by Jenn Stark
She blinked as he ducked his hand beneath the table and came up with an orange puff of fur, dwarfed in his palm. He scowled at the kitten, but Ginger merely curled into a tight ball, her head burrowing against his fingers.
He continued speaking as he tried to roll Ginger onto the table, wincing as her tiny claws dug into his skin. “I merely helped you achieve what you couldn’t on your own.”
“And that hurt you,” Angela said. Her lips quirked a little as he tried to disengage the kitten. “Worse than you’re being hurt now.”
He chuckled, his large hands dwarfing the determined kitten as he pulled her away. But she got the feeling that he, like herself, found it easier to talk with the animals near, their unfettered affection a key to whatever lay locked within. For Gregori, rubbing the top of Ginger’s fuzzy head seemed to be the release he needed to continue.
“I’m an empath,” he said. “What that means is that I draw on the emotions, pain and sensations of another being and take them into myself, in effect transferring the burden from the other person to within me. You know that.”
She leaned forward as Domino jumped into her lap. Ghost leapt up on the nearby couch, content to survey their conversation from a distance.
“Yes, but you did this once before, this healing thing, and you weren’t so wrecked. I mean, I’m sure it was no walk in the park, but this isn’t the same.”
Gregori grimaced, glancing up from the kitten with a new heat in his eyes. “I suspect it’s because our connection is stronger than it was before.”
“But why…oh.” Heat swept up Angela’s cheeks as she realized what he was talking about. They’d had sex. Hell, more than sex. Her entire body had been blown apart and put back together again in a new way, leaving her craving Gregori’s touch, his whisper, his smile. He was everything she’d ever wanted in a man, never realizing it was actually a demon she needed. She suspected there would be some serious therapy involved with that realization, but there it was. And, as it turned out, she happened to know a very effective healer. “Are you going to get better eventually?”
That brought another wry chuckle. Gregori leaned back in his chair and lifted his gaze from the table to the ceiling, his face warmed by a shaft of sunlight. She caught her breath as the sun played over his chiseled jaw, his long lashes, his full lips. He really was the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen in her life. What had she ever done to deserve him?
There was a scramble of movement from the kitchen door, and now Hey Mister and Elvis shuffled closer, pressing Old Sir forward as they all eyed Gregori nervously. At Gregori’s feet, Hellboy yipped with satisfaction, and the dogs edged a little closer.
“I’ll improve, yes,” Gregori said, ignoring the dogs even as Hellboy leaned adoringly against him. “I’ll get better. To get better, I also have to detach, to remove the emotions from the experience and regard the event as mere history, not some precious moment caught in time. I’m…not quite ready to do that yet.”
“But that makes no sense. Why—”
He waved her off with a tired hand, even as Ginger batted at his fingers. “When you spoke of your past, there was a commonality between both times that the demons came for you.”
She sighed, settling Domino more comfortably in her lap. “The book of witchcraft, the text of the Serbian witches. Before you ask, I haven’t been able to locate it again. My parents long since returned it to the university library where they’d withdrawn it via interlibrary loan. Given some of the things I said during my recovery, they realized at least in part that their research books had potentially put me in danger. It created a sort of crisis of confidence in them about their work and they didn’t share much of it with me for years after that. They never denied me access to their library, but at that point, I didn’t quite remember what I’d done, and I didn’t have any great longing to attract danger to me once again. My parents also aged all those days that I was gone, far more in some ways than I did.”
Gregori nodded. “When a parent commits to loving a child unconditionally, it can be very difficult when that child comes to harm. But the book—do you remember anything about it?”
“I don’t even remember its title,” Angela said, grimacing. “I mean, I guess that’s a good thing. I can remember some snatches of the words I said, I used them yesterday as well, but nothing cohesive enough as a summoning spell. For that, we’ll need real witches.”
That statement gave her pause, and she glanced over to Gregori again. “You don’t think I’m a witch, do you?”
“No one is born a witch,” he said. “It’s a path marked by careful study and is a vocation for its adherents. Were you born with the capacity to manifest thoughts into being, a capacity that was made more real with the aid of ancient spells of powerful sorcerers? That seems more likely. You memorize your surroundings with an impressive amount of visual energy, filling in the complete picture. That visualization skill is definitely above most mortals’. The combination of your natural abilities and your unusual focus could well be all that’s necessary. And it also explains why AugTech abducted witches. They’re using them to summon and control the horde as they conduct their experiments.”
Angela shuddered. Gregori had finally told her what the organization he worked for believed about AugTech. What she herself believed, finally, because she’d seen it with her own eyes. They weren’t employing artificial intelligence units with hallucinogenic drugs floating around to trip up the unwary. These were demons. Fire-and-brimstone demons, as Gregori had called them. The scourging horde.
“I couldn’t imagine willfully bringing those creatures into the world and then trying to control them,” she finally said. “Why would anyone want to?”
“The reasoning for the witch-demon connection goes back almost to the dawn of humanity. There are things humans can’t do, things demons can. And when one or the other party discovers a mechanism of control…it’s going to get used.”
“Can you get the witches away from them?”
“We’re working on that.” As they’d spoken, Gregori’s color had gradually improved, though he was still not quite himself. The dogs seemed to realize it too. They crept out farther into the room, lying down to watch him from beneath heavy brows. Even Hey Mister remained subdued. “My associates are deploying all their resources to track down AugTech’s headquarters and cell sites. AugTech may or may not know they’ve attracted the attention of the Syx, but their demons surely do. It’s a matter of whether those demons have shared that information. If they haven’t, we’ll track them down today. If they have, then AugTech should already be in the wind, burrowing underground until they’ve received approval from your congress to proceed.”
“Today’s meeting,” she said, filing away the name Gregori had used. The Syx. He wouldn’t talk about it, but the Syx had a hold on him, she knew, a hold he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—break. “That’s just the start, though. Anything this big will have to get approved on several levels, and that’s never a fast process in Congress.”
“That’s as may be,” Gregori said, “but I doubt very seriously that it will go through normal channels. I also doubt very seriously that most of Congress will be aware of it at all. That’s the nature of the group to which you were assigned.”
He flinched again, but this time, it had nothing to do with her or with Ginger sinking her claws into him. He focused briefly on the wall beyond her, then glanced back, holding her gaze. “It looks like we’ve found the DC cell. I have to go. I’ll return before your meeting.”
She lifted her brows, shifting to let Domino off her lap. “I have to leave in a little over an hour. There’s no way you’re going to be back here by then.”
“Sure I will. It’s what we do. If I’m not here, however, one of the other Syx will be. If they’re not, you don’t go in. Understood?”
Angela pursed her lips. “I understand you,” she acknowledged, and Gregori sighed. He now knew her better than anyone ever had, and he knew she wouldn’t stay
put. “And I’ll wait for you, but not for your team members. Whoever they are.”
“I’ll be here,” he said.
And then he…well, he disappeared.
The cats seemed completely unimpressed but all four dogs yipped at Gregori’s empty chair. Angela stared at the open space, not sure what surprised her more, that a flesh-and-blood-and-skin-and-bone being whom she’d recently slept with had disappeared in front of her, or that Gregori had felt so comfortable with her that he’d been willing to do that without going into another room or leaving by the front door before he went poof.
She hugged her arms to her body, chilled. Was she okay with…whatever it was Gregori was? A demon enforcer, charged with routing his own kind, possessing superhuman healing and killing and…uh, poofing skills?
“Well, I’d better be, huh?” she asked aloud, and Hellboy turned first, giving her a sharp, affirmative bark.
Angela couldn’t help herself; she laughed. But even with the dog’s approval, she needed to process everything, assimilate this newest information. There was really nothing else she could do but work this problem out aloud, like she’d worked every problem out, creating images in her mind and seeing them in front of her as she paced and puzzled and paced some more.
She stood. “Okay, guys,” she said, addressing the dogs, who all perked up at her voice. “Gregori is a creature heretofore unknown in modern biology, presenting himself as a mythological demon. All presented evidence is consistent with this theory. He’s an elite of his kind, possessing the ability to…ah…disappear. Can the others? This group of Syx? Regular demons?”
The dogs didn’t have a response to that, so she answered for them. “The others can, yes. To date, based on personal observations, demons can change their appearance, as well as spontaneously travel through space unseen by the human eye. They possess varying degrees of strength, but in most cases are stronger than average humans. They possess varying degrees of intellect, some possessing intellect exceeding that of humans. They can’t be killed by most humans.”
Hey Mister barked once, sharply, and she nodded. “They also don’t generally get along with dogs. Noted.”
It wasn’t all that surprising that AugTech had fixed on demons as the perfect killing machine. It was also not surprising that they elected to create the illusion these creatures were robots. There was a whole lot of religious baggage to unpack when it came to the idea of working with demons.
“Demon subjects can be controlled by witches, but that control varies with the skill of the witches and the circumstances of their summons of the demons—hey Calvin, Hobbes, how’d you get out of your cage again?” she asked, continuing her narrative as she turned to take another lap of the room and finally spied the guinea pigs now sitting beside the couch. “You poop all over the floor and Joe is going to lose his mind. Anyway—okay. Demon subjects can appear and leave without warning. Does that ability originate within themselves or is it external? Is it different for Gregori and his fellow members of…of the Syx? The Syx. A group of demon enforcers whose job it is to fight other demons. Run by who?”
There were too many questions she didn’t have answers to. She’d clearly need to make more laps. She turned the corner—and the dogs went absolutely crazy.
“Guys—guys!” she shouted, but she was nearly bowled over by Old Sir, who whirled as soon as he’d reached her and was now growling with a ferocity she’d never seen in him before. Hey Mister and Elvis were in full bristle, barking and baring their teeth, and Hellboy was rushing and feinting in front of the newcomers, spinning like a whirling dervish, claws and teeth flying, his attack enough to cause the first row of them to pause.
“Get back!” Angela shouted. “I’m calling the police!”
Large, looming, and hideous, the creatures in front of her could have sprung straight out of Dante’s Inferno, clearly intended to evoke a maximum response—horns, snouts, claws, and scaly skin, slavering and drooling all over the polished wooden floors.
They expected her to be terrified, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t! In fact, all she could think of was the dogs. And where had she left her phone? “Get back!” she ordered again, shifting another step toward the kitchen. “My guinea pigs will poop all over you, I’m seriously not kidding!”
Then the air seemed to shiver around her, and Angela twisted around as the dogs reacted even more wildly.
A dozen more of the creatures appeared, these smelling of sulfur and need, and they lunged at her. She wheeled back, flailing out with her hands, but something thick was shoved into her face, blocking her mouth, and a second later, she felt the prick—the same prick of a needle she’d felt all those years ago. She wasn’t afraid, but that didn’t matter. She was still going down, losing consciousness, and being lifted against her will as the dogs howled and screamed and fought all around her.
Could demons spirit a person out of a room bodily, she wondered, like snatching a baby from its crib?
She collapsed before she could find out.
20
“You’re not going to like this,” Simon the Fool warned someone at the far end of the room as Gregori materialized into the Arcana Council conference room, a second after leaving Angela’s condo.
“I already don’t like this,” Michael returned, and Gregori’s heavily attuned senses picked up on something he never expected to see in the archangel. Exhaustion.
Beyond the archangel, the other members of the Syx stood with impassive faces, watching the byplay between the two Council members. Warrick, the leader of the Syx, nodded at Gregori, while Stefan and Finn, the team’s resident jokesters, appeared to be trying to gaze everywhere at once. Raum stood off to the side with his traditional quiet reserve, while Hugh watched Gregori. When their gazes met, he gave Gregori a wink, and Gregori stifled a groan. The last time he’d seen Hugh, the demon enforcer had encouraged him to act on his desire for Angela. He didn’t want to have a follow-up conversation.
But for now, everyone returned their attention to the Fool as he started talking.
“So apparently, this newest run on using demons as military supersoldiers didn’t actually originate within a military force. That makes it different from all the times it’s happened before. Different and more dangerous.”
“Because of scale,” Warrick offered.
“Yep,” Simon said. “Back in the day, even up to the point of the Second World War, which is the last time we saw any officially sanctioned use of demons in this way, the bright idea to conscript demons was typically born of some military type who’d had a bad encounter with demons most foul. They made a deal, or the demons offered a deal, more to amuse the demons than anything else, or there happened to be a nearby witch who traded demon control for her life. The how of the thing isn’t quite clear, but it worked, though imperfectly. You needed the witch to keep everything moving, and eventually, the witch figured out how to escape. After that, the leaders of the military operation generally met a bad end. The Syx have been summoned into more than a few of those situations for cleanup, I’m thinking.”
No one spoke, but no one had to. Anyone who worked with demons for any length of time eventually began believing in God. When things got out of hand, they started praying. And on this earth, only the Syx could hear and respond to those particular prayers.
“So what caused this round?”
Gregori shifted his gaze to Sara Wilde, and they shared a quick nod.
“This one is more a case of professional jealousy,” Simon said with a grim twist to his lips. His fingers raced over his laptop, and a second later, an image appeared on the far wall.
“I offer up to you a warlock of some renown whose home base was Estonia up to a very short time ago. There he was part of a venerable old coven, but one that followed rigid traditions. There was only so far a warlock could ascend, because warlocks couldn’t manage demons as well as witches could. That wasn’t enough for this warlock, of course. He wanted to set his pointy hat for a loftier goal.”
&
nbsp; “The attack on the Serbian witches. He orchestrated that?”
“It might be too much to say that he orchestrated it, but he knew it was going to happen. This isn’t some low-level tea-leaf reader. He knows his stuff. He arguably should have been the head of a coven. If he had, we might not be in this situation.”
“Doubtful,” the archangel murmured, and Gregori had to agree. In his experience, once a Connected mortal had run out of patience with the way the elders decreed they should follow their path, it was only a matter of time before they began chasing the shadows of other paths.
“Bottom line, he created a pretty solid plan. He knew all about the influx of demons on the planet, and he saw the potential for control, particularly with a military outfit that had the technology to extend the control of the witches in artificial ways.”
“So they do use artificial intelligence?” Gregori asked. “I’ve seen the circuitry and gadgets, but I didn’t know if those were for show or for actual use. Actual use changes things.”
Around him, the other members of the Syx moved up onto their toes, their bodies tensing for battle. They had been assigned to turn back the horde for the past six thousand years, and they had done so. It had always been somewhat of a numbers game, but the numbers had always fallen in their favor in the end. Six demon enforcers against a legion of the horde made for an interesting afternoon, but little more. The idea that the horde could become supercharged, or super organized, or super anything combined with the ingenuity of human technology put a different spin on the matter.
“Most of it is for show, because, like it or not, there hasn’t been a hell of a lot of experimentation with demon robotics. You can bet that’s going to be changing regardless of what happens with AugTech. They were merely the group who were willing to pay the warlock the most money to bring his demon idea to market, and the ones most willing to let him run the operation the way he saw fit. There will be others.”
