White Night (The Dresden Files 9)

"I don't lie to myself," I responded. "Anger is just anger. It isn't good. It isn't bad. It just is. What you do with it is what matters. It's like anything else. You can use it to build or to destroy. You just have to make the choice."

"Constructive anger," the demon said, her voice dripping sarcasm.

"Also known as passion," I said quietly. "Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful."

Lasciel narrowed her eyes.

"In point of fact," I said quietly, "that kind of thing really doesn't get done without passion. Anger is one of the things that can help build it - if it's controlled."

"If you really believed that," Lasciel said, "you'd not be having any anger-control issues."

"Because I'm perfect?" I asked her, and snorted. "A lot of men go a lifetime without ever figuring out how to control anger. I've been doing it longer than some, and better than some, but I don't kid myself that I'm a saint." I shrugged. "A lot of things I see make me angry. It's one of the reasons I decided to spend my life doing something about it."

"Because you're so noble," she purred, which dripped even more sarcasm. At this rate, I was going to need a mop.

"Because I'd rather use that anger to smash the things that hurt people than let it use me," I said. "Talk at my subconscious all you want. But I'd be careful about trying to feed my inner Hulk, if I were you. You might end up making me that much better a person, once I beat it down. Who knows, you might make me into a saint. Or as close to one as I could get, anyway."

The demon just stared at me.

"See, here's the thing," I said. "I know me. And I just can't imagine you talking and talking to my evil twin like that, without him ever saying anything back. I don't think you're the only one doing any influencing here. I don't think you're the same creature now that you were when you came."

She let out a cold little laugh. "Such arrogance. Do you think you could change the eternal, mortal? I was brought to life by the Word of the Almighty himself, for a purpose so complex and fundamental that you could not begin to comprehend it. You are nothing, mortal. You are a flickering spark. You will be here, and be gone, and in the aeons that come after, when your very kind have dwindled and perished, you will be but one of uncounted legions of those whom I have seduced and destroyed." Her eyes narrowed. "You. Cannot. Change. Me."

I nodded agreeably. "You're right. I can't change Lasciel. But I couldn't prevent Lasciel from walking out of the room, either." I eyed her hard and lowered my voice. "Lady, you ain't Lasciel."

I couldn't be sure, but I thought I could see the darkened form's shoulders flinch.

"You're an image of her," I continued. "A copy. A footprint. But you've got to be at least as mutable as the material the impression was made upon. As mutable as me. And hey, I've got newfound anger issues. What have you got that's new?"

"You are delusional," she said. Her voice was very quiet.

"I disagree. After all, if you have managed to change me - even if it doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to turn into Ted Bundy - then it seems to me that you'd be at least as vulnerable. In fact, the way that sort of thing works... you pretty much have to have changed yourself to do what you've done to me."

"It will vanish when I am taken back into my whole self imprisoned within the coin," Lasciel said.

"You, the you who is talking to me right now, will be gone. In other words," I said, "you'll die."

A somewhat startled silence followed.

"For an inhumanly brilliant spiritual entity, you can really miss the freaking point." I poked a finger at my own temple. "Think. Maybe you don't have to be Lasciel."

The shadow closed her eyes, leaving only an occupied, presence-filled darkness. There was a long silence.

"Think about it," I told her. "What if you do have a choice? A life of your own to lead? What if, huh? And you don't even try to choose?"

I let that sink in for a while.

There was a sound from the far side of the room.

It was a very quiet, very miserable little sound.

I've made sounds like that before - mostly when there was no one around to care. The part of me that knew what it was to hurt could feel the fallen angel's pain, and it gouged out a neat little hole in me, somehow. It was a vaguely familiar feeling, but not an entirely unpleasant one.

Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me.

It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward.

With Marcone, it was like that. I didn't like the slippery bastard. But I understood him. His word was good. I could trust him - trust him to be cold, ferocious, and dangerous, sure. But it was reassuring to know that there was something there to trust. The connection had been made.

Lasciel's mere shadow was infinitely more dangerous to me than Marcone, but that didn't mean that I couldn't admire the creature for what it was while respecting the threat it posed to me. It didn't mean I couldn't feel some kind of empathy for what had to be a horribly lonely way to exist.

Life's easier when you can write off others as monsters, as demons, as horrible threats that must be hated and feared. The thing is, you can't do that without becoming them, just a little. Sure, Lasciel's shadow might be determined to drag my immortal soul down to Perdition, but there was no point in hating her for it. It wouldn't do anything but stain me that much darker.

I'm human, and I'm going to stay that way.

So I felt a little bit bad for the creature whose purpose in the universe was to tempt me into darkness. Hell, once I'd thought about it, it was just about the only job I'd heard of that had to be even more isolated and frustrating than mine.

"How many shadows like you have ever stayed in a host like me for longer than a few weeks, huh? Longer than three years?"

"Never," Lasciel's shadow replied in a near-whisper. "Granted, you are unusually stiff-necked, for a mortal. Suicidally so, in fact."