The dead were everywhere. Piling helplessly into the demon-fueled forges, where they were hammered into shape and hoisted up the scaffolding surrounding the tower. The work was continuous and all-consuming. Everywhere she looked, the demons sacrificed the dead for the tower.
The cold white eyes gazed down from the tower’s unfinished peak, seeming to bore into Autumn. The symbols she’d drawn on her skin burned anew. She turned away from that hateful gaze, and picked her way around the dead, walking the length of the forges. Something compelled her onward. She didn’t know what she was seeking.
Until she found him. Irdu lay spread-eagle, pinned to the hard rock by spikes driven through his hands and feet. Flame engulfed his body. His face was a rictus mask of pain. Two of the dead approached him with another block to be hardened and hammered. Without thinking, Autumn shoved them aside. Touching them sent bitter cold leaching through her body. She fell to her knees beside Irdu. The fire roiled high overhead, but Autumn couldn’t feel the heat.
She reached into the flame and did not burn. The cuneiform on her body lit up with a golden glow. She laid her hand on Irdu’s chest. The glow of her markings flowed into him, illuminating his own tattoos. He cried out and opened his eyes. The flames slowly receded until they died away to nothing, leaving cracked, smoking rock beneath Irdu’s shuddering body.
When he saw Autumn, his eyes went wide. “No—NO! What have you done? Get out of here!”
She ignored him, reaching for the stake in his nearest hand. She tugged and tugged. Her marking lit golden-bright again, and the stake came free.
“Autumn—stop this! Leave! Now!”
With the same struggle, the same glow, she freed one foot, then the other. At last, she freed his other hand. He jumped up and grabbed her, frenzied.
“You have to leave. You can’t let her see you! Please, please, get out of here!”
“The watcher in the tower?” Autumn asked. “She saw me the moment I entered the Underworld. She’s watched me this whole time.”
Irdu’s grip tightened on her shoulders. “What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t let you die.”
“I’m already dead. You must leave.”
“Not without you.”
“Yes. There is no other way.”
Autumn dug her feet in, refusing to be dragged anywhere. “I have a plan. We have to find the scribe.”
Shock crossed Irdu’s face. “What do you know about a scribe?”
“Bring me to her.”
Irdu sagged. “You’ve already met the Scribe at the Gates. The only authority on this side of the wall is the Host.”
“Then I will have to face the Host.”
“No!” Irdu grabbed for her, but she slipped from his grasp and turned to the base of the tower.
“You cannot enter the tower,” Irdu told her frantically. “There is no way inside except to be called by the Host.”
In front of her, the wall melted away, revealing a single door. Inside the door, a staircase spiraled up and out of sight. She stepped onto the first riser. Irdu attempted to come after her, but he crashed against the open doorway as if he’d hit a solid wall. He tried again, and failed again.
“Autumn, please! Don’t do this!” Irdu begged.
She turned back and reached across the threshold to cup his face. “I have to.” He tried to grab her wrist, to pull her out, but she slipped from his grasp, and turned back to the stairs.
“Autumn! No!”
She began the climb.
She could feel the watcher—the Host—anticipating her. That cold malevolence grew thicker, more brutal, with each step. Just as when she’d crossed the plains, she seemed to climb forever under the cold watch of the Host—and then, very suddenly, she reached a landing.
She was at the top of the tower. There was no ceiling. Over the edges of the incomplete walls, she could see to every horizon. It was nothing but lightless emptiness, filled with the souls of the dead, waiting to be smelted into the Host’s tower.
Welcome, Trespasser. Have you come to pay your fare? The Host had taken the form of a woman. But not just any woman. She wore the face of Autumn’s mother. It was a face not unlike Autumn’s own—round-cheeked, with thick dark brows and a pointed chin—except for the eyes, which were an empty, crystalline white. Incomprehensible power radiated from her with nearly physical force. Autumn had to strain to remain in the room.
“I’ve come to make a bargain.”
The Host smiled. You are in no position to do such a thing.
“I am, actually. I’ve put a claim on a demon.”
By doing so, you bind yourself to us. The Host waved her hand, and a select portion of the symbols drawn on Autumn’s body lit up—only one specific symbol, everywhere that she’d written it on herself. Death. Over and over again—on her throat, over her heart, on her hands, her legs, her feet. Death, death, death.
“You did not look closely enough,” Autumn told her. Each and every death symbol on her body was sandwiched between two others—the character for language and the character for power. Autumn reached into her bound hair and pulled the marker from where she’d tucked it before she’d gone to sleep. Starting on her left hand, she added a fourth symbol: love.
The Host smirked. Human emotions have no power here. Her face shifted, and instead of looking at her mother, Autumn found herself facing Dylan. His handsome face stared at her with the Host’s blazing eyes.
“Were you human once?” Autumn asked, continuing to add love all over her body.
We have been many things.
“Are you even conscious? Or are you acting on instinct?” She nearly had every language-death-power modified with an added love. The Host watched with undisguised interest.
We are aware of ourself.
“What did the dead do before you began building your tower?”
The Host’s face shifted from Dylan’s to her father’s. That one gave Autumn pause. She swallowed hard, looked back down at her legs, and continued writing.
They were purified in the fire and released.
“Reincarnation?”
The Host shrugged. It is a place and a time we have not experienced.
“So why do you keep them here, now? Why are you trapping them in this tower?”
We build the tower to the edge of the Underworld. We build the tower to escape Death.
“You are death.”
The Host’s face shifted from her father’s to her grandmother’s. Death is final. We seek eternity.
“You could have it. You could cleanse yourself in the fire and be released. You could allow the dead to be released, instead of condemning them to eternity in servitude.”
The unknown is not eternity. It is oblivion. It is the end.
“What right do you have to steal that end from the dead?”
We have the right, because we have taken it. The Host’s face shifted to Irdu’s.
Autumn flinched. “So you can’t be persuaded?”
The Host laughed. It was an inhuman sound, lacking any real emotion. You do not have the power to compel us.
Autumn drew the last love over her heart. The strain of staying in the tower suddenly vanished. She stood straighter, facing the Host head-on. “I you can’t be compelled, then you must be destroyed.”
The Host’s face faded back to her own—the one Autumn had first seen. An indistinct face, as hollow as that of the dead. You do not have the power to destroy us.
Autumn gave her a sympathetic look. “You have destroyed yourself.” She walked to the wall, braced her hands against it, and pushed. Bricks dislodged, tumbling away. Autumn peered over the edge, watching them fall. They hit the ground and shattered into dust. As if caught in a tiny whirlwind, the dust twisted and spun, reforming into the bodies of the dead.
STOP THIS.
Autumn braced her hands against the wall. The markings on her skin glowed brightly. She pushed again and more bricks tumbled. She kept pushing and pushing, dismantling th
e entire wall.
ENOUGH. The Host reached for her, but her hand passed through as if Autumn were made of smoke.
“You did this to yourself,” Autumn said. She lifted her foot and brought her heel to the floor with a powerful stomp. The bricks fell away beneath her feet. She and the Host both tumbled down. Autumn landed on her hands and knees, surrounded by debris. She launched herself upright and threw herself into dismantling the tower. The Host thundered and raged, but she couldn’t stop Autumn. Her voice grew weaker with each collapsing wall, each demolished floor.
One by one, the forges blinked out as the tower tumbled down, faster and faster. Story after story gave way beneath Autumn’s relentless drive. She heard the sound of voices, and footsteps. A flood of demons poured into the tower—Irdu at their lead. They surrounded Autumn, joined her in the destruction.
Eons seemed to pass. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Irdu, pulling the tower apart brick by brick. The demons who had once circled the tower on wing now clung to the sides, ripping at the walls.
When they reached the lowest floor, the Host was a diminished thing, sagging against the wall, looking no more substantial than any of the other dead. Her mouth worked again and again, trying to issue the same command, but no sound emerged. Feeling no pity, Autumn and Irdu pushed down the final wall. The bricks fell away in a collapsing wave, shattering to dust, and then reforming into the dead.
The Host became more and more indistinct, her features ever shifting and blurred. As Autumn kicked the very last brick away, the Host shattered into dust. The dust sifted and swirled, reforming into six different dead souls. They looked around in bleak confusion. When they saw each other, they surged together, but try as they might, they could not reform into the Host.
A soft wind stirred the air, and every dead soul in the Underworld lifted their faces to it. The hollowness receded from their eyes. The wind grew a little stronger. The spot where the tower had once stood began to glow, as golden bright as the markings on Autumn’s skin.
One of the dead stepped into it. She lifted her face with a soft smile, and when she opened her mouth a gentle laugh emerged. She dissolved away into the golden light, but her laugh remained, echoing through the silence of the Underworld like the ringing of a bell.
Autumn found Irdu’s hand and clutched it. They watched as another of the dead stepped into the light, and with a smile and sigh of relief, he too, dissolved into light. More and more of the dead stepped into the glowing circle, dissipating with looks of joy on their faces.
Autumn twisted, looking up at Irdu. He met her gaze and they moved in sync—she leapt on him, wrapping her legs around his waist as he hauled her up against his body.
“What have you done?” he demanded between gasping kisses. “You insane… reckless… genius…”
“Saved you.” She clung to him. Tears burned her eyes. “I had to save you. Tell me you’ll be alright now. Tell me you won’t dissipate.” A glow enveloped them, glittering and blue.
“I don’t know if I’ll—”
She couldn’t feel his hands on her anymore. “Irdu? What’s happening?”
“Autumn?” His voice sounded far away. The light grew brighter, blinding her.
“Irdu!”
“Autumn!”
The light faded, and she found herself standing outside the gates of the Underworld again. The Gatekeeper loomed over her.
Your claim has been forfeit, mortal. You have no right to the Underworld.
“What does that mean? I no longer have a claim on Irdu? What’s happened to him?”
The living are not privy to the affairs of the dead.
“Dead?” she choked on the word, doubling over on a shock of pain. “It can’t be. He’s immortal. He’s a demon!”
The living are not privy to affairs of the dead, the Gatekeeper echoed.
“No! Tell me what’s happened to Irdu! I demand—”
The Gatekeeper waved a cloaked hand. Return to your domain.
Autumn woke with a scream. Outside her bedroom window, the sky was dark. She’d slept through the entire day. She sat upright in an empty bed.
She was alone.
13
Autumn collapsed back onto her bed with a choked sob. She’d failed. Her vision blurred and she squeezed her eyes shut as hot tears slicked her cheeks. She curled in on herself, wracked with silent sobs that robbed her of breath and made her chest ache as if her heart had been ripped out. Or maybe her chest ached because her heart had been ripped out.
A low noise echoed through her room. Autumn froze. It had sounded a lot like a male groan. Sitting up cautiously, she peered over the edge of her bed.
Sprawled on the floor where she’d let the drawing of Irdu fall, lay a naked man—a naked man with warm brown skin and black hair. Faint markings traced over his body, almost indistinguishable from the rest of his skin, like well-healed scars. A very distinct scar carved a thick, ragged line across his throat. Piercings that had once been golden bright were now a dull, tarnished gray. He had a muscular arm thrown over his face, but he groaned and turned, letting his arm fall away. He had a face Autumn had once thought of as brutish and unhandsome. But time had improved her vision, and she now saw a face that was harshly beautiful. Beautiful—and human.
Unable to make a noise through a throat choked with emotion, Autumn flopped onto the floor and crawled over to Irdu’s prone body. She touched him gently, afraid that her hand would go through him and he would vanish like smoke. But when she laid her palm on his chest, his body was solid, and warm, and real.
His eyes fluttered open, and he stared up at her, dazed.
“Irdu?” she whispered hoarsely.
The dazedness faded, and his eyes warmed. “Autumn?”
“Are you alright?” She was crying again, her tears spattering his chest.
“I… think so?” He reached up, cupped her cheek. “How’d you do it?”
The gatekeeper’s words echoed in her mind. The living are not privy to the affairs of the dead. She’d forfeit her claim on Irdu—and therefore her access to the Underworld—not because he was dead, but because he was living.
She touched the faint scars of his tattoos. “I changed their meaning. I made a new image of you. But I changed your tattoos in the image. I took away the gods’ marks. I rewrote the character slave as man. And I changed the death character to love.”
Irdu pushed himself up slowly, grimacing. Autumn caught his arm, helping him. “How did you know to do that?”
“The tower in Borsippa—the one where you… died…”
He nodded.
“It was built for a god of literacy, Nabu. You had his mark on your body.”
He frowned. “The priests… as I was dying…”
“You also had Inanna’s mark—a fertility goddess who had descended into the Underworld. And I thought, maybe, the language was key. You were covered in references to sex, death, and slavery. I figured they were what had condemned you to be an incubus. So, I thought, if only your tattoos could be changed, your fate could be changed. And then I realized, after you got so upset that I had created a ‘graven image’ of you, that I did have the power to change your tattoos.”
Irdu stared at her in wonder.
“I knew about the tower in the Underworld. I kept seeing it when we had sex.”
He frowned. “You should have told me—”
“You would’ve decided to end yourself even sooner.” She wasn’t going to apologize for keeping him from martyring himself. “Anyways, I could tell the tower was bad. I knew there was something inside it, something corrupt. Whatever it was, it held the key to your freedom. Your enslavement was tied to it. Because it held the key to death itself.”
“The Host.”
She nodded. “And I thought, if I can fight that thing, I can free him.”
Irdu shook his head in disbelief. “How did you know you could destroy the Host?”
“Because I love you. I covered myself in my love for you.” She h
eld up her arms, showing the imitations of his tattoos inked all over her skin. “I had to hide it until I was inside the tower, so that she would think I was harmless and let me in. But once I was there, the Host's corruption couldn’t withstand real love.”
“How did I ever doubt you?” he asked. “I never will again. If you tell me you can flap your arms and fly to the moon, I’ll believe you.” His expression turned fervent. “I owe everything to you.”
“No. You saved me, too. I was drowning in loneliness. Every day was getting harder and harder to keep going. If you hadn’t come along…” She trailed off into fraught silence.
Irdu gently touched her cheek, bringing her gaze back to him. “I love you, Autumn. I love you more than life.”
“Love me enough to stay alive. No more noble attempts at self-sacrifice, okay? Because I love you, too. And if I had to live without you—”
Irdu threw his arms around her and hauled her against his body, crushing the words out of her. She held him just as fiercely. They remained like that for a long time.
Eventually, Autumn drew back. She kissed him softly and looked into his dark brown eyes. “I happen to remember that the last time you were in human form you were ravenously hungry and also quite…”
“Horny?”
She traced her finger along his hairline. No horns. “Yes. That’s the one. I was just wondering if—” she shrieked as he suddenly flipped her onto the floor. He pounced over her, grinning a fangless smile.
“Are you offering to see to my needs?”
“I was hoping you’d see to mine.”
And he did. Several times that night. When she came, she saw only Irdu, felt only pleasure and love. When they weren’t attached to each other’s bodies, they gorged on Christmas leftovers. Sated and exhausted, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
When she woke in the morning, Irdu was still there. Unconscious and drooling on the pillow, but there. And human. Golden sunlight poured through the window, highlighting his features with a sharp-edged glow. Autumn traced a wondering finger over the harsh lines of his face,
Epilogue
Demon Lover Page 15
