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I reached over my shoulder for my backpack, appraising the demon. For a third time, Mammon laughed, the coif of its hair unmoving as it tilted its head, the single ruby stud in its ear sparkling in the hall’s firelight.
“Do not appear so perplexed. Mammon knows the greed that lives in the hearts of men.” Another snap, and a large golden bowl appeared on the table. “Set its broken pieces within. Quickly.”
Herald nodded encouragingly, and if there was any hesitation left in me, it was long gone. There was something brutally efficient about Mammon’s process that should have made me so much more dubious, but I wanted this to end soon. I wanted Vanitas back, the inside of my chest thrumming with that same desire. Want. Need. Now.
Fragments of bronze and shattered garnets tinkled as I spilled the contents of both the wooden chest and my backpack into the bowl. The amulet, the same one that the homunculus had stolen from dad’s place, fell in last, its chain spilling among the tangle of ruined verdigris. It struck me that there must have been a reason that the creature singled it out of all the pieces in mom’s collection. I retrieved it from the bowl, showed it to Mammon, then slipped it in one of my pockets.
“For safekeeping,” I said. “Sentimental value and all that.”
Mammon shrugged. “It matters not.” The demon snapped its fingers again, and a ruby-encrusted goblet appeared in its hand. It locked gazes with me as it sipped, its eyes scintillant, green, laughing. The goblet vanished, and Mammon leaned over to spit into the bowl through wine-stained lips.
The vessel erupted in a tower of flames so massive that Herald and I staggered back. I shielded my eyes with the back of my hand, seeing just enough to find that the flames had transformed into the shape of Mammon’s face.
I couldn’t tell where all the screaming was coming from. In a dirge song as of a hundred voices, I heard Mammon’s strongest of all, chanting over the infernal chorus. Then I glimpsed it, just beyond the demon’s head, one of the paintings. Its occupant’s face had changed. I whirled to look at the portraits in the hallway. They were all burning. They were all screaming.
All at once, the fires went out. The paintings went back to normal, but Mammon took the bowl, now gone white-hot, and tipped its contents back. Like magma the liquid metal slipped past bloodless lips, into a slender throat that glowed and blazed from within. Then Mammon stood there, motionless, with its eyes closed.
“This wasn’t what I had in mind when we talked about forging and smithing,” I whispered to Herald. He glared at me, but said nothing.
“It is a special case for a very special weapon indeed, Dustin Graves.”
Mammon smiled with uninjured lips, then coughed, louder, and more violently, until blood spurted in crimson droplets over the marble floor. Herald pulled on my jacket when I rushed to help – as if a demon prince would even need my help.
With one final, gurgling splutter, Mammon heaved something bright red and glistening out of its mouth. It clattered to the floor, smeared in blood. Among the streaks and splotches of gore peeked the object’s familiar greenish-gold mix of verdigris and bronze.
“Vanitas,” I breathed. Sword and scabbard, all in one piece.
Mammon chuckled, wiping the corner of its mouth with a silk handkerchief. “Few fires can ever burn hot enough to forge star-metal, but few fires are stronger than those of Mammon’s hells. A very taxing service has been completed for you, thing of shadows. Resource-heavy, and complex. The prince of greed demands an appropriate payment.”
I gazed at the blood-slicked thing that was Vanitas, then back up at Mammon. I knew I was going to regret the very next words to come out of my mouth, but I wanted my friend back.
“Name your price.”
With a mouth that held far, far too many teeth, Mammon smiled.
Even Herald, a self-proclaimed demonologist, held his breath when I answered. Simply being in the demon’s palace was having a bizarre effect on me, as if the place was suffused in some invisible gas that made me so desperately eager to have my wishes fulfilled. But I couldn’t stop myself, and I knew that I’d sealed my fate.
“Excellent,” the demon said. “Then Mammon will call on your aid when the time is right. Permit Mammon time to select the perfect quest for this strangest of men, this thing of shadows. When the time comes – should you refuse – that which you most love shall be taken from you.”
I stiffened. That could mean anything. Hell, the quest itself could be anything. But too late. I had what I wanted, and so would the demon, in time. A fine mess I’d gotten myself into. Time was when my biggest problem was figuring out my next paycheck. I never for the life of me expected to owe a favor to a demon. Correction: a demon prince.
“Then Mammon considers this matter settled. You may claim your prize.”
Flames consumed the length of Vanitas’s blade, marking a scorching, black cross in the marble as it burned the demon’s blood away. The fires died out, leaving a shining sword on the ground – at least, as shiny as a tarnished old relic can be.
“Good as new,” I said, picking Vanitas up, and surprising myself with his weight. It was like handling a kitchen knife. He weighed hardly anything. I cocked my head questioningly in Mammon’s direction.
“Mammon has seen fit to improve the device’s enchantments. See how it is lighter now, how it cleaves through the air as a falling leaf dances in autumn.”
Herald’s glasses seemed to flash in the firelight as he turned his sights on the blade. “But this work is incomplete. The garnets in the blade are dull. The sword should b
e sentient.”
I closed my eyes, reaching to that part of my mind where Vanitas’s voice lived. Even with the rough, cold metal of his blade under my fingers, I couldn’t sense him at all. Fuck. I’d just agreed to a demon’s bargain, and all I had to show for it was a paperweight.
“Mammon only promised to put your plaything back together. Mammon never said it would speak or fly again.”
“You piece of – ”
