6.9
Austin goes to bed early and sleeps more fitfully than he has in nearly two years. The nightmares come over him in waves, each receding back into the ether before the next one hits. In one, he looks down to see his hands wet with blood, shaking around the handle of a blade. In another, cold metal pressed to the back of his neck, the smell of gunpowder, bullets hanging around him in the air perfectly in place like ornaments on a Christmas tree. In the last, oily tentacles crawling up from a dark pit, scrambling for purchase on someone’s floor tiles.
Austin wakes up screaming. Someone standing over his bed shrieks, too, and stumbles backwards a few steps. As Austin tries to breathe and control himself, he can make out a dark shape in a white dress shirt hovering near the bed, lit by the first strains of sunlight streaming in through the half-drawn curtains.
“Morse?” he asks hoarsely.
“Yeah,” Morse says.
“Gonna throw up,” Austin says, and throws himself out of the bed so he can make it to the bathroom in time. He does - just barely, and vomits mostly liquid into the toilet.
“I was coming to get you for breakfast,” Morse says, from the doorway of the bathroom, “but now I’m not so sure. Do you always puke right after you wake up?”
“No,” Austin grunts. He reaches over to the bathtub and twists the handle, catching the water that spills out of the faucet in one cupped hand and using it to clean his face. It’s so cold it almost stings, but the sensation brings him back to himself, grounding him in place.
“It’s a danger sense thing,” he tells Morse, once he’s sure he’s not going to vomit again.
Morse’s expression darkens into one of concern. “You think you’re in danger?”
“I don’t know.” Austin swallows, winces at the raw feeling in his throat. “It’s not as bad as when I almost died, back in the mines, but - still bad. I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe you’ll only get injured,” Morse says. There’s a sort of forced levity to his tone that Austin doesn’t particularly enjoy. “Do you still want breakfast?”
Austin only thinks about it for a moment. “Better not.”
“Well, there’s someone downstairs to see you. Should I just send her up after you get dressed?”
“Who?” Austin asks, though he already has an inkling.
“Gen,” Morse says, a little reluctantly. “I don’t think Kesi knows she’s here. She said she wanted to talk to you - Nab’s pretty pissed about it, but there’s no real rule that says champions aren’t allowed to spend time together before they fight. She’s probably just here to try and psych you out.”
Or make a bargain to stop the duel, Austin thinks, balancing himself on the toilet bowl and standing up. If neither of us try to kill each other, there can’t be a fight at all. It does run the risk of the demons trying to incentivize us further, or turning against us, but if we agree to force a stalemate, neither of us has to die right off the bat.
He turns the idea over in his head, stumbling back into the bedroom and rooting around on the floor for clothes to wear to the duel. Eventually, he settles on the ratty, bloodstained ones he arrived at Hell in. Might as well not ruin any of the nice clothes Naberius lent me. Not if I’m just going to die anyway.
“Should I send her up?” Morse asks, pointedly not commenting on the choice of outfit as Austin strips off his pajama shirt and starts to dress.
“Yeah,” Austin says, tugging his torn t-shirt over his chest.
Morse slips out of the room, shutting the door behind him, and it isn’t long before someone knocks on it. Austin gives up on crawling around the floor in search of his sneakers and elects to sit on the bed instead, combing his fingers through his hair so that maybe it will look like he’s been awake for longer than twenty minutes.
“Come in,” he says, his voice carefully even.
Gen does so. She’s dressed in similarly un-demonic fashion, in a short, sleeveless dress with leggings underneath. As she smiles at Austin, he notices that she isn’t wearing her glasses, and her hair is pulled back into a neat bun.
Probably to keep it from getting pulled. Smart. He looks towards his desk, and eyes the ribbon he used to tie up his hair at the party, making a mental note to grab it before leaving.
“Austin,” Gen says, clasping her hands together in front of her. Her voice oozes false sincerity. “So good to be able to see you before the duel. I’ll bet you haven’t seen another human your whole time here, hmm?”
“Cut the crap,” Austin says. His voice is still a little hoarse, but he pushes through it. “Why’d you want to talk?”
Gen tilts her head curiously to one side, a smile playing around her lips. “I assumed you would have guessed.”
“Is it about forcing a stalemate? Because -”
“Oh, no.” Gen laughs. “Maybe I gave the wrong impression. I came here to tell you how pleased I’ll be when I kill you in a couple of hours. Why would I ever want a stalemate?”
“If neither of us fight, neither of us has to die,” Austin says pointedly. “I mean, I don’t think the demons would like it, but we could - we could figure something out, maybe figure out a way of getting back to Earth, even -”
“No, I don’t think so,” Gen says. Her voice is firm, much less saccharine than it was a few seconds ago.
Austin eyes her, searching her face for something other than amusement. Most people would probably take the offer that doesn’t end in them potentially being stabbed to death in one-on-one combat. Is she really that determined to try and kill me?
“Why not?” he asks her.
“Well,” Gen says, and purses her lips for a moment, thinking. “I guess it’s not a big deal if I tell you, since you’ll be dead soon, anyway. Kesi said that if I try to back out on the duel, he’ll take away what he gave me when I first made a pact with him.”
“What did he give you?”
“None of your business,” she intones cheerfully.
Would Naberius go back on our contract if I decided not to duel? Austin touches the holes in his shirt, staring down at the blood around the collar. His stomach turns unpleasantly. Would he just throw me back under that rock in the mine? Let me die there? He didn’t say anything about it. But then again, he didn’t say a lot of things about what the pact with him really entailed.
“I’m not going to let you kill me,” he tells Gen.
“Oh,” she says sweetly, “I don’t know about that. But posture all you like.”
“Get out,” Austin growls, trying to mask the bile rising in his throat again.
Gen does. He makes sure that the sound of her shoes smacking against the marble recedes into silence before he runs to the bathroom to throw up again. It’s mostly dry-heaving this time - there’s nothing much left in his stomach to come back up, save acid.
Morse is leaning on the bathroom doorframe when Austin comes back up, nearly in the same position as before. It’s like he never left. The area where his eyebrows should be is creased with concern.
“Don’t let her get to you,” he tells Austin. “She’s probably had less weapons training than you have, and blades tend to do a lot more damage than magic tricks.”
“Right,” Austin says.
“I’d ask if you were ready to go, but it doesn’t really matter at this point.” Morse steps into the bathroom, offering Austin a hand and hauling him back up to his feet. “Nab wants to leave in a couple of minutes, get you armed and at the arena before the spectators start to get impatient.”
“Hey,” Austin says. He grips Morse’s sleeve insistently, clenching his fingers around it. “If I die, or - or get stuck here, or whatever happens when I lose, make sure Nab delivers those letters. Okay?”
Morse’s expression softens, and he folds his hand over Austin’s, squeezing it reassuringly. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.” He stays like that for a moment before detangling himself and moving back into the bedroom, crouching on the floor. “Let’s see about finding you some shoes, yeah? I’d hate for you to have to fight barefoot.”
“Yeah,” Austin says, and kneels down to help look.