Silver Nitrate(110)

On the screen, a young Clarimonde and Abel opened their mouths, but it was the voices of the older Abel and of Montserrat who read the script. The dubbing, making it all come to life.

“I greet you upon this most sacred of hours.”

“I greet you as the moon bares her face to the sky.”

The crowd repeated the lines. He could almost feel the tumultuous adoration of his followers, their admiration was a kiss, brushing the screen. Their voices bounced off the tall ceilings, created echoes, while the people on film shimmered with the stark beauty of the monochrome palette. Black and white, white and black. The images dizzied him.

He turned and looked at Montserrat, who was dipping the stick with the silver tip into the bowl with blood. He turned to look again at the screen in time to see a hooded figure step forward from behind a curtain. When Ewers removed his cape and showed his face, his voice was provided by Tristán in the duplicate print. He watched himself granting life to Ewers, making those lips emit sounds, every word fanning an unseen power that was nevertheless palpable.

Film, motion, chanting.

Light, movement, sound.

He felt a bit tipsy, as if he’d done a line of tequila shots.

The image flickered. One quick second, the blinking of an eye, and a pillar of smoke began to emerge in front of the screen.

It coalesced with astonishing quickness, and although the smoke was black, Tristán saw flashes of silver among its threads. He didn’t know how smoke could have threads, of all things, but this apparition seemed to be soot, mist, and sinews. It gave the impression of both muscularity and vapor; it recalled the contours of a human body.

On the screen Ewers’s silver pendant glittered.

“Give me your hands, dearest brother and sister, for now we call upon the Lords of Air, the Princes in Yellow, to witness our rites.”

Behind Tristán the cultists parroted the lines. Clarimonde seemed to practically scream hers, gazing at the screen in adoration. Montserrat had dipped her stick in the blood again. She raised her head, pausing. Her eyes sought him.

Tristán nodded.

Montserrat made a quick motion with the stick, tracing a rune. A second later, a solitary spark lit the corner of the room before flames jumped up and began gnawing at the screen.

Three things happened at once. The crowd, which had been happily babbling and holding their hands up in the air, began to protest, pointing and yelling at the spreading flames. The pillar of smoke that had been coalescing in front of the screen grew faint. Clarimonde yelled, motioning to the men with the dogs. They rushed toward Montserrat, their hands wrapped around the dogs’ leashes, and she stepped back quickly, the stick in her hands. José López had faced off against the dogs like that, but she wasn’t López. Tristán thought of following her, even of grabbing one of those creatures with his bare hands and punching it, but the pain in his head increased. He fell to his knees and clutched the back of his skull, digging his fingers against his skin.

He heard a sound, a high-pitched wailing, or static, a noise that was not words although he could hear a faint murmur. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Runes.

“Abel,” he whispered. “Is that you?”

Yes.

Tristán stood up, shaking, one hand still pressed against the back of his head. He moved toward the spot where Montserrat had been standing. There were six runes on the floor, the same as Tristán had drawn during the séance, except the last one was the fire rune instead of Ewers’s vegvísir. That was missing and must be traced for the sequence to be correct. He bent down, wiped the fire rune with his foot, and stared at the floor.

“I can’t remember how to draw it,” he told Abel. “And I have nothing to draw it with. Hey, are you there?”

Abel did not reply. Fuck. He’d worry about the silence later. Tristán turned around looking for a tool, something he could use, while on the screen Wilhelm Ewers smiled.



* * *



—

Montserrat’s heart was beating fast. With one hand she carefully traced a rune, while she pressed a hand against her throat with the other, her fingers settling on the spot where Ewers had touched her. He’d been right, she could feel it, there—power, coiled tight, tainted with death. Or perhaps enhanced by it. Power in the blood she smeared on the floor. It seemed to go from the silver point of the stick up the wooden handle and tickled her hands.

She’d felt sick in the car, almost faint, but now she was wildly alert. The encounter with Ewers had sharpened her senses. This is how he felt, she thought, when he cast his spells and wove his complex conjurations.

Air, earth, water, life, the opener. Her movements were elegant. Both prints were playing in smooth synchronized motion; the dialogue echoed around the room. She paid little heed to it, or to the cultists who chanted in unison. The runes held her attention.

Then she paused, breathing in slowly. Tristán’s voice had started playing. He was reciting Ewers’s lines. She saw Ewers on the screen, with his gleaming, treacherous eyes, and turned her head, seeking Tristán.

He was staring at her, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she looked at his familiar face, those mismatched eyes, one narrower, placed a fraction higher than the other, and the scar from the accident she couldn’t see in the dark but that she knew was there.

The sight of his face, the sound of his voice, jolted her back to the reality of the ballroom, of the night thick with the scent of magic. She drew the sixth rune, but conjured fire instead, wishing for it, willing it forward. Ordering flames and heat to manifest.