Crimson Circle Read online

  No matter how many horrors I experienced, Hell always had a new trick in store for me.

  I spun around. Trees ringed me. The theater had vanished. I was trapped in a celluloid reality, and I had no idea how to get back.

  “Cyon, where are we? How is this possible?”

  My grip tightened on Demon Slayer and Hellseeker, my eyes darting. A sibilant sound sent a shiver up my back. It emanated from the mist-enshrouded trees before me. The stylized horror landscape was something out of a nightmare. Blood Camp might have been a low-budget affair, but the producer had picked the right location to shoot this sucker.

  Another sound rang out, and two huge figures peeled from the trees. The masked killer and his accomplice.

  I took a step back, my roving gaze locking on the misty cabin about forty feet away. A man opened the cabin’s door and waved me over.

  I hesitated. Could it be a trick, or was he trying to save me?

  “Hurry!” the man shouted.

  Trick or not, I didn’t want to just stand around while the killers hunted me. I sprinted toward the cabin. My legs cut through the underbrush at breakneck speed, and condensation coated my face. I tasted the fog. Nothing suggested that this environment wasn’t as real as the world outside the movie screen. What sort of black magic was I up against? And how the hell was I going to get back home?

  With these questions cycling through my mind, I reached the cabin. Not a second too soon. The two killing machines had almost caught up with me, moving with the freakish grace and speed of linebackers. I stormed inside and hurled the wooden door shut behind me with all my strength. Without thinking, driven by sheer survival instinct, I snapped the latch.

  A beat later, my crazed pursuers slammed into the door. Tremors rippled through the cramped cabin. The place reminded me of the Blackmore Witch’s lair. I had battled that wicked spell-slinger a few months back. But this time I wasn’t alone.

  My eyes found the couple. They eyed me with a mixture of terror and hope. I could guess that I was the first living soul they’d seen in ages.

  “You must help us,” the woman said.

  “Luco’s been hunting and slaughtering us for years now. Can you get us out of here?” the man added.

  The woman leaned forward as though she wanted to grasp the hem of my trench coat. “Please, you’re our only chance!”

  These weren’t just characters in a b-movie, I realized. Somehow, Luco had trapped these unlucky souls inside his film. I swallowed hard, unwilling to tell them that I didn’t understand how I had entered this movie nightmare or how to end it. And that’s when I heard a rasping sound outside. The heavy banging had stopped.

  My guard up, I approached one of the cabin’s dirty windows. I wiped the grime away and peered through the glass. What I saw beyond made me gasp. I was not looking at the forest landscape as expected. Instead, I faced the empty movie theater—the cabin’s window was a grimy doorway back into my reality.

  A shadow moved in the darkened theater. When it stepped into the light, a familiar figure grew visible.

  I saw the fear in Archer’s beautiful features. Not for herself, but for me. Despite the dire circumstances, hope flared in my chest.

  As the pounding on the door redoubled, the couple traded resigned glances. I didn’t need to have seen the movie to know how this would play out. The killers were about to invade the cabin. Unless I did something to change the script, these people were going to die—again.

  Outside the window, Archer unlatched the Witch Whip from her belt and lashed out at the cabin’s window. The whip made contact, and the window shattered. Glass showered the cabin just as the latch gave way under the heavy pounding. The door flew open, and the first masked killer stormed inside, his machete trailing scarlet.

  To my great surprise, the hapless couple hurled themselves at the monster.

  “Go! Destroy the print. It’s the only way to—”

  Before the man could finish his sentence, the machete took his head off. The brutality of the act galvanized me into action. As the woman did her best to buy me a few more precious seconds, I dove for the window. Every instinct told me to stay and at least try to save her, but I knew my escape from this place was their best bet at salvation.

  Besides, both of them had been dead for almost forty years. She wasn’t a real, flesh-and-blood person in need of rescue, but a tortured spirit trapped in an endless loop. It was up to me to set their souls free from this nightmare.

  I cursed under my breath as I struggled through the cabin’s broken window frame. Archer had created a tear in the world of the movie with the help of her magical whip, but my gut told me this momentary gateway between the theater and the cabin wouldn’t last for long. I had to hurry.

  The woman’s final scream of terror rocked the cabin, and heavy footsteps closed in from behind. Shards bit into my leg as I wiggled through a maw of jagged glass. I gritted my teeth and stifled a cry; a piece of glass digging into my flesh paled in comparison to the agony that the killer’s machete promised.

  A second later, my surroundings warped as I slipped through the cabin’s window. One moment I was scrambling through the broken window, and the next I tumbled forward and landed on the sticky concrete floor of the theater.

  I was back in the real world!

  I hazarded a glance over my shoulder and saw the killer framed in the cabin’s shattered window. As I backed away, he pushed his body through the window, heedless of the glass. There was a moment of resistance as the membrane-like movie screen stretched around his muscular form like an amniotic sac. Then the screen gave way, and his head and upper body broke through the screen into our world.

  Thankfully, this time I wouldn’t have to battle the killer on my own. Archer’s blessed whip cracked as it lashed out, drawing a streak of red over the psycho’s bulging pecs. Luco cried out in pain and recoiled, giving me enough time to slip a fresh magazine into my magical pistol. The bullets were ordinary ammo, but by feeding them into the blessed pistol, the magic transformed them into projectiles capable of inflicting damage against the servants of darkness.

  Pretty cool, huh? There were a few perks to this monster-hunting gig.

  Before, my bullets had hurt Luco but failed to stop him. I didn’t plan on wasting more ammunition. Instead, I turned toward the projector. I felt like I was staring into a miniature sun. I allowed the demon inside of me to guide my aim, ignoring both the hot breath of the killer behind me and Archer’s panicked expression, and squeezed the trigger.

  Lead whistled through the air, and the projector’s lens shattered as the bullet found its target, guided by Cyon’s superhuman hand-eye coordination.

  The light went out. The killer and his bloody machete vanished from the world, leaving Archer and me behind in a dark theater full of corpses.

  This hadn’t been a victory. At best, it was a draw. Once again, the Crimson Circle had been two steps ahead of me. The movie patrons had paid the price this time. It was too late to help them, but I made a silent promise to the poor souls trapped inside that accursed movie: I’ll set you free.

  The only question was how.

  5

  The vault’s steel door hissed open. The chamber seemed to have doubled in size since the Crimson Circle had raided it. Without the clutter of occult relics, the room appeared enormous. The dark, seductive whispers that normally greeted me when I set foot inside had given way to a dead silence.

  Seeing the chamber like this filled me with an aching sadness. How my partner had fretted over the possibility that one single cursed object might find a way out into the world. Never in his wildest imagination could he have dreamt that the Crimson Circle would clear the entire vault in a single night.

  It was pretty depressing when you thought about it. What was the point of all our efforts, all of our sacrifices? We were mere mortals up against powerful arcane forces, magic as old as time itself. How foolish was it of us to believe we could hope to defeat Hell’s legions?

  Talk
about a pipe dream.

  Case in point, the cursed print of the Blood Camp movie. I had promised the trapped spirits I would destroy the film. After removing the seven film reels, each one eleven minutes long, from their metal canisters, I had placed them in the loft’s fireplace and doused them in lighter fluid. As I struck a match, I expected the cursed print to vanish from this world in a mass of melted celluloid. But the film remained untouched by the fire, which had rapidly died out. Destroying this soul trap wouldn’t be so easy—that probably explained why my father and Skulick hadn’t opted to torch it when they first acquired the cursed film.

  As I placed the film on a shelf occupied by two other relics—an intricately adorned golden urn and a silver nail, the only other items I had retrieved since the breach—my heart sank. I couldn’t save the poor souls trapped in Blood Camp. All I could do was make sure the evil contained in those celluloid strips wouldn’t harm anyone else again.

  “Don’t think about the dead. Consider the living you’re sparing from a similar fate. You can’t save everyone, Raven.”

  On a logical level, I knew Cyon was right, but I felt like a complete fraud and a failure. Was I doomed to be the guy who tries to pick up the pieces after the fact? Three items secured—and a few hundred to go. I turned away from the empty shelves and exited the vault, the heavy steel door rumbling shut behind me.

  I sighed, and my body sagged. This wasn’t about the stolen relics. My somber mood ran deeper than that. The loss of my partner was eating away at me. Even during the weeks we had been estranged while the White Crescent hunted me, I had always known he was out there, a tireless force of good battling the darkness. As long as he monitored the globe for supernatural threats, I believed everything would be okay. Now his light and fire were gone, and the world seemed like a far emptier place.

  My footsteps echoed as I descended the flight of stairs. By habit, my attention turned to Skulick’s command post. The computer monitors and TV screens were dark now, a painful reminder of my partner’s absence.

  “It doesn’t feel the same without him,” a woman’s voice said behind me.

  Pull yourself together, I thought. Don’t lose it in front of Archer! I didn’t have the heart to answer out loud, so I merely nodded, not looking at her.

  The enemy was out there, gathering strength, gearing up for who knew what kind of horrific evil. I had to maintain my focus, keep up my guard, be at my best. There was no room for weakness in the war that lay ahead. The Crimson Circle was planning something big; I could feel it in my bones. With Skulick gone, only Archer and I stood in their way.

  I turned toward the former detective. I hadn’t seen her since losing Skulick two weeks earlier. I had needed to be alone, to lick my wounds and deal with my loss. I had thought that taking her to the movies would be a nice, normal thing to do together, a respite from the non-stop danger and madness that was my life. That hadn’t exactly worked out the way I planned. But at least she’d agreed to come back with me to the loft. I didn’t want to be alone now.

  “You did a bang-up job fixing up this place,” Archer said matter-of-factly.

  I shrugged. “Thanks.”

  It was true. Nothing hinted at the horrible massacre which had occurred within these walls. Bloodstains had been scrubbed clean, and new windows had replaced the shattered panes. Even the wards were back in place. With Cyon’s magical help, I had warded every square inch of the loft, transforming it into an impregnable fortress.

  During the clean-up process, I had refused to spend a single night here, overseeing repairs during the day and retreating to the anonymity of a fleabag motel once the sun went down. Skulick haunted this place—not literally, thank heaven. But everywhere I looked, I was reminded of him. Would the loft ever feel like a home again without him in it? I doubted it, but only time would tell. The bodies of the dead exorcists were gone, but the memory of what had happened here lingered, haunting me when I closed my eyes at night. I would rather brave bedbugs and shady neighbors than face the past on my own during the wee hours of the morning. But now Archer’s calming presence filled me with a sense of peace.

  “Some nice moves back there at the theater,” I said.

  Archer grinned from ear to ear. “I think we make a good team.”

  My first instinct was to say I work alone but wisely kept my mouth shut. Who was I kidding? I never worked alone, not really. There was Skulick, then Cyon. So why not partner with Archer?

  Because I can’t stand to lose her, too, I thought.

  Her smiling features turned serious. “Listen, I know you’ve been keeping your distance. I get it. We all grieve in different ways.” She took a step closer. “But you don’t have to go through this on your own. You’re not the only one who lost a good friend.”

  Only inches separated us now. I inhaled Archer’s scent, the faint strawberry smell of shampoo mixing with the leather of her jacket. I wanted to reach out, wrap my arms around her and bury my face in hair. But something held me back. Was it fear? Or something else? Jealousy, perhaps. A demon dwelled within me, and I didn’t want to share Archer with Cyon.

  Almost as if sensing the reason for my reluctance, Archer made the first move, her fingers brushing against my gloved hand. “Show me.”

  I hesitated, scared to expose the reptilian claw my pact with Cyon had earned me. Once again, Archer acted for me and pulled the glove off. In the moonlight trickling through the loft’s oblong windows, the thick-skinned hand looked even more monstrous. To my surprise, Archer pressed it against her cheek. Her skin felt warm against the mottled leather hide.

  “I’m not afraid of your scars.”

  “It’s more than a scar. I’m tainted.”

  “You are one of the good guys. How often do you have to prove it?”

  She moved in even closer, and my body stirred. Needs which I had neglected for way too long now flared up.

  “Stop thinking about what happened in this place. Take your mind off the future. Focus on the here and now.”

  What do you say, Cyon? I mentally asked my demonic partner. Can I get a little privacy?

  In response, a shiver passed through me, and Cyon left my body. For a split second, I saw the demon behind Archer, back in his semi-human form. This wasn’t the well-built Templar Knight the Ice Witch had seduced centuries ago. I was looking at the tall, bald, and gaunt figure I’d first encountered in Marek’s junkyard when he’d been trapped inside a binding circle, drained by the vampire-demon to the brink of death. I nodded at Cyon, wondering how long he could exist outside of my body but smart enough not to push my luck and find out.

  As the demon walked away from us, I scooped up Archer in my arms and carried her to my bedroom, heart pounding with a mixture of fear and excitement. She was like a fragile doll in my arms, and a sense of peace fell over me as she leaned her head against my chest.

  I gently lowered her on my bed and lost myself in her embrace. For one brief, blissful moment, I put all my problems aside, reality reduced to the warmth of our hungry lips and the ecstasy of our touch.

  But even as my mouth found hers, I knew deep down this wouldn’t last.

  I would turn out to be right sooner than I thought.

  6

  My eyes snapped open, and I jerked wide awake. A quick glance at my watch made me groan. No one had ever called me a morning person, and it required a healthy dose of caffeine for me to come to life in the wee hours. I hunted monsters at night, which meant it was rare for me to drag my ass out of bed before noon. Waking up at three am, feeling energized and ready to take on the world, was out of character.

  I eyed Archer’s sleeping form, her face relaxed. She was a goddess, an angel, and a warrior wrapped in one breathtaking package. How had I gotten so lucky? Looking at her filled me both with joy and a crushing sense of anxiety. Having her in my life—in my bed—made my heart beat faster, yet it also stirred an old fear. People who got too close to me ended up getting hurt…or worse. I thought of my parents. Of Skulick. Other
friends who had fallen prey to the forces of darkness over the years. If you hung around with me, you were painting a big target on your back. I had kept Archer at arm’s length in the past for that specific reason, but I was only human, despite the demon hitching a ride inside of me.

  I couldn’t fight this battle on my own.

  I planted a kiss on Archer’s cheek and stifled the temptation to snuggle up to her. Waking her would be selfish. Instead, I climbed out of bed and slipped on a pair of sweats and a tank top. Gingerly, I took a few steps and then froze, startled by the figure lurking in the room’s corner.

  Cyon peeled from the shadows. “I hope you had fun.”

  And with those words, he stepped into my body, the two of us becoming one again. My insides tightened. I would never get used to this shit.

  I don’t know how long I stood there in the dark while I adjusted to having Cyon back inside my body and mind again, a lurking but palpable presence. Inhuman. Terrifying. And lately, strangely comforting. What was happening to me? To us?

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit early for self-analysis? I’m hungry—let’s eat.”

  Good point. I left the bedroom as noiselessly as possible and headed for the loft’s kitchen, where I helped myself to an apple. As I munched away, sweet juice dripping down my lips, my gaze turned to Skulick’s sprawling desk. I didn’t pay the bank of monitors any mind; my interest was fixed on the grimoire sitting next to them. Without consciously deciding to do it, I headed for the desk and scooped up the book.

  “Are you doing this?” I asked out loud. Having a silent, two-sided conversation gave me a headache.

  Cyon didn’t answer, apparently unwilling to explain my strange actions. What was the demon up to? Sometimes, it felt like a separate entity lived inside me, a creature I could have internal conversations with. But increasingly, our personalities were merging. The thought of our souls becoming one filled me with dread. Was Cyon trying to take me over?