Devil's Punch

chilled into a solid brick inside me; this would not stand.

“I won’t ask what you’re doing here,” he whispered.

Yeah. Best if you don’t.

He went on, “I’d rather not imagine you trapped as I am, so I’m going to pretend you have a plan—that you came to save me and now you’re getting out.”

My voice rasped like sandpaper, thick with tears. “That’s the idea. Is there anything you want before…?”

He knew what I was asking. “Would you hug me?”

It wasn’t easy getting close enough with all the wires, but with some help from Greydusk, I wove through the tangle and put my arms around my father’s waist. He was beyond emaciated, thin in a way that meant he hadn’t eaten for years. They were using magick to keep him alive—and for that reason I wanted the Saremon dead even more. They had done this. Hurt one of mine.

I didn’t waste my energy on more mental promises. Instead, I lived in this moment, where I had my father with me. He had no body heat. No heartbeat. Albie Solomon was the next best thing to dead already, so why did what I was about to do hurt so badly?

The embrace went on for a long time, and then he stirred against me. “I love you, queenie. I couldn’t be happier that I got to see you again…or that you’re the one who will end it for me.”

God, I’d forgotten he called me that. The memory tumbled into my head. I was a princess, wearing a pink dress with a frilly skirt and a play tiara. He used to call me Reenie, and that day it became queenie, because of my princess outfit. After that Halloween, I remembered him spinning me around with raspberry kisses on my stomach, and teasing me with chants of Reenie-my-queenie. My mother had watched us with an indulgent air. How I wished I could have more of these recollections; I needed them, craved them in a way that seemed more vital than air—but there were no more.

I looked at Greydusk, who seemed transfixed by my pain. Queens weren’t supposed to love the men who had given them life. This one did. And I regretted the years I had spent calling him a shiftless bastard in my head. I’d imagined him finding a new family, a better one, and instead he had been here, suffering for me.

“Where do we start?” I asked the Imaron.

He went to examine the apparatus, as the answer wasn’t readily apparent. After giving me a comforting squeeze, Chance joined him. And while they checked out the reaping machine, my father stared at me.

“All I ask,” he said softly, the speaker crackling with his pain and resignation, “is that you make it quick.”

“I won’t touch anything until they tell me how.”

We talked then. Precious, stolen moments. I told him about my pawnshop and my dog, about Chance, who had been my first love and by some miracle was standing beside me still. His eyes grew damp when I told him what I’d done in Kilmer, and he spoke the six words that every child longed to hear:

“I am so proud of you.” Only they came with reverb and distortion.

They had taken everything but his loyalty and devotion. My mother had been lucky to share even ten years with this man. And maybe that’s why she never went looking to replace him. She knew that quantity mattered less than quality and that nobody could ever take Albert Solomon’s place in her heart—and that was why she stared wistfully out from the front porch. Not because she thought he was coming home someday but because she knew he never would.

He gave up everything for you.

“I love you,” I whispered.

Greydusk stepped to my side and murmured, “I found the main connection. If you unplug there, he should feel no pain.”

“Dad, I’m sorry.” Tears sprang up in my eyes, not fitting for a demon queen, but one who hurt this much could not help but weep.

“I’m ready,” my father said.

“Corine, let me.” Chance touched my arm lightly.

For a moment, I wanted him to take the weight. I’d love to give the burden to him to bear, but then when I looked at him, I would see the man who killed my father, not the one I loved. So I shook my head, hair drifting against my cheeks. I felt like one of those screaming women of old with a shriek rising in my throat that I had to swallow down like razor blades. No, better I should be haunted by my own reflection, for I was used to that.

So many dark choices—and this might be the worst. But there was none better. At least I could offer him surcease from pain.

Leaning in, I kissed my father on the cheek, as I had done so many times as a child. He did not smell of Old Spice. He didn’t have a bowling shirt or a Panama hat, but he was still the man who held my dreams in his hands until the day he disappeared. With his blue eyes set in an ascetic face, he smiled, though his lips didn’t move. Then he sang in a tuneless tenor the chorus from “Fire and Rain,” which he’d always belted out in the shower. The speaker crackled with the emotion, and I couldn’t bear another moment. As he finished the last word, I stepped behind the reaping machine, grabbed the cord Greydusk had indicated and tugged.

It popped free with a spurt of fluid, and I kept pulling. The Imaron helped me, knowing I was mad with grief and that I had to get my father down. I would not leave him in this place. Chance worked beside me, his face taut with echoed sorrow. Because he loved me, he mourned with me. I wondered how he would feel if we had found his mother in such a state.

But due to his luck, we’d saved her. And I’d killed my own father.

At last I set Albie Solomon free and he fell into my arms. I held him and rocked, tears streaming down my face. He felt like a child against me, thin and small and wasted. His legs resembled matchsticks, arms like pipe stems, and his face was too young for so much pain, borne in my stead.

Chance and Greydusk let me grieve for a while before the demon dared to intrude. “Your Majesty, we cannot remain here. The mages might return.”

The queen surged forward then, taking over. I bit off the words like chips of ice. “Let them.”

No Way Back

“I’m not leaving him.” My tone brooked no refusal.

In response, Greydusk knelt and collected my father’s body. The Imaron cradled his wasted form with proper reverence, and the pain ebbed enough for me to rise and lead the way out into the corridor.

Now we needed a rathole.

I had an idea. I toyed with it, wondering if the small creature that felt so ambivalent about me could truly help us. But it was worth a try.

“Put the dog down,” I said to Chance.

“Corine…” He trailed off. Then he obeyed, kneeling beside the animal with a worried air. “Don’t hurt him, okay?”

I wrestled a duality of reaction: anger that he’d dare question anything I did commingled with an absurd sense of hurt that he thought I would. With great self-control I put aside both responses to be analyzed later. Eventually I would have to deal with the divergence in my head, resulting from my twin selves—which hadn’t merged, but left me with conflicting impulses—but for now the compound was shaking down around our ears, even if we couldn’t feel it here in the the sanctum sanctorum.

“I won’t,” was all I said before I directed my attention to the animal. Butch, that was his name. “So you’re a clever beast.”

The dog eyed me skeptically and backed up a step. But it wasn’t growling or trying to bite me, which felt like a small victory. Then it yapped. Once.

“That means yes,” Chance put in.

I remembered that after he said it, as if it was a fact I had learned long ago and since forgotten. “Excellent. If I find something that belonged to the mage who worked in this lab, could you follow his scent?”

Butch pondered and then yapped again. He could.