Dark Bound

by Kim Richardson

  My face warmed and I shifted on my feet. “So, do we agree? Me for him?” My pulse leapt at its sudden interest. Maybe it was enough to completely pay off Jax’s debt. “Interested?” I taunted. “Clear his debt to you, and in exchange you can have me. Deal?”

  “Rowyn, don’t be an idiot!” snapped Tyrius. “He’ll kill you. We’ll figure this out. There’s got to be another way.”

  “I agree with Tyrius,” said Father Thomas suddenly. “Perhaps the Legion can help. They could find a way to get him back.”

  “Screw the Legion,” I spat, thinking of Vedriel and what they’d done to me. “They’re worse than demons.”

  I heard the intake of breath from the priest at my slight for the Legion. Okay, so I’d gone a little too far with that last remark. But I was pissed and scared and out of my mind with fear for Jax. I couldn’t let this happen to him. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  I shook my head, clenching my jaw. “There is no other way. I have to do this,” I said, my voice low. “If we don’t stop him now, he’ll take Jax to the Netherworld. You know what that’s like. You think Jax will survive?”

  Tyrius cursed. “Even if the toxic air doesn’t kill him straight away, we’ll never see him again.”

  “I’ve got demon blood,” I whispered, my stomach clenching. “If anyone can survive the Netherworld, it’s me. I can find my way back.” I hope…

  “It’s not that simple.” I looked down at the strain in Tyrius’s voice. “The Netherworld isn’t like this world. You can’t just jump on a plane and go to another country. The Rifts that allow you to pass are rare and dangerous, and you’ll be a prisoner. It’s not like you’ll be able to roam freely,” he said. “Don’t forget the Netherworld is a prison to all demons. They’ll hate you for what you are. They’ll torture you and do other things to you for their own sick pleasures. You might never find a way out. You might die there. Alone, Rowyn.”

  “I don’t care,” I lied, feeling as though this might not be such a good idea. My bravado died at the snarl of pleasure coming from the Greater demon.

  But it was too late. I’d already given my word.

  “So?” My voice echoed in the air and my ears, my heart pounding. “What’ll it be?”

  Degamon had been watching us with a slight interest. “I’m tempted. You would bring me a very large sum. However, I will not break my deal with Jaxie Spencie,” said Degamon. “I already have a few buyers interested in him, who are willing to pay a large sum to play with him.” The demon reached out with its other hand and grabbed Jax’s crotch suggestively. Its black eyes focused on me. “But I’ll be back for you later.”

  “Bastard!”

  I shot forward, pushing off with my legs as a surge of adrenaline spiked through my core. The air shifted and was mixed with black mist, and then a mass of igura demons rushed towards me.

  Crap.

  Danto was already moving for the nearby iguras that had leapt forward at the same time.

  Drawing my death blade in my other hand, I spun and sliced, slashing across the throat of the nearest igura demon. I twisted and shoved the dying demon into the demon closest to it as I plunged my other blade deep into the gut of a third.

  In my line of sight, I caught a glimpse of the priest yanking his sword from the belly of a groaning demon and spun to slice the head off another. Impressive.

  I couldn’t see Tyrius, but I knew he wasn’t far behind me.

  Calming my senses, I moved on instinct, letting my training and supernatural abilities flow through me and guide me. The air moved with the smell of rot. An igura demon stabbed the air with its own death blade, a direct attack to my chest. Cursing, I parried the thrust aside with one dagger, spinning into its exposed torso. Hot, reeking black blood shot onto my hand as I shoved my other death blade into its eye. A cloud of dirt hit me in the face as the igura exploded into dust.

  Taking a gasp of air, I twisted, falling away and smacking the flat of my hilt into the head of another igura.

  Laughter reached me. Degamon. My hatred for the demon ignited like a flame coursing through me, a hot poison in my veins.

  I was going to gut that SOB.

  My breath came in sharply and I halted when an igura jumped at Danto, taloned hands reaching and an ugly sound erupting from it.

  For a second, I watched, shocked, as the two grappled, both moving incredibly fast. Danto seemed to blur in and out of existence, making the igura look like it was trying to catch a moving shadow.

  “Look out!” I cried when another igura got a grip on him from the back, but the vampire twisted with an inhuman speed to fix his teeth on the demon’s neck. The demon screamed and went limp, and before it fell, Danto whirled and snapped the neck of the other demon. Our eyes met, his fangs shining with black blood.

  I was moving again. I darted towards the red demon, towards Jax. If I could kill it, all of this would be over.

  Desperation filled me as I pushed my body harder than ever, twisting, rolling, ducking. I assailed my way through the mass of igura, my sight never leaving Jax’s pained features.

  I’m coming.

  It wasn’t courage that fed my body with strength, it was fury and fear.

  “Rowyn!” Tyrius cried. “Behind you!”

  I jumped and spun in midair, catching the sight of two iguras coming at me with frightening speed. Hunger marred their faces. They wanted to kill me. But I wanted to kill them more.

  Eyes widening, I curled my body as I fell and made contact with the ground. I hurled myself onto it, rolling and keeping low until I was right up under two iguras that were still trying to come straight for me. They screamed as I disemboweled them both in two swipes.

  I came back up. Danto was crushing another demon’s head with his hands, given his supernatural strength. He snarled, his teeth still dripping with demon blood. I winced as the vampire reached up and dug his sharp talons into the demon’s eyes. Screaming, the demon flung itself back, but the vampire was after it. Two quick swipes and the demon’s head was sliced right off its neck and flopped to the ground in an explosion of ash.

  Tyrius leapt at the face of an igura. He was a blur of claws and teeth as he attacked without mercy, slicing into the soft demon’s flesh with savage intent. Black blood flew everywhere, showering the cat’s light fur.

  A growl sounded near me, and I whirled, heart skipping, as I saw an igura charge for Father Thomas who had his sword plunged deep into the gut of another.

  “Father! Duck!” I shouted before throwing my soul blade at the creature’s approaching face. The priest barely moved fast enough to avoid the blow, and the demon’s blood splattered on his shirt.

  As Father Thomas pulled his sword from the other dying igura, I looked up and saw an opening.

  A clear path right to Degamon.

  Half of his igura army were dead and the rest were busy fighting off a priest, a cat, and a vampire. That left me.

  “Gotcha,” I whispered and lunged.

  I was almost there. I could reach out and touch Jax. His eyes were closed. He was out cold.

  With a savage howl, I threw myself at the red demon, my death blade inches from its repulsive, blistering face.

  My ears popped at the sudden shift in pressure—and then I fell flat on my face.

  I pushed myself off the ground and whirled around.

  Degamon and Jax were gone.

  28

  “Rowyn, this isn’t going to work,” argued Tyrius as he sat next to me on the floor of my apartment. “I applaud your creativity, but I think you’re out of your freaking angel-born mind!”

  “It has to work.” God help me, it has to. I reached over and flipped the next page in the dark witch grimoire, careful not to rip the pages from the bulky tome. The smell of dust and leather tickled my nose as I read the next instructions.

  I wiped the sweat from my brow with my arm, blinking at the page. I had done a few summoning rituals before, but I wasn’t confident enough in my conjuring abilities to try and do it
on a whim. Besides, this summoning ritual was particularly hard and was a tad different from the other times I’d done it.

  Tyrius huffed out a breath and muttered, “It’s astonishing, really, that on one hand you can be so clever and on the other… so bleeping stupid!”

  “Tyrius.”

  Tyrius’s face turned incredulous. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time we summoned a demon? Shit hit the fan. Literally.”

  I sighed through my nose, trying to control my temper. I knew Tyrius was only trying to protect me—from myself and my own stupidity. But I was confident this was going to work. It had to work. I was running out of brilliant, or in this case, stupid ideas.

  “We’re not summoning a demon this time,” I said. “We’re summoning Jax.”

  Tyrius swore. “What if you hurt him? Did you think about that? What if you can’t summon him? He’s a freaking human!”

  “He’s not,” I snapped. “He’s an angel-born. And Degamon has to have altered Jax’s essence with something to withstand the Netherworld. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to pull him with him. Or sell him, for that matter. He needs Jax to be able to stand and function in the Netherworld.” I knew it to be true. If Degamon had buyers lined up for Jax, it meant he had fixed him up somehow, altered his essence or maybe even added something to it, hopefully not the latter.

  Degamon had done something to Jax, and it was my key for bringing him back.

  I exhaled a long breath and then took a calming one. It was crucial that I read the spell right. If I made a mistake, I could really hurt Jax, but I could also kill him.

  “You think it’s wise to be playing with the man’s life.” Tyrius was just not letting this go. “He’s a jackass with really good taste in cars—but he doesn’t deserve to die!”

  I spun around. “Do you think it’s wise to leave him in the Netherworld?” When the cat said nothing I added, “He’s not going to make it. He’s not a demon, Tyrius. Demons live in the Netherworld. Not angel-born. What do you think will happen to him if he stays? Turn into a butterfly?”

  Tyrius made a face. “If he doesn’t die, or they don’t kill him, then the only thing left… is that he’ll become a demon.”

  “Right,” I said, having heard the stories of that exact thing happening to angels who’d been trapped in the Netherworld. “I can’t let that happen. Not to Jax. He didn’t deserve this. He only wanted to find his sister’s killer. What was happening now… wasn’t fair. Not to him.”

  I turned away and yanked out my soul blade before Tyrius saw the moisture in my eyes. My necklace slipped out of my t-shirt, the coin that hung from the black leather cord bouncing before coming to a rest against my chest.

  “It keeps doing that,” I said as I reached out and grabbed the leprechaun coin, feeling its rough surface on my skin. It was warm and I took that as a good sign as I slipped it back down the front of my shirt. “It doesn’t seem to want to stay put.”

  “I don’t know why you want to keep it,” said Tyrius. “It was only spelled to show us the way out of Elysium. There’s no use for it anymore, unless you want to go back there.”

  “No, thanks.” There was no way I was going back to Elysium, but I didn’t want to get rid of the coin. It was a visual reminder of the crap I’d stirred and of what I still had to do.

  “Do you even know which summoning spell to do?” Tyrius edged forward, his eyes moving along the Latin scriptures on the pages. “Is there one to summon humans? I’ve never actually seen a witch summon a human before. I mean, what’s the point, right? They summon demons for power. Summoning humans would probably cost them more to do it. I can’t count the times I’ve seen witches curse humans—mostly other females because of a male involved—but I’ve never seen them summon a real human into their circles.”

  My gut clenched. “Well,” I breathed, trying to control my fluttering stomach so that Tyrius wouldn’t see how nervous I was. “I haven’t found one either. Not exactly.”

  Tyrius looked up at me, alarmed. “Then, what are you doing?”

  I screwed up my face. “Improvising?”

  Tyrius jumped to his feet, eyes wide. “Have you lost your mind, woman! I wish you’d never stolen that dammed book!”

  “That damned book might be the only thing that can save Jax.”

  “How?” Tyrius was practically screaming. “You just said you’re improvising? How’s that going to save him if he shows up in your circle warped with his balls on his head!”

  “It’s going to work,” I repeated, as though I was trying to convince myself. It has to.

  With my soul blade in my right hand, I lifted my left palm. Using the small white line of my previous summoning cut as a guide, I slashed through the soft flesh.

  Blood oozed from the deep cut, and I pressed my palm against the floor as I dragged my hand around in a circle, using my blood as though it were ink. Then, still using my blood, I drew a closed triangle within the circle—The Seal of Solomon.

  And this time, instead of drawing three demonic symbols, I leaned over and drew the archangel’s Michael sigil three times—Jax’s archangel marking—one inside each triangle corner.

  Using the same oval-shaped mirror from my bathroom I’d used to summon Degamon, I placed it in the middle of the triangle. Lastly, I squeezed a small puddle of my blood in the middle and wrote the name Jaxon Spencer.

  Tyrius made a noise deep in his throat. “That’s blood magic. You drew the circle with your blood, just like the dark witch. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to curse him, not save him.”

  I leaned back on my heels. “The spell requires blood as payment. I had to use blood because Jax is alive and The Seal of Solomon because he’s in the Netherworld and is probably under some demon curse.”

  Tyrius looked at me. “This is you improvising. Isn’t it?”

  I knew dabbling in blood magic was dangerous. Hell, summoning demons was dangerous. I’d heard the stories, the witches’ souls slowly eaten away to pay for the blood magic they’d played with. Most of the time, blood magic and necromancy got mixed together. I knew the dangers. But I wasn’t using this to gain power or have power over someone or something.

  I was trying to save a life.

  Now, peering down at my circle, I wiped my bloody hand on my jeans and reached out to grab the three candles. I put them on top of the three archangel sigils before I lit them.

  “Maybe Father Thomas was right,” said Tyrius, the pitch in his voice high with tension. “Maybe the Legion can help. It wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

  “They could,” I said, “but they won’t. You know I can’t trust them. They made me, remember? Changed me into… into whatever I’m supposed to be. I have to do this.” I sighed. “I have to try. Just let me try, okay. Just this once and if it doesn’t work, we’ll figure out something else. But I can’t do nothing.”

  “I know.” Tyrius nudged beside me. “It just sucks is all.”

  “Sucks demon balls,” I added and gave him a smile. Tyrius laughed, and the sound filled my heart with joy. Just for a moment.

  “Is it finished?” asked the cat as he peered at the circle.

  “Almost,” I said as I reached inside my jean pocket. “I just need to add one more thing.” And pray to the souls that it will work.

  I pulled out a set of keys, jingling them as I set them on the mirror.

  “Where did you get those?”

  “They’re Jax’s car keys. I took them after Father Thomas and Danto left. It’s the only thing I could find in his damn car. It’s so freaking clean. I tried to find a hair or something else, but this is all I got.”

  “And the keys symbolize Jax? I’m not following.”

  Breathing deeply, I exhaled loudly. “For the spell to work, I need a taglock, which is basically a piece of that person, or something they have close emotional or physical tie to, which can be used as a targeting system by the spell. The grimoire says taglocks are usually the person’s blood,
hair, teeth, skin, or nail clippings—but it’s all I’ve got.”

  “Jax’s DNA,” Tyrius exclaimed softly.

  “In a way, yes.” My breath came in a slow, controlled sound. “I just hope there’s something on those keys.”

  I reached out and pulled the grimoire closer. My heart pounded against my ribs and inside my head. I felt dizzy and nauseated. Please. Let this work.

  Tyrius shifted nervously next to me, his lips moving in a silent prayer or curse.

  Calming my breathing, I let the words flow off my lips. “Jaxon Spencer invocabo. Qui nos venimus ad te veniat nosque hic habitare. Et sanguis sanguinem meum et vocavi te. Et sanguis sanguinem: revertere ad me. Jaxon Spencer antrorsum intra te voco.”

  And then again carefully in English. “I call upon Jaxon Spencer. Come to us who call you near. Come to us and settle here. Blood to blood, I summon thee. Blood to blood, return to me. Jaxon Spencer, I summon you in the space in front of me.”

  I held my breath and stared at the keys without blinking. I could feel the blood pounding through me, hear my heart racing. After a minute, my face went cold.

  But nothing happened.

  “Damn it!” I slammed my fist on the wood floor, hearing something snap. Shit, I’d broken my own finger.

  I moved my hand away, trying to fight off a feeling of depression. My eyes widened. “It’s the keys. The keys didn’t work,” I said, as a frustrated sigh shifted through me.

  Tyrius snuggled next to me, put his head on my arm, and blinked his big blue eyes at me. “Sorry, Rowyn. You did what you could. Cheer up. We’ll find another way. I promise.”

  Tears of frustration spilled down my eyes as I shook my head. “This isn’t over yet. I need something better. I need—”

  The pressure in the apartment changed, followed by a loud pop.

  “Did you hear that?” said Tyrius.

  My heart pounded as sweat broke out on my arms. I turned around towards the sound. Standing in my kitchen wasn’t Jax, but an angel.