Princes of the Underworld

by Olivia Ash

  Steele sighed. “This won’t be easy, then.”

  “What are empusa?” Sadie asked.

  Damien said, “They’re creatures that are part human, part snake. But this can be a good sign. They’re commonly relocated to areas where demons want to protect things.”

  Steele snorted. “It’s funny, really. When you see a hoard of them, it’s usually a sign of something worth stealing.”

  “Still, they’re mindless and bloodthirsty,” Kaiser said. “Perhaps, you should stay here, Sadie.”

  She glared at him. “Stay here? Are you freaking kidding me?”

  “We just don’t want you hurt,” Kaiser said. “The four of us can take them. You don’t have to lift a finger.”

  Sadie inched closer to him and jabbed a finger into his chest. “Listen here, mister. I didn’t wear this dress just to sit around and look pretty while you boys have all the fun.”

  Behind Kaiser’s shoulder, Mordecai grinned.

  “Now, now, brother,” he said. “Don’t baby the queen. Even if you tie her in chains, she’ll still probably find a way to get to the artifacts before us.”

  Damn straight.

  Kaiser ignored his brother and kept his eyes on Sadie. “If something happened to you, Sadie, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  She took in a deep, steadying breath. Though she was irritated with him, his genuine care and need to keep her safe was touching. On the exhale of that breath, she cupped Kaiser’s cheek with her hand. “Believe in me for once, will you?”

  “I do. I just—I don’t want a single scratch on you, do you hear?” His eyes became stern and serious.

  She smiled but kept the giggle bubbling in her throat from coming out. “I promise I won’t die. Happy?”

  He groaned, looking at her like he would chain her after all. But he turned around and grabbed the dagger he slipped under his boot. “Let’s go kill some demons.”

  Steele already had his axe in one hand, and he unholstered the hammer he had grabbed with the other. Mordecai twirled his staff. Damien unsheathed his broadsword but kept it from igniting in flames. Sadie supposed he didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention toward their group.

  “What now, Captain?” Mordecai asked.

  “Let’s try to sneak into the cave and hide from them,” Sadie said. “If we get caught, I’ll attempt to speak with them and hope they listen to me. But if not, then I guess we fight.”

  “Sounds simple enough,” Steele said.

  Sadie looked at Mordecai. “You can go.” She placed a hand on his elbow. “And please take care.”

  He winked before shifting to shadow and disappearing again.

  “I’ll lead the way,” Damien said.

  Sadie agreed, knowing his enhanced senses would help them navigate.

  Sadie, Kaiser, Steele, and Damien sneaked into the cave, keeping their footsteps as light as they could. They walked through the dark entrance. A tense silence enveloped their small group. Sadie held her black sword on her side, gripping the hilt harder than she should. It unnerved her how dark and silent the cave was.

  Around her, the men held their weapons at the ready, all of them prepared for an ambush. She wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse.

  Damien took the lead. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, turning his head or turning up his nose every once in a while, perhaps listening for movement or catching a scent only he could detect. All of them trusted his sense of direction more than their own.

  In the middle of their group, Kaiser held out his palm and summoned an orb of yellow light, small enough to illuminate a short distance around them and, Sadie hoped, faint enough that creatures lurking in the dark wouldn’t notice before Damien caught sight of them. But the place felt empty, like they had no other company besides the damp tunnel walls that surrounded them.

  Sadie wondered if Mordecai had somehow been mistaken or if the empusa had managed to travel deeper into the cave or left when everyone wasn’t looking.

  Damien stopped in his tracks. He held out a hand, signaling them to halt. Then, she heard it. Sounds of soft hissing began to echo from the numerous tunnels in front of them.

  Around Sadie, the guys raised their weapons. She raised hers too, and she focused her hearing on the hissing whispers. At first, they sounded muffled, but the voices grew louder, becoming more distinct. Sadie knew they were getting closer to them.

  She strained to hear what they said through their thick accents and odd dialect.

  “Demon queen.”

  That was it. Spoken in a chant or mantra.

  Sadie stiffened.

  The dark tunnels in front of them became lit with bright, yellow light as slightly more than a dozen women with burning hair similar to the ifrits’ appeared. True to Damien’s description of the empusa, these women’s lower bodies were scaly serpent tails.

  Really, really big serpents.

  They slithered toward Sadie and the princes. Sharp blades of scales that glinted and reflected the light coming from the flames of their hair covered their forearms and hands. Kaiser dropped his hand to his side, letting the small orb of light he casted die out. With all the light the empusa emanated, his tiny orb wasn’t useful anymore.

  Here goes nothing. She took in a deep breath and stepped in front of Damien. She stood taller, mustering confidence she hoped was convincing. “Halt!”

  The empusa stopped and swayed from side to side. Their whispers continued to assault her ears. “Demon queen… Demon queen… Demon queen.”

  The largest empusa of the group slithered closer to them. She looked at Sadie and bowed. Sadie exhaled the breath she had been holding.

  “What bringsss her Majesssty here?” the empusa asked, voice high and screeching.

  “I’m looking for something,” Sadie said. But as soon as she spoke, something shifted in the air, and the empusa’s demeanor became more tense and aggravated.

  The empusa looked at each other and back to Sadie, tilting their heads and furrowing their brows. They all snarled, their flaming hair glowing brighter. Something had set them on high-alert.

  The empusa that had addressed Sadie bared her sharp, jagged teeth and pointed a finger at her. “You are not the demon queen.”

  The others hissed behind her. “Fake. Impossstor. Fake.”

  What do you mean fake? Who else would I be?

  The empusa raised their arms and rapidly slithered toward Sadie and the princes. The men wasted no time in sprinting past her, no doubt to take the first blows from the monsters and keep them away from her. Even with the erupting chaos, she rolled her eyes.

  Of course, there would be an issue.

  As Sadie dashed toward the melee to fight the demons, she mulled over the empusa’s reaction. Maybe they greeted her nicely at first because the amulet had confused them. Maybe they were still loyal to Hecate. She couldn’t think of any other demon queen that still existed. Or, rather, still had some form of life.

  An empusa slithered to Sadie and swiped with its arm. Sadie raised her sword to block the blow. She whirled and slashed with her sword, decapitating the monster’s head. Nearby, an empusa slithered behind Steele. She lifted a blade into the air, readying to thrust it into his back.

  Sadie rushed over and plunged her sword between its shoulder blades. The monster collapsed to the ground. Steele glanced behind him, eyes wide. His gaze drifted to Sadie, and he nodded to her in thanks. She pulled her sword from the creature’s corpse. From her left, another empusa charged at her. She swung at the creature’s neck, slitting its throat.

  Sadie looked around. The princes slaughtered empusa. Damien dispatched five of them, Steele killed four, and Kaiser took out three. Even Mordecai fought his own share of the creatures. He must have heard the commotion and came to help.

  One last monster remained, fighting Mordecai with its bladed arms. Mordecai sliced the empusa’s shoulder and stabbed the creature in the heart, killing it instantly.

  The flames of the last empusa’s hair died
as the creature gave out its last breath, leaving Sadie and her princes in darkness. And without the empusa’s hissing, their group became wrapped in silence again. Dead empusa lay scattered in the darkness surrounding them. Sadie’s heart grew heavy. They had caused another massacre.

  She summoned a flame in her hand, casting soft orange light on the five of them and the littered corpses around them.

  “Is anyone hurt?” she asked.

  She made the flame grow brighter as she looked at each of the princes, scanning their bodies for any major injury. But the princes shook their heads and she felt relieved that none of them were seriously hurt.

  “We should leave,” Damien said. “There might be more.”

  Sadie pursed her lips. “We’re not leaving without the weapons.”

  “Worry not, Captain. I found it,” Mordecai said. His enchanted staff dissipated to mist as he turned to face them. “Follow me.”

  He led them to a small cavern with a single chest on the far end.

  “I haven’t opened it yet,” Mordecai said. “But it’s free from any kind of trap or enchantment. I checked.”

  Sadie approached the chest, knelt in front of it, and opened the lid. She stared into the cavity a bit dumbfounded. It was empty, except for a small piece of paper on the bottom. She picked it up and read the message scrawled onto its surface.

  Good job for finding the treasure!

  - B.B.

  XOXO

  The guys looked over her shoulder.

  “Blackwood,” Damien said, growling. “That woman ruins everything.”

  Sadie wasn’t sure what “B.B.” had meant until Damien said Blackwood. That was her last name. And the first B had to mean Blair. She crumpled the piece of paper. “Shit.”

  That was a whole lot of effort for nothing. She felt like laughing and crying at the same time. Blair had probably intended to trick one of her enemies, but she ended up tricking Sadie instead.

  Sadie thought of places Blair might have hidden the mageblades, but her sister had kept so much from her that she had no idea where the things could be. Sadie recalled the fight at her apartment. If Blair already had her hands on the mageblades, that meant the knife Blair had given her in the apartment was definitely one of the artifacts. And there were three more daggers out there somewhere.

  Sadie looked at Kaiser and frowned and rubbed her forehead.

  “I already had it. One of the mageblades. I had it, but I didn’t know what it was.” She paced as she muttered to herself. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Steele, Mordecai, and Damien stared at her. They seemed confused.

  “What do you mean?” Mordecai asked.

  Steele’s eyebrows met. “Do you know Blair Blackwood?”

  She dropped her hands to her sides and faced the three men. “My full name is Sadie Blackwood. Blair is my sister.”

  Damien gaped. “You—” He ran a hand through his hair, staring at her as though he had been betrayed.

  Steele completed his sentence. “Blair Blackwood is your sister?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Mordecai asked, snarling.

  Sadie’s eyebrows rose. She didn’t understand why they were upset. There were more things to worry about than Blair being her sister. She stopped pacing to glare at them. “Why is that the issue?”

  Damien looked at Kaiser and pointed a finger at him. “You knew all along and you didn’t even mention it once?”

  Kaiser just shrugged. “It wasn’t my business.”

  The three of them seemed hurt. Perhaps, because Kaiser knew, and they didn’t.

  Sadie groaned. “Are you kidding me? This isn’t important right now. Will you please focus?”

  She must have appeared really annoyed because they didn’t pursue the topic further. Still, she suspected she hadn’t heard the end of it.

  Mordecai grumbled. “Fine.” He crossed his arms. “What now, Captain?”

  Sadie ignored the way Mordecai had said captain and shifted her attention to Steele and Damien. “Can we agree to leave this behind for now and focus on how we can find the daggers?”

  “All right,” Damien said. His jaws clenched, and his lips were pressed tightly together.

  They were really pissed at this discovery.

  Steele wrinkled his nose, but he nodded.

  “The only thing we can do now is retrace your sister’s steps,” Kaiser said beside her.

  Damien agreed, but he still seemed quite pissed. “Worth a shot.”

  “Okay then,” Sadie said, choosing to ignore their accusatory stares. “How about we start with my apartment?”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Sadie

  Sadie held Kaiser’s arm as her world shifted into rapid blurs of shapes. She felt weightless the moment before her feet touched the ground. Her knees buckled, but Steele’s strong arms kept her steady. As far as going through portals went, this was her third time. She wondered if she would ever get used to the vertigo that came with it.

  In front of her stood the building she had inhabited not even a month ago. Looking at the place now, nostalgia overwhelmed her, and a slight tinge of nausea as she remembered the fight with Mara. In the night sky above, a quarter of the moon shone, peeking through silver clouds. She wondered how her apartment had fared since she last fought with the demoness.

  “Lead the way, Captain,” Mordecai said in human form.

  All of the princes had changed form to their human shape in order to remain inconspicuous. Sadie thought that was a good idea. Halloween would’ve been a much easier night to walk around in their normal forms. Maybe even win a few contests for best costume. But it wasn’t Halloween.

  The five of them approached the side of the building and climbed up the fire escape, keeping as quiet as they could, hoping not to gather any kind of attention from the few people on the streets or inside. Mordecai shifted to smoke and passed through the wall. He opened a window leading to the hallway for them. Once each of them had climbed through, Sadie led them to her flat.

  The last time she had seen her door, the edges and doorknob were stained with blood, and yellow police tape covered the door. Now, the tape was gone, and her door had been painted brown.

  “Can you check for new inhabitants?” Sadie asked Mordecai.

  He nodded, shifted to shadow again, and the rest of them waited in the hall shifting weight from foot to foot, or shooting casual glances down the hall on either side.

  Mordecai returned a few moments later, opening the door and gesturing everyone inside. “We’re alone.”

  When Sadie entered, it didn’t at all feel like the place she had lived in for years. The wall paper, the lighting, and the flooring had been renovated already.

  That didn’t take long.

  And she was thankful it wasn’t still the charred, blackened remains of an apartment it had been, because she remembered Carlos and the stains his blood must have left on the old flooring. She remembered Mara and Blair, and the fire. It would likely have been too much for her to step into so soon after the events themselves, but she would do anything to get her hands on those daggers, facing the burnt apartment or not.

  The guys walked around, looking at shelves and tabletops. Sadie roamed the place, forcing back all the memories she had here, both good and bad. She already knew they only wasted their time coming here. If someone had cleaned and reconstructed everything, to the point that even the walls and overhead lights were different, and the dagger was definitely not here. If it was, whoever had cleaned should have gotten it, or Mara must have kept it.

  Sadie sighed. “We aren’t finding anything in here.”

  “Then, where to next?” Steele asked.

  Kaiser said, “The safehouse.”

  Kaiser knew the place, so he made the portal to get there. All five of them held hands as Kaiser transported them to the safehouse where Sadie had fought the demon hunter.

  When her world began to spin and distort, she bent her knees and readied herself for the tough landing.
Once she set foot on level ground, her legs didn’t buckle, and she didn’t topple over from losing her balance. She suspected it was because Steele and Kaiser held each of her hands, but she was still proud of herself for having made that improvement.

  They landed inside the abandoned house. Sadie looked around the place. Nothing had changed. Even the pile of ash that had used to be a demon hunter remained on the floor, though it was a significantly shorter pile this time, perhaps because of the breeze that, from time to time, blew in from the broken windows.

  She didn’t want to stay longer than necessary, so she searched everywhere, looking at anything that might seem suspicious. Her eyes traveled over the broken debris on the floor, to the pile of discarded clothes and items, the shelves on the walls and the cabinets. But she didn’t see anything that would help.

  Sadie noticed Mordecai scanning the symbols on the wall, at the graffiti of an ouroboros that filled the entire surface.

  She approached him. “What is it? What does it mean?”

  “The owners of the house converted,” he said, not looking at her. “They belong to a demon now. The symbol is a warning to other demon hunters who stop by here that it’s not safe anymore.”

  “How do you know that?” Sadie asked.

  Mordecai looked at her then. He smirked. “I’ve converted a few demon hunters in my time.”

  Sadie snorted but wondered why she wasn’t bothered by the revelation. Though she suspected Mordecai had done terrible things, she didn’t feel scared or disgusted. She shook her head. This wasn’t the time to analyze her views about the princes. It was time to focus on where Blair might have hidden the daggers.

  From what Mordecai had said, she guessed multiple hunters had used this place. So, Blair would have hidden her stash well. But, if Blair had used this place as a safe house for a while, then she must have hidden things here. At this point, there was no telling, and things started to look pretty grim for them.

  Sadie needed to find the daggers. She needed to kill Mara and be done with her once and for all. The only thing standing in their way was her sister.