Diana

by Chloe Garner

  “You ready?” he asked, rubbing his hands together to spread the oil on both palms. He needed to be able to hear what Tiber would be able to hear, the little demons popping away, the rumble of bigger magic coming. She coated her hands and handed the vial back, taking out a preparation of her own and swallowing it. He caught a glimpse of the white paste and shook his head. She was still testing herself.

  “Never wrong to kill a demon,” she said.

  “Never,” he agreed, wondering if there might be an opportunity to make her stay in the car, this late. Lock her in?

  “I want to try something,” he said, reaching into his sock and pulling out a pair of handcuffs.

  “Professional or recreational?” she asked, not listening for an answer. She was so focused. He had no problem handcuffing her wrist to the steering wheel. She looked over at him, dour, and closed her hand around the locking mechanism on each cuff. They fell open and she tossed them back over.

  “Didn’t know you could do that,” Carter said, looking back at the building.

  “Neither did I,” she said. He nodded.

  Savant.

  Obnoxious and unreliable, but often useful. He’d known a few, people who used magic more by instinct than by practice. He wondered how crazy it drove her being shaman, not knowing what or how she was doing.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  It was time.

  Would have been more fun on his own, but having the angel blade sitting next to him in the car, the look on her face, he knew this was better.

  “You should be marked,” he said. “You’re nowhere near as powerful, naked like that.”

  “Not interested,” she sighed, opening the door and getting out. He shook his head. That was a mistake. He pulled power into the tattoos that covered his body, feeling the latent stores of ability there, the more active ones, the walls and the weapons, sucking down magic power, making him stronger, tougher, bullet proof and fearsome.

  She wouldn’t have any of that.

  She just had clothes on. And not much at that, he noted. Her default clothes for hunting demons seemed to have settled into the half-leather-half-skin stuff she’d worn to clubs before he’d been able to talk her into mesh.

  Rings, facial chains, black nail polish. She might have dyed her hair the deep black-red he’d chosen for her just that morning.

  She was powerful. That much was unmistakable.

  They started for the building.

  All around him, he felt the squishy little bog demons glitching away, a little tug and then emptiness here, there, half a dozen behind a pile of trash next to the building. Samantha wouldn’t have been as well-tuned as he was, but she’d at least know that it was happening.

  He drew Regent and she opened the door to the building, drawing Lahn.

  “Don’t forget your voice,” he murmured. She nodded, letting the door fall closed behind her.

  “Up or down?” he asked, looking at the vacant open space in front of them. Rats screeched and skittered away and more blood demons abandoned their catch of rotting fish guts to flee.

  He watched as she closed her eyes and tipped her head back, just lifting her chin, like a scenting dog, then she pointed.

  “Stairs,” she said. “Down.”

  It was a good guess. The bowels of the building felt rumbly to him, too.

  He let her open the door to the stairs, and he went through.

  “Stay behind me,” he said, and he heard her grunt. It wasn’t happy, but it wasn’t argumentative, either.

  Regent had a slight buzz to her, just aware of the situation, active, interested. A live thing in his hands, just as much a part of the hunt as him or Samantha, and yet… boring. Boring was better than annoying, but only just slightly.

  The stairs weren’t lit, and by the time he got down a floor, he was operating by touch to find the door.

  He opened it and stepped through.

  Samantha had her back against the wall, but he wasn’t the type to hide. He was here to find Tiber, and he wasn’t going to act like a commando sneaking in.

  He needed to know where Tiber was, and he would prefer Tiber not know exactly where he was far enough in advance to set an ambush, but he was here.

  He wasn’t going to creep.

  There was a hallway, on the other side of the door, and a small handful of blood demons vanished.

  Tiber probably wasn’t in the immediate vicinity.

  He touched several of the doors as he went past, but they were cool, no sign of magic that had seeped into them. Samantha skittered around behind him, en garde.

  The problem with training with angels was that they had organized matches, with rules, start times and stop times. You tended to walk into your fights expecting them.

  Carter preferred to walk into fights with a demonic awareness that something unexpected was more likely than anything else.

  And not look like a scared cat.

  Sure, she had his back, all right.

  He rolled his eyes and went on.

  At the end of the hallway, there was a larger room without a door on it. He went in, glancing around, then took a grease marker out of his pocket and put a mark on the wall with it.

  It melted.

  Damn.

  Well, you can’t do the same trick every time and expect the demons to never get wise.

  He tried the floor.

  Sucker.

  The floor had different behaviors, but you could get the same outcome, if you knew what you were doing.

  And apparently Tiber had forgotten to ward the floor.

  Ha.

  He straightened and put the marker away, looking back at Samantha.

  That was the point where he realized something was wrong.

  She had an odd look on her face, and for an instant, the pit of his stomach fell into his shoes as he anticipated the moment she would fly into the ceiling and then the floor, her body just chemicals, solids and fluids. The spirit gone.

  But that wasn’t what this was. She pushed against something and shook her head.

  “I can’t,” she said. He reached across, and he felt nothing.

  “Targeted,” he said. “Got you and not me.”

  “Why?” she asked. He shook his head.

  Didn’t know, didn’t care.

  They were in the right place.

  He went to stand in front of the lone table in the room, where a light bulb cast a pool of light onto a cascade of papers.

  He picked up one of them, glancing past it at pictures that were underneath it, but taking the time to look at the words on the page, first.

  This was a list of everything he’d spent money on in the last two months, he realized.

  Including silly things like groceries and newspapers.

  He frowned hard, looking over his shoulder at Samantha.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  She was blocked.

  And Tiber had a list of all the possible things Carter had in his stomach.

  That was troubling.

  He folded the inventory and put it into his suit pocket, looking down at the pictures.

  Him.

  Him at Nuri’s.

  Him in the artisan’s street.

  Him going into Tolemny’s shop.

  Samantha.

  He tipped his head, brushing several pictures out of the way.

  “Where was this?” he asked, picking the one up that had caught his attention and holding it out for her. She squinted.

  “Can’t see.”

  He walked it over to her and she held it for a moment.

  “That’s outside of the market where I bought my breakfasts,” she said. He raised his eyebrows and she looked up at him.

  “In Singapore,” she finished.

  He gritted his teeth.

  “Show yourself,” he shouted.

  Every blood demon in the building, maybe every blood demon on the block vani
shed with one simultaneous pop.

  There was a growl, the sound of a demon clearing his throat, and Carter turned his head, slow, letting his body feel out the noise.

  Power.

  Deep in the pit power, a black to it that he hadn’t felt in a while.

  Nuri had it. Boy oh boy did she have it. But she and Kjarr were firmly gray, a centuries old, dusty gray that didn’t have that black to it any more, and hadn’t for a long, long time.

  Carter didn’t like black demons like that. They didn’t have the same rules that grays did, and they didn’t have the same limitations that the weaker demons did. Hell, the blood demons were proper dark demons. They just knew their place in things.

  A black demon like Tiber was a social anomaly. They didn’t make it long, on this side, because someone like Carter would hunt them down as they amassed power and made themselves more and more of a threat. Ash ‘em early, and you don’t have to worry about…

  … well, this.

  Tiber snarled again. That was a laugh, in hellspeak.

  He heard Samantha answer it, a snarl that was significantly less humored.

  He’d heard her speak hellspeak before, but something about launching it at a black demon radiating that much power had a reverberating effect that you could tune in, if you knew what you were doing.

  He wondered where she’d learned that.

  He didn’t speak.

  The man stepped out of the corner where he’d glitched in, first just a dark in the darkness and then a shadow in the darkness, and then a figure.

  He had a similar history to Toby, a local demon who ran a club where Carter would bring Samantha to make her uncomfortable. Important politically, smug. More, they’d selected similar genetic originations for their forms, and took similar advantage. Tiber was shirtless with long black hair that was braided down his back. Muscular, he probably had thirty pounds on Troy. Mass was a direct corollary to power, in demons. Mass and age. They were both in their late twenties, to look at. Peak of form, peak of power, peak of virility.

  Thing was, Troy was gray. He wasn’t a big fan of it, but he was gray.

  It was the difference between a zoo cat and a mangrove tiger. Tiber was the kind of animal who would stalk you through thick plants and carry you away as prey, no different from an antelope, except that the antelope is faster.

  “I’ve been watching you,” Tiber finally said.

  “I have lots of fans,” Carter answered. “If you wanted a signed picture, that’s what my assistant is for. We don’t like the freelance stuff.”

  “They say you’re a big deal,” Tiber said.

  “I kind of am,” Carter agreed, letting Regent slope lower and lower until her tip scraped the floor. They were both moving, both feeling each other out. Carter walked upright, calm, straight, powerful in how he didn’t need to demonstrate it. He would have straightened his cuffs if he hadn’t had a sword in his hand.

  “They say that you made a mark on hell that hasn’t faded,” Tiber said.

  Carter thought that sounded a bit melodramatic, but if you’re going to get accolades, it’s best just to own them.

  “Did I miss you?” he asked. “I could have given you a tour.”

  Tiber snarled, and Samantha snarled back. Both of them ignored her.

  “You will be a slave for the rest of time,” Tiber said. “You are nothing.”

  “The way I see it is that I’m the only one of us who is anything,” Carter said. “I may have a long, creative future ahead of me, hellside, but I’m alive. That’s one thing you’re never going to get again, if you ever did have it.”

  “You are nothing,” Tiber said. “I have lived for a thousand years and a thousand more. The world will forget you the moment your flame extinguishes, and I will stay on.”

  “But you don’t matter,” Carter said. “Out here in a stinking abandoned building, eating raw fish, surrounded by swamp demons that can’t resist the smell of the rot.”

  Usually that would have made any dark demon worth his salt good and angry - Carter was getting bored and was ready to actually match blades with Tiber - but Tiber grinned.

  “After a thousand years, you’ll miss the smell of the rot, because there’s nothing left.”

  Hell was dry.

  Carter blocked out the attempt to get into his head. He wasn’t going to think about it, because there was no point. Yeah, that’s where he was going to end up. Yeah, he wasn’t going to have the benefit of anonymity and surprise. He wasn’t going to have freewill.

  Those things sucked.

  But that was simple fate. He’d screwed up, burnt his soul beyond a lifetime’s worth of recovery, and there was no fixing it.

  Right now, he had a smug dark demon in front of him who had splashed Samantha’s fiance and his entire family.

  “You’ve gone to lengths to get my attention,” Carter said, Regent still drawing along the floor like a rattlesnake. “You’ve got it.”

  “They say you’re so great,” Tiber said. “But you’re nothing.”

  “I think we’re going in circles, now.”

  “I will show them,” Tiber said. “I will take your life from your body because I am the greatest who is.”

  “Don’t let Nuri hear you say that,” Carter said.

  “She hides,” Tiber sneered. “In her little hole in the city, thinks she rules the world.”

  Carter shrugged.

  “You know, that almost makes it worth keeping you alive, so she can hear you say it. She is…” he savored the word, the idea, “an artist, when someone finally inspires her to do the work herself.”

  Tiber spoke four words in hellspeak, and the room lit, intense, from the floor, like they were standing on glass over a fire. Something in the corners of the room broke or melted and dripped down the walls, candlewax red, and Carter felt the weight of it descend on him.

  Well.

  Tiber was going to make this interesting.

  Carter probably should have seen that coming.

  The marks on his skin held up, but his body felt heavy, slow, and when he went to grab time, it slipped away from him like water.

  So.

  They were here and now.

  It had been a while since he’d fought like that, but he was the Carter, and if Tiber wanted to call the specifics of the fight, Carter was still going to win it.

  Tiber drew a long ashgray sword from the sheath at his hip, the gold pointed teeth at the corners of a wicked smile glinting in the new light.

  Wolf teeth.

  Carter had a sudden impression of a shootout, calling each other out into the street, seeing who was fast and who was dead.

  Tiber’s sword looked unmarked, but she had a vibration to her, like the room was bending around her.

  “Who is that?” Carter asked, tipping his head back at the sword.

  “You can ask her if you survive,” Tiber said.

  “I’ve been looking for another for my collection,” Carter said.

  “Tolemny said you were restless for another mistress,” Tiber answered. Carter frowned.

  He’d have to deal with that, after this. Tiber grinned.

  “We’re going to enjoy picking over the carcass of your apartment, once your magic dies.”

  Dammit.

  Some of the magic would stay for a while after Carter died, but it would eventually fade, and a demon who was skilled in crafting magic tools would have a decent shot at being the first to make it in.

  “Hope you didn’t let him overcharge you,” Carter said. “It isn’t going to make any difference.”

  The great gray sword swept through the air and Carter reflexively grabbed at time again, but it wouldn’t bend. He was on his own.

  Worse, he discovered an instant later, his mark hadn’t done anything to prevent Tiber from glitching, once he was here.

  Tiber was stronger than Carter, he was faster than Carter, and he had prepared the room specif
ically to put Carter at every disadvantage he could think of.

  But Carter was Carter.

  He figured he had at least a fifty-fifty shot at this.

  He blocked and spun, getting out from under the larger portion of the downward force of the swing, lashing out with Regent at Tiber’s exposed ribs, but Tiber glitched away. Carter put Regent up and over his head, bringing her down behind his back to block the strike there. His skin strained with the force Tiber was capable of generating. If not for magic reinforcement, Carter would have lost his feet. He closed his eyes, just long enough to clear his mind, focus, and draw on the magic he had that Tiber couldn’t touch.

  Dark freewill magic, something Carter had been only peripherally aware of, before he’d gone hellside, but he had come back with a new, profound understanding of it. He didn’t know how much of it was his own pioneering work and how much was simply discovering things other people had already done, somewhere else, but he’d invented all of it himself, tailored it to himself, the soul from hellside that had possessed the body that it had originally inhabited.

  Freewill.

  He felt the magic of the room waver, unable to withstand it as he spoke the words that wove the magic around him, creating thickness and depth of power around him.

  Tiber’s next strike was slower, weaker, but still plenty to kill him, if Carter didn’t keep up.

  Without having bent time to manage the different things he needed to be doing, he was running on instinct, for the swordplay, putting all of his attention into the magic.

  It was a careful balance, but Tiber was sweating now, fighting against the magic defense, the way it picked at the room, at Tiber himself, knowing the weaknesses Carter had found in the blood magic from Justin’s house.

  He was shouting now, hellspeak, dark magic, and the room was collapsing around him, but Tiber was still stronger, still faster, and Carter’s perfect form was slipping.

  He caught a slash across his stomach that unsteadied him and Tiber’s magic rolled back down the walls like closing gates. He pushed harder, not sure, in the moment, just how much a piece of him Tiber had gotten.