by Bella Klaus
“What the hell is this?” Jonathan roared.
Aunt Arianna stumbled to her feet, stretched, and yawned. I turned my gaze away from her bruised and naked and bruised body to where Great-Aunt Laratte also rose and kicked Tania awake with a snort.
Why did the hostages look so relaxed? Why weren’t the enforcers burning? Why was the man with the whip grinning at me as though I had delivered him an early Yule present?
Palpitations tore through my heart. Valentine was right. Despite being careful, entering the Supernatural Council building via the sewers, and staying out of sight, we had just walked into a trap.
“What’s happening?” I asked, even though deep down, I knew the answer.
The enforcer holding the whip spread his arms wide. “Behold, gentlemen. The first phoenix in ten thousand years.”
Every single person in the room, including Aunt Arianna, Great-Aunt Laratte, and Tania gave the enforcer a polite round of applause.
Jonathan and I edged closer, standing back to back, with the twins at our sides. We all held out glowing hands, daring the strange people to come closer.
The enforcer sauntered toward us, giving Aunt Arianna a pat on the shoulder, who preened under his attention. He raised a hand and curled manicured fingers as though beckoning me to come closer. There was nothing remarkable about his appearance—black hair, black eyes, and pale skin within an unforgettable face—but something behind his eyes smoldered with an intelligence that made the fine hairs on the back of my head stand on end.
“It would seem that you are more protected than I thought,” he said in a light voice a host might use for welcoming guests. “May I inquire where you acquired such a splendid cloak?”
“Die!” Jonathan threw out a whip of black flames at the enforcer.
The enforcer raised his arm and drew the flames toward his hand. “Interesting use of fire magic.” He twisted the stream around his fingers, seeming to separate the fire from the smoke. “I imagine that the lesser races find its smell most intimidating but it doesn’t have the same bite as hellfire.”
My throat dried, and all the pieces fitted into my mind like a jigsaw. The happy hostages. The enforcers’ invulnerability to flames. The mention of hellfire. The disappearing doors and windows. Even the mention of lesser races. Our speaker was no enforcer, and this wasn’t a trap set by the Witch Queen. She and the Angel King always called for swift executions and never toyed with their prey.
Only one member of the Supernatural Council salivated over the prospect of executing those who wielded fire. Only one member benefited directly from sending their souls to Hell.
The Demon King.
“Stay back.” I pushed my magic out, sending six-inch-long flames out through my fingers. “We just killed all the enforcers in the hallway, and if you come any closer—”
“They were low-level scum.” He waved a dismissive hand.
The trio of hostages sauntered to a bank of chairs on the far left of the room and sat as though they’d been invited to enjoy the show.
Jonathan blasted a wave of black flames at the man I expected was the Demon King, but he walked through the fire without so much as singing a hair.
“What did I tell you, hybrid?” the Demon King said with a sneer. “That level of fire won’t even toast bread in Hell.”
“Who are you?” Jonathan’s voice shook.
His eyes turned the color of glowing coals, and he continued toward us still with his gaze fixed on me. “I go by many names. Pick one.”
“The Prince of Lies?” I spat.
His lips curled into a cold smile. “I prefer the title King.”
Blood roared in my ears, and I resisted the urge to release the flames crackling from my fingers and pull the cloak around my body. The Demon King stopped a foot away from where we stood, and he stared down at me with eyes that glittered with a mix of cruelty and amusement.
Something he said about lesser races rolled through my mind. Demons and angels were said to be the oldest in the world, apart from the gods, who had long left this plane. The faeries were angel-demon hybrids that dwelled in a separate realm, and these three races deemed themselves the superior supernaturals. Shifters, mages, vampires, and witches were the only supernaturals that lived in this realm, and we were deemed inferior.
We were truly, unequivocally, and without a doubt screwed.
As I stared into those smoldering eyes that seemed to glow brighter with each passing second, my heart ached for Valentine. What would he do when he discovered I had been killed? Without me to remind him about right and wrong, would he regress into a cold killer, sire an army of preternatural vampires, or rush into the Supernatural Council and get himself captured and killed?
My heart shrank, leaving an empty hollow in my chest. There was one thing I needed to know before the Demon King killed us all and threw us into Hell.
“What did you do to my coven?” I asked.
“I have absolutely no idea where they’ve gone.” The Demon King spread his arms wide in an exaggerated shrug. “They disappeared days before anyone even confirmed you wielded fire.”
Regret washed through my veins like warm acid. Kain drove to their cottages and said the houses had been emptied. When Valentine arrived in London I had tried to call Aunt Arianna for days, only to discover she had gone on a retreat for Samhain. What if she never returned to Logris after the Sabbat?
I pressed a shaking hand to my lips, meeting the Demon King’s burning eyes. That wasn’t his true appearance. High-level demons never showed their true faces, and most of them didn’t venture out to Logris, instead preferring the fires of Hell.
My gaze darted to the battered trio sitting on the sidelines. The one that looked like Aunt Arianna gave me a thumbs up.
“Who are they?” I asked.
The Demon King waved a dismissive hand. “Friendly faerie shapeshifters who owed me a favor. Do you know how high and low we searched for samples of your family’s hair and blood? They did a wonderful job trying to erase their existence, but they forgot to cleanse the taxi they took across London to Heathrow Airport.”
Beside me, Jonathan whimpered. The twins remained silent and had stopped trying to attack what had now become apparent was a room full of demons.
I should have known Aunt Arianna would have used the Samhain retreat as an excuse to leave Logris, but I had been too caught up with Valentine’s return and the assassins to pay attention to her movements.
Now I had led Jonathan and the other fire mages into a trap.
A tiny sliver of hope remained that Aunt Arianna had guided the coven out of the country. If they’d been caught, the Demon King would already have boasted about having them in his possession.
“What do you want?” I rasped.
He flashed me a broad smile. “Once I’ve reaped the souls of your companions, I will destroy your body and release the phoenix within.”
“But my blood—”
The four demons behind him twisted and shuddered before falling on their faces in twitching piles of broken bodies.
I choked back a scream and skittered away from the fallen demons.
“How peculiar.” The Demon King stepped back and stared at my feet.
“Did you do that?” Jonathan whispered in my ear.
My heart pounded harder than a war drum. I hadn’t done a thing. The Demon King continued staring at my feet, and I followed his gaze to find the hem of my cloak billowing out in a cloud of mist.
Jonathan grabbed a twin and ran in the direction of the nonexistent door.
Gail’s last words in the ritual room rang through my ears. When I had stepped on the podium and found him gone, she had told me Valentine had turned to mist. Somehow, Valentine must have attached himself to my cloak and hitched a ride.
The mist swirled in front of me to form a column that coalesced into a man.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The figure in front of me took shape and turned into Valentine, making me draw in a sh
ocked breath. Valentine was now as pale and corpse-like as he had been while lying dead on the slab. I placed a trembling hand over my mouth. Turning into mist and traveling through the flames had expended the magic animating his body. How did he intend to fight in this half-feral state?
“King Valentine?” The Demon King smirked. “I barely recognized you now that you’re dead.”
Valentine raised his arm, sending up a whirlwind of papers and debris that lifted the Demon King two feet in the air. The trio of faerie shapeshifters sitting on the chairs on the left of the room vanished in a puff of glittering faerie dust. I clenched my teeth, wishing Valentine had dealt with that wretched trio before he’d taken out the other demons.
Jonathan surged forward, his hands covered in black flames.
I grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him backward with every ounce of my strength. “What the hell are you doing?”
Jonathan yanked his arm out of my grip. “Joining the fight, what do you think?”
“That’s the bloody Demon King,” I said through clenched teeth. “Your flames won’t work against a creature from Hell.”
He stared down at me with defiant eyes, and he folded his arms across his chest. “So?”
Realization hit me harder than a slap, making me flinch. Jonathan knew this—he had just seen his and the twins’ attacks land harmlessly on the demons. Their king even told them that the black flames were nothing compared to hellfire, but they would work on lesser creatures. Lesser creatures like vampires and those particularly vulnerable to fire like preternaturals.
“You’re trying to kill Valentine.” I shoved him hard in the chest, making him stumble back a few steps.
“I’m trying to free you,” he spat. “Can’t you see you’re under his thrall?”
“Don’t be stupid,” said one of the twins. “You can’t change sides in the middle of a battle.”
“The Vampire King just saved us from a deadly situation.” The other twin wrapped an arm around Jonathan’s shoulders. “Let’s not stab him in the back and get ourselves killed.” He and his brother dragged Jonathan toward the only opening in the room, the postage-stamp-sized window. Jonathan glowered at me over his shoulder, the look in his eyes saying that this wasn’t over.
Valentine pinned the Demon King to the wall and tried to ram his fist into the man’s gut, but his blow got caught in an invisible ward. He threw his head back and released a roar that filled my skull and made every bone in my body vibrate.
I slipped my hand into the pocket of the reaper’s cloak, looking for something that might help to move the fight in Valentine’s favor. Beneath the glass jar lay something cold that radiated a sharp energy against my fingers. I backed toward the other side of the room and fished out a folding knife that sprang into the shape of a miniature scythe.
“Valentine?” I raised the peculiar dagger in the air.
A gentle wind swirled around my hand and plucked the weapon from my fingers. If anything could hurt a high demon, it had to be the weapon of an angel, even though reapers were the less powerful celestial beings. Using his wind, Valentine made the weapon hurtle through the room, aiming it at the Demon King’s head, but it caught in midair a few inches before his target.
“Next?” the Demon King drawled.
I clenched my fists. Why wasn’t the Demon King fighting back? Someone as old and as ancient as him could have destroyed Valentine’s body in a column of hellfire. Stepping back, I studied the pair. While Valentine darted around, trying to smash through the barrier, the Demon King stood against the wall, with an amused smile playing over his bland lips. Even his eyes had returned to black. He wasn’t interested in engaging with Valentine—but why?
This was no ordinary one-sided fight. The Demon King was up to something. I couldn’t tell if he was testing the extent of Valentine’s power or trying to make him use up the little blood he kept in his veins.
“My dear boy.” The king spread out his arms. “You’re looking under the weather. Positively dead. Would you like an appointment with my personal physician?”
With a feral snarl, Valentine slashed his hand through the air, snapping the Demon King’s neck and turning his head at an unnatural ninety-degree angle. Triumph flared in my chest. If Valentine stuck to air attacks, he might have a chance of winning.
The Demon King grunted, his jovial expression darkening. “That was uncalled for.”
“Mera is mine,” Valentine growled.
“Calm down. Once I’ve extracted the bird of fire from your young lady, I’ll leave you her perfectly preserved corpse.”
Trepidation penetrated my cloak and chilled me to the bone. That was the second time he had mentioned that I was a phoenix instead of only wielding its flames. Was that why he was being so patient?
I rubbed my dry throat. If preternaturals ran on blood the way cars ran on gasoline, the moment Valentine burned through his supply of stolen blood, he might shut down, leaving me easy prey. I stepped back toward Jonathan and the twins, who huddled around what used to be the window.
“Do you need any help?” I asked.
One of the twins stepped aside, showing me the window, which was now four inches wide. “If the Vampire King can continue fighting the Demon King, we might wedge open a hole large enough to slip out.”
“Just keep an eye on those demons on the floor and tell us if one of them so much as twitches,” said his brother.
I turned my gaze to the back wall, where the demons still lay in a twisted pile.
Valentine backhanded their leader, who flew across the ceiling with a giddy laugh. “Death becomes you, King Valentine,” the Demon King said, his voice light with amusement. “You were always so serious and mild mannered for a vampire. Nothing like your father.”
Before I could check the cloak for extra pockets, something cool snaked around my arm, making me spin around. A black shadow spread across the room from a crack in the wall, and yanked me to where the door had disappeared.
“Roman, Leman,” I shouted over the sound of howling wind.
The twins rushed to my side, leaving Jonathan keeping the window open with his black flames. One of them sliced through the shadow with his beam of light, while the other used his magic to widen the tiny gap in the wall to create an opening the size of a door.
“Mages of light and fire?” said a deep voice from beyond the wall.
“Great, another enemy.” I glanced over my shoulder to where the Demon King fought against a torrent of wind with his teeth clenched and no longer enjoying Valentine’s attention. One of his arms hung limply at his side, appearing dislocated, and a thick stream of smoke billowed from between his lips, making the air thick with brimstone.
Something fell against my cloak and fell onto the ground. It was the dagger I had given Valentine to attack the Demon King. I picked it up and held it in my fist, ready for the owner of the voice to burst in and attack.
“Abominations,” the voice said again.
“You’re just jealous because you only have one form of magic.” One of the twins carved an entire opening with his light, while the other slid a sheet of light beneath the door that emerged up through the gap at the top. “Don’t you wish you could do more than use your shadows to sneak up on girls?”
“Insolence,” the voice rumbled, making the light flicker.
My throat dried. Was this the same shadow that had tried to snatch me in the library? I glanced down at my wrist for signs of a cursed mark, but my arm was bare. Maybe the shadow belonged to an enforcer.
The twins raised their hands, using their light magic to force the door open, only to reveal a doorway filled with a cold, unending darkness. All three of us backed toward the wall on the right, where Jonathan strained to open the window another few inches.
A howling wind pierced the air, and wind slid over the hood of my reaper cloak. I glanced over my shoulder. The Demon King stood at one end of the room, throwing curl after curl of smoke at Valentine, who held back the attack with an
outstretched arm. I gulped. Was this another attempt to get Valentine to use up all his energy?
“No,” the twin nearest to me growled.
I turned to find the fallen demons rising off the pile where they had fallen, their twisted bodies lurching like marionettes toward Valentine. Bile rose to the back of my throat. Was that necromancy or were they unconscious? Before I could study the demons' faces, another cold tendril wound around my finger, trying to pull me toward the dark void at the door.
Without even trying, flames flared out from my hand, making the shadow sizzle into ash. “We need a shield of light.” I edged closer to Jonathan. “Now.”
The twin closest to me erected a wall of pure light that curved around us, creating a barrier between us. I glanced over my shoulder to where Jonathan and a twin had expanded the window to ten inches.
“Can’t we hold hands and shimmer out of the room?” I asked.
“Not with all that wind.” Jonathan slammed his flaming fist into the window.
“Why?” I offered him my flaming hand in case he needed more magic to wedge it open, but he shook his head.
The twin maintaining the wall of light glanced at me over his shoulder. “Oxygen fans flames, but too much of it can extinguish them.”
His brother clasped Jonathan’s hand and pressed it against the window, widening it another inch. “We would need the magic of all eight of us or more to withstand all the circulation.”
“If you can get your dead master to stop huffing and puffing, we might be able to escape,” Jonathan muttered.
I was about to reply when Valentine’s furious roar tore through the air, and one of the unconscious demons flew across the room and through the doorway, making the darkness beyond collapse into a rectangle on the floor.
“What was that?” I whispered. “An illusion?”
A tall figure stepped into the doorway, clad in black robes that resembled my reaper’s cloak. His gunmetal gray eyes landed on me, and his lips curled back into a broad smile. “The phoenix.”
