The Pact, page 14
part #1 of The Dark Roads Series
You knew what would happen, Serenity. You knew.
A shadow perched on the sill like a watching gargoyle. A shifting, weaving darkness, peering down at her the way she'd peered down at Jack, with its two wild, yellow, lamp-like eyes glaring. They were curious, and terribly understanding.
So... It spoke into her mind, like little moths fluttering against her ears. So.
The street faded. The doctor, Jack, Magda, all faded. The people in the windows disappeared, and only the door remained, leading into the Den. Beyond it, only red, fiery light. A cavernous maw opening up to devour her whole.
She passed through it without thought, without will. And as she entered, the rest of her world and everyone in it melted away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
This is why you sought out my power?
"Yes."
Serenity spoke, but didn't speak, her words voiceless whispers in an empty void.
She hung in a cold darkness, like a corpse floating on an endless sea. The presence of the other came to her as a sort of humming, a low static surrounding the blurry edges of her mind. It waited. Pondered.
Then came the sensation of something like fingers through her hair.
You are certainly an interesting specimen, little traveler.
No, not her hair—her mind. The demon picked through it, taking up memories and studying them, putting pieces back where they didn't belong. It explored, like a cat, wandering leisurely, unconcerned, curious.
The voices of darklings echoed and reverberated, flitting back and forth across her consciousness. They sang the old children's rhyme—Reap' shot ‘im six times, dig ‘em six feet—over and over. They muttered in languages she couldn't understand, some the languages of men and some the languages of the otherworld. In the darkness, she found nothing but the darklings. Everything was them. She was them, inside and out, nothing but a clay vessel for the prowling thing to make its home.
"Take it," she said. "You win...take my mind, or my memories. Take what you want."
Prying. It crept about in her brain, touching tasting with its scissory claws, the sense of a pleased grin shining down on her as if it found her sweet. But everything the creature did...it hurt.
"Please, stop. Just take it."
A ripple of something inky and sleek, like laughter, danced between them. Not like that, fleshling. Do you think you die?
"I don't want you. Not you."
Too late. You cast the rune to bind me. And here I am.
"Destroy me, then."
No. I destroy you, and I destroy me. We are one now, Serenity Walker.
More shuffling. More rifling. Demon fingers caressing the depths of her, like a lover. The mind shuddered on invisible strings between the two of them.
No, it mused. No, that is not the way a contract works.
"What are you?"
Surprise crackled through their brain. Don't you know me, little fleshling? Don't you recognize the feel of me in you?
She could find no more strength to form words. She tried to send her query across the signals it created through her. It seemed to pause, as if assessing whether or not she inflected the truth, or if she was just stupid.
I was the one on the mountain, it said. I was the one that brought down the hammer of thurisaz on the head of your enemy. I lent my power to you, to your remarkable will, to crush the man who would have harmed you.
"And now you mean to take me as your own?" she managed. Each word came like a heavy weight pulled out of a deep, black well. She hadn't been strong enough—she hadn't been good enough to master the darkest art, and she'd failed Jack. She'd failed Rook.
When you wake up, you'll forget this part, the darkling snickered. You'll think you did well, little traveler, think you came here with all your weaver's tricks and outsmarted the cleverest of the otherworlders. You'll forget this darkness, and think you've walked away with a prize. And I will lie, and let you think so, and let you go on with your life.
But I will remember what you really feel.
I will always remember how helpless you are here. How open and vulnerable.
To me.
Another sense of a smile, vicious and sharp, cut through the brain.
Remember, this is what you wanted. This is what you came into my world for. This is what you cast the runes for.
"No," she whispered, dreading the very thought of waking. "No, this is not...what I..."
The creature passed its touch over her eyes. Darkness within darkness fell over her, and she felt herself—she felt Serenity Walker, student of Jack, daughter of Eclipse—slipping forever away.
Yes, fleshling. This is how it is.
Everything...all of her...slipping away.
Did you really think you could ever be strong enough to tame one like me?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rook hadn't waited. He'd moved on, just as she'd suspected he would.
Serenity sighed. She'd undergone more than a week in one long, driving migraine, since the morning she'd left him up until now. She'd hoped with everything in her, he would be here to comfort her. He'd ease the exhaustion with a bout of excited praise, wrap his arms around her and remark upon the new woman she'd become. But, no. He'd left the cave exactly as they'd found it, without a single clue they'd ever been there at all. Even the ashes of their fire, gone.
For a second, the harsh sting of tears made her tremble, but she shut her eyes tight and forced the emotion away. She staggered into the cool darkness, thankful at least that the haze now seemed to be passing, and the pain finally starting to recede.
Rook had been right. Trying to adjust to the second presence inside herself jarred her, to say the very least. The demon trembled on her brain like a spider on its web. His dark presence curled up in petulant denial any time she tried to engage him. When he did speak, his voice echoed up from the base of her neck into the back of her skull. The sensation grated on her bones. You'll get used to it, her new companion snarled.
She sat down, leaning against the wall of the cave, with a heavy groan.
She'd learned, though the darkling never volunteered to tell her, he was called D'aej. A demon word, naturally. She had no idea what it meant. Since stepping across the border of the Rachalör and fighting him, she'd phased in and out of consciousness, waking up to remember things which weren't hers to remember, and grasping at things she'd surely begun to forget. He kept slipping into her mental pathways, interfering with her, causing her to fade out or, worse, pass out at odd moments. By good fortune, she woke up alive and unharmed, the predators of the tainted mountainside nowhere to be found. They avoided her, now. Even the birds flew up from the trees in a panic when she passed. But the darkling's efforts grew weaker, finally. She'd started regaining control.
You did it, she thought to herself, though she didn't have much energy in her for enthusiasm. You beat the demon.
Something—the ghost of a deep, nameless feeling shimmering at the end of her mind, like the last eking lines of a mirage—balked over the reassurance. But then it flittered away. It didn't concern her. In the last few days, her struggle against D'aej threw everything in her mind into scattered confusion, memories and emotions and thoughts all running together. She'd floated between dreams and waking, going back to Eclipse, or even farther back, to the caravans of the winter nomads, summoning the vaguest, vaguest memories of the childhood before her life at the Wolf's Den. Swirling through time, grasping at lucidity, and holding onto it as long as she could pry herself back from the borders, finally, she'd been able to separate the dreams from reality. And finally, she'd retaken control of the body.
She'd beaten D'aej.
A seething sense of acid resentment bubbled up in her skull. A black, icy hate. But the demon said nothing.
She took her deck of cards from her knapsack and began shuffling.
"You'd better get used to it yourself," she muttered. "Since we're going to be partners, now."
‘Partners' is not the word I'd use, he growled. Don't be too comfortable in your own skin yet, Serenity Walker.
"You've lost," she said, spreading the cards out before her then leaning back to have—for the first time in her life—a cigarette. She'd picked up a tin of tobacco a few towns back and kept it on her for some time, without knowing why. Now, it seemed to make sense. She'd saved it for this moment. Her own small, private kind of celebration. Like Jack, at the end of a good day.
She snapped her finger, and a spark ignited—a trick she'd just discovered—and she lit up, inhaling deeply and sighing the smoke into the air. Most boys she'd seen in Eclipse smoking for the first time coughed and hacked, unable to handle the vice right away. She, on the other hand, found herself pleasantly immune.
"Well, I'd say I've earned it." She imagined how Magda would disapprove, sneering and scolding, and it brought a smile to her face. She felt giddy. Different.
I feel good.
"So this is how it's going to work." She crossed her arms behind her head, gazing up to watch the smoke swirl. "You and I have a man to find."
The man who murdered your teacher.
"Yup."
But years have passed since your Jack was slain, fleshling.
"Six, to be exact," she said. "What's your point?"
You really think you can still find him?
"I know I can."
And you have a suitable plan of vengeance in mind, I suppose?
"Exactly where you come in."
Quiet, brooding resentment. The darkling did something that made Serenity's shoulder's bunch and her spine twinge—almost as if he'd scraped his phantasmal claws down a vertebra or two. That would take some adjustment, all the ways he could affect her physical sensations.
She smirked. "Come on now, D'aej, don't be so angry. You've got a nice little place in a human body now. The things we can do—the powers we'll have together—it's going to be much, much better than you think."
Again, the shifting, contradictory, mirage feeling. His fussy, feline attempts to make himself comfortable in her mind, she suspected. She brushed it off. More silence from D'aej, although she thought she sensed a faint, electric blue spark of interest somewhere in the cloud of his emotion.
"You can use me as much as I use you," she said, closing her eyes. "You know it. We're one, now. Your spirit, my flesh."
Don't lecture me on how this works, he hissed. You're going to find out it is nothing like you expected.
"Well, I am willing to learn." Perching the cigarette between her lips, she practiced a series of runic signs. A whole host of new forms and permutations danced before her, supernatural effects she'd never considered before. They all seemed easy, now. Child's play.
If we share a body, we share its pain. I am not fond of pain, nor am I fond of the thought of death. I don't get the sense you are entirely serious about your survival. You seem to forget how dangerous your world is for one who allies herself with mine.
"I can handle it. Trust me."
It will be quite a long time before I can trust a man-worlder. Especially a self-important brat with more talent than she rightly deserves or knows how to use.
This time, Serenity remained silent. She took a drag of the cigarette—and how deeply satisfying it was—and let the darkling have the last word.
For now.
There would be time—lots of time—to let the bond settle between them.
Because there was no going back.
PART THREE
THE PACT
Humanity...
It's au revoir to your insanity...
You sold your soul to feed your vanity,
Your fantasy
And lies.
~ The Scorpions
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Serenity's accidental rescuers had brought her to Dao, the last city between the Geiralian Desert and the harvest lands of the east. A busy city, not her favorite kind of place, but of course a busy town made it easier for a woman like her to go unnoticed. It also boasted quite a healthy list of taverns, saloons, and hotels. Choosing one far from the city center—in a little quieter area, she hoped—Serenity pulled her borrowed traveling cloak close, making sure her ruined clothing and her scar were safely hidden, ducked the crowds, and retired for a drink.
The swinging wooden sign above the batwing doors read Aces High. She took a quick assessment of the place from the entryway—a wide floor, perhaps two dozen tables, most of them taken up by knots of gamblers. The bar ran the span of the eastern wall, with a brawny, mustachioed barkeep behind it, scrubbing a glass and keeping a keen eye over the action. A few saloon girls—the kind of girls Magda declined to have in the Wolf's Den—sauntered the floor, looking for marks among the men. The place smelled of heavily salted meat and fragrant cigars, and a piano player tapped out a lively tune for the occasional coin tossed his way. Yes, it looked busy. The mouth-watering scent of roasting pig from the kitchens caught her attention, though, and made up her mind.
"Amber whiskey, please," she said to the man behind the bar as she approached and leaned on the counter.
She extended her hand, and in her mind, she and D'aej clicked to create the runic illusion of bills in it. She'd gotten used to this trick in hard times, flicking the wrist of her other hand into the signs under the bar where the man couldn't see them. He gave her a careful, assessing once-over—the prerogative of saloon folk the world over—but he nodded, taking the proffered "coin" and serving her up a mug.
"You offer dinner?" she asked, and he gave her the affirmative. "Then I'll have a plate of that, too, if you will."
He nodded and then disappeared to find her a plate. While he did, she gave her attention back to the dining room and watched it, scrutinizing the patrons bustling about. She took a long sip of her amber whiskey—Rook's drink of choice, she'd never forgotten—and pondered the people before her. D'aej would have mentioned it if they'd gotten close to the man they hunted, but she checked out the gamblers and drinkers anyway. Sometimes even prey could be clever, and sneaky enough to fool a darkling. Not often...but then, this prey was special.
No sign of her quarry, but D'aej sent a nagging little pinprick across to her all the sudden: it meant he sensed something, or maybe someone, worth keeping an eye on in here.
Her eyes were drawn to one of the saloon girls. A heartlander, it looked like, and definitely a doxy, probably a few years younger than Serenity. She wore a satin, ruffled dress the color of deep rubies, with matching ribbons in her glossy black hair. Sitting alone on the banister of the stairs leading up to the rooms, she fiddled with the folds and stitches on her dress, head bowed and hidden in shadow.
"Getting a little lusty, there, D'aej?" Serenity murmured under her breath, frowning as she studied the girl. The darkling sent Serenity a sharp and acid sense of disgust, a feeling like shards of black Rachalörian ice skittering across hard rock. Something like spitting.
Don't be crude.
"I've heard enough tales of darklings using the bodies of their hosts to take human lovers to their beds. But I'm sorry to tell you, if that's what you're looking for, I'm not in quite the right mood to cooperate."
By the living runes, you're an idiot. There's something arcane about her.
The barkeep returned with Serenity's meal, and she tipped her head in thanks, continuing to scan the room. Another presence tickled at her senses, a lingering, hard-to-grasp flicker of magic, someone besides the whore. Whatever had caught D'aej's attention, Serenity now noticed it, too: a vague, very vague sense of the lacy fingers of the otherworld, tripping the edges of her consciousness. It nagged at her darkling, but it proved incredibly hard to grasp—like seeing the flash of cards in a hand, or the glimmer of laughing eyes.
It's the girl in red, Serenity. I know it is.
"Is what?" she whispered. "I can detect something here, but I don't know what I'm looking for."
Someone like you, I think.
"A weaver? In a town like this, there are probably a dozen, at least. But they aren't going to show their nature somewhere this public."
One with a demon, genius.
She narrowed her eyes and sipped her drink, letting her gaze return to the girl on the stairs. To her mild surprise, the girl stared back at her, with wide, startled eyes.
"Well, what do you know?" she muttered under her breath. "You might just be right."
She took her time, mulling over the meal she'd ordered, glancing up here and there to keep check on the red-ribboned doxy. Eventually, the girl moved away from the stairs, as if someone shooed her off, or she'd all at once remembered some errand, and she wandered around the room, stopping at tables to flirt prettily with men and grin at their teasing. She wore a painted smile, though, and Serenity thought she might know why. The girl knew what Serenity brought in, too, because she kept returning Serenity's glances, looking furtive and ashamed.
Then, when the doxy's eyes caught the light, Serenity caught the flash of scarlet underneath her soft lashes.
D'aej knew his business. The girl must be a bound weaver. But Serenity didn't think the poor thing's journey had ended quite right.
She watched for the better part of half an hour, while the girl grew more and more uncomfortable, knowing Serenity still watched her. She clumsily bumped men's glasses or chairs, trying to duck Serenity's eyes, occasionally glancing up at her, somehow hurt and confused.
"What's wrong with her, D'aej?" Serenity murmured into her drink.
A ruined bond, he replied. She didn't take well to the change. Perhaps most or all of her mind is gone.
"But she's not a lost soul. She's not even close to the mutants and monsters I've seen before."
No. It is possible the darkling has scarred her mind, but does not control it. In fact...I'm not sure either mind actually survived, to be honest.
