Everyone has Their Demons

by A. L. Kessler

  Chapter Seven

  Mario grabbed my wrist, and I yanked it away from him. "What have you done?"

  "Ah, princess, nice to see you again." Ira stepped forward, and Mario tried to put his arm around me to comfort me.

  I stepped away from him, but it put me closer to Ira. "What is going on?"

  The others in the room started to file out as if they were waiting for some secret cue. Hannah stepped forward, her body encased in a black dress that moved like liquid against her body.

  Mario leaned forward and whispered, "She's in the mood for violence tonight, watch your tongue."

  But all I felt was rage; he'd brought me into this situation, and I couldn't trust him to have my back. The only thing I could trust was my magic.

  "Mario, you're no longer needed. I will call you when it's time to take her back." Hannah gave a wicked smile, showing fangs.

  My heart sped up as she stepped up to Ira, draping an arm around his waist. "Ira was just telling me something interesting about Leviticus." She played with Ira's hair and then met my gaze. "And you, Abigail."

  I stepped back trying to assess my situation. "Mario, home. Now."

  I turned to find the vampire gone. He'd actually left me there, and I hadn't noticed, too preoccupied with the vampires in front of me. Panic started to fill me as I realized he had abandoned me to Ira and Hannah.

  "Mario never could refuse an order from me." Hannah let go of Ira and stalked toward me. Her power marched up my skin, raising the hairs on my arms and giving me just a touch of what she could do, force me to do whatever she wanted. Last time I had Mario to fend off some of it, this time…I felt my body start to relax the closer she got, and I suddenly understood why Mario couldn't refuse her.

  I shook my head and called on my magic, heat rose through me and pushed her influences away. "You cannot touch me. I'm here as one of Levi's people. To harm me would mean to threaten him."

  "Except I never promised that you would be unharmed. That wasn't part of the negotiations between Mario and me."

  Hannah reached out to me, but I threw a circle up before she could touch me. The red and purple swirled around me, and I met Ira's gaze through it. I wasn't going to be stupid about this. There would be no letting the vampires near me.

  "Just like your mother's circle." Ira laughed. "Every time I see you I'm reminded of Elizabeth and her power." He put a hand against the circle, and I felt it pulse.

  "Why now, Ira? You and I have a meeting at the end of the week."

  "Because I promised Hannah some information and you. She's jealous of your relationship with Mario; you're keeping him from her."

  So neither of them knew that the relationship was a facade after all. I swallowed. I was safe in my circle. If I could hold it until dawn, maybe I could find a way to get out of here.

  Hannah walked up and placed her hand over Ira's. "Watch."

  I felt like something was pulling the power out of me. I cried out as the pain slashed through me and my circle fell. What the hell was that? I gave Hannah wide eyes as I tried to catch my breath.

  "Mario failed to mention that I was a witch before being changed?" She gave a shrill laugh and was suddenly in front of me, grabbing my hair with her hand.

  She threw me to Ira. "You had something to tell her?"

  I threw my hand out and cast Hannah in a red circle and turned to Ira to do the same, adrenaline carrying me through the situation now.

  Ira caught my wrist, snapping it with a twist. The pain blinded me for a moment, and the circle around Hannah faltered and crashed down.

  Magic engulfed me, freezing me in place. I struggled to breathe through the ice cold constriction.

  Ira walked up to me and touched my cheek. "The spitting image of your mother, but Levi's eyes."

  I tried to jerk away, but the magic held me tight. I couldn't even speak through it, all I could do was glare at him.

  "I bargained for this time with you because Levi's stipulations forbid me to tell you what I wanted, and now with Hannah's help, you are speechless and helpless." He leaned in and kissed the side of my throat, on the pulse. "Trembling and scared for once."

  I tried to call on my elemental magic but found no fire near to use. Fuck. My heart pounded at his touch which only made him chuckle, his breath hot against my skin. "Oh Abigail, my brother has hidden so much from you. Your origins, your power, his title."

  I felt his fangs scrape against my neck and my entire body tensed. My mind spun. What was he talking about? He had to be lying, trying to play with my head. Complete and utterly helpless and it was Mario's fault.

  Ira's fangs broke my skin, and I let out a muffled cry as the searing pain shot through me. The magic around me fell, but Ira wrapped his arm around me, pinning me to him as he drank.

  Pain flooded through my veins, chasing the numbing cold of Hannah's magic away. My knees buckled and the only thing that held me up was him.

  "That is enough, Ira." The voice that broke through the pain wasn't one I was expecting.

  Ira dropped me to the ground, and I barely caught myself to keep my face from slamming into the ground. Traces of the pain still radiated through my body, but I forced my magic out and into a purple circle. I wiped my good hand over my still bleeding neck and wiped the blood on the floor to fortify the magic.

  I looked up, meeting my uncle's gaze. I had no doubt that my current hate was evident in my eyes.

  Ira looked down at me through my circle. "If I had my way tonight, Abigail, I would slowly drain you until your heart stopped. You tell Levi that I will destroy everything he loves, slowly, while he watches."

  He disappeared, leaving me in the room with Hannah and Oliver.

  "Pull down your circle, Abby. It's over." Oliver walked up to it. "We need to get Mario, and we need to get you home."

  I glared at him. "Like hell. What the fuck are you doing here?"

  Hannah laughed. "Oh, she's not happy with you." She clapped her hands together and kissed Oliver on the cheek. "Is the price you paid worth seeing the hate in her eyes and hearing the scorn in her voice?"

  Oliver nodded. "Because even if she hates me, I know that I kept her safe from you and Ira for tonight. I'm sorry Abby." He pulled out a knife, dragging it over his palm, he met my gaze. "You're just going to have to trust me." He placed his bleeding hand against my circle shoving my magic back into me.

  I cried out as burning engulfed me, making me feel like my soul was on fire. I tried to force my magic back out to fight Oliver's but I couldn't. It continued to crash into me until my world went black.

  Chapter Eight

  You should have told me." Levi's voice held an edge to it that I hadn't heard before.

  "And risk Abigail feeling Hannah's full wrath? Locking her away wouldn't have worked. She would never have listened or agreed. Hannah would have waited until Abigail's stubbornness had won out." Mario's voice was soft, but I had to wonder why the hell he was there after he left me at Hannah and Ira's feet.

  My eyes refused to open, but I did get my fingers to twitch through the stiffness of my body. I wasn't sure what had happened, I was at Hannah's and then…Ira. The memories came flooding back to me. My eyes shot open, and I tried to sit up, but I put the pressure on my broken wrist, and I cried out.

  The two vampires looked at me, Mario went to speak, and I reached for the gun I normally kept on my nightstand. Gone. "Which one of you moved my gun?" I didn't hide the anger in my voice. They were smart for moving it, or I might have shot them both.

  "I did because I knew you'd go for it." Levi sat on the edge of the bed. "How do you feel?"

  "Like someone ran over me with a truck. Ira took a chunk out of my throat again, but this time…this time something was different." I went to touch the spot on my neck and flinched as my fingers found the wound.

  "Mario, leave us."

  "I owe Princess Ab
igail an apology, and I need-"

  "To get the fuck out of my house," I snarled. "You led me there knowing Ira was waiting."

  "He wasn't supposed to touch you. She told me no harm would come to you."

  I didn't understand why he had been so blind to what was going to happen there. Why he had left when Hannah told him. And where the fuck was my uncle right now? I looked at Levi and remembered what Ira had told me. I needed to verify things before I freaked on him, because at this moment, Levi was the only one in the room I could trust, I didn't want to destroy that if Ira was lying to me.

  Levi looked at Mario. "I will be back to the mansion as soon as I speak with Abigail."

  Mario didn't look at Levi; he looked at me. "Of course."

  He disappeared, and my tension went down a notch. "What time is it?"

  "It's five am."

  Almost dawn. "What are you doing here then? Why am I at home and not the mansion?"

  "This is where Mario brought you. Abigail…" He was at a loss for words for once.

  My phone rang, and I reached for it with the wrist that wasn't broken. I was going to need to go to the doctor's to get it set and cast. He grabbed my hand. "Work can wait."

  "No, it can't. That's Liz's ringtone, which means she has something on Clarissa's case."

  Levi snarled. "You are to stay away from her case. You need to pass on your PIB case so that you can come home and stay safe."

  I stared at him for a moment. "Safe? Like you allowed Mario to waltz me right into that trap? I had no idea that Hannah was a witch. Her magic left me helpless against Ira. Mario abandoned me to them at her simple request. I'm pretty sure the only thing that kept me alive was that Ira had a message for you." I couldn't keep the anger and fear from my voice. It trembled, trying to betray me.

  He stared at me. "What message?"

  "That he would destroy everything you love, slowly, painfully, and make you watch." I grabbed my phone, but Levi took it from my hand.

  "We are not done with our discussion."

  I closed my eyes to keep from yelling at him. "I'm not running away. I am not letting Ira scare me into hiding. I have a job to do. He has to follow the truce here until after our meeting, so I'm in no immediate danger unless someone else decides to betray us."

  "I didn't know Mario's intentions. I would never have let him take you." Levi's voice quieted a little. "But he is right; it would have been worse if Hannah had gone through with her threat."

  "What threat?"

  "That she would have dragged you into her territory with the full force of her power. Abigail, that would have left you at her mercy, and I don't know if you would have survived."

  I remember what her magic had felt like, the full force was probably worse, but that didn't mean that I could forgive Mario. "I made it through, one broken bone, some blood loss, but I didn't kill anyone with magic." And a lot to think about and look into.

  "Good, because that would have gotten you in trouble."

  I had been lectured enough about killing Ira, had I done it with my magic it would have stained my aura, but Levi was more worried about his and Ira's maker coming after me.

  "Abigail…" he started again, but then shook his head. "It is close to dawn. Call Liz back, but please rest."

  I'd see how I felt when I got up and started walking around for the day. I also needed to get my wrist checked out. At that moment I wanted to follow his instructions, but I had a job to do, a demon summoner and a murderer to hunt down. I couldn't do that from bed.

  He set the phone down on the edge of the bed and then disappeared. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to use my hand with the broken wrist. Pain shot through my arm, and I cursed. There was going to be no getting around it.

  I unlocked my phone with my good hand and called Liz back.

  "Abby, I have a lead, but I need your help on the runes, I was hoping you had your notes at the house still?"

  I nodded and then realized that she couldn't see me. "I do. Look I had a really tough night. If you want to come over to compare something, that's fine, but I'm not sure I'm going to make it into the office until this afternoon." I looked down at my wrist. I could see the bone pushing up against the discolored skin, threatening to break through even with the swelling.

  There was hesitation in her voice. "You okay? You said you had a date."

  I snorted. "Yeah, well, my date turned out to be something a bit more dangerous. Sorry, I can't really share details." Because how do you tell your coworker that your faux boyfriend betrayed you and you ended up being fed on by someone on PIB's most wanted list? Yeah, there was no easy way to share that information. At all.

  "Okay, I'll head over there in a couple hours, if that's okay?" She sounded tired, and I wondered if she'd been up all night.

  "Yeah. I'll be ready for you by then." I disconnected the call and got out of bed. My body ached from having my magic shoved back into me and from being held with Hannah's magic. I slowly stripped my dress off and went to the closet to find something to wear. I grabbed a pair of jeans and a blue shirt, putting them both on was agonizing.

  A knock on my bedroom door had me sighing. "Come in Merick."

  "It's not Merick." My uncle stepped into the room.

  I snarled and gathered my magic, which caused more pain to hit me. What. The. Fuck.

  "Calm down, Abigail. Let me explain."

  I shook my head and inched back toward my dresser where my gun was lying. "No. You were in on last night. You let that monster feed from me, you've done something to my magic."

  "Your magic will be fine in a few hours. I have made coffee downstairs, Merick is waiting to sit with us while we talk."

  Merick was safe. I knew that. It was his job to keep me safe because the Cult of Ra had an interest in me. Of course, it had also been Mario's job to keep me safe, and he betrayed me. My world was crashing down and panic built up in me. Oliver though…he'd always been shady. Last time he betrayed me he had his reasons, even if I didn't agree with him.

  My hand wrapped around the gun as I considered my options. Oliver raised a brow. "Your wrist is broken, you won't be able to hold the gun with both hands and control the recoil."

  Fuck, he was right.

  "I'll heal it for you downstairs."

  I hung my head. "I'll be down in a moment."

  "What are you feeling, niece?" There was a touch of concern in his voice.

  What was I feeling? "Confusion, shame, grief," I muttered. "Just go. I'll be down in just a moment; it's not like I can just poof in and out of here."

  "There is no need to feel shame; you did what you could last night, you were just outnumbered and ambushed." He turned and walked out of the room.

  I took a few moments to calm myself before heading downstairs. I kept my right wrist close to my stomach and held on to the railing with my left as I made my way down the stairs. My body became less stiff the more I moved, and I started to relax.

  At my rarely used little kitchen table, Merick and Oliver sat facing each other. Neither one of them looked happy. I sat down and laid my arm on the table. "Heal it and undo whatever you did to my magic."

  "I will after we talk."

  I raised a brow. "Really? After we talk?"

  "I don't want you to try and fry me." There was a little smirk on his face when he said it, and I couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

  "What were you doing at Hannah's?" I leaned back in my seat and Merick got up to go to the coffee maker.

  Oliver watched Merick and hesitated before answering. "I was hoping she had some leads on someone else like Drake Moll."

  Drake Moll was a warlock turned vampire who had been insane. I was trying to figure out how Hannah kept her sanity, of course maybe she was just better at controlling her insanity than Moll had been. "She seemed to think that you were there for me."

  "She told me tha
t you and Mario," he spat the name out, "were coming to celebrate the return of Keira, she didn't realize that we were related."

  Merick came back with a cup of coffee and sat down. "Oliver was smart enough not to reveal that until a critical moment."

  "Which was?"

  "When Ira showed up and knew exactly who I was and then bragged about what he was planning on doing to you." Oliver shook his head. "Abigail, you must trust me, I had no intentions of letting him touch you, but there was only so much that I had to negotiate with to save your life."

  Merick snorted, and Oliver shot him a nasty look.

  "Glad to see Merick is also on edge this morning. My trust is something that's not very strong right now. Mario left me there, and there are things that Ira has planted into my head."

  Oliver nodded. "Ira is determined to cause a rift between the vampires, by tonight all of the vampire population will hear the rumors about Levi."

  "That's not what I was talking about."

  Oliver sighed. "I can't confirm or deny the other things he told you."

  "Bull-fucking-shit, Oliver," I snapped. "You were the closest person to my mother."

  "Elizabeth…" He shook his head. "Now is not the time to discuss her or what Ira told you. Right now, I need you to know that I didn't betray you."

  "What did you give up to spare me?" I couldn't keep the venom from my voice.

  He met my gaze. "I gave up my seat at Levi's side, as his warlock."

  I swallowed. There was something in his words that hinted at something bigger. "You pulled your alliance with Levi?"

  "Leaving you as his witch, yes." Oliver nodded. "I never wanted that for you which was why I took his offer when you were first born. I knew that eventually you would work for him and the magic he expected would taint your aura."

  "So you'll be with Ira?"

  "You don't want the answer to that." Oliver shook his head.

  I knew already though. "You have to swear to me one thing."

  "Which is what?"

  "If you get a chance, you destroy my blood. You won't let Ira use it against me."