When he reached out to her to grab her arms, she screamed. That was when great black wings erupted from his shoulder blades, fire sluicing down all around them.
“Why are you so afraid?” he asked. “Ethelred? I will destroy him.”
She realized that he wasn’t aware of how his voice had taken on a thundering timbre, of how his flesh was shrouded in fire, or even of the beautiful downy wings of darkness that marked him as one of the fallen. They were splayed out behind him.
“I’m afraid of you,” she whispered.
He looked surprised. “Me? I’m the same demon you’ve been shagging senseless. And, demon or no, I’m male. We all get jealous. It’s normal. You’re afraid of a little jealousy?” He paused. “Or is it because I offered to destroy Ethelred? Don’t most women like that chivalric garbage—‘destroying thine enemies’ and all that crap?”
Her voice was shaky, and Grace hated how weak it sounded. “The water is really hot, Caspian.”
Steam was rising in waves. Caspian looked down and reached out again to touch her, but Grace flinched away. That was when he saw he was wreathed in flames. If he stepped out of the water, she’d bet the whole place would go up.
“Get out of the tub,” he said calmly, moving slightly away from her.
She scrambled, naked, out of the tub and wrapped herself in a towel just as the water began to boil. Her skin was red and tender all over, but she knew it was nothing compared to the damage that he might have unintentionally wrought.
Caspian repeated himself, as if he were talking to a child. “You need to answer me, Grace. What did he do to you? Ethelred.”
“Nothing, Caspian. He didn’t do anything but talk.”
“Most women wouldn’t banish someone for talking to them. Especially not a handsome man like Ethelred appears to be.”
Grace desperately wanted to see Caspian as a man again. She needed to. What she saw now was horrifically beautiful, but it was both impossible to look at or away from. She wanted to see him as he’d been—dashing, funny, gorgeous, a means to an end who saw her as exactly the same, and who also happened to be delightfully talented at the carnal arts. Nothing less, nothing more.
“You think he’s handsome?” She gave Caspian a weak smile that made the corners of his mouth curve and the flames began to recede. “I just know he’s helping Michael. I wanted to take away the advantage. That’s all.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re sure that cream wasn’t for me? Because if you want me to leave, all you have to do is say so.”
After this? She wasn’t going to tell him shit from apple butter—and without having time to think better of it, she told him just that.
“I’d never hurt you,” he promised.
Grace wanted to ask him why not. Why hadn’t he hurt her before this, in fact? She wondered if he was like Michael. He’d said he would never hurt her either, not unless she forced his hand. She wondered just what it would take to force Caspian’s.
“I was angry because I thought Ethelred hurt you,” he continued. “I haven’t been angry in a long time. I’d forgotten what it was like.”
How did one forget what it was like to be angry? Probably the same way Grace forgot that Caspian was a demon. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to have lived so long to forget feelings, to be so unaffected by the world. Sure, it would be wonderful to never be sad or lonely. To never feel pain. But Grace also knew that being without those things would mean existing without the other side of the coin. She wouldn’t know the good things: the warmth of love and joy, awe at the beauty of the universe.
She wondered what it was like to be Caspian. How lonely it must be, and she doubted he even knew it. That part saddened her and she didn’t know why.
Grace decided she needed another guzzle of champagne. Picking up her glass this time, she noticed the dramatic masks etched into it, and she recognized they were from the Kansas City Met opera house. She also recognized the hot tub. There was different greenery around it now, almost like from someone’s backyard. But this wasn’t a backyard. It was a magickally enhanced balcony on the hip side of Westport. Worse yet, it was Michael’s.
She dropped her glass and it shattered. Droplets of golden champagne covered the ground. “What have you done?”
Caspian looked sheepish. “Which time, Gracie?”
She didn’t correct the use of that name. “This time. Right now.”
Caspian shrugged. “He’s not here.”
“Is my son?” Grace pulled the towel tighter around herself. “Did my son hear his mother having sex with a demon?”
“You don’t have a son,” Caspian said.
She spun to face him, irrationally angry. “And how would you know?” She went to the door and tried to enter the apartment, but found she could not. “Were you there?” she threw over her shoulder.
What if Nikoli was inside the apartment and alone? What if he was afraid? She felt an overwhelming urge to get through the door no matter the cost. How had Caspian walked right through it only moments earlier, holding their champagne? Grace was almost hysterical, banging on the door, trying to get through. Her power pooled around her fingertips, drawing energy from everything around her, including Caspian.
Her power turned to flame and she was just about to release the full force of her need upon the door when Caspian grabbed her hands. “The door is hexed, Grace. Whatever you cast on it will come back to strike you.”
Her frantic fears were not allayed. “Then how did you get through?”
“I didn’t. I went to the opera and stole Michael’s champagne. He wasn’t drinking it; he was launching Scud missiles in the men’s room. Oops. My bad.”
She couldn’t resist the mirth that the image evoked, but it warred with her fear for her son. “I don’t want to laugh right now, you ass!”
“Look, Grace.” Caspian sighed. “This wasn’t part of our deal, so I probably shouldn’t be handing out freebies, but Nikoli is not real. You don’t smell like a woman who has given birth.”
Grace shook her head, unimpressed. “You don’t understand. I feel him. I know he’s real.” Her hands were shaking. “I remember feeling him move inside of me. I remember his baby smell. I remember . . .”
Emotion choked her, and she couldn’t say anything else. Her eyes fluttered closed and her dark lashes swept the curve of her cheek.
At last they opened wide. “Petru told me to ask you,” she admitted. “He said you’d tell me the truth. So I ask you now: Is my son real?”
He drew her close, his ebony wings curling in to cradle her. He paused a moment and then said, “I swear to you, Grace. I swear if he is real, I’ll get him back.”
She felt shielded from the world in that dark embrace, and Grace was tempted to believe his promise. She also wanted to ask him why he’d asked her to scream his name while he fucked her here in Michael’s hot tub. If it had been a mortal man, Grace would assume he was staking a claim. But, Caspian was a demon. He didn’t have feelings. Not like mortals. This didn’t make any sense.
She supposed it didn’t matter. All that counted was his pledge. He’d made a promise, and a demon’s word was not lightly given. Could she let him stay long enough to try to get Nikoli back? They had ten days. But if he failed, she’d have to get rid of him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Vexing Verbiage
Last time he checked, Caspian was sure he hadn’t had a bowl of stupid meal for breakfast with a side of idiot sausage. But you could have fooled him, what with that I swear to you nonsense. Really? Had that just happened: him promising to rescue her nonexistent child? It had to have happened to him? otherwise, he’d have to admit that he’d done it to himself, and a Crown Prince of Hell would do no such thing. Ever. Grace was a mark. She was nothing more than a contractee, and he the contractor. That was it. She’d paid him with her snatch to make Michael’s life hell.
Oh. That’s what it was. He just hadn’t fulfilled his part. Michael wasn’t in Hell yet. The demo
n crabs and operatic assplosion were just the beginnings. Caspian had to go see a man about a hooker. Specifically, the one Michael had strangled and tossed in a Dumpster. He’d had a few good ideas about her.
Unfortunately, while he was smirking about removing one plaguing question, another went bubonic: Why had he gotten so angry at the thought of Ethelred hurting Grace? And, damn, if the pain in his chest wasn’t worse than being junk-punched.
He was also hearing a strange sound that he’d never heard before. Okay, he’d heard it before, but not when he was by himself, and not since he was a mortal child. Humans made that sound, not demons. Never demons. What could it be? It was a strange, foreign thudding in his chest. Caspian had to say that he didn’t care for it in the least. It sounded like a heartbeat, which had to be a hallucination. There was no way there was anything alive in the black hole where his heart once was. Demons didn’t have hearts.
As long as he was asking stupid questions, he might as well pose the big one Grace was dying to ask. It wasn’t why he’d agreed to help her get her son, either; he could finagle that into being part of the contract if he so desired, could say that taking Michael’s son away would indeed make his life worse. Such a loophole was perfect if the Big Boss asked, which was always important. But, no, the big question was why he’d transported them to Michael’s hot tub. He could have teleported them anywhere in the world: Iceland, Poland, Missouri. Anywhere. But he’d chosen to set up their carnal carnival in her ex’s hot tub, and he’d asked her to scream his name. Why?
Aside from the fact he just liked hearing women screaming his name through abject kitty-wrecking pleasure, he knew damn well why. He just didn’t know if he should acknowledge it. He thought of her as his. She belonged to him, pure and simple. Grace Stregaria belonged to Caspian.
But, this was simply a territorial thing. It wasn’t like—Lucifer and the Chorus of Hell forbid—he was having feelings or anything. All males were territorial, even demons. That was just nature.
If he was just being territorial, why had he offered—no, not offered, damn it. He’d promised to help her get her son back. She’d looked up at him with those chocolate eyes so full of hope that they’d painted him with a suit of shining armor, and like a dumbass he’d fallen into it.
And yet, she knew he was a demon. She had no illusions about what he was. She’d seen him in a raging, fiery fury. She was even afraid of him. He hadn’t liked that fear in her eyes, and just about anything would be worth tackling to maintain that joy she’d shown when he gave her his vow.
What a fucking mess.
Why hadn’t he just told her again that Nikoli wasn’t real? The boy was a demon-magick-induced figment of her imagination that he couldn’t counter. How in the name of Legion was he supposed to get Nikoli back? Oh, he could construct something from her planted memories, but it wouldn’t be real.
For just a moment out of time he wished that he was something other than what he was. He wished that he could give her a baby, because demon spawn or no, she would be the child’s true mother—something his own parent had been unable to do. And even though he couldn’t be a proper father, he still liked the idea of Grace holding their son in her arms. Caspian couldn’t help but wish for it, just a bit.
Grace was protected by powerful magick indeed if she hadn’t ripened with his seed yet. Or she was barren. Considering how un-virgin she was, and the virility of demon seed, Grace should have been knocked up higher than a kite in the past few days.
He damn well wanted to know what Ethelred was doing talking to her. There was no reason for it, unless it was to taunt her or work more devilries upon her at Michael’s behest. Well, here was something he could tackle. Caspian would put a stop to that in two shakes of a seven-headed dragon’s tail. He and Ethelred were going to have a discussion immediately—and he might not even open the window before he threw the bastard out, depending on where Ethelred was.
The demon turned out to be visiting a café in Brussels when Caspian found him later that evening. Not, unfortunately, the best venue for demon chucking. If it had been the Scottish Highland Games, Caspian might have gotten away with it. Or even at the Punkin Chunkin Festival. But not a droll little café in Belgium, with its dainty, metal-scrollwork chairs, and quaint hand-carved tables. Not to mention the Old Country Roses china cup that was currently pressed to his slick-talking mouth, Ethelred, that cock-muncher.
Not that he knew for certain that Ethelred was a cock-muncher, and not that Caspian cared if he was. In fact, Caspian had been bored enough to experiment back in the 1700s, but that was neither here nor there. He was getting off track. It just felt good to call Ethelred a name, even if it was only in his head.
Seeing and acknowledging him, the other demon motioned for him to sit down. If he’d been wearing knickers, Caspian’s would have been twisted into a tight knot at the thought of having to be cordial. Going commando did have its benefits. But he sank into the chair with the grace inherent to demonkind, and when a dainty cup with Irish Breakfast tea appeared before him in the same china Ethelred was using, Caspian added some milk and three cubes of sugar. Then he threw in another just because.
Ethelred raised a brow. “Some tea with your sugar, my prince?”
Caspian narrowed his eyes in contemplation and tossed in another cube. Really, he’d rather just put the sugar in his mouth and suck on it. Funny, how affectations from time as a human stayed with a mortal after accepting demonhood. His mother would have slapped his hands and clucked at him like an overwrought chicken for putting that much sugar in his tea.
It was also funny how he was thinking of his mother so often now. He’d gone years and not given the woman a moment’s consideration. Now he could hear her voice clear as a church bell, as if he’d seen her yesterday.
Ethelred smirked. “To what do I owe your esteemed presence?”
“You know very well ‘to what you owe my presence.’ ” Caspian sipped his tea.
“Michael Grigorovich, I assume. He’s indebted to me for well nigh a thousand years should he fail to convince Grace to . . . ah . . .” He paused, looking for the right word. “Save him.”
“You may also assume”—Caspian took another sip before continuing politely—“that if you torment the human Grace Stregaria with any more false visions of a son, I will bind you for all eternity as a dog rocket in Central Park.”
Ethelred didn’t answer. He picked up a pastry and popped the whole thing in his mouth before pushing the plate forward. “These are heavenly. You must try one.”
Caspian fixed him with a glare that would induce death in a lesser being.
“That’s quite a hefty threat considering this insignificant human woman. Especially since I’m next in line for Crown Prince status.” Ethelred popped another pastry in his mouth, chewing while he talked. “Are you getting soft in your old age?”
Caspian turned up his nose. “Finish that bite before you speak.”
Ethelred laughed. “You torment souls and see the blackest depths humanity has to offer and you’re offended by this?” He opened his mouth to show Caspian his food.
“It’s disgusting.”
Ethelred swallowed and waited for Caspian to say something else. When he didn’t, the lesser demon spoke. “So . . . you were threatening me with eternity as a canine rump biscuit in Central Park?”
“Yes, that. I was actually going to smite you, but the Big Boss would frown heavily upon such an obvious and public display of power. Instead I’ve decided to warn you. Leave Grace alone.”
Ethelred pursed his lips. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. And before you go all avenging angel and send me back to perdition, let me tell you why.”
Caspian was indeed about to “go all avenging angel” and smite the demon down. He could feel the flames this time, the heat gathering around his body. His tea was boiling in his cup and molten frosting slid off a nearby tart.
“My prince, control yourself before you burst into flames in front of all of these people
! You know the Big Boss’s greatest achievement was to convince the masses that he doesn’t exist. You’re going to fuck that up in five seconds, all over a piece of . . .” The demon stopped short, realizing his terminology would be the last sprinkle on the shit-fire sundae he was making himself. “Over a woman,” he corrected.
“I’m awaiting your explanation. And it had better be good because, Big Boss or no, I will own your demonic ass.”
“Grace isn’t human.”
“That matters exactly how?”
“The Baba Yaga is indeed Grace’s grandmother. Seraphim Stregaria wears the cone of power.”
“Again, so?”
“Auschwitz? Her pregnancy and grand escape were all machinated by . . .” Ethelred let the words hang, hoping Caspian would figure everything out. Caspian didn’t, so he had to continue. “The baby was Grace’s mother, and a half-demon whelped on her by none other than a certain Crown Prince of Hell who is now . . .”
“The only one who outranks me,” Caspian finished. “Sonofabitch.”
“The real bitch of it is that she still has free will. Now, Michael learned a powerful summoning spell from his mother. Someone had to come, and if it was anyone else everyone would be bitching that Hades has gone soft. A revolt in Hell is really not cool right now, capiche?”
“So, you can’t remove that memory spell no matter what I do to you. Grace has to break it herself.” Caspian’s rage toward the other demon cooled slightly. “I suppose I can’t just kill Michael, can I?”
“Nope. He’s bought powerful wards. You can’t kill him . . . but as you’ve already discovered, you can make him wish that he was dead.” Ethelred picked up the teapot. “More tea?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Witch Balls, Medium-Size
Seraphim Stregaria watched the happenings through her crystal orb and was not the slightest bit happy with what she was seeing. Again. In fact, she was downright pissed. But this time it was for different reasons.
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