“I’m glad to see you up and about, Andy, but I’m most curious as to why you’re skulking around my room in the dark of night while I sleep.” His grip was painful as he held me down by my shoulders, and it was clear from the force he exhibited that he’d been holding back with me all along—not showing the full brunt of his strength—which made my circumstances seem even more dire.
Apparently, demons didn’t like it when you snuck around.
“I came to ask about the second vial on my dresser,” I hissed at him. “I came to make sure you hadn’t done something foolish, like go after my sisters while I slept.”
His expression didn’t falter as his face, still hidden in shadow, hovered only inches above mine. “What is it you think I did? Stormed the refuge of nuns and abused women and slaughtered them all before I found your precious Lilies, forced them to make one final elixir for you, then killed them, too? The witches responsible for keeping you alive?”
“Another vial of elixir appeared in my room while I slept—something that has never happened before this night. Is it so wrong to suspect that you had something to do with that, given your desire to keep me of use to you?”
“No, which is why you should know that I wouldn’t harm your sister witches,” he argued, leaning in so close that our noses nearly touched. “That would hardly inspire your cooperation in our shared endeavor.”
“I never said you killed them,” I countered as I glared at him, trying to hold my anger close for fear that it might give way to the other heated thoughts in my mind—the ones focused on the press of his body against mine. The memory of his mouth on my lips. Were he a human, my inner battle wouldn’t have even waged; reason would have gladly stepped aside to let want take over. But he wasn’t a human, and the faint glow of fire in the depths of his eyes was a welcome reminder.
His body shifted against mine, and I bit my lip to suppress a moan. “Perhaps you didn’t. In my defense, it sounds like an assumption you would make.”
“If you didn’t go to them, then how did it appear?” I asked, my voice a little too breathy for my liking.
“It’s possible that your magic—through your failing body—called for it. Or that your sisters know what is happening to you. Perhaps any number of scenarios played out to achieve that end. My question to you is: why should it matter? If you were bound to me, it would not.”
“Perhaps you put it there in an attempt to leverage me into that bond. To mess with my mind when I was weak and vulnerable,” I countered, wriggling beneath him to get free.
My effort was the definition of futile.
“Would it make you happier if that were true? If I were the villain you paint me to be in your mind? Because I can be him—be just like Xandros—if that is what you want.” His hands slid down my arms to my wrists. “He would force you into the bond without a thought. Is that what I should do, Andy? Force you to bind yourself to me? Because that can be arranged.”
In a flash, he yanked my hands above my head and held them with one of his as the other reached for something out of my view. Seconds later, it reappeared with his shirt, and he tied it around my wrists so tightly that I feared they might pop off. With my arms pinned under his knee, he wove the remaining fabric between my wrists, then affixed it to the bedpost as he uttered some demonic words. The mundane fabric turned to cold, metal shackles like the ones Xandros had used to confine me, and fear finally broke through my cloudy mind.
The icy finger of terror trailed down my spine as I struggled against my restraints to no avail, and I closed my eyes, trying hard to breathe while I panicked at the memories of my captivity. Images of the torture I’d endured, bound and shackled in my stony cage, raced through my mind at a frenzied pace. But when I opened my eyes, that was still all I could see, the memories too strong to escape.
My breaths came in ragged gasps as Zen’s body—which weighed as much as would be expected, given that his massive demon form had been crammed into a human skin—rendered me vulnerable beneath him. My tongue, paralyzed with dread, lay limp in my mouth. No spells or incantations could help me. The fight had all but left me. My past and present had blended into a nightmare I did not wish to endure, but there was no escaping it, just as there hadn’t been then. All I saw was darkness and fire and death awaiting.
Tears welled in my eyes, just as they had before I’d surrendered my soul, and the weight atop me shifted away.
“Andy…Andy…”
The pain in my wrists abated as the male voice continued calling until, finally, a face came into view. My vision swam, and I blinked repeatedly until the darkness of my captivity gave way to that of Zen’s bedroom. The demon hovered just over top of me, his face close to mine, staring down with a look in his eyes that I had never seen there before. No amusement. No smug indignation. No condescension. No deadly monster swimming just below the surface. Just shock and disbelief, with a hint of something like fear and regret mixed in.
When he saw whatever he’d been waiting for, he crawled to the edge of the bed and waited while I dragged myself to the opposite side. We stared at one another in silence for what seemed like an eternity, neither of us wanting to speak first. It was another battle of sorts, as most things were between us.
“Something just happened,” he said softly. “Something I don’t fully understand.”
“How could you?” I bit back at him, rubbing my wrists. “You’re the tormentor, not the victim.”
His eyes narrowed as he assessed me. “You speak of Xandros—”
“I speak of demons. Demons who shackled me to a wall and beat me, cut me—did everything they could to break me so I would surrender my soul,” I said, anger brewing within me as my fear slowly subsided. “Demons who watched my torture with perverse delight as I was reduced to a pitiful creature who begged Xandros to take what he wanted because I wanted it all to end. Because I was too weak to endure any more.”
“But you are no longer there,” he said, head canted to the side, confusion furrowing his brow. “Your torture has ended.”
I pulled my legs up tighter to my chest and hugged them as I took a steadying breath. “It never ends,” I whispered to the shadows of the night. “It is always with me, bubbling just beneath the surface like a living, breathing thing, ready to pull me into that dark abyss and drown me if I let it.”
“Your memories haunt you,” he said, though the soft surprise in his voice made him sound unsure. “I’ve never met someone who survived the demon realm before—have never seen its lasting effects.” His hand drifted toward where my hair hung in my face, but one look at how my body tensed made it fall to the bed. “Your persona—your very being—is so strong that it never occurred to me that your mind would still be tortured by what he did to you.” He leaned forward, allowing a sliver of moonlight to highlight the sharp angles of his face and the deep sadness in his eyes. “I am sorry for unleashing those memories on you with my actions. And I am truly sorry for what happened to you. It should never have transpired that way—”
“That way?” I asked, incredulity thick in my tone. “How should it have transpired, then? What happens when you take the souls of your victims?”
“That is not what I meant to say—”
“Should they thank you for stealing their lives before they willingly hand them over? Rejoice that they won’t be made to suffer if they do as you ask?”
“No,” he said as he leaned closer still.
“I know you’ve taken at least one soul before, or you wouldn’t have the ability to come to the earthly realm. So how did you get your victims to comply, I wonder? Because humans don’t part with their souls easily. Neither do witches…”
“Do you truly think the truth would give you comfort, Andy?”
“I want to know—”
“You want to see a shred of human morality in a being who has no soul,” he argued, anger flashing in his eyes. “But that does not mean that I have no compassion. That I feel nothing—including remorse for what happe
ned to you.”
“And what of those that watched my torture? That reveled in my pain—my bloodshed? Were you one of them?”
Fire flared in his dark eyes for a moment, then simmered to coal as he stared at me. “I was not,” he said, voice low and thick with anger. “I had no knowledge of your presence in my realm until Xandros started to draw your soul to him.”
“Really? Because Xandros bragged to anyone who would listen about how he’d chosen such a strong witch; talked about how hard it was to break me. Demons would come just to watch him beat and cut and burn me with demon fire, hoping to see me cower and beg him to end the pain—”
“As I said,” he replied with more heat in his tone, fists clenching the bedsheets as his body went rigid, “I had no knowledge of this until it was almost over.”
“But if you’d known, it wouldn’t have changed anything, would it?”
“If I said yes, would you believe me?”
Maybe…
“No.”
A silent battle waged between us, converting the strange turn of events into something more familiar—more comfortable. I knew how to deal with Zen acting like Zen. I did not, however, know how to react to Zen showing sympathy.
Treating me like anything more than I was to him—a means to a mutual end.
“I guess it’s a good thing the call of my sisters’ magic pulled me from your realm before it was too late, or you wouldn’t have your precious Daughter of Fire to help you kill Xandros.” His black eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to speak, then quickly shut it, abandoning whatever rebuttal he had planned. Good. Maybe he was finally learning. “I’m going back to my room,” I said, standing next to the bed.
In a blink, he was between me and the doorway. “If any more vials should appear, please make sure you drink them, Andy…for my sake, if not your own.”
“Ah, yes. Wouldn’t want to almost lose me again, now would you?”
I moved to brush past him but he gently caught my arm in his hand and held me still. “No. I wouldn’t.” His hand lingered on my bicep for a moment longer than necessary until he let me go, fingers trailing down my arm as I walked to the door. I quickly crossed the hall and shut my bedroom door behind me.
As I lay on my bed and waited for that deep sleep to take me, I pondered what had transpired in Zen’s room. What his actions and reactions meant. My mind spun them in so many ways, creating a tangled ball of theories and suspicions and questions with no answers.
But the real matter I should have been focused on—but had been too frazzled by Zen to consider—eventually resurfaced like a days-old bloated body in the East River: the potion. Why had it appeared? And why did I need it? Two obvious possibilities glared at me, though I tried to ignore them. The first was that the spilled potion had started a downward slide of my health that had been staved off magically until that point. The other, far more disconcerting, was that my body was weakening with the proximity to the master of my soul, who had come to claim the rest of it.
And that it might fail me before I had the chance to take it back.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The sun was high in the sky when I emerged from my bedroom, feeling rested but restless. My mind had never been so uneasy since my return from the demon realm, and I saw no end in sight. Knowing that Zen would be downstairs awaiting my arrival, bearing his book on virtuous women (much to the delight of Mrs. Whittle), did nothing to help. Were he actually Mr. Henderson, I might have found some enjoyment in what would undoubtedly be an entertaining exchange. But he wasn’t, and no amount of good looks and charm could make up for the truth of what lay beneath his well-toned body and heart-melting smile—or so I continued to remind myself
I reached for the demon claw in my pocket and held it tightly in my fist as I walked downstairs.
“Miss Nightshade!” Mrs. Whittle called, as though she’d seen a ghost. Perhaps she’d thought I’d died in the night.
“What time is it?”
“Why, it’s just past noon—”
“Mr. Henderson? Have you seen him?”
Her expression fell in an instant. “No, dear. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him all morning. I was worried, so when I went to check in on you, I knocked on his door, too. No one answered, so I poked my head in—”
“And?” I asked. My heart was in my throat, though I had no idea why. Whether it was excitement at the remote possibility that I was finally rid of the pesky demon or something else entirely, I wasn’t sure, but what I did know was that I wasn’t willing to investigate the latter any further.
“Well…I’m afraid he’s gone, dear.” She wrung her hands, as though she feared I’d fall apart right there before her.
“Gone?”
She rushed to my side and sat me down. “Now there, there, dear. This isn’t your fault. I gave it a lot of thought last night, and I think that somebody gave you some bad liquor—maybe some of that moonshine I keep hearing about—”
“Mrs. Whittle—”
“—either way, it was wrong of Mr. Henderson to just dump you in your room, then abandon you!” Indignation tainted her expression as she let her never-before-seen temper loose. “And he was supposed to share those sections of his book with you today!”
I forced a cough to cover my laughter at that remark. “Mrs. Whittle, while I deeply appreciate your concern for both my person and my prospects, you need not worry about Mr. Henderson. We were a poor match.”
She sat down slowly in the chair next to me and took my hand in hers. “Miss Nightshade, I may be old, but I am not blind.” She patted my hand in a soothing way, then got up abruptly and fled the room. Since I had missed lunch, I followed suit and left the dining room, headed for the front door.
I needed to outrun the implications of Mrs. Whittle’s words.
And I needed to get to the guild.
I walked into a cacophony of shouting and chaos.
Ivy and Hazel were in a heated discussion, while Willow sat beside Petal, her arm wrapped around the younger witch’s shoulders. “You can do it, Petal,” she said encouragingly. “Just try to focus on their names.”
“Whose names?” I asked, storming into the room as if a fight had broken out—as if there were an enemy to slay.
“A small coven from the Sixth Ward is missing,” Ivy said, her expression dire.
“They run a shop with an apothecary in the back,” Hazel added. “They always have the best sage—”
“Petal,” I interrupted, working hard to keep my voice level and show no emotion, “can you locate them?”
Sweat dampened the poor girl’s brow as she squinted her eyes shut. She exhaled with a gasp, then turned her sorrow-filled eyes to me. “I can’t find them…I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Ivy cooed as she rushed over. “Take a rest. We’ll try again later. Grisholm is using his channels to search for them now.”
“I’ll help,” I said, racing toward the back door.
“Oleander, we need talk about—”
“We can talk once the witches are found.” I stared across the room at Ivy, her sharp gaze saying everything she didn’t need to. She’d found the claw missing. She knew I’d taken it. I imagined I had her to thank for the extra potion. But what she didn’t know—couldn’t have known—was that my recklessness was the reason that the coven was missing.
Though the distance between the guild and the apothecary was substantial, I made it there quickly; fear and guilt were excellent motivators and kept me moving well above the pace I should have been able to maintain. By the time I reached the back entrance, I was breathing hard, my chest burning. Upon first glance, the door appeared closed, without any sign of damage, and the slightest sense of relief coursed through me. Perhaps the witches, too, had taken to the tunnels last night when the demons had neared and had found refuge there, or had traveled somewhere safe to emerge. If their shop or identities had been compromised, they wouldn’t return. The pain in my chest eased further as that likelihood gai
ned traction in my mind.
I turned the knob and pushed my way into the apothecary. Nothing was amiss. The trap door was still closed and sealed.
With hope replacing the empty void in my chest, I bent down and pressed my palm to the spot where the magical door was hidden. I whispered the phrase the young witch had the previous night and used a surge of fire to seal the incantation. The iron handle appeared, and I pulled the door open.
“Hello?” I called softly, peeking down into the darkened space. I conjured another ball of fire and threw it into the air to hover before me, its warm orange glow illuminating the tunnels. Step by step, I descended into the corridor that had saved us from the demons only hours before. “Hello!” I shouted this time. Once again, I was met with silence.
Retracing my steps, I followed the same path as the night before, running behind the levitating ball of fire that illuminated the corridor a few yards ahead. Though there was no press of the evil I felt in the presence of a demon, something ominous permeated the air and clung to the stone walls and floor like a film of foulness—of death. As I ran, I continued to call for the witches, hoping my voice would carry to them in one of the many tunnels winding beneath the city. I needed Ivy’s gift in that moment, but there was no way to bring her there without revealing my duplicity, and I cursed that fact.
There would be no coming back from that level of betrayal.
So I ran on, determined to search every single corridor until either I found them or my body collapsed from exhaustion, which seemed likely, given its behavior the past couple of days. At a fork in the tunnel, I could see a shadow of sorts absorbing the light where it should not have. I ran faster, feeling secure because I did not sense any demons in my presence. Anything else, I could deal with; or so I thought.
But that was before I saw what was left of the witch who had helped me.
To my shame, I screamed when I saw what had been done. Her face was all but missing in most places, sliced clean from the bone with something perilously sharp—just as my mother’s had been. Tears flowed from my eyes at the memory of her corpse lying at Xandros’ feet as the claw in my pocket practically burned with recognition of the crime. Slowly, my fingers trailed along my torso and down my legs, tracing the scars I possessed that seemed trivial by comparison. This act was not a killing; it was a rage-infused message. For me.
A Curse of Nightshade (Witches of the Gilded Lilies Book 1) Page 12
