Night Life

by Caitlin Kittredge

  "I see my son didn't fail me in the end," said Alistair, standing over Dmitri like a shade. He motioned, and Dmitri's bitten arm jerked. He screamed, and the sound rattled glass and my back teeth.

  Alistair clenched his fist, and with a rending of flesh a were paw appeared from the wound in Dmitri's arm.

  Alistair grinned. "Don't know when to leave well enough alone. I love that about you weres. It makes you very apt subjects for my enjoyment." In the courtroom cadence that hypnotized juries for seventeen years, he asked, "How does it feel having the beast within ripped without, Mr. Sandovsky?"

  With one final twist, Dmitri became half were, half man, the bloody union between the two leaking out of him. I screamed, too, long and devastated, as wolf legs and human body twitched and went still.

  Alistair brushed his hands together as if they'd been soiled and then turned back to Olya's gasps. "Shut your mouth," he snapped. "You'll be all out of breath soon enough, no sense wasting it."

  "Mr. Duncan," I said.

  Alistair inclined his head to me. "Yes?"

  I held up the spellbook. "You know, it really pays to do your research before you start the calling."

  Duncan went even whiter than he already was. "Give me the book, Detective."

  "Hex you, Alistair. Let Olya go and we'll talk."

  Alistair hissed. "Bitch!"

  "Likewise," I said. "So what's in this book anyway, Alistair?" I thumbed a few pages at random. They were definitely in English now. "Is it like a manual? Care and feeding of your human slave, by Meggoth?"

  Duncan laughed. "If you knew what that book said, you wouldn't be standing here making a pathetic attempt to bargain with me." His eyes narrowed, and the blackness of the iris spilled out like an inkstain to cover the rest. "Now give it to me."

  I rolled my eyes. "Here, take the Hexed thing." I cocked my arm and flung it into the far corner of the room, and ran for Olya as Duncan dove. I didn't care if I had to rip her arms out of their sockets to get her free.

  Too late, I felt the prickle of a working circle snapping into place. I'd never experienced a calling before. It felt like running into a wall of concrete. Magickal concrete. I flew backward and smacked a real wall of concrete, sliding down it until I was in a heap, breathless, every inch of my body on fire.

  Duncan went for the book again, but I was faster and gripped it the same time as he did. His lip curled. "Let go."

  "You reconsider sacrificing Dmitri's sister and we'll talk," I told him. Our hands were almost touching on the cover of the spellbook, and this close Alistair was musty and burnt with blood workings.

  He tried to yank the book away from me and I snarled, letting myself fang out.

  "All right, all right." He held up his free hand. "Let go and I'll release her."

  "Unh-unh. Release and I let go."

  Alistair glared. "You really were a mistake, Detective."

  I smirked. "That's what you get for believing Roenberg."

  Duncan's mouth twitched once, and then he sighed and Olya's ropes went slack. She sat up, massaging her wrists. "She's free to go," Alistair said.

  I took my hand off the book. "Hope your daemon master chokes on it."

  Duncan didn't hear me as he turned and strode back to the circle, drawing a silver athame from under his coat and raising it above Olya's head.

  "Gods!" she screamed.

  I tried to stand, but I'd put myself through too much abuse and my legs went out from under me. I couldn't get to Olya. I was weak.

  The were howled in despair as Duncan lowered the knife and cut a clean line across Olya's throat.

  "Seven souls for seven sins, seven's blood and seven's pain." Alistair used the athame to cut off Olya's left index finger and placed the bloody stump on the last point of the circle. He read from the spellbook, "Heed my call, and make the wanderer between worlds whole!" Gold smoke began to roil across the circle he had chalked. The smoke drew to him, entered his throat and nose.

  Alistair choked and fell to his knees. "Yes…" He grinned. "Yes … take me …"

  The smoke coalesced in the center of the circle and formed a shape, first a silhouette and then rapidly a body and finally a man, olive-gold-skinned with a lion's legs and tail and a crocodile's pointed teeth. A serpent's tongue flicked from between black lips as he looked upon the human world.

  Twenty-Six

  Meggoth regarded his body and the surroundings for a moment. "Finally!" Alistair cried. "Thirty years and I have you!"

  "Alistair Duncan, why have you not fallen before me?" Meggoth cocked his head. He had a thick accent and his words were muddled, like it had been a long time since he'd used a human voice.

  "You bastard." Alistair grinned. "I spit on you. You really think I waited all of these years to become your servant?"

  "You have no choice!" Meggoth rumbled.

  Alistair got to his feet. "Look at where you are, wanderer."

  From my excellent vantage on the floor, I saw the calling circle was doubled, and Sunny's words came back. Only for binding the really nasty ones.

  Because it wasn't a calling circle at all. It was a binding.

  "Traitor!" Meggoth bellowed.

  Alistair held up his casting chalk and broke it in half. "By wards worked in blood, I bind you in eternity, Meggoth, to serve my will."

  Meggoth's eyes flamed gold and he let out a scream of pure rage. Alistair just smiled. Who wouldn't, when you were a blood who had just managed to enslave the most powerful daemon known to witchkind?

  "You will suffer like no other," Meggoth promised Duncan. Alistair shook his head.

  "That attitude will never work. Say, What do you command of me, Master?"

  Meggoth threw himself against the binding circle. "I did not bow to the Descent and I do not bow to a blood-wielding maggot like you!"

  Right at that second, I liked Meggoth a lot.

  Alistair shook the spellbook at him. "That's very impolite. Would you like me to compel you with your true name, wanderer?"

  Meggoth glared silently at Duncan. I was surprised, considering the look, that Alistair didn't burst into flames.

  "What do you command of me, Master?"

  "For a start." Alistair tossed the chalk away. "Dispose of this Insoli trash lying around."

  Meggoth met my eyes as I crouched in the corner and I felt the chill at the very core of my soul. His mind was touching mine, and I was cold.

  Such a pitiful creature, he echoed in my head. Hardly worth my trouble.

  "Not really your choice anymore," I answered him without thinking. "You've got a master now."

  Your death will be quick, Insoli, he spoke. Do not tempt me to make it slow.

  I looked into those golden eyes, so icy and barren, not like a were's. I wasn't cold anymore. A soft glow permeated the edges of my vision.

  I realized I wasn't afraid. Of Meggoth, of Alistair, of dying.

  Not the phase. Not anymore.

  "Do as I say!" Alistair screeched. "Before I send you back and find another more suitable to my needs!"

  Meggoth didn't break his gaze with me as he crouched and caressed Olya's face once.

  All I wanted was her. My Serah, he told me sadly. She offered me a place when all others had vanished into the dark The caster witches took her for it.

  "Kill the were," Alistair warned. "Or I won't let you have any more fun."

  The demon slowly turned toward him, and I got the impression that Alistair's circle, powerful as it may be, was little more than a flimsy fence for Meggoth's vast power.

  "Are you under the impression, Master, that the offerings we procure are for pleasure?'

  Offerings. Not sacrifices. The daemon had reduced Alistair's pleasure in the calling to what it really was— disgusting.

  "I took pleasure in them," said Duncan. "I don't really care what you think about all that." The binding circle sparked and Duncan leapt back. "Careful! That would have been unfortunate."

  Meggoth regarded the lines at his feet pulsing
with power. "I should not be here."

  "Of course you shouldn't!" Duncan shouted. "According to humans and weres and those stupid scared caster witches, you don't even exist." He kept well clear of the circle as it began to vibrate on a high-pitched note. "Yet here you are."

  Meggoth's eyes stilled pinned me to the wall, the same scene from my nightshade dream, with him looking past my skin and into my thoughts. I winced as the working holding the circle in place strained and bent, sending a shriek through the ether only I and the daemon could hear.

  I never wanted to break this world, he said. I seek only to regain what was mine and exact swift vengeance on those who commissioned it. I am not Meggoth the destroyer. I do not seek death for death's sake. My name is truly Asmodeus, the lonely walker of worlds.

  I tried sending another echo back to him. "My true name is Luna Wilder, and I am a protector of this one. You must help me."

  I cannot. I must do as the mortal commands.

  "Duncan doesn't know his binding is failing. He'll kill everyone in Ghosttown if it snaps."

  Asmodeus's gaze grew heavy. "Good-bye, Insoli."

  "Finally!" said Duncan. "Good boy. And after you kill Detective Wilder, I believe I will find you a woman. I will watch."

  "Don't be a fool," I echoed to Asmodeus. "Alistair is one of the ones who harmed you. Just a blood witch too smart for his own good."

  Why do I trust a were? Your kind bears me no good feeling.

  I shot a glance at Duncan, grinning away over Olya's body and chuckling as his binding sparked and popped, weakening with every passing second. The wards, worked in blood, would never give way, but the circle transforming their power was about to.

  I didn't really want to think about what happened when wards strong enough to bind a daemon had no conduit for their energy. "Maybe you should trust me because I'm the only one alive in this room who hasn't tried to Hex you over."

  I am sorry, Asmodeus echoed. This must end.

  Crap.

  Asmodeus held out his hand toward me, and I kept my eyes open. I would face my death head-on, like the warrior-wolf that had spawned my kind on dark hilltops millennia ago.

  Out of the corner of my eye, silver flashed in the candlelight. I sent one last, probably futile echo to Asmodeus.

  End it.

  I kicked the discarded athame hard as I could, sending it skidding toward the circle. Soaked in Olya's blood, it passed within the binding wards. Within the daemon's power, the knife came to rest in his palm.

  "What are you doing!" Duncan screamed.

  Asmodeus smiled at him, a perfect mimic of Duncan's expression. "Ridding this world of you."

  He sent the athame straight up like a bullet, shattering the blackened skylights over the circle. Moonlight flooded the sacrificial pyre, washing over Asmodeus and Duncan and filling every corner of the room.

  It touched my skin, and I burned.

  It touched my soul, and I phased.

  I saw everything tinged in silver, clear and crisp as sunlight. Release into the phase was the purest euphoria I had ever known. A tingle raced over my skin as fur sprouted and I instinctively curled on all fours.

  No pain as claws sprouted from my hands, as my jaw elongated and my eyes sank and expanded and glowed as golden as Asmodeus's skin.

  He echoed, Do what you must.

  Phased, I could hear everything—a dull thrum of power from Alistair, the screeching of his broken circle, and the terrifying void of quiet from Asmodeus, the vacuum from a power so vast it covered everything.

  Asmodeus told me to do what I must. I knew he meant break the circle, and that was death for me. Binding wards could only be dispelled by the witch who cast them, their power drawn back to his blood.

  You understand me, Asmodeus echoed. And that is why I am sorry for you, Insoli.

  I echoed back. "I do."

  I advanced on Alistair Duncan step by step, claws clacking against the cement. I let the cold bloodlust in my eyes fill him with the fear of every victim whose life he had destroyed. Visceral memories flashed by, not so much sights but sounds and smells. Joshua, my own screams, the volcanic pain of the first phase, and the metal-tainted blood in my mouth that I recognized instinctively as human.

  I kept walking, on four black paws, feeling the hot wind from the breaking circle ruffle the fur on my spine. None of it mattered anymore. I was a were, and we did kill and we did hunt and we enjoyed it, because it was part of us.

  I bared my teeth at Duncan and snarled, scenting his musty, used blood and marking him as prey.

  Duncan screamed over and over again, stumbling and tripping over his own feet, backing away from me toward the circle, which shot blue sparks as the working gave way.

  As Alistair's foot slipped over the binding wards, I leapt on him and tore his throat out.

  His blood was hot, tainted, and bitter over my tongue, and it released the wards with a flood of misplaced magick that tore across my body like a lightning strike. That was the last sensation I remembered before the circle broke with a fierce snap and I found myself de-phased, staring up into a full, silver moon blessing me with its light.

  * * * *

  When I could move I crawled across the floor to Dmitri, cradling his head against my naked body. "Please," I whispered. I didn't know who I was praying to, and it didn't do any good. Dmitri's ravaged form remained just as lifeless.

  Bare feet whispered behind me and I looked up into Asmodeus's face.

  "You released me," he spoke aloud.

  "Yeah, well, you might as well get it over with and kill me now." I stroked Dmitri's cheek once before releasing his body and covering myself under the daemon's eyes.

  "I am not a monster," said Asmodeus.

  "Could have fooled me," I snapped bitterly. Argue with a daemon, I didn't care. Dmitri was dead. Dead because of me. My fault. The hole in my gut that had opened when I ran from Joshua widened and deepened until I was afraid it would swallow me.

  "Anger is ugly, Insoli," Asmodeus said. "It consumes."

  "Stop calling me Insoli and Hex off!" I screamed at him. "Dmitri is dead and unless you're going to do something about that, get out!"

  Asmodeus crouched and moved me aside. He had human hands with black nails, a touch warm and soft. "You released me," he said. "You have the right to compel a task in return, as payment."

  "Leave," I whispered. "Just leave me alone."

  Asmodeus picked up Dmitri's arm, touching Stephen's bite. I wanted to tear him limb from limb for touching Dmitri, but I was so weak it was a marathon effort to keep my eyes open.

  "I believe I will interpret your request freely." He opened his own palm on one pointed nail and pressed it against Dmitri's wound. The blood sizzled, and the bite mark faded to a black crescent. The convulsions spread to Dmitri's whole body, the were half blending back to human.

  Asmodeus stood. "And now I will honor your order, Insoli. Good parting." Golden smoke grew up around him, obscuring my view. Before he faded, I swear Asmodeus stretched out his hand to a second figure and that they shimmered away together in the smoke. I decided I was hallucinating, and finally slumped over next to Dmitri's body, too exhausted to keep awake any longer.

  * * * *

  Someone kicking me in the side woke me up. "Hex you!" I snarled before my eyes opened, batting at the foot.

  Regan Lockhart glared down at me. I gasped and scrambled away from him. He smiled thinly. "Not the person you expected?"

  "Lockhart, person doesn't apply to you even as a joke."

  His hair was a brownish red now, the face more square and old Hollywood movie idol than his previous small frame, but the obsidian eyes and curled smirk were definitely Lockhart.

  "You let Meggoth walk away. Under pack law, consorting with a daemon means death."

  "His name is Asmodeus, and you try to kill me, you pull back a stump," I warned. I slid a glance to the spot where Dmitri had lain when I passed out. He was gone, a smear of blood the only remainder.

&nbs
p; "Detective, your defensiveness is extremely unattractive," said Lockhart. "While I'd like nothing more than to rip your skin off and feed it to you for releasing Asmodeus, the higher-ups have determined you did us a service by removing Duncan." He rolled his eyes at the last part. I wondered if his higher-up was anything like Roenberg.

  "So, what, are they going to pin a medal on me?" I asked wearily, tilting my too-heavy head back against the wall. Lockhart snorted.

  "For dispatching a dangerous blood witch, they grant you life. As for the favor Asmodeus did you, that's yours to bear."

  He looked down at his new palm and I saw a tattoo like the one Roenberg sported, only far more complex. Off to infiltrate another pack of blood witches. "You don't have to worry about him anymore," said Lockhart. "With Duncan dead, none of his apprentices will have enough energy to do much more than magick up a cup of black coffee."

  "What are you, Regan, telepathic?" I asked churlishly, though I couldn't have cared less.

  "Ask me again next time we meet," said Lockhart. "If you haven't figured it out." He nodded curtly at me once, and then blinked out of existence.

  Come to think of it, I really didn't like the way he used the word favor.

  I drifted in and out of a drugged kind of sleep until the real, human police found me. No one tried to arrest me for Thorpe's murder; they just wrapped me in a blanket and took me to the ambulance, where I passed out and woke up in a hospital bed two days later.

  Twenty-Seven

  Sunny jumped up so fast from her chair that she knocked it over, tackling me in a hug that shook the air from my sore chest.

  "Ow," I said as she squeezed.

  The small interrogation room at the Twenty-fourth was as dingy as ever, but as Sunny pulled up a chair and sat me in it, it was damn near beautiful.

  "I thought you were dead!" were her first words.

  "Why do you always, always assume the worst with me?" I demanded. "I was unconscious in Sharpshin Memorial, not shuffling off the mortal coil."

  She grinned so wide I was afraid her face would crack. "When Missing Persons called with your Jane Doe report, Lieutenant McAllister was so excited he did a little dance."