Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (24 page)

She shrugged. “Maybe. But with your
Hyrke
upbringing,” she said snidely, “you probably remember this one.”

She murmured a few words beneath her breath—a spell—and then with a grand flourishing motion reminiscent of a circus ringmaster, she directed my attention to a spot near the center of the room.

Recalling some of Fara’s earlier spells, I tensed, but a moment later the most innocuous thing happened. A ghostly girl appeared, maybe age seven or eight, with bangs, pigtails, and a jump rope. Beneath one of the stained glass windows, under the fading brilliance of Lucifer’s multi-hued transformation into the Morning Star, the girl started jumping rope. And then she started chanting a rhyme I had long since forgotten:

Curiosity

Killed the cat.

It was knowledge

Brought him back.

Now he seeks

Just one thing:

A trip into

Oblivion.

Fara let the girl chant the rhyme twice before she let the image fade along with the light from the window. Outside, it was dark. Inside, it was quiet.

“Everyone knows Estes is Patron Demon of the Lethe,” Fara said softly. “But do you know what the Lethe itself is known for? Do you know what Estes’ first followers really wanted?”

I shook my head, completely lost.

“To forget. They sought oblivion. They didn’t want to know.”

I stared at her, not knowing what to say. Above us, I heard hurried footsteps and Delgato shouting incomprehensible instructions to Russ.

Fara grabbed her Book and stood up, snapping to Virtus, who had been sleeping on the couch. Just before she turned away, I said:

“Fara, I don’t understand. What’s your point?”

She laughed then and said somewhat spitefully, “If you were
my
ward, I’d tell you straight out. But since you’re not, I’ll let you figure it out for yourself. Or not . . .” And then she turned and left, taking her own cat with her, leaving me alone in the library.

*   *   *

T
here’s another demon on board,” Rafe said, shaking me awake not ten minutes later. I must have fallen asleep in the darkening library after Fara had left.

Correctly guessing my next two immediate moves, Rafe placed a hand on my shoulder to keep me from jumping up out of my chair and said quietly, but firmly, “
Control
your signature.”

I swallowed and nodded. He lifted his hand and I stood up, careful not to let my chair squeak on the wooden floor.

“How do you know?” I whispered back.

“A few minutes ago I cast Demon Net. There were three on board . . . and now there are four.”

“Three, now four? I don’t feel
any
.”

Despite the circumstances, he must have found my comment funny because I saw a flash of white teeth as he grinned. “You, Ari, and Delgato were the three. Demon Net tracks
all
waning magic users. Now that you’re not going to panic, open up your signature. You’ll feel it.”

I did. And that’s when I felt the fourth. I gasped.

“I can’t tell the signatures apart! Or sense where anyone is.” It was as if our signatures had been stacked and then mixed, mine included, and now they were just one big blur of waning magic. Although fearful of it, I’d been prepared for a water wraith attack. This was much worse.

“It’s a hellcnight,” I hissed.

“How do you know?”

I told Rafe about the waning magic blur. “That’s why I can’t tell anyone apart. Or where anyone is.”

“One’s on the sundeck, two are on the lower front deck, and one,” he said, looking right at me, “is in the library.”

“So if you can tell who’s who, which one’s the hellcnight?”

“I can only tell
where
you are, not
who
you are. You all feel the same to me.”

I couldn’t resist. “How do we feel?”

Another flash of teeth. “Dangerous.” His hand found mine in the dark and he opened the door and prepared to step out, thinking to drag me with him, I guess. But I had other ideas.

I tried to shake his hand loose. “I’ll head for the front. You go up top.”

But Rafe held tight. He turned toward me. “I may be many things, Onyx. But an oath breaker is not one of them. ‘An Angel does whatever is necessary to preserve and protect the life of his ward.’ Joshua—”

“Twelve, seven, I know. You sound like Fara.”

His only answer was pulling me out into the hallway. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. But I also wanted to find the demon that’d climbed on board before it did something to the boat, the food we had stored on board, or the crew. I felt a brief pang of sympathy for Fara, who was likely to find out soon that one of the demons
out there
was now
in here
. I refused to even think about something happening to Ari, but with his past experience, I thought he’d probably be okay. And, speak of the devil, there he was . . .

Just as Rafe and I neared the end of the hall, Ari came down the stairs. He placed his finger on his mouth, a signal to us that he too was aware of the hellcnight. His gaze traveled the length of me, coming to rest on Rafe’s hand, which was still holding on to my arm. I shrugged Rafe off and ran over to Ari.

When I reached him, he said quietly, “There’s a hellcnight on board. Do you feel it?”

“I feel the waning magic blur Delgato told us about.”

Ari frowned. “We should split up and search the boat.”

“Agreed,” I said, grabbing Ari’s hand. My signature felt odd, like it was thick and full of holes. “Check out the sundeck,” I called back to Rafe. “We’ll search the front.”

I didn’t even give Rafe a chance to respond; I just grabbed Ari’s hand and headed up the half flight of stairs to the lower front deck. At the top, I stopped. I couldn’t see anyone—or anything—here. But this was where we’d loaded most of the crates of food so there was no way to tell if the deck was truly empty without searching it.

“You take the left side,” I said to Ari, “I’ll take the right.”

“Not a chance,” he said, following closely at my heels. We started searching the lower front deck hand in hand. Ari’s hand in mine grew forged-in-the-fire hot. I recognized the sign. He was preparing for an attack. Did mine feel as hot to him?

We crept around the larger chests and crates, quietly lifting tarp corners, canvas covers, and anything else a demon might hide behind. Nothing. As we neared the front of the boat, I thought I saw a shadow move.

“Come on!” I yelled, dragging Ari forward with me. Fear had suddenly been replaced with anger.
How
dare
this demon come on
my
boat?!

But when we reached the area where I thought I’d seen the shadow, it turned out to be no more than a piece of untucked cover, flapping in the wind. I bent down and refastened it. When I stood up, Ari stood in front of me with a peculiar expression on his face. Disappointment? Maybe, but oddly, it looked more like anticipation.

“It’s not here,” I said. We’d searched the whole lower deck.

I stood in the last little corner we’d checked. To my left was
Cnawlece
’s front rail and behind and beside me were more crates. The deck was empty, except for us. I started to move forward, thinking to navigate back through the crates in order to get to the stairs to continue the search . . . and that’s when it dawned on me.

It might not be Ari standing in front of me. It might be the hellcnight.

“Let’s search the rest of the boat,” I said, regretting the slight wobble in my voice. But Ari just shook his head and reached for me. The look on his face cinched it. Ari Carmine would never have looked at me that way. As if I were living meat.

Instantly, I tried to bolt, but the creature was faster. It grabbed my hand and yanked me back with a jerk that nearly tore my arm off. Fear and panic made my mind muddled and I could barely think of what weapon I should be shaping my magic into. The hellcnight, on the other hand, suffered no such performance anxiety. Immediately it shaped its magic into a fiery battle flail, which it held threateningly in its right hand as it advanced on me, pushing me back into the corner between rail and crates.

I tried to duck under its arm, but it seized me by the face and threw me back. My head smashed into the side of a crate. I looked up into its face—Ari’s face—slightly dazed. I shook my head, momentarily amazed that my jaw was still attached, and managed to shape my magic into the first weapon that came to mind: a fireball. I threw it toward the hellcnight, but fear gave my magic an erratic elliptical spin. The fireball clipped the side of the demon’s ear and blasted a nearby crate. I heard pounding footsteps on the sundeck just as the hellcnight started shifting. It was surreal because the face staring back at me was Ari’s. But the expression was one I’d never seen on his face before.
Pure hatred.

The footsteps got louder and I heard shouting.

“I’m over he—” I tried to shout, but the hellcnight stepped forward and pressed his hand against my mouth. As the demon shifted, its hand grew rougher. Coarse hairs pierced the soft skin of my cheeks. Soon, the hellcnight’s hand grew so large it covered my mouth and nose. I couldn’t breathe. I threw another fireball at it, but the creature easily deflected it. Another crate of food and a huge war chest went up in flames. Before my eyes, Ari’s face—the face of the man I’d given my body to countless times and my heart to once and forever—morphed into a gruesomely pale, blue-veined demon’s face with bloodred eyes and a protruding, slavering jaw full of diseased-looking gums and huge, pointy teeth the size of garden stakes.

The hellcnight lowered his mouth to my neck to take a deep bite, but before he could do more than graze my skin with one of his teeth, I heard something that sounded like a lion’s roar and then a huge four-legged beast crashed into the hellcnight, knocking him off of me. It was Delgato, who had shifted into his manticore form.

Hellcnight and manticore fell to the deck with a heavy thud. The flames from the chest and crates filled the air with crackling smoke. I gathered my fear and my anger around me like a fiery blanket and then melded them into the same razor-sharp, diamond-strength type of magic that had killed Serafina. My magic always seemed to be strongest when I was defending someone. I had only the briefest second to hope that would be the case now. I thrust my fiery spear right at the hellcnight’s heart. It would have worked. I could feel how well shaped it was and how accurately I’d thrown it. Problem was, my target moved. Instead of the hellcnight’s heart, it hit Delgato’s. He writhed in agony on top of the hellcnight, his scorpion tail twitching, his lion’s mane fluttering like the red flames surrounding us, his massively muscled body convulsing.

Burr yelled something to Russ and I felt
Cnawlece
slowing in the water.

I stared as the hellcnight thrust Delgato’s limp body off of him. It stood up, glared evilly at me, and then jumped over the railing just as Ari—the real Ari—Rafe, and Fara ran over. A moment later, I heard a splash. Ari took one look at my neck and stepped forward. But even love couldn’t prevent my involuntary retreat. The image of Ari’s face morphing into the hideously fanged hellcnight was still too fresh in my mind. I held up my hand to stop him.

“Go check on Russ and Burr,” I said, waving at him and Fara. Ari looked like he wanted to argue, but one look at my face convinced him otherwise.

“Heal her,” he barked to Rafe and then turned on his heel and left. I shuddered. I couldn’t help it. Now that the hellcnight had gone, our signatures were released from his hold. One by one they became distinct again. Ari’s was chaotic, angry, even murderous—the effect of which was to further terrify me, since it echoed what I’d seen in the hellcnight’s face just before it had shifted from “Ari” into the horrifying creature that had attacked me. I didn’t want anyone (most of all Ari) to know that the sight of his face scared me, though, so I focused on the third signature—the weakest one—Delgato’s.

Rafe stepped over to me with an expression on his face I’d never seen before: concern.
Well, he could take his concern and shove it,
I thought viciously. I think anger and unbelievable regret was making me bitchy. I couldn’t bear the thought that instead of saving Delgato, I’d killed him, especially since
he
had been trying to rescue
me
. It wasn’t fair to inflict my misery on Rafe, but I could barely stand myself just then, so I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone—even Rafe—showing concern for me.

Rafe tilted my head up so he could see my neck and get a better look at the wound he was going to heal. I shoved his hand away.

“Not me,” I snarled. “Delgato. That’s who you need to heal.”

Rafe said nothing, only raised his eyebrows. But he walked over to the manticore and knelt beside him.

“I can’t bring people back from the dead, Noon,” he said quietly.

“He’s not dead. I can still feel his signature.”

Rafe looked doubtful and then sighed. “I’m an Angel, not a Mederi.”

“You’re an oath breaker, that’s what.” I practically spit the words out. Rafe stared down at the manticore. I couldn’t tell if my words had any effect on him. I knew I didn’t mean them; I was just being mean. I didn’t feel well. My neck hurt where the hellcnight’s tooth had nicked me. The cut stung and I felt even angrier than I had before. It felt like my brain was one big buzzing hornets’ nest. I reached up to touch my neck. It throbbed. My fingertips brushed the cool silver of the alembic’s chain. I would gladly have traded it for what we’d just lost: two crates of food, a war chest full of weapons, and our captain. I slumped to the floor with my back against one of the crates. My last vision was of Rafe trying to heal Delgato.