Page 28 of Unholy Bond
I pulled out of the vision with a smile. Mission accomplished.
I let myself bask in the afterglow, the taste of paperwork and dust and the impending doom that grew underneath everything. The Void nuzzled my throat, satisfied, and moved me to the next channel.
I opened my senses to search out the second demon in the military wing, south barracks. The agent here was a flying model, the wingspans folded so tight they looked vestigial. Its body was thin, almost elegant, and it wore nothing but the spiral of blue runes carved into its arms and neck. It perched above the bunks, just under the exposed heating pipe, and listened to the churn of soldier gossip.
Below, the grunts of Hell’s army. They slouched on the beds, uniforms open at the neck, every one of them half-inebriated on the sanctioned beer that passed for a nightcap in these parts. The topic, as always, was Lucifer’s latest edict: double shifts, new torture protocols, a crackdown on recreational homicide. The sergeant, a thick, ugly brute with a cleft lip and a triple row of teeth, read from the bulletin and spat after every paragraph.
“Efficiency targets will be met. Underperformers will be reprocessed. Promotions are contingent on active participation in pain generation quotas.” He tossed the paper on the floor, stomped it into a greasy print. “Guy’s lost it. You think he ever gets out of his own ass long enough to see a working demon?”
The soldiers snorted, some muttered. None would dare open insurrection, but the resentment curdled in the air, delicious and bitter.
My agent tore at the beam with a claw, carving a tight spiral into the old wood. It didn’t take much. The beam had been here since the first palace was built, and the grain still remembered the names of every demon who’d ever shed blood below it. A scratch, a dig, and the rune was set. The spell wouldn’t kick in until the room was full and the mood reached a boil, but when it did, the words “revolution” and “strike” would taste a little sweeter on the tongue, the idea of turning on the top brass almost as satisfying as the actual violence.
Below, one of the soldiers caught a whiff of something off. He looked up, saw nothing. The agent blurred into the shadows, wings flexed, already prepping for the next target.
The psychic feed winked out.
I shivered, the pleasure of sabotage almost enough to make me moan. Instead, I clenched my hands, drawing the black veins even tighter against my skin, and tuned in for the final show.
The third demon was in the noble court. Here, my agent had class. It moved in a body built for social engineering: tall, thin-waisted, dressed in a tailored black jacket that rippled with oily highlights. Its face was all bone and sharp, the smile wide enough to split a watermelon. It carried a tray, gliding through the crowd with just the right amount of obsequiousness, a servant but never a doormat. The court was packed: dukes and ministers, wives and paramours, their children (some only a century out of the womb) bored and picking at the canapés.
On the dais, a minor prince gave a speech about loyalty, the need for unity, the sanctity of the new regime. No one listened. They drank, they whispered, they cut each other down with small, precise insults. My agent maneuvered from group to group, never lingering long enough to draw attention. It poured wine into goblets, letting a single drop of saliva fall into each cup.The effect was immediate, each demon who drank blinked, as if someone had just whispered their deepest insecurity in their ear. For the briefest instant, all the smug confidence melted and was replaced by something raw and vulnerable. Most shrugged it off, but some flinched, their next words stumbling or dying in their throats.
The agent tuned its ear to the undercurrent, picking out the key phrases. “He’s slipping.”
“She’s got the numbers now.”
“That Void-spawn bitch will ruin us all.”
It cataloged each whisper, each complaint, and let the information route itself back to me, perfect and unfiltered.
When the prince finished his address, my agent moved to the head of the room and offered him a fresh glass. The prince took it, eyed the servant, and drank deep. The mark on the underside of the cup glowed faint blue, invisible to all but the most sensitive. The prince shuddered, then smiled, a little wider than before, and dismissed the servant without a word.
Feed cut off.
The darkness behind my eyelids faded. I came back to myself, hands gone clammy and legs half-asleep. The air in my chamber had cooled by several degrees, the black veins on my skin lighting up like a star chart in negative. I shook my head, letting the last traces of borrowed memory slough off, then stood.
It was nearly time for the download.
My children filed in, one by one, from the secret passages and vents that snaked through the palace. Some arrived upright, heads held high; others crawled or oozed, depending on the model and the damage. Most bore fresh cuts, burns, a few bulletholes, but they wore them like medals, each injury proof of their success. They arranged themselves around me in a circle, eyes downcast, limbs folded to minimize space. I nodded to each in turn, counting, confirming, finding the gaps left by casualties.
When all were present, I knelt at the center, rolled up the sleeve of my robe, and pressed a knife to my forearm. The blade bit deep, the blood welling up slow and thick. I traced a spiral on the floor, then motioned the first child forward.
It was the Komodo-demon, scales now dulled by a layer of black soot. It knelt, offered its wrist, and I pressed my cut to its own. The blood mingled, and the transfer began. Images poured into me. The clerk’s shocked face as the desk burst into corruption. The spread of the Void up the furniture, infecting every file and every surface. The slow, delicious panic as the entire office realized that something fundamental had shifted in their world. I cataloged every sensation, every useful bit of gossip, every name attached to a weakness.
When the feed completed, the agent sagged back, spent. I nodded it aside and beckoned the next.
The winged agent limped to me, one foot mangled from a close escape. I took its hand, pressed vein to vein, and let the impressions flow: the tension in the barracks, the hunger for mutiny, the subtle reinforcement of dissatisfaction as the rune pulsed in the rafters. I saw the faces of the soldiers, their loyalties and doubts. I heard, in their own words, what they would risk for a chance at a new world order.
I moved to the next, the social agent from the noble court. Here, the information came as a hot rush, a flood of emotion and intrigue. I saw the faces of the conspirators, tasted the poison in the wine, heard the hiss of silk against skin as the lords and ladies shifted in their seats, terrified of losing their place. Iwatched, through the agent’s eyes, the ripple of fear that passed through the prince as the Void whispered its secrets into his marrow.
One by one, I collected the data. Each agent left a new rune on my body. A tally, a trophy, a keepsake of their service. By the time the last demon limped away, my skin was a roadmap of sabotage, the black marks writhing just beneath the surface.
I stood and stretched, letting the blood run down my arm and drip onto the marble. It pooled at my feet, then raced outward in fractal lines, mapping the palace and every point of weakness we’d uncovered.
I squatted and traced my finger along the largest line, following it to a cluster of runes near the main command post. “This one is nearly ready,” I murmured, half to the room, half to the Void. “They’re almost begging for a leader to step in.”
The Void swelled in my chest, pleased. The line of thought was so clean now, the two of us no longer separate. Its appetite was mine; its strategy, flawless.
