by Rachel Aaron
“Nico,” he shouted, “there’s a shelf a bit higher up you could jump to.”
But Nico didn’t answer. Miranda peered over the lip of his hiding place. Several feet below, the girl was standing at the base of the wall, stoically watching the black tide as it rushed toward her.
“Nico,” Eli said more urgently, leaning out of his crevice and thrusting out his arm. “Take my hand!”
“Josef told me to protect you,” Nico said, not even looking at him.
“Don’t be an—” He gasped and ducked as a black wave crashed against the wall, sending burning spray up the walls around them. Miranda turned away in horror as the black surge covered Nico’s lower body, and waited for the scream.
But there was no scream, not even a pained gasp. Miranda turned back. Nico was standing in inky liquid up to her knees. Smoke rose in white plumes where the acid touched her, yet her posture was as calm as ever. She might have been wading in a warm river for all the attention she paid the black water eating at her legs.
At the center of the room, the black blob quivered, and the tide of black sludge receded with a sucking hiss. Miranda watched in spellbound horror as the girl’s legs came back into view, bracing for the worst. However, while Nico’s trousers, boots, and the hem of her coat were completely dissolved where the acid had submerged them, her pale skin was untouched, as were the heavy silver manacles she wore on her ankles.
Gregorn screamed in angry confusion as Nico took a step forward, her bare, uninjured feet moving through the sludge of the dissolved treasure in quick, light steps. As she walked, a soft, dry sound cut through the spirit’s wailing. It sounded like dust blowing through grass, and it took Miranda a few seconds to realize that Nico was laughing. The girl hopped clear of the treasure detritus and stood before the screaming sludge spirit, tilting her head back so she could see all of him at once. When she spoke, her voice was full of that horrible, dry dust laughter.
“You think you can beat us with that?”
The black sludge froze in midshriek and hung there, quivering. Nico watched for a moment, and then she raised one bony hand to her throat, and the temperature in the room plummetted.
In one smooth motion, Nico tossed her coat to the ground. Without its bulk to hide her, she was skeletally thin. Her threadbare shirt was sleeveless, and her bony arms hung like cracked branches from a crooked trunk. Her silver manacles glowed with their own light, casting weird shadows across the acid-etched floor as she reached up to take off her hat.
“Nico …” Eli’s voice held a warning, but if the girl heard him, she ignored it. “That stupid girl,” he whispered.
Miranda didn’t have to ask what he meant. Without the coat to hide her, the girl’s aura was inescapable. Predatory menace rolled off her in waves, stirring Miranda’s deepest instincts to run, to get out. But she could not move. Deep, irrational, primordial fear had turned the air to glue, snaring her soul like a rabbit under a wolf’s paw. She could do nothing except cower in her alcove and watch, gasping in the acidic air and waiting for the threat to kill her or pass by. For the first time, she understood why all spirits fear a demonseed, and why Gin had been so adamant about killing the girl, no matter how small or controlled she seemed.
“Can’t you stop her?” Miranda whispered through gritted teeth.
“Only Josef can stop her when she gets like this.” Eli was pressed so far back in his alcove Miranda couldn’t see him anymore. “You might want to get down,” he whispered.
Nico stretched her arms out, flexing her shoulders. One by one, the thick manacles at her wrists, ankles, and neck popped open with a hard, metallic snap. Each time, the silver clung to her for a moment, screaming angrily, but even fully awakened metal can’t fight gravity. The manacles hit the floor with a crash, cursing Nico all the way down. As soon as she was free of their touch, the small girl’s posture changed completely.
The Nico who stood at the center of the circle of cast off clothes and silver restraints was an entirely different creature than the Nico who had entered the throne room with them. Her thinness was no longer awkward, but deadly and cutting, like garrote wire. Her movements were languid as she dropped lazily into a stance, her newly freed hands flourished in front of her.
With a thin smile Nico stared up at the enormous sludge. Then the dim moonlight seemed to bend around her, and she vanished.
The sludge roared as shadows, blacker than any simple darkness, streaked across its surface, appearing and vanishing in an instant, like black heat lightning. It was nauseating to watch, but Miranda could no more look away than she could sprout wings and escape. Everywhere the shadow touched, a large section of acidic sludge vanished. It wasn’t that it got knocked away, or that the creature was pulling it back. Where the darkness landed, that piece of the blob was simply gone. Within a few seconds, the acid spirit looked like a mouse-nibbled biscuit, and the fear in the room was suffocating. The stones were screaming, the unlit lamps were screaming, the gold-plated decorations, the remaining contents of the treasury, the glass windows, the air itself, everything in the throne room was screaming nonsense in a state of full panic. The voices stabbed Miranda’s ears, filling them to bursting, but all she could do was press herself tighter against the screeching wall and watch wide-eyed as Nico winked into view, landing neatly at the center of the throne room.
Gregorn’s sludge was about half the size it had been. It lay at the far end of the room, whimpering pathetically, but still protecting the dais as it had been commanded to do. Nico, on the other hand, looked healthier than Miranda had ever seen her. Her pale skin was flushed and glowing. Her body was no longer skeletal, but strong and supple. Her legs were longer and her torso more filled out. She also looked taller, a suspicion confirmed by the new gap between the hem of her shirt and the waist of her trousers. It was as if she’d aged ten happy, healthy years, and yet the freezing, predatory menace rolling off her was stronger than ever. She glided across the corroded stone, and the acidic sludge shrank back, but it would not give up its position in front of the dais, not even when Nico stopped a foot away from its trembling base.
“Nico!” Eli’s voice was thin and strained, but the fact that he could speak at all was a miracle. “Don’t do it, Nico!”
The girl ignored him. With a triumphant cry, Nico plunged her bare hand deep into the acid’s center. If Miranda had named the spirit’s scream a wail before, the cry it gave now reduced its earlier sounds to whimpers. Gregorn’s spirit thrashed on the end of Nico’s arm like a speared fish, slinging acid in huge arcs. But, despite its struggles, the spirit was shrinking. It was now not more than double the height of the dais. Then it was no taller than Gin, and still it was shrinking, its cries growing smaller and smaller. When the sludge was no larger than Nico herself, a new shape began to emerge. The black tar narrowed and separated, revealing long appendages. Ribs appeared at its center, and its peaked top became a rounded head. Two legs, barely more than tar over bone, appeared at the base, and shoulders like knives led to twiglike arms. Finally, the last of the sludge disappeared altogether, and Nico stood over the kneeling, black form of an old, skeletal man.
Wisps of hair still sprouted from his head, plastered down by black tar, and his face, his face was still human. Sunken eyes grayed over with cataracts looked pleadingly up at his conqueror. His cracked, black lips moved pathetically, but no sound came out. Black tears pooled in the hollows of the ancient enslaver king’s cheeks as he looked up at her, his ruined hands rising slowly to grasp Nico’s wrist where her hand was buried deep in his hollow chest.
With a final, cruel smile, Nico yanked her hand free, and what was left of Gregorn toppled to the ground. He made no sound as he fell, the last of his human features crumbling to dust even before they struck the pitted stone. Nico shook the dust off her fingers, and Miranda knew as surely as if she’d been standing over him herself that Gregorn’s spirit was dead.
“Nico.” Eli’s soft voice made Miranda jump. She hadn’t seen him leap dow
n from his alcove, but the thief was standing a dozen feet behind the demonseed. Cautiously, he held out his hand, the largest of Nico’s manacles, her neck piece, dangling from his fingers. “You did well,” he said. “You did as Josef asked. Now it’s time to come back to us.”
The girl turned slowly, regarding him through slitted eyes that flashed in the darkness with their own flickering light. The room was deafeningly silent. Everything seemed to be holding its breath as Nico considered him.
“Come back?”
Her voice was different. The dry dust scrape that had been just a whisper before now completely overwhelmed her natural sound. It was so alien, so strange, that if Miranda had not seen Nico’s lips moving, she would not have been able to name the speaker as human. Nico took a step forward, moving with unnatural grace toward the thief until she was only a few inches from Eli’s outstretched hand. Then, with casual cruelty, she reeled back and punched him.
Eli didn’t try to dodge. He took the blow full in the chest, and it sent him flying backward. He landed with a bone-snapping crunch on the scarred marble, the silver manacle clattering off into the dark. The second he hit the floor, Nico was on top of him again with another of her gut-wrenching, light-bending jumps. She kicked the manacle out of his hand and grabbed the thief around the neck, lifting him off the floor. “Come back?” she hissed, glaring at him with eyes that opened wider than human eyes should. “To what? I see how you treat the girl. A weapon, a servant. Our kind do not serve, thief!”
“I’m talking to Nico, not you,” Eli said coldly. “You’re just an interloper, a deadbeat tenant. We treat Nico as a partner, which is far more than I can say for you, bug.”
She roared at that, drawing her fist to hit him again, but before she could strike, there was a silver flash in the thin space between them. Nico screamed and flailed backward, dropping Eli on the ground. Breathing hard, the girl reached down and wrenched something out of her chest. She tossed it to the ground where it landed with a clatter, and Miranda recognized one of Josef’s knives. Eli grunted and rolled over, another knife ready in his hands.
But Nico’s white skin was knitting itself back together as Miranda watched, and she crept toward Eli like a hunting spider. “You treacherous thief,” she hissed. “How dare you take his blades!”
“Ah-ha,” Eli said, coughing as he sat up slowly. “So there is some Nico left in there.” He tucked the second knife back into his sleeve. “Listen to me, Nico. This isn’t the real you. You’re human, Nico. Still human, even now. Josef didn’t nearly die five times over rescuing you just to have it end like this, in this nowhere kingdom.” He held out his hand, his face kind and pleading. “Come back to us.”
Nico paused and stared at his hand, and for a moment, the inhuman light in her eyes flickered out. Then it was back brighter than before. She lifted her clenched fist, ready to bring it down on the thief’s unguarded head, but before she could swing, a tremendous crash stopped everything. Glass exploded above them, and Nico looked up just in time to see the swirling mass of gray fur and knife-sharp claws crash through the high window right before it landed on top of her.
Miranda pressed her hands to her mouth. The relief mixed with fear was almost more than she could bear. “Gin!”
Gin had Nico in his mouth. He shook her fiercely before flinging her as hard as he could against the stone wall. Her impact cracked the marble, and she slumped to the floor, her limbs bent under her at unnatural angles. Gin bounded to one side, putting himself between the crumpled girl and Miranda.
“I came as soon as I felt her,” he growled, never taking his eyes off Nico’s motionless body. “I told you, didn’t I? Demons can’t be trusted.”
Miranda jumped down from her alcove and ran to him, flinging herself face down into his swirling fur.
“The king?”
“Still hiding and safe enough,” he said quietly. “Not that any of us are ‘safe’ at this point.” He voice thickened to a snarl as Nico stirred. “Get the thief.”
Miranda nodded and looked around for Eli. The thief was still on his back where he had fallen, coughing painfully.
She ran to help him. “Can you stand?”
Eli nodded and took her offered hand, groaning as she pulled him to his feet.
Gin gave a warning growl. Nico was stirring, her cracked limbs righting themselves as they watched.
“What do we do now?” Miranda said.
“We do what we should have done when this mess started,” Gin said. “We kill her.”
“The dog might be right,” Eli whispered, his voice thin and pained. “At this point, without Josef, I don’t know anything else to do. Every moment she spends like this, our Nico goes further away. But whatever we do, let’s do it quickly, otherwise”—he tapped his foot on the acid damaged stone—“the castle will do it for us.”
Miranda froze. Now that he’d pointed it out, she didn’t know how she’d missed it. Now that Gin had injured the demon and broken the spell of fear, every spirit in earshot was awake and calling for blood. Every piece of the throne room, from the broken glass to the stones under their feet, rumbled with desperate anger. Showers of dust cascaded from the ceiling as the marble strained against its mortar. Even the support pillars were edging closer, preparing to break free and let gravity do the rest, even if it cost them their lives, if that’s what it took to kill the demon.
With a sickening series of cracks, Nico sat up. She stretched out her arms, and the joints snapped back into place. As she moved, the terrified dust flung itself off her, creating a low cloud that obscured her movements. Even so, Miranda could feel when Nico turned, feel the girl’s regard sliding over her skin. Then Nico opened her eyes, and Miranda’s blood turned to lead. The girl’s eyes, which were too large to be human anymore, glowed with a steady, otherworldly light. They shone bright as candles through the terrified dust, brilliant but illuminating nothing. The rest of her face was lost in shadow, but Miranda could see clawlike hands scraping as the girl edged to the rim of her crater, and that was enough.
Nico moved along the wall, gathering herself for another leap, but Gin didn’t give her the chance. He charged with a howl, barreling toward the demonseed. She snarled in answer and sprang to meet him, winking through the darkness faster than Miranda could follow. But Gin’s sight was better than Nico’s, and the ghost hound’s teeth caught Nico’s arm just before she landed a killing strike on his skull. She whipped her other arm around and caught his jaw before he could bite down, stopping his momentum like an iron wall. Gin struggled against her grip, and Nico cackled, her terrible eyes narrowing to glowing slits. She slammed her feet into the screaming stone and lifted the ghosthound off the floor. Gin yelped in surprise as Nico swung him over her head and slammed him into the cracked wall where she had landed before. The hound rolled as he flew, landing on his feet. His paws barely touched the stone before he pushed off again with a roar, barreling straight for Nico. The demonseed had no time to dodge before the flat of Gin’s head hit her square in the chest and the two of them went flying in a tangle of shifting fur and snapping fangs. But when they landed, Nico was on top. With a triumphant cry, she plunged her claws into Gin’s back, and the ghosthound howled. He fought her as hard as he could, rolling and snapping, trying to knock her off, but her hand was deep in his muscle, and he couldn’t dislodge her. Dark red blood flowed down his sides, matting his fur and hiding his patterns. His movements grew sluggish, but he would not stop fighting, even when his legs collapsed. Miranda’s throat was raw before she realized was screaming, though she couldn’t make sense of her own words, or if they were words at all.
Without thought or warning, her spirit flung itself open, and Miranda’s power roared to life. Spirit voices shot through her, clearer than ever before, flooding every sense until she could almost taste where one soul ended and the next began. Without thinking, she swept her spirit across them. The response was immediate. Every spirit was desperate for action, desperate to fight the intruder. A directi
on was all it took. She thrust her hand toward the demonseed, and the spirits leaped forward, screaming vengeance. A volley of broken glass, stone, and metal came from every corner of the throne room to strike Nico wherever there was room to strike. The impact ripped her hand free of Gin’s back, and she toppled over. The marble floor was ready for her. The moment she hit, the stones sank beneath her, going as soft as clay at Miranda’s command. As soon as Nico was mired, the stone surged over her arms, legs, chest, and neck before hardening again, pinning the demonseed to the ground. Miranda ran forward, flinging out her hand. The throwing knife that Nico had flung away clattered across the tiles and leaped into her grip. Miranda clamped her fingers on the hilt as she jumped, aiming the point to land deep in Nico’s exposed throat.
But the blow never connected. The demonseed ripped her legs free of the stone at the last moment and caught Miranda in the chest. The Spiritualist grunted in pain as the new impact hit the old bruises, and she tumbled backward, cracking her head on the stone floor. Nico sprang to her feet, flakes of dead stone falling off her like dried mud.
“Stupid girl,” she hissed, her eyes glowing like lanterns in her shadowy face. Her hand shot out, grabbing Miranda around the throat. Miranda struggled violently as Nico lifted her off the ground, but her head was ringing and the demonseed’s grip was like iced iron against her skin. Nico pulled her close, close enough that Miranda could smell the strange, metallic stench of the girl’s transformed skin. The demonseed’s mouth curled into a sharp-toothed grin as she dangled Miranda from her outstretched arm, the Spiritualist’s still kicking weakly as her air ran out.
“That’s enough.”
The deep voice cut clean through the spirits’ clamor, leaving only silence in its wake. Nico froze, her lantern eyes flicking past Miranda to the tall figure standing in the ruined doorway, outlined by the falling dust.