Neon Blue

by E J Frost

  Leave ‘em. They’re safe enough topside.

  I retreat from Zeifyr’s copper-cold psyche and reach for the next impression Jou feeds me. Reece. Blood and the paper-musk of money. A hard, winter-burnt core around which the flesh constantly shifts. I can’t get a grasp on Reece. Male. Female. Beautiful. Grotesque. Sweet. Depraved. He/she shifts through my mind like a fall of broken glass, sharp-edged and painful to grasp. Like Zeifyr, Reece examines my call and debates for a timeless moment. Unlike Zeifyr, Reece follows my call and I feel him/her swell within my mind, until Reece stands beside us in the growing crowd.

  That’s my clutch. Call the others. He helps me direct my thought, catch the rest of his household in my mind. Bizzy, a goat-legged, red-skinned demon wearing a green plastic ‘Herrods’ apron, who appears bent over and holding a huge metal spoon, as if called in the moment of stirring a pot. Cazin, a massive, shaggy, horned monster who roars into existence a few feet away, looks around in surprise and fury, then wraps Nevida in an embrace so tender it brings tears to my not-eyes. Icozi, a minature version of Cazin, red-skinned and bandy-legged. He responds to my call with such enthusiasm that he hops across the burning ground. He cradles something between his legs as he runs, and after a moment, I realize that he cups a pair of black testicles so large they look like bowling balls.

  Yeah, that’s Icky. Bring ‘im home. Bring ‘em all home. Jou stretches out his phantom arms, encompassing those he cares for. His family, kith and kin. He embraces them all and closes Ash Hill around them. I feel the tower’s stone encircle them. Keeping them safe. But I’ve also felt the inferno of Asmodeus’s rage. The stones Jou’s piled on this shifting hill of ash won’t protect his family from his father. That’s why the tower has been empty. That’s why I’m calling them home. They’ve been scattered, hidden, because Jou’s power cannot stand against his father’s.

  But mine can. As soon as I think it, I know it’s true. My power is different from his, from Jou’s, from any fire Elemental’s. My power’s the strength of Earth—

  And Air.

  Huh?

  Air, c’mon, sweet meat. Haven’t you figured it out? How d’you think you called those fucking bats that took such big chunks outta me?

  I look wonderingly into his eyes, their neon glow undulled by our lack of substance. I . . . never thought about it. The nethancs just came when I called. They’ve always come when I called. It’s never occurred to me to wonder why.

  Think later. Help me make something unbreakable now.

  Earth and Air. Earth to strengthen the foundation stones. I reach down into the ashy soil, into the strange, unearthly substrate of Hell. It’s not Earth. I feel the difference immediately. The otherness of it lies across my magical senses like a shadow. But it’s close. Close enough that when I call, the bedrock responds, surging up through the tower. Pinions of rock and metal and mineral to anchor Jou’s home to the very substance of Hell.

  But even the strongest walls can be breached. Even stone can be broken. Worn away. It doesn’t even require force. Just time. And wind.

  I stretch my not-arms to the sky. Air. I’ve never consciously called on Air before, but as soon as I do, the winds of Hell answer. They roar across the tortured landscape, flattening everything in their path. Even the distant firestorm thins and cowers before their force.

  Unbreakable walls. Unbreachable walls. Walls of Air. Walls of Killing Wind. I hold my hands out to the tower.

  The winds whirl around us, through us, pulling at my mind the way they would pull at my flesh if I were really here. If Jou wasn’t somehow keeping me safe. Here and not here. Encircled and protected by his power. His warmth swells within me. His thoughts and feelings. Emotions he controls and doesn’t let rule him but feels all the same. The way he feels about his family. The way he feels about me. His emotions are so strong. He doesn’t feel love. Not the way I think of love. He’ll never put me first or care more about me than he does himself. But his emotions are strong and deep and wonderful and they call on what is strong and deep and wonderful in me. I could love him. Even though he’s a demon. Even though he terrifies me. Even though he wants me to become something completely different from everything I’ve ever known. I could still love him.

  Good. ‘Bout time you realized that.

  I turn to look at him, with insubstantial eyes and substantial heart, but he guides me back to the burning tower.

  Stay focused, sweet meat. We’re almost done here.

  No, we’re not. I’m not. There’s more I want to do, and see, and know. This is more than his home. This is his heart. The soul he says he doesn’t have. I want to know it as intimately as I know his body. I push my mind outward, up through the tower. Up from the web of power anchoring the tower to the hill, up into the walls that I wrap with wind. I let them eat away the rock until there’s nothing left but whirling walls of air. I pull on Nevida’s power, which is the essence of Jou’s smoky, sexy edge. Where Jou controls his passion, leashing it tightly with his will, Nevida lets hers burn. I drink in Nevida’s essence and breathe it out into the whirlwind. Watch it catch fire. Burning strands circle the tower, wrapping it in fire. I feel Nevida’s delight, Jou’s delight, as the walls of air turn to flame.

  But it’s not enough. Jou’s father is a fire Elemental, and I can’t leave Jou with defenses his enemy can control. And there’s more here for me to work with. With a tentative thought, I touch Fulsome’s mind.

  I expect him to push me away. I felt his disdain in that moment that I called him home. He despises me. Because I’m human, and because Jou has brought me here to do what he couldn’t. Any sign of weakness enrages Fulsome, ignites that cold-burning core of hatred that powers him. So different from Jou’s warmth. And yet they taste the same. Fulsome’s bright-white rage; Jou’s dark desire. They both feel the same. They both come from the same base urge.

  I draw hard on that primal source, that crucible of emotion. Harder, pulling against the cores of both demons. There’s so much here. I thought true power lay in the elements: earth, air, fire, water. But suffused with Fulsome’s power, and Jou’s, I’m no longer so sure. Their emotional energy is more readily available. More pliable. Easier to work with. I twist it into rings, into explosive glyphs that have meaning only for the three of us, into a spiral of power to encase the burning tower. An outer line of defenses incomprehensible and impenetrable to anyone else.

  I leave Fulsome collapsed in Nevida and Cazin’s arms, Jou shaking against me, and reach for Reece.

  Panicked, the demon pulls back.

  Don’t fight me.

  For a wrenching moment, I see myself the way Reece sees me. A small, pale, naked ghost with burning eyes and hands, wrapped in Jou’s misty arms. Power blows off me in dark veils, whipping into the burning whirlwind of the walls. An echo of a memory.

  Neferure. Her name whispers through all of the demons’ minds, these four children of the demoness who raised the hill on which we stand. To protect her children. To defend them after she was gone. And another emotion floods me. Anguish. Neferure’s anguish, raising the hill with the last of her strength, knowing she was dying even as she brought forth new life, knowing she wouldn’t survive to protect the small new lives she bore. Reece’s anguish, unmothered, unfathered, the weakest of the clutch, overlooked, ignored, scrabbling for scraps of energy, of attention grudgingly given when he/she did something novel, something none of the others could do. Learning to change constantly, to keep delighting, to never settle into one shape, one gender, one personality.

  I bathe in Reece’s fluidity. It’s not something I can hold onto. I let it wash through me. My will shapes it, creating currents in the stream. Directing it out across the ashy ground to circle the burning tower. A moat of bitterness, that will drown any trying to cross it in anguish.

  Enough.

  I’m not sure who thinks it. Maybe Jou. Maybe all of them. For a moment, I reject the thought. It’s not enough. I could keep going. Pull on the flickers of awareness I feel around me. T
he dark, crawling thoughts of the creature that lairs in the caves below the hill. The fathomless rage that swells within the nearby pit. The icy metallic strength of Zeifyr and her sisters, connected to Jou with glistening threads of blood and loyalty and emotion—

  Enough, sweetness. That is Jou. His thought is weak with fatigue, but layered with satisfaction. He’s so pleased by what we’ve accomplished that he’s conflicted about stopping me. Part of him wants to push me on, to see everything I can do, even though he knows it might kill him and his clutch. But then his will, his indomitable will, to survive and to protect what is his, reasserts itself. It’s enough, sweetness.

  I pull back into myself a little. Jou’s conflict swirls inside me. I don’t want to stop. There’s so much power here, and it’s so easy, so safe. I don’t need complicated recipes or exacting rituals to shape this power. There are no consequences here, no elemental balance to maintain. Hell’s power is right there, right on the surface. Ready to shape. Ready to use.

  Ready to use you, sweet meat. Let it go.

  Reluctantly, I open the mental fingers I’ve been clawing through the minds and magics of the demons and their home. Release the energy I’ve gathered. I feel it flow back into Jou’s siblings. Feel Fulsome and Nevida begin breathing again. I didn’t realize I’d drawn so hard on them. Reece shudders against the cold stone floor, rolls over and begins painfully crawling away, towards his/her dark hidey-hole in the lower recesses of the tower. Away from me.

  Reece . . . I didn’t mean to hurt . . . Jou—

  Reece’ll be okay. Come inside for a minute.

  We don’t move so much as shift. Our lack of substance means that everything is insubstantial to us. The tower’s new defenses melt around us. We slip into the courtyard where Jou’s family clusters. Fulsome and Nevida lie prone in the arms of Bizzy and Cazin, while Icky hops nervously around Reece. Jou bends over Fulsome, murmuring something I can’t hear, his glowing eyes casting bizarre shadows across the golden demon’s face.

  Fulsome looks like a Renaissance painter’s idea of Apollo, lying in Bizzy’s arms. His beauty should draw me, but it doesn’t. Surface beauty never has done much for me anyway. Jou’s harsh strength has more appeal. But that’s not drawing me either as I look around the bare courtyard. There is something here. Something that calls to me. Something that desperately longs to be more.

  I feel my way towards it. Down through the ash and rock. Down to a hot magmatic heart that beats fiercely, yearning to be free of the oppressive weight of rock.

  I ball my mental fingers into a fist and smash down through the base of the tower, reaching towards that straining heart.

  What the fuck’re you doing?

  I don’t respond. I let Jou feel the compulsion that drives me. Feel him acquiesce. Hear him move his family away from the crater that I’m opening in the middle of the courtyard.

  I reach the knot of magma that lies coiled and yearning deep underneath Ash Hill. I wrap my mental fingers around it tentatively. Fire’s not my element and in my hands it’s unpredictable. But this is Earth-fire. Molten rock. Burning stone. And it responds readily. When I coax it towards freedom, it surges upward, gathering speed, to explode in a fiery fountain ten feet above the courtyard’s cobblestones.

  I cup my mental hands, hollowing the broken ground into a glassy bowl for the magma to fall back into. I watch the fountain play for a moment, listen to the rumble and hiss of the molten stone, before I turn back to Jou.

  He’s watching the fountain, arms crossed over his chest, a lazy grin lighting his face. Better than those blinds of yours.

  Jou—

  I’m just teasing you, sweetness. I like what you’ve done with the place. He surveys the fountain with that same overweening sense of satisfaction that he felt when I fortified the tower. Any other redecoratin’ you’d like to do?

  I glance at the fallen demons. Reece is still trying to crawl away to his/her sanctuary. Fulsome is beginning to sit up, but Nevida lies limp in Cazin’s arms, her dark face ashen and pinched with the strain of sharing her power with me.

  I shake my head. I have no idea of demon aesthetic. No idea what they might want. I’ve made their home safe. That’s got to be better than tricking out their pad.

  You sure? This’ll be your home, too. He runs his hands down my arms, a touch that starts cool and ghostly at my shoulders, but by the time he reaches my elbows, I feel a hint of warmth.

  What are you doing? I begin to back away from him, but his hands wrap around my elbows and hold me in place.

  Can’t you feel it? The way the Hill responds to you? The way we respond to you? You belong here.

  It was amazing. To be so free to use my power. To do so much without fear. I glance at his family again. Look at what it did to them. There’s no balance to maintain here, no limits on what I can or can’t do. And that much unrestrained power has its own consequences.

  They’ll recover. His hands work up my arms, squeezing gently, spreading warmth.

  I could have killed them, Jou. I would have, if you hadn’t stopped me.

  This time. Next time you’ll know how much you can take. Stay, sweetness. See how much you can become here.

  I jerk back from him, feeling the drag of his grip on my arms, much more substantial now. No.

  Sweetness—

  No, Jou! You promised. You said no part of me would stay here. In and out, you said. You’re drawing me here. I can feel it. I can feel YOU. I shake off his hands.

  He crosses his arms over his chest and looks at me for a long moment, his eyes filled with that hard neon blue light.

  My breath catches in my not-throat. He’s going to keep me here. I see it in his stance, in the cold light of his eyes. For all my power here, I have no idea how to get back. And in that moment, I know that no matter how strong I am, Jou is stronger. His will, his drive, will always be stronger than mine. That iron determination is the very core of him.

  I let him draw me down into Hell and now he’s going to keep me here. Just like I let him tie me up and he used it to bind me to him. Why do I keep trusting him?!

  Jou’s arms drop to his sides. You won’t forgive me, will you?

  I look up at him. Shake my not-head. Maybe someday I’ll be ready for this, Jou, but I’m not yet. If you keep me here now—

  You could learn to be happy here. An’ to forgive me.

  Could I? I reach down within myself. No, no, I couldn’t.

  I want you here. More than anythin’.

  Jou, please, don’t do this. You promised. Please, that has to mean something. If there’s even a chance of us being together, that’s got to mean something.

  He reaches for me again, his hands no longer misty or insubstantial, but solid and golden and so here that I can see the light from the magma fountain gleaming on the fine, dark hairs on the backs of his arms. I shrink from him, but it’s a futile gesture. If he decides to keep me here, he will.

  He hesitates. Looks at hard at me, then shakes his head, crimson dreadlocks rustling over his bare shoulders. This is gonna come back and bite me in the ass, I can tell. But we’ll do it your way. Go on, sweetness. There’s your window.

  He nods at something over my shoulder and I follow his gesture with my eyes. The blue-edged Hellhole that sucked us through my shower wall has appeared again, hovering in the air just behind me. I look back at the demon. Jou, I—

  Go on. Don’t give me time to change my mind.

  I nod. I don’t want him to change his mind. But I’m afraid to step into that swirling chaos alone. Without the protection of his arms around me. I wait, and when he doesn’t immediately move to join me, hold my hand out to him.

  He moves in behind me, and I can feel the warmth of his body. His delicious warmth. I begin to close my eyes, not wanting to see what we pass through when he carries me through the Hellhole. A hard shove between my shoulder-blades snaps my eyes open. I fall forward, into the Hellhole, alone. Without him holding me. Without him behind me. I fall and squeeze m
y eyes shut at the last second. So I don’t see whatever engulfs me. I only feel the loss of his warmth. Coolness. Nothingness. No arms around me. No body at my back. I’ve gone through without him and I’m falling. Falling and falling with that sick feeling rising up from my belly. That sick feeling of falling when you know there’s no bottom. Of loss, when there’s nothing and no one to catch you.

  And then I’m sliding down something cold to land in a heap on the unforgiving ceramic of my bathtub with the shower beating down in freezing needles across my naked skin.

  I sprawl in the tub, feeling jabs from my uncoordinated landing shoot up through my knees and wrists. I sit back on my heels, push wet hanks of hair out of my eyes and reach a tentative hand up to the wall behind me.

  A wall that’s suddenly much too solid.

  I pat across the plastic. Cold, solid plastic. There’s no Hellhole. There’s not even any give to the plastic. It’s as solid as it was when Jou was fucking me against it. Only then he was here and now it’s solid again and he’s not here.

  “Jou?” I hear myself say his name in a voice that doesn’t sound like mine at all. A child’s voice. That child’s voice says his name over and over while I pat at the wall inanely, even while I’m thinking that it’s inane, that I should get up and turn off the freezing shower and get the fuck out of my bathtub, except something has splintered in my head and I can’t think clearly. I can’t think of anything except that he’s not here. We went to Hell and he sent me back, alone. I didn’t want to stay with him and he didn’t force me to but he didn’t come back with me either. He sent me back. Alone.