I took another drag from my cigarette and exhaled the embers into the cold night sky. It was peaceful out here, away from all the phoney chatter, people pretending to enjoy each others’ company. After all, we’d be backstabbing each other again in the morning, once we were back in the office.
The peace was broken, however, when the back door to the restaurant opened. Something that looked and dressed exactly like a man stepped out. He pressed his back to the wall beside me. I pretended he didn’t exist.
The would-be man pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He drew one out then lit it up. When he took a drag, the smoke didn’t enter his lungs. He didn’t have lungs. Instead, it rolled around in the cavity of his mouth and escaped from the sides.
I scratched the back of my head. He did the same. I pulled my loose tie down a little further, then kept my hand on the half-Windsor knot so that it stayed closed to the inside of my jacket. He did the same. I took a long drag, draining away half a cigarette in a single breath, then held it for three, four, five seconds. He copied, but most of the smoke fled from his mouth as more rushed in. The rest he stored in his closed mouth. My mouth was open. The lungs did all the work. The downside was that I started to get dizzy from lack of oxygen, smoke inhalation, and consequential nicotine high. After ten seconds I let it all out in a wheeze, then broke into a coughing fit. He didn’t copy that.
“Algier,” he said once my coughing had died down. “Been a while.”
“Not long enough,” I managed. “Alastair.”
He didn’t look at me, and I didn’t look at him. Both of us leaned against the wall. My hand didn’t move from my tie.
Alastair stirred. “No hard feelings between us, I—”
“Did you set this up?” I interrupted.
Alastair stared at me without blinking, a faint glow behind his brown eyes.
“Two offices having their Mandatory Year End Break parties at the same restaurant,” I pressed. “On the same day, at the same time, and we just happened to meet during that time. Did you set this up?”
A long pause. The cigarette between Alastair’s fingers dripped ash.
“I wanted to see you again,” he said simply.
“Then look in the mirror.”
Another pause. I settled back against the wall. Alastair did too. I took out another cigarette. I needed it. The last one hadn’t eased any stress, not that smoking made me feel anything these days. I wasn’t sure why I still did it. My hand never left my tie. I lit the thing one handed. Alastair never offered a light. After all, I wouldn’t have offered him one.
“Algier,” he said. “No hard feelings.”
“You took my job.”
Alastair stared at the cars passing along the arterial road. His high cheekbones remained stoic. His thin lips never flinched.
“You took my looks,” I said. “And now you’re taking my time. What else do you want from me, enepsi?”
A crack in his façade. The demon’s hand went to his single horn, like a self-conscious tick. He turned to me and could no longer hide the embers resting behind his eyes. Alastair reached out to me with a hand. It wrapped around the back of my neck. My hand slipped under my jacket as the demon’s teeth approached my neck.
“What do I want from you?” he whispered in my ear.
My whole body stiffened. I couldn’t feel his breath. It was like he wasn’t there. His lips touched my ear.
“Everything.”
I drew Erasure and fired. His body evaporated after the second shot. I fired four more. All that remained of him was a circle of ash and a tie laying inside of it, still knotted in a half-Windsor.
There was little I could do after that. Once a demon is erased, they’re gone. I’d dropped my cigarette so now I felt like another. I lit it up with one hand, then took a deep drag.
That was how they found me: standing over the remains of a demon I’d just slain, covered in flecks of his ash, with a demon slaying weapon in my hand and a cigarette dangling from my mouth.
----------------------------------------
“I can’t believe I have to fucking give this to you,” Volce whined.
He shoved a clear vial filled with red liquid into my hands, nearly breaking the thing.
“The only reason she didn’t erase you was because she wanted me,” I said.
I uncorked the bottle and the smell hit me instantly. It was like the most pungent coffee I’d ever whiffed, though with none of the addictive hit that made me want to down it. Just bitterness. That wasn’t what made me hesitate before quaffing the thing.
Rise and Shine, for all intents and purposes, was made from a demon like all other rabdoses. And I was about to drink it. That itself wasn’t an issue—after all, demons were nothing but an incarnation of will, bound by a strict and strange set of rules. What bothered me was that downing a full vial of Rise and Shine was a guaranteed way to increase my corruption. Well, no point worrying about it.
I held by breath and quaffed the thing. Surprisingly, it went down smoothly and tasted like nothing. As soon as it went down the hatch, my eyes popped open, my shoulders unstooped, and I could feel my rib move inside of me. There was no pain, it just happened. One second a bone was jabbing into something it ought not to, next it was back where it ought to be.
The only way I could describe it was that it broke in reverse. Weird. No matter how many times I take the stuff, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that sensation of my body unbreaking.
Sighing in relief, I tossed the vial aside the pulled up my stat screen.
[Corruption] 5 (was 3)
I panicked for a moment, thinking that one vial had just given a flat increase of two, but Volce butted in with an unintended explanation.
“Wow, you’re really getting into the demon spirit. Pun intended. First you spend, like, ten minutes paired with me, then you down a consumable.”
One point from using Volce’s power, one point from the Rise and Shine. It occurred to me that the last use of Rise and Shine, when Enzi had force fed it to me, hadn’t caused my corruption to tick up. In other words, it wasn’t a flat one-to-one system. Some actions gave more corruption, others less. Half a bottle of Rise and Shine wasn’t enough to cause a full point increase.
Volce adjusted his suspenders and it made a sharp snap against his shoulders. “But you know what’ll be even better? You not nearly getting yourself killed by a crazy demon hunter. Because that last comment?” The deuces face turned sour and his voice raised to a screech. “Nearly got us both fucking eliminated!”
I stared at him deadpan. “She’s not going to kill us. She’s after Silica.”
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“Oh, sure, no problem. She might just accidentally break us along the way. You saw how fucking strong she is!” He hovered closer to me. “Listen. I’ve known a lot of demon hunters. You heard the whole sob story I gave to that crazy bitch. And let me tell you, of all the demon hunters I’ve ever know, that fucking psycho”—he thrust a finger into the forest, in the direction Berlin had leapt away—“is something else.”
“Is that why you screamed like a baby? Were you scared of her?”
“Oh, if you could only feel what I felt you’d know exactly how terrifying she is. Her control over ash was, er, how do I put this.” Volce kicked back onto an invisible chair in the air, his legs folded and arms crossed in contemplation. “It was like she was made of ash itself. Her whole body was coated with the stuff, and when she knocked me down, it’s like the ash got into me. You know how much it hurts a demon when you rub ash in their wounds, right?”
“Good to know.” I was well aware. I’d considered more than once using some of the ashes I’d taken from dead demons to shove down Volce’s gob, with the hope it would keep him quiet.
“Yup,” Volce said, hovering within arm’s reach of me. “It’s practically the only way to hurt a demon.” He tilted his head. “By the way, what was all that stuff about you mo—”
The moment Volce got close enough, I activated his power and grabbed him by the throat. With one hand I slammed him onto the log I was sitting on. With the other, I put my knife to his throat.
“What the fuck?” Volce squealed. “What the fuck are you—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What are you talking about? Lucifer’s nips, have you gone insane as well?”
“Your power,” I growled, low and sinister. “It does nothing.”
“Bullshit! It saved your life.”
I pressed the knife a little firmer to his neck. “Exactly how? Because when I used it against Berlin, she was all over me like I was a joke. Your power did nothing.”
“Better question, why the fuck did you use it like that? I mean, you want to blame me for not giving you a power that made you Superdemon, but you’re the moron who signed a contract with a deuce whose power you didn’t get.”
“You have until the count of three to—”
He started struggling. Panic and fury quaked along our connection. “Seriously? Why are all you humans so fucking insane? You know I can’t lie, meat head.”
“Then explain. Now.”
“It’s simple. Really simple.” He pointed a pudgy finger at me. “It’s because you got lucky.”
I blinked at the deuce. At that moment I really did contemplate killing him.
But Volce waved his hands in a panic. “Pull up your stat screen. Your stat screen!”
Gritting my teeth, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Sure enough, everything listed under [Stats] was listed at the lowest value of human. However, a new row was listed at the bottom of the [Stats] section.
Luck: ???
I cocked an eyebrow at him. No doubt he could feel my curiosity through the connection because he flashed a saw-toothy grin.
“Yup. Luck. It’s the most stupidly broken power that a deuce can have. Use it correctly and everything can go the way you want it. Of course, if you use it like an idiot—for example, trying to attack a demon hunter that could turn a car into Swiss cheese with her toes—then you’re just asking for trouble.”
“And how exactly did it save my life?”
“You know that broken rib you had? That could have easily been a busted lung, or a blown kidney. It was practically impossible for you to avoid taking the hit, but that little bit of luck saved you from something much worse.”
I glowered at the little demon, still holding the knife to his throat. Sure, demons don’t lie, but they do hide the truth. However, I could feel through our connection that Volce was being completely up front. I doubted there were hidden elements to his power.
Letting out a sigh of relief, I pulled the knife from his throat then sat back. I wasn’t worried about retribution since the deuce had agreed to protect me unconditionally. How far those conditions extended were of concern, but for now I was safe.
I sought out the thread which connected me to that boiling, swirling ocean of thoughts that was Volce and, mentally tugging on it back to me. The connection broke. The sensation that came with it, of rage and the belief I could make anything possible, yanked back along the broken line and was gone. It left me feeling empty, deflated, ambivalent to what would happen next. My hand closed around my mother’s pendant and with it came a reminder: keep fighting, keep living, keep being human.
Volce was floating a safe distance from me, rubbing at his throat. “Another reason why my power is bullshit,” he muttered, “is that it works against me. Let that be a warning to you: luck is neutral. It can be your ally or it can fuck you over completely.”
Fiddling with the pendant, I took some time to think about my next course of action. However, I couldn’t shake a question—a number of them, actually—which Volce’s story about demon hunters had brought on.
“Hey,” I said.
The deuce whipped around, wide eyed, likely thinking I was going to strike him again.
“Tell me more about the demon hunters you worked with.”
Volce opened his mouth to speak, then a sour look crossed his face. Pouting, he sat back in the air with his arms folded. I glared at him, but he wasn’t budging. So I exaggerated a sigh and stood, knife held casually at my side.
The deuce raised his hands to ward me off. “If you want to know you can read my mind,” he said in a rush. His eyes settled on mine. If he could sweat, there would have been a bead running down his temple. “Listen, listen. I need to trust you. So far you’ve been really fucking cold and have even threatened to kill me. More than once.”
“We have a contract.”
“A one-sided contract. Very one-sided. However,” his features brightened, “my power is difficult to use, and highly situational. If you want to use it properly, you’re going to need my help. And if you want my help, you’re going to need me to trust you. So…” He tapped his temple. “How about it?”
In our contract was an addendum called, [conditional mindreading]. Those conditions so far, both according to the detailed description I’d discovered when I’d tapped on the word and from my own experiences, were as follows:
When we paired, we could both read each others’ minds. However, due to the [power throttling] addendum, I had to choose when this power was activated. If I chose to reduce the strength of our connection, I’d only be able to glean surface-level emotions from Volce, or whatever the demon-equivalent of emotions was. Volce, on the other hand, had no such limitations, meaning he could read my thoughts as he pleased, so long as we were paired.
Grumbling, I closed my eyes. As much as I wanted more answers surrounding my mother, surrounding Silica, I really had no choice but to play along. Mindreading was the only sure-fire way to know that Volce wasn’t hiding anything.
I opened the connection, felt that familiar burning excitement. Then I gripped the thread that tied us together and stretched it. At once, the world felt like it was screaming.
Fire and fury coursed through me; a storm unrelenting. The demon’s whole being was flooding into me. When I thought it was too much, that it would stop some time soon, more of his burning will choked out my thoughts. I wanted everything to be mine, but was too overwhelmed to move. I wanted to trample over whatever stood in my way, but my body was consumed by flames.
Then I heard his voice, heard it a thousand times, echoing atop itself until it was indecipherable. The sound reverberated in my skull and I felt my head would pop open from the noise alone, my brains would splatter all over the trees if I let this continue.
My hand sort out my mother’s locket and squeezed. Then with a heave I snapped the connection with the deuce. The riot of fire and blood stopped as soon as it had begun, the voice screamed away into the void, and I was left trembling, sputtering, and moaning on a bed of trampled foliage.
The demon was twisting a finger in the hole of his ear. “What was all that bullshit about keeping it quiet?” he hummed. “Because I think you screamed down the whole forest back there.”
Trying to calm my thoughts, I willed myself to stop trembling. It took a while, and even after a couple minutes of rattled breathing I was still coughing and my heart raced away from me.
“You’re—” I could barely choke out my words. “You’re… powerful.”
Volce flashed his jagged teeth. “Oh, you finally noticed. Since I know your thoughts a little better now, I bet you’re thinking, ‘How is a four name so strong?’”
He was right, but I answered, “Just tell me.”
“Well.” He threw his palms up in concession. “The thing about the naming system is that it’s all bullshit. There are no real rules for deciding how many names are used, other than the fact that you have to pull those names from a demon’s sigil. Realistically, it’s just one names giving or taking away names. Sometimes they’ll decide to take a name away because they like you, or give you one because you didn’t follow their orders. If anything, it’s more a ranking system that one names gather together to agree upon, and if they don’t want you admitted into their little club, you’ll never become a one name.
“Fact of the matter is, my power is strong enough to give a one name a run for their money.” He glared at me. “Assuming I find the right partner. But the fuckers don’t like me, and they don’t think my power is that helpful. Plus, I don’t like following those bossy assholes’ orders. Therefore, poor old Volce got shafted with four names.”
I sat up, my hand still trembling around the locket. “Sounds to me like I shouldn’t use your power.”
“Oh, no. You can use it. You just need a little more demon juice in you to numb the side effects.”
“Pass.”
I stood on shaky legs, buttoned up my jacket, and headed deeper into the forest. I went vaguely west, hoping it would take me back to where the other demons were. If Toll were alive, they’d no doubt be on the hunt, so it was better to run into them—and preferably Enzi—than for Toll to track me down and keep me to themselves.
Even though Volce protested at my refusal to use his power, I had two good reasons to avoid it. Firstly, I didn’t want him poking around in my head. Since every time I opened the connection to him he’d get free reign in my noggin, I needed to be careful about how I used it. I was formulating a plan at that point and didn’t need him knowing the details.
Secondly, and most importantly, the last thing I wanted was to gain more corruption, to give up on what remained of my humanity. Doing so would have been a betrayal of my mother’s legacy.