Page 50 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

That meant she’d be going uphill on the way back, but that was a problem for Future Hazel—and maybe she’d get to sit down beforehand. Maxwell’s sister might even give her a glass of lemonade, like all the stereotypes about country hospitality said people did, or a slice of pie. She pictured it as she started walking again: blueberry pie, filling dark against the golden crust, maybe with a scoop of ice cream on top. She’d sit out ontheirporch and tell a normal person that somebody had been stomping around in her yard while she was gone, which was a normal problem. Maxwell’s sister would make sympathetic noises, and Maxwell himself might be there and offer to come back with her.

She couldn’t count on any of that. Some of it was wildly unlikely and none was guaranteed. Still, she’d had a long, weird day. She’d earned a fantasy to keep her walking. It worked very well right up until she reached the bottom of the hill, where she found herself staring at a small white church and the highway beyond it.

There was no house where Maxwell had said he lived, not evena driveway or a side street that might have led to one. He’d given her fake directions. Maybe his sister didn’t even exist.

Hazel stood staring at the church, wondering what else the nice, normal guy had lied about and why.

Chapter 26

He’d changed.

Ligat couldn’t tell precisely how or even precisely when. It was more than just his first carnal experience in decades—though thathadbeen shattering and therewasoccult power in sex, perhaps even in sex as impulsive and devoid of ritual as that had been—and it was more than simply being less compelled to answer Perthrux’s questions.

Memories came back to him more frequently now, for one. He was inclined to put that much down to his own mind, the effects of conversation with mortals, and perhaps unrelated to the ability to deceive the demon, until he stood in its immediate presence for the first time in weeks.

He was presenting a severed head to Perthrux, not a particularly unusual duty, and waiting as motionlessly as he’d quickly learned to do. The demon liked to savor its triumphs, and it never disliked making Ligat uncomfortable, so he stood gripping the beast’s head by its many-angled horns and trying to ignore the growing ache in his biceps. As always during such times, he searched for a distraction, one that would let him stay aware of Perthrux’s chambers and the demon itself. When it did stop gloating and speak, it would expect Ligat to respond promptly.

Thus he turned his attention from the physical to the magical, tothe flow of power around Perthrux’s lair and the ways it ran around and through him, and only long practice kept him from showing his surprise.

Perthrux’s will weighed lighter than ever on him. If its bindings had been physical, the ropes would have still been on his wrists but very loose. He couldn’t quite get his hands out, so to speak, but he had plenty of slack to aid him—unless the demon noticed and tightened the bonds again.

Ligat half expected that blow to fall at any moment. When Perthrux opened its primary mouth, he braced himself for questions, for punishment, and for even greater restraint.

“Did it tax you, that battle?” the demon asked instead. Its eyes flicked over Ligat, searching greedily for cuts or bruises, even for signs of exhaustion.

He could fake such things, but it wasn’t always wise. Sometimes Perthrux wanted to enjoy his discomfort, sometimes it wanted to believe that its servant and its power could easily triumph, and Ligat still hadn’t learned to anticipate the difference. “A bit,” he said, choosing honesty because it required the least effort. “It was a nimble creature. Good aim when spitting acid too.”

Perthrux skittered toward him, stopped just slightly too close, and reached down to stroke thelamag’scheek. “To no avail, though.” It giggled. “No, no, no profit at the end, for all its quickness, and I have my prize.”

It did, to Ligat’s regret. The lamag’s death itself didn’t bother him particularly—the creatures used what little intelligence they had for cruelty, and they weren’t in any danger of dying out—but its head would become an oracle of sorts. He didn’t like the idea of Perthrux having even flawed clairvoyance, and he had the feeling the head would be even more obnoxious in death than its owner had been in life.

“Give it here,” said Perthrux, its primary mouth just at Ligat’s eye level. Its breath smelled like burned hair and raw flesh, and Ligat could see scraps of its last meal in the razor shards of its teeth, butthat view was still better than lifting his gaze and looking the demon in the eyes.

Obedient as always, Ligat passed the lamag’s head to Perthrux. He only released it once he was sure the demon’s hold was firm. That was another lesson he’d learned early.

The demon breathed out a reeking sigh of satisfaction as it held the head up before it. “A pity the young ones are all too small. But the eyes—” It pressed a talon against one of the lamag’s eyeballs, causing no damage but making a liquid squelch. “Not clouded. Not stone. It’ll do well.”

“That’s good,” said Ligat, thinking that the demon expected some response.

He was wrong. Perthrux focused on him with disgusted surprise, both mouths curling up. “Youlinger. I don’t want you anymore.Go.”

The command ran through Ligat, turning him around before he could think to move. Perthrux’s will might have loosened in general, but direct commands apparently still had plenty of force. He was glad to feel the power fade again as he left the demon’s chamber, not only because he’d neverquitegotten used to the loss of his will but because it gave him a bit more data, and the intellectual he’d once tried to be welcomed any information.

Outside, alone, Ligat stopped and eyed the twisted metal gate that led to Perthrux’s lair. The landscape around him was unpleasant—a dark, almost formless plain surrounded by suggestions of fleshy shapes, with phantom screaming filling the air—but still he lingered.

He had existing orders to watch Hazel. He suspected that trying to attack Perthrux would bring him up sharp against his bindings, in addition to being essentially suicidal in itself.Never strike at mehad been one of the first orders the demon had given, andneverpretty well extended it. The sigils on his body guaranteed that Perthrux could summon and command him when it wished and that he couldn’t reveal as much to anybody.

What exactly didstrike at memean, though?Reveal?It would have done no good for Ligat to think in such terms before, when the demon’s compulsions had weighed more heavily on him, but now they exerted much less pressure, and the lamag’s head would keep Perthrux distracted for a while. If there was ever a time to experiment, Ligat had found it.

He turned his attention to the gate, an edifice of dark, stained iron that reached up and down into the shifting darkness and barred the way to the only solid path forward. Each of its stakes was as thick as Ligat’s arm and covered with curved spikes. Ligat doubted he could do much to any of them, bindings or not, and the power required would almost certainly get Perthrux’s attention.

The gate had swung shut as soon as Ligat left, almost catching the edge of his robe, and the locks had rattled into place. Five chains wrapped around the bars, moving on their own, and five metal faces closed their jaws to secure them: a glaring man, a toothed bird, a lionlike beast with horns around its eyes, a bulbous-skulled eel, and a creature made entirely of angles and bones. None were friendly. All were small—and since they or the gate constantly tried to draw Ligat’s blood as he passed through, action against them was simply making his life easier, notreallystriking at Perthrux…or so he hoped.

He knew humans best, even after all his years since being one, so he bent to the lock in the middle, the one that looked like a human man. It was the size of his palm, which meant that the teeth clamped on the chain were small but clearly visible. Looking at it closely for the first time, Ligat noticed that they were also far too long and sharp to belong to a normal human, and thanked what little providence he still believed in that he wore gloves.

Holding his breath, he took one of the front teeth between his finger and thumb. The metal, which Ligat suspected onlylookedlike iron, shivered in his grip, but the face didn’t cry out or try to bite him. Perthrux’s bindings on Ligat himself stayed light.

Ligat whispered a few words in Sumerian and yanked. The toothfell into his hand so easily that his own force sent him stumbling back a step, and he almost dropped the bit of metal before he closed his palm around it. He caught himself, jammed the tooth into a pocket of his robe, and looked around swiftly, bracing for a response.