by Jaci Miller
She hung up, assuring him she’d call tomorrow after speaking with Lucien.
The remaining days business consumed her attention. It was after eight in the evening before her mind returned to the matter of Lucien Beck.
The lights of the Manhattan skyline shone through the glass wall of her office. She loved being at the office after hours. The night sky always cast a peacefulness over the bustling city, which calmed her mind and her spirit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t having the desired effect tonight.
Her fingers tapped rhythmically on her desk as her thoughts went to Lucien Beck. He’d changed over the past few months, and she worried she no longer held any leverage over him. If he’d used his powers on Dane inappropriately, he would have done so knowing he was breaking coven rules and if that was the case, she doubted he cared about the consequences.
Lucien had always been at the forefront of ensuring the magic in this city stay hidden. And those who practice magic do so within the boundaries set by the Protection of the Coven. One of their doctrine’s gravest violations is manipulating the free will of an unwilling individual. If Lucien Beck had resorted to such malice, then he was no longer the man she knew. Moreover, if what Nathan Callan says about his daughter is true and her powers are enhanced by ancient magic, then Lucien Beck has a dangerous weapon under his control.
Pulling a bottle from the desk drawer she poured herself a finger of scotch.
The bite of the alcohol soothed her nerves as the amber liquid slid down her throat.
Tomorrow she will find out Lucien’s true intentions.
Tonight, she will pray to the goddess that it isn’t too late.
Chapter 18
“I’m sorry Mr. Beck, she wouldn’t listen.”
Lucien looked up from his desk to see a very determined Celeste Winslow striding into his office followed by a very flustered Mrs. Ames, his personal assistant.
Lucien’s eyes sparked at the unexpected intrusion, but he forced a smile.
“It’s fine Mrs. Ames,” he said in a dismissive voice.
She nodded curtly, shot Celeste a scornful look, and hurried out of the office closing the door behind her.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this unannounced visit, Celeste?” he asked, leaning back in the tall-backed leather office chair.
“You haven’t been returning my calls and I’ve been worried. When I heard you were back in town, I thought I would check on you.” She gave him her brightest smile.
He stood and rounded the desk buttoning his dark blue suit jacket. “As you can see, I am quite well but regrettably I have plenty of work to catch up on and little time to spare. What can I do for you?”
Celeste’s head cocked. The tone of his voice was pleasant enough, but she sensed the irritation behind it he tried to conceal.
The early morning sun silhouetted him in a soft yellowy haze.
There was something different about him. In the few weeks, since she’d last seen Lucien, he’d changed. He was still gorgeous, confident, and intimidatingly charming, but now dark energy seeped from every pore.
“Where have you been?” The question came out harshly and she cringed. She sounded like his mother, accusing him, scolding him for his absence.
His pale blue eyes burned but his face remained a serene mask.
“As my assistant informed you, I was completing a business transaction that needed my personal attention. Now if there is nothing else, I must get back to work.”
He moved toward her gesturing to his office door.
Celeste’s eyes flashed. He was dismissing her. After all these years, he was treating her like the hired help.
As he came closer a warning sounded in her mind. Her skin prickled, a familiar sensation when her magic detected the spirit of the dead. With lightning reflexes, she reached out and grasped his hand before he could avoid her touch.
Searing pain scorched through her arm, and she dropped his hand. Her amber eyes widened as she stared at him. “Lucien, what have you done?”
A shadow flickered in his pupils and a sneer contorted his handsome face.
“I never could keep anything from you, Celeste.”
She rubbed the palm of her hand as burning pain throbbed under the skin. “Your energy, it’s no longer that of the living.”
Lucien shook his head. “Sometimes, your necromancer powers are a bit bothersome.”
“You know I don’t like using that term.”
“Don’t be so sensitive, Celeste.” His voice was forceful, and he began to pace. “You have the power to raise the dead, to command the spirits of those who no longer reside in this world. Calling yourself a diviner is so demeaning especially for a witch of your caliber.”
A sarcastic tone had crept into his voice.
“Call me what you will Lucien, but it is not I who have done the unspeakable. Your energy is no longer your own. So, I ask again, what have you done?”
“What I had to.”
For a moment Celeste thought she detected a hint of regret in his words, but his face remained a mask of superiority.
Her heightened senses reached toward him exploring the dark energy drifting around him. Somewhere deep in her psyche, a memory tugged at her conscious mind—an understanding of why Lucien’s energy was so different and why it didn’t hold the same composition as the living or the dead. Stained with the scent of death his aura was heavy with dark magic. She stiffened as the reason became clear. The part of his energy that was dead was not his own and sadly, she recognized the magic swirling inside it.
“Lucien, where is Lilith?”
“Dead.”
His callous attitude unhinged her. “Did you kill her?”
He lifted his eyes to meet hers. There was a soulless depth reflected in his pupils. “It wasn’t like that. Fate chose her. Her sacrifice will be the reason we survive what is to come.”
“We?” The person standing before her wasn’t the kind, caring, charismatic man, she’d known for the past decade. This man was cold, calculating, and void of empathy.
There was something sinister in the smile that crept across his face. “Those of us with magic.”
Celeste’s mind wrestled to unravel the meaning behind his words. Lilith’s blood and her death stained his energy, which could mean only one thing—Lucien had performed a blood ritual and, she had been his sacrifice. He’d forfeited Lilith’s life to gain immortality. Given his soul to a daemon and in return he’d gained dark powers. His energy was neither living nor dead, it was tainted—a soul in purgatory existing between two worlds. A wraith forever linked to the daemon to whom this twisted and unholy pact was made.
Blood roared in her ears as she stared at the man before her.
It all made sense now—Lilith’s disappearance, the drastic change in Lucien, his unyielding hold over Dane. He wasn’t just a glamour witch; he was much more, much worse. The power he’d gained from the blood pact had not only enhanced his natural abilities but also turned him into a predator. She’d encountered one of his kind before many years earlier, but the similarities were undeniable.
Her eyes filled with tears as the realization of what he had become slammed through her mind. Lucien Beck was an incubus!
“Why Lucien,” she stammered.
“Why what? Why did I kill Lilith? Why did I choose a dark path?” Aqua blue eyes simmered with frustration, and he didn’t even try to conceal the fury in his voice. “Because I’m tired of hiding in the shadows. Tired of looking up at a race who is so far beneath us.”
“But magic is flourishing, Lucien. It is much more accepted worldwide than ever before.”
“Yet we still hide in the recesses of this city, skulking like street dogs. Why? Because humans consider magic fun and games, something to pique their curiosity. They don’t know of its depths, its power. To them, it’s just people playing at
invoking goddesses and casting spells. There is no true understanding of the powers we possess or how deftly we wield them. We would be shunned if they did for their fear always overwhelms logic. It’s why the magical community has rules and why we hide our powers from mortals. After all this time, we still don’t believe we’ll ever be safe from persecution. We’re hypocrites.”
“Lucien, please.” Her voice was quiet as she attempted to reason with him.
His lip trembled but his eyes flared as he shook his head in defiance. “No more will I bow to the sullied masses. Magic will rise again, the earth will experience a reckoning, and those on the right side of history will rule.”
Lucien’s rhetoric astonished her but thinking back, it shouldn’t. He’d approached her almost a year ago concerned about the rumors. There’d been whispers of impending doom rippling through the magical community at the time—talk of an apocalyptic event; a reckoning. Like others who came before him, he had no concrete evidence. Other than some old writings he’d discovered in his family’s grimoire there was little else to support his conjecture. She hadn’t believed him and dismissed his concerns.
Staring into the stoic face of her old friend she realized how her actions were a betrayal, and most likely resulted in his turn to the dark side to find the truth.
“You can’t believe this to be true.”
“It’s the only thing I believe.”
As she looked into his tortured eyes, she recognized the man she knew was gone. This was no longer about coven violations or magical misdeeds and no consequence or reprimand would solve the problem. Lucien Beck was no longer one of them. He now played by his own rules.
Her mind reeled. “Lucien, where is Dane?”
A slight twitch appeared briefly under his eye.
“She is safe and will not be harmed, you have my word.”
“What is your plan?”
He smiled and his handsome face lit up the way it used to.
Seductive magic crept toward her. Her hand reached into the pocket of her pencil skirt fingers brushing over the cold metal of the protection amulet.
She came prepared. He would have no sway over her. Pulling it from her pocket she showed it to him.
He chuckled. “You were always one step ahead of everyone else Celeste. It’s why I admire you so.” Turning he walked back to his desk. Leaning against the dark mahogany top he crossed his arms eyes sparkling mischievously. “I suppose it won’t hurt if I tell you my plans.”
Celeste felt ill at the prospect of what he was about to tell her, and she eased herself into a chair in front of him.
“Do you remember a few years back when I showed you the Tierney family grimoire and the notes magically infused onto a few of the pages?”
“Yes,” she croaked remembering their conversation and her response. She’d listened intently, thanked him for the information, and then promptly pushed it aside as if it had no importance.
“There was something else I found in the grimoire. Something I didn’t share with you,” he said a cockiness in his tone. “I knew you didn’t believe me. Coven elders are so arrogant you deem yourselves untouchable. The control you think you have over the magic in this city is a delusion and you won’t acknowledge your weakness or face the fact that your rules are tyrannical. The Coven has become more of an oppressor of magic than mortals ever were.”
Lucien had begun to pace, his face flush as he spoke. “It certainly didn’t surprise me that you didn’t believe an ancient evil could rise. Something of this magnitude would minimize your power and weaken the Coven in the eyes of the masses. To ignore the possibility was so much better for you.”
Celeste’s eyes hardened and a film of perspiration made her ebony skin shimmer. “There is no truth to your ramblings, Lucien. The elders did not address your concerns with any conviction because you did not substantiate your claims. Do you know how often there are whispers concerning some impending doom or another? It wasn’t until the alchemists discovered the formula six months ago and breached the veil, did I realize your concerns were valid. Unfortunately, by then you were in Europe and not returning my calls.”
The last words were a jab, and she forced the words out like daggers.
Lucien walked back to his desk and shrugged. “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway Celeste. My destiny, like Dane’s, was written long ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our connection exists because of those worlds as does mine to the daemon. You see my ancestor, Vertigan Tierney, documented in our grimoire how to control the beast. The immortals from his time called it the ancient dark an entity like no other possessing immeasurable power.”
He leaned against the desk and shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. A dark shadow crossed his features. “Sadly, my ancestor fell victim to its power. Manipulated through greed and hate to do things he normally would not. When the immortals finally vanquished the beast to a prison under the earth, my ancestor was left with an innate connection to it. He was able to stay inside the beast’s mind and because of this he eventually came to understand how it thought, what drove its intentions, but most importantly how to control it.”
A shiver crawled up Celeste’s spine. “Are you telling me you are controlling an ancient entity?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Lucien walked around his desk. Opening the top drawer, he pulled out a small wooden box its sides intricately carved with runes. Unlatching the lid, he reached in and removed the contents—a small amulet, tarnished and marred, with a black jewel at its center.
Her eyes widened. “Is that a daemon stone?”
“It is. This is the reason I went to Europe. It took me months to track its whereabouts. I, at last, discovered it in a quaint Italian village, in the basement of a small cathedral concealed inside a secret compartment in the cornerstone. It had remained undetected for centuries but the clue to its location was in my family grimoire. For generations, my ancestors had been readying themselves for this day of reckoning. Preparing for the inevitable—the rise of evil dictated by the ancient prophecy.”
“And with this stone you have somehow managed to reach this daemon, to control it.”
“The daemon stone is just the beginning. You see, the ancient beast gets his strength from magic. It consumes it and feeds off its power but there isn’t enough magic on earth, so it adapted. It found a way to thrive off something there is an abundance of, hate.”
“And what did Lilith have to do with any of this. Why did she have to die?”
“Regrettably Lilith became a means to an end.” His voice hitched as he said her name. “I needed a conduit to create a gateway between worlds. A person with magic that the beast could link to. Sadly, it drained her quicker than I anticipated. Her magic was weak, and her body began shutting down. The link made her go mad and brought her to the brink of death. The blood ritual was in fact, merciful. Her sacrifice will restore the family name. You see only a Tierney can initiate the pact and only the blood sacrifice of a Tierney can bind it. It was my destiny and hers.”
He lifted his eyes to Celeste. “Lilith was my sister.”
Those words hung in the air as if frozen, and she gasped. He hadn’t found Lilith on the street by accident, he’d sought her out. He didn’t take her in out of the goodness of his heart he needed her magic, and Celeste had gotten it for him. Dormant for so many years Lilith’s powers had been difficult to draw out. The process had been physically painful for her and mentally distressing for them both. A tear slid down her cheek as she realized her part in Lilith’s life and death—she had readied her for the slaughter.
Her anger surged. “And Dane? What do you need from her?”
“She is the thread joining both worlds together. Ancient magic will free the ancient beast from its confines but only she can truly control it. Her destiny is not to become the savior of this world bu
t to become wrath, a source of hatred so powerful it will fuse the ancient magic to this world and create a vortex for the beast to exist within. With Dane by my side, the earth will be cleansed, and we will rule the remains for eternity.”
For all his calm confident demeanor Lucien sounded mad.
“Lucien, it’s impossible to truly control an evil that dark. Ancient magic is so different from ours. You are dealing with the unknown. There’s no way for you to know this beast from notes in your ancestor’s grimoire. Through the blood pact you’ve entered, you will ultimately succumb to its will. This won’t end the way you think.”
A dark shadow crossed over his handsome features and for a minute she thought she noticed uncertainty flash in his eyes.
Her voice softened. “Please Lucien, listen to yourself, this isn’t you. Release Dane and stop this madness before it goes too far.”
“The world as we know it will end. Piece by piece, city by city, country by country, the age of humans will soon be over. Magic will flourish and those who wield it will step out from the shadows, free to exist as they once did. Join me, Celeste. The darkness holds so many possibilities and you can unlock them all.”
An uncontrollable laugh bubbled up inside her.
“I know what the darkness holds Lucien, the souls of the dead, the lost, the tortured. A shadow world of pain, suffering, and fear—not possibilities. You want me to use my powers to bring that darkness to this world knowing it will destroy all that is good and just.” Her amber irises flashed, and she shook her head vehemently. “No, I would rather die.”
Lucien stood before her resentment twisting his face into a mask of hatred. His calm façade slipped, and he lashed out.
“If that is your decision Celeste then remember this. When you are gasping for your final breath do not forget that I tried to warn you. The prophecy is upon us, Celeste. Eight days until the full moon and then this world will be lost forever. The beast will rise, and mankind will succumb to the darkness that follows. Magic—dark magic—will once again rule the earth. If you choose not to accept what is to come, then you shall perish with the others.”
