Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL)

by Archer, Jill

  Obviously, lighting a cigarette wasn’t proof you could kill something, at least not immediately. But I realized just then that maybe I’d never wanted to perfect my control because it would make me more deadly. It had never occurred to me until then that I might be intentionally sabotaging myself. That I might be subconsciously encouraging my own lack of control.

  “It’s not easy to kill something, is it, Noon?” Rafe said softly. My head snapped up and I met his gaze, instantly suspicious. How had he known what I was thinking?

  “Who said anything about killing?” I said too quickly. “You asked me to light your cigarette.”

  Rafe tucked the cigarette behind his ear and motioned me over to him. When I was standing in front of him, he turned around, kneeled on the bench, and looked out across the river and rush lands. He patted the rail next to him. Reluctantly, I climbed up next to him. The day was warm and bright and the sun on the water was blindingly beautiful.

  “You do realize you threw an entire tray of sandwiches into the Lethe, right?”

  I said nothing for the span of about two heartbeats. Then I couldn’t help myself, “Sandwiches? But I thought . . .”

  “You thought it was a jar of pickled hearts, right?”

  “No, not exactly.”

  Rafe looked surprised. “What did you think it was?”

  “I thought it was a tray of . . .” Oh, Luck, was I really going to admit this? “. . . artichoke hearts and . . . baby gherkins.”

  Suddenly, we were both laughing. Hard. Tears welled and rolled down my cheeks. I knew it was a stress release for me. For Rafe, who knew? Maybe he just thought it was “the thing to do at the time.” I wiped my face with the sleeve of my shirt.

  Rafe murmured under his breath, “Damn,” and then a little louder, “Well, that’s what I get for trying something new. Fara would have nailed it.”

  He turned toward me and got serious again. “I’m going to cast Demon Net,” he said. “And then I’m going to cast Lure and Aggression.”

  “What’re those?” I said. All traces of former mirth completely disappeared.

  “Demon Net tells me where the rogares are, Lure brings ’em in, and Aggression riles them up. As they come in,” he said, dropping his voice, “you’re going to kill them, one by one.” He bumped elbows with me. “Think you can do that?”

  I turned toward him. Gold and bronze flecks glinted in his yellow irises. Just now, he looked utterly harmless. Long, gray eyelashes framed his eyes and one of them had fallen onto his cheek.

  “Why are you always asking me that?” I said softly.

  “Why do you never answer?”

  We didn’t say anything for a while. I fully admitted to myself that I could not figure Rafe out. Finally, I said:

  “Why would I want to kill rogares that aren’t threatening us?”

  “That’s why I offered to cast Aggression. Once that’s cast, your killing them will be in self-defense.”

  “Is that your idea of Clean Conscience?”

  “Maybe it’s my idea of practicing.”

  But there was something in the way he looked at me. Something I was missing that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Was Rafe really as cold-blooded as his question implied?

  “Well, it’s not mine.”

  He nodded, like he wasn’t surprised by my response. He pulled the cigarette down from where he’d tucked it behind his ear and pointed it at me. “That’s why you should just light my cigarette.”

  I blinked. “Are you threatening me?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I have to work with you. Smoke some demons or light this. Your choice.”

  “You chose to work with me! And besides, I already have one person who pushes me. I don’t need another.”

  “Ari.”

  I nodded.

  “Your ‘field partner.’” He smirked when he said it.

  “He’s more than just my field partner.”

  “I gathered,” Rafe said dryly, and then he obnoxiously pointed from the cigarette to the rush lands.

  Would Rafe really bring the demons down on us? Over a cigarette?

  “Fine.”

  I tuned everything out: Rafe, the eyelash that was still on his cheek, the sunlit water, the wooden railing, my fear of failing . . . my fear of succeeding . . . I knew this was it. Prior to now, my magic training had advanced in “two steps forward, one step back” fashion. It may have worked for New Babylon but it wasn’t going to work out here. It wasn’t that I wanted to be more deadly. It was that I no longer wanted to go backward. This wasn’t about surrender. It was about commitment.

  I directed a thin, steely flame right to the cigarette’s tip and, suddenly, it was lit. Rafe took a big puff and then offered it to me.

  “You’d share your last cigarette with me?”

  He shrugged. “‘Ever’ is only as long as I’m working with you,” he said, and then he flicked the unfinished cigarette out into the river. He exhaled, away from me this time, and when he turned back to me I could resist no longer.

  I reached up and plucked the eyelash from his cheek.

  “Make a wish,” I said. This time, I surprised him. I could tell. Just as he was about to respond (likely with some smarty-pants comment like I wish Estes would regift my smokes three thousand times over), we heard a voice from the top of the stairs.

  “You shouldn’t play with fire, you know.”

  It was Fara. As dead serious as I’d ever seen her. I glanced at Rafe. He actually looked guilty. And then Fara left as quickly as she’d come.

  When I looked down again, the eyelash was gone.

  Chapter 14

  But I don’t understand how drakons can exist in the first place,” I said. “Aren’t demons spawned from the ground? I mean, Luck creates them . . . because demons can’t create anything.”

  We were sitting in Cnawlece’s library with the late afternoon sun shining through stained glass windows depicting some of the most iconic moments in Haljan history: the demon legion and the angel horde’s Armageddon battle, Lucifer attempting to rally Mephistopheles’ cohort for a final but unsuccessful attempt to pierce the horde’s front line with fire, the moment that Lucifer was struck with the lance that killed him, and Lilith’s too-late rush to reach him.

  We’d been studying malum in se versus malum prohibitum (and the fact that, in Halja, there really was no difference) and somehow the conversation had segued into drakons. I was glad, because I wanted to know more about them—and because I needed a break. Unfortunately the fact that we were on a boat in the middle of nowhere, possibly heading to our own deaths, didn’t mean we could neglect our studies. Dorio, Telford, Copeland, and Meginnis expected Ari and me to be just as knowledgeable about procedures and principles as the rest of the Hyrkes when we got back. It was brutally unfair. Optimus obligatus, our Host obligations, really sucked sometimes.

  And Ari wasn’t even here to study with. He was on watch. Which was why I was studying with Fara. She sat opposite me at the room’s two-sided desk in an outfit that was ridiculously ill suited for studying: skintight white cropped pants, black-ribboned platform shoes, and a leopard-print bustier.

  A few days into our trip it had become clear, because of the way we’d worked out the watches, that Ari and I couldn’t study together all the time. At first, I’d tried to simply fill my solo study time with reading. But the concepts we were supposed to be learning were much better learned through discussion. So, after a few fits and starts, some minor bristling, pouting, stomping out, and slamming of doors, Fara and I had declared a truce and she helped me when Ari was on watch.

  I wouldn’t go so far as to say Fara and I were friends but, grudgingly, I had to admit that Fara was a decent study partner. She was a natural sponge and, mentally, she was as agile as a gymnast. Rafe, on the other hand, was a terrible study partner. His infrequent time in the library was usually spent loafing on the couch with Virtus.

  Fara sat across from me now with one hand resting li
ghtly on the Book of Joshua and the other waggling a pencil. Remembering what she’d done to Sasha, Tosca, and Brunus with her dowsing rod at the beginning of the semester, I eyed the pencil warily.

  No one knew better than I how having demon blood prevented one from creating things. Because I’d had the “luck” to inherit a drop of demon blood, I’d inherited the power to light fires, destroy things, and (in theory) control demons. But I’d never be able to grow a garden, heal someone, or have a child. Because demons, and those with demon blood, cause the end of life, not its beginning.

  So, if a drop of demon blood prevented having a child, how could a creature that was full of demon blood have one?

  “That’s the thing,” Fara said, “Luck creates them. As you said. Demons are spawned by Luck—anywhere he likes. So who’s to say he can’t spawn one in a woman’s womb? And when he does, they’re born as drakons.”

  I shuddered. I’d always wanted a child, but I knew beyond the shadow of a demon that I didn’t want one in that way.

  “But there are hundreds of thousands of women in New Babylon,” I said. “If drakons are demon children who are born to human mothers, how come I never saw one until three weeks ago?”

  “No surprise there. ‘Ignorance is bliss until Judas’ kiss.’ Joshua, fourteen, five. For years you ignored who you were, attended Hyrke schools, and shunned any education that would teach you about the demons you have the power to control.”

  “This from the woman who is constantly masked,” I said dryly.

  Fara stared back at me with zero expression. I wondered what emotion her glamour was hiding, if any. For a moment, I worried that she might pick up her Book and leave, as she had during the first few study sessions we’d spent together. But instead, she pointed her pencil at me. I narrowed my eyes at her. But my signature never heated up. She wouldn’t dare try to cast a spell over me. Would she?

  “How do you know so much about drakons anyway?” I said.

  Fara snorted. “A Joshua School education is nothing if not thorough. Drakons were a subunit of the chapter on Estes’ cultural impact in my post-Apocalyptic history class.”

  “Estes? What does Estes have to do with drakons?”

  “Most of them are his by-blow. Estes is rather virulent, you know. Delgato’s dining room pictures don’t lie. Sometimes his affections are returned, sometimes not. But when he lies with a woman, often Luck will gift his lovers with a child.”

  “Gift?” I said dubiously. “A drakon growing in your belly?”

  Fara nodded. “Whether they want one or not. The horrible thing is, it’s nearly a death sentence for Hyrkes. A powerful Angel or a Mederi would likely survive such a birth; but then, can you imagine an Angel or a Mederi wanting to raise a drakon?” She laughed, as if what she spoke of were purely academic or theoretical. That we weren’t discussing real people, who had lived—and died—as a result of the subject of this subunit in her cultural history class.

  “Is it always Estes?”

  “No. But it’s mostly Luck’s greater demons. The ones who rarely take physical form. Or, rather, the ones who rarely take physical form except to ravish some young woman.” Her tone was contemptuous.

  “You sound like these women deserve what they get.”

  Fara shrugged. “‘If you play in the devil’s garden, don’t be surprised when a serpent appears . . .’” Her voice trailed off when she saw my expression and where my gaze was directed. At her Book of Joshua.

  Had it just occurred to her that I could turn her precious book to ashes in just half a second? That I might even do so by accident?

  She looked like she wanted to tuck the Book away in a pocket, but in those pants she didn’t even have room for a folded piece of paper. So instead she drummed her fingers on the cover, waiting for me to respond. I had to give it to her. She might be scared of the demons out there, but she wasn’t easily intimidated by what was in here, on board Cnawlece.

  “So, except for how they’re born, drakons are just like any other demon?”

  “That’s what I was told. Their magical abilities vary but, like all other demons, they have the power to shift and, as they age, they spend more and more time in their true form.”

  Remembering Jezebeth’s true form, I shuddered.

  Had Ynocencia known what she was really getting into when she fell in love with Jezebeth?

  But Fara continued, unaware of the splintered direction of my thoughts.

  “Just look at Delgato. He’ll look like Virtus before long.”

  “Delgato?” I echoed, not really following her. Our drakon discussion had naturally flowed from our earlier discussion on things that were malum in se. But her next words took us completely off the map.

  “Do you ever wonder if Delgato is Cattus?”

  “Cattus?” I repeatedly blankly. I was beginning to sound like a parrot. “You mean Cattus, as in Curiositas and Cattus?” I said, my tone incredulous. “How could Delgato be Cattus? Curiositas killed Cattus.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  Well, no. I didn’t. I actually thought it was the other way around.

  “But Cattus was a demoness,” I said.

  “Maybe she came back to life as a he. Didn’t Cattus have nine lives?”

  “Fara, you’re not making any sense,” I said, exasperated. Now I knew how Ivy felt when she and I discussed that story. “No one comes back to life in Halja.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. But with your Hyrke upbringing,” she said snidely, “you probably remember this one.”

  She murmured a few words beneath her breath—a spell—and then with a grand flourishing motion reminiscent of a circus ringmaster, she directed my attention to a spot near the center of the room.

  Recalling some of Fara’s earlier spells, I tensed, but a moment later the most innocuous thing happened. A ghostly girl appeared, maybe age seven or eight, with bangs, pigtails, and a jump rope. Beneath one of the stained glass windows, under the fading brilliance of Lucifer’s multi-hued transformation into the Morning Star, the girl started jumping rope. And then she started chanting a rhyme I had long since forgotten:

  Curiosity

  Killed the cat.

  It was knowledge

  Brought him back.

  Now he seeks

  Just one thing:

  A trip into

  Oblivion.

  Fara let the girl chant the rhyme twice before she let the image fade along with the light from the window. Outside, it was dark. Inside, it was quiet.

  “Everyone knows Estes is Patron Demon of the Lethe,” Fara said softly. “But do you know what the Lethe itself is known for? Do you know what Estes’ first followers really wanted?”

  I shook my head, completely lost.

  “To forget. They sought oblivion. They didn’t want to know.”

  I stared at her, not knowing what to say. Above us, I heard hurried footsteps and Delgato shouting incomprehensible instructions to Russ.

  Fara grabbed her Book and stood up, snapping to Virtus, who had been sleeping on the couch. Just before she turned away, I said:

  “Fara, I don’t understand. What’s your point?”

  She laughed then and said somewhat spitefully, “If you were my ward, I’d tell you straight out. But since you’re not, I’ll let you figure it out for yourself. Or not . . .” And then she turned and left, taking her own cat with her, leaving me alone in the library.

  * * *

  There’s another demon on board,” Rafe said, shaking me awake not ten minutes later. I must have fallen asleep in the darkening library after Fara had left.

  Correctly guessing my next two immediate moves, Rafe placed a hand on my shoulder to keep me from jumping up out of my chair and said quietly, but firmly, “Control your signature.”

  I swallowed and nodded. He lifted his hand and I stood up, careful not to let my chair squeak on the wooden floor.

  “How do you know?” I whispered back.

  “A few minutes ago I cast
Demon Net. There were three on board . . . and now there are four.”

  “Three, now four? I don’t feel any.”

  Despite the circumstances, he must have found my comment funny because I saw a flash of white teeth as he grinned. “You, Ari, and Delgato were the three. Demon Net tracks all waning magic users. Now that you’re not going to panic, open up your signature. You’ll feel it.”

  I did. And that’s when I felt the fourth. I gasped.

  “I can’t tell the signatures apart! Or sense where anyone is.” It was as if our signatures had been stacked and then mixed, mine included, and now they were just one big blur of waning magic. Although fearful of it, I’d been prepared for a water wraith attack. This was much worse.

  “It’s a hellcnight,” I hissed.

  “How do you know?”

  I told Rafe about the waning magic blur. “That’s why I can’t tell anyone apart. Or where anyone is.”

  “One’s on the sundeck, two are on the lower front deck, and one,” he said, looking right at me, “is in the library.”

  “So if you can tell who’s who, which one’s the hellcnight?”

  “I can only tell where you are, not who you are. You all feel the same to me.”

  I couldn’t resist. “How do we feel?”

  Another flash of teeth. “Dangerous.” His hand found mine in the dark and he opened the door and prepared to step out, thinking to drag me with him, I guess. But I had other ideas.

  I tried to shake his hand loose. “I’ll head for the front. You go up top.”

  But Rafe held tight. He turned toward me. “I may be many things, Onyx. But an oath breaker is not one of them. ‘An Angel does whatever is necessary to preserve and protect the life of his ward.’ Joshua—”

  “Twelve, seven, I know. You sound like Fara.”

  His only answer was pulling me out into the hallway. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. But I also wanted to find the demon that’d climbed on board before it did something to the boat, the food we had stored on board, or the crew. I felt a brief pang of sympathy for Fara, who was likely to find out soon that one of the demons out there was now in here. I refused to even think about something happening to Ari, but with his past experience, I thought he’d probably be okay. And, speak of the devil, there he was . . .