Chapter Three #2
“I know from personal experience, nothing more. I don’t make a habit of prying. Genes or jeans, it’s none of my business what goes on inside them.” I huffed, and the vivid red eyes of a greater demon reflected round the mirror from the male staring at me.
“He’s nefalem and inherited the being as part of his omega father’s line,” the man spoke, and I waited to hear more.
“Half succubus.” He clarified that right up for me, and I immediately understood my attraction. Half succubus, half greater demon, blursed with a daeva.
With a single step, the suited male flowed forward, sliding through the window and wall as if it were nothing but smoke. He stared down at my book, placing a pale hand over the circle drawn within, pointed black ombré nails tracing the sigils. “These are for humans.”
He turned another page, staring down. “Part celestial… Those are for shifters.”
“There’s nothing in there for a demon. I’d have to substitute the god I draw power from through a hell-borne greater demon lord or higher, beseech them with part of my magic, and I don’t know what it’ll cost as I’m rather partial to all my soul.”
“What you’re proposing is linking your magic to jump-start his soul, revive his body as a zombie, and bind it to you in contract.” He stared at a circle and drew his nail over. “If you have a familiar, you could sacrifice it to—”
“I do not have a familiar. I’m opposed to sacrifice as well.” I took a short breath. “Mr. Faust?”
“Draevus Faust. Yes?” His gaze snapped to mine.
“You’re one of the partners of the firm that’s handling my case, aren’t you? Esmeray is your son…” I squirmed in my seat, my heart heavy with sorrow.
“I am. And it appears that in some way, you may be indirectly responsible for my boy’s death.” He leaned down to my ear, breath like brimstone wafting by. “And the place in hell I choose for you will never be hot enough for my satisfaction if you do not do something. Now.”
The officer who questioned me stood to attention as Draevus pulled away from me. “Take us to the morgue.”
Demonic lawyers? Checked out. Demons with hope? That was what separated them from humanity.
I swallowed hard and nodded once. “If I in some way contributed to his demise, I will pay willingly. I vow it.”
Draevus narrowed his gaze, and an officer grabbed me roughly and shoved, making me stand and stumble. I had no idea what I’d gotten myself into, but my union was about to hear about it.
***
In a room with a temperature a degree or two above freezing, a dogged technician eyed us warily and jerked his thumb toward a set of double doors. I needn’t have been directed, though, for what concerned them was apparent.
Fierce tendrils of shadows lashed beneath the door, unable to reach farther, their cold presence a frost in the already-chilled room. “That’s no good.”
I walked forward, ignoring a protest from the technician. And, as I approached, the shadows hesitated, their threatening lashing motions turning into slow curls, inviting almost.
I continued to step, one foot in front of the other until I faced the door and pushed them open.
The entire room reeked of cold death, painted with dark shadows, near inconsolable for the loss of its host with no heir apparent.
Despite this pure rage that surrounded me in darkness, Esmeray’s body stood out, almost aglow atop a metal table, neck burned from the magical influence of a garrote.
And where the shadow flowed and surrounded every inch of his body, the neck seemed immune.
“Mage. Can you?” Draevus’s cold tones made my skin prickle. My immortal soul was on the line, and I could name two other people who owned it before him. My death would cause a war between several extra-planar beings.
“I’ve not investigated yet. His shadow is letting me near, though.”
“How did you know its name?” Draevus’s concerned tones faltered as he asked.
“I do not. Why?”
“It’s allowing you passage. As if you commanded it.” Draevus silenced as one of the tendrils rose and rubbed against my shoulder almost affectionately, longingly, pleading for something as it made sharp pointing gestures with another.
“I recognized what he was when we met, and I poured him some wine in his shadow. He respects me, nothing more.” I stared closely as his father didn’t remark again.
The bloody line around Esmeray’s neck glistened with thick, dark blood, and I reached into my pocket for a pen before reaching out to tap at the wound.
Something metallic clinked back. Satisfied, I dug into the wound just slightly and lifted out inch by inch a long, bloody chain.
Silver, if I had any guess. It reeked of burnt flesh.
I sighed and shook my head as the talisman at the end of it came into view.
The absolute worst group of people I could imagine had left their mark.
The Church. It had no other monikers or pseudonyms, only followers who called themselves Singulatarians.
It hailed from Christianity and rooted itself in human superiority and the rejection of magic.
Whoever they were, they couldn’t have known who Esmeray was…
I barely knew who he was, and I’d just met his father.
A small tendril caressed my ear as I relocated the cross and moth sigil to another table. The shadow calmed and a soft whisper said the words I feared most. “Make a bargain with me, mage.”
“My soul is spoken for, I’m afraid,” I said as I positioned Esmeray’s body with as much reverence as I could. He was still warm, strangely, but dead all the same. Unburdened by rigor mortis.
“I’ve used what energy I have to keep his body in a state similar to that of living.” The whisper of the shadow made me shudder.
“I can tell. You did excellent work.”
“Who are you speaking to?” Draevus demanded, his tone fearful, no longer accusatory.
“His daeva shadow.” I placed my fingers on his neck, touching the place where a pulse should be.
“Fool cannot hear me. He is not tethered to me.” The shadow swirled about my feet in a lazy pool as I detected a pulse in his mana. The shadow gently squeezed his heart and lungs, keeping oxygen flowing to his brain.
“And I am?” I brushed my fingers along the slit in his neck and hesitated, calling out to the coroner. “Find me suture thread.”
“What is he telling you?” Draevus hesitated at the doorway, almost fearful to enter.
“I believe he is offering me a bargain, but my soul is spoken for.” I glanced at the door and extended a hand as the coroner stood in the doorway and threw a few packs of threaded suture needles in.
The shadow scooped them from the floor and carried them into my hands as I tore the packages open, perhaps unhygienically, with my teeth and bare fingers.
With a simple strike of a needle across the pad of my thumb, I drew enough blood to taint the thread and perfuse it with my magic.
The oldest source of binding power, guaranteed to work with a daeva’s need for sacrifice.
“The thread goes in, and the thread goes out, into your larynx and out of your mouth,” I sang to that macabre old tune and let my voice carry magic that I used to work the needle through flesh in what the shadow declared was beautiful work.
Despite the fact that I stopped singing, the song continued on, echoing about in an eerie facsimile of my voice.
“Were he a doll, his head would be stitched up no finer.” It caressed about my ankles and slid along my arms, touching almost seductively. The bulk of it rose along a wall, horns of many types curling and forking from its head. “But it is not your soul I desire.”
“Then what is it?” I left his body and rummaged about for gauze and chlorohexidine wash. I wet a few pads with it and wet them in a sink, daubing at his wound as the burned flesh and cut healed.
“What’s the holdup?” Draevus lost all composure, his tone nervous.
“Tell the horned one that I, Ausmius, offer you the oldest contract of all. Say my name.” The shadow snickered.
“Saying your name isn’t going to cost me, is it?” I cut my gaze toward the shadow he threw up on the wall as clawed hands spread, and red eyes glowed in his form.
“Only a whisper of your breath to say it and the time it takes to do so.” As honest as a demon could be.
“Ausmius has given me his name and told me to inform you he has offered me the oldest contract of all.” I knew of several old contracts. The contract of a firstborn, the contract of marriage, of gold, and life.
Draevus’s face hardened. “Do it, mage. I will make sure your place in hell is paradise. On my honor.”
“What is this contract I’m offered?” I pulled the thread taut as the shadow snipped it with finality, a reminder that it had physical presence in this world.
In tandem, Draevus spoke with Ausmius, “Eternal union.”
I took my still-bleeding thumb and circled it over his heart, making sigils that burned as I drew them out. A mate ship. A life partner that would go beyond the veil. “Even if you believe I am the cause of his suffering?”
I bided my time. I wouldn’t do such a thing without consent, and the price I would pay for refusing would be eternal damnation.
Draevus would ensure it. If Esmeray refused, I would trade my life for his, in hopes that I would earn leniency in exchange for the meager years I, as a mage, could offer, years he wouldn’t be able to wield a demon’s power.