Page 16 of Unholy Bond
I remembered.
I palmed the knife, weighing it. The sensation of cool, black glass was nearly erotic against my palm. I sat cross-legged on the velvet, drew up my right leg, and braced it with my left hand. The skin of my thigh was smooth and new. I poised the tip just above the knee, where the flesh thinned, and the blood ran closest to the surface.
I pressed until the pain registered. I pulled the blade down and out in a tight arc, then drew a parallel line just above it. The blood beaded instantly, black in this light, but the color brightened as the cut widened. I worked with the efficiency of an artist prepping a fresh etching, my hands steady and deliberate. Each line was a letter, each drop a word, each spray a punctuation. The patterns I carved were not random, not decorative. They were the script of the Before, the primal grammar of everything that came before language, before time, before God had stolen creation for himself.
By the time I finished, my thigh was crosshatched with runes. The blood gathered in thick rivulets, which did not run but rather pooled and pulsed, as if waiting for permission to dosomething more. I kept my breathing steady. The Void pressed up against my ribs, anxious, but I shushed it with a thought.Wait.
I whispered the next part, the incantation. The words would not have made sense in English or Latin or even Sumerian. They were just noises, scraped from the back of the throat, but in the confines of this chamber they became commands. The blood on my leg began to move. The streams curled in on themselves, then unfurled, forming precise spirals and nested triangles. I watched as the pattern grew more complex, old logic wars with new math, until the lines on my skin glowed faintly, illuminated from within by a purple-black shimmer that reminded me, somehow, of lightning seen through a bruise.
I looked up, half expecting the door to blast open, for Lucifer to burst in, horns and all, furious that I’d hacked his prison. Instead, the air just thickened. The lights in the walls shivered, the temperature dropped. I heard a low, subsonic drone, and the hair along my arms rose.
In the darkest corner, the shadows shifted.
I watched as the first of my children peeled itself out of the wall. It unfurled one membranous wing, then the other, the motion deliberate and unhurried. The wings were not feathered but the tough, leathery skin of a bat, veined in black and striped with a deeper maroon. The creature itself was humanoid, but only just. It had too many joints, the limbs slightly wrong in length, and its face was a wolf’s skull wrapped in glistening black. It crouched, then hopped down, the claws of its feet clattering against the marble.
It sniffed the air, then looked at me, eyes as blank as night. It grinned, revealing rows of teeth that spiraled inward, the tonguea purple, bifurcated muscle that snapped out to taste the air. I grinned back.
The second arrived more conventionally, crawling up through a fissure in the floor. This one was reptilian, the body slick and segmented, the scales iridescent. Instead of arms, it had a cluster of prehensile tentacles, each ending in a tiny, perfect hand. Its head was all eye, a bulbous orb split by a horizontal mouth that oozed something viscous and white. It made a sound like a kitten purring, then settled in next to the first.
A third followed, this one quadrupedal, all sinew and exposed muscle. It moved like a big cat, but its spine was studded with bony spurs, and the tail swished independently of the body, as if it had its own agenda. It padded to the base of the bed, then collapsed in a heap, gnawing at one of its forelimbs as if checking it for defects.
The rest trickled in. Some drifted down from the ceiling, flapping or gliding, while others simply appeared, stepping through tears in the air that closed instantly behind them. Each demon was a collage of features: human, animal, and things that had no earthly precedent. They carried my DNA, but each had been personalized by the circumstances of its birth. The only thing they shared was loyalty, and a yearning that made the room seem crowded even when it was empty.
One by one, they approached. The first pressed its face to my ankle, then dragged the long, forked tongue up the inside of my calf, tracing the line of blood and licking it clean. The saliva stung, but in a way that promised healing more than infection. The second coiled its tentacles around my foot, then pressed the bulb of its head against the wound, sucking up the blood with a gentle, rhythmic pulse. The others waited, respectful, until I nodded them forward.
They each took their share, careful to avoid overlapping, careful not to drip on the sheets. The attention was almost worshipful. I had seen priests less devout at the altar. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. I had no more water to spare.
After the last one finished, I cleared my throat. “I missed you,” I said.
The children didn’t answer, but the air around them shimmered with something like joy. They crowded closer, settling in a loose semicircle around the bed, their eyes locked on mine.
“You know why I called you,” I said, keeping my voice low, the way one does in church or at a deathbed. “You know what he’s planning.”
A ripple of agitation went through them. The first demon bared its teeth, the second coiled tighter, the third arched its back and let out a hiss.
“It won’t work,” I said. “He thinks the Void can be tamed, that I’ll carry it for him, turn it on the world, then kneel when he asks. But he’s never understood. Not really.”
One of the demons with human eyes, pale blue and ringed in pink tilted its head and made a questioning sound.
“Because it’s not his to use,” I explained. “It’s not even mine. The Void just is. And all we have to do is open the door.”
They all seemed to understand, or at least accept it. The first demon reached up and placed its hand on my wounded thigh. It pressed gently, and the pain went away.
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it.
The room was suddenly very quiet. The runes on my leg faded, the blood drying in dark, scabbed patches. I let the silencestretch, let the moment settle into the bones of the building. I thought of Aziz, Levi, and Ian. I wish I could reach out to them. But Lucifer would know the moment I did.
I missed them. I missed Evelyn, too, the girl who’d believed in mornings and apple pie, who’d said her prayers without irony and expected to be answered.
But I was here, now. And so were my children.
The largest of them lumbered forward. It was bipedal, the legs stunted and bowed, the arms thick as steel cables. It knelt, slow and deliberate, then pressed its forehead to the floor.
I leaned forward, ignoring the sting in my thigh, and cupped its chin in my hand. The skin was cold, but not dead. I felt the pulse beneath the surface, slow and powerful.
“Mama’s home,” I whispered, the words nearly lost in the distance between us.
The creature looked up, and in its eyes I saw not hunger, not fear, but something like pride.
