by Misty Evans
Maria hadn’t cursed Dalinda with the Mark…she didn’t have that type of power. That was my domain, or had been when I’d lived at her court. Instead, Maria had simply put her own, twisted demon mark on the succubus. A little succubus-on-succubus violence.
Some humans believe hell exists only in people’s minds. Demons know the mind is the most powerful tool on earth or any plane. All of our minds are subconsciously linked because humans and supernaturals come from the same origin. That origin—God, the Universe, whatever you prefer to call it—has an aberrant sense of humor.
Good thing I have an aberrant logic to match. Jerking my demon’s leash, I reeled her in from her pain/pleasure orgy with Maria’s mark and tugged Dalinda up from the floor. “You’re coming with us.”
Dalinda fought me. “Not my hands! Don’t take my hands!”
I snapped the whip again and Volante’s handle trembled in my hand. Dalinda trembled in the other. “Don’t make me repeat myself, D. You’re coming with us.”
Cole shook his head in exasperation. “We don’t have room for her in the TT.”
“She can sit on your lap.”
Both War demon and succubus looked horrified. I pushed Dalinda ahead of me toward the kitchen. Volante floated off the ground as if I were walking a ghost dog. As we reached the door to the garage, she went rigid.
Merde.
I held up a hand to signal Cole. He gave me a chin-up acknowledgment. Motioning Dalinda into a corner, I flipped off the kitchen light and sniffed the air.
Nothing unusual. No trace of witch, demon or supernatural, just the scents of Dalinda’s house, the slowly receding fumes of her car and the almost odorless, clean smell of snow.
My gut didn’t care what my nose said. Something was off.
A sharp pain, like claws digging into my intestines, cut through my abdomen. I held back the scream jammed in my throat and clutched my stomach. Forced my chest to breathe through the agony as I motioned Cole to look out the window.
Moving like an oversized cat, he snugged up to the small, square kitchen window and peered out. His face went totally blank and I knew we were in trouble.
Big trouble.
Without pause, I hauled out my cellphone, sent a text to Damon and Dru with nothing but Dalinda’s address. They knew my shorthand. Knew to send backup. Whether that backup would arrive in time remained to be seen.
The burning sensation in my stomach didn’t subside and my demon, still sensitive from her encounter with Maria’s mark, raged inside at the pain. Not that she didn’t enjoy it. Like all demons, pain brought pleasure as well as torment.
“Is it Dru?” I ground out softly. Cole wouldn’t have had that kind of reaction if it was. Sure, he hated vampires—who didn’t he hate?—but I’d been around him long enough to know his tells. The blank face was one of those.
He didn’t answer. At least not verbally. Without taking his attention from the window, he waved his gun at me in a get over here motion.
I crossed the linoleum, staying out of the faint moonlight filtering through the glass to slip up beside him. The sight that greeted me in the backyard made my face go slack as well.
Dozens of Undead, all dressed in long, black trench coats faced the house in rows of five. None of them moved, and every one of them had a white film over their eyes.
Toel’s minions. Half-vampire, half-zombie, they creeped me the hell out. Vicky had no doubt reanimated their human corpses. Toel had then turned them.
Ick.
Wind gusted and blew through the sparse line of trees, driving snow into their faces. No one blinked. They stared straight ahead, watching the house like white-eyed zombie watchdogs.
Cole left the kitchen, came back with news I didn’t like. “Out front too. At least another dozen of them, doing nothing but standing guard.”
“You ever see I, Robot?” I asked.
“Course I saw it. Will Smith kicks ass. I always substitute the robots for vampires in my mind when I watch it.”
“Me, too.” There was a strange similarity. “You know that scene where Smith’s character is in the warehouse looking at a thousand VS5’s?”
“A thousand and one,” Cole corrected.
The one being Sonny, the robot Smith’s character was hunting. “Yeah, that one. That’s what they remind me of. They’re like drones, waiting for the command to move. They are well and truly tied to Toel. He must be ecstatic.”
“So are they zombies or vampires?”
“Depends on what Vicky and Toel did to create them, but my gut says both. Vicky is good at raising things. Who knows? Maybe they’re a new kind of demon spawn.”
Cole grunted in disbelief. Another cramp racked my intestines and I flinched. He shot me a concerned look. “These vamps causing you pain too?”
“Not them,” I said as I thought about Vicky’s trap. I had no trouble identifying the Undead population in general from the tug of their blood calling to mine, but this was like Dru’s presence. Dru, a Master vamp born from Vlad the Impaler. “Shit,” I said.
“What?”
“Toel Chase, Vampire King of the Western United States. He’s here.”
Chapter Seventeen
Human politics are a mess, but the politics of the Undead are a quagmire of backstabbing, closed-door deals, coup d’états and blackmail. They have canons of rules, regulations and ceremonies that make the Catholic Church look like child’s play.
Being queen of the Central U.S. Undead population and having sworn allegiance to Vlad when he was still alive did not spare me from Toel’s desire to depose me. Likewise, being a demon did not spare me from the politics. Rather, I’d spent a good deal of time since my coronation sidestepping vampire politics, thanks to Dru’s help, and another good deal of time hunting Toel. The night of my coronation, he’d disappeared when a group of Noctifectors, led by my Rad, stormed the place and disrupted our fight. I’d regretted letting him get away every second since then.
As the cat inside my stomach used my intestines as a scratching post, it was the memory of that night that flashed across my mind. I’d allowed Toel to bait my demon into making an appearance because he’d pushed me to my limits. I wanted to tear him limb from limb and I wanted to cause him as much pain as possible. We had been inside Carpathia House, no humans nearby, and my demon had been itching for a fight.
She got her chance, but because of Rad and the Noctifectors, she didn’t get to finish the job. Thing was, she did leave her mark on Toel, and that was suddenly in the forefront of my mind.
I gasped and bent over as fresh agony ripped through me. In the dim room, my knees buckled and hit the tiled floor. A checkerboard of dots danced along my peripheral vision. Even my demon struggled to get away. The sensation was unnerving, like I was splitting in two.
Cole’s voice came from far away. He grabbed my arm and lifted me to a standing position. He was talking, but to my ears, it sounded muffled and didn’t make sense. All I wanted to do was lie down on the cool tiles of the floor and curl into a ball.
When Dru was near, my stomach rebelled and hurt enough to get my attention, but this was taking it up three notches. My head swam, my legs shook and dizziness made the sink in front of me appear to rise and fall as if it rode a wave. I grabbed onto the countertop with both hands and spit blood from my mouth.
Blood. The night of the coronation. There’d been a lot of blood that night. Vampires had died. I’d bitten a chunk out of Toel’s neck…
“Oh, no. No, no, no, no.” I clung to the counter and blinked back the dots. A soft noise echoed in my ears, sounding like fine grit sandpaper rubbing over my eardrums. Shish-shish. Shish-shish. Shish-shish.
The sound of my heartbeat.
The feel of magic. The taste of blood on my tongue.
Shish-shish, shish-shish. My heartbeat, my blood, responding to the call of a sire vamp to his underling.
“Kali.” Cole half-dragged, half-carried me to the tiny table and sat me in a chair. He kneeled in front of me.
“What the hell is going on?”
“It’s Toel,” I whispered, my teeth chattering like I was outside in the winter storm without clothes. In actuality, my body was burning up. Sweat broke out along my hairline and ran down the back of my neck. Waves of heat, invisible to the naked eye, but readily apparent to my demon, flowed off my skin. I was suffocating, and the cold, wet snow outside held definite appeal. If I could just throw myself in it and stop this awful burning…
“You said that already.” Cole shook me this time, interrupting my dream of bathing in the snow. “I know Toel’s out there. How can I help you?”
I couldn’t make my mouth form all the words flooding my brain, the most prevalent still being no. I’m not one to live in denial, but this was one instance where denial was the pick del giorno. “Not Nudra.” I pointed to my stomach and hoped my shorthand would make sense. “Toel.”
Cole squinted and tilted his head in confusion. Then, as if my crazy brain flashed a picture over the top of my head, his body stilled. The expressionless poker-face returned. “That’s not possible.” He felt my forehead with his hand as if I were a child running a fever. “You’re delusional from the pain.”
The splitting sensation tore through me again, my demon trying to extricate herself through the magical bars of her prison. In the past twenty-four hours, I’d come to believe anything was possible, and at the moment, I knew Dru had spoken the truth to Damon about my withdrawal. I was losing control of my demon.
If she got loose, there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. Right and wrong did not exist for her, only desire. She had no moral quandaries, no soul. She was the essence of the seven deadly sins and the top predator on the earthly supernatural food chain. Chicago would be one big sand box of human toys for her if she succeeded. “Need silver knife.”
Cole’s jaw clenched. “Bullshit. I’m here to save your life, not take it.” He shook me again, hard enough to rattle my teeth. “You will keep that demoness under control, Kali. You hear me? Do not let her out. You’re the strongest vengeance demon in the western hemisphere, so quit overthinking this and just kick some ass.”
Without waiting for any response, he released me, grabbed Dalinda and shoved her at my feet. She whimpered, her fearful eyes glaring up at Cole even as she tried to slide away from me. He grabbed her by the hair and put his face nose-to-nose with her. “Put your Satan-loving succubus hands on her and relieve her pain. Now!”
Her gaze ping-ponged between us. “But, I…”
Cole held his gun to her temple. His eyes were hard and flat. “The only reason I don’t kill you right now is because you can help her. Your choice. Put your hands on her or die.”
Dalinda bit her bottom lip, surveyed my body, looking, I guessed, for a prime spot to touch me. She started to remove my gloves in order to take my hands, but I reached for hers and jammed them under my cloak and against my stomach.
She opened her magic a crack, unwilling to go full bore. Couldn’t blame her, but I was running out of time. Using my hands to continue pressing hers against my stomach, I accessed my magic and let it flow over her, strong, possessive and demanding. I truly didn’t think this would work, but if we were going to try it, we were going all in.
She gasped and tried to jerk away when my earth magic hit her full force. My hold was too strong for her, though, and within seconds, she succumbed to exquisite thrill of exchanging our magics. My pain flooded into her but so did the power high of my magic—a high no succubus had ever come close to when feeding off humans.
At the same time, her seductive magic lured my demon back. The invisible but captivating succubus venom transferring from her hands to my stomach flooded me with desire, releasing endorphins in my brain with the speed and efficiency akin to Rad’s ardent love-making. The pain subsided, or rather, it dulled. It was still there, but masked by her efforts.
It wouldn’t be enough. “Restraints,” I muttered to Cole. “In the bedroom.”
He read my shorthand again with the ease of a long-time companion. “Keep your hands on her,” he told Dalinda as he maneuvered me out of the kitchen chair and into his arms.
In the bedroom, he laid me beside Jeremy Stewart, removed my cape and switched the restraints from the human’s wrists and ankles to mine. Mr. Stewart didn’t wake up.
I hated the feeling of the leather cuffs, the heavy clinking sound of the chains and the loss of control confinement instilled in me. A rush of memories from Maria’s torture chamber rose in my mind, ghosts coming back to haunt me. The evil inside me clawed her way closer to the top.
“Get…out,” I said through clenched teeth to Cole. “Take the human…the succubus…clear the block.”
Cole withdrew the stun baton from my cape and stuck one of my cherry wood stakes inside his jacket. Dalinda’s hands were still on me, but I could tell she was losing the war against my pain. Her hands trembled on my stomach; her face was pale and drawn above me. Her scent had morphed from sugary sweet to briny—my true demon nature scared her.
Smart female.
My demon smiled and clawed harder, wanting to turn the tables on the succubus and suck the life out of her.
“I’m not leaving you,” Cole said. “End of discussion.”
“You have to.” He wasn’t looking at me, and if I’d had a free hand, I would have smacked him to get his attention. A burning sting zipped down my spine, making my back arch off the bed. “Cole…I can’t hold her back…any…longer.”
The tone of my voice made him look. He frowned, finally losing the unemotional front. A war waged behind his eyes. He’d sworn to stay with me and protect me, but how could he protect me from the one thing that made me who I was?
My body bucked on the bed, my teeth shearing off enamel and my hands and feet straining against the restraints. “Get out! Now!”
Cole motioned Dalinda away and she jumped from the bed, looking like an actress playing a role in a horror film. Eyes huge, fear clearly written on her face. She rubbed her hands as if they itched or burned and stumbled backwards until she hit the wall.
Tears pushed against my eyeballs, the pressure too great. Magic burst through me into the room, a crack of loud thunder echoing over the house so loudly, the bedroom mirror broke and shattered into dozens of tiny missiles. They drove jagged points into Dalinda and Cole, bringing a scream from Dalinda and colorful swearing from my bodyguard.
The last time I’d let my inner demon free with no restraints was when I’d confronted Maria and taken revenge on her. I took revenge for my family, for Rad, for all the innocents…and when I was finished, there was nothing left of her. Almost nothing left of me. For months along the southern coast of Italy, earthquakes and tsunamis erupted from the force of our fight and her eventual annihilation.
Before I’d attacked Maria, I hadn’t realized my full potential. The years in her court, I’d nourished my demon and fine-tuned her abilities, but it was easy when my prey was given to me on a daily basis. When there was nothing personal about the pain I inflicted. It was a job, one I performed well and took pride in. But with Maria, it went beyond personal. The rage, the hate I had ignored for so long, became profoundly intimate. I’d spent those years in her court guarding my private thoughts, ignoring the inner conflict she caused inside me. So when all that was stripped away and I had nothing left to lose, the predator in me became a ferocious nightmare.
Cole had never seen my true nature. What he’d witnessed of my demon during some of our more intense workouts was a tenth of what she could do. Since her last period of freedom, I’d kept her on a sturdy leash.
Now she was breaking that leash. So close…
The house shook. Dishes in the kitchen fell and crashed on the floor. The pictures decorating Dalinda’s bedroom walls jumped from their nails and sailed through the room, Frisbee-style. The succubus fled. Cole looked defeated. My demon howled her delight.
Taking the stake out of his jacket, Cole slapped it into one of my hands. His fingers brushed across my
skin. Being a demon, he burned hotter than humans just like I did, but his skin was cooler than mine. So much so, in fact, his touch felt like a soothing splash of water. “Then you use her, Kali, and kill every last one of them hell-damned vampires.”
Vampires. God, I hated them as much as Cole did. And the one I hated the most had some kind of power over me. I’d underestimated him too many times before, ending up here, in this situation.
Mai più. Never again.
My hand tightened on the stake and I shivered. The feel of it in my hand, the determination in Cole’s eyes, the touch of his fingers against the pulse beating wildly at the base of my wrist…a renewed sense of purpose rose, fighting the inner demon for control. She was full-on evil, but I’d had two hundred and eight-some years of training. Of holding her back just like the restraints now wrapped around my wrists and ankles. Of building my resistance to her dangerous nature and tenacious attempts to set herself free.
I had one motto when it came to my demon: Mai arrendersi.
Never back down.
“Free me,” I said to Cole, my voice hoarse but louder than it had been.
He hesitated for half a heartbeat, then released the wrist blade from its sheath on his left arm. The knife sang as it shot out and in one fluid motion, he cut through the leather straps binding me, nicking my skin and drawing blood. Next went the ankle straps.
My demon purred her approval at Cole. The restraints wouldn’t have held her down for long anyway.
But now I definitely had to pull out all the stops to trick her back into her cage.
The moment Dalinda had removed her hands, the wicked pain had returned, but because my demon had invaded so much of me again, she was absorbing it to spur on her power. I needed her to keep soaking it up. At the same time, I had to keep her from growing stronger.
Or at least redirect her end game.
Like all demons, she craved human blood. Craved taking over human bodies and bending them to her will. In some ways, all demons were ghost riders like Maria, using others to draw more power, more energy to themselves. We fed off their wills, their very essence, because they were made in the image of God…nothing more powerful on any plane…and we were created from the earth. Where they were filled with souls, we were filled with sin. Undesirable, harmful and destructive, we lived to ruin them, and in doing so, fulfill the insatiable desires, at least temporarily, by absorbing their life force.
