by Chloe Garner
“Are you afraid of snakes, Lange?” she asked.
A sullen silence.
“No.”
“You are,” Samantha said. “Oh, that’s good. I’m stealing that.”
“What are you talking about?” Lange asked, edging sideways away from her.
“My greatest fear is standing right in front of me,” Samantha said.
“I’m going to kill him,” Cassie said. She wasn’t talking about Lange. “I’m going to kill both of them, but I’m going to take my time with Sam. And you’ll be looking for him. You won’t be able to help but feel every second of it, trying to find him while I kill him.”
“It isn’t real?” Lange asked.
“It’s real enough,” Samantha said. “I can hear it, so it’s at least partially here.”
“Who is Cassie?” Lange asked, edging further away.
“Bad news,” Samantha answered. “Don’t get bitten.”
“Done,” Lange said.
Easy enough for him, Samantha thought. His greatest fear was a snake. She stashed the gun away and drew Lahn.
“I’m going to kill him slow,” Cassie said.
“Sounds like a winner,” Lange said, easing his way around the edge of the space. The snake hissed again.
“You’re locked away,” Samantha said. “I beat you.”
“Are you sure?” Cassie asked with a mocking grin. Electric patterns in green and purple played across her face.
Samantha wasn’t going to win this fight. It was a fight with her own mind. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just psychological. Something in the magic Benjamin had put down here had triggered it, and without knowing the specifics of the magic, Samantha couldn’t know the specifics of what would happen if Cassie attacked her. Or won.
Samantha would have added all kinds of things to it. There was power in something your mind constructed breaching your skin. The magic you could pour into someone was intense.
And Cassie knew it.
Because Samantha knew it.
The demon disappeared and Samantha bent time hard, spinning to find Cassie behind her with a pair of daggers. She blocked one, dodged the other.
“I need you to get through the floor,” Samantha said, blocking and spinning, just barely staying ahead of Cassie’s knives.
It was just another kill box, just completely unlit this time.
Cassie disappeared and reappeared, a strobe in the black.
“Any thoughts?” Lange called. “I can’t tell what it’s made out of, but it’s hard.”
They’d closed it up after Benjamin. He’d done his work and then they’d sealed off his path in.
She needed to stop playing defense.
Cassie wasn’t real, in the sense that she could go hurt Sam or get away and go tell a bunch of other demons Samantha’s secrets. Samantha was willing to bet she couldn’t leave the physical space where Benjamin’s magic was active.
And she appeared to be restricted to the normal rules for demons.
The fact that she wasn’t real hadn’t suddenly detached her from the rule of gravity, for instance.
And demons, in general, couldn’t see in the dark.
Did she believe it?
Did she believe it that much?
She turned off the flashlight.
“Oy,” Lange said. “I needed that. There’s a snake in here.”
“She can’t see me in the dark,” Samantha said.
“Doesn’t mean I can’t hit you,” Cassie said. Samantha bent time, considering her options.
She had stuff in her bag, but without understanding the interactions with Benjamin’s casting, it was dangerous.
Benjamin was a witch. With someone co-casting dark magic with him, he might be able to pull of some pretty intricate stuff, but she’d never known Benjamin to be the type to work with someone else, and his ingredients didn’t suggest it, either. If she didn’t have to take the risk, she wouldn’t. What were her options in non-interactive light magic?
She smiled.
It was a risk. A big one, even, but…
She pulled her hairpin, finding Sam.
“It won’t work, Renouch,” Cassie said.
“What’s she talking about?” Lange asked. “I don’t think I can get through this floor.”
A floor laid by demons.
She tugged at Sam and he was there, immediate, close, even though the bond was stretched uncomfortably tight.
She was in trouble.
Obviously. He’d known she was in trouble the second Kelly had shown up looking for reinforcement from Lange.
She needed him.
Desperation. He couldn’t get anywhere she was in time to help.
No, not like that. She tried to send him the feeling of music. She could control a hellflame with just force of will, but angelflames were different. They were deeply dangerous and only a very few could control them. They tended to consume everything around them, out of control, and ultimately kill the user.
Side benefit, they ashed demons pretty well.
Sam sent her confusion, hope that she would be clearer.
Music. Music, music.
The feeling of dancing, of being lost in a rhythm and a melody.
Dawning recognition.
He was slow.
She felt the air move and felt a dagger catch her clothing on the way by. She rolled as silently as she could, moving on quiet feet. Cassie was quieter.
She hit the wall with her back. Noise. Rolled along the wall, feeling the illusion of knives in the dark.
And then, there it was.
Just a thread at first, but she hung on it, and Sam buried himself deeper in the music.
Something hissed and Lange yelped. It didn’t sound like pain, but she couldn’t be certain.
The feel of it came to her, the calm control that had always come with music, from outside of herself, and she held up her palms, summoning angelflame.
White fire, pure and smooth like a metal, sprung from her hands, and in the light, she saw Cassie make her last attempt.
Samantha dropped the flames on the floor, forming a tight ring around herself that she pushed out slowly, slowly, consuming the room. Cassie screamed, and she was gone. Samantha let the flame drop lower, finding Lange in a corner with a very, very large viper eying him down. She ashed the figment, then let the flames rage higher, pinning Lange in his corner.
“Don’t move,” she called.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he yelled back.
She closed her eyes, feeling the roar of power, the tenuous grasp she had on it, but more than that, oh, so much more than that, the power and drive of music. She pulled her shoes off with her toes, feeling the floor beneath bare feet, and felt the power surge higher, her breath hot and scorching in her chest, but there, biting, feeding on the magic Benjamin had left there to trap her.
It was a kill box, but now it was hers.
The floor was beginning to melt. The music was with her, her mind was easy.
She opened her eyes.
“Hold on to something,” she said.
<><><>
The floor gave out from under her in an explosion of dust and flame, and she landed on the tile below in a crouch, feeling for Lange, cocooning him in angelflame. He landed just as capably, and they moved forward, following a wall of flame. He came to walk along side of her, taking a quick look at her, then following on, swords at the ready.
She could feel the light flames, a billowing wall of molten white, consuming the rest of the magic that Benjamin had lay, and then Sam was with her. He’d felt the last bit of the wall come down, and his vision was there, intense and alert.
“They aren’t far ahead,” Samantha said.
The white light flickered red here and there, and Lange stepped to the side.
“Does that mean what I think it means?” he asked.
“Blood,” Samantha answered. She wondered if Isobel was still alive, and felt marvel back from Sam, rather than regret.
Something stra
nge had happened, up ahead.
The hall they were on had doors on either side, and Lange opened them one by one as they went by. Samantha filled the hallway with fire, feeling the pops here and there as it brushed up against demons. She couldn’t see anything, but Sam saw everything, and he would warn her if she was going to destroy something she didn’t want to.
She pointed at the room that Sam indicated, some way ahead, anger. Lange opened the door and she pushed the flames into the room with her hands, a wall of white fury, and four demons died. Sam was disappointed that others got away.
How many did they have involved at this point?
She was losing her grip. Too much power, too little control. She was going to have to put it all out, soon, and she and Lange would have to fight their way from there, but Sam pushed her to hold on just a little bit further.
They were almost there.
And then, like a blink, he told her to put it out. She pulled the flames down to nothing, catching them in her hands, just a final moment of discipline, and held the undulating white in each palm before closing her hands over it and extinguishing it.
“Well, that was dramatic,” Isobel said. “One of you have a smaller knife than that? I haven’t been able to talk them into untying me.”
<><><>
They sat at the hotel.
Samantha stared at Isobel.
Isobel stared back with a single raised eyebrow.
“What did you do?” Samantha finally asked. Again.
“I don’t understand,” Isobel answered. Again.
The eyebrow said she was lying.
No.
It was worse than that.
The eyebrow said she was teaching Samantha something important.
And, perhaps for the first time in her life, Samantha resented it.
“Why did they leave you alone?” Samantha asked. Isobel turned her head ever so slightly to the side.
“Apart from the ones you killed, I suspect they were glad you finally took me off their hands,” Isobel said.
“What did you do?” Samantha asked.
“I don’t understand,” Isobel said.
“They should have been torturing you. Trying to make you answer questions. Trying to use you.”
“Oh, they did,” Isobel said.
“And what happened?” Samantha asked.
“I told them not to do that,” Isobel told her. Samantha dropped her hands, exasperated.
Lange had gone home with her thanks. He had taken a larger apartment in New York, and he’d offered to let them stay with him, but that was just weird. She didn’t want to deal with Carter and Celeste still had the keys to Samantha’s apartment with Sam, so this was where they were, again. Tomorrow they’d to back to Vermont and Samantha would pick up the search for the demoness.
“They had you shielded,” Samantha said. “I would have come for you sooner, if they hadn’t.”
Isobel looked at her with some intensity for a moment, then folded her hands under her chin.
“You expected me to be in mortal danger,” the woman said.
“I did,” Samantha answered.
“I’ve had a little while to think about it,” Isobel said. “At first, I didn’t think that life would be worth living, without Rafael. I’ve died so many times. Certainly the last wouldn’t be any different. But I came to realize that my life is still valuable to me, if only because of how valuable it has been to him. All this time, he’s never let death touch me, and I wondered if I shouldn’t do what I could, to continue it.
“And then, quite suddenly, while they were hauling me off like so much luggage, I realized that I do cherish my life, whatever it is now. And I don’t plan on dying. Not for a long time.”
“That’s healthy,” Samantha said, trying not to be too sarcastic about it.
“Yes,” Isobel said slowly. “I have a lot more fight in me than you might expect. And a long, long life full of learning. I think… perhaps.” She paused. Looked at Samantha with narrowed eyes. “Your entrance was far too grand. But I will acknowledge that it was impressive. And I think I’m not wrong in deducing that you are impressed at my own survival skills. So maybe we can learn to respect each other, and maybe I can be of some help to you as you give me one last opportunity to make a home for myself.”
Samantha sat back.
“What was it like, being with an angel for that long?” she asked.
“He was my husband,” Isobel said simply. “I loved him and he loved me. I can hardly bear the thought of never seeing him again. He would often be gone for long stretches of time, but I always knew he would come back to me. It’s very tempting to simply pretend that he will come back for me one last time, but I’ve never found that perception of reality to be prudent.”
The idea of being married to an angel was beyond what Samantha could imagine. O’na Anu’dd was one of her best friends, important in her life in a way no one would ever match, but he was so clearly something else. She would never have considered him that way.
Isobel watched her like she could hear Samantha’s thoughts.
“You left your husband with a man you clearly dislike. How is that going?”
Samantha gritted her teeth.
“If I could go get him, I would. But he needs to be where he is.”
“He told you that?” Isobel asked.
Samantha hesitated. That was a complicated question.
“Yes,” she finally said.
Isobel nodded.
“There are important things going on, everywhere in life. At the end of the day, I don’t think you’ll ever feel like you had enough time.”
The thought left Samantha cold, a premonition of grief to come.
“You think you’ll outlive him,” Isobel said.
“I outlive everyone,” Samantha said with unanticipated stoniness. Isobel nodded.
“I understand.”
She did.
Samantha realized suddenly just how poignantly Isobel would understand that feeling.
“I know where to find your demoness,” Isobel said after a quick breath that seemed to break the chain of thought.
“You what?”
Isobel smiled, the sly, understated grin of a fox, and she nodded.
“You develop certain tactics for accumulating knowledge, when you’re as old as I am,” the woman said. “She’s in Canada.”
“Where?” Samantha asked.
“An island on the St. Lawrence river,” Isobel said. “Unoccupied. Obviously there will be some foot traffic, but I don’t expect anyone would stumble onto her by accident.”
“Which side of the border?” Samantha asked. Isobel snorted.
“How would I know? I should be able to help you find it, with a map.”
Spake.
Well, it could have been worse. It would be in a hole in the border, somewhere, right between Samantha and Spake, so it was clearly in Samantha’s jurisdiction, and Spake wasn’t the worst of them to work with on something like this.
Odd.
But he wasn’t going to get into a territory or accountability fight with her over it. He just kind of went on his cracked way.
“How did you do that?” Samantha asked. Isobel gave her another sly smile.
“I don’t understand the question.”
<><><>
They stood outside of the great building where Spake lived, a castle on a hill with a moat and a drawbridge. You didn’t see it, at first, but that’s what it was. The drawbridge was made of cattle guards with bent metal posts on each side, but Samantha knew for a fact that it came up. The walls were rough limestone, covered in ivy and obscured by tattered evergreens, but they rose up above the treetops, hidden elegance.
Samantha glanced over as Jason and Kara got out of the Cruiser with Isobel. Samantha needed to get the count from Kara again. She understood that she’d missed a few fractures in the last couple of days.
“Like your place better,” Jason said as he walked past Samantha, his han
ds in his pockets. She smiled and followed. Lange coughed into his hand.
“Suckup.”
Jason coughed into his own hand.
“Loser.”
They jostled each other, going up the path toward the door, and Samantha did her best to ignore them. Jason looked over his shoulder at her.
“Why is he so weird?” he asked.
“Who, Lange?” Samantha asked. “Cause I beat him so often.”
“Well, there’s that, but I meant Spake,” Jason said.
“Oh,” Samantha said with a shrug. “Because he’s a rabid duck.”
Jason and Lange both stopped.
“What does that mean?” Jason asked. Samantha had to think about it to shape words around it. That was how she’d always thought of him, but she’d never actually said it out loud before.
“When I was little, we had cows, and there was a day when this duck kind of just… stumbled into the barn. It didn’t walk right, its head didn’t move right, nothing. We put it in a cage for my dad to look at, and he told us it was rabid. He took it out in the woods and shot it.
“The thing is, the cows knew, and so did the horses. Nothing would go near that cage while the duck was in it, and nothing would go near the cage afterwards, either. It still smelled like a rabid duck. They just knew. It wasn’t dangerous, really. Not to a horse or a cow. But they were terrified of it, anyway, because it was unpredictable and wrong.”
“Yeah, that fits,” Lange said.
The door ahead of them opened and a majestic woman with fair black skin came to stand in the doorway, watching them.
“Who is that?” Jason asked.
“That’s Miranda,” Samantha answered. “Spake’s wife.”
“Spake’s…” Jason said slowly.
“I’ve never met her,” Lange said.
“Where does a guy like Spake get off having a wife?” Jason asked.
“And a wife like that,” Lange added.
“I wouldn’t say that around her,” Samantha said, putting on a smile that wasn’t entirely fake and passing them. “It’s good to see you, Miranda.”
“Welcome,” Miranda answered, putting out an arm and ushering Samantha into the house. She ignored the rest of them, walking alongside Samantha.
“You’ve brought quite a crowd to my home,” Miranda said.
“Going to need most of them,” Samantha said. “The demon I’m hunting is unlike any I’ve seen before.”