Ann Aguirre - Devil's Punch

“Dad?” Despite Oz’s taunts, I hadn’t expected to find my father—and certainly not like this. He hadn’t aged, though he looked awful. This man appeared to be no more than five years older than me. “What have they done to you?”

His lips moved but no sound resulted. Frustration flashed in his thin face. A copper wire was plugged into his throat and he turned his head slightly toward the knob next to it, trying to tell me something. I clicked it on and adjusted it.

His voice emerged from a speaker on my left, tinny and scratchy. “You have to get out of here before the magister returns.”

All Saremon were mages; that wasn’t a helpful distinction. “Which one?”

“The others call him Oz, but I don’t think that’s actually his name.”

My hands fisted in impotent anger. “He’s the one responsible for this?”

“Yes. Go .”

“Will it hurt if I unplug you?” I asked.

For the first time, hope dawned on his desperate features. “Hurt, yes. Would kill me. I can’t survive outside this contraption.” And by his tone, he didn’t want to. He wanted to be free like the dearest of unfulfilled dreams.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” It was impossible that he would.

I had been a child of seven when the demons took him, skinned knees, gapped teeth, and mousy brown braids. My father, Albert Solomon, took a closer look then, studying my face with ferocious concentration. His eyes—so like mine—widened. A pained sound escaped the speaker.

“Corine?” He didn’t wait for my confirmation. “You’re all grown up. Have I been here so long?”

An eternity for him, no doubt. Over twenty years in the human realm.

“It’s me,” I said softly.

“Oh God, you shouldn’t be here. How’s your mother?” The same sweet love I’d remembered between them sparked in his blue eyes now, undimmed by time’s passage or the impossible distance between them.

“She died.” In as few words as possible, I explained what had happened in Kilmer, the murderous twelve and the terrified townsfolk…and Maury. It hurt to relate and wounded him even more to hear. “She missed you until the end.”

“I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.” My father closed his eyes, too late to hide the fat tears that struggled out from beneath his lashes. Whatever they had done to him had not left him too inhuman to cry.

“Does it hurt to talk?”

“Everything does. I don’t remember what it’s like not to hurt. But it’s worth everything, knowing I saved you from this.”

I froze. “I don’t understand.”

“They came for you, Corine. You were the last girl child born of Solomon’s line. When your mother and I had a daughter, we talked about the likelihood there would be trouble. So I was ready. I had a counteroffer for them.”

That didn’t square at all with the laughing, carefree man I’d known, but I had been a child, shielded from all the darkness, until it split my world wide open. “Why didn’t Mom tell me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she thought you were too young to understand. Or she was afraid the guilt would cripple you.”

“So she knew you sacrificed yourself for me.” As she had. Maybe she’d meant to explain it all when I was older, but she never had the chance. At least now I understood why she never wanted to talk about him. In other cases, a woman abandoned by a man called him all kinds of names, but this hadn’t been like that.

I just hadn’t known the truth. Having just found him, I wasn’t ready to lose him, but looking at what they’d done, I didn’t think he could be saved. I turned to Greydusk.

“Your thoughts?”

“This looks like a reaping machine,” the demon answered.

Chance raised a brow. “What’s that?”

He took a half step toward me, his expression unsure. I curled into his side, grateful to be myself for these moments, though I could feel Ninlil scrambling in my head, preparing to resume control. I returned a gentle caress to the back of his hand.

Greydusk explained. “Remember the soulstone I used to open the gate?”

I nodded.

“This is how they’re made.”

“How long does it take?”

“Fifty years, or so I’ve been told.”

Damn. I didn’t imagine getting my hands on one for a quick exit would prove a simple task. Obviously my father hadn’t been here that long, so the jewel in his chest shouldn’t steal his soul. When we unplugged him, he would just die.

Just. As if that wasn’t bad enough.

The queen half of me didn’t remember her dad. She’d had one; but after siring a daughter, the father’s parental role became less critical. Demons had a longer life span than humans, but they were not immortal. In this fashion, Ninlil always ruled in Sheol, until the archangel summoned us and stole our power. That lingering anger blunted some of my grief. She’d heard of soulstones, of course, but she’d never seen the apparatus responsible for their making. Ninlil also whispered to me that it was possible to use a fresh sacrifice and open a gate that way, but for obvious reasons it wasn’t always practical.

Yeah, because that was my concern.

“Why do they want your soul?” I asked. “Apart from obvious reasons.”

The speaker crackled, reminding me of Shannon, and that made me feel like my father was already dead and I was talking to him through her spooky radio. “They hope that a soulstone created from one of the Binder’s line would permit a stronger gate to open between worlds. A permanent gate.”

“Hope or know?” Chance asked.

My father’s expression was like a shrug, though he couldn’t move his arms. The agony from being suspended like this had to be intolerable and he couldn’t even scream unless someone turned the volume on for him. Rage chilled into a solid brick inside me; this would not stand.

“I won’t ask what you’re doing here,” he whispered.

Yeah. Best if you don’t .

He went on, “I’d rather not imagine you trapped as I am, so I’m going to pretend you have a plan—that you came to save me and now you’re getting out.”

My voice rasped like sandpaper, thick with tears. “That’s the idea. Is there anything you want before…?”

He knew what I was asking. “Would you hug me?”

It wasn’t easy getting close enough with all the wires, but with some help from Greydusk, I wove through the tangle and put my arms around my father’s waist. He was beyond emaciated, thin in a way that meant he hadn’t eaten for years. They were using magick to keep him alive—and for that reason I wanted the Saremon dead even more. They had done this. Hurt one of mine.

I didn’t waste my energy on more mental promises. Instead, I lived in this moment, where I had my father with me. He had no body heat. No heartbeat. Albie Solomon was the next best thing to dead already, so why did what I was about to do hurt so badly?

The embrace went on for a long time, and then he stirred against me. “I love you, queenie. I couldn’t be happier that I got to see you again…or that you’re the one who will end it for me.”

God, I’d forgotten he called me that. The memory tumbled into my head. I was a princess, wearing a pink dress with a frilly skirt and a play tiara. He used to call me Reenie, and that day it became queenie, because of my princess outfit. After that Halloween, I remembered him spinning me around with raspberry kisses on my stomach, and teasing me with chants of Reenie-my-queenie. My mother had watched us with an indulgent air. How I wished I could have more of these recollections; I needed them, craved them in a way that seemed more vital than air—but there were no more.

I looked at Greydusk, who seemed transfixed by my pain. Queens weren’t supposed to love the men who had given them life. This one did. And I regretted the years I had spent calling him a shiftless bastard in my head. I’d imagined him finding a new family, a better one, and instead he had been here, suffering for me .