Time had instilled hatred for many things in Cary: standing still, children with permanent markers, and magic used to quell the freedom of others. If the van-full of fucking chaos sorcerers transporting Cary and Oleg produced a set of permanent markers, she might combust from fury. Even without the markers, the energy field that kept Cary standing as the van swayed made her sweat from rage.

Cary had reverted to her flesh body after being captured by the nameless chaos sorcerer woman. That witch, along with her cohort of fellow sorcerers, had lifted Cary up with magical assistance and hovered her into a dark blue van with white paper over the back windows. The roof was tall enough that Cary didn’t need to stoop to fit within, which was a small mercy.

Oleg had been bound with writhing grey cords that licked at his skin and spread their grey malignancy where they touched. Rot Tethers. The phrase made Cary’s stomach churn. They wouldn’t affect her, but she’d read enough about them to respect the agony that had to consume Oleg’s reason as he lay on the floor twitching.

Guilt, an emotion almost as rare in Cary as glee, surged through her chest as she watched Oleg’s struggles. She had brought about this outcome, though she certainly hadn’t intended to. If not for Oleg, Cary could have directed her fury and rage inward and left it uncatalyzed by the sight of her first friend lying on the floor of a moving vehicle.

Without a view to the exterior of the van, her captors probably believed Cary lost. Too bad for them. Dipping heavily into Emilia’s memories, Cary found she could combine her acute senses and Emilia’s knowledge of the area to pinpoint her location as if tracking herself on a map.

It gave her something else to think about. The sorcerers carted her toward the center of town, not far from Cary’s original summoning point. Somewhere nearby, Emilia lay huddled alone in her small bed, fighting for a wink of sleep. The binding the sorcerers used on Cary did nothing to cut her off from her sources of information. Or they hadn’t anticipated Cary’s mortal thrall.

Regardless of the cause, they underestimated her. And that served Cary’s purposes by easing her potential escape. Now all she needed to do was come up with a plan.

Massive concrete pillars surrounded the exterior of the van when they opened the back. Before she could do more than note the number and height, as well as the presence of several automobiles, Cary’s captors placed a hood over her head. They moved her to a wheeled stand and rolled her into an elevator.

Emilia’s memories became something of a lifeline for Cary. Without them, she wouldn’t have known where they’d taken her, without them she wouldn’t have known she was only a few blocks from Emilia’s home. She wouldn’t have even known what the automobile that transported her was called, the same with the elevator.

On the twentieth floor, the carriage stopped and the sorcerers wheeled her out. From the sound of Oleg’s panting on the floor, they’d dragged him in and then out with her. Odd that she didn’t notice until then.

Wind howled through this floor and carried the sounds of the road up to Cary’s ears. That told her this floor was opened and unfinished. Or the sorcerers had picked a fancy deck with an exposed face to hold Cary and Oleg. It seemed unlikely to Cary, but she didn’t dismiss the possibility.

The woman jogger, the one who’d originally caught Cary, pulled her hood off. Sure enough, no windows or metal blocked the wind from tearing about this floor. It sent bits of opaque plastic dancing over unfinished concrete slabs. A few bits of electrical machinery dotted the floor here and there, but nothing told Cary where she was like the map she held in her mind. As to the use she could put those devices to, Cary imagined wrapping their cords around the head sorceress’s neck and tossing her off the building while they dragged her down.

Cary doubted the sorceress or her power would cooperate with that particular plan, as pleasant as the image was.

“How did you get here, demon?” The woman spat the last word, as if she loathed Cary for who she was. Cary recognized that level of hatred. Either the woman had been subjected to centuries of cohabitation with a demon or a demon had slain someone close to her. It occurred to Cary that she might be the demon in question, especially if the man she’d killed had been close to the woman.

After waiting a few seconds, the woman slapped Cary across the face. “I said, how did you…”

“Oh sweet Boundary, shut up!” Cary kept the smirk off of her face as the woman wrinkled her nose and lowered her chin in shock. “I’m trying to listen to the birds and the song of the wind and all you can do it talk! Maybe just replace my hood and let me go on my way?”

The woman punched her and Cary shifted her interior to stone, blocking the woman’s strike. Cary detected a slight wince from the woman, as if she’d hurt herself punching Cary. Now that offered some assistance to Cary. Perhaps the sorceress was subject to injury from herself? In that case, Cary had something to work with in terms of escape.

“Tell me how you got here! Were you summoned?” The woman walked into Cary’s personal space, bringing her face right up to Cary’s nose, like she might try and bite it off. Her breath reeked of garlic and sausage.

“Oh sweet gods, please rinse your mouth or perhaps…” she had to access Emilia’s memories, “brush your teeth? I understand parsley…” This time the woman surprised Cary by swinging a thin metal club at her face. Though the woman moved quickly, she wasn’t fast enough to catch Cary with her flesh out. She shifted back to her stone form, covering her mouth and nose with stone before the woman could hurt her. “Look, I guess you haven’t been doing this for long, but you can’t harm me with your sad little human implements. Maybe send in someone with a gentler touch?” The woman ground her teeth, displaying her frustration as if it would intimidate Cary. But anger already rode Cary and controlled her like a mount. “Or maybe you made a mistake and you’re trying to cover for yourself?”

At the woman’s blush and slight eye twitch, Cary snorted, but didn’t comment. After a few seconds of staring at her, the woman turned away from Cary and tossed her little club across the ground. “Get Henderson and assemble the ritual elements.” The woman issued an order to her minions, who scrambled back to the elevator. She directed her attention back to Cary. “This way is more expensive, more inconvenient. But we will find out who you are and why you’ve come.”

There was something more going on there, something the woman refused to say. Sometime during the trip here, the woman had shed her jogger camouflage in exchange for an outfit Emilia’s memories identified as a business suit. The way she held herself, the woman commanded the others of this little coterie. But the desperation in her voice told Cary that the woman reported to someone higher in the food chain; this woman was not her own master. And if she didn’t come up with the information she wanted soon, that master might express their displeasure.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Cary recognized the look easily enough. Elelele’s demesne had been replete with mirrors. For thousands of years a slight turn of her head would have shown Cart the same expression staring back at her from silvered depths. Each time her master brought her back home, she memorized that look anew.

“Your master will be displeased if you waste too many of his resources on me.” Cary kept her attention carefully off of Oleg. She could have said “us,” at the end of her challenge. But that might have reminded the woman of her other hostage.

“Just. Tell. Me. Your. Origin.” The woman pinched the bridge of her nose and stared into Cary’s eyes.

“No. I refuse your demands and further reject any offer of succor you might sing.” Cary gathered the power about her, as it to manifest it within the world between her and the strange sorceress. “May there ever be war between our kith and kin. May the offense between us be cleansed only with the blood of the offender.”

The woman stiffened at the ritual words. She knew them, meaning she’d studied her Demonology like a diligent little sorceress. But the magic Cary had pulled about her faded at once, sticking no more than ink to waxed paper.

Cary found that irritating.

“You seem incapable of conjuring your fell magics, demon.” The woman hadn’t recovered her composure. But the incident had emboldened her. “Perhaps we were mistaken, perhaps you are from somewhere other than the Infernim?”

Rolling her eyes, Cary sighed. “Let me out of here and lower your wards. Then I’ll show you.’

“Just tell me your name and I will do exactly as you ask.”

Cary snorted at the woman. Not only had Cary sworn never to cooperate with her less than a breath before, but they both knew sharing her True Name would put Cary under the woman’s power. “No. Tell me your name, witch.”

“Samantha.” It came out so abruptly that Cary didn’t have a reply ready. The woman quirked an eyebrow up, hiding the irritation she’d felt with herself. “Surprised you, didn’t I, demon?”

“Sure, but I suppose curtesy demands an exchange.” It really didn’t. But this would be another chance to tweak the sorceress’s nose. “You can call me Cary.”

The woman shook her head at Cary, as if not quite believing Cary would do it. “Demoness Cary, I command you to tell me how you arrived on our world!”

“Yes ma’am.” Cary droned as if controlled by the woman. “I arrived here with my foot tied to a star. On my native world I am a princess…”Another slap came. This one lighter than the last, the woman had learned not to hit Cary too hard, lest she break something. “Oh, did that upset you, Sam? Good.”

Samantha shook her head and screwed her nose back up. Rather than spar with Cary further — she was losing badly anyway — she stomped back to the elevators to wait for her subordinates. Or so Cary thought. Samantha dropped the hood over Cary’s head as if to insult her.

Tracing the woman’s steps, Cary listened to her pace while the elevator remained dormant. Oleg’s whining filled the quiet. The innocent Chuhaister should not have been caught up in this. For his capture and treatment Cary had marked Samantha for death. But the longer she dragged his pain on, the more Cary wanted to torture Samantha, to teach her better ways of behaving.

At long last the elevator dinged. The bulk of the night had faded and the Sun’s warm rays stirred the winds to blow a hint of the solar radiance toward Cary. Morning would arrive in less than an hour. Time spent waiting flew by as if its tail were on fire, so Cary hardly minded the wait. It was the entrapment and company that bothered her.

“Mistress Samantha, one of the Cabal was spotted downtown before dawn.” The first lackey through the door reported to Samantha as soon as he stepped out of the elevator. Sounds of frustration blew from Samantha’s nose and mouth.

Pausing for a moment, Samantha said, “how close were they, near the sanctum?”

Cary supposed they thought she couldn’t hear them.

“No ma’am, but they were spotted flying about a few blocks away.”

“Call in the auxiliary guards. We’ll perform the ritual on one of the enclosed floors.” Stepping up to Cary and thumping the wheeled platform she was bound to, the woman spoke in a louder voice. “Prepare her for the ritual and bring her to the Encleasiam.”

Cary didn’t know that word, but then again neither did Emilia. The group of lackeys carted Cary off to a lower floor and left her hooded in the room alone. Oleg hadn’t come with her. That fact set Cary’s teeth on edge. If this group killed Oleg, Cary would stalk them the rest of her days and take her revenge on all of them. Only the fortunate would die quickly.

Dawn rose with her iridescent fingers clasped about the horizon. Though this room was sealed and Cary had a duller environment to survey with her ears, she felt the Sun’s arrival through her bones.

Casting her awareness off and finding the only anchor she could attach it to in Emilia, Cary followed her. The young woman moved through wards that would have blocked Cary’s vision, if she hadn’t taken Emilia as a servant. As far as Cary knew, only death would keep her locked away from her servant. It was possible her former master Elelele could have crafted sufficiently powerful wards to shield a demon from its servant, but Cary ignored the thought and set it aside. The wards protecting Emilia did prevent Cary from spying on her visually. But emotionally, the young woman was a wreck.

This was worse than when Cary had been summoned. Deep aches bent Emilia’s shoulders, hunching them until they resembled bat wings clutching a branch from the underside. Though Emilia imagined herself plain and unattractive, Cary had seen the potential in the woman. Potential like that deserved cultivation and recognition. It certainly didn’t warrant abuse and scorn, or whatever had been done to Emilia over the years. Cary stayed away from those memories.

Hours after dawn, Samantha and her subordinates hadn’t returned to trouble Cary further. She spent the whole time watching Emilia, as much as Cary could do so through the servant bond. An image of a man in a dark suit flashed through Cary’s mind. He wore a round-topped hat with a narrow brim as well as an oversized suit. The glimpse was brief, but Cary fixed him in her mind as significant, though she couldn’t say why. A few minutes passed with Emilia in a heightened state of excitement and stress.

Suddenly power surged over the connection between them. Magical energy the likes of which Cary had never encountered flowed from an unknown source into Cary’s form, conducted by Emilia and the link they shared. Cary felt alive and energized for the first time in days. Flexing her mental muscles, she realized she felt stronger now than she had in at least fifteen centuries.

Fear shuddered through Cary over the link from Emilia, so Cary closed the tap from her end. That power sat in her middle and demanded release. Breaking the bonds holding her became as simple as exerting a fraction of her own True Will. Stepping away from the platform she’d been on, she pulled off her hood to find herself alone in the wide floor of a skyscraper.

Magic, so long denied Cary sparked to her fingertips and fluttered out before it manifested. Cary swore at her own lack. She could fill herself with magical power, with Pranna, but she couldn’t do anything with it.

Other than free herself.

Freeing Oleg would be impossible without the ability to control and direct her magic, so Cary gave up on him. It didn’t sit right with her, but she’d rather not wait behind and leave herself to Samantha’s mercies. Though she’d only met the woman in passing, Cary recognized the woman didn’t possess any such kindness.

When the elevator dinged behind her, Cary ran for the edge of the floor. Shouts from behind as the sorcerers discovered her flight had no effect on Cary’s movement. She didn’t slow one step in her effort to escape Samantha’s hospitality, such as it was.

Turning her arms into stone, Cary burst through the upper floor of the skyscraper. Her body hurtled through the air with all of the flight capabilities of a statue. This would be the highest distance she’d ever fallen since her master had transformed her. Cary idly wondered if she would shatter upon impact with the ground or if she would walk away unharmed.