Crossed (21 page)

EIGHTEEN

It can’t be. The form in front of me is like him, but not. I swear it was his eyes, but his nose is swollen, obviously broken, and he’s is dressed in rags. His posture is bent, chains drape his wrists—hardly the arrogant asshole I remember. He carries a serving platter and my eyes fly to his neck. No collar. Still a demon, then.

A demon who has been punished, perhaps, for letting a prized captive escape?

He turns away before I can be certain, and I creep closer, watching. As a prey animal sensing a predator’s gaze, he looks up suddenly.

It’s him. Oh, yes, it’s him.

He has no reaction to seeing me, but he wouldn’t. Not in this skin. It doesn’t matter, though, he doesn’t need to know it’s me to sense the danger. Not in a place like this. He turns, trying to be subtle, and slides through the crowd, keeping low. He doesn’t move quickly, I assume so as not to draw attention to his flight. Then I see the manacles around his ankles.

I drop back, letting him think he escaped. Then I follow.

Turns out the opportunity for revenge is as good as the comforting company of friends for erasing bad memories. Maybe better.

The Hunger, which was surprisingly quiet in the pit, awakens with the sharp sting of pins and needles.

My father picks up his pace, shuffling as fast as he can, the chains dragging against the stone. Blood seeps from his ankles, leaving a dim smear on a floor that has no doubt seen worse.

A plan is taking shape, and my fingers itch, bending into claws. The Hunger swells, casting its avid eye on our prey.

Patience,
I stroke the Hunger with the word and it arches like a greedy cat.
Patience
.
We have things to do first.
Torture is only a part of what I plan; as Armand so aptly explained, hell is more than physical pain. It is a place where mental vulnerability is as powerful—no, more so—than the physical. Where one’s memories are wielded like weapons.

There are no secrets in hell.

And my father’s secrets are ones I’ve wanted for a very long time. I can pull his memories from him, rip them from his brain. I can know everything.

I watch his weak, bloody shuffle and I am overcome not with familial affection, but the buzz of anticipation.

Perhaps I am my father’s daughter after all.

He turns a corner down a hallway that, even from here, I can tell is dimly lit. The blackness of its entrance is a dark smudge against the wall of the well-lit corridor I inhabit, a dark mouth swallowing dear daddy into disaster.

Sure enough I turn the corner, and find him alone. He must hear the
shhht-shhht
of my feet on the stone floor as I creep up behind him but he doesn’t turn. He flinches, his shoulders climbing high around a neck that has turned red in apprehension. Being crept up on by someone with ill intentions is apparently not new for my father, and it occurs to me that coming to this corridor was not an act of stupidity but rather an attempt to avoid an audience.

I reach out, slowly at first, then snatch at the bare flesh of his arm, wrapping my hand just above the bloody manacles. Unable to pretend anymore, he spins, incapable of stopping himself from trying to pull away, though he must know from experience that it’s pointless.

He doesn’t recognize me. Not in my new skin, not with the chains draining him of his demon magic. He cringes, waiting for my attack, but I don’t want to hurt him.

Not yet, anyway.

For now, I want something only he can give me. One touch and I can force the truth from him. One touch, and I can compel him to tell me everything I’ve ever wanted to know. I don’t so much think a question as I feel it. It comes out in one, desperately-wanting word.

Mom.

His memory doesn’t come upon me gently. It’s not the soft, sudden appearance of a shadow world around me. Maybe because of the desperation behind my question, or maybe because of my fear of what I’m about to see, but I don’t sift through his memories—I careen through them. I am swallowed by them, tossed in them like they’re a churning surf during a storm. I spin wildly, then suddenly the world stills, the rush pauses, the past comes into focus, and there she is.

Was
. There she
was
.

It’s not real. Not anymore. And yet my heart seizes at the sight of her.

The room, a prison cell, is one I recognize. I’d been confined there—or, rather, one near it—myself this past year. The walls are mere bars, providing no privacy. The floors are polished, cockeyed black tiles that reflect the dim blue lights and the movements of anyone in the room, making it difficult to see where an enemy is coming from. She is alone in the dungeon, a bright spot of pale skin and a ragged-but-bright t-shirt in a dark room.

My mother is young. So young, I’m struck with it. Everything that happened to her happened when she was no older than me. Kidnapped, tortured, impregnated. In a year, she will be a mother. Her youthful face is still smooth, lacking the lines that will carve themselves into her skin with every smile, every frown, over the next decade-and-a-half. But though she looks more like a classmate than anyone’s parent, in her high cheekbones, in her curls, in her yellow-brown eyes, I see my mom.

Then my shock, my emotions, my memories are swallowed by zi-Hilo’s. It’s only a glimpse, barely a blink of time. He doesn’t remember everything that happened that day. There was only one inexplicably notable moment.

The first time he sees her. Flashing golden eyes, flushed cheeks, profanity that would make a sailor blush.

He laughs, delighted. Why, he can’t say. She is screaming the most horrid things, but he can only laugh.

Then the rushing sensation swallows me again as I tumble through time. The room dissolves and reforms around me. We're no longer in the dungeon—her room now has damp-looking stone walls—but it is still obviously a cell. My mother sits on the bed, cradling her arm protectively behind her bent legs, her back pressed against the wall. Zi-Hilo sits on the only chair, medical supplies and a bowl of brown liquid crowded on the small table next to him. I have no idea how much time has passed, but my mother looks thinner, her cheekbones and collarbones jutting in stark relief. Her t-shirt and jeans have been replaced with the white sacking of a witch prepared for the stake. I try not to look at the rust-colored stains.

“What did you trade it for?” she asks, watching him with unreadable eyes.

He reaches out for her arm, a bandage in his other hand. He’s been treating her for months, but still she hesitates before holding out her arm for him to wrap. “Oh, so we’re going to be civil this morning?”

“I make no promises,” she says tartly.

He snorts.

After a long pause, she tries again. “So? Your soul. What did you trade it for?” She winces as he pulls the bandage tight, then pins it in place. He doesn’t release her hand, but continues to hold it, inspecting her damaged fingers. He’s treated enough Crusaders to know that it’s probably pointless to try and treat them this long after her last interrogation. Sure enough, the delicate bones had already knitted together crooked
. He told those idiots—
he shakes his head. Ah, well, they’ll be broken again. He’d fix them next time.

“Well?” she demands, tugging her hand from his. He holds it a moment longer before letting go.

“It’s a secret.”

“’There are no secrets in hell,’” she quotes.

“Only between its residents—and you, my dear, are only a guest. Unless you’ve changed your mind, hmmm?”

She glares at him, and he grins just to irritate her.

“Fine, don’t tell me.”

“Whew. So glad I have your permission,” he mocks.

“Ass.”

“Shrew.”

She snorts, then laughs. “Oh, come on, tell me.”

“It’s not the kind of thing you tell a prisoner,” he says loftily then passes her the bowl from the table. “Now eat.”

“So I’m healthy enough to torture again?” she looks at her crooked fingers. “I think I’ll pass.”

“You can’t hold out forever.”

Her determined little smile isn’t one he recognizes.

Yet.

Again the disorienting sensation as I plunge through time. I'm dropped into the same room and a whirling pool of emotions not my own.

He hides his sudden inexplicable panic behind anger. “Dammit, eat or, or—’

“Or you’ll what?” The weak, wry question is the first thing she’s said to him in days, and it startles him for all it is barely audible. A rush of pleasure floods him at the sound of her voice. “You’ll torture me?”

And, of course, she would use her dying breath to mock him.

She doesn’t turn from the wall. “Pardon me if that threat has lost a bit of its edge.” She actually tries to laugh, but it sounds more like a strangled cough. When she’s able to catch her breath, she continues. “You’ll have to find some new leverage, I’m afraid.”

He growls and tosses the bowl on to the table, slopping the soup over the side. She has a point.

At the clatter of the bowl hitting the table, she finally turns her head. The movement is so slow and pained, he wonders if she’s been facing the wall out of spite or the inability to move. “You’re terrible at this, you know. Playing nursemaid.”

“It’s not like I had a choice. I don’t get to pick my assignments; they just send me wherever the hell they want.”

“That must be terrible for you.” She’s mocking him again, but he can’t make himself care. He’s just grateful that a little of her old vim was back.

But not enough.

As if his thoughts of her weakness calls it, she exhales and seems to shrink into the covers of her cot. Her eyes flutter closed, brown lashes stark against the pale blue skin under her sunken eyes. He can’t help it; he takes her hand in his. At the touch her eyes open.

“Just taking your pulse.” Lie.

It beats as quickly and as faintly as the wings of a butterfly. Her soul bidding to make its escape.

His hand tightens on her wrist. “You must eat,” he says again. “At least drink.” He doesn’t care for the note of pleading he hears in his own voice.

“I don’t think so,” she says, almost gently.

“Dammit, Mary—’

“Mary,” she repeats on a sigh. “You’ve never used my name.”

“I didn’t—I mean—what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Nothing.” The word fades away.

“Mine’s Hilo,” he says, seized with a sudden panic. “My name. It’s Hilo.”

“Hilo,” she exhales the word slowly, and something about the way she says it makes his hand tighten on hers. She doesn’t open her eyes.

He’s losing her. He can feel it. He grasps for something, anything. What was it she had said? “Leverage.”

Her eyes open at the word.

“Leverage. You said I need new leverage. What do you want?”

“You have to ask?” Wry again, a twitch that hasn’t the strength to become a smile.

“I can’t set you free.”

She’s silent. She’s silent for so long he fears he really has lost her. Then finally, so faintly he has to lean down to hear, she answers. He realizes he never did let go of her hand. He still doesn’t. “The sun,” she whispers. “I’d like to see the sun one last time.”

“If I show you the sun, you’ll eat?”

He waits, his cheek next to hers so he will hear her response, no matter how faint. But no words come, just the rasp of a shallow breath across dry lips.

“Dammit, Mary.” Indecision tears through him. “
Dammit
.” He scoops her into his arms.

And so the creature of darkness gives his prisoner the sun.

Now he realizes he was played. Now he realizes that she wanted him to pity her, to fear losing her. To feel like a hero when she wrapped her frail arms around him, tipped her head back to bask in the sun and laughed. Now he realizes she never more intended to die that day than he did. It was all a ruse, a hoax.

But he didn’t know that then. He knew nothing then.

The next day he took over her torture, if sunlight and painted-on bruises can be called such a thing.

The room re-forms, but this time they sit on the bed together. His head is lowered.

“I had a little girl, once. She was . . .” He can’t find the words. “And when she . . .” Those too, he can’t find. The bright memories had faded in the dark. But he remembers the pain. The panic. Those emotions belong here. “Then she got sick, and it was all my fault, don’t you see? I was a doctor. I’d brought it home.”

A small, crooked hand wraps around his.

“What was I to do? Tell me, what was I to do?”

Her answer is a kiss, a kiss that starts soft and sweet, but doesn’t stay that way. A kiss that offers comfort but ends up taking so much more.

Then it’s gone. I am swept out of that memory and into another one, one that flickers in and out of existence so quickly that I can only catch a glimpse of an audience chamber and zi-Ben, brilliantly red, seated on a black throne. But the emotion in that moment is so strong it makes me gasp.