Fiery Edge of Steel (Noon Onyx #2)

by Jill Archer

  Bodies.

  But they didn’t look dead. They looked like they were sleeping. I took a chance and increased the glow of my fire. In its flickering light, we counted twelve of them. One of them was a young girl. Athalie. It had to be her.

  I splashed over to the body that was closest to me, oblivious to the noise. It was a man, probably around thirty years of age, although it was hard to tell in this light. He, and the others, were resting on narrow shelves that had been cut out around the room. Had this place once been used for burial? Maybe by Vodnik and his early settlers? But these people hadn’t been buried. Or rather, they hadn’t been buried in any traditional way.

  They’d been entombed down here—alive.

  I felt for a pulse at the man’s neck but couldn’t feel anything. Still, he wasn’t stiff and the room didn’t stink of death. Instead it just smelled dank, almost like dirt, which was weird since the whole room was full of water. Ugh. I wondered when I was going to get the assignment that didn’t involve a deep, dark hole in the ground that some demon had dragged people into. I peeled back the man’s shirt so I could see more of his upper torso. Sure enough, there was a hellcnight bite just beneath his left collarbone.

  “He’s been bitten by a hellcnight,” I said. No need to speak loudly in here. Every sound echoed.

  Fara and Rafe, who’d moved away to check other bodies, confirmed bite marks on three others. My guess was they’d all been bitten somewhere. While the Angels continued examining bodies, I surveyed the room. The splashing from our movement and the drips from the walls and ceiling barely drowned out the sound of my breathing. I was scared.

  “It’s in here,” Rafe murmured.

  I fought the urge to shout or to spin around shining the light every which way. Panicking now would only get everyone killed. Slowly, I turned around, shining the light of my fireball into the dark areas of the room. At the same time, I opened up my signature as wide as I possibly could. My body shook, as did my magic. The fireball sputtered and my signature wavered.

  Just before my fireball went out, I saw it.

  It wasn’t underneath us, in the water; it was on top of us, on the ceiling.

  It was the most hideously frightening thing I’d ever seen. The hellcnight had Ebony’s shape, but the black serpent body now had hundreds of tiny claws that anchored its massive weight into the stone ceiling above us. Its eyes were as big as my fireball had been and suddenly just as glowing. The sight of it flushed my magic like water spilling from a slashed water pouch. It didn’t matter that Rafe and Fara had cast me up with no fewer than seven spells between them; I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

  Couldn’t see.

  My light had gone out.

  “Raf—!” I managed to squawk before the thing jumped at me.

  The water and the weight of the thing crashed down on me. Claws pierced my arms and legs. Water covered my head, pouring into my ears and mouth as I was pressed beneath the water. In the second it took me to react, I finished calling Rafe’s name. But it came out as a string of shouted bubbles. I thrashed and twisted in the water, trying to break free. My arms and legs felt like someone had driven nails into them. Every attempt to wrench myself out of the thing’s clutches just drove the nails deeper into my flesh. My eyes watered, but little difference it made.

  Finally, just as my head slammed into a stone, I threw a blast of magic at the beast. It shrieked, the high burble of it sounding positively unholy in the water, and squeezed me tighter.

  Where were Rafe and Fara? Could they not hear all my splashing and thrashing?!

  I felt woozy and slightly numb, surely the effects of hitting my head. I had an unfortunate history of blacking out at inopportune moments such as these. This time, I refused to succumb.

  Even though I was still underwater and likely bleeding from a hundred tiny holes by now, I willed myself to be calm. I stilled . . . and concentrated. I shaped my magic like Burr’s filleting knife and plunged it into the beast’s belly. Instantly the claws withdrew and the weight that had been pressing me into the water lifted.

  I rose up out of the water gasping. Above the water, all was a cacophony of sound. I realized only a few seconds had passed. Rafe and Fara hadn’t been ignoring me; they’d been casting spells at the demon. I hadn’t worked with either of them long enough to recognize what they were throwing, but it was impressive. The Angel army at Armageddon must have been formidable. The air was alight with sparks of magic, spitting bursts of fiery electric blasts, frantic splashing, and incomprehensible shouting. I rubbed my head where I’d hit it on the rock and looked around to see where the demon had gone.

  It had disappeared.

  “Noon, are you all right?” Rafe asked, rushing over to me. He motioned to Fara to follow. She did, but kept a wary eye out for another attack.

  “Did you see where it went?” I asked.

  “No,” Rafe murmured, distracted. He was looking at my injuries. He put his hand behind my head, cradling it. At once I felt stronger, less light-headed. He’d cast a healing spell. My arms and legs still throbbed and I felt the trickle of blood oozing out of too many cuts to count. But I pushed Rafe’s hand away and started walking toward the center of the room. There would be plenty of time for healing later.

  Again, I lit a fireball, but this time I let it grow as large as the giant skulls we’d passed on the way in here. The room was now nearly as light as the Angel restaurant Empyr with its thousands and thousands of candles. I looked around the room, taking care to inspect the ceiling carefully. Behind me, Rafe and Fara were still. Looking. Listening.

  Nothing.

  I swallowed.

  It was still here. I felt it still, hiding, lurking, waiting.

  I glanced around at the bodies again. Wait—!

  There were thirteen of them now. Hadn’t there been twelve before?

  But which one was the hellcnight?

  The hellcnight was doing what hellcnights did best, masking its signature. Demon Net must have only told Rafe that it was in this room because he was still searching the ceiling.

  I caught Rafe’s eye and pointed toward the bodies. I held up one finger, then three, then put my finger on my mouth and started walking toward one of them. The flaming knife I’d shaped with my magic was still holding strong so I felt only slightly unhinged at the thought of examining these bodies yet again, knowing this time one of them didn’t belong and it was really a demon that wanted to kill me . . . Or bite me and feed off of my sleeping form later.

  As it was, it didn’t take long to focus in on the demon we were looking for. As soon as I approached the young man in the corner farthest from where we came in, it sat up.

  It was Ari.

  I switched my flaming knife from hand to hand, suddenly nervous in a whole different way than I had been before.

  “It’s not him,” Fara hissed. “It’s the hellcnight.” She readied a sparking, electric bolt of blue and held it in her hand, looking at me, waiting for my okay. Rafe did the same.

  There I was, flanked by two Angels, their blue Angel light contrasting sharply with the orange red glow of my fire, facing a demon that had to be put down . . . and I wavered. My fire flickered.

  “You don’t really want to kill me, do you?” Ari said.

  I gritted my teeth. How could the voice be the same too?

  “Let’s go outside,” I said. “We can talk up there.”

  “Noon . . .” Rafe growled, his voice a low warning. “You know that’s not Ari.”

  “Who are you?” I said to the demon. “Who are you really? Are you Grimasca?”

  “Grimasca!” The thing shifted again and stood before us as the other hellcnight had, a pale, blue-veined, sharp-toothed demon with glowing red eyes. But now it had a scorpion-like tail that whipped around behind it like a snake. “Grimasca is just a name for all hellcnights, like the Legion is the name for all demons. Grimasca is a romantic legend for those of us who like dark tales.” The hellcnight took a step toward me. “Wher
e is my partner, the hellcnight who was impersonating Vodnik?”

  “Dead,” I said. The hellcnight looked angry, but also frustrated and possibly the least little bit scared. It had to be a trick. Everything about hellcnights was a trick. I glanced at the end of the hellcnight’s tail and raised my flaming knife. Best to go for the end of the tail first and then its belly, I thought, marveling at my own thoughts.

  I heard splashing as the Angels shifted in the water. But instead of attacking, the hellcnight pointed to my alembic.

  “Is that full of waerwater?”

  I raised my left hand to the partially crushed alembic. The catch was still in place. I had a sudden urge to rip it from my neck and blast it with fire. Was the hellcnight’s question a trick?

  And then the hellcnight shifted again. Into a man. An ordinary man. No one I had ever seen before. But someone I could have seen a thousand times before. The man standing in front of me could have been any man in the Shallows or any man in all of Halja. The hellcnight had intentionally chosen a less threatening form. But it was a calculated act of nonaggression.

  “I want to confess,” the man said. I glanced at Rafe, who gave me a guarded look in return. Fara’s gaze was locked on the hellcnight. I had a feeling she was still feeling pretty angry about Ari’s betrayal and refused to be fooled again. She didn’t trust the hellcnight, even in its innocuous and nonthreatening form. I didn’t blame her one bit.

  “Confess to what?” I said warily.

  The hellcnight smiled. “I want to make a formal confession,” it said. “I will tell you my name. My real name. And your Angels will act as witnesses. I will confess to my sins here in the Shallows and then you will try me—with waerwater.”

  I tried not to look surprised. I doubt I was successful. This definitely had to be a trick. Ari had said he’d seen “more than a few” demons die from drinking waerwater and none who had lived. Ari’s credibility might be somewhat shot now, but I doubted he’d have lied about that. Did this hellcnight just want a chance to die “honorably”? I didn’t think hellcnights were honorable. Maegesters were supposed to be the honorable ones. We were the ones descended from Luck’s right hand. Hellcnights were the demons that carried out the dirty work of Luck’s left.

  I had two choices. I could either kill this thing now or I could allow it to confess and be tried with waerwater. Since I wasn’t too keen on killing in the first place, the second option seemed like the way to go. Sure, I’d likely have to hear all kinds of gruesome details (or possibly heartfelt excuses) about what had gone down out in the Meadow three months ago, but I’d have all my answers, the case could be closed, and the waerwater would nicely take care of the demon so I wouldn’t have to.

  With a cautious glance at the Angels to make sure they were ready to move if necessary, I doused my flaming knife. It retracted with just the slightest bit of smoke. I reached up and unfastened the necklace’s catch. I held up the alembic, which swung suspended in the air by the silver chain. But I didn’t offer it to the hellcnight. Not yet.

  “Let’s hear it,” I said.

  “I am Beetiennik, Patron Demon of Springtails, Mayflies, and Water Beetles. The hellcnight who I hunt with—who you say is now dead—was Biviennik, the Patron Demon of Shipworms, Squids, and Slugs.”

  Before Rafe could jump in, I made my own introduction, “And I am Nouiomo Onyx, future Maegester for the Demon Council.”

  Beetiennik raised an eyebrow, no doubt at the “future” part of my introduction, but he continued with his confession.

  “Three months ago, Vodnik and a group of his followers called upon Grimasca, the Grim Mask of Death, out in the Meadow near here. You can be the judge of whether the demon they called really came or not. After all, it all depends on who, or what, you believe ‘Grimasca’ to be. If you believe Grimasca to be death itself, then he came.” Beetiennik sneered evilly.

  “Biviennik and I attacked Vodnik and his fishermen out in the Meadow that day. Why? Because we were hungry. Because we were tired of eating bugs and slugs. Vodnik and one of his followers were killed in the attack.”

  “What about Stillwater, Vodnik’s gerefa? Why did you leave him there?”

  Beetiennik barked out a laugh. “He was a surprise. We thought we got everyone. And then he comes out of the swamps two hours later, ranting about how Grimasca had gotten everyone.”

  So Stillwater had been telling the truth. Luck really had saved him that day.

  “What about Cephas? The fisherman who was bitten in the Meadow the month before you attacked Vodnik and his group?”

  “That was Biviennik. Being too hungry to wait for the right time.” I narrowed my eyes. Beetiennik ignored me.

  “We moved our catch down here,” he continued, “to keep it cold, and then Biviennik took over for Vodnik ‘upstairs.’ We didn’t want to spook our new school of fish with any big changes to their environment.” I was beginning to think waerwater would be too merciful for this demon. “And then we found out the girl had sent word to the Council—to you.” Beetiennik shook his head disappointedly. “So Biviennik took her out to the Meadow and I bit her there and dragged her back here.” He looked expectantly at me. I said nothing. “We knew you, or someone like you, would be heading out to the Shallows, so Biviennik kept watch for you while I stayed back here pretending to be Vodnik. Biviennik was the hellcnight that attacked you on your boat.”

  “But you were the one who pretended to be Ebony that night at the Elbow,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Beetiennik said.

  “You were the demon that killed Burr.”

  “Who?” Beetiennik looked confused. He also looked mildly aggravated with my continued questions. Like he couldn’t believe I would care about the identities of his Hyrke victims. His lack of compassion galled me. It angered me. It enraged me. That Beetiennik could end a life without even knowing the sort of person they were, good or bad, was incomprehensible to me.

  “Beetiennik, Patron Demon of Springtails, Mayflies, and Water Beetles, I have heard your confession and find you guilty of murdering five human Hyrkes and an outpost demon lord.”

  “And I appreciate your judgment, Nouiomo Onyx, future Maegester for the Demon Council, but yours is not the judgment I’m looking for. Lucifer’s judgment is what I seek. I demand to be tried by the absent king himself. I demand my right to a trial by waerwater.”

  Part of me felt like a coward, handing over the waerwater. I’d told myself before Jezebeth’s execution that I hadn’t wanted Ari to throw my stones for me. Well, giving Beetiennik waerwater to drink was letting Luck throw my stones for me. Still, the only alternative was to become a lawbreaker myself. Definitely not something I wanted to do. I wasn’t entirely sure I believed in the divining power of waerwater—wasn’t sure that I believed it really was Luck passing judgment on the accused—but since the outcome would be just, I wasn’t going to quibble with the method.

  Not trusting the hellcnight enough to get close to it, I tossed the alembic to it. Beetiennik caught it and wasted no time. He unfastened the catch and, after only the briefest hesitation, tipped back his head and poured the contents of the alembic down his throat.

  The effects were as awful as I’d been led to believe they would be. Beetiennik immediately shifted back into his true hellcnight form—a horridly pale demon with bloodred eyes and an oversized jaw—and collapsed into the water shaking. I resisted my first instinct, which was to help him. He’d asked for this “trial.” He thrashed in the water, making horrific squealing noises, clutching at his throat and bashing his head and limbs every which way on the rocks and debris. Before our eyes, he seemed to shrink like a plum left in the sun. His claws grasped at the air and he struggled for breath. The water around him bloomed like a crimson rose. We could see the stain of the demon’s blood in the water even in the half-dark room. Eventually, Beetiennik’s squealing ended. But then the truly horrific thing happened. I thought he would stop thrashing and lie there, dead in the water. But instead, he got
up. He wasn’t laughing. Instead he was panting and wheezing, but he was alive.

  Beetiennik was alive.

  What did it mean? That he was innocent? I didn’t believe that and wouldn’t no matter how many divination tools told me otherwise. Did the fact that Beetiennik lived really mean that Luck had saved him? Or that Luck was still testing me?

  When Beetiennik’s wheezing subsided and he could finally speak again he said, “You are free to go now, Ms. Onyx. You’ve come to the Shallows and completed your assignment. You can go back to New Babylon now. The Boatman should be here in a week or two. Your Angels can bear witness to both my testimony and trial. There are no further crimes that need to be tried here.”

  Was he mad? Of course he was mad.

  I couldn’t leave him here! And wouldn’t. I didn’t care that Luck may have deemed him innocent. I realized then that even if Beetiennik promised to go somewhere very far away, I wouldn’t let him do it. It was blasphemous to put my judgment before Luck’s, but I was too afraid Beetiennik would do it again. To another Hyrke—or even another demon—somewhere else. And what would that make me? As guilty of that future murder as Beetiennik would be.

  I took a deep breath, because what I was contemplating was so very grave. I wanted to make sure I could live with my decision. If I executed Beetiennik now, I would be the one committing a sin, arguably against Luck himself.

  “You’re free to go,” I said to the Angels. I didn’t want them to be witnesses to anything they didn’t want to be a part of. To anything that could get them into serious trouble later, should the truth come out. But they didn’t move. Instead they readied two blue bolts of Angel light.

  For this execution, however, I was going to strike first. Because if anyone was going to take the blame for casting the first stone against an “innocent,” it was going to be me.

  I reshaped my magic from a filleting knife into a huge amorphous blast—exactly the kind of blast both Rochester and Delgato had warned me never to throw. Because, though they are hot and blinding, they are almost never deadly. Beetiennik laughed, an odd warbling gurgle that sounded like a bubble being dislodged from his throat. He thought I’d made a mistake. But I hadn’t. I knew, without the element of surprise, my magic wouldn’t kill this demon. It was far too powerful. So while the demon laughed over my apparent magical miscalculation, I unsheathed Burr’s knife and stepped close. Just as its laughter was fading, I plunged Burr’s knife, his real one, deep into the demon’s heart.