Ill Wind

The room was spacious, tasteful, with a huge king-size bed and pillows big enough to qualify as mattresses in their own right, or maybe that was just my exhaustion talking. David went straight to the far corner and set his backpack down.

"Why the hell do you carry that? It's just window dressing, right?" I was pins and needles all over, aching, itching for a fight. "Like the clothes. To make me think you're really human. Well, give it up. I know better now."

"Do you?" He sat down on the bed and put his hands on his knees, watching me pace back and forth. "I doubt you know any more about the Dji

I couldn't look at him. I liked the way he looked, and I knew what I saw was constructed, artificial, something he'd put together to please me. Which was just—wrong. Obscene. And it pissed me off. "I know everything I need to know about the Dji

Dangerously quiet on that end of the room. I paced restlessly to the windows. Rolled the curtains open on a night sky rich with stars.

"Maybe I will claim you," I said. "Maybe I'll claim you and order you to get the hell away from me for a change. Wouldn't that be a stitch?"

He knew I was baiting him. "Don't start this, Joa

"Well, news flash, I didn't want any of this! I didn't want to be gang-raped by Bad Bob and his pet Dji

He stood up. I turned to face him. Energy crackled the air, and it wasn't entirely emotional; it couldn't be separated that way. Dji

"Just what?" he asked in a soft, dangerous, purring tone. "Let you throw yourself on the pyre of your own arrogance? Don't tempt me."

"Just get the hell out," I said flatly. "I thought you didn't want to fight."

"I don't! I've tried to help you! I've tried to make up for—" He stopped himself. His eyes were molten bronze, glittering with gold flecks. Shimmering hot. "Say the words. It's the only way you're going to get out of this alive—you know that."

"Oh, so now you're going to kill me? Oh, hell, why not? There's probably a Let's Kill Joa

He grabbed me by both arms and shook me. Hard. "No! Stop being a smart-ass bitch and listen to me! You have to say the words and give me the Mark, now! Just do it!"

I put my hands flat against his chest and shoved. It was likes pushing at a block of David-size concrete.

"Say the words!" He yelled it at me. Shook me harder, so hard my head snapped back and forth, my hair fell in a blinding curtain over my eyes. "In the name of the one true God, say it or I swear I will hurt you so badly, you'll beg me to kill you! I will hurt you!"

He was hurting me. His hands were tight as vises, crushing skin, bending bone. God, it hurt. It was like dying from the inside out, and the Mark, the Mark was fighting back, ripping at my flesh with invisible claws….

"Say it! Be thou…"

I wanted it to stop. I wanted the pain to stop. "Be thou bound to my service!" I screamed. "There! Happy?"

His face went pale, but his eyes burned brighter. His fingers squeezed tighter. "Again!" He shook me again, just to be sure, as if he could rattle it out of me. "Say it again!"

"Be thou bound to my service!" I didn't want to say it, but it was ripping itself out of me, the words like knives in my throat. The pain was incredible, blinding, suffocating. My skin was burning where he touched me. Scorching. I could smell my skin cooking under his hands….

"Again!" David shouted. "Say it again!"

Three times the charm. Three times would bind him to me for the rest of my life. Three times for him to trap me into doing what I did not want to do.

I remembered Lewis's Dji

I choked on tears of rage and pain and croaked out, "Nice try, asshole. No way."

He froze, staring at me, and I saw something incredibly vulnerable in his face—a kind of ashen despair. It was instantly gone.

The pain vanished just as instantly—bruising, no broken bones, no burns. Illusion.

He hadn't even left a mark. His hands were gentle on me, and the only heat there was skin on skin. Human heat.

"Say it," he whispered. "Please. Just end this, and say it. Please don't make me watch it rot you inside. I can't stand that."

I sank down on the bed and cradled my head. "Why the hell do you want to do this for me?"

He went down on his knees on the carpet next to me, started to touch me and then stopped as if he didn't trust himself. "It's the Mark. Can't you feel it? It's seeping into your thoughts, your feelings. Soon you won't want to be free of it. It's got to be now, or you're lost."

He was right, of course. That's where the anger was from, the constant, itching fury. From the Demon Mark. It was growing, developing, taking me along for the ride. I could feel it tapped into me now. Its power was at least partly mine. Soon, we'd be joined, and there'd be no going back unless I was ready to give up my soul with it.

When I looked up we were at eye level, close as lovers. I put my hand on his cheek and said, "I swear to the one true God, David, you will never take this Mark. So give it up. Just go away. Let me have a little peace, while I still can."

It hurt, that moment. It was a wire stretched between the two of us, buried deep in our hearts, pulling and singing with tension.

I broke it. I got to my feet and stepped around him. He caught my wrist. "Where are you going?"

"To take a shower," I said. "I stink like a cattle truck. Don't worry, I don't think the Mark is going to wash off and spoil your chance to be a martyr."

I walked calmly to the bathroom, shut the door, and locked it. All the normal bathroom hotel amenities, like a coffeemaker and a hair dryer, complimentary shampoo and lotion… Life looked so normal in here, preciously, wonderfully normal.

I sat down on the closed toilet seat and stared at the spacious bathtub for a while. I was too tired to think, but luckily there was no need for it; I stripped off my filthy clothes and piled them in an untidy mess under the bathroom counter, started the water, and got in while it was stingingly cold. As I started to cry, I felt the Demon Mark moving inside me, stretching lazily, like a bully waking up from a nice long nap. I sank down to my knees in the tub, hugging myself, letting the warming water pound my neck and back. Water sluiced away, sluggish with dirt, but even when it ran clear, I felt far from clean. I would never be clean again.

Soaping and rinsing my hair was oddly therapeutic, though. By the time I rinsed for the third time some of the chill in me had started to thaw.

I was going to live, I discovered. Even though turning down David's offer had effectively signed my death warrant, there had to be something left. If Lewis came through, fine. If not… there were options. There had to be. I could read, research—find out how to fight this thing.

Still, it took every ounce of courage I had to get myself out of the tub and through the ritual of drying off.

When I ventured out of the steaming bathroom again, David was gone. His backpack was there, still leaning drunkenly in the corner; his long olive-drab coat was hung neatly in the closet, and his clothes were in a drawer. Even his shoes were present and accounted for.