Malphas.
The name was familiar to Lillet, and the fear it kindled felt a cold knife through her belly. She'd seen it during her reading of the Lemegeton, during the few days she'd held Solomon's legendary grimoire. She'd encountered it in other research as well, even on the previous day at the Royal House of Magic. Malphas, Duke of Hell. Amoretta had been right when she compared the scent of the murder-sacrifice to Advocat's, for Malphas was reputedly among the highest ranks of devils, outmatched only by the very princes of the underworld such as Asmodeus, Grimlet, and Mephistopheles.
This was the devil Calvert had summoned up, no doubt with flawed, patchwork ritual.
The knowledge could have been useful, Lillet supposed, were she not bound, gagged, and at the lunatic's mercy.
"Perhaps you understand," Calvert went on. "She's yours now, after all, so you surely appreciate her charms, and you are a magician..." He paced back and forth. "You must feel it, then, the craving to see beyond the veil, to experience for myself all the hidden wonders of the invisible world around us? I found the Key to Avernus in a second-hand shop; I performed the rites and made the sacrifices...and Malphas came to me, spoke to me in my mind!"
The explanation made sense; the ritual probably hadn't been able to summon Malphas in person--especially since Calvert was not an experienced magician and was working alone. His mind and will had been opened to the devil's, though. It had no doubt led him into worse and worse acts, subverting Calvert's already vulnerable soul in small ways, until at last he'd seen Amoretta.
"When I first saw her, I couldn't believe my eyes--no, more than just her beauty, her incredible voice. I could all but taste her, feel her like Art sprung to life!"
It was the angel within Amoretta, Lillet knew, one of the heavenly host given a flesh-and-blood body with all the weaknesses of such. To a devil, she was like a succulent joint of beef waved beneath the nose of a starving man, water to one parched in the desert.
Lillet could all but write the rest of the story herself.
"I had to have her, to make her mine, and Malphas showed me the way! And now, now that you are in my power, it will be complete!"
It would, too, Lillet thought, though not how Calvert expected it. Amoretta called both to the lusts of the madman and the devil, and in this way allowed the merging of wills. No doubt Malphas had devised the murders to exploit this, to merge the minds of man and devil, the symbolism of their shared desires matching the reality of their shared will, allowing more and more of the devil's mind, the devil's power into the world.
No doubt when the cycle was finished, Malphas would possess Calvert completely and be utterly free in the world, unbound by force or by contract.
A few murders would be nothing compared to the evil it would do. No doubt its first act would be to take Amoretta for itself, and so keep the literal terms of its promise to Calvert--after all, Calvert's body would...
No. Don't think about that. Think about how to stop it.
But how could she? Her magic was completely denied her, and as she couldn't even talk there was no chance of using deception. Wits were useless without the capacity for action.
Lillet had no idea at all how she could win that capacity.
"That's it, over there." The fairy pointed to a crumbling three-story building, one of several once fine-looking homes now reduced to sagging tenements and rooming houses.
"You're sure he's in there?" Ballatore asked.
The fairy put her hands on her hips and stamped one foot on empty air.
"I don't know about any 'him.' Miss Lillet is in there, in the attic." She then shuddered, a look of fear crossing her face. "The place all but reeks of devils. I couldn't get inside."
"It's all right," Amoretta said. "You found her for us."
"Okay, if you're happy."
There was a little poof of smoke, and the fairy vanished back to its own world.
"She's not going to help fight?" Riesling asked.
"She was only bound as a messenger," Amoretta said. "She's already done more than her bargain required, and freely, because Lillet is a good mistress to work for."
Ballatore glanced down and half-drew his sword from its sheath. Faint green lights glittered along the exposed blade. During the cab ride from Argentine Way to the Old Quarter, the fairy had charmed the weapon to enhance its effectiveness against the kind of enemies they would likely face. The effect was by no means permanent, or so Riesling had said, but it felt good, if he was going to be going up against devils, to be wielding "elf-shot" instead of ordinary steel. "More than her bargain required", indeed.
"All right, then." He took a sealed envelope from his pocket, then scribbled the address on the back in pencil. He handed it up to the cab driver. "Take that to Royal Magician Riesling at the Palace." They were going in fast, to try to save Lillet, to forestall what might come next, and to take advantage of any possible element of surprise. If they failed, though, then Amoretta and Riesling's report would insure that the Royal House of Magic would come down on this Gaylord Calvert in full force.
The driver swallowed nervously--running errands for the Watch and dealing with magicians often unnerved people on their own, let alone together--but nodded and whipped up his horse. The cab clattered off, away from the street where Calvert's building waited.
"There won't be separate stairs. We'll have to go in through the front door," Ballatore murmured, considering their strategy. "Janice, we're going to need whatever you can give us."
Riesling nodded.
"It's a good thing that necromancy is especially effective against the power of sorcery, since that's what I'm best at." Again she drew the ghostly Hades Gate as she had at the murder scene two nights ago and at the Merlot shack earlier that day. This time, though, she did something different, making the pale light gleam more brightly, before she began the act of summoning. The wait made Ballatore twitch nervously. Could Calvert sense magic being performed nearby? Or might he simply look out a window and see the ghost-light glowing? He looked over at Amoretta; she did not fidget or pace, but her expression was pensive and she bit nervously at her lip.
At last the translucent form of an armored knight stepped forth from the circle. In its gauntleted fists was a massive flamberge, a wavy-bladed sword. It was an ironically appropriate weapon, as the blade was crafted to resemble a flame but the phantom's sword actually burned with a halo of orange fire. A second ghost knight joined the first a minute later, and then a third. Riesling sagged to her knees, her face slick with sweat.
"That's all I can manage," she gasped. "I'll try to find a source of mana so I can replace them if any are defeated, but don't count on it."
"It's all right," Ballatore told her. "They'll be a lot more use than I will." He glanced at Amoretta. "Are you ready?"
She shook her head.
"Not quite. I wanted...I wanted to wait until last to do this, because it might alert the devils." He caught the hesitation, as if she was about to do something that she wasn't entirely sure about.
The homunculus unhooked the sheathed sword from her belt, then dropped to one knee, holding the scarlet weapon in front of her, hilt upright. She bowed her head, closed her eyes, and recited softly:
"I beseech Thee, O Lord, to let Thy light shine forth o'er the land, that I may do Thy will, and sweep away that which be unclean in Thy sight."
A shudder passed through her, and she arched her back as if in pain, held taut and trembling in that frozen moment, and then, slowly, she stood upright, closed her hand around the hilt of her sword, and drew it from its sheath, sliding its emerging edge over the palm of her other hand. The blood from the cut hand...no, not blood, but something else, something amber-gold, flowed down over the blade and as it did caught fire, shining with a golden purity that hurt Ballatore's eyes, blazing far brighter and cleaner than the flaming swords of the phantoms.
"My God," Ballatore whispered, only faintly aware of the irony.
Amoretta's face was a mask of determination, but the words she spoke were soft, even gentle.
"Be safe for me, Lillet."
Calvert's head seemed to snap around as if seized by an external force, and his eyes blazed up an unholy crimson.
"Here!" the devil's deeper, huskier voice hissed.
"No! How--?"
"This is why we should have killed her! You have brought trouble to our doorstep."
Calvert reached out for the knife, then his hand jerked back.
"Fool! It's too late for that now! We have more important things to do." The blazing eyes stared right into Lillet's. "Later, we will settle things with this one."
Lillet shivered, her reaction causing a momentary smile on the devil's lips. It then turned away, made a little gesture, and the magic circle in the center of the room was overlain by the bloody light of a Rune. With the devil so close to manifesting, Calvert no longer needed cumbersome rituals to perform his summonings and could instead call on hellish minions directly. Chattering, keening as their belled caps rang, the first imps began to crawl forth.
The door had been warded, according to Amoretta; anything that crossed the threshold would have received a nasty surprise. The sweep of the flaming sword that carved open the door physically, though, also apparently dissolved the magical barrier. At least, Ballatore noted, the homunculus, the phantoms, and he himself entered the building without trouble.
Dust was everywhere. The foyer was clear enough and parts of the front hall, but the corners of the hall and the doors to side rooms were choked with it. To Ballatore's police-trained mind, this indicated at once that those parts of the building had been left unused for some time--though, he noted as he observed the movements of the ghost knights, there were things that left no tracks. Still, he had a feeling that Calvert's landlord hadn't long survived the artist's first experiments in sorcery.
There were no lights, indeed no candles anywhere, and without a lamp the only illumination came from the intruders themselves: the ghostly radiance of the phantoms' bodies and the flames of their and Amoretta's swords.
The Inspector was expecting the attack from the moment they'd entered and it came as they mounted the creaking staircase. Chittering black forms flung themselves over the landing above, falling among the intruders. One actually landed on Ballatore's back, at once raking at his shoulder with its claws before a phantom's sword swept the imp away.
The imps were not strong fighters, but they came on like a tide; for every one that dissolved into stinking smoke at a fatal wound two more seemed to appear. Amoretta let the phantoms take the lead; the imps' claws seemed to pass right through Riesling's familiars without harming them. This gave the invaders the edge they needed to force their way to the upper landing. They had just fought their way into the upper hall when two side doors were flung open and three massive forms surged out into the fray.
Ballatore nearly froze in terror. The imps had been bad enough, but these things were demons as the popular imagination had them: seven feet tall, massively built, with horns and wings and cloven hooves. The first devil clawed out at a passing phantom and when its talons pierced the ghost's body they seemed to slow as if meeting resistance and trailed little shreds of blue light when they emerged.
The third demon charged right for Ballatore, and he was slow, far too slow in reacting from the shock of their appearance. A man needed time to accustom his mind to facing devils in real life, and Ballatore didn't have time.
Suddenly, Amoretta was there, stepping between himself and the demon with sword upraised. The monster flinched, actually flinched away from the golden flame and in the next minute she'd sliced it in two.
"Thank you," he said, but she was already turning to help the phantoms--now down to two. After a moment, he too raised his saber and returned to the fight. Another half-dozen imps or so were swarming down the stairs, followed by another hulking demon and...a cat?
But of course it wasn't a cat. Cats didn't walk on their hind legs. Cats didn't have paws with elongated fingers and opposable thumbs in which they carried gnarled wooden staves. Cats didn't point those staves at an attacking phantom, launch a bolt of magic, and snuff the ghost knight out like a spent candle before chortling cruelly. A tide of imps swarmed Amoretta, clawing at her and giggling insanely. She beat them back but not before they'd scored several cuts along her legs, drawing blood and slitting boot-leather.
The devil-cat pointed its staff again and Ballatore acted, not wanting to see if it could do to the homunculus what it had to the phantom. He hurled his saber; it flew clumsily over the wave of imps and slammed edge-on into the witch-cat and, probably due more to the fairy charm than the force of the throw, sent it shuddering into a cloud of foul, brimstone-scented smoke.
Calvert growled deep in his throat. His expression of rage told Lillet that things were not going as well for him as he'd expected. He waved his hand again, and from one of the runes before him tottered a large egg.
Dragon!?
The egg began to hop and twitch, shaking as it started to swell. A monster like that in these enclosed quarters would be a disaster. Its sheer bulk would crush floors and walls, and its fiery breath, in the middle of all this aged, dry timber, would start a blaze that could end up burning down half the city, to say nothing of Lillet and her rescuers.
Calvert the man might have cared about such things, but Malphas the devil definitely did not. Indeed, it might even consider the wake of a disaster fertile breeding ground for despair and greed, recruiting ground for souls.
In the next instant, though, the door to the atelier crashed open and Amoretta entered the room, spitting a massive demon on her sword. The blade shone with a pure golden flame so bright it stung Lillet's eyes, and her lover's face was a mask of resolute determination. In another instant Amoretta had crossed the room, raised the burning blade, and smashed it down on the twitching egg, blasting it to fragments. Quick strokes shattered the crimson Runes Malphas was using to gate in demons.
Calvert twitched and shirked from the flaming sword, his expression swirling between baffled rage and stark terror, the scarlet glow flickering in and out in his eyes. Then he spun, took two quick strides, and hurled himself through the nearest window in a shower of glass. Inspector Ballatore, whom Lillet hadn't even noticed until then, sprang across the room after him, bracing his hands against the sill as if he intended to follow despite the drop. Riesling dashed, puffing, through the door and grabbed his arm, just in case he truly intended to leap.
Amoretta, though, only had eyes for the prisoner. She dashed to Lillet's side and with deft strokes cut away the bindings, then pulled down the gag.
"Lillet! Please tell me you're all right!"
"Oh, Amoretta!" Unable to speak for a moment, Lillet flung her arms around the other woman and squeezed her close in a crushing embrace. They rose to their feet, still clinging together; with her free hand Amoretta gently stroked Lillet's hair.
"I'm just so glad you're safe. I was so worried that madman might have hurt you."
"No, I have a nasty bump on the head from when he captured me and a little chafing from the ropes, but you saved me from anything worse."
Amoretta stepped back from the embrace and took Lillet's hand, holding it up so she could see the wrist marked by red welts.
"Oh, poor Lillet," she said, and softly kissed the injury. "Promise me you'll have Gaff heal you as soon as we get home."
"I promise, but only if you have him look at those cuts!" Her legs were marked by a number of superficial wounds and her left shoulder by a slightly more serious slice that bled sluggishly. "But Amoretta, I had no idea you could fight like that. You looked like St. Michael, slashing through those devils with that flaming sword." She glanced down at the blade, which still flared with gold light along its length. Amoretta blushed shyly, let the fire die out, and sheathed the sword. "Is that what you were?" Lillet asked. "A warrior angel, one of the guardians of heaven?"
Amoretta shook her head.
"I don't remember anything about my past existence, Lillet; you know that. And...I don't want to, either." She squeezed Lillet's hand. "I'm too happy just being with you to want to ever give that up."
"Oh, Amoretta." Lillet felt her eyes flood with tears and hugged her lover close once more.
Ballatore cleared his throat noisily. Suddenly remembering their circumstances, Lillet and Amoretta sprang apart and turned. Ballatore and Riesling both looked sheepish, the depth of the two lovers' emotion clearly making them feel like eavesdroppers.
"I'm glad you're safe, Mage Consul," Ballatore said, "but we still have to get after this bastard. We can't let a mad sorcerer run loose in the streets."
"I think we might be able to do something about that."
"You know where he's going?"
"No; right now I'm not sure even he knows where he's going, but I think we might be able to make him come to us."
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NOTE: The devil's name, Malphas, comes from a seventeenth-century grimoire, the Lesser Key of Solomon, also commonly called...the Lemegeton. This book gives, among other things, purported instructions for the conjuring of 72 major devils and gives their names, titles, attributes, and so on. Malphas is one of those devils, although I've taken liberties with his title--he's identified as a Prince in the Lemegeton and I've downgraded him to ducal rank. Hey, Grimlet isn't in the real Lemegeton, so it's clear there are some differences between the game world and the real world...other than the obvious fact that magic works there and not here. As further trivia, the Lesser Key of Solomon is a minigame in Shadow Hearts: Covenant (the crests equippable to use magic come from the names of the 72 demons, and putting them all in the correct places on the map unlocks greater powers and an optional boss), while Malphas appears in various Castlevania games, sometimes as a boss and sometimes as a common enemy (his visual attributes therein, incidentally, do reflect the Lesser Key of Solomon, so in this case it seems someone actually Did Do The Research). In the scene where Riesling is summoning phantoms, it's easy to get a measure of her ability to summon familiars in game terms--she's got a limit of 7 points of possible familiars that she can control at once (which equals three phantoms at 2 each, plus a leftover point so she can summon a ghost to try and hunt down some mana. Amoretta is of course attempting to let out a little of the essence of her own core through the shedding of her blood; essentially the same thing as she does in the game when she commits suicide to destroy Grimlet in Loops III and IV, but under hopefully controlled circumstances. I sense a "How could you do something so dangerous for my sake!?!" lecture from Lillet when they get home...always presuming that they do get home...
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