“Is this the part where you recap our longstanding rivalry for me as if I am unaware?” Xander took the stairs quickly, his hand skimming the railing, the other flitting above his head. “Because if you do that, I’ll know you’re asking me for something that you think I don’t want to give you.” Then he whirled around at the next landing, stopping Damien short. “And there are very few things in that category.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Doesn’t it? Death’s at the top of the list.”
“That’s more like it.”
Xander turned again and continued downward. “Go on, then—tell me aboutus.”
Well, not when he said it like that. Damien groaned, calling up Amma’s words in his mind. “It’s just occurred to me over the last week that we may be…friends.”
Xander stopped short at the foot of the stairs. Even the back of him looked uncomfortable. Xander, who would gladly bed anything on two legs and describe the act in full detail to a stranger, cringed at the thought of actual companionship. In some ways, Damien understood that, and for that reason alone he knew: they almost definitelywerefriends.
Taking in a long breath, Xander glanced back over his shoulder. “You owe me a sparring session.”
Damien ground his jaw. “Fine.”
Xander’s dark eyes twinkled, grip on the railing tightening for a moment so that the metal beneath his hand looked to bend with the tiniest of escaping shadows. “Excellent.” He led Damien across the main hall to a room he’d not yet been in, a wide, empty space with stone floors and walls. It wasn’t made to be elegant and pretty like so much of the rest of the Chthonic Tower. This space, with its dim lighting and old stains of blood, was meant for one thing.
Xander was already taking off the long, dress coat he’d been wearing that day, the linen tunic beneath undone at the neck and falling open so that the vial of blood he always wore danced against his chest when he moved. Throwing his arms out, the white coat was flung across the room and into the waiting arms of a shadow imp who disappeared with it. Xander backed into the space, eyes on Damien. “Let’s see, let’s see…we need some rules…”
“Oh, you haven’t already thought this through?” Damien rolled his shoulders and pushed the sleeves of his tunic up. Neither had on armor, a little more dangerous, but at least balanced.
“Only every night,” mumbled Xander with a chuckle. “We ought to keep faces off limits, and no conjuring—the shadow imps aren’t fond of other infernals, and it’s bad enough your dinky, little fire imp’s here. Oh, and do you still use those squishy, bindy tentacles?”
Damien undid the button at the top of the tunic to expose his chest. The more skin he had available the better. “Sometimes.”
“That’s what I was hoping for—don’t hold those back.” Xander grabbed the vial about his neck and popped off the cork, holding it up in salute. “And if you really insist on talking, you have to earn it.”
A cast of red smoke immediately filled the room before Xander had even spilled any of his own blood from the vial. Damien’s dagger slid into his hand like it was an extension of himself, flipping around his fingers as he got low to the ground and crossed the room, eyes on where Xander had been. He called up arcana to reach out and feel for Xander’s presence, but in his own home, Xander’s stink was already on everything, and then there was no point, Xander cutting through the smoke with a blade brandished, swinging it down right at Damien’s head from above. So much for avoiding faces.
Damien dodged him, slashing but at himself instead of Xander. His blood spurt out down along his arm, and with it his own faithful blades. They sailed toward his opponent, the smoke cleared in their wake—a nice theatric but short lived and ultimately a waste.
Xander dodged two of them, but the third caught his elbow. He hissed from the pain, his own blood spilling, then he grinned. “Faster than I remember. So,”—he flicked his wrist, and the arcane sword he was holding lost its rigidity, the blade falling in a loose coil on the floor—“it’s time you tell me how you’re going to free our parents.”
Damien clicked his tongue at the new weapon. “Very subtle.”
“If you’re using ranged attacks, so am I.” Xander cracked the whip made up of arcana and then struck out with it.
Instinctively, Damien shielded himself, and the arcane cord wrapped around his forearm but at least avoided his face. “Enthrallment,” he said, reaching over and grabbing the corporeal magic, giving it a tug and pulling Xander off balance toward him.
Xander tripped, tall but light, and then grunted as his weapon pulsed, the whip wrapped around Damien’s arm sizzling. “Enthrallment?” Xander ducked as Damien swiped at him with his dagger then popped back up. “Like my girls?”
“On Archibald? Please, I need the enthrallment to last longer than a succubus’s charm. Stay still.” Damien struck out again, but his aim was thrown when the burning of the arcana wrapped around his other arm intensified.
Xander snickered, wrenching backward and taking Damien along with him. “So, no ubi infernals, then what? You think you’re going to convert Eiren’s king away from that ridiculous god Osurehm? His domain includes honor, last I checked—you expect to get Archie to drink some new-fangled infernal wine in devotion to whom exactly?”
The pain in Damien’s arm was too much, and he stabbed the dagger through the weapon hard enough to pierce it down to his own skin. He felt his blood seep out beneath it, and with it black tendrils crawled out over Xander’s magic to choke it back. “The succubi’s captivation is short-lived and based on desire, and sects like The Brotherhood rely on their followers’ desperation and willingness to drink that arcane sludge,” he said, grinning as Xander jumped back, losing his weapon completely as it was gobbled up by Damien’s arcana. “I crafted a talisman that bends the victim to my will despite their own. If the target simply touches it, their body absorbs it wholly, and they can be ordered to do anything I wish, interminably.”
Xander scoffed. “No, you didn’t.”
Blood still dripped from his forearm amidst coiling burn marks, but Damien whispered Chthonic instead and commanded shadows from the edges of the room to sneak up behind Xander and jab him in the back. “Yes, I did.”
Xander straightened, frowning, and grabbed the vial around his neck to tip blood onto the ground. “Say you did manage to do that. What good is it?” He pulled his boot through the small pool, and from it a black haze emerged and flew at Damien.
Freezing and all-encompassing, the shadows Xander conjured were too fast to dodge. Their squeeze was tight around his body, and he inhaled sharply at the shock of cold, the air forced from his lungs. The sound about him was all gone, and the light too, but that was just fine—in the silent darkness he could easily focus on the arcana Xander had sent to consume him, and with his dagger in hand, he sliced down through the shadows, bursting out.
With a deep breath, Damien blinked into the light. “The king absorbs the talisman, I order him to free Zagadoth, the deed is done.”
