Selling Out (6 page)

She heard Tath chant some strange sound. The shadow disappeared into his green energy and then came the almost familiar prickle and tang of magic working as an emerald line of force extended instantaneously out of Tath’s spirit form, through her, out of her eyes and into the blood slick of the demon. It shrieked, bubbled, and spat in agony. Lila felt a horrible voyeurism as Tath, using her as his proxy, sucked the life from the wound in the demon and from its blood. She felt Tath’s energy grow in power and density. She felt him changing . . .

What are you doing?

It saw me. Demons have souls. Spirits. If this one reaches the realm of the dead with the knowledge of me there are necromancers aplenty here who will pull its story back to the living world. Death is no silencer.

Blood poured over her. Smoke billowed. The demon screamed and she felt its body go floppy, as if it was genuinely deflating. All its furious energy was passing through her. She could see and feel it but it was not of her. It was going into Tath. She was horrified and revolted. He was eating its soul.

For the first time this was not some drily recorded activity in a textbook. It was a frenzy; the destruction of something unique, beautiful, and fragile. Even though the demon had intended to kill her and she was killing it, or trying to, this seemed an atrocity far beyond anything either of them had meant. And moreover she could feel Tath’s reaction to his own arcane power: he experienced it as an abomination almost beyond endurance but, at the same time, he gloried in it. He bathed in the demon’s self as he transformed it into raw aether and he felt an intense, orgasmic pleasure as he drank that energy in. Tath swelled. Lila felt his presence intensify. His astonishment, fury, and self-hatred filled her up.

She dropped the demon’s lifeless body and it fell at her feet with a meaty thud. Poisons—real, emotional, and psychic—flooded through her. Tath felt her responses and flared with anger and hate. For the first time ever she truly felt that he was capable of easily killing her, and always had been.

There was a flash.

She blinked blood out of her eyes. Standing on the window ledge was a small purple demon with a camera.

“Hold it, love!” it shrieked.

There was another flash.

“Perfect!” It grinned and then said, “Oof . . .” as it was kicked aside. Lila heard its angry protest as it fell and then saw another demon alight on the balcony. It was big and blue with a dragonish look and a long, horsy face. There were horns, whiskers, fierce gold eyes. Its eyebrows, arms, and legs had white feathers where a human would have had hair, some marked with violet and some plain. A mane of thick white plumes spread from its head down its back and along the spine of its tail to the tip where they ended in a heavy, soft burst of iridescent plumage. It was slender, powerfully muscled, and naked. The blue hide shone like polished vinyl and its powdery white angelic wings made a creaky sound as it furled them close to its back. It jumped down from the rail with the ease of flowing water and came towards her on its hind legs, grinning, suddenly almost human in aspect now that it was upright. A warm, sensual charisma radiated from it. Like an animal it crouched low, balanced on its toes, and sniffed around the wreckage of papers and the lake of blood. Its face was mobile and expressive—it raised its eyebrows and pulled its mouth into a surprised series of moves. It cocked its head and glanced down at the dead demon.

“Azarktus, my brother,” it said softly and tutted. “You impetuous fool.” A tear rolled from its eye and fell onto the body. When it landed there was a sound like a sigh and something faint, almost invisible, streaked up from the corpse and fled, wraithlike, out of the window. “I’d kill you myself if you weren’t already dead.” Then the creature stood up tall and held out its slender hand, smiling and showing all its sharp tigerish teeth.

“I’m Teazle,” it said in a heavy demonic accent. “Pleased to meet you.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“
O
f course,” the demon continued, conversationally, whilst glancing between her and its outstretched hand in an inviting manner, “now that you have slain my blood kin my family is at war with you and I am bound by near infinite regress of ties and duties to seal your mortal fate at my earliest possible convenience, however . . .” It paused, glanced at the hand Lila had not taken, and then quietly closed it before abruptly coming to a change of heart and smiling and offering it again. “However, I consider it extremely inconvenient to do so and I expect that I will continue to consider it that way almost indefinitely which is technically not a crime though it violates the spirit of the law (though who cares for that?) and I wish you would take my hand because I am beginning to feel stupid.”

Lila, woozy from poison, irritated by pain, and generally feeling in a bad mood, stared at the hand and then at the demon’s yellow eyes. Straw to gold, she thought with annoyance.

Watch out . . .
Tath whispered faintly
. . . beware of . . .

Magic?
Lila asked. She was heartily sick of his warnings and her own frequent memories of how easily it took her in. She did not feel the citrus airburst of wild streams which could bind her into some unwilling pact.

She dropped the blade she was holding and with her own bloodied hand took hold and shook firmly. The returning grip was strong and confident. The demon smiled cheerfully and its eyes narrowed in wrinkles of pleasure.

“Charmed,” it murmured and tilted its head, looking mostly at her from one side. “And it feels so real.”

Lila pulled her hand back. “It is real. Really.”

“But of course.” The demon flexed its fingers, remembering her grip. “Pardon my imprecision, it’s not long since I left government and the affairs of state and, more accurately, the documentation and language of state, are slow to depart. I meant to say how fleshlike it feels, considering it is nothing of the sort.”

Lila looked down. “You don’t seem very . . . sad . . .”

The demon glanced at the body briefly and shrugged. “He is gone. There is nothing I can do about it. What I have missed of him through neglect whilst he was alive is my own failing but that is also gone. This,” it rolled the corpse over with its foot, “is for the garbage collectors. Look, his face is very angry. At least he did not go to the endless shores in a self-pitying state. Really, our mother will be glad of that. Which reminds me. I was sent here to invite you to a party.” With a quick jerk it tore a feather from its wing. “Burn this tonight at seven and follow the smoke. I’d stay and help you out here with whatever you were doing but I have to go deliver the rest of the invitations and my mother turns into a living horror if her parties go wrong. The librarian will send someone for the body if you holler. Pity about your dress, all that blood really has spoiled it. Nice breasts.” It flashed her a grin of long, tigerish teeth and then hopped once, twice, onto the balcony and over the rail.

Lila stood and slowly straightened up to her full height. The body steamed. A light breeze ruffled the scattered, trodden on, and generally ruined pages of her scholarship. From behind her the soft padding of feet came into the room. There was a short, impatient sigh and a faint growl of anger.

“How many times must I go over it?” she heard the librarian mutter. “No duelling in the Reading Rooms!”

“I . . .” Lila began, seeing the old demon stoop and shuffle forwards, leaning on his staff with which he tapped a large brass sign attached to the wall beside the door. Lila had not really noticed it before. It said, “No duelling. No summoning of imps or other manifestations of elements potentially damaging to the records, including but not limited to: elementals, wisps, sprites, ifrits, goblins, vile maidens, bottleboys, basprats, toofigs, magshalums, witches, elokin and major, minor, and inferior spawn. No praying. No cursing, except by staff. The library is closed on public holidays. Donations welcome.”

“I . . .” Lila tried again weakly.

“Not you!” he rasped crossly. “This idiot.” He kicked the heavy body with one cloven foot and then growled with pain. “Arthritis in my knee. Janitor already fuming about unscheduled funeral arrangements—oh his job is not worth the grief, he is not paid to cart corpses about the place, he is thinking of forming a union . . . Curse you, whippersnapper!” His stave glowed and fizzed. He gave Lila a rueful look. “Can’t curse the dead of course . . . and I suppose I should congratulate you but it seems a little like harsh sarcasm, my dear, considering you have voluntarily entered a vendetta with the Sikarzi family. They’re big in this town, you know. One of their sons is the most successful assassin from Bathshebat to Zadrulkor, perhaps even the most successful assassin in the history of Demonia, although one has to say that just in case the bastard is lurking behind the shelving units.” He rubbed his knee with one seven-fingered hand and stared balefully at the dead demon. “Not this one of course.”

“No,” Lila said, looking down, feeling sick and feverish as the discharge of contamination from her poisoned blood briefly overloaded her liver. “Of course not.”

“No,” said the librarian with vicious satisfaction. “This one was the runt of the litter and no mistake. If there was any justice in the world they’d send another son to marry you, you doing them a favour like that,” he made a chopping motion and then a slicing motion, a common gesture in Demonia that indicated the importance of culling the weak, “but instead it’ll be the endless war no doubt, depending on how long it takes them to kill every living relative you have.” He glanced up at Lila and nodded with appreciation. “Weak and foolish but his mother’s favourite. Doted on him. On all the sons of course, as they do, but this one more than any because he was weak and she couldn’t stand the shame of having brought him from the egg so she made out it was all part of his character development and him some new experimental brave new breed to try out being more like humans—all snot and bother but no balls—no offence, Miss. Made it her mission in life to try to develop him. Her whole world, he was. How he must have hated her! And here you are, the human ambassador and a perfect freak to boot—everything he never was nor could be, like some kind of nemesis or foul doppelgänger sent to torment him, eh Miss? Ah well. He’ll have been glad you came along, you see? Your public death would be the only thing that could have gained him any respect. Now he goes to the murk unmourned as the ass he was.

“Well, you can’t walk around my catalogues covered in that muck. I will send you to your circumstances . . .” He whirled his hands in the air. A blue glow appeared around them.

“But . . .” Lila began.

And then she was back in her room at Sorcha’s house.

The old male demon who kept the rooms free of wandering magics during the hours of daylight was there, collecting stray essences from the air that came in through the windows and sipping them from his hooly-bowl. He raised one, thorny eyebrow. “You look like you’ve had a successful day, Miss.”

Lila felt herself cold, sick, sticky. She might throw up but that all seemed trivial in comparison to her new situation as murderer of a favoured son, subject of a vendetta and intended victim of the greatest assassin in a world of dutiful killers. And she had to go to a party, and her dress was completely ruined. “I guess,” she said.

Look pleased
, Tath said.
In their terms you just entered the big league. You should be throwing your own party and spending your inheritance on it, while you still can.

I don’t have an inheritance
, Lila told him, walking directly into the shower.

Stop!

Stop?
She began to turn on the water.

You have to go as you are. Wear the blood.

No.

Yes. It would be a sign of enormous cowardice to wash it off.

It smells.

You’ll live.

That seemed like a promise. Tath assured her it was something like one. Wearily, she stayed her hand on the tap.

Zal stood staring moodily out of the window of the suite at the Beautiful Palms Hotel, watching the surf roll up and down the beach. It was a beautiful day. It was beautiful weather. It was all very very picture perfect. He was in a foul temper. It was because of what the faery behind him had just said a moment ago—words still ringing around his head in that acutely irritating way that happened when someone said something that hit a nerve . . .

“Tell her about your addiction, before it gets out of hand and she finds out another way.”

Since the day, perfect though it was, provided absolutely no avenue of escape, he turned around and sat down in one of the armchairs and glared at Malachi for a few moments, but that didn’t work either. Vague fantasies of a spectacular fight with the creature flitted through his mind but were squashed by the knowledge that this was one of Lila’s friends and also by the fact that the faery’s instruction was quite right.

In the other armchair Malachi matched Zal’s steady gaze. There was a bouquet of flowers almost but not quite between them, placed on a circular glass table. Zal angled his feet away from Malachi and put his gaze on the flowers. He considered allowing his
andalune
body to spread out in the hope that it might put Malachi to sleep—elven aetheric bodies interacted with faery aetheric senses and caused an overload of some kind which put the faery straight into a deep sleep in a protective reaction.