Bat Out of Hell (Promised to the Demons Book 2)

by Lidiya Foxglove

  "Oh--well--it was nothing." I spilled a little soup on the blankets. I needed to sit up straighter and struggled to support myself on shaky arms.

  "Here, if you don't mind..." Piers took the spoon from me and brought it to my mouth.

  "You don't have to be nice to me. Piers, you know I love Bevan. I really want to see him."

  "Bevan sat here with you for eight hours while you were unconscious," Piers said. "He's taking a quick rest."

  "Oh..."

  "Can I ask you a question?" Piers asked, after feeding me a few bites of the rich, sweet vegetable broth with bits of grain and root vegetables. (Lots of leeks in the broth, I thought.)

  "Sure..."

  "If Bernard came to you and apologized for all the ways he had ever mistreated you, if he acknowledged that he'd made a terrible mistake and swore to give you the life of an honored familiar with access to all the magic you'd ever need...would you return to him?"

  I shivered at the question as I realized I couldn't answer right away. "I...I would certainly rather marry Bevan and work alongside him."

  "But your loyalty to Bernard still has some hold on you..."

  "I guess I can't help it." I bit my lip, ashamed by my weakness. "No matter how much he hurt me, I really do want..." I almost felt close to tears, knowing how much happier I was with Bevan, and hating that even a little part of me felt a pull to go back to Bernard.

  "I see..." Piers almost seemed to be saying it to himself. He kept giving me the soup, and I really was hungry, so I couldn't stop drinking the broth. At the end of the bowl, he finally met my eyes, and the cold eyes softened slightly. He looked like he had a lot of regrets weighing him down, and I realized I wished Bernard would look at me this way. As if he really was sorry, and wasn't ashamed to say so, and we could rebuild the relationship we had as Bernard and Celeste.

  A few tears finally leaked out, enough to blur my eyes.

  "I am not Bernard," Piers said. "But I almost killed my own familiar. I don't think I'll ever see him again. I would like to find some way to repent for my sins and I wondered if you would hear my confession."

  "Oh...that sounds very serious. I'm not sure I'm qualified to hear a confession!"

  "I almost forgot that St. Augustine is about the most pious wizard town in the nation," Piers murmured. "But you don't need to be qualified in a religious way. I want you to hear it because the life of Bernard and your own and mine and Chester's...well, in both cases, the wizard has failed the familiar. If you can give me a shred of your forgiveness, I will try my best to help you, and even if I think you are charming, I will not get in the way of you and Bevan or anyone else. All I crave is penance."

  Charming! I couldn't believe that all I had to do was set foot in the world outside and every man I met seemed to think I was...intriguing. I always thought I was plain, and in books, plain girls were always in despair. Then again, they do always end up having adventures and love stories after all…

  No one had ever asked me something so serious before, and I felt rather important. "Yes," I said solemnly. "I'll hear your confession. After all, I might as well listen while I'm just laying here. I hope I don't fall asleep."

  "Fall asleep if you need to," Piers said. "I'll just get out what I can." He poured some wine for himself and took a slow breath.

  Chapter Five

  Piers

  "When I was a little boy, I was very close to my familiar, although those memories seem very far away..."

  "And his name?" Jenny asked, drowsy but still interested enough to ask questions. Just taking in the barley vegetable soup had brought more color to her ghostly cheeks and made her look a little less like the heroine of a Victorian tragedy.

  "Chester."

  "That's a nice name."

  Was it? I didn't think of names that way, and I didn't think of Chester that way. A name was what you made of it. My earliest memories were of the house I grew up in, an estate of fourteen rooms, not nearly as grand as that of my cousins, but just as gloomy. We lived farther up the Hudson River than the von Hapsburg branch of the family, which my uncle married into.

  "I was the only child in the family. I always had the impression that my mother really didn't want any children at all, but of course, in those circles, you have to have children. At least, the one son. I had nannies and didn't see my mother very much."

  "Were you naughty?" Jenny asked.

  "Why do you ask?"

  "It seems like in books, whenever there's a nanny, the children are also naughty, and it sounds like fun.”

  “No, I was very obedient, really. I wanted to please my parents.”

  “Were your parents very lovely people? Was your mother beautiful and your father stern but kind? I could imagine that.”

  “No…neither of those things. I don’t think they were especially lovely. Just strict and unhappy and always complaining that they should be more rich than they were.”

  “Oh…I do understand that,” Jenny said. “Mrs. Franch was always complaining…”

  "I think I must have been alone a lot, before I reached the age for school," I said, reaching back to the forests of childhood, the particular rocks and ruins that became places for Chester and me to imagine ourselves as great sorcerers or pirates. "We had fifty acres, and we were five miles from the town, so it seemed like our own world. Chester was my companion, at that time. I didn't have any friends yet."

  "You do sound like you were lonely," she said, her voice welling with sympathy. "But I loved playing with Bernard, just the two of us, when we were little."

  "Chester must have liked my company too," I said, and for the first time in many years I was able to imagine Chester as he was to me then, just a playmate, like a brother. I didn't judge him on his scrawny, unremarkable appearance. "My parents tried to discourage us from getting too close, of course... They wanted me to play with other wizard children who lived in the town. I was sent to stay with my grandparents pretty often, because they lived right in town, but the town children had their own games and I didn't want to play with them."

  I didn't tell Jenny all my weaknesses, and detail the precise feeling of cowering behind the gate in front of my grandparents' house, watching bigger boys run by, throwing a football around, and the terror of Grandfather throwing open the door and bellowing, in his thick Romanian accent, "Go and play with them!"

  I had vowed not to indulge in any feelings for Jenny, but I still struggled to tell her just how pathetic I was as a child. When you're very young, you don't know when you're an inferior specimen, until you start being surrounded by strange children.

  "When I reached school age, my parents sent me right to a boarding school, in the hope that I would lose interest in playing with Chester and make friends. They seemed to think I would be a leader if I just had a chance to be around other kids...but at the age of six, I was the third smallest boy in my class, and..."

  "Why don't you just say what's troubling you?" Jenny said, almost dreamily, her head halfway sunk into a voluminous feather pillow.

  "I am."

  "You're skirting around it, really."

  I took a deep breath, fidgeting in the chair. My left arm was starting to ache, since I'd shoved into my jacket for a while now, and my elbow needed to stretch. I finally pulled out the stump and massaged my elbow and shoulder, bringing back the circulation. My cuff mostly covered the stump, but the skin was shiny and mottled with scar tissue.

  The feelings of shame and inferiority were already familiar to me. I didn't have to be crippled to know.

  But as Jenny hung on my every word, her eyes gentle and free of any trace of disdain, I started to feel safer.

  "Jenny," I whispered. "When I went to school, I realized that I was a born loser."

  "What!" she scoffed.

  "Well, I did realize it early on, and I wasn't about to succumb to it. I knew nothing would come easily to me. I wasn't a particularly attractive kid, or a strong one. I didn't have royal blood like my cousins."

 
; "I bet you were smart."

  "Smarts are useless in the game of life, on their own. You have to throw in determination and craftiness."

  "So that's what you did?"

  "Yes, but that's where all the trouble started. Once I realized that I'd have to fight hard for success, it never stopped. I did anything I could to get higher and higher, and any cruelty seemed like it was just necessary, the way we have to kill to eat or chop down trees to build a house. If I thought something was wrong, I just learned to shut out my feelings and get it done. Eventually I thought that I was responsible, in part, just for keeping the magical world safe, and nothing else mattered."

  "I think Bernard is telling himself that same thing," Jenny said. "But maybe you do keep it safe, too."

  "Are you actually giving me justification?"

  "Well, I can't believe Bernard is all bad. I know what's in his heart too well. And I bet your parents were really hard on you. Your voice tightens up when you mention them."

  "Of course they were hard on their only child..." I gave my head a brisk shake. "No, I won't blame them for it. My ambitions exceeded their expectations. That's on me. But if I went back in time, to talk to my younger self, I don't know what I'd tell him instead. I wasn't about to just...get kicked around."

  "But you do have regret and I'm here to listen to them," she said. "So what's the worst of them?"

  "The worst...is my years of cruelty to Chester. I saw him as the weak side of myself, and I punished him for it. His animal form is a sugar glider--kind of a cute, ridiculous little thing, if you've never seen one. Everyone always said your familiar reflects who you really are. There was no way of hiding it. Whether in animal form or human form, he made me look weak. I felt that I had to reject him. Of course, I've done other things, but I know Chester actually loved me as you probably still love Bernard. My cousins, and their friends--I shouldn't have hurt them like I did, but in the end, the hell with 'em. They always cut me out and treated me like I wasn't as good as them. Kids are cruel. They weren't stupid either. They could see I was useless and unattractive and not a royal either."

  "You're not unattractive, and not useless at all!” Jenny said, like it was just a fact. "I thought you and Helena looked a lot alike!"

  I snorted. "You're too kind. Especially now. If I ever had any hope of being attractive, it's definitely out the window. I will never marry. I'm not joking about the monastery."

  "Well, it sounds like a monastery might be good for your soul...," Jenny said. "On the other hand, you're being a little silly. I'm sure someone could marry you, if you weren't too standoffish. I mean, Mr. Rochester wasn't supposed to be attractive, and--oh! Oh!" She suddenly just grabbed my maimed arm like she was actually excited. "Have you ever read that book, Piers? Because at the end, Mr. Rochester has lost his hand and his face is scarred, and he's pretty moody too!"

  "Are you saying that because a character in a book found love despite all his mistakes and hardships, that I'll just waltz right into it myself?" My skin burned where she was holding my jacket.

  "I guess not. I just thought...it might make you feel better, because it was a very romantic book." She pulled her hands back and smashed her face into the pillow. "You're right. That sounded stupid."

  "I guess it did make me feel a little better," I said.

  "Oh, good.” She smiled with exquisite innocence.

  "Well...I suppose that was the original sin. I turned on Chester and started bullying him and sending him away, to save my own skin. It all started there. And I've done countless other awful things since. It just kept escalating, and I still don't know that I can even be absolved, because I'm not sure I would have ever snapped out of it if I hadn't lost a fight so badly..." I babbled out the words now, almost trying to push her back to arm's length, because...

  Well, comparing me to one of classic literature's most famous antiheroes, and one who fell in love with a very plain but clever girl at that...it was hard not to want to misinterpret that.

  And I really had no intention of driving a wedge between her and Bevan. I knew she would be infinitely happier with him. I wanted to dislike Bevan because he was Helena's familiar, but having traveled with him, I really couldn't. He was a level-headed, loyal person who understood the value of team work and wasn't short on skill, either. He would be a good mate for a sweet girl. She trusted too easily, but that trust would be in good hands.

  I knew I was no good match for any girl. Much less one I actually liked. Why would I want to punish her that way?

  "We'll never really know what might have happened if things went a different way," Jenny said. "So it seems like you could spend your whole life getting mad at your other self, but in some parallel timeline, your other self ended up realizing his mistakes on his own. So then all that thinking is for nothing."

  "I'm not sure about this logic. You trying to let me off the hook?"

  "But if you have actually changed, I think it's punishment enough that you know what you did, and you've been scarred by it, and now you should try to do something better with yourself. Something that makes you happy."

  "When did happiness come into this?"

  "Why shouldn't it?"

  "I am certainly not owed that much."

  "It's not something you're owed. It's something you have to find, even when it's very hard, but what's the point of anything without happiness?"

  "The point is...survival of the fittest. That's nature."

  "You have been happy...or have you?"

  "Sure I have."

  "What makes you happy?" Her eyes lit up like her favorite thing in the world was hearing what made other people happy.

  "Um..." I didn't want to sound so ridiculous as to not have an answer, but I really didn’t. "Chocolate."

  "Chocolate!" she crowed, like this was a triumph of her own. Then she started coughing so hard that I feared I'd forced too much out of her by talking to her for so long. I had fully expected her to doze off at the sound of my voice, not to ask me questions or compare me to Mr. Rochester.

  I’m not sure I really meant chocolate. I think I meant the chocolate she gave me. The small hand shoving a plate with a single cookie under the cabinet, and a voice ringing out, “Here you go, Piers! It’s a cookie!” even as she knew I wouldn’t answer.

  I brought her a smidge more of the soup. "Here. The steaminess of it will help a little." With only one hand to steady the bowl, I almost spilled more on her.

  "Thank you, Piers," she said raggedly. "Oh, my ribs ache so badly... I don't think I've ever been this sick."

  "I'll let you get back to sleep."

  She put her hands on both my arms again--ever so briefly--as I took the bowl away. "I didn't mind listening," she said. "I'm glad chocolate makes you happy. I'll be making more of it as soon as I can get out of bed."

  "Don't worry over it now," I said.

  She settled deep into the blankets with a sigh. "Goodnight, Rochester."

  I scoffed and went to clean the bowl and busy myself in any way that didn't involve her, but my skin burned with a feeling that seemed no more controllable than the movements of the tide.

  She doesn't have feelings for you, Piers. And alas for her if she did.

  Chapter Six

  Jenny

  He reminds me of Bernard, but if only Bernard would say those words to me... The thoughts in his heart...even if they're flawed, it's better than the way he shut me out.

  I just wish he'd talk to me. Invite me in.

  But I guess Chester probably wishes the same of Piers...

  After struggling hard to stay with it, my eyelids finally shut like they'd never open again. My eyes burned. I could still hear Piers tidying up, or whatever it was that he was doing, and the sound soothed me back to sleep.

  I had a strange dream in which I was naked in an open meadow with nowhere to hide, and my magic wouldn't work to conjure clothing. Dark clouds gathered overhead from the west, and from the same direction, Variel was riding toward me on a huge black
horse. I was horrified that he might see me naked again, but suddenly a man was there to protect me.

  "Here you are, Celeste..." He threw a long woolen jacket around me. At first I thought it was Bernard but then he became Piers instead.

  I became aware of a hand on my forehead and jolted awake, thinking Variel was back, but Bevan was looking down at me, and it was his warm hand on my skin. It was dark and quiet now in the faery palace.

  His small, private smile greeted me. "Good evening, sleepyhead. I'm so glad to see your eyes... Piers said you were awake for a while. Awake for him and not me? Really, now."

  "It's you I wanted to see," I said. And it was--oh, it certainly was! Bevan was the only person I'd ever known who I relaxed around so deeply. He was the one I really wanted to give myself over to, completely and always.

  "You don't know how much I wish you were my warlock," I said, the covers rustling as he moved to sprawl beside me in the bed. "Ooh, my voice is even more of a croak than before. I sound terrible."

  "You look much better, toadlet," he said, kissing my forehead. "And someday I'll be something better than your warlock, I expect."

  "Well, I wish you were everything. Because then I would have every sort of bond with you."

  "I would rather we don't have a magical bond," Bevan said. "That's how we'll be absolutely sure that our feelings are real and we act of our own free will."

  "You have a point." I lifted my head, even though it seemed to weigh a hundred pounds, to look at him better. "Are you...bigger?"

  "I took some of Variel's magic from him," Bevan said, with pride. "Did you notice that he was smaller, too? I stole some of his power and his size. I don't seem to grow horns, though, which I guess is all right, but they're kind of cool."

  "You're huge!" It was hard to tell at first when he was laying down, but I realized that I was absolutely tiny beside him now. Even his hands were larger. "I'm not sure I like it!"

  He was still smiling even as he shook his head. "You'll get used to it, I'm sure. I'm stronger and more able to stand up to Variel. That's definitely a good thing."