The Demon's Librarian

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “I think he was wrong,” she said, and pushed herself up from the table. “We’d better get going. It’s already afternoon.”

  “He wasn’t wrong,” Ryan said to her bent head as she scooped up her plate and silverware. She was, at heart, a neat little soul. He watched her wrist, bent at just the right angle to display maximum vulnerability. If the Inkani got their claws on her . . . “I can smell it on you. I could when I met you, but I didn’t know what it was. You’re a Golden, Chess. And I’m going to protect you.”

  “Would you still ‘protect’ me if I wasn’t useful to this Order of yours? Or if your own ass wasn’t on the line?” Her dark head shook once, sharply, side to side. “No, of course not. We’re business partners, Ryan. And as soon as we pick up this guy of yours, I guess we’ll see which side your bread’s buttered on.”

  Wait a second. What the hell? “Chess—”

  “No.” She turned away, stalking into her kitchen. “Give me a couple of minutes, and I’ll be ready to go.”

  What the hell? What did I do now?

  He didn’t have the faintest clue.

  * * * *

  He couldn’t drive, and she didn’t have a car, so it was an agonizingly slow bus ride and then down to the subways, managing to make him uncomfortable. If he’d been on his own he could have used rooftops and alleyways, the secret back routes of the city, but she was in no condition—or mood—to be clambering up the sides of buildings and leaping from roof to roof, even if she could have kept up with him. He could have carried her, but what would be the point, other than enjoying the feel of her?

  No, they took the subway. And she was monosyllabic, staring out the window and biting gently at her lower lip, evidently deep in thought. She wore another sweatshirt jacket, this one a deep maroon and zippered up the front, its hood resting gently on her slim shoulders. The train bulleted around a bend and her center of gravity shifted; she actually leaned into him. Though there were empty seats, they both stood—Ryan preferring to be on his feet in case of attack and her . . . she probably didn’t want him looming over her. He didn’t blame her.

  I don’t blame her for any of this. Even though she found the books, woke up her potential, killed a fucking skornac and got me into trouble. No, the books probably called her, if what I was told of potentials is true. She probably doesn’t even know why she found them, probably felt compelled. And now she’s frightened, I haven’t given her any goddamn reason to trust me other than dragging her to a tavern the Inkani just happen to decide to attack while she’s there. He glanced up at the map and looked down at her sleek bent head. “Next stop,” he murmured, and her shoulders hunched. She’d heard him.

  Why had she suddenly withdrawn into herself? Was it something he’d said? Probably. He had no gift for handling females, like Paul did. Hell, Ryan barely had any idea of how to talk to a woman, she seemed mercurial at best and stubborn at worst, when she wasn’t so bloody foolhardy and brave it threatened to drive him right out of his head.

  They emerged onto Harkness Street, and even though it was during the day she shivered. The sun was sinking, it had taken them much longer than he’d thought. “Not far now,” he said, wondering why she didn’t have a car. It didn’t seem like the right time to ask.

  “Maybe you should go up alone,” she said suddenly. “If you’re this guy’s partner, he might not be too happy to see me. Especially if you’re not supposed to be around a . . . female.”

  “You’re coming with me. Once Paul understands, you’ll have two protectors instead of one. I’m no coward, but the more Malik around, the safer you are. Even if you don’t want to talk to them.” They’ll wait. Hell, for a Golden they’ll fall on their knees and beg. And she trusts me, I have to be careful. Not do anything stupid.

  Harkness Street was in the Vietnamese district, and the crowds here didn’t make eye contact as Ryan towered above them, occasionally touching Chess’s shoulder to direct her. The smells of pho and baking cream puffs, strange spices and laundry steam, permeated the air. Vegetables spilled out of sidewalk booths, and a little girl in a red jacket, her black hair cut straight across her forehead and falling in an unbroken sheet down her back, pointed at Chess and asked her mother a question. Chess had turned pale, and her steps slowed. Frustration and annoyance boiled under Ryan’s ribs. He’d been gentle, he’d been careful, he’d been as kind as he could.

  Maybe she was having second thoughts about hanging around a Drakulein.

  He guided her to a door tucked between an apothecary’s shop and another grocery, this one with colorful paper pennants for sale under the awning. The clouds were beginning to show up in earnest, and the temperature was dropping even through the sunlight. The door was glass, marred with spiderweb cracks as if someone’s head had been rammed into it, and Ryan began to feel uneasy. That hadn’t been there before.

  The door opened, and he crowded Chess in. The noise of the street fell away. A narrow tiled hall, indifferently-carpeted stairs at the back, they’d rented this room from a hard-eyed Vietnamese woman and paid in cash, weeks ago. Ryan sniffed cautiously, and didn’t like what he smelled.

  Paul’s scent, of course, familiar as his own breath. And over that, the red roil of bloodlust, of fear, of dark purpose, and a fading tang of demon. Not Drakulein, but another type of demon entirely. Maybe a brilnac, it smelled wet and disgusting, like fur left to rot with potatoes in a dark corner.

  “Upstairs. Second floor.” He had to move forward, herding her. She went reluctantly. The smell of her fear and adrenaline began to come in waves, and he tried not to breathe deeply. Little shallow sips of air, the scent spiking across his hindbrain and hiking his pulse to match hers.

  She climbed the stairs in front of him, trying to move quietly. When they reached the narrow sloping aperture that gave way to the second-floor hallway, he slid around her and took the lead, going slowly and glancing back when she paused. “Stay with me.” He didn’t like the way her eyes were now ringed with white. Dammit, woman, what’s wrong with you? Why are you afraid if you’re with me?

  Still, her fear was only normal. Maybe she could sense the presence of demons, too, if she was far along the path to becoming a full Phoenicis. If she could . . .

  As soon as he drew near the door he could smell something else, too. Blood, violence, and a copper scent he recognized.

  Death. Fuck. Oh, holy fuck.

  He turned back, sliding a knife out of its sheath. “Stay here,” he whispered, and pointed to a spot right up against the wall, where she wasn’t visible from the stairs or at risk from flying wreckage if any of the doors burst open. “Right here.”

  “I thought I was supposed to stay with you,” she whispered back, fiercely.

  “Don’t fucking argue with me. Stand right there and don’t move.” His tone brooked no disobedience.

  Her eyes glittered, but she moved. She stood where he’d pointed, and her chin lifted a little, mulishly defiant. Spots of high color stood out in her pale cheeks, she set her jaw and glared at him. Even that glare made her look adorable.

  We’re going to have a talk about your attitude, sweetheart, just as soon as I see what’s behind Door Number One. He eased up on it, moving soft and deadly. No pulse behind it, but there could be a masking-spell; sometimes the Inkani got a little tricky like that.

  Paul, I hope you got out of here in time.

  If he hadn’t been with Chess he would have come in through the window on the fifth floor and come down. Her perfume was beginning to fill up the hall, her heartbeat accelerating even more as he reached down and tested the doorknob, barely realizing he’d made the habitual ward-movement to blur his fingerprints.

  It was unlocked.

  Oh, dammit. Dammit.

  The door swung wide, and he studied the room, the bed in the corner Paul had slept on, the chair in the opposite corner Ryan had stood guard in for at least a week while they canvassed the city for signs of the skornac’s killer. The tiny sink and counter for a hotplate, the narr
ow bathroom off to one side. The smell boiled out and he heard Chess moving. There were no demons here.

  Not anymore.

  A man’s body slumped across the bed. Blood had splashed in a high arc up the peeling wallpaper. The little room was close and full of the stench of death and spoiled Malik sorcery; no window because this was a bolt-hole, a rendezvous point. His throat had been slashed, a quick and messy job. He wore a brown leather jacket and unbuttoned jeans, a dark green T-shirt. His head lolled obscenely over to one side, his face pointed toward the door. Below his chin the wide grimace of his cut throat opened, grinning huge and horrible.

  There was another body on the floor, a human woman in a tight skirt and high boots, the perfume and hairspray she’d worn while living turning into a cloying reek. Her neck had been broken and her shirt was off, her torso glowing pale in the dim light from the overhead lamp.

  Goddammit, Paul. You couldn’t go a night without a female, could you. You stupid, stupid . . . Wait a minute. Just wait one goddamn minute.

  Relief welled inside his chest. That’s not Paul.

  “What is it?” Chess, at his shoulder.

  I thought I told her to stay back! He reached out to push her away, to shield her from this unlovely sight, but she looked past him and gasped. Her hand flew up to her mouth.

  “Get back.” He pushed her away from the door. She resisted, but was no match for a Drakul’s strength, he dragged her back to the safe spot against the hallway wall and propped her there. “Stay here, goddammit. Don’t make me repeat myself.” There might be a trap in the room. Just waiting for a Drakul to come back and poke around.

  Besides, you don’t need to see this. I don’t want you to see this. Even if it isn’t my Malik.

  She was even paler, if that were possible, and she stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. Her pupils dilated.

  God, help me. “Stay here,” he repeated. “Here’s the safest place for you.”

  Her lips moved, but even with his demon-acute hearing he couldn’t tell what she was trying to say. He tore himself away and stepped back into the doorway, the knife laid flat against his right forearm, the plain wooden hilt protruding just a little from his fist. He picked his way into the room carefully, one step at a time, sparing himself nothing.

  The female smelled ripe, with the bathroom odor of death-loosened sphincters. No taint of demon on her; but the recent smoky smell of sex hung in the air, fading fast. Whoever this man was, he wasn’t Paul. His wallet lay open on at the end of the bed, the green edge of cash poking out— two twenties lay in a congealed pool of blood. Last night, then, the blood smells fresh but not that fresh. If I’d have dragged her out of bed and ran over here, it still would have been too late.

  The small table by the chair was empty, Paul’s coat was gone too. Ryan checked the corpse’s pockets, feeling his gorge rise briefly. Pointlessly. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could have done, even if his stomach hadn’t twisted into a knot over the woman who had disobeyed him once again and stood in the doorway, her fingers pressed against her mouth, her eyes huge and darkly dilated, the two violent spots of color in her cheeks standing out against pale skin.

  I don’t want you to see this, Chessie. The thought was tinted with sadness—and rage. Paul had broken cover to leave a message with the librarian’s coworker; a demon had come up here and killed a man and a hooker who were, in all reality, unconscious of the danger they were in. Where was his Malik?

  Goddammit, Paul, I hope you’re all right. I’m glad it’s not you in here.

  But the sick chewing of worry wouldn’t go away. And that was something else to worry about; his worry wasn’t for Paul or even for the two hapless victims. No, the only person he was worried about right now was her.

  Ryan retreated to the door, pushed Chess aside. She didn’t resist, but she did make a small, hurt noise. “Quiet,” he warned her. If she started screaming now, she wasn’t likely to stop. He swept the door closed, shut his eyes briefly. Go to God, whoever you are.

  His next problem looked up at him with eyes that threatened to break his heart. “What is . . . Who did . . . Why . . .” She couldn’t even formulate a question, and that disturbed him too. She wasn’t taking this well.

  What, she can handle demons but a dead body gives her trouble? He shook his head. It was an uncharitable thought. “Demon.” He grabbed her arm and pushed her toward the stairs. “We’ve got to get out of here, we’ve already left more traces than we should have. Come on.”

  “But . . . police . . . the . . . the . . . ” She struggled, but he used his strength ruthlessly, pushing her through onto the stairs.

  “No police. Not now. I’ll call in from your apartment and a cleanup crew will come out. They’ll—”

  “But—” She took a deep, gulping breath, and he didn’t like the way her paleness was turning slightly green.

  “Dammit, Chess, move. A demon was here. God alone knows what it left incubating in that corpse. We have got to get out of here.” His fingers sank into her arm and she swallowed another soft sound, this one of pain. He knew he shouldn’t hurt her but he had no choice. “Move.”

  She stumbled on the thin, cheap, carpet, and he held her up. I won’t let them take you, Chess. I won’t.

  Outside, the sun was sinking below the horizon, a soon, short winter sunset. And now, he didn’t have any time. Because as soon as dark hit the Inkani would be spreading through the city, and it didn’t take much imagination to think that perhaps they’d show up here. Just as he thought that, he heard a low, chilling growl, and his eyes focused on the end of the hall.

  Oh, great. Not an Inkani, but one of their spiders, already in the process of shedding its humanity. Its eyes glowed with sparks of red, its fingers crackling as they lengthened. It wouldn’t be able to go out into full sunlight, but the room was windowless and the hall only lit by the dimmest of bulbs. And outside, it was cloudy . . . and the light was already fading.

  “Stay still, Chess,” he said, quietly. “This will only take a moment.”

  Eleven

  Her knees turned to water. She slumped against the wall, staring at the young man who had just appeared. He was slim, Vietnamese, and no taller than her—but then he started to grow.

  The horrible stench from the room full of dead people made her want to gag as she watched the human shape at the end of the hall stretch grotesquely, as if he was made out of rubber and was being pulled from both ends. Her jaw went slack, and she wondered when, exactly, her life had gone down the rabbit hole.

  There’re dead people in there. She’d only looked for a moment, but the sight was seared into the inside of her head. She suspected even a hot shower and scrubbing her eyes with bleach wouldn’t make it go away. The horrible throat-cut grin under the slack face, blood spattered in a high arc and soaking into tattered wallpaper, the gassy, terrible smell—

  The man at the end of the hall made a low, hoarse sound like a scream of pain. He wore a faded Jericho Warriors sweatshirt that kilted up at the bottom as his lanky frame stretched into something skeletal and hunched, bones cracking as his dark eyes lit with red sparks. His hair, in the layered razor-cut so popular with young men nowadays, fell in his eyes as his shoulders rotated inward, hunching. He looked like a cartoon, except for the claws that sprang loose from his lengthening fingers. The claws looked like bone, and his bony hand jerked out, claws slicing through the faded paint on the walls, dust puffing down.

  Ryan moved forward, his shoulders almost seeming to fill up the hall. “Just a spider,” he said, the razor edge of contempt slicing the air. “An Inkani spider. Used to hunt during the day. A filthy maggot with the worm inside him.”

  That doesn’t make any sense. “Um,” Chess managed through the pinhole her throat had become.

  “Left here to provide a little surprise, eh? Only you wandered from your post, slave.”

  The boy snarled back at him, a thin thread of sound that ended on a yip. Chess wished she could
stuff her fingers in her mouth to bite down and push back the scream trying to work its way free.

  Then the bone-clawed boy yanked his fingers free of the wall and leapt forward, claws outstretched. He didn’t aim for Ryan, who was definitely in his way, seeming to take up most of the space; instead, his red-flecked eyes fixed on Chess and his hands outstretched. He even foamed at the mouth, champing like a horse with the bit in his teeth.

  Oh, Christ. Oh God. She stood frozen in place, staring as Ryan reached out with one hand and backhanded the boy.

  “No!” Chess yelled.

  The boy went flying, smashed into the wall. More dust flew. He shook his head and scrambled to his feet, but Ryan was on him, moving with a spooky blurring speed, inhumanly fluid and graceful. His fingers sank into the boy’s throat as the thing writhed and cackled, its claws tearing and beating at the air. Ryan’s free hand caught the boy’s right wrist and twisted, the sickening crack of bone breaking echoed in the hallway.

  “NO!” Chess screamed. Ryan didn’t pause, his own fingers turning into hooks and sinking into the boy’s throat. One quick twist, another horrible sickening crack, and the body slumped uselessly on the floor.

  Oh, my God. He just killed him. All the air left her lungs in a walloping rush.

  It was all very well to kill demons. But this was a person. Ryan had just committed murder.

  What kind of person goes around with claws? the particularly jolly voice of horror caroled through Chess’s head. She smelled it again, the ripe gassy scent rising thickly to clog her nostrils and choke her. She hated that smell, hated it; it reminded her of a crooked alley and seeing a little human shape lying broken under an octopus demon’s maw, and the sound of wet crunching as the skornac fed.

  Ryan stood with another fluid movement, brushing his hands together as if ridding them of dust or dirt. “God grant you peace,” he said harshly. “Chess?”

  She pressed her fist against her lips. No. God, no.