Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows)

by C. V. Larkin

  The soft click of the door latch was a gunshot. Xavier wrenched his head up as Royal walked into the room.

  "Well?"

  *You were, perhaps, imagining an outcome in which Tian would decline to repay the debt she so recently incurred? Don't be stupid.*

  "I wasn't imagining anything. Get out of my head, Royal."

  The demon laughed and lowered himself down onto the couch. "Alcoholism doesn't suit you."

  "No? Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough." Xavier took another swig that dribbled down his chin. The demon was right, he was sloppy. "You tell her about her client's kid brother?" he asked.

  "A rogue Mage preying upon the human populace isn't a Fae matter."

  "Sounds like a no to me."

  "I told her that the issue was resolved. Which it was. The youth is as stable as he is ever going to be, which is why she agreed to our request. You're pathetic right now. I hope you know that."

  "I'm not the asshole that has minions who moonlight for the Guardian."

  A placid expression stayed plastered on Royal's puss, but the electric green shimmer around his irises indicated that a nerve had been tweaked. "An issue that will be rectified soon enough. Tell me, Xavier, which do you think you will regret more, Tian's loss or your own?"

  "Sometimes I really fucking hate you."

  Royal laughed. It came barreling out of him before he could suck it back; the sound was choked and brittle. The metal in his face gleamed wickedly in the firelight.

  The demon's thought echoed through Xavier's skull as if he'd screamed it.

  *That makes two of us.*

  ****

  The music in the club pounded like a bad porno. Tian hated Polk St. The hellish red lights made the hipsters with their martinis look like wraiths. She moved through the crowd with all the inherent gentleness to which she was born. She was a wrecking ball. The progeny marks in her wrists burned as she closed in on her target. The hollow ache in her torso was absent for the first time she could remember, and given the passenger she was toting, she wasn't about to start second guessing. From what Avery had said she'd been near catatonic for days after she'd gotten back.

  Get in, kill the succubus, get out, and sleep for a week.

  Assassination of a rogue demon was one thing, but she didn't want to deal with the Guardian that Royal had intimated were involved. Guardian wizards were a cult of sanctimonious hypocrites and vindictive bigots. Unlike the covens that looked to emulate them, each member had more than enough individual power to make themselves a nuisance. Tonight they should have been some other schmuck's problem. Instead they were hers.

  "Sea and stars, I wish they had butlers," Ceyla said, surveying the masses as she downed a shot from the closest server. "It's always the sodding butler."

  "The closest thing you're going to get around here is a bathroom attendant," Avery told her.

  "No bathroom attendants on Polk, luv, just portals, graffiti, some vomit, and a whole mess of used condoms."

  "Classy," Tian said, trying to ignore them and focus on the progeny spell's burn.

  "Entertaining," the shifter countered with a full body stretch. He and Ceyla had insisted on accompanying her to repay the debt she'd incurred on behalf of the house. It was likely they still thought she was unstable, but had too much good sense to mention it.

  "Hey now," a random human murmured.

  Tian ignored him. They'd been in the place two minutes and already they were garnering unwanted attention. It was still furtive only because Avery was atypical when he was unshifted. When he wasn't trying to look like anything the skin-walker was a good natured tank, all blocky physique, wide planes, and wild hair in the shape of a matted clown wig stuck halfway between dreadlocks and curls.

  Ceyla grabbed Avery's arm and gestured toward the bar to the right of the dance floor. "No mate, that is entertaining. That one is well fit."

  Tian glanced in the direction the other female had indicated. Her perception grew fuzzy. The goddess sign grew in her chest until it was unbearable. It was a liquid feeling with a metallic edge. Living things, swarms of ravens, tested the limits of her skin from the inside. The sensation stretched through her system, leaving room in its wake for the gnawing desire that defaced the void in the seconds following. Tian grabbed a glass off the nearest table and threw back the contents without tasting them.

  "Hey!" came the irritated response from the nearest seated bystander.

  "Fuck yourself," Tian said. She didn't recognize her voice as it came out.

  "Relax," Ceyla told the girl, throwing around a little glamour to sooth her words. "We'll get you another one."

  "What just happened?" Avery asked.

  "Hell, if I know," Ceyla said. She turned, all inquiry and wide eyes, toward Tian, who was fighting the naked need polluting her bloodstream and clutching the cup like it was a lifeline.

  "You alright?"

  "No, I need another drink."

  "You don't drink," Avery said. He removed another full glass from the table and handed it over. Tian took it and downed something that tasted syrupy and pink. The aftertaste lingered. So did the image of the last time she'd seen the man standing at the bar. The effect he had on her hadn't lessened with time, torture, or rationale. He accepted a drink from a hovering vulpine bartender. The other woman flashed a predatory smile laced with glistening white teeth and a jolt of recognition ripped through the sigils at Tian's wrists.

  The succubus oozed against the bar, displaying a substantial amount of cleavage. She must have pulled out the stops because several humans turned to stare at her, eyes glazed over and wanting. The sex demon leaned farther to finger the enticing angle of his jawline. Tian growled. She discarded the glass and made a move forward, only to be grabbed around the waist and hauled off her feet by one of Avery's thick arms.

  "Tian, what are you doing!? Ease down! Do you know him?"

  Ceyla grabbed one of Tian's wrists and consulted the burning sigils. "I thought you said we were dealing with a succubus."

  "We are. Get off me."

  Cold rage coated her throat like venom. It was a bad sign. It had been a long time since she'd had a real emotion that she had to worry about controlling. The male leaned back and flashed the demon a dead look. There was something about him that didn't fit in the depths of those storm gray eyes. It flared like a trapped spark, expressing itself in every fiber--as if what lurked below consciousness was a secret, a leviathan in his soul that was restless and surfacing. The smug satisfaction on the bartender's mug made whatever encouragement he'd given clear.

  "Did you hear what I said?" Ceyla sounded pissed.

  "No, I didn't." Tian shifted so she could see around the other woman, but Ceyla moved with her, blocking her view.

  "I said there are Guardian all over this joint. It's crawling."

  That got her attention.

  "Joint? What is this, film noir?" Tian took a minute to reassess the room. "There are four in my periphery. How many am I missing?"

  "One behind me," Avery said. "I'll assume there are a couple more out of view."

  "That's a full team," Ceyla said. "Next time we see hell's angels remind me to thank 'em proper. Pricks."

  "I say we dust the demon and get out. Leave the G-Force to do their own dirty work." Avery retracted his death grip on Tian's midsection.

  "Ain't going to happen, my friend." Ceyla shook her head and swiped another shot from an oblivious passing server.

  "What do you mean "Not going to happen"?"

  "I believe I used the term ain't, and did you not see the look on her face? We're not going anywhere without Adonis over there."

  "Talking about me in the third person only works when I'm not standing here, asshole," Tian said.

  Ceyla chuckled.

  "Is she wrong?" Avery asked.

  "No." Tian let out a slow sigh and looked at him. "So, now that we've determined I'm about to do something cosmically stupid, can we ge
t on with it?"

  "Probably should 'cause yo man just went into the john with a real cock sucker."

  Tian scowled. "Remind me another time that I think you're funny."

  "No problem. I was even gonna get a couple of pixies to follow me around with cymbals so they can cue you humorless sad sacks when to laugh."

  "You know if you do this, Eamon will reallocate you. He will hurt you and then reallocate what little's left," Ceyla said.

  Tian bit her lip. "Probably."

  She started moving, shoving her way through the drunken mass of bodies toward the bathrooms. The atmosphere was oppressive, a club med to the non-humans who had taken to siphoning energy and/or emotion from unsuspecting prey. By the time she got to the seedy hallway in back, the sigils in her wrists were making it difficult to feel her hands. They wreaked of burnt flesh and were bright enough that the light was noticeable under the sleeves of her coat.

  Tian turned the handle to the women's and found a cramped box with alien lighting and a pair of cockroach munching hobbs hiding in the toilet paper. They goggled at Tian with bright green eyes that overwhelmed their faces. Lipless mouths that wrapped halfway around their heads ceased smacking and hung open. The hobb on the right was dressed in a dingy kilt made from a gutter sock and a miniature red rodeo vest that did nothing to obscure the greasy pot belly he'd developed.

  "Which one's the portal in Murray?"

  Murray's cat slit pupils contracted. "Thishhh one," he answered in a deep baritone.

  The other hobb looked up and sucked the guts from the underside of a sewer bug. Severed antennae waved helplessly between his blunt yellow teeth. He adjusted the condom wrapper strapped to his foot with a long gnarly toenail. "Ithhh's a flusher," he told her.

  "Excellent," Tian said.

  She chipped a couple of pieces of gum from under the sink and tossed them across the floor. The hobbs attacked the hardened lumps and she backed out of the door behind her. Tian removed a magnet from the inside pocket of her gun holster and made the two foot trek to the men's room. Her stomach was in knots that had nothing to do with reservations about her impending kill. She used the magnet to unlock the door and slip inside.

  The bastard who'd derailed her was more breathtaking up close. The shirt he was wearing had been shoved up onto his chest, exposing the hard ridges of an obsessively cultivated washboard. He was braced against a shelf above the toilet tank with the succubus kneeling in front of him. Tian slid the lock back into place as she watched him. His head was tilted toward the ceiling, but what she could see of his expression was vacant, disinterested. A searing pain from the sigils lanced through her forearms which did nothing to improve her mood.

  "Didn't anyone tell you it's a bad idea to let strange bitches blow you in the back of a club?"

  She grabbed the demon by the hair, slammed it head first into the sink, and threw it into the far wall. Too bad "far" was only a few feet away. The man's head snapped down as if it were on a hydraulic piston. His gray eyes went wide in shock before they flared to life with recognition.

  "What's your name?" Tian asked.

  The succubus hissed and pitched a half full metal trash can at her face. The thing smashed into the wall at ninety miles an hour. It missed Tian's skull by an inch, putting a substantial dent in the plaster. Tian kicked the bin out of the way.

  "Sio."

  His voice was crushed velvet and cigarette smoke. The creature in the corner gargled an unintelligible response. Its human mask bled out along with the thick spill from the crumpled side of a freshly deformed skull. It lunged, long dark hair shaking out in clumps from around the wound. Tian caught the demon on the upswing and planted a thick soled boot in the middle of its solar plexus with a sickening crunch. The succubus kept coming, bony fingers elongating into talons and tearing through cloth and flesh.

  "Sio, this is a succubus. You were about to get dead."

  "Yeah, I see that."

  Tian lost focus as she turned to look at him and found her head ricocheting against the wall. The next thing she knew, the succubus was being torn off her. Sio held the hissing, spitting demon at arm's length. It braced a leg against the wall and hit him in the face with a hard right, rolling out of the way as he staggered. An obscenely long tongue snaked from the creature's mouth, venom dripped from the gills on either side as sharp thorns raised from the taste buds in a long line down the center.

  Tian got her head back into the game and landed a lucky uppercut to the creature's jaw, severing the sickly mass. It dropped to the floor, making contact with a wet slap against the broken tile, and writhing as if not even amputation would kill it. Sio slammed the battered trashcan down on top of the tongue and kicked it back into a corner. The succubus gurgled its displeasure with blood spewing like oil from the left over stump in its mouth.

  A loud pounding against the door added to the chaos. "Buddy, what are you, on vacation or something? There are other people out here that are waiting."

  "Gimme a minute," Sio bellowed, staring wide eyed at the still moving trash can.

  The she-demon produced a straight razor from inside her skin tight outfit and Tian rushed her as the pounding grew louder.

  "Listen asshole, I'm a close and personal friend of the manager. You do not want me to have to go talk to him. Now get the FUCK OUT OF THE BATHROOM!"

  Tian couldn't hear the reply if there was one. Sio waded back into the fray. He slipped on the blood coated floor, catching the creature off guard and dragging it into a choke hold as he braced his big body against the sink. Tian took the momentary reprieve to liberate the razor blade along with a couple of the demon's digits. She opened a vertical fissure in the creature's chest between the two enormous globes of its breasts and shoved her hands in.

  The pounding resumed, drowning out the high pitched keening from the succubus. The marks screamed in Tian's wrists. She shoved past muscle and angry broken shards of bone until she was up to her forearms in chest cavity and both Progeny sigils were fully submerged. Sio looked stricken as the succubus he'd been holding seized against his body. Tian had a brief flash of regret in the seconds before the sigils detonated.

  They incinerated the creature from the inside out, taking chunks of Tian's wrists with them. The pain was spectacular. She broke into a cold sweat, biting back a bile laced scream as her knees buckled and she sank to the floor, taking the smoldering, dissolving corpse with her in wet pieces. The stench of sulfur hung heavy in the air.

  "We need to get out," she said.

  Sio took a paper towel from the top of the broken dispenser, ran it under some water, and held it out to her. "I'll go wherever you want me, as long as you can explain this."

  Tian staggered to her feet, slipping in the waxy sludge of ashes and ectoplasm. He grabbed hold of her and stabilized her against his body.

  Too close.

  He smelled like winter air. She breathed him in and, for a moment, the attraction overwhelmed the cloying stench of blood and death. It was hard to tell which of them recoiled first. The part of her that wasn't thinking straight wanted to crawl back into him. She didn't. It dawned on her that she was vexed by the way she'd found him, and she held on to the emotion. An inscrutable look passed through his dazzling features, submerged as soon as it happened.

  The pounding on the door resumed, beating in rhythm with the pounding headache throbbing in her temples. It was accompanied by a steady stream of profanity. The asshole on the other side was heated, but he wouldn't be a Guardian. If they were smart, they'd be waiting to see who came out before they got involved.

  Tian used the marginal reprieve to clean the blood off her hands and the pulled pork of her wrists in the sink. The stains in her clothes could wait. She turned to find Sio watching her. There was blood all over his shirt and in the angry scratches on his arms, but for the most part he read as unscathed.

  "If you don't get out of the bathroom right now you're going to be sorry, jerk off! I'm not the only o
ne out here and no one's happy!"

  Sio continued to stare. His unwavering interest made her feel exposed. He raised an eyebrow and glanced toward the door. Tian shored herself up and nodded. He let them out.

  "It's all yours, jerk off," Sio said.

  Their antagonist's eyes bulged as he backed away from the much larger male. Tian caught movement in the periphery of her vision. She grabbed hold of Sio's shirt and shoved him across the hallway. She didn't bother with the handle to the ladies' room as she slammed into the already stressed wood and ripped the lock out of the door. An underage drunk in black frame glasses was fixing her makeup in the mirror above the sink. She looked annoyed by the intrusion until she got a gander at Sio.

  "Ain't happening, honey," Tian said, picking up the girl and forcing her into the hallway. She slammed the door shut.

  "Is there a reason you booked my ass back into a bathroom?" Sio asked.

  "Same reason I broke into the one you were in." Tian barricaded the entrance with her body as something slammed into the other side with the force of a battering ram.

  Her feet skidded forward on the damp tile. She pinched the nail of her right thumb between her teeth and pulled until her knuckle popped and she ripped it whole out of the nail bed. She spit it out down the sink in a demonstration of incredible poise as the blood welled furiously. It was always the little things that stung like a son of a bitch. Tian flicked the pool of blood forming in her hand onto the toilet in the corner. She caught Sio's waistband and shoved him down onto the bowl. His hands came up to grip her hips. The Hobbs whistled from the trash can as the door was blasted inward and she depressed the flusher.

  Chapter 10

  Old Things in Old Places

  Sio struggled to rationalize the way his night had devolved. If he wasn't crazy, the last thing he wanted to do was have as emotional breakdown in front of the wet dream who had his T-shirt wadded into a death grip. He must be crazy, though. She'd been elbows deep in the torso of that demon thing she had beaten to shit in the bathroom and he was still turned on. Turned on and scared beyond reason. Apparently, the two were not mutually exclusive. He took a breath and tried to regain a semblance of control along with the oxygen.