Chapter Five
The shop looked a little different from the back, with the shades drawn and the lights extinguished. But Sid’s shiny bald head was the same as it poked out a crack in the door and stared around nervously. “Hurry up!” he hissed, catching sight of John. “Before anyone sees you!”
John felt like pointing out that he’d just cut through a maze of side streets and across two marketplaces before doubling back, just to insure that no one would see him. But he didn’t. Because Sid could have left him to find Ealdris on his own, instead of scribbling ‘meet me out back in half an hour’ on the edge of the map.
He stepped through the door to find that the lights were off inside, too. But the softly glowing contents of the rows of apothecary jars provided just enough illumination to see by, throwing a watery rainbow over the walls, the floor and Sid’s anxious face. “I couldn’t talk before,” he said, wiping his hands down his apron front. “If Ealdris heard I helped you--”
“Tell me where to find her and you won’t have to worry about it for long.”
Sid snorted. “Typical human arrogance!”
“No. Knowledge she doesn’t have.”
The little demon didn’t look convinced. “Such as?”
John spread the map on the counter again. “If she was hiding in the city, the Alû would have found her by now,” he said, referring to the High Council’s feared enforcement squad. “But they haven’t, and none of the tracking spells they sent into the hinterlands returned anything. So I know where she is.”
“You think she’s camping in the middle of the desert?” Sid asked archly.
“I think she’s camping under it.” John’s finger traced an arc across a mountain range to the north of the city. “Long before there was a settlement here, there was some kind of mining concern in the hills. I don’t know what they were taking out of there, but it was extensive. I came across a few of the tunnels as a boy—”
“So that’s what you were doing when no one could find you? Exploring the desert? You might have been killed!”
“But I wasn’t. And that gives me an advantage she doesn’t know I have. As do these.”
Sid looked dubiously at the yellowish blocks of explosives John was pulling out of a backpack and piling on his nice clean counter. “And you think this lot will let you take her on?”
“If she’s like most of the older demons, yes.”
That won him a narrow-eyed look. “And how is that?”
“Powerful but not resourceful.”
Sid huffed out a laugh. “I’ve never known your father to have a problem in that area. And he’s nearly as old as our missing queen.”
“The incubi are different,” John admitted. “They have to build relationships with their prey unless they want to spend all their time hunting. And humans are nothing if not unpredictable. Interacting with them requires the incubi to be flexible, inventive, even somewhat open-minded.”
“Unlike Ealdris. You think she won’t expect an assault with human weapons.”
John nodded, not wanting to elaborate and insult the creature. After all, Sid was fairly ancient, too. But as a shopkeeper, he also had to be flexible, at least to a point, to deal with so many different species. That wasn’t true of most of the older demons, who tended to turn more and more inward as the centuries past. By the time they reached Ealdris’ age, they were virtually unable to comprehend any ways other than their own.
It was what had him worried, because she should have done exactly as she had last time and headed for earth as soon as she broke free. Demons gained strength through one thing and one thing only—feeding. She needed food, and quickly, if she was to maintain her independence. And earth was by far the richest source available.
But instead, she’d come here. It was like a starving man passing up a banquet hall to search for scraps in the Dumpster outside. It didn’t make sense, and every time an ancient demon surprised him, John got edgy. And when he got edgy, he tended to hedge his bets, which was why he’d packed enough C-4 to bring down a mountain.
“Preferably right over her,” Sid said, when he’d finished explaining.
“That’s the plan.”
“It’s a good one,” Sid admitted, frowning. “The wards she’s familiar with guard against magic. Like as not, this…stuff…won’t even register.”
“But?” John asked, because there clearly had been one in his tone.
Sid sighed and started returning a few scattered jars to their appropriate shelves. “Nothing. I’m just a foolish old man who remembers another time.”
“Meaning?”
“That in my day we did things differently. We faced our enemies.”
John stared at him incredulously. “You think I’m being dishonorable? Knowing what she’s done? What she’ll do again given the slightest—”
“No, no.” Sid shook his head. “I didn’t mean anything. You’re only half-demon and incubus at that. I don’t expect you to understand.” He caught John’s expression. “No offense.”
“None taken,” John said curtly. Not being mistaken for a demon was hardly an insult. And standing and dueling a being as powerful as Ealdris wasn’t honorable, it was stupid.
“And you’re little more than a child,” Sid said, looking down at the jar he held. A hazy smear of deep magenta curled and twisted inside, painting his skin a livid hue. “You don’t know what it was like, in our day. And how could you? Seeing what we’ve become.”
“You mean it was worse?” John asked cynically.
Sid glanced up at him, and smiled slightly. “You’d probably think so. It was certainly more savage, more raw. But infinitely more glorious, too. You should have seen it, John,” he said, his voice going dreamy. “There weren’t as many of us then, so you might think we were weaker, but it wasn’t so. Huge armies we had, glittering in the night, under commanders worthy of the name, marching off to victory or death—”
“Mostly death,” John interjected, because there had been nothing glorious about the ancient wars. Just century after century of bloody chaos, as each race struggled for existence in a never ending competition for food and resources. Ending them had been one of the few things the High Council had ever gotten right.
“Yes, yes, but you miss the point,” Sid said irritably. “The chaff was winnowed out, but the best survived, thrived, grew stronger by their ordeals. Instead of the weakest being rewarded for how well they can toady, like today.”
“I never took you for a Social Darwinist.”
“I’m not anything human,” Sid told him, with a bite to his tone. “We were stronger without them, back when every resource was scarcer, every meal more hard won. Then we found their weak, soft, rule-bound race, and everything changed.”
“I’m sure they felt the same,” John said curtly, not interested in a debate. “I’m also fairly certain that Ealdris is where I say she is. But there could be miles of tunnels through these hills and I don’t have time to search them all. I need you to narrow it down.”
Sid stared at the map, but didn’t say anything.
“Before the rest of your clientele goes missing.”
The little demon sighed fretfully and flapped a hand at the windows. “Check the shades, would you?”
“I promise you, I will find her,” John said, turning to look for gaps in the dark green cloth.
And then dropping to his knees when something slammed into him with the force of a dozen sledgehammers. It knocked him to the floor, his head reeling, pain shooting from temple to temple in a mind numbing haze. But not so numb that he couldn’t make out the ancient being bending over him--who was suddenly glowing with a power he shouldn’t have had.
“I believe I can guarantee it,” Sid said, as the room exploded around him.