She was still staring in amazement when Den grabbed her arm. He snatched her off her feet before she could react and brought her dangling up in front of him, his other hand grabbing her neck as surely as though he were the one who could see.
“I told you,” he said, fingers digging into her throat. “Blinding me does nothing.”
Nico gasped and tried to kick him in the groin with her dangling legs. He spoiled the blow with his knee, spirit moving instantly to absorb the shock just like before.
“And it’s not just that I can hear you,” he continued as though nothing had happened. “I can feel your killing intent.”
He opened his hand, and Nico plummeted, crashing into the sand. The moment she hit, Den’s boot was on her back.
“You should have run when I gave you the chance,” he said, grinding his heel into her back. “If you don’t even know that, then you have no hope of beating me.”
Nico gasped in pain, bringing in more sand than air. Den’s heel was like an iron spike on her spine, pressing so hard she saw bursts of color behind her eyes. But the dark was still her highway, and the moment her mind cleared enough to slip into the shadows, she sank into dark ground. Relief flowed over her as the pressure of Den’s foot vanished from her back. She slipped sideways, coming up in the shadows behind Den as she looked down to survey the damage.
Nico froze in place, all pain forgotten. In the days since she’d first started to see as spirits saw, she’d never once looked at herself without her coat. Now, in the dark, with no coat and no normal sight to intervene between her and truth, she saw herself for the first time.
Above her, Den looked up from the sand where she had been, his face surprised. “Where did you go?” he whispered. “And why are you so afraid?”
Nico did not hear him. She’d forgotten all about Den, about the fight, about her injuries. All she could do was stare in horror as the demon’s voice filled her mind.
Now you understand why the spirits panic when they see you?
She didn’t. There was no way to understand what she saw inside her own body, beneath the frail mask of human spirit. The only way to describe it was darkness. Living, devouring, hungry darkness. And below that…
Why are you surprised? The demon’s voice was like silk against her mind. You’ve always known you were a monster.
“Knowing’s not the same as…” She couldn’t say it.
Seeing? the demon finished, his smooth voice sharpening to a cutting edge. I suppose that’s true. Poor Nico, don’t you wish now you’d taken my offer when you had the chance?
Nico snarled, snapping herself out of her terrified trance with a burst of defiant rage. She flung open her soul, slamming the demon back into his prison. Across the shadows, Den stiffened and spun to face her. Nico didn’t care. She fell panting to the sand, staring up at the blank darkness of her coat, desperately looking anywhere but at her body, if she could even think of that thing as her body anymore. But even as the thought of it filled her with fear, another voice spoke in her mind, a voice that sounded very much like Tesset’s.
Horrible as it is, it’s still your body, isn’t it?
Nico blinked. Trembling, she raised her hand, holding it as close as she dared to her face. The blackness below her skin flowed like water. Below it, the shifting yellow eyes stared at her without blinking while the hungry mouths opened and closed in a way that made her stomach clench. Black claws scraped against the thin cage of her flesh, looking for a way out, and on her wrists where her manacles had once rested, she could see the faint outlines of black, jagged teeth waiting for any scrap of food.
Mixed with the liquid darkness, Nico could actually see her own heart pounding in terror in her chest, but she forced herself not to look away. This was her. Her body, her power, her life. She hadn’t fought for so long and hard only to be afraid of it now.
Nico flicked her eyes to Den. He’d found the edge of her coat and was pressing his hands against it, looking for the edge. She could see the orderly flow of his spirit tensing. He was losing his patience. Soon he would rip the cloth and return them to daylight, and then there would be no way to stop him going up the beach. That wasn’t acceptable. She’d told Josef she would stop him. But Nico was facing a very real dilemma. She couldn’t beat Den, not as she was, not even when she had the dark to move through and he had nothing. That left only one path. She had to become stronger, become something Den couldn’t stop. Nico looked down again at her own darkness, the clawed hands scraping against her flesh. “Become” was the wrong word, she thought with a grim smile. She already was a monster. All that was left was to embrace it. After all, the monster was hers. She’d ripped it from the demon of the Dead Mountain with her own hands. Now it would fight as she commanded, for it was a part of her, and she was the master of herself.