Pale Demon th-9

by Kim Harrison

  “You son of a bitch!” Jenks shrilled, a hot red dust spilling from him.

  “Like the demon she is?” Oliver said, smiling wickedly, but I could do nothing except stare. Was there such a thing, or was this part of his plan? Put some fake curse on me so I was off the coven radar? Brooke had offered me something similar. What would my life be like now if I had accepted?

  “Well, she is a demon, isn’t she?” Trent said with a nasty boys’-club smile on his face.

  I didn’t know what to do. He had said trust him, but this…

  “Oliver, we can’t,” Vivian exclaimed, aghast enough to tell me she thought it might be possible. “That’s inhuman!”

  “She’s a demon!” Oliver shouted. “Human morality doesn’t apply to her!”

  A thump reverberated across the barrier sheltering the stage, and everyone cowered as the shimmering ever-after pulsed. Ivy had ripped a chair from the floor and thrown it. She looked wild, eyes black, shaking with anger given free rein. Oliver gave the incensed vampire a disparaging glance. “Can you do it?” he asked Trent.

  Pierce was being restrained. I knew he could break from it and was following my lead of wait-and-see. Trent glanced at him before nodding. My heart thudded. Trust him?

  “I need a collective,” he said, and I could imagine my life ending. I’d never be able to return, I’d never see the sun—unless this was part of his plan. How bad had it been, I wondered, when he had been a demon’s slave? How much hatred had he hidden from me? Was he going to laugh at me now? Hurt me?

  “You putrid elf! That’s my daughter!” my mother screamed, and Trent twitched. He’d been named. His secret was out. But I didn’t think it mattered. He had left his daughter’s ears undocked. The elves were coming out of the closet with her. The directive of the next generation. He’d given me a say in it. Or had it all been a lie?

  Oliver shifted into motion. “Isolate them,” he directed, pointing at my mother and Ivy, now struggling violently. “Form a collective! We do this now!”

  “Oliver! We need to think about this!” Vivian demanded as she confronted him, but Oliver motioned for security, and she was restrained.

  “You are outvoted,” Oliver said with satisfaction. “Put her with coven member Pierce.”

  I felt sick, unable to move. It wasn’t the plastic straps with the charmed silver at their core that kept me from reacting; it was Trent. He had said to trust him. He had said I had to lose. He’d told me to go quietly, but I didn’t know why!

  The light from above was eclipsed as security shoved me into a circle one of the junior coven members had sketched and I fell to my knees. Trent’s shadow lay heavily on me. I looked up, his stone-cold face scaring me. Lucy was bawling in someone else’s arms—her wailing giving my unvoiced fear a sound. “T-Trent?” I stammered. He could do it. He said he had a curse, and I believed he could do it. He’d been dropping elven wild magic the entire trip, and apparently he had a new trick to show me.

  “Betray me, and I’ll never rest until you’re dead,” I vowed, my hands bound behind me, kneeling before him and the entire witch council.

  He grabbed my shoulder, hauling me up as the crowd shouted its approval. Not as far from our witch-burning past as I had hoped, I guess.

  “I’ve got a demon curse to give you,” he breathed for me alone, green eyes turbulent as his wild magic seeped from his fingers and sent tendrils of power I couldn’t use through me, tingling, warming, seductive. “I’ve been carrying it since the arch fell. Ku’Sox gave it to me. I had to take it to free him. It doesn’t do anything to me but give me a headache. You, though, I think it will work on.”

  Ku’Sox? I went cold, the memory of an elven assassin singing me to death rising high in me, pulled into existence by Trent’s magic seeping through me like a soporific, soothing even as excitement sparked from his touch. I’d almost died under wild magic. And now he wanted to give me Ku’Sox’s curse with it? I was a fool. Elves fought demons. He’d used me again.

  Trent leaned in closer, his hand light on my shoulder. “Once I give it to you, you can—”

  “No!” I cried, my bound hands coming up to shove him away, but Trent had grabbed me, his eyes looking behind me. “I’d sooner get a lobotomy,” I said, scared. “You son of—”

  Agony exploded in my knees as something hit me from behind, exactly where the guards in Alcatraz had gotten me. Gasping in pain, I crumpled, my knees exploding. I looked up, finding Trent staring down at me, his brow pinched, his unsaid words swallowed in frustration.

  “Curse her,” Oliver said as I tried to breathe. “And hurry up about it,” he added.

  Squinting in pain, I looked up when Trent’s shadow fell over me. “You not trusting me is going to get you killed,” he said, his expression grim as he bent to lift me up, failing when I refused to cooperate. “As I was saying, take the bloody curse and give it back to Ku’Sox.”

  My muscles went slack, and my mouth opened in an O of surprise. Give it to Ku’Sox? That would mean I’d have to, like…touch him!

  Seeing my understanding, Trent stopped trying to get me to stand up and turned to the audience. A gold-tinted wash of ever-after sprang up around us, and as the watching people chanted in unison to show their collective spirit, I felt the tingle of wild elven magic spark through me again, making me tremble. Ku’Sox wanted to dissect me. And Trent thought I could hold him still long enough to curse him? Was he nuts, or just tragically overestimating my abilities?

  Trent was inside the circle with me, and I tried to get up, falling back against it when he shoved me back down. “No,” I pleaded, my hands bound before me, but he began to chant, low and under his breath as he gathered his magic. I took a wild breath, collapsing slowly when a wave of lassitude spilled into me, carried by his music, circling over and over in my mind, becoming my world. Wild magic. Oh no…

  It promised peace, and even as I tried to fight it, my eyes slipped shut against the harsh glare. My soul hurt and needed to heal. Too much had happened, and I wanted it all to be over. That’s what the magic promised, and I wanted it even as I fought its peace.

  My head bowed, and Trent knelt before me, singing in words I couldn’t understand, his beautiful voice rising and falling so softly, it was only for me to hear. A tear slid down my face, a tear for all that I hadn’t done, that I should have done differently. Regret. But it didn’t matter now.

  Trent’s energies prickled against me, and I suddenly realized he wasn’t singing anymore.

  “Rachel?” he breathed, and I lifted my head, numb. “Si peccabas, poenam meres,” he said softly, putting a hand on my shoulder, and I shivered as the curse slid gently from him to me, settling like tattered silk atop my aura.

  “Why?” I pleaded, thinking I’d been stupid to trust him. My eyes met his, begging for mercy. It was just us, though we were surrounded by hundreds bearing witness to the event.

  “Because you’re the only one who can,” he said, and I stiffened as the curse began to soak in, making me want to scream. Like a thousand beetles boring into my skin, I felt the curse burrow into me, finding a place among my cells, wiggling, squirming maggots embedding themselves in my soul. A smut-tainted wash of ever-after coated me, and as I heard the howls of the crowd become muffled, I knew I was being pulled into a ley line. And yet Trent gripped my shoulder, not done with me yet.

  “She’s still here!” Oliver shouted, his ugly face shimmering behind Trent’s circle.

  “The first part shifts the curse,” Trent said, talking to Oliver, but looking at me, his fingers pinching my shoulder so hard it hurt. “It’s the second one that severs it from me and banishes her.”

  He was telling me how to do the curse, but I could hardly focus on him, my drive buried under wild magic and my senses dulled. Somehow my gaze found my mother in the mass of howling people. She was crying, leaning on Ivy, who stood stoically as her heart broke. Seeing me look at her, my mom rallied, pushing away the man blocking her and striding forward.

  �
��Give them hell, Rachel!” she shouted at the edge of the bubble, tears streaming down her face. “I’m proud of you!”

  Trent yanked me up by the shoulder, and I staggered, my knees barely able to hold my weight. “I curse you, Rachel Mariana Morgan, to be fixed to the reality I banish you to. There you are cursed to remain until summoned, be it day or night, forever bound as a demon.” His eyebrow lifted, mocking me. “You got all that? Want me to write it down for you?”

  The curse. He wanted me to give it to Ku’Sox. Should I be pissed or marvel at his foresight? “Okay,” I said numbly, and a hint of a smile flickered in his eyes. My jaw trembled, and doubt hit me. Why was I trusting him! “Trent? Wait!” I cried out, knees throbbing.

  “Just so you know, I’ve trusted you since camp,” Trent said, then shouted dramatically, “Facilis descensus Tartaros!”

  His hand let go, and it was as if I was sucked into myself, yanked backward into nothing. The jagged disjointedness of the San Francisco lines took me, dissolving me to thoughts and memories, and dropping me into the infinity of time.

  He trusts me? I thought. Trust me, Trent had said. I wanted to. But to risk death to curse Ku’Sox? Why should I even bother?

  The world had turned its back on me. I should turn my back on it.

  Twenty-three

  Sliding, I hit the red soil face-first, eyes clenched shut and teeth together so I wouldn’t bite my tongue as I scraped against the ground for several feet before coming to an ungraceful stop. The shift here had been rough, almost as if no one had been assisting, the subtle calculations that brought one back into reality standing and stable completely absent.

  My first breath was choking, and I sat up, babying my knees and wiping the dirt off my bare legs and trying to figure out where I was. Yes, I was in the ever-after, but where? This wasn’t Cincy. The ley lines were too jagged and the skyline wasn’t right.

  It was dark, the moon unseen behind boiling red clouds, the surrounding buildings slowly melting, slumping into themselves and burning as they collapsed. The thing was, they never seemed to fall completely. The best way I could describe it was that it looked like the world when you’ve been on a merry-go-round for too long—everything a jumping mess.

  Knees throbbing, I tried to find the moon or some gravestones to fix on. If it was like Cincy, then they would be solid, free of the nauseating red sheen on everything. But there was no moon, and if there were any graves, they were unmarked. Not only was I two thousand miles from home with my knees busted again, but I was on the wrong side of reality. At least I had gotten rid of the charmed silver, though, and I rubbed my wrist, glad I could tap a line again, even if they were nasty, broken things.

  On a whim, I tapped a line, wincing at the ugly taste of it but holding on all the same. Al could usually feel it when I tapped a line in the ever-after and would come and fetch me; otherwise, I don’t know how he’d know I was here.

  “Stupid elf,” I muttered, wrapping my arms around myself and shivering in the same, nerve-grating wind. God! I hoped I wasn’t being more stupid than usual. Had I really sat there and let him curse me? Because I tru-u-u-u-usted him?

  The earth shook with one of the West Coast’s frequent tremors, and the building across the street collapsed. And collapsed. And collapsed again. For an instant, I saw a flash of black sky with stars, and a hint of peaceful gray water, and then it was gone and the red-sheened glow was back. Shivering violently, I took a step toward the fleeting image as a breath of salt-laden air pushed aside the burnt-amber stink for the briefest of instances. Did heaven lay just underneath the hell surrounding me, visible only on the farthest arcs of the pendulum swing?

  A rock fell behind me, and I turned, my welcoming snarl freezing. It wasn’t Al. Heart pounding, I licked my lips and squinted in the reddish glow at the top of a small slump of rubble. “Oh, hey. Hi,” I muttered, seeing the thin, raggedy figure standing belligerently above me, a bent stick in his grip. His bare foot moved, and another rock rolled clunking to where I was sitting.

  “Yeah, I see you,” I said as I painfully got to my feet, and then I yelped, ducking when he threw his stick at me.

  “Holy mother pus bucket!” I yelled, dancing back as the surface demon jumped from the rubble to land ten feet in front of me. The slump of debris behind him slowly melted into dust and blew away, and a park bench took its place, only to crack and crumble as the demon inched closer.

  “Look, home slice, I got no beef with you,” I said as I hobbled backward, tugging my dress down. “I’m simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Give me a minute, and I’ll be out of your hair. Off your turf. Outta your…crib.”

  He snarled at me. Honest, what had I ever done to him? But when he picked up his stick and his black-eyed stare went behind me, I had to look.

  “Swell, you got brothers,” I said, rising out of my crouch and putting my hands in the air as if giving up.

  Bad decision. One of them threw a rock, and I ducked, pulling heavily on the ley line and wincing as a lame-ass circle wobbled into existence. The chunk of concrete hit my bubble inches from my head and slid down, and the surrounding surface demons edged closer. There wasn’t any salt water around to interfere with my magic, but the more heavily I pulled on the broken ley lines, the harder they were to work with, until it felt as if I were trying to hold a cat going boneless and slipping out of my grip.

  The surface demons were wincing even as they crept closer, and I wondered if they felt the line I was trying to hold. It was giving me a headache, too. “Let’s all be friends, okay?” I said as I backed up. “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to.”

  I jerked when two more rocks hit the bubble behind me, but a third one got through, and I gasped when my circle fell and the rock hit my shoulder. “Hey!” I exclaimed, popping my circle back into existence as I rubbed my arm. “Look, I’m not a demon, okay? Well, maybe I am, but I’m not like the rest of them. I can walk under the sun.” Wincing, I added, “At least, I used to be able to. Maybe we can come to a mutual understanding. I help you, and you don’t stone me to death.”

  The first surface demon raised his stick, yelling, and they ran at me.

  “Maybe not,” I whispered, wide-eyed, and I pulled harder on the ley line, shoring my wobbly circle up. “Al!” I shouted, wondering where he was. I hadn’t wanted to admit defeat, but hell’s bells, I needed some help.

  The surface demons barreling toward me suddenly skidded to a stop, their black eyes wide as they tasted the night. “Now you’re going to get it,” I said, guessing Al was coming when the ones in the back scattered. “You should have been nice.”

  With a weird cry, the closest surface demon fell back, but it was too late. A flash of red light exploded overhead, smashing the buildings away as if I were at the center of an atomic explosion. The surface demons scattered like brown leaves, the remnants of their clothes and auras fluttering. It was Al, and he burst into existence in a grand mood, an old-fashioned lantern in his hand and a walking cane at his side.

  “Rachel Mariana Morgan!” he shouted enthusiastically, raising the lantern high, and I painfully rose from my crouch, breaking my bubble with a small thought. “I’ve come to save you, love!”

  I winced, even as I was glad to see him. He’d won, and with a cheerfulness that made me sick, he strode over the rubble between us, kicking rock and rebar out of the way. I couldn’t help but notice that the buildings he had destroyed with his entrance were back again. This was unreal. No wonder the surface demons were crazy.

  “Done already?” he said, his mood expansive. “From witch to demon in less than an hour. It must be a record. And what are you doing in the badlands? They’re somewhat…unnerving, are they not? Especially now.”

  I was scanning the edges of the ragged horizon, looking for heads, sticks, rocks, whatever. “Yes. I’m done. You were right. Oliver lied. Pierce is an idiot. They should all eat toads and die. Can we go home?”

  Oh God. The ever-after was my home. />
  Al blinked, tucking his cane under an arm and a white-gloved hand turning my chin to him as he peered into my eyes. “Rachel, love, what did they do to you?”

  I blinked, shocked to find that tears suddenly threatened. “Nothing.”

  “They cursed you…,” he whispered, flinging his walking cane at a surface demon. The creature squealed, and a putrid puff of green smoke was torn apart by the gritty wind. “It was that elf, wasn’t it?” Al said. “I smell the stink of wild magic on you. You can’t go back unless summoned.”

  “No, I can’t,” I admitted, feeling stupid. “But Trent has a plan…” My words trailed off and I felt even more like an idiot. What was the point? I was here. Even if I cursed Ku’Sox, I was still shunned, a virtual exile.

  “I told you to take that piece of elf crap firmly in hand,” Al said, pulling himself to his full height and frowning sternly at me. “Now look what he’s done. You were a day-walking demon, free to come and go as you please, and now you’re chained like the rest of us. What a waste. Stupid girl.”

  I said nothing, and Al stepped back, his lantern making a hazy gold glow around us. “He has a plan, eh?” he mocked.

  Bless it back to the Turn. “Yeah,” I said, yanking a strand of hair out of my mouth where the wind had put it. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. Can we get out of here? It stinks, and my knees hurt.”

  Shaking his head, Al tsk-tsked, making my face burn. I suddenly felt small beside him, and I shrugged out of his arm, trying to go companionably over my shoulder. “This is why we don’t live on the surface,” he said as he tried to cover up my rebuke by tugging his frock coat straight. “I’ve never seen it this bad, though. Usually the buildings don’t fall like this.” He sniffed and adjusted his smoked glasses. “Shall we go?”

  Shivering, I hobbled up to him, feeling his warmth. I was starting to get depressed. I was never going to see the sun again. “Thank you for picking me up,” I said, and Al beamed.