Scorched

by Sharon Ashwood

  “She is unhurt,” the Avatar said.

  Mac looked up, mildly irritated. He felt a beat behind the conversation.

  “You want to know why you were involved in this battle,” the Avatar said, making it a statement.

  “That would be nice.”

  “It is a very mortal need. Why is so important to the short-lived. The simple answer is that I needed your strength.”

  “And the longer and more satisfying answer?”

  The Avatar shifted, her bracelets making a clinking sound. “The Castle—I—was failing. Sylvius had just come into his powers and was old enough to release me without suffering harm himself. You were there, and your demon was in a mutable state.”

  “So it was you who changed me?”

  “I took your dormant infection and made it active again. I switched you from a soul eater to a fire demon. Fire demons are much more useful for raising power, and I needed power to complete the spell.”

  Mac’s mood went black. “So the time was right and I was convenient. That’s it.”

  The Avatar gave a half smile. “I knew you were the one the moment you spared Bran’s life, right before you met Constance. There is a line you will not cross, one that keeps you from surrendering to darkness. You are someone who has a will to help others. You held on to that despite how the demon changed you. No other demon would risk death to save a teenage incubus from a roomful of guardsmen and sorcerers. Everything you are or ever have been destined you to save me and those who dwell here.”

  That sounded a lot like the hellhounds’ prophecy. Lore had been right. “You mean I was just a pawn of destiny?” he said dryly.

  “There is always free will. You could have not saved us. You could have let us all perish.”

  “But instead I did my bit.”

  “And I appreciate it,” she added.

  “Good to know. So you got your spell. Can I go home now?”

  She looked perplexed. “Home? You’re a wandering spirit.”

  Mac began to feel sick. “Spirit?”

  “You gave your life so that I could be free.”

  A wave of desperation surged through him. He was dead. He couldn’t be dead. He slapped a hand to his chest, but he felt real enough. The bench felt hard and uncomfortable beneath him.

  “You feel what you expect to feel,” said the Avatar. “Just as you see me because your mind needs an image to talk to.”

  Mac licked his lips. Or thought he did. Whatever. “You said Sylvius is all right. How come he got to live and I didn’t?”

  “Sylvius was two beings in one. Me, and his father’s son. There’s only one of you.”

  Mac looked over the railing again, trying to catch a glimpse of the kid. He caught sight of Connie instead. She was leaning on Caravelli, starting to sob. She’s found out. She knows I’m gone. That should be me holding her.

  “But you can’t.” The Avatar sounded vaguely perplexed, as if he were being slow. She didn’t look so relaxed now.

  Mac swiveled to face her. “Look, you turned me into a monster. A killing machine. I did terrible things to fulfill your spell. Soul-destroying things.”

  “That’s true.” She didn’t sound very worried about it.

  “You owe me for that. You turned me into a murderous monster.”

  She leaned forward, not exactly angry but definitely intense. “Yes, as part of the spell to restore me, you killed a great many guardsmen. You paid for those deaths with your own life. Isn’t that atonement enough? And wasn’t it in a good cause?”

  Mac didn’t say anything more. How do I argue with a pile of stone?

  The Avatar put a hand on his knee. It felt cold, heavier than a woman’s hand should have been. “Very well. You died in my service. I acknowledge my debt to you. What would you have me do? Do you wish to return to your human life?”

  Mac lifted his head.

  “Can you do that?” Mac heard the hope in his voice. Hope for everything he’d lost—his job, his family, his friends. He could see himself back at his desk, dirty coffee cup and files and more work than was humanly possible to accomplish stacked before him. It looked like heaven.

  And there was more. He could keep October mornings. The smell of coffee. Dogs. Going for a run in the rain. He wouldn’t have to die, a wisp of nothing fading into the dark.

  The Avatar gave an apologetic smile. “It is difficult to remove a demon symbiont from its host. It is harder still to keep that infection from returning. I would have to set safeguards in place to limit your contact with the supernatural world. If you were human again, my doors would be closed to you. You would find the supernatural community outside your reach.”

  On first hearing, it sounded like a small price to pay. Mac looked out over the cavernous gloom, the small figures below lit by the fire from the lake. It was a macabre scene, like something from a medieval painting of hell.

  Then he felt the Castle’s words like lights going out in his heart, one by one. No supernatural community meant no Holly. No Caravelli, or Lore, or Sylvius. He could have his old life, but it would be without those friends who had been there for him, demon or not. Worst and most terrible: No Connie. He would be doomed to live without her love.

  Mac felt his limbs growing cold. Was that death, or just sadness?

  “Does a human life not please you?” asked the Avatar.

  “Is there a door number two? One where I get to be a white hat?”

  She sat back, turning the bracelets around and around her wrists. The long, pale hair fell over her face, and she was silent for so long Mac thought she had lost interest in him.

  Mac slouched against the balcony rail, looking out over the cavern. When the Avatar spoke, he jumped. His thoughts had wandered away—down to Connie, and Holly, and all those who had fought beside him that day.

  “Then would you serve me?” she asked. “You were a guardsman in your old life.”

  “I dunno. Doesn’t sound like your guards are all that happy.”

  “They fell into despair because I was gone. In truth, it was my absence that killed them. Not your sword or Atreus’s mad spell of fire.”

  Mac turned to face her. She sat, looking up at him. Her expression was earnest.

  “I want to make amends.” She lifted a hand, and let it fall with a jingle. “The few guards that remain are good men, but they’re lost. They need someone to lead them. Someone stronger than they are, like a demon.”

  Mac’s heart sank. “Demons destroy. We’ve been down that road already.”

  “I’ll make you the demon with the badge that helps people.”

  “That makes no sense.” He could feel despair seeping into him, cold and gray.

  “Yes, it does. It was as a demon that you looked after Constance, and loved her, and gave her the strength to grow into her own power. She’s her own woman now, servant to no one. You rescued her son, twice. You carried Reynard to safety. You put the events in motion that saved Lore’s people. You have high ideals, and the demon gave you the physical strength to live up to your own standards. The creatures of the Castle need human compassion, but in a form that matches their own.”

  “I surrendered to the fire demon. I slaughtered your men because I couldn’t control it. Why would those guardsmen who are left follow me?”

  “They will know you by how you lead them. You know how such men work far better than I do. You’re one of them.”

  “I think they’ll complain if I burn them to crispy critters.”

  “I will give you mastery over your demon nature. It is something you would have developed in time, anyway. It takes practice to harness your powers. Isn’t that what you told Constance?”

  “Then I get some control on the heat thing?”

  “Of course.”

  Mac rallied, his spirits rising despite himself. “And none of this no-eating crap. I keep my appetites, thank you very much. In fact, you should have more repression-free zones like the Summer Room. It’s healthier that way for everybody.
Maybe if people get to let off steam now and again, they’ll stop hunting the incubi like truffles.”

  The Avatar blinked, looking taken aback. “That would be up to you.”

  Mac froze. “Up to me?”

  She waved a hand, taking in the entire cavern. “I must regenerate rivers and forests, a sky and stars. That’s a lot to look after.” She shrugged. “I’ll have to leave a lot of the smaller details up to you.”

  “You actually need me,” said Mac, surprise bubbling through him.

  The Avatar nodded. “Yes, Conall Macmillan. And this time I’m asking your permission. Will you help me become the beautiful place I once was? Will you look after my people?”

  Mac thought about Reynard and the guards, the warlords and the smugglers, and all the downtrodden of the Castle. It was more than an army of social service agencies could ever hope to clean up, and he was proposing to do it on his own.

  “Hell, yes.” And then he laughed.

  Cleaning up the street was exactly the kind of work that got Mac up in the morning. Besides, he wouldn’t be on his own. He had friends, and there were folks in Fairview who cared about what happened behind the Castle door. They’d proved that today.

  Most of all, there was Connie. If ever there was a girl worth being resurrected for, she was the one.

  “I’ll do it.”

  The Avatar smiled, and it was like the sunrise. “Good.”

  “Just a few more things before we shake hands. . . .”

  The Castle laughed, sounding very much like a lovely woman. “Of course there are. But just remember that the only thing that matters is the joy that gives you life.”

  Chapter 29

  Suddenly, Mac was standing in front of the Empire Hotel. From the looks of things, it was early evening, the street still full of cars and people. What am I doing here? It was an interesting choice of locations for his resurrection. He guessed the Castle had some fine-tuning issues, but whatever. For a newly restored Avatar, he supposed it could be worse.

  What do I know? He was grateful to be alive, too grateful to even think about the alternatives—death, or eternity as a ghost. Crap. That was one mental road he refused to go down. Not until he had time for a proper mental breakdown.

  Which was never.

  Leaning against the wall, he looked around. People were walking by, talking on cell phones, holding hands, absorbed in their evening plans. Car radios. Conversations. The bleed of jazz from inside the pub. Fairview was noisy.

  Mac had missed that. The Castle was so damned quiet. Lore had said something about hooking up TV and radio reception. He was going to have to talk to him about that.

  Mac jogged around the corner to the alley. It was jammed with people. It looked like the word of the hellhound exodus had spread and every supernatural citizen in Fairview had shown up to gawk. Quite a few seemed to actually be helping. He recognized the waiter—what was his name? Joe?—from the pub. He was passing out coffee and pastries to the volunteers.

  Mac slipped through the crowd to see what was happening at the door. Ashe Carver was sitting on the ground, Reynard’s head in her lap. Good. They made it out okay.

  She had one hand on Reynard’s forehead, lightly resting there. It looked like they had both received medical care—probably from a fey healer or a witch. Reynard was zonked out, but his injuries looked far better than they should have.

  Still, in Mac’s book, Reynard should have been in a hospital, but that was impossible. Guardsmen could leave the Castle for only hours at a time—just long enough to retrieve an escaped inmate. So, after several hundred years of dedicated service, the captain was lying in a dirty alley instead of a proper ward.

  No wonder the guards went rogue.

  Things were going to change. Mac started a mental list.

  He paused to get details from Ashe, but then Caravelli burst out the door, his sword—oddly crumpled—in one hand and a hellhound child in his other arm. “Goddamned dragon!”

  Mac couldn’t suppress a snicker. The kid ruined the whole Prince of Darkness image.

  “What happened?” said Ashe, craning her neck to look up at him.

  “It came back. It took one look at the fire pond and did a belly flop right in the middle.”

  “It killed itself?” Ashe said, her voice going up an octave.

  He passed off the child to one of the hound women. The little girl must have been lost, because they looked very, very happy to see her.

  “No, the dragon likes it.” Caravelli made a dramatic face. “It’s wallowing in it like a big, fire-breathing pig, rolling around in sheer bliss. Nobody can get through there. We’ve had to detour the second group of hounds through the balconies.”

  “Leave it there for now,” said Mac.

  It was clear the vampire, on some level, was enjoying himself. The hellhounds were looking at him like he was the Second Coming.

  “We’ll leave the dragon there for now,” Caravelli said, still looking directly at Ashe. “We’ve got it surrounded in case it tries to move.”

  “How are we going to get it back where it belongs?” she asked.

  “Caravelli?” Mac said.

  The vampire ignored him. “It looks like the tunnels that vanished are opening up again. Maybe by tomorrow we can convince it to go home.”

  This is weird. “Caravelli?” Mac waved his hand in front of the vampire’s face. No reaction. Then he waved his hand through Caravelli.

  Outrage slammed through him. I’m still a ghost! This was a disaster. Mac looked frantically around. Okay, everybody here is supernatural. Surely somebody is psychic. He didn’t see Holly anywhere.

  And he hadn’t seen Constance. He turned around again, looking everywhere for her small, dark form. Lore was sitting with Sylvius on some overturned crates, one hand around his friend’s shoulders. Mac ran over to them. “Hey, can you see me?” He snapped his fingers under the hellhound’s nose. “Yo, Fido!”

  Nothing.

  Mac stopped, caught short by the stricken set of Sylvius’s body. He was curled over, his head nearly on his knees. The first thing he noticed was that the kid wasn’t hurt anymore. No blood. No wounds. Even his color was good.

  “You’ll be okay,” Lore said. “I have faith. So should you.”

  Mac nearly missed Sylvius’s answer, it was so quiet. “But Macmillan died! So many did. And what’s going to happen to me now?”

  “You’ll do what you must.”

  Which was true, but clearly not what Sylvius wanted to hear.

  “I’m not who I was. The Avatar took back the part of me that was her.” Sylvius raised his head. “What’s left?”

  With a shock of surprise, Mac understood. Sylvius was a young man. No wings. With the silver hair and black eyes, he was striking to look at, but he was human—or humanish—like his father.

  What was a teenage ex-love god going to do when he finally discovered the twenty-first century? If ever there was a need for adult supervision, this was it.

  Mac spun on his heel, hurrying into the Castle. He had to fix this invisibility problem pronto—but first he had to see with his own eyes that Constance was all right.

  When the worst was over—and that had gone on and on, with battle and injury and death—Constance went back to the Summer Room. She needed solitude, if just for a minute or two.

  I should be with Sylvius. He needed her. But they’d grieved together for hours. She had nothing left. If she could only gather her strength and fumble the pieces of her heart together—then, maybe, she could help someone else.

  The Summer Room was just as she had left it, violated and broken. It had become her home—the home she had ached and longed for—and it was destroyed. Like everything else. Crying felt useless. She’d already sobbed until her ribs ached. There had been so much to cry about—but weeping did no good. It changed nothing.

  Atreus had finally found respite from his madness. Someday she would find the energy to wonder whether his madness was guilt at what he had done to
the Avatar, or if his love for the Avatar had been the result of insanity. Right now, all that mattered was that he had destroyed, and destroyed, until he finally destroyed himself.

  She had been, in the drama of the great Atreus of Muria, what they called collateral damage. After two and a half centuries of service, her master had destroyed her world without a thought for her happiness. And not just hers. If she had let him go at the end, it was only to stop the carnage yet to come.

  She was done with masters.

  Her servant’s tale was so small, it could be written on a handkerchief.

  A man had loved her. He had loved her despite her human weakness and her vampire strength, her innocence and her bloodlust. He’d kept coming back despite the fact that she asked him to lay down his life for a child not his own.

  And then he died, and left her.

  Mac was dead.

  It was her fault.

  Events had followed, one after the other, like a string of beads, and it all led back to her. Lore had warned her about wanting her vampire powers, but she had fallen prey to temptation. The first time she had really used those powers, she had released Atreus. He had killed Mac.

  And she was left empty of all but a stunned, silent grief.

  She fell onto the sofa, trying not to see the splintered wound left by Bran’s sword. She could feel the shards of wood under her hand, digging through the cotton of Holly’s skirt. Constance put her hands over her face, hiding from the candlelight. Bran might have broken all the furniture, but the magic candles still burned on, their length never altering one bit.

  All the wrong things seemed to go on forever.

  Cold air wafted through the room. With the door caved in, there was nothing to stop the unpredictable Castle breezes. Connie shivered, mourning Mac’s heat. Mourning Mac.

  The cold came again, more acute now. She shuddered, somehow finding enough will to get up and drape one of the tapestries across the door.

  Connie?

  She started, looking around. She had heard Mac’s voice, but there was no one, nothing in the room but her. Grief is driving me mad.