I spun so that my side was to her just as the shoe rebounded back at me from the side of the cage. It spun heel over toe in my direction, slicing through the air with tiny wings that whirred as they cut the air.
I almost reached out to catch it till I realized the wings were made of steel. The glint off the edge of one winked at me as it went past. The shoe landed on the floor at her feet.
"All you can do is spell objects, huh?" I said, noting that the wings folded back onto themselves and disappeared into the sole of the loafer.
"Valkyrie wings," she said with a shy grin. "Razor sharp."
I didn't have time to be impressed. She lobbed the other shoe at me and this one had all the rage of hellfire in the heat it emitted. A blast of it singed my hair.
I lumbered for her out of instinct. The crowed cheered from below as the action seemed to finally be starting. I had to stop her before she ended up making me hurt her out of self-defense.
"Stop it," I said. "We have to figure this out, we have to--"
I went dumbstruck as she peeled her shirt up over her head in answer. The lights of The Kennel, the magic that sizzled all around us, the glitter that the pixie had left hazing the air, they painted her skin with a glow that looked ethereal. Fae-born witch, I reminded myself. Not just any witch, but one with all the beauty of the high fae.
Her breasts swelled over her demi cup bra. The long-dead priest in me wanted to pull my coat off and toss it over her, keep her from lecherous eyes, but something else pushed that impulse aside. The demon unfurled its tail and dug its claws into my psyche. I wanted her. Badly. I throbbed with the lust for the entire moment it took her to ball the shirt up over her head, for the seconds it took for the sleeves to sprout tentacles that sported three, repulsive heads as she let it drape in front of her again.
One of the heads stretched toward me as she held the shirt by the hem.
"Hell no," I muttered and fell to a crouch just as a shower of flames spat out from its mouth. I duck-walked three feet before shoulder-rolling out of range. This was getting out of hand.
"Fuck, woman," I said. "We can work this out."
"There's nothing to work out." She said. "I fight or I die."
She leaned back on her heels as the writhing material of the shirt went parallel to the floor. Each head from each sleeve tugged on her, making her buck backward just to stay on her feet. Voracious, I thought. Those things were starving.
And the crowd was loving it. Someone tossed up an orb of some sort that glowed bright enough to blind me for a moment.
"I won't kill you, I swear it," I said. "Not if we can figure something out."
"You don't get it, do you?" she said. "There is no out. And I'd rather die than go back to that prick."
And that was it. I knew she had every intention of fighting me until she was nothing but a bloody pulp.
I charged for the first sleeve, grabbing hold of it before the heads could realize what I was doing. I had to duck underneath and grapple with the material where the scaly flesh petered out into fabric. It was easy, really. The heads had no sentience. They flapped about and bobbed up and down, but once I was past the worst of it, I managed to dig my fingers into the seam and tear.
The witch grunted with the effort of standing and holding her ground. The heads were writhing about like eels on a dock. The fabric tore beneath my fingers and for one second, I felt like I had the upper hand.
Then I realized the creature she'd called to with her magic wasn't just any magical being.
It was a hydra. And I now had to deal with six heads instead of three.
One of the heads clamped down on the back of my leg and I arched forward in pain and reflex. It bit down hard, and I could swear I felt a sting of venom burn up my veins. I lashed out in rage, whipping into the sleeve where the fabric met scaly flesh. I looped my finger around that lizardlike skin and I twisted, gritting my teeth as one of the other heads scraped against my throat.
I thought it was going to tear into me. It's breath smelled of sulfur and fabric softener. The witch gasped as I wrenched the thing aside and ducked to snag the hem of the shirt.
I pulled and yanked, using the fabric as purchase to make my way toward each head one by one. The heads, all three of them, curled around my waist and collided into my back and waist, tearing into the fabric of my jacket.
Even with the leather covering my spine and softer flesh of my kidneys, it was only a matter of time before the other sleeve, with its three heads would knock me off balance.
"Stop," I said to the witch. "Neither one of us can win this way."
I didn't want to hurt her but I couldn't hold out much longer before self-preservation kicked in. I needed her.
It was just as the second sleeve of hydra demons worked their way beneath my belly and one of their mouths clamped down on my stomach that I saw my salvation.
There, just outside the cage not three feet away, weaving her way through a cluster of vampires hassling one of the servers, was Rosario.
Rosario. She looked a bit younger, not as stooped as when I'd last seen her. But that last time had been a glamor meant to elicit pity from me. I knew the fae beneath all that magic was sharp and beautiful, much like she was letting herself be seen now. Her hair was the same strawberry blonde, cut in a blunt fringe over bright blue eyes.
I didn't need the fae witch after all. Rosario caught my eye. I thought she mouthed words of encouragement. I didn't have to die in this cage fighting off the witch who could help me stay human.
"Finish her," Rosario shouted at me.
I wrenched myself free, stumbling backwards as my grip on the shirt let go with the effort. The hydra took a peeling of skin from my belly at the sudden thrust, and blood sprayed over the cage floor. A whiff of excrement met my nose. I didn't feel anything for three full seconds, then my stomach burned.
I didn't dare look at it.
A burst of magic from below punctuated a victorious cheer. Someone had bet on the witch, apparently.
I swung on Vivianne. She'd dropped the shirt at the shout from Rosario and must have known she couldn't win. The look on her face certainly indicated her fear. If her eyes got any bigger, they'd take over her entire cheeks.
The hydra heads writhed on the floor at her feet, attacking each other as she pressed herself deeper into the corner and dug at the buckle of her belt.
The primitive instinct to surrender in the face of danger forced my hands in front of me. I noted the terrified look in her eye. She had hurt me, and she knew it. She also realized I didn't need her anymore. Whatever she planned for me with that belt of hers, it was going to have to be killer.
But shadows already crept into the corners of my vision. My hand went to my belly and felt something warm and viscous. Blood. Maybe a blob of viscera.
I didn't need to look down to know I was bleeding out. I felt like an old man lumbering toward her. All sensation was leaking out my fingertips.
"The demon, Saint," Rosario yelled from outside the cage. Her voice was hoarse, as though she hadn't spoken in a dog's age, but it was her. I knew it.
"I can see the demon," she said. "Everyone can. It's taking over."
9
Three things scared the beJebus out of me. One was dying. Doesn't matter how old you get, how long you live, or how much time you think you have, when you've done the sorts of things I've done over the years, seen the things I've seen, and know--really know--where you're going to end up when you expire, you have a healthy terror of death.
The other had to do with mirrors, and the reason why will die with me.
The last was my worst fear and I'd lived through it already twice in my lifetime. I swore there would never be a third.
I slid my gaze to the witch.
"Can you see it?" I demanded of her. "Can you see the demon?"
I didn't want to let her see panic on me but it was hard to keep the edge of it out of my voice.
One quick nod in my direction moved her black hair l
ike ripples in ink. It was all the confirmation I needed. In truth, I would have known anyway by the sheer look of terror on her face. That kind of horror only played on an expression when the victim had an epiphany of how badly she was going to be damaged.
And she was about to be damaged very badly. She'd fight, sure. That she hadn't been paralyzed by shock and adrenaline in those first moments we'd entered the cage was evidence of the kind of stuff she was made of, the things she'd endured under the fae-kin cabal's hold. She'd fight and she'd fight hard. She'd find a way to battle the demon that took over me the same way she'd fought me.
She'd wage her war until she lay dead.
And that was when I knew I had to kill her. If only for her sake. She didn't deserve what the demon would do to her when it peeled back the veil of spell and magic that was probably no more than a tatter of gossamer by now.
It was just a matter of time unless I acted now. If I finished all of this right now, I might never need to worry about the demon having control. Because now I had Rosario.
Rosario could shove the demon back down. Rosario would be the savior of us all. I just had to kill the witch first. And I had to be quick about it. I had to act now.
I leapt for the hem of the shirt the witch had abandoned and snatched it from the floor, deftly avoiding the tangle of heads that were fighting for dominance as they writhed on the floor of the cage.
In a single movement, I flung it sideways. One of the heads snapped down on air as it whizzed by, and I had the feeling I'd just missed getting my throat torn out. I barely heard the sizzle and crack of the bars as they connected with the skin of serpents. The witch backed into a corner. She had her belt nearly pulled from her jeans.
I lunged for her without mercy. The demon kicked me from inside, like a sharp toed boot with steel girthing. I felt it the way it felt to drown. It couldn't hurt more than if someone had kicked me in the stomach while I was deep underwater. My lungs didn't just burn, they felt scalded. My stomach was a bit of meat being seared on a hot griddle.
I drove for her throat the way a dying man reaches for that last gasp of life. My fingers closed around her neck and I felt the suppleness of her throat. My fingers noted her swallow of surprise
She deserved a quick death but I couldn't bring myself to cut her or mar her features in any way. She didn't deserve that. A flash of image came to me of that poor lesbian I'd used to get into the bazaar. On the heels of that memory came a thousand more. Some images were nothing but half-remembered reels of massacre and carnage, and I held my own breath to suffocate them from my thoughts.
The demon began laughing loud enough in my head to make me wince. I wanted to stop up my ears. It was too loud, without volume control, and it was a shrieking, razor-sharp sound.
I thought I was screaming right along with it until a soft touch landed on my shoulder. I expected a desperate clutch from the witch but she was gentle. Too gentle.
"Please," she said as she sagged beneath me. "I..can't..."
"Just die," I said through a tight throat as I squeezed harder, not enough to break bone or cartilage, just enough to stop the begging. I didn't think I could stand to hear the pleading. "Go quietly."
Her complexion began blooming with the flush of trapped blood. The ice-blue of her eyes sought mine, so I closed my eyes against a blur of water so I wouldn't see the look of despair. I didn't want to see the light go out in them. I didn't want to catch sight of myself and the hateful look on my face as I took her last breath.
A voice shredded through the miasma of thought. That same raspy sound from before. A voice I knew and yet was somehow just a bit different.
"Finish her, Saint," Rosario called up to me. "Win your battle. The demon is there. Right there. Don't wait. Do it."
Right there. I knew she was right. I could feel the tatters of veil being dragged away from the hooks that held it in place. I felt the magic tear. I smelled it somewhere in the deep recesses of my sinuses, a metallic, old blood smell.
The pregnant inhalations of the Kindred below was proof enough that the witch was dying, that the demon was climbing into my skin, that I was sinking into oblivion as it took over.
"Go," I said. "Die. Just die."
The witch wheezed beneath my grip. I felt each futile attempt to drag in air. I swayed on my feet, trying not to slip in the blood drooling from my belly. I couldn't feel pity. I couldn't. A thousand lives depended on it. And yet...
Yet something wormed its way into my thoughts. Rosario never called me Saint. She called me Hale. Sometimes she called me bastard, and more often than not she called me prick.
But never Saint.
The wheezing grew softer. The thready feeling of pulse in the witch's throat came only once every two seconds. She was a bag of water in my hands. Her legs splayed out around me as I crouched over her. I had the feeling I was bleeding all over her.
But Rosario never called me Saint. Saint was for business. Those who bought me and used me for their own ends. I thought of the last time I'd heard Rosario's voice. The last time she said my name. A curse. A declaration that she'd never speak to me again. Even then, she had used my Christian name because she said it humanized me.
A bark of laugh escaped me, one that rattled my throat. That creature calling for the witch's blood wasn't Rosario at all. It was a glamor. A bad one if I really thought about it and I'd almost fallen for it.
If I killed this witch, the demon would take me and there would be no Rosario to stuff it back inside. In my body, the demon would do terrible things to whatever got in its way and in the end, it would be me that went to Hell to suffer the consequences. My body would heal as it always did because the demon bargain gave me immorality as well as strength and those two things would make a mockery of all life before it turned on me and let me live with the consequences....years, maybe decades later.
Such was the nature of the fae underboss's cunning plan. I might win the Kennel fight but I'd be bereft of the tools to keep my humanity when I did. I'd be a worse pariah than I was now. I'd be hunted even as I razed every house, home, town, and city I wandered into. Because the demon had been chained far too long and it would want to have its vengeance. It would glut itself on blood.
I let go the witch's neck so suddenly I was shocked when she made a sound halfway between a bark and a gulp. I fell backwards without the support of her body to hold me upright. She fell into herself as though she had no bones.
The Kindred below erupted into hisses and angry shouts. A bottle flew up to strike the bars and burst into a hail of glass. And then, it went deathly silent. Even the music clenched in one, frozen heartbeat.
I crawled onto my hands and knees and then scrabbled my way to the witch's side. Whatever goo met my palms, I ignored. When I got close enough to see she was still alive, I watched her struggling to breathe, feeling each of her inhalations myself as I hauled in air with gasps that made my shoulders heave.
"Get up," I said in a hoarse voice.
The witch lifted her head and blinked at me. Stupefied. Still dazed. The curtain of her black hair fell back from her jaw and cheeks and she blinked again twice, trying to reset her faculties.
She seemed to remember she was supposed to be trying to kill me and reached for her belt again in a feeble movement too weak to accomplish anything but she clung to it just the same. It hung limp from her wrist.
"Can you speak?" I asked her.
What was the bargain again? Fight and win and you can have her contract.
There was a loophole.
"Can you speak?" I said again.
Her hand raked her throat and she coughed. Good. Nothing was broken.
"Concede," I said. The iciness was receding. Warmth stole over my body but it wasn't one that came from a core of health. Like the numbness of frostbite, it was false heat given me by the demon yawning awake.
"Concede," I said again. "Hurry."
Her head lolled to the side as though I had broken the bones beneath, but I knew better
. I had been firm but not too rough. I fell to a crouch in front of her, thinking of that poor young nun for some reason. I tried a gentle tone.
"Say I won," I murmured. "Just say it."
Her fist came up, belt in hand and the buckle in her grip went red hot. With a punch, she connected my cheek with the metal and I howled in pain and rage as it burned down into the flesh.
"Concede," I commanded and the demon inside pealed out roll after roll of laughter. I felt it pulling itself forward with long nails that dug into my tissues. Pain lanced my temple but I tried not to wince.
"Fuck you," she said. "I'm not dying in this place. Not today. Not ever. You're as good as done for. Why would I concede when I'm winning?"
Her voice had a mania to it that scared me more than the feeling of my own impending death.
"Horatio didn't bargain for death," I said, gritting my teeth against the pain. I yanked her hand away, jamming my thumb the trigger point on her wrist to force her to release it. The buckle, belt and all, fell to the floor with a thunk.
Someone below started chanting kill him kill him kill him.
"Horatio bargained for my win," I said, trying to catch her eye. "He made a mistake. We don't have to die. We can both live if I win, but these people, these creatures, they won't if you don't hurry."
Dizziness swam over my vision as I watched her face for signs of comprehension. I worried she was too far gone to manage any reasoning. The sheer weight of impending doom was enough to knock me on my ass again.
"Am I dead?" she said in a tone of wonderment. Her fingers reached out for my cheek and she cupped it like a lover might. Her eyebrows scuttled together in bewilderment.
My shoulders weighed about a hundred pounds. My spine creaked when I leaned closer to her. I was getting cold. So cold. Someone had reached inside my open belly and slipped a block of ice in the viscera.
"You're not dead," I whispered in a rasp that surprised me. I sounded like the old bishop in my order in the hours before he'd been taken by the plague. "You're hurt but you're not dead."
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