CHAPTER EIGHT
‘ D emon.’
A second pair of eyes slid open beneath the first. And as though the demon heard his whisper all the way from the gate, all four eyes shifted, pinning Jules in place.
‘What?’ Kian asked, confused, crowding up beside Jules at the window.
‘Quiet.’ Jules slapped a hand over his mouth and wrestled him away from the glass.
‘Did you knock your head?’ Kian mumbled between his fingers. ‘We’re in Nice, not Rome.’
He frowned. Kian was right. A demon walking the streets of Nice was beyond unlikely, but … ‘I know what I saw.’ The burning truth of it flickered in his guts.
Kian squirmed in his grip. ‘That hurts,’ he hissed, pulling away.
Snatching the back of his shirt, Jules propelled Kian toward the door. ‘We need to get out of h—’
‘Don’t know your own strength?’ The voice was sonorous and low, vibrating in his bones.
Jules looked up at the silhouette filling the doorway. Too fast , he thought, a chill crawling sluggishly down his spine.
The demon was beautiful, if utterly terrifying. His elongated bones had stretched his skin. His well-carved biceps, chest and stomach were powerful, as though carved by a Renaissance sculptor, but his joints had begun to split free, like a seam too tightly sewn.
His eyes were the worst. They were piercing blue in the depths of his skull, but the sclera and surrounding skin were charcoal, with veins of deepest black spiderwebbing outward as the blazing irises seemed to burn him from within.
No, not him. His … body . The one he’d stolen to walk among them.
Jules stepped in front of Kian, straightening to his full height. He rarely felt small, but he did as the demon bent to pass through the open door.
Already moving, Jules caught Kian’s eye, mouthing, Run!
Jules knew he was fast, but as he sprang toward the demon, it was as though the world slowed and only the demon kept moving.
The demon’s grin was one of straight white teeth that gleamed when he passed through the bars of orange light. Before Jules registered the movement, the demon’s enormous fist caught him in the gut and slammed him back against the window. Shatter lines fractured from the point of impact.
Jules groaned. Near the door, Kian faltered. Kian—his brother in all things but blood—took one stumbling step back toward him, and the demon’s eyes snapped up. The demon’s fingers lengthened into a grotesque bone spear. With one sharp thrust, Kian’s body jerked, impaled on wickedly sharp bone.
A wordless sound of rage clawed up his throat as Jules threw himself at the demon. Weaponless, it was suicide. He didn’t care. Indistinct lines of attack formed, but no pure killing blow. No matter . If he’d survived Ostrava for any reason at all, it was so he could die shredding this demon apart with his bare hands.
Without sparing Jules a glance, the demon caught him by the throat. The demon’s long fingers encircled his windpipe, tightening to cut off his breath. Then, with passionless ease, the demon flung him through the window.
Glass shattered and Jules fell.
Pavement cracked beneath his shoulders. His teeth snapped together. Stunned, he lay still as Kian’s death played across the backs of his eyelids.
He fought a scream. One that threatened to crack ribs and rupture organs.
Through the pain, he breathed a botanical scent off the breeze. It coiled in the darkness behind his eyes.
Star jasmine. A bite of spice and citrus.
A girl dropped to one knee at his side, two fingers jabbing the pulse point beneath his jaw. His eyes refocused. Her dark hair slid forward, brushing his cheek. Her eyes were trained on the broken window, brows crumpled with rage.
His breath was tangled. Thoughts fuzzy. But he recognized the beautiful girl from the station. Now ephemeral golden marks twined around her wrists and fingers, vanishing beneath her sleeves. Jules blinked and they were gone.
His heart thundered behind his ribs.
‘ Sei vivo? ’ she gasped, amber eyes widening as she yanked her hand back.
A pulse beat warm beneath her fingertips.
‘You’re alive?’ Selene looked at him in surprise.
She had witnessed the moment the boy was thrown bodily from a third-floor window by the Duke of Briars.
‘ Exorciste ,’ he rasped, pulling away from her touch.
She switched to French. ‘Yes. What’s your name?’
He was silent for a staggeringly long moment. Impatience flared in her chest, but if the halo of red was anything to go by, he had cracked his skull on the stones.
‘Jules,’ he said at last.
‘Good.’ At least he remembered his name. Probably.
She stood, smoothly drawing a knife from her boot, and stepped over him.
Multiple ruptured organs, a broken spine and possibly some kind of critical brain injury. He wouldn’t be going anywhere. If he was lucky, he’d survive until Eliot arrived.
Her breathing was rapid. When the demonic energy had just about flattened them, she’d cut through the early-morning traffic on foot.
The orphanage’s large double doors had been decimated. Raising her guard and extending her senses, she took the stairs three at a time.
The cold flicker of her magic licked at the ventricles of her heart, lashing the insides of her ribs in howling answer to the demon. It wanted to be unleashed. She could feel his essence encased in the flesh he’d possessed—it pulsed as though wanting to escape its bounds. A silent scream only she could hear.
Yes , her magic whispered back. I’ll free you.
A snow-tinged draught rattled the vertical blinds as Selene slid, shadow-like, into the room. The far wall was painted with gore. A body lay crumpled on the floor.
She sensed the demon but didn’t see him until he moved.
Stepping out of the dark, he was silhouetted against the smashed window. Her eyes tracked down his body. Her brow edged up. ‘Was that as you found it, or …?’
‘I brought something to the table.’
His voice was gravelly, but warm and rich as forest loam. And for a moment Selene thought perhaps she could appreciate this monster. At least two parts of him, anyway. ‘Impressive.’
The demon watched her inscrutably. The sapphire flames of his eyes burned bright in the hollows of his skull. Echoes of power in his rotted shell.
She let him see the glint of the knife in her hand. He smiled indulgently—it was a thistle to a lion.
‘I take it I have the pleasure of meeting the Duke of Briars?’
‘Call me Baliel.’ His eyes flared with interest and he bent fractionally at the waist.
‘No, thank you.’
Circling the room, she slid a gloved fingertip atop a dusty bookshelf. Her hand still ached from being broken the night before, and the cold didn’t help. When her body blocked his line of sight, she drew her gun and spun, loosing a round of bullets.
Baliel raised a casual palm and the bullets combusted. Igniting with blue fire, they slowed and melted, dripping to the floor like melted wax.
She swung her knife into one of his four eyes and a hot wash of blood coated her hand.
Baliel laughed.
She averted her gaze from his wide smile as she yanked her knife free and pivoted away, putting as much space between them as she could. Baliel slashed the air where she’d just been with a lance of bone. He was a blur, too fast to dodge.
To stay alive, she’d need to predict his attacks before they landed.
Ducking behind the desk, she used it as cover to shoot him. He dodged all but one that struck his breastbone. Selene followed the bullet, stabbing for his armpit with the knife. He met her halfway, ramming her with his shoulder. Ribs cracked and she wheezed against a sudden tightness in her chest.
She sprang back. Knife poised to carve her sigils, she sliced away her sleeve.
Baliel knew too well what she intended and batted her knife away from her exposed flesh. His smile showed too many teeth.
‘Selene!’
Eliot’s voice reached her faintly from beyond the shattered window. She ran, leaping to kneel on the sill.
Eliot held her scabbarded sword aloft. It was so close and yet—
Utilizing the distraction, Baliel attempted to punch through her spine. She twisted out of the way but his hand burned a scalding line across her side—skin and clothing blistering from the heat of his flame-coated hand.
She kicked him in the chest and thrust her arm out the window, fingers stretching.
There was a grunt and her sword sailed through the air end over end. Not close enough.
Selene lunged, hanging over the window ledge to catch the strap with a crooked finger.
Baliel’s fire warmed her back and she could smell the burning air as he closed in. Catching his attack on the scabbard of her blade, they grappled for a moment before tumbling apart.
She drew her sword.
DEUS IMMORTALIS.
He smiled, eyes trailing over the writing on her blade with the tenderness of a lover. ‘Now I can stop holding back.’
They struck and parried. It was nearer a dance than a fight, they were so well matched. The joy on the demon’s face made nausea coil in her gut. He was enjoying this. She was just trying to survive.
They broke apart, backing away from each other. The tension between them heightened. Each searching for an opportunity to strike. If she hadn’t been watching him so intently, she would never have noticed the shift.
He cocked his head. The joy was gone from his eyes. Only murderous intent remained. ‘I know your type. You hunt, don’t you? Always hunting .’
‘Obviously.’ Not taking her eyes off him, she wiped a trickle of blood from her brow.
‘Even young ones. Even when we’re born here, just like you.’ He rolled his shoulder, watching her with terribly cold eyes.
‘Gleefully,’ she hissed through bared teeth.
Baliel laughed, though it was a joyless sound, and a cold chill caressed her skin.
Selene lifted her sword, questioning whether she dared risk exorcising him. She wasn’t sure how much magic would be required to destroy his body and sever the hold he had over it. Given the vastness of his power, it could well be more than she was willing to give.
Selene swallowed.
And then he attacked.
Catching his first blow on her sword, her back hit the wall and the plaster fractured. Baliel gritted his teeth in a silent snarl, and hot lines of blue light wrapped around his throat like burning brands, digging into his flesh with acrid coils of smoke.
Selene stared, horrified. What was happening to him? His neck corded with agony. ‘Vatican. At the heart—’
Dio . Baliel was fighting to even speak.
She had never seen it, but she recognized the signs from her textbooks. Sometimes powerful demons appeared on the front lines in their war with the Caspian Federation. They were bound through some profane means by Caspia’s damned demonologists, who bent them to their will to bolster the war effort. To do so was to first invite a powerful demon into this world. Dangerous even under the best of circumstances.
Baliel was bound .
Her mind spun as Baliel tangled his fingers in the burning brands around his throat and stripped them away, dropping them like tattered ribbons. No sooner had he done so than others snapped into being about his neck. It made no sense. If he had been ensnared, why was he here? He should be making his terrible way to the front lines like some angel of death.
Selene was the last person in the Vatican to soften in the face of a demon, but she could feel no flaw in the powerful invocation that bound him. The way it wound around his body and soul, tangled in the threads of his being, he had to be in agony . And still he fought. In that moment, she respected him.
Her back was against the wall. ‘Why fight?’ she whispered.
‘It’s what I do.’
The downward pressure from his bone spear against her sword made her tremble with exertion. The plaster behind her back cratered and her sword slipped past him, giving the demon a gaping bloody opening, but he held himself still.
His gaze burned into her. The shadowy darkness spreading from his eyes crackled the skin of his cheeks like broken pottery. ‘The Vatican.’ Baliel ground out the words through clenched teeth.
Her heart sank. Not the front lines, then. He was being pulled to Rome.
Again Baliel ripped at the powerful magic that bound his body, ribbon after shredded ribbon of it falling to the floor in ashes. Her fingers tightened on her sword. She had to end him or he’d threaten Rome.
His throat worked, as though he wanted to speak, but no words came. Then his gaze flicked down to her hand, keen eyes recognizing the determination of her grip. She swung for his neck, the blade slicing through the burning brands around his throat as though they were nothing. Baliel folded backwards and she missed his flesh. She twisted, swinging her sword in a full arc as though to gut him.
Baliel caught her blade. His expression was no longer tormented—the glimmering bindings around him gone.
Together they smashed through the plaster wall, filling the air with dust. His foot met her chest and she was thrown bodily through the next, bringing down a fall of bricks around her. Vision wavering, Selene pulled herself up by the banister, swaying on the landing as Baliel stepped through the Selene-sized hole in the wall. Baliel shook bricks off his shoulders and straightened to his full height.
With aching muscles and joints she levelled her sword.
Beyond his towering form, a row of doors lined the hall. Children in snow-white nightclothes stood clustered in the open doorways, staring with large innocent eyes at the horror before them. The closest, a young boy no older than seven, dragged a rabbit half his own size by the ears.
She sprang at the demon. His eyes flamed as they collided.
The child screamed, blond curls buffeted as they raged toward him. She wanted to tell him to run. The other children were already scrambling to put distance between themselves and the dervish of heat and blades. She wanted to tell him that he would die if he didn’t move. But it was already too late. A maw of despair opened in her chest. She could do nothing more than parry the demon’s blows on a collision course with the child.
She pushed the thought aside in the moment between breaths, focusing on the only thing she could influence—the fight. To lose concentration would be to die.
She couldn’t save the children. She could barely save herself.
And the Butcher of Rome would leave another body in her wake.
Selene gasped against the pain of her broken bones and planted her foot against a fall of bricks. She raised her sword, one hand splayed against the flat of her blade. A final stand between the demon and the child. But the fight was too fast and she wasn’t strong enough. Selene braced herself for the spray of blood.
Instead, everything went terribly still.
She blinked at the strange tableau. It was like waking from a dream. The young man from the pavement—Jules, probably—had one hand flung toward the demon, his other holding the child. Frozen in place, Baliel’s spear of bone was barely an inch from splitting Jules’s outstretched hand.
Baliel stepped away, almost stumbling, as the bone spear crumbled to reveal long elegant fingers. He sagged as he leaned against the wall. The body seemed to be failing him, its flesh slower to stitch itself together where it tore.
Jules stumbled back, turning his body to protect the child.
‘What’s happening?’ the child whimpered, clutching Jules’s shirt in his fists.
‘We’re alive, you little shit,’ he answered, voice rasping with disbelief. ‘We’re alive .’
The child promptly vomited down his shirt.
With an effort of will, Baliel pushed himself up, his four eyes narrowing as he stared at Jules, whose expression twisted in what Selene assumed was belated terror at having gained the demon’s full attention.
Jules set the child down behind himself. ‘Run, Marcel.’
Baliel snarled, a terrible sound like shredding skin and bone. A flick of his fingers released a billow of blue flame and shadow. His essence overwhelmed the bounds of his physical body, withering the flesh of his right hand until there was only bone. Soon not even that. It crept up his bicep, eating away at him.
Jules watched the small child dash away, as Baliel’s flames exploded outward. He flung both hands toward Baliel, as though to push against the flames.
But they engulfed him.
Selene leapt back, covering her face. Flesh burned away from her arm, leaving it red and raw. She swallowed her pain. Swallowed a whimper before it could spill free. Instead, she carved a quick mark into her scorched flesh to find the bone. She bit her lip, breathing through the agony.
Protezione . Gold flared within the symbol carved into the very quick of her bone.
The word of power washed over her like cool water. Her magic felt less gutting here in Nice. Or perhaps she was so badly wounded that her senses were skewed. It didn’t tear through her like wildfire. It lit in her like the steady flame of a candle.
Selene’s vision cleared, her magic lending her heightened senses. A billowing shadow built from within her blood, seeping into a skeletal, serpentine form that coiled around her, protecting her from further damage.
Because her magic felt so natural here, she did something inescapably reckless. She pushed it out. Protezione . Not just protection for her, but protection for—
Her consciousness faltered. Black crowded in on the edges of her world.
Protection for all of them. From Baliel, from his flames.
In her last moments of consciousness, the walls creaked as the orphanage was devoured by flames from within. Baliel reached for Jules, one enormous hand cupping his head, as though to crush it. Baliel made a terrible choked sound of agony. It was a smoky thing that echoed through his ruined body. Echoing from within his essence. The demon flames licked the walls, spreading with the kind of vigour that would not be stopped. And then Baliel disappeared in ash and fire.
The moment his vivid presence disappeared, his blue flames died too.
Jules stood in the embers. His clothes were burned, but his skin remained unmarked.
‘You—’ she rasped, coughing ash and smoke. ‘You’re not—’
Hurt .
Then darkness claimed her.