Chapter Nine
“No, no, no!” Sid yelled. “The charges aren’t set yet! Consume him now and we’ll have to start all over!”
The pressure abruptly released and John hit the ground, hard enough to rip the air from his lungs and to stab him in the side with his own broken rib. But the outward pain was nothing next to the emptiness inside. Dark and cold and echoing, it made him want to curl into a protective ball around his terrified, savaged soul.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even manage to lift his head when someone grabbed him, jerking him off the floor. “I wanted you fresh,” Sid hissed. “You’re more powerful that way. But I’m not going to lose you after this much trouble!”
John found himself slung over a shoulder and carted back down the hall, then dropped in a heap on the floor. It hurt, but not nearly as much as it should have. Which was a bad sign for some reason he couldn’t seem to concentrate on at the moment.
His head lolled to one side, seemingly of its own accord, but he couldn’t see anything. Until he switched to demon sight, but that was little better because the glare of Sid’s power practically blinded him to everything else. It glowed through the demon’s skin like a searchlight through cheesecloth, turning the veins of ore in the walls into a web of silver fire, revealing their true color instead of the tint they borrowed from the stone.
And yet, there was a gleam of red, a faint flicker against all that light.
John transitioned back to human sight to find that the darkness had retreated into its host, leaving the corridor dim and prosaic-looking except for that coil of angry red. It was coming from the small jar Sid had just pulled out of a backpack. John watched, mesmerized, as the contents gleamed and twisted, sending hellish flames dancing across the stones.
Sid sat it down on a flat piece of floor and pulled out another one, this one empty. John didn’t ask what it was for. He didn’t have the strength, and in any case, he had a pretty good idea.
He forced himself to look away, to search for some avenue of escape. But and all his peripheral vision showed him was more of the same: a small, rock-cut tunnel, a few distant shadows that might have been exits he couldn’t possibly reach, and Sid, muttering to himself. If there was anything helpful in that, John didn’t see it.
Except, of course, for the obvious.
“Experience is the best teacher,” Rosier had said, leaning back in his chair. “Why read about something when you can live it?”
“Because it kills them!” John held out the jar that had contained his latest acquisition.
It had been a special order, one he’d been so eager to get his hands on that he’d paid a premium for a rush job. Perhaps that was why the hunters had been a little careless, why they’d left some of the final memories intact. Or perhaps their usual clients wouldn’t have cared.
But whatever the cause, John had experienced everything, just as if it had been happening to him: the desperate flight, the heart pounding terror, the cold wash of disbelief when they cornered him. The hopeless cry—what had he done? And finally, the veil of pain that fogged his senses, as he clung to consciousness, to life, with a frightening effort of will, even as his soul was ripped from his body—
John had come out of it in a cold sweat, hands shaking, stomach churning, unsure for a moment who he was, where he was. He’d run into the next room in a blind panic, trying to hide from soul hunters who weren’t there, before reality finally caught up with him. He hadn’t found it a great improvement. In the end, he’d lain on the floor in his bedroom, soul-sick and shaken, and stared at the ceiling for a long time.
Then he’d gone to see his father.
“So does butchering a cow,” Rosier had said, impatiently. “And I haven’t noticed you becoming vegetarian.”
“A cow is an animal—”
“As are some of these.”
“But not all! Not most! Many of them are sentient beings--”
“Who have the most to teach us.”
John had looked at the creature he’d once so admired, and for the first time, seen him for what he was. “Even if doing so destroys them?”
Rosier saw his expression, and his face closed down. “What did you expect?” he demanded. “A library full of books? We’re demons.”
“You are,” John had breathed. And walked out.
It had taken him years, and a wealth of pain, to understand that he’d been right that day, in what he’d told his father. But he’d been wrong, too. Because part of him was demon, with the same unending hunger as all the rest.
He could feel it now, not taste or scent or any other sense a human would have understood. Just desperate, all-consuming need. It was mewling in his gut right now, begging piteously for just.one.taste. of all that exotic power, that deadly strength, that…
Irin.
He didn’t know how he knew. But the part of him that was incubus identified it unerringly. He even knew which one, the memory of its power still fresh from their brief meeting in the shop.
John supposed he knew what Sid had done with those thirty minutes.
He didn’t know why, because Irin were not easy prey. They had abilities that might have turned the tables on Sid very handily. But then, that was true of John, too, before he lost his magic, and it hadn’t helped him. He could see Sid, the trusted shopkeeper, running after one of his best customers, having forgotten to tell him…something. It didn’t matter; it had obviously worked. And now they had the perfect test subject.
And that’s what he was, John realized, watching the color thrash uselessly against the glass. They couldn’t risk implementing their plan without being sure that his watered down blood would do the trick, so they needed a test. He assumed that, after Ealdris got done with him, she would try to absorb the contents of the jar. Which had to be something unusual. Something exotic. Something most demons couldn’t possibly ingest.
But John wouldn’t have that problem.
John never had that problem.
He stared at the jar.
He didn’t often get this close to temptation anymore. Incubi needed their victim’s lust, like vampires needed blood; without it, they had no conduit to a person’s power, no way to feed. But there was no body here anymore, no barrier, and thus no need for a conduit. All he had to do was reach out. All he had to do...
John closed his eyes, but the color swirled in through his lids nonetheless, sharper, richer, clearer in his demon senses than it ever could be in human sight. It was breathtakingly beautiful, as they all were. And sweet, so sweet, every single one.
Even the last.
You are what you are. Someday, you’re going to have to come to terms with that. His father’s voice echoed in his head, but it lacked any weight. Because Rosier had never understood: John had come to terms with it. He knew what he was, what he would always be, no matter how far he managed to run. He’d had that demonstrated one horrible night in the most vivid way possible. And for years, he’d believed that it was all he ever could be.
Until he met someone who refused to see him that way. Who argued and fussed and tried her best to boss him around, but who never shrank away. Who relied on him and needed him and called him friend. Who touched the scars on his body, and other places, as if they were just another part of him, not evidence of where he’d been, what he was.
And lately he’d begun to hope that perhaps, just perhaps, there was something even a monster could contribute.
He stared at the jar.
And then slowly, shakily, he held out his hand.