Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [69]
“I need to get some information,” I said. “And you’re the only person I know of that will give me the straight truth.”
“Very well,” said Victor. “Ask away.”
I bit my lip. “What is the Skull of Mathias?”
At first, I thought Victor was having a heart attack. He froze with his cup halfway to his lips and stared at me, absolutely still, his breathing as rapid and shallow as a hummingbird’s. “Victor?” I said cautiously. “You okay?”
“How do you know about the Skull?” he whispered, setting his mug back in the saucer. China rattled as his hands shook.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “What does is that you people yanked me into the middle of your idiot feud over this thing, and I want to know what it is, close my case, and return to a world that has at least a veneer of normality.” I set down my coffee and leaned toward Victor, who still looked like the reaper was standing on his grave. “You owe it to your son. He deserves to rest. And Valerie deserves to know who killed her brother and why.” I didn’t say anything about what Victor deserved—he’d killed Patrick O’Halloran, or ordered it done. Even if I could never prove it, he was guilty as a crooked priest.
Victor was composed again, bright eyes missing nothing. Only a tight jaw and a line of white around his mouth betrayed the shock he’d had. “I can see why you’ve lasted so long as an Insoli,” he said finally. “You never give up.”
“Not until I’m dead,” I agreed. Victor sighed, pulling out a battered silver flask from his pants pocket and adding the contents to his teacup. The liquid was black and oily. I decided it would be better if I didn’t scrutinize the smell too closely.
“How much do you know about daemons?” he asked me finally.
Asmodeus flashed into my mind, the implacable gold eyes searing through my skin and into my thoughts. “More than I want to.”
“One time, they walked among men,” said Victor. “Gifting the nonmagickal with abilities to kill or destroy. The caster witches did not appreciate the implied challenge, and cast the daemons into their shadow realm.”
I knew all of this. I also knew that not all the daemons had been cast from ye olde mortal coil. Unfortunately for me. “So what’s the twist ending here, Victor?” I said.
He rubbed his chin. “Mathias was the sole human given permanent magick, the power to draw workings from his own body. His descendants diluted and abused the power until they were reduced to using their own blood, or the blood of victims, to focus the terrible gifts the daemon gave their ancestor.”
“The first blood witch,” I said.
“Yes, but also not a blood witch,” said Victor. “Mathias needed no blood, just as a daemon needs no focus or buffer. When he was killed a follower inscribed every working and spell he had conceived onto the master’s own skull.”
There are those questions that you just don’t want to ask, because you know the answer will send you down a path that no sane person would walk. But in my job, you ask them anyway and walk into the dark forest willingly. “What would happen if a modern-day witch got hold of the skull?”
“Nothing,” said Victor, “because the means to read the carvings are lost. My family inherited bits and pieces of translations made through the ages, but the key to reading the symbols was destroyed. By the damn caster witches, of course.”
“Going hypothetical,” I said, even though I wished we weren’t, “what can the Skull do?”
“You’d have no need for blood,” said Victor with a sigh. “No need to rely on donors or your own frailty. As much magick as you could ever want ripped directly from the ether.”
Just like a daemon.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry to take up so much of your time.” Amazing how you can be all Miss Manners when your thoughts are whirling and you feel like you might pass out. The compulsion spell used on Joubert was daemon magick, the same kind I’d seen during the Duncan case. If the O’Hallorans had figured that much out, how close were they to unlocking the skull?
What would happen if a human being wielded inhuman magick? My experience led me to conclude nothing