Chapter Eight
John smacked the floor like a sack of sand. That went well, he thought, as a pair of dusty boots stopped by his head.
“You’re braver than your father,” Sid said, kicking him over. “I’ll give you that.”
How kind, John didn’t say, not being quite up to sarcasm at the moment. He settled for palming his knife out of Sid’s waistband when the demon bent over to pick him up.
“But not as bright.” Sid looked at him in amazement as John went scuttling backwards, all feet and elbows, like a particularly inept crab. “What do you think you’re going to do with that little thing?” he demanded. “You can’t kill me with it, and even if you manage to get your arms free, what then? Do you really think that will improve your odds?”
Can’t hurt, John thought hysterically, and rolled to his feet, which is harder than it sounds when you’re basically a sausage with legs.
“What’s the plan, John?” Sid demanded. “You’re underground, lost in a maze, which—believe me—you are not going to find your way through. You can’t use magic, your human weapons are gone, and in the last two minutes, I’ve had no fewer than four opportunities to kill you.”
Five, John thought irrelevantly, but he guessed Sid had missed one. It was the only thing he’d missed. For someone who swore he wasn’t a warrior, Sid was doing okay.
“Why make this harder than it has to be?” Sid asked. “I’ll knock you out; you won’t feel a thing—”
“But you will,” John snarled. “After I bring this place down on your head!”
It was pretty much the only card he had to play. Thanks to the no-magic clause, his options had been narrowed to two: get out--which meant getting past the brimstone so he could transition back to earth—or make sure that neither of them did. The former was looking less and less likely all the time, and the latter…
A lot of people believed that John had a death wish. Even some of those closest to him acted like they suspected it, despite denying it when anyone else brought it up. But it had never been true. There had been times when he could honestly say he hadn’t cared much, either way, but he’d never been suicidal. It wasn’t in him not to go down fighting, not to struggle for every last breath, not to take as many of his enemies as he could along for the ride.
But suicidal or not, his line of work insured that he’d faced death any number of times. And he thought he’d at least come to terms with it. Damn it, he had come to terms with it. He knew the feeling like an old friend—the hard ache of despair, the iron strength of resolution, the cold calm of acceptance.
Only he wasn’t feeling so much that way right now. Which was a problem, since the acceptance of death was one of the few things that had so far helped him to avoid it. Get a grip, he told himself savagely, as Sid slowed to a halt.
But despite his lack of forward momentum, the little demon didn’t look impressed. “And then what?” he asked. “If you collapse the corridor with some spell, what happens?”
“We die!” John spat, sawing frantically at the acre of rope the bastard had cocooned him in.
“No, you die,” Sid said blandly. “I am…inconvenienced…for a time, while forming another body. Which I have more than enough power to do. You’ll delay this, nothing more.”
“But I don’t get another body,” John reminded him sweetly. “This is it. And without me—”
“What?” Sid looked at him impatiently. “John, I didn’t even know you were coming until you walked into my shop! We were planning this for Rosier, all along. You were a happy coincidence, yes, but if you die, we’ll merely go back to the original plan.”
“Assuming the council doesn’t find out about it in the meantime--”
“They haven’t so far, and we’ve been planning this for months.”
“--and assuming your partner survives the explosion. If brimstone really is laced throughout these rocks, setting it off here might bring down the whole mountain!”
He’d expected that to hit home, since Sid’s plan pretty much required keeping his battle queen alive until she returned to her former strength. But ether the little demon had a damn good poker face, or John had missed something. Because there was no flutter of those short eyelashes, no slight flush to those plump cheeks. Just a slight moue of irritation.
“She’s two-natured,” Sid reminded him, “or have you forgotten?”
“No. I also haven’t forgotten that she’s weak. She was almost starved, you said so yourself. And I doubt the council was kind enough to feed her before they threw her back in jail!”
“She doesn’t need her full strength to best you,” Sid said dryly.
“But I’m not the scariest thing out there, am I?”
It was what John had been betting on when he’d formulated his plan, in case she got past him. Of course, in that happy scenario, he’d also had a cadre of the council’s elite guards to back him up. But even without them, the Shadowland wasn’t the place to be an unhoused spirit--not unless you were a great deal more formidable than Ealdris was at present.
But Sid brushed that argument away like the others. “You aren’t scary at all,” he said frankly. “And this has gone on long enough.”
John backed up again as the demon resumed advancing, wondering if he could risk a glance behind him. All he needed was a distraction and an open corridor. He might not be able to outfight Sid under the circumstances, but bare feet or no, he was willing to bet that he could still outrun him. And he didn’t need to make it all the way back to the surface; he just needed—
To not fall on his ass. A piece of the damn uneven floor tripped him up, sending him staggering backwards—into a solid wall of rock. He felt around frantically with his foot, but there was no opening.
Dead end, his oh-so-helpful brain quipped.
He was going to have the damn thing examined if he ever got out of this.
“There’s nowhere to go, John,” Sid said, echoing his own thoughts. “Now, why don’t you give me the knife—”
“My pleasure,” he hissed, and threw it with the arm he’d finally worked free of the damn rope.
He saw it connect with the flabby fold of Sid’s neck, saw blood spew in a pinkish mist--and then nothing. The knife had barely left his hand when something that looked like black smoke boiled out of Sid’s pores, his eyes, even his mouth, as if he’d caught fire on the inside. In an eye blink, it had enveloped the two of them in a color so thick, so dense, it almost had substance.
Almost nothing, John thought, as something latched onto him, like a thousand tiny barbs sinking into his skin. His shields should have stopped it, but he hadn’t been able to use them here. And without them, there was nothing to prevent the horrible sensation of something other slithering in through his skin, sinking inside him through a million tiny invasions, draining him dry. He sank to his knees, a scream unable to get out past the suffocating mist pouring down his throat.
And he finally realized why Sid hadn’t seemed too concerned about his partner.