I wasn’t about to argue, though, so me and my coffee followed Marcus through the mansion’s quiet hallways. Morning light filtered through the tall windows, casting long rectangles of gold across the hardwood floors. From the dorm area wing, I could hear the muffled sounds of students moving around—footsteps, a door closing, someone laughing. Normal sounds of a school going about its morning business.
We passed the sitting room where Laura was huddled with Stuart, both of them bent over laptops, probably reviewing the budget or some other essential administrative thing I was grateful not to have to think about. Stuart looked up as we passed, and something in his expression made me pause—that distant look he got far too frequently now, like he was seeing something the rest of us couldn’t. But then he blinked, and it was gone, and he went back to his computer.
I made a mental note to check on him later, then followed Marcus into the library. Thanks to Eric’s love of rare books and his training as both a Hunter and analimentatore—essentially a research guru—the school’s library is a bibliophile’s dream. Floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with ancient texts, leather spines cracked and faded with age. Research tables scattered with papers and artifacts. The smell of old books and older secrets.
Usually, I loved this room. But it wasn’t a place that Marcus frequently visited as a combat trainer, and when he made a point of closing the door behind us, I shivered as an invisible cloak of dread seemed to settle over me.
When we reached the biggest table in the center of the room, I saw why we were here—Marcus had spread Antonio’s materials across its surface like evidence at a crime scene. Which, I supposed, it was. Printouts. Photographs. Photocopies of documents so old the text was barely legible.
“Thank God for Mindy,” Marcus said, closing the heavy doors behind him. “That kid’s a whiz at research.”
“So what do we have?” I asked, glancing at the closed doors. This was bad. This was something he didn’t want anyone else to hear about. Not yet.
“A lot. Maybe some answers.” He paused, his expression strained as he added, “A few things you won’t want to see.”
I drew in a breath. “Whatever it is, just tell me. I’m sure I’ve dealt with worse.” I expected a snarky comment in response.
I didn’t get one.
Instead, Marcus selected a printout from the pile and slid it toward me. The text was in Latin—because of course it was—but certain words jumped out at me even with my rusty translation skills.Sanguinis. Blood.Porta. Door.Terra sacra, consecrated earth. There was also a word I didn’t recognize, repeated throughout the document like a heartbeat—Samarek. A name, I assumed. And considering who I was and what I did, I assumed it was the name of a demon.
“What am I looking at?”
He pulled out a chair and sat, then gestured for me to do the same. “Antonio was researching a ritual. Something called Samarek’s Rite. It’s old—medieval, maybe older. References to it appear in texts the Vatican has kept locked away for centuries. Forbidden knowledge, even by Forza standards.”
“Samarek,” I said. “I haven’t heard of him.”
“Old. Doesn’t slide into our world often. And when he does, it’s usually bad.” He pulled another document from the pile—this one a photo of a page from an illuminated manuscript, the margins decorated with images that made my skin crawl. Twisted figures. Writhing shapes. And in the center, something that might have been human once, if you squinted and ignored the horrific wrongness of its proportions.
“According to Antonio’s research, Samarek started out human. But ages ago, he began trading pieces of his humanity for demonic power.”
I shuddered as I studied the illustration of the thing that had once been a man. “Trading how?” I asked, keeping my voice level when I really wanted to cringe and
say, “Eww.”
“Literally how? No idea. But the bottom line is that he gave up a piece of himself—soul and body—and his sire demon replaced that offering with something from the other side. Over and over until there was nothing human left. Just...this,” he said, tapping the illustration. “A patchwork demon, the old Hunters called him. Part human memory, part demonic corruption, all of it stitched together into something that shouldn’t exist.”
The coffee churned in my stomach. I’d fought a lot of demons over the years. Killed more than I could count. But this? This may well have been the creepiest thing I’d heard of.
“That’s...” I couldn’t find the right word. Horrifying really didn’t sum up the freak factor. “Why would anyone do that?”
“Power. Immortality. The usual temptations.” Marcus shrugged, but his eyes were grim. “The texts say Samarek was ambitious even as a human. A sorcerer, a scholar of dark things. He didn’t want to just summon demons—he wanted to become one. To transcend human limitations entirely.”
“Just when you think you’ve seen everything in this job...”
“Ah, but wait. It gets worse.” Marcus pulled out a printout of a photograph—grainy, dark, clearly taken with a flash in poor lighting conditions. But I recognized the image immediately.
TheSignum Fidelis. The symbol we’d found burned into Antonio’s palm.
“This is Samarek’sSignum Fidelis,” Marcus said quietly. “His personal mark. Antonio had been tracking references to it for months before he died. That’s why he was coming here early,breaking protocol. He found something that scared him enough to risk everything.”
“Wait—he was coming here to get our help or because he thought we needed help?” Fear cut through me as I thought of Eric and Allie. Surely this freakish demon didn’t consider them brethren because they had demon essence woven through their humanity.
Did he?
“Marcus?” I pressed as silence lingered. “Tell me.”
He sighed, then nodded. “Okay. Okay, here’s the thing. The ritual I mentioned earlier—Samarek’s Rite—it’s blood magic. Very dark. Very dangerous. It can channel Samarek’s power for specific purposes. Healing wounds that should be fatal. Curing poisons that have no antidote. Saving lives that should be lost.”
