The Witch's Quest

by Michele Hauf

  Lily had his blood. For better or worse. He supposed that was a gift he would leave her, too, although it often seemed a curse. His affinity for daemons had led him to join with Reynard in hunting them. It was Reynard’s joy in the hunt, his increased ruthlessness, that had led Samuel to question his gift. He was drawn to daemons and they were drawn to him, but in the end he had decided he was supposed to be the bridge between humanity and daemons, not their executioner.

  That realization had come too late.

  The Rogues were evil because they sought power and dominion over the entire universe. Loyalists only wanted to build an autonomous life for themselves. Lucifer didn’t fall from heaven. He leaped. Others had followed him. His death at the hands of Rogues had begun the revolution.

  Samuel quietly let himself into the apartment. He left his key and the sword on the mantel near the kachina dolls his wife had arranged above the fireplace. The colorful Hopi statues had caught his eye many years ago, even before he’d fallen in love with the woman who carved them. She’d been at a stall in a Native American market. He’d paused, drawn to a spiritual song from the dolls that only his affinity could hear. She would know when she found the sword that it was a farewell. They had only ever had stolen moments anyway. His life wasn’t his own. He hadn’t been free to settle down and live with the family he loved.

  Maybe Sophia would understand the deal he’d had to make to protect Lily.

  An indistinct murmur was his undoing. His resolve had been firm. Get in. Get out. But he heard a rustle and murmur and he was drawn to his daughter’s bedroom. He didn’t go in. He only peeked from the door. She had murmured in her sleep. He watched as his three-year-old child snuggled deeper into her pillow. The softest whimper reached his ears. Samuel had to reach for the doorframe to hold himself in place rather than go to her.

  Was it a nightmare, or did she sense his presence and his pain? Her mother might understand the desperate measures he’d been driven to take, but would Lily?

  He watched as soft moonlight from the window illuminated her hand. Her tiny fist opened to reveal a kachina doll that had been grasped in her fingers. A frisson of dread shivered down his spine when he saw it was the doll that had been carved in the shape of a warrior angel. The wings down its back had been painted black long ago by one of Sophia’s Hopi ancestors. Unlike the other kachina dolls that were traditionally carved with indistinct features and masks with rough edges and curves, the warrior angel was like a Renaissance sculpture in miniature form, but crafted of wood instead of stone.

  Had a Hopi priest seen his daughter’s future in some prophetic dream long, long ago?

  He forced himself to turn away. He spared only a glance for the bedroom a little farther down the hall. Sophia had been a softness to his otherwise jagged life. It had been weakness to love her. But it was strength to leave her now. The wound on his back screamed for surcease that would never come. He had to walk away. He was a deadly magnet on an ordinary day. Injured and weak, he was an irresistible lure to Rogues or anyone with Brimstone in their blood.

  In time, Lily would be a magnet as well. That’s why he’d been forced to ask for help.

  This time as he made his way to the street, the building around him was utterly silent. No creature stirred. The simple operation of the elevator doors sounded like a shriek. Finally, he made it to the street where he remained on foot. He headed to the bus station. One dogged step after another. If anyone saw him, they would have assumed he was a drunken vagrant. He planned to get on a bus and ride as far away as he could from his precious family before he fell.

  He could only hope and pray that the daemon deal he’d made would protect Lily once he was gone.

  Chapter 1

  When the daemon stepped from the shadows, the darkness seemed to cling to his tall, lean form, separating from the black leather of his jacket and the faded denim of his jeans reluctantly. For long seconds, his angular face and muscled shoulders seemed to be draped in a dark winglike mantle. Lily Santiago’s breath caught in her lungs as familiarity punched her in the gut until he came forward another step.

  She blinked as he moved, and she exhaled a long shaky breath as the shadows retreated to the corner of the kiva where they belonged. The daemon didn’t have wings. But he should, her senses told her. He should. An impossible familiarity began to foment in her brain. She’d seen this daemon before.

  The underground Hopi chamber was a circular room with a packed earthen floor and stacked stone walls. There was only one opening to the sky where an old wooden ladder would have leaned. She’d used a nylon climbing rope to descend the ten feet. The abandoned chamber would have been dark at midday—at midnight only her lantern and the occasional flash of the daemon’s nightglow eyes as they refracted the low light held back the night. The firepit on the other side of the sipapu had been cold for a century or more. She rose slowly from her crouched position near the kachina dolls she had carefully placed for the ceremony she was about to invoke. She gripped a short silver flute in one clenched fist.

  “Move away from the edge,” the daemon ordered.

  Lily had heard daemons speak before, yet none of their voices had been so deep and melodic. Her heart thrummed in response to the mellow drawl of his vowels and the low pitch of his husky tone. He wore a guitar on his back, she noted. The silver-studded strap crossed his broad chest and she could see the neck of the instrument behind his right shoulder.

  If his voice caused gooseflesh to rise on her bare arms, it was the Brimstone of his blood that forged a deeper reaction. Her stomach coiled. Her muscles tightened. Her skin flushed and her breath, once caught, now came too quickly between parched, parted lips. She was used to being buffered against the Brimstone burn. She’d known she would have to be much stronger outside the palace walls.

  Her affinity for daemons was her greatest strength and her greatest potential weakness. She could summon them, but she couldn’t control them. Her control was limited to the elemental spirits that dwelled in the kachina dolls her mother had carved. Those she could summon and control.

  But daemons were different.

  No one could control Brimstone’s burn, not even the daemon whose veins flowed with the lava of hell. Her affinity made her vulnerable, so she stood and waited for the inevitable fight.

  “I promised my mother when she died that I would seal every sipapu in New Mexico with the skills she had taught me,” Lily said. It was a warning. She wasn’t here to fight, but neither would she be swayed from her mission.

  The sipapu was a hole at the center of the kiva. It was thought by many to be a symbolic opening to the lower world. Hopi people believed that their ancestors had risen up from such places to become a part of this world. In most kivas, the hole was only a few inches deep. In this unexplored, undiscovered kiva she had found with the direction of her affinity and her mother’s kachina dolls, the sipapu’s floor was so deep that it wasn’t revealed by her lantern’s light, and a cool waft of air rose up to chill the whole chamber.

  Lily set her teeth, hardened her jaw and dug her heels into the hard-packed desert earth that had been carved into a religious chamber hundreds of years ago. She needed to seal the portal to the lower world. Then she needed to pretend she had discovered the kiva and the surrounding ruin of a small unknown Hopi pueblo on an innocent hike so that archaeologists and Native historians could come in and excavate the site.

  “A noble promise, but I bet you’ve met resistance along the way,” the daemon replied.

  He didn’t hold a weapon. But he was obviously big and powerful. Not to mention the whole daemons-being-nearly-immortal thing. At five foot four inches, and one hundred ten pounds, she was in trouble. She had no one to rely on for protection but herself. Not anymore.

  The daemon edged closer. The kiva chamber was a large circular room. She was separated from the approaching daemon by the fire pit and the
sipapu, but the sipapu was only about a foot in diameter and he’d already made his way around the bigger indention of the pit that was still blackened by ancient fire.

  “I have a sacred duty. I handle resistance as it comes. I’ve sealed every single sipapu I’ve discovered,” Lily warned.

  Her family tree could be traced to ancient Aztecs on one side and to Spanish settlers on the other, but it had always been rooted by one simple thing: standing against evil. There was irony in that, considering where she’d spent the last fifteen years, but she had no time to let that slow her down.

  The daemon didn’t flinch or falter when she refused to move away from the portal. He continued to approach. Slowly, carefully, as if he were giving her time to get used to his presence. The pleasure of his voice spread warmth to other places already warmed by his Brimstone burn. The whole chamber had gone from chilled to heated. Her gooseflesh was gone. Her flush had deepened. The perspiration had evaporated from her skin. She’d been warned to guard against daemon persuasiveness. Her powerful affinity wouldn’t protect her from it. On the contrary, it made her more susceptible than most.

  “The other daemons who tried to stop you were Rogues. They want as many pathways to the hell dimension as possible to remain open as they resist the rule of the rightful daemon king,” the daemon said in a soft, reasonable voice, as if he was pacifying a madwoman.

  Who was he and how did he know these things?

  Considering her free hand had gone to the hilt of a hidden sword at her back, his tone was probably justified. She could feel the grimace that stretched her face taut as she prepared to battle. She was no warrior, but the small elemental spirit dolls at her feet weren’t her only weapon. The flute and the dolls helped her channel her affinity to call on the elemental spirits. In days long past, she would have been deemed a priestess. Her mother had trained her in the old Hopi ways...but the sword had come from her father.

  “My mother gave me a job to do and the sacred tools with which to do it. My father gave me this,” Lily said. The rasp of steel against its leather scabbard sounded loud in the underground room.

  Perhaps the daemon could see the Latin prayers scribed into the blade even by lantern light, but if he could he didn’t retreat. He came toward her one more step. Then two.

  “And what makes you aware of the daemon king’s wishes?” Lily asked as she brought her father’s blade down in a practiced move that prepared for the daemon’s attack.

  The whole while she took in the daemon’s appearance. The absence of wings didn’t matter. Her mother had given her a gift along with her training and her tools. It was nestled in the backpack that had held all the kachina dolls that were now arranged near the sipapu. Hundreds of years ago one of her ancestors had carved an unusual kachina doll. It had been passed down for generations. From the time the daemon had stepped from the shadows, she’d recognized the sharp angle of his jaw and the full swell of his lips. She recognized the thickness of his wavy, shoulder-length hair swept by the desert winds. His broad shoulders, the set of his eyes and the patrician nose were all familiar.

  The kachina doll had stiff wings that had been carved in a mantle down its back and painted black. This daemon had no wings. That initial illusion had only been created by shadows. But his fallen angel’s voice made the idea of wings possible every time he spoke.

  He couldn’t be her warrior angel.

  Her hand gripped the hilt of her sword to stop the trembling in her wrists and fingers. This couldn’t be her family’s kachina come to life. He was no nature spirit or ancestor who had come to help her. When he moved, she could see the glint of Brimstone glow in his eyes. She could feel the heat of his blood. She refused to let fire and familiarity influence her actions.

  “The daemon king doesn’t rely on sipapu portals. He has his own pathways he protects,” the daemon explained. “But it isn’t safe for a human to meddle in these matters.” He had paused, but it didn’t feel like a reprieve. It felt like he was waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

  “Are you his servant then? And you’ve come to help me?” Lily asked.

  Likeness to her family’s oldest treasure aside, she still held the sword at the ready. Over the long, hot months of the strangest summer job any runaway had ever taken on, she’d learned to guard against daemon deception. They couldn’t be trusted. It wasn’t her Hopi mother who had told her that the devil had a silver tongue. That bit of wisdom had come from her guardian himself.

  “No. I’m not his servant. I’m his adopted grandson,” the daemon said. “My name is Michael D’Arcy Turov.”

  Her sword didn’t waver, but the air did catch in her lungs again in a hiccup of surprise. Her guardian’s heir wasn’t here to hurt her. She’d never been allowed to meet him, but she’d known about him from afar. The guitar on his back should have given his identity way, but her shock over his features had distracted her.

  Michael Turov was a living replica of her warrior angel, but he was also the Brimstone prince. He was the talk of the hell dimension and had been since it had become common knowledge that he didn’t want the throne.

  The unusual kachina her Hopi family had once worshipped, then treasured for centuries, was the perfect likeness of a daemon prince. She wondered why her guardian, the daemon king, had never deemed it necessary to warn her. Lily was distracted by the revelation only long enough to blink in surprise, but that was long enough. The daemon leaped. His body slammed into hers and her planted feet slid backward with the force of his superior weight and strength. His momentum pushed her back from the portal’s edge, and his hands over hers on the hilt of her sword kept her from using it in defense.

  It didn’t matter. She couldn’t have attacked him anyway. Not even if she hadn’t realized he was trying to protect her from the sipapu’s edge. She’d always slept with the beautiful kachina beneath her pillow. When Michael Turov pressed her back against the chamber’s earthen wall so that his body was between her and the open sipapu, the shock of his Brimstone heat didn’t stop her from tracing the familiar features of his face with her gaze. It was almost too sharply cut to be traditionally handsome. There was something inhuman in the perfectly pronounced bone structure beneath his skin.

  This daemon prince’s face was the reason she’d been drawn to kachinas in the first place.

  Face-to-face with a living replica of the unusual doll, her hand twitched against the hilt of the sword. Her mother had been a carver, but Lily suddenly ached to be an artist. Could she re-create the angles of his cheeks and jaw? Could she capture in wood the ferocity of his expression while still creating the slight softness of his lips? She noted his mouth seemed to tilt on one side as if he laughed at the world, or himself, or some unseen joy in the shadows that gamboled for his attention alone.

  “Grim, we’re about to have some unsavory visitors. You might want to come out here and give us a hand,” Michael said. “Or a paw.”

  His gaze swept over her face as he spoke as if he was the sculptor who would try to capture the blend of Hopi and Spanish that came together to create her brown eyes, dramatic brows and dark hair. Her hair had loosened when she hit the wall. It had fallen around her face in a black waterfall of straight silky chunks.

  “Your hair reflects the light,” Michael said.

  Maybe it was a daemon prince thing to say, but it wasn’t a usual thing for her to hear. She’d been kept in isolation her whole life. The wonder in his tone and the admiration in his eyes gave her pause. For the first time, her grip loosened beneath his fingers on the hilt of her sword.

  “Who is Grim?” Lily asked.

  Michael turned his face toward the shadows where he’d appeared earlier and his move—when she dragged her gaze from the razor’s edge of his lean jaw—allowed her to see a monstrous doglike beast swirl into being as ashy embers coalesced into a canine shape. A snarling maw of snow-white teeth was the first p
art to solidify, followed by a muscular form surrounded by shifting fur that seemed more smoke than hair at the ends.

  Lily’s nose twitched as the pleasant scent of wood smoke filled the air around them. It was a scent her body instinctively associated with hearth and home—because of the slight sulfuric burn, not in spite of it. She’d found a haven in hell with her mother as a child. They’d created a home in one wing of an immense Gothic palace others would have feared.

  Her hands tightened again and she tried to pull from the daemon’s grip, but he held fast. His hands were big and warm around hers. She glanced down. The indentations his guitar strings had caused in the tips of his fingers were slightly rough against her skin.

  “Grim is a friend. And we’re going to need his help,” he warned.

  She stilled and looked up into Michael Turov’s gaze. In this position, the glint was gone and all she saw were sincere hazel irises rimmed with a darker chocolate as he met her gaze without blinking. But movement behind him kept her from becoming mesmerized. Smoke poured up from the hole in the ground. The sipapu now seemed like a slumbering volcano that had wakened. The wood smoke scent was suddenly tainted by a much stronger sulfuric stench.

  “Let us take the lead,” Michael said. “Rogues give no quarter and they have particular reason to want me dead.”

  “Oh, so you came to make it worse then?” Lily joked. “Don’t let my hesitancy to lop off your head fool you. I don’t need anyone to take the lead. Not a prince or a...” She failed to be able to label the creature across from them that snarled and snapped at the sulfuric smoke.

  “Hellhound,” Michael supplied. “Grim is my hellhound.”