The Demon's Choice

Kris Starr had just walked back out on stage, guitar in hand, prepared for an encore, when the balcony collapsed. No one’d expected it. The aging London venue—a venerable theater, a small exclusive show, a gift to fans—just couldn’t hold up. Overstrained ribs burst. Ancient supports shattered. History plunged downward, overwhelmed. His touring band jolted to their feet. Instruments scattered. Kris’s husband, who’d been standing in the wings—they brought Justin out on stage for encores a lot of the time, because Justin really could sing and because audiences always cheered wildly at the love story present in person—ran forward. The tour had been fantastic, Kris thought vaguely, still catching up to calamity—this show had been fantastic too— Maybe too good, such good luck, no equipment troubles or breakdowns or travel issues at airports at all—all the bad luck’d been saving itself for right this second— The balcony groaned. Sagged. Lurched toward the pit and the lower seats and the people. Bodies, frantic, tried to move. The redistribution of weight caused deeper ominous groans. Lights swung. Red and yellow, blue and white. Shooting stars and spinning designs: Kris Starr had always liked special effects. Part of what’d made Starrlight so great live, decades before. Before his solo career, and his hiding-away, and then Justin, his half-demon manager and the man he loved, the man who’d come along on tour because Justin had always been a Kris Starr fan and liked travel and could oversee his job’s publishing editorial duties from anywhere—Justin, who was now out on stage at his side as the whole f*****g venue shrieked in distress— “Justin—” Be safe, Kris meant; his husband’s eyes were huge, and Justin’s slim shoulders might be used to rock-concert pits but couldn’t fight off crumbling buildings— Security had materialized. A few people in the crowd—obviously telekinetic to some degree—were trying to stave off the ancient theater’s shattering, but all of them had only tiny human glimpses of talent; they weren’t holding anything back from cataclysm— The aging bones of the balcony gave way. The theater broke. Supports cascaded, imploded, burst. Bodies fell. People. Screaming. Justin ran another step forward and flung out both hands. Six or seven people—Kris couldn’t think fast enough to count—winked into demon teleportation magic and back out: safely on the ground, at a good distance from the shrieks of the crumpling building. Brimstone briefly scented the air. “Justin—” “I need to focus—” Justin caught three more flailing people. Yanked them out of disaster and over to solid landings. “Ow—oh, damn—I’m going to have the world’s worst headache—” “How can I help?” Hand on Justin’s arm. The protective detail had run out from the wings. Trying to get the band, the stars of the show, to safety. The collapse hadn’t hit the stage. Only that side balcony. And Justin wasn’t going anywhere, which meant Kris wasn’t either— Justin saved people. Justin was beautiful, a demon with crackling power at fingertips and incandescent eyes and streaming hair. Kris spared a single second to be entranced by him. Shouts of alarm rose up around them; sound equipment and speakers clattered; bodies in the pit and at the floor level swelled with apprehension, forming mobs, trying to exit or find companions or give assistance. Hadn’t any building inspections happened? Any precautions? How’d a whole theater come apart so instantly? Needing one demon to catch so many people, dozens of people— It’d been an intimate venue, so not hundreds, but Justin had once needed food and a spot to sit down after rescuing a girl’s lost chubby cat, and was pretty damn far from inexhaustible— Kris tightened his grip on Justin’s shoulder, on stage. They stood out in front as another section of balcony, pulled by its neighbor, groaned and wrenched itself downward. “Tell me what to do!” “I’ve got most of them—” Strain laced Justin’s voice, eyes, pale face. Crimson and ochre rippled through his hair, his gaze; his teeth and horns and cheekbones sharpened. Less human, more demon, more himself: semblances peeled away by power and stress. “I can do more—just keep everyone calm—” The first sweep of people groaned, sat up, checked themselves over: intact and awed. Justin’s summoning gifts whipped falling debris away, flung theater fragments into thin air and subsequent reappearance safely on the ground, and reached out to cradle trapped concert-goers and pull them out of crushing spaces. Kris stretched out empathy. Fought to broadcast calm, reassurance, a lack of panic. Projection hummed at his fingertips, at the core of his existence, in familiar woven strands of green and brown and melody and London and New York and guitar-strings and fire like comets, blazing a trail into legend. He’d always been good at throwing his passions out into the universe. Right now the universe—and his demon—needed him to believe that everything would be okay. So he did. He believed it hard. And he let the soothing fall like a weighted blanket over distressed shouting crowds. Sirens sounded. Emergency relief. Assistance. Kris, holding the fear of thousands of shaken fans in one empathic hand, turned to his husband. Who breathed, “This is the last—there’s no one else trapped—” as two more bodies materialized away from the rubble. “They can check to be sure but—I think—that’s it—nothing else’ll come down, I moved everything that felt dangerous—” “You’re incredible,” Kris told him, stepping closer, reaching a hand out to touch him. A few people, grouped in a knot of rescue at the base of the stage, began applauding. They’d all seen what Justin had done. “You’re brilliant, love—I thought you had limits, I didn’t know you could do that much—” “Yes…well…” Justin’s face was white, Kris realized abruptly. Fire-hair had grown duller. Eyes more brown than glittery cinnamon. “I can’t, actually…” “You what?” “I do have limits,” Justin admitted, a ghost of usual teasing; and then put a hand up to touch his face, and looked surprised, swaying. Red, Kris thought, though the thought did not take shape for a horrified blank second; but the red was blood and not fire, because Justin’s nose was bleeding, and Justin’s eyes were closing, and Justin’s whole body gave way all at once, collapsing into Kris’s arms— No. No. Kris felt the scream like a whip-crack across the night, searing its way out of his soul. He heard gasps, and a few cries and moans; he grabbed the empathic projection and held on tightly, metaphorical magical hands shaking. Justin would tell him to get it under control; Justin saved people; Justin wouldn’t want anyone else hurt… Justin was hurt. Limp and white and unresponsive in Kris’s arms. Justin’s head fell against Kris’s shoulder; his eyes did not open. One hand dropped to the stage, and lay there. The stage where he’d just been standing—alive and upright, on both feet—in a seventies rock-band T-shirt and skinny black jeans, the same ones he still had on, laughing and waiting for Kris to pull him into an encore, a song, full of anticipation— Dark ruby stained the pale blue logo of the shirt. Justin’s hair and cheekbones and even fingertips were simply human: magic emptied out, leaving ordinary nails without lightly pointed claws, and the regular ginger sort of human hair, pale red and wavy and lifeless. He’d dyed it all sorts of colors, once, not letting otherwordly fire peek out; Kris had loved the discovery, when they’d first tumbled naked into bed, that Justin was in fact more or less a redhead. Right now Justin was more human than Kris had ever seen him: burned out, drained, younger and fragile. He lay in Kris’s arms without moving or opening his eyes; he was breathing, chest going up and down, but he did not react when Kris clung to him, pleaded with him, called his name. A burst of materialization and brimstone scorched the air. Three slim pillars of flame crackled into existence and resolved themselves into three of Justin’s aunts, all sparks and teeth and claws and hissing. A paramedic who’d started toward the stage froze in place; the rest of the band had been hustled away by security, leaving instruments, being taken care of. Kris and Justin, in a tangle of stunned limbs and bodies, remained in place. Kris cradled Justin, shook him, tripped over love and anguish and words. “Justin—Justin, love, wake up—open your eyes, you can do that, you have to do that for me, please—please, stay with me, look at me, Justin, please—” All three demons threw themselves down beside their nephew on the scuffed stage; Aunt Raissa’s glamorous blue evening gown tore in a rip of silk. Aunt Mara, who tended to be the spokesperson, commanded, “We’ll handle this—” and spun to face Kris. On both knees, in jeans and a very ordinary green shirt, wearing fire in eyes and voice and claws, she grabbed Justin’s unmoving hand and defied the apocalypse with pint-sized familial ferocity. “What happened?” “He—” “He saved them,” Mara said over him, “didn’t he? Oh, stupid, stupid ridiculous human heart—oh, Justin. Come on, come on, pet, wake up. Wake up for us.” “We felt it,” said the third of Justin’s favorite aunts—he had around fifty, though only three or four had taken an active interest in raising the half-human child of the sister who’d died in the human world—and looked up, uncertain. Kris had only met Ylse perhaps three times; he knew she liked human soap operas and romance novels and lacy sundresses. Right now her eyes were bright and scared. “We felt him, clearer than ever, like he’d reached over and touched our world, like a portal—and then we couldn’t feel him—Mara, he won’t wake up and I think he’s feeling worse…” “He saved everyone.” Kris could barely talk. Clutching Justin. On a stage. While demons knelt and touched bare colorless skin and made miniature fire-flares sizzle in the air. “He…I know he’s…he’s only half…not as strong…” Justin had saved people before. That cat. A baby. Five residents of a burning apartment building, once. He’d admitted to Kris that that’d been hard; he didn’t have boundless resources, he was part human, and his human body wasn’t built to channel that much otherworldly power. He’d fainted in an alleyway, he’d said, after rescuing the people; he’d awakened with a splitting headache. But Justin wasn’t human, and could— “He can heal.” Kris looked from aunt to aunt, demon to demon: all of them clustered over Justin, here in a dust-filled theater full of despair and voices and aftermath. “Can’t he?” They exchanged glances. “What?” “He might be able to,” Mara said slowly, “but I think Ylse’s right and it’s hurting him…using any of it, right now…” “What does that mean?” “It means,” said Justin very weakly, “that everything hurts. Oh, gods…oh, Kris…” His eyes opened, beautiful as ever, but his voice trembled; Kris held onto him, held him, wanted to weep with relief and terror, and couldn’t. Justin had already started to cry, not from fear but as if hurting too badly to hold it all in; that realization spun Kris’s emotions into white-hot blankness. He got out, “You’re alive, love, you’re alive and I’m here, you’ll be all right, I swear, I’m here and I’ll take care of you, I love you,” and stroked a wisp of hair—faded red, tired, whisper-light—out of Justin’s face, and tried to demand answers from some demons with his expression. “Justin?” Mara, sitting beside Kris, touched her nephew’s wrist. “Come on, pet, look at me. I know it’s hurting, I know, just look up for a second…” Her voice murmured like velvet, like roses, like coaxing: worried and soothing with the edge of centuries-long practice at temptation and seduction. Justin caught breath, shivered, held on to Kris, but looked at his aunt. They gazed into each other’s eyes for a moment: more human than usual, meeting more magical. And then Justin flinched, and tucked his face into Kris’s shirt. Kris pressed a kiss to the top of his head, held him more proprietarily, and demanded, “What was that?” “Not good,” Mara said. “I’m all right,” Justin said into Kris’s collarbone, shaky. “Love,” Kris said, “you’re not. Don’t worry about reassuring us or what the f**k ever, don’t worry about anyone else, understand? Just take care of you.” “That’s part of the problem.” Justin swallowed, struggled more upright, took a breath. He remained terrifyingly weak, weight wholly resting against Kris’s bulwark; he hadn’t tried to sit up on his own. Drying blood streaked his face and the world with awful hues. “I can’t heal. I can’t even shift aspects…if I try, everything hurts so much…I did try, just now, and it was…I couldn’t…” He shivered more. Shook his head, silenced by pain; he leaned against Kris more after, exhausted. “So you’re not all right.” Kris tried to keep his voice even. He was dying, screaming, falling apart—but he couldn’t, he couldn’t, because Justin was leaning on him and he needed to stay strong and even-keeled and secure, a rock-solid but aging empath who couldn’t even protect the man he loved… “I’m…” Justin paused to breathe some more. “I’m not getting worse. I think. I’m still here. But I feel…everything burns…it’s like fire, inside, and even more if I even think about…” When he held up a wobbly hand, he looked at it as if expecting burn-marks, trails of scorched black, seared lines along veins and bones. “It’s too much…” The aunts shared a moment, then looked at Justin. Aunt Raissa said, with the presence of mind of someone in a long-term relationship with a United States Senator and consequent awareness of the media, “We should get you out of here before anyone tries to study you and the effects.” “I can’t teleport,” Justin said. “I can’t…” “Not you, pet.” Mara patted his shoulder. “You can’t do anything right now. None of your human doctors can. No offense, Kris.” “If you can help,” Kris said, and stopped, as tears skewered his throat. “We’ll take you home,” Mara said. “Both of you—” And as she said so the world blurred, became watercolor and fire, a swirling pool of cinnamon and garnet and primrose streaks.