The Demon’s Surrender (30 page)
Read The Demon’s Surrender Online
Authors: Sarah Rees Brennan
She was listening for Anzu’s silence so intently she almost did not register the slight noise. Her instincts saved her; her hands were on her knives before she knew why they were there. Nick, who had pushed open the door, was an instant too late drawing his sword.
The magicians were waiting for them. Sin leaped back as Laura sent a bolt of black fire shimmering from her hands. It hit Nick head-on and he stumbled, going down to his knees. Sin ducked down and darted to his side, her hand under his elbow, and tried to get him up. Then a crow launched itself at Sin’s eyes from the ceiling, and she spun away from Nick, throwing her knife like a javelin and pinning the bird against the door frame.
The illusion changed and the magician turned from bird to man, slumping on the threshold, and black fire came from two directions. Sin threw herself down on the dead body.
While she was down there, she retrieved her knife. When she rose to her feet again, she saw that Nick had fallen and was slumped against the door, his face slack and young and defenseless.
It had been that easy for the magicians to get the jump on them. It would be this easy to die.
There were four magicians left alive in the flat, Sin saw. She should leave Nick and run, but Nick was Alan’s little brother, the person he loved best in the world. Nick was her ally.
Sin stepped over and in front of Nick with both knives at the ready.
She deflected one fireball and hit the wall hard, jarring her arm up to the shoulder. She thought Laura was the leader of this expedition. If she could just get to Laura—
One of the other magicians crashed into her hurt shoulder, his burning-bright fingers sending a sizzling line of pain up along her arm. His hand pinned her wrist against the wall, and her fingers convulsed open. The knife slipped from her numb hand and clattered to the floor. Sin lunged at him with her other knife, driving it home, but her aim was off and the knife stuck in his rib.
Black fire exploded behind Sin’s eyes, and she slid down the wall. She hit the floor too hard, cracking her forehead against it, and watched three sets of feet approach as blood rushed in her ears.
One set of feet exploded in ash and bones. Darkness washed over Sin’s vision, and her hand clenched on the ash carpeting the floor, trying to force herself up and into consciousness, trying to understand what has happening.
Dimly, she saw Laura’s heels moving past her eyes, the sound of the shoes echoing in her ears. She could not even lift her head, could not tell if she was saved or dead.
Darkness rushed back to stay, and the world was gone.
Sin’s head throbbed. Her arm was red agony, but the darkness had receded enough for her to be able to sit up, her palms sliding in ash and blood. The magicians were long gone, though one had left a charred shadow on the wall.
Behind her, Nick said, “Am I supposed to be grateful?”
Sin turned her head slowly, and saw Nick sitting up against the open door, one leg drawn up and an arm around it. There was blood on the side of his face, streaking vivid red from his black hair.
Anzu was crouched in the doorway, between Nick and the dead body. There was a smudge of blood and ashes on his cheek.
Sin was fairly certain that, unlike Nick, the blood on Anzu’s face was not his own.
Anzu shrugged in answer.
“I’m not,” Nick said. “You took my brother. There is nothing you can give me that will make up for that.”
There was a silence. Anzu glanced over at Sin, almost as if he expected her to say something, to disagree with Nick. Sin just stared at him, silent as a demon. She could not feel grateful either.
Anzu turned his gaze back to Nick.
“He left you, you know.”
“What?”
“Your precious brother,” Anzu said. “We don’t lie. You know I am telling you the truth he never did. He left you a thousand times. He used to lie in bed daydreaming about he and his father driving off, getting away from you when you were a nightmare child with black button eyes. He used to not be able to sleep because he was scared of you! He worked with his leg hurting, and he thought about how much easier the struggle would be if he didn’t have to feed you and your mother. He knew Mae preferred you, so many girls preferred you, and he resented you for that. He would get in the car and drive away and leave you for ten, fifteen minutes, driving out of the city never to come back, until he turned around. He meant to leave you. You took his life, and you took his chance at love, and he hated you, and he wanted to leave you!”
Nick swallowed, the flex of his throat terribly obvious and almost vulnerable with his head tipped back like that.
“But he didn’t leave.”
“No,” Anzu said. “But he wanted to. He should have. If he had, he’d still be alive, wouldn’t he? I didn’t kill him. You did. He would have lived, without you. He would have had a life, if only he hadn’t wasted his time trying to love something that could never love him back.”
Nick laughed. It was a truly horrible sound, with nothing human in it, echoing off the cement and the prison wires on the walkway. He sat against the door because he was too hurt to get up, bleeding beside the body of a magician and the body of his brother, and laughed a cold, awful laugh as if he was at the point of madness, as if he was on the edge of despair.
“Who knows?” said Nick Ryves, with nothing at all left to lose. “Maybe I did.”
He turned his face away from the demon in his brother. Anzu stared at him, furious and disgusted, and lifted a hand to hit Nick, as if too angry to simply strike out with magic.
He raised his right hand to hit Nick, and his own left hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. Protecting his brother.
Nick looked around. Sin shot to her feet, which a moment ago had seemed impossible, and all the blood rushed dizzily to her head, the world spun in a sickening whirl, and she did not care.
“Alan?” she whispered.
Anzu looked down at his hand as if it had betrayed him, and then his gaze turned inward, thoughtful, almost dreamy, as if he finally had something to look forward to.
“Oh, you’re going to be very sorry you did that,” he whispered in Alan’s stolen voice, and Sin knew it was for their benefit. He left Nick’s side, turning his back on him, and went over to Sin. “Say it again,” he commanded her.
She was not going to endanger herself by refusing the demon when he was furious. But Alan was in there. She would not throw his name in his face.
She looked into his black eyes, the crackling magic changing him, and tried to look past it all.
“Alan,” she said softly.
Anzu gave her a charming smile, bright and brilliant as stage lights.
“No.”
19
Mavis to the Rescue
A
NZU DISAPPEARED THEN, LIKE A GHOST AT DAWN, LEAVING
a shimmer in the air. Sin put out a hand to steady herself and then pulled it away, too late: She had already made a bloody handprint on the wall.
Nick eased himself to his feet and passed his hand over the magician’s body. It sparked, like the glints of fire in banked coals, and turned into more ash.
Neither of them spoke about Anzu, and what revenge he might be taking on Alan’s body. It would do no good. There was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
The sound of a door opening made them both go for their weapons, with what Sin suspected was a mutual sense of relief. Anything was better than thinking.
It wasn’t a magician. It was Mae. She had dark circles under her eyes, but she looked fairly calm.
Mae looked around at the hall, decorated with ashes and blood.
“I love what you’ve done with the place.”
“What are you doing here?” Nick demanded.
“Well,” Mae said. Her fingers played with the strap on her messenger bag, plucking at the strap so hard her knuckles were a little white, but she kept her head tipped back and looked Nick squarely in the eye. “I hit you. But you controlled me, so I’m glad I punched you,” she continued, and twisted the bag strap around again. “But I’m sorry I blamed you. I know you did everything you could to protect Jamie.”
Nick said, “Why are you here?”
“Oh,” Mae said. “Yes.”
She stopped fiddling with her bag strap and squared her shoulders, a habitual gesture of hers, trying to make herself larger than she was. One small girl, wanting to be able to take on the world.
“I came here so you could look at my face.”
Sin often had trouble reading Nick’s expressions, or being able to tell whether he had an expression at all. This one was pretty easy, though. He stared at Mae as if she was insane.
“What?”
“I know,” Mae said. “It’s pretty big of me, especially considering what an enormous jerk you are. But I’m a giver.”
“I think I may be missing a subtle human nuance here,” Nick told her. “What exactly are you trying to give me?”
“Emotional support,” Mae said firmly. “You said once that my face made you feel better. And I know that you are feeling worse than you ever have in your life, and I know it won’t help much. But in case it might help a little, I wanted to be here. For you. I thought you might want that too.”
“I want,” Nick began violently, and then checked himself. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I want to—I want to
not
hurt you.”
“That’s good,” Mae said, almost gently.
“Is it?” Nick asked. “It’s different from how I’ve wanted other people. I don’t want to hurt you, but at the same time I do. I want to hurt everybody, all the time. I told you. I meant it. I want to burn down the world.”
He meant it. The dark promise in his voice made Sin flinch where she stood in the doorway, not quite able to look away. Mae didn’t flinch.
“You don’t have to hurt me. I can just be here. I’ll talk at you, or if you don’t want me to talk, I’ll read a book and you can sharpen your weapons.” She paused, and when Nick didn’t speak, she said, still in that gentle-for-her voice that wasn’t quite gentle, “Or I can go.”
Mae waited another minute. Then she nodded her head, shifted her bag strap into position with some finality, and turned away.
“No,” said Nick, with an effort. “Don’t go.”
Mae turned back to him and smiled slowly. It was a hell of a smile, dimples deepening and dark eyes turning warm. It made her beautiful for a moment, even though she wasn’t.
That was what made Sin turn away at last. She remembered being that happy, wildly, stupidly happy, happy in spite of everything. She didn’t want to hate Mae.
She went into the kitchen, closed the door, and made herself a cup of coffee. She sat at the table and tried not to think about what she had lost.
She was slumped over her cold coffee, half-asleep, when the touch landed between her shoulder blades and found her suddenly alert, panic flooding her system with adrenaline. Like a prince waking a princess with his touch.
Like being that princess, and waking to find your prince a monster.
Alan stood under the skylight, and aside from the black eyes it was Alan, just like Alan, with none of the sinister beauty of a demon altering his very bones.
It was Alan, but he was so changed. The line of his mouth was thin and despairing. The pale morning filtered through the skylight was stark and unforgiving, illuminating every trace of pain.
There were gray locks threaded among the red curls she had run her hands through, and he looked so tired.
Sin jumped up from her chair, horror coursing cold through her veins. One of her hands gripped the chair back so she would not reach for him, and her other hand grasped a knife.
And then like a cloud passing away from the sun, Anzu stood before her, every inch radiating bright, awful demonic beauty.
“So I’ve had a thought,” said Anzu.
Something about his voice made Sin blink past the brilliance of golden hair and careless menace, and she realized he was on edge. Apparently torturing Alan hadn’t been fun enough for one day.
She reached for her other knife.
“They both abandoned me,” Anzu told her. “Hnikarr promised us bodies, and then he changed and took it all back, and I thought I’d take revenge. I’d take his little pet and he’d be furious and he’d come around, be like he used to be. I thought Liannan would help me. But she’s set on some voyage of discovery with her body, and Hnikarr, he won’t—nothing’s like I thought it would be.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Sin murmured, her whisper poison. He sounded like a child, a murderous child bewildered that pulling the wings off flies had not given him everything he wanted.
Only the flies were Alan: The toy he had taken to spite Nick, the toy he was breaking, was Alan.
“So I think we’ll just go away together, you and I,” Anzu said. “Somewhere lovely, with mountains. Do you like mountains? I do. The others like their humans so much. Hnikarr thinks being human, being loved, is so wonderful. I’ll try it. I can have it too. You can love me.”
“No,” Sin exclaimed. “I can’t.”
There it was, truth as harsh and simple as a demon’s, and she braced herself for his reaction.
He brushed it off. “I’ll do nice things for you,” he said. “Then you’ll love me.”
“That’s not how it works!”
“Why not?” Anzu demanded.
Sin’s palms pressed into the hilts of her knives. There was a restless, fierce brightness about Anzu that seemed as if any moment it would explode into violent delight or violent despair. Or just violence.
She wanted to ask
Why me?
but she knew why. He was lonely, in his demonic way, and she was there.
And Alan wanted her. Demons did tend to gravitate to the loved ones of those they possessed, because they could possess them next more easily and perhaps also because they were familiar, because the body still yearned toward them.
In the midst of horror and fear, Sin was almost happy. She hadn’t been sure of exactly what she meant to Alan. He’d never said. He’d said so many things, but not that.
If he could reach through a demon to her, though, that must mean he loved her a little.
“It won’t work,” Sin said. “Because you disgust me.”
She shouldn’t have said it, but the memory of how Alan had looked moments before with the skylight shining on the threads of gray in his hair rushed back and overwhelmed her. She stood, staring Anzu down, and when he stepped in toward her she lifted her chin and waited for whatever was coming.
Anzu hovered over her, golden in her vision like a gilded bird of prey about to strike. Then he touched her, fingers in her hair, pulling like talons, too tight.
“I’m tired of being alone,” he whispered. “I want you with me. Come to me like you did before—at the window, when you said you were here. I want you to mean here for me, not him. I want that for me. Tell me what I have to do to get that.”
“I can’t give you that,” Sin said. “I didn’t mean to give it to Alan. It isn’t something you decide. And I’m not going anywhere with you.”
The hold on her hair went tighter, pulling her head back.
“Why not?”
“I have a family,” Sin said. “I won’t leave them.”
“You might not have a family for long.” Anzu leaned in close enough to kiss her, and Sin turned her face away. He breathed, soft against her cheek: “Think about that.”
Sin relaxed all her muscles deliberately, made her body soft and yielding and exactly what he wanted it to be, as she knew so well how to do. His fingers loosened in her hair, and she turned toward him.
When he saw her face, it was his turn for all his muscles to go tense.
Sin stared at him coldly. “This is supposed to make me love you?”
“Maybe you will,” Anzu said. “If you’re all alone. You’ll have to love me then. Who else will there be?”
“Me,” Sin told him. “I’ll be there. You can’t make me become something I don’t want to be. And you sure as hell can’t make me love you.”
“Sure as hell,” Anzu murmured, and smiled, drawing even closer to her. The smile hurt to look at, and then it hurt when he touched it to her ear and she felt his lips curve and the faint hint of teeth. “How sure is that?” he asked. “I live in a place of eternal pain and cold, and now I have been abandoned even there. I won’t be alone here. I’m going to have you.”
“No,” Sin said, keeping her voice even. “You’re not.”
“I really shouldn’t have let those children go, should I?” Anzu asked musingly. “But there are so many ways to have power over you.”
He kissed her under her ear, lightly, as if they were lovers and he was teasing.
“There are plenty of other ways to change your mind. Ways that will hurt Hnikarr, too. And I would so love to do that. There’s that girl Hnikarr seems so taken with, or the little magician, of all the perverse things for him to take a fancy to. The girl is your rival, isn’t she? Would you like me to kill her?”
“No,” Sin said, her skin crawling and cold under his mouth.
“I’d like Hnikarr to be unhappy,” Anzu said, almost dreamily. “I would like for him to be alone. But perhaps you’re willing to bargain for the girl’s life?”
Sin thought of Mae dead. She closed her eyes and apologized to her friend. She would have fought to defend her, died to defend her if she had to, but this was different.
“No. I’m not currency.”
“I wonder who I have to kill to convince you,” said Anzu, and kissed her.
It was a swift, intense thing, like being made the center of a storm, those talon-feeling fingers tilting up her chin. His touch stung and the kiss burned: There was nothing of Alan in it at all.
Sin drew one of her knives and lunged, a swift thrust upward at his throat. The blade sliced through nothing more than colored shadows and smoke. Anzu disappeared like mist in the sun.
He left her standing in the kitchen with her blade drawn, and no enemy she could possibly fight.
Sin blundered out of the kitchen, not able to stay there for a moment longer. She hit her shoulder hard against the bathroom door and noticed distantly that things had come to such a pass that she was being clumsy.
She’d had some vague thought of washing her face, but she didn’t. She found herself just standing in the bathroom the same way she’d stood in the kitchen, feeling helpless and sick.
She climbed into the bathtub, back against the edge and her knees drawn up, cool porcelain propping her up on all sides. She rested her forehead on her knees and breathed in and out.
There was a sound in the hall. Sin’s head snapped up.
Nick was standing at the threshold of the room, arms up to grab the door frame. The black of his eyes were two chasms, the abyss looking back at her with intent to devour.
“I won’t have him going after Mae or Jamie,” Nick said. “If Anzu’s taken a shine to you, can’t you play along for a while?”
She should have thought of Nick overhearing. This flat was too small, the walls too thin. She should have known.
He prowled into the room, every movement he made a promise of violence. Sin thought again of Anzu, wearing his stolen body so lightly, like a weapon carelessly flourished. He could kill you, barely meaning to.