Spinner of Lies

CHAPTER TWO

THE CITY OF AIRSPUR, AKANUL

16 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

The gaunt man advanced across Demascus’s roof.

Demascus sighed in relief. Sometimes fate was kind. He couldn’t have asked for a more perfect distraction from the maelstrom battering his mind.

He relinquished confusion and regret; he wasn’t even sure what he should feel guilty about. It was easier to let go. A familiar spike of joy in the face of drawn weapons shattered his doubt. This newcomer was about to discover the only ending on this night would be his.

The world slowed, making it seem like each raindrop was a distinct globule suspended in air. Even as Demascus’s adversary tensed to attack, he seemed to freeze in place. The deva’s hands itched for Exorcessum, but he’d had no reason to bring his blade to the roof. It was locked in a trunk under his cot. He really should keep his sword closer, especially after all the trouble he’d gone through to find it. But the weapon was so unwieldy. Even sheathing it on his back was awkward. How had his previous selves managed it? No matter. His current weapons included his Veil, which seemed to function only about half the time; and the single scroll-shaped charm woven into his hair-useful in conversations where lies were flying like crows-but not so much against swordplay.

And by the way the newcomer’s tar-colored blade seemed to eat light, the weapon was enchanted with some kind of nasty surprise. Demascus swiveled side-wise toward his foe to bring one of his favorite weapons into play. His heel lashed, once into the man’s stomach, a second time into his neck, and finally where the stranger’s fingers wrapped around the hilt of his blade. It was like kicking a bag filled with sodden earth, not flesh. But the sword came free. Demascus snatched it out of the air even as his foe’s eyes dilated with pain. Or maybe just surprise. It didn’t matter; Riltana was squaring off against four foes by herself in his living room.

A row of ghostly runes faded onto his borrowed blade in pale imitation of Exorcessum’s designs. He hewed the intruder with the man’s own sword, and the man dropped like a limp rag from the force of the blow, though no blood came. Demascus dismissed the attacker and gazed into the gaping hole in his skylight. A jagged shadow thrown up from a glass splinter offered a convenient path, so he stepped into its embrace. His next step was out of a different shadow, this one thrown by an overturned divan one level down.

Riltana was on her feet. Four adversaries ringed her, menacing the genasi with black iron weapons. One intruder was huge, another tiny, the third dressed all in yellow, and the last was a woman with painted red fingernails as long as daggers … they all had the same feral, hungry look and colorless eyes with only tiny black circles to mark their irises. When the one in yellow screamed and leaped at Riltana, Demascus saw long incisors in her mouth. Vampires? He swallowed. He hoped not. He’d faced vampires before. At least, a previous version of himself had. Probably. Uncertainty made him hesitate.

Riltana dove beneath her opponent. Her adversary managed to score the back of her armor, but the windsoul came to her feet in one piece. She’d exchanged places with her attacker; the vampire stood in the center of the wrecked living room and Riltana’s back was to a wall. Time jerked back to its too-rapid pace as he unwound the Veil from around his neck. The black iron weapons made him nervous. What if the one in his hand decided to betray him? The Veil of Wrath and Knowledge would serve as a backup weapon if it came to it.

“Demascus, when you’re done standing there like a beer-addled tosser, maybe you could help?” Riltana yelled.

Oops. “You should’ve let me know you were bringing guests,” he replied. “I would’ve set more places.”

The woman with red dagger nails spun at the sound of his voice. Before she’d half turned, he stabbed her. The sword plunged to its hilt in her side, but the woman didn’t seem to mind. She snarled, “The thief has a friend. Kill them both! Retrieve what she stole!”

Demascus realized Riltana had filched from the wrong household. He wanted to tell the woman that he’d had no part in Riltana’s thievery. But before he could say anything, the red-nailed woman blurred forward and grabbed Demascus’s wrist. He gasped; her fingers were like ice. He released the sword and jerked back his hand. But she didn’t let go, and her eyes blazed with hypnotic power.

She whispered, “Blood. It tastes like danger. So sweet and thick …” She bent her head to his neck. He elbowed her in the face. If anything, she was more solid than the man on the roof, and her grip was a glacial manacle sucking away his body’s warmth, his vitality. If he didn’t get away, he’d collapse, drained of life. She wasn’t a pushover like the vampire on the rooftop.

With a cry of command he summoned a flare of divine light from his skin and clothing. The vampire flinched at the radiance, and he stepped across the room and down the hall within the woman’s wavering shadow. She’d feel differently once he retrieved Exorcessum-

“Watch out!” came Riltana’s warning from down the hallway.

Something bit him on the shoulder. He spun, spattering his own blood on the walls. The man he’d dispatched on the rooftop crouched there, his mouth red with Demascus’s flesh. Burning dominions, the thing had actually bitten him! That couldn’t be good. He fought back the urge to shrug off his coat and examine the wound then and there in the hallway mirror. He wouldn’t know what to look for anyway-two holes where the incisors had gone in? Discoloration?

The female vampire stood a few steps behind him. When his eyes skittered across hers, she tried to catch him in a hypnotic trap. He averted his gaze.

The woman’s touch had hollowed his stomach like he’d eaten bad fish, and the expanding burn on his shoulder was worrisome. A regular bite would ache just the same, right? He realized … he was sort of afraid of vampires.

Stop it, he commanded. Remember who you are. Or, anyway, who you once were.

Demascus stood with one foot in light and one in shadow. He recalled how his friend Chant remarked awhile ago that a deva could draw his strength from either, and that on the whole, Chant preferred the light.

Demascus, however, reveled in the dark. He shook out the Veil, throwing a shadow into a plane few could see. That gloom fell across the vampire like an immaterial shroud, and through its gauzy lens all of the vampire’s strengths and weaknesses were made plain. Seven points of pale light flickered through the creature’s body. Their gleams revealed to him a creature animated by necrotic vigor. An undead was stronger, faster, and more resistant to hurt than living flesh, and its wounds would mend supernaturally quickly. But it wasn’t invulnerable. The root of the vampire’s power lay in the bottommost point of illumination, which pulsed red like spilled blood. In that flicker, Demascus discovered what he should have known all along.

The vampire would burn away instantly in full sunlight; too bad he was fresh out of sunshine. Of course, he wielded the next best thing: the radiance of the gods’ wrath.

But without his sword to channel it, his options were limited. He could try the same thing he’d-

The male vampire lunged, arms out, to ensnare the deva in a wrestler’s grapple. Demascus made no move to stop him. The bloodsucker pulled the deva close to its chest, baring Demascus’s neck. The deva whispered an oath of light. His voice was a quill that scrawled a burning mark of divine brilliance, the promise of destruction. The mark erupted, and the vampire blew apart in gobbets of golden illumination, sizzling gore, and a smell of decay so pungent Demascus gagged. Weren’t they supposed to turn to grave mist and slink away? He was pretty sure that was the case. But he’d touched something of his deeper power, accidentally, when he’d called the light. That undead wouldn’t be coming back in any fashion whatsoever.

The back splatter of radiance and burning flesh had caught the female vampire nearby. She screamed as smoking holes marred her previously flawless skin. Her scream bubbled to a sigh as she transformed into a pillar of mist. Ha! he thought, I knew it! Mist!

Thuds, scrapes of metal on stone, and Riltana’s curses echoed down the hallway from the living room, muted by the grave vapor. Demascus checked his instinct to plunge through the roiling bank to Riltana’s aid. Though she faced three all alone, he still hadn’t retrieved his best weapon! And what if the red-nailed vampire re-formed around him as he rushed through?

He flung open his bedroom door and dove for the long chest containing his sword. As he worked the latches, he heard Riltana scream in equal parts fury and pain. “Hold on!” he yelled, clicking the last latch open.

“What’re you doing back there, having a lie down?” came her muffled reply. He could tell by the hoarse timbre in her voice that she was desperate. Demascus snatched up his sword. The cross guard was an intricate affair of opposing styles, as if the smith had managed to forge two or three weapons into a single whole. Nearly as long as two regular blades laid end to end, it still felt light as a switch of hazel wood in his hands. The sword trembled, and for a moment he saw … Madri, the woman he’d killed!

Demascus opened his mouth in surprise. He wanted to tell her he was sorry for what his previous self had done, to explain that he wasn’t that person anymore.

But the image blurred away, leaving him alone.

A shattering crash broke his paralysis. He launched out of his room and down the hall, holding Exorcessum before him. The enigmatic runes, scarlet down one side, porcelain on the other, gleamed with secret magic he hadn’t quite puzzled out. But some visceral part of him recognized the touch of the hilt and the sword’s balance. Dangerous, wild, uncontrollable joy filled him again as he returned to the fray.

A tangle of mist curled up and out of the hole in the ceiling. It could have been the scarlet-nailed vampire or the one Riltana had bested while he’d been gone, because the one wearing yellow had disappeared; only two foes remained.

One was the hulking genasi vampire wielding a hammer of black iron. The other was little more than a child, darting in and out of range of Riltana’s knife and whirling a short sword.

“Riltana, why’re there vampires in my home?”

She said, voice tight, “They’re just stray dogs. Followed me here.” Then she fended off a hissing attack from the smaller one. Riltana was dressed in the black leather and face mask she wore to hide her identity and provide protection while she acquired things that didn’t belong to her.

“So you’re filching from vampires now?” he asked.

Before Riltana could answer, the large one came at Demascus with a swiftness that belied its hulking frame. It’d probably been an earthsoul before undeath lightened its skin to a shade nearly as stark as the deva’s own. The hammer came around, scribing an arc that would connect with his head. He brought up his sword and deflected the strike, but the impact nearly ripped Exorcessum from his hands. The thing was strong, even for an already preternaturally powerful vampire.

The deva considered his options … which felt an awful lot like grasping at straws blowing in the wind. It was at times like these that he wished, more than ever, he had the artifact called the Whorl of Ioun. It was the key to recovering his true powers. For instance, he knew he could call forth divine radiance; he’d just blown the one in the hallway to tatters. But as he reached for that same divine brightness again, he found only a void. What the Hells?

“So,” he said instead, “Riltana, why don’t you just give back whatever you stole, and maybe they’ll leave?”

The windsoul shook her head and frowned. “Hey! I didn’t take anything! I just peeked at some artwork in their private gallery. Who knew they’d get so upset over a drop-in art critic?”

The small one hissed, “She’s a thief! She must die for her trespass.”

Riltana chose that moment to execute a pirouette, extending her sword high and steel-toed boot low. The vampire wisely ducked the sword, so the windsoul’s boot swept the little thing’s feet. Only its supernatural reflexes saved it from falling flat on its back.

Part of him wanted to chastise the windsoul for bringing the attack on herself, and by extension his home. But most of him was glad he had something to kill, to take his mind off … things. And if anything needs killing, he thought, it’s vampires. Killing again, anyway.

The big one whirled his hammer over his head, then changed the weapon’s trajectory mid-swing, again showing off immense strength. The hammer came straight down and caught Demascus by surprise, clipping his right shoulder. The pain was shattering.

Something woke to the agony, rising up from a hidden reserve of his soul. A scarlet sun rose over the horizon of his consciousness, and everything was different. He forgot about Riltana, about whether or not she’d taken something from these vampires, and about his own lack of culpability. He felt bathed in purpose. He wanted to move. To act. To slay.

He grinned at the hulking creature of the night before him. Of its own volition, one hand relinquished Exorcessum’s hilt, gathered a clot of shadow from thin air, and threw it like a dart into the vampire’s forehead. The creature shivered, then ceased to move as it strained against the immaterial barb pinning it to the air.

Demascus laughed. With the casual ease of an executioner, he lopped the vampire’s head from its shoulders. The creature withered to impotent mist and dispersed. His glee redoubled, as if he’d downed a couple of fiery shots of whiskey and anticipated a couple more. The sound of heavenly horns sounded distantly in his mind.

He turned his gaze to the last visible foe. It had scuttled away from Riltana and clung like a spider to the living room ceiling at the lip of the shattered skylight. The thief had apparently missed its departure, because she was casting about for her foe behind the remnants of living room furnishings.

“Face me,” Demascus intoned, his voice resonant with power. He pointed Exorcessum at his adversary.

The vampire’s head swiveled all the way around to stare directly down at him. Its eyes sought to burrow into the deva’s mind. This time Demascus didn’t look away. The compulsion in the white-eyed stare broke on his mind like a straw of sugar fluff. This sniveling child-monster was a joke for someone like him-he was the Sword of the Gods!

He stared back at the vampire and said, “You should never have come here. You’ve sealed your fate.” He flicked the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge. Its parchment-pale length unfurled with a snap, and the far end wrapped around the vampire’s left foot. The small creature shrieked as Demascus yanked it off the ceiling. Its right arm snapped when it hit the ground at the deva’s feet. He stomped a boot down on the broken arm, riveting the creature in place. It was a child, in truth-a firesoul boy aged about thirteen winters-turned to undeath. He had become an abomination. He snarled and tried to scramble away, but Demascus just pressed harder. Surprise, quickly replaced by abject fear, washed across the creature’s face as it realized something more than the deva’s weight trapped it. Demascus was actively preventing it from turning into escaping mist with his stare alone.

“You see?” Demascus said. “I am fate’s agent. You can’t elude me. Because your thread ends now.” He dragged his sword through the creature’s body, releasing a pulse of the same light that illuminates the heavenly domains. The vampire burned to a human-shaped silhouette of ash in a heartbeat. No hint of grave vapor remained.

“Who’s next?” Demascus asked, and his gaze fixed on the only remaining person in the room.

The windsoul’s eyes widened. She raised a hand and said, “Hey! Wake up, idiot! Remember me? Your friend, Riltana, the friendly genasi?”

What was the windsoul going on about? Of course he knew who she … oh. The red glaze of murderous euphoria leaked away like steam off a too-hot mug of tea. With it went his momentary familiarity with a staggering suite of avenging prayers and assassin’s tricks. In the absence of his manic rapture, the room seemed duller, cluttered, and all too real. Is this how he normally lived in the world? And his shoulder still hurt where the vampire had bit him. He rubbed it and winced.

“What just happened?” he said. Events of the previous few moments were foggy and disconnected, like a dream. Hopefully he hadn’t done anything too embarrassing. But as he let the tip of his sword fall, he guessed that was a forlorn hope.

He cleared his throat and said, “Don’t worry-I’m me again.”

Riltana laughed, somewhat nervously, and said “Demascus … sometimes you scare the living shit out of me.”