by Julie Kenner
Fuck.
The leader twisted his neck to look at the demons behind him, his hideous mouth pulling into a delighted smile. “You see? Did I not tell you she would come? The key, little bitch. Give us the Oris Clef, and this pitiful human can live.”
I took a step forward, not certain what I planned to do, but knowing I had to do something. I couldn’t stand there and watch them kill a priest.
Rose’s hand on my arm pulled me back. “You can’t give it to him,” she said. “After everything Deacon did to hide it—after everything you did to keep it away from Penemue—God, Lily, you can’t just turn it over now.” She turned to look at the monsignor, and I saw the tears trickle down her cheeks. “It’s war, Lily, and the demons can’t win. You know what they’re like. You know what they’ll do.”
I could hear it in her voice. The terror. The memories. Everything she’d suffered at Lucas Johnson’s hands coming right back to haunt her.
There was no way I was giving up the Oris Clef, but neither was I giving up that innocent man without a fight. “We fight,” I said, and even before the words were out of my mouth, my knife was out of my hand, spinning blade over hilt toward the demon that held the priest. It landed true, right in the bastard’s eye, and as the monsignor fell to the floor, the demon’s body dissolved into a thick, viscous oil that dripped down onto him, covering his arms and legs until it finally disappeared into the floor, a greasy stain the only evidence his captor had once been there.
I’d brought a second blade, too, and I sent it flying as well, but that time, I’d lost the element of surprise. As the throng rushed forward toward Rose and me, the lead demon leaped sideways, even as the Caller raced toward the fallen priest. I whirled toward him, yanking the sword from the scabbard at my back, and shouted for him to stop.
He did, but only once he had the priest in front of him.
I froze, eyeing the knife he held at the old man’s throat.
“Do not fear,” the priest said, and when he looked at me, it was Gabriel’s face I saw. “My faith will keep me strong.”
I stumbled backward, then willed myself to stay in the game, not to react to the hallucinations, if that even was what they were.
“Shall I do it?” the Caller said. “Shall I bleed him?”
I hesitated, because Rose slid up beside me and pressed a blade into my hand. I recognized it as my own, and I held it tight. More than that, I saw opportunity.
I could save the monsignor. I was certain of it. I could save him by killing the Caller, who towered at least a head taller than the priest. I was sure of my aim, certain of my target.
I could do this.
And if I did, the Caller demon would die.
If I didn’t, the priest would.
Did I sacrifice the priest for the slim chance of finding the blade?
Or did I kill the Caller and have faith that somehow it would all turn out okay?
So far, faith and I weren’t the best buddies, but I was trying. And when I looked in the old man’s eyes, I knew I had to try once again.
I clutched my knife, took a breath, and sent the blade flying.
It got the Caller dead in the eye, just as I knew it would.
But it didn’t matter.
In the split second it had taken for me to contemplate my faith, the Caller had taken his own knife and slit the monsignor’s throat.
I’d lost them both, Caller and priest.
I’d gambled on faith, and I’d lost.
So far, I thought, that had been the story of my life.
I saw the body fall, heard Rose’s frustrated cry, and caught the scent of fresh blood on the air. Within me, the newly dead demons writhed and preened, gaining satisfaction from the massacre and screaming for another kill—demon, human, they didn’t care.
I did, though. I cared.
I grabbed Rose by the arm and dragged her back toward the door.
“The priest!” Rose called. “Can’t you—”
“He’s dead,” I said flatly. I could heal, but I couldn’t resurrect. I’d lost him, and now I had the weight of another priest’s death on my shoulder, counterbalanced by the weight of the whole damn world.
Having lost their hostages and their leader, the demons were a disorganized mob, and though I wouldn’t say they were happy to let us go, the battle to get back out on the street was quick and dirty, and ended with Rose and I both increasing our dead demon head count.
All good and well, except once we were free and standing outside in the light of the almost-full moon, I could see a gang of demons marching toward us, the blades they held in their hands glinting in the soft glow, their faces—or what could reasonably be called faces—twisting with malicious purpose.
“Forget fighting,” I said. “Just run.” We did, only to find the way to the Tiger blocked. “Fuck it,” I said, then smashed in the window of a nearby car. “In!”
“Hurry!” Rose said, bouncing on the passenger seat as demons reached through the hole in the window, trying to drag us back out.
This model was harder to get started, but I finally got the engine going, and I gunned it, aiming that puppy not away from the demons but toward them. And I didn’t take my foot off the accelerator for an instant.
The sickening sound of flesh torn apart by metal echoed around us, accompanied by the slightly squishy sound of bloody body parts splattered on the hood and windshield.
I pressed on, flicking the wipers on to see better, and trying to ignore the fact that none of this seemed to faze Rose, who took my Demon Derby approach to driving in stride.
By the time we got back to the pub, I was frustrated and pissed, the burden of the monsignor’s death weighing on me all the more because I’d lost the Caller demon, too, and time was running out, moonrise on the day of the convergence fast approaching.
Fuck.
I was moving to the bar to pull myself a Guinness when Deacon and Rachel came down. “Any demon activity while I was gone?” I asked, looking at each of them in turn.
“I just woke up,” Rachel said, ignoring the way Rose scooted over to make room for her in a nearby booth and instead settling onto a stool at the bar. “One for me, too.”
Rachel was more of a wine sipper than beer guzzler, but I wasn’t going to deny her a fast slug of a thick brew, and I passed her a pint, then took a long draw of my own before pulling another for Deacon.
“Well?” I asked.
He looked at me, his eyes seeing more than I wanted. “What happened?”
“What do you think happened?” I spat, slamming the pint down and sloshing beer everywhere. “Dammit.” I got a towel and started mopping furiously, determined not to cry.
Damn.
I turned away, feeling their eyes on me. I kept my back pressed against the oak, my face turned toward the tower of bottles. I could see them, like modern art, reflected in the bottles and the bar mirror. Rachel and Deacon nearby, Rose curled up back in a booth. Rose looked a little shell-shocked, the way I felt. Deacon looked firm, resolute. Like a soldier, and I took some comfort in that.
And Rachel . . .
Rachel just looked like she wished this whole thing were over.
Well, I thought, don’t we all?
“He had his faith to the end,” Deacon said. “And we will find the key even without the Caller.”
“How?” I said, rounding on him. “How are we supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know.”
That was all he said. Just, “I don’t know.” But I heard so much more in those two little words. I heard compassion and understanding. I heard the reflection of everything he’d lost in his time upon this earth. Of everything he wanted to gain.
And I heard the promise that he would stand beside me as I fought my way through the pain. As we figured this out together.
Maybe I was reading too much into those two little words, but as I looked at his face—at the warmth in his eyes—I didn’t think so.
And I damn sure hoped I wasn�
��t wrong.
EIGHTEEN
Time was ticking down fast, and without the Caller demon, I was beginning to fear we were completely screwed, and I was kicking myself for acting so rashly and not figuring out a way to save the priest and catch the demon. Or maybe I should have just sacrificed the monsignor. I didn’t know.
For that matter, all I did know was that the only thing in the whole world I needed was to figure out where Alice’s mom had hidden the dagger, and as to that I was having absolutely no luck despite the fact that we all spent hours searching the apartment and the bar for any talisman that Alice’s mom might have used to hide the key and Egan might have then taken and hidden himself.
Nothing.
“The book,” I said as late afternoon rolled in. “It has to be. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“It didn’t work,” Deacon said. “Worse, you were almost destroyed.”
I had to admit that was definitely a downside. “But what else can it be? Unless the portal’s hidden in one of Alice’s kitchen knives.”
“Or a letter opener,” Rose added, in a distinctly unhelpful comment.
“I have to try again,” I said.
Rachel crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “I don’t know . . .”
“Right now, I’m the one calling the shots,” I said. “And I am trying again.” I pointed to Rose. “Go get the book.”
To her credit, she didn’t argue, merely trotted upstairs, then returned with the battered tome. She set it on the bar, and we all peered at it, keeping our distance as if the thing could bite.
Deacon stepped up beside me and took my hand, prepared to be my anchor despite his objections to the experiment.
“Here goes nothing,” I said. I opened the book back up to the inscription, sliced my palm, pressed, and waited for the jolt.
It didn’t come.
“What’s happening?” Rachel asked.
“Nothing,” I admitted, opening my eyes. “Not a thing.”
“No rumble? No yank on your gut?” Rose asked.
“I said nothing,” I snapped, irritated more by the failure than by her questions. I reined in the urge to toss the book across the room. Instead, I ripped my hand free from Deacon and stalked to the back. I opened the walk-in freezer, found the ice cream, and proceeded to dig it out with an industrial-size spoon.
When all else fails, sometimes you have to fall back on the old standbys.
Rose came in to the freezer with me, made a face, then took the ice cream from my hands. I protested—I really needed that chocolate—then realized she was only leading me out of the chill. We parked ourselves at the small table where Caleb the cook sat to get off his feet during his shift. I wasn’t in the mood to get up and search for another spoon, so I shared the one I had with Rose.
“We used to do this at home,” she said.
“I remember.”
“Do you think it’ll ever be like that again?”
There was hope in her voice, and I hated the thought of killing it. So I reached for her hand and squeezed. “Sure.”
Her smile was sad. “Liar.”
“Losing faith already?” It wouldn’t surprise me. Goodness knew my belief that I would find the missing key was fading fast.
“No,” she said, her voice so sincere it made my heart swell. “But even after we stop it, the world’s never going to be the same, right? I mean, people have seen.”
I nodded, wondering if she was right. They’d seen, yes, but had they understood? People, I knew, had an amazing capacity for rationalizing everything, and I wouldn’t put it past them to rationalize the end of the world, too.
“What’s going to happen?” Rose asked, picking at her cuticles instead of looking at me. “If you can’t find the lost key, I mean?”
I grimaced. Because wasn’t that the question of the hour? “Don’t worry,” I said. “I will.”
It wasn’t a promise I could be sure of keeping, but it was one I meant with all my heart.
I took a final bite of ice cream and headed back into the pub to see if Deacon had come up with any brilliant ideas, because without that damn missing key, I was right back where we started, with me staring into that rock and edging up against that proverbial hard place.
In the front of the pub, Deacon was stalking across the floor, his body tense, his gaze darting out the window at the coming dawn. There was a tension about him that made me nervous, and I moved toward him, wary, my gaze on his back in case any wings decided to sprout.
“Deacon?”
He paused in his pacing, then turned to me, moving slowly, as if he had to focus on every step. A man trying hard to stay connected to this reality.
“Can you feel it?” he asked. “The pull. Like a rubber band tight around your middle.”
“I—”
“And the sound. Like swarming bees.” He tilted his head to the side, his eyes narrowing. “They’re readying.” He looked at me. “They’re coming.”
“I know,” I said, wary. I’d been feeling it myself, that subtle tug. And along with it, the Oris Clef had been calling out to me more and more, teasing and tempting me. I was fighting it, yes, but it was getting harder.
It was getting harder for Deacon, too.
“I won’t join them. I won’t turn again.” He craned his neck, looking at his back. “I swear to you now, Lily, that I will not fail in this fight. I will not turn again.”
I moved to him, felt his arms go tight around me. “I know. That’s not who you are. Not anymore.”
He pulled back, then hooked his finger under my chin. “And you?”
I stepped away, ashamed, my fingers going to the Oris Clef, hanging around my neck. I could feel its power in my hand. Like Deacon, it was attuned to the coming convergence, and it thrummed with energy, warming my hand and fueling thoughts that I had no business thinking. I knew I shouldn’t even open myself to the temptation. But I couldn’t deny that the temptation was there.
“I’m running out of options,” was all I said, and he nodded, his breath releasing on a sigh.
I was also running out of time. I hadn’t seen Penemue or Kokbiel or Gabriel, but I knew that wasn’t because they were being polite and waiting for engraved invitations. No, they were gathering strength. Waiting until closer to the convergence. Planning to swoop in and take either the key or me, then use it as the portal peeled open.
Soon. Very soon.
We stood there a moment, Deacon and I, looking out onto the night. The street was gray, covered in a thin ash from fires that raged throughout the town. The street was cracked, the aftereffects of a series of tiny earthquakes. No teenagers walked the streets; no cars purred down the road. The world, it seemed, was dying. Humanity might not understand why, but it knew it was ill. Knew that the final death throes were upon it.
Rachel came up softly behind us. “Do we have a plan? Do you two have any idea about the missing key? Any idea at all where it might be?”
I shook my head, frustrated to have to admit that we did not.
She frowned, then took my arm and tugged me aside. Deacon didn’t notice; he was back to staring out the window, the fight within him already having begun.
“Rachel? What is it?”
Her brow furrowed as her lips pressed together. She glanced over her shoulder to where Rose was now tossing her knife at the dartboard, hitting bull’s-eye after bull’s-eye.
“Nothing,” she said, then turned away.
I pulled her back. “Wait. Hang on. You pulled me aside, remember? It’s not nothing.” I saw the battle play out across her face, the hard-fought question of should she, or should she not tell me whatever it was that was on her mind.
“It’s just that—it’s just that I know you.”
“I—okay.” I had no idea what I was supposed to say, or for that matter if I needed to say anything at all. “Um, so?”
She ran her fingers through her hair, tousling it in a way which suggested she was even more disturbed than she
was letting on. Rachel, I’d learned, was nothing if not put together. “I just mean that even though it hasn’t been that long, I really feel like I know you. And it’s not just an illusion—I’m not having fantasies that you’re really Alice, or that some part of her lives on inside you. I know you.” Her brow furrowed. “Your heart, I mean.”
“This is all really nice,” I said. “And I appreciate the pep talk. But I’m on the clock here, and I should probably go see what Deacon’s doing, because if he doesn’t come through with a Caller demon, I—”
“Use the key,” she said. “Do it. Use the Oris Clef.”
I gaped at her. “You can’t be serious.”
“Hell, yes, I am,” she said, leaning forward and eyeing me earnestly. “Don’t you see? It’s like I said before—black magic’s only black if you use it that way. But you’re good. You step up and take the throne, and you’ll have an opportunity no one has ever had before. You’ll have the chance to take something dark and make it light. To take evil and turn it around until you don’t even recognize it anymore. You can eradicate it, Lily. Don’t you see? You have the chance to have a legacy here. And, honestly, I think it’s what you were meant to do. I think it’s why you’re here.”
“I don’t know,” I said, though I had to admit there was some sense to what she said. After all, I’d been fighting the demonic essence inside of me for a while. I’d gotten it down. Figured it out. More or less, anyway.
Surely it wouldn’t be harder when I was the queen. Hell, it might even be easier. How many queens personally executed the bad guys?
I’d be the Gentle Demon Queen. Lily the Great, who goes down in history as the woman who ushered in a new era. Who merged the realms of dark and light.
The woman who tamed the demons.
And how much easier would that be than the alternative? An eternity so vile I couldn’t even wrap my head about it. So horrible that the mere thought of it brought the stench of death back to me, making me gag and whimper merely from the possibility. “I don’t know,” I said. But I was tempted—hell, I’d been tempted when Deacon had suggested it, too. And I could tell by Rachel’s expression that she knew that I was.
