The Demon's Surrender

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.

The mouth that had been Gerald’s mouth twisted at the corners. Anzu moved, pulling a carved ring off his finger, and threw it at Jamie.

Jamie caught the ring and Mae took it from him, slid it onto the finger of his remaining hand. The ring shone there, like the tears running down Jamie’s face, falling from his magic-bright eyes.

“Which of you will surrender to me?” Jamie asked the surrounding magicians quietly. “Which of you will join the Market?”

Laura lunged at him.

“Never, you little monster,” she shouted, palm lifted.

Nick caught her hand above her head and forced it down. Laura shook with horror, looking into his black eyes.

The magicians had never seen one of their own possessed before. It must have happened once, long years ago, and they must have learned to be careful enough that horror faded out of memory, and they were even able to believe Jamie’s story that he could control a demon through his mark.

Sin had believed it herself.

She couldn’t blame Gerald for believing it too.

Laura tore her hand out of Nick’s grip and ran headlong out of the room. No-one stopped her.

Jamie looked around the room. “Will anyone surrender to me?” he asked, still quiet.

Helen of the Aventurine Circle, sword wielder, his mother’s murderer, stepped forward with her fair head bowed.

“I will,” she said. “If you will have me.”

With a painful effort, Jamie smiled at her. “I will.”

Helen came striding across the room, over the broken glass and the remains of two summoning circles, and knelt at Jamie’s feet. He laid his hand on her silvery hair.

“Circle of my Circle,” he said. “You are mine.”

Helen rose and ranged herself behind her leader. Jamie’s eyes traveled over the faces of everyone in the room and stopped at Seb, a faint question in his eyes.

Color rising in his face, Seb said, “I was yours already.”

Some other magicians came forward. Some retreated, slipping away and out the door. Nobody stopped them, either.

“You made the right decision,” Jamie said, when the last magician left swore to him. “I am going to take the magician’s mark Gerald gave all of us, so that we could all share power. We have two demons who will share power with us now. Nick will give it to me, and I will give it to all of you. There will be less power than before, but there will be enough. And there will be no more killing.”

Sin memorized the faces of the magicians who did not look relieved by the thought of no more killing, who looked even briefly furious about the loss of power. It was always useful to know who thought they had got a bad bargain.

“And for those of you who left,” Mae said.

“Or those of you who may change your minds,” Sin chimed in sweetly, and let her eyes fall on every face she had memorized.

“You all carry the magician’s mark Gerald gave you,” Mae said. “The channel between every magician in the Circle. And now the channel between you and the demons. Nick made a bargain with Anzu in the magicians’ circles. You all saw it. When Gerald’s body decays and dies, Nick will give Anzu another magician to possess. And another. Every magician in the Circle who keeps feeding people to demons will be fed to our demon, in time. And every magician who has already left, who will go to another Circle with Gerald’s new mark, will open a new channel for us. Every magician in England who kills will end up possessed.”

A full circle of victimhood, using the mark Gerald had been so proud of inventing against them, bringing on the magicians the same fate they had been willing to let fall on innocent people.

Only it meant that now the Market fed people to demons. No matter how guilty those people were, it was a terrible thing.

Sin did not have more than a moment to think about the guilt she had to bear, because the next moment Anzu moved toward her.

She remembered the promise she had made.

*

Gerald’s body was already changing, Anzu changing a human being to suit his own taste, terrible beauty sweeping his face like a forest fire, hair running with gold.

He stood in front of Sin, silent and patient as demons had to be. It was only when he reached out and touched her arm, jerking his head toward the door, that Sin knew he wanted to go now.

Sin stepped toward him, separating herself completely from the others. If his fury was going to be directed at anyone, she wanted it to be her alone.

“I’m not going with you,” she told him gently. “I was never going to go with you. I was lying when I said I would. Humans do that.”

Sin closed her eyes and bowed her head.

He could kill her now, if he wanted. She refused to show fear and held herself braced. She knew the risks she had taken, making herself a bargaining chip in the demons’ game.

And she’d never meant to go. She wasn’t for sale.

She waited for a long time, and then the touch came. Light, against her stomach.

The pain from her wound dissolved under his fingers.

Sin lifted her head. Anzu’s face was almost completely changed now, golden and still, like a face painted on a glass window.

He didn’t kill her.

He nodded slowly instead and turned away. His hand lingered above hers, not quite touching, in what might have been a demon’s version of a good-bye.

She wondered if he was doing what he’d said he would, doing nice things for her so she would love him, or if he’d listened to anything she had said about love, or if he had learned something from Nick.

He could not speak. She would never know.

He looked at Nick before he went. Nick met his eyes with a level gaze, his friend from another life, his enemy in this one.

The demons would keep their bargain, Sin thought.

Anzu walked out the door. The magicians and the Market people shuddered away from him as he went on his silent way, all humans together caught in a moment of horror.

They had won. They did not need to keep up any pretense of power, when they had used it all.

Nick lay down, in the smoky ruins of the Circle, like an exhausted child. He lay down beside the still body of his brother.

Jamie staggered and Mae dived to catch him, both of them sinking but managing to stay up, Mae’s arm tight around Jamie’s waist. He sagged against her arm as if it was his only support, and spat something out onto the floor.

He lifted his face after doing it, and Sin saw blood dark on his lips and dyeing his teeth. His face was very white. His eyes were Mae’s eyes for the first time, dark brown and human, and Sin found herself distantly shocked by them.

Sin could hear quiet spreading in Anzu’s wake, through the house and then outside it, the battle stilling, over and won. She went to the window and saw it was raining, not a demon’s storm but just the light gray drizzle of London, rain falling in the silent street.

A small sound made Sin turn around.

In the mess of the summoning circle, through the lingering smoke, she saw the new gray shimmer of Alan’s hair.

His shoulders were humped, his back an arch of pain, as he struggled onto his hands and knees. He was making a low, terrible moaning noise. Sin knew that he was moaning and not speaking because Alan the silver-tongued, her smooth, cunning liar, had given up his words to a demon, had not used words in so long that they were lost for now. Animal sounds were passing his lips, nothing human.