by Celia Kyle
“But how do we find them?” Jezze slumped into one of the comfy chairs in my office. “I mean, we don’t even know who this woman was, let alone how to find her family.”
Goody. I got to be bad again.
“Amazingly enough, I know someone with access to all of Uncle Luc’s files.” I tugged out my phone and went to my recent calls. “If there’s one thing I know about working with the evilest creatures ever to cross through the tween, it’s that there’s always a paper trail. Dems and gels? They know nothing of trust.”
19
Killian was back but he sure as hell wasn’t doing well. The previously polished lawyer was wearing a wrinkled suit, tie crooked, and hair rumpled. This wasn’t the man I’d first met. This guy hadn’t changed clothes in a couple of days and there was a nervous twitch in those dark eyes. Dark eyes that hadn’t been afraid of me, but now was afraid of… something.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where you were?” It’d annoyed the fuck outta me that I’d had to wait days to see him because he was out of town. It’d also annoyed me because, damn, that siren was a smoking hottie and I’d had to talk to her on the phone more than once.
Killian shrugged and spread his hands apologetically. Yeah, figured.
I shook my head. “Fine. Let’s just get to it then. First, can you tell me where Uncle Luc is yet? I’ve found something that, you know, actually concerns him this time.”
Killian pursed his lips. “You’ll hear from him soon.”
“Buuut not soon enough to help me with this.” I sighed and propped my hands on my hips. “Okay then. What can you tell me about a dem named Silaran?”
He stiffened, the expression on his face dropping to a nervous frown. A new tension thrummed in his body and I narrowed my eyes. “Be careful. There are some powers beyond you. Ones that no one but your uncle can control. It would be best if you left this until he returned.”
“Yeah, so, I don’t have that option. Shit’s going down now. Like, now. If Uncle Luc can’t help me, I’ve got to deal with this myself. FYI, I’m not looking forward to it. Another FYI, I don’t have a choice.”
“If that’s how you feel.” His stoic expression remained, but the tension remained high.
“Good. Then there’s something I need from you.”
He pressed his lips tightly together, but those eyes… Killian was a freaked out unhappy camper.
“I need a name and any information you might have on a mortal woman who was involved with Silaran.” Though, really, who could fuck a guy so… ugly? Like, physically ugly? “Whoever was stoking his furnace lately allegedly killed herself and Uncle Luc took her to a part of hell where Silaran can’t reach her. Which, seems like a thing that might tick off an uber-powerful demon.”
Killian rubbed his hands together, fidgeting in his seat. The unflappable lawyer I knew didn’t fidget. I could also see the new calculation in his stare. He was bound by my uncle or dark magic, so he couldn’t share everything. I could tell he wanted to help—as much as an evil dem could want to do anything nice—I just needed to figure out the right way to get what I needed.
“Let’s try that again.” If I had to play by someone else’s rules, I’d do it, but I was sure I could find a way to twist those rules to serve my purpose. “As the devil’s advocate, you have access to information about new arrivals to Hell.” He nodded and I continued. “As Lucifer’s niece and the bitch in charge up here, I have a responsibility regarding mortals, correct?”
He nodded again, a small smile on his lips and a bit of life in his body.
“So if someone took their own life and got sent to Hell, it’d be within my purview to check in on their family up here.” I adopted that pouty, sweet look I’d perfected long ago. Six hundred years gives a gal a long time to learn how to fake it. “I’d need to find out if losing a loved one to a mortal sin has negatively affected them. Maybe find out if the loss has set them on a dark path that might lead them to sin as well. That definitely sounds like something that would fall under my jurisdiction.”
“I’m inclined to agree.” He tilted his head.
“Excellent. So, I’d like a list of all suicides in the Orlando area within the last… year.” A year sounded good. This mystery woman must have killed herself after I instituted the dem ban. Hell, the ban could have been the reason she’d killed herself. If she got cut off from her lover, she might have wanted to end her life early to be with him. That sort of thing would take a lot of dedication… and insanity. Someone dating an ancient demon probably had a lot of both.
Me? I would have just moved, but I have that whole logic thing going on. Not all humans are smart.
If it’d been longer than a year, he would have come at me sooner, but it happened recently. Recently enough for him to push forward now.
“Well,” Killian grinned, “by disclosure agreements, I do have to share our files on Hell with authorized parties, whether they be from the tween or On High. Can’t have anything that could lead to a mistrial when a soul is judged for their eternal fate.”
He touched a button on his desk phone. “Janice, please make copies of the Black File for Ms. Morningstar. Everything for the last year.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Howe.”
That siren needed to not talk. Like, ever again.
I smirked at Killian, stomping on the tendril of arousal that wrapped around me. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“Always.” I got a wicked grin.
I snared the file on my way out the door, not giving “Janice” a chance to speak. I just needed the names, not a good time. I had a file containing bios on thirty-seven humans who’d decided to end their lives in my town.
When I got back to Momma R’s, we got to work, slicing the list in half pretty quickly by eliminating men, teenagers, and seniors. While I wouldn’t put it past a dem to seduce a teen for his own purposes, a woman had been offered the throne. An ancient dem didn’t make that kind of deal with a minor.
That left me with eleven possibilities. Seven more eliminations because they’d been married ladies and couldn’t be our girl. No matter his age, even dems were bound by certain laws and rules. The whole “til death do us part” was something they couldn’t violate. The sanctity of marriage kinda stuck to a soul and was a total turn-off in Hell. Toying with a married woman to taint her mortal soul was good, actually marrying her when she entered Hell was another.
And Silaran had been looking for a bride.
That left me with four. The first three didn’t trip my what-the-fuck trigger, but the fourth…
I held up the last bio. “This is our girl. Lucia Cole. Twenty-seven, raised by an abusive father, drug problem, suffered from depression and possible schizophrenia. Sounds like the kind of woman who’d fall for a demon’s seduction.”
Jezze read the page over my shoulder and pointed at a line near the bottom. “Living next of kin, Maxim Cole. He’s got an address downtown.”
“Then let’s go visit Maxim and convey our regrets for his loss.”
When the three of us got there, I had some actual regrets. Mainly that it’d taken me this long to figure out the right question for Killian. The place was abandoned, a thick layer of dust all over the furniture inside. There was no indication of where he’d gone or when he left.
The basement, however, had lots of lovely things that sent chills up my spine—beakers and vials, discarded rubber gloves and plastic goggles. Either Maxim got a badass chemistry kit for Christmas, or this was some kind of meth lab.
I sniffed around, my wolf whimpering at the scent of the vile substances. Some of the residue smelled similar to the dem drug. “I think we found our chef.” I poked one of the vials. “Though this stuff looks pretty mundane.”
Jezze wandered through the lab, picking up a notebook and flipping through the pages. “He was probably a human dealer before his sister died. You think maybe Silaran got ahold of him? Convinced him to try out a fancy new recipe?”
Sam scowled. “Afte
r which, he began poisoning the city.”
We dug around a bit longer until I found a wastebasket with burned slips of paper. I pulled them out and laid the scraps on one of the tables. “Jezze?”
She came to my side and scanned the pages. “I think I can work with this. Hold on.”
Jezebeth slowly waved her hands over the pages, muttering arcane words under her breath. A soft glow flowed down over the charred paper, slowly restoring them to their original form. When she was done, I picked up the sheets and flipped through them.
Computer printouts, maps of the Orlando area, along with some notes written in a shaking hand. On the last page, there was a location circled in red pen. Right beside it? The word “ISOLATED,” the word underlined several times.
“Aw, our boy didn’t want us to track down his operation.” I grinned. “He moved his base of operations outside the city. An old, abandoned mine.”
“We should go now. Get this done.”
I couldn’t agree more.
20
It was after midnight by the time we were organized, strapped with weapons, and got to the mine. We parked a good half mile away and slowly approached the place, easing toward the edge of the massive crater. I had my swords out and coated with the heat of hellfire, blades aching for blood. I searched for someone to kill, a fight with beings other than drugged-up humans I had to take it easy on.
We kept low, unwilling to be seen by someone below. The entire area was quiet and devoid of animal life. This place hadn’t been open in years and it made me itchy that the fauna was quiet. Animals tended to be more in tune with supernatural dangers than humans.
We got on our bellies, crawling forward until we could see over the very edge of the crater… and found something unexpected.
In Florida, a state surrounded by water with a high water table, underground mines weren’t a thing. Depending on the area, a person could dig five feet and find their hole filled with liquid in no time.
So, staring into the crater of this surface mine—where the owners had actually mined for sand—it was odd to see the entry for an underground mine. Yeah. The guy obviously hadn’t read up on the state. Or got his intel from dems that were stuck in the old west.
A weathered looking, wood frame formed an entry to the mine, signs mounted out front that warned of danger and denying entry. It kinda reminded me of a black and white movie from the ’40s. Huh. Maybe the dems weren’t that old. We circled the crater, coming in from the side, just out of sight of the entrance. I spotted movement and we all froze, crouching low. A small group of stoned humans meandered back and forth in front of the area.
“This is the place,” I whispered. “There’s not many of them, but we don’t want them to raise the alarm.”
“I got this.” Jezze slipped away and a few moments later, a soft, seductive song drifted through the air, wrapping around the humans. My ears itched as I fought off the magic woven through the sound. Jezze was great with her imitation siren-song, but I was thankful she wasn’t a true siren. Then, even Sam and I would have been affected by it.
The humans wandered off in the direction of Jezze’s voice, more appearing from some of the outbuildings. They climbed from the crater, sliding on the uneven sand, following Jezze as if she were the Pied Piper and they were her rats.
Once the area was clear, Sam and I headed right for the magical entrance to the mine. The front was boarded up, signs that read “CAUTION: KEEP OUT” nailed into the wood. A closer look showed that several of the boards had been ripped off and replaced so many times, some of the aged look had worn away.
Half-assed magic.
I peered into the darkness, wolf eyes penetrating the black. I didn’t see anyone near the entrance, but I caught the scent of someone farther back. No, several someones, whose scents carried a touch of brimstone.
“Dems,” I whispered low and sniffed the air again. “Half-dozen, hundred yards in.”
He cracked his knuckles and clenched his fists, giving me a nod.
We pulled off the boards and slipped inside, pulling them back into place just in case anyone followed. The human part of me, bred from Papa Leth and infused in my blood, wanted to charge in with a battle cry falling from my lips. The wolf wanted to stalk and pounce on its prey. Right now, the wolf won.
I crept forward, crouching low to the ground, and my wolf gradually emerged. My eyes took on my wolf’s sight, my nails transforming into claws and my fangs descending. I held the wolf back from going farther. It’d get its playtime eventually. I ached to taste the blood of my enemy, but I needed a clear head for now.
The shaft opened to a wide room with several paths leading in different directions. Silaran had really made a nice little ant hill for himself. A dozen red-skinned dems, long black horns sprouting from their heads, filled the area. They were relaxed but alert, ready for trouble, but not expecting it to actually appear.
Cocky dickholes.
We’d have the element of surprise and sheer awesome on our side. And we’d need it. This would be a tough fight, even for the Princess of Hell and a fallen angel. We needed to kill them… quietly.
I looked to Sam, giving him a small nod, and he flexed his fingers in anticipation. We waited until our breathing was in sync, our bodies matching rhythms.
Then it was a silent, blinding rush. I let my hellfire flare, infusing it with even more heat from the depths of Hell. I swung one of my swords at the first demon I reached, the blade arching through the air. He looked up at me, eyes widening in surprise, just before I slashed him across the ribs. Black blood spilled forth, coating the ground with its darkness, but it didn’t slow the fucker down. I swung the second time at his neck, ready to just lop his head off.
But he reached out and grabbed it with his claw. His palm sizzled against the heat of my hellfire, burning his damned flesh. Most dems were immune to a normal flame, but not the reach of my fire. Yet he stared me down without flinching even as his skin melted away to reveal blackened bone.
“It’s the Morningstar bitch,” he hissed. Then a wicked grin spread his dark lips.
He twisted his hand and a loud snap echoed in the cavern. I stumbled back, lifting my blade and frowning at the shard of metal. He’d snapped it in half and it took an ungodly amount of strength to break a hellfire-forged blade.
More strength than a dem should have.
“Sam,” I yelled out, dropping the blade and snatching the curved dagger from my belt, “they’re high.”
The dem and two of his buddies rushed me while two others rushed Sam. A few hung back, searching the battle for an opening. One of the advantages of a massive melee was that it was hard for all of them to attack at once. I put my back to the wall, using my blade to parry the dems’ claws, leaving no room for their BFFs to join in. Sam engaged a few more on the other side of the cavern, cut off from me.
We’d lost the element of surprise, and I’d expected to have at least dropped a few of our opponents by now, but I hadn’t considered how strong a dem would be when on Silaran’s drug.
I found an opening and rammed my blade into one of the dems’ guts, spilling more of the putrid blood onto the ground. I let out a fierce roar and called on more hellfire, pumping it into his bowels. He screamed as I cooked him from the inside out. The stench of brimstone and blood mixed with cooking demon flesh had my nose twitching. He stumbled away from me, flailing in pain, and my blade was yanked from my hand. By the time he hit the ground, his body was charred and limp. Before the night was through, someone would drag him back to Hell—where he belonged.
One of the other dems moved in and swiped a claw across my arm, drawing a gout of blood. I snarled and stabbed my dagger into his claw, then I twisted the blade, snapping the bones in his hand.
His buddy slashed my face, snapping my head to the side with the strike. The hit ripped me open in four long gashes, blood pouring down my neck as several long strips of skin hung in tatters from my cheek. I staggered and dropped to one knee, body numb wit
h the sudden flare of pain. My wolf howled inside me, snarling and scraping at my mind, demanding to be freed.
Now that I knew what I was up against, I knew I couldn’t hold it back any longer.
It wanted out.
It wanted blood.
I looked up at the demons, all sense of humanity vanishing beneath the pain, beneath the wolf. I smiled despite the pain, the wolf excited at the idea of being unleashed. It was time. Time to play. Time to kill.
I crouched, muscles bunching, and then leapt forward—up and over—letting the transformation come over me mid-leap. Fur sprouted across my body, muscles bulging while I shifted into the thing horror movies were made of. Part girl, part wolf, and one hundred percent angry fucking bitch. The transformation knitted my skin together as my body was reformed, sealing the worst of the wounds. This shift couldn’t heal me completely, but it’d keep me from bleeding to death.
I landed in the center of the cavern with a dull thud, hybrid body taller and stronger than my human shape. I had the best of both worlds, a wolf’s weapons and strength with the human’s mind. Nearly feral, but not quite.
I raised my claws, holding them away from my body while I called for hellfire. It filled my paws first, blue globes forming before it spread. It writhed around me, black and red, blue and white, all of it hungry for demon blood. Several of the dems took a step back, stunned by my sudden transformation and ferocity.
That brief hesitation was their death.
The very tips of my claws flashed with Hell’s hottest fire and I slashed out at the two nearest dems before they could react. Left. Right. Muscle and bone bursting from their flesh. Blood splattered, staining my fur, but the scent spurred me on. Several more dems rushed me; brave or so drugged up they didn’t know enough to be afraid. I pounced on the first, flames dancing along my fangs as I sank them into the demon’s neck. I ripped out his throat, midnight blood coursing down my throat, and I let out a howl that shook the very walls around me.
