Slaying Monsters for the Feeble: The Guild Codex: Demonized / Two

by Marie, Annette

  Yanking my arm free, I clutched Zylas and shouted, “Ori eruptum impello!”

  A silvery dome exploded from the small artifact. It struck Vasilii and hurled him backward—but the spell hadn’t had time to fully recharge and the burst of force wasn’t as strong as before. It was still enough to send Vasilii crashing down on his back.

  Holding me tight, Zylas sprang away, opening a wider gap. Vasilii rose with uncanny grace, unharmed. Nothing we did could damage him.

  Except, maybe, fire.

  We needed an inferno and we needed it right this moment—but how? There were no gas cans for me to ignite with an otherwise harmless flame cantrip.

  Zylas, can you light him on fire?

  As my mind turned inward, I felt the demon again—that dangerous, shadowy presence inside my head. I could feel his urgency, his fear. He didn’t know how to stop this creature. He could heat things up but he didn’t have a spell to burn Vasilii. That was human magic. That was—

  My magic.

  No time to draw a cantrip large enough to do any damage. My magic wasn’t fast enough. Fast spells were—

  My magic, Zylas whispered in my head.

  He raised his hand—and I raised mine. His palm pressed to the back of my hand, our fingers aligned. Crimson power streaked up his arm—and hot scarlet magic blazed over my wrist in twisting veins. In my mind was the fire cantrip, the smooth lines of the rune bold and crisp. Simple. So simple compared to the complex tangles of Zylas’s spells.

  Crimson light ignited before my eyes. The Arcana cantrip appeared on the ground in glowing lines of demon magic, spanning three long yards—with Vasilii in its center.

  An instant for the fae’s black eyes to narrow. An instant for the creature to lunge toward us.

  “Igniaris!”

  Zylas’s snarl and my cry rang out together, the sounds melding into one—and the giant cantrip erupted into roaring flames. The boiling fire surged skyward, towering thirty feet. Blistering heat blasted my face, then swirling cold engulfed me as Zylas pulled the fire’s energy into his body. His fingers curled down, gripping my hand as the glow of his magic faded from our arms.

  The inferno crackled and rippled for twenty long seconds, then the flames shrank and shrank until only burning embers remained, smoldering on the blackened grass. The snow was gone from the clearing, evaporated in seconds.

  In the center of the charred circle, a burnt husk lay, unmoving. A fitful wind blew down the mountainside and the corpse crumbled, ash blowing across the ground. Something silver glinted in the debris—my slightly blackened infernus.

  All the strength left my limbs and I slumped in Zylas’s arms. “It worked. I can’t believe it worked.”

  “Which part?” Zylas asked. “The fire or the vīsh?”

  “Both?”

  His arms loosened, my only warning. I braced my feet just before he let go, but I wobbled unsteadily. Deciding it was all-around safer, I sank onto the damp earth.

  Fire. I hadn’t been sure it would work, but one of the two legendary vampire hunters from my history book had been a heliomage. One of the most destructive Elementaria combinations: air and fire.

  I stared at the fae’s crumbling corpse. We’d defeated Vasilii. Not with demon magic or Arcana but with a union of the two. Just as we had somehow cast a demonic spell together while he’d been too weak to move, we had cast an Arcana spell together—merging his ability to instantaneously create a rune with the swift, simple power of my cantrip.

  Later, I would freak out over both those occurrences, but not now. My brain was already threatening to implode.

  With a rustle of branches, Zylas dropped out of a nearby tree. Heedless of his bleeding wounds, he crouched beside me and held out the grimoire. Fighting back tears, I took it in both hands.

  It … well, it had survived. The clasp was torn but the cover was intact. A few pages were on the verge of falling out, and some had partially torn, but overall, not too much damage. Awe slid through me as I carefully flipped page after page of Ancient Greek handwriting in faded ink. So much archaic knowledge, so much forgotten history.

  I turned the last page and my heart lurched painfully.

  At the back of the book were the torn stubs of a dozen pages. The ripped edges were white—recently torn.

  I remembered Nazhivēr snapping the enclosing belt off the book. Remembered the open book in his hands as he sprang skyward.

  “He stole pages,” I whispered, horror muting my voice. “He ripped pages out.”

  And he’d escaped with them, leaving the rest of the grimoire behind, knowing Vasilii would go after the book. Nazhivēr had taken what he’d wanted most and fled, leaving Vasilii to claim the vandalized grimoire and kill Zylas. Furious tears stung my eyes.

  “We will get the pages back,” Zylas said, “when we kill them.”

  “Will we?” I mumbled despairingly.

  A slow smirk curved his lips. “I cannot let them steal from my grimoire.”

  I blinked in confusion—and he plucked the book out of my hands. Then he was on his feet and walking away with a jaunty snap of his tail. I blinked again, then shoved to my feet and rushed after him, unsure if I should laugh, scream, cry—or smack that smartass demon right in his smug face.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I peered over the top of the thick textbook with concentration so fierce my head ached.

  On the other side of the coffee table, Zylas was sprawled across the sofa, ankles propped on one end and his head cushioned on the opposite armrest. As I peered intently at him, he reached over his head for the small bowl on the side table, filled with chocolate-dipped grapes rolled in crushed almonds, flaky caramel, and butterscotch chips.

  He plucked a grape and held it above his mouth. One eye opened and his dark pupil, nearly invisible in the glowing crimson, turned to me.

  I narrowed my eyes to slits, straining my brain as hard as I could.

  “That is not how to hear inside my head, drādah.”

  Damn it.

  His husky laugh rolled through the room—as usual, he had no problem hearing my thoughts—and he dropped the grape in his mouth. His jaw moved as he chewed through the chocolate layer before swallowing.

  Sighing, I returned my attention to the textbook. The coffee table was spread with old leather tomes, textbooks, and scattered papers. In the center was the grimoire, open to page sixteen. That was as far as I’d gotten in the last week.

  In a neat stack beside the grimoire were half a dozen pages of my mother’s translations, the paper crinkled and the ink smudged. Zylas and I had searched the mountainside for half an hour to find them, but not knowing which grimoire pages they went with, I hadn’t yet made much sense of them.

  I peered at the textbook again—an exhausting, brain-destroying breakdown of the Arcane jargon used in Ancient Greek—then gave up. As I stacked my reference books, my attention returned to the demon hogging my sofa. Or, actually, the demon and the kitten.

  Now that she’d recovered from her injuries and the shock of a new home, Socks was friendly enough with me and Amalia, but she did not deign to cuddle with us, probably because we were intolerably inferior to her favorite sleeping spot.

  That spot being anywhere on or beside Zylas.

  At the moment, she was curled into a furry donut right in the middle of his stomach, blissfully dreaming cat dreams. When his magic was fully charged, he ran a couple degrees hotter than a human, so it didn’t surprise me that she’d want to sleep on him. What surprised me was Zylas’s tolerance of it.

  I hid my smile and continued packing up my work. Looking back on it now, I wasn’t sure Zylas had ever intended to torment the injured kitten, even when he’d perched on top of her crate. A cruel demon terrifying her for his own twisted satisfaction?

  Or a curious demon who had no idea how to interact with a small, easily frightened creature of another species?

  In some ways, that applied to me as much as it did to Socks. Small, easily frightened … a
nd he had no idea how to handle either of us. He was figuring it out as he went along, just as I was figuring out how to interact with him.

  As I scooped up a stack of books, the grimoire resting on top, he opened his eyes again.

  “Where are you taking my grimoire?” he asked with a sly gleam in his gaze.

  “To its usual spot.” I rolled my eyes. “You don’t need to ask me every time I move it.”

  An amused flash of pointed canines. I rolled my eyes again to make sure he’d noticed, then stalked into my room. At every possible opportunity, he pointed out that the grimoire was his. I had given it to him and he got to decide when and where and how I got to use it. He’d even tried to convince me that I had to ask his permission to take it out of its box, but I’d put my foot down on that one. He’d settled for constant reminders.

  Annoying demon.

  “Drādah mailēshta,” he called from the living room.

  “Get out of my head!” I yelled back. The grimoire’s case lay open on my bed—the metal box that only an Athanas sorcerer could open. I wrapped the book in brown paper, settled it in place with my mother’s translations resting on top, and closed the lid. White runes flickered across it as magic sealed the box shut.

  I slid it under my bed, then sat on the mattress and heaved a long sigh. In the week since we’d killed Vasilii and reclaimed the grimoire—or rather, most of the grimoire—we’d found no sign of Claude. Not that we’d really searched. Christmas had been on Tuesday, and it was hard to worry about a dangerous summoner and his demon with all the holiday cheer going on.

  Amalia and I had decided that, since neither of us had available family members to celebrate with, we would skip all the traditional Christmas activities. Instead, we’d gone for a double feature at the cinema, then ordered enough Chinese food to last us a week.

  Since then, I’d been spending hours every day on the grimoire despite the disappointing lack of revelations. What I’d translated so far wasn’t even Demonica but other Arcana that Anthea Athanas had recorded thousands of years ago. I might have to skip ahead.

  My wandering gaze fell on the book on my bedside table: The Complete Compilation of Arcane Cantrips. The vivid memory of the fire cantrip in Zylas’s crimson magic rushed through my head—followed by the equally vivid memory of his power flowing over my hand and up my arm.

  Pushing to my feet, I returned to the living room. At my approach, Socks uncurled from her ball and stood on Zylas’s stomach, back arching in a luxurious stretch. Hopping onto the floor, she wound around my ankles and meowed demandingly.

  I wasn’t worthy of cuddles, but when dinnertime came around, she expected me to provide.

  Hands on my hips, I peered down at Zylas, again trying to pry open his head and see his thoughts underneath. I wanted another glimpse of the mind behind those crimson eyes. Of the keen, cutting intelligence, the brutal determination to survive, the dizzying expanse of experiences I couldn’t begin to imagine.

  He gazed up at me, impassive.

  “How do I hear your thoughts the way you can hear mine?” I demanded.

  “Why would I tell you?”

  “Because it’s more fair that way.” I pointed at him accusingly. “You were hiding it all this time, that we could speak to each other in our heads. Don’t you think that might’ve been useful before now?”

  “Ch,” he scoffed, closing his eyes lazily.

  “How did we combine our magic?” I’d asked him this question half a dozen times, and his answer was always the same. At my feet, Socks meowed loudly, then stalked off with her tail held high.

  Zylas stretched his spine, then relaxed into the sofa. “I don’t know.”

  “Guess, then.”

  “Kūathē gish.”

  “Huh?”

  “Go away. You are noisy.”

  I squinted one eye, then turned around. Instead of walking away, I dropped onto the sofa. He might be super strong and halfway to invincible, but even a demon couldn’t ignore a hundred pounds landing on his diaphragm.

  His breath whooshed out. Eyes snapping open, he glowered at me. I flopped against the back cushion, sitting on his stomach where Socks had been, my feet dangling above the floor.

  “As you can see, I’m not going away,” I declared. “So let’s talk about the whole ‘magic sharing’ thing.”

  His nose scrunched in annoyance, then he resettled his head on the cushion, grabbed a chocolate-and-butterscotch grape, and ate it.

  I waited a minute, my chagrin growing, then growled, “Zylas.”

  “Drādah.”

  “You can’t just ignore me sitting on you.”

  He pointedly closed his eyes again.

  “Tell me about the magic. You must have some idea.”

  “I do not know.” He reached blindly for another grape. “I did not think. I just did.”

  During the fight, I hadn’t stopped to think about it either. It had felt … natural. Instinctive. As simple and easy as raising my arm and spreading my fingers.

  I gazed at my hand, held before my face with my fingers stretched wide. I remembered his presence inside my head, dark and ferocious.

  Sitting forward, I aligned myself to face him. Jaw tight with focus, I pressed my palms against his cheeks, my fingers resting on his pointed ears and tangled hair.

  Staring intently into his eyes, I strained to hear his thoughts. To find his alien presence. To reform that bizarre, breathtaking connection. I wanted to hear him again. I would make it happen. Catching my lower lip in my teeth, I brought our faces—our minds—closer. Where are you, Zylas?

  He stared up at me, then took my face in his hands, fingers catching in my hair. His crimson eyes searched mine, his lips parting.

  “Na, drādah,” he whispered.

  My breath caught in my lungs. “Yes?”

  “This”—his hands tightened on my cheeks and a laughing grin flashed over his face—“will not work either.”

  I growled furiously. “You—”

  With a clatter, the apartment door swung open. Amalia breezed in, her cell phone against her ear and a bag from her favorite fabric store hanging off her arm.

  “Yeah, hold on, Dad,” she said, her gaze sweeping across the room to find me. “I’ll ask her—ah!”

  Her shriek rang out and she flung both arms up like she was being assaulted by an invisible burglar. Her phone flew out of her hand, her face stamped with horror.

  She pointed at me and yelled, “What are you doing?”

  I blinked. Looked down. Realized what I was doing.

  “Ah!” I shrieked. I released Zylas’s head and threw myself off his chest—which I’d been straddling. Stumbling wildly, I bolted away from him. Amalia stared at me like I’d sprouted my own horns and tail.

  “It wasn’t—I didn’t mean to—I was just—” I babbled, my face flaming.

  She took in my embarrassment, then barked a laugh. “Let me guess. It was for science.”

  My blush deepened and I peeked at Zylas. He was nonchalantly eating grapes and ignoring the human dramatics a few yards away. Socks poked her whiskers out from under the coffee table.

  Shaking her head, Amalia searched around the floor and found her phone.

  “It’s okay—somehow. Didn’t even crack.” She raised it to her ear. “Sorry, Dad. Robin was being a weirdo again. Repeat that … right.” She refocused on me. “Dad asked if the missing pages from the grimoire are all from the back?”

  I nodded.

  Another pause as she listened, then she asked me, “Are there any drawings of sorcery arrays in the back?”

  Frowning, I recalled my examination of the book. “I don’t think so.”

  “She doesn’t think so.” Amalia listened for a moment. “Hold on, switching to speakerphone. Okay, say that again.”

  “Robin.” Uncle Jack’s tinny voice sounded from the phone. “If the arrays from the final pages were still there, you’d know it. The spells …” He cleared his throat. “I told Claude about those pa
ges. I’d been planning to scan a few to see if he could decipher them, but I never got around to it.”

  My worried gaze met Amalia’s. “I think Claude might already have an idea what those arrays are,” I said. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had his demon steal them.”

  “I think so too,” Uncle Jack agreed grimly. “And I think we need to know what those arrays are, and what magic Claude now has. Get translating that grimoire, Robin.”

  “Already working on it. Are you all settled in?”

  “Yes. This safe house is much more comfortable than the last one. I don’t think Claude has any more use for me, but just in case …” Another awkward cough. “You girls stay safe now.”

  Amalia gave her phone an exasperated look. “We’ll be fine, Dad. You’re the one who almost died.”

  “Yes, well …” A third cough. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Yep. Talk to you later.” She disconnected the call, her attention swinging onto Zylas, reclined on the sofa. I saw the question in her eyes—a question I’d been dwelling on too.

  Uncle Jack had almost died … and he was only alive because Zylas had healed his mortal wounds. The demon had barely glanced at the man afterward. He didn’t seem to care. Hadn’t acknowledged his summoner in any way since.

  Why had he healed Uncle Jack?

  Amalia and I both gazed at the demon, then looked at each other. Her tiny, hopeful smile reflected mine. Maybe our hope was silly. Maybe we were being ridiculous, naïve humans, but we both suspected the same thing: Zylas had acted not because he cared about Uncle Jack living or dying, but because Amalia and I cared.

  She dropped her shopping bag on the counter. “Have you changed your mind about our evening plans?”

  I ignored the swoop of nerves in my gut. “Nope.”

  “Then I’d better get changed.” She shrugged off her coat. “I’m not dressed properly for Grand Theft Library.”

  * * *

  “Coast is clear,” Amalia whispered.

  Leaving her to stand guard, I slipped down the short hall to a door marked Guild Members Only. Two weeks ago, Zylas had broken through it while tracking the scent of old demon blood, but the librarian had caught us before he could find the source.