Heart's Blood(73)

"I am magister of the conjurer's guild." Grey projected certainty, though he wasn't exactly sure how he had got caught in the lunatic's spell. "And I am particularly sensitive to conjury done wrong." That was true-and could indeed be the cause.

"Didn't help you, though, did it? Not once I perfected my spell." Ferguson rasped in a breath over some broken thing inside him. "You'll still be here when Belial comes, even if I have paid for my crimes. Other magic dies with the magician, but not this."

Grey couldn't see how Ferguson could have tested it without dying, so he found it hard to believe. But the demon might be awake, and it might have nothing better to do, and Ferguson might not have gotten around to dying before it showed up. Grey opened his magic senses as wide as possible. If he didn't actually search, but merely let the magic flow to him . . .

Grey! Mary's cry seemed to come from a great distance. Grey, help me! Why won't you hear me? I'm stuck!

She wasn't the only one. Spirits wriggled all over the sticky magic outside the warehouse.

Shh. Pearl's voice and her soothing magic came flowing through Grey and out. The trap caught some of her sorcery, but it reached the pinned spirits, giving them strength enough that most broke free. Mary wasn't one of them.

It will be well, Pearl said. Tiny steps. Ease your way out without fighting so hard.

Demon! Mary shrieked. Demon, demon, demon! Her panic popped her free and she went wailing off into the distance.

"One safe," Grey said.

And it was there, the demon.

It oozed through the bricks of the warehouse, a miasma of evil that backed Pearl up into Grey. She reached out and caught Katriona's arm, pulling her out of her frozen terror to join them. Pearl had no idea whether strength lay in numbers in this sort of battle, but she wanted the girl close.

She would have dragged Ferguson over, too-no one deserved to face that sort of soul-sucking evil alone-but he turned toward the approaching demon. He stood up straighter, as if the pain lessened, and he smiled. A terrible, twisted grimace full of cruel anticipation that blossomed just as the demon took form.

Pearl tugged Katriona even closer, wrapping an arm around her as Grey's spirits spread their protection wider, taking her in. Katriona still had a faint remnant of Pearl's blood on her hand, left behind from placing it on Ferguson. The blood allowed Pearl to add a layer of sorcery shielding, as was the duty of masters for students.

The demon was beautiful. Demons were fallen angels, after all. But its beauty was dark and ugly, warped into a lie. And, Pearl realized, not at all like Grey.

His beauty was purely human. Warm, living, and good. Loving. He did know how to love. She could see it now. Now that she had a good look at what the antithesis was. Grey loved. He loved Mary. And he loved . . . her?

Pearl looked up at Grey, startled. His fierce concentration was on the elegantly dressed demon in its silver-gray morning coat and trousers strolling toward them, but there was no mistaking the emotion flaring through the familiar's conduit like the heat from a blast furnace. Grey loved Pearl, and Pearl loved Grey, and it flowed from one to the other and back again in an ever-increasing circle.

"Belial," Ferguson gasped. "Avenge me!" He twitched and crumpled to his right as the magic riding him bit deeper.

The demon lifted a lorgnette and peered through it, first at Ferguson, then at the three standing together to one side.

"Why should I?" the demon drawled, looking back at Ferguson through the lenses.

"Wh-why?" Ferguson looked as if the hammer had hit him in the head before schedule. "B-because I summoned you. I command you!" He gestured his sigil-the one that had made Grey turn green-in the air. "Avenge me!"

The demon smiled. Pearl could see flies crawling on its neck beneath its gleaming gold hair. The smile made her shudder more than the flies.

The opposite of love wasn't hate, she understood now. Hate could be in the mix, but mostly, the opposite of love was selfishness. Hate grew because one's selfish wishes were thwarted. Selfishness treated the rest of the world as tools, servants to its own pleasure. The demon standing before her was pure, distilled selfishness, without a single drop of anything else-not mercy, or justice, or anything-to dilute it.                       
       
           



       

"I think not," the demon said. "No one commands me."

Magic flared. Or rather, "magic" was the only word Pearl had to describe it, for it was power so great no mere human could touch it, much less manipulate it. Essence of demon. It burned like dark fire, gleeful hate capering at the thought of souls crisping into black lumps and pale fluttering ash.

The power licked over the three in their magic shell-Pearl could feel the heat. It flickered around Ferguson, then subsided into a barely visible aura of heat and darkness around the demon.

"Tasty." Its smile promised pain beyond imagining, pain the demon would enjoy, then forget.

"Take them." Ferguson shuffled to one side, offering better access to his prisoners. "I brought them for you. And then, go and destroy the dead zones as you promised."

"Dead zones." The demon's beautiful face twisted, as if it tasted something foul. It spat on the ground. "I grow bored with the dead zones."

"It means it can't do what you asked," Grey said.

What was he doing, antagonizing the thing? Pearl squeezed his arm. "Grey!" she whispered. "Hush."

The demon shrugged. "Perhaps I can, perhaps I cannot. Perhaps it amuses me to watch you mortals struggle against them."

"But, you swore an oath!" Ferguson cried. "You promised. I bound you to that promise." The man almost wept, whether with the pain of the sorcery surging through him or from dashed hope, Pearl didn't know. She almost felt sorry for him.

"Look." Ferguson waved a trembling hand at the other three. "I brought them for you. Do what you will with them."

And all sympathy departed again.

"You said they were tasty," he whined. "Just keep your promise. You promised."

The demon seemed to increase in size as it took a step toward them. "What makes you think," it said, "that I would keep a promise to you when I broke my oath to God Almighty?"





28




"ARE YOUR BINDINGS greater than his?" the demon wanted to know. "Only a fool would be so stupid as to trust the word of a demon."

"Told you they were demons," Grey muttered. "Not ‘greater spirits.' "

Pearl pinched him outright this time. Hard. And twisted. He winced.

"Shut. Up," she hissed as quietly as she could, given how angry she was. "Do not draw its attention."

"Doesn't matter," Grey whispered back.

"I will indeed do exactly as I wish with these . . ." It paused to look Katriona and Pearl and Grey over again through its lorgnette. "These delightful creatures. But I suspect they will prove an indigestible lump."

"Told you," Grey muttered at Pearl.

Its demonic aura flicked out again to scorch them through their protections. Polonia cried out and Pearl fed her magic. The spirit couldn't be destroyed, but it could be hurt, and it could be driven away from its place protecting them. The blood magic seemed to ease the pain. Pearl just hoped she had enough.

"No." The demon turned its awful smile back onto Ferguson, who whimpered. "No, when I said tasty, I was referring to you, my dear magician. You have reached just the proper stage of corruption, perfectly tinged with the delightful horror of realizing everything you believed has turned out to be utterly wrong, and that ancient claptrap you despised was, in fact, correct. Oh yes."

The demon chortled with delight. "You will be delicious. And then I will entertain myself with these three. And after that-" The nasty anticipation in the demon's grin-a literally unholy glee-made Pearl's stomach churn.

"Why then," it said, "I shall take advantage of this little exit from hell you have so generously provided, and do as I will with whatever else I might find to entertain myself."

"At least the little spirit's escaped," Pearl whispered to Grey, keeping Mary's name back.

"I'm hoping she's gone for help, as I asked her to," he muttered back. "She has a tendency to forget everything when a demon appears."

I can go, Angus offered in that humming through her bones he used to communicate with her.

"I don't think you can get past the trap," Pearl said.

Once more, Grey seemed not to hear Angus, but he followed the conversation anyway. "Safer where you are, friend. For all of us."

Angus hummed an assent and spread himself around her, as the other spirits had, offering his protection. He was new, his layer thinner and weaker than the older spirits', but it was an extra layer around her. Could she convince him to shift and protect Grey in-?

"No!" Ferguson shrieked. "No, you can't. You promised. I forbid this! I command you, take them. Leave me alone!"

The demon's aura had flared out to encompass the wizard. It was burning him, but not consuming him. Katriona cried out and turned away, hiding her face in her hands. Pearl put her arms around the girl, who had loved the man at least a little. Pearl couldn't make herself look away as the demon stepped closer and closer to the screaming Ferguson.