Demon Ensnared (Demon Enforcers Book 4)

by Jenn Stark

  Silence filled the room as the electrical surge being fed into Gregori’s shackles increased, then increased again. The pain that ratcheted through him was almost reassuring, grounding him in place, temporarily cutting off the impact of the Sator square helmet. Then it abruptly cut off.

  “If you won’t tell us, then perhaps you will show us.” The doors on either side of the large space opened, and just as in the gladiatorial games, Gregori’s enemies poured forth. Some of these demons he even recognized. Howling, crowing, loping toward him with blood in their eyes. If he hadn’t fought them directly before, he’d fought their brethren, and they knew what he was. Even if they couldn’t sufficiently articulate it to their captors. And though they knew even under tremendous stress that there were some lines they couldn’t cross, they were still demons. Goaded beyond their sense of restraint. They could see him plainly locked in place while they had claw and spear and cudgel and fang and numbers on their side. Him tied up against a legion of the creatures seemed like reasonable odds. And as they rushed toward him, he couldn’t fault their logic. It seemed like more than reasonable odds to him as well.

  They raced toward him with naked desire and hunger in their eyes. Gregori opened his mind to them. It always made it easier, and this was no different. These creatures had harmed God’s children. Slaughtered them, in some cases. They’d possessed and infiltrated and driven the weakest mortals to taking their own lives and even the strongest to the pit of despair. They’d taken delight in sowing discord and chaos, reveling in the misery of the humans caught in their net. They deserved what he would give them, even if he fell beneath their combined weight of hatred.

  Some of the more enterprising of the demons didn’t bother waiting to rip him with their claws. Instead, they broke apart from the group, flanking the others, and hurled weapons from afar. The blades sang through the air, and through the haze of noise and electrical crackling fire, Gregori’s reflexes weren’t as strong as they should be. He ducked and flinched away, but the blades hit their mark too often, searing his skin with their razor-sharp edges. And it wasn’t only the cut of the blades he felt, but the telltale bubble of poison. The demons had taught their captors well, it seemed. Even with Gregori bound, they wanted to slow him down. They were worried about what damage he could wreak before he betrayed his own weakness.

  They were smart to worry too. Gregori braced himself, his brows knitting together, glaring at the horde as they loped toward him, yowling their heads off with mindless glee.

  Then, when the legion of his attackers was nearly upon him, his shackles fell off.

  23

  “Oh!” Angela lurched forward with sudden urgency as Gregori’s restraints fell away. What were these people thinking? He would destroy them, he would—

  “We want to see,” Martin murmured, his face alight with interest, matched by the intensity of Zachary Howard’s focus. “We want to see what your demon can do.”

  And then her demon proceeded to show them.

  Gregori moved so quickly, he became little more than a blur of fury and force. Immediately, he turned to the right and yanked the pole out of the floor, fueled by his righteous anger and a very real survival instinct that he hadn’t had to evoke for millennia. Raising the pole high, he swung it like a baseball bat and clocked the first wave of his attackers hard enough to send them sprawling into the second wave. Half the demons exploded on contact, leaving the next round of attackers covered in ropes of black goop.

  Angela watched, transfixed. She’d never seen Gregori in action before. She’d always been in the midst of being attacked when he’d been driven to action. Watching him now, from the safe remove of this observation deck, she didn’t know if she should be swelling with pride or dumbstruck with terror. To her surprise, she was erring much more on the side of pride. Her fierce and beautiful demon, mighty in his fury, was plowing through his assailants like he was on a mission from God. Which, she supposed, he was. Almost without realizing it, she pushed her way forward until she was all the way to the glass. She lifted her hands to lay them lightly on the transparent surface, as if she could reach out and add her power to his.

  “He’s very impressive.”

  She stiffened, but Martin didn’t let her shift away. One of his goons stood on the other side of her, whether demon, possessed human, or merely asshole, she didn’t know.

  Martin continued. “The others are very definitely afraid of this one. All we’ve been able to get out of them is that he’s a member of some sort of vigilante force within the horde itself. That implies a level of organization we honestly didn’t think these creatures were capable of.”

  She shot him a withering glance. “Really. You’ve been studying demons, a kind of creature that’s walked this earth for thousands upon thousands of years, for what, all of twelve months? And you don’t think that maybe they’re capable of a little more than you’ve been able to discover in that time?”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “Demons have been controlled by witches for thousands of years. They’ve served as cannon fodder for mercenary armies for nearly as long, and some of them have proven to be quite cunning. But the idea of a team working together as a concerted, self-directed force isn’t something these creatures should be able to master.”

  “And you know this, how? Because you’ve successfully killed and dissected them?” she asked, derision continuing to drip from her words as black goop splattered the window, causing most of the scientists and military types to step back. Neither she nor Martin moved.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “How do you know anything about that?”

  She smiled. “Oh, you’ve tried, I’m sure. I assumed you hadn’t wanted to kill any of the demons yourself because they were your army. Why destroy your own supply, especially when you aren’t entirely sure you can keep restocking? But I underestimated you. You did try to kill them. How’d that go?”

  Martin’s lips thinned. “I think we’re deviating from the primary purpose of this conversation.”

  A door slammed, and quick steps interrupted them. “Sir,” came a clipped, faintly anxious male voice.

  The urgency of the minion’s voice drew Angela’s attention back to where Gregori was fighting. Fighting… And winning. The enormous demon was now slightly less human than he had been even a few short seconds ago. The infuriated creature beneath the veneer of glamour was peeking through. Gregori’s broken mountain of a body elongated and seemed, if anything, to grow larger. He towered over the other demons, sometimes three times as tall, and swept them into his enormous hands as he howled in rage, shattering their bodies into gore and spray.

  The demons attacking him piled on with even more force. As attuned as Angela was to Gregori’s emotions, even in this state, surprisingly, she registered something more than fury from him at this assault. She registered surprise. Gregori couldn’t understand why the demons kept pressing forward, and she was smote with images of a hundred thousand other battles he’d fought before, where the demons, upon seeing they were outmatched, simply fled back to the shadows, to the caves, to the life they’d been so carefully living, until they had gained the notice of the Syx. But they weren’t doing that now.

  “They want to die,” she realized aloud, drawing Martin’s attention back to her. “You’ve done something that no other entity on this earth has managed to accomplish. You’re convincing the demon horde to return to the very hellfires from which they were spawned. I don’t think that’s gonna make you employer of the year.”

  No matter what else she might think of him, Martin Filmore was a quick study. “Stop this,” he snapped, his Southern drawl going hard as flint.

  Zachary came forward, his voice crisp and sure as he unhooked a radio from his belt and spoke into it. “Terminate the attack.”

  Then all three shifted their gaze back to the war going on below, which wasn’t a war at all. It had turned into a suicide mission, and only a few of the demons were hanging back.

  The minion broke in a
gain. “Sir, that’s the problem. We noticed the same anomaly, took steps to redirect. But our circuits are being jammed somehow. We’re not getting through. They’re not responding.”

  Martin turned and grabbed Angela, thrusting her toward two heavily armed men. “Take her down there and set the demons on her. Get new members of the horde if we need them, but make sure you catch the alpha demon’s attention. We control him, we control them.”

  “Sir.” The nearest man nodded.

  “And don’t waste time. In fact—”

  Angela’s eyes widened as Martin moved quickly, efficiently. He reached inside his jacket and pulled a gun free, aiming it low and at an angle—directly at her. He fired, and a sudden flare of white-hot pain exploded in Angela’s upper thigh.

  She screamed, and a second later, a roar of unmistakable anguish exploded in the space below them. For the first time, the row of demons retreated from Gregori, and he spun, pole still in hand, a bull desperately searching for somebody new to gore.

  “Get her down there,” Martin snapped. “Now.”

  Angela didn’t resist as many hands grabbed her and half dragged, half carried her out the door of the observation room, where a gurney appeared. She was hauled on top of it, and they started moving again. As four security guards raced her down the hallway, another man came out of a side room in a technician’s outfit, and once they’d reached an elevator and shoved her inside, he bent to examine her.

  “Through and through,” he barked, though Angela didn’t know if he was sharing this information for her benefit or speaking to someone on a mic. “She’ll bleed out fast if we don’t get her medical attention.”

  She didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but before she could summon the energy to respond, the elevator opened again and they were in another access corridor. Screams of rage and fear echoed loudly enough from the room beyond, then the doors were thrust open and she was launched—gurney and all—into the melee.

  Chaos descended around her.

  Mewling with abject fear, her hands slick with her own blood as she clutched her leg, Angela rolled off the gurney as it crashed into the backs of several demons. She could almost sense when the orders came through the demons’ earbuds, directing them to stop their attack on Gregori and flee—and kill her along the way.

  Cowering on the floor, Angela would’ve laughed if it hadn’t been so horrifying. Martin couldn’t have come up with a better way to play into the demons’ basest fears and needs: stop attacking this guy and start attacking someone else and you can run free.

  Not surprisingly, it worked. A full third of the demons she could see immediately turned her way, howling with excitement as they dove toward her. On the other side of the room, Gregori roared in fury, but he was never going to get to her in time, Angela knew immediately. Did Martin fully realize that? Was he counting on her bond with the demon to be so strong that upon her death, he would somehow be rendered more controllable? Or was Martin merely acting on instinct, taking advantage of serendipity, as he was so fond of saying. She had a feeling he didn’t understand exactly what that word meant. She also had a feeling he was going to learn the meaning of karma shortly. But first, she needed to survive.

  Traveling back on all fours, Angela slipped again on the gore-soaked floor, her own blood mixing with the blood of demons as she came face-to-face with the horde that had haunted her since she was a little girl. It was shocking how quickly all the old memories came back, and even though they weren’t anywhere near as potent as they used to be, since she’d been healed by Gregori’s hand, they still evoked a shadow of her former fear, and that was enough.

  She moved almost blindly, without thinking, thrusting her hands in a wide arc, creating a circle that stretched at least two feet, first with the swipe of her left hand, then with a swipe of her right, while she remained inside. It wasn’t a perfect witch’s circle. She was pretty sure it wasn’t a witch’s circle at all, but it was going to have to do. With all the blood seeping from her leg and waves of dizziness starting to rise within her like a shimmering tide, there was no way she could even stand, let alone escape. Instead, she huddled in the circle and raised her hands.

  And just as they had all those years ago, the symbols, images, and words that had been in the Serbian spell book sprang to her mind and lips.

  She started talking. Slowly and quietly at first, feeling her way and then with rapid acceleration as the horde literally collapsed in on her. Their faces, their hands, their bodies pressed toward her, and she smelled the stink of their fetid breath, their excitement almost a living, pulsing thing. But the circle held. Sort of.

  “Stand back,” she ordered, her voice ringing with a sincerity she didn’t truly feel. “Stand back.”

  Not surprisingly, they didn’t listen to her, but she also realized they weren’t quite reaching her either, though they were too close—too close! The circle still exerted some kind of power strong enough that their scrambling hands couldn’t get hold of her body.

  Angela kept up her exhortations, but she couldn’t get past the fact she’d been shot in the leg and was rapidly losing blood. Unlike these creatures, unlike Gregori, she wasn’t unkillable by human hands. She was weakness and flesh and blood, and she was fading.

  “Kill her.”

  This new order was spoken by a woman, loudly enough that she could hear it crackling over the demons’ earbuds, and she realized it was being spoken in the same tongue she was speaking, the ancient language of the Serbian witches, the language they’d employed to control demons since their first coven was formed at the dawn of recorded history.

  Outrage kindled anew inside Angela. These were her sisters, her fellow humans, women being ordered to make this command. Yes, they might be brainwashed or fearing for their own lives, but to say such things, to order another creature to do their bidding in such a final heinous act, how was that even possible? How strong must the power being exerted over these women be, how strong…

  “No!” she screamed back, her voice carrying over the horde. “No, you will not!”

  Her anger only seemed to galvanize the demons to greater frenzy. She felt them pressing in again, and it was only with a Herculean effort that she was able to clear enough space to breathe through the torrent of words she spewed, not even sure what she was saying anymore, but throwing every ounce of her emotion back into the idea of keeping herself safe and keeping the demons safe too, safe from their shared enemies, instead of fixating on the outrage of her betrayal by her own kind.

  The frenzy shifted, mindless rage replaced by surprise and confusion, in a way that made Angela straighten. There was something here, something important, something she was missing. A key. A memory, just a fleeting hint of an idea that she should recall but couldn’t quite. Staring at faces inches in front of her own, she was no longer the seasoned and cynical congresswoman, but a terrified little girl no more than five years old, huddled over her grandmother and tormented by creatures she could barely comprehend.

  As she peered into these new, hideously broken faces, all the old terror resurfaced, and this terror was up close and personal once again, not seen with the distance she’d captured for such a brief and beautiful time with Gregori’s intercession. No. Once more, she was that little girl, lifting her hands, warding off a nightmare she finally understood deserved something more than she would ever have thought to give it. Something more than anyone should give it, frankly. But something she could absolutely give.

  “I forgive you,” she whispered. The words came out in English, but their Serbian equivalent was right there. Had she read that in the books as well? Had she learned that phrase of grace and absolution alongside the spells of domination and control? She didn’t know, but it felt more right than anything else she could say. As the nearest demon stopped and reared back, she said it again.

  “I forgive you.”

  Her words were stronger now, more resolute, and more of the demons around her flinched back from her as if she’d t
hrown poison at their faces. But poison wouldn’t have fazed these creatures, not as much as this. Fading and weak, Angela nevertheless put forth all her energy into the words again.

  “I forgive you,” she declared, and she lifted her hands, not in a gesture of warding off but with her palms up, supplicating, no longer praying for her life to be spared, but honoring these vile and wretched creatures for their own lives, their own existence.

  They stared at her, gape-mouthed, clearly not knowing what to do, and then they simply…disappeared. A sudden circle of space opened up between Angela and the closest demons, a breathing space she hadn’t realized how desperately she needed. She hauled in a lungful of oxygen as, out of the corner of her eye, she could see movement and anger explode in one of the observation deck windows. The observation deck she’d just left. That was good. That was right. That was—

  Another wave of demons crashed into her.

  24

  Gregori knew the moment that Angela’s leg was shot, could feel the violation and wrongness as the bullet exploded through her leg, tearing veins, ripping through muscle, skimming an inch away from both artery and bone. His own left leg gave way, and he staggered, but that didn’t stop the onslaught of demons rushing toward him. They attacked him with a renewed frenzy that was more than foolish, it was flat-out suicidal, and it had taken him clearing nearly a third of the room to understand that they were willingly giving themselves over to his judgment. There had been scores upon scores of demons loosed into the world, and this was the tiniest fraction. But at least he could send these assholes back beyond the veil.