The Necromancer’s Betrayal
“Will you let me indulge my desire?”
OH, SHIT. HEAT pooled at my center, and my head spun. The scent of smoke and pine still clung to him, blended with his demon musk. Ewan glided his hand up my ribcage, sending jolts into and off my skin.
My breath trembled. My throat trembled. Hell, my heart trembled.
But we couldn’t do this. This sexual interlude wouldn’t change anything and would only result in suffering for the both of us, although Ewan definitely had the more wicked suffering to bear.
“We can’t. They’ll punish you,” I said. Anytime he broke the terms of his debt pact, Malthus had to punish him in some way Ewan refused to explain, which only conjured the worst of medieval tortures in my vivid imagination.
He stopped my words with a finger against my trembling lips. “I don’t care.” He brushed his hand against my breasts. “You can give me something to forget the pain.”
My eyes blurred. “I don’t want to cause you pain.”
His eyes turned somber, and he took my hand and placed my palm over his heart. “I’m afraid it’s too late, sweetheart.”
I shook my head and stared at the floor. “But tomorrow, it’ll be back to business as usual. Is it worth it?”
My breath hitched when he stroked his thumb over my hardened nipple. I arched my back against the wall, my hip meeting his, encountering the hard length of his erection.
“Yes.” He smiled.
Also by Mimi Sebastian from ImaJinn Books
The Necromancer’s Seduction
Book 1 of The Necromancer Series
The Necromancer’s Betrayal
by
Mimi Sebastian
ImaJinn Books
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.
ImaJinn Books
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Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-492-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-511-9
ImaJinn Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.
Copyright © 2014 by Noemi Ghirghi writing as Mimi Sebastian
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
ImaJinn Books was founded by Linda Kichline.
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to Linda Kichline.
I’d like to thank Debra Dixon and Brenda Chin of BelleBooks for taking on the ImaJinn authors and keeping Linda’s spirit alive.
Chapter One
I PAUSED ON the steps, my mind fighting the compulsion to turn around and leave the demon lair. A frantic anxiousness welled at the thought. But then what? Even if I made it past Kara—my best friend and witch—looming behind me, running away wouldn’t change anything.
Kara leveled her gaze at me, one black manicured brow raised in question. I shoved the panic aside and took the next step down to where the gateway between worlds pulsed.
The last time I’d traveled through the portal, to New York, I almost didn’t make it back to San Francisco alive. And this time, instead of using it as transport between two cities in our world, I was going to enter another one entirely—the demon realm. While I’ve done my share of cursing the realm parallel to ours, it’s not the Biblical hell. And demons, while devilish in nature, are not forsaken, cloven-hoofed entities. They are another race of powerful beings who constructed the portal allowing travel between our worlds and since then, have insinuated themselves in all levels of human society. To what ends, I was desperately trying to understand. Especially since I learned I’m partly one of them—the first ever demon necromancer. It was a dubious honor at best. At worst? I’d yet to find out.
I watched Gus amble down the basement steps in front of me. The butler and demon lair busybody moved as if uncomfortable in his skin and bones, as if he hadn’t quite adapted to his human body. I don’t know what impulse had driven me to ask him to guide us and was shocked when he’d agreed, seemingly unconcerned about repercussions from Malthus Green, his demon master and my grandfather, which only increased the mystery surrounding the crusty coot. He didn’t look equipped to take out the trash, much less lead Kara and me through the perils of his homeland. This seemed a suicide mission at best.
“Maybe this excursion isn’t such a great idea, Ruby, but I couldn’t resist the chance to see—holy cow—demonland,” Kara said from behind me.
“I’m sure it’s not a good idea, but it’s the best one I have at the moment,” I answered. I’d worry about dealing with a pissed-off Malthus when I returned—if I returned.
When we stepped into the basement, Gus told us to wait and disappeared through a door opposite the pool table. I grabbed the red ball off the table and launched it across the green felt, waiting for it to slam into the black eight with a sharp thwack. “Finding out Malthus is my grandfather really threw me for a loop. I don’t want any more dirty demon secrets rearing up and biting me in the ass, so I’m going to educate myself.”
Kara took her own turn with the blue ball, knocking my red into the corner pocket. “So a foray to the demon realm is going to reveal all?”
I shrugged. Call it the anthropologist in me, who seeks the why and how, or the masochist addicted to pain. Either way, I needed to understand why another necromancer named Cael had killed six supernaturals, including a witch named Adam Taylor. To understand why Malthus had pushed me to bring Adam back as a revenant—an upgraded zombie reanimated with its soul intact. Malthus had claimed Adam would shed light on who was driving the murders, but in truth, he’d wanted to test my capabilities as a necromancer. More and more, I’m learning necromancers are inextricably linked to demons, and not just sexually, although a lot of that has been going on too.
“I’m in the game now and I intend to play it my way,” I said, smacking her ball into the far pocket.
“Don’t become like them in the process.”
“No, I’ll become better.”
She shot me a look and I couldn’t tell if she was impressed or worried. “You seem convinced the killings are connected to some messed-up history between necromancers and demons.”
I didn’t dispute the skepticism in her tone, but couldn’t dismiss my instincts. “Cael said some things about the demons and ‘stuff behind the scenes’. Others keep bringing up a past war involving the necromancers, yet no one wants to elaborate, so it must be important. There’s a bigger picture here—something I’m not seeing. The demon realm might give me some glimpses.”
I still didn’t know what had occurred hundreds of years ago to compel the demons to wipe out most of the necromancers—a genocide. It’s one of the reasons so few of us exist today.
“And you think a demon was stringing Cael along?”
“Absolutely.”
While Cael had served as homicidal front man, I was certain, as was Malthus, that a more formidable force, commanding more power and resources than Cael, had masterminded the supe killings. I called him the Big Bad. Malthus had packaged the murders with a tightly-bound Cael bow to keep suspicions over my role in the mess at bay until we could prove our theory about another demon’s involvement. Not that the supe community had completely subscribed to his explanation, but without any real evidence to the contrary, they weren’t going to challenge Malthus. Most supes preferred to avoid demon business, understanding too well their penchant for manipulating situations in their favor.
“If anything, you might learn something that might help you defend yourself in front of the demon council. I assume that’s still happening?”
I grimaced. “Yes.”
The demon council held me accountable for killing Cael two weeks ago. The aftershocks of which still reverberated through my consciousness, occasionally wrenching me from sleep in a cold sweat, heart racing. I’d spend the rest of the night reassuring myself that all was okay, and the boogeyman was not about to pounce from under the bed. Of course, to some, the boogeyman might as well be me.
I’d barely defeated Cael by using a power sphere, an old, forbidden necromancer power—another thing the council deemed inappropriate. Fueled by arcane energy I’d extracted off a corpse and a revenant, the power sphere had given me the strength to kill Cael and his zombies. Maybe I could have spared him. Spared Brandon, a werewolf, and Adam, the witch. Both revenants. Unlike mindless, soulless zombies, revenants retained their intelligence and emotion, making them difficult to control. Brandon and Adam, my undead creations, had been so vibrant—more alive than half this city. I finally had to release them, and it crushed me, as if I’d delivered the killing blow. But keeping them reanimated would only have led to more tragedy. They would have descended into an animalistic need for flesh. I had to restore them to death where they could have peace. But it still hurt.
And I missed them, and Cora, my grandmother, who’d pretty well raised me. My mom and I had lived with her in the Victorian I now own, but Mom was too self-involved to give me much emotional support, and then she’d killed herself. Not uncommon for a necromancer. Most didn’t live past forty, succumbing to the corrupting influence of their power, like Cael. Cora had lived to a ripe sixty-eight—an exception. At thirty, I guess the jury was still out on me.
“Where did Gus go?” Kara asked.
I recognized the anxious tone in her voice. I too wanted to get this show on the road, to see the demon realm and discover its secrets. If all went well, I’d return with enough time left in my Sunday night to read student essays before my class the following day. It took a moment for that thought to sink in. I was treating this excursion as though it was a visit to the library. Was this my new normal? And if so, I shuddered to imagine the new abnormal.
“You sure we can trust Shaky Bones to guide us safely to the demon realm and back?” Kara asked.
Gus reemerged and must have heard Kara, because he grunted and shot her a well-practiced stink eye.
“We don’t have a choice,” I said, although not traveling to the demon realm constituted a choice. Accepting defeat constituted a choice. Neither of which I was ready to accept.
Gus ushered us past the door and down a hallway, the same one I’d walked through with Ewan when we’d taken our ill-fated trip to New York. Anticipatory goose bumps skimmed across my back.
“I’m guessing Ewan doesn’t know about our escapade?” Kara asked.
“He’ll find out soon enough.”
And he won’t be happy. Unlike Malthus’s stoic demeanor, Ewan’s emotions practically reached out and strangled you with their fury.
“How are things between you two?” Kara asked.
I shrugged. “We manage to deal with business. Otherwise, I try to avoid him. It’s less painful.”
Ewan March—or Marchios, his demon name—warrior and my former lover, had committed some trespass that earned him a debt pact, or so the demons called it. More like a prison sentence. He had to serve Malthus for ten human years and during that time, was forbidden from associating with Malthus’s family, which now included me. A very archaic, stupid, demon tradition. Now, he and I’d sulk around each other, burning ourselves from the caustic friction our interactions generate. He’d insist I need protection because I’m Malthus’s granddaughter. His protection. When I’d shoo him away, he’d huff and puff in alpha demon frustration, and I’d laugh. It was better than crying. He’d chastise me for going to the demon realm alone, grating that some would seek to harm me. Well, what’s fucking new?
“And the tension between you two has nothing to do with a certain vampire?” Kara asked, causing me to intensify my lip chewing.
I gave her a side-glance, but nothing in her look or tone betrayed any sort of reproach, only a gentle curiosity.
I sighed. “Lysander stuck his neck out to help me.”
“Right. Which you won’t explain to your best friend.” She crossed her arms and nudged past me to catch up with Gus.
I hated keeping secrets, especially from my closest friends, knowing firsthand after Malthus and Ewan had withheld truths, how secrets could destroy trust. But I couldn’t tell her how Lysander had helped me confront Dominic, the Master Vampire, after one of Dominic’s lieutenants tried to kill me. In self-defense, I ended up turning the lieutenant into a vampire zombie, which didn’t endear me to the vampires, who already bore a deep-seated enmity toward the demons regarding the power and influence they’d established in this realm.
Kara glanced back at me. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“About Lysander?” I bit my upper lip. “I don’t know. While there is some attraction between Lysander and me, hooking up with a vampire, who was good friends with Ewan, doesn’t seem like the smartest move, even though Ewan’s past has pushed us apart. It’s fucking frustrating. He embraces, honors the punishment, and won’t explain why. He’s the first man I’ve connected with whom I don’t need to hide from. And I don’t want to hide anymore. Besides, he’s so goddamn sexy.” My throat ached at the words. Yes, we’d shared incredible sex, but beyond the physical, I felt like I’d touched his soul, and he’d exercised the patience and will to reach past my fear and tap into the passionate side I’d buried. It had only taken a few words from Malthus to eviscerate the burgeoning emotions and trust we’d nurtured.
I’ve never felt so powerless. I could slam my head into a wall all week, and it wouldn’t alleviate the maniacal frustration about to snap me in pieces. Before this trip, I wavered between researching the genocide and looking into Ewan’s past. I’d only have time for one before Malthus discovered us, and the demon realm, toxic to humans, began taking its toll, particularly on Kara. So I put Ewan on the back burner . . . possibly for good. Supe life demanded heavy payment for survival, usually in the form of romantic turmoil.
Kara stopped walking and turned back to me. “I tried to wrangle information about Ewan’s past from Jax, but he just shakes his head sadly,” Kara said, referring to her own demon lover. I wasn’t quite sure what was up with those two. Kara, normally Chatty Cathy about her sexual escapades, has been oddly quiet about Jax, making me suspect she’s in over her head. I sighed inwardly. I hoped for her sake that he didn’t have any nutty demon pacts. “Maybe Ewan’s situation isn’t fixable,” Kara added, reminding me of almost the exact same line spoken by Adam before we confronted Cael in the boarded up theater.
Maybe not, but I could no longer hide and pretend none of the supernatural stuff mattered, that Ewan didn’t matt
er. My power didn’t matter. Activating the power sphere had connected me to a latent well deep inside that was now rising, overflowing, refusing to lie dormant. I’d stood by while Mom went nuts and Cora was killed. Not that I could have prevented their deaths, but I’d allowed the fear of using my power to constrain me. Necromancy had basically killed off my family and delivered me to this alien place in my life. This time, I wasn’t about to slouch around and let things fall apart, even if it took me where no necromancer had gone before, or at least to the demon realm. I didn’t want to wind up bleeding out on a cold, tiled bathroom floor, like my mom, with no clue as to why I’d just slit my wrists.
A blast of cool, moist air hit us. Kara rubbed her arms. “That was unexpected.”
I gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Just wait.” Hopefully, cold air would prove the biggest surprise, but somehow I doubted it.
Gus huffed with impatience, waiting for us to catch up. As we proceeded farther down the darkened hallway, I noticed uneven rock had replaced the cement floor. I’d given up trying to guess how to best dress for trips through the portal and had settled on jeans and a T-shirt. When I’d traveled with Ewan, the passage had transformed into a dungeon of some sort. Each demon approached the portal differently, based on their mental projection. Apparently, Gus favored rocks, the cold and trees. The walls had contorted into towering pines, and our path narrowed to a mountain ledge. I grasped the thick tree trunk when my sneaker slipped on a mutated succulent-type plant sprouting from a crevasse in the rock. The worn treads of my Vans were not well suited for a hike through Gus’s projection of mountain wilderness.
“You should have told me to bring my hiking boots. Sheesh. What the hell?” Kara said while stepping over the gnarled, exposed roots of the towering trees.
“No kidding,” I agreed, glancing at her sneakers, jeans and T-shirt. Though her attire was similar to my own, she somehow managed to radiate a polish I could never seem to emulate. Her black hair artfully tangled in a bob cut while my auburn mane constantly escaped whatever clip or elastic band I’d used to confine the thick layers.
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