The Legend of Diablo

Epigraph

Round and round the circle whirls

Red blood flows through boys and girls

Who so e’er the black thorn pricks

Is the one Diablo picks

The bones, the eye, the corn from ash. The water drawn three times from the bottomless well. The skin of an unborn black gosling. And, of course, the pistola. Javier went over the list of ingredients four times, checking them off as if one might disappear suddenly.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Fernando kept his eye out for coyotes, soldiers, or anything that might interfere in the ritual. The ring of torches in the middle of the desert would draw all manner of beasts, the worst of them man.

“It’s this, or Duarte keeps after me.” He ground his teeth. “I’ll never join them, Fernando. And I can’t let anyone else suffer.” He glanced toward the fire. “Is it hot enough, do you think?”

“You’re the prodigy. You tell me.”

The flames didn’t look special, but the fire had been lit with an ember from the funeral pyre of a virgin. The scroll had said the flames would need to be white and black—all he saw was mundane yellow and orange, and they were running out of firewood.

Would it still work? He delved into the filaments of reality with his magical senses, seeking the tenuous connections that would allow him to draw together the forces he needed to build the weapon.

“It’s almost time,” Fernando warned. “The moon is high.”

“I’m ready.” Javier checked and rechecked the protection circle, then gestured at his longtime friend to back out of it.

He’d memorized the incantation on the scroll before it had disintegrated. It was seared into his mind like a brand now—one of the things he’d sworn to erase from his memory after he’d made the mage gun. The knowledge was too dangerous in Duarte’s hands, which was why Javier had stolen the scroll in the first place. Three men had already died trying to perform this ritual. Few were skilled or powerful enough to cast this spell.

And you are?

Don’t think about that, he countered himself fervently. Doubt had no place in magic.

He began the chant, adding each ingredient as he circled the fire. The pistola went in last—it’d been an old piece, a single-shot antique found on a body by the side of the road. The threads told him it had once belonged to a pirate and had traveled far, but it was barely used and too rusted to be reliable.

With luck, Javier wouldn’t have to use this weapon, either. Its mere existence should be enough to deter the men pursuing him.

The incantation ended. The spell’s ingredients almost entirely smothered the flames now. Had he not built the fire up enough? The gooey eye of a hawk leaked and sizzled, while the bones released greasy black smoke. Plumes of white smoke wafted into the air.

Fernando hovered at the edge of the protection circle, looking forlorn. Javier sagged as despair took hold. All that work, all those months gathering the ingredients—

Then he felt it. The threads of the universe slackened and parted, like a beautiful woman’s face peering through overlong bangs. The flames leaped, and then a beam of light shot up from the firepit.

Javier stumbled back as a violet-rimmed portal opened beneath the firepit, the ingredients hovering within the light. The magic emanating from that pinhole in reality made his bones shudder. He heard all the realms singing in a chorus of minor keys, layers upon layers of resonance that threatened to pull him apart. It blasted his ears, filled his head, until his whole body shook, his bones pulsating with power.

“Javier!” Fernando shouted.

He held out his hand to stop him. He couldn’t let his friend breach the circle, for his own safety as well as for the spell’s sake.

The black-and-white smoke that hung in the air surged and recoiled, spiraling tightly. All of a sudden, it was as though he’d been thrust into a potter’s kiln. He hissed as his exposed skin blistered and peeled like flakes of ash. He covered his face as the flame focused down to the power of a tiny sun, all of it centering around the pistol.

In his mind’s eye, the threads of the universe tautened once more so that the tapestry of fate was rewoven. The pattern remained, the ropes and bundles strong and tight as always, but something was different about it now. It seemed…shorter?

As the flames receded, he shook his head and blinked past the dark splotches dancing in his eyes. Nothing was left of the ingredients except the pistol, which had melted to become…a lump of metal. Or was it ivory? Or pearl? It shifted through shadows, a braid of energy and matter. And it…sang. Just the barest echo of that fading chorus. He reached into the smoldering embers and picked it up.

Its warm weight was comforting, but also… Javier frowned. The song became a keen. Sadness. Anger. Hurt. Like a curious wolfling caught in a rabbit snare, whimpering for its mother. He stroked it gently, soothing it.

“Javier!”

A flash of light, and then a loud boom rang across the land. A blast of cold air hit him. He looked up. A white streak of light angled downward, a faint bluish glow trailing behind it. It got closer, bigger, and then Javier realized it was not going to stop.

He dove out of the protection circle as the fireball crashed, plowing a deep gouge into the earth and sending a wake of grit over Javier. The torches went out, and darkness engulfed them.

Fernando helped him to his feet. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” He glanced toward the crater with a frown, his heart hammering.

“Did it work?” Fernando held up a lantern.

Javier looked at his hand. The lump of twisted metal was still not a gun. And yet…

He closed his eyes. The gun’s threads were tangled, twisting, writhing like a knot of rutting snakes in heat. It was a gun. It had been a gun, and now it had been reformed. Transformed.

He opened his eyes and looked down. The pistola had been restored, the grip made of buttery ivory, the barrel shining. Fernando exclaimed, “You transmogrified it!”

He didn’t have a chance to correct him. Something rose from the crater where the firepit had been. No, someone.

Javier picked up a rock and whispered an incantation, then threw the stone into the sky so it hovered and cast its brilliant light over them. His knees grew weak; after the ritual, his energy had been sapped. He wouldn’t be able to defend them magically.

He raised the mage gun shakily as the being unfurled. No telling what had come through from the other side when he’d bound the demon to the pistola. He hoped El Diablo was willing to meet the challenge…

The creature moaned.

Javier drew back sharply. It was a man. At least, something that appeared to be human. The being’s neck was bent at an unnatural right angle to his body, and his shoulder blade jutted up at a sickening slope, but there was no blood. No open wounds spilling his guts across the ground.

The being slammed the heel of his palm against the side of his head, snapping his neck upright, then pulled his shoulder back so the bones popped into place.

“Madre…” Fernando crossed himself, eyes wide. Javier saw why.

The creature was entirely naked, only…there was nothing to show them it was a he. That curiously blank space made everything inside him squirm. He’d not been a terribly devout student of the Bible, but he did know what kind of creatures came without manhood or feminine clefts, and hazy memories of those lessons surfaced.

“You…you’re an angel…” He lowered the gun. It had to be. Magic needed balance: it made sense that the demon he’d summoned and trapped within the gun had also called down a divine power of equal value. That hadn’t been mentioned in the scroll, but it made sense…

The creature looked up as if noticing them for the first time. His eyes were…gods, they were like two large gems, facets sparkling and shifting between the color of the sky and a stormy sea. His long blond lashes fluttered like birds whose wings had suddenly been clipped. “Where am I?”

He’d said it in their language. With their accents, even. His shaking voice had a flutelike quality to it, as if he were speaking through choppy, windswept waves.

“I am not sure this place has a name,” Javier said carefully. “But we’re three days’ ride northwest of the nearest village. We’re safe here from the soldiers.”

“Soldiers?” The creature—a man, Javier decided, with his soft, deep voice—shook his head, as if having a hard time understanding. He staggered forward, those strange eyes panning the flat, dusty plain bathed in night. He cast his gaze toward the stars, faint beyond the hovering glow stone. His chest rose and fell rapidly, and he collapsed to his knees, moaning.

“Javier, what are you doing?” Fernando whispered as he drew closer.

“I don’t think he’ll hurt us.” He grabbed a flask and blanket from their provisions. “He’s a…guardian, sent to protect the power of this gun and keep it out of the hands of evildoers.” He didn’t want to admit to his friend he didn’t know what this being’s purpose was, or how he might have messed up the spell. “Get the horses ready. We should leave this place before we attract any more attention.”

Dutifully, Fernando hurried away. Javier draped the cover over the naked angel, noticing he had no wings. He thought of the stories of Icarus, the fool who’d flown too close to the sun… No, wait, Icarus hadn’t been an angel. Javier frowned. He’d never been a very good student.

He held the flask out. “Easy, friend. We will not harm you.”

The man refused the flask. “I… I don’t know… Why am I here?” he croaked, shuddering.

That was the question.

Perhaps God is testing me, Javier thought self-consciously. Cold sweat dampened his brow. He kept glancing at the creature’s back, expecting to see wings.

“Let’s get somewhere safe,” Javier urged. “I will do what I can to help you, friend. My name is Javier Punta.” He held out his hand. “What do I call you?”

The man considered him warily, but grabbed his hand and pulled himself to his feet. “I am called Abzavine.”