18

Here in the city, with countless lights, there was no way to simply look up and know that tonight was the night of the dark moon.

Patrick knew it anyway. Keeping track of details like that ensured that he was never caught by surprise by his demon servants. They'd turn on him in a heartbeat, given the opportunity, and the night of no moon was a time of demon power. Much better to have it used for his benefit, rather than against him.

He walked the streets of downtown, studying those around him measuringly. What kind of prey should he choose tonight? Power or pain? Maybe he'd just leave it up to chance, and see which he spotted first.

“Spare some change?”

Patrick glanced at the girl huddled in a doorway. Occasionally, he chose a homeless teenager deeply mired in despair and self-contempt and shame; it left them vulnerable to a kind word and an offered meal, even at a cost. Each had willingly suffered to feed Patrick's demons, pathetically grateful for praise and approval. It was much easier than needing to hunt once a month, and he'd found uses for them the rest of the time.

Of course, they never survived past the death-offering the demons demanded once a year, at the winter solstice, but then, it wasn't as though their lives were worth anything anyway. It was probably a mercy, really.

This one, though, she still had a core of strength hidden beneath the raggedly-cropped hair and the tattered layered denim and the faded army blanket. She was no use to him. He shrugged, tossed her a couple of quarters, and kept walking.

He walked past a bar he knew was friendly to the leather and bondage crowd. The concept of domination and submission and all its layers had seemed like a godsend when he'd first encountered it, but he'd discovered quickly that, for the most part, it was the worst possible place to look for someone with the mindset of a victim. The so-called submissives in those circles tended to have too clear an idea of who they were and what they wanted, which made it much more difficult to tie them into emotional knots. Why go to all the extra effort, when he could find prey that was so much easier to break? At least he'd picked up some useful ideas, though he saw no reason for the great care for safety that obsessed that whole group.

Power tickled the fringes of his awareness; he scanned the area, tracking it. It was quiet, muted, he would never have noticed it at all had he not been searching for exactly that sort of clue. That was a dryad aura... there, coming from a young man with café-au-lait skin, mahogany hair drawn back in a tail. In Patrick's experience, dryads came in two basic types: small and slender, or tall and solid. This one was the latter, but life in the city, where contact with the earth and the trees was scarce, had turned what would otherwise have been the sturdiness of an old oak into an illusion—this one was hollow inside. Probably his mother had a brief relationship with a male dryad, and this one had grown up never knowing why he was chronically ill and depressed.

Patrick followed him, twining light mental fingers into the dryad's mind. Yes, the emptiness he'd expected was there, a sense of something missing, a weariness from yet another battle with poor health. He'd won, had recovered, but was beginning to wonder whether it were worth it—hm, that he was doing as well as he was implied that he might be healer-gifted, which would make it all the better. Somewhere, he'd come across the idea that he must have done something in another life that he was paying for in this one, and while he only halfway believed it consciously, some deep part of his mind had latched onto it—any explanation was better than none at all. Even now, he was wondering again what he could have done that was so very terrible.

This would be almost too easy.

He followed the dryad, reaching deeper into his mind, encouraging the fantasies of atrocities he might have committed in another life. While he was in there, he picked up his name, as well: Troy.

The dryad left the busier streets, making his way through a quieter area. Around them were offices, for the most part, all closed for the day; there was no one in sight.

Patrick wrapped an illusion of absence around himself, and nudged Troy's mind with apprehension, enough to make him stop and look around, checking behind him. That gave Patrick a chance to get in front of him. As soon as the dryad faced him, the mage traded that illusion for one that wrapped him in white and gold light, turning his everyday clothes to blinding white, with a suggestion of bright wings.

Troy cried out, shielded his eyes with an arm.

“Peace, Troy,” Patrick said, pitching his voice to gentleness. “There's nothing to fear.”

Cautiously, Troy lowered his arm, eyes watering from the brilliance. “What... who are you?”

“I've come to help you. Nothing ever goes right for you, does it? Somehow, no matter what, you always get sick again, or you stop feeling that anything matters, and your life falls into pieces again.”

“How do you know that?”

“You did something you shouldn't have, in your last life, and you never paid for it. The universe demands balance, so you've been atoning for it in this life, right from your birth. But you know that already, don't you? Something inside told you that was what was happening, that was why the world and even your own body seem to turn against you every time it looks like something might work out.”

Troy lowered his gaze. “Yes,” he whispered.

“I've come to give you a chance to free yourself from that. A chance to do your full penance all at once, so you can be free of it for the rest of your life, and continue on from here with no old business outstanding. What happens then is entirely what you can make of it. But it's your choice to make. It's no easy thing to do a lifetime of penance in a few hours. And once you choose, there's no turning back.”

“All at once?” Troy looked up, hope dawning in his eyes. “Then everything will stop going wrong all the time?”

“Yes.”

“Anything! I don't care how hard it is, I'll do it. Please, tell me what I have to do...”

Almost too easy. But that was just as well. He had no stomach for dragging people off by force if he could possibly avoid it.

“Go home,” Patrick said. “I'll come to you there.” He switched illusions again, from brightness to invisibility, and waited while Troy's eyes adjusted to the twilight again.

The dryad lived in an apartment building; small wonder he was sick so often, half a dozen stories up from the earth. Patrick stayed near him, unseen; it took only slightly more illusion to slip in the door past him.

“Now what?” Troy asked the empty apartment.

Patrick let himself appear—still haloed with light, enough to blur his features, but not enough to completely blind the dryad. “You're certain?”

Troy nodded mutely.

Patrick smiled. “Strip.”

He bound the naked, shivering dryad with chains made of fiery light, and turned his imagination loose, describing for Troy in ruthless detail the supposed crimes for which he was being punished. His primary demon, Sikial, came at his call, in the form of a slight, white-clad, blonde youth of about twelve, and watched avidly, drinking in the dryad's guilt and shame and fear.

When Patrick decided Troy was ready, he turned to more physical forms of penance. There was a certain satisfaction in this, in the control it gave him over another person's body and mind and emotions; this aspect of his bargain with Sikial's kind he'd taken to eagerly.

Hours later, near sunrise, Patrick looked down at the sobbing, exhausted dryad. He'd done nothing that wouldn't heal—physically, at least. It would be months before he recovered from Sikial and the others feeding on his healing gifts, but even that would pass. The odds that Troy would ever tell anyone about this were low at worst, and even if he did, who would believe him?

Patrick sighed, and strengthened the illusion of light, backing it with sunlight warmth.

“Troy,” he murmured. “You've done well, and you've atoned for what you did, the balance has been restored. Leave the city, move to a place where you can get back in touch with the earth and the cycles of nature, and go on with your life. You have no further debts to pay. Your life and your future are in your own hands now. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Troy whispered. “Thank you.”

Patrick laid a hand on his forehead, and sent him into a deep sleep. By the time he woke, the edge of the pain would be gone.

“Sikial, go. Wait back at the motel.”

Sikial nodded, and vanished.

Patrick let himself out, laid a hand over the lock and gave it a telekinetic nudge so it snapped shut, and began the walk back to his motel room.

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