Carnival of Souls

CHAPTER 8

BELIAS CAME INTO CONSCIOUSNESS with a yell that rolled into a name: “Aya!”

“Keep it down,” someone muttered.

The unfamiliar voice brought Belias to his feet. Several frightening moments wherein he couldn’t see passed, but as he blinked and stayed still, his vision returned. However, what he saw wasn’t particularly comforting: a strange woman in a gray suit sat on a chair in front of a table.

Belias felt his flesh where he’d been stabbed with Aya’s toxin-laden knives: no injury remained. Am I dead? If he was, he had been thoroughly wrong about the afterlife. If not, he wasn’t sure where he was. The woman, her clothes, and the room were unlike anything he’d seen in his life.

He stepped toward the woman — and hit an unseen wall.

Witch. He looked again at her. Unmasked witch. That clearly couldn’t be good. No witch walked around unmasked in The City.

She looked only a few years older than him, but witches — like daimons — lived for centuries, so he had no idea how old she truly was. Few witches older than three hundred existed. Most of the older ones had been killed in the wars, but this witch seemed more poised than even the elder ruling-class daimons were.

He watched her as he put both hands up and pushed, but unlike the fight circles, this barrier didn’t shock him. It simply wasn’t permeable. He paced the perimeter of the circle, running his hands over it, nudging the base of it, and confirming that he was held as securely within it as he was within fight circles.

All the while, the witch continued to work on whatever the papers on her table were. She paid him so little attention that if not for her initial words, he’d wonder if she knew he was there. He felt for the weapons he’d had in the fight, but only found one knife. After ascertaining that he was still armed, he decided to speak. “Witch!”

She glanced up, spearing him with a cold gaze from her blue-and-gold witch’s eyes. “Daimon.”

Then her gaze returned to the paper in front of her.

Belias had never been ignored. He was a favored son in a ruling-class family, a well-regarded fighter, an experienced bedmate, and, of late, a finalist in Marchosias’ Competition. He frowned, and then said, “I demand my freedom, witch.”

“No.”

“You cannot—” His words died on his lips as she lifted one hand and waved it in the air.

“I can do whatever I want, Belias.” She didn’t look up even as she silenced his voice. Her pen continued scratching across the paper for several more moments.

He tried to speak, tried to clear his throat, and finding no sound possible, began running his hands over the barrier again. She had silenced him. It was more effective than anything he’d ever encountered in The City, but he didn’t need to speak, especially if she wasn’t going to listen. He’d tried conversation, but she resorted to her spells rather than act honorably.

It wasn’t surprising: witches were lesser beings, capable only of treachery unless they were kept in check. They’d murdered his father and countless other daimons. This one had imprisoned him. If witches tried to live openly in The City, they would be murdered in their sleep — as they should be. It had been that way for centuries. They’d traded in the flesh and blood of daimons to work their spells, had set nature against The City, and until they were all but purged from his world, they’d been a constant threat to order.

After the war, the witches had been given the human world; the daimons kept The City — what little of it they could save from the uncontrollable growth of the Untamed Lands. It was a fair treaty, far more so than the witches deserved. There were little conflicts after the treaty. A few daimons had exposed some witches somewhere called Salem, but daimons had become too complacent. Rumors of daimons summoned and bound as witches’ familiars circulated from time to time, and there was talk that other, stronger witches lived in the Untamed Lands, but there was no proof.

Except here I am, caged and silenced by a witch.

He’d been taught to always win, to never give in no matter the odds, so he wasn’t going to let some witch kill him. He was going to escape, and once he was home, he would use this experience to gain support for his plan to eradicate the remaining witches from The City.

Methodically, he began at the ground and slid his fingers around the edge, seeking a flaw or opening he could use to tear a hole in the circle. As he did so, he let his fingertips become talons. Animal wasn’t a form he preferred, but his talons were sharper and more sensitive than fingertips.

He heard a book close with a soft thump, and the witch’s footsteps clacked over the stone floor.

At her approach, he stood again. Even if he couldn’t get out of the circle, he wasn’t going to stay on the floor as if he was her subordinate. When he stood, he saw how very tiny she was: frail bones and no musculature to speak of, yet she had boldness unlike any witch he’d seen in The City.

“I dislike being interrupted when I am working, Belias.” She walked around the circle, and he turned as she did so, continuing to face her rather than let her stand behind him. “You’re different from the ones I’ve summoned before.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

She murmured something in the language of witches and motioned to him.

The temptation not to speak at her command vied with the need to know. The desire for knowledge won over pride. “Summoned where?” he asked.

She studied him as objects were studied in the Carnival of Souls, and Belias felt an unfamiliar prickle of fear spread over his skin. His hand went again to the hilt of the knife strapped to his thigh — and he realized that it was Aya’s knife, one he’d bought for her.

Why do I have Aya’s knife?

Nothing made sense.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You are at the offices of Stoneleigh-Ross, Belias. Specif-ically, you are in my office, in my summoning circle.” The witch looked bemused. “You are also completely and utterly unable to be anywhere else unless I allow it.”

Belias hadn’t ever heard of Stoneleigh-Ross, but he had heard of summoning circles. Daimons were only able to be summoned if the witch had their full name. “How? Who are you? Why? I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not going to stay here as your prisoner. Witches aren’t free from judgment. If Marchosias—”

“You aren’t within his domain,” the witch interrupted. “This is my domain.”

Belias narrowed his gaze. “Who are you? Where are we?”

“I’m Evelyn Stoneleigh, and we are in North Carolina.”

“Where?”

“The human world, Belias.”

Horror filled him. The human world was terrible. Every treatise his father had given him on the place highlighted the perversions and barbaric nature of humanity. The City wasn’t perfect, but it had a functional caste system, breeding control, and healthy commerce. Marchosias kept order, and judgments were swift.

The witch walked past him then, leaving him alone in the room, trapped in her summoning circle.

How did I end up here, in a world where witches hold dangerous amounts of power?

The last thing he remembered was his former betrothed stabbing him. He’d expected to die, been certain of it, in fact — and he wasn’t sure that waking up imprisoned by a witch in the human world was a much better fate.