Chapter 9: The Haggle for Salvation
The air in the Dark Market tasted of ozone and old stories. Around Rainbor’s candy stall, the group stood in a tense huddle, the earlier urgency now crystallized into a cold, sharp dread. Vivian was coming, starved and terrified. Mike, Casey, and Yukio were walking into the dark. And somewhere above the city, a dragon flew on a bond of friendship.
Shiv O’Connor’s face was a mask of grim practicality. She turned from Jan and the weeping ghost of the phone call to the wizened sphinx merchant who presided over a stall of whispering scrolls and glowing bottles. The creature had the body of a lion, vast and tawny, and the head of a woman with ancient, knowing eyes the color of desert sky. She watched their distress with detached curiosity.
“The Epic of Unbinding,” Shiv stated, her Dublin accent cutting through the market’s murmur. “We need it. Now.”
The sphinx blinked slowly. “The price is not in gold or favors, little witch. It is in truth. A memory. Your greatest shame.”
Brigid, standing behind her mother, made a small, distressed noise. “Mam, you don’t have to—”
Shiv didn’t even look back. She snorted, a short, dismissive sound. “I’ve got three kids and a dead husband I talk to every day. My greatest shame is that I let my middle daughter get dragged into a forgotten god’s ego trip. Take that memory or leave it.”
The sphinx’s tail twitched. “That is not a memory. It is a current regret. It lacks the… vintage of true shame. The nectar of humiliation must be aged.”
Shiv’s green eyes, so like Jan’s but hardened by decades, narrowed. She leaned forward, resting her hands on the stall’s edge. Her voice dropped, not to a whisper, but to a low, honeyed register that carried a dangerous warmth. “Fine. You want vintage? How about the memory of the night I seduced a Green Moon recruiter out of a powerful artifact she was meant to safeguard? It was summer. There was a dryad involved, very surprised. A lot of whipped cream. And a folk song I still can’t hear without my cheeks burning.”
A flicker of interest shone in the sphinx’s ancient eyes. The market sounds seemed to fade around them. Rainbor shifted his weight, looking elsewhere with polite discretion. Lady Eleanor let out a delighted, spectral sigh.
“The artifact was the Chalice of Unspoken Want,” Shiv continued, her gaze locked on the creature. “Arlene thought she was protecting it. I thought my Marty deserved a leg up in a world that was all magic and no sense. So I made her want me more than her duty. I remember the taste of the cream on her skin. I remember the dryad’s leaves rustling in shock from the trees. I remember the exact, shameful triumph in my gut when Arlene handed me the chalice, her eyes still glazed with my magic. It was a shitty thing to do. To her. To my own conscience. That shame’s been fermenting for thirty years. Is it aged enough for you?”
The sphinx was silent for a long moment. Then she gave a slow, regal nod. “The memory is accepted. Place your hands upon my temples.”
Shiv didn’t hesitate. She reached up, her work-roughened fingers settling on either side of the sphinx’s serene face. A soft, pearlescent glow emanated from the point of contact. Shiv’s jaw tightened, a minute flinch the only sign of the memory being siphoned away. The sphinx shuddered, a low rumble escaping her throat. After a few seconds, the light faded.
The sphinx exhaled, a sound like wind through ruins. She extended a clawed paw, offering a slender scroll sealed with wax the color of tarnished gold. Shiv took it, her hand steady.
“Mam,” Brigid breathed, her face pale. “You didn’t actually… with the… the cream…”
Shiv turned, tucking the scroll into her coat pocket. She winked, the mischievous glint returning to her eyes, though it was underscored by fatigue. “Never you mind the details, Brigid Moira. What’s done is in a sphinx’s head now. Let’s go save our friends from becoming permanent knick-knacks.”
Jan was already pulling her Green Moon compact from her pouch, flipping it open. The mirror didn’t show her reflection; it swirled with phosphorescent green mist. “Vivian’s close. The pendant’s signaling she’s moving fast. We need to contain this before she arrives.”
“Contain how?” Stacy asked, her hand resting near the small of her back where her pistol was holstered. “We can’t fight hunger.”
“We satiate it,” Fatima said, her voice small but firm from her three-foot height. She looked at Jan, then at Shiv. “Controlled feeding. Green Moon technique. But without Dale, the bond is broken. The hunger will be ravenous, indiscriminate. She will need a powerful, willing source. And a focus to prevent her from draining them to death.”
All eyes landed on Jan. She swallowed, then nodded. “Right. Of course. It’s my magic that taught her. Makes sense.” She tried for a grin. “Just like old times.”
“It is nothing like old times,” Fatima snapped. “This is a triage. You must be the anchor. You must open yourself completely, but you must also maintain the ritual boundaries in your mind. If you lose focus, she will pull your life force out like a thread. Do you understand, Jan? This is not a party game.”
Before Jan could answer, a throaty roar of a motorcycle engine, horrifically out of place, echoed from the mortal entrance to the Market. A second later, Vivian Chase half-staggered, half-ran through the shimmering portal. Her usual vintage leather jacket was misbuttoned. Her long red hair was a wild tangle. Her eyes, usually a timid green, were now pools of seething, hungry black, pupils swallowing the irises completely. She clutched something small and metallic in one trembling fist.
“Jan!” The word was a sob ripped from a raw throat. She stumbled toward them, collapsing to her knees on the packed earth. She opened her hand. On her palm lay a three-inch-tall tin soldier, painted in the crisp blues of a cruise ship security uniform. The tiny, beautifully rendered face was Dale’s, frozen in a stern expression. A small key was welded to its back.
A collective wave of pity and horror washed over the group. Hank looked away, swallowing hard. Katie reached for Lena’s hand, gripping it tightly.
“It hurts,” Vivian gasped, doubling over, clutching her stomach. “It’s a hole. It’s burning. I can smell everyone… Rainbor’s vitality, Hank’s… it’s like meat cooking. I’m so hungry.” A tear traced a path through the dust on her cheek, sizzling where it fell and vanishing into a wisp of shadow.
“Right. Here. Now.” Jan’s voice shed all pretense. She shrugged out of her coat, then began pulling her bohemian tunic over her head. “Stacy, clear that space by Rainbor’s storage crates. Brigid, I need you and Fatima to set the containment sigil. Use my chalk. The triple-circle pattern for safe haven.”
Everyone sprang into action. Stacy moved crates with a grunt, creating a semi-private alcove against the brick wall of the warehouse. Brigid, her hands shaking, accepted the white chalk from Jan’s pouch and began drawing on the ground with precise, mathematical intensity, guided by Fatima’s whispered instructions. Rainbor moved to block the view from the main thoroughfare, his massive arms crossed. Lady Eleanor hovered close, her expression unusually solemn.
Jan stood in the center of the emerging sigil, naked now, her freckled skin glowing in the Market’s weird light. The Power of Exposure radiated from her, a calming, awe-inspiring aura, but it was met by the volatile, desperate need pouring off Vivian. It created a charged, dizzying space between them.
“Vivian,” Jan commanded, her voice low and rhythmic. “Look at me. Just me.”
Vivian raised her head, her black eyes locking onto Jan. A shudder wracked her frame. Shadows began to coil from her skin, living tendrils of darkness that licked at the air.
“Come here,” Jan said. “Feed. But you follow my lead. You take what I give. You stop when I say stop. Remember the rhythms.”
Vivian crawled forward into the sigil, which flared with a soft green light as she crossed its boundary. She was on Jan in an instant, but not with passion—with a frantic, animal need. Her mouth crashed against Jan’s, and it was less a kiss than a claiming. Her tongue plunged deep, and Jan could feel the pull immediately, a dizzying suction that started at her lips and traveled straight to her core. She moaned, not in pleasure, but in stark, overwhelming sensation.
Vivian’s hands clutched at Jan’s breasts, her thumbs scraping over the nipples. The shadows solidified into cool, touch-like tendrils that wrapped around Jan’s thighs, parting them. Vivian broke the kiss, her mouth trailing down Jan’s neck, and where her lips touched, a delicious, draining numbness spread.
“Good,” Jan gasped, forcing her mind to hold the ritual structure. She pictured the green circles on the ground, felt their energy. “Through the touch. Just the surface energy. Don’t go deeper.”
But Vivian was lost. The hunger was a feedback loop. A shadowy tendril, slick and cool, found Jan’s pussy and pushed inside without preamble. Jan cried out, her back arching. It felt like being fucked by night itself, a void that pulsed and pulled at her very essence. Another tendril circled her clit, applying a ruthless, perfect pressure.
“Fuck, Vivian, easy—” Jan’s protest became a strangled shout as the dual invasion triggered a violent, unwanted climax. Her cunt clenched around the shadowy intrusion, and she felt a massive surge of her energy—her life force, her magic, her simple vitality—rip out of her and into Vivian. It was too much, too fast.
Vivian screamed, a sound of ecstatic relief and agony. The blackness receded from her eyes for a second, showing a flash of familiar green, swimming with tears and horror. “Jan, I can’t—it’s too good—”
“The boundary!” Fatima yelled from outside the sigil. “Jan, hold the boundary in your mind!”
Jan was drowning. The pleasure was apocalyptic, each pulse of her orgasm fueling Vivian’s feast, weakening her own will. She saw flashes behind her eyes: childhood memories, the face of her first kiss, the smell of her father’s pipe tobacco. Vivian was drawing from the tap, but the pipe was cracking, pulling up sediment from the well.
“Stop…” Jan whispered, but her body was betraying her, hips grinding against the shadow, inviting more theft.
A new hand, solid and warm, slapped down on the sigil’s edge, right between two chalk lines. Shiv O’Connor knelt there, her own eyes closed, her face a concentration of fierce will. From the pendant around her neck, the ghost of Marty O’Connor shimmered into view, a translucent, comforting presence. Shiv began to hum, then to sing, the same old Irish folk tune she’d mentioned to the sphinx. It was a lullaby, but sung with a raw, grounding power.
The song wove through the chaotic energy, a stabilizing thread. It didn’t weaken Vivian’s pull, but it gave Jan a rope to clutch. Jan grabbed onto the melody, onto the memory of her mother singing it in a sunlit kitchen a lifetime ago. She used it to rebuild the crumbling walls in her mind.
“Now, Vivian,” Jan gasped, finding her voice again, layered with her mother’s song. “Slow. Sip. Don’t gulp.”
The shadows inside her softened. The violent pull became a steady, rhythmic draw. The pleasure remained, immense and terrifying, but it was now channeled. Jan rode it, each wave of climax feeding a measured portion of herself into the starving succubus. Vivian slumped against her, sobbing, her mouth latched to the base of Jan’s throat, drinking in a controlled stream.
Minutes passed, measured in shuddering breaths and shared, devastating releases. Finally, the ravenous blackness faded completely from Vivian’s eyes. The shadows retracted, slipping back into her skin. She went limp, her head resting on Jan’s breast, her body spent. The terrible, burning emptiness in her gut was filled, for now.
Jan lay on the cold ground, shaking. She felt hollowed out, lighter, as if a part of her had been physically carried away. The sigil’s green light faded. Brigid rushed in with a blanket, covering them both, her face streaked with tears.
Vivian stirred, looked up at Jan’s ashen face. The shame in her eyes was bottomless. “I took too much. I felt it… I felt your childhood. Oh god, Jan, I’m so—”
“Don’t,” Jan croaked, her voice ragged. “It worked. You’re you. That’s what matters.” She tried to sit up, and the world swam violently. Stacy was there, an arm around her, holding her steady.
Shiv stopped singing. The ghost of Marty faded back into the pendant. She looked at her daughter, then at the broken half-succubus, and her expression was unreadable.
Rainbor’s deep voice broke the silence. “The little tin man,” he said, pointing to where the soldier had fallen from Vivian’s hand. “It’s moving.”
They all looked. The tiny figure of Dale was no longer lying on its back. It had rolled onto its side. One painted tin arm was outstretched, its little hand pointing like a compass needle away from the market, down a specific, dark alleyway.
Lena Jennings knelt, her artistic eye seeing the nuance. “It’s not pointing a direction. It’s pointing at a thread.”
A faint, golden narrative thread, identical to the ones Calista had shown them, was now visible in the air, leading from the tin soldier down the shadowy alley. Nergal’s signature.
“The edit is fresh,” Fatima whispered, her analytical mind clicking back into gear despite the trauma. “The residue is still actively linked to the source. It’s a trail.”
Jan, leaning heavily on Stacy, looked from the pointing tin soldier to the scroll of the Epic of Unbinding in Shiv’s pocket, to the exhaustion on all their faces. Two paths, both leading into the same dark heart.
Her voice was a dry scrape, but it held a core of iron. “Then we follow them both.”
“Then we follow them both.” Jan’s words hung in the strange air, a fragile bridge between despair and action. The pointing tin soldier, the scroll of Unbinding, the exhausted succubus, the hollowed-out Green Moon—they were pieces scattered on a bloody game board.
A world away, under the cold Chicago sky, other pieces were moving into irrevocable positions.
The Art Institute of Chicago, a beacon of civilization, now hummed with a different frequency. Calista Gunderson stood on the sidewalk, her silver-streaked hair tugged by a wind that smelled of ozone and burnt parchment. Around her, the tactical deployment was complete. A dozen Golden Wand agents in charcoal suits formed a perimeter, their postures rigid, steampunk-inspired devices humming in their hands. Bethany stood among them, her pink-spiked hair hidden under a severe cap, her face unreadable behind sunglasses.
Their magical backup was a spectrum of strange. Annie Schmidt clutched her calico kitten Sophie, her sunny face tight with worry, while Aaron Sweeney checked the ink-stained fingers of his right hand, preparing Fair Bargain contingencies. Eric stood stoically, his hand on the head of Reggie, his loyal, normal dog. Hans, the tracker, knelt on the pavement, his nose almost touching the concrete. “The narrative residue is a river inside,” he murmured, his voice gravel. “It pools, thick and stagnant. He is there. He has been there since the first display.”
Mike shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, following Hans’s gaze to the museum’s grand entrance. “Of course he never left. Why move your studio when you’ve just furnished it with all your favorite subjects?” His tone was bland, almost bored, a familiar defense against the surreal.
Casey stood beside him, her artist’s eyes analyzing the building’s façade as if it were a canvas. She saw the subtle warping, the way the stone seemed to breathe. “The whole place is an edit now. He’s not hiding inside. He is the inside.”
Yukio cracked her knuckles, the sound sharp in the tense quiet. Her dark eyes blazed. “I’ve had enough of this cryptic god bullshit. He turned Amy into a doll.” She said it flatly, a final declaration. Before anyone could react, she broke from the group, her boots slapping against the pavement as she sprinted for the museum’s main doors.
“Yukio, wait!” Calista’s command was too late.
The Wands shifted, weapons rising, settling into siege stances aimed at the building’s facade. Their plan had just been incinerated by a teenager’s righteous anger. Mike and Casey shared a single look—a tired, ‘here we go again’ glance—and took off after her. From behind a parked car, a golden streak followed: Godfrey, the puppy, tail wagging with oblivious excitement, having trailed the entire convoy from the house where Amy and Jason now guarded a sleeping Rick.
Yukio hit the doors and they blew inward without a sound, dissolving into shimmering dust. She marched into the grand hall, and the breath caught in her throat. The familiar Renaissance galleries were gone. In their place stretched a vast, echoing ziggurat of sun-baked clay and hanging gardens. The air was dry and hot, smelling of incense and wet river mud. Cuneiform script glowed on the walls.
“Hey!” she yelled, her voice echoing in the cavernous space. “Nergal! You piece of shit! Where’s the bastard who turned my best friend into a figurine? Come out and explain yourself to my fist!”
The response wasn’t a sound. It was a pressure, a presence filling her skull like poured concrete.
I AM ALL AROUND YOU.
The voice was in the mudbrick, in the scent of the lilies, in the very air she struggled to pull into her lungs. A wind, hot and rough, tore through the hall. It wrapped around Yukio, then Mike and Casey who skidded to a halt beside her. It didn’t touch the hanging silks or disturb a single grain of sand on the floor. It only touched them. Their clothes—Yukio’s jeans and sweater, Mike’s jacket and t-shirt, Casey’s hoodie and leggings—unraveled at the seams, dissolving into threads that vanished before they hit the ground. They stood naked, exposed in the grand hall.
A familiar, unwelcome tingling began at their extremities.
“Not again,” Mike complained, looking down at his own hands as the color began to drain from his skin, replaced by a smooth, grey-white pallor. “We didn’t even get to the annoying questions part.”
Casey sighed, a sound of profound professional frustration. She watched the skin of her arms crack with fine, terra cotta lines. “We rehearsed the ‘Midwestern Tourist’ routine for this. The pamphlets about local attractions were primo. This is just rude.”
Yukio tried to lunge forward, but her feet were already fusing to the floor, her legs solidifying into a column of cemented debris, rusted metal, and shattered glass. A real, red rose pushed itself through the surface where her tattoo was, its petals unfurling with obscene vitality.
Mike looked down as his body completed its transformation into polished marble. “Okay, hold on,” his stone lips seemed to whisper as they froze. “The sculptor took some serious liberties. I am not that well-endowed. It’s misleading.”
“He really isn’t,” Casey agreed, her voice hardening into clay before she fell silent for the second time in her life, a statue of earthy brown, caught mid-eye-roll.
Outside, the air coalesced. A figure composed of shifting sands, shattered pottery glazes, and swirling ink resolved before Calista’s forces. It had a humanoid shape, but its features were an ever-changing montage of artistic styles—one moment a classical Greek profile, the next a cubist abstraction. Nergal.
“Thank you, Merlin,” the being said, its voice the rustle of papyrus, the strike of a chisel. “My collection was impressive, but it lacked… thematic cohesion. You have brought me the connective tissue. The living friends of the art. The context.”
Calista’s face was a mask of horror, but her hand was steady as she raised a device. “Golden Wands, neutral—”
The god’s hand, now resembling a branching coral, gestured.
Annie cried out, her body arcing as green leaves erupted from her skin, her limbs thickening, rooting into the sidewalk concrete. She became a beautiful, sculpted topiary bush in the shape of a surprised woman. Sophie, dropped from her arms, mewled piteously and circled the rooted feet, confused.
Aaron looked at his hands as they flattened, elongated, and fused with shining metal. He was a decorative set of balanced scales, perfectly still.
Eric and Reggie screamed in unison, a horrifying duet that cut off as their bodies merged, twisted, and re-knit into a single, grotesque form: a taxidermied creature with a man’s terrified face and a dog’s body, frozen in mid-snarl.
Hans simply vanished. In his place, a set of detailed footprints appeared on the pavement, moving in a silent, endless patrol along the perimeter.
The Golden Wand agents didn’t scream. Their suits stiffened. Their movements became jerky, mechanized. Bethany, her sunglasses now painted on, began a slow, repetitive march, five steps forward, a precise turn, five steps back. Each agent was reduced to a simple, absurd function—one repeatedly polished a non-existent knob, another saluted an empty corner of sky.
In moments, the siege force was gone. Only Calista remained, untouched, Sophie weaving around her ankles. Godfrey sniffed at the topiary that was Annie, whined, and then trotted over to pee on the base of the marble statue of Mike.
Nergal’s form solidified into something almost classical, admiring his handiwork. “A curated space requires proper attendants. Atmosphere.”
A shadow blotted out the moon. Flamewing descended like a thunderclap of scale and muscle, her roar vibrating the city blocks. Her golden eyes fixed on the god. She drew a breath, her chest glowing like a forge, and unleashed a torrent of dragon-fire that could melt tanks.
The fire engulfed Nergal. It roared around him. And then it parted, flowing around an invisible sphere exactly one inch from his body, harmlessly licking the air. When the blast ceased, he stood unmarked, not even warm.
“I am a god, little lizard,” Nergal murmured. “Your fire is a pretty pigment to me. A splash of color.” He flicked his wrist. Flamewing’s massive form shimmered, compressing, folding in on itself with a sound of squeaking metal. Where the dragon had been, a large, ornate table lighter in the shape of a reclining dragon sat on the pavement, a tiny, perpetual flame winking at its mouth.
Satisfied, Nergal walked over to Calista. She stood her ground, her grey eyes burning. He leaned in, his face an unfinished clay sculpture inches from hers. She could smell the earth of riverbeds long dry.
“Now,” he whispered, "call the Red Tornado."