Sarah Brennan - The Demon’s Surrender

“What?”

“I know,” Mae said. “It’s pretty big of me, especially considering what an enormous jerk you are. But I’m a giver.”

“I think I may be missing a subtle human nuance here,” Nick told her. “What exactly are you trying to give me?”

“Emotional support,” Mae said firmly. “You said once that my face made you feel better. And I know that you are feeling worse than you ever have in your life, and I know it won’t help much. But in case it might help a little, I wanted to be here. For you. I thought you might want that too.”

“I want,” Nick began violently, and then checked himself. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I want to—I want to not hurt you.”

“That’s good,” Mae said, almost gently.

“Is it?” Nick asked. “It’s different from how I’ve wanted other people. I don’t want to hurt you, but at the same time I do. I want to hurt everybody, all the time. I told you. I meant it. I want to burn down the world.”

He meant it. The dark promise in his voice made Sin flinch where she stood in the doorway, not quite able to look away. Mae didn’t flinch.

“You don’t have to hurt me. I can just be here. I’ll talk at you, or if you don’t want me to talk, I’ll read a book and you can sharpen your weapons.” She paused, and when Nick didn’t speak, she said, still in that gentle-for-her voice that wasn’t quite gentle, “Or I can go.”

Mae waited another minute. Then she nodded her head, shifted her bag strap into position with some finality, and turned away.

“No,” said Nick, with an effort. “Don’t go.”

Mae turned back to him and smiled slowly. It was a hell of a smile, dimples deepening and dark eyes turning warm. It made her beautiful for a moment, even though she wasn’t.

That was what made Sin turn away at last. She remembered being that happy, wildly, stupidly happy, happy in spite of everything. She didn’t want to hate Mae.

She went into the kitchen, closed the door, and made herself a cup of coffee. She sat at the table and tried not to think about what she had lost.

She was slumped over her cold coffee, half-asleep, when the touch landed between her shoulder blades and found her suddenly alert, panic flooding her system with adrenaline. Like a prince waking a princess with his touch.

Like being that princess, and waking to find your prince a monster.

Alan stood under the skylight, and aside from the black eyes it was Alan, just like Alan, with none of the sinister beauty of a demon altering his very bones.

It was Alan, but he was so changed. The line of his mouth was thin and despairing. The pale morning filtered through the skylight was stark and unforgiving, illuminating every trace of pain.

There were gray locks threaded among the red curls she had run her hands through, and he looked so tired.

Sin jumped up from her chair, horror coursing cold through her veins. One of her hands gripped the chair back so she would not reach for him, and her other hand grasped a knife.

And then like a cloud passing away from the sun, Anzu stood before her, every inch radiating bright, awful demonic beauty.

“So I’ve had a thought,” said Anzu.

Something about his voice made Sin blink past the brilliance of golden hair and careless menace, and she realized he was on edge. Apparently torturing Alan hadn’t been fun enough for one day.

She reached for her other knife.

“They both abandoned me,” Anzu told her. “Hnikarr promised us bodies, and then he changed and took it all back, and I thought I’d take revenge. I’d take his little pet and he’d be furious and he’d come around, be like he used to be. I thought Liannan would help me. But she’s set on some voyage of discovery with her body, and Hnikarr, he won’t—nothing’s like I thought it would be.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Sin murmured, her whisper poison. He sounded like a child, a murderous child bewildered that pulling the wings off flies had not given him everything he wanted.

Only the flies were Alan: The toy he had taken to spite Nick, the toy he was breaking, was Alan.

“So I think we’ll just go away together, you and I,” Anzu said. “Somewhere lovely, with mountains. Do you like mountains? I do. The others like their humans so much. Hnikarr thinks being human, being loved, is so wonderful. I’ll try it. I can have it too. You can love me.”

“No,” Sin exclaimed. “I can’t.”

There it was, truth as harsh and simple as a demon’s, and she braced herself for his reaction.

He brushed it off. “I’ll do nice things for you,” he said. “Then you’ll love me.”

“That’s not how it works!”

“Why not?” Anzu demanded.

Sin’s palms pressed into the hilts of her knives. There was a restless, fierce brightness about Anzu that seemed as if any moment it would explode into violent delight or violent despair. Or just violence.

She wanted to ask Why me? but she knew why. He was lonely, in his demonic way, and she was there.

And Alan wanted her. Demons did tend to gravitate to the loved ones of those they possessed, because they could possess them next more easily and perhaps also because they were familiar, because the body still yearned toward them.

In the midst of horror and fear, Sin was almost happy. She hadn’t been sure of exactly what she meant to Alan. He’d never said. He’d said so many things, but not that.

If he could reach through a demon to her, though, that must mean he loved her a little.

“It won’t work,” Sin said. “Because you disgust me.”

She shouldn’t have said it, but the memory of how Alan had looked moments before with the skylight shining on the threads of gray in his hair rushed back and overwhelmed her. She stood, staring Anzu down, and when he stepped in toward her she lifted her chin and waited for whatever was coming.

Anzu hovered over her, golden in her vision like a gilded bird of prey about to strike. Then he touched her, fingers in her hair, pulling like talons, too tight.

“I’m tired of being alone,” he whispered. “I want you with me. Come to me like you did before—at the window, when you said you were here. I want you to mean here for me, not him. I want that for me. Tell me what I have to do to get that.”

“I can’t give you that,” Sin said. “I didn’t mean to give it to Alan. It isn’t something you decide. And I’m not going anywhere with you.”

The hold on her hair went tighter, pulling her head back.

“Why not?”

“I have a family,” Sin said. “I won’t leave them.”

“You might not have a family for long.” Anzu leaned in close enough to kiss her, and Sin turned her face away. He breathed, soft against her cheek: “Think about that.”

Sin relaxed all her muscles deliberately, made her body soft and yielding and exactly what he wanted it to be, as she knew so well how to do. His fingers loosened in her hair, and she turned toward him.

When he saw her face, it was his turn for all his muscles to go tense.

Sin stared at him coldly. “This is supposed to make me love you?”

“Maybe you will,” Anzu said. “If you’re all alone. You’ll have to love me then. Who else will there be?”

“Me,” Sin told him. “I’ll be there. You can’t make me become something I don’t want to be. And you sure as hell can’t make me love you.”

“Sure as hell,” Anzu murmured, and smiled, drawing even closer to her. The smile hurt to look at, and then it hurt when he touched it to her ear and she felt his lips curve and the faint hint of teeth. “How sure is that?” he asked. “I live in a place of eternal pain and cold, and now I have been abandoned even there. I won’t be alone here. I’m going to have you.”