by Jill Archer
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Malphia’s expression change from cruel to confused. As it had yesterday, her magic had been hovering at the edges of mine, poking, scratching, slicing, trying to gain the entry that I’d so easily just granted to Ari. And he’d seized it, without reservation, while at the same time offering me unfettered access to what seemed like a bottomless pit of power. Although that bottomless pit didn’t mean I was able to see Vannis, who still eluded me.
Ari’s plan called for me to wait until Vannis attacked me. He’d been sure he would. I was the team captain. Incapacitating me was the goal. Vannis was on Malphia’s team but he preferred to work alone and, most importantly, the only subtle thing about him was his invisibility, not his tactics. Once Vannis attacked, Ari’d said he wanted me to shape a bunyip.
“Can you do it?” he’d asked.
“Not for long,” I’d replied.
Ari had quickly explained, as if I hadn’t known already, that the point of these melees was for his Captain of the Guard to assess our strengths and weaknesses. Yesterday, Yannu could have immediately given the order to attack Fara, but he hadn’t. Why? Because he’d wanted to see me fight. So, even though Ari had a plan for incapacitating Malphia, he advised me to wait before I gave the order to do it. Why? So I could show Yannu more of what I could do, which was shape fiery beasts in addition to weapons.
My fiery bunyip was sure to lure Malphia into the fray, and at that point, it would be up to me how long I wanted to fight before giving the order to take her out. The only thing I shouldn’t do is lose sight of Vannis once he attacked me.
Fine, I’d said, as if there was nothing to it.
After all, Ari’s plan was a good one – no, it was a great one.
Which is why I should have known it was never going to go the way we wanted it to.
Was it my pride that got in the way? Was I so hell-bent on showing Yannu – and Ari – what I could do that I didn’t see the danger?
Vannis didn’t attack me. He attacked Ari. Stabbed him in his left side – up under his damaged, useless arm – with a dagger. I only know this because Vannis stood there after, holding his Luck-forsaken bloody blade and smiling, until he was sure I saw him. Then he disappeared again. Ari swayed, his good hand pressed against an exponentially-increasing patch of red, and then fell to his knees.
Yuri, Yarin, and Yavin bore down on us then and everything went to hell. The magical maelstrom between Ari and I died out and his magic choked. That frightened me because it made me worry his wound might be fatal.
“Fara!” I yelled, pointing to Ari. “Stanch, left side. Then cast Aegis, Impenetrable, and every other shielding spell you know." Then I leapt away, hoping the bunyips would follow me. But of course, since Luck never seemed to favor me when it came to big stakes like this, only one of them did.
Not chancing potentia waste or a mistake, Fara ran to Ari’s side rather than casting from afar. Nova and Virtus went after the other two bunyips – Yuri and Yavin? Who the hell knew? – I didn’t care. I blasted the bunyips with electric bolts, but it was like blasting rubber boats. Nothing happened.
Meanwhile, Malphia’s dark magic was slithering along the edges of mine, and Yarin was raining blows on me right and left. It was only a matter of time before he simply railroaded me and then stomped on me. Fara’s glamour flickered and faded. Her potentia nearly drained, she slumped against Ari, who was now struggling to get out from under her.
My boost and shield spells started to give way and I felt Ari’s signature change. He’d been radiating frustration, which I’d thought odd in light of his injury. I’d have expected him to be pulsing with pain and rage like I was. But frustration morphed into desperation. I was given the most fleeting glimpse of his current emotional state when my words from last night rumbled in my head.
I don’t need you anymore.
Ari had said he wanted me to show Yannu what I could do, but this whole time Ari had been trying to show me what he could do. For me. What we could do together.
But his plan backfired.
When Ari realized he could no longer help me win the melee, something inside him snapped. Complicated human emotions gave way to more basic, primal ones like kill, mine, and take. His magic bubbled back into him as if fed by an enormous preternatural spring. With dawning horror, I realized what was happening – Ari was shifting.
The rational part of me was glad. Shifting would help Ari heal faster. But the irrational part of me was afraid. Keeping him alive was my priority, but at what cost? This creature wasn’t going to merge his magic with mine. It would do what it wanted. Fara stumbled back and Ari’s gaze met mine. It was no longer familiar. Fiery-red eyes, set in a head with a long snout, enormous teeth, and horns, stared back at me. Instead of a man, Ari crouched before us now as a drakon, fully healed except for a maimed left wing, muscles tense and ready to spring.
Malphia immediately went down on one knee and bowed her head, but the bunyips merely turned toward him, considering.
Were we going to continue the melee now? Surely, a truce would be called. Ari needed to calm down and shift back. I couldn’t control him like this. It felt as if he couldn’t even control himself like this.
I glanced at the observation decks. Many of the Hyrkes had fled, but a few brave souls had stayed, including Zeffre, who stood beside Tenacity on the nearest platform. Yannu was some ways away but he had a calculating expression on his face, as if he’d been planning for this. He nodded to his bunyip retainers, but instead of attacking Ari, they turned back toward me.
I clutched my sword and my stomach burned. Where was Vannis?
Yarin raised his sword and Yavin and Yuri came running. My boost, bump, and shield spells were gone. Ari’s magic was no longer available to me. A hidebehind assassin lurked somewhere near, three bunyips were bearing down on me, and one very large, uncontrollable drakon was one step away from killing someone and/or just scooping me up and flying off with me.
It seemed preposterous, but it was very real. Ari’s massive drakon heart seemed to beat with only three clear thoughts: kill… mine… take. His thoughts were so primal, the object of each desire wasn’t even named. For the drakon, there was no Yarin, Yavin, or Yuri. There was no Malphia, Vannis or even Nouiomo. There were only enemies and a treasure, which he was sick and tired of not having all to himself.
My own signature must have pulsed with shock, dismay, and not a little fear. Just before Ari launched himself toward me, I gave the order to end it.
“Stonewall! Now, Fara!” My voice faltered a bit. “Ari though, not Malphia.”
Admitting defeat – and possibly shaming Ari – wasn’t at all what I’d wanted to do this morning.
Like the good Angel she was, Fara complied and cast Stonewall over Ari. It had been his idea, but who would have guessed we’d have to use it on him instead of the other team’s captain? Instantly, a stone wall, tall and round as a two-story tower, enclosed him.
“I surrender,” I called over to Yannu. “You win,” I told Malphia. Not wanting to fuel Ari’s fire any longer, I ruthlessly tamped down my feelings of bitterness, frustration, defeat, and disappointment. I took a breath, waiting to see what would happen.
Would the surrender be accepted? Would Fara’s stone walls hold Ari?
Malphia rose and glanced at Yannu, who was eyeing me with a narrowed gaze. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or disgusted with what I’d just done. Finally, he gave the cessation gesture and the bunyips retreated. I exhaled as he walked over to me.
“Angels aren’t allowed to aggressively cast against regulare demons,” Yannu reminded us, his expression dark.
“Stonewall isn’t offensive. It’s defensive. And Ms. Vanderlin didn’t cast it over the patron, she cast it around him.” In some ways, it was a semantics game. One that was nerve-wracking to play without Ari by my side. In our current conditions, neither Fara nor I could defend ourselves against Yannu. And we’d just incapacitated the one demon who would have.
> Yannu stared at Fara for a long time before turning back to me.
“Looks like you lost again, consigliere.”
“I surrendered. And, besides, it wasn’t a fair fight.”
Yannu cocked a brow at me. “Is that so? At least we weren’t the ones who cast an experimental, potentially dangerous spell over this town’s demon lord.”
“We? ’Fess up, Yannu. You cheated by helping the opposing team win. Malphia wasn’t its captain, you were.”
Inwardly, I gulped and cursed myself for speaking without thinking. Dumb, Onyx, dumb. You don’t accuse a regulare demon – especially a Captain of the Guard – of cheating.
But Yannu just shrugged. “I’m everyone’s captain.”
Behind us, Stonewall disintegrated just as Vannis reappeared. I tensed as Ari, a man once again, emerged naked and faced the hidebehind. But instead of trying to attack Ari again, Vannis took a knee and bowed as Malphia had.
Yannu lowered his voice so that only I could hear.
“I’m not sure what Aristos’ greater weakness is – his left wing… or you.”
10
WALKABOUT
They say that smell is the oldest and most powerful sense we have. And this is mostly true, even for members of the Host. Certainly, metaphysical things are best sensed with our magic, but with the purely physical, we’re no different from Hyrkes. And the smell of Ari – calm, peaceful, relaxed, contented Ari – sprawled so close to me brought back a flood of warm memories: playing mancala with him at his adoptive family’s home in Bradbury… sleeping in on Saturdays in his dorm room at Infernus… even studying together at Corpus Justica, which had almost always led to other, less cerebral, pursuits.
He smelled the same. Some combination of vanilla, anise, and hot muscly man that I’d once been completely and naively overwhelmed by. To be fair, Ari’s human form wasn’t a lie. Most demons have several forms. But whatever human shape they take is theirs. It’s not an illusion or a glamour. They can’t change it. It’s who they are – or at least it’s part of who they are.
After this morning’s melee, Fara and I had retreated to our rooms. I hadn’t known if Ari would still want to patrol the gorge with me, but I figured, under the circumstances, that waiting at the rotunda was probably better than heading off somewhere else.
Fara had spent an hour at her desk, writing up field notes and journal entries. Then she’d declared that, if all I was going to do was sit around all day, she was heading to the hospital. Then I’d waited… and waited… and wondered if Ari was angry with me for having Fara cast Stonewall over him.
Around midday, however, Tenacity had come into my room to inform me that his lordship wanted me. She’d given me a saucy wink then, which I’d ignored, and told me she’d packed a picnic lunch for us. Curious about where Ari might be taking me, I’d scrubbed my face and located a package in my trousseau marked “Walkabout.” Soon after, my bloodstained armor had been exchanged for soft canvas pants and a comfortable tunic. Thinking of the mid-summer heat, I’d tied my hair back and stepped into the atrium.
Tenacity had hooted at my appearance.
“What?”
“You should wear pigtails.”
“Why?”
“Because then you’d look even less intimidating,” she’d said, guffawing. “It’s hard to believe you’re the same person from this morning. No one would be afraid of you looking like that.”
“Should they be?”
She’d rolled her eyes. “Yes!” And then Ari had entered dressed in something similar and Tenacity had nearly lost it.
Our stated purpose was to look for any sign that Displodo might be a rogare who was hiding somewhere outside of town, but our excursion was also a chance for Ari and me to discuss suspects and clues. I’d been in the gorge for two days now. And I’d spoken to Ari privately each night. But those discussions had focused on the us I’d denied existed. Today, I was determined to further my investigation.
We spent the next hour and a half hiking along a blackened trail that skirted the northern bank of the Acheron. Mount Occasus’ peak rose in the distance and, the closer we got to it, the steeper the trail became. After I’d turned around for the seven hundredth time, Ari had assured me that there was very little chance of encountering a hidebehind. He likened them to shooting stars. They were out there, but they wouldn’t show themselves during the day.
“Vannis did,” I said, not bothering to hide my hatred.
But Ari only smiled and said, “I’m not worried about him so you shouldn’t be either.” I wasn’t entirely convinced, but I let it drop, not wanting to spoil what was otherwise a serenely beautiful hike. All afternoon, we’d neither seen, nor sensed, anything out of the ordinary.
In time the narrow trail led us to a broad, open ledge. Built into the right angle between the ledge and the sheer rock face of the mountain was an old stone castle, six stories high, roofless and crumbling. At first it reminded me of the Stone Pointe keep, but once inside, I realized the two buildings were very different. Here there was no mud or muck, no disgusting bone throne or human refuse. Its proportions were normal too, not monstrously gargantuan. This wasn’t a place where giants had once lived. According to Ari, it was the original home of Servius Rockthorn and his family. This had been Rockthorn Gorge’s first castle – its first “rotunda.”
Ari spread a blanket over the building’s floor, a combination of broken pavers and dry dirt. Then he emptied his pack. A few bottles of water and a dozen or so small paper bags fell to the ground. I sat down near the blanket’s edge and reached for one, hoping it wouldn’t be full of just deserts leftovers.
How long passed after that with us merely sitting, sipping, and eating, I don’t know. The bags turned out to be full of the most innocuous, almost boring, food items: tree nuts, beef jerky, and hard cheese. The silence between us might have been awkward if it weren’t for the fact that it allowed us to hear the warbling of bluebirds and the occasional, farther off, cry of an eagle or griffon. After all, tension was pretty hard to maintain when the air was full of bird song. So, little by little, I began to relax. Truly relax. To a soft, mellow state that I hadn’t felt since before I’d arrived.
Ari seemed to bask in my mood. He sprawled out on his back, alternatively chewing and simply gazing up at the cloud-covered sky. His signature radiated tranquility, and it had seemed like, in that moment anyway, if I’d suggested we forsake everything for each other and just spend the rest of our lives doing nothing but this, he would have agreed with alacrity.
Maybe that’s what he was waiting for. For me to suggest such a mad and selfish scheme. Thank Luck the smell of him – spicy, sexy, dangerous, yet familiar – brought me back to reality. Ari peered over at me.
“How are Ivy and Fitz?”
I smiled. “They’re well. Ivy is Assistant Editor for the Riparian Law Journal now and Fitz is dating Francesca.”
“Francesca Cerise?”
I nodded, grinning.
“What happened to Babette?”
“She threw him over for Cornwall Dun.”
Ari grunted and then laughed. But his laughter seemed to die early, accompanied by the briefest whiff of wistfulness. Did Ari miss St. Luck’s?
I’d never thought about it before, but why wouldn’t he? Why would he have signed up for three years if he hadn’t at least liked some part of it? He’d enrolled there before he’d even met me.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.
Ari frowned and his signature seemed to snap and retract. “For what?”
“For Stonewall…” I took a deep breath. “And for Revelare Lucere.”
Revelare Lucere had been the spell Rafe had cast that had revealed Ari to be the demon he was. I hadn’t intended to apologize for telling Rafe to cast it. Or for telling Fara to cast Stonewall today. And I probably would do everything all over again the same way if given a second chance. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t sorry for some of the consequences. Like the fact that Ari could neve
r return to St. Luck’s as a student. Or the fact that I may have undermined his authority today, which was the opposite of what I’d come here to do.
But he didn’t seem angry. His signature was no longer radiating tranquility but he was far from fired up. He sat up and faced me.
“Life would be a whole lot simpler without the Angels, huh?”
I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them. “Life would be a whole lot simpler without demons,” I countered. But I cocked an eyebrow at him and smiled so he would know I was only half-serious.
He grunted and looked away.
“Ari…” I said, wondering where to start. We needed to discuss Displodo and the camarilla and the possible connection between the two, but there were a few preliminary things I was wondering about, like: “How did you end up here? Why Rockthorn Gorge?”
He blew his breath out. “Remember first semester when I told you I knew Cliodna?” I shook my head slowly, trying to remember. But Ari waved off my lack of recall. “It doesn’t matter.” He paused, thinking. I didn’t sense he was trying to avoid telling me something as much as he was simply trying to figure out the best and easiest way to share his story.
“My parents haven’t always agreed on what future I should have,” he said. I murmured in sympathy and wondered if that was the case for all parents. Mine had certainly disagreed about which direction to steer me.
“My parents raised me as a human,” Ari continued. “Not as a Hyrke, of course,”—he laughed then, I guess because he still thought the fact that I’d been raised as a Hyrke was at least nominally ridiculous – as if he was in a position to criticize! – “but as a human member of the Host with waning magic. My mother taught me discipline and control and I was sent to occult schools so that I could learn the ways of the Host from the perspective of its human members.”