by E J Frost
I step out of the Earth a moment later. Into my hearth room. Around me, my protective circles flare to life like an atomic blast.
Within the inner circle, caught behind my wards, triple-circled, the demon rages.
“What the fuck are you doin’?” he snarls. “Let me outta here.”
“No,” I say softly.
That stops him. He tucks his claws behind his back. Rocks on the balls of his feet so his leather pants creak. “Okay, let’s talk, sweetness.”
“Don’t call me that. It was ‘sweet meat’ at first,” I say, remembering. “That was more honest, wasn’t it, Jou? Since that’s all I am to you.”
He tilts his head to the side and watches me. The neon has died out of his eyes. They’re just dark now. Soft. But I’ll never forget how he looked when Denys was cutting me. He would have let me die. Without regret. Without remorse. My life doesn’t matter to him, because he already has my soul.
“I got my limitations,” he says slowly. “I’ve been walking among your kind for a long time, and, yeah, you all look like meat to me. But you know that’s not all there is between you an’ me. You know that.”
I scoff while I rebelt my robe to cover myself. He doesn’t get to see me naked anymore. “I know you want me with you. Whatever that means. But you don’t need me alive, do you, Jou? I’ve been wrong, all this time. About everything. I’ve been afraid of all the wrong things. I shouldn’t have been afraid for my soul. It has value to you. You’ll protect it, won’t you? You told me that. But my life, that means nothing to you—”
“It means something to me,” he interrupts, holding his hands out towards me as far as the flaring golden light of the protective circle will allow.
A sudden whiff of sulphur flares my nostrils.
“Oh,” I say, as I realize what it is. “Oh, oh . . . that’s the first time you’ve lied to me.”
We stare at each other in silence for a long moment.
I push the sleeves of my bathrobe up to my elbows.
“What’re you doin’?” His voice is as soft as velvet, but I can feel the hidden razor of his will. It scrapes along my abraded nerves.
“I’m going to be free of you. And you are going back to Hell,” I answer.
He explodes. “You’re gonna send me back? I protected you! I killed them ‘cause a what they did to you!”
I sit down cross-legged on the packed dirt floor of my hearth-room. Look up at him. I don’t feel anything. Shouldn’t I feel something? I just feel numb. “That’s the second lie you’ve told me. You killed them because they threatened you, Jou. What they did to me didn’t matter. Because you already have my soul wrapped up in a nice box, don’t you?”
I shake dust and dirt off my arms. Hold up my hands to the night and call power. The shadows of his bindings creep across my skin.
The demon’s roar brings my attention back to him. He’s pressed up against the edge of the protective circle. My power restrains him, shooting like golden wires across his skin, glyphs flaring like supernovas, outlining his massive form against the smoke that billows behind him. He’s buried his talons in the wall of light separating us. His dark not-blood streaks down the invisible but very tangible barrier between us. As I watch, he drags his hands down through the protective barrier, leaving black ribbons of blood behind, suspended in the air. He cups his hands in front of his groin, the seat of his power. A gleam peeks between his black talons, growing to a ball of neon blue light.
We stare at each other for a long moment. His face has gone hard, demonic, the light from what he holds in his bloodied hands casting shadows up onto his face, turning his expression alien and terrifying. His eyes aren’t empty now. They’re filled with that cruel light. Doomlight. And that’s when it really sinks in. My life means absolutely nothing to him. He’ll kill me himself to get what he wants.
Something tears in my chest. A fragile cocoon of love and hope. Instead of releasing a butterfly, it collapses on itself, bleeding, rotting, leaving my eyes wet and my throat raw when I ask, “You’d do it?”
“That’s the way you want it, that’s the way we’ll play it,” he responds, and there’s no softness in his voice. He doesn’t let anything get in his way. His will, his damned indomitable will, is all that’s important. My feelings. My life. My dreams. They don’t mean anything to him, and they never will.
I bring one hand up between us, shake my wrist so the bindings the Squire so carefully severed slide down my arm. Just one loop still circles my wrist. One knot: black, red and gray.
I raise my wrist to my mouth and bite down on the knot. Feel fire, a thousand times hotter and more intense than when I bit off Ro’s binding, shoot up into my head. It spills out of my mouth, scorching my chin, dripping in burning ribbons across my breasts. I keep biting down. One chance. I want to live. I want to make my own choices, whatever they are. No one has the right to control me. The pain builds steadily. I can’t stand it. I have to let go.
Stop, Tsara! His voice in my head. Now he speaks into my mind. Not when Denys was cutting me. Not when my heart broke. Now that he stands to lose what he wants, he opens the connection between us.
I let silence answer him. Keep biting down. Finally, finally, my teeth meet.
The bindings break. The explosion rocks my head back. Blood spatters my face. Pain wraps my arms in a barbed wire embrace. I scream and yank my wrist away from my face. Lines of fire circle my arms where the bindings lay, where his magic worked its way under my skin. Burning drops of blood fall to sizzle on the hard-packed ground, and the stink of my own burning flesh fills my nose.
I hold my burning arms out to the demon.
He watches me impassively. He doesn’t care. Alive or dead. Maimed or whole, as long as my soul is his.
I fall to my knees as the burning bands on my forearms die to embers. When they’re ash, I let my arms droop to my sides. My hands rest limply against the cool dirt floor.
“You let him cut me,” I whisper.
“I woulda—”
I’m not listening anymore. Not to anything he has to say.
“You let me burn,” I say. An edge of power creeps back into my voice. A counterpoint to the tears.
“Sweetness—”
I shake my head wearily. Turn my hands over and dig my fingers into the dirt.
I reach deep. Down into the very fabric of my Element. Down into the mystical force that connects my plane with the others it touches. Whether it’s the Great Tree or the Wheel or whatever, I know what to look for now. His plane. Hell.
With a scream of pain and effort, I shove my hands into the ground and tear open the barrier between my world and his. There’s no exacting recipe or intricate spellcasting now. No skeleton key still lying in my handbag. Just raw power, and I can feel it ripping out of me even as it claws open the gateways between his world and mine. A few more moments and there will be nothing left in me. I’ll have drained myself dry.
The Hellhole opens with a howl of fury. It yawns beneath the demon. A vortex of wind and power. He hovers above it, staring down into the lightning-streaked depths. Then he looks at me. His eyes are filled with darkness.
He shakes his head. “You know something, sweetness?”
I can’t breathe. Can’t think. My entire being is focused on holding that tear between the planes open. I shake my head, shuddering.
“You never did say it.”
He lets his hands drop to his sides, and instead of flying at me the ball of killing light dissipates into streamers of smoke. He tilts his head back and with a roar like a sun being swallowed by a black hole, drops down into the pit.
It closes behind him. The light around and within me fades. Leaves me on my knees amongst the ruins of my hearth room. Limp and exhausted and so drained that I can’t even heal myself. I cover my head with my burned arms and cry myself into oblivion.
Whatever my connection with the Earth, sleeping on the dirt floor of my hearth room does not restore me. It just leaves me stiff and sore
in places that weren’t injured before. At some point in the long night, when the pain wakes me, I crawl across the torn lawn, whimpering as the withered grass brushes the terrible burns on my forearms. It looks like I’ve laid my arms on a griddle. I can’t look at them. Thinking about the burns makes my stomach seize and my head spin, so I concentrate on making it the few yards across the lawn, up the steps to the porch, across the rough boards, picking up splinters in my palms and knees, through the back door, to sprawl across the linoleum when I catch my knee on the lintel.
I lie there with my palms and cheek pressed against the cool floor until it soothes the pain enough for me to fall back to sleep.
As I drift into darkness, I feel my Dala’s cold, ephemeral hand on my hair, soothing me the way she did when I was a child.
All I’ve left myself are ghosts.
Chapter 36
My very corporeal business partner is very pissed off when I show up well after noon the next day and tell her that Jou and I have broken-up, so we won’t be able to make dinner. She presses her lips together as she takes in my appearance. I’ve wrapped and covered my burned arms, after my stomach rejected both healing potions I tried to take. My time in the Earth healed the cuts on my chest. But I know the wounds from last night are showing. Under her scrutiny, I scratch my hair self-consciously. It feels lank, greasy. I need a shower. But I have no energy to take one, and I fear the touch of water on the burns. Finally, she says, “I’m here when you want to talk about it.”
I nod gratefully.
She rises out of the guest chair in my office. “I’m not sure where you’re hurt, but your aura is fucked nine ways to Sunday. Do you need me to drive you to the hospital?”
“No. I’ll brew myself a healing potion.” I can do more for myself than any gorgio doctor. Or I could if I could brew. My healing magic seems to have deserted me at the moment. All I can smell and taste is ozone. Maybe that’s the price for abusing my Element the way I did last night.
Lin pauses at the door and looks at me. “Zee, I know you hate anything that smells like pity, but I really am here. Whatever you need, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Some needle-time couldn’t hurt you.”
Yes, it could, because the needles open me up, and everything is too raw right now. “After the weekend, huh? I think I just need to get some rest.”
“Go home. I’ll cover for you for the rest of the day. All four hours of it,” she says with a glance at the clock on my office wall.
I decide I’m not going to get anything useful done, and take the escape route she’s offered me.
Home holds no comfort. It’s cold and empty. He’s not there. Not that I want him to be, but, still, he’s not. My hearth room is in tatters, and I don’t have the energy to repair it. Even my cauldron’s been knocked to the ground. I’ll have to purify and mount it all over again. I can’t face that now.
I wander around my house like a ghost. I can’t settle anywhere. Can’t rest. Finally I pull on my jacket and high-tops and walk into Porter Square. A breeze blows my hair around my face, but all I smell is smoke. There’s no Air.
Without Borders, or even Starbucks, there’s not much hope of good coffee in Porter Square and finally I resign myself to Dunkin Donuts. The press of sugar-high donut-eaters in the store is too much for me and I take my Styrofoam cup back outside and find a seat on the brick wall circling the entrance to the T.
I sip the hot coffee and look around blearily. A troop of kids in brown and yellow uniforms pass me, holding hands and chattering, as they’re herded down into the T by an adult wearing a bigger version of the same ugly uniform. A mother emerging from the T struggles with her stroller. A car honks in the street beside me as a gaggle of college students cross the street against the light. Life as normal. It’s all gone on, despite everything that happened last night. Nothing I’ve done has made any difference. Not to anyone but me.
I look up to the sky to stop the tears that are gathering in my eyes from spilling.
A plane taking off from Logan powers its way up through the clouds. Without warning, without me thinking about him, the demon stirs in my mind.
You promised we’d ride the wind.
I look down, away from that bright wonder in the sky, and roll my coffee-cup between my palms. I did. I know. Jou, I’m so sorry.
I feel him settle into the same position, echoing me, holding something loosely between his hands. But I can’t see what it is, or where he is. I only know he’s not here.
Call me back, he thinks.
My vision blurs and something drips into my coffee. I wipe my eyes hastily, wishing I still had my army surplus coat instead of the leather jacket that just smears the tears instead of absorbing them.
No, I manage.
Summon me. I’ll show you how. There’s no point in this, sweetness. You’re separatin’ us for no reason—
Oh, no. There’s a very good reason. I can still feel it in the ache of my burned arms. In the ache of my heart, where the wounds of last night haven’t even begun to scab over. Fuck, no.
He’s silent for a moment. You belong with me.
Not now I don’t. Maybe not ever. But that’s a decision I get to make. No one will ever make it for me. And no one will ever bind me and force that decision on me, not ever again.
I feel him sigh. Sweetness—
Don’t. This is just tearing me apart all over again. How do you break-up with someone who is inside your head? Can you leave me alone for awhile? Please? Please, Jou?
Yeah. I’ll see you tonight.
What does that mean? I start so violently I slop coffee all over my shoes.
It means I’ll stay outta your head during the day, but at night, you’re mine. You can’t keep me outta your dreams.
I think of the Shadow Man, and wonder if I ever could.
I sigh and rise off the bench. I should go home and try another healing potion. Or at least a painkiller, since my arms are starting to throb again. I toss the horrible coffee into a nearby trash bin and tuck my hands into my jacket pockets. Could I at least have a nice dream? I ask, without much hope. He’s furious. I can feel his neon rage simmering just beneath his calm. I seriously doubt I’ll get away without throwing up tonight.
Summon me and I’ll give you an eternity of good dreams.
Just the idea of an eternity with him makes me shudder as I start trudging back towards my house. Can you get out of my head now? I guess . . . I guess I’ll see you tonight.
Yeah, you will.
About the Author
E. J. Frost is an American living in the wilds of North-West England.
Connect with the author on www.ejfrost.co.uk, Facebook (EJ Frost), and Twitter (@ejfrostuk).
Watch for the sequel to Neon Blue, Blood Yellow, coming soon.
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Neon Blue
Copyright 2014 by E. J. Frost
