Keeping It Real (12 page)

little teeth. 'They can't be blood related like you mean by the word brother and sister, no. For sure not.'

She rolled her eyes and shook her head at the idea, laughing and snorting. 'No.'

'So he isn't your brother.'

'Yeah he is so, and anyone who says otherwise or treats him like he isn't of our estimable kin incurs my

family's eternal vengeance.' Her tone left no doubt that she meant it quite literally.

'Family of choice?' Lila suggested, not beginning to imagine what choice that
was from Zal's point
of

view.

'Hell no. How could some elf live with demons and what
demon would want to claim relation to one of

them?' Sorcha stared at
her as if Lila had suggested bestiality. 'How could we have kinship? Are you out

of your mind?'

"That's what
I'm asking you,' Lila said patiently. 'I never heard of anyone being . . . adopted . . . across

species
.
Especially not across your two.'

Sorcha grinned and a little steam rolled off her.' Well, I ain't gonna tell you, sister
.
You have to find it

out for your bad self
.
It's not something that
can be told. Only known. See?'

Lila did not see. 'It's a secret, then?'

Sorcha shook her head and narrowly missed igniting the curtains with a dismissive flick of her hand

that
sent
small jets of fire from the tips of her fingers.

Lila nodded and sent
her findings back to Sarasilien. Finally, rather desperately, she asked, 'So, are

you going be . . . are you an elf sister, then?' The demon froze and Lila braced herself, eyes squinting, in

case she was about
to be barbecued.

Sorcha peered at her with blazing eyes. 'Do I LOOK like an elf to you, baby?' Then, relenting, she

shook herself and laughed. 'Me, get
into all that
health food and macrame? You have to be joking. I'd

sooner cut off my left tit' She jerked upwards with one talon of a thumbnail and made a slicing action,

snorted and stamped her foot. A fine tremor ran through the floorboards and the carpet
suddenly gave

off a singed smell. Sorcha hummed a little tune to herself, chuckling, 'What demon would ever want to do

that? In fact, what living being of any soul at all? Hah!'

'So, it's rare,' Lila said.

'Far as I know, sugar, he's the only one,' Sorcha said. 'Only one with any brains at all but that don't

mean he has many.' She sighed
.
'I'm so into him
.
Isn't he great?' After this point Lila was only there to

listen, as Sorcha didn't seem to need responses and had no intention of returning to their subject
.
'I love

Mode-X
.
So dark and bad. So funky. I might do some of it myself
.
Hey what is taking you so long,

Legolas? Is all this stuff going with you?' Sorcha gestured at the room's furnishings.

'None of it's mine,' Zal said, placing some worn-looking clothes into a carryall. 'Except the painting.'

'Oh, Titia gave you that? Hah. Pity she's a faery.' Sorcha paused and confided to Lila, 'Elves put

faeries to sleep in close contact. It's the aura thing, y'know?' Then she continued to Zal, 'And all your girls

here the same, it's like a freakin' nunnery
.
Are you getting rootsy for Alfheim now you've left home?

Going puritan on me?' She kept darting little glances at
Lila as she spoke, full of mischief
.
That was in

between the time she spent opening drawers and sniffing around the room, trailing her perfectly

manicured fingers along the surfaces, restlessly moving
.
Finally, she seemed contented and curled up like

a cat
in the middle of the bed.

Zal ignored her with filial contempt and went into the long, walk-in dressing room, closing the doors

after himself.

Sorcha instantly turned to Lila, rolling over onto her stomach
.
"There's a Game between you two, isn't

there?' Her hair waved around her face in tendrils of living fire that
was only prevented from burning the

house down by careful enchantments.

Lila refused to confirm or deny it. She was trying to retain a professional detachment with which she

could vaguely impress Sorcha, but it was a pointless effort since demons were known for their affinity to

wild magic. They couldn't control it any more than anybody else, but they could sense and read it with

unmatched aplomb.

Sorcha's grin of delight
intensified, 'Oh, my, you have it bad! What is it?'

Lila shrugged, suitably ignorant for a human.

'Ah, you don't know yet. Want me to find out for you?' Sorcha's long, pointed tongue was out, licking

her glossy lips in anticipation
.
'Go on, before he comes back. It might give you an advantage. I'm really

good at these things. Quick, give me something of yours.' She bounced across the bed to Lila and held

her hand out.

Although Lila could think of a hundred reasons why not, she found Sorcha's enthusiasm and personal

charisma impossible to withstand. Worse than an elvish glamour. And her care for Zal was indisputable,

oddly, for demons and elves generally were well known as having no time for one another. So, despite

her misgivings, Lila found herself opening a zipper on her jacket.

Sorcha was dancing with excitement as Lila handed her a flechette round from her pocket. T like you

so
much!' she exclaimed, turning the bullet over in her fingers. 'Personal weapons of grisly death! And

now something of Zal's. Oh!' She leapt
over and touched the round to the painting and hummed a note.

A faint werelight grew between the two objects. As it strengthened into wavelengths even Lila could see

Sorcha gently moved the round away from the picture frame. A fragile skein of near invisible tendrils

stretched out in the air between, and the spider's web of lines briefly moved into letters of the demonic

language before they vanished.

'Aaah!' Sorcha squealed. 'Zal you bad, bad dog!' To Lila she turned around and gathered herself and

came and sat
down, pulling Lila close to her. Her red eyes zipped with glee. 'Girl, didn't your Momma

ever tell you never play with the elves?' Her changes of mood made Lila feel dizzy. Sorcha was now as

concerned and intent as a kind mother

herself. "This is the oldest
Game there is, honey. You know what I mean?'

Lila didn't know how to respond at all. She was out of her depth. She kept
a thoughtful silence
.
This

increased Sorcha's pity, which Lila could have done without.

'Let's see what the Victory condition is.' The succubus slowly turned the round in her hand and sang a

few notes to it. She listened, her blazing eyes closed for a moment. 'Ah. Not too bad,' she gave Lila a

wink. "The loser is the one who cracks first and begs the other one to end the Game. The oldest ones are

the best. Now the Forfeit.'

'Forfeit. Isn't that it, when somebody wins?'

'You really washed in on the last tide,' Sorcha said. "There's always a Forfeit, though most humans

don't know that until it's too late.' She went to the painting. 'I can even tell you who started it. D'you want

to know that too?'

'No,' Lila said. "That's enough already.' She was wondering what the Forfeit
had been on the other

Game, and if it had been avoided. Surely Sarasilien would have told her of it? Was there a compulsion

lying on her now that
she didn't
know about? She couldn't
believe he would cross her like that.

'Honey don't be down.' Sorcha pressed the round gently into Lila's hand. 'People are playing this stuff

all the time, it's no big. What? What's the matter? You're not
thinking of
qui
tt
ing
are you?'

Lila glanced at
the dressing room but
there was no sign of Zal. She decided, on an impulse she might

well regret, to take Sorcha at
face value. She told her about the letters. 'I'm obliged to lose,' she said. 'It's

in the way. So, if all I have to do is . . .'

'No no no no,' Sorcha rapped smartly
.
'You have to
mean
it. That's the condition
.
It has to be genuine

lust that
makes him beg for your favour, lust
over sense with every last
shred of personal pride biting the

dirt. Otherwise it
isn't worth the entry charge, is it? Trust
me. I've played this before a hundred times.

Loser cracks first and then the Forfeit - well, no, t
hen
the rooty, unless you're playing a real bastard, and

t
hen
the Forfeit
.
Forfeit could be anything
.
You have to watch those.'

'Doesn't matter,' Lila said, biting down irritation at the wretched binding rules of the magic and her

ignorance of them. 'Can you lift the Game?'

Sorcha waved her hand dismissively. 'No. Don't look so worried. I

have four or five on all the time. Life's no fun at
all without them. Sometimes I can't
even remember who's

playin' what
on whom. Look though, before you lose, if you
could
lose even, don't you think you're

better off knowing the Forfeit at least? No sense in suffering agony over a tin of kitty food, and no sense

giving in sight-unseen on eternal banishment to Zoomenon or something
.
Here, let me.' And before Lila

could stop her Sorcha stood up and spat onto the polished wooden chest of drawers beneath the

painting
.
She sang a complicated melody and extended one of her fingernails into a claw. With this she

scratched a mark into the saliva
.
It shaped itself and froze into a tiny lens like a magnifying glass
.
Beneath

it the forfeit could be read, as though it was stamped into the wood in clear letters
.
Lila bent close.

'Still wanna lose?' Sorcha asked, clearly surprised.

The spit window frosted, and deliquesced to nothing with a few greyish flickers. The Forfeit it had

shown her was etched in Lila's mind: the loser will live a lifetime never being able to love anybody else.

Curiously, she found the idea almost comforting. She might have to suffer a brief and difficult

short-term period of fixation on Zal, true, but he'd leave as soon as the Game was done, and she was

used to living far away from people she cared about. Very used to it. It wouldn't be so hard to put

another picture in her pocket and, after that, have the security of knowing that she'd be in no emotional

danger ever again.

Sorcha was staring at her. 'You scarin' me now,' she said. 'You can't be serious.'

'Oh come on,' Lila retorted. "The alternative is having your brother love me for the rest
of his life, and

he's going to live for centuries, and then . . . gods know what.'

Sorcha made a warding sign at the mention of gods. 'You listen to me, Metal Molly. I've seen a

hundred girls looking for the right angle or minute or chance with him, and I never liked one of them as

sister material. But there's something about a huqaan girl who's been made over into a death machine

with the fires of hell driving her . . .' She gave Lila a long glance and Lila knew that
Sorcha was talking

about the reactor - something she shouldn't have known anything about at all. It was one of the many

things she would have questioned her on, but Sorcha hadn't paused to let a word in. 'And that makes me

feel for you, makes me like you, and I can think of worse fates that
might
be riding much closer to him

than that, can't you?'

Lila almost
gaped w
i
th aston
i
shment, but managed to turn it into talking
.
'What do you know?'

I know that you're supposed to protect my brother from these maniacs and I want you to do that job

and I think that
this Game is working well for me, honey
.
' Sorcha's delicate, supple body rose up and her

tail co
i
led suddenly. Venom formed into a drop at
i
ts dartl
i
ke tip. She put her face right into Lila's
a
nd Lil

a
smelled fire on her bre
a
th
a
nd felt a sudden, blistering instant of heat. Sorch
a
's vo
i
ce w
a
s the qu
i
et sound of
a
d
i
stant furnace roaring
,
'And I'll tell you th
i
s for noth
i
ng. If you f
ai
l, then I'll hunt you down with every demon this side of T
a
rt
a
rus
a
nd eat your head.'

Lila simply stood there, astonished and slightly singed
.

Sorcha w
a
s already off, sitting down playfully on the bed again. She flicked a slender golden card out

of the narrow belt that was all that
held her bodynet
in place. 'Anyway, ten million dollars for you
if he

loses.' She grinned, reached out
and tucked the card down the front
of Lila's armoured vest. 'I l
i
ke see
i