A Little Fate

by Nora Roberts

  tunnel.

  “Here. Sorak has been this way.”

  Harper caught no scent in the stale air other than the grease and metal of machines. “Can you tell how long ago?”

  “Some hours past, but fresh enough to track.”

  She moved carefully, knowing the dangers of an underground ruled by a demon. She kept her voice low as they began to hunt. “The Bok sees as well in the dark as in the light. Perhaps better. He will fight more fiercely for his lair than he would even for food.”

  “In other words, that skirmish we had this morning was just a preview of coming attractions.”

  She thought she was beginning to understand his odd expressions, so nodded. “Tonight, it is to the death.”

  She whirled, coat billowing, as she laid a hand on the hilt of her sword. Though he had heard no sound, the beam of Harper’s light picked out a shadow in the dark. He’d nearly drawn his gun when he recognized the uniform.

  “Transit cop.” He said it under his breath to Kadra. “Let me handle this. Hey, Officer. Riley and Tripp from the Post. We’re cleared to do a feature on—”

  He broke off as the figure took one shambling step toward him and his stiletto-like teeth gleamed in the narrow beam of light.

  The teeth parted, row after monstrous row. The hands, tipped with bluing claws, lifted. But the eyes—the eyes were still painfully human.

  “Help me. Please, God, help me.” And with a sound trapped between a sob and a howl, he leaped.

  Kadra’s dagger shot through the air and into his throat with an ugly sound of steel piercing flesh. The blood that trickled out of the wound was a thin reddish green.

  “The change was not complete with this one,” Kadra stated.

  “He was still human.” Furious, Harper dropped to his knees and tried to find a pulse. “Goddamn it, he was still a human being. He was a fucking cop. You killed him without a thought.”

  “He was neither human nor demon, but trapped between, I ended his life to save yours.”

  “Is that all there is?” Harper’s head whipped around, and his gaze burned into hers. “Life or death? He asked for help.”

  “I gave him the only help I could. Do you think it gives me pleasure? With his death, one of my people dies. That is the balance.” She crouched, pulled his dagger free. “That is the price.”

  “We could have gotten him to the hospital. A blood transfusion, something.”

  “That is fantasy!” She shot her dagger home. “He was dead the instant Sorak kissed him.” She gestured toward the body as it began to smoke. “Infected with demon blood. There was nothing to be done for him, in your world or in mine. If Sorak has found one human to change, he has changed others.”

  She glanced toward the dark maw of tunnel. She would rather face it, even if her own death waited inside, than the hot accusation in his eyes. “If you are unable to do what must be done, go back now. I will go on alone.”

  “He asked for help. He was scared. I saw the fear.” Now all Harper could see was a blackened skeleton. “And he never had a chance.” Sickened, Harper got to his feet. “We’ll finish it together.”

  “This is the way. I smell blood, some still fresh.” She walked deeper into the tunnel.

  8

  THEY moved in the dark, guided by the thin beam of Harper’s penlight and Kadra’s instincts. And they moved in silence.

  She had killed a man—and to Harper the charred remains they had left behind in the tunnel were still a man. She had done so with the same cold efficiency she had used to destroy the hideous little two-headed monster in A’Dair.

  In the zoo he’d found her brutal focus fascinating, admirable. Even sexy. But there they had fought beasts—savage and hungry and alien despite their form.

  This had been a man. How could she be so certain that his lunge forward had been an attack instead of a plea?

  “You said it takes time for the transformation,” Harper began.

  “In my world.” She snapped the words out. “I can’t know—no one can know—how the change happens in yours. No demon has ever traveled from my world to yours until now. In A’Dair, the demon carries his victim off, into a lair. For twelve hours the human sleeps, a changing sleep that is like death. Only during this period is there any hope of being saved, and even that hope is small. Once the demon wakes, it is too late. The change is irreversible even if he is not complete. He is demon. And he feeds.”

  “If there’s a different time frame here, maybe there’s a different structure to the change.”

  “He waked. He walked. He would have fed on you if he had not been stopped. The blood was already mixed, Harper. His death was a mercy. What was still human inside knew.”

  She hadn’t known love could be painful. She hadn’t known that when your heart lay open to another it could be so easily wounded. But hers was, and the hurt ran down to the bone: he had looked at her as if she were the monster.

  She didn’t want to speak of it. She wished to push it aside and do only what she had come to do. But the ache in her heart was a distraction.

  “Every human death is a death inside me.” She spoke quietly, without looking at him. “I cannot save them all. I would give my life if that would make it otherwise.”

  “I know that.” But they both heard the doubt in his voice.

  The pain of it sliced through her, made her careless, made her vulnerable to what leaped at her out of the dark.

  It was snarling, teeth snapping. Its claws swiped, scoring her neck as she whirled to block.

  It was old and female. And it was mad. It skittered back, impossibly fast, like a spider, into the shadows. Kadra freed her sword and, going by scent and sound, struck out.

  It cackled. That was the only way to describe the sound it made as it attacked Kadra from behind.

  Harper’s bullet caught it in midair. Blood gushed, that awful hue of mixed red and green, as it thudded to the ground, arms and legs drumming.

  An old woman, Harper thought as he stared into the crazed and dying face. One of the pitiful who so often slipped through society’s fingers and into its bowels.

  She was old enough to be his grandmother.

  “You did not kill her.” Kadra crouched beside him. “You did not end her life, and you must not talk the weight of it. Sorak killed her, and you ended her torment. You slayed the monster. The woman was already dead.”

  “Do you get used to it?”

  She hesitated, nearly lied. But when he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, she gave him the truth. “Yes. You must, or how could you pick up your sword day after day? But there is regret, Harper. There is sorrow for what is lost. The demon has no regret, no sorrow. No joy or passion, no love. I think when thy feed on us, they hope to consume what it is that makes us human. Our heart, our soul. But they cannot. All they can take and transform is the body. The heart and soul live on in another place. And that place is locked to them.”

  “So Sorak’s come here. Maybe he thinks he’ll have better luck eating souls in this dimension.”

  “Perhaps.”

  The woman was all but ashes when Harper looked at Kadra again. “I’m sorry about before. I didn’t want to believe it could happen, that we could be used this way. It was easier to blame you for stopping it than Sorak for starting it.”

  “There will be more.”

  “And we’ll both stop it.” He reached out, touched a fingertip to the claw marks on her neck. “You’re hurt.”

  “Scratches, because I was careless. I won’t be a second time.”

  “Neither will I.” Not with the battle, he thought, and not with her. He took her hand as they got to their feet. “Let’s find this bastard, and welcome him to New York.”

  Harper kept his Glock in one hand, the knife in the other. The tunnel curved, and a dim light glowed at the end of it. He heard the rumble of a train behind them, but ahead there was silence.

  He could see signs of human habitation now. Broken glass, an empty pint bottle t
hat had held cheap whiskey. Food wrappers, an old tennis shoe with the toe ripped out.

  “His lair.” Gesturing with her chin, Kadra slid her sword out of its sheath. “He is not alone.”

  “Well, why don’t we join the party?” He turned the knife in his hand. “We’ve brought our host some nice gifts.”

  She stripped off the coat, flung it aside. “He will not be pleased to see us.”

  The tunnel widened. There was more debris from the life that had chosen to spread underground. Spoiled food, battered boxes that might have served as shelter. A headless doll. And as they drew closer to the light, a splatter of blood against the dingy wall.

  The first three came out in a mad rush, all claws and teeth. Harper fired, sweeping his aim left to right. There was a stench of something not human as one threw the wounded at Harper, then came in like a missile beneath the body. Its teeth fixed in his calf as he sliced upward with the knife.

  The teeth continued to grip his leg like a vice even as the thing began to smoke. He cursed, kicked, and felt both cloth and flesh tear as the demi-demon struck the tunnel wall.

  He spun clear to see that Kadra had already killed the third, and a fourth that had tried to use the cover of their attack for one of his own.

  She wasn’t even winded.

  “That was too easy,” she commented.

  “Yeah.” He limped over, gritting his teeth against the burning pain of the bite. “That was a real breeze.”

  “He toys with us.” Now she pulled out the healing cloth. “He insults us. Bind your wound.”

  He knelt, quickly tied the cloth around his bleeding leg. “And just how is sending four advance men with really nasty teeth an insult?”

  “He knew we would destroy them. Four, not fully changed, are child’s play.”

  “Yeah.” Grimly he tightened the knot on the cloth. “I’m feeling real childlike at the moment.”

  “He wants us in there. Wants to watch the battle. The smell of blood feeds him almost as much as the taste.”

  “Okay.” He tested his weight on the injured leg. It would have to hold. “Let’s go give his majesty a real five-star meal.”

  She drew her dagger, checked the balance of both blades, then nodded. “For your world and for mine. To the death.”

  “Let’s make that Sorak’s death.”

  They charged.

  Kadra caught a blur of movement above, and went into a roll that sent the demon flying over her head. She ran him through with one thrust, pulled her sword out clean before his body hit the ground. Using her hips, she reared up, shot her boots into the next attacker’s face. And was on her feet, hacking and whirling.

  She heard gunshots and, pivoting, saw Harper slay two demi-demons on his left and set to meet another on his right with his blade.

  She spun clear, slicing with her sword, and positioned herself so they fought back-to-back.

  “Sorak is close!” she shouted. “I smell him.”

  “Yeah.” Sweat dripped into Harper’s eyes and was ignored. “So do I.”

  He shot a bony, bald demi-demon who still wore a torn and faded New York Mets T-shirt. As the demon smoked and died at his feet, Harper scanned the tunnel.

  He couldn’t think about who they had been, he told himself, only what they had become.

  “I don’t see any more of them.”

  Still back-to-back, they circled. “Sorak!” Kadra shouted. “Come and meet your fate.”

  As if on cue, light flashed into the tunnel. Through the glare of it, three demons charged.

  “He’s used the portal He’s brought more through.”

  Harper fired, and when the Glock clicked on empty, he used it as a club. His leg screamed as he sprang off it to launch himself into a roundhouse kick. The demon barely staggered, shoving Harper so that his wounded leg buckled. He skidded over the floor, and lost his breath and the gun when the demon landed on him.

  For the second time, he felt the bite of claws. Screaming in rage, he plunged the knife into the demon’s throat, snarled like an animal himself when the thick green spewed onto his hands and face.

  When he crawled out, covered with blood, he saw Kadra fighting both of the remaining demons.

  Her blades flashed like lightning. She blocked the sickle sword that one of them swung at her, then plunged her dagger into his belly while she hacked her blade through the second demon.

  “Next time,” Harper said as he limped toward her, “I get the two-on-one.”

  Winded, she nodded. “Next time.”

  The smoking blood hazed the air. She peered through it, pointed her sword at Sorak. His claws and face were smeared with the blood of the body that lay at his feet.

  He had fed, and fed again, she realized, and would have the strength of ten.

  Still, her stance was cocky, her voice a sneer. “You should have brought an army, demon king. We would have littered this place with your dead.”

  “I brought better than an army.” Sorak reached back and hefted a small girl by the scruff of her neck. She let out a sobbing squeal as her little legs kicked in the air, two full feet off the ground.

  Leering, Sorak skimmed his teeth over her throat. “The young are so sweet to the taste. How much for her life?”

  Kadra lowered her blade. Though her hand was steady, her heart stumbled in her chest. “Will you bargain your life with a human child’s? Is not a king worth more?”

  “I was not speaking to you, Kadra, Slayer of Demons.” Sorak lifted his other hand, and the gun.

  Subway cop, Harper thought on a jolt of panic. Sorak had taken the gun from the transit cop, and he had been too angry to notice the empty holster.

  On an oath, Harper shoved Kadra aside as Sorak fired. As she fell, blood streaming from her temple, the sword clattered to the ground.

  “No. Goddamn it, no!” Harper fell to his knees, gathering her up, checking quickly for a pulse.

  “I was born for her death.” Sorak shook the child until she began to wail. “Tell me, Harper Doyle, were you born for death?”

  She was alive, he told himself. And slayers healed quickly. He would do whatever he could to give her that time, and to save an innocent child from death. Or worse.

  He got to his feet, the knife gripped in his hand. “For yours. I was born for yours.”

  “Approach me and . . .” Sorak ran a blue claw teasingly down the girl’s round cheek as her wails became the mewling sounds of a trapped animal. “I tear her to pieces. How much for the child, Harper Doyle? How much are the young worth in this world?”

  Her eyes were blue, Harper noted. Glassy as a doll’s now, filled with shock. “How much do you want?”

  “You will do. Your life for her life. I would enjoy taking what is the slayer’s and making it mine. Throw down your blade, or the child dies now.”

  “And Kadra?”

  Through the stinking smoke Harper saw the gleam of jagged teeth. “Do you think your life is worth both of theirs?” Sorak stepped forward, and Harper could see blood coming from wounds of the claws sliding down the girl’s white neck. “I could kill you where you stand with this weapon. But it would be . . . unsporting. Make the bargain, or watch while I give her my kiss.”

  There was no bargaining with monsters. Even knowing that, Harper could see no choice. “Set her down, let her go. A knife