Demon's Cradle (Devany Miller Book 3)

by Ponce, Jen

  There were still things missing from his story, I could tell it. But what I’d already heard had set me reeling and I didn’t have the head space to delve any deeper. “So what am I, then?”

  He smiled. “Powerful.”

  “And you?”

  He shrugged. He was standing by the bed now and I felt vulnerable spread out horizontal before him. I didn’t move though, I don’t know why. “She tore me away from my mother when I was but a babe and set about to convincing me of my lesser status from that day forward. It wasn’t until I discovered her papers that I began to understand what she’d been about. I watched. Waited. When she began disappearing to Midia for lengths of time I knew that she was up to something. So I kept watch and found out she was planning to make another ... whatever I was.” He sat down on the bed and I tensed, but he didn’t offer to touch me. “I warned your parents for your sake, not theirs. And hid them for the same reasons, hid them in time. She went mad.” He shuddered. Even now, without his soul, he shuddered. It made me cold, the implication.

  “What are we?”

  “Have you ever wondered where the Originators came from?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t, actually. Not much time and really I hadn’t wanted to know any more than I needed to keep myself alive.

  “They don’t reproduce but for creating their spawn. The only way another can be made is if one is killed. And in all of time, it’s only happened once that an Originator was displaced. Do you think it’s coincidence that you are the one to do it?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” He was close enough to touch but I wasn’t sure why I wanted to. Perhaps because he was the same as me—if he was telling the truth—and we were the only two creatures in all of existence alike.

  “When you killed Ravana, you took her place. When you killed Amara, you took her place, too. The energy has not been upset. None of the other Originators felt her death because there wasn’t an upset of the balance, as there would be if one of her spawn had managed it.”

  I shook my head. “None of this makes any sense.”

  “The Slip is held together by the power of the Originators. They were necessary for the survival of the Slip and the worlds connected by them. Were an Originator to die without someone to take his place, the Slip would start to fail.” He leaned into me, putting a bracing arm on the other side of me. “Until now.”

  “Until now.” He was leaning closer still, his chest warm and hard against mine.

  “We can kill them all, Devany. Destroy the old gods to make way for the new. We could rule the entire Slip together. And once there are no more Originators to maintain the status quo, we can open the doors and let our children walk the worlds in truth.”

  Our children? He was mad. “Talking with you is like dancing with an alligator. All fun and games until the thing gets hungry and snaps off a chunk of flesh.”

  “Think of the power. You could drink it like wine. You could be the ruler of all the worlds, more worlds than ever you have imagined.”

  “Why? Why would she make us if we could kill her?”

  He laughed. “One, she was insane.” He brought his other hand round to slide a finger down my jaw to my neck, making me shiver. “Two, she didn’t intend for either of us to live long enough to enjoy it. She wanted, my dear Devany, our child.”

  “We don’t have a child,” I said hoarsely. “And there’s no way in hell I would have ever let her near a baby of mine.”

  “But you wouldn’t have had a choice. If she’d gotten me whole and you, then she would have forced us, however she had to. And when the babe was born, she would have killed us both.” His eyes darkened with anger or horror I wasn’t sure. “I hate to think what she would have done with the babe. Consumed it, probably.”

  I choked on my own horror. I had to remind myself that she was dead. Dead. I’d killed her and she was dead. “Why?”

  “Why? Sweet Devany, don’t you get it? Any child we have will be a god.”

  FOURTEEN

  I hooked away from him. Dropped myself through to my own bed rather than let him weave more enchantments around me. Gods. Our kids would be gods. Then that was yet another reason not to let him anywhere near my pants.

  I still had the heart in my hand and though I hadn’t asked him why he’d had Arsinua made it, I guessed. He’d lost track of me and wanted to find me. The heart would have pointed him right to me.

  ‘Neutria? Did you know?’

  Follow the heart, he said. Find it and find power.

  Right. Not because the heart held any but because I did. ‘Did you know he was going to arrange an accident that would fuse us together?’ But there was no answer because no answer was needed. Neutria was a rather narrowly-focused creature. She wanted power and she went after it. Period. ‘What is your story, anyway? How did you meet Ty?’

  She twitched and stirred inside me, as if stretching. My body filled with her presence and I tensed, but it was nothing more than Neutria making herself known. I wanted power. Wanted to know more. Went hunting for it. Found world-walker skulking. He offered power. A lot of power.

  Right. So, Arsinua went to Ty to ask for help stopping the Theleoni. He cons her into making the heart, which would help him find me but she decides to run and take the heart with her. He sends Neutria to find her, dangling power as incentive. Of course, he hadn’t known there would be an explosion, hadn’t known Arsinua and Neutria would get all tangled up with me. It had put a crimp in his plans. Had that been why he’d been so helpful getting Arsinua out of my head? So many secrets, so much uncertainty.

  Speaking of secrets.

  I pushed myself from my bed and crossed to my dresser, rooting around in the drawer to get at Ravana’s papers. I unfolded them from half and watched, amazed, as writing stirred itself across the page, showing up as unintelligible scrawls at first but reforming into English. Responding to my magic? A drawing of a half-flayed, vivisected Skriven met my eyes, a horrendous piece of artwork that looked like it may have been drawn by da Vinci. It bore a strong resemblance to Tytan.

  “‘To truly appreciate spawn, one must open them up to see how they work inside. They are our tools, our making. We have every right.’” I curled my lip and closed the obscene mess, not sure I could stomach it, even without a soul. Interesting that she sought to justify her cruelties. For whom? Were these words for her eyes only or someone else? Not Ty. And she hadn’t intended for me to live, either. Our kids, the imaginary ones we’d never had that she may have wanted to consume? But that didn’t make sense.

  I put the paper away, sliding it under my underwear and shutting the drawer. Another day, perhaps, when I was feeling stronger.

  I went downstairs to find my dad sitting with Arsinua, who had tears running down her face. I was about to say something half-heartedly funny when her head snapped up and she pinned me with a glare.

  “You lost your soul.”

  “It was stolen, yes.”

  She bared her teeth at me, actually snarled and then my dad was between us, his big hand on her chest to hold her back. She snapped, “She needs to leave this house and get away from the children.”

  “Now, let’s just calm down,” Dad said. When that didn’t work, he put some steel into his words, and a little something extra. “Sit, witch.”

  The bite helped. She blinked at him then stepped back, her body trembling.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” I told her, not offering to move closer. No, I wasn’t afraid of her, but I’d rather not have a fight in my house where the kids could see. “I’m the same me. With a little less ... empathy ... until I get my soul back.”

  “You are one of them,” she spat.

  “I am one of them,” I said, allowing some Skriven evil into my words. “And don’t forget it.”

  She paled and that pleased me very much.

  “Ladies, there are things happening for which we need solutions. This won’t help.” Dad patted the couch beside him. I waited until Arsinua sat opposite hi
m before I moved. “There are lots of unanswered questions,” he said, picking up his book off the coffee table. “I don’t know if this answered some of them or if I got it all wrong.” He frowned. “Writing this thing? It’d be like I’d go into an altered state. Maybe I was accessing the magic without knowing it.”

  “You were on Earth,” Arsinua said, her eyes not leaving mine. I wanted to make a face at her, decided what the hell, and did it. She didn’t even twitch. “You couldn’t access magic here.”

  “Maybe he could. You yourself said he was special.”

  “It’s not possible.”

  “Like hooking to different places on Earth isn’t possible?”

  “Only for Skriven. Though, you are one, so that mystery is solved.”

  Dad clapped his hands and magic blew outward, puffing back our hair with an arctic blast. “Knock it off.”

  I grinned at him. “Wow.”

  He looked shocked himself. “Yeah. Uh. I didn’t realize I could do that.” Then he cleared his throat. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is my daughter needs my help getting back to normal. What else?”

  I shrugged. “That’s it. Well, there are a couple more things, but that’s the big one.” Now that I’d taken care of Leon and the Rider, that was. Though I hadn’t checked Liam. That would be the last step, to make sure my kid was okay. He had to be, anyway. Who else hated me like Leon?

  “She’s hiding things,” Arsinua said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Get over yourself. I’m still me. Losing my soul hasn’t changed that. I may not be as nice, but surely you can live with that.”

  “Not as nice? Your soul is the love and wonder. It’s the tenderness and the emotion. You lost that and you don’t even realize it because you’re soulless: you can’t even comprehend what you’ve lost.”

  “She won’t be soulless for long. We’ll figure that out.” He put a big hand on Arsinua’s shoulder and squeezed, his patented comfort, given in a simple gesture. “It will be all right. Faith.”

  She blinked at him, an expression of hero worship washing over her. I guessed in her anger with me, she’d forgotten Dad was Bran.

  I kept forgetting it too. Then something occurred to me. “Why were you crying?”

  Arsinua’s lips tightened. I shifted my attention to Dad and raised my brows. He threw his hands up. “I’m not getting in the middle of this nonsense. Her tears are her business, Devany. And Devany’s lack of soul is her business, young lady,” he told Arsinua. “Now. I feel the need to go home.”

  ***

  “Home?”

  “To Midia. Yes.” His eyes darkened a moment. “It won’t be the same without your mother. But I need to go home. To see it.”

  Arsinua glared at me, as if this had been my idea. “The Anforsa would execute you without questions if she found you. They wanted you dead.”

  Dad grunted. “They always pick the most uptight sticks to do that job.”

  I snorted. “That describes Kenda all right. She confronted me a couple days ago, wanted me to go in and register. Answer for my crimes.”

  He snorted. “That’s Council talk for putting you in a cage until you rot.”

  “That’s what my friend said, too.” Tytan had said he’d pushed Dad and Mom through the Rend, forward in time. “It’s been a long time since you were last there, Dad. Things will be different.”

  He waved his hand, poo-pooing the idea. “I didn’t imagine it would be exactly the same. Though, from talking with Arsinua, it sounds like they are still losing their grip on the magic and fighting a losing battle.”

  Arsinua, of course, took exception to that. “It’s not a losing battle. We can repair the Omphalos if we have enough power.”

  “You don’t need power. You need to let things go back to the way they were. Our grip on magic was always tenuous at best, and downright criminal at worst. The Wydlings live with the magic, work with the flow of it. Their way, I think, is the better one.”

  Arsinua’s lips thinned. “What about the broken ones?”

  My dad’s face grew solemn. “There is evil on either side. Can you really say that our way is the better one?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Dad? Do you want me to take you?”

  “You can just ... take us there, anywhere I want?”

  “Yes.”

  He clapped his hands together. “All right then. Let’s get the children.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t want the kids to go.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re human.”

  “Part human. Also part Wydling and part witch.”

  “Dad, they almost died last time.”

  Dad’s eyebrows shot up and I realized I hadn’t told him what had happened. I explained it, briefly, and then we all pondered the implications for taking them now. “Bethy’s working magic. Liam is Dreaming. Maybe the trip woke up their magic and getting them out kept them from dying from it.”

  I sighed. Remembered the domar berries as a fail safe if worse came to worse. “Fine. But at the first hint—hint!—of trouble, I’m out of there. Capiche?”

  “Gotcha, kiddo.”

  With the absence of unease that would have normally accompanied the thought of my kids back in Midia, I rounded Bethy and Liam up and told them the plan. Bethy’s eyes rounded but Liam broke into a smile. “I can see Sharps in the Real?”

  “I can’t promise that. I don’t know where the Carnicus will be,” I said, thinking, ‘Or if she’d even welcome a visit from me.’

  “Oh.”

  “There’s still a lot of cool things there. And, well, you can meet a friend of mine.”

  He narrowed his eyes and I wondered if he knew I meant a guy friend. Surely not.

  I gathered everyone together and made the hook. The kids hesitated a long moment before stepping through.

  We didn’t end up in the Dream Caves. We didn’t even make it to Odd Silver, which was strange. I’d held the caves in my head when I made the hook.

  Arsinua looked like her head might explode. “We are in the Anwar!” She had a bubble around her and Bethy, who was nearest her, before I could blink.

  “Yeah.”

  “The wild magic will taint us,” she said furiously.

  “It’ll be okay.” I studied both kids in turn, looking for signs of hook sickness. Both were fine now, but I didn’t want to take any chances. “We need some domar berries before we do anything else.” I straightened. “I don’t know why we didn’t end up ... shit.” I’d forgotten the emiliometer. “I need to grab something. Come on, let’s go back.”

  “Devany,” my dad said, warning in his tone. I looked around. Ellison stood a hundred yards or so away, his form dark against the brilliant sun behind him.

  “You didn’t succeed,” he said in the voice of the Rider. And then he stepped backward and raised his arms. Black things, like tentacles, slithered through a rip in the air behind him, framing him in evil. “In the body of this Skriven, I shall destroy this planet and the next. I can’t deny I got lucky. It’s rare to catch up a world-walker in my net. The conditions have to be just so.” The Rider distorted Ellison’s face in what I supposed was a grin. “Join me.”

  I frowned. “Suck it, asshole.” Then I realized Liam was walking toward him, my son, and I grabbed for him, but Dad was there first. Liam fought him, a blank expression on his face. “Bastard,” I said, and threw power at Ellison, a blinding flash that engulfed Ellison’s form.

  Bethy screamed behind me but I didn’t turn around, intent on making sure Ellison was incapacitated.

  The light cleared, vanishing on tendrils of smoke that whipped into the sky. Ellison was gone but his voice wasn’t. “You won’t find me in time.”

  “Why even show yourself?”

  The Rider laughed and the voice echoed over my skin. “I’m particularly fond of this game. And you, Originator. I will enjoy using your son for my purposes. How much time do you have left?” Another laugh and then even the words dissi
pated into the breeze.

  “Shit.”

  “Mom?” Liam looked confused, blinking as if awoken from a dream. “What did he mean by using me?”

  “There’s a parasite in your head,” I said grimly. “Or the potential for one. That’s what he meant.”

  “Am I going to die?”

  I shook my head and pulled him close, possessive, if not loving. “No. He is.”

  ***

  In the end, we ended up in Banishwinds. The kids goggled over the domed houses and the tavern that looked like a slouchy witch’s hat, the path leading up to it a lolling red tongue. I didn’t let them go inside, even though I thought they’d enjoy the bar with the fairies trapped under the glass. Bars weren’t places for kids, I didn’t care what world I was on.

  Though I kept a gimlet eye on them, neither Bethy nor Liam exhibited any sign of hook sickness. Had their trip through the first time cured them? Their exposure to me? I didn’t know.

  My dad was almost as fun to watch as the kids, though for different reasons. The kids’ expressions were priceless each time they spotted something fantastic. Dad, though, he was like a hero come home from war. People recognized him, which blew my mind. A shopkeeper with a frog’s grin pumped Dad’s arm up and down the entire time they spoke, a woman tripped over her own feet to get close enough to giggle at him, and a group of witches stood together, whispering and staring. “How is it they know you?”

  “They know of him,” Arsinua said, her mood not improved in the least. “His coming back must have broken whatever geis was laid to wipe him from their memories. And he was always most popular with the witches on the borders.” She nodded toward the far side of town, where the permanent hook was suddenly very busy. “It must have also alerted the Council to his arrival. We should go.”

  “Dad, come on.”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to speak with them. Let them take me into custody if they must. I fled this place when your mother and I both had a lot to lose. Now you’re grown, Travis is grown, and your mother is gone. I need to stay. Perhaps I can change things.”