After they left, I stayed a while in the empty war room, listening to the silence. I caught my reflection in the screen of the large TV that was mounted on the wall. I noted the wrinkles and random scars that mapped a lifetime of battles and bitterness. It reminded me that all beauty is temporary.
We were going to lose unless I burned all the rules to hell.
To do this, a bargain had to be struck with the demon king. It required a ritual I knew little about, but I knew of a man who was well versed in darkness.
You never get used to the taste of sulfur.
The old man—who had no name, or maybe had too many to keep track—did the prep. He shuffled into the war room with his kit of relics and powders and started drawing the circle on the flagstones. Salt, bone ash, some kind of oil that made the whole place stink like burned popcorn and dead teeth scattered around. He hummed to himself as he worked, never once glancing up at me or the guards in the doorway. He needed only one look, right at the start, to know who was paying the bills.
I watched the lines take shape, thinking of all the times I’d stood in a different kind of circle, a different kind of war room. We used to do it with guns and hands and threats of violence, back before the world got smarter and everyone decided to play God. Now even the monsters needed lawyers.
The cold set in as the hour approached. First a chill, then a bite, then the kind of subzero air that freezes your sinuses and turns your lungs to glass. Rook started shivering, and Vex looked like she wanted to crawl into her own shadow. Only Dagger kept still, but even he tucked his hands into his pockets.
The last touch: a single drop of blood, mine, onto the center of the circle. The old man handed me the scalpel, and I didn’t hesitate. It’s only pain.
A gust of wind, though there were no windows in this room, and the air vents never offered such a breeze. The center fluorescent light swung as if paying homage. The darkness in the corner of the room got deeper, more solid, until it resolved itself into a shape.
He presented himself in his more demonic form, not the human form he showed the world. He wore a suit, expensive and perfectly cut. The shirt was white, but not the white of fabric—more like the inside of a bone. His skin was translucent, an iron hue, and the veins underneath pulsed with something that wasn’t quite blood. His eyes were black glass, and his mouth, when it opened, was a neat line of human teeth sharpened down topoints. The hands were wrong, too: five fingers, but each joint bent a little too far, nails painted with a clear gloss.
He smiled.
“Silas Drake,” he said. The voice was rich, deep, but didn’t seem to come from his mouth so much as from the center of your skull. “It seems you have need of something from me, and I have need of something from you.”
I tried not to show my relief or my disgust. “Yes sir. I believe we have mutually beneficial needs. It seems you already know why I’ve summoned you, so to speak.” I gave a short cough.
“Many things are known. Few are understood.” He loved to speak to people he saw as underlings in this bullshit manner.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and got straight to the reason we were here. “I need your Clovis compound.”
A flicker of interest. “And you offer?”
“The Amarillo cut. Plus, we intend to take Iron Valor. Every drop we take from them, you get a quarter.”
Vex made a choking noise, but I ignored her. This was my table, my risk.
The demon king’s smile widened. “A quarter is not enough.”
“Take it or leave it,” I said. “You know the numbers. Nobody else can touch what we’re pulling out of that city.”
He considered the deal. Not for long. “Half.”
I grinned, all teeth. “I don’t think I need it that bad.”
He leaned forward. The temperature dropped another ten degrees. Dagger’s breath came out in clouds.
“Forty percent,” he said, eyes like obsidian marbles. “And I will throw in the safe house in Albuquerque. You’ll likely need it before this is done.”
I made a show of thinking, but we both knew I’d take the deal. “Done,” I said. “But I want it signed, sealed, and protected. No back doors. No clever curses. You fuck us, I’ll find you. And I won’t bring the old man next time.”
The lights went out. When they came back on, the demon had grown until his head almost touched the ceiling.
His voice was like thunder, even though his mouth did not move. I wanted to put my hands over my ears. Vex, Dagger, and Rook did.
“I’m not quite sure who you think you are dealing with, boy. I am the King of Demons. Only one sits higher than I in all of hell. I do not need your deals. Remember,yousummonedme. Any room in which I stand can be consideredmykingdom and as such all who inhabit it, my subjects. Treat me with the respect that I am due.”
At that point, Vex, Dagger, and Rook hit the floor on their knees. The urge to do the same was overwhelming. Try as I might, I could not remain in my chair. In the blink of an eye, I, too, was on my knees before the demon king.
The room went dark once again. When the lights came back on, Maltraz was back to his normal height.
