"Shut up,” she whispered, and shivered. The shivers spilled up her back, cresting and flying down her arms, and her hands began to feel numb. The knife vibrated hotly on her hip. She wrapped her fingers around the hilt. A thin wire of strength slid up her arm. Caught. Like a rat in a trap.

It brought up an interesting question: Did she draw the knife now despite its glow—or did she back up into the dark, mathematically-straight corridor behind her and hope to be overlooked?

Unless, of course, the demon was coming up behind her. If she froze like a rabbit in a trap…?

I have nothing to lose. She stepped forward, turned to her left, and started to run as fast as her weary body would allow. And she saw, at the end of the impossibly long hall, like a gift, the last thing she ever expected to see.

Stairs. Going up.

Crimson, shot through with blackness. Moving on instinct, tucking his chin so the spider couldn't get purchase to rip out his throat. The demon's back broke with a sound like iron-laced glass shattering. He did not even recognize the sound he was making. A low, thrumming growl, the entire tunnel resonating to subsonic frequencies. Making a lot of noise. Lot of noise. Can't be helped.

The thing scrabbled weakly in his hands, already dying. It was a soldier demon. He'd already met one of the High Ones and was consequently bleeding again.

It didn't matter. He'd killed it, though it had damn near tried to take his spleen out the hard way. And once he'd killed it, he had to deal with the spiders. He had been down here a long time, an eternity, fighting, working toward the direction instinct told him would lead him to an exit. He needed to get out of here, go to ground somewhere. Lick his wounds.

Traitor. Traitor. Someone had betrayed him, and he was going to make them pay eventually. But to do that, he had to keep moving. Keep fighting.

His legs worked when he pushed himself forward, leaving the small hairless little demon writhing on the stone floor. It was the same type of thing they put in the human slaves, but past its pupae stage, with long sleek legs, compound eyes, and a caved-in nose. But still, it died.

The other one clamped its teeth in his calf, but he was ready for that and stamped down sharply, heel becoming a battering ram, then reached down and snapped its neck. The bodies slumped around him, each one terribly battered; the spiders roamed in packs when they didn't ride a human carrier. His breathing came hot and harsh, ribs flickering as he pulled in air tainted with death and demon.

Who am I?

He no longer knew. Or cared.

It took him a few moments to wipe the blood out of his eyes. He leaned against the cold wall, his heart pounding and his body shrieking as etheric energy crackled, his fighting aura patching together the rips in his wounded body, forcing his skin to close and muscles to reknit themselves.

Traitor. Kill the traitor. He stalked down the corridor, some part of him aware that he was seeing in complete darkness, heat and etheric force bouncing off the walls, acting as a kind of sonar to inform him of speed, direction, drift. There were torches lining the walls, but he was past using his eyes to see; they were merely blobs of heat, bouncing off the stone and showing him the way.

A breath of scent drifted across his senses.

Gold. Female. Young.

Familiar.

The bleak darkness in him stopped, a ceaseless spinning shifting its axis. Mine. He raised his weary head, taking a deep breath.

She had come this way. Just who she was he wasn't sure, but the deep well of instinct flooded over with possessive fury. Whoever that scent belonged to, he recognized it, and that made him temporarily able to think a little bit clearer.

Just a very little bit. The thirst for revenge faded under this new priority.

He smelled smoke, torches, the peculiar nose-stinging odor of others of his kind, ones that made a shiver of distaste fly up his spine. Them, the ones that smelled like danger; if he faced them in this condition he would die. Instinct told him this, clearly, unavoidably.

She's here. She was alive, not too long ago, passed this way, touched the wall here. Smell of burning fat… candle. Why a candle? Who knows?

He was used to tracking, so a few breaths told him everything he needed to know. The scent of another demon lay over hers, one that chilled his breath and sank into his skin. Following her, something with blue eyes and long maggot-waxen fingers.

He sensed them massing behind him. Why am I underground? Who am I?

The name would not come, no matter how he shook his head, so he discarded it and moved on, ignoring the soft slipping sounds as his blood hit the floor. He would stop bleeding soon enough, but for right now he had to follow this trail as quickly as he could. He'd figure something out on the way.

Mine, the blackness in him whispered. Mine.

Mine, he agreed, and began to run.

The stairs stretched, and the trail was fresher. He pushed himself up, up, each step a song of agony from the time his heel touched down to the time his leg tensed to carry him upward. He wondered how far below the ground he still was. His fingers trailed along glass-smooth stone, reading from each slight vibration how far back the pursuers were—and how far ahead his prey was. He was slowing, slowing, each step an agony, his feet bare and oddly damp against the stone. He was leaving bloody footprints.

My name. Can't even remember my name.

It should have troubled him, but he was too busy forcing himself up to care. The golden scent in the air, beginning to falter, to be overlaid with the copper smell of devouring fear—that troubled him. The blackness inside him pulled swiftly on all the strings of etheric force it could reach, feeding strength into his weary muscles, but he was still only partly demon, and tired. Exhausted.

Blackness lay like a wet blanket against his eyes, even though he could smell the torches left at the stairs’ bottom. He was operating on blind instinct, it could be deadly unless he could force himself to think.

Mine, the blackness whispered, subsiding slightly.

He blinked, his body moving smoothly, passed beyond misery into dumb endurance. Keep going. She needs you. Needs you.

Or it was a trap. The thought rose foggily, but he felt something else: wind. Cool wind on his cheeks, touching his blood-crusted hair. The wind was freighted with scent. Trees, mud, the outside world. And water. And the faint, straining smell of gold, under a heavy screen of demon.

Inkani, he realized, the word rising through deep, black water to whisper in his ear. Inkani A High One. Following her.

His feet tangled together and he fell, heavily, barking his forehead on a sharp edge—a stair. Other sharp edges dug into his hip and heels, he lay stretched out on the stone stairs and blinked.

All right, that's enough.

"I swear fealty to the Order.” The voice was ragged, hoarse. Cracked, bouncing off the stone.

Who the hell's that?

"O, quam misericors Deus est; Justus, Justus…” Coughing. He retched, tasted blood. Light began, piercing through his eyes again. Like a needle to the brain.

Christ. It's me. I'm talking to myself. Get up.

"Misericors… ” A long, hollow moan.

You're the only one I trust. This voice spread soothing heat over his skin, like soft clean fingers touching his face. We're partners, remember?

It came back in a blinding flash, striking right through his eyes and into his brain like sunlight, that hated light that stole his strength. He remembered.

Chess. Goddammit, Chess. An Inkani following her. Get… UP!

Somehow it worked. He found his palms on stone, his tattered body mending itself as quickly as it could while he curved over, retching, shaking his head to clear it. “Ch-Chess…” He coughed, tasted more blood, and bile. Goddammit. First make sure she's safe. Then kill him. Kill the traitor.