by Michele Hauf
All except those who knew better. Like her. The forest was a thin place where the realm of Daemonia overlapped this mortal realm. Summoning a demon would be as simple as snapping her fingers. And having the fortitude to do so.
Tuesday had lived nearly forty years, and had honed her magical skills in privacy and under the tutelage of some powerful aunts and good women. She had eaten a vampire’s heart to secure immortality and a youthful appearance—at least, for another century—and had cast down the moon and summoned healings and utilized the natural elements to move through life.
She was not like those women who were being accused in the trials. Women who had knowledge of female anatomy and tried to heal and teach others. They were merely humans who sought to educate and save. But the menfolk would not condone a smart woman living in their midst. Females were to submit and serve. And they used them as cat’s-paws and accused them of witchery. Anything to subdue and make them submissive.
Of course, Tuesday could be thankful for the distraction of that wayward and unprofessional witchery. It kept most eyes from her, a true witch. And she was wise enough not to share her skills with anyone who had not been vetted to her by a witch elder. Even when Finn slyly questioned if she would ever attempt witchcraft, she laughed and told him he was silly. It was something she imagined most every woman in the village had been asked. Men were suspicious creatures. Their fear of losing control to what they deemed a mere woman made them so.
A woman would do well to learn how to control such irresponsible creatures—men. And she was teaching herself that by learning all that she could about herself, her body, nature and the universe. Strength came with wisdom and knowledge.
But tonight she would reach beyond her own capabilities in a quest to save her lover’s sight.
Once deep in the forest, she did not light a candle. She didn’t wish discovery by hunters. Drawing out a pentagram with black salt on the leaf-crusted forest floor, she spoke the invocation to summon a demon. The surprise she felt when one appeared made her step back and clutch the smoky quartz she wore from a leather strap about her neck for protection. He stood within the circle, but posed gallantly beside a thick oak, elbow propped high to lean against it.
His eyes glowed red, so she knew he was demon. But otherwise he looked a human, dressed in a fine blue silk frock coat, shot through with silver threading, and with lace dripping around his wrists and at his neck. Such finery belonged only to royalty. She had seen Pandora dolls imported from Europe wearing such elaborate silks. And his hair was long and wavy and black as midnight. He smelled...of lilacs. A pretty man—demon—if she was to size him up. And that notion startled her. Should not demons be more creature-like? Horned and possessed of red or black skin with claws? This demon’s handsome appearance was disconcerting, to say the least.
“Who are you?” she asked, a bit too timidly for her comfort. So she set back her shoulders and lifted her chin. Courage hummed in her bones. “Have you come from Daemonia?”
“You don’t even know who you’ve summoned? What a sorry witch you are!” The demon tugged out the lace from the end of one sleeve. “Daemonia is the last place I should ever tread. I am of this realm. And I am Gazariel, The Beautiful One.”
Tuesday knew demons often went by monikers, and that one was right on the nose. Beautiful, indeed. And he seemed to believe it himself, judging by his mannerisms. Primping and preening. Not a wrinkle to the silk, nor a hair out of place. Was that rouge on his pale cheeks?
She tested the binding on the summons and did not feel a weakness in the air. He could not approach her, and if he tried, the circle should keep him in check.
“I need your help,” she said. “With a healing.”
The demon rolled his eyes and shook his head sadly. “Bother. Always with the sicknesses! And here I thought you might request I attend the next village soiree and impregnate a dozen virgins with my demon babies.” He gestured dismissively. “You’re boring, witch.”
“My lover is going blind. You can kiss his eyes and give him sight.”
“Of course I can.” He rubbed his fingernails against the embroidery edging his silk lapels. “We demons have such skills. Most of us, anyway. I would not dare to ask a wrath demon for some delicate brain trephination, though, mind you. What is this lover’s name?”
“Finnister McAdams. His sight is almost completely gone. He is a kind man. And so young. He is strong and contributes all that he can to the village. If you could see to healing him, I would be ever grateful.”
“Release me,” the demon said.
Tuesday’s spine stiffened. She was no fool. “Not until you give me what I ask.”
“I can’t go near the man unless you unbind me, now can I?” He splayed his lace-encircled hand toward the circle on the ground.
That was true. He did need to move about freely. And she could hardly lead Finn here to the forest to receive what healing magic the demon could provide. Such had to be managed with cunning.
“You’ll follow me home and attend to him while he sleeps?”
“He doesn’t know you’re a witch? Of course not. You may be a bore but you are not stupid. Take down the circle. I’ll see what I can do. And in turn, I’ll ask a favor from you.”
“Which is?”
He shrugged and flipped out a hand to display the lace grandly. “I’ll decide on that after the task is complete.”
A favor to a demon? It was only fair to reciprocate. But she wasn’t sure what she could do for him. And she had no intention of having one of his demon babies. Well. She could not. Her womb was barren. She’d known that for decades. A condition she’d been born with, according to a wise witch who had gazed into her soul and seen her birth.
With trepidation, Tuesday slashed a foot through the salt circle. The demon disappeared instantly, leaving her alone in the dark woods. An owl hooted, chastising her with his repeated tones.
“I have been a fool! He will never give me what I want. I should have offered him a gift immediately. Given him reason to want to help me.”
And what would the creature demand of her should he serve her wishes? It would never be good, she felt sure.
“It is a sacrifice I am willing to make,” she muttered and turned to wander back to the village.
By the time she returned home, she saw the demon standing outside her door. His pale blue frock coat was an unwanted beacon in the darkness, and in a village where the only colors worn were black, brown and gray.
She rushed up to him. “What are you doing here? You can’t be seen!”
“Oh, Tuesday Knightsbridge, you sad, pitiful witch.” He placed a hand over her chest, right between her breasts, and Tuesday felt a searing pain but she could not step away from the demon. “Your lover lies to you. I came here to find him returning from the forest. He followed you. Watched you and I. He knows. And he is not going blind. His sight is as perfect as yours or mine.”
“No, that’s—”
“That’s a foolish witch for you,” the demon said piteously. “And you have fallen in love with a witch hunter. Ha!”
The searing at her chest now burned as if in flames.
Then her front door opened, and Finn spilled out with hell blazing in his eyes. He looked right at her. Saw her for what she was. Finn snarled, “Witch!”
The torture began the next day. The water chair was the one that siphoned all Tuesday’s gumption from her. She was tied to a chair on the end of a seesaw and repeatedly dunked into the filthy, muddy river. Each time she was lifted above water, gasping, choking, pleading for Finn to stop, she was commanded to confess to being a witch and consorting with demons.
She would not. She would survive this. Somehow.
Later, the whip that flayed at her skin left deep gashes, and caused Tuesday to pass out more than a few times. Hot pokers to her hips and between her toes almost made her confess. Almost.
After four days of suffering her lover’s vicious, hateful punishments, Tuesday was lying on the cold, hard dirt floor on a tiny cell at the edge of the village. No moonlight on this night of the new moon. On the other side of the building, the village pigs snorted and rooted, and filled the air with a nauseating odor that she breathed as if a toxin.
All vitality had been beaten out of her. Even the will to live had been vanquished with a humiliating search of her private body parts in search of devil’s marks. Finn had done so before a dozen village elders. All men. All leering. If she’d the strength she would have cast a spell over them all, reducing them to stupid, foul, snorting pigs like those outside her cell. Alas, she’d expelled all her energies with a breathing spell during the dunking.
She would be dead by morning. Her tattered heart told her as much. And she sighed with acceptance.
When the flash of red light flickered in the cell and she scented a brief fragrance of lilacs, she tried to lift her head to look at the demon, but the flay marks along her neck pained her with every subtle movement.
The demon’s silk, red-heeled shoes were but inches from her face. “Men are terrible, yes?”
Indeed. And yet, she was not prepared to condemn them all. Her father had been a good man. And the village baker, who she knew was married to a witch whom he protected, was also kind. “Not all of them.”
“You’re right. It is love that is so vile. Can’t be trusted. Merely a means to trick and use innocence. And you have been thoroughly used, my witch.”
Indeed. Why had the demon returned? To rub her failures into her open wounds? Or did he still require she serve him something in return? He hadn’t healed Finn, for the man hadn’t required any healing.
The demon bowed low and the tickle of his hair across her cheek smelled sweet and too luxurious. “I can give you something that you’ll find most useful.”
“Leave me to die, demon.”
“Do not address me so. It is vulgar. I am The Beautiful One.”
She could but close her eyes tightly and wish death would quicken its pace.
“I carry a curse,” Gazariel continued. “But I don’t need it. Or want it. And you can have it if you’ll willingly accept it.”
A curse? Why ever would she ask for a curse?
By some means, Tuesday managed to roll to her back. The red light surrounding him illuminated her cell. Her tormentor looked down over her. Pity from a demon? She’d thought being held under the river waters for long minutes had been her lowest. Gazariel’s pouting mouth reduced her to less than that low.
“If I am dead,” she whispered, “curse or not, it will not matter.”
“Oh, you’re going to live, witch. I will make sure of that. The question is, do you want to walk this earth a wise, smart, powerful witch who will never again be defeated by love?”
The demon placed his palm between her breasts. And Tuesday felt a darkness tickle into her heart.
“What is the curse?” she asked.
He leaned in and whispered in her ear, and his voice was melodious and warming. “You will never know true love again. Your soul will repel it, and even should it occur, the moment your lover realizes he loves you he will suddenly hate you. Perhaps even suffer a cruel malady or some such,” he added offhandedly.
Such a curse actually sounded sweet and tempting. She was lying here, near death, because of love. Fickle, cruel love. And she wanted the demon to save her. No one ever wanted to die. And she wasn’t singular for wishing it so. Even for the sacrifice of accepting such a deal. To never again know love? To feel the pain of what love could do to her?
To live so that she could walk away from the bastard Finnister McAdams and all those men who had wounded her soul deep?
With a nod, she said, “I’ll take the curse.”
The demon lifted her under the chin, dragging her body to sit up. With a forceful shove, Tuesday’s back hit the cell wall and she screamed at the pain as the sigil seared into her skin.
Gazariel apported out of the tiny cell. And she did not see him ever again.
Chapter 7
That was a heavy past to carry in one’s baggage. Ethan rubbed his jaw and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
A smirk to send away the horrible remembrance of the pain she had endured at her lover’s hand was all Tuesday could manage. “Don’t be. I took the curse willingly.”
“To never have love?”
She shrugged. “It was a means to escape the torture and to live.”
“But you can’t still want such a thing?”
She shrugged and looked aside. Ethan’s heart shivered as it had when she’d described the awful torture she’d endured at the hands of a witch hunter, a man she had loved.
He knew what it felt like to wield the whip. Never against a witch, of course. Their blood could have killed him back in the days when such violence had been acceptable, a means to survival. As a young vampire in his tribe, he’d been tested, asked to prove his alliances, most especially during the Blood Wars that had seen his tribe fighting the werewolves. Never had he regretted those acts more than now. Yet to mention it would not win any trust from the witch.
Could his actions since she’d arrived in Paris be construed as a subtle torture, a form of control? Surely. Hell, he didn’t want to think about this too much. It would only stifle the mission. He had to focus on the task at hand. Her tale was sad, but she had survived, and seemed the stronger for it.
She’d been punished for caring about another man. By a seemingly selfish and narcissistic demon, who had cursed her only because he could. And yet, she had willingly taken his dark curse in a moment of such weakness she could not have known the impact it would have on her. No one would wish to never know love. Even he, who was jaded by love, would take it if the time was right and his heart leaped.
“We can’t wander about the forest calling out for the demon,” she said as a means to indicate she was finished talking about her history.
The demon had taken advantage of her.
Now more than ever Ethan wanted to find that bastard, and once he gave up the book with the code, then Ethan would banish him to Daemonia, never to return. Was there a possibility he could have Gazariel take back the curse from Tuesday? With the forced expulsion to Daemonia, all curses, hexes and otherwise foul doings would be erased in the demon’s wake. She could be freed if he found the demon and kicked him the hell out of the mortal realm.
“You’re right about wandering around without a clear direction.” He started the engine and the car heater roared up again. “Tell me what to do.”
With a heavy sigh, she pointed behind her. “I think he’s probably living in one of those fancy apartments we passed. I mean, he’s not living in a tree. The man can obviously walk and live amongst the mortals without suspicion, like all the other demons that showed up on my map. They hold jobs, they live and love, they pass for human.”
“As we all do.”
“Exactly. So, I need to cast a GPS spell and that should lead us in the right direction.”
“A GPS spell? Like the map you cast at my place?”
“This one is more advanced. A witch has got to evolve with the technology, yeah?”
A witch, a vampire and every other paranormal species. The mortal realm was not designed for their sort. At least regarding being out and vocal about who and what they were. His species did what they had to do to survive.
“What do you need to cast such a spell?”
“Your cell phone, and the demon’s sigil. And a couple drops of blood.”
About to ask why they couldn’t use her phone, Ethan remembered she’d been taken from a bar in Massachusetts, with little more than her clothes and shoes. She probably didn’t have a phone.
He tugged the phone from his pocket and before he handed it to her, he asked, “Is this
going to brick my phone?”
“Nah.” She grabbed it and tapped the home button. “Maybe? No. I don’t know. I’ve never tried it before. I’m only just learning tech spells. But you’re rich. You can afford another.”
“What makes you think I’m rich?”
“You’re driving a Bimmer. And that apartment with the stunning view had to set you back a couple million.”
So he was well off. That happened when a vampire took care to invest over the centuries and kept a healthy portfolio across various international markets and banks. Tech stocks were a gold mine. His accountant was a vampiress who lived near the Eiffel Tower, and she was a gem.
“Just don’t set it on fire,” he said.
“I won’t. I think. Maybe?” She winked at him. “I do have water magic in case of emergency.”
Her mood had lifted since she’d told him her tale, and he was grateful for that. Though he’d never discount anyone’s suffering. There had been occasions he’d been hunted over the centuries—by slayers and werewolves—but nothing could compare to being caught and tortured. And to live to tell about it.
Tuesday set the phone on the raised center console between them and opened up her coat to tug free the ribbons at her shirt front. Those full breasts were a sweet tease, and Ethan had to remind himself he was on a mission. His attention swerved from her breasts to her lips, and back again.
Hell yes, he’d kiss her again. But thinking that made him wince as he sensed a swift boner could give him up. And the last thing he wanted to do with this witch was prove to her that he was the Richard she’d accused him of being.
“Got a knife?” she asked and extended her forefinger toward him. “I left my athame at your place.”
Ethan stared at the finger and all lusty thoughts were replaced by sudden horror. Maybe that limp-dick spell had a delay set on it because he was no longer hard. Because what she asked...
She needed blood for the magic. Blood magic was wicked and he’d known a lot of it might be needed on this adventure. He knew better than to challenge it, or try to interfere with it. But what should he expect from a dark witch?
