Chain of Gold

A sharp laugh rang out. Standing atop one of the dunes of sand was a man with pale gray hair and eyes. He looked young, and startlingly beautiful, but there was a dark edge to his beauty—it was like the loveliness of blood in snow, or the gleam of white bone through shadow.

He resembled James. Not in any specific way, but the shape of his eyes, perhaps, the bones in his face, the curve of his mouth. She had to remind herself: This is Belial, Prince of Hell. If he reminds you of James, that is deliberate on his part. In his true form, he may look nothing like this.

As the dust settled around them, he held out a hand toward the Mandikhor demon. The demon seemed to freeze in place as Belial turned to regard Cordelia with a cold gaze. “Tsk-tsk, James,” he said. “Bringing in reinforcements like this is cheating. What of the rules of fair play?”

James drew a gleaming shortsword from his weapons belt. He was breathing hard, and very pale: streaked with dirt and sand, he no longer looked like a young Edwardian gentleman, but something more primal than that. “Let her go back to our world,” he said. “Just leave her be. I’m the one you have business with—”

“No,” Cordelia said sharply. “I won’t abandon you!”

Belial made a bored gesture, a lazy flick of the wrist. Cordelia gasped as black vines exploded from the earth, twining around her feet and legs, pinning her in place. James took a step toward her; she raised Cortana and brought it down, intending to slice through the vines—

The blade vanished from her hand. She overbalanced, falling to her knees; the vines twisted tighter around her legs and she choked down a scream. The pain was agonizing, turning her vision red. She heard James shout something and looked up through blurred eyes to see Belial, smiling a terrible smile, Cortana gripped in his hand.

He laughed at her expression. “In this realm, all things obey me,” he said. “Even a blade of Wayland the Smith.” He snapped his fingers, the sound loud as a gunshot.

The Mandikhor demon reared back and sprang at James.

* * *

James rolled to the side as the Mandikhor demon sprang. He heard it hit the ground beside him, sending shock waves through the sand and dirt. He rolled onto his back as it rose up over him, stabbing upward with his sword. He heard a grunt, and burning ichor spattered his arm.

The demon reared back, giving him just enough room to spring to his feet. He could see Cordelia, struggling desperately against the vines. James somersaulted forward, rolling over and over until he shot to his feet and spun around: the Mandikhor was behind him, swinging a mace-like clubbed paw. James ducked as it whistled overhead, just missing him.

His head ached and throbbed. His skin felt hot and tight, his wrist a burning agony. He backed up, trying to center his vision on the Mandikhor. It was a shadow moving against a brighter light that hurt his eyes. Belial watched intently as the Mandikhor circled, growling.

Cordelia screamed a warning. The Mandikhor had leaped into the air—it was peculiarly swift, despite its sores and wounds—claws outstretched. One raked James’s arm; he spun sideways, blade whipping overhead, slashing across the demon’s torso. More ichor splashed him, mixing with his own blood now. He tasted metal in his mouth and rolled into a crouch that spun into a lunge: the Mandikhor threw up a clawed fist, catching at the blade of his sword. It howled, its skin sliced open, as it gripped the blade and shoved, hurling James backward.

He hit the ground with enough force to knock his breath out of him. His sword skidded from his hand. He reached for it just as one of the Mandikhor’s feet slammed down on the blade. He rolled to the side as a racking cough seized him; crawling to his knees, he spit up blood. He could hear Belial laughing.

He wiped the blood from his mouth. The demon had reared up over him to its full height: it looked down through slitted red eyes.

“Give up, James,” Belial said. “Concede defeat. Or I will order the Mandikhor to strike you down.”

James rose painfully to his knees. He saw Cordelia, her hands bloody from tearing at the vines. He wanted to apologize to her, to tell her he was sorry for dragging her into this hopeless mess.

She looked at him—it was as if she was trying to tell him something, trying to speak to him with her eyes. Her hands still gripped the vines. She hadn’t given up, despite the blood, despite the pain. She was Cordelia; she would never give up.

Fight on, he told himself, but he couldn’t rise: his body was shutting down. Shadows had begun to creep in at the edge of his vision. The Mandikhor hovered above him, waiting for a word, a gesture from Belial. Belial, who ruled over all this place, who bent this realm to his will.

James stretched out his right arm. The slash made by the Mandikhor’s claw was still bleeding freely: drops struck the ground, and the sand drank them up. He thought he could hear the sand whispering, a soft murmur of sound, but perhaps it was only the poison in his body.

Shadows, the sand whispered, and James thought of all the things Jem had ever taught him. Focus. Clarity. Breathing. You must build a fortress of control around yourself. You must come to know this power so that you may master it.

Belial had mastered this world. He had bent everything in it to his will—every tree, every rock, every grain of sand is under my command. Each part of this realm responded to that which made Belial himself.

Are you not my heir, my own flesh and blood?

James focused. He drew all his concentration down like light drawn through a magnifying glass. He bore down with his will, with his resolve, with the blood in his veins. He felt the ground shift and change beneath him; he reached out for the substance of this realm itself: the petrified wood of the gnarled trees, the teetering piles of bones, the dunes of sand, the shadow of the Mandikhor.

Belial cried out: the Mandikhor demon surged upward. James bolted to his feet. He was funneling his own strength into the realm around him, and it responded with alacrity: the earth roared under his feet; the air exploded like dark fire from his hands, his fingers. The Mandikhor staggered toward James, but the wind was full of swirling sand, creating a dark tornado.

Belial shouted, but the Mandikhor could no longer hear him: his voice was lost in the tearing wind. James stood with his arms flung wide to either side, wind and sand tearing around him like a storm in the desert. The Mandikhor was howling and howling now: the whole substance of the realm had turned against it. Branches sheared free of trees, flying through the air like knives; bones became missiles. The demon gave one last howl as the dark, churning air rose up in a circle around it before plunging inward, crushing and tearing.

The Mandikhor vanished. Instantly James let go: the wind quieted, the earth stilling under his feet. Debris pattered softly to the ground. He wiped sand and blood from his eyes, casting around desperately. The whole landscape had changed: the dunes had shifted, the sand had flattened out in front of him. He saw Cordelia then: she was lying motionless, her red hair like a splash of blood against the sand.

“Daisy,” James said hoarsely, and started forward.

He barely took a single step. Belial appeared in front of him, though he had not been there a moment ago. There were no tracks in the sand to show that he had crossed it to get to James. In his left hand, he clutched Cortana, its deep golden blade shining against his gray skin.

“Well,” Belial said, his face twisting into an approximation of a smile. “How very, very clever you are.”

James only stared. He could feel the exhaustion, the poison in his veins, waiting to rush back, to claim him. He was desperate to get to Cordelia before he collapsed. “Get out of my way,” he snarled, his voice rasping out of his dry throat.

Belial chuckled. “ ‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.’ It’s a nice thought, isn’t it? From the book of James, too.” He leaned toward James, and James could smell the burnt-chalk scent of him. “I see that you begin to understand a fraction of the power you could have if you embraced your true heritage,” he whispered. “The blood you share with me is far more powerful than the blood you share with Raziel. What power do you think you will have, if you remain what you are now?”

“Let me be,” James said hoarsely. “I won’t let you—”

“Enough!” Belial roared. It was as if the demon had lost control of the features of his face: his eyes appeared strangely elongated, as did his mouth, stretching and stretching across his chin in a snarl of terrible rage. “You think I would allow you to let this body die? You have no choice, you—”

Belial’s left arm jerked backward. James’s eyes widened as Cortana flew from Belial’s hand, ripping free of his clawed fingers. Belial cried out, twisting around to see what James himself had only just seen: Cordelia standing behind them, her gear shredded from the knees down. Cortana flew to her like a bird: she reached out for her blade, and it thumped home against her bloody palm.

“It’s very rude to take someone else’s sword without asking,” she said.

Belial’s eyes narrowed; he raised his hand, and the ground under Cordelia’s feet began to crack open. James staggered forward blindly, meaning to catch her before she fell—but Cordelia was steady on her feet. She sprang toward Belial, driving Cortana into the demon’s chest in a single, smooth motion.

Belial threw back his head and roared in agony.

“Daisy!” James darted forward as Cordelia wrenched the sword back; Belial was still howling. Blood spilled from the wound, the color of dark rubies, a shimmering red-black. James seized hold of Cordelia, who was gasping and shaking; her eyes were fixed on Belial.

“Fools,” Belial hissed. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

He raised a hand as if he meant to strike one of them, but it crumbled away like sand. Belial gaped as his body shuddered into pieces, like a child’s puzzle tossed haphazardly in the air. He opened his mouth as if to roar or scream, but his face caved in before he could make a sound—he crumbled, dissolving against the air as James stared in horror.

Cordelia cried out. The ground heaved under them. The sky began to crack, red-black light pouring from the fissures like the blood from Belial’s wound. The realm was crumbling around them. James pulled Cordelia toward him as the bottom fell out of the world.