by S. E. Smith
Bigger. Stronger. True. His true self.
So much closer to everything that mattered. Magic was brighter this way. Sharper. Colors more saturated. Power flowed through him, energized him. He and Avitas had once had a hundred thousand demons sworn to them, and until he was in his true form, that fact faded to nothing.
The psychic resonance of the humans in the vicinity came to him sweet and clear. There was a man on the third floor who didn’t know yet what he was. A minor street mage and a dabbler. And Wallace. There was Wallace, and now that he’d learned how to see her, he marveled at her resilience. The magekind acted like street witches didn’t matter, but Wallace wasn’t the only one who’d turned out to have more power than some of the witches who’d been trained up from the age of three.
The box was locked with a nasty trap, but he unwound it without much trouble. Inside lay a marble cylinder that, to his enhanced vision, glowed with the life entombed in it. Unmarked, unpolished, and level at both ends. He brushed the marble with the back of his finger. Cool stone, yet there was an electric buzz at the contact.
He opened himself Avitas. There came a moan of dry wind through his mind; a death rattle that had lasted half a millennium. She was closer, so close, this echo of the missing part of him. The separated inseparable.
He wanted to touch her again. Hear her laughter, be complete again, but all that was left was the cylinder balanced on his palm. At every point of contact there was a spark, a pinprick transfer of heat, and a tiny world in which he and Avitas were one and the same being. When he cracked the talisman, there would be nothing left of her. If all went well, and he survived, he would never have even this echo of them.
Wallace was coming this way. He ignored the growing pain of the contact with the cylinder and moved just his head. She emerged from the hallway in the same clothes as before. She had all her things. Her purse, her jacket, shoes, coat. The battered suitcase she’d brought with her.
Her eyes got big, but not much rattled her. She’d seen other demons in their true forms. Maddy didn’t let the witches go long without that experience, and besides, she’d fought magehelds and fucking Jeanne, and handled them. With her ability, she didn’t have much to worry about.
She put down her things and bent to pick up the items she’d dumped from her purse. “Are you all right?”
Palla lifted the talisman. He focused on her, on Wallace and not the energy rocketing through him. “This is an abomination.”
“It is.”
He closed his fingers around the cylinder, and the heat from the material had nowhere to go but into his skin. “Will you bear witness to me, too?”
“Always.”
He stared at her with eyes that saw colors she could not. If he did not survive, she would hold him and Avitas in her memory and in her heart and bones. Maybe it wasn’t a blood-bound oath, but she given her word and that had power, too. “Thank you.”
“Will you let me call someone later? To see how things are?”
After everything they’d been through, she was acting like nothing between them mattered, and he both wanted her gone and wanted her to stay. Underneath it all his oath to her shimmered. “Whatever you want.”
“What happens to your oath if I leave?”
“If you leave, I cannot protect you.” He gritted his teeth through the pain streaking through him. “I would eventually, be compelled to follow, to be sure you are safe.”
The quiver that had begun in his fingers had now reached his shoulder, and the howl in his head was louder. So loud he could hardly hear. His palm burned where the talisman touched his skin.
“I’ll wait then.”
“You cannot stop me.”
Her face softened. “I would never do that. Never,” she said in a low voice. “You deserve better, and so does she.”
He tried to speak and could not. The words wouldn’t leave his tongue.
“I know what can happen. Maddy told us. You can’t pretend it isn’t dangerous, what you’re doing. And I will not let you die alone. You don’t do that anybody. Especially not to people you love.”
He held the talisman tighter. Fuck the pain.
She put down the rest of her things, just dropped everything on the floor, and sat beside the pile. “I’ll be right here.”
Chapter 16
Palla in his true form was a sleek, virescent black that scattered cat’s-eye gold in the light. From her cross-legged position on the floor, Wallace stared, stunned by his impact on her and memorizing everything. She would not forget this. Whatever happened, she would have the memories she’d promised to him. Honor demanded it.
He stood at least ten inches taller than in his human form, broader across the shoulders and chest. His eyes were gold, flecked with green, a thing of nightmare. Her heart gave a thud. This otherworldly Palla was monstrous, and beautiful and beyond understanding.
What had she been thinking, arguing with him as if he were, at heart, just like her? He wasn’t. He was not safe just because he looked human. He wasn’t. He wasn’t human at all.
The center of her chest vibrated with reaction to him and to the undercurrent of the talisman. He wasn’t suppressing his power. Even without a connection between then, he bowled her over, overcame her, and she accepted that. She absorbed the terror of him so she would have this moment to bring to mind. There were people like her, fellow magekind, human born, who sought to enslave and destroy, and that must be anathema.
He opened his clenched hand, palm up. The cylinder was gone. That faint call of madness remained, though, the unsettling wrongness. He’d lived centuries without his blood-twin, knowing she’d been condemned to suffer without cease. Now, today, that wrong ended.
Palla folded his taloned fingers, a languorous motion of fluid joints. He turned his hand sideways. Translucent sand streamed toward the floor and pattered onto the hardwood. When the last of it was gone, he spread his arms wide, muscles tense, head back. Grains of the substance clung to his hand and glittered in the light.
Now that his hands faced her, she saw a dot of lava-red on his palm. It shimmered and formed a tail that writhed and snaked toward his wrist. She focused on that. Avitas.
He straightened, turned his head to her, with those fully gold eyes that were not human. She saw through to him. His psychic push at her was not a demand. They connected because she wanted to, and he allowed her. She walked to him. When she stood before him, she took his hand in hers and studied his palm. This was the source of the energy that had once been trapped in the talisman.
The tail that had emerged from that livid red dot now reached past his wrist. The color wasn’t a stain, it was under his skin, part of his hide, moving, swirling like a living thing, stretching along his arm, and her heart folded over with the conviction that no demon could survive prolonged contact with the power now concentrated there.
“Does it hurt?”
“Like fucking hell.” Her sense of Avitas lessened. Already, already, the assimilation had begun. The voice that came from the changed planes of his face and mouth rumbled from deep in his chest. He curled his other hand around the back of her neck, and fear sizzled through her.
She put a hand on his torso, smoothing his skin, gliding along that amazing black-green iridescence. She leaned in and pressed her lips to the center of his chest. His fingers tightened on her, slid up and covered the back of her skull. For two beings with so many differences, the thought of losing him panicked her. “I want you to be all right, Palla. Please be all right.”
He kept her near—she stayed close—and they remained like that for a long time. Forever. She floated along his vast, internal quiet until he swayed. She jammed her shoulder under his armpit. If he collapsed, he’d crush her in their fall.
Together, they stumbled to the couch, and he sprawled full length. His body changed several times in succession. Different forms; beast, devil, animal. His human form. Once, only once, a human woman with blonde curls and icy blue eyes. Wallace took the woman�
��s hand and kissed her palm.
“I love you,” she whispered. “Forever. Both of you.”
The woman’s shape was subsumed by the creature she’d first seen. His eyes opened, he shuddered. The red streak on his arm was halfway to his elbow now. She moved away, but he caught her hand and brought her back. “Wallace.”
She put her hands on his chest and concentrated on him, on the pain that wracked him. She drew that pain into her. Was she imagining he was better?”
He whispered her name. He flared in her head, raw, searing, and their connection was immediately two-way. She wasn’t new to this anymore. She could take care of herself. His low, raspy laugh in response, the smoothness, wasn’t a pat on the shoulder for a job well done. There was respect that made her chest tighten. He slid both hands down her back, bringing her forward. “Yes?”
That soft question slipped through her, and, yeah, she wanted this. Palla. A friend, a lover. They stood, and he seemed completely well. Thank God.
Of all the people who’d worked with her, he was the only one to see something in her besides the mundane. Because of him, she’d found the talent that lived in her.
She set her hands on his chest while his fingers followed her arms downward to bracelet her wrists. He walked her backward, now with an arm around her waist so she wouldn’t fall, and he laughed, and she did, too.
That red line undulated beneath his skin. He stumbled once on his way to his room. Just one of those things, right? They made it to his bed, and he worked at her clothes and all the while she got flashes of that red streak moving up his arm. To his elbow now. His skin was hot, his hands warm when he touched her and before long she was as naked as he was.
She put a hand on his belly, above his cock and then down, and she bent and took him in her mouth, and there he was in her thoughts, feeding her his response, and she managed to think you don’t hate witches as much as you say.
He touched her body, glided fingers over her skin and he did come in her mouth, and she went along with him, feeling the moment when he was vulnerable to her because he’d let his climax take him away, and the entire time, she drew away his pain.
He touched her everywhere, after that, everywhere, and he savored the difference—the fact that she was human, and that he could touch her magic, and that was something, the way her heart raced.
The moment came when he pulled himself over her, she knew he was supposed to get her consent to this. He stilled, his cock hard, his alien, otherworldly features aligning in angles that weren’t human. “I need yes.”
That red streak was past his elbow now. He slid a thigh between her legs, and she could not imagine living another five seconds without him inside her. She put a hand on the arm he propped on the mattress above her shoulders and touched that red line. There was an image in her head now, of that line snaking around his throat, curling around to the back of his neck and upward.
“What happens then?”
“I’m either dead or not.” He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed the side of her throat. “Yes? Yes, like this? Yes, I can taste your blood. Yes, I get to make love to you so you won’t forget even a second of this. I’ll change back in time, I swear it.”
“Yes, yes, please.”
Green and yellow flecks flashed through his eyes, and then he was pushing into her. She arched to meet him, to make it happen, and she hollowed out again at the sensations, the impossibility of the creature inside her. There was a desperation to their lovemaking. She couldn’t erase the possibility that he might not survive, and or that he was thinking that if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be sorry to have this experience be one of his last.
He slid a talon along the side of her throat. A nick. Just enough to draw blood, and when he tasted, her mind whirled with colors she could not name. His hips pressed into her, and he let her see and feel what it was like for him to have a human woman’s body in his arms. He drew a talon down her spine and there was a surge of power in the wake of that contact.
Close. He was mentally withdrawing from her in preparation for his transformation to human form, and it struck her as tragic, wrong. The wrong thing for them. She stroked his arms, running her fingers over his arms and the muscles there. “Stay like this.”
He stilled. That vivid red line now reached to the top of his shoulder. “I can’t.”
“You can if I agree. If you want that, too.”
“You understand what that means?”
“I do.”
He moved in her once. A pull backward of his pelvis and a slow slide forward, and, God, she felt good having him in her. So good. “Angel. You need to say it’s okay for me to do this with you.”
“Yes.”
“Nikodemus will take care of you. He’ll make sure you have everything you need.” He cupped the side of her face, his weight propped on his other arm. He was thrusting in her again, slowly for now, but was already coming apart. “If I get through this, I’ll do the needful. You won’t be alone unless you want to be.”
“I know that.”
There were no spoken words after that.
Half an hour later, the red line had snaked around his throat like a chain, and then, from one breath to the next, he collapsed. Not dead. Please not dead. But she was cut off from their psychic link, and all she could do was hold his hand and wait, and take away his pain until she was filled with agony.
Chapter 17
Wallace got back to the apartment later than she expected. In the elevator, she knew there were more demons than just Palla inside his apartment. She dropped her purse and her coat by the door and kicked off her shoes per usual. She could be cool about this. All conversation had stopped. There was a weird vibe she didn’t understand, and it made her jumpy. Maddy was there, with Tau, and one of the other demons who’d worked with Maddy’s street witches.
Most of the others here were demons, though there was one who was a mage. They stood near various windows and doors looking like they thought she was going to riffle through their wallets when no one was looking, and it was their job to make sure that didn’t happen. She and Palla exchanged a glance, and he nodded, somber. Not closed off, but not fully open, either. Nikodemus.
Okay then. Palla was sworn to the warlord, and that meant he was focused now on whatever business Nikodemus had here. She lifted a hand. “Hey, Maddy.”
A cute woman with purple hair and a tattoo on her temple stood beside Maddy and beside her was a gorgeous Indian man. Palla stood on the other side of the couch from Maddy. Everyone who wasn’t staring at her was staring at the man on the couch. He had on a black tee-shirt that said Demons Get Possessive in big red gothic lettering.
The man on the couch stood up. He was tall, and he had a great smile. “Wallace Jackson?”
“Yes.”
The Indian demon moved toward the man in the black shirt, and she got a chill because he had that way of moving that the more powerful demons had. The air around the tall man shifted in response. Everyone, Palla included, positioned themselves around him, and he looked like he expected no less.
“Wallace,” Maddy said. “Good to see you again.”
She scratched the back of her neck and wondered if maybe she should start growing her hair so she could do cornrows. It was time to change up her look. A woman in her neighborhood did a good side business doing cornrows in her kitchen. “I didn’t know there was going to be a party.”
Palla was too serious. Much too serious. “This is Nikodemus.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Wallace. I’ve been hearing a lot about you.”
Her stomach clenched. “Yes, sir.”
“You kept my guy here alive.” He nodded at Palla.
She shrugged. “It was more a mutual thing.”
“Maddy’s told you how this works, right? Palla, too. He should have.”
“Yes.”
Nikodemus was quiet a little longer than was comfortable for anyone. He sent a sideways look in Palla’s direction. “He better have.” He waved a h
and. He had a star ruby in one ear. Rubies had properties that enhanced magic for the magekind. He was making a statement wearing one at all. “Then you know the deal, right?”
“About?”
He gave her another long look. “We’ll have a talk about that. For now, I mean you being a witch. You know the deal about that.”
“Not really.”
“You got tagged as having significant power.”
She laughed, and then stopped because no one else was laughing. Palla gave her what should have been a fatal case of stink-eye, but she was used to that and ignored his glare.
“I have no problem with humans who have a little something going with magic. Most of them can’t hurt anybody. I don’t bother them as long as they can control themselves and stay safe. Someone like you, we have to deal with differently.”
“Okay.”
“Let me make it clear, though, if you and Palla have a kid, no worries there. No one leaves you without resources in that respect. We don’t abandon our kids or their mothers.”
“That’s good.”
“Notwithstanding, if you want to stay in my territory, you swear fealty to me, or you swear unaligned. No exceptions.” He was still smiling, but his eyes were hard. “That’s the way it works. In case no one set that out for you. “
Nikodemus was talking about an oath that had power. As in break the oath, and you were lucky if you died quickly.
“You understand those rules?”
“Except in defense of self or family, no harming the magekind. For the magekind, no magehelds allowed, not in flesh and not incorporeal. No killing a demon.”
“Close enough.”
“If you go unaligned you can’t work with Maddy. That’d be taking sides.”
“I know.”
He sent another sideways look at Palla. “The way things are right now, I can’t have my people shacking up with magekind or kin I can’t trust. And I can’t trust anyone who isn’t sworn. Maybe that’s unfair, but that’s how it works.”
She nodded.