Cameron’s eyes got wider, and though I couldn’t hear him, I could feel the movement of his protest against my hand. “Look, he’s… He’s a friend.” Sort of. “He’s not the thing that’s out there.”
“Aw, Jesse… I’m touched. Tears in my eyes, really.” I glared at the demon, and he just chuckled. “Wanna bet he’d wet himself it I walked over and touched him?” Axel wiggled his fingers with a leer.
“Would you quit? This isn’t helping.”
“Oh I’m sorry. When exactly did I offer to help?” He smirked.
Cameron said something else behind my palm, and I gave him a look. “Can I let you go without you… doing some hocus-pocus or whatever?” He nodded, his eyes promising to behave. I removed my hand and stepped back.
“That’s a demon!” His voice was distant, tinny, but I could make out the words so long as I was looking at him. Cameron pointed an accusing figure at Axel, who just laughed.
“Give the little priest a big cigar!” The smile Axel gave him was nothing short of predatory and the demon advanced on Cameron. “Now what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. He’s going to do nothing.” Will someone please explain to me later how I wound up protecting a demon from a priest? I put a hand on each chest and pushed, noting that yet again, Axel’s touch didn’t trigger Mira’s protection spells. In fact, he felt all too human. It was… yes, creepy, okay? I didn’t have a better word for it. “Both of you go to your separate corners and cool off.”
Cameron ignored my well-meant advice, of course. “What’s it doing here?”
“ It got stuck inside when that set off that rather poorly constructed consecration spell,” Axel spat. “ It had no intention of hanging around this little ape colony any longer than absolutely necessary, up until that point.”
“Axel…”
“What? He can be rude but I can’t? Demon, hello…” Whatever tirade he was going to go off on next was interrupted by a booming voice from outside, so loud that even I could hear it.
“ARCHITECT!”
Axel cursed, too soft for me to even tell what language he was speaking. My stomach gave a small lurch, so I was guessing it was demonic.
“ARCHITECT! Come out!” It had to be the Yeti because the mere sound of the voice made my skin crawl and I tasted oil at the back of my tongue.
I looked at Axel. “Architect?”
He ignored me. “I believe, gentlemen, that that is my cue to depart.” Axel sketched us a small two-fingered salute and headed for the stairs. Cameron scrambled to get out of his path.
I know the guys downstairs had to be saying, “What the hell?” (again) when Axel calmly walked down the stairs and headed for the front door, Cameron and I thudding after him.
I think we’d all forgotten about Duke. The mammoth mutt took one look at Axel and made a lunge for him, bellowing to high heaven. Without breaking stride, Axel snarled-literally snarled, with bared teeth and glowing eyes-at him, and the dog nearly did a backflip trying to come to a halt on the hardwood floor. Axel barked, “Sit!” and the big lummox cowered, making a puddle on the floor. So much for our valiant defender.
I snapped a quick, “Stay inside” at the guys, trying not to sound like I was telling them to sit as well, then followed Axel out onto the front porch. Cameron trotted after us pretty quick, and everyone else pressed against the windows to watch.
The Yeti was standing just inside the tree line, carefully out of range of the morning sun. He’d assumed his human guise again, the albino in the charcoal gray suit. Knowing what he really was, I could see both forms, flickering over each other like a bad film clip, managing to fill both the hulking space that was the Yeti and squash itself into the slender man’s form at the same time. It was going to give me a headache before too long. Dark shadows swirled around him, wisps of blight coalescing where he stood like fog seeking low ground.
Axel leaned against the porch rail nonchalantly. “You rang?”
“We must speak, Architect. Come here to me.” The suit-clad figure was still, but the other, superimposed over the first, swayed side to side, shifting from clawed foot to clawed foot. Almost like he was nervous.
I strained to hear the Yeti’s words. The voice part of it was still muffled in my damaged ears, but the demon side, the sickly oil-slick side was getting through loud and clear. Ugh.
Axel snorted. “No, you come here.” It was a moot point. Neither demon was going to cross the last strip of consecrated ground. The Yeti did inch out of cover though, fidgeting until he found a place safely shaded from the light. The furry form snarled its reluctance, almost like it was pulled forward against its will, while the man in the suit merely stood with his hands folded together in front of him.
“We must speak,” he said again, his colorless lips barely moving at all. “Of many things.”
“Of cabbages and kings?” Axel examined his fingernails idly, apparently finding them infinitely more interesting that the creature across the clearing.
“Of your transgressions.” I had a feeling that not only did the Yeti not have a sense of humor, but he had never read Lewis Carroll.
Axel laughed, and part of me cringed to hear myself laughing at the Yeti. I was really going to have to talk to Axel about using someone else’s voice. “You and I might have all the time in the world, but our friends here do not. Perhaps you should pick just one great sin to harp on?” At some point, I realized, Axel’s language had changed. He’d become all stuffy or something. More formal. I started to understand that, whatever this was, it wasn’t just a regular old chat between buddies.
Furry Yeti’s head tossed in agitation while Human Yeti’s image remained calm, cool, and collected. “You should not be here. You violate your own laws.”
The blond demon snorted again, and I swear I saw the real Yeti flinch. “There is no law that says I cannot try to collect a soul, especially one I’ve had a claim on for years. Check the ledgers, you’ll see my mark.”
I gave Axel a “what the fuck?” look, but he refused to take his eyes off the other demon.
“Yes… the Architect’s little pet.” The Yeti was not happy. The man in the gray suit frowned, jaw clenching, and overlaid on that image, the big hairball’s muzzle wrinkled, his claws digging furrows into the forest floor. “A mark unclaimed is a mark unclaimed. Your presence here exerts undue influence-”
“YOU DARE?!” That hurt, and out of the corner of my eye I caught Cam clamping his hands down over his own ears too. Damn, Axel had some lungs on him. “You DARE question ME?”
And it wasn’t just us. I swear, the Yeti about wet himself. He looked just like Duke making a puddle on the floor. It’s kinda hard to be scared of something that looks like a spanked puppy. “The laws.. .”
“I know the laws! Did I not write them? Shall we really start tallying up just who has violated what?” Axel moved down to the very last step, as far as he could go without touching the ground. “Do you really want that eye focused on you?”
I’ve heard of the power of personality, but I don’t think that I truly appreciated what that meant until I watched Axel back the Yeti down with nothing more than a stern glare and a few cold words. Even without his gaze fixed on me, part of me wanted to go slinking back inside too, and I’d taken two steps before I caught myself.
“You are sworn to be neutral.” Even cringing and all but melting under Axel’s gaze, the Yeti had enough spine to try to resist. “Remove yourself.”
“YOU WILL NOT COMMAND ME!” Leaves fell from the trees; rocks clattered down the hillside behind us. Axel’s voice reverberated for what seemed like forever. “MY WILL IS LAW!”
I don’t know what he did. He flung his hand out, a casual gesture, and there was a flash of light, brighter than the sun. When I finished blinking the after images out of my eyes, the Yeti was gone. After a few moments Axel’s shoulders relaxed, and he dropped his hand to his side. “Well. That’s that, then.” He shook his head, frowning at something, and finally said, “Well, shit.”