The Gathering

by Jennifer Ashley

  In the grove, at the apex of the moon, Leda drew her circle while the others grouped outside it and continued the argument.

  “Practicing death magic killed my sister,” Amber said, face set.

  Leda straightened up, marking the circle’s boundary with her long wand. “I won’t be practicing death magic—not exactly. But this barrier between realities, the ripple, can most easily be pierced by demons. We’ve spent two weeks chanting spells and throwing life magic at it to no avail. I’m betting Hunter used Samantha with her demon magic to open the way for them. Fury, a Bocca demon, opened it for Darius, and Fury has been sick as a . . . demon . . . ever since. Ricco has death magic, yes, but I have the feeling we need the demon brand of it, or Hunter would have asked Septimus or one of his vamps to help him open the ripple, instead of Samantha.” Leda drew a breath. “Samantha is the only demon Hunter has ever come to trust, the only one he could let know where he was going. We need a demon to stop a demon, ladies and gentlemen.”

  Leda didn’t feel as glib as her words. When she’d used demon magic before, she’d spent a year recoiling from the violation of it, only recovering after Hunter had removed the residual death magic from her. This time, there was a good chance Hunter wouldn’t be around to cure her.

  Leda had figured out, though, what Isis had meant when she’d claimed Leda had the courage and strength to do what must be done. Leda had survived using death magic before because of that strength. She’d survive again, Isis had hinted, at least long enough to save the world. What happened to Leda after that—whether she and Hunter rode off into the sunset, death-magic free, or Leda lost herself to death magic trying to save him—didn’t matter.

  Leda closed her circle, shutting the others out before they could stop her, and raised a sphere of power around her, a bubble of blue light that shimmered in the darkness. Mukasa, beyond it, grumbled low in his throat.

  Leda lifted her hands, and with an inward apology to the Goddess and the God, chanted several memorized lines in a harsh-sounding demon language. Roughly translated, they meant: Come to me, glorious one. I have need of your wisdom. Take of me what you will, my body or my soul, for my need is great.

  Leda chanted the incantation three times before she lowered her aching arms, her heart beating swiftly.

  She didn’t have long to wait. Not ten seconds after her voice died away, she felt a black surge in her mind. A rush of displaced air blasted Leda’s face, its smell foul. With an audible pop, the groth demon she’d summoned once before, to save her husband, manifested inside her circle.

  He gazed at Leda, then the grove, the large house in the background, and the crowd of life-magic users surrounding the bubble. He blinked in surprise then let out a long sigh of what sounded like relief.

  “Thank the dark ones you summoned me again, lovely Leda Stowe. I was getting so bored.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Isn’t that a groth demon?” Ricco asked.

  The demon turned to Ricco and bowed, very carefully not touching the blue nimbus of Leda’s bubble. “That’s me. Thanks for the protection, Leda.” He peered at the others looking in at them. “Those are some mean-looking critters out there, especially the half-Sidhe, not to mention the lizard.”

  “Watch it, demon,” Valerian growled. Mukasa came up beside Valerian, and growled as well.

  “Kitty, kitty,” the demon said. If a lion could look disgusted, Mukasa did.

  The groth demon’s human face was that of a sultrily good-looking man—tight body, dark hair, a shadow of beard emphasizing the perfection of his features, soul-sucking dark eyes. Last time he’d come to Leda, he’d worn a tailored dark suit and red silk tie—this time he’d chosen to be a grungy bad boy, with jeans and a T-shirt. Because Hunter wore that, Leda realized, while her husband had worn suits. Demons looked into their victims’ minds and pulled out what they most wanted to see. The groth demon smiled a little at her with Hunter’s smile, watching her understand.

  “I brought you here to do me a favor,” Leda told him sternly. “I need you to open a portal for me.”

  “Love to, sweetheart. How big and to where?”

  “Large enough for all of us to enter . . . somewhere over there.”

  The demon looked to where Leda pointed, and his dark eyes widened. “You don’t want much, do you, love? Open a hole in reality so you can slide into the dark dimensions? Oh sure, coming right up.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “I can maybe do it. But it will cost you, sweetheart. I was cheated out of my price before—I felt my compulsion spell on you crumble and die—so this will be double.” He grinned out at Mai, who gave him a deprecating look in return. “I’ll take you, plus that cutie over there.”

  “That cutie’s boyfriend is a powerful vampire,” Leda told him, as Ricco scowled at him. “We’ll discuss the price when you’ve opened the portal, and we’ve gone in and returned safely.”

  “You mean when you’ve gone in. I’m not going in there at all. Do you have streaming video? I’ll wait for you inside that cushy-looking house.” He nodded toward Amber’s large and rambling home.

  Leda gave him a nod. “Fair enough. I’ll lower the wards for you to enter the house once, but only once. If you leave it, you won’t be able to get back inside.” If everything went as planned, it wouldn’t matter where the demon went after this.

  “Hmm. I should be suspicious of your so easy consent. But I’ll enjoy thinking about my payment.”

  Leda gave him a severe look. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  “Gladly, my dear.”

  The demon moved to stand behind her. As he slid his arms around her, his well-muscled human arms began to shrivel and blacken, morphing into leathery, wrinkled demon skin as the groth demon took on his true form, his breath on Leda’s neck burning like acid.

  “I’m ready,” he said in into her ear. His voice was soft, seductive. Hearing that voice, a beguiled human would forget to be repulsed by the demon’s appearance.

  “Hunter is not going to like this, I think,” Mac said softly.

  Hunter wouldn’t, any more than Leda’s husband had liked that she’d used demon magic to save his life. But saving Hunter was more important than what he would and wouldn’t like.

  The groth demon’s death magic twined through Leda’s, like black and foul vines wrapping around a healthy plant to feed on its vitality. Leda’s air magic was strong enough to keep the demon from taking her over fully, but his darkness constricted her spine and burned along her nerves. Part of Leda’s mind tried to rebel, not wanting to let the darkness back in when it had been so wonderfully taken away by Hunter’s magic.

  Tamping down the urge to fight it, Leda concentrated the dark energy deep inside her, letting it mesh intricately with her own. The coupling of her magic with the demon’s was like sunlight obliterated by dirty fog, hope torn away by violence. Their intertwining sickened her, but it was necessary. Leda raised her hands, the force within her crackling and swirling.

  Hunter, I love you, she whispered inside herself as she pointed her fingers through her blue life-magic circle to the ripple and let the magic fly.

  The black and white light, tangled and twining, struck the ripple with an audible crack. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a gap slowly tore through the rippling air, rolling open like a bridge lowering to reveal blackness beyond. Foul air poured out of the hole that had no end, darkness coming out with it, flowing fast and ever faster.

  “Shit,” the demon said, and yanked his arms from around Leda’s waist.

  The hole widened until the darkness encompassed the entire grove. It swallowed up the green, the swaying ribbons left from Beltane, then surged to the houses beyond, growing larger and faster every second it moved.

  Inside Leda’s little bubble of magic, nothing touched her or the groth demon who hunkered behind her. Outside, the darkness engulfed her friends, who turned to fight whatever might come out of the hole. Lexi and Sabina shucked clothes as t
hey morphed into wolves—Valerian’s clothes splintered off him as he became sixty feet of dragon.

  Christine and Amber were busy raising a circle of their own. They jerked Mai and Mukasa inside the circle before the sphere of life magic closed over the four of them, sealing them into a glowing bubble. Ricco drew daggers and seemed to grow taller, less human-looking—an Old One cloaking himself in powerful death magic.

  Mac himself sparkled with power. Leda thought she heard him mutter—”Och, mum’s going to kill me,” as he plucked from nowhere, of all things, his guitar.

  Then the darkness swallowed them completely, blotting out the grove, the house, and the street beyond it.

  Someone came running out of the hole—Samantha—her dark demon eyes wide with terror, widening even more when she saw the array of life-magic creatures plus a vampire ready to attack her.

  Samantha fell once in her haste, but rolled to her feet, her police training coming to her rescue. She sprinted for Mac, as though instinctively homing in on the immense strength of the demigod.

  Lexi’s wolf snarled at Samantha and tried to intercept her, but Leda shouted from within her bubble. “No! She’s on our side! Mac, take care of her!”

  Mac, after his first startled look, said, “Right,” and grabbed Samantha and shoved her behind him. Samantha bent, hands on knees, trying to catch her breath.

  The others were staring at something in the darkness. Leda focused on what they were looking at and saw a painfully bright light in the center of the void, incandescent in the gloom. The light grew, expanding . . . no. The darkness was not coming out of the hole, Leda realized. It was pulling the rest of the world into it. Leda and her friends were actually rushing toward the white glow.

  As things grew more clear, Leda saw that four men were standing inside the circle of light.

  The Immortals. They were back to back, unmoving, heads tilted upward, eyes open and staring at nothing. Kalen, Darius, Hunter, and Adrian, their weapons at their feet, Darius’s tattoos gone from his body.

  A red-haired man dressed in chain mail and surcoat walked slowly around the four Immortals, made for Leda’s protective bubble, and looked down at her through it.

  “You are too late,” he said. His voice had a slight lilt, which would have been pleasant if he hadn’t been speaking words of doom. “I have gathered my brothers to me, and now you will watch us die.”

  “Like hell I will!” Leda shouted.

  She threw her demon-entwined magic at Tain. Tain’s eyes blazed as Hunter’s had done when he’d been infused with Kali’s magic, Tain’s eyes bright blue in the darkness. Immortal magic poured from him, stronger and far more powerful than Hunter’s. Snakes of it twined around Leda and lifted her from her feet.

  “Hunter!” Leda yelled frantically. Tain’s magic broke her sphere as though it were a soap bubble, and he propelled her high into the air, leaving nothing between her and a nasty drop to the ground. “Hunter, damn it, wake up!” Leda shouted.

  Tain continued to lift her, his eyes burning with magic. “I don’t want to hurt you, little witch. But you must understand. Let us die and find our peace.”

  “She’s brainwashed you,” Leda cried. She was twined in place, much as Hunter had done to her in the bedroom when he’d explained why he had to go. Leda was high enough now that if Tain let her go, the landing would break her bones and possibly kill her. “Don’t listen to her. She’s a demon. Let your brothers help you.”

  Tain gave her an angry look. “You can’t understand what it’s like to be an Immortal. The centuries, the loneliness, the emptiness of it all. Being used again and again then left to while away the time. Never able be close to anyone because time will take them away. An Immortal’s greatest enemy—time. Now we will have it no more.”

  “Did you ask them first whether they wanted to die?” Leda jabbed her finger at the motionless brothers. “They might enjoy what life they have. Did you think of that?”

  “Hunter loved a woman once upon a time. And I saw what losing her did to him. He wanted to die and he couldn’t. Immortals suffer differently from humans. Nothing erases our grief.”

  “Then the good times can’t be erased either, right?” Leda asked, growing desperate. On the ground beneath her the groth demon had pressed himself flat, whimpering.

  Tain ignored him. “Kalen was punished in oblivion for killing the last of the people he was meant to protect. Then he wasted away his time with art and women. Was he happy? Or was Darius, held to Ravenscroft by the selfishness of his mother-goddess? Or Adrian, drowning his troubles in decadence? They have nothing. Why should they not die?”

  “Because we love them,” Leda shouted. “Christine, Amber, Lexi, and I—we love them! Give us a chance to prove that.”

  Tain’s brow furrowed, and he lowered her the slightest bit. “It is not for Immortals to fall in love.”

  “This isn’t about them falling in love. It’s about us caring for them. Please, Tain.”

  “You’re wrong, little witch,” Tain said. “When you watch them die, you will understand that my way is better.”

  Samantha’s voice came ringing out of the darkness. “Or you might let them wake up and decide for themselves. It’s not always about what you want, Tain.”

  Leda felt herself lowered another foot as Tain peered past her. “You let them in,” he said to Samantha, as though troubled by this thought. “You hid from me in the darkness, and I let you because you were innocent. Who are you to challenge me now, when you are so weak?”

  “My name is Samantha,” she said, her voice steady.

  Tain studied her, head tilted, as Leda went down another few feet. “Your aura is strange. Dark. You are . . .”

  “Half demon.” Samantha snapped. “I’m getting tired of that Immortal look, as though I’m something they just stepped in.”

  Tain continued to study her, Leda floating closer to the ground. “You’re not angry, despite your words,” he said to Samantha. “You are afraid.”

  “You bet I am. Scared shitless. But I have demon blood in me. That means I can live a good long time and will probably endure a lot of loss. But you know what? I still want to live. Maybe your brothers do too.”

  Tain shook his head. “They came here voluntarily. They understand now.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Leda broke in. “Kalen was taken by the demon against his will. The other three were trying to rescue him.”

  Tain glanced at the Immortals, the light bathing them in a strange, cold glow. “Why would Kehksut lie to me?”

  “Because he’s a demon,” Samantha said. “They do that. Hello?”

  Tain’s glare swept to Samantha again, lifting her from her feet now while he set Leda down almost gently. “Why do you say these things to me, half demon? I could so easily kill you.”

  Samantha’s face set in spite of her terror and exhaustion. “I prefer to go out kicking and screaming. And I told you—my name is Samantha.”

  “You are defiant. Instead of chattering on about love, you fight me.”

  Even dangling in midair Samantha managed to fold her arms and look angry. “Love has never really done much for me. I want my life.”

  “Your half-demon, half-human existence? Neither one thing or the other?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m me. I’ve learned to be me with everything I have. I’m a cop. I solve crimes and arrest people who hurt other people. I like it.”

  “It is small and petty, this life of yours.”

  “Yeah, well, not everyone can be a big bad warrior, can they?”

  Unnoticed, Leda slipped around Tain and hurried to the glowing white light that encased the Immortals. They stood quietly, oblivious to her and everything around them.

  “Is that how you see us?” Tain was asking Samantha, his tone curious. “Big bad warriors?”

  “That’s what you are,” Samantha answered.

  Leda blessed her for distracting him, though it was in vain. Leda couldn’t even touch the light barrier—whe
n she reached for it, her hand was stopped a foot away, as though some force pushed back at her.

  Samantha continued to talk. “You fight, you win, you make women want you. Don’t pretend you hated that existence.”

  “It is a lonely one.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re all lonely. We get by.”

  Tain sounded, if anything, a little more sane. “So if I had come and saved your village once upon a time, you would have, as you put it, wanted me?”

  Samantha made a show of looking him up and down. “At the moment, you’re a homicidal maniac, so I’m not inclined to say yes. But maybe back when you had all your marbles, I would have. You’re pretty good looking.”

  Tain frowned. “This is naught but flattery.”

  “I bet your demon friend told you that,” Samantha said. “I bet she’s jealous if you so much as talk to another woman. But what I say is true. If I’d met you casually—say in a bar or at a party—and you weren’t crazy, maybe I’d go for you.”

  A spark lit his eyes. “This interests me.”

  He sounded a little more like the other four wicked Immortals now than an insane demon slave. Leda figured the demon wouldn’t like that too much, and she was right.

  With a crash and a swirl of darkness, Kehksut-Amadja-Culsu made a dramatic entrance, no longer the seductive man or the beautiful black-haired woman, but a full scale demon, an Old One in his true form. The demon grew to fantastic height, his body easily as large as that of Valerian, huge wings unfolding from his back.

  With a shaft of death magic he cut across Tain’s white light and sent Samantha tumbling to the ground. She screamed as she fell, then a shaft of life magic shot from Tain’s hand at the last minute, cushioning her fall. Samantha still landed hard, tucking and rolling, then she lay still, curled up at the edge of the green. Whether she was hurt or wisely staying out of the conflict, Leda couldn’t tell.

  Tain spun to face the demon, anger on his face. “I was not finished.”

  “You are finished,” Kehksut said, his voice rumbling through the darkness-stained grove. “It is time to die.”