The Demon’s Surrender (25 page)
Read The Demon’s Surrender Online
Authors: Sarah Rees Brennan
“Let’s take this outside.”
She could see Anzu’s face, though, savage and hungry and gleaming with a terrible kind of triumph, though Sin didn’t know what he thought he’d won. He spun and almost swaggered through the door, blade dangling carelessly from his hand. Nick followed him.
As soon as the door shut, Sin leaped into the hall and to Nick’s bedroom, scrabbling for the doorknob and shoving at the door with her elbow in a burst of panic.
Lydie and Toby were on the bed, curled up tightly together, asleep. Mae had made sure they got dressed, and Sin hoped she’d fed them too. She couldn’t tell if Mae had washed their faces, because both of their faces were grimy again already, screwed up and covered in dried tears.
They must have heard some of what was going on outside. They had been so good. They hadn’t made a sound.
Sin hated to wake them.
Maybe, since they were asleep, she could go outside and see what was happening. Just for a moment.
She shouldn’t do it, Sin thought, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans. But Alan was in there, trying to hold out, helpless and watching all this. What he must be feeling, fearing his own hands would strike down his brother.
She knew it was a mistake, but she made it. She closed the door softly so she wouldn’t wake the kids, grabbed her keys, and dashed out the door.
The demons were dueling in the roof garden, circling and striking, blades catching the light of the sinking sun in a blinding rain of blows. Anzu was dancing around Nick, taunting, making a game of this, and Nick was feinting and dodging.
Nick was trained, but Alan had made sure his brother’s power was limited. Sin suspected it might be less than Anzu’s power.
Sin ran down the cold passage lined with wire mesh and then up the steps. She knelt on the highest step that would still be out of view, poised like a sprinter ready to leap.
The sunlight bathing him alone could not account for the gold of Anzu’s hair and skin. Even the bones of his face looked different; he was changing Alan’s very bones because he felt like it, turning his face into something sharp-edged and beautiful and terrible.
He seemed angry.
“What I want to know is what’s wrong with everyone?” he demanded, dealing Nick a blow that, if Nick hadn’t parried it, would have cut his head clean off. “Liannan cooperating with a human, sharing with her, running around doing the human’s little
errands
!”
The way he spat out the word had added vehemence because it was punctuated by another savage stroke of his sword. Nick met the stroke, his arms and shoulders braced. If Sin hadn’t known enough to measure the impact of that strike, she would never have guessed how hard Nick had just been hit.
“And as for you,” Anzu exclaimed, disengaging and spinning in a furious circle. Nick met each of the blows, blocking them, parrying them, but not making any attacking moves of his own. He was like a stone, looming dark and comparatively still. Next to Anzu, he looked like a statue in a graveyard. “You,” Anzu said with loathing. “Having a temper tantrum about your little pet? You make me sick.”
Nick’s shoulders bunched, muscles moving differently than they had before, engaging with the sword now. Sin knew the look of someone turning their body into a weapon.
She was not surprised when he lunged at Anzu. Anyone human would have stumbled at the sudden onslaught, and Anzu had to retreat, but he did it fast, almost gleefully, almost dancing back.
Nick delivered a series of punishing hits so close together they didn’t look like a series but like one continuous monumental effort to batter Anzu to pieces. Anzu was only just keeping up, only just able to defend himself, and he looked delighted about it.
Nick wasn’t lacking power; he had been holding back. For a moment Sin didn’t understand why he should do that, why he would want to spare Anzu, and she thought about a demon’s loyalty to its own kind.
Or maybe he had realized what she had, after Anzu started talking. Maybe he knew his brother was trying to hold out, and he was trying to spare the body.
She wished she knew. She wanted to be sure, but all she was sure of was that Alan was being tortured, and that he would never in a thousand years have wanted to hurt his brother.
If it came down to a choice, she had to try and protect Nick.
Nick did not look especially in need of protection. Anzu was still dancing backward, the body changing like a mood ring, all shifting colors and bones. He seemed to be trying to alter the body into something entirely new, into air and light.
He stepped off the side of the building, pivoting into nothingness, and landed on the rooftop of a building yards away. He stood on the smooth gray slant of the roof, staring across the space at Nick, their gazes locked and mirroring each other, a void reflecting a void, nothingness going on forever.
Nick jumped, a spring that a human wouldn’t have been able to make. If Anzu was barely connected to the human body, Nick was using it to the fullest extent he could. He was a thundercloud of muscle and magic, fighting a lightning bolt. Anzu kept laughing and they kept moving, halting for a moment with swords locked at the crest of the roof.
They went down the other side of the roof caught in combat, even their silhouettes against the sky slipping away from her.
Sin judged the distance and then bounded to her feet and ran, building up steam for the jump, all the muscles in her body coiled and burning to prepare for the effort.
Her hurtle through the air was a brief moment of terror, wind and hair whipping into her eyes and leaving her blind. Then her knees hit the very edge of the roof, viciously hard. She felt her jeans and the skin of her knees both tearing, but she ignored the sting and, crouching low, made her way up the slope of the roof.
The sound of swords clashing filled her ears before she saw them again. Anzu was not even sweating. Nick was, his T-shirt clinging damp to his collarbones. He was breathing hard, but he circled Anzu without a hint that he might relent or pause. His mouth was set in a grim line.
“We can go dueling through the rooftops of London,” Anzu said. “We could cross blades on top of Westminster Abbey. No human could catch us. No human could stop us, no matter what we wanted to do. You were stranded out here with the humans, isolated and in chains, but we are both here now. There’s no need to crawl for them any longer.”
Nick was crouching like Sin, not to hide but to attack. Locks of wet hair were falling in his eyes and he was panting, but his teeth were bared in something like a savage grin.
It occurred to Sin that they might both be enjoying themselves. She might just be trying to throw herself into the middle of some deadly inhuman game.
“And as for that pet of yours,” Anzu went on, raging and exulting at once. “He couldn’t fight you like this, could he? He was even more worthless than an ordinary human. He was broken, and useless, and pointless.”
He punctuated each of his descriptions of Alan with a slash, face alight with triumph. Nick dealt him another series of hard blows for an answer, bearing down with his superior weight and strength, and Sin waited for the moment when one of them would stop using their magic to fuel their fight and simply use it to lash out.
It didn’t happen. Anzu betrayed himself by flinching under the barrage of blows, his parry vicious but wavering a little, almost uncertain.
Nick knocked him back with another blow.
“I’m your brother,” Anzu shouted. “Not him!”
The next blow of Nick’s sword brought Anzu to his knees. Nick drew his blade slowly, lightly, along Anzu’s throat. Anzu was still wearing an awful half smile, as if he thought this was all part of a game.
“You’re right,” Nick said, his voice utterly emotionless. “This isn’t like fighting Alan. He’s human and weak and broken, all the things you said. And Alan would have cheated by now. He would have won.”
Anzu stopped smiling. Nick crouched down, his face close to Anzu’s.
Cold as ever, Nick murmured, “I know my brother when I see him.”
Sin sat on the sofa and hated herself. Nick had had the situation under control. Of course he had. There was no need for her to be running around like a fool, trying to protect a demon!
Once she’d seen that Nick could handle himself, she had turned around and gone back, but it was too late. She had no time to wake the children and make her escape. Both the demons had come back almost as soon as she did.
Worse than that, Nick had gone into Alan’s room and slammed the door. Sin had not the faintest idea what he could be doing there, but she did not appreciate being left out here alone with Anzu.
Anzu did not bother her. He seemed not to notice she was there. He just stood staring out the window, arms crossed over his chest. The sun was setting, throwing red banners over the buildings and crowning them with light. It almost looked like the city was burning again.
For a while Sin sat, waiting for him to do something and reproaching herself for her own stupidity in not running when she could. She would almost deserve whatever the demon decided to do to her.
At last she began to believe he would stay put. There was still no sound from Nick’s room, where the children were.
Sin tried to make herself relax. She had to be strong to get the children out at the very next opportunity that arose. She would not be so weak as to let the chance slip out of her fingers a second time.
She couldn’t relax. She wished something would happen, a disaster, anything she could deal with so she wouldn’t have to think.
Failing that, she wished Nick would get out of Alan’s room so she could go in there and look at his stupid guns and books, put her head on the pillow they had shared last night, and cry.
With nothing she could do, all Sin could think of was Alan. He was locked up in his own body, dying slowly, watching all of this.
She knew what happened to a possessed body. What Nick and Anzu had been saying today was not news. Demons loved to boast in their dancing circles of how they made humans suffer, trapped in bodies that started to fall apart so fast, trapped in a corner of their own minds and screaming.
She had spent hours talking to her mother, trying to comfort her even though she knew that Mama could never respond to her touch, never answer her again.
Alan would go through that, all of that, but even more slowly, and he might have to see people he loved hurt at his hands.
Sin looked across the room at Anzu. He was not using much magic now, and he looked almost like Alan again. She could look at his red hair curling against the collar of his shirt and the solemn lines of his profile, as if he was absorbed in thought, and she could almost think it was Alan.
But it wasn’t. It would never be Alan again.
She was on her feet before she realized what she was about to do, walking softly until she reached the window and the demon.
She stood beside him and thought of Alan trying desperately to survive a little longer, as if she or Mae could possibly hope to save him. She shut her eyes, the setting sun painting the darkness behind her eyelids scarlet and gold.
Sin put her hand at the back of his neck and drew his head gently down. She kissed him on the mouth.
The demon let her do it.
“I’m right here,” Sin breathed. It felt like Alan was close for a moment, even though he wasn’t. “Hold on.”
16
They Have to Take You In
S
IN WOKE TO EARLY-MORNING LIGHT STABBING BETWEEN HER
eyelashes. She was wedged in the corner of the sofa, and she cracked her neck to get out the crick in it, stretched, and realized that she had fallen asleep with a demon two doors away from Lydie and Toby.
She wrenched herself off the sofa, flooded with horror, and met a demon’s eyes.
“Anzu’s not here,” Nick said.
Sin closed her eyes for a brief moment of pure, deep thankfulness, and then she went for the door. She’d been stupid long enough.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m getting Lydie and Toby out of here.”
“I see,” Nick said. “Well, that makes sense. Alan’s no use to you now.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Nick was in yesterday’s clothes like she was, and he looked as if he’d slept less than the few hours she’d finally caught sitting up on a sofa, but his voice was very clear. “Oh, I don’t know. You openly despise Alan for years, and then suddenly you’re homeless and friendless and you discover a burning desire to go out with him? That’s awfully convenient.”
“I’m sorry,” Sin said. “Are you still cranky because you’ve lost your pet? Tell me, do you think that you’ll be over it soon? How long does it take to replace a really good pet—was Alan special enough to wait a week before you get a new one?”
Nick moved in close to her, tall and strong enough so simply doing that seemed threatening, and Sin held one fist clenched and positioned to punch him in the stomach.
“I never called him that.”
“I never called him a meal ticket, either.”
“And yet the evidence is against you.”
“What about you, Nick?” Sin demanded. “Isn’t the evidence against you? I know your kind don’t have the same feelings as humans. I know you think of humans as jokes, as pets, as playthings. You threw a tantrum and you fought a duel, you lashed out; that’s what demons do. They don’t care! I don’t know how you felt about Alan. You don’t know how I felt, but I can tell you, and it doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. I loved him, and he’s as good as dead, but I still love him. If there were any way to save him I’d do it, if there were any bargain to make I would make it, but there is nothing I can do and there is no time. I love Toby and Lydie as well; they’re my first responsibility, and I have to get them away from danger. If Alan was here he would understand, because he did anything he had to do to protect you. Now shut up and get out of my way.”
She shoved Nick aside. He didn’t stop her, and she made for the door.
She was stopped at the threshold by his voice. “Did you tell Alan?”
“Tell Alan what?”
“How you—what you thought of him,” Nick said roughly.
Sin looked at the painted wood of the door frame. “Yeah.”
“Good,” Nick said. “He would’ve liked that.”
She didn’t know what to say in response. She bowed her head for a moment, then went to get the kids.
Lydie was awake. When the door opened, Sin saw her freeze and clutch Toby tighter. Then she recognized Sin and sat up.
“I’m so sorry,” Sin said. “I should’ve got you out earlier, but I’m getting you out now. Give me Toby and grab your things.”
Lydie threw herself off the bed and began stuffing all their loose clothing in the bag Mae had given them. Sin lifted Toby in her arms and he started to fuss, cranky and scared. Sin rubbed his back and tried to soothe away the low, continuous whine.
“Want to give me that bag?”
“No,” Lydie whispered, and then more firmly: “I’ve got it.”
Sin gave her a smile. “Then let’s go.”
She was calculating as they left the bedroom: The money she had would keep them in a hostel for a few days, and by then they would have a flat. She’d just have to make another appointment to dance, and fast.
The important thing was that they would be safe.
The front door opened before she could reach it, and Anzu stood in the doorway and stared, horribly close to her. Nick strode into the hall to her side, and even though it might pique Anzu’s curiosity, she was glad to have him there. Lydie immediately hid behind him.
“What’s going on?” Anzu asked, sounding faintly puzzled.
“They’re leaving,” said Nick. “Get out of the way.”
Anzu did not move, and, somewhat to Sin’s surprise, he did not look at Nick.
He looked at her instead.
“Why are you leaving?”
“I don’t think this is the best place for Toby and Lydie to be right now,” Sin said honestly.
“Why not?” Anzu asked. “I have no interest in hurting them. What use are they to me? I don’t take bodies under sixteen. None of us do.”
Toby was full-on wailing now. Sin could not fight with him in her arms. She did not even dare raise her voice, but no matter whose body he had, at that moment she would have loved to kill Anzu.
“He’s scared of you,” she pointed out, and tried to control her voice, give a performance that would get her by him. “He’s scared of both of you,” she added, glancing at Nick. “And even if you don’t mean to hurt them, they might get hurt in an accident around you guys.”
Anzu gave Toby a considering look that had her baby cringing back, whimpering into Sin’s neck.
“They might get hurt in an accident anytime at all,” he said softly.
Sin did not let herself react as if it was a threat. “That’s true,” she said. “But it’s more dangerous around demons. Since you have no interest in us—”
“I didn’t say that.” Anzu smiled, lazy and malicious. He reached out a hand and touched Sin, trailing a finger along her arm, too close to her baby brother, then letting his hand fall away. “I have no interest in them.”
Demons only ever touched people for one of two reasons. Sin’s stomach did a slow roll of horror.
But she had no time for horror.
“Well, I am fairly interesting,” she murmured, determinedly calm. “But I have these children to think of.”
“Oh, they can stay too,” Anzu told her carelessly.
He could afford to be careless: She had her two vulnerabilities out in the open, and if she provoked him or Nick did, it would be the easiest thing in the world for Anzu to take revenge.
Sin caught Nick’s eye and tried to convey that to him. She had no way of knowing if her message got through to him, but he stayed perfectly still as she stroked Toby’s hair, desperately trying to hush him. Anzu could crush Toby’s skull like an eggshell and still have Lydie’s life to bargain with for her good behavior.
She had to get the kids out, before he stopped thinking of them as a minor inconvenience to put up with and started thinking of them as leverage.
“I really think it would be best if I took them away. You can’t possibly want them here.”
Anzu touched her arm again, this time not lightly. He did not mind how tight he grasped, or if it hurt her.
“Have I been unclear? You’re not leaving.”
She had very little choice, then, except to do the one thing she had promised herself she never would, and go beg for help.
“No,” said Sin, holding her head up, keeping her voice perfectly serene. “I’m just going to drop the kids off somewhere else. Then I promise you, I will come back.”
She moved forward, calm and sure, not allowing her self-possession to falter for a moment and projecting the absolute conviction that he would step out of her way.
And he did, moving back until he hit the wire mesh wall. He stood against it, black eyes intent. At that moment he looked like nothing so much as a bird of prey escaped from its cage, burning to return to the hunt.
“Where are we going?” Lydie asked when they were on the Tube, in one of the old trains with fuzzy orange benches rather than separate seats. Her voice was a bit muffled because she was pressing her face into Sin’s arm.
It was hard to say the words because it still seemed unreal that she was doing this, the thing she had tried so hard to avoid doing for so long. But if she could do it, and she had to, she could say it. “I’m bringing you to my father.”
“Jonathan?” Lydie asked, surprising Sin, though she supposed it was natural Lydie knew. Mama had talked about him a lot, which Lydie and Toby’s father had hated. “Is he nice?” Lydie inquired, sounding a little afraid.
“Yes,” Sin said firmly. “Yes. He’s very nice.”
Lydie seemed to be trying to burrow her way into Sin’s side.
“Maybe I should stay with you. Toby should go to your father, of course, because he’s only little. But maybe I could help.”
Toby turned at his name and helpfully pulled Lydie’s fringe.
“Thank you for offering, but I’d only be worried about you and do stupid stuff,” Sin said. “You understand what’s happened to Alan, don’t you?”
Lydie nodded, head-butting Sin in the arm.
“I want you guys safe,” Sin whispered as their train rattled into Brixton.
It was a long walk to the house, and they had to sit down on the pavement a few times. A blond woman gave Sin a silent, reproachful look as she passed them, obviously thinking Sin was the worst babysitter in the world.
The fallen leaves along Dad’s road had been rained on and had turned into soggy solid brown banks.
Sin held on tight to Lydie’s hand so Lydie couldn’t slip, and they made their way through the gate and knocked on the blue-painted door. At this hour of the morning, Sin figured Grandma Tess would be catching up with the news and Dad would be in his home office. It was fifty-fifty on who would go for the door.
When the door opened, it was both of them. Grandma Tess was on the stairs, but Dad was at the door, right in front of her.
Sin was shocked to find herself shaking.
“Thea, honey,” Dad said. “What’s wrong?”
“Whose are those children?” Grandma Tess asked from the stairs, her voice accusing, and Sin had had enough.
“They’re mine!” she shouted, and then stopped, horrified at herself. She had meant to come here and bargain and beg, Toby and Lydie’s safety depended on it, and instead she had started by yelling on the doorstep so all the neighbors could hear. “I’m sorry,” she said immediately, squeezing Lydie’s hand. “I’m sorry for yelling. But they’re mine.”
Dad was looking at Lydie.
“They’re Stella’s,” he said, soft and a little sad. “Aren’t they? Come in.”
“Stella’s?” Grandma Tess said from the stairs.
“They’re mine,” Sin said fiercely. “My brother and sister. This is Lydie, and this is Toby.”
“Come in,” Dad said for the second time. “All of you.”
Grandma Tess beckoned, Dad stood aside, and Sin came in. She had to bump against Lydie as she came, Lydie orbiting her like a small anxious moon around a planet until they both stopped at the foot of the stairs.
“Your name’s Lydia?” Sin’s grandmother asked.
“Lydie,” Lydie said firmly.
“Your face is a sight. Who’s been looking after you?”
“Sin looks after us,” Lydie answered, chin up. “Sin looks after us
very well
.”
Which was not at all the speech Sin had trained her to give if anyone ever came asking. That speech included vague references to Merris as their guardian; it shamed Sin that a sister of hers had such a bad memory for her part.
“Well,” Grandma Tess said, and held out her hand. “Let’s get your face washed. I still have some of Thea’s clothes from when she was your size. Would you like to find a pretty dress?”
She descended the stairs, and after a moment’s thought Lydie accepted her hand.
Grandma Tess had liked Sin best when Sin was Lydie’s size, when Sin’s parents were still together and she could fuss over her and fix family meals and expect more grandchildren.
“Thea, give me that child, I don’t know what way you think you’re holding him,” said Grandma Tess, and took Toby in her arms. Toby looked uncertain for a moment, then made a grab for her glasses.
Sin had not expected Grandma Tess’s desire for more grandchildren might outweigh everything else.
Behind her, Dad asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Relief washed away, and there was nothing left but this moment she did not know how to escape. There were no demons watching. Lydie and Toby were upstairs and did not need to be reassured.
“I’m sorry,” Sin said, staring at the shadowy stairs, not wanting to look around and see his face. “I thought—I thought you never had to know. I thought it would be best for you, and I know I hurt you all those times I wouldn’t even stay for dinner—but I had to be with them, I was all they had, I was responsible. I didn’t have anything more fun to do. I did care about you. I did. I’m sorry.”
