by Ann Aguirre
Chance drew in a sharp breath. “What did you do?”
“Camouflage. While you can pass on your own, she needs a little help.”
“What?” I demanded, seeing the anxiety he couldn’t hide.
“Your eyes are bloodred.”
“Like the Dohan,” Greydusk said, unconcerned. “It will wear off in time.”
The Dohan were the Drinkers, if I recalled correctly. Which meant I had to feign a yen for human blood. Awesome.
“Thanks.” I meant it.
“It falls within the agreement, Binder. I pledged to serve your interests. It does not benefit you to be captured by your enemies.” He turned to Butch, just barely peeking over the edge of my bag. “Now something must be done about your mammal.”
“Like what?”
By his worried yip, Butch shared my concern and curiosity.
Greydusk didn’t reply. He merely whispered in demontongue until my ears burned with it. Magick built around us and Butch tried to hide. But he couldn’t. Because in a swirl of darklight, he turned into something else.
And he had wings.
After a moment, I recognized what the demon had done. He’d turned Butch into a quasit. It was a revolting but sensible choice, as an imp might serve a demon, but any self-respecting Dohan would eat a Chihuahua, not lug it around and pet it. Butch couldn’t even whine over his fate; his vocal cords were shaped differently now. A muted chir came from his throat. He flapped his wings in agitation.
“Don’t be dramatic,” the demon told the dog/quasit. “This wears off too. It is best for your mistress. Be brave.”
That actually seemed to work, as the quasit settled, still in my purse, but you know, you couldn’t build Rome in a day. Time for us to move. It was odd because we didn’t gather a second look from passersby. Well, Chance did, from time to time, but that was due to his beauty, not anyone’s suspicion. Some glimpsed my red eyes and gave us a wide berth. Apparently the Drinkers didn’t limit themselves to human sources. Which made sense. So they could live on the blood of other demons, but maybe humans tasted like a really nice Shiraz, a treat they couldn’t pass up.
Greydusk led us through winding city streets. In place of the split-faced sun rose a breathtaking moon. It was whole and haunting, larger than any moon I’d ever seen on earth; the edges burned with silver, softening all the ugly lines and imbuing Xibalba with alien beauty. For the first time, this land was not merely strange and terrible, and the dark queen in my head rejoiced.
“Is it not lovely?” Greydusk whispered, following the trajectory of my gaze.
“Gorgeous,” I admitted.
“There was a well-known poet here who wrote, Night in Sheol steals the soul. I have forgotten the rest, but each time I see the moon, I remember that one line.”
“For obvious reasons,” Chance said softly.
I put my hand in his. For long moments, I just stared up. I didn’t care about finding Shannon. I felt warm and languid, as if my skin soaked up that lunar light. I wanted to take Chance somewhere dark and private and spend hours— No, that wasn’t me. The demon queen craved those things. The flavor of her desire differed from mine; it was deep and sharp, like a rapier lodged in my rib cage.
“I understand the land was not always so dark and cold. Barren,” Greydusk observed.
Raising a brow, I prompted, “Oh?”
“There was a civil war. Our records are incomplete.…It was so long ago. But I imagine how majestic it must have been, before our forebears broke the world.”
Damn. I’d assumed—wrongly—that Sheol was ugly because it was full of evil beings, but that involved a logical disconnect. Places weren’t inherently bad; sometimes people populated them who did terrible things and it scarred the land.
“You have a destination in mind,” I said to the Imaron, making a mental note to consider the implications later.
He nodded. “I know of a club where we won’t draw attention. Mixed-caste parties often venture there for a night of carousing.”
Demons, carousing. My spirit recoiled, and my instincts screamed this couldn’t end well. “Take us there.”
Greydusk did.
The walk took a while. I felt we couldn’t afford to flag a cab and leave someone with a clear memory of us. I chose not to use my forget fog again because I didn’t intend to use more demon magick than I absolutely must. Each spell gave the demon queen more purchase in my head, and she was already fighting me for control. Though I hadn’t confessed as much to Chance, I feared how this would end.
I could lose myself here, forever. There might be no avoiding it.
The club was nothing like I’d expected. For one, the building was made of metal, which must create a hellacious echo inside. The segments looked to have been fused together with incredible heat; other plates had been riveted in place. It looked like a drunken remodel of a battleship, turned on its side so the stern pointed straight in the air. Over the door, someone had scored CLUB HELL into the rusty steel.
“Seriously?” I said.
“What?” Greydusk shrugged. “The locals like it. They think it’s kitschy.”
Well, it was that. Shaking my head, I followed the demon to the door, where he paid the cover charge for all of us with more of those ivory disks. Inside, it wasn’t as noisy as I’d expected. Sure, there was music, but it was more the torch variety. An enormous red-skinned Hazo female crooned from the stage in a surprisingly lovely voice. Which went to prove, you shouldn’t judge by appearances.
Just inside, the demon whispered with the host, and then he showed us to a private room. More accurately, it was a round niche with a booth in it, covered by a folding screen. I slid inside and Chance flanked me. The Imaron chose to slide in the other way, leaving plenty of room between us. In contrast, Chance settled against my side, an arm around me, and Butch flapped his brand-new wings. He made a delighted noise when he discovered they would, in fact, lift him off the ground. Soon we had a quasit-Chihuahua swooping around our heads. Which was just what the day needed.
“Come here often?” I joked.
“Sometimes,” Greydusk replied. “This is a good place to do business.”
That didn’t make a lot of sense. At first. But when the demon lit the taper on the table, all sound from the outside ceased, one of the coolest tricks I’d ever seen.
“Magickal?” I turned the fat white candle in my hands. “How’s it made?” Then I read his expression and supplied, “Let me guess—I don’t want to know.”
“You catch on quick.”
The demon ordered drinks using a magickal panel on the wall. By tacit consensus, we waited until the server had come and gone. It hit me then. With this illusion, Greydusk had answered the question I had about the caste with red eyes. I looked like one of them. Quickly, I filled the Imaron in on what I’d learned from handling Shannon’s things, including the detail about her red-eyed captors.
“This helps immeasurably,” the demon said, once I finished.
Chance frowned. “Were they manifested Dohan who took Shannon or—”
“Spirits who had been summoned in a blood ritual?” Greydusk completed the question. “Since the Drinkers look human in their natural form, it’s hard to say. It would take a soulstone to transport them, and those take an incredibly long time to manufacture.”
“In a factory?” Chance asked, aghast.
The demon shook its head. “In a magickal lab, though we have factories for mundane goods. At one point, the Birsael owners tried to enslave the Noit to work in them, but they only broke the machines and ran amok.”
“So they were probably humans, possessed by Dohan?” I guessed, steering us back on track before Chance pursued the idea of that goblin creature working an assembly line. I sympathized; I was intrigued too.
Pondering, I remembered that Greydusk had said Maury was Birsael, of the Bargainer caste. Coupled with this new information about factory ownership, did that mean he came from the merchant class? And perhaps, despite parental
objections, he’d run away from home to lead a more glamorous life. Despite myself, I smiled at the irony. Some things were constant, even between disparate species.
“I suspect so. They would have taken her to the nearest natural nexus.”
I nodded. “To draw me here.”
“Precisely so.”
“At least we have a place to start,” Chance put in. “If the Dohan took Shannon, you can check into their holdings, places they’d hide a hostage.”
I flashed him a grateful look, glad that his methodical mind was still ticking over the angles. He’d always been good at that.
“That presumes they still have her,” Greydusk replied.
Toying with my drink, I asked, “Why wouldn’t they?”
“I wonder if when they moved her, it was more along the lines of a trade.”
“Someone else has her now?” Chance asked.
“Perhaps. The lead that I ran down this evening suggests as much. If the Dohan took Shannon, they received a better offer today and handed her off.”
“To whom?” Panic clutched at me with spidery fingers.
Greydusk looked grave. “The Hazo.”
That struck me as a worst-case scenario. Their knight had reason to hate me more than most. Caim was nursing a grudge, and now he had my best friend. Squaring my shoulders, I told myself, You beat him once. You can do it again.
But this is his home ground. I recognized the voice, so smooth and seductive. The demon queen had found a way to get her thoughts outside the mental prison I’d built for her. Free me, so I may raze your enemies. We are one, Binder. The Knights of Sheol have been permitted too much freedom for too long. They grow impetuous and insolent. They need a queen.
“But not me,” I said aloud.
Chance and Greydusk glanced at me, but neither asked what I meant. They both seemed to realize I was talking to the bitch in my head. Chance’s mouth tightened, but the demon acted as if it was natural to converse with long-dead demon queens. Only in Sheol.
Join with me, Binder. Your companions will die if you do not.
“I can protect them,” I protested.
Chance touched my hand lightly, drawing me out of the argument of which he could hear only my half. I’d be lucky as hell if we lasted another day at the rate I was going.
“So the Hazo traded the Dohan for Shannon.” Chance reminded me where we’d been before I wandered off mentally.
The Imaron inclined his head. “Or so my informant led me to believe.”
“Could it be a trap, a play from Caim to draw me out?”
Greydusk shrugged. “Possible but unlikely. The Hazo are not known to be strategists. They prefer to resolve their grievances in direct confrontation.”
I thought about that. “Which means getting his hands on Shannon and putting word on the street is how Caim would proceed if he wants a rematch with me.”
Greydusk nodded. “Exactly.”
“Do we have to worry about him tracking us?” I asked.
The Hazo Knight had tasted my blood back in Peru. I wasn’t sure what that meant in relation to demon magick. For all I knew, he might be able to use that memory of my taste to dispatch a goon squad to our location.
“Does he have samples of your hair, blood, or…other bodily effluvia?”
I shook my head. “Not that I know of. Unless blood, once tasted, stays in the demonic digestive system?”
“Er, no. It would be quite difficult for him to home in on your location. Xibalba teems with magick, which will retard efforts to find you.”
That was good news. The mob who appeared at his house ran us down on regular street gossip. If we laid low and kept moving, they couldn’t track us.
“And Shannon,” Chance said grimly.
“That’s why I didn’t suggest it,” Greydusk said, in agreement. “While the Binder has considerable power, brute force cannot winnow out a minute trace from the swirling morass of magickal energy that makes up the Vortex.”
“You mentioned that in passing before. I saw it…but what the hell is it?” I propped my chin on the table and drank…whatever he’d ordered. It tasted like lemonade with a bit of a kick.
Greydusk put on his lecturing face. “Every demon has some ability to work magick. His position in the caste determines how powerful he is. The amount of magick done inside the city limits contributes to the protective field that prevents monsters from attacking the walls. It also keeps the outcast Xaraz from attempting to return, once they’ve been exiled.”
“It’s like a force field?”
“Rather.”
“How does it work?” Chance asked.
“For every spell cast in Xibalba, the Vortex steals a small portion of the energy to sustain itself. Not enough to affect the outcome of the casting.”
“And split among so many demons, nobody notices the drain,” I guessed.
Chance said, “So it’s kind of like a toll.”
“Near enough. But what protects us also makes it all but impossible to successfully use scrying or seeking spells within the city limits.”
“But my luck still works,” Chance murmured. “Sort of.”
Greydusk pondered for a moment, likely remembering how we’d tracked Shannon. “I’ll wager you get some interference from the Vortex, but since what you do isn’t magick per se, there’s no cost.”
“We need a plan,” I said then.
“Agreed. Caim will be fortified and ready for you.” Greydusk drummed long fingers on the table, thinking.
“A frontal assault against the warrior caste sounds like suicide,” Chance muttered.
“Perhaps we can deal with the Dohan first,” the demon suggested. “And turn them against their allies.”
Sitting forward, I rested my elbows on the table. “Tell me more.”
Hungry Like the Wolf
“The Dohan prize one thing above all else.” When Greydusk paused significantly, I knew I wasn’t going to like where the conversation went. “They rarely get to experience it, however. The number who are permitted to respond to blood rituals are few. It’s only the honored, the chosen.”
Chance tensed. “What are you suggesting?”
“A simple commodity exchange.”
“That’s our blood you’re talking about,” I snapped.
The demon shook its head. “Not yours, Binder. His.”
“Why not mine?”
The Imaron sighed as if I were dense. “Blood rituals comprise the most powerful spells in Sheol. You can’t risk that the Dohan would use yours to enslave you, rather than drink it. All the castes want you to align with them, elevate theirs above the others. Ninlil would sometimes pick a favorite and that caste had dominion. She did it because she was mercurial and cruel and it amused her to see them clamor for her favor.”
Those were good days, the demon queen whispered wistfully in my head.
“Which means you want Chance to feed them. No.”
“What else do you have to offer as payment?” Greydusk asked coolly. “Thus far, I have spent my own money on this endeavor with no guarantee of recompense.”
Before I could stop her, the queen snapped, “You are honored to serve me, Imaron. You are fortunate I do not remove your head for such impertinence.”
“Ah. I am reminded, now, why I serve.”
“I’ll do it,” Chance said.
I touched him on the thigh. “Not happening. Nobody’s bleeding for me. If I give my blood, they’ll drink it in my presence. I’m not letting them store it for later use. And if they try to double-cross me, I’ll set the queen on them.”
She growled in anticipation, pressing against her bonds, and this time it was all I could do to contain her. The mere promise of freedom and my body for her use? Her excitement pounded in my head like tribal drums.
“Are you sure you wish to pursue this path, Binder?”
“It’s the only currency I have.”
“The Dohan may claim to own your especial favor later,” Greydusk warne
d, “if you choose to feed them from your own veins.”
“They can claim whatever they wish. Let them try to enforce it.” I didn’t realize it until the icy words left my lips, but the dark lady was whispering them along with me in my head.
Now I wasn’t sure where the sentiment had come from, where I ended and she began. Oh, Shannon. What have I done?
I finished my drink. Afterward I remembered Greydusk telling me that food and drink consumed here would strengthen her hold on me. But we hadn’t packed much from the human world, so I hoped my self-control was sufficient for the time it would take to get the information we required from the Dohan, maneuver on what they told us about the Hazo plans and their stronghold, and then execute our final move by liberating Shannon from the warrior caste. Oh, and then there would be Sybella and the Luren to deal with, and then I needed to devise an exit strategy.
No problem.
Okay, maybe a few.
The Imaron blew out the candle and led the way out of Club Hell. He wove a neat path through the writhing bodies. Butch flapped in our wake; the pseudo-quasit flew like a drunken bat and nearly slammed into the top of a demon’s head several times, but he appeared to be having fun for the first time since our arrival. That counted for something, so I didn’t yell at him to get down. Of course, if the spell wore off in midflight, I’d have a very sad dog on my hands.
On the street, the night had gotten colder as the moon rose, as if it streamed icy breath down toward us. I shivered and Chance drew me against his side. He laid a gentle kiss against my hair.
“Why wouldn’t you let me help you?”
I knew what he meant. And it was complicated. I mean, I’d let Kel give his blood to the witch in Catemaco. But it felt different with Chance. I could accept it from Kel because it was his job. He’d been assigned to protect me, and he’d chosen a compact with the witch as part of his orders. I also thought Kel could protect himself from harmful spells. So maybe that was it. Chance seemed more vulnerable, even less at home in this fucked-up world than I was. I had to look out for him.
Greydusk pulled a little ahead of us as he walked, scouting, I suspected. If there was trouble, he would loop back and let us know. In the meantime, it permitted us to talk on the way to meet the Dohan. I wondered what they’d make of my eyes.
