Ann Aguirre - Devil's Punch

“Where do we start?” I asked the Imaron.

He went to examine the apparatus, as the answer wasn’t readily apparent. After giving me a comforting squeeze, Chance joined him. And while they checked out the reaping machine, my father stared at me.

“All I ask,” he said softly, the speaker crackling with his pain and resignation, “is that you make it quick.”

“I won’t touch anything until they tell me how.”

We talked then. Precious, stolen moments. I told him about my pawnshop and my dog, about Chance, who had been my first love and by some miracle was standing beside me still. His eyes grew damp when I told him what I’d done in Kilmer, and he spoke the six words that every child longed to hear:

“I am so proud of you.” Only they came with reverb and distortion.

They had taken everything but his loyalty and devotion. My mother had been lucky to share even ten years with this man. And maybe that’s why she never went looking to replace him. She knew that quantity mattered less than quality and that nobody could ever take Albert Solomon’s place in her heart—and that was why she stared wistfully out from the front porch. Not because she thought he was coming home someday but because she knew he never would.

He gave up everything for you .

“I love you,” I whispered.

Greydusk stepped to my side and murmured, “I found the main connection. If you unplug there, he should feel no pain.”

“Dad, I’m sorry.” Tears sprang up in my eyes, not fitting for a demon queen, but one who hurt this much could not help but weep.

“I’m ready,” my father said.

“Corine, let me.” Chance touched my arm lightly.

For a moment, I wanted him to take the weight. I’d love to give the burden to him to bear, but then when I looked at him, I would see the man who killed my father, not the one I loved. So I shook my head, hair drifting against my cheeks. I felt like one of those screaming women of old with a shriek rising in my throat that I had to swallow down like razor blades. No, better I should be haunted by my own reflection, for I was used to that.

So many dark choices—and this might be the worst. But there was none better. At least I could offer him surcease from pain.

Leaning in, I kissed my father on the cheek, as I had done so many times as a child. He did not smell of Old Spice. He didn’t have a bowling shirt or a Panama hat, but he was still the man who held my dreams in his hands until the day he disappeared. With his blue eyes set in an ascetic face, he smiled, though his lips didn’t move. Then he sang in a tuneless tenor the chorus from “Fire and Rain,” which he’d always belted out in the shower. The speaker crackled with the emotion, and I couldn’t bear another moment. As he finished the last word, I stepped behind the reaping machine, grabbed the cord Greydusk had indicated and tugged.

It popped free with a spurt of fluid, and I kept pulling. The Imaron helped me, knowing I was mad with grief and that I had to get my father down. I would not leave him in this place. Chance worked beside me, his face taut with echoed sorrow. Because he loved me, he mourned with me. I wondered how he would feel if we had found his mother in such a state.

But due to his luck, we’d saved her. And I’d killed my own father.

At last I set Albie Solomon free and he fell into my arms. I held him and rocked, tears streaming down my face. He felt like a child against me, thin and small and wasted. His legs resembled matchsticks, arms like pipe stems, and his face was too young for so much pain, borne in my stead.

Chance and Greydusk let me grieve for a while before the demon dared to intrude. “Your Majesty, we cannot remain here. The mages might return.”

The queen surged forward then, taking over. I bit off the words like chips of ice. “Let them.”

“I’m not leaving him.” My tone brooked no refusal.

In response, Greydusk knelt and collected my father’s body. The Imaron cradled his wasted form with proper reverence, and the pain ebbed enough for me to rise and lead the way out into the corridor.

Now we needed a rathole.

I had an idea. I toyed with it, wondering if the small creature that felt so ambivalent about me could truly help us. But it was worth a try.

“Put the dog down,” I said to Chance.

“Corine…” He trailed off. Then he obeyed, kneeling beside the animal with a worried air. “Don’t hurt him, okay?”

I wrestled a duality of reaction: anger that he’d dare question anything I did commingled with an absurd sense of hurt that he thought I would . With great self-control I put aside both responses to be analyzed later. Eventually I would have to deal with the divergence in my head, resulting from my twin selves—which hadn’t merged, but left me with conflicting impulses—but for now the compound was shaking down around our ears, even if we couldn’t feel it here in the the sanctum sanctorum.

“I won’t,” was all I said before I directed my attention to the animal. Butch, that was his name. “So you’re a clever beast.”

The dog eyed me skeptically and backed up a step. But it wasn’t growling or trying to bite me, which felt like a small victory. Then it yapped. Once.

“That means yes ,” Chance put in.

I remembered that after he said it, as if it was a fact I had learned long ago and since forgotten. “Excellent. If I find something that belonged to the mage who worked in this lab, could you follow his scent?”

Butch pondered and then yapped again. He could.

“Brilliant.” Greydusk saw the plan in its entirety, I had no doubt.

In essence, it was simple enough. If the dog could follow the trail, it should lead us to the route that mages had used to escape my wrath. If we found their hiding place along the way, even better. It could end here and now. If not, we left the collapsing Saremon compound and went straight to the palace, where I could issue my first proclamation, hire staff, begin renovations, and organize a proper funeral.

That list daunted even a demon queen—but that had to be weariness and grief talking. I had been born for this role. I had lain dormant in the human’s blood, in her soul, waiting for my moment. Once I set my affairs in order, the pleasure in this would return. I didn’t permit any doubts to take root.

Instead I took action, ransacking the lab for some cast-off piece of clothing. My efforts bore fruit when I slammed open a drawer and found a dirty handkerchief. It was damp with some unidentifiable fluid and I found some pincers to pick it up, then I knelt and offered it to the dog for his perusal. He sniffed and then sneezed. Whined a little too. I couldn’t blame him; it was fiercely revolting.

“Is that strong enough?” Chance asked.

The dog’s look said, Hell, yes. Any stronger and I would die .

I swept my arm out before me in an inviting gesture. “Lead on. We’re right behind you.”

The little dog pranced. Part of me found it adorable; the rest of me wondered how it was possible the creature hadn’t been eaten. Butch lowered his small head, tail up and twitching with excitement. He sniffed around outside the door and then settled confidently on a path that led back the way we’d come, only at the first opportunity, he hung a left. We’d explored this part of the lab complex, but I hadn’t been looking for an exit then. I’d only been thinking of my dad. Later I would replay those moments with him. My heart hurt; it was a caution against love and its shocking weakening, but I did not deny those feelings. Even pain would make me stronger in the end.

The dog led us straight to a hidden passage. This place was probably riddled with them. When I knelt beside him, a breeze swept out from beneath the stone. I felt around for the catch and then a section of wall slid behind the rest.