Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [39]
It was nearly one when he climbed the steps to his rooms. The lodging house was deserted, and only a faint chill clinging to the banister gave any hint that an unhuman presence had passed that way. But he knew that chill by now, and its owner, and therefore it was no surprise to him when he unlocked the door to his small apartment and found the Hunter waiting.
“I’d have thought you’d be keeping an earlier schedule by now,” Tarrant challenged.
“Yeah. Well.” He pulled the door shut behind him and locked it, then made his way wearily to a well-worn chair. Dust gusted up from the cushion as he sat. “I had a bad day.”
He could feel the force of the earth-fae sucking at him as the Hunter’s Knowing reached into his brain for surface details. Let him. It was easier to endure the invasion than try to capture the day’s humiliation in words.
“I’m sorry,” the Hunter said at last. Regret, not apology.
Damien managed to shrug. “I guess it could have been worse.” He looked up at Tarrant, noted that as usual he looked neither tired, distressed, disheveled ... nor human. “How’s the Forest?”
It seemed to him that the Hunter hesitated. “Safe enough,” he said at last. “But our enemy’s workings can be subtle, and I wouldn’t bet my life on such an assessment.”
“Yeah. Same here.”
“You believe that Calesta has made contact with the Patriarch?”
He gazed into Tarrant’s eyes. Cold, so cold. Pits of anti-life. How could he have imagined that the Patriarch resembled him? Or any living man, for that matter?
“He knew,” he said bitterly. “Everything. Details he couldn’t possibly have learned from any other source.” He met that inhuman gaze head-on, drawing strength from its cold inner fire. This is my ally. My support. He wished the thought felt more uncomfortable than it did. Had he changed so much in the last two years? “He knows I fed you my blood,” he said quietly. “He knows about the channel between us. Do you realize how that damns me, in the Church’s eyes? There’s nothing I can say now to save myself. Nothing I can do, except avoid the source of corruption from now on.”
“Is that what you want?” Tarrant demanded. “If it truly is, then I’ll leave you. If you value your precious peace of mind more than our mission. Maybe Calesta will even forgive you in time, learn to leave you alone, once you’ve ceased to be—”
“Don’t be a fool, Gerald.” He reached for a bottle of ale he had left on the table earlier in the day; it was warm now, but what the hell. “Neither one of us is safe until Calesta’s dead and gone. Hell, the whole vulking world isn’t safe anymore.” He drank deeply of the warm ale, wincing as its spices bit into his tongue. “Look what happened in the east. Look at how many lives would have been sacrificed to one demon’s hunger, if you hadn‘t—”
The Hunter’s expression darkened. Damien let the words trail off into silence.
“Sorry,” he said at last. “I shouldn’t remind you.”
Tarrant turned away, toward the window.
“At any rate, we don’t stand a chance singly and you know it. Like it or not, we’re stuck with each other.” We may not even stand a chance together, he thought grimly as he took another swig of the warm ale. The alcohol was slowly loosening a knot in his belly the size of Jaggonath. Well worth the lousy taste. “So how did your research go?”
Tarrant shook his head sharply in frustration. “Volumes of notes, centuries of study, and not one useful bit of information. Oh, I can recite you the names of over a hundred Iezu, complete with their aspects, preferred forms, and habitats, but