Page 61 of I Will Always Find You
“You look confused, demon,” the Romani witch scoffed. “Since you cared not for necromancy, I thought Sumerian blood magic may be more to your liking.”
“What is this?! What have y—”
“Silence!” the Romani witch commanded, cutting off the immortal. And silence he received. “You’ve done enough talking. I don’t want to hear another fucking word out of your mouth. You are now linked to me by my blood, monster, and your body is mine to control. You cannot move, cannot speak, cannot act unless I allow it. I could order you to kill yourself, and you would without a moment’s hesitation. Your thoughts are your own, however, for I want you to understand what I’m about to do to you.”
This mystic act was far more potent and far more sanguine than the Blood Puppet spell the Romani witch had used on Alejandro. This was not even the Egyptian blood magic taught to him by Aeneas and his mother; this was dark, primordial Sumerian thaumaturgy straight from Baba Yaga’s grimoire.
“The dagger is enchanted, so it does not kill me. It does, however, give me access to your heart and soul. Without it, I can only affect you physically, and that simply won’t do. You see, demon, I’m going to unmake you.”
The god twisted his face in confusion, his brows knitting together. “What do you mean by ‘unmake me’?” he demanded to know, a hint of incredulity lacing his angry voice.
“Qlippothic magic, fiend. Entropic energy. Anti-creation. I know how.”
The fiend’s eyes widened in disbelief, and a wave of sheer terror washed over his face, chilling him to his wicked core. “You would not dare!”
“I absolutely would, monster,” the Romani witch grinned sinisterly. His eyes, though still black as midnight, verily glowed in the darkness, pulsing with malevolent energy. “This is why I needed to bind your heart and soul to me, not just your flesh and blood. To unmake your form is not enough; I desire the destruction of your essence. I intend to uncreate you, to erase you from existence, from all planes of reality.
“I see it in your stony eyes, demon. You enjoy pain, brutality, and killing. Death—you relish it! You’re no god, just another monster who thinks possessing great power grants them the right to control or destroy with abandon and slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately.
“You took my eternal beloved, my home, my friends who became family, and even my own life from me, and you did it for no reason aside from evil, sick pleasure. I couldn’t stop you then, but I can now. Forever.”
The immortal seethed with a cacophonous mix of fury and distress, his voice a storm of curses that echoed through the night. He vacillated chaotically between wrathful threats and desperate pleas for mercy. The thought of beinguncreated,eternally wiped from the face of reality, had driven him to the brink of madness.
Suddenly, a man-sized portal opened behind the immortal, revealing an infinite expanse of darkness that seemed to consume all light.
Caught off guard, the Romani witch faltered in his incantation. The stillness radiating from the abyssal gate felt utterly alien to him; it was a stark contrast to the vivid, pulsing energy of the doorway of darkness he had once summoned in Baba Yaga’s enchanted hut centuries ago.
There were no thrumming tendrils of living darkness that danced with untamed life, nor was there any resonant energy that filled the air with magic, with power. Instead, this portal radiated an unsettling sterility, an oppressive silence that whispered of an absence so profound it seemed to suffocate the very notion of space and time.
The Romani witch’s instincts told him that this was not the Shadow Realm he had previously encountered but rather a chilling abyss of nothingness.
Before his eyes, the Romani witch saw his enemy begin his transformation back into an apparition.
Unable to hold on to their target, for the immortal’s body was no longer fully tangible, the five ropes of blood fell to the ground with loud splashes. In seconds, the crimson liquid evaporated, and the Romani witch’s five bloody gashes healed as that part of the spell was broken.
“No, stop! He’s mine! The monster deserves this!”
The harmonious sound of three female voices—one young, one aged, and one stern yet affectionate, almost motherly—echoed resoundingly in the night air, even though there were no physical bodies to be found.
“What you desire is not his fate, witch, and be grateful for that, for the sake of your own immortal soul. His cursed existence is not yet over, and neither you nor the Wheel of Destiny can alter this. Take comfort—pride, even, if you desire that—in the knowledge that you have defeated the once-Titan. And he knows this. The two of you shall never meet again. The Fates have spoken.”
Just as he was on the brink of vanishing completely from view, the immortal was pulled through the portal by an invisible force. Then, without a sound, the doorway closed, sealing off the passage between the two realms.
Alone in the middle of the deserted cobblestone street on the outskirts of northern Madrid, the Romani witch dropped to his knees and cried. He cried not because he had failed to destroy the immortal but because his soul had been saved. He understood this as soon as the wisdom of The Fates touched his heart.
He understood beyond a shadow of a doubt that had he performed that diabolical magic, eradicating an immortal soul, his own would have been utterly corrupted—possibly irrevocably. That corruption would have cost him eternity with Aeneas in whatever state of being they were destined, or cursed, to share.
Collecting his thoughts, the Romani witch realized he must have dropped his enchanted parchment earlier in the shock of seeing the immortal. He reasoned it had either blown away or been incinerated by fire. Without any other amulets, talismans, or elixirs at his disposal, there was no magical way to locate Gian or Alejandro. Every other spell he had for tracking required one or more of those items.
Still reeling from the tension and excitement of the ordeal, an unanticipated trial by fire for his immortal soul, the Romani witch began walking back toward the only route out of the dead-end street he was on. He saw that the fires in this northern part of Madrid had gotten out of control and were soon to be upon him. Shouts of men calling for aid, to bring water to douse the flames and blankets to smother the fires seemed almost on top of him.
The few people he encountered ran past him, ignoring his presence; they all had far more critical things to worry about than focusing on a man in a hooded cloak who seemed out of sorts, unpredictable, and possibly even mad.
As he turned a corner, lost in thought and not really paying attention, he tripped over a body on the street, causing him tonearly topple over. After catching himself, he turned back to glare at the corpse as if it was their fault for being dead in the middle of the street and intentionally meant to trip him.
“No—” the Romani witch gasped, his voice cracking, the words catching in his throat. He wanted to fall down and die—right next to the lifeless body of Alejandro. The man had been shot several times through the chest and once in the head.
Bending down, the Romani witch picked up the corpse of the former Black Monk, the man who had housed the soul of his beautiful Aeneas, and cradled him close.
