Demons & Djinn: Nine Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Novels Featuring Demons, Djinn, and other Bad Boys of the Underworld

by Christine Pope

“Take this,” Elise said, shoving the stone vessel into Betty’s hands as she emerged from under the dashboard. “Ann can’t perform the sacrifice without it, so it’s safest with you. I trust you. Don’t go far. I might need help transporting James.”

  Her friend nodded, cheeks flushed. “They won’t get it without a fight!” Betty declared.

  “Wait,” Anthony said, power-sliding around the stone angel to a stop, “where are you going?”

  “Ann’s not here, so James isn’t here,” Elise said. “Ann lives across the street. I’m sure they’re in there.”

  “You can’t go alone.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Elise prepared to leap down into the cemetery, but Anthony caught her hand. “Wait,” he said, and he pulled her to him and kissed her. He was forceful, desperate, as though afraid it would be his last chance.

  And then she jumped over the door before he could catch her again, disappearing into the night. She caught a glance of his face before she went—an expression of admiration, adoration, and fear.

  Now that she no longer had the vessel, the servants ignored Elise. They followed the Jeep, and Anthony gave them a good chase—he weaved in and out of the path, and the bigger spots in between the graves, driving over several of the shorter headstones as he made a line for the exit. The possessed ones couldn’t keep up.

  The storm overhead broke with slaps of thunder and lighting. Elise flipped her braid over her shoulder so she could sheathe the sword, and she ran toward Ann’s house…and James.

  The night grew darker.

  One by one, the street lamps flickered and went out. A line of shadow crept up the street. The few people still struggling to stay awake began turning off their lights and going to their bedrooms, oblivious to the world around them. The heavy rain clouds that had briefly parted to reveal the moon’s crescent covered it once more, and the shadow’s hand gripped the Earth.

  A single oil lamp illuminated Ann’s room as the neighborhood’s electricity turned off. Her outline was thrown against the wall in stark relief, a huge monster of a woman with massive shoulders and tiny legs.

  The shadows beside her twisted and writhed. Ann’s fiends covered every square foot of her house, silent and hungry. She passed the trap door, carrying the oil lamp to the altar, and peered down the ladder. The demons covered the floor below, and the floor beneath that as well. Elise wouldn’t be able to get in without getting ripped apart.

  Ann set the lamp beside James’s leg and faced her altar, standing with her back to the open window.

  The fiends touched her legs and stroked her arms and rested their heads on her feet. Some touched James, too, but he didn’t stir. The high priest was unconscious.

  She spread her arms wide. “Listen up, guys,” Ann said. “Every beginning is the end of another. Tonight we leave behind the world we have come to know together for the past several years. Tonight we march to the ruins and transform everything. Tonight, you become the children of the new world.”

  Their lips quivered. They drooled.

  “The city will be ours, and soon, this whole world will too. Why return to Hell under the law of another when we can have this Eden? You all deserve freedom. You deserve flesh. You deserve Earth.”

  Something clattered downstairs.

  Ann cut off, frowning. She perked her ears, listening to the reports the fiends whispered into her mind when something happened. But there were no comforting voices from her demons—only a complete mental silence.

  Elise.

  “Take care of her, please,” she said.

  The fiends piled down the ladder, leaving the attic empty except for a handful of fiends and the two humans.

  Ann rested her hand on his forehead. His pulse throbbed in his temples, rising and falling like the heart of the ocean. He was beautiful with symbols of transference and death painted upon his body. He was so lucky.

  She took a step away from the table and began walking a slow circle, speaking quietly as she went. Ann drew runes in her mind and called upon spirits at the north, the west, the south, and the east—spirits few humans called in fear of their power. Her dominant hand pointed to the floor, and she felt rather than saw the energy burn an invisible path on the wood.

  Ann clapped, and the circle of power erupted around them. James’s eyes almost fluttering open.

  “Did they get her?” Ann asked one of the fiends.

  But before she could make out any reply, a dark shape darted out of the corner. She spun to see curtains flapping in the open window.

  Nobody was there.

  A fiend shrieked.

  Elise stabbed again, driving her blade through the skull of the demon to silence it.

  The weapon shocked Ann into silence. It wasn’t just steel and leather—it coursed with magic, enchantments, prayers. It glowed in Ann’s vision, both beautiful and terrible. She recognized it. Death’s Hand had its twin.

  Elise jerked her blade free, and a spray of blood spattered to the floor. The kopis decapitated the fiend’s body with one smooth blow of her sword, and she kicked the head across the floor to Ann’s feet.

  Fresh blood flowed down the sharp edge of the sword. Elise’s skin was flushed, her eyes blazing. Vedae som matis may have been the Goddess of Death, but Elise was the goddess of fury—and even with the power of a mighty demon at her back, Ann felt afraid.

  And when Elise spoke, her voice burned. “Give me back my witch.”

  Chapter 18

  “Elise,” Ann said. “Put the sword down.”

  Elise’s eyes flicked between Ann and the nightmare of an altar with James as the centerpiece. His nakedness was a shock, but not nearly as horrifying as the black demon runes looping over his skin like the brands burned into the flesh of the fiends.

  “Not until you let him go.”

  The necromancer scooped up the head at her feet. “Let him go?” she asked, cradling it in her arms as blood dribbled out the neck. “You killed my fiend.”

  “That will be nothing compared to what will happen if you don’t give me James.”

  “I offered you a trade,” Ann said.

  “We both know you weren’t serious.” Elise took a deep breath. “We don’t have to fight, Ann. This is between me and vedae som matis.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

  Ann straightened suddenly. Her head tilted, as though listening to some distant voice Elise couldn’t hear. And then she began to smile.

  “We have company.”

  The trap door banged open. Fiends jumped inside, dragging two larger shapes with them. For an instant, Elise half-hoped they were injured, struggling servants—but servants didn’t fight and swear like these two.

  The fiends threw Betty and Anthony to the floor. One of them ripped the pocket off her jacket, and the stone vessel thudded to the floor. Betty struggled, trying to take it back, but the fiends held her arms.

  “Hey, get your hands off me! I’ll punch you! Don’t make me do it!”

  Ann cradled the staff against her shoulder like a baby. “This night just got so much better.”

  Elise moved. Blood splattered on the walls.

  The fiends holding Anthony fell. She sliced again, and the fiends holding Betty also fell. Intestines spilled onto the floor in a wash of red and yellow fluids, stinking of brimstone.

  Anthony jumped to his feet. He punched another fiend in the eye. It keened, stumbling backward, and he hauled Betty to her feet before returning his attention to the little demons.

  Elise twisted and jabbed, skewering a small demon on her sword. Something hit her wounded side. The breath rushed out of her lungs.

  They hit the ground and rolled, and then it seemed like all the fiends were on top of Elise, clawing at her, grabbing and biting. The demons were nothing but shadows in the darkness of the room, blotting out all the light. She felt stubby teeth sink into her arm, and she threw the fiend off, struggling to stand. She was just a little too slow, a little too weak with the inju
ries David Nicholas inflicted.

  Between the legs of an attacking fiend, she saw Betty fly at Ann like a manicured beast, her fingernails flying. Ann shrieked and Betty leapt onto her back, dragging them both to the ground.

  Elise pushed away a fiend and swung blindly, feeling blade connect with body and hoping it was going to do damage.

  Kicking off another demon, she flew to James’s side at the altar. His closed eyes looked like they were bruised.

  He stirred at her touch. “Elise?”

  “Let’s get you out of here, huh?” she said, throwing her jacket over his body. She felt around the ropes binding him to the table. “Hang on, it’s going to take me a minute to figure out these knots.”

  “Finish the fight,” James rasped.

  She took a moment to plunge her sword into a fiend’s stomach when it broke away from the others to attack. “I’m not leaving you behind.”

  “Ann will get away, Elise.”

  “She’s not going anywhere. Betty’s got her.”

  He gripped her wrist. His eyes had darkened, no longer that perfect shade of ice blue. A thunderstorm roiled in his gaze. Elise’s fingers went still on the lock. “Trust me. I’ll be fine. Get Ann.”

  “Okay.” Elise pressed her boot knife into his hand. “If she gets close to you—kill her.”

  The room was in turmoil. Anthony thrashed in the grip of several fiends, but he wouldn’t relinquish his position over the trap door, which he had locked. He bled from a gash near his hairline. The other fiends had turned their attention to the fight between Betty and Ann, which seemed to involve a lot of slapping and hair-pulling.

  Elise smiled faintly. A slap fight. That was new.

  And then a blade flashed from nowhere, and Elise’s smile disappeared. Ann’s hand cracked against Betty’s skull with the flat end of the hilt.

  “Betty!” Anthony roared.

  Elise leapt forward, but the trap door suddenly exploded underneath Anthony. The force threw him forward into the waiting arms of the fiends, and the servants from the cemetery began to climb inside.

  One by one, the attic filled with the possessed ones. The man from the hospital, his female partner. A burly, tattooed corpse Elise hadn’t seen before. And then Lucinde.

  Ann stomped to the front of the room again, standing beside the altar. “Restrain them!” she ordered, and three of the servants came forward, grabbing Elise’s arms and dragging her to the end of the room.

  A fiend ripped the sword from her hands and dropped it out of reach. Another dragged Betty’s lifeless body to her side. It took two of them to restrain Anthony.

  The rest had to hold Elise.

  A knobby fist sank into her side, making pain explode through her body. She staggered and fell to her knees. Claws raked down her bruised face and smacked into her jaw.

  Through blurry eyes, Elise saw James raise a free hand with the knife.

  The motion drew Ann’s attention. She slapped it out of his hand.

  “This was going to be my night of glory. This is when I was going to show vedae som matis that I’m good enough for her. Don’t you realize what you’re ruining?” She slashed her dagger along the wound she had carved on his belly. Fresh blood began to trickle down his side.

  Elise struggled, but the possessed ones held her in place. “You better not—”

  Ann pointed the knife at her. “Shut up. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

  “He doesn’t deserve to die.!”

  “Do you think he’s a good man?” Ann asked as she sprinkled herbs over his head.

  Elise swallowed. “The best I know.”

  “Then you don’t know him as well as you think you do,” Ann said. She traced her bloody finger down the bridge of his nose. “He’s never told you the truth. You would let me kill him if he had.”

  Betty sat up, holding a hand to her head. “Ugh. What did I miss? Did we beat that—” Anthony threw a hand over her mouth.

  Ann pulled an owl’s skull from underneath the table. Sharp teeth that birds had never possessed on Earth filled its mouth. She laid it on James’s chest.

  “And now I can repay my debts to the Hand of Death,” she said. Her voice was hushed, reverent.

  She smashed the skull on James’s chest. Pieces of bone flew everywhere, and blood seeped forth beneath it. She smeared it across James’s solar plexus.

  Elise’s muscles were liquid. Every time she moved, little hands dug into her wounds, burying their nails into muscle.

  If only David Nicholas hadn’t attacked.

  If only Elise hadn’t provoked him.

  If only she were a little stronger…a little faster…

  Ann turned her back on them. She raised the dagger high, smoothing her hand over James’s brow. Shadows rippled off her body.

  Elise felt the press of Betty and Anthony’s eyes on her. They were waiting to see what last-ditch trick she was going to pull out of her hat, like she was some hero from a movie with a plan always in place.

  But she didn’t have a plan. She couldn’t think, or breathe, and she couldn’t move with so many demons holding her down. She met Betty’s gaze, and she saw her best friend’s worried countenance dissolve into terror.

  The stress of the last days built inside Elise, growing and swelling until she felt her ribs might burst. Exorcising Lucinde. Fighting the possessed ones in the cemetery. Losing James, and finding him again to realize he had been all but gutted like a pig and left poisoned. Her new life destroyed; her old life returning like an unyielding cancer.

  I’m not ready for this.

  Ann. Lucinde. James.

  The witch shifted her grip on the dagger so its blade faced down.

  Elise threw herself against the steely arms of her captors, but they were unyielding. “Ann! No!”

  Her hand came down. The dagger buried into James’s chest with a crack.

  His mouth opened in a silent gasp, eyes blank.

  For an instant, there was no reaction. The world was reduced to the space between Elise and James—so close, just inches away, and yet utterly impassable. Elise’s breath caught in her lungs. Her pulse roared in her ears.

  Betty let out a sob, deepening the silence rather than breaking it.

  James’s chest hitched, and blood spilled over his lip.

  “James,” Elise said. She was so cold.

  His head lolled to the side, looking beyond the wall of servants to his partner. Their eyes met for a breathless instant, and his mouth formed a single word: Elise. No sound escaped his bloody mouth. His teeth were red.

  The light behind his eyes faded, and that was all. His body sank into the table, muscles relaxing one by one until there was no sense of life in his face, his body.

  And that was all.

  “Berald, Beroald, Balbin, Gab, Gabor, Agaba,” Ann was saying softly, her hands moving over James’s body. A bracelet of bird bones dangled from her wrist, brushing against his bare stomach. “Berald, Beroald, Balbin, Gab, Gabor, Agaba…”

  The world receded, slipping away from Elise. Her ears were ringing and her heart was thudding and she knew that James was dead. She could have been a thousand miles away, and she would still know with absolute certainty. It was as though, in his passing, a part of her had died, too.

  The scar on her arm from the binding ritual that tied them together as kopis and aspis burned.

  Dead.

  Anthony was muttering under his breath. It sounded like prayer. The valley of the shadow of the death. She took another step back, and the fiends finally released her. Betty was on her knees. Anthony was beside her, holding his cousin’s hands. They were pale and shocked and Elise barely even registered it.

  James’s eyes were empty.

  “Balbin, Gab, Gabor, Agaba, Berald…”

  She didn’t feel pain anymore. She didn’t feel anything at all. A glint of metal caught the corner of Elise’s eye.

  “…Beroald, Balbin, Gab…”

  She dropped.

  The ha
nds of the possessed ones reached for Elise, but she rolled under their grasp and took her sword. She came up on her knee in one smooth motion, plunging it into a servant’s stomach until the hilt slammed into flesh and the blade burst out its back.

  She freed the sword with a jerk of her wrist and kicked the servant to the floor. It fell, lifeless and gaping.

  Ann spun. Her jaw hung open. “That was mine,” she said. “You little—”

  Elise spun, burying her sword into the belly of a nearby fiend, tearing it out its side with a gush of blood and mucus. It dripped down the blade and onto her gloved hand.

  “Plan B,” Elise said. Her voice was dead.

  The attic exploded in motion.

  Fiends and servants alike dove for Elise. She dropped to her knees and slashed, slicing through hamstrings and driving her blade into torsos regardless of whether it belonged to a demon or had once been human. Her ribs ached and she thought something was broken and she didn’t care.

  Blood splattered on the walls. Someone screamed.

  James’s empty stare remained fixed on the wall.

  Elise kicked, punched, and dodged entirely on instinct. She let her long-unused muscles twist her out of the way of blows just in time, feeling claws whistle past her cheek and slice into errant curls.

  Something sharp sliced down her arm. She chopped off its hand.

  Anthony fought behind her with less grace but no more regard for what he was fighting. His fists flew, making sledgehammer noises against flesh.

  Elise threw herself around him, ducking low to stay out of the way of one of his blows even as she gutted another enemy. A body. It had once been the man from the hospital, but now he was mulch. He hit the floor in several pieces, and Elise’s foot squelched on a piece of steaming intestine as she spun to attack another.

  And she came face-to-face with Lucinde.

  The little girl didn’t look human anymore. The symbol on her forehead burned, and she reached for Elise with little hands that almost looked like the fiends’ claws.

  But her face registered in Elise’s numbed mind. She froze mid-swing.

  A fiend struck her in the side, sending them both bowling to the floor beneath the altar. Its slavering mouth flashed at her face, and she blocked it with her forearm. Its teeth buried into her flesh.