Diana

by Chloe Garner

  “I’m going to dismember him,” Carter said, going to brush his hands off over the sink.

  “I had a thought on that,” Samantha said. He blinked once and looked at her.

  “Did you.”

  “We should summon him,” she said. He actually liked the way she thought. The upside to hunting down something that could glitch anywhere in the world at will was that you could use it against them, if you knew what you were doing and had the right tools. There was still a problem.

  “We don’t have anything to hook him with,” Carter said. She gave him half a smile. She was holding something back.

  “Shaman,” she said. “You really think I’d leave a table full of paperwork just laying there?”

  She disappeared to her room and came back with a stack of paper, spreading it out across the table. He frowned, coming to look at it.

  “Yeah,” he finally said. “That would probably do it.”

  She nodded quickly.

  “I’ve been thinking… Why don’t we go to Nuri’s and summon him, just rain ash on everyone as a warning?”

  He grinned at this. That was a level of malice he appreciated. Nuri’s club was warded enough that a demon couldn’t glitch in. The last one who had tried had ashed evenly across the entire club.

  “You think you’re the first one to think of that?” he asked. “Nuri has strict rules against it, or else everyone would do it. She wouldn’t bend those, even for you.”

  He took the pages in his hands, feeling them out for residue. It was there. He didn’t know if Samantha had known or if she’d guessed, but it was there.

  “Besides,” he said. “That’s not enough. I’m going to make him crawl.”

  “Whatever happens,” Samantha said. “I’m going with you. This may be personal for you, but this is still about Justin, for me.”

  He was already searching the city in his mind’s eye, looking for the setting that would be most effective for him.

  “Do you want sunlight?” Samantha asked.

  “I use just as much dark magic as he does,” Carter said.

  “Steel?” Samantha asked. He gritted his teeth at her. She was distracting him. He went to the counter and spread the pages out in front of him.

  Samantha at the market in Singapore.

  This was completely personal. Those images were a threat, specific and smug, and Carter was going to wipe the smug right off Tiber.

  And then he was going to ash Tolemny, so that Swordmaker could say what he thought of the blacksmith to his face.

  “I know where I’m going,” he said, going to his room and packing a small bag. He slung it over his shoulder and came back to the main room to find Samantha standing with her backpack. He shook his head.

  “Overprepared is just as bad as underprepared,” he said. “You can’t find what you need in there, when you need it. You’re going to be going for an oil and come up with jasmine powder.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Samantha said. He shrugged and opened the door, summoning the elevator and getting on.

  “Surprised you aren’t fighting me on this,” he said.

  “I knew as soon as I told you I had the papers that you wouldn’t wait,” Samantha answered. He tipped his head to the side, considering, then settled back into himself, feeling his shoulders, his hips, his knees, the way his feet pressed on the floor.

  He was Carter.

  Today was just one more day.

  No more or less important than any other.

  Tiber mattered that little.

  She drove him to the demons’ market, mostly closed at this hour, and he broke into one of the buildings that overlooked it, going to the second floor and looking out a window down at the shuttered, locked, and warded booths.

  This was it.

  “Why here?” Samantha asked, scouting the empty room. He shook his head. He wasn’t going to explain it to her, that it was about her. She’d let something like that go to her head.

  He set to work marking the walls.

  She watched for several minutes, just standing at the center of the room, then she went to her bag and started building bags of various things that she ultimately left in the corners of the room. He felt the room tighten as she dropped the last bag, like waking up in a night sweat.

  “Natural magic,” he observed. “Thought you were too good for being a witch.”

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t know it,” she answered without resistance. The next thing that she built up was a white paste that she rubbed around the window frame. That one he recognized, turning his face away from it.

  He thought about yelling at her for bringing that much light energy into the space - he’d already told her he didn’t want sunlight - but he knew the intensity would be so much higher for Tiber, he could hardly fault her. She crossed the room and started the door frame.

  It took them an hour or more to get completely ready, and then Carter stood back from the symbols on the floor.

  It was hardly fair. It was going to be a massacre. He’d underestimated how angry Samantha still was; she’d gone all out, challenging his own creativity. The room positively sung with magic. He looked at Samantha, but she was stern, just staring at the space where he would summon Tiber.

  He cleared his throat, just to hear the sound bounce, captive, off of the magic, then he began.

  “I am Carter,” he said. The magic buzzed with the power of his I am, even in English. He nodded and started the rest of the incantation.

  The room had grown dark as he’d spoken, mostly because of the setting sun outside, but also because of the swirl of mist and smoke as the demon he’d laid hold of fighting against the summon.

  There wasn’t any way Tiber was getting away from him, though. The number of hours he’d invested into the research were telling, the physical contact he had had with the paper. Carter had a hold of him, and he was winning.

  Samantha stood with Lahn drawn and at ease, just waiting.

  Just waiting.

  He got a sharp tug as the magic wound closed and he shook his head. No, it was done.

  A demon appeared in the middle of the circle.

  Both Carter and Samantha reacted, and both of them jerked to a halt at nearly the same time.

  “Who are you?” Carter asked. The demon turned, adjusting his glasses.

  “Ragweed,” he said. “You’re Carter. Tiber said this might happen soon.”

  Carter looked at Samantha, who shrugged. Ragweed sighed in a genteel sort of a way.

  “You think this is the first time someone has tried to summon Tiber and gotten me? You humans are nothing if not mundane and predictable.”

  “Where is he?” Carter asked. Ragweed shook his head and adjusted his glasses.

  “No, not from me, friend. That’s not going to happen.”

  “Who are you?” Samantha asked, coming to stand in front of Ragweed with Carter.

  “I’m his professional researcher,” Ragweed said. “You’re a very interesting young woman, as humans go.”

  “So you do know where he is,” Samantha said. Ragweed sighed.

  “I’ve been doing this for centuries. If you think you’re going to threaten me and I’m just going to tell you, you don’t understand anything about living that long. No one has ever ashed me, and no one has ever gotten me to tell them where Tiber is. You aren’t that special.”

  “I am,” Carter said, the room reverberating around him again.

  “Good show,” Ragweed laughed, “but no. You aren’t. I know as much about you as any demon walking this side, and I know you aren’t going to ash me.”

  Carter growled low in his chest, feeling the root of the magic there, the entire room contained inside his ribs, a motor, a machine. His. Ragweed squealed as the effect hit him, and Carter opened his eyes. Ragweed coughed politely and held up a hand.

  “You misunderstand,” he said. “It isn’t that you aren’t strong enough. I know you’r
e willing to use violence. I certainly know that. It’s that, if you ash me, Tiber is going to get away. I am your only lead, and he…” Ragweed pressed his lips in a mocking sort of a way. “What he did to her fiance and his family, that’s just inexcusable, isn’t it?”

  Lahn met his neck faster than Carter had known Samantha could move, blood beginning to seep across the angel-forged metal, ashing as it went. Ragweed went perfectly still.

  “Anadidd’na Anu’dd,” Samantha said. “I will not fear. I will not cower. I will not doubt. You are insignificant, corrupt, and nothing, and you will fall away from the earth into a forever of darkness and pain. I belong in the light.”

  Carter’s skin prickled with the power of it, and he took an involuntary step to the side.

  “Yes,” Ragweed said, another soft cough. “But do you want to find Tiber or not?”

  “You say you won’t tell us where he is. And that you will live,” Samantha said, her nose curling up in an exquisite anger. “I’m telling you those aren’t both possible.”

  Ragweed looked at her, Lahn shifting along his neck and spilling more blood. He had been doing this a long time. Carter couldn’t help but be impressed.

  “What I have that you don’t,” he said, “is time.”

  Samantha shook her head.

  “You live at my discretion. He won’t stop me.”

  She motioned to Carter. He stuck his tongue between his back teeth and thought about it. She was probably right. She drew something from the waist of her pants and pressed it against Ragweed’s throat, cursing him in hellspeak. He tried to return the sentiment, but choked. She nodded.

  Hellspeak was the definition of falsehood, whether or not the words were true.

  “And now we know where we are,” Samantha said, letting Lahn slide across his neck, scoring him a bit deeper and a bit deeper, than she put the blade away, leaving the wand against Ragweed’s throat.

  “Now,” she said. “You did all of Tiber’s research?”

  “Yes,” Ragweed said.

  She nodded.

  “And you know where he is?” Samantha asked.

  “Yes,” Ragweed told her.

  “And you are certain you aren’t going to tell us where he is?” Samantha asked.

  “Yes,” Ragweed said. She looked at Carter. He nodded.

  “He’s here.”

  She nodded back, stepping away from Ragweed.

  “You have any holes open from outside?” she asked.

  “You know as well as I do that it’s all directional,” he answered, looking around the room.

  “I did the window and the door,” Samantha said. “Is he going to come in through the wall?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest,” Carter said blandly, looking at Ragweed again. “You’ve been doing this for hundreds of years?”

  Ragweed might have swallowed uncomfortably at that, and Carter grinned.

  “Demons and their egos,” he said, looking at Samantha.

  “You know how to do a summon spell with a live object?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not possible.”

  “It isn’t, if the thing is actually alive, because you’d have to destroy it to use it in the spell, and then it wouldn’t be the living thing, any more.”

  “But demons have entirely different rules,” she said with a smile, coming to stand next to him again. Carter felt the slight bubble of force as Ragweed tried to glitch out again. He grinned wider.

  “Oh, that was a tell. You know, Sam,” he said, looking at her without rotating his shoulders at all, “for as much a pain as he turned out to be, Tolemny sold me just the tool for this.”

  “Did he?” Samantha asked, going back to her backpack. “Because I was thinking I might have brought a few things that would keep him stuck in there long enough to cover the walls with him.”

  Damn. He had severely underestimated how angry she still was.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, stepping forward, drawing his eyebrows down and in. “You just test yourself again. I’ve got this.”

  The knives from Tolemny did exactly what they were advertised to do. When Carter finished, he was coated in blood, and so was everything else. Bits and pieces of wet demon were all over the room, his heart tacked to the door with one of the knives, his eyes taped to the window with duct tape.

  Samantha had come prepared.

  At least this time, when it was all done, it would ash and his suit would be clean again. That was how it was supposed to go.

  Carter hadn’t really done anything remarkable, as far as torture went. It had been more of a butchering event, creating the right pocket of magic that still centered around the midpoint of the room, where the webbing was the strongest. He looked at Samantha, who appeared a bit green, but was holding it together silently. It wasn’t the worst she’d seen, especially when you considered the sadism demons were capable of, in copulating, but it was up there. Ragweed had a pulse and a voice, and he looked human in every way that mattered.

  She hadn’t spoken a word of complaint, and she hadn’t turned away.

  She was owning this.

  “You ready?” he asked. She nodded, Lahn out again.

  “Need you to hold everything stable,” Carter said. “The layers are getting slippery.”

  So was the floor.

  She nodded, dropping to a knee and closing her eyes as she put the fingers of her empty hand splayed on the floor. Something altered subtly, and the alignment of the room went perfect. Carter felt it, and so did Ragweed. The heart on the door started beating faster.

  He nodded.

  “I am Carter,” he said. “And I know you’re close. I know you think you’ll win because you have before. The world is never the same twice. Today you ash.”

  The room growled back. Tiber was close, bound to it through the magic Carter had woven through Ragweed, and it was just a matter of reeling him in.

  And then ashing him.

  And then. Ashing him.

  Carter nodded, feeling the thrum of power, and an odd tweak to his midsection where the muscle was still healing. This was revenge, and even the magic healing his body could feel it.

  The room trembled, the very structure of it struggling with the battle of wills between Carter and Tiber. Samantha was a player in it, a great mass that kept the magic from slipping away as he drew on it.

  If she hadn’t been there, hadn’t been able to do what she was doing, Tiber would have ripped everything to pieces like a great fish snapping a rod, simply too big and too strong to bring him in. That was a shock.

  Carter began a short incantation in hellspeak, just testing what would happen, and suddenly Tiber lunged at him, through the magic and into the manifest world, a great, heavy body coming across the room at him. Carter moved aside, bending time as he felt it happen, prepared, but Tiber was furious, an animal caged, taunted, injured, but every bit as powerful as he ever was. Diana was out, a flame of power in Carter’s hand, and the epic blade that Tiber carried blanched before her. He felt it, with the complexity of magic there in the room, everything around him like a part of his own senses. Like swordfighting on a spider web attached to his brain.

  Tiber would be able to feel it, too. The magic wasn’t shielded to keep it away from him. The demon was vicious. Even with an inferior sword and a room stacked against him, he put Carter on the defensive with his opening attack.

  Carter was in his element, now, though, and balanced, calm. All the time in the world.

  And Tiber couldn’t micro-glitch. He was strong. Maybe truly the strongest demon Carter had met, certainly the strongest he’d fought. He could still glitch. He couldn’t glitch far, or the room would reset him to the middle, but he’d glitch away again, appearing somewhere else there inside the room, keeping Carter from getting a good engagement from him.

  Carter was better with a sword and had the upper hand with magic, but Tiber still wasn’t giving up. Still w
asn’t going to make it easy or let himself be taken.

  Diana was pure energy, alive, thrilled, determined, a part of Carter like his arm or his mind. She hunted the demon as actively as Carter did, drawing him toward Tiber when the demon glitched outside of Carter’s realm of vision, artistic perfection with a desire for victory. For domination.

  He was in love.

  They battled as the sun continued to go down, the light in the room dropping to the point that they were only a pair of shadows in a room that smelled of blood.

  Twice, Tiber went after Samantha, and twice Carter saw it and defended her as she kept the magic balanced. She was a rock. He used her.

  Used her hard.

  Bracing off of her magic, doing things that he knew would make what she was doing harder and harder, as Tiber did the same.

  She kept her grip, sending almost no discernible vibration through the magic. There was a simple presence, there on her back, that was Lahn, a light point in a room consumed with dark magic, but she never wavered.

  And then, as the light almost completely abandoned them and the shops below began to generate enough traffic that Carter could hear it, Tiber was in front of him, to this side, to that side, his great gray sword arcing through the air. Carter had it. Diana had a sense to her and she was going to block it, but it was an attack that Carter hadn’t seen coming. He’d been pressing an advantage across the room, pulling at magic that would slow Tiber and make it yet harder for him to glitch when he’d come in close like this, going for a lucky death blow.

  Carter had time bent hard, to keep up with the demon, and he was watching with a sense of dispassion as Diana edged ever closer to Tiber’s sword, and Tiber’s sword flowed in on its steady path toward Carter. He could still glitch again, try to get between Carter and Diana, but Carter was ready for that. He had the angle worked out so that he could get his arms out of the way in time, and Diana had a singular enough focus that he thought he could at least get a slash in before Tiber glitched away again.

  And then something funny happened.

  There was a noise, strange and foreign, and Tiber’s expression changed. In slow motion.