Her hand crept to her stomach and clearly felt the small life growing within.
Damn.
She should tell Jack…but no.
They’d already had that discussion. Jack didn’t want a child.
Did she? She hadn’t really thought this through. But she had assured Jack she’d take care of this situation if it arose.
The wine had been to relax them, help Jack get some sleep. They had a busy day ahead, and if they didn’t relax a bit, the amorous man would just drag her back into a web of lovemaking until the sun rose. They’d both regret that, but probably not much.
She reached for a jar in her cabinet and laced Jack’s glass of wine with the crystalline powder it contained. It would help Jack sleep soundly and give her the opportunity to do what she had to do without the possibility of him asking what she was doing.
She refused to lie to him.
Taking cautious sips from her glass, she shared the wine and joked with Jack for about fifteen minutes before the herb took effect. His glass was almost empty when he slumped. Quickly snatching the glass from his fingers, she set it on the nightstand, tucked him into bed, and returned to her kitchen.
His soft snores emanated from the other room as she stood in front of her herb cabinet. She spent long minutes pondering as she searched through her stock of fresh and dried herbs.
Both blue and black cohosh sat in front of her on the cabinet, as well as pennyroyal and angelica. The dosage would be necessarily strong, and probably make her ill for a day or so. The after effect would be…
Liberating? Depressing?
Her hand went instinctively to her stomach. She had shrugged off her late period as stress, her nausea as a mild flu, but deep down she’d suspected. Tonight, she had felt, strong and healthy, that small spark of life growing within her.
They’d been careful in their lovemaking, always using protection. Jack had never forgotten. He’d stressed how important it was to him not to have children. No matter how deep or enthralling their lovemaking had become, he’d never forgotten protection. It had to have been that first night, that one wild night under the full moon in the circle of protection. Protection? Hell, she’d have to come up with a new name for it now.
She ground the herbs that would create the abortifactant. It was so much easier to hand the mixture to someone else—someone who’s decision had been clear and firm. She’d done it on several occasions for friends in trouble. She was a strong believer in a woman’s right to choose. Now, however, it was her choice.
Her child. Of course she wanted children. She’d always wanted children. Sometime. In the future. This one was just so…inconvenient. Was that a legitimate reason? Inconvenience?
His child. Did he have a say? Hadn’t he already told her how he felt? Did that mean she didn’t have to tell him now?
What if she kept the child? Her child. His child. She couldn’t tell him. Ever. She’d have to distance herself from him. Break off whatever it was that had been growing between them the past weeks. She would lose Jack.
But if she did this, just to keep him, it would always be between them. A dark shadow, a lie, something she would have to keep from him.
She loved him. She realized it then. She needed him like she needed to breathe. If this is what it took to have him in her life, then she should just swallow it and keep it hidden forever. He’d never know. She’d never tell him.
With determination she grabbed the vial and brought it to her lips. But before she could drink, her front door exploded.
Chunks of wood and broken glass rained down in her living room. She turned and the shock of what she saw made her drop the vial she’d been bringing to her lips. It shattered on the tile of her kitchen floor.
A Ballor demon stood in the doorway. Behind it she could make out four or five lesser demons. Kolthas, Falgolites, and a huge Droga.
An attack. Why? Were they after Jack?
She conjured up a field of force around her. She wasn’t sure if it would protect her from a Ballor, but it was the best she could do.
The Demon Lord stepped over her threshold, and the lesser demons flooded in around him. “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” the demon growled, its leering eye scanning her naked form. “Please, make it hard.”
Shimmering pools, crystal balls, shining mirrors. The seer views beyond place, beyond time. – Arcanist Pathways by R. Bob Elway, 1965
Chapter 13
Jack woke with the morning sun on his face. There was a slight ringing in his ears, but he felt refreshed. He spied the almost empty wine glass on the nightstand. Last night? Oh yeah. Anna. That incredible negligee. Their lovemaking had been so intense, he’d been hoping for a second round. He must have been more tired than he thought, to have fallen asleep on just one glass of wine.
He reached his hand out, expecting to find Anna there, craving the feel of her smooth skin, but Anna’s side of the bed was empty. Sunshine spilled brightly through the bedroom window, splashing across the bed. He checked the clock on the bedside table. Eight thirty-six. Better get up and get going. Just because he no longer had a full-time job, didn’t mean he could sleep in. Anna had a lot of tests she still wanted to run on his new abilities.
A strange, almost eerie silence filled the house. Where was Anna? Probably out back in her garden. She loved her garden.
He felt groggy, groggier than he should have even after the wine and sex last night. Maybe he was coming down with a cold. Squinting as the morning light flooded through the lace curtains, he rolled out of bed, found his boxers and jeans, and pulled them on before padding toward the bedroom doorway. The light coming in from the living room was even more blinding, and he had to squint more to see. Why were his eyes so sensitive this morning?
He squinted deeper, trying to sharpen the hazy glow that seemed to surround everything in his sight. He hobbled through the bedroom doorway and into the living room beyond. The front door stood wide open and the window shades were up making it even brighter in there. Why would Anna have left the front door open?
His foot caught on something and he went sprawling among the debris. At least the thump helped clear his head. He’d tripped over a bookcase that lay across the bedroom doorway—its contents spilled out around it. The dining room table was upended and its chairs were lying on their sides, one of them little more than a broken heap of kindling. The front door wasn’t open, it was lying in chunks on the floor around him. The place looked like a battle zone.
“Anna?” he shouted, but only silence came back. What was he to do? Anna didn’t even have a telephone for him to call 911. She only used a cell phone, which she always kept on her. Jack had never been able to afford a cell phone. It had been all he could do to keep his old landline at home.
He made his way toward the kitchen. It looked to have been spared the ravages of the living room. He needed a drink of water. He needed to clear his head. Hell, he needed a cup of coffee. But most of all, he needed to find Anna.
Then he spied Anna’s cell phone on the kitchen counter. He dove for the small unit, tapping the screen with every intention of dialing 911. There on the display he saw the small flashing icon.
“Message from Nathan Gray,” it said on the display.
Highlighting the icon, Jack punched the call-back button. He waited impatiently as the phone rang three times before the old man answered.
“Anna,” Nathan Gray said. “Did you get my message?” The old man had a desperate tone in his voice.
Mr. Gray, this is Jack Hughes. Anna’s gone. Her house is trashed. I think she’s in trouble.” Jack’s heart raced.
“Damn it,” the old man swore. “I was too late. Stay there. Do not call the police. I will be right over.”
The line went dead and Jack’s stomach knotted. He got himself a glass of water, then splashed more water on his face at the kitchen sink. He watched the water run down the drain. The same drain he’d fixed just two months ago when he’d reconnected with Anna. In that time, she�
��d come to mean the world to him. What could have happened to her? And how could he have slept through it?
Jack looked around the wreckage in the house. Anna would be devastated. There was so much broken. Inside he was longing to clean up, make the place look as nice as possible for when she returned. She would be returning. She had to.
On another level he knew he shouldn’t touch a thing. The police would want to inspect the crime scene as it was. He knew that much. Why hadn’t Nathan Gray wanted him to call the authorities? With a sigh he made his way back to the bedroom to finish getting dressed.
It was less than fifteen minutes later that Nathan Gray arrived, along with JJ, Kelly Grant and Salina Fry.
“I feared as much,” Nathan said, scanning the devastation. “They have taken her.”
“Who’s taken her?” Jack asked urgently.
“Don’t worry Jack,” Miss Grant said, making her way to him as he stood in the middle of the mess. “We’ll get Anna back.”
Salina was holding a cloth covered bundle as she and JJ made their way toward the upended dining room table.
“Here,” JJ said, looking at Miss Grant.
Miss Grant motioned toward Jack. “Help me right the table.”
He followed her across the room toward Salina and JJ. After they tipped the table back into place, Salina placed her bundle on it. With a swift motion JJ took the cloth wrapping from a large crystal ball.
JJ’s eyes went blank and she began to chant. The crystal ball clouded, then the mist swirled in the sphere. Suddenly an image crystallized within the globe—a picture of this same room, but as it had been before, with the furniture in good repair and in its place.
In the image, Anna was pouring wine into two glasses. Was this last night? She added something to one of them—the one she later handed to him. She’d drugged him?
The scene jumped ahead then, Selena adding her voice to the chant. Jack saw himself sleeping, Anna tucking him into bed and kissing him on the forehead before she made her way back to the kitchen. She was mixing something then, taking herbs from her cabinet and grinding them. Though there was no sound, Jack still jumped as he saw the front doorway smashed in.
“That’s a Ballor,” he said.
Anna had told him all about the Demon Lords and how they ruled over the lesser demons. This one looked huge, easily over seven feet tall. Golden orange, scaly skin, the thing had large, bat-like, purple wings. How could something like that exist in the world and never be found out?
The Ballor was accompanied by other demons, each just as strange as the next. The whole group of them attacked Anna. Jack knew he had to have been drugged. There was no way he’d have slept through this. Why had Anna done that to him? Had she known this would happen?
The demons in the crystal ball captured Anna. They tied her up and dragged her out the front door.
“Stay with her, JJ,” Nathan said. “We need to know where they’ve taken her.”
The demons made their way to where two black SUVs were parked. The demonic forms shimmered and suddenly they were all humans.
“They use illusions, Jack,” Miss Grant said, “to walk among us.”
Amazed and horrified, he watched as they dumped Anna into the back of one of the vehicles and drove off. The vision in the crystal ball followed, flying above the vehicles as they sped down the road. The place they took her, he recognized—a mansion, in the hilly, forested outskirts of town, owned by one of the rich, corporate types.
He’d stumbled across it while out hiking one day. Armed guards walking the grounds had him backing away quickly.
“We’ll need a strike force,” Nathan Gray said.
“I’m on it,” Miss Grant answered, pulling a cell phone from her pocket.
JJ and Selena stopped chanting and the crystal ball cleared. They came out of their trances, both blinking incessantly and shaking their heads.
Nathan Gray turned to Jack.
“I have a plan,” the old man said. “But I’m going to need your help.”
A Demon Lord’s soul is as dark as a Falgolite wing – Know Your Demons by Olive Lombardo, 2009
Chapter 14
Quexlon chuckled at his son, who was trying to bandage up a tattered hole in his wing. This witch had been a formidable opponent and his son, Kwinlox, had paid a price for underestimating her.
“The witch gave you a bit of a fight, did she, Kwinlox?” the Demon Lord asked. Three of his lesser demons were trying to help the young Demon Lord but, in his frustration, Kwinlox kept pushing them away.
“It will be months before I can fly again, damn her.”
Kwinlox was unused to losing. Even though he’d secured the witch, he’d paid a heavy price. “Ha, you still made out better than Galven or Tsum.” Two of his lessers had died in the attack.
Quexlon found it amusing whenever a lowly human managed to mess up his troops a bit. It did them good and kept them on edge. So what if he lost a few lessers now and then? They were replaceable. In fact, he enjoyed replacing them.
He slapped his youngest son on the back as he passed, knowing the slap would hurt like hell. Serves him right. Kwinlox would have to learn how to dodge faster if he wanted to continue to function as a general in his father’s army. His inheritance was nowhere assured, but he had secured the woman, and that had moved him up a bit in the Demon Lord’s eyes.
Now, that woman…the summoner…his summoner. The witch had spirit; he’d give her that much. He’d have to break her, of course, but that would make the breaking vastly more fun.
Quexlon had been disappointed when his wife pointed out that the witch was pregnant. The woman was a fine-looking specimen and he would’ve enjoyed adding her to his harem right away. But right now, he needed her cooperation. Her abilities as a summoner were more important than any breeding potential she might have.
If she could summon demons from their home world, it would build his army much faster than his harem was currently, and right now he needed a larger army to expand his holdings and defend his turf from encroaching Demon Lords to the north and west. After three thousand years of demonic infestation, this world was starting to get a bit crowded. And the demon gate was due to open soon, which meant even more demons streaming in, looking for opportunities.
As he pounded down the hallway toward his throne room, Quexlon considered how he would use the witch’s pregnancy against her. Humans tended to be somewhat sentimental toward babies and pregnancy. Quexlon laughed. That would be convenient.
* * *
Anna shivered, though she was not sure if it was from the chill in the room or fear. She stood naked in a large, richly furnished room. Behind her was a hoard of lesser demons. In front of her, sitting on ornate thrones, sat the members of the Ballor family. Anna had studied the hierarchy of a demon lair. The Ballor Lord and his Lady would sit on the highest level. Currently a female Ballor occupied one of the two topmost thrones. Any sons would have thrones on the second tier, and there were two of these, one now occupied, the other vacant.
Female Ballor had no status until they married. Stupid culture.
A door opened in the back of the room and in strode the largest Ballor demon Anna had ever seen. He quickly ascended to the topmost throne to join his Lady. A cruel smile and leering eyes stared down at her.
“Ah, my little witch,” he said, “we have much to discuss.”
The big Demon Lord was followed by the Ballor that had captured her. That Ballor was nursing his many wounds. He took the vacant seat on the second level, and the look he shot Anna spoke volumes as to what he would do to her if allowed.
“We have nothing to discuss,” Anna replied defiantly. “Let me go.”
She put more confidence in her tone than she felt and doubted it would have any effect on the Demon Lord. But false courage was better than none.
The demon only laughed. “Oh, no, little witch,” he said, “letting you go is not part of any bargain we can make. But life might be, if you’re smart.”
Life? Ballor had little regard for life, and she doubted she could trust any deal she could make with this bastard.
“I know that you can summon from the other side,” he continued. “It took weeks for my spies to find you, but that little glade out in back of your house spoke volumes about what you have been up to.” His gravelly chuckle sent a chill up Anna’s spine.
“You will summon me an army,” he continued. “As many and as often as you can from my home world. In return, your life here will be somewhat easier than my other slaves.”
Anna stood defiant. “I will not bring any more of your kind into our world. You are a blight that needs to be eradicated.”
The Ballor’s great brow furrowed. The creature’s aura was dark red…evil and filled with hate. “This part is not up for negotiation. You will summon me an army, one way or another.”
A chill ran down Anna’s spine. Violence and murder were a way of life for these creatures. If she couldn’t escape, she’d die here sooner or later.
“Never,” Anna said, accepting her fate. “You’ll have to kill me.”
Demon Lords captured human women as breeding slaves. They were responsible for a huge amount of human trafficking. The lesser demons were the product of Ballor males mating with these women. In this way the Demon Lords built up their forces. Yet, summoning demons from the other side would certainly be faster, and she refused to be a part of any of it.
There had to be at least thirty lesser demons scattered around the room, in addition to the three Ballor Lords and the Lady in front of her. She was completely outnumbered, with no hope of victory. Still, she’d fight—take out as many of them as she could before they finished her.
She reached out with her senses, searching for a pool of power she could tap. Calling forth her most powerful spells she resigned herself to her fate. But there was no power here. The Demon Lord’s lair was surrounded by a dampening force. Her senses battered against the shield but could not get through to the power pools beyond. Anna was helpless.
Awakening Page 8
