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Chapter 26
I remember only flashes. A face over mine, a face I'd seen in DMZ Sarajevo while a nightclub full of Nichtvren and other paranormals danced to the throbbing beat below and a hellhound dozed at his side. Round and heavy, square teeth that still looked sharp, cat-slit glowing eyes. The face wasn't human, for all that a human Magi's hand had once drawn it in a charcoal sketch. The eyes were too big, the teeth too square, and the expression was… inhuman.
Yelokel? The Hunter. Allied to Eve. Anubis, help me. "She was not to be harmed." A harsh unlovely voice, but with its own compelling undertone. A voice that demanded obedience, burrowed along the nerve endings and hurt as It yanked at my bones, ran hot lead into my marrow. I moaned softly, half-swallowed the sound. I could barely even think the disorientation was so intense.
"She'll live." Someone else, clear and chill as a bell. I recognized it, didn't I? I'd heard it taunting Japhrimel, when my fingers were glued to the ropy scar of his name against my shoulder.
"Here is your payment." Clink of something light and metallic, a short chuffing inhale of breath. "Consider our alliance renewed."
Darkness took me again as I strained to open my eyes, to see, to fight.
The next flash-a candleflame. Red flame, crimson as blood. Standing up straight, then wavering in a nonphysical direction, not guttering but seeming to shudder anyway. I struck out with fists and feet, dimly aware I was in danger. I heard shouts, and someone caught my wrist, a touch that sent fire through me and made my left shoulder crunch with vivid pain.
"Be still," he said, the voice that demanded I obey. I struggled against it, against him, felt the python squeeze of another mind close around mine, Power crushing down until my strangled scream choked the air. He squeezed, almost as I would with a werecain, but harder, determined-this was no warning, this was a prelude to brutal mental rape.
No. The core of stubbor
What you ca
Scars in the fabric of my mind tore open, bled afresh. Tearing, ripping, my defenses resisted, denying him entrance to my mind, to the i
— shoving against the back of my throat, against my nose and eyes and ears, fingering at the zipper of my jeans, another tide of slime as Mirovitch's ka tried to force its way in-
A breathless scream spiraled up out of me. No. I would fight, I would die before enduring another vicious mental assault. I could not be violated that way again and remain sane.
"Stop." Female, young, and edged with steel, a smell like baking bread and heavy musk, a smell I recognized. The smell of Androgyne.
Eve, Doreen's daughter. Lucifer's child. And maybe mine too.
"Stop I t. Didn't I tell you not to hurt her?" The sharp guncrack of a slap, and I fell into darkness again, the mental pressure falling away and my slight helpless moaning spiraling into silence.
Next came the gutwrench of hover transport, my stomach turning over in purely psychosomatic reaction to the rattling hum of antigrav. My cheek against freezing-cold metal, the Gauntlet on my left wrist propping my head up. I moaned, soundlessly, my mouth hung slack. Something was very wrong. I felt too weak, too fevered. What was happening to me?
Burning fingers stroked my forehead. "Hush," Eve said, gently. "It's all right, Dante. I'm here now."
I don't want you, I thought hazily. I want Japhrimel. It should be him saying those words to me. Where is he? Japh?
Power jolted down my spine, spread through nerve cha
"There," she whispered, stroking my forehead again. "Better?"
It wasn't better. Japhrimel wouldn't have hurt me like that, he had never hurt me like that. Childish faith rose up in me, I was too exhausted to fight it. Darkness, since I couldn't open my eyes, the crackling breathlessness of a small space full of demons, a heavy spice in the air that closed around me and soothed even as my nervous system jolted with more electric pain, raw acid tracing through my bones.
"Japhrimel," I heard myself whisper, cracked lips shaping the word.
"Soon enough," she said, and I heard cloth moving. She walked away, but the aura of her scent lingered, sinking into my head, confusing me until I passed out again.
When I woke next, my fingers slid against my breastbone. I lay on my back, on something soft. I felt the arc of my collarbone, the calluses on my fingertips scraping as I reached instinctively for my left shoulder. Then, contact, Japhrimel's mark writhing and hot, bumps and ropes of scarring moving under my skin like the inked lines of my tat.
I don't care, I thought hazily. I need you. Please.
The vision swallowed me whole, I sank into seeing out through his eyes as if I had never stopped. Had I always resisted before?
— spine straight, sitting in the middle of the circle holding square holding pentacle, the diagram spi
The door opened, slowly, and she had come. As he had suspected, she could not ignore the chance to taunt him. Tall demon, the mark of the Androgyne on her forehead, a sleek cap of pale hair and a half-smile that tore at him, reminding. She was not the woman he wanted to see.
She wore simple blue, the marriage-color, a sweater and loose breeches hiding none of her slender grace. The aura of an Androgyne-spice, the potent smell of possible-breeding, the attraction of fertility-teased at him.
It was not the scent he wanted.
"A spider emerges." Forcing the words out between his teeth, no politeness, no petty games of silence. "The trap was baited well."
She shrugged, pushing her sweater-sleeves up. "Sometimes the clumsiest tools are the most effective. You could be free in a single moment, Eldest. All that is necessary is to say the word." Her voice stroked the air, the weapon of an Androgyne, meant to seduce, cajole, entice.
His right hand became a fist, and the flexing of muscle pushed at his wrist, a red tide of pain sweeping up his arm.
She laughed, a low sarcastic bark of merriment. Perhaps he truly did amuse her. "Then I will be forced to treat with your companion, Fallen. She, at least, will listen to reason."
Both wrists burned now as his fists knotted. The candle guttered, recovered itself slowly. "If she is harmed-"
"Why would I harm her? She is so amenable, so willing to please."
It was his turn to laugh, sweeping his eyes across the room at the windows. No sunlight. Another day gone while he worried at the walls of his prison, tearing apart the demonic magick that held him bit by bit, thread by thread. Inhuman patience, a single pointed will, spurred by the need burning in his veins. Need, like addiction. He wanted to see her again, he needed to see her again, to reassure himself she was alive, unharmed.