The Demon's Lexicon (10 page)

Besides, Nick was going to dance again. They all knew it would be a good show.

A lot of the time, dancers would dance through their steps, and no demon would show, but they never failed to come for Nick.

“Who's Anzu?” Jamie asked. “Nick said he was going to call him.”

“Two demons have given Nick their names so he can call on them,” Alan answered. “Demons can do and show themselves as almost anything, but mostly they have preferred forms and ways of doing things. There are the ones Mae would call succubi and incubi, who try to appeal to people romantically, there are those who show themselves wearing the faces of the dead, there are the ones who favor a particular animal. The demons Nick calls are Anzu, who often takes a bird shape, and a succubus called Liannan who—well.” Alan glanced over at Nick, who smiled at him and waved a hand for him to go on. “Demons don't have a very good sense of time,” Alan went on. “Liannan thinks Nick is a boyfriend of hers from a while ago.”

They were starting to light torches and chant to prepare the circle for opening. Torchlight caught Alan's hair and changed it from the color of blood in the dark into bright gold.

Jamie looked stunned. “A boyfriend? I thought demons were evil!”

Alan frowned. “Well, it's up for debate. Some of us argue they are, and of course Liannan would have been ready to take her boyfriend's body and his life. You can't trust them, not for a second, because they are so desperate to get into this world, but—some people think that not all their feelings are simulated to trick us. They are very different from us. It's hard to tell, but some people think…” Alan's voice softened, and he admitted, “
I
think—that they can love.”

Nick thought that if a succubus ever got to Alan, he would probably want to take her out to dinner and talk about her feelings before he'd accept any dark demonic delights.

The torches were burning steadily in brackets set on the trees around them. The circles were done, and the plates of fever fruit were emptying. Nick felt like he was separate from his body and still trying to keep it steady. Light was brimming and refracting in his vision as if he was seeing it underwater. Girls and boys with sticky fingers and sticky mouths crowded around him, laughing and asking him why he was dancing again. Alan, the fixed point in a whirling world, stayed close and answered for Nick. He would be asking questions for Nick soon enough.

The drums started the dancing rhythm, a low, muffled sound that seemed to begin in his bones. They always had to muffle the drums in case someone heard them, but all the sounds of the night were distinct in Nick's ears suddenly—the sound of a woman spreading her cards on a stall, the sound of small, frightened animals in the wood.

The light step of a girl, behind him. Nick spun and saw Mae.

“Good news,” announced Merris Cromwell. “We have found a most promising new dancer.”

Nick laughed, and Merris regarded him coldly. “She fulfills all the requirements. She has good coordination, she has a strong desire to call the demons, and she has no fear.”

“She'll be afraid enough in a minute,” Nick murmured.

“Want to bet?”

Mae strode past Nick to the nearest dish of fruit and seized one as if she was picking up a gauntlet someone had thrown. When she bit into it, the juice ran in a golden stream down her chin.

Her eyes met Nick's, and his hand went to his belt. He unbuckled his old sword and scabbard, and tossed them aside. He wasn't going to back down from a challenge.

“Let's dance,” he said.

As Mae cut her circle under Merris's direction, he turned to Alan, who offered him the shell. It gleamed in pale seashell colors, blue and violet and apricot in the Goblin Market lights, and then it was white once more. Nick kissed it, put the speaking charm around Alan's neck, and then stepped into the circle of summoning.

Nick's talisman flared in a sudden moment of pure pain. Nick tilted his head back and absorbed the shock, let it wash over him like water, and listened through the feeling of pain and rising magic for his brother's voice.

“I call on the demon they called Anzu in Sumer!” Alan said as the sound of the drums came faster and faster. “I call on the demon they called Djehuty in Egypt! I call on the demon the Romans called the thief at the gates and the watcher by night. As they called him, so I call him: I call on Anzu!”

Mae must have entered the circle beside him when Nick had entered his, but Nick had no awareness of her now. Partners or not, she would dance or fall on her own.

The drums surged and pounded in his temples, and he stepped along the lines for communication. The lines of traveling began to whirl as if they really were the spokes of a wheel, and he had to keep up with them. There was a cold, well-known touch all along his side, a seductive and almost familiar voice whispering to him, and in his other ear the call of “Come buy!” spiked into an appeal to stay, a promise of warmth in this world. He side-stepped neatly, never going too far to meet the demons; he twisted and spun in the center of sound and color and set lines.

There were thin screams of approval all around him. Arms reached out for him. Some were human, and he let them
reach him. They pressed warm hands against his body, against his face, and the fever fruit was pressed again to his lips. He bit down and the world was bright around him, like a glass sculpture on the very edge of a mantelpiece, catching the light before it fell. He put his body between the worlds, threw back his head and put the straining muscles of his shoulders, the twisting strength of his hips, put his heart and his clenched hands at the service of the demon, and then held firm.

Nick always had to wait for his partner to catch up. He waited with his heart slamming against his chest and his throat raw with every breath, the world in a glow from fever fruit.

For a moment all he registered was that Mae was doing well for a beginner. Her steps along the weaving were sure, and she was making the right gestures of offering and appeal. Then he saw the fall of her skirt against her leg, the gleam of the chain around her stomach in the firelight. He saw her hands sliding like a lover's hands down her own throat as she tipped her head back, and he realized that he could want her, after all.

He realized that he did want her.

There was no time to think about that, since at the point where their two circles intersected there was a cold light burning, racing along the patterns of the weaving but growing stronger and stronger at the point where it had started. Until the light gave birth to a dull red bonfire, and at the center of the red chill a shape formed.

Anzu was taking the shape of a man today, though there was a suggestion of the eagle in the curve of his nose, a glint and pattern like crimson feathers about his golden hair. The fair skin he had chosen to wear was reddened by the dull glow of the fire around him, and when he lifted his eyes to Nick's face, they were enormous, and clear as water.

Nick saw his own face reflected in those eyes, black eyes and black hair, a face far colder and more grim than the demon's face before him. That was Anzu's intention, of course.

“Nick, isn't it?” Anzu asked, pronouncing Nick's name as if it was rather a good joke. “Well, well. Dancing again, are we?”

“Our pair danced for you and you fed off their feelings. You owe us some service, Anzu,” said Alan.

Anzu peered out past the circle. “Ah,” he said, looking even more amused. “It's Alan, isn't it? The one who knows so much. What service do you require?”

A new voice broke through the sound of drums and the sizzle of the flame.

“I want to save my brother,” said Mae, clear and confident. “He has a third-tier mark. How can I do that?”

Anzu laughed. “You can't,” he answered. “He's ours now. It's only a matter of time.” His great glass-colored eyes traveled to Jamie's face. “So young,” he remarked, smiling wickedly at Mae. “We do like them young.”

He turned and grinned at Nick. Nick saw sparks pinwheel around Anzu's head and take flight in the shape of tiny birds.

Alan hesitated, his face grave, but Nick's brother knew better than to leave a pause for a demon to misinterpret.

“I have a first-tier mark,” he said quietly. “Can you remove it?”

“Oh, of course,” Anzu replied. “Washing you clean would be my pleasure. Can't have you leaving that little family of yours. What would they do without you? Put the mark in the flame.”

Alan knelt with some difficulty on the grass and rolled up his jeans. He extended his leg into the circle, making sure it was lifted well above the pattern of the weaving, and held it in the center of the fire.

The fire did not burn him, but its sullen glow lit up his leg so the first mark stood out dark against his skin, the two slashes forming a doorway. The shadows lurking in them were so deep that it looked like they were welling with fresh blood.

“Hmm,” said Anzu. “That's interesting.”

Alan's voice was clipped. “Explain.”

“Oh—it's nothing,” Anzu said. “Only that your mark”—he nodded to Alan—“and the young thing's mark were made by the same Circle. The Obsidian Circle. And they were made by the same demon.”

“What does that mean?” Alan demanded.

“A small thing,” Anzu told him. “It means that if you agreed, I could transfer one of the young thing's marks onto you instead. That would mean you would both be bearing a second-tier mark, which still means death for someone. If you caught and sacrificed two magicians of the Obsidian Circle, then you would both live. It is the only chance the boy has, but it would be a terrible risk for you to take.” Anzu waved a careless hand, fingers blending into the flame. Nick could almost see talons. “Forget I mentioned it.”

“Wait,” said Alan.

Nick had kissed the speaking charm and given his voice into Alan's keeping a hundred times, and he had never missed his voice. It was almost peaceful, having no words, having Alan speak for them both, but now Nick had something to say. It felt as if smoke had got caught in his throat, or the lack of words was scorching him. He moved his mouth, moved his tongue with a painful effort, and found his whole body empty of words when he needed them most.

Mae had words. She looked at Alan and she said simply, “Please.”

Nick knew that while he was within the circle, Anzu could feel a little of what he felt. Even though Nick could not speak, even though he knew that his own face rarely betrayed much emotion, Anzu looked at Nick as Mae spoke and Nick was sure Anzu knew everything Nick could not say. In turn, Nick thought he could feel just a touch of the demon's malicious delight.

No
, Nick thought, his whole body thrumming with that single word. He wanted to shout it.
No
.

Alan cleared his throat and said, “All right.”

Still looking at Nick, still grinning, Anzu reached out one of those hands that blurred into talons, and with a talon he stabbed Alan three times as deep as he could.

He drew the second mark, which meant death, onto the skin of Nick's brother.

A
S SOON AS THE BALEFIRE DIED AND THE DEMON WENT
down in smoke, Nick broke out of the circle in one stride. He was beside Alan in another step, one fist clenched in Alan's shirt and one closing around the speaking charm. He ripped the charm violently from Alan's neck and took a savage satisfaction in seeing the thin red line spring up on Alan's skin when the chain broke.

He stamped on the shell and felt as if he had bitten his tongue and blood was filling his mouth, slipping down his throat. Only instead of blood, it was his voice.

Now that he could speak, he found he had nothing to say. It was done.

Nick shoved Alan away, sending him stumbling back into the ash and the broken pattern of the demon's circle. Alan was easy to throw off balance. If Nick had thrown him back with any more force, he would have fallen, and if he'd fallen, Nick might have kicked him when he was down.

A crowd of people had gathered to watch the dance, and now they were all gaping like the idiots they were. Even those idiots were not stupid enough to get in Nick's way. He
stormed forward, and they scattered in all directions before him. He plunged into the depths of the wood, away from the noise and lights of the Goblin Market into a raging darkness. Branches caught in the night wind whipped at him, twigs raking his face.

There was a sharp burn in the corner of one eye and a trail of heat down his cheek. Of course, it was blood.

Nick wiped at his eye and saw the lurid smear of blood on his knuckles, red even in the darkness. He wanted every trace of the fever fruit burned out of his system. The fruit made even this dark wood too bright. It made the wind and shadows into whispers and lurking thorns.

He turned at every sound, wanting to lash out at something, but nobody was stupid enough to follow him. He was surprised when he heard the unmistakable sound behind him, a sound not of wind or branches but of a step, and he realized that somebody had been stupid enough to follow him, after all.

He wheeled around and it was not Alan.

It was Mae, coming toward him with her eyes wide and her whole face luminous with emotion. At first Nick thought she was just happy. She had every reason to be happy, after all, since Nick's stupid brother had removed her stupid brother from immediate danger by risking himself.

Then he remembered the fever fruit.

Mae's eyes were a little too wide, her pupils dilated. Nick remembered how the world was after that first taste, how everything was magnified and glowing, every color breaking in on you like light, and every thought like a revelation.

“What do you want?” Nick snapped.

Mae's lips were slightly parted and quivering. She licked
them, and with that fevered sharpness Nick saw the place on her mouth where her tongue had rubbed away the lip gloss.

She came closer, put out her hand, and pushed Nick against a tree. Her lips quivered again, and she spoke.

“I want,” said Mae, offering up her mouth. “Oh, I want…”

She lifted her free hand to pull Nick's head down, fingers knotted in his hair. Nick remembered, with a vividness born of the fever fruit, the curve of Mae's hips dancing. He could want her.

Alan wanted her too. This would hurt Alan, and after Alan's little stunt Nick liked the idea of hurting him.

Nick seldom said no to a girl, and he had never done so in circumstances like these, with the lights of the Goblin Market glimpsed like far-off lightning behind her and her trembling mouth an inch from his.

Nick touched her for the first time.

He took hold of her shoulders and pushed her away. Then he leaned forward and whispered into her ear.

“You'd want anyone right now.”

He let his lips touch her ear and when he drew back, she did not look angry, only dazed and uncomprehending.

He left her. He did not want to run, because that would have looked like fear or some other ridiculous thing, so he loped through the woods, going easily, knowing that when he walked fast no girl and no crippled idiot could catch him. He held his hands clenched in fists, but he did not hit out at any thorns.

When black night was touched with the cold, unfriendly blue of coming morning, Nick went back.

The Goblin Market was in the process of being packed
away. The remnants of the stalls stood forlorn as their owners stored their wares in boxes, and the few customers left lingered uneasily around the debris of magic.

The others were standing in the center of the clearing, near a fortune-telling stall. Jamie was looking uneasily around and saw him at once. Mae was leaning against Alan, cheek pressed against his shoulder. As Nick came toward them, she made a determined effort to twine herself around Alan and turned her face up to his.

It seemed that, indeed, anyone would do.

Alan stooped and gave her a soft kiss, light, but enough to show her she was not being rejected.

“No, Mae, I really can't. It would be taking advantage,” Alan was saying.

The fortune-teller picked this unfortunate moment to lean over her stall and pluck at Nick's sleeve.

Her crystal ball, left out in forlorn hope, stared up at Nick as if the woman had a huge third eye cupped between her palms. In the crystal depths, luminous points of green spiked like a tiny forest; above the green, streams of iridescent blue were looped like ribbons.

“See the future, young sir?” the old woman croaked theatrically. Merris Cromwell would have coldly recommended a cough drop.

The tightly interwoven blues and greens darkened. The impression Nick received was that of a shadow falling over a lake, a silhouette that grew more distinct, moving from a shadow into the lines of a face.

It was just his own face, his darkly reflected eyes staring out of the crystal.

Nick picked up the crystal in one hand and hurled it with
vicious force at the nearest tree. The crash made Mae and Alan jump and look around. Nick caught their movement from the corner of his eye, but mostly he was staring at the glittering shards.

“I think I've seen enough,” he said.

 

They dropped Mae and Jamie home, Alan giving strict instructions for Mae to be put to bed and kept there. Jamie made solemn promises and held Mae's hand tight with the air of an anxious nanny.

“You don't need to worry,” he said, leaning into Alan's open window. “And, er, Alan?” he added. “Thanks.”

He gave Alan a quick kiss on the cheek, and then disappeared through the gate with a struggling Mae in tow. It was rather a fancy gate, loops and swirls wrought in iron creating a picture Nick couldn't quite make out. Through the intricate pattern he glimpsed an ivy-covered house, large and white, looming in the still-dark sky like a big expensive iceberg. The windows in the upper floors cast yellow light on the big garden and the tennis court.

These two had everything. They could have left Nick's brother alone.

Nick crossed his arms over his chest and said stonily, “Quite a night you're having.”

Alan said, “I'm not talking to you while you still have the fever fruit in your system.”

Not talking was fine by Nick. He stared out the window as Alan drove.

Usually the journeys back from the Goblin Market were all right no matter how long they were. It was not like moving; it was just the two of them without Mum. Alan played
classical or country music and talked for ages about whatever his latest craze was, from vintage comics to philosophy. It was all just insane ranting to Nick, but he didn't mind hearing it, and he always bullied Alan into letting Nick drive most of the way home.

This time there was silence. Nick did not offer to drive at all. He measured exactly where the halfway point was and when it came, he did not speak. Let Alan tell him to drive. Let Alan take care of himself for a change. Nick glanced over at Alan and saw his jaw set. He was not going to ask Nick for help; he was too proud to ask for anything that was not offered willingly.

Nick was viciously glad. It was Alan's own fault. Let him suffer.

They continued to drive in silence, except for the tiny hitches of breath that began to rise helplessly in Alan's throat. Nick listened to every stifled sound of pain.

Alan would never have let Nick hurt himself, no matter how angry with Nick he might have been. Nick knew that, but that was the difference between them. Nick was a jerk, and Alan was a suicidal fool.

The car drove into a lurid yellow morning, the terrible toxic color of leaden clouds filtering pale, sickly sunlight. There was a fine, continuous rain falling. Nick stared out at the wash of water down the glass and wondered if other people got as angry as he did. He'd seen Alan angry, but he'd never discovered in Alan's eyes any savage urge for blood. He wished he wanted to yell at Alan or slam doors, wanted to do anything but lash out with extreme violence. He sat, fists clenched, too aware of the new sword at his belt and the knife against the small of his back.

When they pulled up outside their house and the purr of the car engine stilled, Alan let his leg relax and breathed out a sigh of pure relief. For a moment there was complete quiet.

Then Alan said, “While you were gone, I talked to Merris. She said she wouldn't be able to help us with Black Arthur, but—I don't know. I've heard stories about the experiments she does in her house. She won't talk about them. What we need is an excuse to get into Merris's house.”

That was just like Nick's stupid brother, still worrying about Mum when he was the one in danger. What Nick needed was to get both marks off Alan, and that would be almost impossible.

“We need to kill a magician,” Nick snarled.

Dad had been killed by the magicians. They had spent their whole life running from the magicians, and now they had to seek them out.

“We've killed magicians before,” said Alan.

“When they came for us,” Nick snapped. “They live in magicians' Circles. If we try to deliberately find one, we'll find a nest of them. They have demons, they have magic, and they outnumber us.”

These were the facts. Alan knew them, and it maddened Nick to have to enumerate them. He did not add the next fact, which was that Alan was probably going to die.

“It's a chance,” Alan said. “Jamie didn't have a chance before. Now we both do.”

“Why should he expect you to die for him?” Nick demanded. “What would I do with Mum if you were dead?”

“I didn't realize,” Alan said slowly, looking a little pale, “that your concern was so entirely practical.”

Nick stared at the dashboard. Alan was choosing now, of
all times, to talk nonsense. Nick was in no mood for it.

“You weren't being noble,” he informed Alan after a moment. “You didn't want to give anyone a chance. Don't lie to me. Don't tell me it had nothing to do with that girl!”

Before Alan could tell him anything, Nick had wrenched open the door. He leaped out and slammed it shut behind him. He ran as he hadn't run through the wood at Tiverton, as if he were being chased, down the gray side streets of south London.

He ran to the new garage he was working at. Nick found comfort in machines that were either working or broken, and if broken could be either fixed or destroyed. He found the garage as still as a graveyard, cars in various stages of repair like sad metallic specters.

Nick kicked a box of tools and sent wrenches and spanners flying out onto the cement. He wanted to overturn a car, and he felt sure he could. He was so angry he wanted to kill.

A car, winched up as high as it would go, collapsed with a crash behind him. Nick spun and drew his sword as a loose wheel rolled into the wall, and he noticed for the first time that the lock on the garage door was broken. Somebody or something had smashed it.

Nick was suddenly happy. He hoped this was an attack, that here at last was something he knew how to deal with. He turned in a slow circle, watching for a flicker of movement, for the slightest sound. Another car fell with a thunderous crash as soon as his back was turned.

“Got you,” Nick said, turning on the sound with his sword already arcing through the air. All he saw was a lick of flame leaping under the bonnet of the car.

It was a demon. It had to be. The crash had not been enough to start a fire and besides, Nick's talisman was a prickling, harshly humming weight against his chest. There was a demon, somewhere close, and it would not show itself so he could kill it!

He thought for a moment that he needed to go warn Alan so they could all start packing, but then he remembered. They were chasing demons now. If there were magicians here, they had to stay and hunt them.

He should really go, he realized. He didn't need to be caught and laid off for setting fires.

“So,” he said to the dying flame and the empty room, “I'll get you later.”

He did not feel like going home, so he took a walk, and then returned to work, where everyone was wondering who the mystery vandals were. Nick nodded to all the theories, and then popped a car bonnet and got down to work. He worked grimly and silently, two shifts, until it was dark and someone told him to get out and enjoy what was left of his night.

Nick just nodded a final time and left. He went home at last and got into bed without seeing anyone. Sleep, black and consuming, swallowed him whole.

He woke late as usual and came downstairs to find Alan playing with a piece of toast. He looked pale and worn as an old bone, after only one night with a second-tier mark. There were violet shadows under his eyes, and he did not look up from his plate as Nick approached. Nick could usually sneak up on anyone but Alan. He went over to lean his forearms on the back of Alan's chair and frowned at the back of Alan's neck.

“Don't,” he said, and saw Alan jump at the unexpected
word, so close, and then relax. “Don't do anything like this again,” he said. “All right?”

Alan reached behind him and grasped Nick's upper arm. His thin fingers only half closed around the swell of muscle, but he held on.