Chapter 38: Pact

  What stood before Cole now was not a human being.

  Black horns, undulating with dark green light, spiraled from Devin’s head. His face was no longer a human face either. It was sharper, longer, stretched into something strange. His eyes were like a goat’s, but a toxic yellow-green with flat pupils. When he blinked it was a slow, deliberate, unhuman blink.

  His hands had become sharp claws. His arms were twisted things, corded and overbuilt. He had cloven hooves. His legs were longer, distended. He was huge now, all rippling muscles, green veins spider-webbed across him, pulsing with sick light beneath the skin.

  He still wore the tatters of his old suit, the last remnants of whatever had been human about him. The fabric clung to his frame in strips, black and gray.

  The ash around them swirled as the creature breathed.

  When he’d roared, it was a roar of possession. Claim. A statement that something had arrived and the world would have to accept it.

  Now, he bowed his head, looking down at Cole.

  “I must thank you, mortal wizard,” the creature said. “This turned out much better than I thought.”

  The voice hit Cole’s brain a fraction of a second before his ears caught up. That same sensation he’d felt in the garage when Veritus spoke.

  Cole’s blood went cold.

  Before he could process why the cadence sounded familiar, the demonic creature blurred.

  It simply vanished from where it stood and appeared in front of Cole, close enough that Cole could smell it. Smoke, rot, and that chemical tang of the green flame.

  “Ashen Aegis,” Cole snapped.

  His shield bloomed unseen, that subtle line in the sand, that quiet no he’d leaned on against bullets and blades and spells. It felt solid for a heartbeat.

  The punch hit like a sledgehammer swung by a god.

  The Aegis shattered in his awareness, failing. The fist drove into Cole’s chest, and Cole felt ribs crack. Air whooshed out of him in a harsh, helpless sound. His vision went white at the edges as he flew backward and slammed into a building.

  Concrete bit into his shoulders. Dust burst around his head. Something sharp scraped his cheek, hot and wet.

  The Crozier fell from his hands, clattering away across the ash coated pavement. Cole’s fingers twitched uselessly, trying to grasp for it and finding nothing.

  The demon chuckled.

  “Mm,” it said, savoring the sound. “That is an impressive shield, but you don’t know how your stats even work, do you?”

  Cole tried to suck in a breath. His chest screamed at him. He tasted blood, iron and bitter. His body wanted to curl inward and protect itself, but the impact had left him half draped against the cracked wall.

  The demon’s hooves clopped closer, slow and unhurried. No fear in it. No caution. It had crossed from threat into certainty.

  “I can’t say what stat empowers that shield,” the demon continued conversationally, “but whatever it is has to be near equal to or higher than the stat that is governing my attack if you want to stop it.”

  Cole’s authority stat tightened in warning again, a sharp pressure.

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  “Now that I have taken over dear Devin’s body,” the demon said, “his strength stat is overwhelming.”

  Cole groaned. Pain wracked his body, ribs stinging with every movement. He forced his eyes to stay open, forced himself to keep the creature in sight. His left arm trembled as he tried to push himself up even an inch. It didn’t obey.

  The demon’s shadow fell over him, swallowing what little light was left.

  Cole managed to cough out his conclusion.

  “Veritus.”

  The demon bowed his head in a mockery of politeness.

  “Indeed, little wizard. Indeed.”

  The last remnants of Devin’s suit fluttered slightly as Veritus shifted, and for a split second Cole saw a tear in fabric that revealed skin beneath. That skin wasn’t normal. It looked stretched over something that didn’t fit.

  “How,” Cole choked out. The word scraped his throat raw.

  Veritus tilted his head, studying Cole the way a child studied an insect pinned to a board.

  “Can you not put it together?” Veritus asked. “Why do you think I was so insistent on making that deal with you? Because I was kind?”

  He made a grinding noise that might have been a laugh.

  “No. I did it for many reasons, but one of them was for this.”

  Veritus took a step to the side. His voice remained calm. Almost instructional.

  “You see, when someone defeats me or closes a portal, I can’t really do anything with your world until the Unending allows it,” Veritus said. “The rules are tiresome. There are boundaries. Consequences. It is all so…civilized.”

  Cole swallowed blood. His fingers scraped along the ground, searching for the Crozier by feel. All he touched was ash, fine and dry, and bits of broken glass.

  “But if I make a pact,” Veritus continued, “and certain conditions are met…”

  Cole’s eyes squeezed shut for a moment as pain surged again. Then his eyes snapped open.

  He got it.

  He could feel the trap closing in around his throat.

  Veritus smiled, flourishing a clawed hand toward himself, as if presenting a work of art.

  “Yes,” Veritus purred. “I get to take this body for a little ride.”

  The demon spread his arms slightly. The green veins beneath his skin pulsed, brightening in time with his words.

  “Any levels it receives, I receive,” Veritus said. “Quite the nice magical skill, don’t you think?”

  Cole tried to move again. His torso screamed. Something inside his chest shifted wrong. He gritted his teeth and forced himself not to make a sound. He wouldn’t give Veritus that.

  Veritus walked away from him a few steps. He regarded the cracked building overhead, the one Cole was pressed against. The structure had already been weakened from the earlier blast and from the fight, hairline fractures running through the concrete.

  Veritus lifted his gaze and spoke casually.

  “I’m going to go to that little settlement of yours, I think,” Veritus said.

  Cole’s blood turned to ice.

  “Killing everyone there should be a nice boost to the experience,” Veritus continued, casual as a man talking about a meal. “Even if it’s only one level, that’s something when you get to where I am at.”

  Cole’s mind flashed with Hawthorne. The gates. Naomi’s clipboard. Alina’s exhausted eyes. The kids, still shaken. The patchwork walls they’d built. The people he’d trained. People who were stronger now, yes, but not strong enough for this.

  Not for Veritus wearing a demon’s body as armor.

  “You may have noticed already, little wizard,” Veritus said, “but the Unending pushes you to greater and greater challenges. It enjoys its story.”

  Veritus looked back at Cole with those goat eyes, amusement burning in the toxic glow.

  “Another advantage of my pact magic is that I can face those challenges with the body I take over,” Veritus said. “And even if it dies, well, no great loss, is it?”

  He spread his hands again, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

  “I am still here,” Veritus said. “Removes a considerable amount of risk.”

  Cole’s authority stat screamed again, and this time it wasn’t just danger. It was urgency. A pressure that demanded action.

  Cole tried to speak. Tried to threaten. Tried to stand.

  His body refused.

  Veritus’s attention drifted back to the building over Cole’s head. He studied a vulnerable crack in the concrete, the kind that looked small until you understood how structures failed. How collapse started with a single point of weakness.

  With a clenched fist, Veritus punched that crack.

  The blow was casual.

  The effect was not.

  The building groaned. The sound rolled through the wall Cole was pressed against, vibrating into his bones. Dust sifted down in a steady stream. Tiny chunks of concrete bounced off Cole’s forehead and cheek, sharp little impacts that would’ve been nothing on a normal day and felt like knives now.

  The crack widened. Split. Branched.

  Veritus turned back to Cole.

  “Goodbye, mortal wizard,” Veritus said.

  Then he blurred away, toward the settlement.

  The air snapped in his wake. Ash lifted in a brief spiral where he’d been standing, then settled again.

  Cole lay there, staring at the empty space, watching dust fall.

  The building was going to fall on him.

  Hawthorne was going to be slaughtered.

  And Cole could barely move.

  He clenched his jaw and tried anyway, dragging one arm forward through ash. His fingertips brushed something solid. Metal.

  The Crozier.

  He hooked his fingers around it, pain lancing up his arm, and pulled it toward himself inch by inch as the wall above him continued to groan.

  He had to move.

  Because if he didn’t, the last thing he’d ever see would be Hawthorne burning in the distance.