by Kathryn Moon
“Murders you committed!” Josie snapped, her head pounding with panic, mood sliding wildly through every emotion. Terror, anger, annoyance, a desperate hope for pity.
Merryweather only nodded, lined eyes sliding shut and sloped shoulders sagging. “I just meant to spook those kids.”
“Liar,” Josie whispered, and his eyes flashed open to fix to hers. “You’re a liar,” she repeated, voice croaking. “You went right for them. They didn’t even get a chance to look at you.”
His brow furrowed, and he stared hard at her face, the tension making the angles of his face sharpen into something predatory. “No one around here gives a shit about my family. We gave them every inch of the land they walk on, and they forgot about us.”
Josie jutted her jaw forward and glared back at him. “Excuse my lack of sympathy.”
The tip of the knife pricked her skin beneath her belly button, a warm bloom of blood welling up, and she gasped and collapsed again.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, brow furrowed as he stared at her stomach. “I’d… I’d save this for later, but it has to look right. Like you carved the mark yourself before…”
“Please,” Josie said, voice breaking, body trying to wriggle away from the tip of the knife poised above her ribcage. “Please don’t.”
With his free hand he reached into his back pocket, shaking out a sheet of paper that looked like it’d been printed off the internet. With the candlelight coming from the circle, Josie could see what was printed, glowing through the sheet; a black circle with a strange combination of lines and curls inside, and one upside down heart at the bottom. She could have laughed. It was Beleth’s damn sigil.
“You’re calling a demon?” she asked.
Merryweather gave her a sidelong glance of confusion, head tipping. He set the sheet down on the floor and then braced his hand over her lower stomach, the sweat of his palm an oily touch on her skin. “Demons aren’t real,” he said flatly.
The knife dug into her skin, and Josie screamed, forcing Merryweather’s hand over her mouth. He drew the circle around the entirety of her stomach, and Josie found herself tightening her muscles and forcing herself to hold still for the assault.
After all, she really needed that sigil to come out right. Her life might depend on it.
Bell glared at the rescheduled crew party from his corner booth in Inferno. Dante and the others had conjured waitresses out of local girls, and Danny had found a collection of friends to help in the kitchen, from various restaurant jobs he’d held. Cornell and Thurman somehow managed to mingle with everyone, even Barbie, whose lips twitched every so often in the presence of the older men.
It was not the success of an introductory party for the crew that he’d originally hoped for. There were canapés instead of beer cans, and their recruits were grinning instead of glowering. It was possible that Sweet Pea was winning the battle they’d come to wage, twisting the dark intentions of the crew into some kind of camaraderie.
None of that was the reason for Bell’s pissy mood.
He slid out from behind the booth, stalking up to the front door, narrowly avoiding an intentional collision with one of the eyelash batting waitresses. Dante would need to give those girls marching orders to stay out of his way. He wasn’t interested in idle entertainment. At least not from them.
Pie joined him at the window and held out a beer bottle in offering.
“You look as though you need reminding of what we’ve accomplished,” Pie said slowly. “Votes lean heavily to selling the Preserve. The witches are out of favor. When tourism picks up again, Inferno will wash two local businesses out.”
Bell nodded and tried to ignore the heaviness in his chest. He was well aware of what had been done. It was the lack of pride in their progress that concerned him.
“This is your mission,” Pie said in a whisper.
Bell turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised in question, trying to understand the secret in the words. Pie’s lips parted to continue ,when a sudden yank in Bell’s gut left him staggering, palm pressed to the window. The call faltered, and Bell frowned at his own reflection, eyes sliding up to stare crossways down the street to a golden window near the far corner.
“A summoning?” Pie asked.
It was weak, the flicker of vanilla faint, but enough to have Bell’s tongue flick out against his lip craving more.
“You could resist it,” Pie said.
Bell grinned. “I could. Call me curious.”
Pie nodded. “Just don’t let the humans see.”
“Of course,” Bell said, although he’d been just about to follow the call without giving a shit who might see him vanish.
He pushed outside and jogged across the street, savoring the call in his blood that tugged him to the alley. He might have walked the whole way there, just to leave her waiting for him, but his impatience won out. When he stepped into a dark spot of the alley, he gave up the hold of his control and spun into ether. He hadn’t made up his mind on how to appear to Josie when he caught the first whiff of rich, metallic blood. His boots landed in the heart of a shoddily made summoning circle, body crouching and a wolf’s muzzle baring his teeth in a snarl.
Josie was pinned to the floor by a human man, her eyes wide on Bell and full of relief and terror. Blood oozed over her stomach onto the floorboards, his mark carved into her skin in a way he found both satisfying and enraging. The man’s head shot up, and Bell didn’t care who he was, if he was faintly familiar or not. Identity was meaningless for a man who was seconds from deceased.
“What the hell?” the man breathed, body shaking as he gawped up at Bell.
“Smudge the circle,” Bell growled to Josie.
She was pale and trembling, but she screamed behind the man’s hand over her mouth and thrashed her bound legs out from under his, taking advantage of his shock at seeing Bell halfway transformed into a beast. Or maybe it was simply the impossibility of someone appearing out of nothing. Tears leaked out of Josie’s eyes as she twisted so her feet scrubbed over the edge of the circle, and Bell grinned as soon as he felt the frail bubble of containment pop. He leapt across the space, knocking the man off Josie and to the floor, relishing the bite of pain under his own skin as he transformed his fingers into claws to tear the man apart.
“You can’t kill him!” Josie cried out.
“I can, and I’ll enjoy it,” Bell growled.
“What are you?! What is this?” the man whimpered and shuddered beneath Bell. Just as Josie had trembled under him. Bell’s vision was red with fury. She had been hurt, marked, frightened.
“He has to confess! Bell, if he doesn’t confess, it’ll all get blamed on me,” Josie said, and Bell’s skin shivered as he felt her resistance, the mark on her skin influencing his will.
He rumbled, swallowing a roar that ached to be released, and focused on the man’s eyes. Merryweather. That’s who this fucker was. Bell shook the claws out of his hands and wrapped a hand over Merryweather’s forehead, pressing into his temples and striking him useless with magic. The body went limp beneath him, and some of the stinging fury in his blood eased at the sound of Josie’s rattling sigh.
“Will… will he wake up again?” Josie asked, and Bell’s fists clenched at the wobble in her tone.
“When I want him to,” he said turning to face her. She was trying to sit up, and Bell climbed off Merryweather to help her, tearing through the tape around her ankles and where her wrists were bound behind her back. “Then he’ll sing every second of the murders to the police.”
“Good,” Josie said, squaring her jaw and nodding. There was blood dripping down her stomach, staining her skin, and he reached his hands out to cover the mark, but she caught them in her own and held him back. “You can’t heal me, Bell. It’s proof. We need it.”
He wanted to be sick, and Josie looked about two seconds from fainting. He tore his shirt off over the back of his head and pressed it to her skin, adding cool magic to cut through the pain.
“Just to slow the bleeding,” he muttered.
“Okay. Okay, we need to call the police,” Josie murmured, wincing as she glanced down at Merryweather and then over at her blood on the floor, blending in with the scuffed white circle.
Enough, Bell thought, and he wrapped his hands around her shoulders and pulled her up from the floor, taking her out into the hall.
“He won’t—”
“He won’t wake until I want him to,” he repeated.
Josie’s feet tripped underneath her, and she tipped to the side, sliding down the wall. “Here’s good. I don’t wanna get blood on the couch.”
Bell resisted the urge to mention he could get the blood out of the damn couch as long as she was okay, and crouched in front of her, blocking her view of her bedroom.
“There’s a spare key to the apartment on top of the fridge,” Josie said.
“So?”
“So go get it. I gave it to you, so you could show up when you wanted,” Josie said, and when his brow furrowed, she added, “You know, that’s how you got in tonight and caught Merryweather. Call the police, go downstairs, unlock the door, and leave it open a crack for them. We’re dating or whatever, and you came over and caught him.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got it,” Bell said. How the hell was she thinking straight when she’d been carved up, and he was somehow incapable of stringing together a thought deeper than Josie’s hurt? The spare key was overkill on the details, and he didn’t even have a damn key ring, but he would conjure one if that was what she wanted.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
Bell grunted through the explanation as he hurried down the stairs and cracked open Josie’s door, before running back up. He knew Merryweather wasn’t getting up again until Bell was good and ready to let him, but he didn’t like leaving Josie while she was bleeding and still shaking with adrenaline and fear.
Admit it, a voice whispered inside of him.
Fuck you, I do admit it, Bell thought back. Josie mattered. Specifically, to him.
Her eyes were fixed on the bedroom door when he returned to the hallway, hands pressing his t-shirt to the wounds on her stomach.
“I was hoping you’d come,” she said, and Bell blocked her view again, forcing her to meet his eyes. Her smile was weak. “I didn’t know if you’d be on my side, though.”
He wanted to say it, but the words were too heavy on his tongue. If he gave her those words, she deserved for them to be true and not just spoken in the moment. Eventually, he would have to perform his duty here in Sweet Pea, and there was no way to twist the situation that would benefit Josie.
Instead, he said, “Vinny acted against my orders at the cafe. He was punished.” Josie’s eyes blinked sluggishly, and she nodded. It wasn’t blood loss, just the slow onslaught of shock. “I can force him to confess or—“
“Have Merryweather take the blame for it,” she said.
“Done,” Bell said, reaching through space and rearranging Merryweather’s memories on the subject.
“Thank you,” Josie whispered, and he rested his fingertips against her pulse, frowning to see the way he left bloody marks behind. “For coming,” she added.
If he could’ve strangled himself, he might’ve tried, but nothing would restrain the words that followed.
“I won’t let any harm come to you, Josie.”
Her gaze flicked up to his, and the pain wrenching through his chest was indescribable but he relished it, it was a decent punishment for being so weak to fall under her sway. This witch would unravel his mission, Bell was fairly certain of it. At least his part in it. But the vow was made, and he intended to keep it.
Bell’s head dipped as Josie’s chin tipped up. She smelled of blood and butter and sugar, and they were the exact flavors he found on her bottom lip as he took it between his teeth, sucking on the flesh and soothing his tongue across the swell. One of Josie’s hands reached up, claiming the back of his neck and tangling her fingers into his hair as she sighed against the kiss.
It wasn’t enough. Bell surrounded her, grasping at her hips and dragging her up to his lap to twine around him like she had on that ride home on his bike. He stole tastes of her, his tongue against hers, her lips surrounded by his, their breath mingling. Josie’s left hand was trapped between them, and he wondered how many of her whimpers and sighs where due to the pain of her wounds, so he stroked his hands up her bloody sides, numbing the sting and ache in the wake of his touch. She pulled his lip between her teeth, a fiercer nip than he’d served her, and Bell growled and pinned her to the wall. He hadn’t let himself admire the view of her chest, practically bare, not when she was bleeding—but there was no stopping him from savoring the crush of her breasts against his chest and the hammer of her heart.
The kiss slowed and then dallied, and Bell softened, cradling Josie in his hold as if he could hold back the rest of the world, and keep the clock from ticking against them. Josie’s nose nudged against his, and then her head fell back to the wall with a soft thud. Her lips were shining and swollen pink, and there was shock written in her gaze. Sirens rang in the alley. Bell thought they could try and pry him off her if they really wanted, but he had no plans on untangling her from around him.
“Merryweather,” Josie whispered, and Bell focused on the way her tongue slicked against her bottom lip more than the warning. “You need to wake him up.”
There went his plan to keep her clinging to him. Bell sighed and, to the surprise of them both, pressed another kiss to the corner of her mouth before sliding her off his lap and stalking to the bedroom. With a flick of his fingers it was Merryweather’s turn to be trussed up in duct tape, body laying limp and unconscious.
Feet stomped on the stairs up to Josie’s apartment, and Bell had seconds to wake Merryweather. Which was fine. He knew exactly how he wanted to do it. He stood over the body of the man, snarled at the sight of Josie’s blood on his hands and shirt, and then drew back his arm and slammed his fist home, breaking Merryweather’s nose with a satisfying crunch. The man woke with a whimpered shout and screamed as he saw Bell looming over him.
“I knew the vote would move to sell the land. I deserved that money—” Merryweather began immediately.
“Save it for the investigators,” Bell said, and then he grabbed Merryweather by the collar and dragged him to the bedroom door, blowing the candles out at his back with a gust of conjured air.
Sirens blared at Bell’s back as he walked down the alleys and side streets of Sweet Pea. Josie was on her way to the hospital, and every step in the opposite direction felt as though a fishing line was unravelling in his chest, hook caught on the witch traveling farther and farther away.
It was all worse than he feared. Josie’s sway over his thoughts could no longer be blamed on amusement. She mattered in a way he refused to consider too closely. As much as Morningstar and his role in Hell, perhaps. Bell could only think of one way of dealing with the situation.
Utter denial.
As he neared Grimsby House it became clearer. There would have to be two of him. One, the Warlord and Morningstar’s axe. The other…
The other he still refused to put words to, but he knew it revolved around Josie Benoit.
Paimon listened to the soft scuffle of boots coming up the cobblestone drive, rolling a red tipped cigarette between his fingers but not smoking it. He’d been staring over the garden fence for the better part of an hour, in a patient meditation while Beleth was missing at the summoning of a witch. It concerned Pie that they’d been discovered by the witches, their goals laid bare. It concerned him even more that Bell didn’t seem to mind.
His eyes flicked to the shadows under a red Sweetgum tree. Bell had walked back from the kitchen witch, and now he was…almost hiding.
Kings don’t hide, Paimon thought, the judgement hard as stone in his head. He brushed it away as if it were sand, that old voice of his thoughts a tired thing now.
“That was a long summoning,” Pie said, eyeing the shad
ow. “What did she want?”
Bell stepped out into the light, drifting slowly to the table, and Pie was disturbed by the unsettled look on Bell’s face. The Warlord King wasn’t angry, he wasn’t smirking, he wasn’t even stony and centered. Bell looked… brittle, and disturbingly human.
“I’m compromised,” Bell said finally, checking to be sure no one in Grimsby House was paying attention to them.
Pie’s feet slid off the seat across from him, and his spine straightened, smoke curling and obscuring his stare. “You’re working against us?”
“No.” Bell’s jaw worked, and Pie caught a hint of sugar in the air before Bell seemed to draw it back in on himself.
“Are you… preventing us from performing the mission?” Pie asked.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Bell said.
Which meant it could be and wasn’t yet.
“Do you want to be sent back?” Pie asked, head cocking.
“No.”
Pie stared at Beleth, but his fellow King only stared back, firm in answer. “You said when things go wrong, it has to do with the team.”
Finally, Bell smirked. “I did say that.”
“What did she call you for?”
Bell shook his head. “She didn’t. The murderer did, accidentally,” and so the story came out, Pie’s eyebrows ratcheting up with every word.
Beleth had protected the kitchen witch, had vowed her safety. No matter how he wanted to play the words, they were made, and Paimon wondered if Bell really understood the knot he’d tied himself in.
“Is this a game to play?” Pie asked, head tilting to the side. “Like Ash and the stitch witch? Are you gaining her trust?”
“Would I have told you I was compromised if it was?” Bell asked, voice dark and growling.
“I suppose not,” Pie said. In fact, he suspected the situation was further developed than Bell admitted, if he was willing to speak of it at all.
