by A. H. Lee
Chapter 65
Jessica
Jessica thought she understood, just for a moment, what it must feel like to be stuffed into a bottle. She felt as though her whole body were being drawn through a pinhole. It was surprisingly painless, but extremely disconcerting. For an instant, Jessica experienced an absolute lack of sensation—no light, no sound, no smells, no tastes, no feel of clothes or air against her skin. She did not even have a sense of where her limbs were in relation to each other, whether she was curled into a ball or lying flat, whether she had limbs.
Then, abruptly, she felt Azrael’s hand in hers. She had hands. Her body had weight. She was standing. Sound came back into the world—a man speaking. Jessica realized she’d closed her eyes. She opened them.
She was standing beside Azrael and Mal in an airy, domed room with pink and white marble columns and wrap-around, tiered seating. The room was full of people. There was no judge’s bench, no podium of any kind. A gentleman with skin darker than Mal’s, wearing a beautiful red and gold waistcoat was standing a few feet away from them, looking startled. His mouth was open as though he’d been speaking, but no sound came out.
Jessica still had Azrael’s hand in one of hers, and she backed up instinctively to take Mal’s on the other side. They stood there, back-to-back, breathing quickly. Jessica wondered whether she should draw her sword. She wondered whether it would still glow.
The man in the center of the room cleared his throat and spoke in a severe voice. “Lord Azrael, you are…” Jessica thought he wanted to say, “Late.” But technically, they weren’t. According to the clock on the wall, they had arrived on the stroke of the hour.
The people in the room began murmuring to each other. Jessica looked around at them, conscious of her torn and bloodstained exercise clothes and hair that was coming out of its tie. The people were dressed in a variety of styles, with skin and features from every corner of the Shattered Sea—dark and light, curly and straight, tall and short, stocky and thin—but they were all well-groomed, and they all looked at least twenty years older than Jessica. She lifted her chin. I just faced down the Faery Queen. I will not be intimidated by a bunch of human magicians.
They looked very unfriendly. Jessica could see why Azrael hadn’t wanted to arrive this way. It was a showy insult to their sense of security.
Some of these people don’t think you’re human, whispered a voice in Jessica’s head. They don’t think that killing you is murder.
Her chest gave a squeeze, but then she spotted a familiar ginger beard and bald pate. Lord Loudain was sitting in the front row not far away. He smiled at her and winked. Jessica relaxed.
Azrael deliberately released her hand and bowed, first to the man who seemed to be in charge, then to the rest of the room. “Lord Hastafel, Colleagues, I apologize for my sudden appearance. We had trouble with faeries on the way.”
Lord Hastafel harrumphed. “We are glad you could attend,” he said stiffly. “Faeries or not, we would prefer that you use the door next time.”
“Noted,” said Azrael coolly.
Lord Hastafel folded his hands behind his back and looked down his nose at them. “Lord Azrael, you have been accused of dark magic. I assume you have come to defend yourself?”
“I have,” said Azrael. “Or rather, I’ve come to let you decide.”
Jessica could feel the strange, prickly sensation of unfamiliar magic. She supposed they were looking at her aura. The magicians were whispering to each other again. Jessica felt fur brush against her hand and glanced around to see that Mal had turned into a panther. He was bristling all over. Azrael had thrust his own hands into his pockets. He looked unconcerned, but Jessica felt certain he was preparing to attack if anything went wrong.
An unfriendly looking man in the second tier stood up and said, “You use magic to control our kings, yet you insist that no magic be used for war. This puts far too much power in your hands and the hands of that demon.” He pointed a finger at Mal.
An elderly woman stood as the first man sat down. “That creature has a very strange aura. If I did not know better, I would say it contains sorcerous magic.” She looked piercingly at Azrael.
Azrael looked back at her without a flicker. “I didn’t hear a question.”
“Has that creature been feeding on you?”
“Are you suggesting that an astral demon could feed on his summoner without killing him?”
A storm of muttering broke out.
“That’s not possible.”
“—can’t be an astral demon.”
“Well, it obviously is!”
Another man stood, this one younger. “Demon,” he said, addressing himself to Mal, “have you taken possession of this sorcerer?”
Jessica glanced at Mal. He was bristling to his tail tip and growling softly. It seemed to take him a moment to remember how to speak. “No.”
All of the magicians stared at him. “He’s telling the truth,” someone whispered.
“You can’t be sure. He could be cloaking.”
“He’s not! Look at him.”
“Yes, look at him!”
“Abomination. It should be banished at once. It’s contaminated and it’s…unbound!”
“It can’t be unbound.”
“It is; we’re looking at it.”
Azrael’s posture was growing more rigid, his jaw tight. Mal had backed up against them. Azrael slid one hand out of his pocket to clench in the fur of Mal’s shoulders. Jessica put a hand on her sword hilt.
A middle-aged woman stood up. Jessica thought she was wearing a stole, but then the stole yawned. It was a ring-tailed lemur, draped around her shoulders. The lemur looked at Jessica with obvious intelligence. It was wearing a jeweled collar. “Lord Azrael,” said the woman, “we know perfectly well that you are not a dark sorcerer. Yet.” A ripple of argument broke out around her, but Lord Hastafel glared, and the interruption ceased.
The woman continued. “My colleagues are jealous and worried, but they know this. You’ll leave here in a moment, and whether or not you leave a smoking crater behind you is up to us.”
Azrael’s mouth twitched up. His posture softened ever so slightly.
“You don’t give us many opportunities to ask you questions.” Her eyes skipped around the room, and Jessica could tell that she was talking as much to the other magicians as to Azrael. Her eyes said: “Don’t throw away this opportunity because of your pride.”
Azrael turned his body towards her.
“You’re a mystery,” continued the sorceress, “and you want to stay that way. However, I, for one, would give a great deal to understand some of the things you know. The panther demon is not bound. We can all see this. He is an astral entity. We can see that, too. Everything about his magical signature points to you as his summoner. Yet he has not killed you. This is remarkable. How did you do it?”
“Astral demons become more human the longer they’re kept,” said Azrael in a patient voice. “I am not the first sorcerer to make this observation.”
“Purely theoretical,” someone said. “Unsubstantiated nonsense.”
The woman dismissed her colleagues with a shake of her head. “Yes, you freed him, obviously, and he did not kill you, nor did he return to the astral plane. This happened. It must have happened! But how did you make that decision? How did you know when it would be safe to release him? Demons are charming, but they’re remarkably good liars.” The lemur on her shoulder grinned. Jessica wondered which vice this creature represented. Offhand, she would say Sloth.
The woman’s sincere and infinitely practical question seemed to take Azrael off guard. “Well,” he said in a less certain voice, “I didn’t make the decision…exactly. Mal was dying. There was a necromancer. We were in the Shadow Lands. And Jessica…” His eyes flicked around the room. “Do you…really want to hear the story?”
His audience had gone so quiet that Jessica heard someone swallow. “Yes!” exclaimed the woman with the lemur. “Yes, w
e really do.”
Azrael put his hands in his pockets again, this time more thoughtfully. “You all know that the deceased Duke of Carnobo liked to collect antique curiosities. Unfortunately, he collected some things from my old school, including a spirit vessel with a mad wizard trapped inside. That was the beginning, but maybe not the beginning of the part about Mal. Jessica…” He nodded at her. “She came to my island as a courtier. Neither she nor anyone else knew she was a fledgling succubus. She got along very well with my astral incubus…”
Azrael hesitated, and Jessica realized that these people had not known for sure what kind of demon Mal was. Some of them probably suspected, but they didn’t know. Summoned aspects of Lust took the shape most attractive to their summoner, refining it over time. Mal’s human appearance revealed very personal things about Azrael’s sexual tastes.
He hesitated, but no one spoke. No one looked disgusted. No one made a sound.
“Mal discovered that he could use Jessica’s nascent magic to cut me off from his own,” continued Azrael. “He intended to use this to escape. Meanwhile, I was distracted by the appearance of a necromancer who seemed intent upon stirring up war between Aspiria and Solaria. He’d created a frost bear golem to stalk the Shadow Lands.” Azrael was relaxing, slipping into his reading voice, his storytelling voice. “As it turned out, this necromancer knew my name.”
Someone in the audience gasped.
Azrael smiled faintly. Mal had stopped bristling. He stretched out with his head on his paws. “Please tell me I’m not going to be the villain of this story.”
“Well, you sort of were,” said Jessica.
“I fixed it,” whined Mal.
Azrael gave them a sidelong look and continued, “This all culminated when the necromancer tripped the spell traps I’d set to monitor his activity. He tripped them all at once to taunt me. I went after him in the Shadow Lands. That’s where things got interesting…”
Chapter 66
Azrael
Two hours later, Azrael stood in the back of the courtroom as it emptied. Mal and Jessica had agreed to answer questions from the other magicians, who’d lined up to talk to them on their way out. The atmosphere in the room had shifted from hostility to friendly curiosity.
Mal had transformed into a man. He had one arm looped through Jessica’s, but he looked calm. These four months abroad have been good for him, thought Azrael. In the past, Mal had never been quite certain how to interact with other humans whom he was not supposed to either seduce or attack. Clearly, he had improved his social skills. Perhaps I have as well.
Azrael flinched as a big hand clapped him on the shoulder. “You did good, kid.”
Lord Loudain smiled benevolently at him. Azrael wanted to say, “Don’t call me kid” and possibly, “Get your hand off my shoulder.” But he was feeling too relieved to do either. His mouth twisted up into a smile before he could stop it.
“Have you given any more thought to that school?” asked Loudain.
No, I have been too busy building impossible gates and learning to be a sexually active adult. “I thought I would wait until I wasn’t on trial for dark magic.”
Loudain nodded. “They’d do it, you know. They’d send you their children.”
Azrael massaged his temples. “I’ll think about it when I get home.”
Loudain folded his hands behind his back. He watched Mal and Jessica for a moment. “Have you ever read Boltrard’s History of the Abyss?”
Azrael thought for a moment. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“I think the only copy may be in my family library. It was one of the books denounced after the Rift Wars. I don’t think many copies survived. It’s the sort of thing that would make magicians uncomfortable even today.”
Azrael couldn’t help himself. “I am a collector of rare books…”
Loudain’s eyes twinkled. “It has a prohibition charm that’s supposed to make it impossible to reproduce.”
“I’m pretty good at breaking those.”
“Well, feel free to visit us and take a crack at it. The book has a lot to say about demons. The author speculates at length about what demons actually are and why they gave us their names. I suppose you’ve read all those theories?”
Azrael pursed his lips. “I don’t know about ‘all.’ Religious leaders claim that astral demons are evil entities who lost their war with angels. Their names were given to mortals as a punishment. Some claim that demons are learning from their many lives on earth and will eventually be cleansed and become angels again.
“Less pious sources claim that the war was between the demons themselves—that there are no angels, that demons are not evil in any moral sense of the word, but alien beings. They steal each other’s names and sell them to mortals as a form of attack.
“Others claim that demons sold their own names to ancient sorcerers in exchange for favors we cannot understand. Some say that demons require an exchange with the mortal plane in order to survive.” Azrael shrugged. “Summoned demons give conflicting answers to these questions, and many people conclude that they do not know the answers themselves. Or perhaps we just haven’t asked the right questions.”
Loudain nodded. “I’ve read all that, too. In regards to angels, well… You might find Boltrard interesting, even if you don’t agree with him. He seems to think that demons and angels are two aspects of the same thing, that vice and virtue are, in fact, very close together. What is romantic love, after all, but lust with empathy and a conscience?”
Azrael thought about that.
Loudain shrugged. “Maybe angels are not summoned, but made. Maybe it was always up to us to make them.”
Azrael said nothing for a long moment. “Please don’t tell Mal you think he’s an angel. He will be insufferable.”
Loudain grinned and clapped him on the back again. “Well, I’m glad you came, anyway. And do visit my family library sometime. I know it’s smaller than yours, but it might still have a few items of interest. We have, after all, been around for eight hundred years.”
Azrael laughed. He felt suddenly very young and very stupid. You must think I am insufferable. “Thank you, my lord. I will visit.”
Chapter 67
Mal
I am good at this, thought Mal. Who would have guessed?
The magicians asked him all kinds of questions about feeding and not killing people and how his collar worked. Mal avoided anything about feeding on Azrael, and he did not tell them that the collar was a magical focus. In spite of this, he was able to answer most of their questions with reasonable accuracy. The magicians were so interested, hanging on his every word.
They were warded, of course. He couldn’t see their auras properly, couldn’t tell whether they were attracted to him, although he felt certain that some of them were. Several had demons of their own, and that made Mal a little uncomfortable, but he was mostly able to ignore the other demons.
Jessica remained at his side, answering questions. “How did Azrael treat her? How often did she feed? How many children had she produced? Had she ever killed anyone? Did she want to?” Jessica answered even the insulting questions with kindness and patience. Mal tried to do the same.
They were down to the last couple of people in line when Mal turned to the next face…and there stood the demon hunter. Mal froze. How had he missed this person earlier? How had Azrael missed him? Some sort of glamour. Azrael said he was old and powerful.
The man’s piercing eyes bored into Mal’s. He wasn’t smiling.
He knows my name. Mal couldn’t breathe. If he’d been a panther, he would have tucked his tail. Why did I agree to answer questions? Why is Azrael on the far side of the room talking to Loudain? Why did I think I could do this?
He knows my name, he knows my name, he knows my name…
“Mal?” Jessica’s voice sounded anxious and he realized he was gripping her arm too tightly. Her eyes skipped to the demon hunter, and she caught her breath.
Definitel
y a glamour. No one recognized the man until they focused on his face.
“I see your master has told you about me,” said the hunter.
It was too late to run. The man was standing too close. “I don’t want to go,” whispered Mal. “Please.”
The demon hunter studied him. “Are you happy?”
It was the last question Mal had expected. He stared into the man’s face. “Yes.”
The demon hunter studied him, studied his aura. “You’re terrible at cloaking,” he commented.
Mal shut his eyes.
“And I can see you’re not lying,” he continued. “Are you killing people?”
“No,” whispered Mal.
Again, the demon hunter studied him. He shook his head. “You’re an aberration, Malcharius, and I don’t trust you. But for now…” He shrugged and gave a helpless smile. “I’m in a generous mood.”
He turned away, and Mal finally noticed the woman on his arm—an attractive woman who looked close to the hunter’s own age. She was wearing a mink coat. Mal felt a jolt of shock as she looked over the hunter’s shoulder and winked at him.
Azrael came strolling up as the two of them walked away. Mal cleared his throat. “Boss…did you let Lucy out of her bottle?”
Azrael stretched. “Yes, I sent her ahead of us when I woke up this morning. She was going to scout around and give me a report. Have you seen her?”
Mal nodded, lost for words.
“I think you owe Lucy some cigarettes,” whispered Jessica.
“I’m in a generous mood.” Mal put a hand to his forehead. “All the cigarettes. And one of those long holders she likes.”
Azrael looked between them.
Jessica made a face. “But is she really going to…? With a demon hunter?”
Mal shrugged. “She’s good at cloaking.”
Azrael stared at him. “Lucy is with the demon hunter?”