Moon Burn (The Half-Demon Rogue Trilogy Book 3)

by D. N. Erikson

  Instead of getting a drink, I plugged the gator twice in the face, its brains leaving ripples in the placid surface as they landed. It flopped over, turning the surrounding water a deep shade of foul, brackish crimson.

  “You should thank him,” Ruby called. She hadn’t waited for me, and her voice seemed far away.

  I looked at the ruined water, deciding to move up shore where it wasn’t polluted. As I searched for a new spot, eyes peeled for aggressive reptiles, I shot back, “Thank him for what?”

  “You think you’re thirsty now, wait until you take a drink.”

  My throat constricted, growing dryer by the minute. The sun gave no sign of abating, and my muscles were threatening to cramp. I was only feet away from a perfectly good source of water. One little drink wouldn’t hurt.

  But my scratchy face told me that was a lie. Whatever this substance was, drinking it wouldn’t sate my thirst.

  For a moment, I considered testing it on the dog. He whined in my arms, and the briefest feeling of shame rushed over my being. If there was something within this reverse-paradise capable of “fixing me,” then we needed to find it sooner rather than later. I didn’t know if I could withstand the temptations of evil for long.

  Or at all.

  By the time I returned to Ruby’s side, nobler goals had dropped off the horizon. My trigger finger was twitchy, nerves shot as I watched for more alligators. I wanted to paint the sea red.

  “You didn’t drink the water, did you?”

  “For now.”

  “Good man.” She hadn’t stopped moving since I’d awoken. Her breaths were steady, deep, her shoulders displaying only the slightest hint of fatigue. It struck me that she wouldn’t stop moving in this place until she either died or escaped.

  Maybe the only way to survive here was through constant motion.

  Ahead, a beautiful peninsula leading up to a scenic cliff awaited us. All fool’s gold, lined with beautiful trees and fruit bushes that would no doubt reduce a man to madness. Things worse than water, that would further test our mettle.

  The realm began to howl, the perfect day overtaken by an ear-piecing storm. But the painful noise came unaccompanied by wind, hail or lightning. Everything remained brilliant and sunny, making the foreboding racket all the more sinister.

  Especially since I had no idea what it portended. Or if it hinted at anything at all.

  “You wanted to know the plan.” Ruby screamed to be heard over the sonic maelstrom. Her finger pointed up toward the cliff’s edge, where I now saw the faint outline of a pyramid where none existed before. Pausing to take a step back, I watched the shadowy hint of the building vanish into nothingness.

  A hundred yards forward, and the ancient structure shimmered, the stones gilded in immaculate gold leaf. The effect was so bright that I had to shield my eyes and cut further up the shore, toward the tree line. Rumbles from the tropical forest made me reconsider, and I struck a half-blind compromise along the dry sand.

  “What’s up there?”

  “Not what,” Ruby said. “Who.”

  “Save the pedantic bullshit.”

  “The Sphinx.” Although Ruby spoke in a yell, it hit my ears as barely a whisper.

  Head spinning from the sensory tricks, I screamed back, “I don’t want any riddles.”

  “No riddles,” Ruby replied, her calm voice somehow slicing perfectly through the roar. “Deals.” There was a pause. Then she finished with, “Deals that you don’t want to make. But that you have no choice but to make.”

  The words stung my ears worse than the brutal howl of Agonia as we climbed up the wondrous cliff to meet the Sphinx.

  Maybe the Sphinx could fix me.

  But at what cost?

  27

  Agonia’s howls turned to whispers as we walked up the peninsula. Whispers that screamed horrible things, the type of actions from which a man’s soul—half-demon or not—could never recover. Although the cliff didn’t look high from the ground, this proved illusory. By the time we were level with the pyramid, I was breathing heavily, a cold sweat clinging to my brow.

  Ruby cut an awkward, indirect jag toward the glowing structure. At one point, I decided to forge straight ahead, only to find myself falling strangely behind. The sea below, the ground—it all moved, just as one would expect when walking. But the pyramid didn’t come closer, defying the laws of physics and reality. Ruby had to come back and get me.

  “Do I need to hold your hand, Kalos?”

  “But how…”

  “I told you not to fall behind.”

  My eye sockets burned. I gripped the dog’s neck so tightly that he yelped. My first inclination was to throw him into the sea. The whispering winds urged me on, telling me that he was just a burden. A freeloading menace. A lost cause. After all, we were visiting the Sphinx for me, not for him.

  He had already been condemned to die. Best get on with it, then.

  Ruby grabbed my wrist. The human touch caused me to release my grip. The dog sighed and fell back asleep.

  “We’re close.” Her slate-gray eyes briefly lit blue at the edges. An imperfect calm tingled through her fingers, transferring down my forearm. The muscles slightly relaxed, the burn telling me that they’d been tensed all the way up the incline. Hours of pent-up rage.

  I shook her loose and said in a growl, “I don’t need you to hold my fucking hand.”

  But I kept close, eyes locked on her boots. One step left, two steps right. A quarter-step back. Working our way through an invisible maze that no one but, I suppose, a Realmfarer could see. I wondered if this was the same trial Athena the Goddess Killer had undertaken to free Marrack from this world.

  Or it could have been one of a hundred other tribulations. The view from on high showed an endless world, one stunning in its endlessly varied beauty. A cruel reminder of all the things one could not have by virtue of being here.

  I coughed, my throat scratchy from dehydration. As we got closer, the pyramid’s golden veneer wore off, replaced by a blackness darker than my shattered soul. The sun winked out, overtaken by an endless night devoid of moonlight. Crows and vultures cackled, although none were seen.

  More tricks of Agonia. The dog, half-asleep, whined again. Fur flaked off in my hands. Disgust rushed through my chest at the pitiful creature, and I lamented my weakness in not hurling him to a quick death. Demonic temptation grabbed me once more, but it was snuffed out by Ruby saying, “We’re here.”

  She placed her slender fingers against a doorway large enough for a man—or beast—three times my height to enter. Ancient stones and gears creaked within as the slab shuddered open. The unlit interior beckoned us inside, an unseen force promising answers to all our problems.

  A voice, rumbling and smooth, seeped out from the opening. “Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalos.”

  I stepped forward without thinking, catching an arm bar to the chest from Ruby. Snarling, I jammed the .45 into her chest.

  “You cannot trust him,” Ruby said. “The Sphinx is a liar.”

  “Get the hell out of my way.” My body felt ready to burn up in a supernova. “This is about me. Fixing me, right?”

  “Don’t listen to him. It’s a game of wits.”

  But I didn’t hear that. All I heard were lies. The lies she told me. Taking me to the center of the desert and abandoning me. My subconscious flooded with promises from the Sphinx that she would get her just reward. That she would suffer, and that I would get everything I wanted if I just stepped inside the pyramid to discuss this between two like-minded souls.

  Without the Realmfarer.

  The thoughts wormed their way into my psyche, taking root like a virus until they were my own.

  I relaxed against her arm and smiled. Visibly relieved—and somewhat surprised—she dropped her arm and said, “Stick close to me—”

  Faster than ev
en I thought possible, I dropped the .45 and used my free hand to yank her away from the entrance. She stumbled, caught off balance, her intuition failing to foresee the move. I sprinted forward as the rattling door hurtled down.

  Just before it crashed to the ground, she screamed, “You can’t trust him!”

  But that wasn’t true at all.

  The Sphinx was the only one I could trust.

  For he would grant me everything I wanted.

  28

  “You have brought your filthy animal, Kalos.” The Sphinx’s tone was terse and accusatory. Guilt shivered up and down my spine, mixing with regret. He’d said alone, and yet here we were, a party of two. Would he break his promises because I had broken mine?

  You should have tossed him off the fucking ledge, you dumbass.

  Still, I clung to the dog like a security blanket, refusing to let him go.

  The echoes of Ruby’s loud knocks gradually subsided as I plunged further within the pyramid. My mind briefly focused on his promises. What were they? Had I even heard anything at all? Or were they mere delusions? Thoughts blurred by the Sphinx’s influence and demonic overload, I wasn’t entirely sure that any deal had been struck.

  But emotion overrode rational thought, and I ignored any misgivings. The Sphinx was trustworthy. He had called me here.

  Me.

  I was a chosen one. This was part of my destiny, one that had begun seven thousand years before on the shores of the River Styx. I was important. Mentioned in the Journal of Annihilation. Critical enough for Javier’s family destiny to simply be the delivery of said book to me.

  All doubts about my importance and power assuaged, I straightened my back and strode confidently through the halls. Unlike the majestic and breathtaking exterior, the interior proved quite plain. The designers hadn’t shelled out the big bucks for the Sphinx’s quarters.

  Or maybe it was simple budget overruns due to sheer size. Because after five minutes inside, I hadn’t made any progress.

  The Sphinx made his annoyance known. “Our first deal, Kalos.”

  “A little early for that.” I bit my tongue from grinding my teeth together. Should’ve known I couldn’t trust this bastard. He was in Agonia for a reason, and that reason wasn’t for a scenic vacation.

  “I make the rules of my domain,” the voice rumbled lazily. “And I grow bored of your pitiful meanderings.”

  An ominous shaking filled the narrow corridors. The vibrations transferred through the stone, rattling me to the bone. A quick glance back indicated that the floor itself was disappearing, sucked into an invisible black hole.

  Maybe I should’ve been afraid. Instead, steam and smoke sizzled off my bare skin.

  Something moved under my arm.

  “You can’t trust him,” the sack of fur and atrophied muscle that was the dog said. “Listen to Ruby.”

  “Fuck Ruby.”

  The dog didn’t argue, and I felt vaguely satisfied about ending the conversation. A confident smirk on my lips, I resumed the push forward. The Sphinx could play his games. We would see what kind of deal he’d be willing to make when his tail was nailed to the wall and blood dripped down from his half-slit throat.

  Hopefully his chambers were large enough to accommodate my vengeful desires.

  My hands and legs shook as I walked forward, the vibrations growing in magnitude with each step. Furiously, I picked up the pace, going faster to put distance between myself and the chasm snapping at my heels.

  Suddenly, the vibrations stopped, and the Sphinx’s irritated voice boomed. “Fool! Imbecile!”

  “Say that in the same room.”

  “You cannot even pass the first trial.” The beast sounded more like an exasperated schoolteacher trying to explain fractions to a slow study than a dealmaker of epic proportions. “After a hundred years, I receive a simpleton.”

  I furrowed my brow at the muffled curses, trying to figure out what had just transpired. A quick glance over my shoulder told me that the ground had stopped dropping away. It also told another alarming story: however fast I had sprinted, my efforts had done me no good.

  In fact, by the looks of it, my gung-ho, plunge-ahead attitude had actually been detrimental to my progress. For the chasm was not just nipping at my heels; it lay but three or four feet behind me, despite covering what had felt like hundreds of meters.

  A brief spark of human intelligence made the connection to Ruby’s strange path outside. The same mechanism seemed to be at work in here, an invisible maze cloaking the true path forward.

  Unfortunately, I’d left my Realmfaring guide outside on the cliffs, leaving me with nothing but a dying dog and my limited powers of intuition.

  The Sphinx stopped muttering expletives and cleared his throat. In a smooth, collected tone he said, “Very well. Perhaps I’ll just watch Hawaii-Five-O.”

  “You get TV down here?”

  “Old episodes.” The Sphinx growled. “They show us all the trailers for new movies but leave us fifty years behind.”

  “And here I thought the water sucked.”

  “Well, then, consider this a mercy.”

  “What?”

  The answer came as the floor moved, the last rocks falling away behind me.

  29

  I took a step forward, ready to sprint down the corridor as fast as my feet would allow. But the Sphinx’s mocking offer for mercy made me stop and direct my rage toward a different solution. Heat flooded my brain, circuits overloading like I’d just mainlined a mountain of Adderall.

  Faint, faded wisps of light swirled in the darkness, flitting in and out of view like a radio station with bad reception.

  I wasn’t quite a Realmfarer, but this would do. One step to the right, then at a diagonal. Up against the wall for three yards, then a quick cut to the left. Ignoring the sound of the tumbling floor, I focused on the wisps.

  They were all that mattered.

  Hitting a rhythm, I found that the rumbling of the booby-trapped floor died into nothingness. The next step toward the Sphinx, his tail on the wall—this was what drove me forward. A sort of bizarre brute focus that transcended obsession into something far scarier.

  I understood Marrack, now, better than I ever had. How he had managed to convert his demonic impulses into a fuel beyond rage or hate. It contained elements of each, and all manners of nasty things besides, but the cocktail was far more potent than mere emotions.

  This was an addictive, vengeful sort of clarity that one could grow accustomed to.

  The last wisp disappeared as I entered a small chamber. Its size told me that it wasn’t the pyramid’s tomb. If this place even had such a thing. What use was a tomb when you lived forever, albeit in a world worse than Hell?

  A single fluorescent bulb dangled from the ceiling, electricity buzzing through it. Its wattage was bright enough to obliterate most of the shadows, instead bathing the stone walls in a sort of mega box store halo.

  Posters of bands littered the walls, indicating that the Sphinx at least had good taste in music. Nirvana, the Rolling Stones. Not what I expected. Other than the posters, a record player and an unmade bed, there was nothing within the room.

  A thin, reedy voice startled me. “You see why Hawaii Five-O is a problem.”

  It seemed we had a man of wealth and taste on our hands. “I’m crying a fucking storm of tears.”

  The covers rustled, and I instinctively reached for the .45. I came up empty, but my demon magic was more than happy to pick up the task. Before the covers could move further, I froze the mound in place. By this point, I barely remember what a soul felt like.

  I put the dog down roughly in the corner, ignoring his moans.

  Hands outstretched before me, ready to strangle any attackers, I headed toward the bed. Despite my holding spell, the covers moved a little bit. Maybe the Sphinx was a more formidab
le opponent than I thought.

  I flung the covers off.

  “What the fuck?”

  The fat cat lying belly up on the bed gurgled for a minute and then sputtered, “N-nice to meet you too.” He managed to clear his throat, the muscles loosening in his neck. “Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalos.”

  My hand shot forward, grabbing the cat by the scruff of his doughy neck. He was garden variety and unspectacular in every way—three orange paws and a white one, his face a sandblast of colors and breeds. Definitely bred in an alley and brought up on box wine and fast food scraps.

  His legs kicked as I held him up. “How the hell are you resisting my spell?”

  “Your magic is shit,” the cat replied, sticking its tongue out in defiance, its speech betraying its roots. “You’re like one of those ball players in the late nineties.”

  “I don’t watch baseball.”

  “Suddenly everyone and their mothers is mashing fifty homers a year,” the cat said, trying to shake itself free. “Everyone’s thinking it’s skill. But no, it’s the needles they’re jamming in each another’s asses.”

  “I’m not seeing the connection.”

  “Like you, hotshot, burning down the door in Agonia. No skill, just essence.”

  “What’s the difference when it’s your brains on the wall?”

  “Yeah, whatever.” The Sphinx had dropped any regal pretexts. “Fucking amateur.”

  He hissed. I knew jack about cats, but it felt like the best move was to put him down. Turning him into the equivalent of mulch wasn’t going to help. Although he was definitely a liar. He knew an impressive amount about modern sports for someone whose media diet was fifty years behind.

  The Sphinx landed nimbly, given his weight, then hopped back onto the bed. After disappearing beneath the covers for a moment, he emerged tugging a microphone with his teeth. He nudged the switch with his pink nose.

  “Now, we may have a discussion.” His reedy voice returned to its former rumbling and majestic heights. “Like gentlemen.”