Taking Back Sunday (25 page)

“I wasn’t going to tell them about
me
. I was going to tell her about Constance.”

“No, kid,” he said, shaking his head more with pity than with any anger. His shoulders slumped, and he took a step toward her, extending his arm to grip her shoulder. “You want to tell them because you think that will explain why you’ve been missing for all these days. You think it will make them forgive you for running away if they know you’ve done them this huge favor.”

Cyrus paused and lowered himself to sit beside her on the bed. He turned her to face him, and cradled her cheek in his hand. He looked into her large, brilliant eyes now puddled with tears, and his heart shattered. His voice was soft as he spoke to her.

“You know that you can’t fix any of this by telling them. They’re
mundane
. They can’t know this shit exists. They play witches one day a week for an hour or two and they get to go back to their white picket fences and their nine-to-five jobs. That’s not your life, Sunday. It wasn’t your life two weeks ago and it’s not your life now.”

Cyrus placed his hands under Sunday’s shoulders, and he pulled her onto his lap, setting her legs on either side of his hips. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close in a warm, comforting embrace. Forgetting all the heat of passion and all the things she’d seen in his mind, Sunday collapsed against his chest and drew heaving sobs into it. Cyrus patted her head and combed through the short strands of her hair. He laid a kiss to her temple and squeezed her until their bodies melded into one.

“Sunday,” he continued, gently pressing his cheek to her head, “you know as well as I do that telling your friend what’s really going on will put her in an impossible position. The only way to really protect your friends is to keep them in the dark and take care of this thing ourselves. I’ll be with you all the way and I won’t leave you alone when it’s finished.” He took her head in his hands and pulled it back so that look into one another’s eyes. “I promise you, Sunday. I promise to you that, for the rest of your life, you’ll never have to be alone again.”

Placing a tender kiss on her trembling lips, Cyrus cradled her in his arms. The watershed reality of her predicament was breaking her. Werewolves hunted her, a cult sought her, a demon-conjuring warlock was infringing on her friends’ coven, and too soon for comfort, she was abandoning the only life she’d ever wanted for herself for the only life she knew how to live. She was alone and frustrated. The whole world sat on her shoulders, threatening to roll off and shatter to pieces.

“We should get to work finding out what’s going on,” Cyrus eventually said. “I could use your eyes and your head on this with me. You’re much better at going through a witch’s belongings than this doofus werewolf is.”

Cyrus couldn’t see her face, but he could feel the smile forming on it against his chest. It warmed his heart to no end to know that he could give her that single, innocent pleasure by poking fun at himself and using her own words to do it.

Hours later, they were well into sifting through Constance’s collection when they came across a notebook containing verses and rituals painstakingly translated from an ancient text. Throughout the pages of the journal, Constance had inserted papers with shadings of traditional Indonesian artifacts and engravings. Recalling the pendant she’d lifted from the warehouse, Sunday sprung from the bed and ransacked the room to find it.

“What is it?” Cyrus watched expectantly as Sunday fumbled through her jacket pockets to retrieve the artifact.

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “Like I told you last night, it’s a Malay black magic pendant that Constance has been using as an amulet during her incantations. We didn’t have a clue about what she was using it for until…
this
.”

Sunday pointed to the sketch of a human form kneeling and raising his arms to another larger and equally simplistic humanoid figure. The figures were encircled by inscriptions in a language that neither she nor Cyrus could read. Beneath the image, Constance had highlighted the caption. It read “Crude illustration of
nyani
(evil spirits, Semai myth) ghost exalting personage identified as
Dhajal
(Deceiver).”

“Look at this closely,” Sunday said, holding the pendant out to Cyrus. “It’s not exactly the same, obviously, but the
Dhajal
is posed in the same way and… look at that word there,” she pointed to a word in the inscription surrounding the figure drawings. “It’s the
same
word that’s engraved into the silver right there.”

Cyrus inspected both items and saw that she was right. The similarity between the drawing on the page and the relief on the pendant was undeniable, but it was impossible to tell if they were of the same person, or thing. The word was difficult to decipher, particularly since neither of them recognized the language, but it looked good that they were, if not the same word, then at least words shared similar characteristics.

“Do you have any idea what this could mean?” he asked Sunday.

“Not really.”

With the charm in her hand, she sank onto the bed and hunched her shoulders. “All I know about
Dhajal,
or whatever is that he’s, essentially, the Islamic equivalent to the Christian Devil. Beyond that, I’ve got nothing except that this copy gets us the closest to understanding the amulet of all the other things we’ve found among Constance’s things. I mean, we’re looking at the same culture or region, right? Malay,
Malaysia…Dhajal
is Islamic. I even traced the design of the relief to that area on a Google search, no less. It’s the only thing that doesn’t fit. Everything else we’ve gone through had been Celtic or centered on the island of Britain, and all of it predates Christ.

“
This
—this pendant, these notes—is the only stuff that’s different. It comes from a different tradition and from a different time. I can’t believe that she’s been studying for so long centered on one location and time period and suddenly becomes interested in Malay black magic unless the latter has to do with what she’s up to now. Maybe she’s failed for so long going down the one path that she sought out another, and through this last one, she’s finally been able to make some progress.”

“You mentioned that the other witch, Michelle, had it, right?” Cyrus asked. “Is she involved in this?”

The last thing Cyrus wanted to hear was that they’d have to further split their limited resources between the werewolves who had already complained of the exhaustive, multi-faceted, and slow-moving investigation. Adding Michelle into the mix meant longer hours and splitting apart more, leaving less coverage on the vampires’ nest.

“I’m positive Michelle’s not involved,” Sunday stated matter-of-factly. “First, she’s a weak witch so she really has no business getting involved with demon-casting. Second–”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Cyrus jumped out of his seat. “Demon-casting?! Who the hell said anything about
demon-casting
?”

Realizing she hadn’t told Cyrus about the demon spirit that she had conjured via Hell’s version of a video-chat, Sunday bit her cheek and raised her eyebrows to make her eyes large with apology.

“I might have forgotten to mention that, at the warehouse, I kind of tapped into a phone line Constance had been using and picked up a demon at the other end.”

“A
demon
, Sunday?! Are you fucking
kidding me?!
”

Cyrus was outraged, storming around the room. When he punched the wall, it left a dent. The fact that he hadn’t sent his fist clear through the wall was a sure sign that he was holding back his strength. Probably, Sunday guessed, so that he could use it to yell at her some more.

“It
might not
have been a
demon
, demon,” she explained, her voice hitting the high-pitch of a woman who was coming to strongly regret having said anything in the first place. “It might have just been some angry ghost or something.”

“’Some angry ghost or something’?!” Cyrus growled. “How did you do it? How did you talk to this demon or angry ghost or something? What else do you know that you’re not telling me while my brothers are out there stalking your witch friend and her bloodsucker friends, huh? What
else
can you possibly be holding back?”

Sunday recounted her experience at the warehouse in the time after he had packed up the truck and sat out front waiting for her. Cyrus was particularly interested in how Sunday had managed to open the lines of communication with a creature from Hell without casting a spell, and in deciphering what the demon had last said to her.
You have nothing and I will live again
. He interrogated Sunday about her process and picked apart every possible meaning of the demon’s final statements.

As much as she could verbalize, she shared with Cyrus how she worked. The problem was that there was so much of what she did that relied on nothing but his blind faith to believe in her ability. Upon his insistence, Sunday explained to him the difference between being in control of her abilities and being overwhelmed by them.

“Most of the time, like right now, I’ve got a pretty good hold up on my guards. It took a lot of effort and training, but Bernadette taught me how to get to a point where I could live a semi-normal existence. Only much more potent, pointed extraneous energy registers when I’m in control. The guards though, they don’t always hold up. I’ve gotten to where my natural state is to be guarded, but if I lose myself or I’m confronted with much stronger power than usual, then every metaphysical, or ‘psychic,’ force comes charging at me all at once.

“For instance,” Sunday explained, “the night that we were at my house, I had been really good,
really
good, Cyrus. You don’t even know how good I’d been up until that point when–”

“When you ‘overheated’?” Cyrus cut in with a shit-eating grin.

Blushing, Sunday paused and shook off the thought of that hot night of genuine steamy passion.

“Right,” she said. “I’m usually able to handle those situations pretty well. You have to believe me. The thing is, with
you
, you brought something to the table that no one else really had before. You had all this pent up aggression for me. At first, I thought it had been that you were just really
into
it, you know, in the moment, but now… I know better now.”

Sunday thought back to the things that he’d shared when he’d opened his mind to her, his soul. She’d set it all aside knowing that, right now, Cyrus had no intention to hurt her. Because he was unequivocally on her side, she could ignore the yet unaired history between them and focus on the task at hand: the warlock, the vampires, and the demon.

“
This
time, just now, this was different. Why?” Cyrus asked.

“
This
time,” Sunday continued, “
I
was the one in control. It wasn’t about being with you as much as it was being focused on getting into your head.”

What she said would hurt his feelings given the strong emotions he carried for her, and Sunday dropped her head to avoid Cyrus’ eyes. Even when Cyrus had shown up at her house fully aware that she was the Incarnate, he hadn’t been trying to deceive her. He had been sincere with his desire to get to know her, as sincere as he could be. Not just to bed her, but actually get to know her. The difference between the last time they were together, and this most recent time, had been Sunday’s intention. She was in control because she wanted to access his mind without him fighting it. She needed to know, after all, who it was she was trusting with her very important mission and who it was she was going to have to rebel against when the problem with the warlock was finally resolved.

“I deserved it,” Cyrus declared, believing with every fiber of his being that it was true. He had deceived her first and foremost, and he had proven himself to be a threat to her safety and well-being. She knew, now, that she’d been hunted and she knew, too, of the burden he’d carried through the years.

“No one deserves it.” Sunday hated knowing she’d done something that, had it been done to her, would have ripped the heart out of her chest and stomped on it. “People deserve to be made love to because they’re wanted, Cyrus. You’re no different than that.”

What she really wanted to say, Sunday held back though just barely: she
wanted
Cyrus, wanted to know uninhibited passion with him. She wanted to know what it would be like to make love to her soul mate because she was sure that he was it for her, just as she’d seen, in his mind, that she was his mate. Even though he scared her now more than ever, Sunday believed that Cyrus was the real deal. With him, she knew she could come clean, be open, and be truly happy.

Of course, that didn’t mean she trusted him. With everything that she now knew, she was evermore sure that she couldn’t. No matter how honest he was being with her now, Cyrus couldn’t wipe the slate clean. Talking about it would make no difference. Facts were facts. She had always been and would always be his prey. What she felt and what she
could
feel needed to be brushed aside so that she could confront the present.

Veering from the detour their conversation had taken, Cyrus redirected her to talk more about her experience with the demon.

“I can’t tell you much else,” she replied. “He was what you think something from Hell would be. He was proud, and sure that Constance would manage to raise him. God knows, I probably aided in their cause. I didn’t mean to, I swear, I wouldn’t have if I’d known.”

“I know, Sunday. But I need you to think back on what you saw. You said you could feel Constance spell casting on the charm, and you said that you know she’s used human blood in her sorcery. I need you to be really thorough about this, Sunday. We need to know
why
it hasn’t worked. We need to know if she’s doing it for someone else, like the vamps, or if she’s doing this for herself. We need to know how the murder at the magic shop fits into this. Anything you can say will help us.”

Sunday considered all the possibilities. The reasons that a warlock would try to call upon a demon or damned soul, or try to raise one could be millions. Maybe she needed something specific that she couldn’t obtain on her own, and she’d run out of other options. Maybe she was a devotee of a certain spirit and the reach into Hell had been a commandment she was following from a greater power. Maybe she was under contract by another agency, like the network of vampires, who were paying her for her services in exchange for something she desperately wanted. How the witch she’d murdered at Bearers of Mystical Fruit played any role in Constance’s plot was just as lost on her as it was on Cyrus and the werewolves.