“Is the one she left on me,” I finished.
“In time, the demons’ minions will recognize their error. The Medal of the Saints will shield Celeste only for a short while.”
“Yeah, but by the time they realize they have the wrong soul…”
There won’t be enough of me left to scrape off the floor, I finished mentally.
“You sure have a way with women, kid.”
“Tell me about it. No good deed goes unpunished.”
“Clearly she doubted our ability to protect her and took matters into her own hands. Miss Solos was apparently much better informed about the occult than we realized. She knew about the Medal of Saints and the Soul Dagger, knew about our operation and, from the looks of it, has dabbled extensively in magic.”
I processed this. The price for dabbling in the dark arts was madness and corruption. I’d seen it too many times to doubt that Celeste would end up just like the Blackmore Witch if she wasn’t stopped. It was likely that the magical abilities had already begun to poison her mind.
“What’s the endgame here?” I asked. “At best, marking me with her blood buys Celeste a little time. But there has to be more to it than that.”
Skulick hesitated before he answered. “A Faustian pact can’t be broken. Only renegotiated.”
I perked up. “How so?”
“You have to offer Hell something of greater value in exchange. And what could more valuable to a demon than Celeste’s soul?”
I thought it over for a moment, and the answer hit me like a sledgehammer to the head. “Multiple souls.”
As if to lend weight to my words, Skulick tapped a key and the image of the stolen Soul Dagger appeared onscreen.
“The Berlin Ripper planned to murder thirteen innocents, the most saintly people he could track down. Nuns, priests, relief workers, hero cops. People whose souls were beyond the reach of the forces of darkness.”
“The dagger let him offer their souls to his dark master,” I said. Celeste’s plan was coming into focus. She was going to use the knife to collect souls she could trade for her own. How many? It didn’t really matter. Even one life would be too many. I felt bad for her. It wasn’t her fault that her father was a power-hungry son of a bitch. But if she went down this path, she would deserve Hell.
“Skulick, I’m so sorry I brought her here,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Skulick’s grim visage softened. “You wanted to save a young woman from a fate worse than death. Your heart was in the right place, kid. If I were twenty years younger, I would’ve done the same. Hard to resist a damsel in distress.”
Tell me about it. But Celeste had turned out to be no damsel. Far from it.
“What’s our next move? How much time do we have before Hell comes knocking on our…?”
The words died on my lips as my cell chirped. A quick scan of my phone identified the incoming caller as Homicide Detective Rob Benson, our contact person in the department now that Kove had moved on. After a year that had seen a sharp rise in occult crimes, the police had grudgingly accepted that Skulick and I could be assets. Benson’s call meant he was working some occult crime scene and needed my help.
As Benson explained the reason for the call, I could feel my mood darken. Five minutes later, I cut him off with a promise to immediately head over to the crime scene.
“What’s troubling the good detective?” Skulick asked.
“There’s been a murder. Gabriel Horne, son of Desmond, was discovered stabbed to death in his penthouse apartment. This image was found next to the body.”
I held up my cell phone for Skulick. Benson had sent me a photo of the luxury apartment turned crime scene. Of greater interest than the expensive decor was the occult symbol painted on the wall. I assumed that it had been etched in the murder victim’s blood. That was the way these things usually went. The symbol was identical to the mark on Celeste’s arm–the brand of the demon her soul was promised to.
If the identity of the dead man hadn’t been enough, the signature left behind at the crime scene told me everything I needed to know.
The Soul Dagger had found its first victim.
CHAPTER NINE
GABRIEL HORNE’S TWENTY-story luxury apartment was located in one of the ritzier areas of the city. To my surprise, I got lucky and found a parking spot without much trouble. Fatigue loomed heavy and my eyes burned with the need for sleep. I felt ragged and worn out - the lack of rest, the physical stress of confronting the Blackmore Witch—not to mention being hit by fifty thousand volts—it was all catching up to me big time. Even though I wanted to crash, sleep would have to wait. Perhaps I wasn’t in the right shape to brave the world, but ready or not, here I came.
There would be no rest for the wicked today.