by Ann Aguirre
I reached out and touched his face, cupping his bony cheek. If they ever fed him, it didn’t show. He had the skeletal shape of one affixed to a cross, a martyr’s bones beneath his skin.
“Dad?” Despite Oz’s taunts, I hadn’t expected to find my father—and certainly not like this. He hadn’t aged, though he looked awful. This man appeared to be no more than five years older than me. “What have they done to you?”
His lips moved but no sound resulted. Frustration flashed in his thin face. A copper wire was plugged into his throat and he turned his head slightly toward the knob next to it, trying to tell me something. I clicked it on and adjusted it.
His voice emerged from a speaker on my left, tinny and scratchy. “You have to get out of here before the magister returns.”
All Saremon were mages; that wasn’t a helpful distinction. “Which one?”
“The others call him Oz, but I don’t think that’s actually his name.”
My hands fisted in impotent anger. “He’s the one responsible for this?”
“Yes. Go.”
“Will it hurt if I unplug you?” I asked.
For the first time, hope dawned on his desperate features. “Hurt, yes. Would kill me. I can’t survive outside this contraption.” And by his tone, he didn’t want to. He wanted to be free like the dearest of unfulfilled dreams.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” It was impossible that he would.
I had been a child of seven when the demons took him, skinned knees, gapped teeth, and mousy brown braids. My father, Albert Solomon, took a closer look then, studying my face with ferocious concentration. His eyes—so like mine—widened. A pained sound escaped the speaker.
“Corine?” He didn’t wait for my confirmation. “You’re all grown up. Have I been here so long?”
An eternity for him, no doubt. Over twenty years in the human realm.
“It’s me,” I said softly.
“Oh God, you shouldn’t be here. How’s your mother?” The same sweet love I’d remembered between them sparked in his blue eyes now, undimmed by time’s passage or the impossible distance between them.
“She died.” In as few words as possible, I explained what had happened in Kilmer, the murderous twelve and the terrified townsfolk…and Maury. It hurt to relate and wounded him even more to hear. “She missed you until the end.”
“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.” My father closed his eyes, too late to hide the fat tears that struggled out from beneath his lashes. Whatever they had done to him had not left him too inhuman to cry.
“Does it hurt to talk?”
“Everything does. I don’t remember what it’s like not to hurt. But it’s worth everything, knowing I saved you from this.”
I froze. “I don’t understand.”
“They came for you, Corine. You were the last girl child born of Solomon’s line. When your mother and I had a daughter, we talked about the likelihood there would be trouble. So I was ready. I had a counteroffer for them.”
That didn’t square at all with the laughing, carefree man I’d known, but I had been a child, shielded from all the darkness, until it split my world wide open. “Why didn’t Mom tell me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she thought you were too young to understand. Or she was afraid the guilt would cripple you.”
“So she knew you sacrificed yourself for me.” As she had. Maybe she’d meant to explain it all when I was older, but she never had the chance. At least now I understood why she never wanted to talk about him. In other cases, a woman abandoned by a man called him all kinds of names, but this hadn’t been like that.
I just hadn’t known the truth. Having just found him, I wasn’t ready to lose him, but looking at what they’d done, I didn’t think he could be saved. I turned to Greydusk.
“Your thoughts?”
“This looks like a reaping machine,” the demon answered.
Chance raised a brow. “What’s that?”
He took a half step toward me, his expression unsure. I curled into his side, grateful to be myself for these moments, though I could feel Ninlil scrambling in my head, preparing to resume control. I returned a gentle caress to the back of his hand.
Greydusk explained. “Remember the soulstone I used to open the gate?”
I nodded.
“This is how they’re made.”
“How long does it take?”
“Fifty years, or so I’ve been told.”
Damn. I didn’t imagine getting my hands on one for a quick exit would prove a simple task. Obviously my father hadn’t been here that long, so the jewel in his chest shouldn’t steal his soul. When we unplugged him, he would just die.
Just. As if that wasn’t bad enough.
The queen half of me didn’t remember her dad. She’d had one; but after siring a daughter, the father’s parental role became less critical. Demons had a longer life span than humans, but they were not immortal. In this fashion, Ninlil always ruled in Sheol, until the archangel summoned us and stole our power. That lingering anger blunted some of my grief. She’d heard of soulstones, of course, but she’d never seen the apparatus responsible for their making. Ninlil also whispered to me that it was possible to use a fresh sacrifice and open a gate that way, but for obvious reasons it wasn’t always practical.
Yeah, because that was my concern.
“Why do they want your soul?” I asked. “Apart from obvious reasons.”
The speaker crackled, reminding me of Shannon, and that made me feel like my father was already dead and I was talking to him through her spooky radio. “They hope that a soulstone created from one of the Binder’s line would permit a stronger gate to open between worlds. A permanent gate.”
“Hope or know?” Chance asked.
My father’s expression was like a shrug, though he couldn’t move his arms. The agony from being suspended like this had to be intolerable and he couldn’t even scream unless someone turned the volume on for him. Rage chilled into a solid brick inside me; this would not stand.
“I won’t ask what you’re doing here,” he whispered.
Yeah. Best if you don’t.
He went on, “I’d rather not imagine you trapped as I am, so I’m going to pretend you have a plan—that you came to save me and now you’re getting out.”
My voice rasped like sandpaper, thick with tears. “That’s the idea. Is there anything you want before…?”
He knew what I was asking. “Would you hug me?”
It wasn’t easy getting close enough with all the wires, but with some help from Greydusk, I wove through the tangle and put my arms around my father’s waist. He was beyond emaciated, thin in a way that meant he hadn’t eaten for years. They were using magick to keep him alive—and for that reason I wanted the Saremon dead even more. They had done this. Hurt one of mine.
I didn’t waste my energy on more mental promises. Instead, I lived in this moment, where I had my father with me. He had no body heat. No heartbeat. Albie Solomon was the next best thing to dead already, so why did what I was about to do hurt so badly?
The embrace went on for a long time, and then he stirred against me. “I love you, queenie. I couldn’t be happier that I got to see you again…or that you’re the one who will end it for me.”
God, I’d forgotten he called me that. The memory tumbled into my head. I was a princess, wearing a pink dress with a frilly skirt and a play tiara. He used to call me Reenie, and that day it became queenie, because of my princess outfit. After that Halloween, I remembered him spinning me around with raspberry kisses on my stomach, and teasing me with chants of Reenie-my-queenie. My mother had watched us with an indulgent air. How I wished I could have more of these recollections; I needed them, craved them in a way that seemed more vital than air—but there were no more.
I looked at Greydusk, who seemed transfixed by my pain. Queens weren’t supposed to love the men who had given them life. This one did. And I regretted the years I had spen
t calling him a shiftless bastard in my head. I’d imagined him finding a new family, a better one, and instead he had been here, suffering for me.
“Where do we start?” I asked the Imaron.
He went to examine the apparatus, as the answer wasn’t readily apparent. After giving me a comforting squeeze, Chance joined him. And while they checked out the reaping machine, my father stared at me.
“All I ask,” he said softly, the speaker crackling with his pain and resignation, “is that you make it quick.”
“I won’t touch anything until they tell me how.”
We talked then. Precious, stolen moments. I told him about my pawnshop and my dog, about Chance, who had been my first love and by some miracle was standing beside me still. His eyes grew damp when I told him what I’d done in Kilmer, and he spoke the six words that every child longed to hear:
“I am so proud of you.” Only they came with reverb and distortion.
They had taken everything but his loyalty and devotion. My mother had been lucky to share even ten years with this man. And maybe that’s why she never went looking to replace him. She knew that quantity mattered less than quality and that nobody could ever take Albert Solomon’s place in her heart—and that was why she stared wistfully out from the front porch. Not because she thought he was coming home someday but because she knew he never would.
He gave up everything for you.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Greydusk stepped to my side and murmured, “I found the main connection. If you unplug there, he should feel no pain.”
“Dad, I’m sorry.” Tears sprang up in my eyes, not fitting for a demon queen, but one who hurt this much could not help but weep.
“I’m ready,” my father said.
“Corine, let me.” Chance touched my arm lightly.
For a moment, I wanted him to take the weight. I’d love to give the burden to him to bear, but then when I looked at him, I would see the man who killed my father, not the one I loved. So I shook my head, hair drifting against my cheeks. I felt like one of those screaming women of old with a shriek rising in my throat that I had to swallow down like razor blades. No, better I should be haunted by my own reflection, for I was used to that.
So many dark choices—and this might be the worst. But there was none better. At least I could offer him surcease from pain.
Leaning in, I kissed my father on the cheek, as I had done so many times as a child. He did not smell of Old Spice. He didn’t have a bowling shirt or a Panama hat, but he was still the man who held my dreams in his hands until the day he disappeared. With his blue eyes set in an ascetic face, he smiled, though his lips didn’t move. Then he sang in a tuneless tenor the chorus from “Fire and Rain,” which he’d always belted out in the shower. The speaker crackled with the emotion, and I couldn’t bear another moment. As he finished the last word, I stepped behind the reaping machine, grabbed the cord Greydusk had indicated and tugged.
It popped free with a spurt of fluid, and I kept pulling. The Imaron helped me, knowing I was mad with grief and that I had to get my father down. I would not leave him in this place. Chance worked beside me, his face taut with echoed sorrow. Because he loved me, he mourned with me. I wondered how he would feel if we had found his mother in such a state.
But due to his luck, we’d saved her. And I’d killed my own father.
At last I set Albie Solomon free and he fell into my arms. I held him and rocked, tears streaming down my face. He felt like a child against me, thin and small and wasted. His legs resembled matchsticks, arms like pipe stems, and his face was too young for so much pain, borne in my stead.
Chance and Greydusk let me grieve for a while before the demon dared to intrude. “Your Majesty, we cannot remain here. The mages might return.”
The queen surged forward then, taking over. I bit off the words like chips of ice. “Let them.”
No Way Back
“I’m not leaving him.” My tone brooked no refusal.
In response, Greydusk knelt and collected my father’s body. The Imaron cradled his wasted form with proper reverence, and the pain ebbed enough for me to rise and lead the way out into the corridor.
Now we needed a rathole.
I had an idea. I toyed with it, wondering if the small creature that felt so ambivalent about me could truly help us. But it was worth a try.
“Put the dog down,” I said to Chance.
“Corine…” He trailed off. Then he obeyed, kneeling beside the animal with a worried air. “Don’t hurt him, okay?”
I wrestled a duality of reaction: anger that he’d dare question anything I did commingled with an absurd sense of hurt that he thought I would. With great self-control I put aside both responses to be analyzed later. Eventually I would have to deal with the divergence in my head, resulting from my twin selves—which hadn’t merged, but left me with conflicting impulses—but for now the compound was shaking down around our ears, even if we couldn’t feel it here in the the sanctum sanctorum.
“I won’t,” was all I said before I directed my attention to the animal. Butch, that was his name. “So you’re a clever beast.”
The dog eyed me skeptically and backed up a step. But it wasn’t growling or trying to bite me, which felt like a small victory. Then it yapped. Once.
“That means yes,” Chance put in.
I remembered that after he said it, as if it was a fact I had learned long ago and since forgotten. “Excellent. If I find something that belonged to the mage who worked in this lab, could you follow his scent?”
Butch pondered and then yapped again. He could.
“Brilliant.” Greydusk saw the plan in its entirety, I had no doubt.
In essence, it was simple enough. If the dog could follow the trail, it should lead us to the route that mages had used to escape my wrath. If we found their hiding place along the way, even better. It could end here and now. If not, we left the collapsing Saremon compound and went straight to the palace, where I could issue my first proclamation, hire staff, begin renovations, and organize a proper funeral.
That list daunted even a demon queen—but that had to be weariness and grief talking. I had been born for this role. I had lain dormant in the human’s blood, in her soul, waiting for my moment. Once I set my affairs in order, the pleasure in this would return. I didn’t permit any doubts to take root.
Instead I took action, ransacking the lab for some cast-off piece of clothing. My efforts bore fruit when I slammed open a drawer and found a dirty handkerchief. It was damp with some unidentifiable fluid and I found some pincers to pick it up, then I knelt and offered it to the dog for his perusal. He sniffed and then sneezed. Whined a little too. I couldn’t blame him; it was fiercely revolting.
“Is that strong enough?” Chance asked.
The dog’s look said, Hell, yes. Any stronger and I would die.
I swept my arm out before me in an inviting gesture. “Lead on. We’re right behind you.”
The little dog pranced. Part of me found it adorable; the rest of me wondered how it was possible the creature hadn’t been eaten. Butch lowered his small head, tail up and twitching with excitement. He sniffed around outside the door and then settled confidently on a path that led back the way we’d come, only at the first opportunity, he hung a left. We’d explored this part of the lab complex, but I hadn’t been looking for an exit then. I’d only been thinking of my dad. Later I would replay those moments with him. My heart hurt; it was a caution against love and its shocking weakening, but I did not deny those feelings. Even pain would make me stronger in the end.
The dog led us straight to a hidden passage. This place was probably riddled with them. When I knelt beside him, a breeze swept out from beneath the stone. I felt around for the catch and then a section of wall slid behind the rest.
Though I half wanted resistance, I encountered none. The mages had gone to ground and would strike next from a fortified position. They were smart enough not to want to
face me in a dark tunnel with little preparation time. The strongest rituals took time to set in place. That was why I hadn’t dealt instant death in the arena.
The hidden passage led us into a plaza across the way, and when I turned, I saw the utter devastation of what had been the Saremon compound. They had shaken it to rubble rather than let anyone else gain a foothold there. It would take a salvage crew weeks to unearth their library, though the magickal shields should protect the books from harm. A host of curious onlookers had gathered to watch the fall of the house of Saremon. They didn’t see us emerge behind them.
“Summon the carriage,” I told Greydusk. “And take us to the palace.”
After handing my father’s body to Chance, the Imaron did as I ordered. I watched with implacable resolve as the cube unfolded and he sent the black mist of the Klothod into the mechanism. It wasn’t revolting anymore; it was a tool to be used. The demon assisted me into the coach, and we were off before the assembled mob took an interest in our activities.
The city—and the caste checkpoints—flew by in a blur; then the coach stopped outside a massive black gate with barbed points atop the walls. This wasn’t a glamorous fairy castle. It was entirely suitable for a demon queen. Time had been unkind, but with a little effort, the villa would glow once more with a dark luster.
“Home sweet home,” I murmured.
“You need to disembark, Your Majesty. The magickal protections sealed the place up when you vanished. Only your touch can raise the portcullis.”
Nodding, I dropped down to the cobbled street and strode toward the gate, where I wrapped both hands around the bars. “Open in the name of the Once and Future Queen, who is risen.”
A shudder rocked the ground I stood upon. Then the bars scrolled backward with a hideous, rusty shriek. I returned to the carriage.
“It knows me,” I said with satisfaction.
“As do we all,” Greydusk replied. “Even those who oppose you cannot dispute your identity.”
The coach clattered over the stones into the courtyard. Behind us, the portcullis lowered on its own, like enormous jaws slowly swallowing prey—an ominous and efficient magick. I approved.
