They will all die until I get what I want...
I swallowed back the bile rising in my throat and bent down beside her. Sister Mary Jacob would have cursed me up one side and down the other for violating a corpse before final rites could be given, but the victim was a witch, and I needed to be certain her soul hadn’t been taken—or given, as it were. I ripped open her blood-soaked shirt and searched her chest. Aside from the slash marks that adorned her body, there was no sign that her soul was gone. I breathed a shallow sigh of relief.
“I’m so sorry, sororcula.”
I whispered a prayer for the dead and wrapped her soiled cloak around her. Once I found the others, I would bring Hazel back with me to return them to the fertile earth—a Daughter of Earth’s charge.
Leaving her behind—the witch whose name I didn’t even know—I continued through the passage, finding the others in the same condition along the way, their bodies ruined by demons. This is all my fault, I thought as I closed the eyes of the fourth witch, the one who’d sustained the least damage. There was a scorch mark on the ground near her. The Daughter of Fire had fought back.
The knot of guilt in my stomach tightened.
“Dammit!” I shouted before letting loose an unholy sound that mimicked that of the demons that had slaughtered the witches. I slid down the stone wall at my back next to the corpse and pulled the demon claw from my pocket. “It should have been me,” I said, clenching it so tightly that blood welled in my palm. “They were after me.” My voice echoed slightly, carrying through the darkness to where my firelight couldn’t reach. “They were after me!” I screamed, pulling my hair at the roots in frustration with one hand as blood ran down the other arm.
“We are after you,” a voice called just as the wave of evil crashed over me. I shot to my feet to find a silhouette from my past at the edge of my firelight, toeing the line carefully, like a vampire afraid to enter the sun’s rays.
Xandros…
“You’re a coward,” I spat, casting a glance at the dead witch at my feet. “You butchered them when they had no way to stop you. But I do.” The pain of his broken claw stabbing my hand helped to clear my mind. I’d need my wits if I were to beat the one who had stolen my soul. The one from whom I’d reclaim it once his corpse was lying before me. “I have a way to end your madness once and for all.”
With grace no human possessed, he slid into the light, dark eyes reflecting the fire. “You owe me something, Oleander Nightshade, and I have come to claim it.”
“Then you can die trying,” I said, pressing my hands together in front of me. I chanted the words so quickly my tongue became sore, but I continued as the fire between my hands grew and the power in my body swelled to a climax it had never experienced before—something far more powerful than I’d turned on Zen in the alley.
I knew the moment I unleashed it on Xandros, it would do as the grimoire had said—kill a demon.
“Your fire will have no effect on me,” he said, approaching me without caution, “or have you forgotten? We’ve been here before, Oleander. Just over two years ago, if I remember correctly.”
“But this time, I know something I didn’t then.”
He cocked his head at me, as though I’d said something of interest for once. The sharp angle of his cheekbones was accented by the light of my fireball as he mocked me with feigned curiosity. “Really? And what’s that?”
I smiled at him, my rage and pain and everything else I hadn’t yet put a name to fueling its malice. “That everything you said and did was a lie.”
He scoffed at my naivete. “You were so easy to seduce. So desperate for love. Even now, I can see the desire to come to me—”
“No.” My voice was as cold as ice. “You see the warrior beneath the witch. The one who has thought of little more than how to kill you since I arrived here. The one who finally knows how to end you.”
“Oh really?” he asked, brow quirked. “And how might you do that?”
I smiled at him as he had me the night he’d stood over my mother’s dead body—the night he’d stolen everything from me—and watched as his arrogance faltered, if only for a second.
“Like this!”
With a thrust of my arms, an inferno unlike any other shot from my hands and blasted Xandros. My knees buckled from the raw power surging from me, but I held fast, pressing my back into the stone wall behind me. Sweat poured from my face, my arms grew tired, and my consciousness waned, but I tapped into all that I had, knowing that, even if it were to mean my death, at least I would take Xandros with me.
And there was great comfort to be found in that.
The fire blinded me as it blocked out my view of the demon; when I could maintain it no longer, it sputtered, then died. I looked to where he’d been standing, prepared to find his charred remains and nothing more, but instead, he just stood there, his clothes barely singed from my efforts.
I stared in awe, knowing that I’d done the spell right—followed the grimoire’s incantation to the letter. So how had it bounced off him like a wave off the shore, leaving him unharmed? This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen; wasn’t what the book had promised.
I had felt the power. Why had it not worked?
Xandros looked down at his vest and smoothed it for show, then smiled at me with a wickedness I knew well. “So close, Oleander, but once again, you’ve failed.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Panic surged through me as he neared.
Out of desperation, I turned to run down the tunnel, hoping I could somehow lose him in the maze, but I’d barely made it five yards before he jerked me back. I crashed to the ground with enough force to rattle my teeth, and my head spun as I pushed myself up. Xandros sneered down at me, then drove his foot into the side of my face, kicking me hard enough to knock me right back down again. Blood spilled out of my mouth, and I spat it on the dirt next to my hands as my arms tried in vain to push my body up.
“There’s a trick to translating ancient texts, Oleander—one I can only assume you never learned, given your current predicament.” He squatted down next to me and took my chin in his hand to wrench my face toward him. “Context is crucial, as are the words themselves. I mean, truly, there are so many ways to write something...like demon, for example.”
He hovered before me, that strange tugging feeling in my chest again as I awaited his next blow. But Xandros was patient, and a sadist as well. He’d draw out my punishment as long as possible, if for no other reason than to make a point. I should never have stood against him. He’d make sure I regretted that choice until my dying breath.
“English has fewer terms for it than other languages, but it still has synonyms—wicked, hellion, devil spawn…evil…”
My mind, beaten and addled though it was, quickly put together his meaning. Zen hadn’t lied to me about needing him to defeat Xandros. He was the evil the spell called for. Perhaps I had enough time to right that wrong. If only I could remember his name…
“And now you’re here, once again at my mercy, so I can take the rest of what you promised me.”
“Zenophrites…Zenophales…” I mumbled under my breath as Xandros craned my head back further. “Zenophrisia…dammit!”
“Now this is an unexpected turn of events,” he said, eyeing me curiously. “I must say, Oleander, I did not anticipate it.”
“Zenophro…Zenophrotes…Zenophrotesian!” I screamed, finally dredging his name up from the depths of my mind. But the demon did not show, and Xandros laughed at my failure.
“Part of his name won’t be enough to save you—not that he could, of course. And now that I know of his treachery, he’ll be dead before your body cools. I’ll see to that.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, searching my brain for where his surname was tucked away. If I’d read it, I would never have forgotten, but I’d only heard it and repeated it in my mind. That method of learning never had worked well for me.
Xandros yanked my head back so far that I feared my nec
k would snap. “How did he do it, I wonder? How did he fool someone as jaded and broken as Oleander Nightshade? Did he seduce you, as he has so many before? Did his lies fall sweetly on your ears, or were you just so full of hatred for me that you believed every word out of his lying mouth?” I tried to reply, but his fist careened into my chest, breaking ribs and knocking my breath from my body. “Women are fools,” he snarled in my ear while I lay on the ground, breaths coming in shallow gasps as the pressure in my chest grew. I could do nothing to stop Xandros, and I knew it. What I had once escaped, I would not escape again. There would be no call from my sisters to save me this time.
Death was coming, and he would be neither kind nor gentle.
“I will soon have the Demonheart Opal,” he said, looming over me like every bit the threat he was, “and with it, I’ll find and destroy your precious witches.” I tried to hide my surprise and horror, but I could see in his smug expression that I’d failed. “Oh yes, Oleander, I know all about the Gilded Lilies. The rumors throughout the city speak of a gang of women who seek to take down powerful men, but I knew immediately that it had to be witches—and that you would be one of them.” He snatched a handful of my hair and hauled me up to face him. “I’m going to hunt them down and kill them one by one. They’ll be no match for me—no being will.”
“They’ll…find…a…way,” I wheezed, clutching my chest, as though that could keep my life from slipping through my fingers.
He leaned in closer. “Too bad you won’t be here to see them die. I promise to make them beg for their lives—to torture them as I did you—so that they can have a taste of the life you lived in that cage. But I don’t need their souls. I only ever needed yours.” His hand brushed mine aside and pressed flat to my chest above my heart. “There it is...” he whispered to himself. “I think I’ll be taking this with me.”
With what felt like a pinch of my skin, he drew his hand back, and I saw that final wispy tendril of white stretch between my chest and his fingers. He wound it around them, admiring it for a moment before his hand fisted around it and tugged it like a rope until it snapped free of me and crashed into him. That sliver of my soul danced up his arm and under his collar until it disappeared. Seconds later, he gasped, clutching his chest as it impaled him, settling in with the rest of my soul.
My breathing grew more labored still, sharp and ineffective. Panic rose within me. Time had officially run out.
“Thank you, Oleander,” he said as he threw me down on the ground, discarding me like he had the others in the tunnel. “My reign will be in part due to you. Do try to find comfort in that in your final moments...”
With that, he disappeared into the ether, leaving me alone to die.
My eyelids grew heavy and shut out the world around me, preparing me for the nothingness of my future. And it was in that quiet, that visual isolation, that I saw the name I could not recall before scroll through my fading consciousness.
“Zeno…phro...te…sian…Nexus.”
It was the last thought in my mind and words on my lips before the darkness of death stole me away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You called, Andy my—oh, no. No, no, no!” The faint sound of Zen’s cursing roused me, and I wondered if he’d followed me into death somehow. He was, after all, a demon. It seemed possible, if not probable. “Andy…Andy, I need you to open your eyes. You have to look at me.” I tried to do as he asked, but my body would not respond. “Andy, you have to say these words exactly as I say them, and you must do it now, do you understand?” I grunted something he accepted as affirmation. “I bind myself—”
I mumbled incoherently through barely moving lips.
He swore under his breath. “Forgive me for this,” he said, scooping me up, “but there is no other way. You cannot remain here soulless—you’ll never last.” I felt a rush of hot wind blast my face just before Zen’s arms shifted underneath me. Even though he remained still, I felt like I was rising up and up until I finally stopped. “Whatever you do,” a deep and rumbling voice whispered in my ear—a voice that sounded nothing like Zen’s—“don’t open your eyes.” The heat on my back blasted over me as Zen took a step forward. Seconds later, he laid me down in what felt like the center of a stone pyre. “There…this should help slow your demise, if only slightly,” he said, his gruff and unfamiliar voice still startling me. Even as death approached, I knew where I was—what he was. He’d taken me to his realm. “Andy, you’re dying. You will be stone-cold dead in a moment, and I won’t be able to do a damn thing to help you, so I need you to put your stupid pride aside and say these words!”
“Can’t—”
“Yes, you can, and you bloody well will, right now!” he roared above me.
My head lolled to the side, and he caught my face in his leathery hands and pinched the tips of his claws into my skin just hard enough to rouse me—the witch near death in the demon realm yet again.
“Let’s try this again, shall we? I bind myself—”
“…by…self…”
“—to Zenophrotesian.”
“…tozen…”
“Through body—”
“…body…”
“—and blood.”
“…blood…”
“Close enough!” he said as he lifted my hand in his.
My eyelids still refused to open, but I felt the sharp bite of a blade against my palm and the warmth of blood spilling down my arm. Then the heat of his palm pressed to mine as he whispered something in his demon tongue. Fire unlike my own blazed through my body, its foreign flame burning like hell. Power—more power than I could conceive of in my state—filled me, and with a dramatic gasp, I shot upright, eyes wide and hands scraping at my throat.
One look at the endless black, fire, and desolation surrounding us, and panic mixed with the pain in my body. My eyes finally fell upon the demon behind the man I knew as Zen, and I scrambled backward on my hands to get away. He was truly terrifying, just as Xandros had been, from the grotesque canines jutting from his jaw to the obsidian horns spiraling from his head and the leathery black scales covering his monstrous body.
“Easy now,” the demon said, reaching for me as though he’d forgotten his appearance and what it might do to me. Then his arm fell to his side, limp. “Breathe, Andy…just breathe. Your body is trying to reject my power. You must breathe and let it find a place to settle.”
“What did you do to me?” I rasped, still fighting the sensation snaking its way through my body.
“I saved you.” There was a distinct note of irritation in his tone. “The binding ritual has been completed. I told you what would happen once it was—that our shared power would help sustain us both. Thankfully for me, your soullessness isn’t damage that can affect me, given that I lack one altogether, so right now, my power is refueling you—keeping you alive.”
I gawked at him, mouth open, still trying to breathe with the demonfire in my lungs. “I didn’t want this.” My accusation fell flat as I fought the bond between us.
“You most certainly didn’t argue when I told you what to say to save your life.”
“Take it back,” I said, closing my eyes. “I don’t want this...”
“Andy my dear, I told you before, there is only one way to sever the bond, and it is rife with consequences that neither of us wants.”
“This is a consequence I don’t want.”
“And yet you have it.” He loomed over me, just as Xandros had, only Xandros had been in human form, and Zen was not. He was a seven-foot wall of muscular beast, and the sight of him was more than I could bear. I stared at his cloven feet instead. “I didn’t lie about the bond, and I didn’t trick you. I offered you the only chance you had to help me save both your world and mine, and you took it. Your regret is yours to shoulder. Do not put the blame on the demon just to assuage your guilt.” He paused, and I forced myself to look up. His flaming eyes narrowed at me. “It is not a sin to want to live, Oleander,” he said as softly as his
gruff voice allowed, “nor is it one for me to want you to.”
Something beyond the fire of our new bond flared in my belly at his words.
Then reality snuffed it out.
“Only because it serves your purpose,” I said as the power the bond offered finally settled in my body, despite my best efforts to stop it. My ribs no longer hurt, and my hand no longer bled. It was as if my fight with Xandros had never taken place at all.
I jumped to my feet with newfound agility and speed and felt my eyes widen for a fraction of a second as I stood nose-to-chest with the demon—the one to whom I was now bound. My first instinct was to punch him in the face (had I been able to reach it), but a warning niggling at the back of my mind stopped me. His pain was now my pain, to some unknown degree, and I’d been through enough that evening already. I didn’t want to essentially punch myself in the face to top it off.
“My purpose is our purpose, or have you forgotten that we want the same thing? That hasn’t changed. All that has is our means to accomplish the task.”
“You wanted this all along.” My words were low and threatening, and I stood my ground before him, fire burning the backs of my eyes as I stared.
“Yes, I did. And perhaps if you had listened to me from the beginning, Xandros wouldn’t be one step closer to getting what he wants.” Zen bent down far enough that his demon lips brushed my ear. “You seem to be operating under the delusion that I am the liar in this partnership, but you, Andy, are the greatest liar of all. You lied to yourself about your ability to kill Xandros, even in the face of evidence that suggested otherwise, and now you are stuck licking your wounds. You should be thankful that you’re alive to lick them at all,” he said, his breath heavy on my neck. “If it weren’t for me, you would not be.”
A Curse of Nightshade (Witches of the Gilded Lilies Book 1) Page 13
