Kit Fawkes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fauxfawkes) wrote2021-01-27 05:09 pm
fauxfawkes) wrote2021-01-27 05:09 pm
Part Five: The Incredibly Stupid Adventures of Kit Hargreaves, Demon Summoner
Title: The Incredibly Stupid Adventures of Kit Hargreaves, Demon Summoner
Universe: The KitVerse, with some crossover guest stars.
Warnings: All the usual warnings for a story involving Godchild as a parent canon: violence, language, dark themes, etc. Also, some fairly ridiculous humor.
Summary: Kit Hargreaves summons a demon. The demon is amused. Crehador is not.
Notes: THIS IS PART TWO. DO NOT READ THIS PART FIRST. GO HERE FOR PART ONE, IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY.
"How very kind of you to bring a hostage with you," a faintly accented voice said as he began to come to, the foggy veil of oblivion slowly parting as he seemed to swim toward consciousness again.
The first thing he noticed was that his head hurt.
The second thing he noticed was that the familiar pressure of his cane against his side had disappeared.
"It certainly makes things a great deal more convenient," the voice went on, seemingly unconcerned by the agony he was currently fighting off as he tried to find the willpower to open his eyes. "It appears you're quite like your father in that respect. One gets much farther threatening your playthings than one does with merely threatening you."
Kit forced his eyes open, still groggy, and found himself greeted with the sight of an opulent room lined with marble pillars and elegant statues, a place that reminded him of nothing so much as the mausoleum where he'd first met—by some very sideways definition of the word—his grandmother and grandfather on his father's side. It was all white, everything in hues of white like clouds or pearls or smoke, and it hurt to try to focus on the expanse of it with his already spinning gaze. His senses weren't responding as quickly as they should've been, either, he noted with displeasure. He hadn't realized he was sitting down until he'd opened his eyes to see the chair—and the restraints binding his wrists and ankles to it.
"Aren't you going to introduce yourself?" he rasped, trying to keep the man talking to buy himself some time. First he had to clear his head, had to get a better grasp of the situation. Then he had to find a way out. Then he had to find Kurama, assuming they hadn't killed him yet...
"Oh, I didn't rank high enough to merit becoming one of your grandfather's precious cards," the man said with undisguised irritation. "Years of service to our holy cause, decades spent in pursuit of the science that would let man achieve divinity, and all for what? To be crushed underfoot by the whims of a man slavishly devoted to a dead strumpet's memory and the toys of the occult."
Kit coughed, trying to muster a dry snicker. "Wow. You must be pretty pathetic, then, if a guy as insipid as that managed to crush you."
He could practically hear the man's knuckles turning white on the arms of his chair in the tense silence that followed, and quickly braced himself for a strike in retaliation. But it never came; instead, the faint sound of chuckling filled the air, slightly too forced to be genuine, and Kit realized he was treading in dangerous waters on that subject with this man. Whatever it was that had happened between his grandfather and him, it was a thorn in the man's side, and he clearly had no qualms about relieving the agony of that thorn by taking it out on his enemy's descendant.
Just one more thing to thank his paternal grandfather for, Kit silently grumbled.
"Now, then, Lord Hargreaves—or would you prefer Mr. Fawkes?" the man continued smoothly, needling at him with such an outlandish implication, that he might prefer a drop in rank, "No, I think we'd best call you Lord Hargreaves. We might as well keep this as close to a family reunion as possible."
"Which makes you my fairy godmother?" Kit answered dizzily. Again, he waited for a blow that never fell; again, he wondered and despaired at what trump card this unknown foe could be holding, that he felt no need to rise to Kit's bait and respond with violence.
"Young Lord Hargreaves, Alexis's precious Magician. What an honor, that I now have the pleasure of entertaining such an esteemed member of the Major Arcana," the man said in a voice that reminded Kit of nothing so much as a snake. "My name is Ducelli. My contemporary, Signor Rapetti, was the man responsible for the operation you so thoroughly destroyed a few months ago."
"The dead girls," Kit whispered, forcing himself to tilt his head up and keep it erect, despite the urge to let it fall against his chest. "I see you compared notes."
"We did far more than that, Lord Hargreaves," Ducelli answered with a cold smile. Then, abruptly, his voice turned pleasant again. "Did you enjoy our sleeping beauties? I do hope you appreciated them. They were specially crafted for you, you know."
"I see you've discovered my weakness for cutthroat women," Kit muttered, his humor as black as his expression.
"The process had been in development for years, of course," Ducelli went on, rising from his chair and beginning to pace the room, seemingly uncaring of the fact that Kit was still bound to his own chair and couldn't reasonably follow his movements without an exceptional amount of head-turning and neck-craning, which considering his current dizziness and disorientation was decidedly not an option. "The deadly dolls, one of your grandfather's finest advancements. Far simpler to work on female subjects than male ones, as well, though not impossible. And such interesting data we gathered from examining them! Souls summoned back from the great beyond seemed to carry with them a unique ability, a mystic property that granted them extraordinary power in an otherwise mundane world."
He paused, turning on his heel so sharply that the sole of his shoe squeaked on the marble floor. "Of course, that wasn't the only area of research in which he made exceptional progress. After all, what good is a soul without a body to hold it? So we also greatly advanced the study of cellular growth, drawing just a few cells from a donor source and maturing them into an adult receptacle to hold our resummoned soul." His voice took on a note of arrogant pride. "I spearheaded that effort. I was the one who perfected a working process. I made the deadly dolls possible!"
"Which makes you a grown man who plays with dolls," Kit replied, sotto voce.
Ducelli's expression abruptly went icy. "But your grandfather," he said, stalking toward Kit's chair. "Your grandfather had no concept of vision. He was fixated on the idea of one woman, one resurrection. He failed to comprehend the sheer potential of what we had discovered, what we could do."
Kit glanced up as the man approached the side of his chair, then resisted the urge to howl as Ducelli seized a handful of the hair at the back of his neck and pulled, forcing him to throw his head back to compensate, making his vision swim and a jolt of pain lash through his mind. "Let me introduce you, Lord Hargreaves, to what I can do."
As if on cue, a new figure stepped into the room—a girl in a high-necked dress with wavy red hair about her shoulders, with a nose and smile that seemed unsettlingly familiar, with a pair of blue eyes that made Kit feel as though his heart had fallen out of his chest and splashed into his stomach. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, wasn't just that she was undeniably the most exquisite of all the so-called princesses he'd seen in the crypt below the house; no, it was that looking at her made him realize, to his horror, that he knew exactly where he'd seen those eyes before.
He'd seen them every day.
He'd seen them in the mirror.
"You were kind enough to spill your blood for us in Italy," Ducelli almost purred, his hand still fisted in Kit's inky hair, keeping his head forced back and his throat bared. "A few cells was more than enough."
"You didn't," Kit choked out, his body already involuntarily fighting against the restraints that bound him, completely ignorant of the pain that lanced up his limbs as sheer revulsion drove him to get away, away, as far as he could so he could kill that monstrosity, that abomination—
"And the Lord made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man, and the man said, 'this is now the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man'," Ducelli intoned, his smile tinged with twisted pleasure. "Shall I introduce you to your twin, Lord Hargreaves? I'm sure you'll appreciate that we've chosen to call her Eva."
The magic, Kit realized a moment too late. The magic in the crypt that had sent him flying, and the eyes he'd glimpsed before he'd blacked out—it had come from her, this girl they'd forged from his own blood, because there was magic in his blood and they'd harnessed that to make her...
And suddenly, more than anything, he longed to lash out and bring the whole building crumbling down around them, even if it meant his own death along with it. Anything if it meant destroying this blasphemous creation in front of him and the sneering man that had brought her into being.
"You're welcome to bed her if you like," Ducelli went on, releasing his grip on Kit's hair to step over and trace the curve of the girl's cheek, as though she were a doll in form as well as in name. And she didn't even flinch at the intimate touch or the insinuation; her blank eyes remained locked on Kit's, her expression as cold and flat as a mirror's surface itself. "I know that's one sin that runs in your blood."
"I'd sooner smother her with a pillow," Kit snarled back, unable to help himself.
Ducelli laughed. "Oh, we've already saved you the trouble of that."
And abruptly, the pieces fell into place. "You created her from my blood, grew her into a person, and then killed her like the others—"
"So that we could summon her back with the deadly doll process," Ducelli finished with a satisfied nod. "A very interesting process, experimentally speaking. You see, we'd known all along that the summoning ritual would awaken certain spiritual powers along with it, but Eva's proved unusually strong. As though the deadly doll process had only augmented a potential that was already there." He paused, obviously more for emphasis than anything else. "A potential that you so graciously demonstrated when you destroyed our laboratory in Italy."
"I'll gladly prepare you an encore," Kit muttered.
Ducelli sighed. "I must say, enduring your unending supply of retorts is just one more reason to commend myself for cutting your sister's throat when I had the chance. I much prefer her silence to your chatter."
"You mean you're so infatuated with the sound of your own voice that it annoys you to hear anyone else's."
"You're quite arrogant for a man bound and held at another's mercy," Ducelli remarked coolly. "Arrogant enough to entertain notions of destroying this entire building the way you did the other, I'm sure. But while I have no doubt you'd be willing to sacrifice yourself for the sake of seeing this undone once and for all, I also have no doubt you'll hesitate when it means the death of that dear young lady you brought with you, as well."
Then they hadn't killed Kurama after all. They were keeping him as leverage to ensure Kit's good behavior—and apparently, given Ducelli's persistent pronoun trouble, they still hadn't realized that his demon wasn't female. Perhaps that long hair of Kurama's had turned out to be useful after all, he thought wryly. With the way these monsters slaughtered girls without remorse, the likelihood of them underestimating Kurama's abilities based on his assumed gender was fairly high.
So much the better for their chances, he mused grimly. But would it be enough?
"Then let's get to the point," he said quietly, never taking his eyes off the girl called Eva. If she had his powers, even half of his powers, there was no doubt in his mind that she was the much greater threat at the moment. "What do you want with me?"
"Want?" Ducelli repeated, as though the answer were laughably simple. "I want to achieve the true purpose of DELILAH, the one we all sought before your grandfather surrendered to the temptations of the woman from Philistia: to bring about the end of this world and raise a new one from its ashes."
"Then you should've named her Babylon," Kit spat, his eyes growing narrow. "The mother of all abominations."
"Oh, no," Ducelli answered, once more grasping at Kit's hair and pulling his head back; this time, however, he traced his fingernail in a thin, stinging line across the expanse of Kit's bared throat and smiled like a snake. "I have my Eve. But so much the better if her Adam should join her."
Kit's blood ran cold as the man continued, "It is much more tedious to create a male doll. But sometimes the finished product is well worth the effort."
"You're mad!"
"An obstruction not just neutralized, but transformed into an ally," Ducelli murmured. "Who could stand in my way with two of you at my disposal? And so long as I gather an ample amount of that blood of yours before the process is completed, as many more as I care to create on top of it. A little blood goes a long way; all of yours should be more than sufficient to last me until my work is complete."
He paused, shifting his free hand to scratch at an itch on the side of his neck before returning his attention to Kit's throat. "Of course, there is still the matter of your young lady's life. And I'm not an unreasonable man, my dear earl, so allow me to extend you a bargain." His eyes narrowed slightly. "There's no mistaking your paternal lineage. You're the Cardmaster's grandson, beyond a shadow of a doubt. But that's only half the equation, isn't it? Half the blood. Half the potential."
His mother, Kit realized at once. The magic he'd inherited from his mother, that was so instinctive to him from years and years of life in Daventry, honed to a deadly edge under Crispin's tutelage and enhanced through his experiences with Crehador and the life he'd lived until now. The man knew who his father was, his grandfather, and quite probably knew everything there was to know about that side of his family...but he, just like everyone else save Crehador, had absolutely no way of knowing who his mother had been. They didn't know he was a prince on her side, and the heir to a kingdom if he wanted it. They didn't know why he was as powerful as he was.
And they couldn't replicate it if they didn't know how he'd gotten it in the first place.
"Who was it?" Ducelli demanded, yanking again on his hair. "Tell me and your young lady goes free. What did the Cardmaster do to create you? Which of his dolls conceived you?"
"You'll never make more of me," Kit forced himself to sneer, his vision already spinning from the abuse. "I'm one of a kind."
Ducelli snarled, releasing his hair long enough to backhand him across the face, making his head snap around from the force of the blow. Then, furious, the man stepped back, motioning angrily to the girl still standing silently in their midst. "Deal with him," he snapped at her. "We'll see if he's more inclined to talk when I start taking off his lady's fingers one by one in front of him."
The girl called Eva stepped forward, brandishing Kit's cane—so that was where it had gotten to, he thought absently, riding the narrow edge of vomiting from the disorientation—and raised it in her hands, her blue eyes cold as ice as he felt the magic flare and steeled himself for a whole new world of pain—
And then the moment shattered as Ducelli's howl pierced through the air.
~*~
Identical pairs of blue eyes turned as one to gawk at the man as he reeled backward, screaming and clasping his hands to his neck as what looked like thin, leafy vines burst from the flesh, ripping a line down toward his shoulder and over toward his chest as it sprouted like wildfire. His eyes were wide, frantic, disbelieving—and Kit seized his chance, snatching the magic that Eva had been collecting and wrenching it away from her, driving it down into his shackles with all the force he could muster.
"Kill them!" Ducelli shrieked as he thrashed and crumpled, flesh still bursting with flora even as he pitched toward the floor, bloody spittle foaming from his mouth.
At his command, Eva whirled back to face Kit, eyes sparking with fury as her magic flared again, and he fought to get his limbs free from the damaged shackles—just a little more, a little more!—as her first bolt of power hit him with enough force to tip his chair over backwards, slamming him back against the ground. He cried out as the impact jarred his already aching head, making his vision swim and blur over, but the landing was also enough to jar his hands and feet free of their bindings, just enough for him to roll out of the way before her second blast shattered the chair into splinters.
"Kurama!" he screamed, knowing his demon was somewhere near—who else could've unleashed such a plant upon Ducelli?—and about to enter the fight. "Break the cane!"
He continued to roll along the floor, fighting off waves of nausea as he scrambled for cover from the barrage of magic Eva was hurling in his direction, her already vast reserves only augmented by the help of the wand in his stolen cane. He dove behind a pillar, gasping for breath as the stone exploded behind him; he'd have to keep moving, he couldn't stay in one place for long, had to clear his head so he could cast and retaliate...
Another shot rocketed off the other side of the pillar, and he dove for a new safe haven, half running and half crawling as he ducked for cover. He had to get himself under control—!
Then, abruptly, the explosions went silent, replaced by the sound of something growing, growling, devouring—and a heartbeat later there were warm, familiar hands on his shoulders, tipping his chin up, gently prying his eyelids open until he could see a pair of vibrant green ones staring back.
"They drugged you," Kurama pronounced with calm fury, and Kit tried to keep his eyes open (when had he let them close?) as he watched Kurama reach into his hair and remove a seed, pushing magic into it until it began to sprout in his hand. So that was why he kept it long, Kit thought dizzily, to keep his weapons inside it. But was this a weapon, or something else? What was he doing?
The little plant sprouted rapidly, maturing to full bloom in a matter of moments, and Kurama snapped the stem in half to reveal a milky white sap inside. "Drink it," he ordered, and pushed the broken stem between Kit's lips almost before he'd gotten his mouth open to receive it. It tasted terrible, like congealed, brackish water tainted with minerals, but he drank it as obligingly as he could. It took him three or four swallows just to get the first mouthful to go down, and the nausea from his headache wasn't helping anything, either, but slowly, gradually, he thought he felt his vision beginning to clear, and the throbbing pain in his head subsiding.
"That won't hold her for long," Kurama said grimly, glancing up in the direction of the devouring noises. "Her power is shielding her, and it's slowly killing my binding plant."
"Can't fight her in here," Kit answered, forcing himself to breathe steadily, fighting to get full control of his senses back. "She's too reckless. Doesn't know how to rein herself in. No strategy, she's not—alive, doesn't think, she'll carry out that order until she dies..."
"This room is in the center of the building," Kurama replied, shaking his head. "There's no easy way outside, certainly not before she could bring down the ceiling on us."
Kit sat up a little straighter, eyes slightly widening. "The ceiling," he said with sudden urgency, his gaze flickering over the ornate, arched roof above them. "Up and out. Do you still have that vine we used, the one we climbed up for the stakeout...?"
"Up and out," Kurama repeated, catching on instantly. "Kit, are you sure you'll be able to—"
"I can do it," he interrupted, rubbing his eyes one last time before pushing himself to his feet, steeling himself. "I can handle it. When I reach the center of the floor, let her out."
And the moment Kurama nodded in reply, Kit darted out into the center of the room, hands at the ready for a fight.
"Now!" he called, and watched as the binding plant exploded in a mass of shredded vine and singed leaf, revealing Eva and his cane in its midst. She looked rumpled but physically unharmed, the edges of her dress in tatters, the cane held firmly in white-knuckled hands and her face, the twin to his, set in a look of furious determination.
It had been a long time since he'd fought a magical battle. And he'd never dreamed he'd ever have to fight one against a creature that was effectively himself.
This was going to be interesting, he thought grimly.
He drew a slow breath as he watched Eva gather her magic, preparing her next strike against the new, available target he presented, and he cast his mind back to the endless lessons with Crispin he'd endured in the days before he ever came to London. It wasn't a game of attack and counterattack; no, it was a game of attack and receive, using an opponent's strength against them, using a trick to seize the upper hand...
The blast of magic came flying at him and his hands instinctively moved to receive it, fingers twitching as he let it orbit around him like a moon before firing it back in her direction.
She saw it coming, of course, and her eyes narrowed in fury as she hauled more magic out of his wand, added her own to it, slammed the attack back in his direction harder and faster than before—and again he received it, flipped it, let it spin harmlessly around him before pitching it back to her.
No one had ever taught her, he realized as the magic crackled and spun, flaring with potential in the ornate room. No one showed her how, no one made her understand why; she was nothing but a useful tool in a monster's hands, a monstrosity born of his own blood and made to walk the earth without ever knowing why...
He lost count of how many times he'd hurled the magic back at her, faster and faster with every shot, but his breath was catching in his throat and he silently urged himself on, commanding his reflexes to respond with the same rapidity as his will demanded, faster and faster until it was racing back and forth between them, larger and larger and burning like a supernova that would kill him in an instant if he were ever to slip or miss.
Eva threw her hands forward, forcing every last bit of the magic in the cane into her blast, and it rushed at Kit so fast the eye could hardly follow it—
But that was the moment he'd been waiting for all along, the moment when she'd exhausted her last reserve, and this time, rather than blasting it back at her, he angled his hands and let it skim up into the ceiling instead.
A blast of magic that powerful would've surely brought down the whole building around them if it had struck a load-bearing wall, but as it was, the force of it tore a hole clear through the stone of the elegant roof overhead—and the roof over that, and further still up into the yonder of the dim blue-gray sky.
A look of hesitation flickered over Eva's face, her gaze twisting down to the cane in her hands as if unable to comprehend where the source of her added power had gone, and then her lips pulled back into a scowl as she cast it away and began to draw on her own innate magic, yanking it out as quickly as she could, gathering it in preparation for another strike to follow the rest.
"Go! Now, go, do it now!" Kit yelled, but Kurama was already moving, and his familiar green vines were climbing up and up through the wreckage of the hole, up toward the sky like the shoots of a beanstalk, and Kit abandoned his ground to bolt for it, leaping onto the vines and holding on for dear life as they carried him up and out and away, up toward the jagged circle of sky waiting overhead.
"Come on, come on, come on, come on," he whispered under his breath, sensing Eva's magic growing stronger by the second and resisting the urge to scramble up the plant's stem itself. Just a little more, just a little further—
Magic slammed into the base of the plant, and the vines trembled and shuddered in reply.
"Here!" Kurama called, reaching down to grasp his hand, and amid a combination of pulling and scrambling and what Kit guessed was a certain amount of creative use of Kurama's own abilities, they hauled themselves up and out of the hole and onto the roof of the estate house, two stories up and dwarfed all around by the open expanse of the sky.
The moment his feet were on solid ground, Kit dropped to one knee, yanking his pant leg out of the way and dipping his hand into his boot to retrieve a second magic wand, this one fully charged and rippling with power. He drew a breath, casting a brief, wild, impossibly arrogant look toward his demon, and held the wand aloft.
"Want to see what I can do?" he said, holding back a sudden burst of hysterical laughter, and proceeded to bring the house down.
~*~
"Ow, my everything," Kit groaned as he picked himself out of the rubble that used to be the manor house, and silently reminded himself that when destroying buildings, it was generally a much wiser idea to knock one down while standing on ground level, as opposed to two stories up in the air. And on its roof.
He had to admit, though, there was something oddly fitting about his tendency of destroying every building connected to DELILAH that he ever set foot in; he mused over that thought as he worked his way over the precarious piles of rubble, coughing a bit from the fog of plaster dust still clouding the surrounding air. Crehador had once mentioned that his father had died bringing down a building that was supposed to house the ritual that would end the world. How nice to know he was carrying on the family legacy in that respect.
"Are you all right?" Kurama asked gently, apparently having much better luck at keeping his balance on the rocky surface than Kit was. He picked his way over and extended a long-nailed hand to help him along, his silvery hair twisting in the slight breeze.
...Wait.
Kit blinked in disbelief, rubbing his eyes with his free hand to ensure he wasn't seeing things (or still delirious, but no, his head seemed much clearer now than it had been under the drugs). But no, that was Kurama standing in front of him, now considerably taller than before and clad all in white, and sporting a pair of fuzzy white ears that poked up from his long silver-white mane of hair...and was that a tail?
"You're a fox," Kit blurted, then realized a moment too late just how incredibly stupid that sounded when he said it aloud. "You're—I mean, you're actually a fox."
"The term is 'youko', to be precise," Kurama elaborated, tugging him within reach and then lifting him effortlessly into a carry hold, darting across the rubble with unnatural ease. It was a much more pleasant way of traveling, Kit had to admit, even if it was downright embarrassing to be cradled and carried along like a baby in his demon's arms. "But yes, you've caught me. I'm a fox. A demon fox, technically, but you knew the demon part of it already."
"I summoned a demon fox," Kit repeated, as if he still couldn't quite believe the chances of such an occurrence. "Crehador's never going to let me hear the end of that one."
Kurama pushed off into one final leap, coming to land in the grass in front of what used to be the manor house, and carefully set Kit down on the ground. "Yes, and speaking of your friend, I suggest you wait here," he said with one of his knowing half-smiles, one made even more cunning when coupled with his now-golden eyes. "Those drugs still aren't completely out of your system, despite your miraculous display of willpower in overcoming their effects a few minutes ago, and I'm afraid you took quite a beating before I was able to get back to you. To say nothing of destroying an entire building beneath your feet and riding the crumbling wreckage the whole way down."
Kit frowned, processing that (and yes, he noted, fatigue was beginning to set in, and had he really been this tired and groggy a few minutes ago? He honestly hadn't noticed, being so caught up in the more important matters at hand) before offering a slight nod, catching Kurama's sleeve in his fingers before his demon could get away. "Crehador's coming?"
"You did just participate in a high-risk magical battle, send a burst of power hurtling through two ceilings and up into the sky like a signal flare, and then summarily destroy an entire building with your abilities," Kurama pointed out. "Even in my limited experience with your friend, it's not unreasonable to deduce that he might be heading this way."
He paused. "Also, there's a falcon circling overhead, which I believe might well be your friend Skippy."
"Skippy?" Kit repeated, slowly tipping his head back to search and silently cursing the fact that any rapid movements were certain to make his pounding headache return with full force. "Skippy found me in Italy. He's...good at finding me."
"And if it is, I imagine he'll be down to see you as soon as the rather large demonic predator in your midst gives enough clearance," Kurama soothed, easing Kit down until he was lying supine in the grass, his head pillowed on something soft. Cloth? Or a plant? He wasn't sure. For all he knew, Kurama might've grown him a massive cotton ball to lie on. "You'll be fine here for the moment. I'll take care of the remaining loose ends for you."
Kit abruptly tried to sit up, eyes widening, but Kurama's long-nailed hands landed on his shoulders in a flash, guiding him gently but firmly back down to the ground. "They're not dead?" he blurted, already searching for the remains of his magic and trying to ignore the faintly buzzing pain beginning to grow in the back of his mind. "They have to be dead, all of them, and my blood—you can't let my blood—"
"I'll treat that as an order from the one who summoned me," Kurama assured him, rising to his feet. "Don't worry. A bandit doesn't live long if he can't tie up a job without leaving a trace."
"All right," Kit murmured, tipping his head very slightly to watch his demon go to work. As predicted, as soon as he was a goodly distance away and bounding over the rubble with practiced ease, the falcon circling in the sky overhead came fluttering down to greet him, eye him, and peck once at his head in the process. It was Skippy, he mused with pleasure and more than a hint of relief. And if Skippy was here, then that probably meant that Crehador really was coming, and if Crehador was coming, then he was probably in for a good scolding or four.
But at least he'd probably bring a carriage, Kit thought drowsily, letting fatigue and his headache finally begin to creep over him. Kurama would take care of the rest, and Crehador would bring the carriage to drive them home, and twelve—no, thirteen, unlucky thirteen—snow white princesses were buried beneath the rubble.
Thirteen girls dead because of him.
And his own flesh and blood killed by his own hand.
"Bastard," he murmured under his breath, dizzily trying to decide how much effort it would take to hold on to consciousness, and if it were even worth it to try in the first place. Had Ducelli's death been as agonizing and terrible as it had looked? He hoped so.
He lost track of time soon after that, which was easy to do with his eyes closed and exhaustion setting in, but the next thing he remembered was Crehador's voice, and the odd smell of smoke, and arms lifting him up and up like he was floating through the air.
"They called his father the Earl of Poisons," someone muttered, somewhere above and to the side of him. "If he's not careful, he's going to earn himself the distinction of Earl of Massive Property Damage."
"I suspect he'd be flattered by that," someone else answered, sounding wryly amused. "You'll have to let him know when he wakes up."
I'm not asleep, Kit said stubbornly, or at least he thought he said it, but he couldn't precisely remember if he'd made his mouth form the words or not.
"When he wakes up, the two of you are going to have a lot of explaining to do," the first someone said irritably, and Kit decided that was probably Crehador. Irritable seemed to be Crehador's default mood whenever things like this happened. Which was pretty much constantly, he silently admitted.
It was much easier to lose track of time again when the people stopped talking, and the only sounds left to listen to were the creak of wheels and some rather aggravated noises from Skippy's beak, and Kit drifted in and out of remembering things as visions of white thread and vines and unsettling blue eyes flickered through his mind.
He wasn't sleeping, he thought again, just as stubbornly as he had the first time. He wasn't.
Which was fortunate, because if he were, those would have undoubtedly been nightmares.
~*~
It was only later, once Kit was safely installed in his familiar old canopy bed in the back room and had swallowed down a foul-tasting preparation that Kurama had insisted would clear his system of the drugs completely, that they all finally managed to piece the whole story together.
Crehador was the one with the expertise in the way DELILAH worked (which was hardly surprising, considering he'd once freelanced for them), and he was able to fill in some of the gaps surrounding the twelve dead girls. Apparently, in the final months of his grandfather's reign, the organization had discovered a way to create whole girls from just a few cells taken from an old skull, but they had always come with a flaw: either the bodies had fallen apart as soon as they came into the open air, or they had been born mindless and animalistic, a freak of nature without a true soul. Rapetti's research operation in Italy had almost certainly discovered a way to correct that flaw, he'd explained, which provided them with an easy source of girls to raise into poisoned dolls, so long as they had the cells from which to grow them. Ducelli, then, had probably acquired Rapetti's research at the same time as he'd stolen the sample of Kit's blood, and having witnessed the full destructive potential of his powers after the Italy operation had been razed to the ground, he'd become obsessed with the idea of creating a doll with Kit's abilities to further the end of the world.
His innate abilities, combined with the powers afforded by the deadly doll process. A horrifying, masterful combination.
The twelve dead girls, then, had been as Ducelli had suggested—the prototype experiments upon which to perfect the process; he'd probably only had a small sample of Kit's blood, after all, and thus only a few cells to utilize. He couldn't afford to waste them on an imperfect effort. So he'd raised the girls, one by one, according to Rapetti's research notes, and then killed them and summoned them back into their own bodies. There was no telling how much success he'd had with the first ones, but by the twelfth, he'd been able to perfect the process enough to risk trying it with Kit's own blood.
Thus came Eva, the blood of his blood, the woman formed from his own body. And there was magic in his blood, so it was there in hers, too—magic that only grew stronger after she was killed and resurrected back into it.
Kurama was able to support quite a few of those assumptions with his own bits of detail, reaching into his jacket pocket and producing a sheaf of notes and diagrams penned in a mixture of Italian and English. They'd taken him at gunpoint to a holding room on the other side of the manor after the confrontation in the crypt, he'd explained, where he'd made quick work of his guards and then slipped out to find and rescue Kit. Along the way, he'd come across the laboratory where they'd created the dolls and had taken the liberty of examining (and stealing) the research notes. Eva had never had a true soul, according to Ducelli's observations; none of the dead princesses had ever possessed more than a basic, rudimentary consciousness, just enough to complete the deadly doll process. That lack had left them all docile and obedient, even to the point of being precariously close to mechanical; upon rebirth, they were highly susceptible to whatever they were told, and they acted like the dolls they were—puppets to be moved, positioned, commanded.
The red hair, he'd added, was noted in a margin as a recurring mutation, a side-effect of the process. All the girls created had been born with red hair, regardless of the donor's own coloring.
He'd arrived on the scene in the ornate room fairly early on, but had chosen to wait rather than act for a twofold reason: the first was that he hadn't known the full scope of Eva's powers, and was unwilling to gamble on the chance that he could stop her before she'd have the opportunity to kill Kit in retaliation. The second was that like Kit, he'd recognized Ducelli's penchant for self-aggrandizing and had thought it more profitable to let the man talk as much as he pleased, to garner as much information from him as they could before stepping in to neutralize his threat.
The itch Ducelli had scratched on his neck, Kurama elaborated, was the sting left behind by the seed he'd planted in the man's flesh. He called it shimaneki (another word Kit assumed was of demonic origin, like youko), and explained that he would've set it off much sooner, except that Ducelli had shown an unfortunate tendency of leaning over Kit in his attempts to menace him, and he'd been concerned that his young charge might have been caught up in the backlash. Shimaneki plants were hardly choosy about who they fed on, he'd remarked with one of his vague smiles. And they were indeed a very unpleasant way to die.
The last thing Kurama told him was that he'd made sure there were no survivors. Kit was well aware of what he meant; after all, there was only one person with the potential to survive a building falling on her. And he'd had a sickly suspicion in retrospect that even after it had all come down, she might very well not have been dead, after all.
In a way, he was somewhat relieved at the thought that he wasn't really the one who killed her. Blood of his blood, flesh of his flesh...Ducelli had called her his twin sister. It was only a coincidence, the topic of twins; the man couldn't possibly have known about his mother and uncle. And yet the thought had struck a nerve.
He half wondered if he'd subconsciously, deliberately caused things so that she wouldn't die from it. He'd tricked her into using all the power from his stolen wand, yes, but he of all people knew exactly how far her capabilities extended. There was still magic in her blood. There was still enough for her to save herself.
He wondered if he'd loved her, in that brief, fleeting time he'd known her. She was an abomination, there was no doubt of that, but she had no mother, no father, no family...not even a soul to call her own.
But then it was his turn to explain his part of it, how he'd remembered that the operatives in Italy had seen Skippy deliver him his cane in the moments before he'd destroyed the building, and how he'd suspected someone might've guessed it as the source of his power—and so he'd created a spare wand, siphoning out half the power from the one in his cane and storing it in the other, which he kept secreted inside his boot in case of an emergency. He'd hoped it wouldn't come to that, but it always paid to have an ace up one's sleeve. Particularly when dealing with a cardmaster's leftovers.
He was going to have to rest for a long, long time, Crehador had mandated, which made Kit hide a smile as he sensed the concern lurking beneath the annoyance in his tone. As much as the medium might give the impression of finding everything he did and all the escapades he got into to be completely stupid, it was still obvious he cared, deep down beneath it all. Which was nice. Crehador wasn't exactly family, but he was still fun, like an uncle who wasn't actually related to you but still let you stay out late at parties and sneak draughts of cognac from the bottle and occasionally summon demons in the kitchen.
Kurama didn't leave his side the whole time. He was back to his usual red hair—it looked like a fox tail, he realized, and no wonder he'd been so prickled with subconscious recognition every time he'd tried to figure out why it seemed so familiar—and stunning green eyes, and he quietly busied himself with tending to the thriving plants scattered about the room as Kit gradually recuperated, day by day.
It wasn't until the third day of bed rest, when Crehador had gone out in his best leopard-trimmed coat and hat to preside over a seance and Kit was itching to sneak out of bed and actually do something for a change, that Kurama finally said, "Are you feeling well enough to answer one of my questions?"
"Is it one of the ones I owe you?" Kit answered without missing a beat, half-turning onto his side as he fluffed his pillows and propped them against the headboard so he could sit up more comfortably.
"Yes," Kurama replied, which made him look up in surprise. There was a strange intensity in his demon's gaze, a sort of razor precision that made a lump gather in his throat.
"Okay," he said, settling back against his pillows and hoping he looked more confident than he felt. "What is it?"
Kurama was quiet a moment, then fixed Kit with a steady look as a hint of a smile played at the corner of his lips. "You've known since the beginning of this how to send me back to my own time, haven't you?" he asked, in a tone of voice that made it clear he knew they both already knew the answer.
Instinctively, Kit averted his gaze, which meant losing their impromptu staring contest but made it a little easier to get the words out, now that he was staring at his bedcovers instead of the impossible green of his demon's eyes. "I do a lot of reckless things, but I'm not stupid enough to cast a spell I don't already know how to undo," he admitted quietly. "I memorized the banishing spell long before I ever tried the summoning one."
"And you lied to Crehador about not knowing how."
"He's a medium. His specialty is dead people. And I can do some of it, too, but I'm a lot more proficient in the arcane stuff than in the spiritual." He shrugged a little. "It helps that I've trained under a wizard, so I've got a lot of background that Crehador doesn't."
"Your wizard taught you well," Kurama answered, sounding vaguely approving. "And I imagine you've already guessed what my next question will be."
"Then why didn't I just banish you when I had the chance, and be done with it?" Kit replied, earning an affirmative nod from his demon in the process. He sighed. "Because Crehador walked in and ruined my plans before you had the opportunity to offer me a contract."
Kurama's eyebrows went up. "I recall your insistence on being offered one, yes." He paused. "Were you expecting to encounter a demon that would ask you to trade your soul?"
Kit stared at the comforter, his shoulders slumping slightly. "You've seen and heard enough of my family to know we've got a legacy of being led into temptation," he said softly. "And I just thought...there's really no way of knowing if you'll be able to resist it until you've faced it firsthand, is there? It's easy to say if something ever happens, you'll do this or that, but then when it really comes down to doing it..."
He closed his eyes. "Like Eva. I know I didn't kill her. I should've. I had every reason to, I had the power to. But when the moment came, I still pulled back. I couldn't do it."
"That doesn't make you weak," Kurama said, and the bed shifted slightly as he took a seat on the edge, the mattress dipping under the new weight. "After what he told you, anyone would've hesitated. If anything, it only proves you're human—which was something she would've never been able to claim."
"You made sure she was dead?" Kit asked, a bit dismayed at how his voice wobbled as he forced the words out.
"There are harsh punishments that await a demon who kills a human for any reason," Kurama murmured. "Of course, at this point in history, I'm still a wanted criminal anyway, so it's just one more offense to add to an already long list of crimes. Yes, they're all dead, on my word and honor both. And your friend Crehador helped me set fire to the last of it, as well, so there's no evidence left behind for any other splinter factions of DELILAH to utilize."
"Good. That's good. I'm glad."
Kurama reached to pat his hand. "You did enough, Kit. It's settled. This much, at least, is over."
He shook his head. "No, it's not," he answered dully. "I still haven't sent you back. The rest of it is done, but the part that started it all..."
There was a note of silence.
"That temptation you've been testing," Kurama said at last, then stopped and left it alone a few moments before gently continuing, "Is it true, what Crehador said about you and redheads?"
Kit ducked his head, feeling his face already beginning to go hot as he quickly turned it away. "I guess that's another thing that runs in the family," he awkwardly replied.
"I see," Kurama mused, sitting perfectly still a moment—which was nervewracking, to say the least, because it was hard enough to gauge what his demon was thinking at any normal moment, but here he had absolutely no idea what might be going through the redhead's mind, or what he might do or say in response.
But what he did, ultimately, was lean over and straighten Kit's covers, smoothing them back into place with the tenderness of a mother. "Get some sleep," he gently instructed. "The more you rest today, the easier time I'll have of convincing Crehador to let you out of bed tomorrow."
Slightly bemused, Kit did as he was told, sinking back down into the blankets and resting his head on the mountain of pillows behind him as his demon made his way toward the door.
"Kurama?" he called plaintively, just before the redhead was out of earshot.
A moment later, Kurama's head poked back into the room. "Yes?"
Kit swallowed hard. "How long have you known?"
That familiar, enigmatic smile crossed Kurama's lips. "Yours isn't the best of poker faces," he answered simply, and a moment later the door fell closed with a soft click.
~*~
Kit did everything in his power to drag out his recovery as long as he could, but despite his best and most concerted efforts, the day finally came to send Kurama home again.
"Remember to keep the white baneberries out of direct sunlight," Kurama reminded him as they gathered in the kitchen, waiting for the sigils painted on the floor (out of a mixture of chicken blood and ink) to dry, "And rotate the larkspur a quarter-turn every day, so it grows evenly."
"Of all the demons in the world to summon, he gets the one that's both a fox and a gardener," Crehador muttered under his breath.
"And keep an eye on the strychnine tree to make sure it's taking to its new pot," Kit repeated obediently. "Right, I know. My garden's never looked better since you've been here, Kurama."
"Oh, that reminds me," Kurama said pleasantly, holding up one finger as he headed for the door. As Crehador and Kit watched, eyebrows raised, he stepped into the hall and returned a minute later with a briefcase in one hand and a flowerpot in the other. "Since you've both been such charming hosts, I took the liberty of getting you each a parting gift. Consider it a thank-you for an undeniably entertaining adventure."
Kit caught himself blushing and quickly faked a cough, hoping to cover the redness in his cheeks. "You didn't have to do that..."
"I think you'll enjoy them," Kurama answered, deflecting the issue with ease. "Don't open them until after I'm gone, will you?"
Forcing himself to ignore the fact that his stomach rather felt as though it was going to drop out, Kit nodded and bent to test the consistency of the sigil he'd drawn on the floor. To his dismay, it was at the perfect balance between tacky and dry to suffice. "It's ready," he said, determined to keep his voice level and the emotion out of his tone. Bad enough to get sentimental over his demon's departure; worse still to do it in front of Crehador. "Are you?"
Kurama nodded, stepping carefully over the lines to extend his hand to Crehador; to Kit's surprise, the medium shook it without protest. "There were far worse creatures he could've called up than you," Crehador said, actually looking faintly amused. "Have a good trip."
"Oh, speaking of which," Kurama answered, glancing between the two of them, "Considering the amount of power I put at your disposal in the events of the past few weeks, it's entirely possible that an emissary from my superiors—future superiors, technically speaking—will be visiting you shortly, having tracked my energy to this place. I'm afraid your great-grandchildren might not be the only ones coming under sudden scrutiny, Kit."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Kit answered, perfectly deadpan. "There were never any demons here, sir."
"I see you've been working on your poker face," Kurama said approvingly. "But still, be careful. I doubt they'll give you any trouble, but you are an extraordinarily powerful individual, and if you somehow hadn't attracted their notice before, I can guarantee that you certainly have now."
"I'll be careful," Kit said, unexpectedly pleased at the implied praise of his talents. "And you too, okay?"
"I'll be fine," Kurama assured him, stepping over to shake his hand as well.
As soon as he was within earshot, hands tightly grasped together, Kit cast a flustered glance at Crehador and mumbled, "I don't suppose there's any way you can get him out of the room for about thirty seconds?"
"So you can give me a more traditional goodbye?" Kurama murmured back, his eyes dancing. "I suspect he'd catch on if I tried. I wasn't the only one who figured you out, you know."
Kit barely managed to suppress a highly undignified noise. Fortunately, Kurama saved him again by continuing smoothly, "But I can tell you he keeps the absinthe behind Descartes's Passions of the Soul on the west bookshelf. I hope that'll do as a consolation."
Then, with a light pat to the shoulder, he released Kit's hand and stepped into the middle of the sigil, nodding at both of them in turn before letting his gaze fall to Kit. "I'm ready when you are," he said pleasantly.
Kit swallowed, flexing his fingers as he thought, just for one fleeting moment, of botching the spell and keeping Kurama here forever. Or at least longer. Or at least—
He waved his hand, uttered a word, and in a flash, his demon was gone.
They stood in silence a moment, just he and Crehador, like mourners at a gravesite as they watched the smoke drifting up from where the sigil had flared to life just seconds earlier. Then, slowly, Kit turned his attention to the gifts Kurama had left behind, more because he was at a loss for what to do than because he was really curious to see what was inside them.
The flowerpot was meant for him, he mused after a quick glance at the tags, and he slit the card open with his thumbnail to read the message inside. And there, in Kurama's neat hand, it read:
Dear Kit,
It seems your father's family is a rather renowned one around London; last night I paid a visit to the estates while you and your friend Crehador were asleep. It's a beautiful place. I hope someday you'll be able to see it firsthand.
The plant in this pot is a geranium borrowed from your mother's private garden, the one by the house tucked away at the far end of the yard that you described to me so fondly in the days I kept you company while you were recuperating. In the language of flowers, the geranium symbolizes gentility, meetings, folly, and true friendship; I thought you'd find that appropriate. Please take good care of it.
In return, I've borrowed a few cuttings from your foxgloves as a remembrance of my own. I thought you wouldn't begrudge me that, either.
It's been a pleasure to be your partner, little fox.
—Kurama
He swallowed hard, glancing toward the flower blooming merrily in the pot. It was a geranium, yes, with blossoms the lush red of his demon's hair, and he reached out to trace his finger along the delicate petals. It would be the first plant in his garden that wasn't cultivated to be deadly, he mused. But Kurama couldn't have picked a more perfect memory. And he wouldn't just take good care of this one; no, this one he would treasure, as a parting gift from one fox to another.
A yell of exclamation from Crehador made him glance up from his reverie, and he had to do a double-take at the sight of the opened briefcase Crehador had propped on the counter—and the neat rows of banknotes packed within.
"Dear Crehador, my apologies again for all the upset I caused you during my brief stay in your charming residence. I took the liberty of borrowing this from Kit's father's safe when I visited his estates last night; please consider it an advance, on his behalf and mine, to accompany Kit into whatever peril he may get up to next," Crehador read aloud, sputtering.
Kit managed to restrain himself all of two seconds before he doubled over with mirth, his sudden burst of laughter ringing out through the kitchen. "He really thinks of everything, doesn't he?"
"He robbed your father," Crehador pointed out, without even a hint of malice.
Kit shrugged. "It's a good investment," he retorted, still chuckling as he retrieved his geranium. "You're never going to be free of my stupidity, Crehador."
And then, with a vaguely hollow feeling in his chest but a strangely light heart to compensate, Kit Hargreaves headed for his little room in the back of the residence to put his newest plant securely away.
"And no more demon summonings!" Crehador irritably called after him.
~*~ EPILOGUE:
The smoke cleared.
Anthony J. Crowley frowned slightly, surveying both the quaint Victorian kitchen and the occult sigil beneath his feet with a hint of bemusement from behind his very dark sunglasses. "This is decidedly not the Ritz," he remarked aloud.
A moment later, he noticed the dark-haired youth in his midst, the one looking at him with wide and apparently innocent blue eyes. Deceptively innocent, too, he noted with sudden interest. Whoever he was, he was powerful. And theoretically corruptible.
"Do you know anything about gardening?" the kid asked, holding out a wilting potted plant.
Crowley suppressed a smile.
~
BACK TO PART ONE
Universe: The KitVerse, with some crossover guest stars.
Warnings: All the usual warnings for a story involving Godchild as a parent canon: violence, language, dark themes, etc. Also, some fairly ridiculous humor.
Summary: Kit Hargreaves summons a demon. The demon is amused. Crehador is not.
Notes: THIS IS PART TWO. DO NOT READ THIS PART FIRST. GO HERE FOR PART ONE, IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY.
The first thing he noticed was that his head hurt.
The second thing he noticed was that the familiar pressure of his cane against his side had disappeared.
"It certainly makes things a great deal more convenient," the voice went on, seemingly unconcerned by the agony he was currently fighting off as he tried to find the willpower to open his eyes. "It appears you're quite like your father in that respect. One gets much farther threatening your playthings than one does with merely threatening you."
Kit forced his eyes open, still groggy, and found himself greeted with the sight of an opulent room lined with marble pillars and elegant statues, a place that reminded him of nothing so much as the mausoleum where he'd first met—by some very sideways definition of the word—his grandmother and grandfather on his father's side. It was all white, everything in hues of white like clouds or pearls or smoke, and it hurt to try to focus on the expanse of it with his already spinning gaze. His senses weren't responding as quickly as they should've been, either, he noted with displeasure. He hadn't realized he was sitting down until he'd opened his eyes to see the chair—and the restraints binding his wrists and ankles to it.
"Aren't you going to introduce yourself?" he rasped, trying to keep the man talking to buy himself some time. First he had to clear his head, had to get a better grasp of the situation. Then he had to find a way out. Then he had to find Kurama, assuming they hadn't killed him yet...
"Oh, I didn't rank high enough to merit becoming one of your grandfather's precious cards," the man said with undisguised irritation. "Years of service to our holy cause, decades spent in pursuit of the science that would let man achieve divinity, and all for what? To be crushed underfoot by the whims of a man slavishly devoted to a dead strumpet's memory and the toys of the occult."
Kit coughed, trying to muster a dry snicker. "Wow. You must be pretty pathetic, then, if a guy as insipid as that managed to crush you."
He could practically hear the man's knuckles turning white on the arms of his chair in the tense silence that followed, and quickly braced himself for a strike in retaliation. But it never came; instead, the faint sound of chuckling filled the air, slightly too forced to be genuine, and Kit realized he was treading in dangerous waters on that subject with this man. Whatever it was that had happened between his grandfather and him, it was a thorn in the man's side, and he clearly had no qualms about relieving the agony of that thorn by taking it out on his enemy's descendant.
Just one more thing to thank his paternal grandfather for, Kit silently grumbled.
"Now, then, Lord Hargreaves—or would you prefer Mr. Fawkes?" the man continued smoothly, needling at him with such an outlandish implication, that he might prefer a drop in rank, "No, I think we'd best call you Lord Hargreaves. We might as well keep this as close to a family reunion as possible."
"Which makes you my fairy godmother?" Kit answered dizzily. Again, he waited for a blow that never fell; again, he wondered and despaired at what trump card this unknown foe could be holding, that he felt no need to rise to Kit's bait and respond with violence.
"Young Lord Hargreaves, Alexis's precious Magician. What an honor, that I now have the pleasure of entertaining such an esteemed member of the Major Arcana," the man said in a voice that reminded Kit of nothing so much as a snake. "My name is Ducelli. My contemporary, Signor Rapetti, was the man responsible for the operation you so thoroughly destroyed a few months ago."
"The dead girls," Kit whispered, forcing himself to tilt his head up and keep it erect, despite the urge to let it fall against his chest. "I see you compared notes."
"We did far more than that, Lord Hargreaves," Ducelli answered with a cold smile. Then, abruptly, his voice turned pleasant again. "Did you enjoy our sleeping beauties? I do hope you appreciated them. They were specially crafted for you, you know."
"I see you've discovered my weakness for cutthroat women," Kit muttered, his humor as black as his expression.
"The process had been in development for years, of course," Ducelli went on, rising from his chair and beginning to pace the room, seemingly uncaring of the fact that Kit was still bound to his own chair and couldn't reasonably follow his movements without an exceptional amount of head-turning and neck-craning, which considering his current dizziness and disorientation was decidedly not an option. "The deadly dolls, one of your grandfather's finest advancements. Far simpler to work on female subjects than male ones, as well, though not impossible. And such interesting data we gathered from examining them! Souls summoned back from the great beyond seemed to carry with them a unique ability, a mystic property that granted them extraordinary power in an otherwise mundane world."
He paused, turning on his heel so sharply that the sole of his shoe squeaked on the marble floor. "Of course, that wasn't the only area of research in which he made exceptional progress. After all, what good is a soul without a body to hold it? So we also greatly advanced the study of cellular growth, drawing just a few cells from a donor source and maturing them into an adult receptacle to hold our resummoned soul." His voice took on a note of arrogant pride. "I spearheaded that effort. I was the one who perfected a working process. I made the deadly dolls possible!"
"Which makes you a grown man who plays with dolls," Kit replied, sotto voce.
Ducelli's expression abruptly went icy. "But your grandfather," he said, stalking toward Kit's chair. "Your grandfather had no concept of vision. He was fixated on the idea of one woman, one resurrection. He failed to comprehend the sheer potential of what we had discovered, what we could do."
Kit glanced up as the man approached the side of his chair, then resisted the urge to howl as Ducelli seized a handful of the hair at the back of his neck and pulled, forcing him to throw his head back to compensate, making his vision swim and a jolt of pain lash through his mind. "Let me introduce you, Lord Hargreaves, to what I can do."
As if on cue, a new figure stepped into the room—a girl in a high-necked dress with wavy red hair about her shoulders, with a nose and smile that seemed unsettlingly familiar, with a pair of blue eyes that made Kit feel as though his heart had fallen out of his chest and splashed into his stomach. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, wasn't just that she was undeniably the most exquisite of all the so-called princesses he'd seen in the crypt below the house; no, it was that looking at her made him realize, to his horror, that he knew exactly where he'd seen those eyes before.
He'd seen them every day.
He'd seen them in the mirror.
"You were kind enough to spill your blood for us in Italy," Ducelli almost purred, his hand still fisted in Kit's inky hair, keeping his head forced back and his throat bared. "A few cells was more than enough."
"You didn't," Kit choked out, his body already involuntarily fighting against the restraints that bound him, completely ignorant of the pain that lanced up his limbs as sheer revulsion drove him to get away, away, as far as he could so he could kill that monstrosity, that abomination—
"And the Lord made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man, and the man said, 'this is now the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man'," Ducelli intoned, his smile tinged with twisted pleasure. "Shall I introduce you to your twin, Lord Hargreaves? I'm sure you'll appreciate that we've chosen to call her Eva."
The magic, Kit realized a moment too late. The magic in the crypt that had sent him flying, and the eyes he'd glimpsed before he'd blacked out—it had come from her, this girl they'd forged from his own blood, because there was magic in his blood and they'd harnessed that to make her...
And suddenly, more than anything, he longed to lash out and bring the whole building crumbling down around them, even if it meant his own death along with it. Anything if it meant destroying this blasphemous creation in front of him and the sneering man that had brought her into being.
"You're welcome to bed her if you like," Ducelli went on, releasing his grip on Kit's hair to step over and trace the curve of the girl's cheek, as though she were a doll in form as well as in name. And she didn't even flinch at the intimate touch or the insinuation; her blank eyes remained locked on Kit's, her expression as cold and flat as a mirror's surface itself. "I know that's one sin that runs in your blood."
"I'd sooner smother her with a pillow," Kit snarled back, unable to help himself.
Ducelli laughed. "Oh, we've already saved you the trouble of that."
And abruptly, the pieces fell into place. "You created her from my blood, grew her into a person, and then killed her like the others—"
"So that we could summon her back with the deadly doll process," Ducelli finished with a satisfied nod. "A very interesting process, experimentally speaking. You see, we'd known all along that the summoning ritual would awaken certain spiritual powers along with it, but Eva's proved unusually strong. As though the deadly doll process had only augmented a potential that was already there." He paused, obviously more for emphasis than anything else. "A potential that you so graciously demonstrated when you destroyed our laboratory in Italy."
"I'll gladly prepare you an encore," Kit muttered.
Ducelli sighed. "I must say, enduring your unending supply of retorts is just one more reason to commend myself for cutting your sister's throat when I had the chance. I much prefer her silence to your chatter."
"You mean you're so infatuated with the sound of your own voice that it annoys you to hear anyone else's."
"You're quite arrogant for a man bound and held at another's mercy," Ducelli remarked coolly. "Arrogant enough to entertain notions of destroying this entire building the way you did the other, I'm sure. But while I have no doubt you'd be willing to sacrifice yourself for the sake of seeing this undone once and for all, I also have no doubt you'll hesitate when it means the death of that dear young lady you brought with you, as well."
Then they hadn't killed Kurama after all. They were keeping him as leverage to ensure Kit's good behavior—and apparently, given Ducelli's persistent pronoun trouble, they still hadn't realized that his demon wasn't female. Perhaps that long hair of Kurama's had turned out to be useful after all, he thought wryly. With the way these monsters slaughtered girls without remorse, the likelihood of them underestimating Kurama's abilities based on his assumed gender was fairly high.
So much the better for their chances, he mused grimly. But would it be enough?
"Then let's get to the point," he said quietly, never taking his eyes off the girl called Eva. If she had his powers, even half of his powers, there was no doubt in his mind that she was the much greater threat at the moment. "What do you want with me?"
"Want?" Ducelli repeated, as though the answer were laughably simple. "I want to achieve the true purpose of DELILAH, the one we all sought before your grandfather surrendered to the temptations of the woman from Philistia: to bring about the end of this world and raise a new one from its ashes."
"Then you should've named her Babylon," Kit spat, his eyes growing narrow. "The mother of all abominations."
"Oh, no," Ducelli answered, once more grasping at Kit's hair and pulling his head back; this time, however, he traced his fingernail in a thin, stinging line across the expanse of Kit's bared throat and smiled like a snake. "I have my Eve. But so much the better if her Adam should join her."
Kit's blood ran cold as the man continued, "It is much more tedious to create a male doll. But sometimes the finished product is well worth the effort."
"You're mad!"
"An obstruction not just neutralized, but transformed into an ally," Ducelli murmured. "Who could stand in my way with two of you at my disposal? And so long as I gather an ample amount of that blood of yours before the process is completed, as many more as I care to create on top of it. A little blood goes a long way; all of yours should be more than sufficient to last me until my work is complete."
He paused, shifting his free hand to scratch at an itch on the side of his neck before returning his attention to Kit's throat. "Of course, there is still the matter of your young lady's life. And I'm not an unreasonable man, my dear earl, so allow me to extend you a bargain." His eyes narrowed slightly. "There's no mistaking your paternal lineage. You're the Cardmaster's grandson, beyond a shadow of a doubt. But that's only half the equation, isn't it? Half the blood. Half the potential."
His mother, Kit realized at once. The magic he'd inherited from his mother, that was so instinctive to him from years and years of life in Daventry, honed to a deadly edge under Crispin's tutelage and enhanced through his experiences with Crehador and the life he'd lived until now. The man knew who his father was, his grandfather, and quite probably knew everything there was to know about that side of his family...but he, just like everyone else save Crehador, had absolutely no way of knowing who his mother had been. They didn't know he was a prince on her side, and the heir to a kingdom if he wanted it. They didn't know why he was as powerful as he was.
And they couldn't replicate it if they didn't know how he'd gotten it in the first place.
"Who was it?" Ducelli demanded, yanking again on his hair. "Tell me and your young lady goes free. What did the Cardmaster do to create you? Which of his dolls conceived you?"
"You'll never make more of me," Kit forced himself to sneer, his vision already spinning from the abuse. "I'm one of a kind."
Ducelli snarled, releasing his hair long enough to backhand him across the face, making his head snap around from the force of the blow. Then, furious, the man stepped back, motioning angrily to the girl still standing silently in their midst. "Deal with him," he snapped at her. "We'll see if he's more inclined to talk when I start taking off his lady's fingers one by one in front of him."
The girl called Eva stepped forward, brandishing Kit's cane—so that was where it had gotten to, he thought absently, riding the narrow edge of vomiting from the disorientation—and raised it in her hands, her blue eyes cold as ice as he felt the magic flare and steeled himself for a whole new world of pain—
And then the moment shattered as Ducelli's howl pierced through the air.
"Kill them!" Ducelli shrieked as he thrashed and crumpled, flesh still bursting with flora even as he pitched toward the floor, bloody spittle foaming from his mouth.
At his command, Eva whirled back to face Kit, eyes sparking with fury as her magic flared again, and he fought to get his limbs free from the damaged shackles—just a little more, a little more!—as her first bolt of power hit him with enough force to tip his chair over backwards, slamming him back against the ground. He cried out as the impact jarred his already aching head, making his vision swim and blur over, but the landing was also enough to jar his hands and feet free of their bindings, just enough for him to roll out of the way before her second blast shattered the chair into splinters.
"Kurama!" he screamed, knowing his demon was somewhere near—who else could've unleashed such a plant upon Ducelli?—and about to enter the fight. "Break the cane!"
He continued to roll along the floor, fighting off waves of nausea as he scrambled for cover from the barrage of magic Eva was hurling in his direction, her already vast reserves only augmented by the help of the wand in his stolen cane. He dove behind a pillar, gasping for breath as the stone exploded behind him; he'd have to keep moving, he couldn't stay in one place for long, had to clear his head so he could cast and retaliate...
Another shot rocketed off the other side of the pillar, and he dove for a new safe haven, half running and half crawling as he ducked for cover. He had to get himself under control—!
Then, abruptly, the explosions went silent, replaced by the sound of something growing, growling, devouring—and a heartbeat later there were warm, familiar hands on his shoulders, tipping his chin up, gently prying his eyelids open until he could see a pair of vibrant green ones staring back.
"They drugged you," Kurama pronounced with calm fury, and Kit tried to keep his eyes open (when had he let them close?) as he watched Kurama reach into his hair and remove a seed, pushing magic into it until it began to sprout in his hand. So that was why he kept it long, Kit thought dizzily, to keep his weapons inside it. But was this a weapon, or something else? What was he doing?
The little plant sprouted rapidly, maturing to full bloom in a matter of moments, and Kurama snapped the stem in half to reveal a milky white sap inside. "Drink it," he ordered, and pushed the broken stem between Kit's lips almost before he'd gotten his mouth open to receive it. It tasted terrible, like congealed, brackish water tainted with minerals, but he drank it as obligingly as he could. It took him three or four swallows just to get the first mouthful to go down, and the nausea from his headache wasn't helping anything, either, but slowly, gradually, he thought he felt his vision beginning to clear, and the throbbing pain in his head subsiding.
"That won't hold her for long," Kurama said grimly, glancing up in the direction of the devouring noises. "Her power is shielding her, and it's slowly killing my binding plant."
"Can't fight her in here," Kit answered, forcing himself to breathe steadily, fighting to get full control of his senses back. "She's too reckless. Doesn't know how to rein herself in. No strategy, she's not—alive, doesn't think, she'll carry out that order until she dies..."
"This room is in the center of the building," Kurama replied, shaking his head. "There's no easy way outside, certainly not before she could bring down the ceiling on us."
Kit sat up a little straighter, eyes slightly widening. "The ceiling," he said with sudden urgency, his gaze flickering over the ornate, arched roof above them. "Up and out. Do you still have that vine we used, the one we climbed up for the stakeout...?"
"Up and out," Kurama repeated, catching on instantly. "Kit, are you sure you'll be able to—"
"I can do it," he interrupted, rubbing his eyes one last time before pushing himself to his feet, steeling himself. "I can handle it. When I reach the center of the floor, let her out."
And the moment Kurama nodded in reply, Kit darted out into the center of the room, hands at the ready for a fight.
"Now!" he called, and watched as the binding plant exploded in a mass of shredded vine and singed leaf, revealing Eva and his cane in its midst. She looked rumpled but physically unharmed, the edges of her dress in tatters, the cane held firmly in white-knuckled hands and her face, the twin to his, set in a look of furious determination.
It had been a long time since he'd fought a magical battle. And he'd never dreamed he'd ever have to fight one against a creature that was effectively himself.
This was going to be interesting, he thought grimly.
He drew a slow breath as he watched Eva gather her magic, preparing her next strike against the new, available target he presented, and he cast his mind back to the endless lessons with Crispin he'd endured in the days before he ever came to London. It wasn't a game of attack and counterattack; no, it was a game of attack and receive, using an opponent's strength against them, using a trick to seize the upper hand...
The blast of magic came flying at him and his hands instinctively moved to receive it, fingers twitching as he let it orbit around him like a moon before firing it back in her direction.
She saw it coming, of course, and her eyes narrowed in fury as she hauled more magic out of his wand, added her own to it, slammed the attack back in his direction harder and faster than before—and again he received it, flipped it, let it spin harmlessly around him before pitching it back to her.
No one had ever taught her, he realized as the magic crackled and spun, flaring with potential in the ornate room. No one showed her how, no one made her understand why; she was nothing but a useful tool in a monster's hands, a monstrosity born of his own blood and made to walk the earth without ever knowing why...
He lost count of how many times he'd hurled the magic back at her, faster and faster with every shot, but his breath was catching in his throat and he silently urged himself on, commanding his reflexes to respond with the same rapidity as his will demanded, faster and faster until it was racing back and forth between them, larger and larger and burning like a supernova that would kill him in an instant if he were ever to slip or miss.
Eva threw her hands forward, forcing every last bit of the magic in the cane into her blast, and it rushed at Kit so fast the eye could hardly follow it—
But that was the moment he'd been waiting for all along, the moment when she'd exhausted her last reserve, and this time, rather than blasting it back at her, he angled his hands and let it skim up into the ceiling instead.
A blast of magic that powerful would've surely brought down the whole building around them if it had struck a load-bearing wall, but as it was, the force of it tore a hole clear through the stone of the elegant roof overhead—and the roof over that, and further still up into the yonder of the dim blue-gray sky.
A look of hesitation flickered over Eva's face, her gaze twisting down to the cane in her hands as if unable to comprehend where the source of her added power had gone, and then her lips pulled back into a scowl as she cast it away and began to draw on her own innate magic, yanking it out as quickly as she could, gathering it in preparation for another strike to follow the rest.
"Go! Now, go, do it now!" Kit yelled, but Kurama was already moving, and his familiar green vines were climbing up and up through the wreckage of the hole, up toward the sky like the shoots of a beanstalk, and Kit abandoned his ground to bolt for it, leaping onto the vines and holding on for dear life as they carried him up and out and away, up toward the jagged circle of sky waiting overhead.
"Come on, come on, come on, come on," he whispered under his breath, sensing Eva's magic growing stronger by the second and resisting the urge to scramble up the plant's stem itself. Just a little more, just a little further—
Magic slammed into the base of the plant, and the vines trembled and shuddered in reply.
"Here!" Kurama called, reaching down to grasp his hand, and amid a combination of pulling and scrambling and what Kit guessed was a certain amount of creative use of Kurama's own abilities, they hauled themselves up and out of the hole and onto the roof of the estate house, two stories up and dwarfed all around by the open expanse of the sky.
The moment his feet were on solid ground, Kit dropped to one knee, yanking his pant leg out of the way and dipping his hand into his boot to retrieve a second magic wand, this one fully charged and rippling with power. He drew a breath, casting a brief, wild, impossibly arrogant look toward his demon, and held the wand aloft.
"Want to see what I can do?" he said, holding back a sudden burst of hysterical laughter, and proceeded to bring the house down.
He had to admit, though, there was something oddly fitting about his tendency of destroying every building connected to DELILAH that he ever set foot in; he mused over that thought as he worked his way over the precarious piles of rubble, coughing a bit from the fog of plaster dust still clouding the surrounding air. Crehador had once mentioned that his father had died bringing down a building that was supposed to house the ritual that would end the world. How nice to know he was carrying on the family legacy in that respect.
"Are you all right?" Kurama asked gently, apparently having much better luck at keeping his balance on the rocky surface than Kit was. He picked his way over and extended a long-nailed hand to help him along, his silvery hair twisting in the slight breeze.
...Wait.
Kit blinked in disbelief, rubbing his eyes with his free hand to ensure he wasn't seeing things (or still delirious, but no, his head seemed much clearer now than it had been under the drugs). But no, that was Kurama standing in front of him, now considerably taller than before and clad all in white, and sporting a pair of fuzzy white ears that poked up from his long silver-white mane of hair...and was that a tail?
"You're a fox," Kit blurted, then realized a moment too late just how incredibly stupid that sounded when he said it aloud. "You're—I mean, you're actually a fox."
"The term is 'youko', to be precise," Kurama elaborated, tugging him within reach and then lifting him effortlessly into a carry hold, darting across the rubble with unnatural ease. It was a much more pleasant way of traveling, Kit had to admit, even if it was downright embarrassing to be cradled and carried along like a baby in his demon's arms. "But yes, you've caught me. I'm a fox. A demon fox, technically, but you knew the demon part of it already."
"I summoned a demon fox," Kit repeated, as if he still couldn't quite believe the chances of such an occurrence. "Crehador's never going to let me hear the end of that one."
Kurama pushed off into one final leap, coming to land in the grass in front of what used to be the manor house, and carefully set Kit down on the ground. "Yes, and speaking of your friend, I suggest you wait here," he said with one of his knowing half-smiles, one made even more cunning when coupled with his now-golden eyes. "Those drugs still aren't completely out of your system, despite your miraculous display of willpower in overcoming their effects a few minutes ago, and I'm afraid you took quite a beating before I was able to get back to you. To say nothing of destroying an entire building beneath your feet and riding the crumbling wreckage the whole way down."
Kit frowned, processing that (and yes, he noted, fatigue was beginning to set in, and had he really been this tired and groggy a few minutes ago? He honestly hadn't noticed, being so caught up in the more important matters at hand) before offering a slight nod, catching Kurama's sleeve in his fingers before his demon could get away. "Crehador's coming?"
"You did just participate in a high-risk magical battle, send a burst of power hurtling through two ceilings and up into the sky like a signal flare, and then summarily destroy an entire building with your abilities," Kurama pointed out. "Even in my limited experience with your friend, it's not unreasonable to deduce that he might be heading this way."
He paused. "Also, there's a falcon circling overhead, which I believe might well be your friend Skippy."
"Skippy?" Kit repeated, slowly tipping his head back to search and silently cursing the fact that any rapid movements were certain to make his pounding headache return with full force. "Skippy found me in Italy. He's...good at finding me."
"And if it is, I imagine he'll be down to see you as soon as the rather large demonic predator in your midst gives enough clearance," Kurama soothed, easing Kit down until he was lying supine in the grass, his head pillowed on something soft. Cloth? Or a plant? He wasn't sure. For all he knew, Kurama might've grown him a massive cotton ball to lie on. "You'll be fine here for the moment. I'll take care of the remaining loose ends for you."
Kit abruptly tried to sit up, eyes widening, but Kurama's long-nailed hands landed on his shoulders in a flash, guiding him gently but firmly back down to the ground. "They're not dead?" he blurted, already searching for the remains of his magic and trying to ignore the faintly buzzing pain beginning to grow in the back of his mind. "They have to be dead, all of them, and my blood—you can't let my blood—"
"I'll treat that as an order from the one who summoned me," Kurama assured him, rising to his feet. "Don't worry. A bandit doesn't live long if he can't tie up a job without leaving a trace."
"All right," Kit murmured, tipping his head very slightly to watch his demon go to work. As predicted, as soon as he was a goodly distance away and bounding over the rubble with practiced ease, the falcon circling in the sky overhead came fluttering down to greet him, eye him, and peck once at his head in the process. It was Skippy, he mused with pleasure and more than a hint of relief. And if Skippy was here, then that probably meant that Crehador really was coming, and if Crehador was coming, then he was probably in for a good scolding or four.
But at least he'd probably bring a carriage, Kit thought drowsily, letting fatigue and his headache finally begin to creep over him. Kurama would take care of the rest, and Crehador would bring the carriage to drive them home, and twelve—no, thirteen, unlucky thirteen—snow white princesses were buried beneath the rubble.
Thirteen girls dead because of him.
And his own flesh and blood killed by his own hand.
"Bastard," he murmured under his breath, dizzily trying to decide how much effort it would take to hold on to consciousness, and if it were even worth it to try in the first place. Had Ducelli's death been as agonizing and terrible as it had looked? He hoped so.
He lost track of time soon after that, which was easy to do with his eyes closed and exhaustion setting in, but the next thing he remembered was Crehador's voice, and the odd smell of smoke, and arms lifting him up and up like he was floating through the air.
"They called his father the Earl of Poisons," someone muttered, somewhere above and to the side of him. "If he's not careful, he's going to earn himself the distinction of Earl of Massive Property Damage."
"I suspect he'd be flattered by that," someone else answered, sounding wryly amused. "You'll have to let him know when he wakes up."
I'm not asleep, Kit said stubbornly, or at least he thought he said it, but he couldn't precisely remember if he'd made his mouth form the words or not.
"When he wakes up, the two of you are going to have a lot of explaining to do," the first someone said irritably, and Kit decided that was probably Crehador. Irritable seemed to be Crehador's default mood whenever things like this happened. Which was pretty much constantly, he silently admitted.
It was much easier to lose track of time again when the people stopped talking, and the only sounds left to listen to were the creak of wheels and some rather aggravated noises from Skippy's beak, and Kit drifted in and out of remembering things as visions of white thread and vines and unsettling blue eyes flickered through his mind.
He wasn't sleeping, he thought again, just as stubbornly as he had the first time. He wasn't.
Which was fortunate, because if he were, those would have undoubtedly been nightmares.
Crehador was the one with the expertise in the way DELILAH worked (which was hardly surprising, considering he'd once freelanced for them), and he was able to fill in some of the gaps surrounding the twelve dead girls. Apparently, in the final months of his grandfather's reign, the organization had discovered a way to create whole girls from just a few cells taken from an old skull, but they had always come with a flaw: either the bodies had fallen apart as soon as they came into the open air, or they had been born mindless and animalistic, a freak of nature without a true soul. Rapetti's research operation in Italy had almost certainly discovered a way to correct that flaw, he'd explained, which provided them with an easy source of girls to raise into poisoned dolls, so long as they had the cells from which to grow them. Ducelli, then, had probably acquired Rapetti's research at the same time as he'd stolen the sample of Kit's blood, and having witnessed the full destructive potential of his powers after the Italy operation had been razed to the ground, he'd become obsessed with the idea of creating a doll with Kit's abilities to further the end of the world.
His innate abilities, combined with the powers afforded by the deadly doll process. A horrifying, masterful combination.
The twelve dead girls, then, had been as Ducelli had suggested—the prototype experiments upon which to perfect the process; he'd probably only had a small sample of Kit's blood, after all, and thus only a few cells to utilize. He couldn't afford to waste them on an imperfect effort. So he'd raised the girls, one by one, according to Rapetti's research notes, and then killed them and summoned them back into their own bodies. There was no telling how much success he'd had with the first ones, but by the twelfth, he'd been able to perfect the process enough to risk trying it with Kit's own blood.
Thus came Eva, the blood of his blood, the woman formed from his own body. And there was magic in his blood, so it was there in hers, too—magic that only grew stronger after she was killed and resurrected back into it.
Kurama was able to support quite a few of those assumptions with his own bits of detail, reaching into his jacket pocket and producing a sheaf of notes and diagrams penned in a mixture of Italian and English. They'd taken him at gunpoint to a holding room on the other side of the manor after the confrontation in the crypt, he'd explained, where he'd made quick work of his guards and then slipped out to find and rescue Kit. Along the way, he'd come across the laboratory where they'd created the dolls and had taken the liberty of examining (and stealing) the research notes. Eva had never had a true soul, according to Ducelli's observations; none of the dead princesses had ever possessed more than a basic, rudimentary consciousness, just enough to complete the deadly doll process. That lack had left them all docile and obedient, even to the point of being precariously close to mechanical; upon rebirth, they were highly susceptible to whatever they were told, and they acted like the dolls they were—puppets to be moved, positioned, commanded.
The red hair, he'd added, was noted in a margin as a recurring mutation, a side-effect of the process. All the girls created had been born with red hair, regardless of the donor's own coloring.
He'd arrived on the scene in the ornate room fairly early on, but had chosen to wait rather than act for a twofold reason: the first was that he hadn't known the full scope of Eva's powers, and was unwilling to gamble on the chance that he could stop her before she'd have the opportunity to kill Kit in retaliation. The second was that like Kit, he'd recognized Ducelli's penchant for self-aggrandizing and had thought it more profitable to let the man talk as much as he pleased, to garner as much information from him as they could before stepping in to neutralize his threat.
The itch Ducelli had scratched on his neck, Kurama elaborated, was the sting left behind by the seed he'd planted in the man's flesh. He called it shimaneki (another word Kit assumed was of demonic origin, like youko), and explained that he would've set it off much sooner, except that Ducelli had shown an unfortunate tendency of leaning over Kit in his attempts to menace him, and he'd been concerned that his young charge might have been caught up in the backlash. Shimaneki plants were hardly choosy about who they fed on, he'd remarked with one of his vague smiles. And they were indeed a very unpleasant way to die.
The last thing Kurama told him was that he'd made sure there were no survivors. Kit was well aware of what he meant; after all, there was only one person with the potential to survive a building falling on her. And he'd had a sickly suspicion in retrospect that even after it had all come down, she might very well not have been dead, after all.
In a way, he was somewhat relieved at the thought that he wasn't really the one who killed her. Blood of his blood, flesh of his flesh...Ducelli had called her his twin sister. It was only a coincidence, the topic of twins; the man couldn't possibly have known about his mother and uncle. And yet the thought had struck a nerve.
He half wondered if he'd subconsciously, deliberately caused things so that she wouldn't die from it. He'd tricked her into using all the power from his stolen wand, yes, but he of all people knew exactly how far her capabilities extended. There was still magic in her blood. There was still enough for her to save herself.
He wondered if he'd loved her, in that brief, fleeting time he'd known her. She was an abomination, there was no doubt of that, but she had no mother, no father, no family...not even a soul to call her own.
But then it was his turn to explain his part of it, how he'd remembered that the operatives in Italy had seen Skippy deliver him his cane in the moments before he'd destroyed the building, and how he'd suspected someone might've guessed it as the source of his power—and so he'd created a spare wand, siphoning out half the power from the one in his cane and storing it in the other, which he kept secreted inside his boot in case of an emergency. He'd hoped it wouldn't come to that, but it always paid to have an ace up one's sleeve. Particularly when dealing with a cardmaster's leftovers.
He was going to have to rest for a long, long time, Crehador had mandated, which made Kit hide a smile as he sensed the concern lurking beneath the annoyance in his tone. As much as the medium might give the impression of finding everything he did and all the escapades he got into to be completely stupid, it was still obvious he cared, deep down beneath it all. Which was nice. Crehador wasn't exactly family, but he was still fun, like an uncle who wasn't actually related to you but still let you stay out late at parties and sneak draughts of cognac from the bottle and occasionally summon demons in the kitchen.
Kurama didn't leave his side the whole time. He was back to his usual red hair—it looked like a fox tail, he realized, and no wonder he'd been so prickled with subconscious recognition every time he'd tried to figure out why it seemed so familiar—and stunning green eyes, and he quietly busied himself with tending to the thriving plants scattered about the room as Kit gradually recuperated, day by day.
It wasn't until the third day of bed rest, when Crehador had gone out in his best leopard-trimmed coat and hat to preside over a seance and Kit was itching to sneak out of bed and actually do something for a change, that Kurama finally said, "Are you feeling well enough to answer one of my questions?"
"Is it one of the ones I owe you?" Kit answered without missing a beat, half-turning onto his side as he fluffed his pillows and propped them against the headboard so he could sit up more comfortably.
"Yes," Kurama replied, which made him look up in surprise. There was a strange intensity in his demon's gaze, a sort of razor precision that made a lump gather in his throat.
"Okay," he said, settling back against his pillows and hoping he looked more confident than he felt. "What is it?"
Kurama was quiet a moment, then fixed Kit with a steady look as a hint of a smile played at the corner of his lips. "You've known since the beginning of this how to send me back to my own time, haven't you?" he asked, in a tone of voice that made it clear he knew they both already knew the answer.
Instinctively, Kit averted his gaze, which meant losing their impromptu staring contest but made it a little easier to get the words out, now that he was staring at his bedcovers instead of the impossible green of his demon's eyes. "I do a lot of reckless things, but I'm not stupid enough to cast a spell I don't already know how to undo," he admitted quietly. "I memorized the banishing spell long before I ever tried the summoning one."
"And you lied to Crehador about not knowing how."
"He's a medium. His specialty is dead people. And I can do some of it, too, but I'm a lot more proficient in the arcane stuff than in the spiritual." He shrugged a little. "It helps that I've trained under a wizard, so I've got a lot of background that Crehador doesn't."
"Your wizard taught you well," Kurama answered, sounding vaguely approving. "And I imagine you've already guessed what my next question will be."
"Then why didn't I just banish you when I had the chance, and be done with it?" Kit replied, earning an affirmative nod from his demon in the process. He sighed. "Because Crehador walked in and ruined my plans before you had the opportunity to offer me a contract."
Kurama's eyebrows went up. "I recall your insistence on being offered one, yes." He paused. "Were you expecting to encounter a demon that would ask you to trade your soul?"
Kit stared at the comforter, his shoulders slumping slightly. "You've seen and heard enough of my family to know we've got a legacy of being led into temptation," he said softly. "And I just thought...there's really no way of knowing if you'll be able to resist it until you've faced it firsthand, is there? It's easy to say if something ever happens, you'll do this or that, but then when it really comes down to doing it..."
He closed his eyes. "Like Eva. I know I didn't kill her. I should've. I had every reason to, I had the power to. But when the moment came, I still pulled back. I couldn't do it."
"That doesn't make you weak," Kurama said, and the bed shifted slightly as he took a seat on the edge, the mattress dipping under the new weight. "After what he told you, anyone would've hesitated. If anything, it only proves you're human—which was something she would've never been able to claim."
"You made sure she was dead?" Kit asked, a bit dismayed at how his voice wobbled as he forced the words out.
"There are harsh punishments that await a demon who kills a human for any reason," Kurama murmured. "Of course, at this point in history, I'm still a wanted criminal anyway, so it's just one more offense to add to an already long list of crimes. Yes, they're all dead, on my word and honor both. And your friend Crehador helped me set fire to the last of it, as well, so there's no evidence left behind for any other splinter factions of DELILAH to utilize."
"Good. That's good. I'm glad."
Kurama reached to pat his hand. "You did enough, Kit. It's settled. This much, at least, is over."
He shook his head. "No, it's not," he answered dully. "I still haven't sent you back. The rest of it is done, but the part that started it all..."
There was a note of silence.
"That temptation you've been testing," Kurama said at last, then stopped and left it alone a few moments before gently continuing, "Is it true, what Crehador said about you and redheads?"
Kit ducked his head, feeling his face already beginning to go hot as he quickly turned it away. "I guess that's another thing that runs in the family," he awkwardly replied.
"I see," Kurama mused, sitting perfectly still a moment—which was nervewracking, to say the least, because it was hard enough to gauge what his demon was thinking at any normal moment, but here he had absolutely no idea what might be going through the redhead's mind, or what he might do or say in response.
But what he did, ultimately, was lean over and straighten Kit's covers, smoothing them back into place with the tenderness of a mother. "Get some sleep," he gently instructed. "The more you rest today, the easier time I'll have of convincing Crehador to let you out of bed tomorrow."
Slightly bemused, Kit did as he was told, sinking back down into the blankets and resting his head on the mountain of pillows behind him as his demon made his way toward the door.
"Kurama?" he called plaintively, just before the redhead was out of earshot.
A moment later, Kurama's head poked back into the room. "Yes?"
Kit swallowed hard. "How long have you known?"
That familiar, enigmatic smile crossed Kurama's lips. "Yours isn't the best of poker faces," he answered simply, and a moment later the door fell closed with a soft click.
"Remember to keep the white baneberries out of direct sunlight," Kurama reminded him as they gathered in the kitchen, waiting for the sigils painted on the floor (out of a mixture of chicken blood and ink) to dry, "And rotate the larkspur a quarter-turn every day, so it grows evenly."
"Of all the demons in the world to summon, he gets the one that's both a fox and a gardener," Crehador muttered under his breath.
"And keep an eye on the strychnine tree to make sure it's taking to its new pot," Kit repeated obediently. "Right, I know. My garden's never looked better since you've been here, Kurama."
"Oh, that reminds me," Kurama said pleasantly, holding up one finger as he headed for the door. As Crehador and Kit watched, eyebrows raised, he stepped into the hall and returned a minute later with a briefcase in one hand and a flowerpot in the other. "Since you've both been such charming hosts, I took the liberty of getting you each a parting gift. Consider it a thank-you for an undeniably entertaining adventure."
Kit caught himself blushing and quickly faked a cough, hoping to cover the redness in his cheeks. "You didn't have to do that..."
"I think you'll enjoy them," Kurama answered, deflecting the issue with ease. "Don't open them until after I'm gone, will you?"
Forcing himself to ignore the fact that his stomach rather felt as though it was going to drop out, Kit nodded and bent to test the consistency of the sigil he'd drawn on the floor. To his dismay, it was at the perfect balance between tacky and dry to suffice. "It's ready," he said, determined to keep his voice level and the emotion out of his tone. Bad enough to get sentimental over his demon's departure; worse still to do it in front of Crehador. "Are you?"
Kurama nodded, stepping carefully over the lines to extend his hand to Crehador; to Kit's surprise, the medium shook it without protest. "There were far worse creatures he could've called up than you," Crehador said, actually looking faintly amused. "Have a good trip."
"Oh, speaking of which," Kurama answered, glancing between the two of them, "Considering the amount of power I put at your disposal in the events of the past few weeks, it's entirely possible that an emissary from my superiors—future superiors, technically speaking—will be visiting you shortly, having tracked my energy to this place. I'm afraid your great-grandchildren might not be the only ones coming under sudden scrutiny, Kit."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Kit answered, perfectly deadpan. "There were never any demons here, sir."
"I see you've been working on your poker face," Kurama said approvingly. "But still, be careful. I doubt they'll give you any trouble, but you are an extraordinarily powerful individual, and if you somehow hadn't attracted their notice before, I can guarantee that you certainly have now."
"I'll be careful," Kit said, unexpectedly pleased at the implied praise of his talents. "And you too, okay?"
"I'll be fine," Kurama assured him, stepping over to shake his hand as well.
As soon as he was within earshot, hands tightly grasped together, Kit cast a flustered glance at Crehador and mumbled, "I don't suppose there's any way you can get him out of the room for about thirty seconds?"
"So you can give me a more traditional goodbye?" Kurama murmured back, his eyes dancing. "I suspect he'd catch on if I tried. I wasn't the only one who figured you out, you know."
Kit barely managed to suppress a highly undignified noise. Fortunately, Kurama saved him again by continuing smoothly, "But I can tell you he keeps the absinthe behind Descartes's Passions of the Soul on the west bookshelf. I hope that'll do as a consolation."
Then, with a light pat to the shoulder, he released Kit's hand and stepped into the middle of the sigil, nodding at both of them in turn before letting his gaze fall to Kit. "I'm ready when you are," he said pleasantly.
Kit swallowed, flexing his fingers as he thought, just for one fleeting moment, of botching the spell and keeping Kurama here forever. Or at least longer. Or at least—
He waved his hand, uttered a word, and in a flash, his demon was gone.
They stood in silence a moment, just he and Crehador, like mourners at a gravesite as they watched the smoke drifting up from where the sigil had flared to life just seconds earlier. Then, slowly, Kit turned his attention to the gifts Kurama had left behind, more because he was at a loss for what to do than because he was really curious to see what was inside them.
The flowerpot was meant for him, he mused after a quick glance at the tags, and he slit the card open with his thumbnail to read the message inside. And there, in Kurama's neat hand, it read:
It seems your father's family is a rather renowned one around London; last night I paid a visit to the estates while you and your friend Crehador were asleep. It's a beautiful place. I hope someday you'll be able to see it firsthand.
The plant in this pot is a geranium borrowed from your mother's private garden, the one by the house tucked away at the far end of the yard that you described to me so fondly in the days I kept you company while you were recuperating. In the language of flowers, the geranium symbolizes gentility, meetings, folly, and true friendship; I thought you'd find that appropriate. Please take good care of it.
In return, I've borrowed a few cuttings from your foxgloves as a remembrance of my own. I thought you wouldn't begrudge me that, either.
It's been a pleasure to be your partner, little fox.
—Kurama
He swallowed hard, glancing toward the flower blooming merrily in the pot. It was a geranium, yes, with blossoms the lush red of his demon's hair, and he reached out to trace his finger along the delicate petals. It would be the first plant in his garden that wasn't cultivated to be deadly, he mused. But Kurama couldn't have picked a more perfect memory. And he wouldn't just take good care of this one; no, this one he would treasure, as a parting gift from one fox to another.
A yell of exclamation from Crehador made him glance up from his reverie, and he had to do a double-take at the sight of the opened briefcase Crehador had propped on the counter—and the neat rows of banknotes packed within.
"Dear Crehador, my apologies again for all the upset I caused you during my brief stay in your charming residence. I took the liberty of borrowing this from Kit's father's safe when I visited his estates last night; please consider it an advance, on his behalf and mine, to accompany Kit into whatever peril he may get up to next," Crehador read aloud, sputtering.
Kit managed to restrain himself all of two seconds before he doubled over with mirth, his sudden burst of laughter ringing out through the kitchen. "He really thinks of everything, doesn't he?"
"He robbed your father," Crehador pointed out, without even a hint of malice.
Kit shrugged. "It's a good investment," he retorted, still chuckling as he retrieved his geranium. "You're never going to be free of my stupidity, Crehador."
And then, with a vaguely hollow feeling in his chest but a strangely light heart to compensate, Kit Hargreaves headed for his little room in the back of the residence to put his newest plant securely away.
"And no more demon summonings!" Crehador irritably called after him.
Anthony J. Crowley frowned slightly, surveying both the quaint Victorian kitchen and the occult sigil beneath his feet with a hint of bemusement from behind his very dark sunglasses. "This is decidedly not the Ritz," he remarked aloud.
A moment later, he noticed the dark-haired youth in his midst, the one looking at him with wide and apparently innocent blue eyes. Deceptively innocent, too, he noted with sudden interest. Whoever he was, he was powerful. And theoretically corruptible.
"Do you know anything about gardening?" the kid asked, holding out a wilting potted plant.
Crowley suppressed a smile.
BACK TO PART ONE