Chapter XIV

Warmth and sunlight. Dried blood and something musky that brought Morgan to consciousness – quick at first, the panic of waking somewhere unfamiliar, then slowly once he recalled where he was. A questing hand found warm skin and Morgan wrapped his arm around Jude’s naked torso beside him.

‘You’re up early.’

By way of reply Morgan nestled close into Jude’s neck, breathing in the blood and Jude’s particular spice of magic and sage. He mumbled a nonsensical reply.

Lightly, Jude pulled Morgan’s fingers away from his chest and brought them to his lips. ‘I’d ask if you want eggs for breakfast, but…’

The thought of solid food made Morgan’s stomach turn. More awake now, he said, ‘I’ll have to swing by my place anyway –’

‘When I’m right here?’

Even sleep hadn’t slowed that tongue. ‘Do you ever stop?’ said Morgan, grinning, as he extricated himself and, confusing the exorcist with a peck on the lips, positioned himself over Jude’s hips. Jude handed him is glasses and after he perched them on his nose the sunlight – brighter than morning, perhaps belonging to noon – filtering through the blinds presented a most enticing view. Small white scars tarnished otherwise smooth and freckled brown skin, and, curiously, Morgan’s fang marks had vanished during the night, the only reminder of their having ever existed dried navy on unblemished skin. His eye caught a diamond nestled in the smooth folds of Jude’s bellybutton that he hadn’t noticed the night before.

‘I never stop. It’s my best trait.’

Elbows either side of the exorcist’s shoulders, Morgan leaned in close, lips brushing neck amid sleep-mussed hair. ‘Is it now?’ he breathed.

A murmur, equally quiet and expectant and responding to what wasn’t said: ‘Yes.’

His teeth were mere inches from the exorcist’s veins when Jude stiffened. In the many times Morgan had bitten him – and during the evening the number was impossible to count – the man had not flinched once.

‘Your corporal is here.’

That woke him up.

Morgan filed the ‘Your’ part of that sentence away for later inspection as he got dressed, tracking discarded items of clothing from the previous evening when they’d been too indisposed to put them away in any semblance of orderly fashion – jeans and socks discarded by the bed, shirt in the middle of the kitchen, shoes beneath the couch. He was in the middle of pulling on his shirt when he realised – why the rush? What did it matter who he spent his downtime with? It wasn’t any of the corporal’s business.

Jude appeared to have had a similar thought. He emerged from the bedroom in nothing but a bathrobe, hair still tussled in a way that left little mystery to what he’d been doing the night before and a sprinkle of stubble lining the jaw.

That mischievous smile made Morgan’s stomach turn anxiously and his chest ache with irrational guilt.

Jude’s smile slipped just a fraction, freezing into something plastic. ‘Sweetheart, why don’t you get the door and I’ll put on something more appropriate for Miss Fairy?’

Morgan swallowed and, fearing a crack in his voice, nodded. He crossed to the door without a second glance, fingers fumbling for the latches and bolts.

Shalia’s cheeks and the tip of her nose were greener than usual from the cold. She’d worn a scarf around her slender neck today, and despite the practicality of a winter coat, jeans and boots, she was lovelier in civvies than in uniform. Her brown hair was loose too, soft short curls just kissing the shoulders, as practical as everything else about the corporal.

‘Lieutenant. You’re – you’re here early.’ Pulling the tails of her coat out of the way, she thumbed the back pocket of her jeans, Austere visible in a holster at her hip. Interrogation mode. She probably wasn’t even aware of it. Her amber eyes travelled from the bottom up, carefully cataloguing: no shoes and only a single sock, the belt of his jeans undone, his shirt inside-out and to his horror splattered with Jude’s blood, glasses askew, hair no doubt just as bad as Jude’s.

‘Very early,’ the corporal concluded, expression too doctored.

He wet his lips, fishing desperately for an excuse that wouldn’t come. ‘I uh,’ Nothing. ‘Come in! It’s uh, it’s cold outside, r-right?’

When he gestured her in, she remained rooted to the spot for a beat too long before crossing the threshold with a tight nod, hand hovering dangerously close to the Austere.

Plaiting his hair, Jude emerged from the bedroom, smartly dressed in a shirt and a pair of ironed trousers. ‘Miss Fairy! A pleasure to have you back, my dear.’

‘It’s Shalia, actually.’

The corporal and the exorcist could have been masters in the craft of fake smiles.

‘Shalia, then.’ He gestured her over to the dining table. ‘Why don’t you take a seat?’

She gave Morgan one final look he couldn’t interpret before stiffly sitting at the dining table – the chairs silent and unmoving this time. After fetching a notepad and pen, three teacups and a steaming teapot Morgan hadn’t seen the exorcist boil water for, Jude squeezed into the chair beside her. Morgan considered surreptitiously adjusting his shirt and hiding the navy blood stain, but thought better of it before he took a seat opposite the corporal. There was nothing he needed to hide, after all; Jude wasn’t a colleague, technically.

A beat passed as Shalia and Morgan watched Jude portion out the tea. Morgan wasn’t willing to start the discussion and, clearly, neither was the corporal.

It was Jude who broke the silence first. ‘So, I’ve been thinking about a way we can bring in Wrath alive.’

‘That was quick,’ said Shalia, cradling her teacup. ‘Where did you find the time?’

Morgan blinked. Had he misheard the insinuation in her tone?

‘I’m a fantastic multitasker.’ A sip of tea. ‘But also, it’s not that difficult of a problem to solve. I’ve been working on a way to put Wrathy in the ground – sorry, a way to legally and safely turn him over to the bureau’s custody – for months now.’

‘And that is what we’re doing, yes? Taking Wrath into custody?’ Shalia’s amber eyes peaked out from within a set of feathered brown eyelashes at Morgan, carefully neutral.

Morgan swallowed. Worked the muscle in his jaw. Moist his lips. ‘Yeah, of course. Wouldn’t clear my name any if he wound up dead. Can’t make any promises on the state he’ll be in though when we’re done.’

Shalia sighed. ‘I don’t expect a miracle. This is a very dangerous suspect and we’re only three people. You really won’t consider the Patrol?’

‘What for? Their skillset is, no offence, not as good as mine. I get hit, I get back up again. Most of the Patrol are human, right? Take it from personal experience, if Wrath got his hands on one of them, there’d be nothing left.’

Jude said, ‘Aw, you do care,’ and drank his tea with the pinkie extended. ‘And what of us? Not scared we’d be reduced to ashes?’

‘I’m sure you can take care of yourself. And the corporal –’

‘Can speak for herself. You don’t need to worry about me. The trap you mentioned, Jerónimos. What should we know about it? How does it work?’

‘Later. More importantly,’ Jude tapped the pen to the notepad’s surface, ‘how are we going to get Wrath out in the open?’

Morgan hadn’t given it much thought. It was suicidal to use himself as bait, draw Wrath out that way, but that’s how he figured the fight would go down. But he couldn’t be prepared every minute of every day, waiting for the demon to strike. No, they needed a more proactive approach, not reactive, a way to draw Wrath into a trap of their own making. But the man – the demon – was notoriously reclusive and unpredictable.

Shalia adjusted the XL-901’s. ‘I have an idea.’ She turned to Morgan and like a schoolteacher coaxing a student through a difficult problem, began, ‘Lieutenant. Do we perhaps know someone that could put us into contact with Wrath?’

It wasn’t a difficult connection to make. ‘He won’t help us. The old bastard pissed his pants at the thought he might be selling Wrath out. There’s no way he’d hand over his contact information without a fuss. Jude,’ Morgan nodded to the exorcist, ‘was a throw-off. A way to get us out of his hair. Take the attention away from him.’

‘You could just…force it out of him,’ suggested Jude into his teacup.

Shalia scrunched her nose with distaste. ‘Not exactly legal, but I have to agree. Jerónimos is right on this one. I’m surprised you didn’t shake it out of Ling the first time you pinned him to the wall.’

‘I wasn’t thinking clearly,’ said Morgan with the familiarity of having said it a hundred times. ‘But you’re right. I guess I thought Jude could lead us to him but…that’s wishful thinking.’

Jude snorted. ‘Don’t sell me so short, sweetheart. I’m sure I could’ve rigged up a tracking spell.’

“Could’ve’?’ prodded Shalia.

‘It wouldn’t have been an ordinary spell, that’s for sure. Tried tracking Wrathy boy in the past but the demon possessing him has a good head on its shoulders. A veil of some kind, obscuring the scrying. Tricky, but not impossible to break. Given time.’

‘Time we don’t have,’ added Morgan.

Jude nodded. ‘Plus, if I do break the veil, the demon would know. It might walk into the trap, it might not. Maybe it’ll blow the place we use to set the ambush into bits, with us inside. Morgan, you might walk out but dear Shalia and I probably won’t.’

‘That just leaves Ling then,’ said the corporal. She turned to Morgan, ‘Even if you can’t “persuade” Ling to hand over the contact information, just a few minutes near his Glass should be enough time for me and the XL’s to crack the security and take the info by force.’

Jude whistled. ‘You can really do that? Without having to lift a finger?’

‘The XL’s,’ she tapped the frame of her glasses, ‘are wirelessly connected to my neural network. They piggie-back off the synaptic pathways created by the bureau-issued Glass so that I might control them by thought alone. Technically, I’m not lifting a finger. But mentally I’m doing somersaults.’

‘Huh,’ said Jude. To Morgan, ‘And what can yours do?’

‘Lets me see.’

Drily, ‘How remarkable.’

Shalia cleared her throat. ‘The trap, Jerónimos? You said you’d explain how it works?’

‘Right.’ He opened the notepad to a fresh page and began to scribble. ‘This is pretty standard magecraft where I’m from. Unlike Joudai, demon summoning and trapping is common practice there. They’re used for a variety of things, too. From cleaning a house to soldiers in an army – whatever you can think of, a demon or celestial is sure to be at the centre of it. At least, it was.’

From between Morgan’s teeth came a name: ‘Talmira.’

‘The dead Runejan queen?’ said Shalia.

‘Surprised you know of her, sweetheart,’ Jude said to Morgan. ‘I wonder what you and her royal deadness could possibly have in common.’

Morgan went rigid, the phantom ghosts of long-gone pains fluttering across the skin: burnt and sallow flesh, an urgency of hunger, a holy sword through the gut. The agony of loss. ‘Nothing interesting.’

Shalia noticed the shift. Her hands came to rest at the centre of the table, close to his but not quite touching. An invitation.

If Jude noticed his discomfort, he didn’t comment. ‘That so? Well, anyway. When she was still alive and had half of Runeja inside her little empire, she outlawed the practice of magic for anyone but the royal family and its armies. Lucky for me, I left that shithole years before her occupation. Unlucky for Wrathy boy, it means I have the right kind of training to capture the demon – or devil – he’s in bed with.’

‘Is there a difference?’ asked Morgan with only half an ear. He withdrew his hands into his lap with an apologetic glance at the corporal.

Jude’s scribbles grew more frantic. Morgan could make out little of the madness – the words weren’t in a language he recognised – but the symbols were unmistakeably magic runes and sigils. ‘Of course! Devils are child’s play, just house servants and messengers. Demons are a problem. If we’re going off the way Wrathy’s killed and from what you’ve told me, he’s likely being possessed by a demon. It makes things difficult, but not impossible.’ He indicated a circle on the page confined by a larger one, tiny words and symbols enclosed by the two lines. At its centre lay a five-pointed star, its point facing down. Morgan shivered. ‘This is the general sealing rune we’re going to use,’ continued Jude. ‘I’ll modify it based on whatever you want to do with Wrath in the end.’ He looked first to the corporal, then to Morgan. ‘Whether you want him unconscious, for me to strip him of the demon, or…’

‘To kill him,’ Morgan finished.

Jude nodded.

Shalia pushed her chair roughly back and got to her feet. ‘A precaution we won’t need. Obviously, we want him to be stripped of the demon.’

Do we? Morgan thought but didn’t say.

‘As long as Wrath is in possession of this thing,’ she continued, ‘he’s a threat not just to us, but the general public. It’s our duty to remove the threat.’

Jude flashed her a showman’s plastic smile. ‘My dear, I don’t disagree. But I think he does.’

Morgan closed his eyes. Something inside of him, something wretched and violent and furious, desperately wanted Wrath dead. A territorial, animal instinct that screamed for retribution, for vengeance on the thing that stepped into his home and threatened his family. That stuck a dagger – two of them – into his chest. That clearly was trying to frame him, ruin his reputation and his life. If it had been the him of twelve years ago, he would’ve agreed. But he wasn’t that person – that monster – anymore. Not entirely.

‘The corporal’s right,’ Morgan said to the tabletop. ‘We take him in alive. Exorcise the demon, or whatever, if we can.’

Jude closed the notepad. ‘Again, I don’t disagree. However, stripping Wrath of the demon comes at a risk.’

‘To who?’ asked Morgan.

‘Now, now. No one’s putting their life on the line unless Wrathy boy gets free. The risk is to the possessed individual. Demonic possession is a tricky thing, exorcism more so. We don’t know the law of the demon’s contract, or how they’re intertwined. How far the possession has progressed.’

‘You mean,’ said Shalia, ‘you don’t know if he’ll survive being exorcised.’

Jude clapped his hands together. ‘Correct! The demon could be possessing his body like a virus, rather than a spirit. Or a parasite. If that’s the case, stripping Wrathy of the demon would likely result in his death. Now, Morgan sweetheart, don’t look so down.’

Morgan stopped chewing on a fingernail. ‘It’s a risk. It’s a risk, but we’ll have to take it. There no way for you to know what type of demon it is?’

Jude shook his head. ‘Afraid not. That kind of thing takes time and energy. To keep a demon imprisoned takes a lot of stamina on behalf of the caster – more so the more powerful the demon. I’m a talented mage, but even I have my limits.’

Shalia said, ‘A shame.’

Morgan, mentally drained and irritable, almost asked what her problem was before he bit his tongue. ‘So, you trap him in the circle. Great. He isn’t gonna just walk into a magic circle like a well-trained puppy. Got a plan to get him in there?’

Jude gave him a withering look. ‘Oh, if only I had a strong, tactically-trained officer to manhandle him into the circle. You wanted a chance to go at it – a round two – and here it is. If you can’t force him into the circle, that’s your problem, not mine. The only thing you should be worried about is not dying before you get him there – or killing him beforehand. Dear Shalia will be there too, won’t you?’

Shalia gave the exorcist a wither of her own. ‘Of course.’ And to Morgan, ‘But like I said, Wrath will be stronger next time. He’ll be fresh, and he’ll likely turn up with a better strategy for killing you.’

‘He was using my family as hostages,’ said Morgan between his teeth. ‘He won’t get another chance, not if we goad him into a fight first.’

‘How did Wrathy boy manage to get a leg up on you?’ asked Jude. ‘It’s not like you to let someone else get on top –’

‘Enchanted knives,’ said Morgan quickly. ‘Once they hit my heart it was like I froze, from the inside out. Everything just stopped.’

Jude nodded, manicured brows creased in thought. ‘Easy enough to counter. We choose a location to lure Wrathy boy in, and I set a ward around it that stops all magic except my own.’

‘That’s still fallible,’ said Shalia, ‘if the magic is powerful enough.’

Morgan shrugged, a thin slither of hope daring to rear itself. ‘It’s better than nothing.’

‘The corporal is, once again, right. If you’re at Wrath’s mercy, I wouldn’t rely on my wards alone to keep you alive for very long, sweetheart.’

‘If it gets to that point,’ said Morgan, ‘I’m already dead.’