Pale Demon

“All you need to do is hold the inner protection circle against all creation,” Pierce said, his blue eyes sharp with an old anger at the reluctance of uptight women. “You don’t need to sully yourself—we’ll do that.”

I dropped my bubble so Pierce could join us, and he took a symbolic step forward. He knew the spell I wanted to use. “My outer circle won’t hold him long. Pierce, you’ll have to be quick in the casting. If he breaks it, the curse will incinerate half of Vegas.”

Ivy looked scared. “Get it right, witches.”

“’Scuse me,” Pierce said with a grunt, throwing another ball of goo at Ku’Sox.

This time, Ku’Sox absorbed it, the black mass dissolving in a cascade of sparkles. He had mastered the countercurse. We had to work fast. “I’m of a mind to see if you’re as grand as you think you are,” Pierce said to me, and I smirked back.

“Same here,” I said, exhilarated even as I was scared to death. “Okay! Let’s do this!”

“Look out!” Vivian shouted, and I jerked as Ku’Sox backhanded Pierce into Ivy. They slid across the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, the spell that Pierce had begun fizzling in a sparkle of green and red. Crap! When had he gotten that close?

“Hey!” I shouted as Ku’Sox wrapped an arm around my neck and started dragging me away. I struggled, trying to break his hold as he headed for the door. Shit, shit, shit! I could still make the outer protection circle, but I wasn’t ready to sacrifice myself to get rid of Ku’Sox. But then I remembered him tearing that woman’s throat out and her silent screams as she tried to breathe. Burning would be better than that. I think.

“You have the nicest hair,” Ku’Sox said as he yanked me up and I felt him touch behind my ear. I stiffened when he ran his nose down my neck, and my breath sucked in as he found the vamp toxins sunk deep in my tissues. “Ohhh, you’re flawed,” he murmured. “How delightful.”

“Oh shit,” I whispered, scrambling for anything to slow us down.

“Shit,” Ku’Sox said speculatively, and he loosened his grip until my heels dragged on the floor again. “I’ve heard that several times now. Is that the word of choice? I do so like all-encompassing words. Verb, adjective, noun. Yes, you are shitted.”

My heels thumped as he dragged me backward. “You’d better let me go!” I cried, reaching out to grab a post. Ku’Sox yanked me off it, pulling me another foot until I snagged a table. I wouldn’t let go, and the added weight slowed him down even more. We were almost to the door, and I could hear radio chatter and yelling people in the street.

“You know why my brethren didn’t kill me?” Ku’Sox said as the table I was dragging hit a post and we stopped. “They couldn’t. Even Newt, and she tried. They made me special, the wonder child of the future, now our ignoble past, designed to bridge the gap between demons and witches and bring us back into the sun, able to walk in reality and the ever-after both, and all of us capable of holding as much energy as a female.” He hesitated, yanking me until my grip slipped and we moved forward again. “You can understand why male demons might want to fix that unfair quirk of nature. I think I turned out quite nicely, don’t you?”

“You don’t look special to me,” I panted, seeing Pierce horrified and afraid to do anything. He was next to Vivian, and Ivy was at their feet. I have to get back to them.

“But I am,” Ku’Sox snarled, sounding almost unhappy. “You know why Newt killed her sisters? I told her to. Newt I could control, but the others? They were a danger and had to be killed. Females can hold more energy than males. They have to in order to hold a second independent field of energy inside them without absorbing it.”

That was interesting, and my thoughts went back to what Ku’Sox had said earlier about my holding Al’s energy, supplementing it. Had I been able to do it because I was female?

“Two souls in one body,” Ku’Sox said, shifting his hold on me and smacking my hand until it went numb. My grip slipped away, and he started forward again. “Two energy fields bound by one aura without the smaller being crushed or absorbed. That’s where babies come from, Rachel, not cabbage leaves. And once I got Newt to kill all her sisters, there was no one left to tell me no, especially when all I needed to do was slide into reality to escape. And then I find you. Natural born. Unknown possibilities. Stronger? Weaker? Let’s find out.”

Crap, we were almost to the door. “I’m all for finding out who’s stronger,” I said, and then I reached for the line I’d never fully released, demanding all that Vegas could give me.

Energy raced in, hot and electric, tasting of dust, sand, and lightning that beat on the desert floor, the power of the sun kept clean and unblemished, the sands storing it like a battery.

I pushed it out through my pores, teeth gritted. It didn’t hurt, but it burned like fire.

Howling, Ku’Sox flung me from him.

I arched through the air, grunting when I hit a table. I slid to the floor, hurting. Damn, it felt like my back was broken. “You’re right,” I slurred as I felt Ivy’s hands reach under my armpits and drag me back to Vivian and Pierce. “I can hold more than you.”

When I could focus again, I looked up to see Vivian, fear on her face for what she was about to do. Pierce took my hand, and I dampened the energy flowing through me so I wouldn’t fry them. Vivian took my other, and when Pierce grasped her free fingers, completing our circle, I took a deep breath, feeling the alien-ness of them with me.

“Fire in the hold,” I whispered, opening my mind and gathering both Pierce and Vivian into my thoughts, now realizing that I could, like a mother with twins. It was akin to sharing a spell, as we had done in my garden, but there would be no will but my own here. For an instant, their souls were mine—my strength was lent to them, and they didn’t know the difference, didn’t know that I directed them. Mine.

Vivian’s bubble snapped up around us, coated with my smut. I felt Pierce’s aura shift, melting with Vivian’s so his magic could pass through her bubble. My outer circle was next, encompassing most of the restaurant’s front room and a slice of the unseen back alley.

Ku’Sox ran for us, his clawed hand looking like a bird’s foot as he screamed and tried to break it, but Vivian’s will was supplemented by mine, and he couldn’t.

“Celero inanio!” The words ripped from Pierce’s throat, pushed by my will and his fear. I could feel Vivian’s despair and shame, but fear for her life burned in her. I felt Pierce’s pride, then wallowed in his shock when he realized I was holding him, holding them both.

In slow motion, I felt the lava ribbons of the curse snake out from Vivian’s bubble, moving like lightning as the energy darted to the edges of my containment bubble, snaking up the sides and running to the peak above us. As one, the six ribbons struck the apex. A flash of energy exploded from it, crisping everything in a burst of heat.

“I pay the price,” I whispered, gathering the rising smut to me as if it were a blanket. The black curse was mine. I deserved the price.

Pierce’s head was down, and Vivian was staring upward in amazement as more power than she knew existed spun through her. It wasn’t that the dark side was stronger, but that everything was the dark side. All magic was inherently wrong, and it was only us fooling ourselves that some of it was good, some of it was bad. Magic…just was.

And so it was only I who saw Ku’Sox’s face go white in the realization that I might be as strong as Newt, but not insane and therefore not easily twisted. The cloud of burning molecules drifted to him in slow motion, sparking from one to the next as fast as an electron can spin—and in a bare second before the air in his lungs turned to flame, he vanished, snarling in anger.

He was gone, and the air burned—empty of his flesh.

I closed my eyes, and the sound of glass breaking sliced through my disappointment. We had missed. Damn it, we had missed.

“God forgive us,” Vivian whispered.

The curse felt me weaken, and it broke upon itself, flashing upward and turning into real flame. With a snap, both my and Vivian’s bubbles collapsed. Hands pulled from mine in haste, and I dropped to my knees. Ivy caught me—her hands gentle with compassion, tender with hesitation.

I opened my eyes to find that the sound of breaking glass had been the lights. We were in the dark, lit only by real, honest fire, dancing at the ceiling. It grew even as I watched, the light becoming brighter, more dangerous. “The ceiling is on fire,” I whispered. “We should go.”

Disappointment made me slow, and Ivy helped me to my feet as the smoke detectors continued to scream and the water system clicked on. Ivy and I searched each other’s expression in the dim glow of the flames, the water mixing with her tears, shining in the come-and-go light from the fire. She knew by my expression that he’d gotten away, and yet she thought nothing less of me, either, for failing to kill him or because I’d tried in the first