The Demon's Covenant (25 page)

Mae stopped reading, breathing as if she'd been running a race. Her throat felt too small, as if it was closing up in an attempt to stop the words coming through.

“Another human reason to hold hands,” Nick said, his voice distant. “Crossing the street. See? This isn't my first time.”

Mae's voice came out stifled. “My mistake.”

Nick's eyes did follow Alan. It was one of the first things Mae had noticed when she was getting to know him as more than just a devastatingly good-looking jerk. She'd seen and thought he was as scared for his brother as Mae was for hers.

“Why are you holding on so tight?” Nick inquired. “To comfort me?”

Mae looked down at their linked hands. She could barely feel her own hand, she realized slowly. She was holding on to his so hard her fingers had gone white and numb.

“I guess so,” she said softly.

Nick's voice was freezing cold. “It doesn't work. I can't imagine why you think it might.”

“Okay.”

“Can I stop touching you now?” Nick snapped. “I don't like it. This whole idea was stupid!”

Mae pulled her hand sharply away and into her lap, where she held it with her other hand, trying to massage warmth and movement back into her fingers. Nick rolled off the bed and caught his sword up from the floor, stalking over to the window and starting to put away his sharpening kit.

She thought of Alan, seven years old and barring his bedroom door because he was terrified of what his own father might do.

“Alan's fine,” she said. “He's all right now.”

“Sure,” said Nick, staring out the window and rolling his shoulders as if he was planning to punch someone. “Why wouldn't he be? Dad's dead. Mum's dead. Every human he ever thought of as family is either dead or wants nothing to do
with him. Whatever game I want to play with him, whatever purpose I have for him, I can go right ahead. The monster has him all to itself.”

Mae took a deep breath. “Don't talk about yourself in the third person. It makes you sound like a serial killer. And Alan has me and Jamie too.”

Nick sheathed his sword and turned away from the window. Sunlight did nothing to soften his face at all. It just lit up the restless, dangerous glitter of his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said, suddenly predatory and intent. “Alan seemed happy this morning. You two have a nice night, did you?”

Nicholas Ryves, ladies and gentlemen, Mae thought. The only person in the world who could make a matchmaking scheme sound like a death threat.

“Sure,” she said, her voice chilly.

He'd made it extremely clear he wasn't interested, but this was just rubbing it in.

“How nice?” Nick demanded.

“None of your business!”

“Oh?” he said, and smirked. “That nice. No wonder he was in such a good mood.”

“There were—” Mae said, and stumbled on her words. She glared at a random corner of the room rather than keep looking at Nick. “A lot happened at the Goblin Market, you know. He had plenty of things to think about.”

“Did he kiss you?”

Her gaze snapped up from the corner to Nick's face, an outraged reply burning on but not leaving her lips.

“Yes,” she answered slowly, instead of telling him exactly how inappropriate his question was. He had no reaction to
the news that she could see. “It wasn't that big a deal,” she went on, putting one verbal foot carefully in front of the other. “We're not going out or anything. I mean, for God's sake, he also seemed to have a good enough time kissing Liannan last night.”

That got a reaction.

Nick lunged across the room at her, and she jumped off the bed and stood with one hand raised, knowing that there was no way on earth she could stop his vicious rush.

He stopped himself, body straining as if he'd hit an invisible barrier. “What?” he bit out, with the force of a blow behind the word.

“Liannan,” Mae repeated, trying to make her voice so light it couldn't disturb the fragile equilibrium Nick seemed to have reached.

“Kissed Alan,” Nick said flatly.

It occurred to Mae now to wonder exactly what Liannan was to Nick. She knew that Liannan knew him. Anzu the demon had spoken about some kind of alliance, the three demons together, and Alan had said once that Liannan acted like Nick was her boyfriend.

Perhaps he missed her. She was his own kind.

“Nick,” Mae said. “Are you jealous?”

He broke and ran, slamming the door, and Mae charged after him. He was so much faster than she was, she heard him knocking into or possibly leaping over the stair rail before she was at the bedroom door. She ran after him anyway, knowing by the crashing where he was headed, and she was in the kitchen by the time he strode into the garden and lifted a hand.

Dark clouds raced from the corners of the sky to cover
the sun, jagged stitches of lightning bright against the shadowed heavens. There was no thunder, only silence, until Nick spoke.

“Liannan!” he shouted. “Come and face me!”

Lines broke the ground in every direction from the spot where Nick stood, as if he was at the center of an earthquake. The demon's circle formed around him violently, dust rising so Mae almost lost sight of him.

Nick's entire backyard was a demon's circle, and flames were licking and leaping from every line. She didn't dare go outside.

The balefire was burning high, making the whole circle glow, shimmering against the garden fence and turning the air above it smoky and hazy. If any of the neighbors looked out of their windows, questions were going to be asked and the fire brigade was going to be called.

At the other edge of the demon's circle, under the gnarled yew tree, there were two shapes forming.

That wasn't right.

Liannan and Anzu rose together out of the flickering balefire, not touching but with their bodies curved toward each other. Liannan was as beautiful as she had been last night but much less soft, skin the stark white of alabaster and hair flying, a being of stone and scarlet.

Anzu's wings were ragged and black, like the wings of a moth in the night. The bright red of Liannan's hair showed through his tattered wings, as if he was already enveloped in her fire and burning away.

Nick stood in the whirlwind of fire and wings, the still, dark center of the demon's circle. They drew in toward him at once.

He stood waiting for them, his shoulders held stiff. Mae recognized his stance. He was ready to fight.

Liannan got to him first, her long arms reaching out. The gesture looked sinister, like a mermaid reaching up to pull a man into dark, drowning waters.

She twined ice-pale arms around Nick's neck and kissed him. She took her time doing it, her body clinging to and wrapped around Nick's at the same time, like seaweed, like ropes. Nick stood still.

The kiss looked like Liannan was laying claim.

After a long moment, the demon pulled away and took Nick's hands in hers, cutting them and hardly seeming to notice as blood welled from the cuts. She was looking up at him, her eyes huge and tranquil, shining like deep, cold pools.

“I knew you'd call for us,” she murmured.

After a beat Nick said, “I don't remember calling for him.”

Anzu's wings snapped restlessly. His whole body seemed caught in constant turbulent motion, mouth curling and fingers closing on nothing, in movements that reminded Mae of a bird's talons. She didn't know why until she realized that the dark points his nails ended in actually were a bird's talons, obscene on the ends of his long, beautiful hands.

He would have been model-beautiful in a golden and angular way if it had not been that your eye could not settle on him long enough to appreciate any one feature. His beauty gave Mae vertigo.

He said, “I thought I'd come to collect.”

Nick tipped his head back. “Yeah?” he asked, casual. “And what do you want?”

Anzu moved in like a bright moth to a dark flame. Liannan detached herself from Nick slightly, one icicle-sharp hand
lingering on his wrist and drawing blood. They circled him for a moment, watching and waiting, utterly silent. Three demons together.

“What do we want?” Anzu breathed, mouth curving, cruel as a scimitar or a hunting bird's beak.

He leaned against Nick, talon-tipped hand flat against Nick's chest. Nick did not back down or look away, and Anzu's pale eyes shone, like crystal caves filling with sunlight and refracting it into a thousand shards of brightness.

The dark veil of his wing hid them both from Mae's sight for a moment, the edges of the feathers shadowy, blurred in the rising magic. Then the wing drew away like a curtain as Anzu moved back. Whatever he had whispered or done in that hidden moment, Mae could not tell. Nick's face betrayed nothing.

Anzu's voice had more than an edge of anger to it now. “Only what we're owed!”

“And what's that?” Nick asked, his voice still level.

Anzu's eyes lowered, as if he was suddenly sleepy or had just had an extremely pleasant thought. He looked like a fairy-tale prince waiting for a princess's kiss to wake him up.

Through barely parted lips, he whispered a single hungry word. “Bodies.”

Liannan closed in now, as if they were taking it in turns to trap him. She kissed Nick again, this time light against his jaw, rows of sharp teeth glinting close to his skin.

“We kept our part of the bargain, didn't we, Hnikarr?” she asked. “You went into that baby and we guarded you. We came every time you called us at the Goblin Market. We came for you. Didn't we?”

“You did,” said Nick.

“Good,” Liannan murmured, as if she was a teacher incredibly pleased that her student had given her the right answer. She leaned her face into the curve of Nick's throat, not touching but close, her profile looking a little less like something carved on a coin. “I'll always come for you,” she whispered. “Even though you have no soul to share with me.”

Nick said nothing.

“You owe us,” Liannan reminded him sweetly. “You remember how cold it is. You won't leave us out in the cold.”

She kissed him again, on the line of his jaw, more a nip than a kiss. Her lips left a frosty mark with pink rising underneath, as if her mouth was so cold it burned.

Nick turned his face away.

“You could choose them, if you liked.” She reached up and tried to turn his face toward her, icicles iridescent in his black hair, bloody lines scored along his cheek. “Choose me any body you want.”

“It's not like you can keep them long,” Nick said, still looking away, his jaw tight. “The bodies die. Someone will notice if I spread death everywhere I go.”

Mae sat down heavily on the back doorstep and hugged her knees to her chest, chilled and alone, the only human there.

“Let them notice,” Liannan murmured. “Wear death like a garment. It looks good on you.” She smiled. “Always did.”

“I agree with Hnikarr. We want someone with no family,” whispered Anzu. The scarlet feather patterns in his golden hair seemed to melt and spread like blood, dyeing his hair almost red. “Someone with no friends. Someone who won't ever be missed by anyone at all.”

He arched his neck, putting himself on display, and
the balefire circled his head and made his face shine as it changed.

The bones shifted, his face went thinner and paler, his eyes turned blue. His hair was really red now.

Nick made a low sound in the back of his throat.

Anzu looked like Alan and not like Alan, the planes and angles of his face a little too sharp, the red hair the heavy dark color of arterial blood. He looked like a cruel, beautiful version of Alan, and he smiled a smile that wasn't Alan's at all.

“I want this body,” said Anzu.

Nick snarled,
“No.”

“Drop it,” Liannan told Anzu sharply.

That didn't have the desired effect at all. Nick wheeled on her.

“And you,” he snarled. “What were you doing last night at the Goblin Market? What were you doing with my
brother
?”

Liannan looked at Nick and then, after a long pause, she laughed. She shook out her hair, and it flared up like a gust of flame. Her hair stayed suspended in midair, ignoring petty human concerns like gravity. The ends shimmered with what really seemed to be fire, sparking along the strands, burning but never burning out.

“He didn't tell you?” she asked, and smiled, displaying a sharp row of teeth.

“I suggest you tell me,” said Nick. “Now.”

“By your brother,” Liannan continued, her voice soft, “who do you mean?”

“You know who I mean!”

Liannan moved away, almost dancing, hair a burning banner. “Even the bodies aren't related, are they? Different parents. Not a single drop of blood shared. And you are not this
body. You are not human. So how is he your brother? In what
possible
sense
is he your brother?”

Nick strode over lines glowing with magic as if they weren't there. He grasped the demon's burning hair in his hands, handled it like a whip, and wrapped it tight around her long neck.

He leaned down to whisper in her ear. Loose strands of her hair rose where there was no wind and opened up bloody stripes on his cheek, but he did not relax his strangling grip. He did not seem to notice.

“In what sense?” he repeated, his voice colder than hers. “In the sense that he's mine!”

“I have had enough!” Anzu shouted. “Stop trying to talk him around, Liannan. Accept the fact that he's a traitor.”

“It's all right if Nick wants to have a pet,” said Liannan. “It's not unheard of, you know.”

“Have a pet?” Anzu echoed. “He
is
a pet! He could do anything in the world, he could rule the humans, he could slaughter every one of the magicians who feed us on crumbs, he could help his own kind! And instead, what does he do?”

Nick didn't spare Anzu even a glance. He was still looking at Liannan.