Heart's Blood(74)

I screamed like that, Angus said. At the end of it.

The demon seized Ferguson and, somehow, it ate him.

Pearl didn't know whether Ferguson shrank or the demon grew, or perhaps only its mouth grew. It ate him, both body and soul. Bones crunched. Blood flew. The audible screaming stopped, but Ferguson's soul went on screaming as it was consumed. It just couldn't be heard with physical ears.

Pearl tried to gather up magic from the blood, but there wasn't any. The demon paused in its grisly meal to swipe the back of its hand across its mouth and grin at her, bits of Ferguson stuck in its pointed teeth. Had they always been pointed?

"His blood ain't innocent." Its accent had changed as it spoke through its terrible, full mouth. "Noffink innocent abou' that one. Guilty through an' through, an' fair meat for demons. No remorse in 'im. No askin' for-"

Forgiveness. The demon cut it off, but the word thrilled through Pearl. Forgiveness covered over any fault.

She'd been dealing with her faults ever since that day in the dead zone, acknowledging her own selfishness in striving for the magic so single-mindedly that she resorted to blackmail, and in selfishly forgetting Rose and the others she'd left behind. She'd sorted most of that out the morning Grey had dragged her in on her way home from church, the morning Katriona had disappeared. Now, she realized she had even been selfish in refusing to love Grey and to believe he could love her.

She turned heavenward to confess this latest failing in rejecting God's gift, and felt the comfort she'd come to recognize as forgiveness. But she needed it from another, too. "Forgive me," she whispered to Grey. "For hurting you. For blackmailing-"

"Already done." He put a finger across her lips. "If you'll forgive me."

"Yes, I-"

The demon laughed, spraying the air with blood and bits. It crammed the last of Ferguson into its mouth. Pearl had missed the intervening devouring, thank goodness. She wished she hadn't seen any of it.

"Now," it said with a horrible, toothy smile, "it's your turn. Which of you shall play first?"

It seemed to have grown larger yet, or perhaps only its aura had grown. It still fit in the warehouse, yet it seemed to fill it from side to side, top to bottom.                       
       
           



       

Pearl prayed, harder and more fervently than she ever had before in her life. Beside her, she could hear Katriona's whispered prayers and she could sense Grey doing the same, though his were silent. None of their human magic could hold if the demon turned its full power against them. They needed help.

Angel! Mary cried as she popped back in and slipped through the spirit warding to curl around Grey.

Grey said something to Mary in silence. Reassurance and gratitude, Pearl was sure. "Now, run and tell the conjurers what's happening."

They know. The other unstuck spirits told them. Mary spread herself around Grey, giving him the same thin extra warding Angus had given Pearl. Pearl wished Katriona had it, small though it might be-and Rose was there, sliding into place around the student sorceress.

The trap is gone, Rose said. An' demons ain't so scary when you're dead.

If the spirit trap was gone, dead with Ferguson, then-Pearl tugged at Grey's sleeve. "We can run," she murmured. "Should we?"

The demon vanished and reappeared behind them, blocking the warehouse door, cackling with that awful glee. "You can run. You can hide. You can pile on spirits like blankets in winter. None of it will protect you." Its aura flared, dark and terrible, licking out to make Polonia scream once more.

Pearl poured magic through Grey into the spirit. Her prayers were one long cry for help. Would their magic hold out? How could they continue to stand?

Angel! Mary shouted, triumphant, and the roof of the warehouse seemed to lift off in one giant piece.

The angel was everything the demon should have been. Beautiful and terrible, and shining with-rightness. Good, yes, but more than that. It was everything as it should be. It was more than Pearl could comprehend, more than she could look at.

The angel moved to stand between them and the demon. "Depart," it ordered the demon. It pointed. To a place Pearl couldn't discern.

The demon screamed, and attacked. Not the angel. Not even Pearl and Grey and Katriona. It turned away from all of them to attack the city behind it.

Huge now, taller than the buildings around it, it smashed through those buildings, snatching up the people in them and stuffing them in its greedy maw.

The night was dark, no moon to light the rare cloudless sky. Pearl could see the demon only with her magic senses. The area was industrial, but some of the businesses worked all night. The demon had plenty of prey.

The angel shouted and raw power burst forth, targeting the demon. It sizzled and shrieked, and sent power searing back while continuing to forage for-for snacks.

"Come on!" Grey's shout stirred Pearl out of her horrified stupor. "If it gets to the train station, or to one of the hospitals-the Lying-In Hospital, with all those mothers and babies-"

"What can we do?" Katriona scrambled with them out of the warehouse.

"Against the demon? Nothing. But we can perhaps help protect the populace against the sideshocks of the battle, the overspray of the power." Grey fumbled for his chalk as they ran toward the battle ahead of them.

Pearl gathered in all the blood magic floating free, and sent as much as she could immediately out again in waves of protection. "Like this." She caught Katriona's magic sense and showed her what she was doing.

Katriona's working was slower and smaller, but it helped. Their magic ignored buildings and snagged on the people it encountered, offering them a minimum of protection.

Grey drew a large sigil on the nearest half-toppled wall. Come. Pearl knew that one by now. He spoke in Latin, summoning the oldest spirits he had language for.

Pearl didn't understand the words, but she knew he called them, asked his familiar Roman spirits to help him call, asking for protection for the inhabitants of the city built on their foundation. He drew another sigil a little farther on, and this time, Pearl lanced a finger and smeared a droplet of blood on the sigil, adding the power of sorcery to his call.

Grey led the way forward, still calling out for the spirits to come, to protect, drawing more sigils periodically. As she stumbled after him, Pearl wondered what the ordinaries could see of the battle, those without a strong magic sense.

The angel registered almost entirely on those senses now, almost nothing visible to physical sight. The demon had more of a physical presence, mostly hands and teeth as it snatched up victims and ate them. Some of its prey, too few, sparked as it touched them and it dropped them, chose someone else to devour.

The angel sent flare after flare of power against the demon. It crashed against the demon's aura, cracking it, sending showers of flashing power cascading in all directions. Some of it the angel gathered up to use again, but some always escaped its net, and some was demon aura, unfit for angelic use.

The demon fought back, though its greed to keep consuming people kept it from fighting well. The dark power smashed into the angel's aura, spraying pure power over humans too horrified and head-blind to know which way to run. The stray power droplets singed along their tiny human auras, burning through to the skin, and deeper as the victims screamed with pain.

Magicians-Grey's Briganti and some of Simmons's enforcers, and even ordinary policemen with a bit of magic sense-were already there in the streets, shouting for people to move along, this way, out of the danger.

Grey paused outside the railway station-the battle hadn't yet reached it-to scrawl another sigil. He held his hand out to Pearl. "Puncture me," he said. "My spirits, my blood. I'm your familiar, right? So it ought to hold some magic."

Nearly as much as her own, Pearl had been told. She lanced his finger quickly, and he smeared blood on the sigil, pushing power into it the way she had.

Again he called out in Latin for the old spirits, the ones who had built Londinium for the Caesars. One moment they weren't there, and the next, the aether was filled with ancient spirits, those so old they'd left behind such human things as gender and form. But they still knew love. And sacrifice.

They spread out, finding the people marked by blood magic, and protected them.

"We need more," Pearl cried. "More magic!"

"The spirits have come," Grey said. "Not just the Romans, but spirits of those before. I think some actual Briganti-the old tribesmen-are here."

"Yes, but they need more magic. Sorcery, to help them know where to protect. Perhaps they've been too long away to know, without it." Pearl didn't know enough to guess, but she knew they needed sorcery. She stretched her senses, hunting for more. This area hadn't suffered as much violence as the slums where she and Rose had lived-and innocent blood wasn't truly made for protecting. But there-

"That's the Lying-In Hospital, isn't it?" She pointed past the station to the west.

"That's right." Grey looked a question at her.

"All the sorcery we need, right there." Pearl hoisted her skirts and ran down the street curving around the station, Katriona and Grey clattering along with her.