by Misty Evans
“I’m not leaving you, Kali.”
“Me, neither.” Rad appeared in the doorway behind Cole. “I’m staying right here.”
I shuffled the faxed papers on my desk, pointed to the top one. “I can’t pick and choose who gets sucked into hell when I do the exorcism. It’s a heavy duty mother and will take out any demon within a dozen yards of the portal. You both have to leave.”
“Much simpler to just take out Victoria.” Cole tapped the barrel of his gun against his forehead. “She’s a danger to all of us, human and supernatural alike.”
I’d already been over all the options when it came to her. “I’ll take care of Victoria. Her days as a witch are over.”
Rad arched a brow. Cole smiled, thinking I was going to kill her. Which I sort of was, but not in the way he thought.
Cole said, “I’m still staying.”
Bullheaded bastard. I shook my head. I was just as bullheaded. “No.”
“You’re going to need someone in hell to cover your six.”
A sudden rush of emotion made my eyes tear. “I’m not taking you to hell.”
“I’m going willingly.”
Rad was eyeing us both with a bemused expression. “Nobody but Lilith is going to hell.”
I sat up straight, made a production out of looking through the papers Damon had faxed to me. “All right then. Guess we better go over my plan before Lilith shows up.”
The two men walked all the way into the room and Cole took the only chair before Rad could get to it. Rad, never easily daunted, made himself at home on the edge of my desk, his jean-clad thigh invading my personal space to such a degree, my pulse tripped under my skin.
I cleared my throat. “The cemetery is a portal. If I can lure Lilith in there and reverse the magic I have on it…”
For the next ten minutes, I explained my strategic plan, showed them the spell, prayer and exorcism and answered their questions.
Rad shook his head as he read over Damon’s notes. “This is much too complicated.” He picked up one of my finely-sharpened pencils and began scratching things out. “You won’t have time to call on all these heavenly entities. Lilith will figure out what you’re doing and stop you before you get halfway through the first set.”
The musician in him began rearranging words, scribbling notes in the margins. The pencil tapped against his thigh as he reread his arrangement.
Damon was no slouch in the spell department. I might have been worried about Rad hacking up the spell and prayer if I’d thought they’d actually work. Since I didn’t, I let the Noctifector, who knew more about Lilith than I did, do his thing.
Maddy showed up while Cole and I were mapping out strategic places around the cemetery for him, Rad and the others to hide. I kept a set of plastic green army guys in my desk and Cole was having a blast lining them up and pretending to blow the smithereens out of Lilith.
“Did I miss anything?” Maddy asked, eyeballing the toys with mock teenager disgust.
I swiveled my chair to get a good look at her. Her color was good and her eyes were bright and clear. She was hungry, but not famished. Perfect.
“I have a very important job for you, assistant.”
“Cool. Are we picking out your ball gown for tonight?”
“Ball gown?”
She saw the confusion in my eyes. “A queen has to look the part at the coronation. Very important. You need something showy but modern to send the right message.”
Going to hell held sudden appeal.
“We’ll get to that later. First, I need you to take care of a little problem for me.”
Maddy bounced on her toes, eager to help. “What’s that?”
Victoria staggered in, rubbing an egg-shaped lump on her temple. “Is Lilith here yet?”
“Not what,” I told Maddy, smiling at the witch. “Who.”
Chapter Forty-two
The cemetery sensed I was up to something. The suppressive magic I’d placed on it hummed with electrified energy, zinging into my legs as I walked through the brambles and overgrowth. The energy would hit, bounce off and hit me again.
A few feet above the ground, the magic hung on me like a cloying perfume, coating my hair, my face, my hands. I didn’t raise my protective magic, but walked around the headstones and checked the air for any sign of Lilith. I’d asked Victoria to mentally call to her and ask her to come to the graveyard. Since they were linked mentally as well as magically, they could tap into each other’s thoughts. Lilith, of course, kept a tight rein on hers so Victoria couldn’t read her mind, but I was sure Lilith was reading Vicky’s mind with ease.
Which was one of the reasons I had kept the witch in the dark about my plans. She thought I wanted Lilith to come to the cemetery because I had news about Lucifer. I’d made up a story about the devil’s desire to reunite with Lilith and he was willing to meet her. She was to show at sunset. Vicky was more than happy to pass on the information.
The weather had turned wintery, fog rising from the ground as cold rain drizzled from the clouds. In a few hours, it would turn to the sleet storm we’d left behind in Eden.
As I walked the property, I kept to a pentagram pattern. It was easy to do since the grave markers were laid out in that exact pattern. Multiple pentagrams, in fact, increasing in size, surrounded a small one in the center. That small pentagon earmarked the portal to other worlds.
On the ground, the pattern wasn’t easy to see, but I’d had a bird’s eye view from the roof of the church every morning. The pattern looked like a magical bulls-eye.
I’d also walked the outline every year, tracing containment magic over the portal. Now I walked the opposite way, reversing the spell and diffusing the restrictive energy. I wasn’t ready to delete it altogether—no telling what monster would be passing by the portal on the other side and decide to pay a visit—but I did lower the concentration so the portal was pliable from my side. If something tried to come through, I could push it back. And when I was ready to send Lilith packing, I could push from this side hard enough to break the remaining barrier.
Above and around me, my army of guerilla soldiers hid in various spots outside the pentagram’s boundaries. Cole and Rad were at the cemetery’s edges and hopefully out of range of the exorcism’s reaches. The two Merc demon bodyguards, who I’d given the option of leaving and who had both declined, were stationed on the rooftop of my house, sniper rifles loaded with two different varieties of demon-repelling bullets.
Vicky stood over the portal, my willing—if oblivious—bait for the trap. Maddy lurked behind a large gravestone a few feet away, ready to do her part on my signal. The exorcism would have no effect on her and I’d done my best to talk Victoria out of her Lilith fangirl mindset, but the witch had stuck to her guns as I’d suspected she would. She was one human I couldn’t save.
As I walked the pentagon surrounding Vicky and the portal, I whispered Rad’s revised invocation spell under my breath. White or dark, magic only worked if you believed it would. I couldn’t say I believed anything would work at that moment, but the chanting calmed my nerves.
The words made little sense to me but Rad had assured me it was all part of the ritual. “Sole Almighty Creator of heaven and Earth, Thou hast neither feathers, wings, arms, voice nor color. The morning stars joyfully cry out your name and the Earth shouts in applause.”
“What are you saying?” Vicky asked.
“I’m clearing the energies here for Lilith and Lucifer.”
She seemed pleased by the lie. Her face lit up. “I could help.”
She was going to help, but not in the way she intended. “You’ve done enough.”
I continued walking and whispering. “I invoke thee through the mediation of the Holy Seven. Shamseddin, Fakreddin, Nasreddin, Sijeddin, Isa, Backram, Kahdirrahman. I invoke thee through the mediation of Mother Mary, the queen of angels. I pray for deliverance from evil. I invoke your protection from evil. I…”
A twig snapped behind me. The air
filled with the scent of smoke and burning fires. Heat breached the barrier of my clothes and licked over my skin. My earpiece came alive with Cole’s voice. “Mama demon, three o’clock.”
A smart ass to the end.
I moved toward the center of the pentagon. Dark earth magic tugged at my feet, weighting them down as it climbed up my legs. Vicky felt it, too, and closed her eyes in euphoria.
The sensation, tantalizing and seductive, made me shiver. Is this what Lilith felt all the time? Did the magic feed her like a constant ecstasy drip into her bloodstream so she never came down from the high?
Magic was definitely a drug to humans. The more they tasted of it, the more they wanted. Problem was, they weren’t born to handle magic long term any more than they were built to handle drugs. The high came at a terrible price and those like Vicky, who allowed magic into their systems on a daily basis, became addicted. They no longer saw the world the same way, and once addicted, they couldn’t turn back. Like a blood slave who had to have their master’s blood to live, humans addicted to magic had to have a regular dose of it to stay functional. Eventually, the magic would eat them up.
“Alciscor.” Lilith emerged out of the fog and drizzle in front of me. The beautiful mink coat was perfectly dry, the rain seeming absent where she stood. Dry heat radiated off her, chasing away the fog around her feet.
She glanced around, an expectant look on her face. “Where is Lucifer?”
Vicky took a step forward, ready to fall to her knees at Lilith’s feet. I stopped her by placing a hand on her wrist and sending a little magic up her arm. She jumped and frowned, but I smiled at her and squeezed her wrist a little tighter, drawing her closer to me. She needed to stay out of Lilith’s reach for my plan to work. “He’s on his way.”
“He said twilight and it is twilight.” Her voice was superior. “Where is he?”
How she could tell it was twilight with the heavy cloud cover and fog was beyond me. “He’ll be here.”
I stepped back and dragged Vicky with me. My magic confused her, dampening her thoughts. She stepped back with me instead of fighting me, and Lilith stepped forward, as if drawn to us without even realizing it.
Perfect. Two more feet to the portal.
I looked over my shoulder, turning my body eastward so Vicky again had to step away from Lilith. I acted as if I were keeping an eye out for Lucifer. Mentally, I finished the invocation prayer, as I continued to turn my body to the four points. Yehowah. Adonai. Eheieh. Agla.
Then I let go of Vicky, who had moved out of the portal’s circle and closer to the gravestone Maddy hid behind. I spread my arms as if stretching, but in fact I was forming a human cross. The act made me sick as I couldn’t help but think of my parents and sister being forced into the same position before being crucified.
Ah, the past. Always popping up at the most inconvenient moments.
“Before me, Raphael,” I whispered, shoving my memoires aside. “Behind me, Gabriel.” I flinched at that one, remembering the Archangel and his righteous anger at the ice cream shop. So not someone I wanted to tangle with. “On my right, Michael. On my left, Uriel.”
In my earpiece, Rad said the prayer with me. His voice ran over my outstretched arms like a peaceful stream over a rock, calming me. The magic leaching up my legs halted. The cloying air slipped off my skin and flung itself away from me.
Lightning zig-zagged across the sky and a breeze rose, making me think of the flap of angel’s wings.
I took a deep breath. This just might work.
Lilith moved closer, squinting her eyes and staring into my face with disturbing intensity. “What are you saying, demon of mine?”
She stood directly over the portal. It was now or never.
“For about me flames the pentagon,” I said out loud, and through the drizzle, flames did indeed rise around us. Small flames at first and then growing larger as I continued. “And in the center stands the evil one.”
Lilith’s eyes went black as night, flames flaring to life in the orbs. Not reflections from the pentagram. The fires of hell.
“What have you done?” she screamed at me.
“Now,” I yelled at Maddy. The young vamp jumped out from behind the gravestone, her preternatural movements so fast, she was a blur. She grabbed Vicky from behind, tilted her head to the side and sank her fangs into the witch’s jugular.
Vicky didn’t even have time to cry out.
She’d already sold her soul to Lilith, was already bound for hell. There was nothing I could do to save her from that. Being Undead offered her a life on Earth while cutting her ties to witchcraft. No more raising demons. No more playing with the queen of hell. She was already my blood slave and a pretty shitty one at that. Turning her into a full-fledged vamp wasn’t ideal, but it was better than the alternatives.
Thunder boomed overhead loud enough to make my ears ring. Lilith’s eyes went wide and I was suddenly locked in a vice grip. I tried to keep speaking, but my vocal cords were paralyzed.
Damn it. Hadn’t thought of that.
I started the exorcism anyway, using my mind.
Rad had tossed out the one I’d planned to use and substituted a Latin one. He was saying it in my earpiece, urging me to join him. My Latin was rusty, and in my head, I stumbled over some of the words trying to keep up with him. As Lilith lifted my body from the ground without touching me, I switched to English.
Way easier.
We exorcise you, impure spirit, satanic power, incursion of the infernal adversary. Thus, cursed demon, we adjure you. Cease to deceive human creatures, and to give to them the poison of Eternal Perdition.
Searing pain ripped through my ribcage. I jerked in response and blood ran from my eyes.
Rad’s voice continued, unwavering. I took up the chant again.
Go away, Lilith, mother of demons, deceit, and enemy of humanity’s salvation. Be humble under the Powerful Hand of God. Tremble and flee from the Queen of Angels.
My limbs suddenly bent in weird angles, bones breaking. I didn’t feel it though. Wind swirled a blinding mass of leaves around us. The ground under Lilith’s feet sank.
She lost her balance and my limbs righted themselves. I still hovered off the ground, but something was working to open the portal door and take her to hell. Either Vicky was close to death or the heavenly powers were listening.
My vocal cords worked again. I yelled over the thunder, lightning and wind. “I invoke by us the Sacred Name at which those down below tremble. Mother Mary, full of grace, help me. Angels on high, hear my words and lend your grace.”
At that moment, I dropped to the ground in a heap near Lilith’s feet. She raised her hand and my body rolled toward her, magnet to steel.
The ground opened.
God help me.
That last part was not part of the exorcism. It was solely my addition.
The portal became a black swirling mass of nothingness under me, the ground turning into a slide. Rad and Cole screamed my name in my ear as I grabbed for purchase, digging my nails into the wet grass and weed-covered ground. Soil gave under my weight, the grass slipping right through my fingers. I slid down, down, down.
Dirt blew into my eyes, the wind sucking oxygen from my mouth and nose. My legs swung useless below me. The black magic, the tainted souls sacrificed to Death, clamped hands around my ankles trying to drag me down with them.
Out of nowhere, hands gripped my wrists. For a second, I stopped falling. Maddy’s face appeared above me.
“Get back,” I yelled at her, but she shook her head, gripping me tighter as the wind whipped hair across her eyes. Below us, the souls lost in the portal shrieked and screeched. Fires burned.
She should have listened to me. A second later, the portal sucked both of us in with Lilith.
I’d always loved roller coasters, the free-falling sensation when dropping hundreds of feet in the air at high speeds. This was similar. My stomach went up in my throat, my body turned weightless. I twisted in circ
les, tumbling over and over. No longer attached to the ground or Maddy, screams erupted from my mouth from the hard hit of adrenaline. I wasn’t flying over a rollercoaster hill. I was flying off a cliff.
Volante’s handle slid into my hand. I flicked my wrist upward, sending her reaching for a gravestone. She hit something, tried to wrap herself around it. Failed.
Over the screeching noise of the portal and my own screams, I heard a voice. A voice that had brought millions of women and probably a few men to their knees. A voice that had rocked the world. Had rocked my world.
Rad spoke with force and conviction in my ear. “Sole Almighty Creator of heaven and Earth, Thou hast neither feathers, wings, arms, voice nor color. The morning stars joyfully cry out your name and the earth shouts in applause.”
I had brushed against Death a few times in my life but always survived. This time, things were different. I could feel it at my core. The demon in me knew it was a lost cause. Whatever else was in me did too. All was black and evil energy around me.
But that voice…that voice was my lifeline.
I didn’t want to die, didn’t want to go to hell. I wanted to live.
I took up the chant, more to savor that last connection to Earth than believing it had any power in this deep hole between worlds. “I invoke thee through the mediation of the Holy Seven. I pray for deliverance from evil. I invoke your protection from evil. I summon thee for help. Mother Mary, help me!”
White light blinded me. At the edges of my corneas, blue lightning bolts flashed. Searing pain pierced my heart, my organs. It felt like I was being turned inside out.
A sharp jerk stopped my somersaults and reversed my trajectory, catapulting me up, or at least I thought it was up. I didn’t have time to figure it out. The light seared my retinas and my mind went blank.
Chapter Forty-three
When I woke, I was lying on the wet ground, staring up at the foreboding night sky. Sleet stung my face.
Blue lightning bolts danced around the peripherals of my eyes and I tried to blink them away. Didn’t work. Above me, Rad, Cole, Maddy and Damon stared down at me, a mixture of relief and concern on their shadowy faces.
