by Rhyll Biest
He stood naked before her, his back turned, and she washed him all over, right down to his bloody feet.
In the very worst form of timing, all sorts of inappropriate feelings were creeping over her, sidling up, crawling close, bellying up to her, whispering, stuffing her head and throat full of words that shouldn’t be said. He needed her strength, not mawkish sentiment.
She saw, as she washed him, how lean his hips and waist had grown below his wide shoulders. It had escaped her attention while they’d been doing more exciting things in their tent but he’d dropped a considerable amount of weight since their wedding. Not too surprising given the effort he expended in battle and the physical changes he’d been going through. The fight on both fronts had scooped his flanks out, cut definition into his arms, and drawn his belly tighter.
If only she could push fat into him, lay her hands on his belly and force the weight back on him.
Still, if she couldn’t feed him health, she could fight instead and take some of the burden from him. He pulled on a clean tunic and sat on his bed, face weary. Their eyes met. She smiled. ‘Come here.’
He flowed over in a gliding motion she hadn’t seen him use before, something halfway between a stalk and a prowl. He rested his head in her lap. Such a trusting gesture. He seemed to have a thing for her lap whether in demon or hellhound form.
She stroked the side of his face and traced the back of his neck, that solid but vulnerable nape she loved so much. Even the hellhound tattoo beneath his undercut appealed to her now. She combed her fingers through his silky black hair. How could she leave him now? And yet she had to if she wanted to save him.
He nuzzled her hand. ‘You’re very quiet. Are you overcome with need for me?’
Ah, a little bit of the old captain. ‘Just thinking about how you have to touch your enemies to drain them. I never thought about it too much until I saw you standing on top of that bitch Mnemnos to kill her.’
‘Yes, but my brother and I have it down to a fine art.’ His lips turned down. ‘Had.’
Guilt slid long and hot like excruciating phantom needles beneath her fingernails.
But admitting her treachery would not help him right now. Instead she gripped him by the chin and pulled his face to hers so he could read her eyes, draw strength from her. ‘He’s not lost; my sister will save his arm.’ She straightened his tunic. ‘But you have to be more careful. I don’t want anything like that to happen to you. In fact, I don’t want anything to happen to you at all.’
He met her gaze, silver eyes sharpening with desire. ‘Are you going soft on me?’
‘Maybe.’ For a moment she longed to kiss him so deep and dirty he would ache for the rest of the day, but there were other matters to attend to. She had changed since her arrival, but duty still came before desire. Or beside it, at least. She wrapped her arms around him and rested her forehead on his shoulder, tracing the corded vein on his bicep. ‘Without Hakan, we need the help of the Eighth Realm.’
He nodded but it was an absent gesture. ‘I failed him, my brother.’
‘What?’ Hakan’s charred arm flashed before her eyes.
‘He needed me, needed healing, and instead I turned into a fucking hellhound.’
‘Hey.’ She gripped his arm. ‘A hellhound that saved my life. Saved his life. Mnemnos was about to fry us all.’
He looked away.
‘How long did you stay that way?’ She studied him. Had she brought on his first full transformation? How long did he have before the transformation became irreversible?
‘Almost a whole moon cycle. That’s how I met the other hellhound. We fought together for a while, got split up, and then I found him dying.’
Him. Not ‘it’. She frowned. ‘How did you communicate?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s another thing that’s come to me. I can hear the hellhounds.’
‘What do you mean you hear them?’
He shrugged. ‘You freeze things, and I hear the thoughts of hellhounds.’
Her brows rose. Perhaps that could be useful to them. ‘Can you control the change?’
‘Not one fucking single bit.’ He hung his head. ‘I don’t know if I can defeat Paimon like this. Especially without my brother. We’ve always been together, always fought as a team, and now he’s gone.’
Acid bubbled on her nerves and the air grew thin at the mention of her brother, but she pushed those things aside. ‘I’m here now and you can depend on me. And we’ll work together on controlling your change. If I can master a sliding stop, you can learn how to control the transformation.’ How treacherous she was, offering him sympathy when his brother’s fall was her fault.
‘I keep seeing him burning.’ He buried his head in her side and wrapped his arms around her.
She squeezed his powerful shoulder and stroked his hair but said nothing. If they couldn’t gain the support of the Eighth Realm, she had to take Paimon down before Adriel faced him—or Adriel would do more than just burn. Her brother’s gift for cruelty would see to that.
Pain cleaved her skull, guillotine-sharp, and for once it wasn’t just the neural wall ripping at her. She would sooner cut off her own hands and feet than allow Paimon to hurt Adriel. No, she would sooner cut off his hands and feet than allow him to hurt Adriel.
She pressed her lips to the hellhound tattoo on the side of Adriel’s skull, breathed in his clean scent.
Her brother was bound to have some formidable players on his team, demons with frightening elemental powers. True, he had one less now that Mnemnos had fallen, but he was bound to have others. He’d always been good at drawing others into his causes. A charismatic speaker who lured with looks and promises. Few bothered to lift the stone and see what crawled underneath.
Her fingers tightened in Adriel’s hair as pain threatened to consume her. She wouldn’t see Adriel burnt away, become a falling black star, but she needed to be smart about her next steps. She had to move quickly before the curse took over completely.
Playing roller derby had taught her the importance of a good team, which meant taking her brother down required bringing in the big guns.
Her sisters. Lore.
It was a good thing she now had something of worth to trade with the archdemon. Surely Lore would help in return for the maleficence Cinna had harvested from Mnemnos? But how? Preferably with something that would burn Paimon as badly as Mnemnos had burned Hakan’s arm.
Chapter 13
Sitting outside as Adriel slept inside the tent, Valeda felt a chill despite the fire at her feet. Cinna’s appearance erased her discomfort, her sister’s suspiciously full pockets warping the fabric of her coat out of shape.
Cinna paused for a couple of dramatic seconds before speaking. ‘I found her. Lore.’
In a single raw breath, acid uncertainty slid like a bare, burning copper wire beneath Valeda’s skin. In its wake, fizzing unease. Her hand went to her pocket and curled around the pink baby food container. Was she making the right decision? What else might Lore demand in return for her help?
Cinna frowned. ‘C’mon, Lore wants to haggle.’ She opened her palm to reveal a pale blue ear encased in a soft glow of silver maleficence.
Valeda’s nose wrinkled. Really, necromancy could be so vile. She picked the ear up by two fingers and spoke into it. ‘This is Valeda. I have the fresh maleficence of a lightning demon and want to make a trade.’ She passed the ear back to Cinna.
Cinna held the ear to her own, nodding at some answer Valeda couldn’t hear. ‘Lore says she’d like to meet face to face to discuss the details.’
Obviously Lore wasn’t a fan of necro-telecommunications either.
Cinna listened to something else through the ear before glancing at the nearby tents. ‘Lore would like some privacy for the transaction. Is there a secluded place nearby?’
Valeda nodded. ‘On the maps I saw a dead pool marked. Lore will know it.’
As Cinna conveyed the message, Valeda noted with detachment a curious numbness stea
ling over her now that her goal was finally in reach. Was it relief or disappointment? If Lore helped her, everything would be over and her brother destroyed. But without a common enemy there was nothing to bind her and Adriel together, nothing to bind her to Hell.
She would be completely free. That had been her aim all along, and yet now it felt … hollow?
On heavy legs she led the way to the deal pool, the pink baby food container a burning wound in her hand.
They walked eastwards for almost an hour until a bubbling sound and growing stench welcomed their arrival. As they waited, Valeda’s mood grew as dark as the black lake. Steam rose from the lake’s inky depths to blanket the stars and swallow the moons.
When Lore appeared it was with her silver aura extended like wings, gleaming with such a fierce brightness that Valeda had to squint against it. The archdemon’s aura dimmed as she studied her surroundings, and Valeda was able to see her, a willowy figure in a white silk sheath. Lore’s luminosity shone stark against the inky backdrop of the dead pool and sky, as did her chalk white bouffant hair, the layers adorned with ostrich feathers piled so high that her beehive almost raked the lower branches of trees.
Lore’s sweeping black eyelashes veiled eyes as white as her skin with neither iris nor pupil. She smiled at Cinna. ‘Thank you for facilitating.’
Cinna pulled a face at her dismissal but left far more quickly than she would have had Valeda asked her to.
Lore smoothed the folds of her pearly silk gown. ‘I believe you have something for me.’
Beneath her cool, restrained tone Valeda heard greed. All archdemons were greedy for maleficence and could never get enough of it despite the side-effects—the memories of the former hosts often drove them potty. Which was why most demons were content not to try to become archdemons. Plus, there was the way that playing host to too many of Lilith’s tears tended to consume a demon heart—maleficence preferred to have a host all to itself.
‘I have something for you if you’re able to help me.’ Was that too disrespectful a way to speak to an archdemon? They had known one another for quite a while.
‘What is it you seek?’ Lore’s chalky face betrayed no emotion.
‘The wall against my memory, which you gave me in exchange for my heart, is crumbling.’ She was careful to keep her tone free of any accusation. ‘Can you repair it?’
‘I was certain you’d ask for your heart back.’ Lore’s pure white eyes turned west, in the direction of the camp. ‘He makes you weak.’
Valeda’s brows drew together. How did the archdemoness know that?
Lore sighed. ‘I know because I study the most promising knowledge demons that I mentor.’ Her white lips stretched into a thin hyphen of a smile. ‘Your performance on the topside dimension showed great potential but fell steeply once you returned to Hell. Some of that was due to the collar, admittedly, but most was due to allowing a certain knuckle-dragging captain to get under your skin. You do realise he is beneath you, don’t you?’
Valeda frowned. Her performance? Was this parent-teacher night at finishing school? ‘Can you fix the wall or not?’
Lore hesitated. ‘No. It’s not in my power to repair it.’
So that was that. But before she could ask Lore to intervene in the battle against her brother, the archdemon spoke.
‘I can’t fix it but I can give you something much better.’
‘Better?’ Suspicion kicked into high gear.
‘Since you gave me your heart in exchange for the wall, and the wall is crumbling, I’ll give you a refund of your choice. You can have your heart back—not that it’ll be much use to you, they never are—or I’ll give you some extra maleficence. Something that might help you to permanently put your little brother in his place. Something you might be able to use to heal yourself … if you’re clever enough.’
Valeda ignored the sly dig, and the stabbing pain caused by the mention of her brother, as Lore drew a small silver snuff box from the folds of her skirt.
Valeda eyed it. If she took the maleficence in her pocket—that from Mnemnos—along with what Lore offered, she could easily destroy her brother all on her own. But if she chose her heart she’d be able to love Adriel.
Love.
Something fought her lungs for air, turned her breath sticky and hot. She wanted to be with Adriel, and yet the thought of being trapped by love—his, hers—made her gorge rise.
A phantom memory filled her mouth with thick, raw meat she could neither chew nor breathe through.
She drew a deep breath just to reassure herself she still could.
Lore smiled. ‘I know you don’t want to humble yourself by asking your mother to undo her summoning. Or allowing the captain to heal you. That would require revealing what your brother did to you—what I rescued you from.’
A not very subtle reminder. ‘And?’
‘Just think about it. You always planned on becoming an archdemon; you have trained with me for centuries. Even though your training isn’t quite complete, you’ve got a better chance than most of surviving becoming an archdemon. Take the opportunity now to move towards that and you can destroy your brother and heal yourself.’
A better chance than most. How good a chance was that? She smoothed the pocket with the plastic container it. ‘Taking the drained maleficence of two other demons will be enough for me to make the transformation?’
‘It will be if you take this particular one.’ Lore offered her palm. On it lay the silver snuff box, a faint silvery glow visible between lid and base.
Valeda could smell the power wafting from it. But whose? The one thing a demon never wanted to consume was unidentified maleficence. The last host had invariably met a gruesome end and, once their maleficence was eaten, their horrible memories became your horrible memories.
Still, the thought of destroying her brother—she winced—without anyone ever finding out what had happened to her was appealing. A lot.
She caught the gleaming snuff box in one hand when Lore tossed it to her.
‘Why are you offering this to me?’
‘I don’t want those particular memories, or the ones in your little plastic container. But it seems a shame to waste them, and I’ve always liked you. You’re full of learning.’
So the memories attached to the maleficence were the problem. Valeda studied the snuff box in her hand, the bursting bubbles rising from the dead pool providing a wet drum roll of anticipation as she weighed her options.
If Lore couldn’t heal her then no-one could. Any happiness she found with Adriel would be short-lived, especially if his legions were defeated. She knew her brother well enough—scissors stabbed her eyeballs—to know he would kill Adriel if the curse had not already claimed him by then.
The curse. How easy it was to forget the countdown to when Adriel’s change became irreversible. She had to act now, whatever it cost her, because what she couldn’t afford was losing the Captain of Bloodshed and Slaughter. He was dearer to her than all her libraries put together. She took a deep breath and flicked open the tiny catch on the snuff box Lore had given her.
A single perfect drop of maleficence stared back at her, its quicksilver depths alive and sentient. When the demon power in her veins stirred, the droplet in the snuff box gave a twitch of recognition, a shiver running through it before it rolled to one corner, crawled up over the lip of the box onto her finger and slid along her hand.
The freezing cold of Lilith’s immortal molecules penetrated her skin where the droplet crept over it. At her elbow it paused, as if hesitant. She gasped as it shot up her arm before darting to rest in the hollow between her collar bones. It disappeared from sight but she followed its frozen caress of her neck, swallowing as it trekked across her face.
It rested on the front of one cheek, a blurry silver crescent looking deep inside her eyes.
What a strange experience, to be studied by the essence of immortality as it decided whether or not to accept her as a home.
Zip!
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All light blinked out in the eye it entered. Blinded by cold and the sensation of something more than mortal mingling with her blood, a tremor shook her. Was she dying? Frost settled inside her bones and blood, reducing her world to periglacial white, time and sound included.
For one blink.
Two.
Three.
Where was she? And how did she return to where she’d been?
Four.
Her surroundings returned in a rush, leaving her blinking and gasping at the jungle of colours, smells and sounds, and at the shove of air against her skin.
She was aware of Lore watching her as she took in the fact that the stars had moved, the second moon had risen and the air was new—more alive. Each air molecule danced across her skin, caressing her with crisp, frigid joy. Or was it she, rather than the air, that had changed?
Lore cocked her head. ‘You like?’
Valeda nodded, mute. To her now finely tuned ears, Lore’s voice hid a thousand nuances, each one a tiny frost-like finger which massaged unfamiliar thoughts and possibilities through her mind—ideas as hard as diamonds, with cruelly glittering facets and terrible edges.
‘If you take the second batch of maleficence, I must warn you that it’s very likely to damage the memory wall at first. The extra juice should allow you to manage the pain and shock of the memories before you work out how to heal yourself, but be prepared to hurt.’
If Lore thought the pain worth mentioning, then it had to be something special. Oh, joy. Still, that was the least of the price she would pay to defeat her brother. Once she became an archdemon, Valeda could never take her heart back. Adriel would be lost to her. The memories might also make her nuttier than a wood nymph. If so, she would be sure to take out her madness on Paimon. She braced herself for a stab of pain that didn’t come. Well, well, the joys of extra juice.
With a smile she pictured her brother, his grey eyes and hair, his slanting smile. Paimon was the one who’d stuffed her full of psychic razor blades in the first place, and she’d hidden from the reality of that for far too long. But now that she was strong enough to strike back rather than hide, she intended to strike very hard indeed.
