34. Chapter 34 #3
He leaned my body against the hot stone of the archway.
How could I not kill him when I knew what his plan for you was?
You couldn’t read the first time I saw one of the death reports.
Blood between their legs, torn tissues, spilled seed dried and crusted on their thighs—that is not the work of an incubus.
It was someone from the village. And when he grabbed you, I knew.
I would never have let that happen to you.
He’s lucky I didn’t do more than I did. Now he’s nothing but squealing meat for the demons of Fang to play with.
Why have they strung him up like that?
Sometimes they feel creative, he said, shrugging one of my shoulders. Have you ever heard of contrapasso?
Of course I haven’t, I retorted. I could not even read until he’d taught me.
The punishment reflects the nature of the sin.
He used the bodies of those women he killed for his own pleasure.
He made them do things, terrible things.
His own personal puppets, until he broke their necks to hide his crimes.
They’ll want him to know he’s their plaything now.
There was a whip in his voice, every word a lash.
He’ll dance for them for eternity. Or at least until they get bored of it.
Then he might find himself violated in much the same way he violated his victims. He might be relieved of his cock at some point.
It’ll come back and then they’ll chop it off again.
A long, thoughtful pause. Do you know what the worst part is?
I didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to expect me to. I could not imagine what would be worse than what John Dale already had in store for himself.
Routinely they’ll ask the damned if, knowing what they know now, whether they’d have adjusted their behavior on Earth accordingly. They can’t lie here, remember. Do you know what the answer always, always is?
I said nothing, his cold, crushing voice reverberating around me. It was a moment before I realized my lips were curved into the barest of smiles.
The answer is always no. Desires that dark, they can’t be tamed, not even by a succubus, though Mother bless them, they’ll try. If the damned ever got a second chance they’d fuck it up just the same.
John’s eyes opened then, thin veiny lids peeling back.
He didn’t recognize me at first, but from locked up in my head, I saw when understanding dawned.
Popping black pupils, fat pale lips stretching into an O.
The smile on my face cracked wider as Remy watched him watching me until the succubus controlling John’s strings sent his legs into a frenzy and his head flopped back on the broken stem of his neck.
I watched until it stopped making sense, all activity incomprehensible and pointless, an anthill boiling over with inconceivable chaos.
I watched until, despite such bright and merry flames, I could not find a squeak of light anywhere in Fang.
Then, wracked to my last shaky nerve, I turned away from the window of my eyes, preferring the darkness of his cell.
Remy, I want to leave. I get your point, but I can’t stay here another moment.
You might tell Lord Fletcher and the rest of them that their wives and daughters won’t be forgotten, he said as he turned me away toward the landing. The succubi will always be there to remind him of what he did.
He relinquished control of my body when we made it back to his apartment. I was hungry but couldn’t imagine eating, not so quickly on the heels of seeing Fang in all its grotesque glory. My head ached in dull pulses, like a distant drum.
You’re okay, he said. You’re stronger than you think.
I wouldn’t have suggested seeing him if I thought you might fly to pieces.
You needed to see it. Now you have. I can’t send you home with proof—even if the council wrote a note confirming John’s confessions, some might think it’s all a forgery or your own invention—but you know the truth. And that’s all that matters.
It isn’t all that matters, I said, bewildered, sinking onto the edge of his bed.
My thoughts or anything I know won’t make a difference to any of them back home.
It was only Serich’s word that might help, and what would happen if I couldn’t find him, if he was already dead, and all for the sake of me?
Pardon. Remy’s voice was thick with sarcasm. Your thoughts are the only ones that matter to me, I should have said.
Then the conversation was abruptly ended by a rap on the door. I thought it might be the Flame servant returning, but when I answered the knock, I found Riquin framed in the doorway, bearing a plate and a careful, close-lipped smile.
“I got this from Alena,” he said, holding it out. “She was just on her way back up.”
“Thank you.” I set it on the bed and dropped down beside it.
“I heard you met Finn yesterday.” Riquin pulled the desk chair over to the bed with deliberate slowness. “I hope he didn’t frighten you. He seemed in too good of spirits when I saw him last night.”
I gave him a halfhearted shrug. “I’ve met worse than him.”
“He must have kept you a while,” he said delicately. “You weren’t here every time I came up to check.”
I felt Remy stiffen in my mind, as if he sensed I were about to fall into a trap. Riquin must have seen him climbing up behind my eyes because he held up a hand as if to force him back.
“Was he just trying to wrangle you into his bed the entire time, or had any other topics come up?”
Head tilted, red lips burnished in the candlelight, eyes like glossless ink fixed on mine.
I rather felt as if he were trying to lull me, though I knew it was impossible when I had a demonic roommate who had incubus blood himself.
Riquin held my gaze, didn’t blink. I had no idea what to say. The stillness between us was crushing.
Remy cut in through the silence. “You can’t honestly expect me to have gotten over everything that happened. I’m not going to just forget that our father was murdered.”
“I would never expect that.”
“You wanted him dead, too, last I heard,” Remy said, my voice dark with anger. “He’s a fucking scribe, all he’s supposed to be doing is recording what happens. He isn’t supposed to intervene and hand out second chances to certain people and to Hell with the rest. It’s not fair.”
“Fair?” It looked as if Riquin would like to laugh.
“Remy, you tell me where Fair is. We’ll all fucking go.
” He sat there perfectly still for a moment, bottomless eyes locked on mine.
“I do want him dead, but I don’t want you to be the one to do it.
Your sister hasn’t seen you in six years.
She’s missed you terribly. You should have seen the way she’s clung to us since you’ve been gone.
You were her only brother and you left her.
Leave Luceric to the rest of us. You need to focus on rebuilding your life here, on getting into the good graces of the council.
They forgave a lot because of your mother’s standing but if you think her credibility didn’t take a hit from all your shit, you’re delusional.
I realize you were young when it happened, that you weren’t thinking straight, but you’re older now.
You don’t have any more excuses, and you won’t get any more passes. ”
The mention of Jessa had caused Remy an uncomfortable twist, but the reference to his mother had him on his feet, smacking at the bars. “She made the fucking council and I’m hardly the first scandal they’ve dealt with. Who could ever throw her out? Do you think you became my father when ours died?”
Riquin looked almost sad, then, as he got to his feet.
“I think I’m your older brother and I love you, probably more than you deserve sometimes.
I want you to get your life back. You won’t if you pick up right where you left off.
” He looked down at me and sighed, his breath a blood-soaked, bilious blast that made my head swim, made me feel quite sure of what his own breakfast had consisted of.
“Your mother wants to see you when she’s finished eating. ”
I bundled myself up like I would for a blizzard, my stomach like a kettle on full boil, butterfingered with buttons, fumbling with bootlaces. I headed for Frost alone, past the grasping gauntlet of the unjudged damned, feeling the eye of every demon I passed against my back.
Wails echoed along the stone walls as if from some many-headed monster.
The antechamber overflowed with shoals of jostling souls.
Screaming, crying, one lone male voice riding high above the rest, yelling about there must be some kind of mistake.
One man stalked me as far as he could down the chamber—sweet girl, please help; a flash of vermeil, a swish of a flamboyantly cut robe; that’s all I saw from the corner of my eye—as if I had any sway at all in this place before one of the guards took notice and cracked him across the face.
It didn’t help to settle my guts, which writhed like a fish on a hook.
My mother wouldn’t have asked you about your life, your family, if she were planning on doing away with you, Remy said in a bid to soothe my nerves, blotting out the screams rocketing up from Fang as I descended the staircase. She wouldn’t have bothered speaking to you at all.
Quick flash of Fury’s frantic, energetic din as I passed by and kept moving down the frozen staircase. Ice dusted Frost’s landing, illuminated by that overbright moon pouring through the archway.
You’ll be fine. She probably just wants to berate me some more, he said, with a decent stab at humor. It’s her favorite pastime. I’m sure she missed it when I was gone.
Snow fell softly inside Frost, and there was a vast, bewitching loneliness in the sight of it, a sort of exhilarated despair I could see myself being easily seduced by, if I weren’t so off-balance with nerves and cold.
Even through my layers, I was freezing. My muscles jumped, springing in fitful jerks.