The Demon's Covenant (49 page)

Dead center of the red triangle was a magicians' circle, already shimmering with power.

Nick was inside it with his black head bowed, his shoulders tense, as if he wanted to spring in a thousand different directions
at once and could not move. He was already trapped, already betrayed.

She was too late.

The Obsidian Circle was massed behind the statue, in front of the town hall. Through the floodlights and the shimmer of magic, Mae could make out Gerald's and Laura's faces; every magician was watching the demon with glittering eyes, waiting for his downfall.

Even Seb at the back looked flushed and excited, carried away with victory.

Alan and Merris Cromwell, standing on opposite sides of the magicians' circle from each other and far away from Gerald and his followers, did not look victorious.

Mae, clinging to the black bars of the church fence as if they were the bars of her prison, could not see Merris's face. Alan was farther away but lit by the white glow of magic; he looked intent. The floodlights were streaming brightness behind him, and he was casting a long shadow.

From his shimmering trap, from the crackling heart of magic, Nick was staring at his brother.

“Liannan,” Gerald said softly, the only voice in that nighttime square. “Liannan, we have caught a traitor for you. Come bind him. Wrap him in thorns. Give him a heart and shatter it like ice. Show him what you do to those who turn against their own kind!”

Liannan came like light, magic forming her shape against the night as if she had been written in by stars. It hurt to look at her, and then the dazzle dimmed so that Mae could make out the red of her hair, which seemed today to be blending with shadows, like blood in night waters, and the cruel curve of her mouth.

It still hurt to look at her.

“Look at you,” Liannan whispered, sliding her hands up Nick's arms to his shoulders in an embrace that drew blood. “My darling. What a fool you are.”

Nick did not even look at her.

She put her mouth to his ear and said with a delighted laugh, “How you're going to suffer.”

Liannan stepped away from Nick and surveyed him like a warlord of old might have looked over some beautiful bleeding captive, with appreciation for her prize and her own prowess in winning it.

“You want to be Nicholas Ryves?” she asked. “So be it.”

She lifted one of her knife-sharp hands. Light came bright and sharp from her upraised hand, like tame lightning, and it crawled up Nick's body and wound him in chains.

The chains had jagged edges, like the shapes of lightning bolts Mae had seen in pictures, hurled down from above by angry ancient gods. Nick was bleeding from a dozen places and his breath was coming in sharp, controlled pants that said he was in pain.

His eyes were still fastened on Alan. There was no warmth in those eyes, no capacity for forgiveness or understanding.

That inhuman gaze never wavered.

“I bind you to this body, Nicholas Ryves, to live within its limits and die its death,” said Liannan, and a whip of lightning curled around Nick's neck as she laughed. “However soon that death may come.”

She was almost dancing around Nick, slowly, bone-white feet flashing below a swinging skirt. She stopped dancing for a moment to stand on her tiptoes and speak in Nick's ear again.

“You are at my mercy,” she told him. “And you know exactly how much I have of that.”

Then she turned away from him and began to walk along the periphery of the circle, hair streaming. She was looking at Alan as she passed him, at Merris, at the magicians.

“I bind your powers to the exact limits agreed on in our bargain,” she declared, and Nick's lightning chains flickered out like candles, leaving him bloody in the dark. “Now,” Liannan said, lifting her chin, “I want out of this circle. I have kept our bargain, and I want my reward.”

Gerald raised a hand, and the boundaries of the circle, the ghosts of the stones that formed the true obsidian circle, vanished. The magic began to recede like the tide.

“You have kept our bargain,” he told her carelessly, his eyes on Nick. “And you will be rewarded. You'll get a body for this.”

Liannan gave him a wolf's grin.

“Oh, I hope so,” she said. “But I wasn't talking to you.”

The magic was dwindling and Liannan with it, her bright, cruel beauty paling like a ghost about to disappear at dawn.

“One thousand nights of life,” she said, closing her eyes and reaching out her hand.

“One thousand days of life,” said Merris Cromwell. She reached into the dying heart of magic and grasped Liannan's hand. The demon's icicle fingers stabbed straight through, coming out the other side of Merris's palm like bloody prisms showing a thousand different shades of scarlet.

Merris screamed. And Liannan vanished, melting away into shadows from the feet up, the last thing to disappear the icicles piercing Merris's hand, leaving behind only a third-tier demon's mark in the hollow of her palm.

Merris's spine arched as if it was breaking and being reformed, her hair flying out in what seemed to be a sudden wind. It settled back over her shoulders shot with red. Like blood in night waters.

When she lifted her face, her eyes were black.

Beside Mae in the darkness, Sin made a small sound and buried her face in her hands.

“You haven't answered me,” Liannan remarked in a torn, crackling version of Merris Cromwell's voice. “Have I kept our bargain?”

She looked straight across the darkness where the circle had been, past Nick.

“You have kept our bargain perfectly,” Alan told her. “How do you like your reward?”

Liannan laughed at the look on the magicians' faces. She lifted her arms like a dancer, enjoying the new body, taking steps that looked like a dancer's steps.

Merris's body looked less like Merris's body every passing moment, the face growing young and smooth around those night-dark eyes. Liannan unwrapped the shawl from around her shoulders, and Mae noticed for the first time as its crimson folds fluttered to the ground that it was not held in place by Merris's talisman brooch.

“The magicians were offering me bodies I would not have to share,” she said, drawing closer to Nick. “But I don't mean to complain. I trust you'll be grateful, Hnikarr.”

“Sharing with Merris means the body lasts,” Alan said, smiling at her nerve. Liannan laughed delightedly back at him. “And there are other benefits to a willing host. How do you like the voice?”

“Maybe I'll learn to sing,” Liannan in Merris said, already dancing.

She circled Nick, her hand outstretched but not quite touching Nick's bloody arm as she went by. Her fingers looked longer than they should have in the floodlights, casting a pale shadow like the ghosts of her icicles, and then she went to stand before Alan.

“What can I say?” she asked him, watching him as if he was some amazing new game.

Alan kept smiling at her. “Whatever you like.”

“Alan Ryves, it was a pleasure doing business with you,” Liannan told him. “Feel like making another bargain with me so that I'll help you fight? I wouldn't ask for much. Just a little, little thing. Nothing you couldn't spare.”

The magicians all went tense. Gerald glanced back at them, warning, and none of them moved or spoke a word.

“I think I've made enough bargains with you,” Alan said.

“You may live to regret that,” Liannan told him, and she put long, ice-pale hands on Alan's arms, leaned up, and kissed him. She looked at him as if she was fond of him and added, still smiling, “Then again, you may not live.”

Alan just nodded. Liannan whirled away, black and crimson dress flaring with her mingled hair, shadows and blood, back to Nick.

“I told you I'd be on your side if I got an offer,” she said. “A warning, though. Anzu won't be happy. Be careful. He knows how to hurt you. He knows you almost as well as I do.”

“And you know me so well,” said Nick, speaking for the first time. His voice was low and rough. It sounded far less human than hers.

“I think so,” Liannan whispered. “Come away with me.
There's a wood outside, and a town full of people to play with. Come be mine again.”

“No,” said Nick. “I have these people to deal with first.”

He looked at Alan again, cold and intent, his attention like a single-minded avalanche, impossible to escape or survive.

Liannan just laughed at him, carefree and unchained. “Come be mine later, then,” she said, and spun away.

She came straight for the side street where they were crouching. Mae felt Sin flinch and lean against her for sheer animal comfort, both of them staring at Liannan with huge, terrified eyes as she went by. Liannan cast them an amused look, obviously highly entertained by Sin's horror and pain, and blew a kiss as she passed.

She was gone. There was only one demon left standing in the market square.

“Liannan seems to feel she got a fair price in your little bargain,” Nick said to Alan, his voice terribly quiet.

He advanced on Alan like a predator, prowling with his eyes empty of anything but hunger.

“Later,” said Alan quietly.

“No,”
Nick snarled.

He stopped in front of Alan, close enough to cut his throat. His stare was a challenge now, his voice out of control, ragged at the edges, consumed with fury.

“We discussed this last night. I'm a demon,” Nick murmured to his brother. “And that means my cooperation comes at a price. I want it.
Now
.”

Alan shut his eyes, as if he did not want to see the blow coming. “All right.”

Nick, don't
, Mae thought, curled up tight between Sin and
her mother, limbs frozen, heart going far too fast.
Oh Nick, please don't
.

Nick slid to his knees.

The magicians were moving now, puzzled and muttering. Even Gerald looked uneasy, confused and lost. Nick curled his hand around the back of Alan's knee. There was a moment of stillness, as if everything had been paused so the world could change.

Then Nick was on his feet, moving fast and light as a cat in the night, barely seen before he appeared where wanted to be, which was beside his brother.

Alan moved to align himself with Nick and face the magicians. He moved smoothly with his weight on both legs, without a trace of pain.

“That was your
price
?” Gerald demanded, more bewildered than angry. “That was what you wanted, in exchange for all your power? What good is—”

Nick interrupted him by snapping his fingers. The shadows lingering around the edges of the floodlights in the square writhed and took shape at the demon's command, became two wavering creatures made of darkness, shadow panthers that came slinking into the light and winding around the brothers' legs.

I bind your powers to the exact limits agreed on in our bargain
, Liannan had said.

The bargain she had made with Alan, when Mae had called her up and left them alone together. Not Gerald.

The bargain Alan had told Nick about last night, after Mae had left.

Nick smiled a demon's smile, slow and ravenous. “Who said anything about all my power?”

21
Bitter Fruit

Mae saw the exact moment that fury crashed through Gerald's patience and shattered it. He lifted a hand, and wind went blasting in Nick and Alan's direction. The other magicians took their cues from him and the murmurs of spell casting were suddenly all around, half the circle drawing back for what Mae guessed was a spot of demon summoning, the other half advancing with magic in their hands. Nick and Alan drew their weapons.

“Now,” said Mae, and grabbed Sin's shoulder for emphasis. “Go alert your archers. Tell the rest of them to come out in the open.”

Sin's voice sounded faint and stunned, but there was a smile in it. “If you go out,” she said, “they'll follow you.”

Mae blinked. “Right.” She stood up and dusted off her jeans, looking helplessly at Jamie and Annabel, who stood up with her. “Right, then,” Mae said, and strode out into the market square.