Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL)

by Archer, Jill

  “I don’t feel any demons here, do you?”

  I’d been keeping my signature as wide as I dared and hadn’t felt anything except Ari the whole way here.

  “No. How about you?” I said, turning to Rafe. “Do you sense any waning magic users with Demon Net?” Ironically, his spell would be the best chance we’d have to sense a hellcnight before it attacked us. I had to hand it to him. He’d known some useful spells after all.

  “Just you and Ari.”

  So that meant there weren’t any demons here. At least not now.

  “Let’s split up, then,” Ari suggested. “We’ll cover more ground that way. Fara, Virtus, and I will head this way”—he pointed to the left—“and you three head to the right. We’ll refill the alembic and you can search the area where the attack occurred.”

  “Okay,” I said. Ordinarily I would have been reluctant about splitting up, but it made sense with the storm coming.

  Ari, Fara, and Virtus walked off in the other direction and Rafe, Stillwater, and I were left to circumnavigate this black cesspit of death as a threesome. I squared my shoulders and glanced at Rafe. He flicked his fingers toward me and I felt another spell slipping into place.

  “You might ask first,” I grumbled. Protection spells were one thing, but I’d really like to know if Rafe had just cast Hemorrhage or Painfall over me.

  Nearly an hour later we were exhausted and soaked. It was a feeling I was starting to associate with bad things, which didn’t help my mood. My hair and clothes were plastered to my skull and body. We’d found nothing. The landscape around us never changed. Nor did the boardwalk. It was equally rotted around what seemed like an endless perimeter. There were no footprints in the mud, no bloodstains on the deck, no pieces of torn fabric hanging from a branch, no dropped fishing rod, tackle box, bait, hook, or lines. There weren’t even any broken branches anywhere. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that any struggle had occurred at any point along this path. Of course, it had been months since the attack occurred, so I don’t know what I’d been expecting to find. I only know that I’d hoped to find something. And that’s when I saw her. Up ahead, crouched on the boardwalk, was a small mud-caked girl with tangled hair and a wild look in her eyes.

  Athalie. It had to be her.

  The girl took one look at us and started running. In the other direction.

  “Wait!” I cried. Without thinking, I took off after her, ignoring Rafe’s shouted warnings behind me. She’s what I came to find, I thought, madly dashing after her. I wasn’t leaving without her.

  I tore down the rotted boardwalk, the urgency of my chase giving the edges of my magic a dangerous orange glow. Small flames briefly flared to life on leaves in front of me. Running past, I quickly smothered them. Up ahead, I caught glimpses only of her, flashes of her wheat-colored hair, flashes of her sun-bronzed skin. Behind me, I heard a brief scuffle and then a huge thump. I kept running. I had to catch her.

  It was just me and the girl. Running. Endlessly running. Around the endless perimeter of the pit full of things I didn’t want to think about. The pit full of people I’d never met and possibly the one demon I never wanted to. And then it was just me and the girl again. Both of us scared and running. Her likely scared because she’d been alone out here in the swamp for three months and me scared because I was afraid I wouldn’t catch her.

  “Athalie!” I called. “I’m here to—”

  My boot hit a warped board and I tripped. Forward momentum sent the rest of my body pitching forward and I crashed through the rail, somersaulted in the air, and landed feet first in the thick, oozing tar. Too late I realized what I’d done. I glanced back up at the boardwalk. The girl was gone.

  Around me, there was only an endless expanse of black, gooey muck covered with a thin film of leaves, twigs, and sticks. I was trapped. And the more I struggled, the faster I sank. There was nothing substantial to grab onto and the boardwalk was just out of reach. The tar was like quicksand.

  I willed myself to be still. A few minutes later and a few inches deeper into the muck, I realized how stupid I’d been. I desperately hoped Rafe wasn’t lying in a pool of blood up there on the boardwalk just out of sight, dying from a gash wound caused by Stillwater’s falchion.

  Had Stillwater clomped Rafe over the head? Is that what I’d heard? Is that why he wasn’t coming? Had we been lured out here to be dealt with in the same way that the young group of malcontents had been? Or had they both been attacked by a hellcnight? Or worse—Grimasca himself?

  I called out, hoping someone might hear me. After a few more moments of silence and sinking, I finally heard light footsteps up on the boardwalk, accompanied by a strange dragging sound. The girl came back. At first, she did nothing to help me. Just stood there watching. But then she leaned down toward me. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure I wanted her near me.

  What if this girl was a hellcnight? What was that old saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Was dying too great a price to pay for being foolish? Apparently, Luck didn’t think so.

  I thrashed in the muck trying to free myself but only managed to sink farther. My head, neck, and left arm were now the only parts of me that were above the surface.

  The girl pulled a long tree branch from behind her back where she must have been dragging it and managed to maneuver it down into the pit toward me. I grabbed it (instinct telling me to run from the girl, logic telling me she was my only hope). The girl tugged and tugged, pulling me toward her and the edge of the tar pit. It was slow going, but after a few minutes of further struggling, I was close enough for her to reach out to me with her hand. But she didn’t. Instead, she leaned toward me and opened her mouth. Her jaws grew big and wide, expanding before my eyes. She started shifting and suddenly I wondered if I was looking at Grimasca himself.

  Rafe had said Grimasca was “the one demon you never wanted to meet, the one demon you’d be deeply afraid of.” So the fact that she first appeared to me looking like the child I’d been too late to save made a sort of macabre, mad sense. But what she morphed into next was even worse. It was a hideous hellcnight chimera of nearly every demon I’d encountered on this trip: it had Ebony’s black twisting tail, Vodnik’s greenish gold snake eyes, and Ari’s face, which was heartbreaking and horrifying all at once. Why hadn’t I lost that horrible memory of the hellcnight attacking me when we’d come through the Elbow? If I lived beyond the next three seconds I’d have nightmares again for weeks. Months. Possibly forever.

  The thing grinned and snapped its head back, preparing to strike. I fired a blast of magic right at its head but it swerved serpent-like and the blast exploded into the brush, instantly igniting it. I flailed in the muck and lost my hold on the branch. The demon’s long, sharp claws grasped the branch and swung it toward my head. Struggling to remember Rochester and Delgato’s lessons, I tried to shape my magic like the falchion Stillwater carried and thrust the force of it toward the branch, deflecting the blow. My magic exploded into angry bits of orange red sparks. They fell into the tar pit and soon the entire surface of dried leaves, twigs, and brush was alight. The flames from my own magic wouldn’t burn me so long as I kept my wits about me, but I’d soon suffocate one way or another. Ironic, in a way. If it wasn’t the tar, it’d be the smoke that killed me. I spent my remaining energy on trying to smother the flames with my magic.

  The demon stood at the edge of the pit, eyeing me hungrily, like a great western ursus eyeing a fluke trapped in a deep stream it couldn’t reach. It definitely either wanted to eat me—or it wanted to save me for later. I shivered and sank farther. My nose finally went under. The last thing I saw before sinking completely was the hellcnight pacing the edge, watching me. I was only conscious for a minute or so after that. They say the last minute of your life lasts the longest. Well, it isn’t true. It’s over in an instant. No time for regrets because fear is the only thing your mind makes room for. When you’re breathing in something that’s as thick as porridge, that’s the on
ly thing you’re thinking of.

  I came to sometime later, lying on the boardwalk with Rafe draped over my front, his lips pressed against mine, trying to resuscitate me. When I started gagging he moved off quickly and held me as I wretched the mud stew from my lungs.

  “How long was I under?”

  “Only a minute or two.” Another bout of nausea overtook me and I leaned over the boardwalk and wretched up more tar porridge. When I finished, I sat up. Rafe stretched his hand out and wiped off my cheek. It was gross but sweet. He held my cheek cupped in his hand for a second longer than he had to and I remembered that, before I’d woken up and gotten sick, his lips had been on mine. It was weird to think of it.

  “Where’s the hellcnight?”

  “Gone.”

  “Where’s Stillwater?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Lying unconscious on the boardwalk. How did you end up in the tar pit?”

  “I tripped.”

  We stared at each other for a few moments. Rafe’s taupe-eyed, lion-like stare became serious and then he said, “You should be more careful.”

  It was my turn to roll my eyes. “You think?” I struggled to stand up, Rafe helped me, and a few moments later we found Stillwater’s unconscious form lying on the boardwalk.

  “What happened to him?”

  “I hit him over the head with his falchion.”

  I looked up at him, surprised. “Why?”

  “He tried to stop me from running after you,” Rafe said, shaking his head. I’d seen that look on his face before. It was the look he gave to people who acted ridiculous, preposterous, more outlandish than he ever could hope to be. “Said there was no reason for us both to die. As if the threat of death would stop me. Does he not understand an Angel’s oath?” Rafe’s words were grumpily muttered, like someone complaining that his bootlaces kept coming untied. But they had a profound effect on me. Until now, I hadn’t been sure Rafe had understood an Angel’s oath. Clearly, I continued to underestimate him at every opportunity.

  “We’ll have to bring him back with us,” I said. Rafe sighed, but then nodded.

  “Can you heal him enough so that he can walk back?”

  “Maybe.” He looked at me uncomfortably for a moment and then made a shooing motion with his hand. “Do you mind?”

  Oh. Right. Even a Mederi would have a harder time healing with a Maegester lurking by her patient’s side. I stepped away.

  “But stay where I can see you,” he said, quirking a smile, and then he got to work. Stillwater came to a few minutes later, rubbing his head and moaning. When he seemed coherent enough to understand where he was, he squinted up at me with a look of shock.

  “You survived,” he croaked. “How?”

  “My Guardian Angel,” I said. I fully intended to glare at Stillwater then, to show him how mad I was that he’d tried to stop Rafe from helping me, but I surprised myself by smiling at Rafe instead. I supposed Rafe would do something egregiously irritating tomorrow but, for now, I couldn’t deny that I felt all warm and fuzzy toward him. He’d saved my life after all. A girl was allowed to feel grateful.

  Chapter 24

  An hour or so later the place where we’d left Ari, Fara, and Virtus was in sight. The storm had picked up, as I’d known it would. Overhead the leaves, moss, vines, and branches fought one another in the wind. The whooshing sounds of the trees’ leafy rattling competed with the creaking sounds of their swaying trunks. The rain fell in swift, straight shafts that felt strong enough to nearly pierce our skulls. I longed desperately for a hooded cloak or a hat. No such luck, though, so I kept spitting rainwater out of my mouth. I kept my head down and tromped to the foot of the shallow set of stairs we’d descended when we’d first arrived at the Meadow.

  I peered into the mist and saw three figures approaching from the other end of the boardwalk perimeter. In seconds, Ari, Fara, and Virtus joined us. Virtus looked miserable, as he always did in the rain. Fara, on the other hand, looked perfect, as she always did, under almost any circumstance. Ari just looked grim and determined. He held the alembic out to me. I noticed the catch was fastened, but the alembic itself was crushed and twisted.

  “Were you able to refill it?”

  Ari barked out a laugh. “Yeah, but what a job. I had to use the alembic itself as a spile.” He shook his head and I knew he was regretting the fact that he never carried iron weapons.

  “What happened to you?” he said, eyeing all the mud and tar on my clothes and in my hair. I felt his signature start to zing in alarm.

  “I’m fine,” I reassured him. And then I brought him up to speed, filling him in on all of the details of the hellcnight attack, except the part about Stillwater trying to stop Rafe and Rafe clomping Stillwater over the head with his own falchion. We needed to get back to the Shallows. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought the water level around the boardwalk where we were standing had already risen. I took the lead on the way back, following the black leaf marks I’d left for us. If Stillwater was impressed by my ability to find my way out of the swampy labyrinth he’d led us into, he didn’t say. But then again, he was likely still dazed from being hit on the head. Or maybe he was just grateful to have someone else in charge for a change.

  It began to feel like the night Cnawlece had gone down. The only difference was that the boardwalk—for now—felt steady beneath our feet instead of shifting. But lots of low- lying parts were flooded by the time we reached them. Whole sections of the walkway were underwater. I found myself sloshing through brown swamp water that came up to my ankles. My boots became heavier; the bottoms of my pant legs became soaked, as did the rest of me. Torrential rain poured down from above, splattering my head and hair, rolling underneath my shirt collar and down my back. For over an hour we retraced our footsteps back through the swamp.

  Along the way I thought about the clues we’d gathered so far and what it all meant. Mentally, I tallied them up, as I would have for class with Telford or Copeland. The six clues that summed up the entire investigation for me were: (1) Cephas, a young man from the Shallows, had been bitten by a hellcnight out in the Meadow approximately four months ago; (2) a group of fifteen fishermen and one girl from the Shallows disappeared from the Meadow approximately three months ago; (3) the fishermen had supposedly been on their way to meet Grimasca, a notorious, albeit possibly mythological, hellcnight; (4) two hellcnights had attacked us on the way to the Shallows; (5) I’d been attacked by a hellcnight out in the Meadow while investigating the aforementioned disappearances; and (6) Vodnik was in possession of two artifacts, a butcher knife and a spice box labeled “For Ebony” that he claimed were Grimasca’s.

  At this point in the investigation it was clear that hellcnights were involved. To argue otherwise would be, as Darius Dorio would say, tauri merdam. So my remaining questions were (amazing what a raging storm and one demon attack will do to whittle your list of questions down; last night I’d had over thirty, now I had just three):

  #1—Where were the hellcnights hiding?

  #2—Was one of them Grimasca?

  #3—If so, was Vodnik Grimasca?

  I realized contemplating question number three was long overdue. The various settler stories I’d unearthed about First Day of Darkness transgressions and grumpy groups of young men were just red herrings. The hellcnight’s attack on me earlier today proved that. Vodnik alone couldn’t be the demon responsible for everything that had happened because he was a water demon, not a hellcnight. And it was highly unlikely that Vodnik was working with another hellcnight to attack his own followers. Demons were dangerous, but patrons who’d successfully managed their flock for four hundred years usually didn’t start suddenly preying on their own people. So that meant Vodnik was a possible victim, not suspect. I’d asked Stillwater earlier today whether he thought it odd that he was the only one to have survived Grimasca’s attack on the fishermen. He’d corrected me and said he wasn’t—that Vodnik had survived too. But maybe Vodnik hadn’t.

  Fact was, it was
entirely possible that Grimasca killed Vodnik three months ago along with the fishermen. Stillwater could be the lone survivor of that ill-fated outing. And if Grimasca masquerading as Vodnik found out about Athalie’s demon complaint, well, it didn’t take much of a mental leap to deduce that he’d have wanted to silence her.

  The way back to the Shallows took forever, and yet it happened in a millisecond. The rain, trees, wind, and water drowned out all further thoughts except where our next footstep would fall. I kept my signature open so that I could sense if there were any rogares lurking just out of sight, but the only signature I could feel was Ari’s behind me. His signature floated around the edges of mine, soft, thick, and meandering, like weft yarn in a weaving. But I could sense the warp underneath, the threads of his magic that were stretched thin, too tight and nearly breaking.

  When we returned to the Shallows, Stillwater left us, which was a relief. I didn’t think he was a hellcnight in disguise, but I didn’t trust him. Based on our earlier discussion, he was obviously very loyal to Vodnik and I had no idea how he would take my new theory that Vodnik might actually have been killed by Grimasca and that Grimasca might be masquerading as Vodnik now. Further, I didn’t want a lawman on my team who tried to stop Guardian Angels from helping their wards when there was trouble. Stillwater may not have had much practice at tracking down villains, but neither had I. I didn’t need sheriffs like him riding at my side.

  “We need to find Vodnik,” I said to our group. “Obviously, there’s a hellcnight, possibly two, preying on the people of the Shallows.” I explained my newest theory—that Grimasca was real, that he might be the demon responsible for all of the attacks so far, and that he could be masquerading as Vodnik.