Diana Read online

  “Prove you’re actually doing something,” Carter said. Tolemny stood and dropped an iron rod into water with a hiss. Steam rolled up the side of his body, backlit by the forge, and for a moment Carter felt like he was back hellside, then it passed and he was in a converted apartment in New York again.

  “You think I’m going to pass up a commission like this one, to be the one who puts the sword in your hands?” Tolemny asked.

  “No,” Carter said. “I just think you’re going to do the stuff you like doing a long time before you start making sales calls. It’s just not your style.”

  “Divan is checking,” Tolemny said. “But he is bound from speaking to you about it.” The demon shook a finger at Carter. “I know you too well.”

  “You’ve got your minion looking for an epic sword?” Carter asked. “You may as well send him after the other Hope diamond.”

  “You came to me,” Tolemny said. “Don’t question my methods.”

  Carter shrugged.

  “So you really don’t have anything for me?” he asked. Tolemny smiled, devious.

  “I might, if you were going to be a good customer and wait.”

  Carter was about ready to leave. Too many people trying to be clever with him, these days. It was well past time to put his foot down and make them behave, but unfortunately, he needed them too much.

  Tolemny held up a finger and turned back to his forge and stoked it. Carter grunted deep in his chest, and Tolemny laughed.

  “Losing your touch, old man,” the demon said, standing. “One minute.”

  He turned and left, coming back with a leather sleeve that he rolled out across a working table for Carter to look at it. Carter slid the thin knives out of their slots one by one and tested them across his palm, feeling the way the cool of the metal eased with the potent threat of slipping under his skin at any moment.

  “They’re nice,” he said, holding one up to the orange light. “You make them?”

  “No,” Tolemny said. “They’re old.”

  Carter frowned, turning the knife over in his hand. It had a smooth feel to it that was hardly ancient in nature. Modern lines, modern balance. He twirled it once around his finger, appreciating how nimble it was.

  “Advanced,” he said. Tolemny snorted.

  “You spend that much time on the other side and you still think like a human,” he said. Carter shrugged.

  “You couldn’t sell something like this fifty years ago, not to mention two hundred,” Carter said. Taste was taste. It really didn’t matter how effective a weapon was, if no one wanted to carry it.

  He flipped the knife blade over handle and let it land flat in his palm a few times.

  “And yet, they’re older than me,” Tolemny said.

  “I don’t get anything off of them,” Carter said. Tolemny shook his head, holding out his hand. Carter held out the knife he was playing with and Tolemny slid the edge of the blade down the back of his arm, leaving a long red wound just deep enough to bleed. He put the knife down and they waited.

  And waited.

  Blood seeped out of the cut, the way it should have, but then it failed to ash. Everything a demon was made of turned to ash when his energy stopped supporting it. You kill them, they ash. You cut their arm off, it ashes. They bleed, it ashes.

  But this blood dripped onto the table, beginning to form a puddle. Carter tipped his head at Tolemny.

  “How long is it going to do that?” he asked.

  Tolemny shrugged.

  “You ever see a demon die of exsanguination?”

  “No,” Carter said, intrigued. “But I’d love to try it.”

  Tolemny nodded, going back to the forge and drawing an orange iron from the fire and pressing it to his flesh with a hiss not dissimilar to the water, earlier. He snarled and put the iron rod back in the fire. The char on his arm didn’t drip blood any more; in a few hours it wouldn’t look like it had ever happened.

  “I’m interested,” Carter said. “How much?”

  “Two hundred thousand,” Tolemny said.

  “I’m not that interested,” Carter said. “I’ll give you fifty.”

  “I don’t make change for a hundred,” Tolemny said.

  “I’ll do it at a hundred,” Carter said. Tolemny nodded.

  “I’ll have my assistant wrap them up.”

  “No, I’ll just carry them,” Carter said. “Send me a bill and I’ll get you the money through Nuri.”

  Standard business for something of this order. The epic blade would cost him at least two or three million, and he’d go through a private money service for that, but Nuri and her people wouldn’t even bother to check that he intended to send Tolemny this little bit of money; they’d just do it.

  Demons, especially New York demons, lived in a different economy.

  Ultimately, all of that cash turned itself into a power economy that the really big players participated in. Power transferred from demon to demon until they spent it, either in recovering from injury, like when someone cut their arm off, or in something more subtle like intellect or strength, as a part of dark magic, or in a hellcrossing. Taking power from one side to the other was dearly expensive, and that’s where almost all of the power that demons ever carried around went. Power that had human free will to thank as its engine. The split of light from dark where it met at freewill threw off an enormity of dark power that the demons had leached off of from the beginning of time.

  Samantha had been uncomfortable with the idea of participating in such an economy, when she’d finally begun to understand it, but, like everything else, you learned to accept it as part of the way things worked. It existed, whether or not she bought or sold anything, and she didn’t create or destroy it. She just saw that it moved from one set of hands to another.

  If anything, he’d finally reasoned out loud, anything that helped her send demons back hellside was the most moral decision she could make, because it did finally take power out of play.

  That had been the day she’d really started working with him. She had a natural human abhorrence to demons, plus her own, fluffy, innocent resentment of them, but she also had a grudge, deeper now that Justin was dead, and she truly had a gift with grudges.

  Tolemny showed him to the door, and Carter left with the leather roll under his arm, whistling as he walked down the street.

  He got back to the building and stashed the knives away in his room, finding Samantha out in the main room when he got back. He wasn’t sure if she’d been there as he’d been going into his room. Had he just gotten that good at ignoring her?

  “He knows where Tiber is,” she said.

  “All right,” he said, going to the kitchen and pouring himself a glass of milk. “Let’s have it.”

  “I want to talk about something first,” she said.

  He set the glass down on the counter.

  “I get the feeling we’re about to find ourselves at an impasse,” he said. She shrugged.

  “Look, you’re doing this for you, but in the end it’s as much for me as anyone. So it isn’t outright manipulation. I just want your attention for a minute to talk about something before you go charging off into your next battle.”

  He sighed, picking up the glass and taking another swallow. She waited for him to put it back down on the counter.

  “It’s about how the rest of the people managing territories are doing it,” she said.

  “Just them?” he asked. “Not me, too?”

  She looked off to the side, then back at him and nodded.

  “No, I think what happens here is fine. Best I know, anyway.”

  That was a double-edged sword at best. She wasn’t asking him to change his behavior. She was asking him to change other people’s behaviors. He wasn’t certain which he liked less.

  “Do I need to put you on a timer?” he asked.

  “I heard that there’s a witch in Texas that’s doing a number on a city there.
They don’t know what it is and they don’t how to stop her, and Argo doesn’t plan on doing anything about it because…”

  “Humanoid,” Carter said. “Not our problem.”

  She picked up the blood-smeared blue rock from the counter where he’d dropped it.

  “How much did you pay for this?” she asked.

  He couldn’t remember. He probably wouldn’t have answered her, anyway, because he could feel the axe about to fall.

  “And how about for the knives you just bought from Tolemny?”

  “How did you know about that?” he asked. She slid her head sideways a fraction.

  “You think everything you do gets past me?” she asked.

  “You asked Abby,” he said.

  “I asked Abby,” she answered. He shook his head.

  “Tolemny needs better security.”

  “You need better habits,” she answered. “How much?”

  He shrugged, finishing the milk in three big swallows and putting the glass down in the sink.

  “Tick tick,” he said.

  “Make Argo pay someone to do it,” she said. “We don’t have to do everything. That’s fine with me. But someone should do it, and if we know about it, we have an obligation to help.”

  “No we don’t,” Carter said.

  “A moral obligation,” she emphasized.

  “You know what kind of burden I’d be under if I felt like I had to fix everyone’s boo boos?” he asked. “The world is a rough place, and people make decisions. That’s none of my business.”

  “She’s hypnotizing children and stealing their energy,” Samantha said.

  “More mindless brats filling our nation’s classrooms,” Carter answered. “You want me to reform the NEA, too?”

  “The NEA is the National Endowment for the Arts. You mean the DOE.”

  “National Educators Association,” Carter said. “But thanks for playing.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “It costs us nothing, and it means the world to them. Do something about it.”

  “It costs us more than you’d think,” Carter said, bending time a fraction to give himself a little more space to think. He had to be careful how he played this.

  In truth, it didn’t matter what she thought, if he just put his foot down and refused to play ball. And there was nothing that was going to make him take care of a city full of southern hicks who were probably mostly braindead to begin with. The problem with just ignoring her was that she really was starting to be useful. As much as he resented her cozy little formative relationship with Marvin, it had gotten him something he wanted, and it had cost him nothing but an unpleasant interaction with the mutt out in the back yard. Probably wouldn’t even cost him that much, next time.

  And if she got a reputation for being able to get him to do things, people would start asking her for things, instead of him, and then she could handle all of the beggars and thieves who wanted something from him.

  Which was a definite upside.

  Downside was that he could get a reputation for actually doing things. And he didn’t want that. He did whatever he felt like, up to a point, and he tended to err on the side of violence, when it came to demons, because that was a reputation he didn’t mind having. He did have to be professional to some extent, because contracts were founded on an expectation that he’d live up to them, but not showing up was part of his unreliability. He didn’t want to be reliable.

  And then there was the whole dealing-with-Argo thing that he didn’t even want to think about. Mitch, maybe. Spake, even. But the rest of them, he didn’t want to have a conversation with until someone was dead. They were an obnoxious lot, same as him, and they didn’t like to be in the same room or exchange words if it was at all avoidable.

  Samantha was talking again.

  Words, words, moral, words, people, bleeding heart can’t deal with reality too much time with angels.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll put out a directive that we place bounties on humanoid affairs. If people take them, fine, if they don’t, I’ve done what I’m willing to do.”

  “With verification,” Samantha said. “We need to follow up and make sure that whatever we asked them to do actually happened.”

  “You want them to mail you boxes with heads in them?” Carter asked. She blanched and he dropped an eyebrow.

  “Humanoid stuff is messy, Sam. They don’t get a pile of ash that they can literally sweep under a convenient rug. There are bodies and families and nasty stuff.”

  “Nasty stuff like me,” she said, pushing him to take it back.

  “Exactly,” he answered. She was right. She was exactly the fallout of dealing with humans that he wanted to avoid. Her and Abby both.

  Just look where they’d gotten him.

  On the other hand, he had a tasty hunt to follow up.

  “Where is he?” he asked.

  “He’s got a lair out at the docks,” she said. “What is it with demons and dank places full of rats?”

  “You know the answer to that. Where, exactly?”

  She told him.

  “Do you want me to drive you?” she asked.

  “Are you going to be able to resist joining me?” he countered.

  “You should have someone watching your back,” Samantha said.

  “I’ve never had one before,” he said. She lowered her eyelids at him and he rubbed his hands together.

  “Now,” he said. “Let’s go see what a Platta looks like.”

  The problem was that he wasn’t willing to run. It was undignified, and it implied that he should have been doing something before when he actually started doing it. The problem, if it was important enough, would wait.

  Samantha had no such dignity. She beat him to the box of keys even after he put up the force block on the elevator to keep her from joining him. She actually ran down the stairs and met him at the elevator with all of the keys on her finger.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said.

  “No,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I am.”

  “No,” he said. “The spree was impressive, but it didn’t prove anything.”

  “I’m not trying to prove anything,” she said. “And this isn’t a negotiation. This is an explanation.”

  He checked up, walking to a car, and turned to face her.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “I’m going, and I’m helping. I know you don’t think I’m relevant this fight, but that doesn’t technically matter. He killed Justin, which means I’m obligated to be involved in finding and splashing him, and you’re obligated not only to let me but to desist your search until I do.”

  He kept his face still.

  He didn’t want her here because she was still headstrong and impulsive. He was wearing on her, but he wasn’t there yet, and he needed to know that she wasn’t going to go tearing into a fight on moral grounds rather than tactical ones.

  Because he didn’t know what he’d do if he found himself at a crossroads between saving her and letting her die.

  He just didn’t.

  On the other hand, she was technically right. He’d pushed her into the fight with the fire demon that had killed her family well before she was prepared to even hold a weapon without hurting herself. It had been her right and her obligation and it had been fun to watch.

  And in that moment, he hadn’t cared if she’d lived or died.

  And.

  Damn.

  And now he did.

  “Damn,” he said aloud.

  She nodded as though he were reacting to her argument and went to get into that new Mustang. She was showing a preference for it. He didn’t like it because he basically had to sit sideways across the back seat if he wanted to avoid sitting next to her. He wasn’t sure which of them were being passive aggressive about it and reasoned that there was no proof it wasn’t both of them.

  He cared what happened to her.
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  How did that happen?

  When did that happen?

  Okay, in an argument with someone being a pain, he could claim that it was simple protection of property. She was his, marked or not, and letting a demon kill her, even in the heat of battle, made him look weak. And he didn’t want that. That was true. But the deeper truth was that he cared about her, his or not, and he sensed he would fight to his own death to protect her.

  It made his stomach churn in a way that made him want to throw up, like he’d eaten something physically painful.

  “Damn,” he murmured again. Samantha didn’t hear him over the roar of the engine as she pulled out of the garage.

  He was going to have to do something about all of this.

  The stench of rotting fish guts from the docks was worse than normal today.

  That was a bad thing because death smells tended to attract blood demons. Little ones with nothing better to do and no real control over their instincts.

  It would have been the type of thing he would have used to train Samantha, if the angels hadn’t done that part for him. Just send her out with an iron rod and a dagger and sit on a folding chair by the car and drink coffee out of a thermos.

  It would have been fun.

  He took a moment mourning the loss, then shook his head.

  The problem today was that blood demons flushed like birds. They sensed that big power demons like this Platta would squish them for the glee of it, and they feared Carter by reputation and form. A demon had told him once that he just smelled powerful, and to a demon who was just barely holding it together on this side, strong enough to glitch but not to keep a human form - the overhead cost of a freewill form - that smell was something that made them pop out of place like a nervous dog peeing on the floor.

  And the Platta, if he was worth all this effort, would feel it when they did it.

  Carter got out his small kit of tools, checking at a glance that they were all where he expected them, including the new knives from Tolemny, then he took a glass vial out of his pocket and poured a few drops out onto his palm. He held it out for Samantha, but she didn’t take it. He looked over at her to find her sitting with her hands on the steering wheel, staring out the front window with a similarly vacant expression to the one he so often saw on Abby. She drew a breath and closed her eyes, then nodded and looked at him, taking the vial.