Devil's Punch

by Ann Aguirre

  It took infinite patience, but I unpicked each rune, thread by thread. The unraveling took ages and more energy than I could’ve called on my own, without the Saremon spring that fueled their whole fortress. It was quite deliciously ironic that I could turn their assets against them. When the last ward puffed away in smoke, I withdrew from my working to find a pile of corpses. Both Greydusk and Chance were bloody; my consort’s face was battered and drawn with exhaustion.

  “It took me some while?” I asked.

  “Six hours,” Greydusk replied.

  “Thank you for your protection.” I didn’t need to speak the words, but I could tell they meant a great deal to my two defenders. “Now let’s go see what the library’s got to offer.”

  Chance opened the doors, and I could see in his movements that he was at the ragged edge of exhaustion. We all needed food and rest, and after I finished what I’d started, I would take care of my own. I became aware of my own weariness then, a burning dryness at eyes and mouth.

  Regardless, I pressed on. Inside, rows on rows of shelves spread out as far as the eye could see. They were filled with books in all shapes and sizes, some bound in scales, others in what looked like tanned human skin. In the astral, the whole chamber glowed with magick, blazing from some tomes more than others. But no question, each volume in this magnificent library was valuable and powerful.

  “Do you know how to get to the labs from here?” I asked Greydusk.

  We had explored the rest of the complex. The spell casters had retreated, leaving the weak to fend for themselves. I’d expected to find them cowering in the library, but I was relieved that the mages had gone further still because I would have hated to fight in a room full of priceless grimoires. It seemed…barbaric. This way, I could seize the books and have them brought to the palace when we finished here.

  He cocked his head, as if listening. “I drained a Saremon once. In his memories, there’s a story of a hidden entrance.”

  “Then let’s search this place, top to bottom.”

  Make It Quick

  The library smelled of old books and musty paper. I wished I had time to examine the tomes, but that could wait until I confiscated them. Once they were delivered to the palace, I could research advances in the arcane arts to my heart’s content. Well, such as governmental duties permitted. It would take a while to get the city running in a respectable, orderly fashion again. The castes had been autonomous too long for me to see my reign beginning bloodlessly.

  After a fair amount of investigation, Greydusk found the hidden exit. A row of shelving slid away from the wall, revealing the door. It was dark and cool within, eerily quiet as well. I peered into the astral and saw a shield of silence rune laid on the threshold, so whatever they did behind this door wouldn’t alarm the rest of the complex. That boded ill for anyone trapped in here.

  As I stepped across, a boom shook the foundation of the whole structure. “What was that?”

  Greydusk searched his stolen memories. “A failsafe. If the enemy breaches these protections, the stronghold falls.”

  Behind us, magickal light snapped into place, barring our way. It was meant to shield the books from intruders and thieves I had no doubt, but it also prevented us from going back the way we’d come. There was a chance I could dismantle the spells if given time, but channeling that much energy might also fry my human body. Since I didn’t want to retreat, I discarded the notion. Nothing would serve but to press ahead and keep looking for my father. I thought it highly unlikely that the mages hadn’t left themselves another rathole, another exit.

  “Are they running?” Chance asked.

  “I suspect so. They need to regroup before they face me.” But it wouldn’t go better on different ground, unless they surprised me again, and I wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

  Once I passed the rune of silence, I couldn’t hear the destruction behind us anymore. The Saremon might end up killing any survivors we had missed, which spoke to how they regarded their lower classes. If I killed these days, it was purposeful, not a casual result of mass destruction.

  A long hallway lay before us, with doors on opposite sides as far as the eye could see. The corridors branched farther out, going left and right; this warren was worse than the prison where they kept their entertainment.

  “The Saremon are really into experimentation,” Chance observed.

  Greydusk nodded, apparently not realizing it was a joke. “They’re always looking for ways to add to their abilities. They’re not as physically strong as the Hazo, but their aptitude for magick is unmatched.”

  I raised a brow, and he added, “Until your return, Your Majesty.”

  Mollified, I strode over the dark tiles. Here, the floor looked like polished obsidian, etched with various runes. I stopped when I realized I could understand them. Skimming, I ignored the irrelevant areas of study, like pyromancy and divinations. Greydusk had stopped too and read the runes alongside me.

  “Research?” he guessed.

  “It’s as likely a place as any to start.”

  I continued down the straightaway and cut left, as the runes had indicated. None of the doors were locked. Some stood open, as if the magicians had fled in great haste. Labs showed experiments in various stages of completion, arcane ingredients and odd machinery with sparking wires. I glanced at Greydusk, who wore a matching expression of bewildered awe—and that told me this wasn’t common knowledge among the other castes. There were cages full of strange, hybrid creatures, likely bred by the Saremon, though for what purpose I had no clue.

  In one room, machines with knobs and levers with piles of copper cables connected to a weird black box emitted a low hum. It was like that for fifteen different rooms with still no sign of my father. Maybe Oz had been lying. If he dared…

  “I’ve been following the cables,” Greydusk said, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Oh?”

  “I think you want to see this.”

  I went with him, and I noticed that the cables went from the machinery to the black box, on through the hallways. Then I stepped into the room the Imaron indicated and time stopped. In all my centuries, I’d never seen anything like it. I couldn’t even imagine the purpose.

  A man hung in a metal framework, those cables plugged into his flesh. At first I thought he must be dead, for they had cut open his chest and filled it with transparent liquid, and where his heart ought to have been, he had a bright, glowing jewel suspended in the solution. In place of flesh, he had glass casement, permitting the ones who had done this to him to see inside his sternum.

  “What the hell?” Chance gasped.

  That summed up my reaction, too. Even if he was beyond saving, we should cut him down. The compassionate thought surprised me; it wasn’t like me to care about the fate of random strangers, but that was my human aspect, I supposed. I wasn’t the queen I had been, but any version of myself was better than oblivion.

  As I stepped closer, the man’s eyelids fluttered open, and I took that first look like a fist in the face. I knew those blue eyes. I knew this man. Oh, part of me didn’t. To that part, he was a stranger. But the other part of me remembered his French toast and his predilection for Panama hats. The human half of me surged forth with desperate strength. She had to be in control in this moment, riding the bittersweet reunion. Because I understood its importance, I didn’t fight; I fell back, and this time, the shift occurred without pain.

  I reached out and touched his face, cupping his bony cheek. If they ever fed him, it didn’t show. He had the skeletal shape of one affixed to a cross, a martyr’s bones beneath his skin.

  “Dad?” Despite Oz’s taunts, I hadn’t expected to find my father—and certainly not like this. He hadn’t aged, though he looked awful. This man appeared to be no more than five years older than me. “What have they done to you?”

  His lips moved but no sound resulted. Frustration flashed in his thin face. A copper wire was plugged into his throat and he turned his head slight
ly toward the knob next to it, trying to tell me something. I clicked it on and adjusted it.

  His voice emerged from a speaker on my left, tinny and scratchy. “You have to get out of here before the magister returns.”

  All Saremon were mages; that wasn’t a helpful distinction. “Which one?”

  “The others call him Oz, but I don’t think that’s actually his name.”

  My hands fisted in impotent anger. “He’s the one responsible for this?”

  “Yes. Go.”

  “Will it hurt if I unplug you?” I asked.

  For the first time, hope dawned on his desperate features. “Hurt, yes. Would kill me. I can’t survive outside this contraption.” And by his tone, he didn’t want to. He wanted to be free like the dearest of unfulfilled dreams.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?” It was impossible that he would.

  I had been a child of seven when the demons took him, skinned knees, gapped teeth, and mousy brown braids. My father, Albert Solomon, took a closer look then, studying my face with ferocious concentration. His eyes—so like mine—widened. A pained sound escaped the speaker.

  “Corine?” He didn’t wait for my confirmation. “You’re all grown up. Have I been here so long?”

  An eternity for him, no doubt. Over twenty years in the human realm.

  “It’s me,” I said softly.

  “Oh God, you shouldn’t be here. How’s your mother?” The same sweet love I’d remembered between them sparked in his blue eyes now, undimmed by time’s passage or the impossible distance between them.

  “She died.” In as few words as possible, I explained what had happened in Kilmer, the murderous twelve and the terrified townsfolk…and Maury. It hurt to relate and wounded him even more to hear. “She missed you until the end.”

  “I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.” My father closed his eyes, too late to hide the fat tears that struggled out from beneath his lashes. Whatever they had done to him had not left him too inhuman to cry.

  “Does it hurt to talk?”

  “Everything does. I don’t remember what it’s like not to hurt. But it’s worth everything, knowing I saved you from this.”

  I froze. “I don’t understand.”

  “They came for you, Corine. You were the last girl child born of Solomon’s line. When your mother and I had a daughter, we talked about the likelihood there would be trouble. So I was ready. I had a counteroffer for them.”

  That didn’t square at all with the laughing, carefree man I’d known, but I had been a child, shielded from all the darkness, until it split my world wide open. “Why didn’t Mom tell me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she thought you were too young to understand. Or she was afraid the guilt would cripple you.”

  “So she knew you sacrificed yourself for me.” As she had. Maybe she’d meant to explain it all when I was older, but she never had the chance. At least now I understood why she never wanted to talk about him. In other cases, a woman abandoned by a man called him all kinds of names, but this hadn’t been like that.

  I just hadn’t known the truth. Having just found him, I wasn’t ready to lose him, but looking at what they’d done, I didn’t think he could be saved. I turned to Greydusk.

  “Your thoughts?”

  “This looks like a reaping machine,” the demon answered.

  Chance raised a brow. “What’s that?”

  He took a half step toward me, his expression unsure. I curled into his side, grateful to be myself for these moments, though I could feel Ninlil scrambling in my head, preparing to resume control. I returned a gentle caress to the back of his hand.

  Greydusk explained. “Remember the soulstone I used to open the gate?”

  I nodded.

  “This is how they’re made.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “Fifty years, or so I’ve been told.”

  Damn. I didn’t imagine getting my hands on one for a quick exit would prove a simple task. Obviously my father hadn’t been here that long, so the jewel in his chest shouldn’t steal his soul. When we unplugged him, he would just die.

  Just. As if that wasn’t bad enough.

  The queen half of me didn’t remember her dad. She’d had one; but after siring a daughter, the father’s parental role became less critical. Demons had a longer life span than humans, but they were not immortal. In this fashion, Ninlil always ruled in Sheol, until the archangel summoned us and stole our power. That lingering anger blunted some of my grief. She’d heard of soulstones, of course, but she’d never seen the apparatus responsible for their making. Ninlil also whispered to me that it was possible to use a fresh sacrifice and open a gate that way, but for obvious reasons it wasn’t always practical.

  Yeah, because that was my concern.

  “Why do they want your soul?” I asked. “Apart from obvious reasons.”

  The speaker crackled, reminding me of Shannon, and that made me feel like my father was already dead and I was talking to him through her spooky radio. “They hope that a soulstone created from one of the Binder’s line would permit a stronger gate to open between worlds. A permanent gate.”

  “Hope or know?” Chance asked.

  My father’s expression was like a shrug, though he couldn’t move his arms. The agony from being suspended like this had to be intolerable and he couldn’t even scream unless someone turned the volume on for him. Rage chilled into a solid brick inside me; this would not stand.

  “I won’t ask what you’re doing here,” he whispered.

  Yeah. Best if you don’t.

  He went on, “I’d rather not imagine you trapped as I am, so I’m going to pretend you have a plan—that you came to save me and now you’re getting out.”

  My voice rasped like sandpaper, thick with tears. “That’s the idea. Is there anything you want before…?”

  He knew what I was asking. “Would you hug me?”

  It wasn’t easy getting close enough with all the wires, but with some help from Greydusk, I wove through the tangle and put my arms around my father’s waist. He was beyond emaciated, thin in a way that meant he hadn’t eaten for years. They were using magick to keep him alive—and for that reason I wanted the Saremon dead even more. They had done this. Hurt one of mine.

  I didn’t waste my energy on more mental promises. Instead, I lived in this moment, where I had my father with me. He had no body heat. No heartbeat. Albie Solomon was the next best thing to dead already, so why did what I was about to do hurt so badly?

  The embrace went on for a long time, and then he stirred against me. “I love you, queenie. I couldn’t be happier that I got to see you again…or that you’re the one who will end it for me.”

  God, I’d forgotten he called me that. The memory tumbled into my head. I was a princess, wearing a pink dress with a frilly skirt and a play tiara. He used to call me Reenie, and that day it became queenie, because of my princess outfit. After that Halloween, I remembered him spinning me around with raspberry kisses on my stomach, and teasing me with chants of Reenie-my-queenie. My mother had watched us with an indulgent air. How I wished I could have more of these recollections; I needed them, craved them in a way that seemed more vital than air—but there were no more.

  I looked at Greydusk, who seemed transfixed by my pain. Queens weren’t supposed to love the men who had given them life. This one did. And I regretted the years I had spent calling him a shiftless bastard in my head. I’d imagined him finding a new family, a better one, and instead he had been here, suffering for me.

  “Where do we start?” I asked the Imaron.

  He went to examine the apparatus, as the answer wasn’t readily apparent. After giving me a comforting squeeze, Chance joined him. And while they checked out the reaping machine, my father stared at me.

  “All I ask,” he said softly, the speaker crackling with his pain and resignation, “is that you make it quick.”

  “I won’t touch anything until they tell
me how.”

  We talked then. Precious, stolen moments. I told him about my pawnshop and my dog, about Chance, who had been my first love and by some miracle was standing beside me still. His eyes grew damp when I told him what I’d done in Kilmer, and he spoke the six words that every child longed to hear:

  “I am so proud of you.” Only they came with reverb and distortion.

  They had taken everything but his loyalty and devotion. My mother had been lucky to share even ten years with this man. And maybe that’s why she never went looking to replace him. She knew that quantity mattered less than quality and that nobody could ever take Albert Solomon’s place in her heart—and that was why she stared wistfully out from the front porch. Not because she thought he was coming home someday but because she knew he never would.

  He gave up everything for you.

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  Greydusk stepped to my side and murmured, “I found the main connection. If you unplug there, he should feel no pain.”

  “Dad, I’m sorry.” Tears sprang up in my eyes, not fitting for a demon queen, but one who hurt this much could not help but weep.

  “I’m ready,” my father said.

  “Corine, let me.” Chance touched my arm lightly.

  For a moment, I wanted him to take the weight. I’d love to give the burden to him to bear, but then when I looked at him, I would see the man who killed my father, not the one I loved. So I shook my head, hair drifting against my cheeks. I felt like one of those screaming women of old with a shriek rising in my throat that I had to swallow down like razor blades. No, better I should be haunted by my own reflection, for I was used to that.

  So many dark choices—and this might be the worst. But there was none better. At least I could offer him surcease from pain.