Sarah Brennan: The Demon's Lexicon

Nick swore. “A third-tier mark. You came to us with a third-tier mark.”

“What does that mean?” Jamie asked in an agitated voice, which climbed higher with every word. “How many tiers are there? What d’you mean, tiers, like — tiers on a wedding cake?”

The windows of the sitting room showed nothing but blackness, but that was the problem with night. The demons could be on you before you had a chance to prepare yourself, and now there was a boy with a third-tier mark in Nick’s house. He glanced at Alan, and Alan looked so sorry. Alan was obviously trying to think of a way to tell the boy kindly, but with news like this it didn’t matter how you said it.

Besides, this was nothing to do with them. Except that the boy had brought it into their home.

Nick went and sat on the table beside his sword. He reached out and pointed, his finger tracing the air an inch from the mark on Jamie’s skin. The mark looked red at first, but after a moment looking at it your vision would blur, as if the mark was trying to slip out of sight. Even though the heart of the wound was red, the torn edges were black as shadows, black as blood in the night. There were two lines cut in Jamie’s skin, and within the two lines were three ragged puncture marks in the shape of a triangle.

Within the lines and the triangle, scarlet and shiny as a burn, was an open, staring eye.

“Three tiers,” he said curtly. “The first tier is the two slashes. They form the doorway. Once it’s made, the demons are aware there’s a weak spot, hira weak and they start to gather at the door between the worlds. They can track you once that first mark is made. Second tier is the triangle. Three equilateral points — three equilateral punctures — and once they’re made it means that someone has to die.”

Mae abruptly sat. She had been standing right behind Jamie, hovering protectively, and then suddenly she wasn’t. She had fallen backward into an armchair, her face white and her fingers gripping the arms of the chair.

“Die?” Jamie echoed.

“Someone has to die,” Alan repeated. “Either you or a magician: one of the magicians’ Circle that summoned the demon. Their blood could be used to wipe the second mark away.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Nick interrupted. “Because you have a third-tier mark. Inside the door, inside the triangle, is the eye. That’s the third tier. Once you have that, they have a fix on you. Eventually they will be able to break down the barriers in your mind, crawl inside you, and control everything you do. The demons are watching you now, and nobody but you will do.”

“Wait,” said Jamie, his voice trembling, his whole body trembling. “You can’t mean that. I thought the two slashes were just tiny cuts. I thought the triangle of puncture wounds were insect bites or something. I didn’t even tell Mae until there was a burn mark that looked like an eye. I didn’t even know if we should come here tonight, and now you’re saying that it’s too late already?”

Nick shrugged. “Yeah.”

He stopped pointing and clasped his hands loosely together, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Jamie was just standing there, shirt crumpled and half-open, hands hanging empty and open at his sides. Both he and his sister were wearing blank, blind looks, as if the universe had been rearranged in front of their eyes and the new version hurt too much to look at properly.

It was the look on Alan’s face that unsettled Nick. He was obviously feeling something, something softer and more than pity, something that came naturally to Alan and that should probably come naturally to Nick. He felt somewhat at a loss. The doomed ones always upset Alan.

“There has to be something,” Mae protested, her voice on a hard edge between rage and fear. “There has to be something I can do, you can’t just tell us that there’s nothing—”

“I’m sorry,” Alan said. “I would help if I could.”

“Why would the demon just want him to—” Mae checked herself, clearly unable to say the word.

“The demon will not want him to die,” Alan answered. “The demon wants to possess him, but once it does, the strain of the human spirit and the demon struggling for possession of the same body will be too much. It will tear his body apart. It always does: The demon can’t make it last. And they won’t give a body up.”

“First he’ll be a demon,” Nick said. “Then he’ll die. Shouldn’t take more than a month.”

Jamie appeared to be on the verge of hyperventilating, to judge from his breathing. Nick did not look at him. There was nothing he or Alan could do, no matter how much Alan wants such Alaed to help. They had told them what was going on, and that it was bad. He didn’t know what these two expected.

It was because he was looking at the carpet that he saw it first.

Creeping from the small unused hearth, over the worn red rug, and spilling onto the carpet, came pale, almost invisible tendrils of mist.

“Mist inside,” Nick reported sharply.

Two attacks in one day, and a boy wearing the demon’s eye in their house. They were certainly getting a lot of attention.

“Out of striking range,” Alan ordered the others. “Get onto the chairs. Get your feet off the floor.”

“Striking range,” Jamie repeated, clambering onto the sofa even as he spoke, holding fast to the back. He was still trembling. “It’s mist. Does mist generally strike in this house? Is it attack mist?”

Nick picked up his sword and prowled around the circumference of the rug, hefting the hilt a little against his palm as the mist spread across the floor. You could hardly see it, and then the slow creep caught your eye, the wavering of the air at the edges of the room, and you realized the room was brimming with mist.

Mae had got up on a chair, but she was twisting where she stood to get a better view. “Mist,” she said. “Is it a vampire?”

“No, woman, it’s not a vampire,” Nick said scornfully. “It’s another stupid illusion from stupid magicians who think we’ll be too distracted by their first attack to notice it.”

He scanned the room from edge to edge, looking for the most likely sign of movement, holding his sword ready. The thin film of mist made the carpet blur a little before his eyes, everywhere he looked.

“Mist is a small magic,” Alan explained. “It usually resolves into a small animal that a demon’s possessing. Mist’s easy enough to deal with.”

The usual form the mist took was a rat. Once, though, Nick had been forced to try and stab a large spider. He hoped it would be something big this time; he could use some action. Thursday night had been ruined, his house had been invaded, but he could be calm about this. All he had to do was kill.

The two amateurs were up on the chairs, moving and making a racket. Alan, who knew better, stood perfectly still and never distracted Nick by stirring or speaking at all. Nick stalked around the perimeter of the room. He caught the shimmer of mist gathering and forming a shape the instant before it happened.

He would’ve had it, but he was not expecting something as long and twisty as a snake. There was just the mist and then suddenly it was there, a thin black stripe against the carpet, moving faster than Nick did, striking faster than Nick did. Nick was only a second behind it.

He sprang forward and brought the sword down hard.

He cut the snake in two bloody halves an instant after it had sunk its fangs into Alan’s leg.

For a moment he was not worried at all. Then he saw the expression on Alan’s face, and he remembered his brother saying, Mae has her talisman, and I can get you one as well.

Nick had not thought to wonder where Mae had got hers. He had not noticed the absence of the telltale bulge under Alan’s shirt.