Taming Demons for Beginners: The Guild Codex: Demonized / One

by Marie, Annette

  “Are you still there?” I inched closer to the silver inlay, my heart picking up speed. “I’m not leaving until you acknowledge me,” I threatened. He didn’t know I had to get back upstairs before Uncle Jack returned. “I’ll sit here all night and annoy you.”

  Folding my arms, I counted to thirty, then opened my mouth to berate him again.

  “Go away.”

  My breath caught. His voice was a dry whisper. I couldn’t even hear his usual irritation.

  “Zylas? Are you okay?”

  He ignored me again.

  “Let me see you.” I scooted closer, my knees inches from the circle’s edge. “Come on. If you do, I’ll bring you something extra good next time I can sneak down here.” I counted to thirty again. “If you don’t reveal yourself, I’ll throw a bucket of cold water on you.”

  To my surprise, the darkness in the circle swirled away, and my heart lurched again. Zylas lay on his side, arms wrapped around his middle, legs pulled up. He made no attempt to straighten as the last of the shadows faded. He didn’t even open his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” I gasped. “Are you …”

  I couldn’t finish the question, since the answer seemed obvious. The demon in the circle grew weaker and weaker, then …

  His eyes cracked open. No longer crimson and glowing, they were dark, empty pits. “Come to watch me die, payilas?”

  “No. No, I …” Demon or not, I didn’t want to watch him die. I didn’t want to see anyone die.

  He hadn’t asked for this. Human magic had dragged him out of his world and chained him to this room to perish slowly. He was dying … because Uncle Jack had gotten his filthy hands on my mother’s grimoire. Without it, he could never have summoned Zylas.

  “I will not submit,” he whispered.

  “I know.” I swallowed. “Zylas, is there anything I can do?”

  His eyelids flickered and those black, exhausted eyes slid to mine. “Do?”

  “To help you. To—to—” I didn’t know what I was saying.

  “To keep me alive until I submit?”

  “No. I know you won’t become a contractor’s puppet. I just …” I pressed my lips together. “It isn’t fair that you’re dying because they summoned you.”

  He closed his eyes again and curled into a tight ball on the floor as though he were freezing. His tail twitched half-heartedly. This didn’t feel real. He’d seemed so invincible—a powerful, untouchable demon full of fierce arrogance despite his imprisonment. Now he was on the floor, unmoving, weak. Dying. He’d faded so much since I’d last seen him.

  “Tell me how to help you.”

  A deep crease formed between his eyebrows, and his lips turned down as he fought an internal battle.

  “Food,” he finally muttered. “Heat. Light. Not fake light.”

  “Heat and light?” I looked around the cold, windowless basement. “And food? Those will help you?”

  His head moved in the slightest nod.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told him, shoving to my feet. “Hold on.”

  I rushed for the stairs. I couldn’t get natural light to him—even if the sun had been up, the library had no windows. I hadn’t seen a space heater anywhere in the house, and I couldn’t light a fire indoors.

  But I could bring him food. If food would help, then I would feed him.

  As I raced into the kitchen, sudden understanding brought me up short. Uncle Jack and Claude didn’t understand why Zylas hadn’t hit his breaking point yet … but I had been feeding him. If food kept the demon alive, then I’d been prolonging his life with those insubstantial treats. Now I understood why he had played along with my questions … and why his strength had faded so quickly once I’d stopped visiting him.

  I flung open the pantry doors and searched for something to feed a starving demon. My gaze whipped across boxed snacks and crackers, cereal and hard pasta, then landed on a pair of soup cans.

  Hot soup. Food and heat.

  I dumped both cans of vegetable soup into a large bowl and shoved it in the microwave. As the appliance whirred, I listened nervously to the sound of the TV from the family room and hit stop before the microwave could chime. The soup was still bubbling when I lifted it out, my sleeves pulled over my hands to protect them from the hot glass. Steam dampened my face as I carried the bowl downstairs.

  My worry kicked up a notch when I saw Zylas hadn’t darkened the circle. As I hurried across the library and knelt, broth splashed onto my arm, burning my skin.

  Zylas’s eyes slitted open, then widened at the sight of the steaming bowl.

  “This is soup,” I said. “It’s hot and you can eat it, but you have to promise to give the bowl back and not break it or try to hurt me with it.”

  Motions slow and stiff, he uncoiled from his ball and pushed himself up. “I agree.”

  I pushed the bowl halfway across the line, and he reached for it.

  “It’s scalding hot,” I warned as he wrapped his hands around the glass and drew it into the circle. “Be careful not to burn your—”

  He lifted the bowl to his mouth and poured the soup down his throat. Steam swirled around his head as he drained the contents in seconds. If it burned him, he didn’t show it.

  His tongue swiped across his lips, catching a few escaped droplets, and I watched in amazement as his eyes lightened from midnight black to deep scarlet. He stared at the bowl, then set it down and sank back onto the floor. Curling up on his side, he watched me, his gaze intense and probing.

  Feeling oddly nervous, like his attention was a blinding spotlight, I reached for the bowl. When my fingertips brushed the glass, I froze in sudden realization.

  Zylas’s eyes flicked down to my hands. To my pale skin a foot from his reddish-toffee skin. My hands were on the bowl—and the bowl was inside the circle.

  My lungs were paralyzed but my heart careened in wild terror. I’d put my hands across the invisible barrier. I hadn’t felt a thing, hadn’t noticed a ripple of transparent magic. Could I pull my arms out before he grabbed me?

  I stared at him, unable to exhale. He studied my hands, so close, within his reach. The end of his tail flicked, like a cat that had spotted a mouse in the grass.

  Slowly, I wrapped my fingers around the cold glass. His expression didn’t change, but a muscle jumped in his cheek. Despite his blank face, his jaw was tight.

  Keeping my movements smooth and painstakingly sluggish, I drew the bowl across the silver line. My flesh cleared the invisible barrier and I let out an explosive breath, shakily pressing a hand to my chest to calm my petrified heart.

  Zylas watched me pant, motionless and impassive.

  I gathered my shredded composure and scooted back a foot to avoid making the same mistake twice. As I moved to set the bowl safely aside, I frowned. “It’s cold.”

  The glass should’ve been hot from the soup. He’d only just drunk it.

  Zylas settled more comfortably on the floor. “I took the heat.”

  I placed the bowl beside me and looked around. “Have you been taking the heat from this room, too? Is that why it’s cold?”

  “Only the heat in the circle.”

  The inner circle had been frigid. That’s what had made me realize something was wrong—that I’d crossed the barrier.

  “Demons need food, heat, and light to survive?” I asked.

  “Food or heat or light,” he corrected. “Heat and light are better.”

  I rubbed my forehead—and my soup-stained sleeve slapped me in the face. Cringing, I pulled my arm out of the sleeve.

  “In books,” I said as I peeled my sweater off, “demons are always described as creatures of cold and darkness, but you live off warmth and light?”

  I tossed my sweater behind me and straightened my tank top. Zylas’s gaze tracked the motion.

  “What is that?”

  “Huh?” I followed his stare. A purple bruise in the shape of grasping fingers, tinged with green and yellow where it had begun to heal, marke
d my upper arm. “It’s a bruise.”

  “I do not know that word.”

  “A bruise is an injury.” I shrugged self-consciously. “From being hit or squeezed or crushed by something.”

  His curiosity waned. “Hh’ainun are fragile.”

  “Compared to demons, I guess we are.” I resettled on the floor. “I can’t stay much longer or Uncle Jack will catch me again. Will you be okay now?”

  “Eshathē zh’ūltis.” He closed his eyes. “Īt eshanā zh’ūltis.”

  I waited to see if he would say anything comprehensible. “What does that mean?”

  “You are stupid … and I am stupid.”

  My gaze dropped to my hands in my lap, and I didn’t ask him to explain. His meaning was obvious. The hot soup would merely prolong the inevitable … and prolong his suffering. He would die anyway. Keeping him alive in his half-dome prison was a cruelty in itself. I was stupid for giving it to him, and he was stupid for accepting it.

  “Don’t enter into a contract,” I blurted.

  His eyes flashed open.

  “Don’t do it,” I repeated, the hoarse intensity of my voice surprising me. “My uncle—the summoners are waiting for you to get weak and desperate. They’ll try to convince you to do it to save your life, but you can’t let them win.”

  He stared at me, then a wolfish grin revealed his pointed canines. “Do not fear, payilas. I will laugh at them as I die.”

  “Good,” I said fiercely. “They deserve to fail. I’ll laugh at them too.”

  He smirked, but the expression swiftly faded. Exhaustion lay over him like a heavy cloud. The soup had helped, but not much.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow night,” I whispered, “and remind you that you’ll never submit to one of us high-nuns.”

  “Huh-ah-i-nun,” he corrected with a spark of irritation.

  A choked giggle escaped me, and I blinked rapidly. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  “Go away, payilas.”

  I clambered up, collected the bowl and my sweater, and crossed the room. At the door, I looked back.

  “Zylas,” I called softly. “Darken the circle.”

  His tail flicked, then the circle faded to black, hiding his prone form. I switched the lights off and crept up the stairs.

  Only when I had closed my bedroom door behind me did I allow the burning tears to fall. I stumbled to my bed and fell onto it, an ache burrowing deep into my heart.

  I’ll see you tomorrow. If he made it that long. He might not. He was so weak. Fading fast. Soon, he would be gone, and his torture would be over.

  I pushed my face into my pillow, muffling my quiet sobs. I cried because this world was so cruel—cruelty inflicted by and upon demons and humans both. I cried because I was a fool to pity a demon, to inflict pain and grief on myself over a heartless monster. I cried because I was alone with no one to turn to, no one to ask what I should do, no one to comfort the aching grief. I would’ve happily died myself if, just for tonight, my mother could hold me one more time.

  My tears eventually ran dry, but sleep didn’t come for many hours.

  Chapter Eleven

  Zylas survived the next day.

  I hadn’t snuck down to the library yet, but I didn’t need to see him to know he was still kicking. Standing at the kitchen counter, I suppressed a bitterly satisfied smirk as Uncle Jack’s shouts rang down the hall.

  “How?” he bellowed. “How is that thing still defying us? It should be halfway comatose! How is it maintaining the darkness in the circle? We haven’t even seen it!”

  Claude’s calm voice answered him too quietly for me to make out any words.

  “I know that!” my uncle roared. “It has to break soon! If it dies before we get it into a contract, I’ll—I’ll—” he spluttered, in search of a suitable threat.

  “Oh, shut up, Dad,” Travis snapped. “We’re all frustrated.”

  “Talk back to me again and I’ll break your jaw,” Uncle Jack snarled. “You’re an apprentice and if you ever want a demon name from me, you’ll start acting like it.”

  Terse silence spread.

  “We need a break,” Claude decided. “Let’s go out for something to eat.”

  Uncle Jack grunted and their voices receded. I strained my ears, and a minute later, the front door opened and closed with a thump.

  I looked down at my white mug. Steaming cocoa filled it to the brim, and I’d topped the dark liquid with a dollop of whipped cream. Cradling the warm mug in my hands, I slunk out of the kitchen and down the basement stairs.

  I turned the library lights up, crossed to the black dome, and knelt. “Zylas?”

  The darkness faded out of the circle. Lying on his side, with his head pillowed on one arm, he looked more comfortable than last time—but his eyes were black again.

  “Payilas.”

  “How did it go today?”

  He gazed at me tiredly. “They are more mailēshta than before.”

  “What does that mean?”

  His brow scrunched and he closed his eyes as though struggling to translate the word. “Annoying. They are annoying.”

  I hesitated, staring at the steaming mug, then held it up. “I … brought this. You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to, but it’s hot.”

  He let out a long breath, then pushed himself into a sitting position, the metal armor on his lower legs scraping the floor. I set the mug on the silver inlay, with the handle sticking into the circle, and he picked it up. His eyes squinched as he prodded the whipped cream with one finger, making it bob in the hot liquid.

  Maybe the whipped cream had been overkill.

  He tipped the mug back, downed the contents like a shot, then replaced the mug on the inlay. I slid it out of the circle and set it aside.

  “What do you want?” he asked, still looking exhausted.

  “What do you mean?”

  He flicked his hand at the mug. “For that.”

  “I don’t need anything.”

  A snarl slid into his voice. “Ask.”

  “But …”

  It was clearly important to him that he not accept charity from me. If it made him feel better … I tried to come up with an easy question. He watched me think, the sconce lights illuminating one cheekbone and the side of his jaw but casting deep shadows over his dark eyes.

  “I want to touch you.” I spoke without thinking—and instantly regretted it.

  His face twisted. “Touch me?”

  My cheeks flushed hot. “Just—just your hand, or—” I cut myself off and took a moment to regain my composure. “In that circle, you’re like a … a vision or a dream. I want to touch you so I can feel that you’re really there.”

  He stared at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “Ch. Fine.”

  My pulse quickened. Dangerous, dangerous. It was far too risky, yet … I wanted to do this. Touching him would make him real in a way that seeing him and hearing his voice couldn’t.

  I skooched closer until my knees were six inches from the inlay. “Put your hand against the barrier.”

  He pressed his right palm flat against the invisible dome and shimmers spread outward like ripples on a pond. My heart climbed into my throat, where it continued its frantic beating. I swallowed it down and lifted my hand. My arm quivered. I hesitated, my body so tense it hurt.

  I touched two fingertips to the heel of his hand.

  His skin was disconcertingly cool. Cautiously, I slid my fingertips up to the center of his palm and pressed, feeling the give of living flesh. As I traced his index finger to the top, wonder ballooned inside me, pushing my fear aside.

  I followed the line of his thumb, then warily curled my finger around to feel the bony knuckle below his first finger. The back of his hand was firm and taut, his skin different from anything I’d felt before—tougher, with less give and stretch than a human’s, yet soft and smooth.

  Tipping each finger was a dark nail, its curved point resting flush against his fingertip. It
wasn’t razor sharp and seemed too short to be dangerous, but that didn’t lessen the thrill in my center.

  With the barrier rippling like liquid light, I spread my fingers and pressed my palm to his, my small hand dwarfed, my slender fingers so fragile in comparison, my fair skin white against his reddish-brown tone.

  I raised my eyes, wide with awe, to his dark ones. He watched me, his expression unreadable.

  It happened in an instant.

  He pulled his hand back—and because I was pressing my palm to his, my hand moved too, dipping forward. It crossed that invisible line and the strong fingers I had traced snapped tight around mine.

  Adrenaline flooded my body. Panic screeched in my head, but I couldn’t move. Frozen like a rabbit in the wolf’s teeth, I stared at him in horror.

  He held my fingers in a tight grip, then pulled.

  I had lamented his obvious weakness—but he wasn’t weak. Not compared to my pathetic strength. I locked my limbs but my knees slid across the floor. My wrist crossed the invisible line, then my forearm, then my elbow.

  Tears flooded my cheeks. Why was I so stupid? Why had I gotten so close? Why had I put myself within his reach? He would drag me in and tear me apart—the perfect finale to his long imprisonment. A demon’s most exhilarating send-off—murdering a helpless human girl.

  His other hand closed around my wrist. I expected him to wrench me the rest of the way into the circle. Expected him to tear into my flesh, to sink his predator’s fangs into my throat and rip it out.

  Instead, he flipped my hand over and pressed two fingers to my palm.

  Between one hammering beat and the next, my tremoring heart threatened to stop.

  He examined my palm, then each finger. He brushed the pad of his finger across my thumbnail, feeling the texture, then flicked his claw against it to test its strength. He felt the bumps of my knuckles, then stroked the back of my hand.

  I trembled violently, scarcely breathing, not understanding.

  He pinched my skin, his head tilting as he pulled. It hurt but I kept quiet. Pushing my sleeve up, he studied my inner wrist, then lightly traced the shadows of veins under my pale skin. His head dipped and his nostrils flared as he inhaled my scent. Inhaling again, he licked my racing pulse. His tongue was warmer than his cool skin.