“It was an accident. The sorcerer burned up the staff while I was trying to get into you.”
Judging by the look on her face, the explanation didn’t tell her much. She shook her head. “Never mind. We’ll go into that later. You seem to be right about one thing—this area isn’t safe.”
And some other part of hell might be? Rule made a noise in his throat, frustrated by his inability to speak. And not at all sure they should budge from this spot.
He didn’t know how they’d gotten here, but the staff had disappeared before when She called it to her. That times, Harlowe had been dragged along willy-nilly because he’d been holding it. Maybe that’s what had happened this time. The burn on Lily’s stomach suggested the staff had been touching her when it was hit with mage fire, and Rule had been touching her. So they’d been pulled into hell with it.
But what about the demon? Why would it have been pulled here? And where was the staff? If She had summoned it, wouldn’t Rule and Lily have ended up wherever She was, too?
He glanced at the volcano. Not that he was complaining about Her absence. The farther away they were from
Her, the better. But if they’d been dragged here by the staff, they should have ended up with it.
The other possibility was that the destruction of the staff had somehow opened a gate. Cullen had called the thing a rent in reality, so that wasn’t too far-fetched. If so, that gate might be their only way home.
But if Lily remembered the existence of gates, they weren’t on her mind now. She had questions—that hadn’t changed—and only one place to aim them. At the demon. “How do you do this whatever-it-is? And what will it do to me other than make me stronger?”
“I sort of get control of your body.”
Rule growled.
Gan frowned at him. “If you want to say something, you have to think the words. Just making sounds doesn’t work.”
“I think I know what he meant,” Lily said. “You are not taking over any part of me.”
“I’m not talking about possession. If I could have done that, I would have. I was trying,” it added, aggrieved. “I mean that I have to take charge of your body temporarily. So I can make it take ymu.”
“This ymu is the energy you were talking about—that comes from living things?” She shook her head. “You’re not stuffing me with death magic, either.”
It rolled its eyes. “Ymu is not death magic! When you eat dead things, is that death magic? Ymu is just energy. You people have all kinds of energy in your world— bombs and electricity and gasoline—only you can’t eat those energies, right? Your body would have to change to take gasoline energy instead of dead animal energy.”
“Yes, but… I feel like you’re pointing in one direction so I won’t notice the card up your sleeve.”
Its forehead wrinkled. “Card?”
“Never mind. How would this ymu help me?”
Its forehead wrinkled even more. “You could say that ymu makes things want to be in their proper form.”
“Then a hirug’s ymu would make my body want to be like a hirug.”
“No, no, no! Ymu is the energy. The pattern is from the assig—which you can’t do anything with. I can.” It looked smug. “That’s why I’m a demon. But you won’t get any hirug assig and your body already knows its pattern, so I just have to get it to take the ymu and it will make itself strong and right again.”
She chewed on her lip a moment. “How would you do that?”
“You could suck me off—”
This time it was Lily who growled.
“Okay, okay, it doesn’t have to be sex. But you have to take something of my body into you. This is still eating. I can’t put ymu in air.”
“I have to eat part of you?”
“I’m not crazy about that, either, if you won’t do sex, but…” It scowled, its brow wrinkling as if it was thinking fiercely. “Spit. Spit should work. I can push lots of ymu into it, then push some in your mouth.”
Her face twisted in revulsion.
“What’s that thing you say? Get over it. Yeah. Get over it. If you’re picky about what you eat here, you starve. No McDonald’s on the corner. No corner. Get it? No corner.” It giggled, appreciating its own humor. “Before you can eat ymu, though, I have to tinker with your body. Make things more dense where they should be.”
“Dense?”
“You don’t have the words!” It rubbed its head with the hand not holding the dead hirug. Then it spat out a stream of what Lily called babble—and this time, Rule didn’t know what it meant, either.
Words mixed with images and sensory impressions. He heard “hydrocarbon.” Smelled blood. “Tender wheat” arrived with “liver” and the sound of water dripping. “Eggs” were part of an image of the glowing disc of the sun.
“See?” the demon finished in English. “He doesn’t understand, either. You have to already have the ideas, or you can’t get the meanings.”
She nodded slowly. “One more question. Can this be undone later?”
“Sure.” It looked at the hirug it still held and then tossed it to the ground. Apparently once something finished dying it became inedible. After another glance overhead, it began studying the remaining dead and dying hirug.
Lily rubbed her forehead. “I need to think about this.”
In the distance, the mountain rumbled, though there was no accompanying trembling in the ground this time.
“Think fast,” Gan said, bending to pick up another hirug.
Rule rubbed his head along Lily’s arm, making a low, grumbling sound. This is a bad idea. Don ‘l do it.
She ran a hand along his back. “You don’t like it, do you? I don’t, either. But what are my choices? I was barely able to make it out of the open before the hirug got here. I hurt. And I can’t travel like this.”
He poked her with his nose and pointedly sat down.
“You think we should stay put?”
For now, anyway. He nodded.
She shook her head. “I think we have to accept that the creature—the demon—that Gan knows how to survive here. And we don’t. If it’s giving it to me straight about needing to keep me alive, or it dies, too… what do you think?”
That he couldn’t answer with a simple yes or no. He couldn’t even write in the dirt. There wasn’t enough of it. Rule made a frustrated sound.
“Never mind.” She sank her fingers into his fur and scratched. “I don’t know why I keep feeling like you ought to be able to answer… anyway, I think Gan’s telling the truth about that part.” She looked at the sky, where the fiery glow near the volcano was fading. “I wonder if you know anything about that goddess Gan says is duking it out with its prince.”
Rule nodded again.
“You do, huh? I wish you could talk. She must be pretty tough if she can hold her own with a demon prince. You think she might help us?”
He shook his head vigorously.
“She’s one of the bad guys?”
He nodded.
“Then it doesn’t matter who wins the fight. Either one will be bad news for us.”
Dammit, she was right—more right than she knew. And he wasn’t thinking straight. If Her avatar survived the battle with the demon prince, She might come looking for Lily.
So yes, they might have to leave this spot, but not right this minute. Lily was letting the demon’s urgency rush her to a decision. Slowly Rule shook his head. Slow down. Give me time to look for any remnants of the staff, or some trace of a hellgate. To look for food and water, find out if it’s possible for us to survive here.
She titled her head to one side. “I can’t tell if that means ‘no, we can’t stay,” or ’no, 1 don’t agree.‘ I guess it doesn’t matter. It’s my decision.“