Cat Adams - Demon Song

Bruno reached out to squeeze my hand with a smile and Creede gently ruffled my hair with a wink and said, “You’re like skydiving with only a backup chute, Celia. Once you survive, the rush makes you want to go back and try again.”

I heard Dawna’s voice from the kitchen door: “Is everyone alive out there?”

Bruno laughed. “Barely. But yeah—the coast is clear. C’mon back and we can talk this out.”

Dr. Sloan was the first one out and swept past me to kneel on the floor next to the circle. The horn was still in the middle of the ring and he picked it up with absolute awe on his face. “Amazing. And yet neither of you found any indication of power when you examined it. What about now?” He handed it to the closest mage, which happened to be Creede. “Did blowing it activate anything?”

Creede held it in one hand and waved his other over the shell. He shook his head. “Not a damned thing. I’d swear on my grandmother’s grave this is not an artifact.”

Sloan sprang to his feet with more grace than I would have given him credit for. “What about the other one? The king conch?”

It was still on the mantel in its usual place of honor. I pointed and Sloan brought it and almost shoved it into my hands; his eyes were bright and excited. “Try to blow it. Does it make any sound now that the other one is close?”

I pointed to the still-smoking circle in my floor. “How about we move this outside? I still have to live here when this is over.” And it was my fault, since I knew full well it had cracked the windshield. I handed the king conch back to Sloan. As he took it, he grabbed my other hand and pulled me toward him. Sloan and propriety have issues .

“Fascinating! Have you noticed the death mark darkens after a near-fatal event?”

It does? I stared at my bare palm and realized he was right. After the exorcism, the mark had faded into the background. I barely knew it was there anymore. But now it was like a fresh scar, the pink after a scab is removed.

Soon my palm was lifted awkwardly so everyone could see. Creede was the first to speak: “Was that the hand you were holding the horn with?”

I thought and then shook my head. “Nope. This one was just loose at my side.” I tipped my head in amendment. “At least until I had to catch my balance on the floor. Then it was on the floor.”

Bruno said, “ That’s when the floor started to smoke!”

Oh, great. That was just what I needed to hear. I knew the death mark couldn’t be removed without killing me, but if the mark itself could be used to burn down a house around me … that was bad.

But Creede shook his head. “Yeah, but the circle was already going wrong. We’ve got two different events going on.”

“Those are Atlantean.” Adriana was standing over all of us squatting and sitting people. She was staring at the four new marks that had appeared on the floor inside the twin circles. “They spell Eris . Just like in the horns.”

Dr. Sloan turned my conch into the light and his bushy gray brows rose until they looked like caterpillars crawling across his forehead. “You’re right! But did the spell identify the horn Ms. Graves was blowing or the name of the spell caster … or was Eris the caster?”

Adriana shook her head. “Eris was queen of Atlantis. Siren queens can never be mages. They can have no other gifts.” The pain in Adriana’s face was sudden but very real. But her pride was too much for me to offer sympathy. Maybe someday, in private. But not here in a crowd. “She would have had priests, though, and many of them would be mages.”

Creede pointed at the new marks. “My spell was to learn the name of the spell, not the caster or owner of the horn. So I have to presume the name of the spell is Eris. Likely something crafted for a single event—which, of course, this was. The problem is—”

Bruno completed the thought. “There’s no such spell on the books. So there’s no way to re-create it or counter it. The spell could do anything. It could close the rift, open it, or destroy the world. We just don’t know without activating it and letting it run its course.”

I pointed to the smoking circle. “We didn’t just let it run its course?”

They both shook their heads and Bruno said, “No. When you pulled the horn away from your lips, the spell stopped. We channeled the power, but I have no idea what might have happened next.”

“How would the person blowing it know when the spell is done?” I was careful in my choice of words. I was still hoping someone else could do the deed.

Creede raised his hands with a shrug. “Honest opinion? The horn would probably stop blowing. It’s likely only sounding now because it senses the rift—that’s probably what has activated the spell.”

I didn’t buy it. “That’s a lot of guessing. So far I’m the only person who can make the triton blow. But that doesn’t mean I’m the only one. It might well be that there’s a hundred people who can do that. I don’t know whether it would have sounded a year ago because I’d never seen it before Adriana brought it to me.” Which raised another question I’d been meaning to ask. I turned my head to catch her eye. “Why did you bring it to me, anyway? Why not have Okalani take you straight to the rift?”

She shrugged gracefully in that special way that only dancers can pull off. “I foresaw myself giving it to you. And frankly, you’re the only person I know on the mainland. I could trust no one else with something of this value.”

Hard to argue with that logic. Creede rose to his feet and offered me a hand. I took it and he pulled. In fact, he sort of overpulled and I wound up pressed against him for a brief moment before I could back away. He didn’t seem to mind and neither did my body.

Just to play it safe, I offered my hand to Bruno and repeated the exercise. Strange, but for all my former fiancé’s superior power, I didn’t react the same way to him. There was just something about Creede’s magic that made my body sing. But oh, the eyes and smile on that big Italian lug made my stomach flutter with nearly the same intensity. Yum.

Dr. Sloan hadn’t noticed our little song and dance, but the two women did. Dawna was looking amused and I’ll bet she couldn’t wait until she had me alone and could grill me about every minute detail. But Dr. Sloan’s voice pulled my eyes away from her, back to the shell in his hand: “I see your point about the reason and scope of the spell. But we really need to test the king conch—see if you can also make it sound. We need to go out to the beach.” He stood and proceeded to do just that, a horn in each hand. I shrugged and motioned that we might as well go with him. I didn’t want anyone or any thing to swoop down and take them away.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, we were no closer to an answer than when we’d started. No, I couldn’t blow the king conch. Nor could anyone else. The triton sounded only for me and with the barest of breath.

Once they started doing testing circles on the shells alone, I relegated myself to the shadow of the biggest palm I could find, because the sun was getting low on the horizon and was becoming painful to be out in it. I needed another liberal application of sunscreen—which I didn’t have handy. I’d apparently left the bottle I’d used in the hotel back there somewhere, because I couldn’t find it in the SUV. There was another bottle in my luggage, but we’d packed in such a rush that I had no idea where it might be.

I also needed another shake even though it hadn’t been four hours yet. The people on the beach were starting to glow and pulse, and it wasn’t helping that there was magic flying all over the place.