“No problem,” Sunny said bitterly. It always fascinated her how people’s attitudes changed when they thought something was being taken from them versus when they were receiving that same thing. Like a switch flipped in the primitive human mind, one that alternated between angry, jealous monkey to kind, generous tribe member. Sunny was cursed to see it all too often, and it sickened her that people were really so shallow.
People were milling, now, excitedly discussing what they’d seen. She heard sirens in the distance.
Before the police could arrive to ask questions, Sunny slipped away. Throwing her shotgun over her shoulder, she went jogging for the public rail to Chugiak. She had less than two hours to get to the Wall…
Chapter 15: The Pact at Eklutna
Sunny got on a small public rail to the North Dome, then took the Megarail to Chugiak. She used a credit card in an autocab, which took her to the militarized end-point of the former Glen Highway, now truncated by the thirty-foot Eklutna Wall and its massive, bomb-proof Millennium Gate. The Republic men behind the razor wire gave her a curious look, but appeared okay with her presence as long as she didn’t try to step up to the gate.
Anxious that she had left most of her weapons in the vehicle, twitchy that she wasn’t in contact with Daphne, and worried that Dortez was loose in the city and she wasn’t doing anything about it, Sunny started to pace.
It was almost four o’clock before Khaz showed up in a tinted government floater, almost an hour late. Sunny knew, because she kept calling out to the guys across the razor wire for the time as she wandered back and forth across the old highway.
Instead of getting out, Khaz gestured for Sunny to climb into his vehicle.
“Where are we going?” Sunny asked, reluctantly getting in.
Khaz glanced at her, and she was surprised to see he looked even more anxious than she felt. “It’s a place of power. Closest one nearby.”
“What, Thunderbird Falls?” It had a cool name, but Sunny wasn’t aware of any stories of ‘power’ associated with it.
“No,” was all he said. He pulled the floater forward, showed his ID to the guard, and the men in government cammies quickly moved to open the small vehicular gate cut into the much larger, train-sized Millennium Gate. Khaz pulled through, then drove over the cracked and overgrown highway beyond in silence.
After a few minutes of an uncomfortable silence between them, Sunny reached out to fidget with a lotus dangling from the mirror. It hurt—the wound the baby monster had given her with its beak had grown red and inflamed.
Khaz must have heard her breath catch as she bent it, because he looked over at the bloody makeshift bandages. “You get that seen by a professional?”
Sunny gave him a look . “My sister’s being hunted by an interdimensional octopus and you think I’ve had time to find gauze?”
“It could get infected.”
“Probably will. Don’t care.”
“Oh.” He continued to drive. It started to drizzle outside, a cold rain that was the only break to the silence as it spattered the windshield.
“You wanna tell me what the plan is?” Sunny offered, trying to remember why the hell she was in a vehicle with a soul-stealer headed out to some unknown place in the wilderness.
“I’m taking you up on your offer.”
“Okay…” What offer? “Uh.” She swallowed and glanced at the fancy old-style calligraphy pen and scroll case resting on the seat between them. Both were etched with runes she had never seen before. She didn’t see any ink.
Sunny glanced at him sideways, trying not to sweat. Instead of letting it stew and fester, she decided to just get it out. “You’re not gonna eat me, are you?”
Khaz glanced at her. “Depends.”
“Oh, that’s not creepy at all ,” Sunny blurted.
He snorted. “You’re the one who wanted my help.” They fell into another silence as the terrain passed beneath them. Sunny considered jumping out onto the broken concrete.
“If you want out, tell me,” Khaz said, as she was calculating how many bones she would break in the fall. “No need to hurt yourself.”
Sunny returned her attention to him nervously. “Where are we going?”
“Eklutna.” He continued driving.
At first, Sunny was confused. Eklutna, the village, had never stricken her as a particularly holy—or in this case, maybe unholy —place to do some weird ritual.
Then it hit her. “You mean the lake .”
A nod was his only response. He seemed to be…brooding…about something.
Indeed, true to his word, he wove their floater up the cracked and tree-studded mountain road for the next thirty minutes before the terrain angled down into the bowl of Eklutna Lake. Seeing the expanse of blue water ahead, knowing it probably hadn’t been visited in a good five years, Sunny couldn’t help but feel very, very alone.
Alone with a soul-eater. That was…great. She inched away from him in the vehicle.
Before he had come to a complete stop in the old State Park parking lot, Sunny hastily opened her door and leapt out so he couldn’t grab her. Still inside the vehicle, Khaz watched her with curiosity. “If you’re afraid,” he said, sounding confused, “why’d you offer?”
“‘Cause I wanna kill a squid,” Sunny said, more belligerently than she felt.
He gave her a long look, then reached out and gingerly took the scroll case and pen.
“What’s that for?” she blurted.
Khaz hesitated in climbing out of the floater. “It’s to make things official.”
Sunny immediately had contracts with demons dancing in her head. She gave a nervous laugh.
“Chickenshit?” Khaz said, smirking.
Sunny bristled. If there was one thing she wasn’t, it was a coward . But still, this thing ate souls , and anyone who didn’t take that seriously hadn’t played enough D&D...
“If you’re feeling like wussing out, I can drive you back to the Domes.”
Sunny glanced at the scroll case. “So, what, after I sign that you own my soul or something?”
Khaz didn’t laugh. With dead seriousness, he said, “That’s a different contract.”
Oh fuck me. Sunny swallowed hard and took a couple steps back.
Khaz watched that, calculating. “So what’s it gonna be?”
“Are you a demon?” Sunny blurted.
He bristled again. “If you’re going to stand there and insult me—”
“Just tell me!” she cried. “Demon yes or no.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Some of my kind might be considered demons by regular folk.”
“Fuck me fuck me.” Sunny backed up a few more paces.
The devaputra watched her, then sighed and put the intricate scroll case back in the floater. “All right. Let’s go back. I’m not here to give you a panic attack and make you need to change your underwear.” He gestured her into the passenger seat like she’d wounded him.
Daphne needs me to fix this. She knew for a fact her sister could never go back to the role of the perfect, happy little homemaker if Sunny didn’t find a way to get rid of the monster she’d unleashed in their midst.
Hesitantly, Sunny moved closer to the floater so that she could see him through the open door, but made no move to climb inside. He was watching her through the opening from the other side of the floater, waiting.
With great reluctance, Sunny said, “You said some of your kind are considered demons?”
In reply, Khaz leaned against the driver’s side door, the front seat separating them. “Some,” he agreed. “There are always bad apples.”
“The kind that steal souls, get people to sign contracts of perpetual servitude, and make promises they have no idea they’re agreeing to, that kind of thing?”
He nodded.
He’s not even trying to hide it, Sunny thought, stunned.
“So…” she offered, “you’re planning to offer me a contract?”
His lips twitched in a grin.
He nodded, then leaned forward against the floater, arms over the roof of the cab.
“One that could have so many loopholes and weasely words that I’ll have no idea what I’m actually signing?”
His grin widened. “That’s the idea.”
“Fuck this.” Sunny spun and walked off. She eventually made her way down to the lake edge, boonie-busting the entire way. She’d been to Eklutna before, as a child, but with so much constant daily traffic and park rangers to keep the foliage in check, the undergrowth had never been this thick. She had only a vague sense of where the water was until she pushed through the alders and stepped in it.
This early in the spring, there were still chunks of ice floating in the lake, and the water level was all the way to the treeline. Surrounding her, the mountains were littered with stubborn patches of snow, the meltwater still draining into the glacial basin.
Sunny had always found the place peaceful, regardless of how many tourists had been there before Alyeska’s borders were locked down to protect bankstone. She squatted at the water’s edge and picked up a flat, rounded piece of slate, feeling it in her hand. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this place. It had been one of her mom’s favorite places to meditate…
Rustling in the brush behind her made her tense. She looked up warily as Khaz approached through the alders, moving cautiously like he was afraid of her bolting. “Don’t run—I just want to join you.”
“I don’t run.”
He raised a brow from her, but when she stayed where she was, true to her word, he pushed through the alders to stand at the water’s edge beside her. He looked out over the pristine blue water in a pensive silence. Eventually, he said, “I’d like to clarify something.” He gave her a solemn look. “And you have my word on my family’s name that what I am about to tell you is the truth.”
Whatever good that is.
Khaz’s Indian-brown eyes narrowed. “I’m forbidden from actively reading the thoughts of humans without permission, but when you throw them at me, it’s hard not to.”
Oops.
Khaz glowered at her a moment more, then glanced out at the lake. “I swear to you on the name of the House Basuchandra that what I am about to tell you is the truth.” He glanced at her sharply, as if to catch her mocking him again, then reluctantly continued, “My kind are smarter than yours. Many times smarter. I can write in any loophole I want, can intentionally use one word to mean another, and there is absolutely no way you can stop me. If I wanted to trick you into eternal servitude, I could. Like outwitting a goat.”
That was definitely not a good start.
The fact he was telling her this, however, was somewhat encouraging. Grudgingly, she urged, “And…?”
He held out the scroll case between them. “And if you want me to help you, with fair and genuine intent, the absolute best thing for you to do is to not even read this until after you’ve signed it and just to trust me to not screw you over, because if you put pen to paper—at all —you are trusting me, and any attempt to change my wording or demand modifications to the terms will just insult me and invoke my passion to extract payback for the slight. As it is, I had to fight my instincts and rewrite this one for several hours to make it fair to both parties.”
“Wow.” Sunny digested that, but made no attempt to take his scroll. “Okay, what else?”
“Further, if you sign my contract and give me a legitimate reason to stay in this realm without me having to beg and scrape for my sustenance from Erik, then I swear to you that I will not bind you to eternal servitude or any other major contract without your permission.”
“Without my permission ?” Sunny laughed. “Why would I ever give a demon permission to—”
At Khaz’s sharp glance, she caught herself. “I’m not going to give you permission for that.”
He seemed to take that as a challenge. “We’ll see.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’ll see’?” she demanded.
He sighed and squatted beside her, taking a moment to pull a stone from the lapping ice water. His dark Indian skin was in sharp contrast to the glacial blue water of the lake. “As I’m sworn to tell you the truth by the honor of my family name, I am bound to tell you that I find your energy delightful…” He glanced at her almost…anxiously? ...then turned away too quickly and busied himself with the stone he had plucked from the water. Looking at it more carefully than he needed to, he said, “…and that if you agree to my contract, one bargain will beget more, and eventually, I will seek a more permanent arrangement, and no amount of maneuvering on your part will let you escape it.”
Sunny didn’t like the sound of that. “I don’t think so.”
He shrugged and stood, dropping the stone back into the water. Tucking the scroll case back into his shimmering coat, he said, “I’ll be at the floater.”
She heard the brush rustle and pop as he made his way back up to the abandoned parking lot. Her heart clenched, thinking of how close Daphne had come to having her entire family massacred like that little subdivision in Willow, all because Sunny had done something stupid, and how Daphne no longer had a safe place, because Dortez could literally be anywhere…
“Wait,” she croaked.
The noise in the alders stopped.
“Come back, dammit,” Sunny managed. “Let’s talk.”
The devaputra—or whatever he was—turned, but didn’t rejoin her. “I’m not exaggerating. If you take me up on this first contract, I will pursue you until I have something permanent.” He made a sheepish grin. “It’s a…tic…we’ve got.”
“Demons.”
His face tightened, his smile frozen on his face. “We are called many things.”
“Like demons.”
“I’m not a demon.” That word really seemed to bother him, which was strangely relieving to Sunny. He rubbed the bark of the tree by his head with his thumb. “You could say I’m one of the good ones…to those who don’t chronically piss me off.”
“You say you’re good…” Sunny pointed out, “…but you still want to bind my soul into eternal service.”
He gave a playful grin. “If you want.”
“Yeah, fuck that.”
He shrugged again and turned to go. Sunny remembered the silent cul-de-sac and the woman crumpled on the pavement, and felt that guilt once again tearing at her heart.
“Wait.”
He turned a second time, looking amused. “Nobody said bargaining with devana was easy.”
“And how do I avoid it?” Sunny asked. “This ultimate soul-binding bargain?”
“Don’t sign the first contract,” Khaz said simply.
“But the only way I’m going to kill that goddamn thing that attacked my sister is with your help?”
Khaz tilted his head in assent, watching her. “It’s highly unlikely otherwise.”
Sunny’s heart was pounding wildly. “What are you going to do if I sign it? How will you help me? How do I know it’ll work?”
Khaz leaned against a tree and idly examined a leaf near his cheek. “It’ll work.”
“I want your word on your family name.”
“My oath continues to stand until I dissolve it. It will work.”
“It’ll help me kill Dortez.”
“Indeed.”
Sunny deliberated, mortified that she was even deliberating. She was talking about contracts with demons …
Still, that other part of her argued, he didn’t seem evil…
But he just told you his ultimate goal will be to nab your soul, Sunny reminded herself in a horrified babble. Demons make contracts like that.
Then another part of her said, He said it won’t be in the first contract. Just don’t make another contract with him and you’ll be fine. You’re stubborn enough—you can keep from signing something.
“That’s a slippery slope,” Khaz commented, still seemingly absorbed in the leaf.
Sunny reddened. “I thought you weren’t allowed to listen.”
&nb
sp; Khaz leveled his gaze at her, amusement on his face. “You’re loud.”
She flushed all over again, but bit her lip against the urge to tell him to screw off, because she had the feeling that this time he’d walk away.
“All right,” Sunny said, standing up and reaching out. “Gimme the contract and the pen.”
“You’re sure?”
Sunny took a deep breath and steeled herself. “If it helps me smear roasted calamari across both the Anchorage Domes, yes.”
Watching her with a quirk of a smile, Khaz popped the lid from the scroll case and pulled a rolled parchment free. Sunny took the scroll, placed it against a tree, and squinted at the inkless pen.
“I assume I’ll need to sign it in my blood?”
Both of Khaz’s dark brows went up. “I brought a bottle of ink,” he said, producing a square black bottle from his pocket, “but if you’re that serious…” He gestured with the tiny bottle. “By all means.” He seemed like he was struggling not to laugh.
Sunny flushed again. “Just gimme the goddamn ink.”
He obediently unscrewed the cap and held it out for her.
With as much dignity as she could muster, Sunny dipped the pen nib in the indigo black.
“You’re not going to read it first?” he asked.
“You told me not to.”
He stared at her for so long that Sunny thought she’d said something wrong.
“What?” she demanded, ink-filled pen hovering over the paper.
Seeming to shake himself, the devaputra said, “Nothing. It’s just…unusual…to find a human so…trusting.”
“I’m not trusting. I’m desperate.”
He met her eyes and there was a moment where something…deeper …passed between them. “I swear to you on my mother’s honor that I will treat you with dignity and respect, chavi.”
“Chavi?”
He shrugged and waited, obviously willing to say no more.
Sunny glanced at the bottom of the contract, the spot with the line over her printed name, barely visible due to the curling of the scroll, and resisted the urge to unfurl it to read the sentences above it. Daphne would kill me, she thought.
Then, Daphne almost died. Her kids almost died. And it was my fault.
Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass) Page 26