The Mark of Kane

by L. W. Herndon

  She shrugged. “Whatever. I probably need someone more my age anyway.” The implication hung in the air between us, an invitation for me to sway her.

  I shook my head and ignored the come-on. “Just for your information, the older the demon, the more you need to watch out for them. They have more control and more power.” I rinsed out the bottle in the kitchen sink. “But don’t write me off in the old-geezer category quite yet.”

  She laughed, “Why is that? You’ve found the fountain of youth?”

  Her laugh cut short in a high-pitched screech as a large, well-muscled arm grabbed her around the neck and another pinned her arms to her body. The air around Jez rippled and crackled as space split in two. I leapt from behind the kitchen counter and made it from my living room in time to strike the hard rock surface of the space beyond the dimensional split. A kick to my ribs and a garbled snarl was enough to ground me in the arena of Shalim’s courtyard.

  I rolled at a sound, a large clawed foot just missing my ear. Adrenaline kept me moving until I’d reached the stairs to Shalim’s throne. Several rolls, one tuck, and a push and I was upright, if not actually ready to do battle with my clan’s fellow demons.

  “Cease.” Shalim’s voice echoed across the cavern, causing the ground to rumble. Pissed didn’t even begin to describe his mood.

  Brazko froze, breathing down my neck with barely leashed aggression. His eyes glimmered with red embers, prepared for assault as he waited for any signal to continue.

  I cast a furtive glance around for Jez but found nothing. She had shielded herself when Moloch grabbed her, and while she wasn’t visible, that wouldn’t keep her from detection in Shalim’s stronghold. This wasn’t the most volatile of clans, but my demon brothers weren’t much for forbearance either. They wouldn’t suffer a human or even another demon in their domain. Odds were, an Irin wouldn’t fare any better. Naberius wasn’t here to point out that ignorance of the rule for noninterference with the Irin didn’t discount my clans’ conviction of the crime if they messed with them.

  “You were to report back to me.”

  I lowered my eyes to keep at least an outward semblance of deference. I didn’t really want to be in Shalim’s bad graces and I would need his support to get Jez out of the stronghold alive. “The problem with the sorcerers is more complicated than expected.”

  “Is this the complication?” Shalim glared at Jez held before him. He’d forced down her shields, her arms locked in a rigid hold between Zepar and Moloch.

  “She’s an Irin I’m using as bait for the Consortium,” I muttered, maintaining my subservient posture.

  Jez gasped. Then her mouth pinched tight, her eyes hostile with her immediate acceptance of my betrayal. Lack of trust was an issue we would have to work on. Although in this case, her hostility would give credence to my story and keep her alive.

  “Irin.” Shalim spat the word as if it were holy water.

  “Let me deal with his failure, Master.”

  Brazko was getting on my last nerve. Fighting up the chain to gain rank and power was typical demon practice. Brazko, however, given his youth, was full of energy and violence but he possessed little control or intelligence. He might eventually succeed at rank, if he survived long enough. Power wasn’t in his DNA.

  “Silence.”

  Brazko backed down, obvious confusion in his big ox-like features before he retreated to guard the courtyard’s threshold.

  “What purpose does the Consortium have for the Irin?” Shalim’s words snapped as he paced, his anger vibrating along the stones beneath my feet.

  “They use their summoned victims to kill and harvest the Irin’s blood.”

  “To what end?”

  “I haven’t determined that yet. But the kills are escalating: more bodies, less concern over visibility, and with broader impact across clans and species.”

  “Across other clans?” Shalim moved closer, his leathery skin shimmering in the torchlight of the courtyard. The black glyphs and patterns on his body quivered across his red flesh in the heat and light, dancing across his skin independent of his motion. The disconcerting knowledge that they had the potential to possess independent form had crossed my mind many times. I’d been present only once for the release of a glyph, for a brief time, to pursue its own desire. The desire had been cold and vicious revenge. The resulting blood and terror, more than most people would see in a lifetime. I still carry the image of carnage with me.

  “My suspicion is yes. I believe the Consortium wages war across many fronts.” I nodded to Jez. “Ours, hers, and others yet unable to take up the battle.” That was sufficiently mushy and vague, but for some reason, Shalim accepted my less than detailed hypothesis.

  “This I will use to my benefit.” He turned away, offering me no view of his expression, but the glyphs had paused with his statement.

  “As you wish, Master.” I bowed my head. “It will be done when we know the Consortium’s true plan.”

  “And yet you waste time protecting others,” Shalim hissed. Brazko shifted at the potential behind his master’s displeasure, sensing a new opportunity.

  “Safeguarding the Consortium’s targets has forced the sorcerers to operate outside of their plan. I aim to bring them to my place and point of battle,” I said.

  Shalim nodded, his eyes misting with sparks of black, the flicker of flame within them momentarily hidden. “A battle there shall be.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Shalim moved back to Jez. Twice her size, he towered over her; still, Zepar and Moloch forced her to her knees before him.

  I anticipated her response and moved quickly but not fast enough.

  Shalim had grabbed her hand with a speed beyond my eye’s capacity to track, and Jez’s, forcing the energy back at her that she had tried to push his way. He held that energy around her, slowly suffocating her and squeezing her internal organs. His fingers circled hers as she fought to remain conscious.

  “She is a key to defeating the Consortium.” My voice was louder than I intended and more forceful than acceptable, for Zepar and Moloch turned their faces away so as not to witness Shalim’s wrath or the outcome. Witnessing clan members’ discipline is never a good thing and every member present froze at the prospect of my punishment.

  For a second, I held my breath as Shalim turned to face me, full flame and ice visible in his eyes. His height grew with his rage, the glyphs now spinning at a dizzying pace over red skin. “She is expendable.”

  I nodded slowly and kept my gaze fixed on the growing hellfire in Shalim’s glare. He would have the same knowledge of the Irin as Naberius, but Jez had pissed him off. I had pushed him beyond his limit and he wasn’t seeing reason. He needed another frame of logic. “She is a child and what they seek. Her kind is difficult to find. It will waste time to find another to use.”

  Time drifted, maybe seconds, maybe minutes. It seemed an eternity.

  He held out his other hand to me. “If you intend to use her, then she will be a burden you carry.” I offered my hand and he grabbed it, the long talon extending from his thumb to pierce the flesh of my palm. To the hand still around Jez’s, he did the same and then moved the two together, binding me to her with a pain of fire unlike any I’d felt before. Jez cried out and shrank away from Shalim, trying to remove herself from his grip. I closed my eyes and endured the pain, for like all the other times, I knew it would end eventually.

  He and his clan couldn’t actually destroy me, not to say they hadn’t tried over the years. However, if Jez were to make another move against him, I would experience every moment of her death as if it were my own. She would feel my pain as well. Despite my words, Shalim knew that I considered her an innocent. One I chose to protect, her welfare an oath I had promised, no matter how reluctantly, to a dying man. Her death at their hands would be a dark shadow I would never shake and one I’d carry with me forever.

  Shalim raised our hands to his tongue and laved our skin, applying a spark of lightning, painf
ul and sharp, then suddenly, he let go. Jez sank to the ground, holding her wounded hand. “Use her quickly, Kane, and do not fail me.”

  I nodded and pulled a reluctant Jez beside me as I made my way out of the stronghold to the fault lines. She didn’t want to stay with me, but her backward glances set her priorities. The need to put distance between her and the clan kept her sandwiched to me.

  We exited the fault line at the back of a chapel around the corner from my building and Jez pulled to leave. I held fast to her wrist and forced her close so I wouldn’t need to raise my voice. “We are going back to my apartment, and we are going to discuss this.”

  “No way. You sold me out…” She almost said again.

  I squeezed her wrist. “You were foolish enough to think you could take on a high demon and his clan.”

  Tears of anger and frustration sprang to her eyes, but her jaw clenched with her obvious refusal to release them. “I’m not going with you.”

  “You have limited choices.”

  “I’ll scream.”

  “You do and you can make the trip unconscious. Your choice. And if you run, I promise you, I’ll make it my last mission in life to hunt you down. I refuse to allow your suicide, even if you seem determined to choose that for yourself.”

  She pulled away from me, her energy evaporated, and blinked. Two fat tears traced quick paths down her cheeks; then she leaned back against the wall of the entryway of the church, submissive. I turned for home without another word.

  ***

  Jez kept her silence until we reached the apartment. I prepared for the full brunt of her mood shift and had to slam the key code combination in several times before I calmed down enough to get it right.

  I entered the living room and raised my hands to contain my head, which felt as if it was about to explode. This used to be my retreat. It wasn’t hidden from my clan, but it was mine, my work, my few belongings, my space. My air. Lately, my refuge had become a beacon for everything that contributed to the cymbals crashing in my head.

  I’d lived my relatively short years taking care of myself. Not always well, but I’d survived. The only time I’d been accountable for someone else’s welfare had been disastrous. I never wanted a repeat.

  Now, through no fault of my own, I’d amassed the burden of others left and right. I was drowning from safeguarding every innocent I came in contact with. Most of them were fighting me to let them die. When had I lost so much control of my life? And all these damn women. There was no reasoning with any of them.

  “I was only gone a short while, Kane; surely it can’t be that bad.” Decibel stood silently in the corner with a wry smile on her face. Not compassionate, just quizzical.

  Jez pointed a righteous forefinger in my direction. “He outed me to his entire clan.”

  I glared at her over my shoulder. “And you did absolutely nothing?”

  “I defended myself.”

  “Where exactly did you defend yourself?” asked Decibel, a slight increase in the depth of her tone. A warning Jez ignored.

  “I was taken. Forcibly abducted. I used the shield, but that obviously doesn’t work too well in their pen.” She glared at Decibel with annoyance, as if she’d withheld some key point during their training.

  Decibel tilted her head at Jez, her next words very slow and precise. “You shielded yourself and then?”

  “Then they unshielded me and he—” Again the finger pointed at me. “He told them I was an Irin. He admitted using me to flush out the Consortium. Just as Sol warned that he would.”

  Decibel was silent.

  “Tell her the rest. Go ahead. Show her your hand,” I shouted and walked off to the bathroom to find something to put on my poor, abused hand. More times than I cared to remember in the last few days, this one hand had undergone the proverbial slice: for Shalim, for Anne, for Aisha, again for Shalim.

  I picked up the hydrogen peroxide, some tape, and gauze and came back to the kitchen counter.

  Decibel stood with her arms folded across her chest, looking at the floor. “So let me get this straight. You used the shield that I taught you so you could remain inconspicuous and flaunted it in front of one more powerful. You used the energy surge, which I taught you so you could make a quick escape to retaliate against the same powerful individual, against a high demon. An ancient leader of his clan. In his own stronghold. Surrounded by his clan, all those bound to him by oath. And you did this in defiance of the only person present who has been committed to stopping the Consortium from annihilating your race. In front of the master he has taken an oath to serve. Did I get that right?”

  Jez opened her mouth to say something. She thought it over, uncertainty gaining a foothold in her expression. With nothing more to say, she glared at me followed by a glance at Decibel, and then nodded.

  “Is it starting to sink in that Kane saved your life? What exactly did you expect to have happen? The heavens were going to open up and offer you some beautifully packaged solution? Because we all know that life is all about black and white, and only you know the truth!”

  At Decibel’s blatant sarcasm, Jez opened her mouth and closed it again.

  “Understand this and understand it well. He is now bound to you. That means others can trace him by you. He is what stands between you and the hounds of hell, and now they can track him through you. You, a vulnerable neophyte. You, who possess minimal power, are now his Achilles’ heel.”

  Decibel reached over for the supplies and placed them in front of Jez. “This means you need to think before you react. Before you think on some whim of revenge, know it will mean life or death to others besides yourself. I’m certain Solomon, your father, would have wanted you to understand that nuance. He would have wanted you to understand that he handpicked Kane to protect you because of his skills. Ones you have put at risk.”

  Shock glazed over Jez’s eyes, and her mouth dropped on in a silent cry. Hardly sucking in air, she sank to the floor by the coffee table. If she concentrated, I was certain she might actually dissolve through the floorboards.

  Decibel shook her head, hands on her hips, and turned to look at me. “Kids.”

  “You didn’t need to tell her that way,” I muttered under my breath as I passed her. With a sigh, I crouched beside the coffee table, picked up the peroxide, and reached for Jez’s hand.

  She didn’t try to shrug me away. She just gave up the hand and shook her head in denial.

  “He was going to tell you.” I dabbed the cotton over the wound to soak up the excess blood and peroxide foam. “He just didn’t have time, Jez. Everything he did was to save you.”

  She said nothing. I patched her hand, then put the supplies back in the bathroom, and leaned against the doorjamb to watch both of them.

  “So now what?” I asked, hoping we could free enough air in the room to fill our lungs with something other than tragedy.

  Decibel sat on the table. “I have news.”

  “Good or bad?”

  She looked at me, brows lowered, mouth resigned in a straight line. “When was the last time you had any good news?”

  “Good point.”

  “The hospital called. They don’t expect Samuel to survive the night.”

  I hadn’t braced myself for that. Rubbing my hand over my chest, I tried for some of that air. No luck. The cold, empty knot in the pit of my stomach felt like I’d lost something tangible and infinitely fragile. And I didn’t even know the kid.

  ***

  “I can’t guarantee this will work.”

  Decibel’s high heels clipped on the hospital’s cement sidewalk as she cast a glance my way, too full of sympathy for me to stomach.

  “Doesn’t matter. Without this option, he has no chance.” I gestured her through the door into the lobby and mentally ran through the scenario we’d set up.

  Fortunately, Anne was free and clear of the hospital and Decibel’s detection, one small bit of grace to keep this situation from exploding beyond my control. Yet what w
e were about to do exceeded the scope of my life experiences.

  “You’re certain of the timeframes?” Decibel asked.

  “I’m not certain of anything.” I stopped, exhaled sharply, and gave her a hard look. I wished I could retract the snap and edge in my voice. Samuel and his situation weren’t Decibel’s fault. Demon or not, she was stretching her boundaries beyond the limit to help me here. “I’m sorry—”

  Her hand cut me off as she stepped closer and placed her palm over my chest. “Just focus on the task. It’s going to get harder, so don’t waste mush and apologies now.”

  I let loose a scoff of sarcasm and shook my head. No wasted grand sympathy from my partner, just military precision and structure, on the outside. However, on the inside, I didn’t need a binding with Decibel to feel her twinge of sadness and apprehension. It hovered just beneath the cool, polished façade. I covered her hand with mine and pressed the elevator button. Once inside, we both moved apart, safe in our personal spaces at opposite corners of the car as it rose to Samuel’s floor.

  “No one saw you?” The statement was my follow-through. She’d been careful. I knew that, but she detailed the steps to calm my mind and fill in the silence.

  “I entered his room, administered the injection, and was out without witnesses. Didn’t leave any needle marks either.”

  I raised an eyebrow, wondering how she’d managed that, but she shook her head.

  “Don’t ask. They won’t find anything.”

  “And the paperwork to deny an autopsy is all good?” Asking the question made me queasy.

  She stared at the doors. “I was very clear on the phone with the hospital. And I’ve also spoken with the technician at the morgue.” She gave a small laugh. “Evidently, he’s quite devoted for someone in his position. I suspect he’ll guard the body with his life.”

  I nodded. The hospital had called two hours ago with the notification of Samuel’s death. From their perspective, all vital signs had stopped on the equipment they had hooked to him. My brief call to Anne had detailed for me the hospital procedures following death and the specifics for the moving of the body to the morgue, hence the timeline in question. Decibel had selected the drug to administer to Samuel, one that induced paralysis and emulated the physical symptoms of death.