Sarah Brennan - The Demon’s Surrender

Gerald laughed again, the sound scraping Sin’s ears like a shriek. “You’re such an idiot,” he told Jamie. “You’re a child, and you’re dreaming. Even if I wanted to try, it wouldn’t work.”

“I’m going to try,” Jamie said. “But I wish you could live.”

Jamie advanced, nobody else in the room moving, magicians and Market all still because nobody was quite sure what was happening anymore, and everyone knew that one move would throw them all into bloody chaos.

Jamie kept coming. Nick and Mae followed behind, not at his side, not openly threatening, but in a silent promise of defense. Gerald watched Jamie come, and watched Jamie beckon to Nick.

Nick leaned in toward Jamie, black head bowed deferentially, and Jamie’s eyes flashed with a fresh wave of magic.

Jamie had hoped Gerald would surrender. Sin had not until she saw Gerald, and then she had thought that perhaps, just possibly, it might be so, that Jamie’s dream could come true, that they could all walk away from this with clean hands.

“Kill him,” Gerald ordered his magicians. His voice was deliberately emptied of emotion, not like a demon’s innate lack of human emotions, but as if he had human emotions and had poured them away. “Kill Jamie, and the demon is mine alone to command.”

He threw a slash of magic at Jamie, like a black lightning bolt. The air froze in front of Jamie’s face, ice absorbing the lightning and falling into glittering shards on the ground.

“You think so?” Nick asked.

He pushed Jamie aside and walked forward, taking one step, then another, across the polished wooden floor and into one of the overlapping magicians’ circles.

“Stop,” Gerald commanded, and Nick stopped. Gerald’s smile spread.

Jamie opened his mouth to speak.

“What are you going to do, Jamie?” Gerald asked. “You gave me control over it too. I can say ‘stop’ and you can say ‘go’ until we tear the thing to pieces between us. But you won’t, will you? Because you care about it, and I don’t.”

He reached out a hand toward Nick.

It felt as if the room had turned into a desert, the heat scorching and no moisture in the air, with silence all around.

Nick went blazing white, and so did Gerald’s eyes.

Gerald advanced on Jamie, and light rose between them like a path for them to follow. They both walked the path to each other, and it seemed like the desert winds howled.

But it wasn’t wind. It was magic, called not only by Jamie and Gerald but by all the magicians, filling the air with sound and light.

A magician, built and buzz-cut like a soldier, threw himself into their midst and caught up Mae. Mae sliced her knife across his arm, and Sin grasped his hair and slit his throat.

The sound of the pipers was lost under the howl and hiss and whine of magic everywhere, and there was no time to look to Jamie. Nick was on his knees, going paler and paler until he was gray, as if he was being leached of blood instead of magic.

“To Nick!” Mae commanded the Market, someone else’s blood red in her pink hair.

Sin ran, faster than anyone else, to stop Helen before she reached the demons’ circles where Nick was kneeling. She threw herself against Helen, pressed close so the reach of Helen’s swords was no advantage at all, and steel met steel.

Sin parried, thrust, dancing close as she could, as light and dark tore at the edges of her vision and there was screaming under the sound of magic.

She slipped in blood and fell, Helen’s sword biting into her side.

With a peculiar clarity in that moment, she saw the clear beads of sweat on Helen’s brow.

Helen said, “Pity to kill you.”

Falling didn’t have to mean ruin.

Sin hooked a foot around Helen’s ankle and twisted away from the sword, back on her feet. “Wouldn’t it be, though?” she panted. “I’m gorgeous. I don’t think I’ll let you.”

She was wounded, and she didn’t know how badly. She could feel the blood flowing warm down her belly, and through eyesight going blurry she saw Mae standing in front of Nick alone, with two magicians bearing down on her.

Sin spun away from Helen and threw her knife at one of the magicians going for Mae. She threw a glance like a prayer at Jamie, and found him still on his feet, eyes still alight with fire.

So were Gerald’s.

“It seems we’re about even,” Gerald remarked, his shirt scorched by magic fire but his skin whole beneath.

Jamie laughed. “Well, you must hate that,” he said. “Isn’t the whole point to have more power than anyone else? Isn’t that what my life was worth to you? Isn’t that worth everything?”

The highest window in the room, curved on top like a window in a church, broke into a thousand sharp pieces as the second demon entered the room.

Jagged splinters of glass slid along the floor to mingle with the gleaming ice.

Anzu, who had landed directly in the middle of the summoning circle beside Nick’s, looked around with a wild bright smile.

Nick looked up at him.

Their eyes met as the markings of the circle burned with rising fire, burned high, burned hot, sparks flying upward into that vaulted ceiling.

“Poor Hnikarr,” Anzu murmured, his amusement plain. “You don’t have much power left for anyone, do you? Here you are, crawling and begging. Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Nick said, between his teeth.

Anzu smiled, malice written all over his face. “I love it.”

And Gerald blasted power at Jamie like a lightning flash and a shock wave combined. Jamie went flying across the floor, hit with a bang that rattled the boards, and dug his hook into the wood as he tried to get up.

The white light of magic had died out of Gerald’s eyes, but he stepped toward the summoning circles and away from Jamie.

“You’re right,” Gerald said. “Power is worth everything. It’s certainly worth your life.”

He glanced at Nick, obviously all but used up, then laughed. He reached into the circle where Anzu stood.

“And I’m about to have everything.”

Both of Anzu’s hands shot out across the circle, like a vulture swooping down on his prey at last. Hands growing talons at the ends bit into Gerald’s flesh, shadowy wingtips curved down savagely to envelop him.

Gerald’s eyes went past blue into white, fierce shining white, like looking into the sun, like more power than anyone could bear. He laughed.

Then it was like a light burning out.

The light drained from white to blue to gray, until even the ashes of light were gone and darkness filled Gerald’s eyes, as if someone had spilled shadows inside him, staining him forever.

There was nothing left of the balefire but smoke and darkness.

Nick stood, a looming black shape in the smoke. Jamie stepped up to his side, his eyes icy white fire in the gloom.

Sin and Mae both came forward and motioned to the Market to join them.

“A demon’s mark on a magician means just the same thing as a demon’s mark on anyone else,” Jamie said. He spoke softly but clearly, his voice ringing around the room. “It means you can be killed, controlled, or possessed. Nick gave me power because he chose to. He did what I said because he wanted to. And he obeyed Gerald’s orders because it was part of Mae’s plan.”

The magicians had already begun to recede from Gerald like the tide, as if realizing how far from human company and comfort he had suddenly gone.

Whatever love or grief he had felt, it did not matter now. He had reached out for power above all, and got his reward.

Laura the gray-haired magician, Gerald’s right hand, was crying, covering her face, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably. Sin had seen mothers cry like that for dead children.

Anzu turned Gerald’s body slowly to look at her, face blank as a stone, and then he looked where Gerald had been looking in the last moment of his life, back at Jamie.