away from Billy, and Billy sucks air like a flopping fish.
“Please don’t kill me,” Billy says, miserably.
“Oh, Billy,” Ollard says. “I don’t want to kill you. I want to kill everyone.”
Billy whimpers. He’d like to think that the sound he makes is more noble than that; he’d like to think that he’s trying to make a grunt of resistance or something, but he hears it come out of him and he knows it’s a whimper.