Tlahaz inclined his head respectfully. He avoided her gaze, just like she thought he would.
Swirling his cup, the king stared down into the funneled wine as though it held the answers he longed for. His host of writhing, dancing shadows picked up their pace, reflecting the unsettling feeling in the room. Setting his goblet onto the table at last, he pinned Adrianna yet again with his chilling gaze.
“How goes the memory work with our friend Levaroth? Asmodeus is most anxious to have his best soldier back in fighting shape.”
Her heart sank as her mouth opened to respond, but it was Tlahaz that answered for her. “She was having difficulty breaching his mind until today. Now that she is past the first obstacle, I suspect his memories will be sufficiently twisted in no time.”
“Hmm.” The king’s eyes never left Adrianna’s, though he didn’t seem upset by the news at all. In fact, no emotion crossed his features at all, though it was difficult to see with the inky blackness passing over his face.
Finally, he leaned back, crossed a lean leg over the other, and looked from her to Tlahaz. “Good work, my dear. And are the two of you enjoying your time together?”
If Adrianna had sipped from the wine—which she had decided not to partake of—it would have been the perfect moment to choke on it in a display of shock at his line of questioning.
Tlahaz shifted again, looking the slightest bit uncomfortable. Adrianna smiled to herself, enjoying the way he suddenly looked like he might flee the room.
“Fine, my king. The witch enjoys her practical jokes, but I have come to tolerate her.”
Her “practical jokes” ranged anywhere from enchanting his cutlery to dance right out of his grasp to making his weapons and armor invisible. None of which he ever found as amusing as she did.
Before Adrianna could snort a laugh, the king burst out with shrill laughter, making him look even more unhinged than he usually did.
The room fell deadly silent. Even the creatures occupying the strange forest stilled. If the king noticed the veil of fear that covered everyone, he didn’t let on. He smiled wide, flashing a glint of sharp canines.
“My dear, you are even more fascinating than I could have known.” Nakosh studied her appreciatively.
Adrianna forced a smile, but Tlahaz scoffed. “More like a severe pain in the arse,” he grumbled.
Her smile turned genuine. Looking toward him, she said with false sweetness,“It’s only fair to play a prank or two on the demon that kidnaps you.”
A softer laugh came from the king, but Adrianna was too busy staring down the general, who glared right back.
Their stare-off was interrupted only when plates of food appeared on the table, startling her back into remembering where she was and who had invited her there tonight.
She noted long trays of what looked like assorted sushi, steaming crab legs drenched with butter, and sizzling steaks with mushrooms. But other dishes made her skin crawl. A stuffed serpent, coiled on the plate with unblinking eyes. A plucked bird that was too big to be common bird yet too small to be a chicken, its neck far longer than that of a duck.
Further down she spied a mountain of something breaded and deep fried. But as she continued to stare at the wide bodies and eight long legs, she realized with a barely contained shriek that they were very large spiders.
“See anything you like?” Nakosh asked, his voice dripping with dark amusement.
Any appetite she’d previously had, vanished. And that was saying something for her. With a snap of his fingers, one of the cooked spiders disappeared from the pile. Nervously she checked her plate, releasing a sigh of relief to see it was still empty.
The crunch from beside her told her the king was now eating one of the vile creatures.
“Having flashbacks, Witch?” Tlahaz asked with a smug smirk.
Adrianna wanted to slap it off his face a few hundred times over. “Whatever breed of spiders those are, they don’t exist in Washington. The ones you had carry me were far smaller.”
“These are camel spiders, I believe,” Nakosh interjected smoothly.
Adrianna’s stomach turned, but Tlahaz selected several pieces of the sushi, looking unaffected. After a few minutes of both Shediem eating in relative silence, Adrianna plucked a halfdozen crab legs with lemon juice and butter from the serving dish.
She’d just cracked the first leg when the king wiped his mouth on a cloth he’d placed on his lap.
“The real reason I asked you here, Miss Adrianna, was to ask for your assistance in growing the Anakeem Asmodeus has been creating. When you’re not working with Levaroth, of course.”
“Anakeem?” she asked, feigning ignorance.
He smiled, already comprehending her knowledge on the matter. “The half-Giborim, half-Shediem children. They have shown a great many powers that would be valuable to us in the coming war. We are in need of a powerful Spellcaster to aid in speeding their growth.”
Adrianna felt her stomach churn violently. She pushed her plate away with a sigh. Apparently the king was determined to ruin her dinner at every turn.
She chose her words with care, ignoring the look of warning Tlahaz shot her from across the table.
“If I were to help in this matter, I’d need something in return.”
Nakosh smiled.“I thought you might say that.”
“Thought, or knew?” she asked without any malice.
He paused, pretending to think.“I’ll save you time by saying I know what you’re going to ask for. I know whom you wish to protect. Did Tlahaz not already guarantee their safety?”
She inclined her head. “To the best of his abilities, but his true loyalties lie with you. Should you be displeased with my progress, I want your assurance that my family will not be used as bargaining chips. No matter what, they need to survive.”
Tlahaz grunted his disapproval at her boldness, but she didn’t care. There was no one but Emma who would miss her if she died. If the king got offended over her attempting to bargain, then there was nothing she could do about it.
But Nakosh merely smiled. The swirling darkness caressed the sharp angle of his jaw and the corner of his full lips that looked too sensual. Her cheeks heated and his smile grew.
“Very well, Spellcaster, I accept. You start in the morning.”
6
Emma
H is wounds were so bad, his skin bubbled and oozed when she fled. She blinked away the tears that burned her eyes—she wouldn’t let them fall.
She’d only just entered the hall when a thought occurred to her. In an instant, the burnt scraps that dangled from her body shifted and spread across her body until she wore full workout gear again.
After two and a half weeks, the perk of Prince Belphegor’s powers remained: the ability to transform an object into another. She practiced changing one object she owned into something else entirely for several days after. When her laptop had decided to stop turning on last week, she held it and focused on a newer, sleeker model. And it had changed into it, functioning as a brand-new device.
At first, the power had felt a little like theft, and she had wondered if somewhere in a shop nearby, a MacBook Pro had gone missing. But when she had tried to find out from Blaze, he’d asked too many questions that she couldn’t answer, and so she’d left it alone. She didn’t have a car—not that she could leave anyway—but she’d been told many times that the state of Seattle these days was bad.
No, worse. It was chaos. A missing MacBook Pro wouldn’t be a big deal in the grand scheme of things, she’d assured herself. And the more she used her new ability, the more she found herself looking around her room for things to upgrade. Until it occurred to her that there was nothing beyond her reach. She could exchange rocks for gold. Anything she wanted could be hers. It was a dangerous power. She couldn’t will anything out of thin air—it was an exchange of sorts—but as long as she could envision what she wanted, it became so.
On the walk of shame back to her room, she’d spied Ax
el standing in the shadowed alcove, watching her with cool blue eyes. With a small, forced flash of a smile, she hurried past him, eager not to make any conversation with anyone.
She did that a lot lately. It was easier to avoid people than to make excuses for things her father’s power forced her to conceal.
In her room, with the doors locked, Emma flung herself onto her mattress with a heavy sigh. Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the high beige ceiling. She felt beside her until her hand hit the wooden side table, and on it, her phone. It was a new phone that Blaze acquired for her after she broke the one from her mom. Emma held it up in front of her face, selecting Adrianna’s number, then paused. Of course she wouldn’t answer, but Emma wanted to hear her friend’s voice. When she returned from Sheol she’d tried to call Adrianna, but every time, there had been no answer—now she knew why.
She hit the call button, and Adrianna’s voice immediately filled the speaker.“Hey, losers, it’s Adrianna. Sorry I can’t answer the phone right now, so leave a message!”
Emma sighed, then dropped the phone onto the mattress. The ache in her chest every time she thought about her friend only got worse, especially now that she knew Adrianna was in Sheol.
She was rubbing the spot above her heart, as if she could soothe it from the outside, when a knock sounded.
Her stomach tightened, but the warm, soothing presence of Blaze wasn’t on the other side of the door. She’d requested all of her meals to be sent to her room so she had one less reason to leave it, but the knock didn’t sound like Gertie’s either.
“Come in,” Emma said, sitting up.
The tall man with tidy blond hair and goatee she’d come to know as Sergei stepped inside, carrying a breakfast tray with two steaming plates on top.
“Morning,” he said in his heavily accented voice.
When Emma had returned to the compound, Sergei was there, red-eyed and worn. He’d already known her mother was in Sheol and unlike most of the Giborim, he hadn’t asked many questions.
“Morning,” Emma said wearily.
“Do you mind?” He gestured to her small table with two chairs. She shook her head and got to her feet to join him as he set the tray down.“We haven’t really gotten a chance to talk much. I think you have questions, perhaps?”
Emma didn’t reply as she sat across the Russian Spellcaster who was in love with her mother. Who had been helping them from a distance her entire life. His eyes were dazzling blue, his smile warm and inviting.
And if she was being honest with herself, he was a goodlooking guy. Even though his suit trousers were wrinkled and his white button-up shirt was rolled up his toned forearms, Emma guessed his unkempt appearance had more to do with her mother’s absence than an inability to properly dress himself.
She lifted a steaming mug of strong coffee and let the aroma wash over her, eyes closed. Her throat burned as tears prickled behind her eyelids. When she opened them, Sergei gave her a sad smile.
“I miss her too, Lastachka.”
She didn’t know what that meant but she nodded, swallowing back the wave of grief.
“I’m working on a spell that would allow me to travel to Sheol without an invitation. I could get her and bring her back.” He spoke the words casually while cracking open his soft-boiled egg.
Emma choked into her coffee.
His gaze flicked to her with concern as she pounded her fist against her chest.
When she was finally able to breathe again—her nasal passage burning—she said,“You can’t do that.”
“Why not?” His voice was stern.
Emma felt her lips press together tightly, and she rooted around in her brain for an explanation that wouldn’t include any mention of Sheol or the Shediem.
“Besides the fact that it’s not safe,” she said, folding her arms across her chest,“who knows if you’d be able to locate her.”
Her spine tingled in warning and her tongue felt heavy, but she’d managed to get the words out.
Sergei shrugged as he dipped his toast into the soft, gooey yolk and took a bite. He chewed, looking thoughtful, but Emma didn’t attempt to eat a bite of her breakfast. Her stomach had begun to knot itself, and nausea replaced her appetite.
“With Gertie’s help, the task should not be a problem.”
She admired his confidence, but from the exhaustion that creased his face and his clothes she didn’t think that it would be nearly as easy as he suggested.
A bulge appeared on his shoulder under his shirt and it… moved! Emma gasped when it moved again. Before she could shout, Sergei glanced down at it, frowning.
“Come on then, Ugo.”
Her brows creased as a small, furry white face peered from under his collar.
“What is that?” she exclaimed.
Little by little the creature climbed out of Sergei’s shirt, pausing to sniff the air, its beady red eyes locking onto Emma.
“This is my familiar, Ugo. He’s actually a wolf but I changed him to a ferret so as not to alarm people.”
Ugo the ferret scurried down Sergei’s arm, darting for a slice of toast. It snatched the bread from the plate, carrying it between its sharp, tiny teeth to sit on the table. The sound of it crunching was all that filled the silence while Emma continued to gape. “Familiar?” she asked.
“Uh, magical creature,” he offered before dunking his own slice of toast in runny yolk and taking a bite. “It bonds to a Spellcaster in spirit and becomes physical to help protect us.”
She blinked, a maelstrom of questions swirling in her mind. Did Adrianna have a familiar? Emma had never heard about them or seen an animal around Gertie.
“Do all Spellcasters have familiars?”
He shrugged. “Some Spellcasters lose theirs—they die protecting their bonded. In extremely rare cases, a Spellcaster has no bonded familiar. It occurs at birth, though a Spellcaster doesn’t know what their familiar will be until their magic reaches its maturity.”
Emma blew out a breath, feeling woefully uninformed. After a beat she asked,“Did my mom know about Ugo?”
Sergei nodded, sadness clouding his crystalline blue eyes.
She bit her lip, not wanting to upset him but also wanting to know more about him. About his relationship with her mother.
“How did you and my mom meet?” Emma asked, picking up her mug of black coffee again. She sipped as his lips stretched wide in a smile.
“Your mother told you that she is from Russia, like me, yes?”
She nodded as Sergei washed down another bite of yolkcovered toast with a large gulp of orange juice. Then he continued. “Our families lived next to each other, though not as close as houses in the cities. At night when her father was out conning the townspeople or drinking himself into a rage in a pub, she would sneak over to my mother’s house.” He paused to take a deep breath, his eyes misty.“My mother always made sure to send her back with enough food for her mother and her sister, Sasha.”
Emma’s heart leapt into her throat at the mention of her aunt. Her mother’s sister.“Why did my mother lie and say she was an only child?”
Sergei forked a bite of eggs into his mouth and chewed in silence for a long moment.“She was ashamed to leave her sister behind. I think it was easier for her to believe Sasha had died than to deal with the shame of leaving her with the monster her father was.”
“But he’s dead now?” It seemed harsh to speak about her only grandparents that way, but from what her mother had told her of her grandfather, it was better she’d never known him.
Sergei nodded, his eyes icing over with clear disdain. “Terrible man. Good riddance. I’m not sorry he’s dead. Only that his wife had tagged along that morning.”
Emma blinked.“What do you mean?”
The blond man looked her over, deciding whatever he wanted to say was best left unsaid.
But Emma persisted.“No, it’s okay. Tell me.”
Sergei shook his head again and rose from his seat.“I should probably g
et back to work. I’ll leave you to your day.” He walked around the table and gently grasped her face in his large, calloused hands. Then he pressed a kiss to one cheek, then the next. His lips were warm, and when he stepped back, he pressed a final kiss to her forehead and whispered several words she didn’t recognize.
“Thank you for having breakfast with this old man,” he said with a smile, then headed for the door.
“Bye, Sergei,” Emma said quietly. She stared after the man who had begun humming to himself as he shut the door, leaving her in perfect isolation once again.
Emma sighed warily as she grabbed her laptop and sat down on the bed, pushing the top open to boot it up.
School was out, probably forever with everything going on, but it brought her a small sense of normalcy to do something so mundane—even if she had to create her own school work.
She worked for an hour, researching the Second World War, though her concentration was sporadic. Her reading material slowly changed to weapons used in wars up through the latest one, before morphing into odd articles and journals by fanatics claiming to know parts of the supernatural races. It yielded little results, and she nearly gave up, until her gaze snagged on the words demonic marking that possessed humans, making them mindless slaves.
Heart racing, she read further, trying to find out if what the conspiracy theory blog was describing was what was done to her.
In ancient times, when demons commonly roamed, preying on humans at will, they each possessed a stone which when forced down a human’s throat, placed them under the mind control of said demon.
The human possessed was capable of physical violence beyond the scope of the strongest human ever recorded, also granting untold speed and a thirst for other humans’ blood. This pandemic of demonic control is what is thought to be the origins of vampires in human lore.
The only way to end the demon’s control was to slay the human, carving open their gut and plucking the stone out before their powerful bodies could heal.
Emma’s stomach churned at the thought. Was the mark that her father had bestowed upon her a common stone that all Shediem once had, or something more powerful?
The Throne of Broken Bones (Weapon of Fire and Ash Book 3) Page 4
