by Nia Night
Ibrahim.
I turned just in time to catch his transformation, to be transfixed by it. It lasted only a heartbeat or two, but the sight was enthralling. Ibrahim’s body shifted, his clothing melting away in a sweep of dark magic. His limbs extended, hands and feet becoming vicious claws. The roar that ripped out of his throat was pure aggression, the guttural call of a beast, a monster from the deepest depths of the ten hells.
Long, curling horns sprouted from his head, sharp and deadly, nearly reaching the roof of the tunnel with his new height. Enormous, bat-like wings sprung from his back, muscle and sinew laced through them. His face changed, mouth and nose elongating, flat teeth sprouting long canines. Dark fur covered where golden skin had been only moments before. When he roared this time, it shook the stones around us.
Even the Accursed had to spare a moment to stare at the male, at the High Demon who’d been hiding among us.
The motherfucker could’ve mentioned that shit.
I was tucking these thoughts away for later when I was struck hard enough across the left side of my face to make stars burst behind my eyes. I didn’t stumble, instead relying on my other senses to guide me. Bringing up my blades at the right moment, I jammed them through the throat of the Vamp who’d been about to fall upon me with those deadly teeth.
Blood ran down over my hands like a dark blessing. It got into my mouth, the foul taste touching my tongue.
My feet were yanked out from under me. I didn’t see who did it or how. My arms flailed as I tried to catch myself and failed, and I let out a grunt as my backside struck the stone, the impact reverberating up my spine.
The bitches fell upon me in a horde, and I thought it rather anticlimactic that this was how I was going to die.
A flash of pale white skin and inky black eyes, and a sharp pain lanced across my neck as shark’s teeth sank into the soft flesh there. Panic swirled through me, but I still had my grip on my blades, and brought the knives up from either side of the leach attached to me, jamming them deep into her neck and dislodging her teeth.
But the damage had been done. The jolt of shock that had gone through me when she’d bitten me had been proof, and the warm wetness currently spilling over my shoulder was further evidence.
I dropped the blades in my hands in a weak attempt to staunch the bleeding. Distantly, I was aware of more Accursed split seconds away from falling upon me, the scent of my blood likely too much to resist.
My heartbeat slowed within me. It was a curious sensation, one I didn’t trust. The world blurred. Pale faces and black eyes closed in.
Then a roar, from somewhere close by, or far away. Or maybe I just imagined it. The more the blood left me, the less I could be sure of anything.
The Accursed before me were knocked away by a giant claw, swiped aside like insects. Then the child was kneeling over me, tying a cloth around my neck. We were scooped up by that same massive claw that had scattered the Vampires, and flashes of fading images took the place of the world.
The tunnel walls, rushing by. The fading sounds of hissing behind us. The shrieks of those who managed to keep pace. The terrifying face of a High Demon glancing down at me and away again.
The child speaking softly in my ear.
“Hold on, Iliana… Just hold on.”
11
“Hold on.”
“Now?”
A low chuckle. “Not yet, silly girl… Okay, now. Now you can open them.”
I opened my eyes and couldn’t help the smile that spread over my lips. My mother stood before me in our small kitchen, biting her lip as she took in my reaction. She held a homemade cake in her hands. It was green and pink, my two favorite colors, and had eleven candles poking out of the top, one for each year I’d been alive, and another for good luck.
My grin stretched from ear to ear. With a wink, my mother set the cake on the table and took a seat on the other side. Snapping her fingers, flames burst at the tips of the eleven candles, igniting the wicks with a touch of her fire magic.
In her soft, familiar voice, my mother sang me the birthday song of our people, the Fire Demons. I stared into the flames, feeling my own magic budding under my skin. When she was done, she told me to make a wish.
I closed my eyes and thought of my most private wish, offered it up to the universe in hopeful ignorance. Then I blew out the candles.
“I have something for you,” said my mother, rising from the table and exiting the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a wrapped box in her hands, a present. Though it was my birthday, my mother had never made a habit of offering me gifts, mostly because we were too poor to afford much. So when she carried the box over to me and set it on the table beside the cake, I sat up a little straighter.
“What is it?” I asked.
She chuckled. “Open it, silly.”
With tentative fingers, I lifted the box and pulled away the wrapping. I felt nervous but couldn’t say why as I removed the lid off an old shoebox and stared down at what was inside.
“Great gran’s Calidi chain,” I said. I looked up at my mother. “You’re giving it to me?”
My mother bit her lip, chest rising as she drew a breath. “It was always going to be yours eventually. You’re a big girl now. Some day you’ll give it to your daughter.”
I couldn’t find words as I reached into the box and ran my fingers over the metal links. The Calidi chain was the only heirloom my mother had, the only physical object that represented our lost family that still existed. Civil war had forced her and my grandparents to flea our native realm, and my mother had been the only one who’d survived that journey.
She never spoke of what happened, never went into detail, so I knew what I knew of her history in bits and pieces. I knew that the gift she’d just given me was more precious to her than all the riches in all the realms.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Of course,” she replied.
My throat was tight, and my lip quivered slightly as I thanked her. She stood and kissed my forehead, going over to the cupboard to gather plates and utensils for the cake. As she did this, I examined my new gift, sending a bit of fire magic to the links beneath my fingertips and watching the metal glow a dull red. My heart picked up in excitement at seeing this. I’d seen my mother send her magic into the chain many times, but had never tried it myself.
“What are you doing here?” said my mother in a voice that made me go instantly rigid.
I pulled my eyes away from the Calidi chain to glance up at her in confusion. My heart stopped dead in my chest as I saw that she hadn’t been talking to me.
Callum stood in the doorway of the kitchen, blocking it with his large form.
He was not drunk this time. His dark eyes were as clear as water, as sharp as knives.
“Get out,” my mother said, voice firm, back rigid.
Callum had been looking at me when I’d looked up from the chain, but his gaze went to my mother now. I knew in that instant why he was here, what he’d come to do. I knew it the same way one knows they are about to hit the ground just after they trip.
There was murder in his eyes. The first I’d ever seen of the particular look. I’d see it in the mirror many times after, though I didn’t know this at the time.
He didn’t say a word, for there were none left to be spoken. It had been four months since my mother had kicked Callum out, four months since he’d backhanded me hard enough to taste blood in my mouth. And, now, here he stood in our kitchen doorway. On my tenth birthday of all days.
Dark magic speared from him, a lance of shadow that gripped my mother around her neck before there was time to blink. I let out a gasp, rising from my chair at the table but unsure what to do. The Calidi chain was momentarily forgotten in the box on the table, along with the cake and candles, the wish that still hung in the air.
My mother’s eyes widened—no, bulged from her head as she gasped for air. Her fingers came up and clawed at the magic’s grip, but there was no b
udging it. I picked up the knife that would’ve been used to cut the cake and hurled it at the son of a bitch.
Callum’s dark magic batted away the blade as though it were a fly. The magic dragged my mother closer to him, until she was within kissing distance, face turning blue from lack of air to her lungs. I glanced around me, looking for something, anything that might break his hold on her.
My eyes fell upon the Calidi chain.
I grabbed for it, but my hand hit a barrier of dark magic. I looked up and saw that I had the bastard’s attention now.
The tips of my mother’s house shoes scraped against the linoleum, legs kicking to no avail. The tiniest squeak of noises came out of her when Callum’s magic gripped me around the throat as well.
My vision blacked out for a half heartbeat before I was able to see again. Panic arrested me as I tried to draw a breath and could not. I gasped and kicked, clawed and fought, but Callum’s magic was too strong, his grip too firm.
He was going to kill us both, right then and there.
And I didn’t want to die. I wasn’t ready yet. I wanted to grow up and see the world. I wanted to become someone like all those characters in my mother’s books she always talked about. I wanted my mother to do those things with me, to watch me grow into an adult and live a long life.
I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to die.
Just as this thought was chasing me into the darkness, as my mind was losing its grip on reality, there was a flare of red to my left. The hold on my throat was broken, and I fell in a heap upon the linoleum.
Gasping and sputtering, I looked up to see my mother engulfed in fire magic, her body wreathed in flames. I’d witnessed her use her magic my whole life, but never had I seen anything like this. I wouldn’t have thought her capable of that much magic, that much power, would’ve ranked her on the average side of the power scale for a full Demon.
But she exploded with it now, so much so that it chased back Callum’s dark magic the way the sun clears away the shadows of the night. The moment lasted only a few heartbeats, but I did not shield my eyes as my mother exploded with fire magic like a dying star streaking across the cosmos.
That’s why Callum’s grip on me had broken. She’d burned the magic back.
But he’d managed to maintain his hold on her, and his darkness rallied with every second that passed.
I saw the message in the flames burning in my mother’s eyes, the command that need not be spoken.
Run. Now.
I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
How could I?
My mother held my gaze, dark magic around her throat, flames fighting against the tendril that was once again reaching toward me.
Run, my beautiful, silly girl. Run!
When I drew in a breath this time, it sounded in a sob. I told my body to act, to obey or disobey my mother’s plea, to do something, but could not seem to make my limbs move. I could only stare at my mother.
Her flame flared brighter still, so much so that I had to look away, that I knew in my heart that it was the last of her magic. Everything she had left. So that I could get away.
Callum’s magic recoiled a little. Just enough.
I scrambled across the linoleum, grabbed the box with the Calidi chain off the table as my mother fought back the magic trying to reach me. Callum still stood in the doorway, but there was a window over the kitchen sink, and a fire escape on the other side.
The decision I made then would haunt me for the rest of forever, the possibilities of what life could have been had I acted differently replaying over and over in my nightmares.
In the end, however, I was just a child, a little girl, really, and I was afraid.
I was so Gods damned afraid.
So when I stole one final look at my mother, one last glance at the female who’d raised me, and the look in her dying eyes told me once again to run…
I did.
I pushed open the kitchen window and climbed out onto the fire escape. On the other side of the pane, my mother’s fire finally died out, the flames around her extinguishing as though they had never been. Her body slumped as Callum’s dark magic reached into her chest and crushed her heart. The Demon watched with rapt interest as the life left her eyes.
Then he looked at the window.
At me.
I swallowed back the scream building in me, gripped the Calidi chain, discarding the box, and began leaping down the fire escape. My heart pounded in my ears, my throat, as the ground got closer at a rate that could not seem fast enough.
“Get back here, you little shit,” snarled a familiar voice from the window above, but I could not look up. I just leapt and jumped and scrambled down the three stories of the building as fast as I could.
My bare feet hit the concrete, my body getting out of the way of a spear of dark magic with a hair’s breadth to spare. On the fire escape above, Callum was crawling out of the window.
But I was already running. Running as hard and as fast as I could, not daring to look back, not even when a couple more spears of dark magic shot past me.
I ran, block after block, the streets quiet save for a few stragglers. No one glanced at the Halfling Demon child running from the monster who’d just killed her mother.
I didn’t stop until I skidded around a corner and collided with a solid figure in all black. I stumbled back at the impact, and fell to my butt to the concrete. Heart thudding in my throat, I looked up at the person I’d run into, and my rasping breath caught in my lungs.
The most beautiful female I’d ever seen looked down at me, dressed in head-to-toe black, wicked looking seraphs hanging on her hips. She raised a fine brow at me, glancing over my shoulder to see what I had been running from, but I’d lost Callum blocks ago, and there was nothing there.
The stranger held out a hand to me, and as her sleeve shifted, I caught a glimpse of a black tattoo on the inside of her wrist.
“Get up,” she said, not gently.
I took her hand and did as I was told, amazed to find my legs holding steady beneath me.
12
I clawed at my neck, trying to loosen the grip of the dark magic that held me. The magic wrapped itself around my wrists as well, pinning my hands down to my sides.
My eyes flew open and I tried to sit up but could not. Pain registered next, mostly a soreness in my neck that made it hard to look around.
Vida leaned over me, big brown eyes clouded with concern. “Stay still,” said the child. “You were hurt pretty badly, Iliana.”
My eyes searched the space until they landed on the Demon. “Let go of me,” I rasped.
Ibrahim said nothing, but I felt the hold of the dark magic recoil from around my arms, my body. It stayed into place around my throat though. I was about to repeat my command more colorfully, but he snapped, “Do you want to bleed out?”
The bite of the Accursed on my neck came back to me now, along with the fight in the Dark Alleys…and the fact that Ibrahim was a High Demon.
He must’ve seen the accusations on my face, because he let out a low sigh and leaned back in his seat. I noticed that we were in another train cabin, but this time we had the entire cart, plenty of room to spread out. Food and drinks waited on a nearby tray, and Vida sat beside the bench where I was laid out.
Carefully, I swung my feet over the edge and sat up, conscious of the makeshift bandage and dark magic keeping the tears in my throat closed. Though the feel of the magic repulsed me, I wasn’t stupid enough to tell Ibrahim to withdraw it again. Begrudgingly, I realized it was likely the only reason I was still alive.
That, and the fact that he was a High Demon.
“Explain,” I said, throat raw, voice strained.
“You’re welcome for saving your life,” Ibrahim replied. “And, yes, I’m a High Demon.”
No shit. Only High Demons had alternate forms into which they could shapeshift. They were the royalty of our kind, the highest tier of Demon hierarchy. I waited for h
im to elaborate, studying him now anew.
He really might’ve been handsome if not for his ugly attitude, with his jet-black hair and eyes, pleasing features and masculine build. When the Demon wasn’t moving, he sat so still that he might’ve been a statue, hands folded neatly in his lap and back resting leisurely in his seat as he stared out the train car window, pitch darkness flashing by on the other side.
“Elias,” said Ibrahim, as if that explained everything.
It took a moment to recall where I knew the name, and shame spiraled through me when I finally did.
“Vida’s previous guardian,” I said.
The Demon nodded. “He was a friend. He was…very close with my brother.” His voice caught on the last word, just a tiny hitch that would’ve gone unnoticed by most people.
I swallowed, waited.
Ibrahim met my gaze now. “They were together, Elias and Idris. They were in love. Had been involved since before Elias became Vida’s guardian. Elias tried to break it off with Idris when he was passed the duty of Vida’s guardianship, but the two had been in love since they were children.” A sad smile and shake of the head, the first emotion other than distain that I’d seen from the Demon. “They couldn’t stay away from each other.”
I was careful to keep my expression neutral, but I knew as well as he did that our kind was not accepting of various sexual orientations, especially not among the elite. And on top of that, Elias had been a human, and such pairings were even further despised by the upper tier because of what they usually produced—Halflings, like me.
So I didn’t have to ask to know that Ibrahim’s brother had probably had a hell of a time growing up. And if Ibrahim really loved his brother as he seemed to, that meant a hell of a time for him, too.
“Idris knew something was going to happen,” Ibrahim continued. “He tried to tell me. Elias had been talking to him about the child and the seven keys, had been indoctrinating him on the importance of it all, on the importance of keeping Vida safe.”
