by Jenny McKane
“Maybe not,” Gideon said. “But he’s also not so good.”
Sunny wasn't certain that she agreed, but she let it drop. Her perceptions and opinions of Fake-Liam were shifting. Before she had been worried that he was some sort of shallow bro type, now she knew there was something much deeper about him, and probably much more dangerous. He had assured her after mentioning fallen angels last night that he was not, in fact, one of them.
She had required that he repeat himself over and over again, assuring her that he was not a fallen angel. She didn’t know much about them, but she knew to be very, very afraid. She never really heard much of their kind, and when people did mention fallen angels, it was always with a hushed tone. She’d never gotten a straight story out of anyone, and she figured if she played her cards right with Fake-Liam, maybe one day, when he trusted her, he would tell her more. Even Gideon hadn’t said much on the subject when she brought it up. He was as tight-lipped as ever.
Within an hour of him arriving home, they were on the road again. Sunny, despite knowing his aversion to it, had demanded a detail or two.
“It’s basically a demon marketplace,” he said.
“Like where demons are bought and sold?” Sunny was not quite certain whether she really wanted to be part of this. Gideon had just laughed at her.
“No,” he said rolling his eyes. “Are you really suggesting that I would frequent a place like that? Give me a break, Sunny. It’s a marketplace. For goods and services.”
Sunny considered the statement for a moment before inhaling quickly through her nose and turning to Gideon.
“This trip doesn’t happen to have something to do with a very special handle you happen to own within a small jeweled box, does it?”
Had Gideon found the serendibite blade he had been after for so long?
“As a matter of fact, Sherlock,” Gideon replied. “It does. It’s a risk taking you here, but it seems to be a risk anywhere I go now. So, it is what it is. But the same rules apply here as they do everywhere. This place is probably even more dangerous, the only thing we have working in our favor is the fact that it is swarming with demons of all races and types. You won’t just come across succubi with a bounty on our heads.”
“Sounds like one hell of a Saturday afternoon,” she replied as cheerily as she could. “Don’t worry too much, Gideon. It’s not me they’re really after. Remember that. You’re probably going to be needing to take a lot of your own advice.”
*****
Mercado, as it was known among the demons who frequented it, was a three-story, open-stall place that looked like it belonged in a George Lucas film. It had this other-worldly feel to it, and it’d taken them forever to get out to it. It literally was in no-man’s land.
“Because it’s all demons here, right?” Sunny snorted at her own joke, but Gideon had given her a pained look.
“Think Old West,” he said. “Not a lot of rules apply out here, so the smarter you play it, the better.”
Gideon kept a tight hold on her hand as he led her through the crowded walkways. The building had four walls, three stories with booths on all three, and a giant open ceiling over the courtyard in the center. She could even see small hallways and walkways off to the sides that led who knew where.
A person could really get lost in a place like that, so she held even tighter onto her tour guide.
He was a demon on a mission and didn’t stop to talk to any of the shopkeepers or vendors in the way as they strode up a long flight of stairs to the second floor. If it was possible, the second floor was even more crowded than the first. She smelled aromas and flavors wafting from the food carts that she’d never experienced before. Some of it was good, some of it made her stomach protest almost violently.
“Much of demon cuisine is an acquired taste,” Gideon explained. “And many of those tastes, I never managed to acquire.”
She turned up her nose at what looked like a rat roasting on a spit, and she could see what he meant. Other carts were not so off putting, and she was even tempted to buy a few sweets from one convincing vendor. And by convincing, Sunny really meant he’d just had to show her what he was selling for Sunny to want to throw all her money at him.
“Save it,” Gideon said, pulling her away while she pouted. “They don’t take human money. If a human, who isn’t supposed to be here in the first place, wants what they’re offering, they have to bargain.”
To hell with that.
Sunny had managed to make it almost two years in the game without bargaining with a demon, and she’d like to keep her track record clean.
“He’s up here,” Gideon said, as he led her to an unassuming storefront that held racks and racks of blades and sticks on the wall.
What came through the curtain from the back was a very round, very slow-moving blob of a man with an almost featureless face and fleshy claws.
“What the actual fuck, Gideon?” Sunny whispered in horror. There was no way she’d be able to not stare at the thing and offend the hell out of it at this rate. There were two legs somewhere along the bottom of it, but Sunny couldn’t really see them.
When he moved around the back of the counter to come to the center of the shop, he had to turn sideways to get his girth through.
“Greetings,” the demon said, his voice sounding mottled and almost like it was underwater. She literally felt like she was on the set of a Star Wars movie.
“This is Ose,” Gideon motioned to the giant demon. “Ose, this is my companion.”
She waited for Gideon to say her name, but when he didn’t, she noticed that Ose didn’t look particularly interested in the first place. It was better this way, she figured.
“I have your delivery,” Ose said, motioning to the back of his shop with a fleshy arm. “But as you can appreciate, I cannot bring it out in broad daylight. You will accompany me for a short moment, yes?”
Gideon looked to Sunny, who had zero intention of going anywhere with blob man.
“Go ahead,” she said, pointing in the direction Ose had just left. “I’ll be fine and stay out of the way in here.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Looking back, as Sunny would have plenty of time to do in the following days, she would realize that his judgement had been clouded by the fact that the one, single item he’d been in reckless pursuit of for nearly two years was just behind a yellow polyester curtain. Nothing short of an elephant wearing knickers could have distracted him from his endgame at that point.
Sunny waited a good five minutes before her eye was caught by a cart selling small crystals on a string. There was a window in Gideon’s house that faced the sunset every night, and one of the perfectly cut round crystals would be perfect for it. She knew she didn’t have the demon cash on her at the moment, but she could get a price for it and convince Gideon to help her make a currency exchange for the day when he was done.
With a quick glance behind her, she assumed he’d be another few minutes at least, and so she darted out of the store toward the crystals.
She had just cleared the doorway of the shop when a giant forearm circled her waist and crushed it against a rock-hard body while a hand covered her nose and mouth with a cloth dipped in a foul-smelling substance. Sunny fought as hard as she could, but the kidnapper was just too big and too strong.
That, and she was unconscious as soon as her oxygen supply had run out, and she’d been forced to such in air through her nose, taking in a full dose of the poison.
Her last conscious thought had been how disappointed she was that she’d never gotten the price of that crystal.
Chapter 32
Sunny had a long history of screwing things up over the years but getting kidnapped at the Mercado was pretty much at the top of the list.
She’d been out cold for however long her kidnapper had transported her away from the marketplace. She had no recollection of being placed in a car of any sort, or of driving in any direction, or even of what the person or demon who had kidnapped her
in the first place even looked like.
Sunny had missed all of it, and now found herself standing in a long, stark hallway. There was nothing at either end of the hallway except a locked door, and no sign of whoever had taken her. She had simply woken up on the cold, concrete floor with a raging headache.
What was it with demons, their poisons, and headaches? They were going to be the death of her, if this latest escapade wasn't.
Sunny didn't know how long she waited, but after she had decided to sit back down on the floor and try not to hyperventilate and completely freak out, the door at the left end of the hallway opened.
A giant of a man strode in wearing a tracksuit that looked like it belonged in some mid-1990s hip-hop video. To make it worse, he wore a matching bucket hat and a large gold chain. Either this was a man from New Jersey, who hadn’t left the confines of his state in decades, or this was a misinformed demon trying (and failing) to blend in with humanity.
The demon walked right up to Sunny and demanded that she stand with a quick motion of his hands. The size of his palms alone matched her face, and she knew that fighting him physically would only get her head crushed like a grape. She wasn't going to survive if she decided to make her stance here, so she stood and she kept her mouth closed.
As he stood in front of her, she noticed that his eyes were orange. This was a demon who did not bother much with human glamors. He also stunk to high heaven of sulfur. That meant that he had recently had a glamor on that he was not used to. Whatever magic he used to disguise himself was weak.
Without a word, the demon grabbed the collar of Sunny’s shirt and ripped it down, exposing her chest and black bra. She panicked immediately and grasped at her torn shirt to cover herself, but the demon swiped at her and hit the side of her head hard enough to make her fall to her knees.
“Get up,” it growled at her. Its voice was human and difficult to understand with how garbled it was. Yes, this was a demon that had not bothered to spend much time in the human realm. He had been sent for a very specific purpose, and she had to wonder if it had really been her or Gideon; most likely the demon had been sent for Gideon, but Sunny had made herself an easier target.
She stood, tears starting to well up in her eyes as the fear took hold in her body. What was happening? Had anybody seen her being taken from the Mercado? Would any of the demons actually care?
“Hold the garment open,” the demon said. He motioned at her chest.
He hadn’t told her to remove her bra, so she tried to comply as best she could. She held the two sides of her shirt open, and she flinched as the demon moved an open palm to a spot of skin just below the right side of her collarbone.
What happened next would be etched into Sunny’s memory, and on her body, for as long as she lived. The moment his fingertips made contact with her skin, Sunny’s chest began to burn with an unholy fire. She felt it in her bones. She felt it all the way through her legs. Her shoulders burned. Her back burned. Every single molecule in her entire body felt the fire in the demon’s agonizing touch. She let out a scream that was so primal that it sounded foreign to her ears. She sank back to her knees and clutched at her chest, quickly pulling away from the charred skin.
What had he just done to her?
Her tormentor was not polite enough to explain what he had just done, and instead yanked her back to her feet and pulled her down the rest of the hallway towards the door opposite of the one he had come in. With a violent kick, Sunny saw that on the other side of the door was a swirling blue and black portal. Despite knowing that it was futile, Sunny panicked and immediately began to fight against the demon that was dragging her into hell.
No, no, no, she pleaded. She dug her heels in and did her best to throw her weight backwards, hoping that the demon would lose his grip even if it meant she left her shirt behind so that she could run for the opposite door. But he was a child despite how big he was, and he would not let go. Instead, he shifted his grip to the back of her neck and launched her through the portal before she could gain any footing and relaunch her escape attempt.
*****
For everything she’d heard and imagined about hell, her first impressions were that it was really pretty ordinary. Having grown up imagining lakes of fire and tortured souls floating through the air like agonized phantoms, the fact that hell had grass and flora had her stumped.
The portal the giant demon had launched her through landed her in the middle of a clearing. Up ahead she saw the beginnings of an urban area, and just as she got herself ready to move, the asshole with the fire fingers landed with a thud behind her and did the whole “grab your neck with my giant meat paws” thing that stopped her where she stood. Thankfully, this time when he grabbed her, her skin didn’t singe. He motioned for her to follow him, and she saw she had little choice.
Sunny also knew that she might not manage to survive an escape attempt while this guy was on the clock. He didn’t seem overly smart, so her guess was that he was hired help, and he was leading her back to whomever had sent him. Was it Seumat? Azriel? It had to be one of them, though with Gideon probably being the original target, she really couldn’t tell who might have been behind this.
They walked into the city with its cobblestone paths, lack of any modern conveniences, and its dark exteriors. So, while there hadn’t been lakes of fire or burning citizenry (that was a religious construct that really had little to do with the actual race of demons, Sunny had come to learn), the building facades were rather grotesque and ugly and everything was made of dark stone.
They walked through a few of the streets in the new city and the open-mouthed stares that Sunny got had her feeling like they wouldn’t make it to whoever had arranged this kidnapping in one piece. The stares ranged from curious to openly hostile and more than one demon hissed at her and bared their teeth. Their terrifying, long, yellow teeth. She tried her best not to react, but when one demon (a snake-looking creature with arms) spit on her, she flinched and cowered away.
Her captor must have had some land on him, too, because he delivered a backhand to the thing that had sent it crashing into the doorway across the street in violent tumble.
By now, the giant dragging her through the new demon city had a grip on her hair and was walking faster. It probably had something to do with the fact that there was a bigger crowd growing and following them now, and he’d probably been hoping to get the human through town without the pitchforks being gathered or the torches lit.
After she’d lost a shoe, her hair tie, and most of her dignity, the giant stopped in front of a building with a living gargoyle perched on the steps that led to the front door. It sniffed the air as she walked by and even fluffed its stone wings out in warning at her approach. She silently prayed that it did not see her as a threat and let her pass.
At the top of the staircase, the giant demon banged on the door, his other hand still tangled in her hair. When the giant door creaked open, the demon pulled her through the door and into the dark hallway. She did her best to glance behind her, but she didn’t see anybody there to have answered the door. Magic?
The sconces on the walls didn’t seem to provide nearly enough light, and the strange checkered pattern on the floor below her were doing a number on her depth perception. Her feet stumbled more than once, and the hand in her hair painfully gripping her was the only thing that kept her from falling face first.
Sunny had nearly had enough at this point. She was sore, and her face hurt from the hit she’d taken. Her hair hurt, and she was sure she’d lost almost half of it where he’d been holding her. And she was scared. Oh, how she was scared. She wanted Gideon. She wanted Plaxo. Hell, she’d take Fake-Liam, or even Michael at this point. She was pretty sure she still wanted nothing to do with that greasy little cherub Rub that hung out with Michael, but hell, if he’d get the demon holding her to stop yanking her hair out, she’d even take him.
They finally made it to what felt like the opposite side of the house and stood at the b
ottom of a staircase while an elegant man walked down slowly and dramatically. He was dressed in a powder blue suit with a white shirt unbuttoned to nearly his navel.
“Well, what do we have here?” His voice was high pitched and uneven, but he seemed to have more practice with the human language than the other one. “Not who I was expecting, but she will still fetch me a good price.”
Sunny was certain she didn’t know this demon. She frowned trying her best to place him but to no avail.
“My manners? Where are my manners?”
Sunny looked around, wondering who the hell he was talking to, because he sure as hell wasn’t looking at her. Suddenly, as though he realized the same thing, his face shifted towards her, and he was staring straight at her, his gaze intense.
“Who are you?”
“Sunshine,” she said. Truth. She’d stick to it as much as she could and as much as it served her.
“Welcome to my house, Sunshine,” he said. “And say goodbye to the rest of your peace and sanity. You’ll find neither of those here.”
Chapter 33
Ammon.
The twisted asshole who’d trapped her in his merry little funhouse was a demon named Ammon. He’d told her that much, hadn’t he?
She was sure he had.
He’d also mentioned that his greatest joy in the realm was creating panic and havoc. Insanity, he’d said. Sunny was positive he’d said something like that.
She was in prison. Her mind knew it, somewhere, deep in there. Though there was no chain on her door, no chain on her body, she was trapped in Ammon’s funhouse.
The house was meant to drive her mad, and her eyes were deceiving her. Over and over, Sunny told herself that her brain knew the truth and her eyes were lying to her. She’d found a pencil somehow and she’d scrawled on the door.
“Your eyes are lying, Sunshine.”
She’d also drawn a line on the bottom of the doorframe for each time she saw the darkness overtake the world outside the window. She assumed it was nighttime in the demon realm, but in her current state, she didn’t want to assume anything.
