Fierce Lessons (Ghosts & Demons Series Book 3) (21 page)

“By killing us all,” Victor said. The old conductor came to the water’s edge. “Please, Iowa. Do not kill him. If he dies, we won’t get Samantha back!”

Peter Smythe smiled. “That’s true. So, tell me, daughter. What have the humans taught you? What is more precious? The life and freedom of your friend or the death of your enemy? Enlighten me.”

I dropped my sword from his throat. “No contest,” I said. “To humans, lives are precious.”

“There is hope then,” my father said.
 

“But we don’t have to be stupid about it, either,” I said. “We don’t have to let our humanity make us helpless in the face of evil.”

Lesson 193: Creatures like Peter Smythe are why we can’t have nice things. I don’t believe in the death penalty. I do believe in self-defense.

Also, I don’t believe in vengeance, but I like the idea a lot. With a single stroke, I lopped off my father’s left arm at the elbow. It seemed only fair. I couldn’t kill him then but I got a bit more than a pound of flesh.

“For Brad,” I said. “And, to be honest, for me.”

33

P
eter Smythe gasped and reeled back, holding his left arm tight in his right armpit. “You…I didn’t spank you enough when you were a kid. We bought into that time-out bullshit!”

“You weren’t around. Mama raised me and she raised me right. I wish she was here now. She’d take the other arm. Maybe a few other choice pieces, too.”

He bled black like a demon, and copiously. My father staggered toward the portal. At the edge of the circle of fire, he looked back at me. I didn’t detect any love in his eyes. “See you again. Soon.”

“I’ll look for you on the field of battle, Daddy.” I backed out of the pool.
 

My father ran back through the rift.

In a flash of white light, Samantha Biggs took his place. Aside from wearing her hair down instead of up, Sam looked the same as when I saw her at Castille.

My old boss gave a wan smile and waded through the water towards us. She appeared unharmed. Sam paused to nod at the Lady of the Lake and then called to Victor. “They’re waiting for their demon mage! You better give Chronos back. The Ra’s army is on the other side of the bridge!”

Victor waded into the cold water to meet Sam and embraced her. “Thank God I got you back,” he said. The conductor gave his order. “Lady of the Lake, return Pandora’s box to them!”

Still in Paul and Polly’s time displacement field, The Lady of the Lake lifted the black box above her head. She threw it through the rift. The box turned slowly in mid-air as it arced toward the portal. Then, at the displacement field’s edge, Pandora’s box was distorted. It looked pinched for an immeasurable moment. Leaving the field, it sped up and disappeared in a flash of light.

The ring of fire died as Merlin closed the interdimensional gate, but the white light remained. We could still see the bridge to the next dimension as if looking through thick glass. Past the bridge, a phalanx of red demons stood ready to invade.

Six demons advanced along the bridge and, halfway across, they bent in unison to lift Pandora’s box. Reverent as pallbearers, the battle demons brought our hostage back to their side of the rift. We watched, fascinated, as they bent to release the lid’s many locks.

“Merlin,” Victor said. “Close it off completely. Magicals! Seal the portal with your many blessings, please.”

As the white window began to close and the Magicals chanted their prayers and blessings to lock Merlin’s portal, a blinding flash lit our dark chamber. At least one army, and maybe my father, was vaporized in the heat of the nuclear blast. The bravest young woman I’ve ever known: Angela Brown of Wilmington, Vermont, detonated the device.

That was half my heritage over there but the only sense of loss I felt was reserved for my friend. When the Choir Invisible sings of her sacrifice, her name is now Wilmington, Demon Army Slayer.

Samantha pushed Victor away and ran, splashing her way to me. “Tamara!” she said. “Your father gave me a gift to defend myself. I want to give it to you!”

 
Sam slipped a dagger from her right sleeve and stabbed at my throat. Without my demon genes, I’m sure I’d be dead. There was no hesitancy in her thrust, but she was only human. I can’t slow time like the vegans can, but I can move faster, perceive faster and twist a wrist faster than any middle-aged funeral director.

I drove Sam to her knees and wrenched the weapon from her hand. Samantha Biggs, the second friend I made in New York, collapsed at my feet and wept as the Magicals chanted and prayed, their cadence unbroken, undistracted from their task to seal the rift.

“You killed my son!” Sam wailed. “You
murdered
my
son!
”

“I’ve killed a bunch of demons mostly,” I said. “
Who are you talking about?
”

“Patrick,” Victor said. “She means Patrick.”

“
Trick
was your son? Hold up,” I said. “I’m going to need an abacus and a scorecard.”

The old man sat on the ground beside Samantha and held her as she wept. “You knew him as Patrick Aonghus of Dungarvan. Your half-brother, Samantha’s child. Do you understand?”

In point of fact, Mama shot Trick first, but that was splitting hairs. I stared at Sam. “You? You and Peter Smythe?” Trick’s curly hair was as blonde as Sam’s. Looking at her now, I could even see the family resemblance.

“Before Sam and I got together,” Victor said, “she and Peter had a child. To keep him safe from your father’s influence, I sent Patrick away to Ireland. That was ultimately why we broke up. Sam went on to have two fully human children who have nothing to do with the Choir with a man who does not even believe in demons.”

“You took Patrick’s power,” Samantha moaned. “You took his legacy.”

Victor shook his head. “When Patrick came of age he returned to us. There was no sending him away again, much as I wanted to. We can dodge fate only so long. I’d hoped that when his demon half was brought out, he could be like you, Iowa.”

“I should never have let you send my baby away, Victor.”

The old man patted her shoulder. “I was trying to do the best thing for him. For everyone. If things had gone a different way…Peter found him, I suppose, and filled his head with promises of glory.”

“He might have had that glory, but you kept him from that,” Samantha said. “If not for you, Patrick would be standing there instead of this girl. Patrick was my
baby
.”

“Forgive me, Samantha. If I had taken him under my wing…” Victor trailed off, choked with emotion. When he could speak again, he said, “All those years ago, we should have stayed together. I shouldn’t have sent your boy away. I was blinded by jealousy. I thought of the baby as Peter’s boy. I should have thought of him as yours.”

Samantha circled her arms around Victor’s neck and cried into his shoulder.

The Choir’s conductor rubbed Sam’s back gently. “I should have made him
my
son. He should have become Patrick Fuentes.”

Some steel came into Sam’s voice when she said, “But you didn’t.”

There are many rules which are mutable. Thou shalt not kill is generally true except where war and self-defense is involved. Thou shalt not steal other people’s stuff, but what if your child is starving and a cherry pie is sitting on a window ledge to cool? You’d be crazy not to steal that to save your kid, right?

The truth is, Truth may not exist. Maybe it’s subjective and relative and different across dimensions. However, there are two eternal truths I know. First, old men do not have a young demon’s reflexes. Second, nobody expects the hostage to be packing a second dagger up her other sleeve.

One minute Victor was choked with emotion. The next, with blood. And that blood was black.

Remember Lesson 189? “All truth comes out eventually.” Victor said that.

As he breathed his last, he sank to the ground and Samantha went to the ground with him, almost gently.

Merlin bent to lift the glamor spell from the old man’s face. When the wizard stood, Samantha did not hold Victor Fuentes. She held a green demon, dead in an elegant three-piece suit.

Every Magical stopped chanting and praying. They stared. Manny and I stood transfixed. Merlin looked at me and smiled, proud of his greatest and longest running magic trick.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Choir Invisible!” Merlin announced. “I give you the truth of your fearless leader: Victor Fuentes, was born Rei Negal. He was a rebel to the demon king Ba’al. He was a lover of all things human, or as the Ra might put it, an enemy sympathizer. A traitor. Mostly, he was the consummate liar and the greatest humanitarian on our tiny planet. The man was a fool. Had he stayed in his own dimension, he might have ruled Hell instead of being a servant in Heaven. We are forever in his debt.”

Lesson 194: just when you think you’ve got a handle on Weird, things get weirder. Every day in every life, there are millions of things we do not see: light outside our spectrum of perception, the way a bee smells the world, how trees of a forest communicate with each other through their root systems. We miss a lot is my point.

I sure didn’t see that coming.

34

S
amantha wept more as Victor bled out. I forgot his demon name as soon as I heard it. That seemed right. He’d been among us as a human much longer than he’d been a demon. Or, at least, I supposed so.

I wondered how much of what he’d told me could have been true. How old was he really? He’d once told me a story about how he’d seen his first ghost as a boy. Was that a lie, or part of the glamor spell? Maybe he’d simply omitted that he was adopted by humans.

Whatever he’d once been, it didn’t matter anymore. Victor died as the conductor of the Choir Invisible. We didn’t love him all the time but I don’t suppose he would have been doing his job right otherwise.

Two Shaolin monks from the cleaner crew stepped to either side of Samantha and gently extricated her from under Victor’s slumped body. They were silent but they were kind. Once she was up and walking, the monks looked to Merlin for guidance.

“In my salad days, we’d lock her up in a tower,” Merlin said. “It’s been a very long time since I was up top. I don’t suppose we have a tower, do we?”

“We have guard towers,” Manny said, “but they aren’t really set up for prisoners.”

 
“Samantha Biggs can take my place, then. The Lady of the Lake can guard her. If the woman is suicidal, she could try to swim for it but I don’t recommend it, as Iowa will attest. Death by drowning is so unpleasant. I suggest we put something heavy on top of the trap door at the top of the ladder and I’ll take the elevator key on my way up. Samantha Biggs, I sentence you to imprisonment in this dungeon.”

“When can I go home to my children?” Sam asked.

“I’ll let you know,” Merlin said. “As for me, I’m really looking forward to watching the sun rise and set. And I shall walk among people. I’ve been seeing this thing called the Mall of America on television. It looks intriguing. I’ll leave the woman my Netflix and HBO subscription. Am I not merciful?”

Merlin looked my way and tilted his head ever so slightly. “I haven’t forgotten you, demon girl. I thank you for your service, as well.”

“Great.”

“You’re a bit of a hothead but you have done well, though you don’t know it. What you fail to understand is, everything you want has a cost.
Quid pro quo.
Bills must be paid and nothing is free.”

“Wil didn’t have to die. We could have figured something out. A timer or something. You’ve lived so long and Wil lived so short. That’s on you.”

“We all serve the same cause,” Merlin said, “but everyone pays and everyone sacrifices in their own way to achieve what they will. Samantha Biggs lost her son and her way. Victor lost his life. They paid for their mistakes.”

“It didn’t have to be this way.”

“Yours is the cry of a child who doesn’t want to accept what is. You love your lessons. Have you not learned the simplest, most trite lesson? Life is not fair.”

“But we’re supposed to try to make it that way.”

Merlin sighed. “You made your father pay a little debt today. He had a child with your mother and Samantha Biggs and your half-brother was sacrificed.”

“Killed in self-defense.”

“And your father killed your boyfriend. You seem to have no issue with claiming that debt but does your attack bring your boyfriend back?”

“No.”

“You believe in
quid pro quo
when it suits you. Your father lost a chunk of his arm today, though I take it that is not all he owes you. A deposit, until next you meet, I think. Your father was good with a sword, you know. It will be quite a duel when you see him again. It won’t be easy for you. He was unarmed this time.”

“Then I’m glad I disarmed him a little,” I said. “You know, Merlin, for a guy who was given a place to hide while Victor paid your bills, I would have thought you’d be more in favor of generosity.”

“I delivered a victory to the Choir today,” he said. “My debt to Victor is paid. As for generosity, that’s a fairly new concept in the world. For a very long time, people understood that if you don’t pay, you don’t value what you receive. Be a demon
woman
and grow up.”

No lesson here, Dear Reader. I refuse to accept this one. Not from him. Not now. Not ever. I still believe a gift can be given freely. We can do the right thing. We don’t have to be selfish. If Earth is worth saving, there has to be room for charity in it.

“Growing up is overrated,” I said.

Merlin smiled. “You say that, but you’ll change your mind. For instance, I’ll pay my bill now. I owe you something and you’ve earned your reward. Step forward. I’ll make your horns invisible for you, just as I did for Victor. You’ll be able to go anywhere and no one will know what you really are.
Quid pro quo.
”

“I know what I am, Merlin. And I know what you are.”

He gestured at his wand theatrically. “It’s just a flick of the wrist and a few words for a glamor that lasts as long as you do.”

I stepped back. “No thanks. I’ll keep the horns. And you can still owe me.”