Chapter 51 #2
“Yes,” said Maxwell, staring at the pattern he was very slowly tracing and remembering the way Hazel’s hands had splayed against her thighs. “She did.”
“A pity I couldn’t bear witness.”
“I can tell you about it, if you’d like,” said Maxwell, pausing.
“Later,” the demon spat. “Have you lost all your wits? Get on with your work.”
The irritating part about undoing his own wards, Maxwell found, was that there was only so long he could fake struggling with them before it became a blatant performance.
He grasped a line of energy, turned it, and dismantled half of the pattern he’d constructed earlier.
Perthrux’s grunt of satisfaction just made the whole experience worse.
“Chapman,” the demon said, “has failed us at the last minute. Perhaps you were right about him.”
“Did the medium drive him away?” asked Maxwell, as casually as he could manage.
“Possibly. I don’t care,” Perthrux added petulantly. “He served his purpose in the end, didn’t he? If he reappears, though, I’ll need to have words with him.”
“Justifiably, my lord.” The ward flared up and vanished. Maxwell let his breath out and purposefully slumped his shoulders. “I need a moment before I handle the last one.”
He sensed, with no need for mental magic, Perthrux’s brief dilemma. It would normally refuse out of habit and spite, but its plans were too advanced to risk its servant blowing himself up or burning his mind out, thus leaving it and its minions trapped. “Take it, then,” it snarled.
Energy ebbed and surged all around them, the remnants of the vortex that had incubated in Hazel. So far, as he and Hazel had hoped, it seemed to have kept Perthrux from sensing any intrusion into its domain—if Hazel had made it that far without getting lost or waylaid.
Nothing good came from pursuing that train of thought. Maxwell pulled a question from the frantic fragments of his mind. “Should I follow you once the barrier is down? Or would you prefer I stay behind as a guard?”
The dead white eyes blinked. “A stupid question. What would you have to guard?”
“Will the rift close, then?”
“Does it matter? Nothing that comes out will threaten us.” Perthrux’s tongue licked out of its second mouth, struck the barrier between worlds, then retracted. “You’ll come along. It’ll be an experience for you.”
“Ah,” said Maxwell.
The demon’s voice came from behind him, soft and full of menace. “You sound like you object, bondsman.”
“I wouldn’t dare, my lord.”
“No? Do you mean to say that I’m unreasonable?”
“Simply that it isn’t my place.”
“How perceptive,” said Perthrux. “I believe you’ve had plenty of rest now.”
“Of course, my lord,” said Maxwell, his stomach sinking. He wiped his palms on his robes, then took a small step in the direction of the final ward. “I should investigate further before starting, though. There might be traps that go off when the protections sink low enough.”
Perthrux didn’t respond. Maxwell stared around him, frowning as though he were checking the forest carefully.
“Are you stalling?” the demon asked.
The world turned to ice inside Maxwell’s head. “I want to be sure that nothing goes wrong,” said Maxwell. It was technically true. It had worked before.
“Turn around,” said Perthrux, and he did. The air around them became heavy, gravid with a burden he knew too well. The demon’s will fell on Maxwell with its full force. “Are you stalling?” it repeated.
He closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said, not fighting in the hopes that Perthrux would be satisfied. “I’m worried.”
Perthrux’s regard skewered Maxwell like a butterfly on a pin. “Is the medium dead?” it asked, enunciating every word with terrible precision. Magic tightened around Maxwell’s soul, barbed and inescapable.
None of Maxwell’s skill could help him in that moment. No trick he’d learned in Perthrux’s service or his own explorations let him resist or evade the question. “I don’t know,” he said, fighting hard enough to limit his response that much.
“You don’t know?” The demon’s voice rose, and behind it the mass of maggot soldiers cringed.
Perthrux lunged forward toward Maxwell. While the barrier still held it back, keeping it outside the physical world, no such obstacle kept Maxwell on the other side.
As its arms shot forward, its power yanked Maxwell toward it.
Talons sank into his shoulders. “You don’t KNOW ? ”
After his brief freedom, compulsion was agony. “I don’t know,” Maxwell repeated. It was all he could do just then.
Perthrux dragged him close to it, close enough for Maxwell to begin going numb from the chill it exuded. “Did you give her the potion?” it demanded.
“Yes.”
The flesh around its face rippled, wrinkled, as it thought. It was not a stupid creature when it didn’t want to be. “All the potion?”
Maxwell bit down on his tongue, but Perthrux’s magic pried his jaws apart and forced the answer from his bleeding mouth. “No.”
Its claws tightened, piercing Maxwell’s flesh. “Traitor,” it snarled. “Why? ”
“I love her,” he said, unwillingly but all the more sincere for it. “I hate you. I want you gone.”
“Then how—” Perthrux stopped. Both of its mouths gaped open while Maxwell’s heart stopped, and the revelation that crossed its misplaced face confirmed his worst fear. “Ah. Clever. Not clever enough.”
“My lord—”
“You’ve forgotten that,” said the demon, over his feeble protest. “I’ll remind you. Come.”
Before he could cry out, before he could even mouth some protest, useless as he knew it would be, the ethereal had become a blur around them. Maxwell couldn’t tell if the maggots were following, but he knew where they were going.