Page 591 of Flirting with Darkness

The Count turned his raptor-like gaze back on the people writhing and gasping and mewling over the stone.

“Although, I have never done a letting of this size before,” he conceded. “Still, the principle is the same. The methods are the same. They will remember none of this. And while their blood and life force will power my magicks, they will have plenty left over to live full, happy lives, likely for as long as they would have had they not contributed to my work.”

“Likely?” Ghost muttered. “They willlikelylive as long as they would have?”

His father turned. His voice grew cold.

“They will never notice missing what they never noticed in the first place, my son. It is not as if they would have invented some cure for measles or cancer during that lost time. Most might eat a few more pies, drink a few more bottles of vodka… little more.”

Ghost didn’t answer.

Still, his father’s words reflected a coldness that hurt something in his heart.

Even without fully understanding, he could feel the darkness of this.

This kind of magick had to have a price.

It just had to.

“All magick has a price, my son. It all finds us in the end.”

Ghost didn’t bother to try and answer that.

He continued to stare down at the people in their expensive clothes, watching them bleed for his father into the stone.

He could only watch it happen.

His mind felt utterly blank, wiped of meaning.

It occurred to him later that he never even tried to stop it.

He never tried to stop his father, either.

Still, he could not help but see what was unfolding in front of him. Putting together the bleeding guests, the round terrace, the carvings in the black rock, his father’s words, Ghost understood the raw mechanics of the blood-letting at least.

Their blood all flowed downward. It all traveled to the same place. It filled the tiny lines and cracks in the black stone of the outdoor patio and disappeared.

Once it filled those detailed lines, it drained down the hole in the center.

It was draining downwards.

Down through the black rock.

Down, down, down…

“…To the crypt,” Ghost muttered. “To that fucked up book and clock.”

He looked at the Count, who shrugged.

“Of course,” he said simply.

The two of them didn’t speak again, not there.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, unmoving, watching silently as the blood drained down through the ridges of black rock, funneled towards the round hole in the stone.

13

THE MAGE CLOCK

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