As great as all the vegetables had tasted, I grimaced at the thought of making every meal a salad. “This is my life now?” I asked, forking a piece of lettuce that had escaped my notice and eating it.
“You’ll survive,” Niko said without an ounce of sympathy.
I leaned back in my seat, relaxed now that I had a full stomach. Niko didn’t appear in a hurry to leave, so I figured he had more lectures for me. I jumped in before he could start.
“What’s our plan now?” I asked.
“That’s for Mr. Pitt to decide.”
I veered away from that delicate subject. “Was this the first demon you’ve encountered?”
“No.”
“The strongest?”
“No.”
“The shortest?”
That got me a smile. “No.”
“How long have you been an enforcer?”
“Since my late teens. I was promoted pretty fast and passed the optivus aegis test when I was twenty-two.”
I was surprised he’d offered information. “Why? What made you get strong so fast?”
“Lots of practice and paying attention to my wardens.”
“You’re not just saying that?”
“No.”
“This job’s got a steep learning curve.” It wasn’t quite a complaint.
Niko didn’t answer. He reached down beneath the table and came up with a knife nestled in a leather sheath. Judging by the sheath, the blade was at least eight inches long. He set it on the table between us, then looked at me.
“Things would have gone a lot differently if you’d been carrying this tonight.”
Yeah, I thought, I might not still have all my fingers and toes. I folded my hands in my lap beneath the table. My happy full-stomach glow cooled.
“You need to be able to take care of yourself and your region without backup.”
“I’ve got pet wood—”
“Remind me how well that worked against the hounds tonight, against the demon.”
I snapped my mouth shut. My aversion to getting a knife of my own spoke volumes about how I felt about using one. I didn’t need to point out to Niko that I couldn’t kill a hound with a knife knowing that it was a helpless dog who’d had no say in its transformation. Niko had probably guessed as much. What scared me more was the thought of plunging a sharp blade into a human-looking demon. If the demon had looked like a vervet, I might not have had a problem. But the demon was Tim, a guy I’d met at a bar. He was real, flesh and blood . . . and antlers and atrum.
“What if I’m not cut out for this job?” I whispered.
“You have doubts?”
I nodded.
“Is this the same woman who turned a hound last night with her bare hands? The same one who embedded her pet wood halfway into a demon?”
I squirmed at the reminder. “It’s the same one who followed brainless imps to a trap. It’s the same one who fell under Tim’s spell.”
“Everyone makes mistakes when they first start.”
“What? After all that crap you gave me, you’re going to shrug it off now?”
Niko grinned. “I don’t condone some of the decisions you made, but I have no fault with your instincts as an enforcer.”
I pulled my mouth closed with effort.
“Besides, you should have seen some of the stupid things I did when I was younger.” Niko shook his head in rueful remembrance.
“Like what?”
Our waitress chose that moment to clear the table and bring the check. She hesitated when she saw the sheathed knife, then rushed away with our dishes. I waited for Niko to continue our fascinating conversation, but he shook his head.
“Something tells me you won’t need the encouragement of the stories of my wilder—and stupider—days.”
“You’re just afraid of scaring me off,” I taunted.
“Maybe.”
Not the answer I wanted. It would have been nice to have more than Niko’s word that he hadn’t always been perfect.
I stared at the knife on the table. It looked much larger without all the plates and glasses around it. I blinked. It looked like any other knife in Primordium: charcoal. A thing of death. I shuddered.
Niko’s color was still not up to full strength, but it blazed brighter than mine did. I wondered if it always would. He was the elite of the enforcers; I was the latest-blooming enforcer ever seen, or so everyone told me. Beneath my lashes, I eyed his strength, that subtle glimmer of more that his soul had. I eyed it, and coveted it. I didn’t want to be weak. I didn’t want my region to suffer for my weaknesses. I wanted to shine with a strength I wasn’t even sure how to obtain.
Tentatively, I reached for the knife and pulled it halfway from its sheath. The blade glowed faintly, a soft white that was akin to a reflective shine. When I pushed a trickle of lux lucis into the hilt, if felt like I’d caressed a smooth piece of glass or stainless steel, something incredibly soft and cold and slick. The hilt remained charcoal, but the blade glowed a little brighter.
“I thought metals didn’t hold lux lucis very well,” I said.
“They don’t. This knife has a core of bone.”
I slid the blade home and rested my hands on the table. “Bone of what?”
“A cow’s rib. And, no, to answer the question on your face, I didn’t kill the cow. A butcher did. The meat was sold, the bone was purchased by a knife manufacturer.”
I let that sink in. The blade looked normal. It wasn’t thick and round like the rib bones I’d seen.
“How does the lux lucis get from the bone to the outside to”—harm, destroy, kill—“banish atrum?”
“The bone holds lux lucis. It’ll hold it longer than pet wood will. And it radiates the energy out to the sharp edges of the blade, sort of like water flowing in the easiest direction. That’s why the knife is double-edged, and also why the hilt doesn’t hold lux lucis. Which means that as long as the blade is sheathed, most atrum creatures don’t notice it. A weapons expert could tell you more, but that’s the gist of it.”
“Do I know any of those?”
“Any what?”
“Weapons experts.”
“Closest one is San Francisco, so probably not.”
I blinked to normal vision. “How long did it take you to learn it all?”
“You never learn it all.”
“Humor me,” I said, not in the mood to play word games. I was sitting on the tip of the enforcer iceberg, and so much unknown was floating out of sight. How many creatures, good and evil, were out there that I didn’t know about? What else was there that I didn’t even know enough to ask about?
“How fast you learn is up to you, but if you want to catch up fast, stick with Brad, keep your ears open, and ask questions. That’s the best you can do.”
“Got anything more concrete than that?”
Niko let his silence ride. I wondered if we’d exhausted his week’s worth of words. Was he normally a talkative man? It was hard to picture. He was so self-sufficient, he probably usually didn’t need words to converse.
I would have loved to sit there and pick his brain for the rest of the night, especially for details about his life, his past, his present. Where did he live? Had he always worked in northern California? Did he have a girlfriend in another city? A girlfriend in every city? A dog? Parents, or was he spawned from pure lux lucis like the ultimate good creature? What was his favorite sexual position?
I gave myself a little shake. If my hormones were back online, I was feeling good enough to go home. Especially since my hormones usually made me look like a fool around Niko.
The knife was large and menacing on the Formica-topped table. I glanced down at my hands where they rested on the table on either side of my inflated chest. My right wrist was circled with a darkening bruise from where Tim had held my hand in the atrum barrier over the door. He’d been stronger than me physically and in Primordium. Even if he hadn�
�t had the element of surprise or his lust magic, I wouldn’t have been able to fight my way free of him. He’d pinned me easily to the floor in the end, and it’d been only Niko’s fantastic timing that had saved me from becoming demon food.
The hilt fit easily against my palm, and the weight of the blade surprised me. I slid the knife into my costume’s backpack with a shudder.
Niko pulled out his wallet and placed some money with the check. The butts of the guns scraped loudly as I slid from the booth. I caught the right one on the table as I stood. The table screeched in protest, drawing everyone’s attention.
“Is that Lara Croft?” I heard a teenage boy whisper to his friend.
“She looks better in 3D,” his friend said.
“No kidding.”
I checked to make sure my shorts were still covering my butt cheeks and walked out with my dignity trailing in my wake.
17
Spay and Neuter Animal Abusers
Niko drove me to my car, then followed me home. We didn’t speak again about the knife or the demon.
“Check with Brad tomorrow to see what he wants you to do,” was the last thing Niko said to me.
I tried to take heart from Niko’s belief that Mr. Pitt wouldn’t fire me. For all that I’d finally admitted I wanted to keep my job, the fact was, I also still needed my job. Were Mr. Pitt to fire me now, I’d make rent and the Civic was paid through the month, but it would mean another frantic job hunt.
I recharged fully with the help of a huge oak tree in my complex. With nutrients in my stomach, the tree’s lux lucis was more than enough to restore the remainder of my expended energy. Niko waited until I walked up the stairs to my apartment to start his car. When I peeked out my balcony window, he was pulling out of the lot.
I fed Mr. Bond on autopilot, meticulously replaced the wards around the doors and windows, tossed the costume in the washer for what felt like the tenth day in a row, and showered. Once I’d changed into some lounge pants and a soft old T-shirt, I flopped in my recliner. Mr. Bond decided that he had several days’ worth of neglect to make up for, and he pranced around my lap while I petted him.
I didn’t turn on the TV or radio. The only sound in the apartment was the soothing hum of the refrigerator and Mr. Bond’s ecstatic purr.
My hands began to shake. Something wet was on my face, and I was surprised to realize I was crying. I closed my eyes and saw Tim’s beautiful human face with twisted antlers tipped in atrum blades sprouting from the top of his head. I snapped my eyes open and stared at Mr. Bond.
My job as an assistant to Eliza Turner had been demeaning and frustrating, Catchall Advertising had been tedious, and being a used-car saleswoman had been disastrous, but none of those jobs, or any others I’d had, had been life-threatening. My biggest work-related concerns used to be about meeting management monetary goals, pleasing the customer, and not succumbing to boredom comas.
Mr. Bond head-butted my chin and I resumed petting him. Gradually my cheeks dried and my tremors stilled.
It had been easy to be brave while in Niko’s company, but sitting in my tiny, isolated apartment was another matter. My wards looked feeble. If Tim had followed me, he’d have no problem knocking down the door.
The thought held me frozen, listening for footsteps on the stairs. The door slammed shut in the apartment below me, and I jumped. Unperturbed, Mr. Bond laid down and began to kneed the blanket I had spread across my lap.
“If only you knew, you’d be more skittish, too,” I told him. I scratched Mr. Bond’s forehead and focused on relaxing.
I tried to imagine what I’d be doing if I’d never heard of Primordium, never seen a soul. It wasn’t hard. I’d already gotten a glimpse of that life when I was trying to ignore what I was. It was dull, uninspired. Why had I been trying so hard to go back to that life?
Oh, yeah. Because no one was trying to kill me then.
Max’s happy puppy-dog eyes and wagging tail swam behind my eyelids. No one was being saved then, either.
If I lost my ability to see in Primordium, I’d always wonder if the dog that snarled at me was coated with atrum, if the attractive man who made my insides flutter was a demon, if the people standing next to me in the elevator were unwitting hosts—if I were a host. I finally accepted what I’d known all along: There was no turning back, no giving up my sight. It was a part of me, and having seen the world of Primordium, I could never pretend it didn’t exist, just as I couldn’t not take action against evil now that I had the power to fight back.
The insurmountable task before me—of capturing and killing Tim, of cleansing my region, of fighting evil for a living—should have kept me awake. I slept like the dead.
I dressed the next morning in the camouflage outfit, shaking my head at myself in my bathroom mirror. I’d have to check with my parents to see if insanity ran in the family genetics.
The outfit accentuated my injuries: the yellow and purple bruise on my left leg from running into the truck hitch; the raw red rug burn on both my knees; a matching puffy red burn on my elbows; an ugly bracelet of a black and blue bruise on my wrist; and the splotchy yellowing bruises on my upper arms. I’d put up a good fight against Tim and it showed.
I’m supposed to be some sort of army woman, I thought, so maybe all my injuries make me look more authentic.
“You really do need professional help,” I told my image in the mirror. We grimaced at each other.
As I drove to work, I prepared my defense against anything Mr. Pitt might say. Everything I’d done had been prompted by an urge to rid the world of evil, which was exactly what an enforcer was supposed to do. That should count for something, right?
I’d been selfish these last ten or so years. I’d run from my ability out of fear. Had I been a little braver, a little more persistent or curious or even had a different first experience, I might have already saved countless lives from being corrupted. How many Maxes were out there because I’d been too afraid to trust myself?
I had a lot to make up for, and I’d only just begun. Mr. Pitt was sure to agree.
“You’re the most brainless enforcer I’ve ever met!” Mr. Pitt bellowed in greeting. He pulled me into his office, pacing back and forth behind his desk, alternately yelling then gesticulating in speechlessness. After ten minutes, I gave up trying to get a word in and sat stiffly in a black leather chair, savoring the sensation of clenching my jaw so tight it felt like my teeth were fusing together.
“Do you realize how close you came to dying? Without Niko, you’d be dead! A corpse. And I’d be out looking for another enforcer. Again! What were you thinking? Oh, that’s right; you weren’t. I get the only baby-strength enforcer who’s carrying around an extra three pounds between her ears for no good reason.”
“Maybe if everyone didn’t dole out knowledge like it was a scarce commodity, I would have known better,” my mouth said before I could stop it.
Mr. Pitt whirled to pin me with his beady eyes. “If you did what I told you, we wouldn’t have a problem.”
“If you explained why you had me do things, I’d be more likely to stick to your rules.”
“I’m your warden, Madison. I don’t have to explain anything to you.”
“I know I nearly got killed last night because no one bothered to explain to me about demons! How was I supposed to know that looking at them with normal vision would cause me to get all lusty?”
Mr. Pitt threw his hands in the air and flopped into his chair. “Fine. Here’s your lesson in demons. Not all demons are the same. This demon didn’t leave a strong signature from which to determine its type until late yesterday. We discovered it feeds on lust about the same time you did. And it’s been feeding and gaining strength in my region for almost a week now. Thanks to you, it’s still out there.” He slammed his hands down on his desk. “Starbursts on a cupcake, we’ve been after it for days and it’s still out there!”
“How do I take it out?”
&n
bsp; “How do you . . . ?” Mr. Pitt sputtered, his face flushing alarmingly bright. “You don’t do anything. You stay as far away from the convention as possible today. It’s the last day of that gumdrop nerd event, which means it’s our last good shot at taking out the demon. Niko will handle it. We don’t need you messing everything up. Again. Everyone hardly finished cleaning up after your last catastrophe. I’m out of favors and deep in debt now, not to mention a laughingstock.”
“If I don’t learn how to take out a demon now, what’s going to happen the next time one gets in our region,” I said, trying for reason, clinging to my temper by my fingertips.
“There’d better not be another demon any time soon,” Mr. Pitt growled. He leaned back in his chair and studied me while the color in his face returned to normal. “You’re too jelly bean green right now. But you’ll learn. You’ll get more training. You’ll get more practice. With a lot of luck, you’ll get stronger. But not today. Today, I’m pissed at you. Today, you need to go home. Stay away. Don’t mess this up. Come back tomorrow.”
I ground my teeth and stomped from the office. I didn’t want to take on Tim alone again. I knew it was foolish. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to be part of whatever Niko and Mr. Pitt were planning. I hated being treated like I was incompetent. Worse, I hated feeling that Mr. Pitt’s decision to exclude me was justified.
At least he’d not mentioned firing me. He hadn’t even hinted at it. Slim consolation.
I wrestled my seat belt around the fake breasts for the third day in a row. I could go home and spend the day watching TV and doing laundry. It was Sunday. I could even call up Bridget and hang out at her house.
Instead, I headed up Douglas to Accessories and More. Mr. Pitt might not have wanted me in the office or near the convention center, but he’d said I needed to get stronger, and the only way to get stronger was to practice. To practice, I needed another pet wood.
“Where’s the hoochie war?” Musad asked. Muhamad grinned at my breasts, then my legs.
“These are real guns, boys,” I warned.
A Fistful of Evil: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 1) Page 24