Shades of Wicked

by Jeaniene Frost

  “How did you survive getting your eyes stabbed out? You couldn’t have been playing dead. The wraiths vanished as the spell broke with your death and your body started decomposing. I had no idea you were so powerful. Do other people know?”

  His laugh was his delighted one, chilling me because it usually heralded horrible things to come. I tried to ignore it as I sent my senses outward, skipping over a dried-up well that had once been used for this park but wouldn’t help me now.

  “Almost no one does.” Dagon’s tone was as carefree as a child’s. He even shifted to make himself more comfortable. Then he tapped the knife hilt again as if to warn Ian not to move. “I suppose I have you to thank for the idea.”

  “Me?” What felt like it used to be a stream was now dried into the merest trickle. Damned climate change. I pulled what little I could from that and kept searching.

  “All your dying and coming back.” For the barest instant, hatred filled Dagon’s expression. Then his bright smile was back. “Such incredible power, wasted on a half-mortal brat. Still, if one as pathetic as you could beat death, I could, too. Demons already had access to the right power source. We’d just been transferring it instead of harvesting it.”

  Power source? Did he mean the magic that all demons inherently had? But demons didn’t transfer magic. They enhanced their abilities with it . . . though they did transfer something else.

  “Souls?” I asked, so sickened by the prospect, I stopped searching for water for a second.

  Now his laugh sounded genuine. “Very good!”

  Then his laughter cut off and his deceptively youthful features twisted with all the rage that his eons of living had allowed him to store up.

  “And you cost me two: one to harvest for my resurrection, one to heal my body so I wasn’t trapped inside a half-rotted corpse. Souls aren’t as easy to come by anymore, girl. People are more loath to bargain them away. I also have to send some up the chain, or I’ll draw suspicion. That’s why you’re now going to sell me yours, unless you’d rather see your lover die?”

  Dagon tapped the knife hilt again, harder. Ian’s features tightened until his cheekbones stood out in sharp relief and his jaw looked carved from steel. His gaze lasered on me, not a hint of pleading for his life in it. Instead, defiance blazed out.

  Don’t you dare! that look said. Sod Dagon and his filthy deals!

  I understood that rage. Oh, how I understood it! I also hated the idea of giving Dagon anything he wanted, especially—especially!—this. But as I stared at Ian, I found myself unable to tell Dagon I wouldn’t do it.

  There are ways out of deals like this, I rationalized. Ian had almost gotten out of his deal, except for Dagon’s surprise resurrection trick. For all I knew, my father might be able to help me get my soul back, too. Furthermore, I didn’t stay dead after I died. Dagon would have a much harder time trying to collect a soul from someone who couldn’t be killed. I still had a chance if I did this. If I said no, Ian didn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to Ian. “I don’t want to, either. But I can’t . . . I can’t just let you die.”

  Dagon began to smile. That rage and tightness left Ian’s face. His expression filled with a wistful sort of tenderness that made no sense considering our terrible circumstances.

  “. . . ud’ve . . .’uv’d . . .’oo,” Ian said, struggling to get each syllable out. Then, he closed his eye.

  “What?” I asked softly.

  I was still trying to translate what he’d said when Ian slammed his head backward, the violent motion ramming Dagon’s knife all the way through his remaining eye.

  Chapter 42

  Smoke burst from Ian’s ruptured eye. At once, his body began to collapse into itself, that silky ivory skin turning to leather that cracked and split until his features were unrecognizable. Horror froze me into immobility while my mind screamed endless denials. Then pain roared through me, until I felt like my bones had been replaced with a storm of knives.

  “That spoiled my plans,” Dagon said disgustedly. “I was going to kill him after you agreed, then laugh at you while I reneged. Ah, well.” His hands clamped around Ian’s head. “At least he’s still good for something else.”

  He sealed his mouth over the back of Ian’s head and inhaled deeply. Something bright flashed for an instant before a glow appeared in Dagon’s throat. He dropped Ian’s head, swallowed that glow, then belched as if he’d just shotgunned a beer.

  “Mmmm. His soul was taste-eee.”

  Something broke inside me. Not grief; that waited beneath my pain and rage, patient and far deadlier than both. No, it wasn’t that. All but one of the chains that held down the thing Tenoch warned me about for thousands of years had just snapped.

  You cannot control the full power of your other nature, Veritas. It’s too strong. Siphon away bits of it if you must, but always, always keep the rest of it chained. Promise me.

  Several of those chains had snapped when Tenoch died. Only my promise had kept me from breaking the last few. Now, only one strained against the force surging beneath it. I might have thrown more chains over it. I’d promised Tenoch I always would. But Dagon kept smacking his lips, mocking my pain with the same malevolent joy he’d shown me and countless others.

  And at the same time, I realized what Ian had been trying to tell me when he’d said “. . . ud’ve . . .’uv’d . . .’oo.”

  I hadn’t understood the garbled words at first, but now, they blazed across my mind with crystalline clarity.

  Could have loved you.

  Ian had fought to get those words out. He’d fought again when he denied Dagon the final taunt the demon had intended. Ian must have known Dagon’s offer to spare him was no more than a cruel trick, despite my being too desperate to see that.

  Given the choice, I’d always rather go down fighting, he’d said mere minutes ago. From the moment I’d met him to his very last moment, he’d proven that.

  Now he was gone. Murdered by the same demon who’d stolen far, far too much from me. A demon who was still smacking his lips as if trying to draw out the very last drops of my pain for his delight. Could have loved you . . .

  “I could have loved you, too,” I said out loud, ignoring Dagon’s surprised “Huh?” in response.

  Then I snapped that last chain myself.

  Power crashed into every part of me. It gushed until my skin split, healed, then split again, as if my body was too small to contain it. My vision went black, but it didn’t matter. All at once, I could feel everything around me. More than that, I could feel the thrum of water from numerous sources, some very near, some several kilometers away. The energy in the water called to me, twining around that ever-growing force as if begging to be a part of it.

  I didn’t attempt to fly, but I was suddenly in the air. Dagon grabbed me, trying to pull me back down. My eyes opened, bathing him in brilliant beams of silver. He let me go, dropping to the ground. Then he began to back away, slowly.

  “Girl,” he said in a lower, almost cautious tone.

  I concentrated on the water closest to me, marveling that I had never considered using it from these sources before. Why hadn’t I? It had been right within my grasp this whole time.

  “That’s not my name,” I growled.

  Then I ripped out all the water from Dagon’s body. It came out bloody, but so much more powerful than what I’d find in an ordinary pond or stream. I stripped the considerable energy from it, ignoring the way Dagon’s scream turned hoarse as his throat and the rest of him instantly desiccated. Then I kept the bloody water floating around me without needing a second thought to do so.

  That had been easy. What else could I do?

  The demons. Their screams choked off into odd, hissing sounds as their bodies abruptly went dry. Now I had a lot of water at my disposal. I pulled the energy out of it and played with the remainder. Some I turned into steam and scalded the dry flesh off Dagon and the other demons. Others parts I kept swirling in the air around me.
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  But the steam rehydrated Dagon and the other demons more than I preferred. I stopped scalding them to rip out both the old and the new water they’d healed enough to regenerate. I was focused on pulling all the energy from it when I sensed something hurtling toward my eye.

  I froze it into place without thinking about whether I could. I just . . . did. Then I looked at the bone knife I’d just encased in ice. It floated mere centimeters from my eye, its sharp point still red. A glance down confirmed it was one of the same knives that had killed Ian. Dagon had ripped them from Ian’s head, keeping one while throwing the other at me.

  I stared at Ian’s remains through the force that had overtaken me. It registered my grief, but in an insulated way, filtering the facts through while leaving emotions behind. Dagon had murdered the man I considered mine. He had also tried to murder me. I would punish him for that. I would also punish all who’d helped him do it. It was what they deserved.

  I started with the demons, sending the water hovering near me down in a rush that coated the ground around them. Then I pulled it back up, making sure the demons saw the new articles it contained. They tried to run when they saw the pieces of bone from the skeletons of their slain, but their bodies were too dry, so they could only shuffle. A few tried to teleport out. If they weren’t so weak, it would have worked. Ian was dead, so every part of the spell fused in his magic would have died, too. But I’d ripped too much water and energy from them to teleport.

  I turned the water containing demon bone into jagged bits of ice. Then I rammed that into their eyes. Their screams reached a near-simultaneous crescendo before silencing with a finality that gave me a sense of resolution versus satisfaction. After they were dead, I pulled all those bits of bones out of their eyes and covered them with more ice. Then I aimed those new pieces at Dagon, who was trying to fly and couldn’t.

  “I don’t know how many extra souls you have in you to burn through before you stay dead,” I told him in a calm voice, “but I’m going to find out.”

  Dagon spun around, holding both hands over his eyes to protect them. “If you kill me, you’ll never see Ian again!”

  I yanked the last bits of water out of the dead demons and used it to form an ice shield that knocked Dagon down when it hit him. I piled more ice on top of him, skipping only the parts that contained demon bone shards. Those I poised over him in every direction he might attempt to escape. After all that, I floated down to him.

  His hands were still over his eyes. That was fine. I didn’t mind stabbing the ice weapons through them. “You already made sure I’d never see Ian again when you killed him and swallowed his soul. You have nothing left to threaten me with or bargain with me for, demon.”

  The ice I’d piled over him kept Dagon from moving his arms, but his fingers flicked in the general direction of Ian’s corpse. “If a harvested soul has the power to bring me back from the dead, it can bring him back, too.”

  He was attempting to bargain. How interesting. “You’re saying you’d harvest someone else’s soul to resurrect Ian?”

  His tone grew crafty. “Demons like me have the power to transfer souls from one place to another. Why couldn’t I resurrect Ian by harvesting the power from someone else’s soul, then put Ian’s soul back in his body and use another one to heal him good as new? But kill me, and you kill Ian’s last chance to be alive again.”

  My laughter was knives sharpening against each other. Even insulated by the incredible power of my other nature, grief found its way to me. “You probably could do all that. But you won’t. I almost took your word about saving Ian’s life earlier. Look how that turned out for me.”

  More slivers of pain slipped in, drawn by the grief spreading like poison through me. Talking about Ian was dangerous. It fueled my vampire half, which was screaming and beating against its new cage with all its might. I could drown that half with more of this power. I should do that. It would insulate me from its weakness, grief, and pain. When had it ever brought me anything except those three?

  “I can bring Ian back,” Dagon said, sounding desperate now. “Only me. Kill me, and Ian stays dead forever.”

  The demon would say anything to save his own life. Pathetic. Why hadn’t I killed him already? Why wasn’t I sending the bone-encased ice knives into his eyes right this moment?

  . . . could have loved you, could have loved you, could have loved you . . .

  The new cage housing my vampire half shattered. So did the ice knives. Water and bits of bones rained over Dagon as all my pain, grief, hope, love, fears . . . everything that was me roared back on top. It shoved my other nature beneath it, winding countless chains over it to keep it down. Gods, it burned to feel everything again! For a moment, I didn’t think I could stand it. At once, that powerful numbness tempted me. If you let me free, it promised, I will protect you from all this.

  I couldn’t. Not if Ian still had a chance. I channeled all my scorching feelings at it, their intensity forcing it back and forming ever more chains over it.

  “I don’t trust you, Dagon, but there is someone who might be able to do everything you said,” I found myself saying.

  Dagon peeked out from behind his hands, eyes widening at the water and bone fragments now covering him. “Don’t bother.” Even soaked with bloody water, his laugh was a dry wheeze. “Your father doesn’t care enough to help you.”

  “He might not,” I agreed, continuing to shove my other half down and fling every inner chain I had over it so it wouldn’t control me again. “But I’m going to find out.”

  Chapter 43

  I jumped on Dagon before he healed enough to attempt teleporting. The web around the park had fractured with Ian’s death since his magic had powered some of it. Then I grabbed two larger pieces of demon bone from the many shards around him. Before he could react, I stabbed one through his eye and held the shard over his remaining eye. Dagon screamed, cursing and threatening me in more languages than even I knew about how I’d regret this.

  I ignored him as I twisted the blade in his smoking, blackened eye socket. Slowly, blood began to drip out. I kept twisting until I had the amount I needed. Only blood from someone at the edge of death would work for this ritual. Then I left the knife in his eye socket to give myself a free hand. I wet my finger in his dripping blood, then began drawing the first of a dozen symbols that would summon the Warden of the Gateway to the Netherworld.

  Yes, I could kill myself to get to him faster, but that would mean leaving Dagon alone and giving him a chance to escape. I wasn’t doing that. Not with Ian’s soul inside him.

  Each time I finished a symbol, white-hot pain shot through me. That pain grew until it felt as if I’d submerged my body into a pool of fire. By the ninth symbol, I was trembling from it, and I fought to keep those shakes from my hand. Each symbol had to be flawless, or I’d need to do this all over again.

  Dagon shifted beneath me, almost causing me to miss a stroke in the tenth symbol. I shoved the bone shard closer until it nicked the jelly in his eye. “Don’t think I won’t kill you before I let you leave. And if you burn up Ian’s soul to resurrect yourself, I’ll stab your eyes out a thousand times if needed until I know you’ll stay dead.”

  “Fool,” Dagon hissed. “This will gain you nothing even if you do succeed. Ian never cared for you. He only pretended to, so he could use your affection to his best advantage. That’s what Ian does. He did the same to me, remember?”

  A month ago, I would have agreed with Dagon. Now, I knew better. I let out a grunt as I finished the tenth symbol. “Are you trying to talk me into killing you this instant instead of waiting to see if I can save Ian? If so, don’t bother.”

  “I’m trying to speak sense to you,” he snapped. “Release me. I’ll take my life as reimbursement for my murdered men and count the score even between us. That is the best deal you could possibly make.”

  “I don’t think so.” I began drawing the eleventh symbol. More agony sliced into me, and my vision briefly went
dark. When it returned, Dagon had tilted his head. Now his eye was a centimeter away from the bone shard instead of beneath it.

  I shoved it back until a pearl of crimson touched the tip. “Move again, and you’re dead.”

  Then I tried to clear my mind from the merciless pain. One more symbol. That’s all I needed. My hand shook as I wet my finger in Dagon’s blood. It still shook when I began to lower it to draw. The blood wavered, about to spill and ruin the spell. I held it over Dagon’s chest so if that crimson drop fell, it wouldn’t mar the other symbols.

  What if I couldn’t do this? I had never attempted to summon my father this way before. I only knew this spell because Tenoch had forced me to learn it. It was how he’d summoned the Warden after he’d first rescued me. If I had to start over while in this much pain, I’d never be able to complete this ritual!

  But . . . I could use my other nature to finish this last symbol. Pain wouldn’t register to me then. Nor would the fear I felt over what would happen to Ian if I failed. I could do that. I only had to let my other half back on top for an instant—

  It surged against its chains, sensing freedom. I felt one of them snap and I shuddered. Then I threw more over it with force of sheer will. Tenoch had warned me what would happen if I ever fully let this nature out. Looked like he’d been right. I’d siphoned power as needed from it before, but now that it had gotten a taste of being in control . . . nothing less would probably satisfy it.

  And I shouldn’t have to need it to complete this ritual! Tenoch had done this when he first saved me without having a more powerful other nature. Mencheres had done it once, too, though he denied it to avoid being punished by the council. Ian hadn’t, but he’d mastered a grave magic spell well enough to redirect the wraiths from me to Dagon, all without needing a half-celestial nature of indeterminate origin for help.