A Line in the Sand

by K. A. Stewart

  “That remains to be seen.” He pushed himself up from his seat. “I will see that an evening meal is brought to you, while we arrange for more permanent accommodations for you.”

  “Hey, do me a favor.” He raised a brow at me. “Hunch your shoulders over a little bit and go ‘my precioussssss.’” No one laughed, but Mary Alice took in a quick breath behind me. “That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? You don’t give two shits about protecting these souls, or me. You just want the power. Do you know how much I’m lugging around? What I could do, if I wanted?” In response, my ghostly companions began winding their way down my arms, leaving the faint feeling of static electricity running across my skin.

  Giordano frowned, truly frowned, for the first time. “This world is being plunged into chaos as we speak. Even before you unleashed the Adversary, the marks of it were everywhere. Natural disasters, wars, famine. All happening at once, all looking to push the human race to the end of their existence. The power that you hold could be the tipping point, the thing that saves us all, and you would squander it in a feeble attempt at your own freedom?”

  “Dude, just watch me.” I rolled my head on my neck, feeling the joints pop gently. The white tendrils of power crept out from under my sleeves, coiling over the backs of my hands, down to my very fingertips. The soul tattoos spun their way up my throat, up into my hair, stopping just short of washing over my eyes, like they understood that I would need my true vision for a fight. “They are more than willing to burn themselves up for me. Just ask them. And then what will you do?”

  “You can’t do this.” He shifted his stance to the balls of his feet, and I felt Sveta and Cam go still on either side of me. If the Cardinal thought I wouldn’t hit a holy man, he was sadly mistaken.

  “I can. And I will.” I desperately didn’t want to. All these months, I’d gone out of my way to avoid putting myself in a position where I’d have to make this choice. But if the Cardinal was going to force the issue, I wasn’t about to just go to my cell with my head bowed like a good little champion. “I will walk out of here, right over the top of you and all your little minions.” I jabbed my finger at him for emphasis, and that’s when things went all pear-shaped.

  The Cardinal’s eyes flicked to my wrist, where my sleeve had ridden up just slightly, revealing the stark black mark of my deal with Henry. His eyes went wide, and then they went blood red, and he bared his teeth in a snarl. “What have you done?!”

  Before anyone could move, he had me by the throat, and I was slammed against the empty bookcases hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. My boots kicked at the air a good foot off the ground, and all I could do was stare down into the churchman’s face, now drawn up in a horrible mockery of his usual features. Something rippled just beneath the skin, a foreign presence making itself known along the lines of his skull. His fingers dug into my throat, cutting off all air, and I knew I had about seven seconds before darkness would claim me.

  “What have you done?!” His voice was not his anymore, at least not his alone. Erupting beneath the range of human vocalization was the thick, otherworldly oil taint of demon speech, and the red glow of demon eyes burned like old blood, forced through actual human eye tissue.

  Two things happened at once. Cameron grabbed the Cardinal from behind at the same moment that I slapped both my palms against his face and began to squeeze. An explosion of light blinded me, all the more stunning for its absolute silence. The older man screamed with his demon-infected voice, and I was suddenly able to breathe, my boots hitting the floor with a thump.

  When my eyes cleared, Cam was sprawled on his back at my feet, and Giordano was huddling in the farthest corner of the room, my handprints clearly visible as blistered, burned flesh on his cheeks. Sveta had her shoulders braced against the door, and the guards outside were slamming themselves against it with no thought for their own well-being. Mary Alice hurriedly helped Cameron regain his footing, and Ivan stood his ground between us and the newly revealed enemy.

  “I had always suspected you to being corrupted, Salvatore.” Ivan’s gravelly voice was grim. “I did not expect this.”

  The black-robed man hissed, doing a pretty damn good Gollum impression after all. “You will all die for this. They will never find the pieces.” Across the back of his hands, darkness appeared, vines and tendrils of black creeping their way out of his sleeves. At his collar, too, the network of ebony lace began to work its way up his neck, recoiling when it touched the burns on his face.

  It wasn’t hard to recognize that here was my true opposite. Me, with my tattoos of white and my souls, and him with the darkness of blight etched on his skin. There was a demon in there, riding shotgun with the head of the greatest organization of demon hunters in human history.

  “How could we not know,” Mary Alice whispered. “The church, the holy objects…how?”

  “Because it’s inside him. Protected, until it shows itself. Just like he said.” I flexed my fingers, feeling the tingle of power just under my skin. “It can’t handle the touch of the souls, but so long as it stays down, the Cardinal still can.” I smirked. “Looks like Coma Guy’s demon didn’t get very far, when you drove it out of him.”

  “Dawson,” Sveta growled, and something heavy slammed against the door, shoving her boots two inches across the ornate rug. Cameron and Mary Alice hurriedly went to add their weight to hers, slamming the door shut again.

  Our situation had changed drastically in the last few seconds. Giordano alone, he could have been reasoned with, appealed to. But the Cardinal wasn’t calling the shots anymore, and a demon worked under entirely different motivations and rules. It probably said something about me that I suddenly liked our chances a lot more.

  The rules that governed demonkind had become fluid in the last few years, dangerously so. Where once I would have bet my life (and had, come to think of it) on the fact that they couldn’t harm a human being without permission, I’d been proven wrong. I’d seen them yank souls out of living creatures, leaving worse than a shell behind. The rebellious faction was no longer content with taking what they’d been allotted. They wanted the world now, and the human race was just collateral damage. But there was one thing I’d never seen fail, the one thing that no demon could resist.

  “Okay, tall dark and crispy. Let’s make a deal.”

  “Jesse!” That from Cameron, but I ignored him.

  The demon-cardinal focused his blood-red eyes on me, and sneered. “I see the mark, champion. You have already bargained away what I want.”

  “I haven’t. That mark has nothing to do with the souls I’m carrying. Do you think they’d still be defending me, if I’d sold them for a pack of gum and two tickets to the ball game?” As if to prove my point, the white tattoos flared brighter, forcing the possessed man to drop his gaze. “You know I’m telling the truth.”

  Conflicting urges played across the older man’s face, the demon’s form rippling just beneath the skin in wholly nauseating ways. It was clear that the two weren’t in agreement on what to do with me at all.

  The pounding on the door ceased, and a voice called from the other side, muffled but audible. “At the count of five, we will fire on this door!”

  “Better move quick, Crispy. Your boys are about to bust in here and mow us all down. And no one knows where these souls are going if I die.” Giordano’s eyes flared a muted scarlet, and the voices outside began their count. I tapped my non-existent watch. “Tick tock.”

  Finally, the black robed figure stood up straighter, and inclined his head just slightly. “I…accept.”

  “Call off your goons. Then we’ll sit and negotiate how to kill each other like civilized fellows.” Outside the door, they’d reached “three.”

  “Withdraw your power.” It was costing him, I realized. Not the Cardinal, but the demon inside. It was costing him to face down the presence of two hundred and seventy-five souls.

  Tone it down, guys. I was never sure if they heard my thought
s, or just happened to decide to obey at coincidental times, but the tattoos slowly receded back under my clothing. Unseen by anyone else, I felt them retreat to their customary places on my back.

  The man in the hallway shouted “One!”, and my three companions made dives to clear the frame. The massive oak door slammed open, cracking one of the bookshelves as it rebounded, and a five man tac-team burst into the room, small automatic weapons immediately coming to bear on those of us who were not wearing a long black dress.

  “Halt!” At the Cardinal’s command, all five men froze in place, but their guns never wavered. Let me tell you, the barrel end of a gun looks absolutely immense when it’s pointed at your face. “Stand down, brothers. There has been a misunderstanding.”

  Sometime in the split second that my attention had been on the gunmen kicking in the door, Giordano’s demon had managed to retreat from the surface. He looked and sounded just like an ordinary person, no trace of red to his eyes or oil in his voice. Perhaps feeling my gaze on him again, he straightened his garments with a sharp tug. “Brother Lorenzo, if you could see that an evening meal is brought up, I think I will be spending some time with our guests, talking. And chairs, for all of us.”

  The men holstered their weapons like they hadn’t just been about to blow all our brains out, and the man in front nodded. I assumed that meant it was Lorenzo under the mask, but I couldn’t have sworn to it. They all kinda looked the same, dressed up like dark Storm Troopers.

  “Have them bring my gear.” The Cardinal raised a brow at my demand. “Unharmed and untouched. And a pair of sharp scissors.” After a moment, the old man jerked his chin toward his henchmen, and they departed, presumably to do what he’d said. The door no longer latched, but it was heavy enough to stay closed when we swung it to. “Don’t worry, I’ll work it into the deal. Don’t want you giving away anything for free.”

  “I appreciate your integrity.”

  “There are just so many things wrong with that sentence.”

  Ivan tugged at my elbow, and I leaned closer to him, never taking my eyes off the blond man in the corner. “I should be the one to do this.” Understand that Ivan whispering is still like a small avalanche, so of course everyone heard.

  “Ni!” That was the only word I vaguely understood as Sveta went off on a Ukrainian tirade. Whatever she was saying, she was really letting the old man have it. For Ivan’s part, he just stood with a faint smile curling one corner of his mouth.

  When she finished, or at least stopped to take a breath, I nodded my agreement. “What she said.” Ivan’s white brows drew together like he was going to argue, and I gripped his shoulder. “I’m the only one who can do this. I’m the only one who has what he wants. We all know this.”

  The white-haired man’s jaw clenched, but he nodded and took a step back. Turning to face the demon-ridden cardinal again, I stood up straight, falling into an attention pose that I could hold for hours if need be.

  “I am Jesse James Dawson. I will wager my soul, and the two hundred and seventy-five others that I currently carry with me.”

  Chapter 16

  Constructing a contract with a demon is (or should be, anyway) a long, labor intensive process. When you’re dealing with an especially intelligent demon, it gets even worse. On top of that, add in the fact that Giordano himself had his own intelligence, his own wishes and desires, and the process got downright messy. The conversation itself made my head swim at times, as my opponent seemed to flip back and forth between his demonic passenger, and his own voice. It was hard to know which one I was talking to at any given time. My first term was that the contract bound both of them, not just one or the other, and he (they?) agreed to it without haggling.

  We agreed to fight that night, after full dark when the sunlight couldn’t aid me and the square would be emptied of onlookers and collateral damage. He allowed me the use of my sword, and when it came time for him to choose his own weapon, his lackeys produced a blade of his own. I was allowed to inspect it, finding it to be a very fine broadsword, and I tried not to show how shaken his choice left me. I’d hoped to be fighting the demon, not the man. A demon, in its true form, has no need of a sword. A demon doesn’t bleed, not really. It doesn’t die, even. It just gets banished back to the other side until it can gather the strength to cross over again. A man I could stab, maim, kill. He would bleed, and scream, and die. Despite our circumstances, it troubled me.

  He agreed to let me keep the spells that currently wound around my body like invisible armor, the protections laid over my sword and chain mail. Mira’s spells, most of them. Some of them Cameron’s, some of them Estéban’s. In return, he’d be free to use his own powers, whatever they were. Superior strength, the Cardinal had said, when describing Coma Guy’s abilities. Speed. The ability to ignore severe injury. And then where was that whole “crossing the supernatural veil” trick that demons were so fond of.

  Ivan caught my eye, and I knew he was thinking the same thing. It was entirely possible I’d have to defeat him twice. I could kill the man’s physical body, and the demon could still rise up from the corpse to fight me again. He could build another body out of blight, as big and as stronger as his own power would allow. I was willing to bet that it wasn’t some weakling Scuttle in there.

  I could have quibbled over it, but ultimately let it pass. Sometimes, the best way to avoid a trap is to know where it is in the first place.

  “No matter how this ends, they all go free.” I knew what he’d say in response to that. I knew the loophole he would leave himself. I had to hope that my friends were skilled enough to fight their way to freedom after my death. I didn’t for a moment believe the Cardinal would let them leave Vatican City alive.

  “Agreed, so long as there is no retribution against the men of the Order after this day.”

  I raised a brow at the Cardinal. Altruism wasn’t something I expected from a demon. “You actually care what happens to them?”

  “They have been loyal and true. Their safety has long been one of the terms of my…arrangement.” That from Giordano himself, no trace of the demon’s foulness in his tone. “None of this is their fault.”

  “Do they know? About you?”

  “They know…something. No one knows the entire truth, and so they cannot be held responsible for their actions.”

  It would have been easier to hate them, if they’d been totally complicit. Dammit. “So long as they raise no hand to us, we will do the same in return.” Behind me, Sveta hissed, but I knew she’d obey. Violating the terms of a demon contract could have all sorts of unintended – usually disastrous – consequences.

  With that term settled, another black slash burned itself into my left forearm. The marks had started at the knuckles and now coiled up toward my elbow. Much longer, and I’d have black coils and spirals all the way up my biceps. The older tattoo, Henry’s tiny little mark, existed in a small circle of open flesh on my wrist, untouched by the darker, deeper sigils. I felt bad for Henry. If I died here, there would be no one to get him his treat for a job well done.

  Oddly, the older man had the same black marks slowly creeping their way up his arm as well. I’d never seen that happen to a demon I’d challenged before, so I had to conclude that it was an effect of the human body it inhabited. The demon’s eyes would look out of his host’s from time to time, flashing brighter when the pain would hit, but for the most part, it stayed silently tucked away inside the human body it inhabited.

  They fed us dinner, and I managed to resist making any “Last Supper” jokes. Even the Cardinal ate, though none of us felt like speaking beyond what was necessary for the upcoming duel. Our belongings, all of them, were delivered from the apartment we’d occupied, and a quick examination showed that everything was accounted for and unmolested. Sveta immediately started producing weapons from her luggage and strapping them on without even bothering to hide them. No one said a word or moved to stop her.

  It was nearing midnight already when we fin
ally decided that we’d covered everything we could humanly (or inhumanly) think of. The demon-possessed man rose from his seat, giving us all a small, courtly bow. “I will give you an hour to prepare. Then my men will bring you to the square. They will leave you in peace until that time.”

  Unspoken was the warning that should any of us attempt to escape, we’d be violating the terms of the contract and the fight would be over before it started. My soul, and all those that I carried, would be forfeit.

  The door closed behind him, leaving the five of us in awkward silence. They all looked at me, all of them pretending that there was no fear behind their eyes.

  “Can I banish the demon without hurting the host?” It was the only thing I truly needed to know.

  Sveta and Ivan exchanged glances, then the woman shook her head slowly at me. “You cannot force a demon out of a host that it has taken with permission.”

  “And if I kill him, the demon can still piece together a body and manifest here. Yes?”

  “Most likely, yes.”

  “And then we go again.” Two fights. I’d never managed to end even one fight in a condition where I was able to immediately fight again. Even if I won the first one, I’d lose the second in a heartbeat.

  And of course, winning meant killing Giordano himself. I wasn’t murdering a human, I kept telling myself. He’d be trying to kill me, and I was allowed to defend myself. But still, he’d be dead at my hand, if I was able, and then I’d have to fight the thing inside him, with zero idea of what it looked like, or what its abilities were.

  “Jesse, you can’t hesitate on this one.” Cameron clutched at my sleeve. “If you lose, Reina will destroy the earth.”

  “No pressure there, Cam, thanks. But no, I don’t think so.” I’d done a lot of thinking, during our negotiations. Negotiating with demons always threw the strategic portion, the chess-playing portion, of my brain into high gear, and I thought I could see this move fairly clearly. “The Cardinal called her ‘The Adversary.’ Her minions don’t name her like that. They call her master, but they don’t say any name she might respond to, because they don’t want to risk her attention falling on them, I think. I don’t think he belongs to her.”