Sarah Brennan - The Demon's Covenant

Alan climbed into the car with him.

“You were going to shoot that magician?” Nick asked, his voice a thread Mae could hardly follow.

“If necessary,” Alan told him, voice calm and sweet. His face told a different story, but that didn’t matter. Nick’s eyes were closed.

Alan reached out and pushed the sweaty hair back from Nick’s brow, and Nick turned his head restlessly away. Alan withdrew his hand

“I had her number the whole time,” Nick murmured. “You have so little faith.”

“Well, faith’s hard,” said Alan, voice so soothing it was practically a melody. “Especially when you’re such an idiot. You realize this shirt is ruined.”

He ripped the shirt apart with efficient hands, the buttons flying behind the headrests and into the front seat.

Nick’s chest was heaving, slick with sweat and blood. There was a thin line where the sword had skittered over his ribs, and then the deep, terrible wound on the right.

Mae tried not to panic.

“That’s going to need stitches,” Alan remarked. “Mae, my first-aid kit is in the boot of the car. Would you go grab it for me?”

He threw the keys over his shoulder at her without looking and she caught them, grateful for something, anything to do.

“Don’t bother,” Nick rasped.

Mae glanced at him, startled, and saw his fingers wrap around Alan’s wrist, forcing Alan’s hand away.

“Why mess around? All you have to do is drive me out of here and I can fix myself up.”

“Oh,” said Alan, his voice entirely changed, gone flat. “Of course. Stupid of me. I wasn’t thinking.” He paused. “Mae, would you grab the first-aid kit anyway?”

“Sure,” said Mae, and went and grabbed it.

When she got back, Alan was scrambling out of the car, wincing as he jolted his leg. He flipped the box open and sorted through it, then ducked his head into the car.

“Here,” he said, his whole air terribly casual. “Here’s a pad. Hold it to the wound as we’re traveling, would you? We don’t want you bleeding out before we cross the boundaries of the circle.”

Nick took it, hissing as he pulled himself into a sitting position.

“I can take the back,” Mae volunteered.

“No,” said Jamie. “I will. It’s fine.”

He climbed in beside Nick a little tentatively, as if convinced that if Nick was even slightly jostled he would die on the spot.

Mae figured the only thing she could do was get into the car so they could get out of there, so she did that as fast as possible. Alan backed out of their space and went out of the car park driving just a little over the limit.

She twisted around in her seat as they sped through the streets of Southwark, at the same time Jamie asked hesitantly, “How are you feeling?”

“Someone drove a very sharp sword between my ribs,” Nick said evenly. “How do you think?”

Jamie laid a hand on Nick’s arm. “Well,” he said, a bit awkwardly. “Th—”

“Don’t touch me,” Nick snarled.

Jamie removed his hand as if scalded. “Sorry,” he said, and tried to tuck himself into a corner of the car as far away from Nick as he could.

Nick leaned his head back against the headrest, teeth gritted against the pain as they went over a speed bump. He’d gone so white he would have looked like stone if not for the sweat making his black hair spike up and pooling in the hollow of his throat.

“I didn’t mean for you to take that the wrong way,” he said abruptly.

Mae stared at him in amazement. So, for that matter, did Jamie.

“What?”

“Demons don’t touch anyone without a reason,” Nick went on, his eyes shut again. “You can imagine what kind of reasons we usually have. I don’t like—not anyone—I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Oh,” said Jamie. “Oh, that’s okay! That’s fine. I understand. I am filled to the brim with understanding and, and acceptance! I’m very Zen like that.”

Nick snorted.

“Thank you,” Jamie said, fast, as if he wanted to get it out before any more misunderstandings appeared in their path. “You didn’t have to do that. If you guys had left me, I know you would have come back later. I mean, you could have done that. I was expecting it. You didn’t have to, um, get stabbed for me. So thanks.”

“Stop talking like a moron,” Nick drawled. “If you can.”

“Thanks,” Jamie repeated in a much less sincere tone.

He shut up. The harsh, labored sound of Nick’s breathing was the only noise in the car. In the front Mae sat and regarded the broken sword on the dashboard and Nick’s strained white face in the rearview mirror.

They were not quite out of London when they passed the boundary of Celeste’s circle. Nick’s breathing changed, became light and easy. His normal pale face in the mirror was such a contrast to the drawn reflection Mae had been studying a moment before that it appeared his cheeks had flooded with color. When she glanced downward she saw his wound had closed, chest whole beneath the blood and torn material.

“You look better,” she said lamely.

“I feel pretty good,” Nick told her, low and pleased. “I like winning. I told that magician I’d win too.”

Only he hadn’t said exactly that, Mae thought, staring out the window as the wide gray expanse of the M4 opened and swallowed them up, leading them on the road back to Exeter, where Gerald and his magicians waited. They were no closer to solving the problem of Gerald than they had been the night before.

What Nick had said to Helen the magician was, I’ll be killing long after you’re dust .

Alan’s hands were tight on the steering wheel, knuckles a shade too pale. In the mirror, Mae saw Nick cross his arms over his ripped and bloodstained shirt. She took up the pieces of the broken sword and fitted them together, as if that could possibly help, even though she knew the only way to mend it was magic.

8

In Two Worlds

The next day was a Saturday, and Mae came around to give Nick his first lesson in acting human.

Once she was there, she found she had absolutely no idea what to do.

The house the Ryves brothers were living in this time was even worse outside than their last one. It was brown, part of a solid block of houses that all looked as if they had been shaped by a giant child playing with mud. The Ryves house was at the end of the row, and someone had spray-painted in green and pink on the side.

It was nicer inside. There was a gray carpet peeling up at the corners in the hall, but next to that was a fairly big kitchen, and up the stairs was a sitting room and one bedroom. Alan and Nick must be sharing it.

Mae would’ve felt a bit uncomfortable doing something without Alan’s knowledge in Alan’s actual room, so she was grateful when Nick led her to the attic.

They had a lot of weapons and books stored up there in boxes, and half the floor was fiberglass insulation and wooden slats, but the other half was worn floorboards. There was even a high, small window, filtering the sunlight in like a slow stream of honey.

Mae sat on the floor with her back to the wall and said, “I keep trying to think of a lesson plan for humanity. I keep trying to think of any sort of plan, but I don’t have one. Nobody taught me to be human. I picked it up as I went along. I don’t even know where to start.”

She didn’t actually expect any suggestions from Nick, standing silhouetted and silent at the window.

But he said, “I thought we could start with this,” and threw a child’s copybook at her feet.