Light My Fire (34 page)

Do it again! Banish him now! It is your only chance.

Through a miasma of pain and sorrow and abject ter
ror, I saw Jim’s face for a second. It was twisted with sad
ness, pain and regret so deep in its eyes, it made me weep.

It also brought me renewed strength of mind. I was a
professional, dammit! I was not going to go down without a fight! I pulled hard on Drake’s fire, flames erupting around me until I stood in a veritable inferno, one hand reaching for Jim. The demon didn’t have any power as such, but it made me feel better to have my hand on it as
I made a final, last-ditch attempt to save us. “Ariton,
known as Egyn!” I bellowed, channeling the dragon fire straight at the demon lord. It met his dark power, collid
ing into a fireball. The resulting flash of light blinded me,
but I didn’t pause to wait for it to dissipate. “Seventh
prince of Abaddon, leader of the twenty-two legions!”

“You will bother me no longer, Guardian! Begone!”

Little bits of me started to tear off. Not my body—bits of my soul, ripped from me and destroyed with the chant
Ariton took up again.

Do it now!
the voice shrieked in my ear.
Use the power! Banish him!

I lowered my head, pulling on Drake’s fire for all I was
worth, but it wasn’t enough. I could feel the chant work
ing on me, pulling me apart, destroying not just my mind,
but my very being, the essence that made up the core of
my soul.

“No! I will not allow this!” My words ripped from my
throat in a voice I did not recognize. The door in my head,
open wide to allow me access to all the possibilities, suddenly was flooded with a hot, sticky warmth. Black and
thick, it filled me with wrath, fired my rage to unimagin
able heights, burning deep and dark alongside Drake’s
fire. “By this light, I banish thee!”

I lifted my head to look at Ariton, filled with so much
power, it glowed around me in a strange, coppery aura. Jim said something, but I paid the demon no attention. That was solely focused on channeling this newfound power into the will to destroy the demon lord.

Ariton screamed back at me, words that cut into my
flesh like honed blades, but I laughed at the pain. It didn’t
matter; none of it mattered—my whole being, my whole
purpose was to destroy the being in front of me. And de
stroy him I would!

“By my virtue, I banish thee!”

A noise like a tornado ripping apart a house crashed
over me. Ariton was screaming in horror now, his body twisting and whipping around itself as the power flowed
from me, wrapping around his form in tendrils of destruc
tion. “No! This cannot be! This ... cannot...”

“By my being, I do banish thee!” My voice rose high and piercing over Ariton’s screams, painful even for me
to hear. With the final words, I gathered up everything I
had, every ounce of rage, every morsel of terror, every
atom of spirit that dwelt within me, and blasted Ariton
with it. He exploded in a nova of blackness that slammed
Jim and me against the wall.

As I slid to the floor, my body rigid with agony, a
voice spoke with quiet contentment.

Well done, Aisling Grey, prince of Abaddon.

20

No,” I told the voice, pulling myself to my knees. “Tell
me you didn’t say what I think you just said.”

“I said you’re crying blood. Your eyes are different,
too. You ... er... you didn’t happen to channel any dark power, did you?” It was Jim’s voice that answered me,
not the voice that had spoken so urgently into my head.

“What? Dark power?” Oh, god! That was the warm, dark, thick feeling that had filled me a few seconds ago.
Loathing rose within me to swamp all the other emotions
twisting around my gut. I had used dark power! The most
dangerous, most forbidden of all powers! The meat and manna to dark beings. I would be damned forever now!
“No! I didn’t mean to! I don’t know—”

I looked around the room as if someone had written
out the answers in big, easily read letters, but there was nothing. The room looked a bit worse for wear after the
struggle between Ariton and myself, and there was a
nasty black stain with rays that spread out across the floor
where he had been standing, but nothing more.

And there should have been something. Someone
whom I had last seen next to the door.

“Obedama?”

“No, although I used its form for a bit,” the demon answered, but it wasn’t in Obedama’s voice. It was another
voice, a familiar voice, once that made my stomach clench
tight with dread. From the black shadows Ariton’s passing had left on the floor, a figure gathered in the air and
formed into that of a man.

I was still shaken by the events with Ariton—not to
mention sick with the thought of having tainted my
powers—but I was not a coward. “Peter Burke. I should
have known you’d be bound up in this somehow. Who
exactly are you? And why were you pretending to be
Obedama? Why did you have me kill your master?”

Peter laughed. He looked perfectly normal, dressed in
a conservative polo shirt and pants, but his face and eyes
were as expressionless as ever. The feeling of power that
rolled off him was bad. Very bad.

“Ariton was not my master. He was not, in fact, an
overly bright being. I used Obedama’s form to keep tabs on him for years, and he never noticed the difference. In
truth, you did us all a favor by banishing him. I have
every confidence that you will rule much wiser in his
stead.”

“No, no, no,” I said, groaning as I got to my feet. I was
more than a little bit surprised to discover that my towel
was still covering me, smudged and dirty from the demon smoke and chalky with debris from the plaster walls, but
still present. I tucked an end of it a little tighter, automat
ically brushing it off as if it was a dress. “I don’t know
why you’ve been trying to manipulate me to be the
Venediger, but you’re absolutely insane if you think I’m
going to be a full-fledged demon lord. I’m grateful you
showed me the way to destroy Ariton, but I am not now,
nor will I ever be, a prince of Abaddon.”

Peter’s face was completely impassive. “I know it
should be princess, but we’ve never had a reigning female
demon lord. We tend to be very set in our traditions here.”

‘“We?
You mean you’re not just a demon?”

“Do you really believe me to be so insignificant?” He
laughed his peculiar humorless laugh.

“OK, let’s back up a couple of steps.” My head felt like
it was going to explode. Maybe if I went through every
thing one point at a time, I could keep from actually
going insane. “First of all, I’m not reigning anything—
either the Otherworld, or a demon lord’s position in Abad
don. I have one little demon, and it’s not a particularly
bad specimen. In addition, I have no intention of taking
part in any of the politics you guys are so wrapped up in.
And finally”—I took a deep breath, my faint control snapping—
”what the hell did you do to me to make me
use dark power? “

Peter just looked at me with cold, blank eyes. Jim’s
cold nose touched my hand in warning. I looked down at
my demon, puzzled why it didn’t speak. That’s when the
penny dropped. “You’re a demon lord.”

He bowed. It lacked all the panache of the dragon’s
courtly moves. “I have that honor, yes. I’m surprised you did not recognize me, since you’ve summoned me in the
past.”

“I have?” I racked my brain to think of the time I’d
summoned a demon lord. Yet another penny dropped.
“You’re Bael, also known as Beelzebub.”

“I wondered if you would recognize me. I took great
pains to disguise myself to you.”

“But
...
I should have known who you were. I’m a
Guardian. I should have felt something different about
you.. .”

“There are some benefits to being the premier prince
of Abaddon,” he said with a faint scowl. The deathless
look in his eyes made shivers go up my back, into my
hair. “The ability to create glamours that can fool even other princes of Abaddon is one of them.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked, my question
coming out a near wail. “Why would you try to get me
to be Venediger if all you wanted was for me to banish
Ariton?”

“My plans are many, and you have a significant role to
play in them,” Peter answered. (I couldn’t stand to think
of him as Bael, the head demon lord of Abaddon, the one
who was going to be thrown down from power in a few
days.)

I brushed away a few tears of horror. “This is about
power, isn’t it? You’re due to be booted from the big kid’s
chair, and you don’t want to go.”

“Would you?”

I shook my head. “This isn’t about me and what I
want. You want power here”—my skin crawled at the realization of what was behind his manipulations to put me
into the position of Venediger—”and in the Otherworld.
You plan on using me to rule both worlds, don’t you?”

Peter strolled past me and examined a bookshelf
behind Ariton’s desk. “And there are some who say you
are not particularly bright.”

“Was it you who tried to kill me?”

“My dear, if I wanted you dead, you would have been
so before the thought left my mind. That shot was just to bring you to Ariton’s house in case he bungled his plan to
use you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I shook my head. “I won’t do it. I won’t help you here, and I won’t help you in the Other
world. I am one of the good guys. I refuse to be a part of
this.”

“Do you really think you have that choice?” Peter
snarled at me, slamming down a book on the desk. “De
spite what you believe, you
are
now a prince of Hell. You
have toppled Ariton from power. That automatically gives
you his place on the council. Far from one demon, you
now lead twenty-two legions of demons and demon-kind.”

I stared at the demon lord before me, my mind crawl
ing around, unable to shake off the horrible, paralyzing
sense of shame, fear, and loathing that consumed me.
“You tricked me into banishing Ariton.”

“Tricked? Perhaps. I prefer to think of it as enlighten
ment. I showed you a possibility. You acted upon it.” Bael
made a dismissive movement with his hands that brought
fresh tears to my eyes.

“How could I have done it? I’m just a Guardian. I have
one demon. I don’t have the sort of power needed to ban
ish a demon lord!”

“Not on your own, no.” Peter walked around the desk
and shuffled through some of Ariton’s papers. “But quite cleverly, you used Ariton’s power against him.”

“I didn’t know ...” I clutched the nearest chair, sink
ing into it as my legs went boneless. I wanted to weep
until my tears washed away everything in my existence.
“Channeling a demon lord’s power is not anything I’ve
done before. I didn’t know that was what I was doing. I
was just trying to save my life.”

“And you succeeded extremely well. You show great potential, Aisling Grey. I will be happy to have you at my
side as my lieutenant.”

“I will not be
anyone’s
lieutenant.” Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed hard to shove it down. “I don’t want to be a demon lord. I don’t want legions. I don’t want to
be a prince of Abaddon. I hereby officially abdicate the
position.”

Hatred pure and deep flared to life in his dark eyes,
causing me to recoil against the back of the chair. The
hairs on the backs of my arms stood on end. Jim pressed
tight against me, clearly trying to lend support.

It did little good.

“There is no abdication. You are, or you are not.” He
seemed to grow until he filled my vision, my body trem
bling in response to the threat he presented. It swamped
me, drenched me in the absolute conviction that he could, and would, destroy my body and leave my soul in perpet
ual torment. “There is no gray area where Abaddon is
concerned. Do not believe that you can put me off the
way you did Ariton. You will either agree to support me
as I continue to rule Abaddon, or I will destroy you. Right
here. Right now.
Decide!”