The Demon Beside Me (34 page)

“She didn’t have any cover,” Tink said. “There’s no way she could have survived that blast.”

The first indication we had that Hikari had in fact survived that blast was when she blew all of Tink’s clothes off. The spell came out of nowhere and threw Tink into the air, her clothes shredding away from her body. “Vengeance is mine, and I am its instrument,” snarled a voice too harsh to have ever come from my ex-girlfriend. Tink struck the ground, naked and vulnerable, her eyes blank. I turned in the direction where the blast came from, saw Hikari standing unsteadily, her fingers bloody and stretched toward me. “I’ll end her now, end all of this.”

I sparked hellfire between my claws, forming a ball large enough to burn through a human, then doubled it. “Don’t try it, Hikari. We’ll call this a draw.”

“She’s the root of all evil,” she spat. Blood trickled from one corner of her mouth. I didn’t know what magic she had used to protect herself from that blast, but it hadn’t been completely successful. “I swear to you, I curse the day you ever met her, and I curse the day I was ever sent to be with you.”

“Sent to be with me?”

She snorted and wiped away the trickle of blood. “Don’t read too much into it. Into anything. Let me finish this and we’ll end everything here.”

“You were sent to be with me? Who sent you?” My hold on the hellfire trembled, letting it flicker in my palm.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered, sweetheart.”

“Who sent you?” I flung the hellfire at her, the spark flashing over her shoulder, bursting against a tree in the distance, one of the few lucky enough to stay standing. I lit another spark, my voice dropping into a demonic growl, my human side slowly losing ground as my suspicions and anger grew. My ichor was burning inside me.

Hikari straightened up, pulling Victor’s jacket closed around her. “I was sent by the Eternal Conclave to contract with you. I was to determine whether a contract with a demon was something stable, something we could use for the future.”

“And you decided that the best way to go about it was to betray me and take up with him?” I took a step toward her and hellfire lit all around me. Sand and dirt flashed to glass under my foot.

She laughed, even as I took another step. “No, Isaiah. I decided the best way to go about it was to fuck you.”

All semblance of rationality left me. I flung hellfire in waves ahead of me as I charged, my wings extended, claws and fangs exposed, my demonic nature fully focused on tearing her into pieces. She didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. I couldn’t understand why, not even when I saw the rune she was drawing in the air between us. The human part of me that could understand what she was doing wasn’t in charge.

I reached her and immediately collapsed. Her magic snapped shut around me with an air of finality. Hellfire swirled around me, but never even touched her. “Did you really think you’d be able to touch me?” she asked. “I helped rebuild that body of yours. I know what drives you, Isaiah. I know where you get your power. I know how to turn it on, and I know how to turn it off.”

A sweep of her hand and my transformation reversed itself. I gasped for air as my ichor suddenly stopped flowing. She looked down at me, no pity in her eyes. “What are you doing?” I asked, barely even able to breathe with her magic crushing me.

“To be one with someone is to know them,” she said. “If you were a mage, you’d know better than to share your affections so easily.”

“You bitch.”

Her eyes closed and she smiled. “If you had listened to me, none of this would have happened. That one over there, she’s the corruptive influence of the two of you. All of your friends attempted to pull us apart. If we had remained together, you’d be happy. Don’t you understand that?”

“I understand something,” I said, settling on my knees and concentrating on forcing my demonic nature under control. “A couple of things, actually. First, you don’t know me half as well as you think you do. Second, you’re wrong, to the point where I think you’ve lost all grasp on reality. How could I be happy with someone who was trying to control me?”

“You were happy, once,” she said.

“I was,” I said. “And then I lied.”

Her lips twisted into a snarl, her expression the ugliest I’d ever seen on her delicate face. She splayed her hands apart in a tearing motion, but I was faster. Once my ichor had stilled, I jumped forward and aimed my merely human fist at the corner of her jaw. The spell slipped off as she sprawled to the ground. She rolled away and came back up to her feet as I tried to kick her. Another spell rolled from her fingers and I felt it strike home in the back of my mind where my inner demon lived.

It made sense. She knew how dangerous I was in my demonic form, so she was focusing on keeping me from using those powers. She didn’t account for how dangerous a mere human could actually be. Before she could realize her mistake, I drove my fist into her stomach, with only a small twinge of conscience. She gasped and crumpled and I stooped down to grab her wrists, collecting them both in one hand, hoisting her up before she could recover. “You don’t understand humans or demons,” I said as she gaped at me. “And you certainly never did understand me, the halfblood. If you did, we would have been happy. Don’t you understand that?”

Her face twisted again as I threw her own words back at her. “Damn you,” she spat. “You don’t know what happiness is!”

“Maybe I don’t, but I do understand what mercy is,” I said, lifting my free hand and allowing a tight stream of ichor to transform my fingertips into claws. “And I understand what a mistake it is to show mercy to those who show none in return.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re going to kill me.”

I nodded.

She closed her eyes. I had looked into those dark eyes so many times. “If you ever loved me, make it quick.”

“He will do no such thing.” I looked over my shoulder. Victor stood in the sunlight, his one hand holding a scimitar, the blade touching Tink’s throat. “Go on, demon. We’ll trade one mage’s life for the other’s. Then, you and I can have it out. I’ll make sure you stay awake this time.”

“Demon,” Tink shouted, then cried out as his sword pressed down.

“Stop it!”

“You know what to do, then.”

I turned back to see Hikari’s eyes still closed, still waiting. I snarled the most vile curse I could think of in demonic, then threw her roughly to the side. She hit the ground and curled up. I resisted the urge to kick her, then turned to Victor and spread my arms wide, reversing the transformation of my clawed hand. “I surrender.”

For a moment, I thought that he’d stab her regardless. Instead, he pulled the blade away and snapped his fingers. “Bind them. Take them.”

Hands grabbed me from behind. Other angels had appeared from nowhere, observing from a safe distance until this moment. A pair of angels grabbed Tink, one of them wrapping his uniform jacket around her shoulders, just as Victor had done for Hikari. They were gentle with her, but not with me. All it took was one false step and they had me on the ground, bound even more tightly, blindfolded, gagged, and completely helpless.

It only took two days for me to realize that proximity to Tink warped time. I knew that barely forty-eight hours had passed since Victor took us prisoner, but it felt like weeks. She was angry all the time. It wasn’t specifically directed at me, but her entire emotional spectrum while locked away ran from white hot rage to ice cold fury. It would have been amusing if I had been on the other side of the bars.

Our cell was prepared specifically for the two of us. I found that somewhat flattering. There were no furnishings aside from a hole in the floor for the essentials. The edges of that hole were polished and smooth so we couldn’t cut ourselves on it. The walls and floor were padded. In theory, we could have tried a friction burn against the padding until we bled, but that would take time and attract attention.

Out of our reach, at each corner of the ceiling, there were runes designed to limit the use of magic in the area, as well as runes specifically created to limit my use and regeneration of ichor. Obviously, Hikari had been contracting out for quite some time. If that wasn’t enough, one face of the cell was barred and two angels were always on guard. There hadn’t been any formal warning, but I was sure that if we attempted anything, they’d have more than enough time to rush into the cell and beat the shit out of us.

I spent most of my time making what limited use of my ichor I could to heal the worst of my injuries. The shoulder that had been dislocated was still painful, and the beating I had received just before being thrown in the cell had left me with a fractured rib or two. On her end, Tink’s left arm was either fractured or sprained, and she couldn’t use her magic to heal it. I used the ragged remnants of my shirt as a sling for her.

Our guards switched up on a four hour cycle. I counted four different pairs of angels before the cycle repeated. All of them were more than happy to greet us as they came on duty. They’d tell us about what had happened out in the world in the past four hours. Their favorite topics tended to include how many demons had been slaughtered, the Choir’s newest military victory, and any notable personages being killed or taken captive.

I could deal with it. So could Tink. We dealt with it, up through the start of our third day in captivity. That was when they started telling us about Caleb and how they had broken every bone in his left arm that morning. I stood up, swayed slightly, and approached the bars. “I’m sorry, I must have misheard that.”

“He should be honored,” the first guard said. I dubbed him Guard A in my mind. “One of the Cherubim did it personally.”

“I bet it was Bartholomew,” I said.

“It was,” said Guard B. “I’m surprised that a damned dirty demon would know of him, though.”

I grabbed the bars and leaned on them. “I’ve met Barty. Probably better than either of you have done. He was a bit of a dick.”

“Demon, you’re not going to succeed at pissing us off,” Guard A said. “You should be aware, though, that we are authorized to break you if you do annoy us. We’ve been given broad discretion as to which parts.”

“He’s good at that,” Tink mumbled. I glanced back at her. She was leaning forward against her knees, head bowed. The angels hadn’t bothered to feed us. I was able to deal with it, but she was starting to suffer after drawing all that blood during our fight with Hikari and Victor.

“So let me get this straight,” I said. “You guys beat the shit out of your captives and you’re proud of it?”

“Well, Caleb’s sort of a traitor,” Guard A said.

“And the Cherubim are authorized to maintain order and morale,” Guard B added.

“I see,” I said. “So torture is a morale building exercise.”

They sighed simultaneously. If I hadn’t been behind bars, I would have found it funny. Angelic groupthink wasn’t just a theory of mine anymore. “Don’t tell me that you demons don’t deal with traitors harshly,” Guard A said. “We have it on good authority that you eat the flesh of those who betray your forsaken Host.”

“Well, we actually tend to hold trials before declaring people to be traitors,” I said. “I’ve been on the receiving end of a trial like that. We don’t torture our people just because we disagree with them, and we certainly don’t eat each other. I know this is like speaking a foreign language to you two. Still with me so far?”

“Don’t push it, demon.”

I let go of the bars and took a careful step back. “Just think of it this way. If you guys ever disagree with one of your superiors, maybe you’ll end up getting your arm broken by Barty. I don’t think you’d be considering it such an honor at that point, though you might surprise me. I’ve always thought there’s a strong streak of submissive masochism in the Choir. It’s probably bred into your bloodlines by now.”

The two angels exchanged glances, then stared at me. “No wonder you demons are losing the war so badly,” Guard B said. “You have no concept of a chain of command and the importance of following orders.”

I rolled my eyes. “And you angels simply follow orders, no matter how wrong they are. That’s never been a defense.”

“Look, demon, no matter what we do to you, it’s simply pre-emptive self-defense, because we know that in the end you’d do worse to us if we gave you the chance.” Guard A delivered that line with a level of sincerity I had only seen from television evangelists.

I stepped back up to the bars and cleared my throat. “Hold on. Wait just a minute. You say that all of this is justified just because you think we might do worse to you?”

“The Seraphim have always warned us about the treachery and deviousness of demons,” Guard A replied, Guard B nodding as if it was a catechism they had memorized in their distant youth. “You demons want to wipe us out so that you can enslave the humans. Aren’t you glad we’re looking out for you, human girl?”

“You angels are some fucked up creatures.” Her hands grabbed the bars next to me. I hadn’t even heard her stand up. “We don’t want you trying to defend or guide us. We can take care of ourselves as long as you assholes don’t interfere. You know what? After seeing what you’re willing to do to the demons, I don’t want you anywhere near humanity. You’re evil, just as bad as what you make the demons out to be, but at least they have individual personalities and can decide for themselves what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“Corrupted,” Guard B said.

“Thoroughly,” Guard A agreed.

“Anything that disagrees with your carefully constructed worldview is corrupted, isn’t it?” Tink snorted and stuck her hand out between the bars, snapped her fingers, and gave them a one-fingered salute. “You’re pathetic, you goddamned mindless robots. Caleb has more guts than the rest of your race combined. Has it ever crossed your tiny little minds that he might be right? Can you think at all for yourself, or do you just parrot everything your superiors tell you to?”

“Should we hurt her?” Guard A asked, glancing over at his partner.

“A little, I think,” Guard B replied.