Sarah Brennan - The Demon’s Surrender

“Alan,” said Nick, the name and his voice a shock in the quiet room. It felt as if he had uttered a curse.

Sin looked up then, unable to help herself. Nick was staring down at her with those devouring-dark eyes. She shivered, not able to help that, either. The shiver almost turned into a shudder: She felt alone and cold suddenly, stranded far from human warmth and held transfixed by the demon’s regard.

“I know,” she whispered. “I won’t let him down.”

Nick’s face was a blur of black and white before her eyes, too close to make anything out. The feel of him this close was like sensing the approach of a dangerous animal, his breath hot on her face as chills raced through her body.

He took a breath that hitched in his chest, not ragged but torn clean in two, and that sign of pain made him reality rather than nightmare. She lifted her hands and touched him, his shoulders solid and warm against her palms.

Nick dropped a rough kiss at the corner of her mouth and cheek. He’d never been clumsy with her before.

“Good luck,” he said in her ear.

They both heard the tiny, traitorous sound as the door creaked open. For a moment Nick’s arms went around her hard, the lines of his body suddenly prison bars, but Sin yanked herself free.

She strode into the hall and met Anzu coming in the door. It was such an ordinary human thing to do, coming home, and he was so unmistakably something else. His hair was vermilion, his skin bone white. All his vivid colors betrayed the fact that there was poison lying just beneath his surface.

“Anzu,” she said, and gave him her best smile, like both hands held out to welcome him.

A returning smile lit that face, so lovely, so cruel, and so changed. It was strange, seeing a demon look pleased.

Of course, he had said he was lonely. And demons always told the truth.

“My dancer. Is this a greeting for a lover?”

Sin’s lips curled in real amusement. “This is a greeting for someone I want to make bargains with. I’m always the sweetest to customers.”

Demons appreciated the truth. Anzu looked at her with a glint in his eye that was not quite warmth but that might have been had he been human, like the reflection of fire in a glass.

“What do you want?” Anzu asked, his voice almost indulgent. “And what do you have to offer me?”

“She’s not the one making an offer,” Nick said from the doorway. “I am.”

The room filled with nothingness, none of them moving or making a sound. Sin did not even want to breathe and disturb the moment.

“I made a bargain with you and Liannan once, that I would give you bodies,” Nick continued. “All I want to do now is keep it.”

Anzu’s lips curled in a sneer. “I have a body.”

“Now, now,” Sin said, coaxing the reluctant buyer like a good Market girl. “Hear him out.”

“That body won’t last,” Nick informed him dispassionately. “You’re tearing it to pieces.”

“Your brother won’t last,” Anzu snarled, and went for him in a rush.

Nick put out a hand and took him by the throat. Anzu halted.

“Your brother won’t last,” he repeated, his voice soft and hateful.

Nick nodded. He drew his thumb lightly over Anzu’s jugular vein; Sin couldn’t tell if it was a gesture of affection or a death threat. “I know,” he said, voice just as soft. “The body lasts for such a short time. That’s how it is for all demons. Except me.”

“How nice for you,” Anzu spat.

“It could be you,” said Nick. “How about it? I can make it so you have a body for a long, long time.”

Anzu backed out of Nick’s hold, wary as a wild animal being offered food.

“Why would you want to help me?”

“For Alan,” Nick said. “Because if I had a soul, I would trade it for his. And because I would like to keep my word.”

Anzu looked at him for a long moment.

“I don’t need anything from you, traitor,” he said at last.

“Anzu,” Sin murmured. “You don’t want to go back to the demon world, do you? If he wants to help, let him. He owes you that.”

“He betrayed me,” Anzu said. “I spent long, cold years dreaming of his pain. I will not have my dreams taken away. Why should he be the one to escape? Why should he be happy?”

“You said you wanted to know what it was like,” Sin said. “You could be happy too. If you never had to go back to the demon world, and you had company.”

Sin looked at him with passionate appeal, as she’d looked at a hundred audiences, trying to show she cared and thus make them care too. This performance mattered more than any other.

“Take the deal, and I’ll go with you anywhere.”

She reached out and did not quite let her fingers touch his bare arm. She figured a demon would prefer that.

In any case, that was what her instincts told her to do. Always leave them wanting more.

She held her body curved beside his and kept her posture relaxed, as if she wanted to be there.

Demons seeking bodies came to windows and tempted humans. Well, Sin was the best performer the Market had. She could tempt anyone.

This demon had been cold and lonely for a long time.

Sin swayed toward him, warm and close.

She whispered, “Please.”

Sin had not known what to expect from Black Arthur’s house. This was the magician who had put a demon in his own child, the shaper of a future they had all been forced to live in, the villain of the piece who had died in the first act. She had never laid eyes on him.

The house was just a rich person’s house. It had windows vast and shining as shop windows, as if the rooms were stages to display their wealth to the audience of the world.

Sin could not see inside the windows from her position on their neighbor’s roof, though she did think if these people were all as rich as their houses suggested, they could take better care of their gutters. She was lying flat on the gray-shingled slope, listening to the cars purr by on the street, waiting for the ordinary noises of early morning to be broken by something strange.

All she could make out from her place was a sea of gray roofs spread out below them. The city seemed far away to Sin, a different and safer world.

But not her world.

The song came, soft and thrilling and lovely. The music went rippling down the street like a river. Sin had always thought that Market music was more beautiful because it was secret, but it sounded even better out in the open.

Down below, people’s heads were turning. Then they started to follow, moving to the sound of the song, pouring out of their houses in dressing gowns and business suits, dancing to the piping.

That would be enough to make the magicians come to the windows, and enough to make them afraid. They didn’t know how far the pipers’ power over these people would extend.

Nor did Sin, actually. When she had inquired, Matthias had said, “I could pipe them into the sea,” and added, “Hadn’t you heard? Pipers steal children.” When she asked for him to stop talking nonsense and children’s stories, he had laughed and walked off, piping already. She’d found her hand tapping a rhythm before she recalled that she danced to no tune she did not choose.

As far as the magicians were concerned, pipers might well be able to pipe people into the sea and steal children, and create an army to fight them.

Sin heard something else, too. She heard the rustle through the bushes in these houses’ front gardens, the sound of dragging bodies through the grass in the back, and she knew the necromancers had sent every crushed piece of roadkill, every frozen cat curled beneath a bush, every drowned dog with a bloated belly in the Knightsbridge area staggering toward the magicians’ house.