BloodAngel Page 13

  He said, "Driven underground, practiced only by outcasts like me, and slaves like Ashika, who kept it concealed from the overclass, the ones who ran and ruled the city. But magic becomes rather twisted when you have no wise one to guide you. And our teacher was Bakal Ashika. She wasn't a very good influence." He giggled.

  "Who taught Bakal? How was a slave able to grow so powerful?"

  "That's a dark, perverted, fabulous story, but we'll put it away for a rainy day. Look here. I'm going to put on a show for you."

  He pointed one long curving fingernail to the stone wall on their right. Images appeared on the stone, flickering there like a film with the sound turned off.

  "Pay attention," Del ordered. "This is important."

  Jess saw a high, sunbaked city wall, wrought-iron gate swinging open. A caravan entered the city, dark-skinned figures in bright robes and scarves filing through on camels and horses. And behind them, Jess saw the slaves: men and women of different ethnicities, roped together by wrists and throats, bare feet shuffling in the sand.

  At the end of the line was a small, thin girl, a mass of blonde hair hanging down her sunburnt back.

  "That is her."

  Del's voice was reverent.

  "That's my lady."

  It sounded as if the demon were whispering right against her ear. Jess started, wheeled round: but Del was only watching her from inside the sphere, hands flattened against its chest.

  "She was twelve," Del said. "Look, look."

  The scene changed to a cool, luxurious interior, walls of red silk undulating in the breeze. Half a dozen Sajae—all tall and lean, with high-boned features and tilted, luminescent eyes—sat in a semicircle, smoking and making comments to one another, their eyes on the event taking place in front of them. Two of the men were taking turns with the blonde slave girl. She was on her hands and knees, matted hair swept over her shoulder, face wrenching with every thrust. Jess saw the girl's eyes, the expression in them: selfhood burned away, nothing left but animal pain, animal fury.

  Twelve.

  "The idle aristocrats," Del observed. "The cultivated elite. This was before they discovered she could sing. Then they would make her perform for them, and then they would fuck her."

  The images flickered again and disappeared.

  "The dark-haired Summoner using her from behind," Del said casually. "Years later, Bakal force-fed him his own testicles. But she fried and buttered them first, while he looked on, still bound up and bleeding. It was funny."

  Jess said quietly, "Was Kai… ?"

  "You mean, did the prince ever put the slaves to such purposes?" Del grinned, licked his lips. "No. Alas." A note of pride in Del's voice. "He was growing a social conscience, if you can believe that. The city was on the verge of revolution, wanting a return to the old ways: equal access to the Academy, the magic, that kind of thing. Kai was starting to be involved with it—secretly, of course, otherwise his father would have slaughtered him. But the revolution wasn't happening fast enough, it would not have gone far enough. Not for us. We wanted some fun."

  "So Bakal and her followers destroyed the Sajae—"

  "Can you blame us? Or at least, can you blame her? She tore apart every man who ever violated her. She slaughtered their wives and children. We helped. And, well." Del shrugged his bony shoulders. "We ended up killing everyone, actually. Sometimes these things happen."

  "So why not take your revenge and stop? Why—"

  "Because bloodshed is fun," Del said, and thumped his tail. "It's tasty. And the hunger. The demon-hunger. The hunger goes deep, so deep, never stops, never stops. My colleagues developed all sorts of plans." Del thought for a moment, then shrugged. "They all want power, of course. Ultimate domination, godhood, that kind of thing."

  "But you don't?"

  "I think their goals lack imagination, myself." He pressed his face against the sphere wall. "Myself, well, all that hunger made me tired. Enough chitchat. Come closer."

  She was so focused on him that she automatically stepped forward; when the glass crunched beneath her boot she was surprised. She froze, one foot still in mid-air, as the demon tilted its head at her like a curious terrier.

  "Kai told you not to go past the glass?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Aw, shucks," he said. "I could do all sorts of things if you got close and cuddly. All sorts of things." Del sighed. "But we'll have to work from here. Now, what do you have to give me in exchange?"

  But her wall of detachment was thinning and crumbling, streaks of true fear ripping through her. She lifted one foot to step back off the glass—

  —And it felt as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to her head. The pain knocked her sideways, her hands coming down on broken glass, shards scattering beneath her body. She kicked out, scrambling away from the demon, but she realized the demon, the entity, had just reached inside her, filling up her head until her skull was close to exploding; she cried out, clutching her temples. Opened her eyes, saw the demon sitting inside the sphere, perfectly still, eyes closed, and when it spoke again its voice came from inside her, booming and echoing like a voice in a dream. I need some memories, pretty Jessamy. That's all I want. You can spare a few memories for a poor, bored demon, can't you?

  Fragments of her life were raining through her mind, the demon overturning desk drawers of memory: road trips with her parents when she was very small; her encounter with Kai in Cape Town—How interesting, the demon said, and Weren't you just the little cutie—and then the years that followed, shell-shocked with grief and displacement. New girl in school; older boys coming round, sniffing out her vulnerability, angered by her resistance, Are you frigid, bitch? Are you a lesbian? The times with Harker, her uncle. Not exactly what I'm looking for, the demon said. Really, Jessamy, don't you have something a little more… feel-good?

  Images of her life in New York.

  Better, the demon said approvingly.

  Gabe.

  Gabe, the corded strength of his arms, the way he murmured her name as he moved his hips against her. Much better! the demon chirped. Candles by the bed, by the bathtub. The discussions they had over coffee and pastries, steaks and martinis: books, movies, her art, his plans for his own line of furniture; the five-day getaway to Santa Fe they took last April; the bookshelves they built together for Jess's last apartment; the time they tried to run the New York City marathon and dropped out halfway through, went for nachos and beer instead; the fights, the makeup sex that quickly followed; reading the newspaper together, jogging together, watching TV together; his habit of whistling the classical music he never listened to anymore but had been inundated with as a boy; his love for fantasy and comic-book art; all the details that knit up into a thing more profound, mysterious, than the sum of their everyday parts.

  I love you.

  The demon took it all.

  No, Jess cried. Stop. But the demon ignored her, and she felt the memories peeling away and out of her and coldness, emptiness, rushing through the vacant spaces. I love you, Gabe. The history and emotion behind those words thinning to nothing—

  I'm just not very good at it.

  —Until the words themselves collapsed into ash.

  Oh, grow up, the demon said impatiently. It's nothing you can't live without.

  Look what I offer in return.

  She no longer knew if she was dreaming or awake.

  Because now she stood in a hallway lined with closed doors. The hallway seemed to go on forever, unreeling all the way down to its vanishing point; the lines of the doors were at weird angles.

  They're all shut, she told Del. She was sure that she had been here before. Those doors are all locked.

  Not anymore, Del said.

  The demon had transformed. He now looked like an ordinary man, dressed in a rough brown cloak and sandals. His face was lined and tanned and friendly.

  She asked him: Where do those doors lead to?

  Yourself. He looked at her intently. This is what Kai could not
do for you. This is what you could not do for yourself. Remember that.

  He grinned, cupped both hands around his mouth, and blew.

  The door closest to them flung open; light poured forth like fire. And Jessamy heard a name, carried high on the wind and the light, spoken in a voice that was eerily familiar—

  Ramsey.

  His name is Ramsey.

  —A voice she recognized as her own.

  She approached the first door, shielding her eyes. Del stayed behind, hands clasped in front of him, like a parent waiting patiently while his kid went trick-or-treating. Jess turned in to the doorway, into blazing, blinding light, and stepped across the threshold—

  —And into a deserted parking lot.

  She saw the parking lot, the strip mall, the night sky overhead, the dark woods rising across the road. She took a few steps, tested the feel of the pavement beneath her, the air on her face.

  And she saw the boy.

  He seemed to come from nowhere, lunging towards her. He was hurt. She stared at him, and he stared back with the same stunned expression. Blood was soaking through his army jacket. His face was blanched, eyes glassy. She had painted him so many times that now, to see him living, breathing, hurting, she felt as if she had authored him: he had stepped from her mind through her paintings into life. She knew that was not true, and yet could not shake her sense of power over him.

  She spoke to him. Jess could barely remember her own words—Let me find you. Tell me where you are—because the expression on his face rolled over her like lava, taking all her words away.

  Terror.

  The boy was terrified of her.

  She felt a hot wind rising, stirring the leaves in the trees, sending an empty can scuttling across the pavement.

  Wait, she tried to say, but heard the sound of a door swinging shut.

  It all went away.

  * * * *

  When she opened her eyes, Jess Shepard was back on the floor of the chamber, the chill seeping through her clothes.

  She looked up.

  Del gazed at her. He had moved back from the sphere wall, sitting cross-legged in the center like a yogi, his tail tucked neatly around him. "Please come again," he said.

  And then: "You owe me. You all do."

  He wasn't speaking to her.

  Footsteps behind her. Strong hands beneath her shoulders, helping her up. Her hands, she saw, were bleeding, blue glass embedded in her palm.

  "Jess," Kai whispered, and the guarded expression in his face gave way to concern.

  "She stepped on the glass!"

  This time it was a higher, thinner voice that broke out from the demon. Del pressed himself (and Jess realized that her concept of the demon had at some point shifted from an "it" to a "he") against the sphere wall, staring at Kai. "She stepped on the glass! It's her own fault! It's your fault! You should have warned her!"

  "I did what you said," Jess said hurriedly. "I didn't go beyond the glass. I—" Her mind felt strange, it felt changed, as if a splinter of glass had driven deep into the core of it.

  She said, "I need to get out of here."

  But Kai was staring at her, and at the demon, and didn't seem to hear.

  The demon squashed his face against the curved wall, grinned, waggled his fingers against the glass. "I did it for you, princeling! I gave her a gift!" His voice rising, shrieking, hurting Jess's ears. "I gave her a GIFT! Now the game is interesting! Now the game is interesting!"

  "We're leaving," Kai muttered.

  Mina was waiting for them outside the chamber. She said nothing, turned and walked down the tunnel. The demon's voice boomed around them.

  "Remember, princeling! You owe me for this! Remember, remember, sweet prince!"

  Part II

  All the Pretty Ones

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the dream, Jess thinks she is alone in the building. Until she hears the singing:

  I'm slap happy

  I'm punch drunk

  Got a sinking feeling I'll wake up on Monday

  With a suitcase full of nothing

  Ain't it funny?

  A raspy baritone, set to the melancholy strumming of guitar. Jess walks down the hallway. It is lined with doors: some of them closed, some of them swinging partway open, none of them she wants to go into.

  But I can't believe

  I'm getting away with this

  Junkies' parade through lover's town

  When the hallway joins up with another she turns left, towards the singing, the deep lonely sound of the guitar. She comes to a door. It opens easily. The room is empty: white walls, dark wood moldings, a bay window that looks onto a brick wall. In the middle of the room a man in a white T-shirt and jeans and motorcycle boots sits on a stool with his guitar. His light brown hair falls across his face, but she knows that face, this man, even before he looks up.

  You're my little handful

  He's looking at her now. His eyes brown and gentle, but flecked with slyness.

  I'm your handful of dust.

  Isn't it ridiculous

  What love's done to us?

  His hands still against the strings.

  He says, quietly, "I'm in too deep. Can't get out now. How 'bout you?"

  "I've dreamed about you before," she says.

  "Actually," he says, as he frees himself from the guitar and places it inside the case, "you've been dreaming about me for years. You just don't remember in the morning."

  "Why the hell would I dream about you?"

  "I'm hurt." He kicks shut the guitar case and looks at her, boots hooked round the rung of the stool, hands clasped between his knees. Suddenly he reminds her of a repentant schoolboy, sitting out detention. He says: "She scares me."

  "Ashika."

  "She fucking eats people."

  She only stares at him.

  "But I can't let her go. She's in me now. She's changing me. And I like it. I like the power it gives me." He pushes the hair back from his face, light glinting off the rings on his fingers.

  "Then is it true?"

  "What's true?"

  "There's going to be an apocalypse?"

  "Well, yeah. There's no getting 'round that. It'll start soon and go on for years." He smiled at her. "Interesting times, don't you think?"

  "I don't want to die."

  "That's not the only option. Come with me."

  "Why would I do that?"

  "I'm hurt," he says again. Then: "We know each other, you and I."

  "We don't."

  "We know each other well."

  "Not in this lifetime."

  "No," he agrees, surprising her. "Not in this lifetime. Not yet."

  Chapter Nineteen

  They were waiting for him in the parking lot of the motel, clustered around the curb, sitting cross-legged on the grass. Lucas wasn't in the mood for this. He was too tired, his ears ringing from the mediocre band he'd gone to see in the downtown blocks of whatever town they were in tonight; he no longer bothered to remember the names. He wanted silence.

  As soon as they saw him drive into the lot, they were all on their feet; as soon as he got out of the van, they surged around him. Maybe twenty of them, ranging from late teens to late twenties, the girls in tank tops and low-slung jeans and funky eyeliner, the guys in ripped sweatshirts, mesh shirts, work boots, combat boots, some of them also in eyeliner. A general air of dispossession, desperation rank as sweat, voices running into and through each other: Asha, they were saying, Asha, please, let me please, need to see Asha, talk to Asha, she's the only one who can help me—only one—

  "Hey," he said, and then, as someone reached out and grabbed his arm, as someone else grabbed his jacket, "Hey," fire in his voice now. He hated when they touched him.

  They fell back and looked at him.

  It was like this, now, in every town, the crowds who waited for him backstage or outside or sometimes, like now, where they crashed at night. It was widely understood that the band broke into two parts: As
ha and himself, and the professional musicians Lucas had gathered in LA, who had started referring to themselves as the Less Interesting Three, and who instead of being jealous or resentful actually seemed—relieved. They wanted to be part of the music, but they didn't want the kind of attention the music seemed to generate. They stayed in different motels from Lucas and Asha, or crashed at the houses of friends or fans. For a band on tour, they were all managing to spend an astonishing amount of time apart.

  It was understood that Lucas was the uncontested leader of the band: he produced and mixed in the studio; he chose the towns, the venues, the dates; he selected the song list; he dealt with the club owners and managers. The other band members took care of themselves and their equipment, showed up on time, did what they were supposed to do, and didn't argue, didn't offer personal opinions. Lucas doubted that any other band in the world so willingly capitulated to the artistic vision and control of one person. But then, no other band had Asha as a lead singer.

  He was the one she had chosen.

  He protected her, ran interference for her, and controlled all access to her.

  This, too, was widely understood.

  Now, he scanned the crowd, their faces and eyes, until one girl in particular caught his attention. Lucas didn't know how or why he made his choices; only, there was something inside him that seemed to speak up; Yes. This one. This one is right, and Lucas had no choice but to select accordingly. Sometimes that inner voice didn't speak up at all, and Lucas would dismiss all of them, turning his back and walking off, ignoring their cries and catcalls.

  The girl he found himself looking at now was the youngest in the group. Lucas judged her to be fourteen, maybe fifteen, her skin dewy and soft beneath the garish makeup. He hadn't seen her in the club the night before, although the fading stamp on the back of her hand told him she'd managed to fake-ID her way in there, watch them perform.

  He said to her now, "Do you know what you're doing here?"