The Demon's Surrender

Sin turned away, back hunched, trying to bear the onslaught of the words. She felt the touch of Merris’s hands on her face, smooth and young, and looked up into demon eyes.

“If I’d had a daughter, I would have wanted her to be like you,” Merris murmured. “But just a little better.”

It wasn’t Merris’s fault. She was possessed, and a lie could not pass her lips any more than her eyes could change back to gray.

Sin had tried, as hard as she knew how. She’d never wanted to disappoint Merris. She’d always tried to balance in a place where she could be both like her mother, beautiful and carefree, and like Merris, the ideal leader.

All these performances, and nobody had ever really appreciated them except one person, and now he was gone. Alan was gone and Merris was going, and Sin knew the only thing she could do was protect what was left.

Sin swallowed. “Will you go back to the Market?” she asked. “Will you check that everyone’s all right? Will you talk to Mae? Please.”

Merris stood up from the sofa. Sin did not dare look up, in case she saw Liannan intent on going dancing through flames and death. She kept her head bowed until her neck ached.

She felt Merris’s lips touch her forehead, gently.

“For you,” she said, “I will. But I won’t stay.”

Sin looked up into those black eyes. “I’ll get the pearl,” she promised again. “I’ll bring it to you. You’ll see, then. The demon will be quiet, and everything will be the same as it was before.”

Merris smiled, pitying and a little scornful. “Child,” she said. “That never happens.”

She left, her back straight, her body strong and lithe and young. Sin watched her go and told herself that she would get that pearl, she would, and once the demon was silenced, Merris would come back.

She tried to forget the kiss good-bye.

“I’ll go with Liannan,” Anzu said from the hall, and Sin looked around to see Nick grab his arm.

“That’s not Liannan right now,” Nick told him. “And you’re staying here.”

The door closed behind Merris, and Anzu rounded on Nick. “Oh I am, am I?”

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

“Great,” Anzu said. The air seemed to glitter around him, molecules crystallizing with his icy rage. “What do you do for fun around here? Oh wait, don’t tell me, I know!”

He spun and slammed open a door. Sin was on her feet with her heart in her throat and her knives in her hands before she realized that he had gone into Alan’s room and not Nick’s.

She sheathed her knives immediately. She couldn’t show concern, she couldn’t give him the idea that it might be fun to play with Toby and Lydie. She had to hope he had forgotten or was at least uninterested in the fact that they were there.

Anzu emerged from the doorway again almost at once. He was carrying a sword.

Sin had forgotten they’d stowed all Nick’s swords in there, away from the kids.

Alan had never had the balance to use a sword effectively, so it was like seeing the smooth, easy new walk to see his body wielding a blade with careless ease. The sword shone in the dim hallway. Its point was aimed at Nick’s heart.

“Come on,” Anzu said softly.

The steel edge pierced the cotton of Nick’s T-shirt, just touching. One shove of the blade, and Nick would be spitting blood.

Nick moved, not backward but sideways, drew his sword, and brought it around in a tight, vicious circle. Anzu only just raised his blade in time to meet Nick’s, and there was a ring of steel that echoed through the little rooms.

Sin couldn’t see Nick’s face as he followed up on his strike, moving in and forcing Anzu’s blade back.

“Let’s take this outside.”

She could see Anzu’s face, though, savage and hungry and gleaming with a terrible kind of triumph, though Sin didn’t know what he thought he’d won. He spun and almost swaggered through the door, blade dangling carelessly from his hand. Nick followed him.

As soon as the door shut, Sin leaped into the hall and to Nick’s bedroom, scrabbling for the doorknob and shoving at the door with her elbow in a burst of panic.

Lydie and Toby were on the bed, curled up tightly together, asleep. Mae had made sure they got dressed, and Sin hoped she’d fed them too. She couldn’t tell if Mae had washed their faces, because both of their faces were grimy again already, screwed up and covered in dried tears.

They must have heard some of what was going on outside. They had been so good. They hadn’t made a sound.

Sin hated to wake them.

Maybe, since they were asleep, she could go outside and see what was happening. Just for a moment.

She shouldn’t do it, Sin thought, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans. But Alan was in there, trying to hold out, helpless and watching all this. What he must be feeling, fearing his own hands would strike down his brother.

She knew it was a mistake, but she made it. She closed the door softly so she wouldn’t wake the kids, grabbed her keys, and dashed out the door.

The demons were dueling in the roof garden, circling and striking, blades catching the light of the sinking sun in a blinding rain of blows. Anzu was dancing around Nick, taunting, making a game of this, and Nick was feinting and dodging.

Nick was trained, but Alan had made sure his brother’s power was limited. Sin suspected it might be less than Anzu’s power.

Sin ran down the cold passage lined with wire mesh and then up the steps. She knelt on the highest step that would still be out of view, poised like a sprinter ready to leap.

The sunlight bathing him alone could not account for the gold of Anzu’s hair and skin. Even the bones of his face looked different; he was changing Alan’s very bones because he felt like it, turning his face into something sharp-edged and beautiful and terrible.

He seemed angry.

“What I want to know is what’s wrong with everyone?” he demanded, dealing Nick a blow that, if Nick hadn’t parried it, would have cut his head clean off. “Liannan cooperating with a human, sharing with her, running around doing the human’s little errands!”

The way he spat out the word had added vehemence because it was punctuated by another savage stroke of his sword. Nick met the stroke, his arms and shoulders braced. If Sin hadn’t known enough to measure the impact of that strike, she would never have guessed how hard Nick had just been hit.

“And as for you,” Anzu exclaimed, disengaging and spinning in a furious circle. Nick met each of the blows, blocking them, parrying them, but not making any attacking moves of his own. He was like a stone, looming dark and comparatively still. Next to Anzu, he looked like a statue in a graveyard. “You,” Anzu said with loathing. “Having a temper tantrum about your little pet? You make me sick.”

Nick’s shoulders bunched, muscles moving differently than they had before, engaging with the sword now. Sin knew the look of someone turning their body into a weapon.

She was not surprised when he lunged at Anzu. Anyone human would have stumbled at the sudden onslaught, and Anzu had to retreat, but he did it fast, almost gleefully, almost dancing back.

Nick delivered a series of punishing hits so close together they didn’t look like a series but like one continuous monumental effort to batter Anzu to pieces. Anzu was only just keeping up, only just able to defend himself, and he looked delighted about it.

Nick wasn’t lacking power; he had been holding back. For a moment Sin didn’t understand why he should do that, why he would want to spare Anzu, and she thought about a demon’s loyalty to its own kind.

Or maybe he had realized what she had, after Anzu started talking. Maybe he knew his brother was trying to hold out, and he was trying to spare the body.

She wished she knew. She wanted to be sure, but all she was sure of was that Alan was being tortured, and that he would never in a thousand years have wanted to hurt his brother.

If it came down to a choice, she had to try and protect Nick.

Nick did not look especially in need of protection. Anzu was still dancing backward, the body changing like a mood ring, all shifting colors and bones. He seemed to be trying to alter the body into something entirely new, into air and light.

He stepped off the side of the building, pivoting into nothingness, and landed on the rooftop of a building yards away. He stood on the smooth gray slant of the roof, staring across the space at Nick, their gazes locked and mirroring each other, a void reflecting a void, nothingness going on forever.

Nick jumped, a spring that a human wouldn’t have been able to make. If Anzu was barely connected to the human body, Nick was using it to the fullest extent he could. He was a thundercloud of muscle and magic, fighting a lightning bolt. Anzu kept laughing and they kept moving, halting for a moment with swords locked at the crest of the roof.

They went down the other side of the roof caught in combat, even their silhouettes against the sky slipping away from her.

Sin judged the distance and then bounded to her feet and ran, building up steam for the jump, all the muscles in her body coiled and burning to prepare for the effort.

Her hurtle through the air was a brief moment of terror, wind and hair whipping into her eyes and leaving her blind. Then her knees hit the very edge of the roof, viciously hard. She felt her jeans and the skin of her knees both tearing, but she ignored the sting and, crouching low, made her way up the slope of the roof.

The sound of swords clashing filled her ears before she saw them again. Anzu was not even sweating. Nick was, his T-shirt clinging damp to his collarbones. He was breathing hard, but he circled Anzu without a hint that he might relent or pause. His mouth was set in a grim line.

“We can go dueling through the rooftops of London,” Anzu said. “We could cross blades on top of Westminster Abbey. No human could catch us. No human could stop us, no matter what we wanted to do. You were stranded out here with the humans, isolated and in chains, but we are both here now. There’s no need to crawl for them any longer.”

Nick was crouching like Sin, not to hide but to attack. Locks of wet hair were falling in his eyes and he was panting, but his teeth were bared in something like a savage grin.

It occurred to Sin that they might both be enjoying themselves. She might just be trying to throw herself into the middle of some deadly inhuman game.

“And as for that pet of yours,” Anzu went on, raging and exulting at once. “He couldn’t fight you like this, could he? He was even more worthless than an ordinary human. He was broken, and useless, and pointless.”

He punctuated each of his descriptions of Alan with a slash, face alight with triumph. Nick dealt him another series of hard blows for an answer, bearing down with his superior weight and strength, and Sin waited for the moment when one of them would stop using their magic to fuel their fight and simply use it to lash out.

It didn’t happen. Anzu betrayed himself by flinching under the barrage of blows, his parry vicious but wavering a little, almost uncertain.

Nick knocked him back with another blow.

“I’m your brother,” Anzu shouted. “Not him!”

The next blow of Nick’s sword brought Anzu to his knees. Nick drew his blade slowly, lightly, along Anzu’s throat. Anzu was still wearing an awful half smile, as if he thought this was all part of a game.

“You’re right,” Nick said, his voice utterly emotionless. “This isn’t like fighting Alan. He’s human and weak and broken, all the things you said. And Alan would have cheated by now. He would have won.”

Anzu stopped smiling. Nick crouched down, his face close to Anzu’s.

Cold as ever, Nick murmured, “I know my brother when I see him.”

Sin sat on the sofa and hated herself. Nick had had the situation under control. Of course he had. There was no need for her to be running around like a fool, trying to protect a demon!