by Jen Ponce
I ran at him, but the first guy grabbed my foot and sent me sprawling. The second guy jumped on me, squashing me against the gravel so that the stones bit into the flesh of my face. He yanked my hands back, cuffing them with metal-threaded plastic. Probably runed, too. Fuck them all.
“You little cunt. Tried to fucking stab me? Stabbed my partner? You’ll be going to jail forever.” He rolled me over and pulled out his phone. If he got my pic, I was screwed. I kicked it out of his hands, and it flew to the edge—but not over the side—of the building. Shit. He doubled up his fist and hit me in the stomach, but it was a shit punch and I took it like a champ. Then I kicked him in the nuts, doubling him over, and rolled to my knees. I ran for the phone, but he jerked me back by my hair. “Kill you,” he wheezed.
I head-butted him and he staggered. I dropped to my base, shifted, and roundhouse kicked him right off the damned rooftop. His scream was music to my ears, and I poked my head over the side to watch him splat. It was satisfying. I heard it from way up here.
I moved away from the ledge and back to the first guy. I squatted, stepped through my hands to get them to the front and then searched him for the cuff removers. They were in one of his many pockets. I snipped the strips around my wrists and then searched his neck for a medallion. It was there, under his shirt, the crystal pale yellow. I used a knife to cut my thumb then smeared my blood on the thing before breaking it.
The demon that appeared wasn’t as shapeless as the one that had vomited free of Laydi’s little boy. I could tell it was a he, for instance. Why were they always nude? “Why did you set me free?” he hissed.
“Because I’m nice that way.”
Another growl. “What do you want?”
I gestured, and he followed me to the edge of the building. “Can you retrieve that medallion for me without getting seen?” People were already gathered around the body, most taking pictures, no one looking too beat up over the fact that a Keeper was lying dead on the ground.
The demon’s form wavered, then he disappeared. I shrugged. Either he helped or not. I had to get out of there before the magi figured out two of their Keepers were missing.
But first, I had to figure out how they’d found me. I stripped down, taking all my remaining clothes off to inspect them. No tracker runes, no sticky spells, nothing. Finally, I took Harriet’s medallion back from the dead Keeper. It was the only thing left. But there wasn’t anything on it that I could see leading them my way.
Unless it was the demon itself.
I debated, then decided to break the crystal. I pulled my clothes back on, then cut my thumb, smeared the thing with blood, and slammed my knife hilt down.
The explosion knocked me on my ass again. When he coalesced, the demon didn’t jump on me the way the hellhound had. He looked to be made of grey mist, his features the suggestion of a man. A very handsome man. His body was lean, muscled, and he was, like the hellhound, completely naked.
And, like the hellhound, he was well-endowed.
“Who are you?” he asked, his accent cultured, foreign, and quite sexy.
“The chick who let you out of your little cage.” I went back to the side and glanced over. The mundane police were below, and I hastily moved away from the edge when I saw a few point upward. “I’d like to get to know you, but we need to get the Hell out of here.”
He didn’t say another word, just vanished.
I sighed. “We, asshole. I said we. Would it have hurt you to take me with you?”
I dropped the broken medallion and took off the way I’d come, wanting to get off the rooftops before anyone thought to come up and look around. Poppy was already going to lecture me from now until forever about what she’d been seeing. I couldn’t get caught by anyone else or she’d yell at me into the afterlife, too.
I made my way down a different fire escape and crept home, feeling the pounding I’d taken from both Harriet and the Keepers. Poppy was waiting for me, and she didn’t even yell, just yanked me into a tight hug. “I thought you were dead, like at least twice.”
“I was fine,” I said. The Keepers had been Elite Order and they hadn’t served me my ass only because I’d gotten lucky. “Sorry.”
“You should be sorry. I can’t even stay and yell at you. I have to go to work. Take some pain pills and get some sleep. I’ll berate you later.” She hugged me again. “I’m so glad you didn’t die.”
“Me too. I’m sorry.”
“Korri.” Her voice broke and I reached for her. “Sorry, too. I don’t want you to die for me.”
“Poppy.”
“No. You listen. You can’t take these kinds of chances for me. I couldn’t live with myself if you died avenging me.”
I pressed my lips to her forehead, then leaned against her. “You’re my friend. My very best friend. And I would do anything for you. Up to and including dying for you. But,” I said, heading her off when she was about to protest, “I took stupid risks today and I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.”
“Thank you.” She checked her watch. “I’ve got to go. Shit. Bye. Try not to throw yourself into danger for a bit, okay?”
I locked the door behind her and leaned against it, thoughts on the demon who’d popped out of Harriet’s medallion. He was different than the one who’d come out of the Keeper’s crystal, but he hadn’t been complete like the hellhound. He was still somewhat misty. What did that mean, exactly?
Maybe whatever it was the magi did to the demons drained them, took from them until they faded away.
I wouldn’t put it past the magi to do something so heinous. Demons, as far as I knew, were magical creatures like witches. We all were inherently magical which must have pissed off magi. They weren’t born with any particular magic, but they learned to conjure it, learned to find magic and bind it to their wills. Witches could start a fire with their inherent magic. Magi had to learn the spells, learn to tap into the magic all around us, and then practice a shit ton to start the same fire. I supposed it had to be frustrating, but they’d leveled the playing field, hadn’t they?
Leveled it and buried the rest of us in the rubble.
10
MALPHAS
I commanded forty legions of demons as a Great Prince of Hell, and those bastards reduced me to a dogsbody. They will pay.
I was free.
I was free and Hell was empty. Or as good as. The bastards had stripped us of everything, had stolen our people, my people, and I wasn’t sure we would recover. Not since they’d learned how to find our true names and summon us, entrap us, enslave us.
I wanted to rage, wanted to destroy everything in my path but I couldn’t even do that, now could I? Not as I was, a shadow of the demon I used to be. They’d pieced me out, unable to contain me in a single crystal.
I had to find the other pieces of myself. I had to be whole again.
“Malphas?”
I turned to see Lux, his red eyes solemn. We had fought battles shoulder to shoulder, Lux and I. “Are they all gone?”
“Most, yes. I visited the cavern of souls to see.” His face was haunted and as I didn’t wish to stab myself with that pain, I didn’t ask him how many, or who.
“Have you protected yourself?”
“Yes.”
I sighed. The Chaos of the Void was dangerous business, but there was no help for that. I’d thought we were too powerful to be taken, to be destroyed, but they hadn’t hit us head on. They’d taken us out, piece by piece, demon by demon, until wind blew through the empty streets and stirred the litter of dead things. Absent things.
I’d been there when Lilith was stolen. I remember feeling the loss of her, remember how badly it hurt, how it had torn into me. She had been our queen and oh, how she was missed. She had shored us up, she had spurred us on, she had been what held us together.
When she died, our Lord Satan died too. Oh, he drew breath, he walked, he screamed, but he died or as good as. Off he went, like a coward, like a fool. Yes, we had mourned her, but her disap
pearance had destroyed him.
It had destroyed us all.
“What do you make of the one who freed me?”
Lux’s lips curled. “She’s … intriguing. Magnetic. There’s something about her that makes me want to taste her.”
I scoffed. “Want to? You have. Fucked her well, if I know you at all.” As I watched, his face lit up as he thought about her, about his encounter with her. It had been so long, too long, since I’d had the freedom to fuck someone because I wanted to and not because I’d been told I had to. The magi seemed to think we were beasts without feelings, evil without morals. Thinking of us that way let them use us as weapons, as tools to wield against those who would disobey them. They used us to scare their children into behaving and then used their children’s fear of us as justification for enslaving us, for using our bodies, our minds, and our powers to fuel their secret spells.
If they all died tomorrow, I wouldn’t mourn a single one of them.
“You should fuck her too,” he murmured, snapping me out of my angry musings. “She’s no ordinary witch.”
“Like this?” I held out my arms, arms that were more shade than solid. “It would be as if a cloud fucked her, Lux. I would need more of me back. Preferably all of me. I know where at least one other piece of me is—with a magus named Adam Windhaven.”
“Good. Then when we kill him you’ll be whole.” Lux held out a crystal, one of those damned crystals the magi trapped us in.
“How?”
He grinned. “This one I stole. I knew where it was, who held it, because the one who’d enslaved me knew it. He’d slipped up and spoke your name. After I was released, I went and retrieved it.” He was staring at the ground lost in thought. “They’re probably already working to call you back, though.”
“Bastards.” The crystal throbbed in my hand when I took it, and when I crushed it with my power, more energy filled me, solidifying me. Soon I would be whole again. Whole and free. The trick would be staying that way.
“Yes,” he said. “And then we will make them pay.”
“How? There are so few of us left.” Countless friends, acquaintances, hell, even enemies, gone. Trapped. Forced to work for them.
“We’re here, now. After centuries. All because of one woman. I think she might be the key to the renewal of our species, of our home.”
His enthusiasm wasn’t surprising—he was a hound, after all, but this excitement was unusual even for him. It made me almost want to meet the mysterious female again and get to know her. “We’ll see,” I said noncommittally.
He just smiled.
We went to the Chaos Void, but it was unable to help me in my current state. It needed power and I didn’t have enough to give it to enact the change. I was on borrowed time, fuck it all. I would not go back inside the crystal and so I had to do whatever it took to stop the damned magi. “Did you try killing them?” I asked once we were seated in an empty bar nursing drinks.
He nodded, studying the cards that were spread out before him. “Many times. Stolas succeeded somehow, as you know, and I hoped ...” His hair, long, glossy black, hung in curtains on either side of his face. His dark skin was burnished copper, his nose aquiline. He was a beautiful demon in either form he took, though he was particularly pleasing now.
I’d missed him.
I’d missed everything. Damn magi bastards.
“He never was the same after Satan banished him,” I said. It didn’t excuse him, of course, for hiding in Hell like a coward while I’d been forced to have sex with them, forced to compel others to do the same. Anger rose in me at the utter misuse of my power. They’d warped what I was, twisted it for their own selfish means, and then used it to hurt innocents. They were idiots and fools and I wanted them all dead.
“You’ve set the bar on fire,” Lux murmured.
My fire, black and hot, danced along the wooden stop. I flicked my fingers and it extinguished with a hiss of sound. “I want to destroy them all.”
“Then we work with the witch.”
I picked up one of the cards, the Empress, and rubbed a thumb thoughtfully over her pregnant belly. “We used to work with witches. Long before Hecate was murdered by those bastards. They weren’t afraid of us. They let us into their homes, into their bodies. We were part of their world as they were ours. Now? The magi have subjugated them and enslaved us. How? How the fuck did that happen, Lux? How did they figure out how to kill our goddess?”
He shrugged a muscled shoulder. “I wish I knew.”
“How do they find our names?”
His red eyes met mine. “I don’t know that either. They do it with surprising efficiency. It’s not a spell or we would have been able to sense it, to thwart it. Perhaps some sort of technology that cracks the code.”
Technology. Surely something so mundane couldn’t dig through the magic and barriers between our worlds to expose us so readily? It had to be something more than that, something supernatural. Perhaps they’d tapped into the Chaos Void. Perhaps they … fuck if I knew. “If our lord was here, if he hadn’t fucked off when Lilith died ...”
Lux heaved a sigh and tossed down the Wheel of Fortune. “Her death destroyed him as thoroughly as it destroyed her.” Emotion ran over his features, sorrow, loss, wonder, curiosity. “What would it be like, do you think, to love a woman so much that you would come apart if she died?”
I snorted. I didn’t know and didn’t care. Love wasn’t in the cards for any of us and the fact that our lord Satan had let himself fall into such disarray over a woman—even a powerful, bloodthirsty woman like our queen Lilith—bothered me. Embarrassed me. Angered me. His duty was to his people and his kingdom. Now he was gone and the kingdom was about to follow. Neither Lux nor I or the remaining demons who skittered like frightened things in the shadows could save us.
Not without help.
But did I want to risk trusting this witch who so intrigued Lux he couldn’t stop thinking about her? Even now, his eyes kept moving back to the Justice card, to the woman depicted there. Strong, violent but fair, beautiful but … what did she want in return? I doubted she freed us out of the goodness of her heart.
Even if she was a witch, who was to say we could trust any of them. Only witches had known how to call us, which meant only a witch could have given that information over to the enemy.
“The bar is on fire again.”
“Fuck.” I extinguished the flames and picked up the Justice card. “What if she betrays us?”
“How much worse could things get?” He laid down the Fool. “What if she saves us?”
My mind went back to the woman, to her flashing dual-colored eyes, her half black, half white hair, her long, lanky body, her powerful arms covered in tattoos. Her lips. “If she betrays us, I get to rip her insides out.”
“Fair,” Lux said.
A slithering hiss made us both turn. One of the shadow demons had entered the bar, dripping from the Chaos Void. “She saved me. And asked for nothing in return but for me to leave the witch children alone.” It solidified enough to have a seat next to me. “Her blood made mine sing.” I raised my eyebrows and when I looked at Lux he shrugged, smiling as if to say, ‘I told you so.’
“Are we being freed?”
It was a good question. I wanted to believe this was a turning point in our endless enslavement, but I hated to hope. Even if we rescued all the other demons, our home was still fucked without Hecate, Satan, or Lilith. We would have to pick a new ruler, and no one would want the job. It meant holding our kind in check as well as keeping a tight grip on the gates between our worlds. I didn’t know of any demon up to such a task.
Perhaps several of us, serving together.
“If we help her, she could free more of us,” Lux said. “She’s already using their tools against them. A hexed knife was what kept my captor from raising enough power to defend himself. She had to have learned that from the magi. She used some sort of rune magic to disguise herself—and it was a damned good dis
guise spell too. And then there’s her thirst for blood. She likes to make them suffer. I watched her kill the magus who had enslaved me and she reveled in his pain. I think … I think she wanted his death spirit.”
I scoffed. “Neither witch nor magus drink death spirits.”
Lux spread his hands in a, ‘What can I say?’ gesture. “I felt the need on her.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t lust?”
He snorted. “That too. But I know blood lust when I smell it, Malphas.” He tapped his nose and I understood. hellhounds had damned fine sniffers. If he smelled blood lust on her then I’d believe him. “So she’s a killer.”
“As if we’d care about that.”
“She might try to kill us when she’s done ripping through the magi.”
His red gaze lifted to mine. “Are you scared?”
Lilith had been killed. A goddess had been destroyed. I’d be stupid not to be scared, not when unknown forces were at work and we were at our most vulnerable. “Are you going to start bawking like a chicken next?”
“If it helps motivate you.”
I rose and got the damned shadow demon a drink. It settled its mist over the glass and sucked it up, then oozed out of its chair. “Thank you.” It was almost to the door when it stopped. “I will help. Lend you my power or let you absorb me to gain more. Let me know.”
After it was gone, I flipped over another card. The Magician. I curled my lip. “Perhaps we should visit her, but first I wish to go to the fortress. I want to see for myself that he’s gone.”
Lux nodded and stood. “Perhaps he will return if we can save our people.”
“If he does, we might want to chain him to the throne for a good dozen centuries. Give him a taste of what we’ve been forced to deal with all this time.” The thought of our great lord, chain around his ankle, stomping about the throne room almost made me smile. “Come, we’ll avail ourselves of his magic and weapons and then we’ll go visit this fascinating female of yours.” I curled my fingers around his arm before we jumped. “Perhaps I can avail myself of you before this day is through as well.”
