Demon Ensnared (Demon Enforcers Book 4)

by Jenn Stark

  Angela sucked in a quick and shaky breath. She felt unsteady, unmoored, her natural propensity for learning stretched far beyond its limits. She tried to resettle herself as the woman put her hand on the door and pushed it open. “Where will you go?” Angela asked, then blinked as she realized she knew the woman’s name. “Cara Night, right?”

  The woman turned back, flashed her a small smile. Her eyes, still jet black, blazed with new purpose. “I’m going to find my sisters. And you’re going to find your calling.” She nodded to Angela one last time. “And when your demon returns to you, please give him my thanks.”

  Then she was gone.

  Angela waited a full minute after the woman left before she peeked out of the lab and into the destroyed corridor. She knew exactly where she needed to be.

  Moving swiftly, she dashed down the corridor and reentered the large amphitheater where Gregori had fought so many demons. As she suspected, there was still a large group of people milling around in the observation deck above, doubtlessly kept there while Governor Filmore and Zachary Howard’s crew tried to lock down the facility and perform damage control. They didn’t notice her at first, but she didn’t need much time.

  She ran to the center of the room, the only area unmarked by demon gore, and quickly surveyed the mess around her. Sucking in a tight breath, she slid her hands through the muck to ensure there was no unbroken surface to the circle of blood and goop. Then she stood, her hands dripping with demon ichor, and lifted her chin, her hair flowing down her back. And she cried out to the demon horde.

  Her summons was as old as time, offering the ancient words of partnership and payoff, respect and understanding. The bond between a witch and a demon always favored the witch, but that didn’t mean the demons went away empty-handed. That was what Filmore and his crew failed to realize, and what the witches were wise enough, despite their terror and torture, not to share. The demons were bound to come, yes. But that wasn’t enough. Angela needed them to obey. Willingly.

  And not even for very long.

  Fortunately, the horde wasn’t unaware of what had just befallen their brethren. Their response to Angela’s call was quick and absolute. Within a few short lines of her summons, the first demons appeared, shifting easily between their humanlike glamour and their hideous demonic forms. They were terrifying to see, even to Angela, who’d now met so many of their kind that they were practically old friends. But their display had the desired effect in the rooms above the amphitheater. Activity in those spaces picked up immediately. Phones were placed to ears, hand waving and shouting followed, and within a few short seconds, she saw the man she needed to see: Zachary Howard. And standing beside him, the man she knew now as a betrayer, Martin Filmore.

  It was Martin whose voice echoed over the huffing and stamping horde, nearly five hundred strong. “Angela?” he asked quietly. Just that one word. But really, there was nothing more for him to say. She had all the control.

  She met his gaze through the glass. “Martin. Hello again.”

  “Angela, what are you doing?”

  “I’m doing what needs to be done. If you’d come to me at the beginning, we could’ve saved ourselves a lot of time and the good people at AugTech a lot of money. But either way, there are needs that must be met and tools that have been forged to meet those needs, and it’s time we accepted that truth.”

  He didn’t miss her echoing back his own words, and the people around him straightened as well, their excitement almost palpable.

  “You’ll help us?”

  “I’ll help you.” She had no intention of doing anything of the sort, but she needed to get out of this building alive, and there was only one way that was going to happen. What Martin didn’t know wouldn’t kill her. “You don’t need a cadre of terrified witches to do your work for you. There are better ways, ways that I know. Ways that you’ll only have access to if I’m running the operation from inside the committee.”

  Martin scowled. “You’re only a junior congresswoman. There’s only so much sway you’re going to have.”

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I have friends in high places. And low places as well.”

  On cue, the demons lifted claws and wings and talons, howling in agreement. Martin’s jaw dropped, and beside him, Zachary Howard appeared stricken for a moment with excitement and greed. She suspected the witches had never secured that level of cohesion from the horde.

  She was right. “How?” stammered Howard, his gaze sweeping over the fresh unimplanted demons, who were still shifting between their human and demonic forms.

  “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you ask nicely,” Angela said dryly.

  But Martin knew her arguably better than anyone in the world, her trusted confidant, friend of the family. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “What’s in it for you?”

  “Fortunately, that’s not something you need to worry about,” Angela said. “It’s a one-time deal. I help secure the safety of American troops or I don’t. Good luck finding your next cabal of witches, though. Because once word gets out about what you were doing, you can bet they’re going to see you coming long before you get there.”

  Martin frowned, but Zachary Howard leaned forward. “We can work together. There’s so much we can do.”

  “Yes.” Angela nodded. “Now that we understand each other, I’m leaving.”

  Martin started, “But the demons—”

  Amanda cut her hands dramatically, and in the space of a breath, all five hundred of the horde disappeared, laughing as they went. “They’ll be here when you need them and not before,” she said.

  But she’d taken it a step too far. Martin’s eyes narrowed sharply, and he said something beneath his breath that she couldn’t catch. A hiss of smoke immediately flowed through the room, and Angela’s heart squeezed. Shit! She’d forgotten about the gas. How could she have forgotten about the gas?

  A second later, there was the softest flutter of a breeze, and somebody else stood next to her, his body immense and bathed in white light, his wings arcing above and around her.

  “No,” the extraordinary being breathed. “No, and never again.”

  Gregori wrapped his arms around Angela and carried her home.

  28

  Gregori stepped quietly through the living room of Angela’s condo, though nothing stirred. The place had been cleaned, he could tell, but…how bad had it been? And what had happened to—

  Angela, now healed and purified of the battle she’d waged, stirred in his arms. He stumbled over to the couch and gingerly laid her down. He knew she wasn’t injured bodily, but when her eyes flickered open a second later, there was no denying the shock and fear that crossed her expression. Gregori instinctively flinched back, but she grabbed his arms, bursting into tears.

  “You’re back! You’re back and you’re safe and you’re here!”

  As if on cue, a single bark sounded deep in the condo, and both Angela and Gregori jerked in surprise as a soaring roar of animal happiness billowed forth from the back of the condo—animal—and men’s voices too.

  “What the—”

  “Gregori, my man!” Hugh of the Syx strode into the living room from the back of the condo, holding a bandaged Hellboy, who was doing his level best to wriggle completely out of his arms. Raum followed, cradling the smoky-gray cat, Ghost, who regarded them imperiously from his perch. The other animals cavorted around their legs, with Hey Mister bouncing straight up into the air, easily clearing three feet every time, as if he was wound on a spring. “Angela Stanton, Hugh and Raum of the Syx. Demon enforcers and dog watchers, at your service.”

  “Oh, thank you—” Angela began, still clearly a little disoriented, then her gaze fell on the dogs. “Oh my God. Old Sir!”

  She pulled herself up on the couch as the greyhound trotted happily over, straining forward to lick her face as the other dogs, Elvis and Hey Mister, quickly followed. The black-and-white cat sat off to the si
de, licking her paws, and the beanbags sat happily beside her, tearing into two large lettuce leaves. “You okay, good boy?”

  “Your dog is a menace,” Hugh informed Gregori as Gregori stood, then crossed the room in a few long strides to reclaim the dog. “He about bit our faces off before we could assure him of our good intentions. Raum knew some sort of dog spell, and boom, we were good, but it was close.”

  “What happened to him?” Gregori asked, staring down into the dog’s soulful eyes. Hellboy’s tongue hung out of his mouth as his lips pulled back in a goofy doggy grin.

  “Singed a little—wouldn’t let us get near him, not even to heal him, so we had to get him to a vet. A vet who may have fallen in love with Raum here,” Hugh cracked, while the quieter demon merely shrugged. In his arms, Ghost shrugged too.

  “Oh, Gregori.” Angela’s voice had him turning, and there—with his demon brothers watching—she threw her arms around Hellboy and him, hugging them both close.

  The emotion that poured out of her swamped Gregori like a crushing tide. But for once, he didn’t shrink away from the deluge of grief, relief, joy, and something else. Something he’d never experienced before.

  Before he could say anything, Angela spoke again, pulling away. “What did they do to you? What happened? All I saw was you in the middle of…all those creatures. They were the Possessed, weren’t they? Demons inside of humans, and there were too many of them to fight without…”

  “Yeah, spill it, home slice,” Hugh said. He snagged a chair closest to Domino, then reached down to scratch the cat behind the ears. After a moment, he also ruffled the fur of the guinea pigs.

  “There were too many,” Gregori said as Angela clung to him. “Too many to fight, too many to do anything but what you suggested. You helped me know how to remove as many of them as I could without harming any more of God’s children.”

  “But none of them died,” Angela said. “The humans, I mean. They all seemed okay. Messed up a little, maybe, and I wouldn’t want to see the therapy bill, but okay.” She was babbling, her voice hiccuping with emotion, and she moved her hands from Gregori’s arms, to his shoulders, to his hair to his face, as if she was trying to convince herself that he was really there. That he was real. His own chest felt unaccountably tight, his heart swelling as tears swept down Angela’s cheeks and fell over his hands.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he assured her. “Don’t cry.” When that only seemed to make her sob harder, he furrowed his brow. “Are you all right? Did they harm you? Is there something wrong?”

  Angela shook her head, but she still couldn’t speak. He grabbed her shoulders, suddenly even more afraid. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  “You…you came back for me,” she whispered, her voice still choked. “You didn’t have to do that. There’s so much work left for you to do, and I’m only one human. And you—came back for me.”

  And in that moment, Gregori understood. This wasn’t Angela Stanton, junior congresswoman, who was speaking now, not entirely. This was the five-year-old little girl, summoning and then dismissing the creatures of darkness to save her grandmother on her own. Eight-year-old Angela abandoned by everyone she trusted and knew, held in a cage to be poked at and prodded by demons. This was a little girl who’d broken her own arm in two places to escape, somehow knowing that was what she needed to do to get home. This was a woman who’d never been rescued. And who couldn’t believe it was happening now.

  “Of course I came back for you, Angela. I’ll always be here for you.” It was only the newest in a line of hundreds of promises Gregori had made this very day, promises of grace and forgiveness he had no right to make, but, as with every one of those promises, nothing felt more right for him, nothing felt more true than to lean forward over this miracle of grace and strength and give of himself until there was nothing left.

  “But what about you?” she whispered, her eyes lifting to meet his gaze. He was transfixed by the need or desire in them, and he didn’t understand it. “Who will take care of you? Who will stand with you in all your battles? There will be so many battles, my beautiful demon, so many terrible battles to come.”

  He sharpened his gaze on her. “What do you mean?”

  Her hands found his and gripped them tightly. “I spoke with the Serbian witches. I saw what they know. I understand something of what you’ll be facing. And you would do it all alone.”

  Gregori shook his head gently, and Hugh and Raum straightened, Hugh once more coming to his feet. “I’m not alone. I have my brothers to stand and fight with me.”

  “He does,” Hugh said quietly. “I swear it. We all swear it.”

  “You have me too,” Angela said, her eyes burning bright. “I know I’m only human. I know I’m weak, but you have me too. I’ll stand with you and fight. I will!”

  For a moment, Gregori could only stare at her. She seemed so impossibly frail and fierce at the same time—her hair a tangled mess, her skin tracked with tears, her large, cloudy eyes far too full of things no human should ever have to endure—but the emotion that radiated from her was all-encompassing. “That’s not your place,” he began, but her chin came up, her shoulders squaring.

  “It is my place,” she insisted. “It is. I’m nothing without you.”

  The impossibility of that statement was so strong that Gregori clasped her hands together, giving her a little shake. “No,” he said fiercely. “You walk in the light, Angela. I do not. That’s not my path.”

  “But I love you!” she said with such ferocity that it took his breath away. “I love you, and I want nothing more than to fight by your side. For your battles to be my battles, Gregori, your life to be my life.”

  Gregori closed his eyes against this new fresh torrent of pain that assaulted him. He was what he was, and Angela was worth more than a thousand of him put together. But he knew she wouldn’t—couldn’t understand—

  “Don’t you dare think that,” she said, as if he had spoken the words aloud. Gregori’s gaze snapped to meet hers, and he found in her eyes a steely determination. “I didn’t just talk to the Serbian witch, Gregori. I learned from her. She taught me. I summoned the horde to buy the witches time to escape, and also, I hoped, to save my own skin.” She smiled a little ruefully. “I didn’t do so well with the last part of that equation. So thank you for that.”

  Gregori went completely still, while his brothers stiffened. Ghost, disconcerted, jumped down from Raum’s arms. “You summoned the horde? In front of the others?”

  She bit her lip. “It seemed to be the only thing I could do to keep their focus on me.”

  “You could’ve been killed. If not by the demons, then by the AugTech directors.”

  “And?” She shrugged, her reaction so quintessentially human it made his heart ache. “If they’d found me and you hadn’t come back for me, I would have been dead anyway. There’s no way they could manage the liability of a member of congress knowing what they were trying to do with federal tax dollars, completely without any meaningful oversight. Even now, I probably have a target on my back.”

  Gregori rumbled a laugh. “I can guarantee you won’t. I’m not completely without resources when it comes to interacting with humans, even though it’s our charge to protect, not terrorize them. There are times they can benefit from a deeper awareness of the full extent of the Father’s creations.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re going to scare them?”

  “I’m going to make sure you’re protected, blessed child of God.”

  “No,” she said, and her sudden certainty shook him again. “I’m more than that. I’m the woman who loves you, Pónos. I’m the woman who will fight to the death for you, and I am claiming you as my own.”

  “We’re out, my man.” Hugh’s abrupt announcement reminded Angela that the other two members of Gregori’s team were still present—people she hadn’t properly met yet—but before she could even turn to them…they were gone. The animals, startled at their sudden dis
appearance, tore off for the back of the condo in hot pursuit, except for Hellboy, who made no fuss as Gregori laid him gently on the side chair.

  “Sleep and heal, brave warrior,” Gregori murmured. Angela’s heart nearly burst as the dog sighed happily beneath Gregori’s fingers, then let his eyelids droop. A second later, he was snoring.

  Gregori turned back to her, his face more beautiful than anything she’d ever seen—strong, caring, certain, true. His dark hair clung to his skin, his brilliant green eyes were exhausted now, his arms were covered with rents and tears, but to her, he would always be…

  “Perfect,” she sighed.

  He grimaced. “Hardly that.”

  “But you are,” she insisted. She hadn’t missed the way Gregori flinched every time she told him that she loved him, but she couldn’t help herself. She felt like she was crawling out of her own skin, desperate to join with him no matter the consequences.

  There was something else about his response that triggered something deep within her, something she could barely wrap her head around. It was as if, after all this time—all these centuries of being part of one of the mightiest teams of warriors the planet had ever seen—he still doubted his own worth. She’d seen him clear demons in his hideous and fearsome form, she’d seen him bent beneath excruciating pain as he forgave those who had done nothing to earn that right except exist as part of God’s creation, she’d seen him study her with fear and wonder in his eyes, as if she was a miracle beyond his reckoning.

  Yet still, he doubted.

  She couldn’t allow that to continue a moment longer.

  “Gregori,” she murmured, and his eyes shifted to hers. Those dazzling eyes, that focus that made her feel like no one else existed in the world. She caught the sudden flare of worry in his glance, and she smiled despite herself. He was so quick to want to ensure everyone else’s comfort and safety that he’d gone centuries—millennia—without ensuring his own. “You can’t keep doing this without healing yourself as well. You know that.”