"Where has she been all of this time?"
"Six feet under. Boaz killed her several years ago."
Lucien straightened and cocked his head, as if listening to something far away. "Liane's waking up. Do you want me to go in there with you?"
"It's best if it's just me."
"Be careful," he said, his face creased with worry. "I'll be close by if you need me."
"I'll be fine." Eve opened the door and slipped inside. Before she closed it, she glanced back at Lucien but he was already walking back down the hall.
She pursed her lips. The space between them was growing.
"It really is you."
Eve spun around. Liane was sitting up on a couch in the apartment's small living room, a blanket at her feet.
"How are you feeling?" Eve asked, her voice steady.
Liane moaned and touched her forehead lightly. "Like I've been hit by a semi. The world has turned upside down, and I don't know how to make sense of it."
"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Eve asked. She sat on the couch next to her, close but not too close.
Liane fell back into the cushions and sunk deep. "It feels like decades ago, a whole other life. Sometimes I wonder if I made it all up."
"What?"
"Boaz." Liane swallowed. "My imprisonment. The things he made me do."
Eve's chest tightened. So much cruelty and violence surrounded that monster. It was nauseating to think that she had once been so blind to the evil that festered inside him.
"Boaz took me after you left," Liane said. "Or I should say after you 'died.' That's what he told me anyway—that your parents had killed you. I didn't believe him at first. He was acting really strange, almost frantic. He was going on and on about needing magic, especially now that you were gone."
A chill, slow and cold, worked its way up Eve's spine.
"I told him that I wanted to go home, but he wouldn't let me. He locked me in a room and every night he'd sneak in, taking more than just my magic." Her voice cracked, and tears spilled onto her cheeks.
"What about your parents? Or William? Didn't anyone look for you?"
Liane shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't had any contact with the outside world until two days ago."
"How did you escape?"
"Sheer luck. Boaz hadn't been to see me for many weeks. During this time, I was able to build up just enough magic to break the lock and sneak out. I was lucky he wasn't home. That's when I went for the monastery, having heard of it from William once."
"Why not your family?"
She dropped her head back into the plush of the sofa, her expression blank. "They're dead. I tried calling them after I escaped, but the number didn't work. After a few more calls, I finally got a hold of a distant cousin who told me the news."
"Oh, Liane," Eve said. "I'm so sorry! And William? Did you try and call him?"
She turned her head toward Eve, her bottom lip trembling. "I don't know if I want to go back to my life with him. The world was so dark then, so—"
Her shoulders shook, and the tears fell more freely. Eve took her in her arms and let Liane cry on her shoulder. Eve knew what she was feeling. All the horrible guilt, the shame of past deeds. Eve vowed right then and there to take care of Liane, to protect her from Boaz.
After several minutes, Liane's tears subsided. She pulled away from Eve, and asked, "Is it okay if I stay here for a while? I have nowhere else to go. Plus, I'm afraid Boaz is searching for me. I can't go back to him. Ever. I'd rather die."
Eve clasped Liane's hands. "You are welcome here for as long as you want. As for Boaz, you won't have to worry about him for long. I'm going to eliminate him once and for all."
17
Minutes passed by. Lucien was painfully aware of each one that Eve was with Liane. He didn't trust that witch. There was something in her eyes, a light missing, perhaps. Maybe her captivity by Boaz's hands had caused this. That's what Eve would say, but Lucien wasn't so sure.
Charlie cried out from the medical room next door. Lucien leaned forward from his chair in the small office and peered through the open door. A doctor was applying bandages to Charlie's face.
Charlie growled. "That hurts."
"Good," the doctor said. "Maybe next time you won't page me in the middle of the night. I have a life outside of here, you know. Now hold still."
Ten minutes later, the gray-haired doctor, who was in sweats and t-shirt, walked out. "If you plan on more injuries like that in the future, then you need to stock that room better."
"Thanks for your help tonight," Lucien said. "We'll try not to bother you again."
The doctor mumbled something and walked away.
"Aren't you going to come in?" Charlie called to him.
"Depends. How bad is your face?"
"Some might say it's an improvement."
Lucien chuckled and stood. Charlie was sitting up on an old hospital bed. Bandages covered half of his face and over his left eye.
"Where's Eve?" he asked.
"Upstairs with Liane," Lucien said. "What do you think of this new witch?"
Charlie reached under the lower part of the bandage and scratched his cheek. "I'm not sure. I tried reading her at the library, but got nothing."
"Like she's blocking you?" Lucien asked, hopeful. If she had something to hide, then maybe he could convince Eve to be more careful around her.
"I wouldn't say that quite yet. I'll visit with her later to see if I can sense anything." Charlie paused. "Eve seemed eager to help her. Does that bother you?"
"Eve has a big heart. I'm afraid it might blind her to Liane's true motives." Lucien crossed the room. "But that's not what's really bothering me."
Charlie swung his legs over the bed and sat up, swaying slightly. "You're wondering what's going on between Henry and Eve. I noticed it, too. There's something they aren't telling us."
"And whatever it is, it's stopping us from going after Boaz."
Charlie lowered to his feet and slowly stood. "Well, we can't keep waiting. We need to take action, whether it’s against the VP or Boaz."
"Are you prepared to kill the Vice President of the country if necessary?"
Charlie sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. "I'll need to speak to him first. Maybe none of this has been his choice, and he's a pawn like so many others of Boaz's acquaintances. But if he's on Boaz's side, I'll take him out myself."
"Good. He'll need to be dealt with either way, but that's only a temporary solution. We need to kill Boaz."
"I agree. Give me a few hours of sleep, and then we'll make Henry and Eve tell us what's going on." Charlie opened the door. "I'll be on the couch in my office if you need me. Are you going to see Eve?"
"She's with Liane, but I'll be close." He followed Charlie to his office. "Do you have headphones I can borrow?"
"Sure." Charlie rummaged through a drawer in his desk until he removed a pair of white ear buds. He handed them to Lucien. "Don't trust yourself not to eavesdrop?"
Lucien grabbed them and stuffed them into his pocket. "Something like that."
He headed back upstairs, stopping in his apartment only long enough to grab a folding chair. He placed it next to Eve's door and sat down. Now that they had captured Eve's mother, there was a very good chance that Boaz would believe Sable and think Eve was alive. He could come for her at any moment.
Eve's voice was easy to hear just beyond the door. She was talking with Liane about her aunt's spell book. There was an edge to her voice, the same sharpness that has been there since she had returned.
Respecting her privacy, Lucien slipped the headphones into his ears and cranked the volume on his phone. The orchestral music playing was filled with percussion and stirring melodies, infused with Gregorian chant style vocals. It reminded him of Ireland. The music took him to another place and gave him a temporary respite from his worry for Eve.
His eyes closed. He didn't dream, but he did remember long ago memories, and not the bad ones that i
nvolved his father's obsessive and cruel demands or his brother Aiden's sadistic experiments. These memories were of his mother. When he was little, he would help her in the forest gathering berries or mushrooms. She would often tell him stories of great warriors who feared nothing in the face of evil.
A soft caress brushed over his lips, warming him from the inside out. He opened his eyes.
Eve was kneeling in front of him, smiling big. She kissed him again, long and hard. He ran his fingers up through her long hair and pulled her closer to him so she was straddling him on the chair. All of him tingled and hummed with an intense heat that he was afraid might consume him.
He gently pushed her back. "What is going on?"
"I did it, Lucien. I found a way to get rid of Boaz." Her smile grew.
"How?"
She spoke fast. "There was a spell at the end of Ellenore's book that will put Boaz into an eternal sleep. It's complicated, but with your and Henry's help, I think we can do it. I wasn't sure what it was at first, but Liane recognized the spell. She even helped me finish it. I think that's what Ellenore was working on just before Boaz killed her. He must've known."
"Whoa! Slow down," he said. "You want to put Boaz to sleep? Why don't we just kill him?"
The smile on her face disappeared and she stood, leaving Lucien's lap cold. "There's something I need to tell you."
"Is this the secret you and Henry have been keeping?"
She nodded and walked a few steps down the hall before turning back around. "When I confronted Sable the other day, she confirmed something Anne had said about Boaz."
"What?"
"Boaz can't be killed until he's made whole." Speaking those words hurt her mouth.
Lucien stood up next to her. "What does that mean?"
"The necklace he made me wear. It holds all his powers, a piece of him. And as long as it exists, Boaz can't die."
"Then we'll destroy the necklace."
"I already tried many times, but it's indestructible."
Lucien paced the hall, thinking hard, but his thoughts refused to go where Eve was trying to guide them.
"What are you saying?" he asked, at length.
Eve took hold of his hand as he walked past. "Boaz will need that trapped part of him restored before anyone could ever kill him, and the only way for that to happen is for a powerful witch to wear the necklace, access those powers, and return them back to Boaz."
His legs nearly buckled. "But for that to happen, that would mean—"
"I would have to be that witch," Eve whispered.
He grabbed her arms fiercely. "You can't! That's your greatest fear, giving up your agency."
"And that's why I've been avoiding you." She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. "If it meant saving lives, then I'd have to go to Boaz and restore his powers. My only hope was that you and Henry would then be able to save me and together we could kill Boaz."
She took a deep breath. "I knew you would never let me do this, so I kept the secret from you. But things have changed now. We don't need to kill Boaz, just put him to sleep, then bury him for eternity or something. It will work. It has to!"
Lucien stared down at her, breathing hard. He could've lost her again. He pulled her into a tight embrace. She was right. He would never have let her go.
"Are you sure about this spell?" Lucien asked.
"Yes. It really is good. We'll need some supplies, like the untainted blood from a few animals, but those shouldn't be too hard to obtain. The hardest part of all of this will be convincing Henry that it will work."
Lucien's whole body tensed when he thought of Henry, and how he had kept this information from him. But even worse was the fact that he'd actually let Eve go to Boaz. He and Henry were going to have to come to an understanding.
Eve reached up and touched his cheek with her warm palm. His eyes went to hers. "We can do this. I promise, and once it's over, there will be nothing left between us. We can live our lives. Go anywhere we want. Do anything."
"Let's go find Henry and convince him right now."
Eve lifted on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly. "We can do that in a while. Let's take some time, just you and me. I've missed your touch so much."
Lucien's mouth pressed upon hers, deeply, lovingly. His whole world was right here in his arms, fragile and yet unbreakable. There was nothing in this world he wouldn't do for this woman. He scooped her up and carried her to his apartment down the hall. For right now, in this moment, it was just them.
Tomorrow they would take on Boaz.
18
"Where in the hell am I supposed to get untainted spider's blood? And what does that even mean?" Rick asked.
He was leaning against the wall of the conference room just behind Eve. She knew some of the spell's ingredients would be difficult to obtain, but they didn't have any other choice.
"You're a vampire, Rick," Alana said in a chair opposite Eve. "Can't you suck it from one?"
"Untainted just means that it can't have anything else with the blood," Charlie said. "So we can't squish a spider and use it because it will have other parts of the spider in it too. Check with the surrounding colleges. There has to be an entomologist at one of them. In fact, a bet there's a whole lab full of spiders somewhere you could take blood from."
Eve swiveled around to face Rick. "But it can't be any spider. The spell requires the blood of a spider that hibernates. Not all spiders do that."
He moaned. "Why can't I have one of the easier ones?"
"Everyone has to do their part," Charlie said. "Besides, I hate spiders. What else do you need, Eve?"
"The blood from three other animals that hibernate. I figure we can easily sneak into a zoo somewhere for that."
"I can do it tonight," Lucien said. Under the table, he stretched out his legs and his knee brushed hers.
Eve sucked in at the unexpected touch as memories of their last several hours together sent a chill racing across her body. It was a time she would never forget.
"Actually, I'll do it," Alana said.
Everyone in the room looked at her.
"What?" she asked. "So I have a thing for animals. What's the big deal?"
"How do you plan on drawing Boaz out?" Henry asked as he moved from the corner of the room. He had been unusually quiet the last couple of hours, ever since Lucien had spoken to him privately. Eve had tried to stop Lucien, but it was useless.
"With the help of our new guest. Liane, my old friend," Eve said. "She's going to go to the club, Eclipse, and get cozy with that guy, Lex, the one who finds witches for Boaz. She's going to confess everything to him in a drunken stupor, especially the part about finding the great Eve Segur. She will tell him that I've been hiding out in upstate New York in a remote cabin." She glanced at Henry and Lucien. "I have no doubts that Boaz will come, and when he does, all three of us will need to focus our power on Boaz and one of us will have to shoot a dart containing the blood of the animals. Once that's done, I will say the spell. Within seconds, Boaz should fall into an eternal sleep."
Alana propped her legs up onto the table. "Aren't you afraid that Boaz will take your magic again?"
"Dmitri taught me how to stop him from stealing my powers. Boaz is no longer a threat to me."
"You hope," Alana said.
"I know."
"I don't like this plan," Henry said. Eve opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her. "However, I'm willing to try it your way. It's the least I can do."
Lucien tensed beside her. She wondered if Henry's sudden compliance had something to do with Lucien's talk with him.
"I'll be there with several men," Charlie said. "Just in case the fight becomes more than you guys can handle."
Henry shook his head. "It can only be us three. We've trained ourselves to block Boaz's magic, making us invisible to him. He will sense anyone else."
"You can't be serious," Charlie said. "It's way too risky."
"Look, everyone, this plan will work," Eve said. "I just kn
ow it."
"When to you want to do this?" Lucien asked. It was the first time he'd spoken. Eve wished she could reassure him more, but there simply wasn't time.
"As soon as possible. Boaz probably already suspects something since we captured Sable. If we don't act first, he will."
"I'll have the blood ready by midnight tonight," Alana said. "Rick?"
Rick shrugged. "I'll get the spider's blood somehow."
"Good." Eve met the gaze of everyone in the room in turn, finally settling on Lucien. "This will work."
He stared at her, his gaze hard and lips tight.
Alana slapped the table and stood up. "Let's get to work."
Everyone stood and left them room. Eve moved to follow them, but Lucien stopped her before she could escape.
"Are you sure you trust Liane?"
She nodded. "She wants him gone just as much as I do. Besides, if she wanted to betray me, why hasn't she already told Boaz where I am? And why would she help me write a spell that could destroy him?"
"Not destroy, just put to sleep. We don't even know how long the spell will last for."
"Enough!" She balled her hands up tight to keep them from shaking. "I have to believe this will work. The alternative is too frightening. Don't you understand?"
His expression softened, and he searched her eyes. She hoped he'd see how desperate she was. This was her only hope.
"I'm sorry," he said and pulled her into his arms. "This is a good plan. I'm sure it will work just as you expect. Everything's going to be okay."
She let him hold her long enough for her heart to steady, but not a beat longer. There was much to do.
***
By ten o'clock that night, all the ingredients for the spell had been collected. Rick had the most trouble and eventually ended up climbing under an old home in search of a brown recluse spider to take blood from with a tiny syringe. He found one, but not before being bit. Good thing he was a vampire and healed quickly.
"How do I look?" Liane asked.
Eve turned around. Liane stood in her kitchen wearing a short black skirt and tank top. "Like you're going clubbing."
The Devil's Soldier Page 11
