Haunted by Shadows: Magic Wars: Demons of New Chicago Book Two

by Carpenter, Kel

  My brow furrowed. “You trade in tea?”

  A gold light entered the witch’s light brown eyes. Mischievous and dangerous in its own way. “I trade in many things. Tea. Food. Blood. Antiquities that are difficult to get ahold of. In that way, I’m much like you. I make bargains to get what I want.”

  “I trade in power.”

  “Power is subjective,” she replied. “In a war-ravaged world, food has power. So does blood. So do rare and hard-to-find objects. Everyone needs for something, and for some, that’s magic. I don’t have much of that to trade, but everything else . . .” She shrugged. “Magic is good, but someone can still have all the magic in the world and not be happy. I’m in the business of pleasing people. You’d be surprised what humans and supernaturals alike will bargain with for just a tiny bit of happiness.”

  Those were profound words for one so young. Wise beyond her years.

  “What is it that makes Piper happy?” I asked her, curious what her insight would offer more than anything.

  Nathalie set the cup down with a heavy sigh.

  “Piper is a difficult one. She’s lived alone for so long. Suffered at the hands of my kind . . . I don’t think she truly knows happiness. Just existence. Her childhood was about survival, and the people she loved most in the world were taken from her. She doesn’t form attachments now as a defense mechanism to keep from getting hurt. The last decade of her life has been chasing answers for how to save a sister she may not be able to save.” Nathalie shook her head, clearly troubled. “But if I had to guess what I think makes her feel at least content—I would say saving people.”

  “Not Bree?” I asked, though I didn’t truly disagree.

  “No,” Nathalie said softly. “Bree is a body. An idea. A memory. She loves and misses the girl she remembers because she associates it with better times. But I don’t think she makes her happy. Not when she has so much guilt surrounding her.”

  She looked away, far off into the distance, and a sad expression crossed her face.

  “And when she finds a way to bring Bree back?” I said. “What about then?”

  “You assume there’s a way to bring her back,” Nathalie said. I didn’t respond, and her eyes narrowed in my direction. “Assuming there is, though? She’ll still struggle. In her mind, Bree is all there is. The sole source of her entire world because of love and guilt. No one can be someone’s everything, and once she saves her . . . I think Piper is going to have a tough time shifting the focus of her survival.”

  I mulled over her answer while the witch sipped her tea in silence.

  “You think it will break her,” I said eventually.

  “That depends.” She lowered the cup to the counter and lifted her light brown eyes as they started to glow.

  “On?” I prompted.

  “If she can find another reason to live.”

  12

  The truth didn’t have time to settle in and weigh me down.

  As soon as Ronan faded, stone walls and a bloody pentagram took its place. I scented sulfur, the tang of copper, and subtle undertones of sex.

  Lucifer still lay on the floor, bound in chains, his body cut open and dripping.

  “I told you to go,” he said, his voice a quiet rumble.

  “I did.”

  “But you came back.”

  His eyes were closed. He didn’t look at me as he spoke. He didn’t move an inch. Lucifer’s chest and arms were still carved open, and so much blood had spilled that it stained his pale skin a reddish brown, completely covering the brands. His once white hair now only had flecks of the snowy color peeking through.

  I wondered how much pain he was in. He didn’t wince or whine or cry. Not that I would expect him to, being the devil and all. But I had to think it hurt to move, hurt to breathe, and that’s why he’d remained so still.

  “Not by choice. The crash came, and I woke up here . . .” I took another look around the would-be-sanctuary. The low ceiling and lack of windows made me think he was underground.

  “You need to leave.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  He sighed, and for once, he sounded . . . tired. Old. Ronan was thousands of years old, and that meant the devil was too. He’d known Lucifer from Hell, the real Hell.

  “They’re going to be back soon,” he said quietly.

  “They?”

  His eyes cracked open, thin slits of gold staring straight into my soul. “The ones keeping me here.”

  “You’re avoiding telling me who,” I noted. “I find this strange since you’re chained down and cut up like a sacrifice.”

  “Exactly. Me, a full demon. A being once considered too great to be challenged.” He chuckled under his breath, but it was a bitter sound.

  “So that’s it? Someone challenged you? That’s how you ended up here?” I motioned to the room around us.

  “Yes and no,” he said. I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. I crossed my arms over my chest and started walking around the outer rim of the bloody circle that caged him. Last time I’d stepped in it, and the magic flared to life even though I wasn’t really there. Somehow it was able to sense me.

  “Someone either challenged you, or they didn’t,” I said. “I don’t see how this is a yes and no answer.”

  “Someone always challenges me,” Lucifer said. “That’s what it means to be on top. To rule. You’re challenged again and again, but to stay on top, you can’t lose. Not once.”

  “So you lost?” I surmised.

  “Yes, but not to them,” he said, a flicker of icy rage entering his gaze. Now that his eyes were open, they never left me.

  “Then who?”

  “You,” he breathed. “Your blood was so sweet, I didn’t even notice it poisoning me. It might have killed me, had the fire not burned it away.”

  I stopped where I stood. “So you’re not my atman?”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  I frowned. Wasn’t didn’t mean isn’t.

  “What do you mean wasn’t? If you’re not my atman, how am I here? The fire should have killed you, or my blood—”

  “Yet, they saved me.” Despite the manacles around his wrists and ankles, the bleeding cuts, and the pain he had to be in—his eyes raked over me, and a hint of both mania and lust peeked out. “The fire didn’t kill me because of the presence of your blood. Your blood didn’t kill me because of the fire. They canceled each other out, and a small amount integrated within me. I survived. Now, I’m immune to both.” His tongue darted out, just the slightest flick to lick over his bottom lip.

  My stunned stupor faded as my eyes hardened. “You could have killed me,” I hissed.

  “It should have,” he agreed. “By all means, you should have died. Yet here you stand, unhurt.” He scanned me from head to toe and then back up. “Curious,” he said softly.

  “I have a question. If you knew that Aeshma was dead, why pretend otherwise? Why play along?”

  Lucifer grinned a little, and blood coated his teeth, though not his lips. I assumed he was bleeding internally. “Aeshma was a cunt,” he said. “I hated her. She rejected me because she wanted more power, and I was sent here out of shame. Imagine how surprised I was to find a woman that appeared to be little more than human had killed her and was now my atma? I would not lose twice. I was going to do everything better with you. Do it the right way. In Hell, Aeshma was what you call born great. She was a princess to power, old power, and it gave her a certain status that I did not have. I was simply Lucifer, Second Son. The Morningstar.” He chuckled like the name that inspired so much fear was but a mockery of the original meaning. “Here I have the power. Here I was king, and you were no one. A human woman with the power of an immortal. I knew of your distaste for my kind. I was going to use it. Start from the bottom and strip it all away. You might hate me now, but when I was done—you’d know every dark deed and awful thought in my mind and love me despite it all. You would have chosen me.”

  My lips parted. “You’r
e wrong.”

  He smiled faintly. “Maybe. Looks like we’ll never know.”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  “You were sure I was your atma too,” I pointed out.

  “And despite being wrong, I was still right. I chose you, and fate chose to throw me a bone.” He chuckled, then coughed. Red stained his lips.

  “You’re dying,” I said after a few heavy moments when his coughing finally died down and his head slumped back against the floor once more.

  “Feels like it,” he said. “But I don’t think they intend to kill me, assuming they know how. Not a good assumption, mind you. Unless Ronan hired them—”

  “Who are they?” I asked him.

  “You going to come save me, Piper?” he asked jokingly. When I didn’t immediately respond, a sliver of pain crept from beneath his mask. “You’d leave me to rot. I’m the devil, after all. So why do you want to know?”

  Because . . .

  “I was tailed the other day, and nearly drowned after an explosion shortly before that. Someone is after me. I’m trying to find out who, and why.”

  Lucifer lay there, seeming to fade in and out for a moment. Just when I thought he wasn’t going to answer, he rasped, “The witches.”

  “Which ones?”

  “The old families.” A metal hinge creaked somewhere not far away. “They’re angry at the restrictions I’ve kept them under since the Magic Wars. Most of the supernaturals are. If they’ve learned you’re my atma, you need to leave New Chicago. I can’t protect—”

  What was with him and Ronan thinking I needed to run or hide at the first sign of danger?

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  Footsteps echoed from outside the room.

  “You don’t understand,” he said through clenched teeth. “As long as I’m in this circle, my persuasion can’t sway them. They will torture you, bring you right to the brink of death, and then heal you up and start all over. I know, because that’s what I did to them when Dryanda Abernathy revealed magic to the world.”

  “You forget, Lucifer, I cut my teeth hunting witches. If they’re after me for revenge on you, they’ll be in for a rude awakening.”

  His eyes glowed brighter for a moment and the circle flared to life around him. “Do not go looking for them,” he said, his magic filling the room. I breathed it in, and the cold it filled me with burned. His jaw was hard, and his fists clenched as he tried to strain past the circle’s hold. The footsteps outside became louder, more insistent. The banging echoed through my brain.

  “Nice try,” I said softly. “But you forget, if you’re immune to me, I’m immune to you—even if that circle wasn’t blocking your power.”

  “Piper,” he growled. The thick wooden door shot open and slammed into the stone wall behind it. “Piper!”

  Witches and warlocks funneled into the tiny room, but none of them seemed to notice me. None but Lucifer.

  My name on his lips was still ringing in my ears when the stone room and bloody circle disappeared. My eyes flew open, and I gasped, shooting up out of bed.

  It took a second to recognize my surroundings. That I was in my room at Nathalie’s.

  What’s more, she wasn’t sitting next to my bed waiting quietly with a glass of water. She was sitting on my lap, shaking me.

  “Wake up, wake up, wake the fuck up!” she chanted under her breath. Her eyes were wide and crazed, a pink tinge ringed them from crying. Tear stains lined her cheeks.

  “I’m here,” I croaked past parched lips. I swallowed hard, trying to soothe the burn in my throat. My limbs were heavy, sluggish, and sore. I wondered how many days I’d been out.

  Nathalie sat back, her hands stilled. She blinked twice but didn’t move to wipe the tears away or calm her expression.

  She stared at me, unabashed and unashamed.

  “Barry’s gone.”

  13

  “What?”

  Gone? What did she mean by gone?

  “He’s gone. The Red Crescent pack took him.” She reached down and pulled a crumpled yellow piece of paper out of her sweatshirt pocket. “They want to make a trade.”

  I took the letter and smoothed it out. Dread filled me, along with that dangerous current of adrenaline. Nathalie spoke again as I read the short note.

  “They want to trade Barry for Lucifer,” I said in a gravelly voice, mostly from dehydration.

  Nathalie nodded. “Except I have no idea where he is. I’ve scryed two dozen times, and I can’t find either of them. Piper, what am I going to do—”

  “We’ll get him back,” I said, my body already moving even as my mind was working through the plan. I nudged her off of me so I could stretch my legs and stand. “That’s all we can do.”

  And deal with some witches who may be trying to kill me while we’re at it.

  “But I don’t know where either of them are.”

  “The witches have Lucifer,” I said, pulling out clothes to dress myself. My skin was dry and uncomfortable. Under different circumstances, I would have showered and brushed my teeth before anything, then ate, then listened to her problems. As it was, her panicked state didn’t make me think we had much time for me to dally.

  “What—how do you know that?”

  “Saw it,” I murmured, yanking open and then slamming drawers shut as I tried to find a clean, long-sleeved shirt. Where were they—

  My eyes slid sideways to the pile of dirty laundry.

  “The same way you ‘see’ Ronan when you’re sleeping?” she asked.

  “Yep.” I almost didn’t notice her tone changing because I was debating how gross I could handle being, even if it was just long enough to capture the devil, kill and interrogate some witches, then possibly deal with a werewolf pack that may or may not already hate me . . .

  Fuck it. I picked up the gray shirt on top and sniffed it.

  Could be worse.

  Not a lot, mind you, but I gave it a fifty-fifty shot I’d end up resorting to magic by the end of the day. Which meant no more shirt in the end.

  “Is that normal?” Nathalie asked, pulling me from this debacle.

  “Nope,” I said, pulling on the one decent bra I had left. She was going to owe me another round of clothes by the end of this.

  “You seem to be handling it alright . . .” she continued.

  “I figure only one of us can be freaking out,” I said, only half sarcastically. “Besides, none of this is normal. I’m a demon, living with a witch, on the second blood exchange with Ronan . . .” I wrinkled my nose at that, even if my skin flushed. Nope. Not going there. “What’s one more soulmate in the mix? I plan to leave or kill them both, anyway.”

  I pulled the shirt on and clasped my belt with my holsters around my waist.

  “I take that back. The panic just hasn’t caught up to you yet.”

  “Nope,” I agreed. “But that’s life. I can’t change it, and we’ve got bigger shit to be dealing with.”

  Arms wrapped around me from behind.

  I froze.

  “Thank you,” Nathalie whispered against my back. The tension in my shoulders eased. “And I appreciate you being willing to wear your dirty, smelly shirt, but you’re going to need to take a shower before we go anywhere.”

  “What?” I pulled away and turned around. “Weren’t you just crying and trying to wake me up so we could go find Barry?”

  She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and sniffled. “That was before I had a lead, but you said Lucifer is with the witches.”

  “Yes,” I drawled, a statement that I made a silent question. “That’s why I’m dressed. So we can go get him. There’s probably going to be some guards. Nothing my guns can’t handle—”

  She chuckled, then sniffled again, sounding stopped-up. “You’re making this too hard for yourself.”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  She smiled.

  “Take a shower and dress nice. Your guns need to be hidden.”

  I blinked as she turned t
o leave.

  “Are you going to tell me why?” I called after. She stopped partway out the door and turned back. There was a hard glint in her eyes. A stiff set to her lips. I knew I wasn’t going to like what she had to say next.

  “I’m taking you to meet my parents.”

  Well, shit.

  * * *

  Apparently, Nathalie and I had different definitions of ‘dress nice’.

  Where she wore a stylish and perky blouse that crimped around her waist and flared at the hips, real leather pants, and four-inch high-heeled boots—I wore slacks, a button-down shirt with a high collar, and a black jacket. The latter mostly served as a means to cover the guns I had concealed on me.

  She took one look and sighed. “Well, at least it isn’t a turtleneck with combat boots.”

  I frowned, looking down at myself. “You said dress nice, not dress like you’re trying to get laid.” Nathalie shrugged.

  “With witches, it’s all the same. Sex and magic go hand-in-hand. Judging from your blood exchanges with Ronan, we get that from demons.”

  I pressed my lips together and turned away. I hadn’t had much time to process everything we’d done, or what he’d said before the crash claimed me. Nathalie woke me up in a bawling mess, and that took priority. Now that there was a brief intermission from the high emotions . . . I found myself very prickly about the whole thing.

  “We should get going,” I said, changing the subject. My stomach let out a loud rumble in hunger, as if protesting our plans. Nathalie quirked an eyebrow.

  “You were out a full week this time. You should eat something before we leave,” she said. Nathalie moved around the counter and grabbed several plastic-wrapped bars out of a cabinet, then set them on the kitchen counter in front of me.

  I reached out and grabbed one of the protein bars, recognizing the brand. It was one of the few that boasted enough nutrition that you could survive on two bars a day, and it didn’t taste like shit. My stomach let out another hungry rumble, and I tore the packaging off the first.