A flare of energy alerted me. Mystify and Pique were nearby. The closer I got, the more staccato the “Ram” signature became, as if Mystify were having trouble maintaining it, as if he were under stress. Maybe they didn’t sense my delicate signature while they were so close to each other.
Sped by urgency, I grabbed on to the chain- link fence and quickly scaled its eight- foot height. My strength helped me stay quiet, and I counted on the darkness under the trees to prevent any passersby from seeing me.
I swung my legs over the top and lightly jumped down, remembering how those demons had jumped from the roof of Crave’s house. I had never attempted anything that high before, but it was nice to know it could be done.
I darted into the shadows of several bushes. There was only an iron-bar fence between me and the edge of the river, with the bank reinforced by short bulkheads disappearing into the water. The river sparkled under the artificial lights, stretching across to the Domino Sugar refinery.
Circling, I finally saw Mystify and Pique in the shadows of another cluster of bushes at the edge of the soccer field. They were wrestling against each other, their legs braced wide. The energy swirled around them in prismatic colors, flashing scarlet with fury where their hands gripped each other.
Pique was taking Mystify’s energy by force.
I didn’t even think; I ran into them, slamming against Pique and throwing him off balance. Pique didn’t let go of Mystify, and we all three went down in a tangle of arms and legs.
Pique continued drawing energy out of Mystify. His snarl showed that he was not going to be denied. His fingers dug into Mystify’s arm like claws, tearing his flesh.
“Let go of him!” I screamed, beating at Pique’s face. He didn’t seem to care.
Mystify was gasping in my ear. “Get off me!” He shoved me until I rolled over onto Pique.
Then Mystify kicked Pique in the throat, finally breaking his hold.
The moment he did, his signature changed. It was no longer a racing, driving rhythm. Instead, I felt as if I were suspended in a blank void with nothing to grasp on to. It was baffling.
I had felt this sudden switch before. But Pique lay there stunned, staring at Mystify openmouthed.
Then in an instant, Mystify’s signature changed to Pique’s. The grating, rasping, rough sensation couldn’t be mistaken. My lips formed Pique’s name when I looked at Mystify.
Now Pique was even more confused. If I hadn’t felt it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.
“Watch out!” Mystify called as he darted away.
I realized I should be running, too. As I turned away, I was jerked to a halt when Pique grabbed my ankle. I struggled to pull away, but he swiped my feet from under me.
As I kicked and tried to roll away, he crawled up my body. He was grimacing, showing his teeth, but it couldn’t be called a grin. There was no merriment in it.
Pique was pressing me down so I couldn’t buck him off. He got his hands on my throat. But he left himself open, unlike Dread, and I was able to grab a finger and pull sharply downward, breaking his hold enough to breathe. Still holding on to his finger, I lifted one hip and used my leverage to roll him off.
My shirt ripped as I got away, standing up to face him, prepared for another attack.
His fingers twitched, as if urging me to go for him, to attack.
“I’m not falling for that again,” I told him.
He lunged for me, and I stepped out of his line and spun him away from me.
Pique was coughing when he got up, and he spit out blood. My elbow had hit him, though that hadn’t been my intention. His focus was hard on me.
It was always this way when I confronted Pique. Some demons taunted me, trying to psych me out. But with Pique, I felt as if I were being stalked by a lion or a hawk, with each move ruled by cold calculation.
I’m getting tired of running.
I suddenly realized I’d been right that night I fought with Pique at the bar—it was time for me to stop getting pushed around. My mistake was that I’d been too cocky, charged up with Petrify’s energy. But standing up to this psychopath was the right idea.
Pique tried to grab me, and I smoothly evaded him, making him stumble past me with a nudge of his shoulder.
He kept coming, and I kept deflecting his strikes and using his leverage points against him. I was always reacting; this time I didn’t strike out at him, reflecting the true spirit of Aikido. Most people thought the style had a bal letic beauty, but was worthless in a real fight. However, I was living proof that it worked.
I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
He had caught me by surprise in our last fight because I made an aggressive move and it backfired on me. This time I stuck to what I did best, stepping away every time he charged and wearing him down. Again and again I threw Pique, letting go of him at the point of maximum trajectory. He came up, shaking his head and staggering. I wasn’t being easy in my takedowns, and even a demon could take only so much pounding. Even I winced when he wrenched his knee, snapping the ligaments with loud popping sounds.
His charges began to slow. He was bleeding in several places, while I wasn’t even breathing heavily.
“I’m not running anymore,” I told him.
Pique was fairly charged-up, as usual. He could have kept hammering at me in hopes that I would slip up again as I had in front of the Den. But the predator assessed me, seeing how I glowed with energy, more than ever before. I wasn’t backing down.
This time I didn’t look like easy pickings.
Pique backed up a step. I went forward one. “You’d
better
run.”
He backed up another step, still assessing me. But there was doubt in his stance. Then he made his decision and began walking away, picking up speed.
Abruptly a shadow separated from the dark mound of bushes. Pique was keeping an eye on me as he retreated, so he didn’t see the man emerge.
Pique could turn on him in an instant. “Get away!” I called out in warning.
When he stepped fully forward, I saw it was Ram. He was back in his Theo-guise.
I hated not being able to sense him. “I need to bell that cat,” I muttered.
Ram expertly tackled Pique, taking him down. Pique was already so battered from the hard falls that he flailed uselessly. Ram got him into a headlock and held him facedown in the dirt.
I ran up next to them. “Ram! What are you doing?”
He exerted a bit more pressure, popping Pique’s shoulder out of joint. His cry of pain made Ram grimace in satisfaction. Now Pique wasn’t resisting as hard. “You can’t let him go, Allay. You need to take him.”
“I’m not going to kill Pique!”
“He’s the one, Allay. It’s time for you to face up to this.”
I backed up a few steps, on the verge of running into the darkness. “Don’t you think I wish it were that easy! Don’t you think I want to live?”
“Then do it; do it now. I’ll hold his shields open for you—it’ll go much faster that way.”
I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes, warring in my heart, my soul, my body, my mind. . . . “I can’t do it! It’s not right to kill someone to survive.”
Ram let out a growl of frustration, kneeling against Pique as he held him down on the ground. “It
is
the right thing for demons, Allay. You’re a demon now, whether you believe it or not.”
“If I die without killing, I’ll still be human.”
“You’ll die by your own hand. There’s a sin in that, I’m told.”
“I’m not committing suicide, Ram. It’s completely different. I’m refusing to commit murder.”
“Allay, nobody’s immortal but the gods. We aren’t gods—I should know that better than anyone. Like every other living creature, we’re supposed to die someday, to pass our energy on to the next generation. You keep thinking of demons in human terms. Humans shouldn’t be killed because they’re so fragile; they die of such insignificant things—a bee sting, a virus, a scratch from a rusty nail. But the only thing that can kill a demon is another demon. Along with fissioning, it’s the only way our essence is passed on. It’s how we live on in spite of our death.”
I had to admit that he was convincing. I had never considered that demons died only by the hand of other demons. It
was
the natural order of things, as far as demon life went. But did I really want to be a demon?
Slowly, I said, “I had no choice when I was turned. If I do this, I’ll be making a choice to be something other than human.”
“You
are
something other than human, Allay. It’s time for you to stop hiding from yourself and the world. You even deny the memories in your own head. That’s no way to live.”
The truth stung. “It was the only way I could survive.”
“You did that. Now it’s time to start living again. I know you’re hurt by what I did to you. Lying to you. I never meant to ruin your life. I’m trying to help you now, so you can move on and find what you want. Live how you want.”
“But to do that, I have to end someone else’s life. Who’s to say that Pique is going to be this way forever? He’s hardly been alive a month. I was certifiably insane after I was turned. Who am I to judge and condemn him?”
I looked down at Ram struggling to hold on to Pique, who was now fighting back with everything he had. It felt wrong to stand there and watch, just as I had watched Ram kill Vex. I was culpable in that, an accessory to murder. Could I take the next step?
Ram got Pique under control again, shoving his face deeper into the grass. “Believe me, Allay, I know what kind of demon Pique is. He lives for suffering, and it will save the world a lot of hurt if he’s gone. You can end it here. Think of it as snuffing out a disease or a deadly virus.”
“He must have more to him than that. He’s a person, not a sickness. He must have at least one redeeming quality.”
Ram gave me a hard look, to be sure I really meant it. “There is one thing I’ve seen. . . .”
“Yes?” I urged, looking for anything that could stop this from happening.
“You know how he likes to wear glasses?”
“Yeah, it’s weird. He doesn’t need them to see.”
“No, but he steals them from people; he seeks out victims who wear them. I saw why last week. When he’s not being a first-rate prick, he’ll sit on a bench or a curb and stare at the simplest things for hours. Leaves. Pictures from magazines. Even plain water. His pupils change shape, as if he were using the lenses to see down to microscopic levels. You could say it’s his only hobby.”
I wished I hadn’t asked. It made Pique seem more real than the bogeyman who lurked outside my bar. But it was so peculiar, as well. He wasn’t even a reasonable facsimile of a human being. He didn’t have a home or people he loved. He was a demon, and his only reason for existence was to prey on people.
Pique’s face was smashed into the grass as he muttered, “Do
something
already or let me go.”
My eyes opened wide. I’d never heard Pique speak before. I wasn’t sure he could. But he must taunt people since he liked to provoke them.
“Who’s your progenitor?” I demanded, curious why nobody had claimed him.
The silence stretched so long that I thought he wouldn’t answer, even with Ram exerting pressure on his arm.
“Don’t do that—,” I started to protest.
But Pique blurted out, “Lash!”
“Lash?”
I stared between him and Ram. “But Dread said Lash gave her offspring to Crave. That was her old ritual with him. The thought of it drove him crazy.”
“Maybe Pique got away before Crave could take him. What happened?” Ram demanded, giving Pique a shake. “Tell us what happened.”
But Pique refused to speak again. Now I understood why he was formed this way; he was born of Lash’s twisted relationship with Crave. I wondered who started that rumor that Lash gave Crave her offspring? She must have consumed Crave’s offspring in order to replenish herself, but the circle had been broken there.
It felt as if I had Pique’s life in a nutshell. It hadn’t been much of one so far.
Ram dug his knee in Pique’s back to keep him from struggling. “Face it, Allay. Pique is dead. I’m not letting him go even if you walk away. He’s been hurting a lot of people, killing them from the inside out. And you need his essence. You have to take him, Allay.”
I felt a cold, hard certainty growing inside of me. Something was saying, “Do it! Do it!”
It was that dying core in my belly, the demon heart of me, speaking louder than any of my human qualms. I had died when I was shot by Mackleby’s henchmen; then I came back to life. No human could do that.
I was a demon.
If being a demon meant killing another demon every two hundred years, then that was what I had to do. I expected my decision to feel like rotten maggots and worms turning in my underbelly, but instead a sparkling clarity filled my mind. I could survive.
I was going to kill Pique. I was glad it was this honest, this unequivocal. No justifications. I was going to take his essence and use it to save myself.
It was time for Pique to die.
I knelt down next to his head and looked up at Ram. “He’s shielded.”
Ram’s expression didn’t change. “Brace yourself.” He dropped his shields, letting loose the aggressive thrumming of his signature to echo around us. It was a hundred times stronger than Mystify’s pale imitation. Despite his recent fissioning, Ram had a depth of energy reserves that was stunning.
I sat back on my heels. It nearly took my breath away, he was so powerful. Now with his shields down I could see the finer gradations of his emotions—concern for me, relief that I agreed, confusion over his own strong feelings, and a hard, watchful edge that was never blunted.