Pale Demon th-9 Read online

  For an instant, our eyes locked, and then, after shaking his head, he threw the spell at Al.

  What is he doing?

  “Rhombus!” I shouted, and Pierce’s curse hit, pinging through my awareness as I slapped his magic aside. It went spinning into the broken remains of Al’s kitchen, and my anger peaked.

  “Are you addled?” Pierce yelled, his blue eyes showing his anger as he stood, his hands bereft of magic. “What the blazes are you doing?”

  At my feet, Al groaned, and I felt a twinge on my awareness as a red-sheened sheet of ever-after coated him, dropping away to leave him looking half dead but no longer bleeding.

  “I had him!” Pierce shouted, arms waving. “I bloody had him, and you knock me away? Deflect my curse? What’s wrong with you, woman! I could have been free!”

  My mouth dropped open, and I glanced down at Al gazing up at me. Holy crap, had I just saved Al’s life? “Uh,” I stammered as Al levered himself up onto one elbow, his head drooping to the floor and his dark hair covering his eyes.

  “I had one chance!” Pierce shouted, shaking as he stood by the fireplace. “And—”

  “Septiens,” Al wheezed, and Pierce collapsed, seizing as if having hit an electrical field.

  “Al! Wait!” I shouted, seeing Pierce writhe.

  “And you blew it,” the demon said, ignoring me as he staggered to his feet before the small hearth. His red, goat-slitted eyes fixed on Pierce. “Killing me when I’m down…not very sporting.”

  My heart pounded, and I remembered the ugliness leaking out of Pierce’s hand. Pierce was a demon killer, and I was basically a demon. Would he try to kill me next? I had to believe no, but I hadn’t thought he’d try to kill Al, either. I hadn’t thought at all, apparently.

  “Let him go,” I pleaded as Pierce shook, his neck muscles straining as he tried to breathe. “Al!” I shouted, smacking the demon’s shoulder. It wasn’t hard, just enough to get his attention.

  For a long second, Al looked at me, his goat-slitted eyes searching mine. Then Pierce’s breath rasped in, and his entire body went flaccid. Panting, he lay on the floor and didn’t move.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Al said, looking disheveled as he leaned against the fireplace and eyed his kitchen. Half-burned wood was scattered on the floor, and the book in the corner was going out. Seeing it, Al snarled and muttered a word at Pierce. Pierce screamed, shocked into pain again as his back arched. “Selling him might pay for this mess,” Al finished, his expression ugly.

  I reached out to protest, then hesitated. Pierce had saved my life, but he had tried to kill Al. “Stop,” I finally whispered, touching Al’s sleeve, but what I was thinking was, Why did I help you? If I’d let Pierce kill him, all my troubles would have been over. Except they wouldn’t have been. Al was my protection in a world that I was probably going to be trapped in very soon.

  Al frowned, and he looked at me as if only now seeing the dirt, grime, and bruises. He twitched, and I heard Pierce collapse behind me. My gut unclenched as it grew quiet, Pierce’s breath sobbing in and out in relief. Part of me was angry, part of me wanted to lift Pierce up and wash off his face. I didn’t know which part was stronger.

  Moving slowly, Al staggered to the stone bench circling the center fire pit, coughing on the dust as he began arranging sticks for a fast fire. His fingers were shaking. It was dark, and I looked for a candle to light. All I found were puddles of wax, spattered like blood. At a loss as to what to do, I looked at the devastation, then went to help Pierce.

  “You did this?” I asked as I pulled him upright against the broken remains of a bookcase, and Pierce winced, his eyes still closed. The shelves were leaning askew, and a thick tome fell, glancing against his shoulder. Still, he didn’t open his eyes, but pushed me away, grimacing. I’d seen them fight before. Almost a year ago, Pierce had gone into this familiar partnership with the intent to kill Al. I hadn’t thought he might actually do it.

  “He wishes.” Al’s tone was flat, and I turned to see his thick fingers nursing an infant fire in the circular fire pit. “He’s a cowardly runt.”

  The new flame flickered, lighting Al’s features into an ugly mask, and from Pierce came a ragged “I utilized my resources to the fullest, demon spawn.”

  “You’re a bloody coward!” Al shouted, then coughed. “Trying to kill me when I was down.”

  I stood between them, not knowing who to help. He had tried to kill Al. “What happened?” I asked, remembering the deadly, world-killing curses that Al had drawn through me. My God, the power they could use and didn’t…I was like a child playing, and I suddenly felt both scared and stupid.

  Al looked up, his wavering gaze landing immediately on Pierce. “You. Go,” he said, pointing, and before Pierce could do more than widen his eyes, he vanished.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed, and Al pushed himself up. He looked beaten, and his clothes were dusty, showing blood and rips, though the skin under them was unmarked.

  “He’s alive,” the demon muttered, dropping a chunk of what had once been his chair on the flames. “I simply shoved him in a box for when I decide what to do with him. He tried to kill me. Please tell me you aren’t still clinging to the idea that he lo-o-o-o-oves you?” he mocked. “That witch is a demon killer. You’re simply lower on his list than I am. Grow up and accept it.”

  I didn’t want to believe it, and I searched the floor, hoping I hadn’t cracked my scrying mirror. Pierce had said he loved me, and I truly believed he hadn’t been lying. But the memory of him standing over Al, hurt and unconscious, with a black curse flickering over his aura, ready to kill him…Could I afford that kind of blind trust?

  Depressed, I picked my way through the devastation to get my scrying mirror, breathing shallowly to avoid the dust. Feeling awkward, I sat beside Al, the slight curve of the bench between us. “You don’t look good,” I said, my thoughts on Vivian. Trent would tell them what had happened. Jenks would be angry that he hadn’t been there. Ivy would be ticked because Trent hadn’t done anything, and Vivian would have another chapter in her “Let’s Shun Rachel” book. Even better, I was going to stink like burnt amber when I got back. If I got back.

  “I don’t look good?” Al wiggled his fingers at his own scrying mirror, just out of reach, and I leaned over to get it, feeling a dizzying amount of other selves trying to get through to him as I handed it over. He wasn’t wearing his usual gloves, and it made him look vulnerable.

  Exhaling heavily, Al put his thick-fingered, shaking hand on the mirror and it fogged up. “You say I don’t look good, but you’re the one in trouble.”

  My gaze went from his foggy mirror to my crystalline one. “But I stopped him!”

  “Not that,” Al said, and he let his mirror slide to the bench. Sighing, he rubbed his forehead, leaving a smear of black ash. “I’ve temporally blocked the collective because I can’t answer that many calls at once, but pretty soon, I’m going to be entertaining. Lots and lots of irate, angry demons in my tiny little living room. It will be embarrassing. My reputation will be utterly ruined. I don’t have enough chairs,” he finished lightly, turning his lip in and chewing on it.

  “You mean Trent?” I said, standing up and distancing myself with the excuse of gathering bits of broken furniture. “I told you already, I didn’t teach him anything.” But a sliver of worry had started to wiggle in me. Trent had summoned a demon. I hadn’t taught him that, but they wouldn’t believe me.

  Al chuckled, low and long, and I stifled a shiver. “If only it was that,” he said wryly. “I know you’re driving to your little witches’ meeting. Tell me you weren’t in St. Louis yesterday.”

  Oh God. I’m in trouble. “The arch falling was not my fault,” I babbled, the broken chair leg in my hand clattering to the floor. “It was Trent! He did it, not me!”

  “Damn my dame. It was you,” Al said, grimacing as if he’d eaten something sour.

  “It was Trent,” I said, wondering how he knew the arch had fallen, but my
voice lacked conviction, and I became more worried yet when Al wouldn’t look at me. Nervous, I tucked my rank hair behind an ear and fidgeted.

  “I don’t know what kind of spin I can put on this,” Al finally said, his eyes on his dirty fingers and his shoulders slumped.

  “Al?” I said, really concerned. He looked up, and I blanched at his empty expression.

  “And then this afternoon,” he said, reaching out to rub my hair between his fingers. I didn’t pull away, and he leaned forward to sniff it. “You were in the badlands of Arizona. Yes?” he asked, looking up at me from around his sweat-soaked bangs.

  I didn’t feel so good, and I sat down, a hand to my middle. “This is about Ku’Sox, isn’t it,” I said, more of a statement than a question.

  He made a sighing groan, and I knew it was. “Then you’ve met,” he said, his thoughts clearly on the day-walking demon. “Funny, you don’t look dead.” His hand touched my chin, shifting it so he could see where I’d been pixed, the blisters itchy and red. “I’m surprised you survived the little designer dump. I nearly didn’t. At least he doesn’t know who you are yet.”

  I winced, and Al’s hand fell away. “He knows, doesn’t he,” Al said flatly, and I nodded, making the connection now between Ku’Sox and the shadowy figure I’d seen fighting Al before I’d come over and found Pierce ready to finish him off. Maybe I shouldn’t have banished Ku’Sox to the ever-after.

  “He lived my entire life in eight heartbeats,” I admitted. I tried not to whine, but I knew by Al’s “So what?” rise to his eyebrows that it was there.

  “Bet that was fun,” he said, and I wondered if Al could do the same and hadn’t, knowing it for the gross violation of self that it was. Not rape, but worse almost. “That adds something a little unexpected to the mix,” he said as an afterthought.

  “Sorry,” I said, and Al slumped, rubbing his forehead with his stubby fingers. From behind us, the tapestry finally became quiet, and the silence was almost creepier than the weird burbling sound it had been making. Licking my lips, I stood. “What is he?” I asked. A shiver went through me, and I wondered if it was the need to feel like I wasn’t alone, that I wasn’t a freak. “Is he like me?” I asked, lips barely moving.

  Al’s eyes were glowing in the light of the fire when I turned to him, the demon seeming to be gaining strength as the flames warmed him. Still he said nothing, and after dropping the broken seat of an upholstered chair on the fire, I stood next to the weary demon, seeing him slowly regain his strength and knowing that we were really, really in trouble. “Al?” I asked again.

  “He’s you.”

  Twin feelings of fear and excitement lit through me, but the fear won. If he was me and he was bad, then everyone would think I was bad by association.

  “A link between demons and witches,” Al continued, nodding to acknowledge that I realized what this meant. “But not made by Trent’s father. Ku’Sox Sha-Ku’Ru was our attempt to bridge the gap when we found out what the elves had done. It didn’t work,” he said sourly, “and we decided not to do that…anymore. He’s missing something.”

  “Yeah, he looks a little crazy,” I said dryly.

  “Crazy? Perhaps. He’s missing something from his soul,” Al said, and my lips parted.

  “That might explain him eating pixies,” I said, and Al cocked his head at me, the glimmer of his usual bluster returning.

  “Ku’Sox was eating pixies?”

  Cold, I wrapped my arms around myself and sat down while Al built the fire higher, his chairs burning with the smell of varnish and burnt amber. I shrugged, then scratched at a little welt under my shirt. “Trent thought we were in danger.” My fingers slowed, and I tucked a foot under my leg as I gazed into the fire. “The idiot called Ku’Sox to get rid of the pixies. He showed up as a bird, and when Ku’Sox started eating them”—I looked up at Al—“I hit him with a curse. It sort of got his attention.”

  “You’re a bright girl for someone so stupid,” Al said, and I frowned, affronted, as he got to his feet and unsteadily went to his bookshelf, nudging the books scattered on the floor until finding the one he wanted and retrieving it. “I told you to take that elf firmly in hand, my itchy witch.” Al sighed as he sat back down, closer to the fire than before. Square reading glasses had appeared on Al’s nose, and he squinted through them as he turned the pages of the book on his lap. “That new mark of his makes him immune to everything.” His eyes met mine, making me shiver despite my anger. “Everything, Rachel. He’s probably the only person on the planet who could free Ku’Sox Sha-Ku’Ru without getting killed in the process.”

  “Free him?” I asked. Al made a questioning face at me, and I figured it out. The arch falling, the power I’d shoved back into someone. Ku’Sox saying he’d been gone for two thousand years, locked in the ground. “You mean Ku’Sox was imprisoned under the arch? Trent didn’t summon him, he freed him?” I said, aghast.

  Al had gone back to his book. “I told you…”

  “To take him firmly in hand, yeah,” I said, seething. Stupid on top of stupid. God! I was ready to smack Trent into next week. “But he loosed Ku’Sox before I gave him his freedom,” I said, remembering the blood coming from Trent’s ears and nose. Maybe Trent was stronger than I gave him credit for.

  Al made an uninterested sound and turned a page. “And of course the first thing Ku’Sox did was find me.”

  “Because you’re my teacher,” I said, and Al laughed, the sound ending in a short cough.

  “No,” he said, clearing his throat and waving his hand. I shivered as the dust in the air fell like rain, and I brushed it off. “Not everything is about you, itchy witch. Ku’Sox and I go back a long way. The son of a bitch completely yanked Asia out of my grip just when things were becoming interesting. I couldn’t get a familiar there for nearly a hundred years until Newt finally trapped him and tucked him safely away in reality. The demon is a genius.”

  Ku’Sox was Al’s rival? Great. “And he can be under the sun,” I prompted, wondering if he had meant Ku’Sox was a genius, or Newt.

  Al blew the dust off a page and turned it. “That was the entire point of creating him,” he said distantly, as if it bothered him and there was nothing he could do about it.

  I wanted to go, but I thought he was working on something for me. The drip, drip, drip of the blood falling from the silent tapestry was loud, and sullenly I said, “I’m sorry.”

  A short guffaw broke from Al, and he looked at me. “That makes me feel so-o-o much better. I’ll be sure to tell everyone that. My student freed her familiar, who let loose a demon we didn’t want to kill and just barely managed to imprison? Newt will be most vexed. Honestly, you told me you were going to be smarter. This isn’t it.”

  “It’s not like you ever tell me anything,” I said sourly. “If you’d said, ‘Don’t go to St. Louis and free the crazy demon under the arch,’ I wouldn’t have.” Nervousness pulled me to my feet, and I went to the bookcase, shelving the scattered books one by one in no particular order—which might be a problem since none of them had names. “And I didn’t free Ku’Sox. Trent did. What Trent does is not my responsibility.”

  A hint of deviltry was in Al’s voice when he asked me, “You severed all responsibility?”

  “Yes,” I said as I shelved another book. “One hundred percent.”

  “You didn’t even keep a call-back clause?” Al asked, then waved his hand and answered his own question. “Of course not. You’ve had the worst upbringing of any demon I’ve seen.”

  I turned, the book I held pulling the heat from me through the binding. “I’m not a demon,” I said, and Al stood to bring me the book he was looking at, splayed open on his palm.

  “Which emancipation clause did you use? This one, right?”

  I leaned over to look at the curse he was pointing to, and though it was in a different book, I could tell it was the same. “That looks like it.”

  Al smiled, and seeing it, a knot of worry eased. For the first
time, that awful smile of his made me feel…good. “Trent is bound to come to your aid when you ask. Did you know that?” Al snapped the book shut and shelved it beside the one I’d just placed there. “I think that puts him in a slightly higher standing, thus freeing you from responsibility for his actions.”

  “Really?” I said, willing to give Trent the high ground if he’d get in trouble, not me.

  His pace a jaunty limp, Al crossed his kitchen, kicking bits of rock and wood out of his way. “I do believe your do-gooder tendencies have finally come home to save you,” he said as he pulled a chest from the wreckage, opened it, and fingered through whatever was inside. “Trent’s in trouble, not you. Go back to your little scavenger hunt.”

  “It’s not a scavenger hunt,” I said indignantly. “I’m trying to clear my name.”

  “Whatever.” Al dramatically waved a silver amulet. “You’re taking the runt with you.”

  “Pierce?” I came up from the floor with another book in my hand, the image of him standing over Al, ready to kill him, sifting through my mind. “He just tried to kill you!”

  “Yes, but for all his anger, he still thinks he loves you.” Al squinted at the black jewel centered in the amulet, muttering a word of Latin to make the stone glow a brilliant silver, and then darken. “You’re going to need protection if Ku’Sox is free to come and go. A demon killer is just the thing to keep you safe. I’d do it myself, but I don’t want any taint of interference to mar our agreement that if you can’t get your shunning removed, you abandon reality.”

  “Al,” I protested, thinking my strolling into the coven meeting with a witch they’d buried alive for black magic wasn’t going to look good. “He’s going to get me labeled a black witch.”

  Al looked at me over his glasses, almost pouting. “You’re going to be labeled a black witch anyway, love.” He smiled, snapping the chest closed and dropping it down the stairway to his herb cellar, to shatter by the sound of it.

  Remembering the look of fury on Pierce’s face, directed at me, I shook my head, reaching for books as fast as I could place them, as if helping Al clean up might win me some favor. “I do not want Pierce tagging along on this magic carpet ride.” But just yesterday, I had.