by Reine, SM
“I was at the sparring match last summer,” he went on, like she hadn’t spoken.
She blew fragments of metal off her sword and tilted it to catch the light. “Yeah. How did he die?”
So she did know.
“Baphomet repaid him for what happened to her centuria. Snapped his neck. So that means you’re up next.”
Elise continued carving as though he wasn’t there.
He stood back with his arms folded to study her. She looked meaner than he remembered. A bandage covered half of her forehead, and the hunger made her appear older and angrier. He liked angry women.
“We should have a drink to celebrate. I’ve got a car waiting. It would be much more comfortable than sitting in the snow.” His proposition was made only fractionally less suave when he blew into his hands to warm them. He couldn’t feel his nose.
Her hand paused on the blade, and her look could have frozen the ocean. “Wasn’t Piotr your friend?”
Malcolm shrugged. “Ancient history.”
She got to her feet and drew a second falchion from her back sheath, holding both like they were extensions of her arms. Her stance screamed I will stab you, and his grin widened.
“You should go,” Elise said.
“Don’t you want to hear about the selection process? I could tell you all about it… while we get a beer.”
She said nothing.
“The delegate from the Council of Dis was too scared to give you the news herself. I’d love to hear how you made such an impression.”
She remained silent.
Malcolm sighed. “How old are you? Twenty? Twenty-one?”
“Seventeen.”
She was younger than he had expected. But hey, that was legal in most countries.
“Seventeen! You are much too young and much too beautiful to be that serious. Come on, now! You might be the first lady to be the greatest kopis. Don’t you think that’s exciting? Don’t you think we should celebrate?” He faked a playful punch at her arm.
That hard edge softened in her eyes. He thought she was going to respond, but someone else spoke first.
“What are you doing here?”
James Faulkner strode from the doors of the cathedral, bundled in a woolen pea coat and earmuffs. A wooden pentacle dangled from a chain at his neck. Pages protruded from his pocket.
Malcolm took a step back to appraise the witch. He’d asked around a bit—or a lot, actually, in kind of an obsessive way—after meeting them at the sparring match, and rumor had it that James was one of the most powerful witches in the world. “I was letting Miss Kavanagh here know about her new status as the greatest kopis.”
His brow drew low over his eyes. “What?”
“The last ‘greatest’ died. She’s the greatest now. Does that go over your head? Should I spell it out more clearly?”
“Oh, hell.” The witch glanced around the monastery grounds like he expected an attack.
Elise sheathed both of her swords. Somehow, she seemed equally dangerous unarmed. Malcolm could have just pounced on her.
“I’m going to pack,” she told James.
Malcolm jumped in. “Leaving so soon? You can’t go anywhere until you promise to have a drink with me. I have got to hear your story. Not now, maybe, but soon. Please?”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Fine.”
“Elise—” James began.
She had already turned to leave. Malcolm jumped in front of her. “I’m going to hold you to that.” Then he swooped in and planted a kiss on her lips, seizing her face in both hands so she couldn’t escape.
He danced back with a laugh as her right hook swung harmlessly in the air.
“See you around,” he called as he jogged away. Elise glared at him with pink cheeks as James gaped.
But she almost smiled, too. Almost.
PART TWO
A Creeping Shadow
I
NOVEMBER 2009
Rick used to make a living selling medicine to plague doctors. He once watched a patron stuff his beak with camphor, rose petals, and laudanum using gloved hands, while explaining that the aromas would spare him from miasmatic air. The doctor had spoken with confident authority, and Rick believed him. It seemed to be as good an explanation for the plague as anything else.
The doctor slid the mask over his face, donned his fedora, and departed to treat the dying.
A few weeks later, Rick passed a pyre of bodies and saw his former customer at the top of the pile. The doctor’s neck below the mask was riddled with buboes. His robes curled with flame. The mask’s long beak was cracked.
It was about then that Rick realized that humans were deeply stupid creatures.
He avoided Earth for a few hundred years after that. The market for human trinkets was good in Hell at the time, considering that there was no reliable way to travel between the dimensions, and he eked out a decent living.
The next time he set foot in a mortal city on the planes of Earth, those deeply stupid animals had somehow created heavy machines that could drive at unimaginable speeds, and they allowed anyone to do it. It was lunacy. Or idiocy. Or very possibly both.
He wanted nothing to do with them.
But his passport had expired, so it was too late for Rick to go back to Hell. He picked a town, bought a shop, and hadn’t left it since—not once.
Rick watched through the window as his newest assistant accepted a shipment, gnawing on his claws with jagged teeth. Jerica was taking her sweet time signing for those crates. She was a nightmare too, though much younger than Rick, newly substantiated and still marveling at the wonders of her corporeal form. She seemed to enjoy using it to flirt with the delivery driver.
What if that blasted truck rolled over and killed her? It had been hard enough finding one assistant. He didn’t want to find a replacement, too.
The shopkeeper kept an eye on the empty street as Jerica continued to talk with the driver, who didn’t seem concerned about the possibility of being killed on the sidewalk, either. She pointed at the boxes, then tipped her head back and laughed. Laughed!
Rick couldn’t watch. He just couldn’t. It was too much for his constitution to handle.
He returned to the counter of his drugstore and took a shot of cactus juice to settle his cramping gut. It tasted like ass, and Rick knew ass. They considered human anuses to be a gourmet treat in Hell. The cactus was definitely worse. But it did good things for his stomach.
Moving away from the window didn’t keep him from worrying over his assistant. He could watch Jerica on the blurry monitor hanging over the locked case of condoms. And watch her he did. Rick worried about that girl.
Eventually, after what felt like hours, the bell over the door chimed. His nightmare assistant backed into the shop carrying one of the crates on her shoulder.
“What is this? It’s heavy.” Jerica crouched to set it on the cracked linoleum.
He wrung his hands. “Do you think you took long enough?”
“What, are you having a rush of business in here?” She popped a bubble of gum and sucked it into her mouth again. “Relax. Being nice never hurt anyone.”
“You would be surprised,” Rick said darkly, thinking of plague doctors and blackened extremities. Jerica moved to open the crate, but he slammed a hand on the wood to stop her. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Checking the shipment. Don’t you want to make sure we’ve got everything?”
“Not up here, where we can be seen through the windows,” he hissed. “Downstairs!”
Rick took the first crate to the basement while Jerica retrieved the other two.
The space beneath his shop was dim, narrow, and had a low ceiling. He still occasionally smacked his forehead on the beams, even after seventy-five years. His desk and reclining chair occupied one corner; the rest of the floor was filled with boxes of inventory.
He kicked a space clear for the crates and directed her to stack all three on top of each other. Then, and
only then, did he lift the lid on one to examine the contents. It was filled with egg cartons, each of which protected twelve small, glowing cubes.
“Lethe?” Jerica asked, sounding wholly unimpressed.
“Mind yourself. This is a special order.”
She jutted a hip. With her asymmetrical haircut, scalloped tunic, and cocky stance, she looked more like an abstract geometric painting than a teenage girl. “Rick, man, you know I love you…”
He smashed the lid onto the crate again. “Ha.”
“…but anyone making special orders of lethe is not someone you should be dealing with. I mean, drugs? Demon drugs? You know what this stuff does to people?”
“It does nothing to people,” he said, unfazed by her attempt at showing concern for him. “Only demons. I don’t question the orders, and neither should you.”
A quick scan showed that every cube was in its proper place, and in good condition. Rick still had an intake bracelet somewhere, probably at the bottom of his laundry pile. Maybe the client would want to drop a couple together. He hadn’t been on a trip in a long time—literally or figuratively.
His assistant watched him replace the lids with disapproval. “Rick…”
“Get on out,” he said, shooing her upstairs. He locked the basement door behind them. “Go on. Get.”
She sighed. “Maybe I should stay and help you with this.”
“Your shift ends in fifteen. I’m not paying overtime. I told you, get on out.”
“You don’t have to pay me.”
But he pushed her toward the door, and she could hardly fight against him. Especially when he exerted the strength of millennia against her dozen or so years. “Careful on your way home. Stay out of the streets. And watch for those cars!”
Her lips stretched so wide from ear to ear that he could see the wad of gum pressed between two yellowed molars. “Nobody’s going to run me over on the way. But if you’re really worried, you could walk me home.”
“You’re funny. Just so fuckin’ funny.”
He shut the door in her face, but considering it was a glass door, it didn’t do much good. He saw her mouth moving on the other side: Be careful. Okay?
Then Jerica faded into the shadows, slipping across the street without touching the pavement, and reappeared under a streetlight. She waved at him before dancing into darkness once more.
Rick sat on his stool behind the counter and found his paperback under a folder of ledgers. Since he didn’t sleep, all he had was free time, and Rick read a lot. Despite being dumb animals, humans were good with stories. He was in the middle of “The Billionaire’s Busty Bride.” The pages curled under his long fingers.
Soon, he was so absorbed that he didn’t look up when the bell over the door jingled. Footsteps shuffled in.
“Leave your bag outside,” he said, licking his thumb to turn the page. “No backpacks.”
The silence that followed his order had weight to it. Rick glanced up. The customer was a tall guy in a leather jacket with a spiked iron band wrapped around his forehead. He was ugly, even by a nightmare’s standards: smashed nose, sausage lips, lined face. Flecks of dried blood were peeling off his leathery skin like he hadn’t washed his face since his last meal of manflesh.
Zohak slammed his fists on the counter. “Where is it?” He had been on Earth for months, but his accent was miserable. Everything was still pronounced in the back of his throat, like he was about to spill out a tirade of Hell’s native tongue.
Rick folded the corner of his page, closed the book, and stuck it under the cash register. “All right, all right.” He shuttered the windows to block out the night. “This way.” Zohak lumbered down the stairs to the basement. His weight made the whole building creak. “No company this time?”
The demon-king glared over his shoulder. “I trust no one.”
“That wasn’t the story last time I saw you.”
“My fiends hadn’t been slaughtered last time.” Bitterness dripped from his growls.
Rick knew a subject he shouldn’t touch when he heard one. It didn’t matter if Zohak had his legion anyway. Only if he had money.
They opened the top crate. A silvery-blue glow splashed over their faces, highlighting the furrows on Zohak’s face. The demon-king’s eyes raked over the inventory.
“Is this all you have?”
“It’s all you ordered. Three stacks of lethe.”
Zohak towered over the nightmare, clenching his hands and baring his teeth. “I ordered five!”
Rick wasn’t impressed, but he was prepared. He whipped the ledger out of his back pocket and held it up. “Three stacks.”
The demon king deflated a little. Actually, he deflated a lot. He quivered, and his broad shoulders sagged. For an instant, an oily sheen obscured his red irises.
He moved to put the lid back on the crate, but Rick stopped him. “Payment?”
The king blinked, and the oily veil vanished from his eyes. “This one is on…” Zohak searched for the word. “Credit.”
Rick flapped the ledger. “No. It’s not.”
“I must sell this before I can afford to buy it.”
“What about the last batch you flipped?”
Zohak seemed to struggle with the words, but not because of the language barrier. “I… lost it.”
And with that, the overhead light bulb flickered.
A strange energy rolled through the basement, and Rick closed his eyes to focus on it. Weight pressed between the space where his shoulder blades should have been. It tasted like ancient papyrus, like the clouds in the sky, and he tried to swipe it from his tongue.
“Wait here,” he said, leaving Zohak with the inventory to head upstairs.
The intensity of the energy grew as he ascended. The air buzzed as though a low electrical current were vibrating through it.
Rick lifted the blinds. One by one, the streetlights dimmed and turned off, marching in a line from the end of the block toward his shop.
His security system beeped, drawing his attention to the monitor. The camera mounted outside his shop flickered, snowed, and cut out. Then the “Open” sign in the window turned off, followed immediately by the lights inside.
A power outage? The clouds were heavy with the promise of snow, but a single flake had yet to fall, and the air was completely still.
Tendrils of dread began creeping over him. “What in the seven hells?”
He willed his corporeal form away, focused on the window, and reappeared beside the warped glass with a thought. He peered into the night.
There was someone moving on the street. A woman.
Rick locked the door and stepped back. “Zohak! Incoming!”
The demon-king already stood at the top of the stairs, and his eyes blazed with red fire. Rick didn’t recognize the woman approaching on the street, but apparently he did.
It only took a moment for her to reach the entrance. Her hair was in a thick braid over one shoulder. There were straps at her shoulders, as though she wore a backpack. A college student?
The back door creaked, slammed, and Zohak was gone.
Rick phased to the counter. Grabbed his crowbar.
The woman rattled the door—locked. She raised her booted foot and slammed it into the glass. Shards rained onto the linoleum.
Rick shook his crowbar. “I’ll call the police!”
The woman reached behind her, and he realized belatedly that she wasn’t wearing a backpack at all. She had a spine scabbard with two swords. The one she drew had a short blade, barely longer than her forearm, and occult symbols etched into the metal.
Rick had heard of that blade, and the woman who wielded it. They called her the Godslayer.
No wonder Zohak had run.
She used it to beat away the remaining glass and ducked through.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Rick said, with somewhat less steam than before. She wouldn’t be impressed by the police. Rumor had it that they had tried to arrest her once, but she kille
d half the force, bewitched the others, and escaped without a mark on her permanent record.
The Godslayer straightened and shook glass out of her hair. So she wasn’t ten feet tall after all. Her eyes weren’t filled with angelfire, either. She looked… human.
“Where’s Zohak?”
He sent out a tendril of energy to sniff at her mind, but there was no hint of normal, brittle human emotions. It was like trying to penetrate a brick wall with a toothpick.
Rick wavered. Surviving in Hell for millennia had left him without a hint of pride. And Zohak hadn’t paid for his goods anyway.
He dropped the crowbar. “Out the back door. Just leave me be!” Then he threw himself behind the counter and covered his head.
That should have been it. The Godslayer didn’t want puny Rick—merely a nightmare, a petty hellborn immigrant of no great consequence—but she rounded the counter and seized him by the arm regardless. Her gloved fingers dug into the place a human would have had a bicep.
“You’re coming with me.”
She strode to the back door, kicked it open, and Rick realized what she was about to do an instant before he crossed the threshold. “No!” he cried, struggling in her grip. “I can’t—stop!”
His feet hit pavement, and he could barely breathe. Electrical lines ran through the air over his head. Dear Lord, what were those animals thinking? And there was a car parked in the alley, so who knew when it might start to roll—
The Godslayer, of course, was unimpressed by this human madness. And she wasn’t slowed by dragging a nightmare, either. She lifted his featherweight body from the ground and strode after Zohak.
She dropped Rick at the mouth of the alley. He tried to scramble back toward his shop, but she kicked him to the ground. Her boot sank into his spongy gut and left an imprint of the sole.
His back hit the car’s tire. It didn’t hurt, but he gave a strangled yell. “Please, please, I can’t be outside!”
“Where does Zohak den? Point me.”
Rick lifted a quavering finger, silently praying that she would leave him to return to his shop if he told her where Zohak lived.
But she seized an ankle and pulled him along with her.