by Elena Lawson
It’s a betrayal, knowing now that it likely never wanted to comfort me at all, it wanted me to claim it.
So that it could claim me.
The car comes to a jarring stop, and I have to throw my hands forward to keep from flinging into the dashboard. “What are you—”
“You cannot kill it.” He seethes. “If the demon dies, so will you.”
I search for any trace of jest in his tone but there is none. His hands wring the steering wheel.
I bite my lip. “And what if I die? What happens to it?”
He doesn’t reply to that straight away, just puts the car back into gear and continues down the dark road. “I’m going to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
“If you just told me about the demon then this wouldn’t have happened.”
It’s cruel and it’s too-little-too-late to point out, but I can’t stop myself from saying the words. It’s the truth.
“You think I don’t know that?” he asks in a dead monotone. “If the last of the time-turning demons wasn’t lost to the Otherworld, I’d have already summoned one to fix this.”
I have no idea what he’s rambling about, but I don’t care. I just hope he knows now that keeping things from me is not a good idea.
He doesn’t need a name, that’s what Kincaid told me. Not, by the way, Na’vazēm, if you name the demon, your soul will be bound to it for eternity, and it will eat tiny pieces of it until you die.
If I’d fucking known that, I wouldn’t have made friends with it. Ugh.
“We’re nearly there, I need you to—”
“Yeah, yeah.” I wave him off. “Don’t leave your side, I know the drill.”
I swear I can hear his teeth grinding.
“What are we even doing there?”
“Speaking to the only Necromancer I know in Elisium. His Diablim bloodline is weak, making him entirely useless in this situation—”
“Then why are we speaking to him?” I interrupt, throwing my hands in the air before crossing them back against my chest, tighter than they were before—to hold in my ever-growing rage.
“If you’d let me finish, then you would know,” he snarls at me. “Do not roll your eyes at me.”
“Or what?”
He takes a long, shuddering breath before the black taint on his hands recedes, though his horns—they remain. I never noticed how iridescent they are. The black shot through with bits of indigo and silver in the faint moonlight.
“We are going to speak to him because he is the only Diablim in Elisium who knows the whereabouts of Lady Devereaux.”
I wonder if he can feel the daggers I’m trying to shoot at him with my eyes. As if I should just know who that is or why we need to find her.
“Are you going to tell me who that is or should I take a wild guess?”
He raises a brow at my sarcasm, and something flips in my belly. He’s…amused. It suits him.
Kincaid reaches over me and rolls up my window as lights flash and blaze in the distance. The curve of a Ferris wheel lifts above the tops of trees to our right, and through the branches I can see the brightly colored fabric of tents and the movement of bodies.
He might have shut the window, but I can smell it from here. A salty sweetness with an undercurrent of something rotten. I can hear it, too. Shouts of glee. Of anguish. A riot of chatter all mushing together into one vibrant hum rising and falling with the drumming beat of music.
“Lady Devereaux is a Necromancer. The most powerful one who’s ever lived. And she owes me a debt.”
“Why doesn’t anyone else know where she is?”
“She’s retired.”
My face screws up into a scowl trying to picture a retired Diablim. What would that even look like? Was she just out there somewhere reading books and knitting scarves, chatting with the spirits in her head for company?
The reality of what sort of life lies before me hits me like a wet slap across the face.
“Na’vazēm, what is it?”
“Hmm?”
The multicolored lights wrapping an archway paint his face in shades of red and blue, glinting off his horns as we pass beneath.
A crush of Diablim disperse as Kincaid parks in the middle of the throughway and steps out of the driver’s side. He’s around the car and opening my door before I can even reach for the handle. I want to ask him if he really intends to just leave his car right there in the middle of the entrance, but then I remember who it is I’m speaking to.
The Diablim gasp and whisper, giving Kincaid and me a wide berth as he loops his arm through mine and tugs me along. A female Diablim pulls the arm of her child when he tries to peer into the driver’s side window of the car, giving him hell for getting so close.
“I’m not sure I should have brought you here,” Kincaid whispers in a voice so low I’m fairly sure no one around us would hear him. I don’t reply, but I’m inclined to agree.
By the way the Diablim here are watching not just their lord, but me, I can tell they know exactly who I am. Word has traveled fast. I could understand why Kincaid would be regretting his very final decision about not letting me out of his sight.
The souls of the Diablim around me vary in brightness, I notice. Some shining dully, flickering like small flames on short wicks. Others pulse with a steadier glow. And others still hold almost no glow at all.
I know now what it means. The ones with the brighter souls are less Diablim and more mortal. And the ones with almost no light within have much stronger demonic bloodlines. They are the ones to steer clear of. The most dangerous of them.
Here and there, interspersed throughout, there are Nephilim, too. A gargoyle, I think as I take in the ashen skin of a middle-aged man with violet eyes. Another with a sweep of auburn hair and an aura like starlight watches me with a keen interest that makes my stomach clench and the blood leech from my fingertips.
“Fresh meat!” A thick voice calls, and I turn, nearly run over by a Diablim man carrying a tray of sizzling tubes of meat, but Kincaid jerks me roughly out of the way and flips the tray of meat into the face of its carrier. He screeches as the meat scalds his rotund face and neck, but falls to his knees and goes silent immediately upon seeing who he’s accosted.
“Forgive me, my lord,” he cries in a high pitch. “Please. I have children.”
I’m honestly not sure I trust that Kincaid won’t kill the Diablim man on his knees simply for almost bumping into me. I thread my fingers through his and give a little pull. “Let’s go find that Necro.”
He lingers for a second, undiluted rage simmering beneath the surface of his stare before he allows me to guide him forward again, and the Diablim man on the ground dissolves into whimpering sobs at our backs.
I try to ignore the stares and whispers as we pass, part of me wishing I’d worn something a little more—well, a little more than the low cut, cropped top and torn jeans that barely fit my waist. They hang down so low they show the bevel and dip of my hip bones.
Beside Kincaid in his debonair jacket, crisp linen shirt, and regal bearing, I probably look like a street urchin. Or something much worse.
Instead of focusing on them, I try to look instead at the wares in the tents. They’re easily distracting. Little packages of what looks like miniature wings. Lightly glowing bottles, the liquid contained within bubbling without having been touched. Crystals of all shapes, colors, and sizes. Runic carvings and roasted street rats.
The noises ahead begin to overtake the hushed chatter and music floating over the market. Screams of delight and pain, snarls and a bark, the sounds I’d heard from the car. As we break through the last of the tents, my eyes widen to an open space.
Carnival rides tip and spin, carrying passengers whose eyes gleam with exhilaration and the shine of intoxication. A large Diablim man with a burned face thumbs through a wad of bills, passing out the winnings of a bet.
Dug into the ground are pits all around, ringed in iron railings. Jeering, shouting Diablim crush against th
e iron bars, concealing what lies within. I wander toward one, catching a glimpse of orange glow and the flick of a black tail before Kincaid jerks me back.
“Do not wander,” he warns, scanning the Diablim mob in search of the Necromancer boy.
“What are they doing?” I ask, unable to help myself.
He blinks at me as though he’s only just realizing what I’ve said, too distracted with keeping an eye on everything and everyone around us.
“The fighting pits,” he tells me. “Hellhounds there.” He points at the one where I saw the flick of a tail. “Diablim there.” He points to another where a bloodcurdling scream rises from within, and the ground around the ring cheers.
“Come, the boy will be this way.”
I let him take me away from the awful sounds and the faint smell of beer and piss, through the carnival rides seeming to operate without the need for electricity, and to a smaller channel of performers.
A Nephilim girl clasps the hand of an older man sitting opposite a table, she recants to him a story that I think is one of his own memories. How odd. Perhaps he has a faulty memory? She’s a diviner then. I remember the one who the officer back in St. Louis proper sent in to glean information from me and shudder.
That diviner was the reason I wound up here in the first place.
Another diviner occupies the tent next to that one and I go still, taking in the people—two girls and a boy sitting around the table. Their auras aren’t the starlit brightness of Nephilim, nor are they the flickering glow of a Diablim’s.
“Are they human?”
Kincaid considers the people at the table, giggling at whatever the handsome diviner boy is telling them. “Yes. They come across the barrier to the west. It’s only a few miles from here. Mortals keep fresh cashflow coming into Elisium. They come at their own peril, but the Diablim know their value. They’ll likely not be harmed so long as they’re spending.”
“What idiots.”
“Were you not curious about the devil’s playground across the water, Na’vazēm?”
I want to tell him I would never have been stupid enough to tempt fate by coming here, but I’m not sure that’s true. I sat outside Ford’s bedroom door with a hand clamped over my mouth to silence my breaths just to hear Lacey Lewis from the evening news tell me more about Elisium and the creatures that lived here.
I’d always been fascinated by it. By them.
“That’s what I thought,” he says with a smug smirk, his hand squeezing mine. “Here we are. It’s just up ahead.”
A small crowd of maybe nine or ten people create a jagged barrier to the tent Kincaid pulls me toward, and I stand on tiptoe to see over their heads. The smell reaches me first, and I gag, trying to pull back from the tent. But Kincaid has already cleared his throat, and the grouping of six humans and a couple of Diablim part, casting curious stares at my demon lord.
With the curtain of their bodies drawn back, there’s nothing to block the view within. He’s certainly a showman, this Necromancer. With his green-hued lighting and the smoke machine carefully tucked away in one corner of the tent, spewing wispy curls of gray smog over the procession of dead things.
His reflective eyes dance as he grins down at his abominations. A squirrel with dull black eyes and part of its torso missing, revealing a delicate set of ribs pressed so close together they look like the teeth of a comb.
A cat, standing on its hind legs, with oozing wounds across its belly and throat. It’s missing both its eyes, but that doesn’t stop it from walking about, doing a strange little jig at the behest of its puppet master.
The mortals cringe and squeal, both disgusted and delighted at once as they drop bills and coins into an upturned top hat on a chair.
“More!” one calls. “Do something bigger!”
“Yeah, like a bear!” another adds, clasping her pale hands together with a wild grin. Her aura has an odd, muted quality and with one look at her eyes, the pupils almost entirely taking over the irises, I know she’s heavily intoxicated. I hope she’s on human drugs. I can’t even imagine the sorts they would have here for their own kind.
“You want bigger?” The Necromancer calls, lifting his arms and showing off the holes in the armpits of his tattered suit jacket. He’s young. Or at least, I think he is. Though his eyes are youthful, his face has a weathered quality to it that could be the product of age or circumstance, it’s anyone’s guess.
“The show is over,” Kincaid says, leveling a hard stare on the guy who is only now noticing the presence of his lord. The color drains from his face and his arms fall. The dead things on the ground at his feet fall too, twitching and sniffling until they go still.
8
I close my eyes against the assault of a thousand memories. A thousand times I’ve seen the same thing and had no idea it was my own doing. I thought Ford was torturing me, trying to frighten me. When in fact he was testing the scope of my power and trying to condition me against it.
I don’t find this amusing. Not in the slightest.
My hands ball, and I shoulder one of the loud-mouthed humans out of my way to take my place next to Kincaid. “Get out of here,” I growl at them, hardly recognizing my own voice. “Leave this place and don’t come back.”
The intoxicated girl lifts her hands, and fear rounds her eyes as she stumbles back from me. “Wh-what is she?” she cries, and I wonder what it is she sees that frightens her. I don’t get to ask though as she takes off like a shot and her fear spurs the others to leave. Must be the drugs.
I watch as the few Diablim who’d been around them compare their spoils and realize that they’d only been there to pick the idiots’ pockets, not to enjoy the show.
Kincaid steps over the dead things and into the tent, drawing the front flap shut behind us.
“To what do I owe this pleasure, Master Kincaid?” the guy asks, his throat bobbing as he picks at the lint on his jacket. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had the pleasure befo—”
“Where is Lady Devereaux?”
“I don’t know.”
Kincaid’s tail flicks out, brushing against my calf as his demon form takes over. In the green lighting, with smoke coiling around his ankles, I have to admit, it’s almost comical. Strange, but it doesn’t frighten me, not when the rage of his beast form is directed squarely at someone else.
“She’ll kill me,” the Necromancer amends. “Please. I can’t—”
“You will.”
Seemingly for the first time, the necromancer notices me beside Kincaid, and his lips part. He stares without trying to conceal his curiosity.
A sliver of unease pinching in my gut, I wonder what he sees.
The Necromancer gestures vaguely at me. “You aren’t what I imagined.”
Lady Devereaux seemingly forgotten for the moment, Kincaid steps protectively forward, putting himself slightly in front of me. “What did you imagine?” Kincaid demands.
“Word is that she’s a Necro, but obviously that’s bullshit.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, and the Necro guy can tell, perhaps from the question or the tick in Kincaid’s jaw, that he’s made some sort of mistake because he backtracks, shaking his head.
“I just mean that her soul isn’t, um, as dark as it should be, I guess.”
Kincaid already had a similar suspicion, given that the demon hiding in the body of Casper jumped at the chance to bond itself to me.
He and I share a look before he turns back to the Necro with a renewed fury ignited by his frustration. He grips the guy by the front of his shirt, lifting him two feet from the ground with ease. “I won’t ask again, boy. Where can I find Lady Deveraux? According to my contacts you are the only worthless corpse in Elisium who knows.”
The guy recoils as if anticipating a strike and seals his eyes shut. “She’s in Infernum,” he squeals. “Living beyond the edge of the city, but within the boundary. That’s all I know.”
Kincaid growls like an animal, and the guy screeches as if h
e were a child. “A blue house,” he adds. “With a rose garden. East side.”
“If you’re lying—”
“I-I’m not, I swear. She used to drag me over there, you know, in my spirit form. For updates about Elisium.”
“When was the last time she summoned you?”
“I don’t know, maybe a year? More?”
Kincaid frowns, but drops the guy back to the soiled ground. He doesn’t try to rise, he just half lies, half sits there, among his putrid smelling dead things.
“You will not warn her of my coming,” he tells the Necromancer.
“Of course, my lord. I won’t say a word.”
“What do you think he meant?” I ask Kincaid once we’re clear of the quieter entertainment and are looping back through the louder carnival rides. “About my soul not being like a Necromancer’s?”
“I cannot tell you. I have several theories, but none make much sense. I’m confident Lady Devereaux will have the answers.”
“How are we going to get to Infernum?”
“We?”
I’m about to tell him I’d rather not be left alone at the house with a demonic cat thing for protection, but someone catches my eye.
A girl lying in the dirt at the edge of a fighting pit. She can’t be more than eleven. Her aura is bright but waning. I’m not sure how I know, but I do. She’s dying.
Without making the conscious decision to, I find I’m already halfway to her. Kincaid tries to stop me, but I twist out of his grasp. She’s Nephilim, I’m sure of it.
I push through the throng, trying to get to her as Diablim block my view.
“Make them move,” I beseech Kincaid without bothering to check he’s heard me. “She needs help.”
An old Diablim woman with a hooked nose and a sneer reaches her first, gripping her roughly by her shoulder to flip her over. The Nephilim girl’s aura wanes and flickers, grows smaller by the second.