Chapter 15

I pushed open the guild door and a wave of conversation rolled out, followed by the aroma of hot French fries and spicy chicken wings. A dozen people were scattered throughout the pub, sitting at the tables in twos and threes, eating food or chatting casually.

A few faces were familiar: the assistant guild master, her brown hair sticking to her face as she rushed behind the bar; Girard, the first officer, poring over papers with a middle-aged man I didn't know; a short, skinny young man with round sunglasses, looking at something on his phone; and the elderly diviner Rose, easy to spot with her turquoise eyeglasses and pink knitted cap.

The diviner gestured me toward her table, beaming eagerly, but I pretended to misunderstand and merely waved. As intriguing as my first crystal ball séance had been, I wasn't in the mood for another one.

The door behind me swung open, chiming loudly. Zora grinned as she entered the pub. "Good timing! Let's sit."

I followed her to a table in the corner and she shrugged off her coat, revealing a black corset-style top that laced up at the front. I instantly wanted one, even though I'd never be brave enough to wear something like that.

"No glasses yet?" she asked, sounding guilty.

"I put in an order but it takes a few days." I blinked against the uncomfortable dryness in my eyes. "I'm wearing contacts."

"Oh, good. I was worried you'd have to go around half blind until you got new glasses." She dug into her jacket and pulled out a folded map. "Let's get to it."

She spread the map across the table. Vancouver's downtown was unmistakable, and red and purple marker highlighted two dozen locations, most of them clustered around the downtown core, with a few outliers in Gastown, Chinatown, and Yaletown.

"Felix did his magic with the vamp's phone," Zora said, smiling at her pun. "The vampires called the same number three or four times a night for the past two weeks. Felix narrowed down an address—we think it's this building right here."

She poked at a blue circle only a few blocks from the big downtown library.

"Is it an office building?" I asked. "That seems like a strange place for vampires."

"I thought so too, but it turns out the building has been closed for renovations for almost a year now." She arched an eyebrow. "Prime vamp real estate."

I nodded.

"These other marks are the locations of all the exterminations performed over the past six weeks by local guilds. Thirty-six vamps in total. In comparison, the total vampires exterminated in the six months prior to this was thirty-two."

"That's a big increase."

"A huge increase. The red marks are nests of mature vampires. The purple marks are new vampires."

I counted fourteen purple blotches. "Is that a lot?"

"I've exterminated more new vampires in the past month than I have in the last five years." Her eyes clouded. "No one likes hunting new vamps. We usually don't get the chance because they tend to fly under the radar. We don't catch wind of them until…"

"Until what?" I asked, unnerved by the tightness in her expression.

"The amount of blood a vampire craves increases over time. A new vamp might bite a person once or twice a week, and doesn't consume enough blood to do any real harm. Nested vampires, on the other hand, tend to leave unconscious victims lying around in alleys every night, so we can home in on their locations that way."

She stared down at the map for a long moment. "New vamps often don't understand what's happening. They deny it, resist the urges… Even if they figure out they're a vampire, they'll fight the changes in their mind and body for as long as they can. But there's no cure. There's no way to stop the transformation. They'll eventually need blood every night, and ultimately, they'll degenerate into a crazed monster like the old vamp we took out.

"You can't explain all that to a new vamp. You can't convince them it's better to die now, with their mind intact, than waste away and hurt a lot of innocent people in the process. No one wants to believe they're doomed, especially not a desperate, confused person who doesn't know what's wrong with them."

She gazed unseeingly at the map. "So you just kill them, as quickly and cleanly as possible."

Silence settled over us, and my heart ached, not only for the innocent people who lost their lives to vampiric infection, but for the mythics like Zora who had to kill them to prevent its spread.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"It's a mercy. Sometimes, it can be hard to remember that, but it's truly a mercy to give them a swift end." She pulled herself upright in her chair. "So, yes, we've had more vampires in general, and more new vamps as well. The reason we've found all these new ones is they were involved with the nested vampires."

My brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"Infection usually occurs from a feeding, but it seems now like these vampires are deliberately creating and almost… rearing new vamps."

"They're building up their numbers?" I realized.

"If they are, that's a level of foresight and planning I've never seen from them." She pointed at the markings. "The reason I wanted to meet was to see if you could spot any patterns connected to your Demonica investigation."

I leaned over the map. After a moment, I found the Crow and Hammer's location, then the Grand Grimoire about fifteen blocks southwest. Uncle Jack's house was across the harbor in West Vancouver, and Claude's townhouse was south of False Creek—outside the downtown peninsula entirely.

"No," I said slowly. "I don't see any connections or patterns, but that address—the office building—is right in the middle of all the vampire activity."

"I noticed that as well." She thumped back against her chair, almost tipping it over. "Next step is investigating the building—and probably an extermination. If there's someone masterminding all this, I'd bet my next bounty check they're in there."

That's what I was thinking too, and it made me very nervous.

"Based on this activity, we could be facing a large nest. I'm already assembling a team." She grimaced. "I wish Aaron, Kai, and Ezra were in town. They're our strongest combat team outside of guild leadership. We could use their help."

My mind jumped to the profile of Ezra I'd found in Claude's apartment, but Zora continued before I could bring it up.

"I want to put a rush on this in case the vampires decide to switch locations. Who knows if they'll realize we're on to them. I'm aiming to hit them tomorrow morning."

"That's fast," I stammered.

"No time to waste, right?"

An awkward moment pulsed between us. Even though I suspected I knew her answer, I asked anyway. "Can I come for the… mission?"

"I'm sorry, Robin," she said kindly. "I'm sure you could contribute, but I need experienced combat mythics who know the drill. It'll be too dangerous for a newbie."

Hiding my wince, I mumbled, "I understand."

"I'll keep you posted on what we find."

"Okay."

Another uncomfortable silence. Words bubbled in my throat and I fought them back, not wanting to further embarrass myself, but they built and built until they burst from my lips.

"How can I be strong too?"

Zora blinked.

Ugh. Wow. I couldn't have phrased that in a cringier way if I'd tried. "I mean… I feel so useless. I'm the smallest and weakest person of anyone I know, but you're so tough and capable, even though you're… you're… petite," I finished lamely.

"Robin, you killed an unbound demon."

"No, my demon killed it. I didn't do anything but stand there—and control him," I added hastily. "But without him, I'm just pathetic."

Planting her hands on the table, Zora sat forward, a stern gleam in her stare. "You survived the storm drains, which were crawling with vampires. That's freakin' badass, girl. You're tougher than you think."

My mouth opened but I didn't know what to say.

Zora relaxed into her chair. "If you want combat training, tell a guild officer and they'll arrange it. The harder you train, the faster you'll learn." She scanned me up and down. "To start, you could use some basic tools."

"Like what?"

"Proper gear, for starters. A weapon requires training, but self-defense artifacts wouldn't be a bad idea."

I liked the sound of that. "What sort of self-defense artifacts?"

"Personally, I prefer something from the impello set for newbies. Simple but effective."

"A push spell? I've used the cantrip, but…" But it wasn't very powerful.

"I was thinking something with more oomph than that. An advanced artifact."

My nose wrinkled. Thanks to the bounty from killing Tahēsh, my bank account looked pretty good right now, but seeing as I didn't have a job, I needed to make the money last. "I'm not sure I can afford an artifact like that."

"Ramsey could get you a good deal. Or one of our sorcerers could make one for you. Lim, Jia, and Weldon are all skilled artifact engineers."

Make one? Why had it never occurred to me that I could make an artifact—something better than a simple cantrip—to protect myself?

"Does the guild have any resources for Arcana engineering?" I asked eagerly.

Zora laughed. "Someone skipped giving you a tour." She folded up her map and pushed away from the table. "Come on, I'll show you."

I hurried after her toward the stairs that led to the upper floors. Waving at Rose, who tried again to summon me over, I trotted to the second floor—a room as large as the pub below but filled with worktables, computer kiosks, whiteboards, and an intriguing row of bookshelves at the back.

Zora kept going to the third level—the domain of the guild officers. Instead of entering the three-desk office, she turned down a short hall. A sign hung on the door at the end, white with no text, and a container holding several fat markers was attached to the wall beside the jamb.

When Zora plucked a marker from the container, I expected her to write on the sign. Instead, she pressed the thick felt tip right to the door and drew a swift rune across it in vivid pink.

"Recludo," she declared.

A shimmer rippled over the wood, followed by the loud clack of a lock. A spell unlocked by a rune? That was clever—and meant only Arcana mythics could enter.

"Get a good look at that," she told me as she capped the marker. "It'll fade in about ten seconds."

The pink lines were already losing their vibrancy. I squinted, memorizing the shape—a variation of a common cantrip—then nodded. Zora threw the door open.

I followed her inside, my jaw dropping.

The first thing I noticed was the three-foot-diameter circle drawn in the middle of the room. The smooth, polished black floor looked like poured glass, without a single seam, crack, or blemish. Next, I spotted the huge skylight built into the flat ceiling above the circle, the glass speckled with raindrops. A worktable and a stool occupied one side of the room. On the other side was a long counter with tiny, neatly labeled drawers underneath it and cupboards above. The back of the room contained a massive bookshelf overflowing with leather-bound texts.

"The Arcana Atrium!" Zora pointed at the ceiling. "Skylight for spells that need sunlight, moonlight, starlight, all that jazz. The cupboards have basic ingredients and components, and if anything is missing, they probably have it downstairs in the alchemy lab. There's a testing room down there too, for more experimental spellwork."

She opened a cupboard. A tangle of rulers and giant protractors tried to fall on her head and she slammed it shut. "See? Everything you need. And…"

Striding to the bookshelves, she gestured dramatically. "And all the spell compilations, grimoires, and instructional texts you could want. Unless you plan to jump right into abjuration or something. We're not that advanced."

Grinning at my stunned expression, she perused the shelves. "Let's see… this one? No… aha! This one."

She slid a book off the shelf and flipped it open. Stepping around the circle on the floor, I joined her.

"This book has a whole bunch of impello variations. Some of these—wow, look at this beast of a spell!—yeah, some are pretty demanding. How far into your apprenticeship are you?"

"Yeah," I said vaguely, avoiding her question about my apprenticeship. Admitting I'd been a sleeper—a non-practicing mythic—up until a few weeks ago would be excessively dumb. Though I'd never officially apprenticed, I'd studied enough Arcana to sort of count as a sorceress. Maybe.

Zora handed me the book. "See what looks doable. You could make a few simple artifacts and try them out before investing in a high-quality one."

"Good idea," I breathed, drinking in the diagrams and instructions that filled the open pages of the book.

Chuckling at my obvious distraction, Zora headed for the door. "If you want to start something, check the schedule clipboard to make sure no one else has reserved the room. And don't forget to turn the sign over!"

By the time I dragged my stare off the book, she'd disappeared through the door.

"Turn the sign?" I muttered.

Balancing the book on one palm, I crossed to the door and flipped the sign over. On its opposite side, bold black text read, "Arcana In Progress." Under that, in red marker, someone had scrawled, "So keep out, losers!"

I settled the sign in place, text showing, and closed the door. Sliding onto the stool at the worktable, I began paging through the book, skipping past the easy spells to the more difficult ones. The room was quiet, the smell of books, leather, herbs, and a hint of something burnt tickling my nose. Part of me instantly relaxed, while another coiled with building tension.

I was going to make an artifact. I was about to do real magic.

Cantrips were the most basic form of sorcery—building blocks more than usable tools. The next level up was a hex—a reusable cantrip. But a sorcerer's true power lay in artifacts. Spells of immense power and complexity, some of which took hours, days, or even weeks to construct, could be sealed into portable objects and triggered by a simple incantation.

Zora's blood trackers were a type of artifact. For myself, I wanted something more impressive, something that would make an adversary think twice about attacking me—assuming I could pull it off. Considering I'd never made an artifact before in my life, that might be a stretch.

At least if I screwed it up, no one would see. This room was comfortingly private.

The infernus tucked inside my shirt buzzed with heat. Red light sprang off it and Zylas took form beside the table.

I sighed. "What have I told you about popping out whenever you think I'm alone?"

"But you are alone."

"What if I wasn't?"

"Then you would not have thought about it, na?"

Rolling my eyes, I returned my attention to the book. Each spell had a short description of what the resultant artifact would do, and I skimmed through them, searching for something good. Zylas wandered to the room's other end. Sniffing at the air, he opened a drawer, peered inside, then shut it. Opened the next one, checked its contents, closed it. Opened the next.

Exploring the drawers and cabinets kept him busy for almost ten minutes. I flipped back through the pages and reread a spell description. Defensive, reasonably powerful, and not too difficult to engineer. This was the artifact I was going to make.

The back of my neck prickled and I looked up.

Zylas stood beside me, studying the page. "What is this?"

"This," I replied, sliding off the stool, "is a set of instructions for creating magic. I'm going to make a spell."

"You are going to cast vīsh?"

"Well… more like build magic than cast it." I opened the cabinets in search of the tools I needed. "Mages and psychics can use their magic instantly, like you do, but that's not how sorcery works. Aside from cantrips, my magic involves putting spells into an object. We call those artifacts. Some can be used over and over, while others can only be used once."

Zylas followed, watching curiously. "We have vīsh like that too. That we put into objects."

"You do?" I turned excitedly toward him, my arms full of rulers of different shapes and angles. "Like what?"

He tapped the armor plate over his heart. "This is magic so it does not break."

"Did you make it yourself?" I asked as I piled the rulers beside the circle on the floor.

"Who else would make it?"

"I don't know." Returning to the cabinets, I searched around until I found drawing utensils—odd markers that smelled like candy canes, and a spray bottle I assumed was for cleanup. "Do demons trade or barter for things they can't make?"

"Sometimes. Or we kill and take what we want."

"How are there any demons left?" I muttered, placing the textbook beside the circle for easy reference. "I'm surprised you haven't wiped your whole species out of existence."

"We used to be many more." He crouched beside me as I flipped to a step-by-step diagram that illustrated how to draw the spell array. "The oldest demons say we did not always kill so much."

As I laid the longest ruler across the circle, I looked up. "You didn't?"

"They say that long ago, Dīnen were powerful and wise. They commanded my kind to be more…" He canted his head. "To hunt each other less."

"What changed?"

"The powerful Dīnen were summoned and never returned. The next Dīnen were summoned away, and the next. The new Dīnen were younger and more zh'ūltis."

An uncomfortable chill ran through me. "Zylas…" Bits and pieces of comments he'd made spun through my head. "How often are Dīnen summoned?"

He gazed at me, somber, almost sad, as though pitying my lack of understanding. "Only Dīnen are summoned, drādah."

The chill in my blood deepened with disbelief. "What do you mean? How can only demon kings be summoned? That would mean all the demons here in my world are Dīnen."

"Yes. We are all oldest of our Houses, given the power of Dīnen when the one before us dies or disappears."

"But… but there are only twelve Houses." Shaking my head, I tried to make the math work. "And—and—how many demons are summoned each year? I don't even know—"

"Hundreds and hundreds," he answered. "Most from the third rank. Their Dīnen do not rule. They disappear before any of their House know who was next."

Horror muted my voice.

"Dīnen were wise in the old times, but now they only think about the short future, because they will not live to see the long future. There is no one to tell us to stop killing."

Demon summoning was, more often than not, a death sentence for the demons called into our world, but I'd never considered that summoning might have a larger effect on demonkind—that we were destabilizing their society. That we were stealing their leaders, the oldest and wisest males of their species, and making them our slaves.

Did summoners know they were calling the demons' kings away, one after another, so swiftly that some Houses had lost all structure? But how could they know? What demon, trapped in a circle and forced to give up his autonomy for a slim chance to return home, would reveal that?

No wonder demons hated humans.

Too disturbed by this new knowledge to ask more, I returned my attention to my spell and began the painstaking process of drawing the array—the longest and most tedious part of artifact construction. Over fifty lines and curves would fill the circle by the time I was done, but despite having to measure each angle about six times to ensure I wasn't screwing anything up, excitement buzzed through me. My very first spell!

"What is all this?" Zylas picked up a monster-sized protractor and turned it over in his hands. "This is magic?"

"No, these are tools for making spells. I have to draw it all out very carefully. See this here?" I pointed to the hexagon I'd drawn inside the circle, its corners touching the white ring. "This contains the spell and directs the magic inward. And this"—I indicated a triangle with one line missing, positioned like a downward-pointing arrow with its tip outside the circle—"will direct the power into whatever object I place here." I touched the small circle I'd drawn under the triangle's point. "It all has to be exactly perfect to work."

Turning to the book, I flipped three pages ahead and showed him the finished array. "I have to add more lines to direct the different elements, and runes to dictate how I want the magical forces to behave."

I expected a scoffing "zh'ūltis" but he was frowning at my book.

"You will draw this on the floor? And that will make the vīsh?"

"Yes. When I'm done, the magic will be imbued into an artifact."

Another frowning appraisal. I waited. His tail swished, then he sat beside me, legs sprawled out, and propped himself up on one arm.

My eyes narrowed. "Aren't you going to comment? Tell me how dumb and useless and pointlessly complicated this magic is?"

He smirked, which only increased my defensiveness. "I already knew vīshhh'ainun was weak and slow."

Ah, the insult. Finally. I felt better now. "Well, we can't all wave our hands and make magic appear out of thin air like you."

Smirk widening to show a hint of teeth, Zylas pulled the book away from me.

"Hey!"

I reached for the text but hesitated, confused by his intense focus. He analyzed the detailed arrangement of lines, angles, shapes, and runes, the seconds ticking past.

At three minutes and fifty seconds—I counted—he handed the book back to me. Answering my unspoken question with the return of his wolfish smile, he raised his arm. Crimson light sparked across his hand and veined his wrist. He spread his fingers as concentration tightened his face.

A glowing red circle flashed into existence, hovering an inch above the floor, perfectly aligned with the white one permanently marked on the smooth surface. But his spell was… was…

I looked down at the diagram in the book. Back up at his glowing red spell. Pure demonic power… in the shape of an Arcana array. The Arcana array I'd barely begun to create, except his was complete, showing every line and rune. Based on how perfectly his spell aligned with my work in progress, I didn't doubt that every angle was flawless.

"How…" I whispered.

He relaxed his hand and the glow died away. "My vīsh is not so different, but I do not draw it. So slow. Gh'idrūlis."

"Then how do you…" I recalled his careful study of the diagram. "You memorized it?"

"My vīsh must be perfect too. I learn and learn it, practice it until I can never forget."

His insane memory—the way he could memorize a thousand puzzle pieces in a few minutes—suddenly made a whole lot of sense. All those complex, tangled demonic spells I'd seen him cast… they didn't appear from some mysterious spell cache in the ether; he'd memorized them all in perfect detail, down to the exact angles and tiniest runes.

"Wow," I whispered.

His lips curved, but I wasn't sure if he was gloating or flattered by my awe.

"Are there limits?" I asked. "How many spells have you memorized?"

"I do not know the number. Hundreds and hundreds." He leaned back again, braced on one hand. "Sometimes it is hard to think of the one I want."

"But if you know it, you can cast it instantly?"

"Hnn. I need… some seconds? I must see it perfect and clear in my mind before I cast. Bigger spells are more difficult. If it is wrong, it is…" He tipped his head back, gazing at the skylight. "It is dangerous."

I absently ran my finger down the page of the book. "That sounds like it requires a lot of concentration."

"Var. If I am fighting, I do not always have time to cast."

"Still, your magic is really powerful and faster than mine. But," I added brightly, "mine will still be pretty fast once it's ready, assuming I can make it right."

He waited, with only the occasional impatient scoff, as I resumed building out the array. Though he'd memorized it in a few minutes, his reproduction of the spell was powerless. Anyone, mythic or human, could speak an artifact's trigger incantation to activate it, but only Arcana mythics like me could create them. I was a conduit, and through the process of creating the array, my passive magic would infuse it.

It took me two hours of careful, intensive work to finish, every line and angle measured and remeasured. Then I spent another hour adding the runes in painstaking detail.

When I went to the cupboards, Zylas stirred out of his bored stupor. I collected bags of iron powder, salt crystals, copper calcinate, and black sulfur, as well as a jar of oil. Using the scales on the counter, I measured out exact amounts and added them to the small, circular nodes I'd drawn into the array.

Finally, I selected a thin rectangle of pure iron the size of a domino. With a small silver marker, I drew three runes down the front as shown in the text, and placed it in the node at the point of the open triangle—the spot where all the magic would be directed.

"There," I declared proudly, standing over my work. "It's ready."

Zylas wandered to my side. He stared down at the array, dotted with piles of colored powder and three drops of oil.

He waited a beat. "Now what?"

"Now"—I consulted the book—"the array needs to charge for at least sixteen hours."

"Charge?"

"Arcana is powered by the natural magical energies that flow across the earth. Spells like this absorb that energy, then expend it when they're triggered."

He scrunched his nose. "You spent hours making this, now you must wait even longer? So slow, drādah."

I shrugged. "Making the spells is slow. Some of these"—I patted the book—"have to charge for months before the sorcerer can complete them."

"What will you do while you wait?"

"Well…" I drew in a deep breath. "Zora thinks she found the vampires' hideout—where the ones controlling all of this might be. She's taking a team in tomorrow morning."

His bored lassitude vanished as he focused his full attention on me.

"I'm not invited on their mission. And even if I were, I couldn't search for answers with a bunch of witnesses. If we're going to learn what's really going on, and why the vampires are so interested in Uncle Jack, I think we need to go see this place for ourselves… before she and her team get there."

Zylas glanced at the skylight, the dark glass reflecting the room and my Arcana array back at us. "Then we have until the sun returns."

Which meant we needed to go now—when the vampires were at their strongest.