DEMON"S DAUGHTER.
By Emma Holly.
To Susan Ilene Johnson.
Because once upon a time, while at a very boring job, two women became lifelong friends.
Chapter 1.
The first human expedition to the icy wastes of the north was not for exploration, as your teachers would have you believe. No, it was for gold, tantalizing veins of which had been discovered in the bordering mountains of Yskut. What triumphs might have belonged to our fair empire had we claimed the Northland"s vast reserves for ourselves are best left to the drunken ramblings of old men. Hoping only for filthy lucre, and perhaps a knighthood, the leader of the expedition, one Captain DuBarry, had his team lower him by rope into a promising creva.s.se. Instead of gold, he found the hidden city of Narikerra"the city and the demons who lived within.
Not true demons, of course. The Yama are our allies, and I must be sensitive. It is only their alien appearance that makes us give their species that name.
So DuBarry found the Yama and their wondrous technology. Understandably, perhaps, since they had been living in scrupulous isolation for thousands of years, the Yama did not find the excitable captain quite as wondrous as he found them. The discovery of the health enhancing effects of human etheric-force on Yamish-kind was all that allowed the intrepid captain to escape alive.
a"The True and Irreverent History of Awar Take a holiday, his superintendent had said. You"re working far too hard.
Eight hours later, Inspector Adrian Philips was fleeing for his life through Awar"s fog-shrouded slums. He could have activated his implants, the tiny devices the Yamish doctor had tucked so cleverly beneath the tendons of his wrists. His muscles would gain power then, as much power as the demons it was his dubious honor to police. Unfortunately, the surge of artificial strength wouldn"t last and, once past, would leave him drained. That he couldn"t afforda"even if those who chased him were only humans. Better to save the advantage for when he truly needed it.
He tried to run faster on his own, but the soiled overcoat he"d donned as camouflage in this seedy section of the capitol flapped about his legs. Though the hem threatened to trip him, he dared not break stride long enough to discard it. His pursuers were too close. Even now he heard them splashing through the lake yesterday"s rain had made at the intersection of Fifth and Heaven"s Gate.
Heaven"s Gate.
Despite his fear, a laugh rasped in his throat. Call him a Bedlamite, but he"d rather be here, running from a gang of slumboys, than home with nothing to do but contemplate the mess he"d made of his life.
"There"s the b.l.o.o.d.y peeler!" cried a voice not nearly far enough behind him. It was a young man"s tenor, the dialect pure docksidea"like an irreverent bully trying to swallow a bag of marbles.
The clatter of hobnailed boots accelerated. All too soon, a shoulder slammed the small of Adrian"s back, throwing him forward. His right cheekbone hit the stoop of a shuttered harness shop.
Stunned, he gasped in pain as they flung him onto his back and began kicking hima"kidneys, stomach, wherever they could reach.
He couldn"t see them. The thick marine mist obscured their features, though their voices rang clear enough. He knew what he"d find in any case: bodies gone lean from feeding the demons with their life force; honed faces; pale, perfect skin. Those who served the Yama came to share a bit of their alien beauty. Not their strength, not their cleverness, just a reason for the shallowest vanity. He"d heard the latest fashion among the gangs was to have their tongues tattooed to match their employers" natural forked markings.
Too ignorant to see how cheaply they had sold themselves, his attackers cursed as they pounded him, telling him to keep his nose where it belonged. He wasn"t wanted there, and they"d better not see him in Harborside again.
Part of him wanted to laugh. These young men must have been demonbait once themselves. Yet. here they were, defending the exploitation of their fellows.
All he"d wanted was to find one lost boy.
Adrian dodged one kick and rolled into another. A foot pinned his arm and ground down until his bones threatened to part company. With a grunt of pain, he wrenched free. He had to get a new hobby. Searching for missing youngsters was not a one-man job. Too bad his department figured the children of the poor were destined for a bad end anyway, so why waste the man hours? Adrian Philips, however inadequate, was their best hope.
Judging it more than time, he tightened his fingers in the pattern the Yamish doctor had taught him to activate the implants. A flash of heat streaked up the veins that led from his wrists. His heart pumped harder, and a frighteningly wonderful feeling swelled in his breast, as if one sweep of his arm could smash the world.
Gritting his teeth to maintain control of his impulses, he threw the nearest slumboy off him, the body flying off as if it weighed no more than a cat. One opponent taken care of, he drove his heel into the shin that wore the sharpest pair of boots. Bones snapped at the blow, and he wondered if he was sorry. Even if he was, he didn"t have time for regrets. Exclamations of surprise and anger met his success. A fist drove toward his face. He stopped it dead with the flat of his palm. This time he strove to be more careful. He"d pull the attacker over with his own momentum.
The boy stumbled as he yanked. Choke hold him, Adrian thought. He didn"t have to kill him. He could threaten his life to force the others to back off. Before he could pursue this strategy, the largest of his attackers barked a sharp order. As suddenly as they"d set after him, they disappeared. Their footsteps reverberated off the gritty cobbles, at least one of them limping. Perhaps seeing the fight come back to him had ruined their sport Certainly, they"d not been cowed by his being a member of the law. The inhabitants of Harborside were in much more danger from each other than from the police.
There weren"t after all, many officers willing to compromise their humanity as Adrian had. The prejudice he faced for accepting his implants, no matter how practical they were, was no small thing.
Numb with shock, he lay panting by the curb, trying to figure where he"d gone wrong. Adrian was no green recruit. He knew how to judge when a situation was about to turn dangerous. But there"d been no warning today. No strange looks from the peoplea"demon or humana"who he"d questioned about the Bainbridge boy. No sign that he"d been fingered for Security.
Harbor side. Just when he thought he understood it it started speaking in tongues.
He tensed as a woman shrieked somewhere in the distance, either in laughter or pain. Perhaps her Yamish keeper had laid his hand on her heart. Perhaps he was even then drinking from the well of her vitality.
Etheric-force, a subtle form of electricity that some called animal magnetism, had always been transferrable in small amountsa"a natural result of interaction between living beings. As far as Adrian knew, only the Yama could draw it off deliberately. To them, human energy, slightly different from but compatible with their own, was a cross between miracle elixir and spiked coffee. It strengthened their already-formidable const.i.tutions and made them, by all accounts, feel both relaxed and alert. No such benefits redounded on their human donors, but they recovered after a day or so of sleep. As long as the exchange was voluntary, it was all perfectly legal.
Sighing, Adrian struggled to sit up, feeling a thousand years old now that the implant"s unnatural boost of well-being had pa.s.sed. Thunder rumbled ominously, a sure sign of winter"s approach. He couldn"t stay here. If he did, others would sniff out his weakness.
With a groan he got to his feet, blinking dazedly through wisps of blue-gray fog: half coal smoke, half moisture. The halos of the street lamps, their gla.s.s wired in diamond patterns against breakage, expanded and contracted before his eyes.
This was demon science, Queen Victoria"s reward for allowing some of the Yama to settle in her slums. A devil"s bargain, many said, but what was the spinster queen to do with the Medell army nipping at her border? Their neighbors to the west had been fighting Aedlyne rule for centuries. Nor were they any less belligerent under their own kings. To fend them off once and for all, Victoria decided to accept the Yama"s offer of superior technology. She couldn"t have known the settlers who arrived would be the Yama"s own outcasts, low-born rebels who couldn"t, or wouldn"t, live within their homeland"s strict hierarchical system. The aristocratic Yamaa"the daimyo, as they called themselvesa"didn"t want to be tainted with their presence any more than they"d wanted to be tainted with humankind"s.
Not one to waste an advantage, regardless of what it had cost, Queen Victoria, High Lady of the Aedlyne Empire, had ordained that every street in every subject nation be lit against the night. Not for the first time, Adrian blessed her fear of the dark, even if the swimming lamplight did make him dizzy.
At least the illumination told him which way to go.
He began to walk, not toward his base station in Little Barkinga"that was too fara"but inland, away from the harbor, the quickest route to safety.
He stumbled repeatedly as he navigated the crooked, foul-smelling streets. He couldn"t blame the stench on the city"s newest immigrants. Even demon riffraff were fastidious. Built by humans a century ago, these rickety wooden houses, their gargoyles splintered and stained, listed dangerously over his head. Some of the upper stories hung so far over the street, their inhabitants could have tapped the opposite side"s windows. He didn"t relish walking beneath these arches; they were too well suited for concealing threats.
He knew he must be gone from here by nightfall. It was more than dark enough already under the fog.
Cursing, he clapped a hand to a persistent st.i.tch in his side. His palm came away wet. He blinked at the shiny red, barely comprehending what it meant Apparently, one of the slumboys had used a blade. The beating he"d been taking must have distracted him from feeling the injury, but seeing it gave it power. Without warning, his legs folded.
Get up, he ordered, shaking his head on hands and knees like a wet dog. He tried to call on the implants again, but it was too soon for them to work. All he got for his attempt was a sickening surge of adrenaline. The sound of childish laughter swelled from a nearby alleya"dark laughter, youthful exchanges of mockery. His neck tightened. Here even children were dangerous. Endangered and dangerous.
With so many serving the demons for the sake of a few scarce coins, it was impossible to know which side anyone was on.
Raising his head with an effort, he spied a brick wall up ahead. Brick, not wood. He must have reached the boundary of Harborside. A fire escape hung down the building"s side like a ladder to heaven. Though it ab.u.t.ted the poorest section of Awar, the four-story brick box inhabited another, safer world, a world he was determined to reenter. He eyed the contraption longingly. Too woozy to think straight, he didn"t stop to wonder if there was an easier way out than up.
Regaining his feet, he tried to grab the lowest rung to extend the ladder fully. Vexingly, it was too high. He had no strength to jump for it, though he tried. In desperation, he pulled off his overcoat and swung it like a grapple.
The ladder descended with a rusty squeal. Shaking his head in wonder, he began to drag himself up the rungs, about as strong as a starving pup. Up he struggled, one story, two.
Midway through the third, he pa.s.sed a lighted window. The tableau inside made him stop and gape. A couple was making love on a kitchen table. Both still dressed, the man was cinnamon-brown, the woman as golden as the desert of Vharzovhin.
These were a previous generation"s immigrants, when newcomer still meant human. The golden woman kissed her lover"s neck, her arms and legs tightening in rhythm to his thrusts. Her blouse had fallen away to reveal one perfect breast, and her nipple stood out sharply in arousal. The man ran his hand up under her skirt, baring her calf and thigh. His eyes were closed, his head thrown back as though the woman were killing him with pleasure. Then his thumb slid into the crease at the top of her shapely leg, pressing something that made her back arch like a bow. A sharp female cry struck the gla.s.s, unmistakably o.r.g.a.s.mic.
Adrian"s throat constricted. Turning away, he tried not to compare this scene to his life with Christine. Three months their marriage had lasted. He"d never even coaxed his wife to make love without her nightclothes. She was a decent woman, a model of middle-cla.s.s Victorian propriety. His consenting to have the implants had been the last straw. After that, she hadn"t wanted to touch him at all. Adrian had loved her, but he couldn"t live that way; couldn"t sire children on a woman who"d been trained to hate the marriage bed, who had come to think of him as a monstrosity.
Monster or not, he didn"t think a morsel of warmth was too much to ask.
Two years had pa.s.sed since he"d left her. He supposed her rejection shouldn"t still hurt. It did, though, distracting him from where he was even as he dragged himself upward. Finally, he was able to lever his chest over the ledge of the roof.
Nauseated from loss of blood, he rested his cheek against the rough wet pourstone. Someone had planted a garden on the roof. He heard the rustle of leaves in the first spatter of rain and smelled late-blooming roses. He smiled faintly, then realized he was about to faint. He pushed himself higher, groaning, trying to ensure a fall on the right side of the ledge.
Thunder boomed as he dropped with a thunk into a flowerbed. As though this had been a signal, the skies opened, pummeling his body in hard, silvery sheets. He closed his eyes, feeling the rain pound him clean. His fingers touched something ruffled and smootha"marigold petals, he thought.
HHe chuckled to himself. How absurd. He"d fallen into the Garden. He, who had been exiled.
He wondered if he"d die here, if his former wife would feel relief at the news. He"d only seen her once since the divorce, at the wedding of a mutual friend. Her eyes had lighted on his face from across the aisle, then flew away like a startled bird. That was all. No words were exchanged. No one else had seen her response, but he"d stayed away from the old neighborhood after that Why risk tormenting her? He didn"t enjoy it, though he knew some men reveled in mastering their wives. He heard their stories at the station house, saw the att.i.tude in every stern-faced male with his fingers tight and white around his woman"s arm. Allow me to know what"s best for you, my dear. Allow me to know.
He didn"t understand those men, but sometimes he envied the freedom they claimeda"at least with their mistresses. To be able to cry out in the heat of pa.s.sion, to shed one"s inhibitions with one"s clothes, to be an utterly sensual creature and to have one"s partner be the samea that must be paradise. But how could Adrian take joy in a mercenary arrangement? He didn"t want a paid sham. He wanted true desire.
If he paid his partners, he would be no better than a demon.
Weighed down by more than bodily fatigue, the last of his strength dissolved.
He woke to the sensation of hands roaming his body. At first, he a.s.sumed he was being robbed, but the exclamations of concern that accompanied the search suggested someone was trying to ascertain how badly he"d been hurt. He opened his eyes a slit.
His examiner was a woman. She knelt on the rain-black granite by the flowerbed. Her legs were doubled beneath her like a child"s. A hurricane lamp glowed yellow at her side, spitting oily curls of smoke where raindrops struck the heated gla.s.s. In its homely light, he saw she wore a thin white gown, muslin, with tiny eyelet straps to hold it at the shoulders.
The gown would have been indecent even if it hadn"t been plastered to her by the storm. Her nipples were dark and puckered in the cold, and Adrian told himself it was only his delirium that kept him from looking away. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s had a lovely shape, swaying as she moved. Beautiful, he thought. He could see the faint shadow of their veins, blue against white rounded flesh.
"You are awake," she said, startling his eyes to her face.
She was not pretty. That was his first thought. Her mouth was too wide, her eyes too palea"almost as silvery as a demon"s. The similarity made him shudder instinctively, though her irises did not cover up her whites. Her hair was a different matter. Long and abundant, it clung to her outrageously naked shoulders like caramel-colored seaweed. Her lack of modesty made him wonder if she was a prost.i.tute. Perhaps he hadn"t made it out of Harborside after all.
Straightaway, he rebelled at the possibility. In the lantern"s wavering glow, she had the fresh, clean skin of a farm girl; me honest features of someone"s sensible maiden aunt. The thought of her selling herself to strangers appalled him, especially if those strangers weren"t interested in s.e.x.
"Does anything feel broken?" she asked, her voice pleasing to the ear and surprisingly cultivated. Adrian prided himself on the practiced breeding of his speech, but her dulcet ease put all his care to shame.
When he opened his mourn to speak, nothing came out He shook his head.
She laughed and squeezed his shoulder rea.s.suringly. Then, to his complete astonishment, she eased her arms under his back and knees and, with no more than a grunt of effort, lifted him like a child.
He was not a small man. Spare of flesh but tall, he was not some stripling boy to be hefted as easily as a sack of flour. That, however, was precisely what she did, striding quickly across the expanse of her rain-swept garden.
For a moment, he was too rattled to struggle. Then, "Are you mad?" he demanded, twisting from her arms. His knees buckled as soon as he got his feet under him.
The prodigy laughed but not mockingly. "Too proud, are we?" Arranging his arm around her shoulders, she hauled him to his feet.
They stood, swaying like drunkards, before a part.i.tioned gla.s.s door. The woman elbowed it open, and together they stumbled into a dark room. Adrian received an impression of s.p.a.ce, high ceilings, wood floors, and many, many windows. He smelled something that reminded him of the varnish his father used at the shipyard. They turned right to cross the length of the room. Water squelched from his shoes with every lurching step, miles of steps. Finally, they reached a parlor with faded velvet chairs and fringed lamps and, saints be praised, a crackling fire in the grate. A generous heap of clean-burning Northlandic peat glowed blue behind the fretwork screen. It smelled like the country.
The woman settled him on a long gray- and pink-flowered couch, her arms shaking from the strain of supporting him. Even in this light, he could see she was strapping, possibly as tall as him. All the same, he was relieved by the sign of human frailty.
"Better?" she asked, and touched his cheek with the backs of her fingers.
A shock hummed through him when he met her worried gaze, an oddly sensual awareness. Her eyes were just as eerie as they"d seemed before, a pale, pale blue, the color uniform except for a delicate fringe of gold around the rim. In spite of the dangerous comparisons they brought to mind, he couldn"t help picturing her eyes half closing with desire as he slid into the softest of moorings. Her lids would flicker shut when he pushed inward to his hilt. They woulda"
"Thank you," he whispered, disconcerted by the turn of his thoughts.
She smiled briefly and began removing his soggy clothes. Adrian protested, but she ignored him, pushing his limbs this way and that with the impersonal efficiency of an army nurse. Thoroughly embarra.s.sed, he closed his eyes and tried to appear unaffected. He reminded himself he was a grown man, nearly forty. Even with a fire, he couldn"t lie there in his wet clothes. If this woman wasn"t ashamed to strip him naked, why should he be concerned?
The stab wound behind his right hip inspired a furious exclamation. She grabbed a towel from the stack of folded laundry that sat in one of the wing chairs by the fire. From the way she stuffed it under him and pressed, he guessed he was still bleeding.
"Lord love a duck," she swore, sounding frightened for the first time. He almost laughed. He"d never heard that expression before.
Fluttering a little, she pulled a knitted afghan off the back of the couch and tucked it around him. It was very soft. Lambswool, he thought.
"Stay," she ordered, then pulled a face when his mouth quirked ironically. "Very well, you"re not going anywhere."
Unaccountably warmed by the exchange, he closed his eyes as she left the parlor, trying to ignore the pain in his side and the way the floor was tilting like a ship at sea.
He heard her speaking earnestly to someone in the hall. A sleepy answer came, a boy"s voice making some argument.
Her son? he wondered. Her partner in iniquity? But, no, the boy wouldn"t be sleeping if that were the case. These were prime business hours for that sorta"at least for human customers. And come to think of it, the place didn"t look like a brothel, mote like a poor but genteel boarding house. One that couldn"t afford a maid.
The woman and boy moved toward the doorway.
"They"ll be busy in bed," the boy was saying. "They haven"t been married a week. I don"t mink Abul cares if he ever sleeps."
"Pull the eel out of harbor yourself if you have to," the woman countered. "Just get him up here."
That settled, she returned to Adrian"s side. One hip perched by his, she pressed the towel more firmly to him and stroked his wet hair back from his brow. The last of his fear gave way at her touch, and a different tension replaced it, like a boiler building up a head of steam. Whatever her occupation, this woman"s hands held more erotic power than anyone he"d met. If drinking energy felt like this, he understood why the Yama found it addictive.
She spoke. "My downstairs neighbor is a resident at St. Stefan"s. He"ll know how to fix you up."
He sighed and nodded. The steady brush of her fingers was so nice he couldn"t bring himself to regret the impropriety. The caress filled him with a painful longing, like the scent of food after a fast. It had been so longa"an eternitya"since anyone had touched him kindly. It seemed intolerable that she was a stranger, mat this tenderness was born of pity rather than any appreciation of who he was.
His forehead tightened under her hand as she leaned closer, her unbound b.r.e.a.s.t.s warming his chest even through the dampness of her gown.
"I"m sorry you"re hurting," she whispered close to his ear. In spite of everything, he couldn"t prevent the heat of her bream from sending blood sluicing to his groin. The tip of his c.o.c.k itched as it stirred against the blanket "Abul will be here soon. He"s a good doctor, and you"ll be fine."
Her thumb swept up the furrow between his brows. "I promise."
"Sweet," he said, without meaning to. He didn"t mean to sleep, either. He tried to hold off, to maintain his guard, but between running halfway across Harborside and using his implants in the fight, he was done in.
A moment later, helpless to stop it, he sank like the dead.
Chapter 2.
Every so often, one of the rohn (the lower cla.s.s demons who had been banished to Awar) would go mad from imbibing too much human etheric-force. Alas for those addicted to the habit, along with the inebriating effect of taking another species" energy came the burden of that species" emotion, a burden these bwer cla.s.s Yama were ill-equipped to handle. Only a Yamish aristocrat"s mental const.i.tution was sufficiently refined to remain unmoved. Though likewise unused to the fire of human feelings, they could enjoy the benefits without the harma"even if it was considered cra.s.s to enjoy them often. The rohn, by contrast, were apt to turn violent. From this dilemma was born the practice of medically "enhancing" select members of those humans responsible for maintaining public order, thus allowing them to subdue an offender without resorting to deadly forcea"a leveling, if you will, of the playing field.
The idea of forbidding etheric drinking to lowborn Yama was not considered by the upper ranks. They reasoned the deportees" lot was hard enough. If they wished to take artificial comfort while forcibly separated from all that was good and pure in Yama life, that was their concern.