CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Isela took a break when her stomach grumbled. A tray had appeared as if by magic while she had been fixated on her dancing. As she cooled off, she nibbled at grilled veggies before dipping into a bowl of chicken soup with homemade dumplings. Satiated, she stretched out on the floor, moving into deeper stretches designed to release tension in her hip while she flipped through her notes and the information Azrael had given her.
Everything led to the words circled repeatedly in ink: Queen of Diamonds. Frustration made her switch tacks. If she couldn’t find anything about the woman, maybe there was something about the book.
Grimoire was a blanket term for a book of magic. Though the word itself was French in origin, the concept went beyond borders, with roots in cultures all over the world. From carved walls and tablets, to papyrus scrolls and bound volumes, spells could be recorded and passed on in an impossible number of ways.
But magic was no more about potions and séances than lightning was the strike of an angry god thrown from a mountaintop. Magic was a flow of energy. Which made spells something like channels to direct it. The necromancer who had the most spells had a great deal of access to power, beyond his or her inherent abilities.
Isela thought back to the collection in Azrael’s study. Hundreds, he’d admitted casually. She had seen no more than three books on the shelf in Havel Zeman’s aedis, all with modern bindings. Azrael seemed to think the one Zeman had been working from when he was killed was much older—something that should have been beyond his reach to possess.
What if the Queen of Diamonds wasn’t looking for the grimoire itself—but a spell it contained? And if they could somehow determine what spell she had been looking for, maybe they could find a way to stop her.
She rocketed off the floor. When she flung open the door, Rory looked up, ready to stop her.
“I need to see Azrael,” she said.
“He’s indisposed.”
Isela ignored the sting. It had been two days since the conversation in the library, and she hadn’t seen Azrael. It shouldn’t have surprised her—it was a castle after all—but after their fresh intimacy, the loss was palpable. Worse, she had been installed in his private rooms, like the new wrought iron bed that appeared after the ruins of the old had been cleared. She was surrounded by him; the whole room carried his scent, from the closet full of clothes to the toiletries in the bathroom.
But Azrael must have had other rooms, other wardrobes and collections of deliciously scented soaps, because she had not heard so much as the echo of his voice in two days. In spite of being constantly shadowed by one of the four members of his Aegis who seemed closest to him, no one would respond to her questions about Azrael. Rory and Gregor seemed all too pleased to ignore them. At least Dory and Lysippe had the grace to be apologetic.
All because she hadn’t jumped at the offer to become Azrael’s love slave.
“Tell him it’s urgent,” she insisted. “I think I know why. . .”
Rory had already angled his head in that particular way that said there was mental communication happening. He dismissed her with his eyes.
“He’ll call for you later,” he said.
Call for you. She raged inwardly. This was the most bizarre sexual coercion she’d ever heard of. All because she hadn’t been willing to give up everything she worked so hard for to become another one of his automatons.
It was fine if he wanted to deprive her of sex, but she was trying to do her job— the job the allegiance had brought her in for—and she would be damned if she would let his errant male pride stop her. She felt the roar building up inside her and then, surprisingly, a glimmer of gold she hadn’t felt in days.
She and Azrael had communicated directly before. Why not now? She arrowed a thought to the image of him in her head. This can’t wait.
Azrael’s mental growl was just as threatening as the real thing. She fought off the goose bumps and the urge to be silent.
It’s about the grimoire. She pressed. I think I know what she was looking for.
Silence.
“Let’s go,” Rory said.
She had to jog to keep up with him.
“I’m sorry I called you Fijian,” she said.
He said nothing. They took an elevator down.
“I don’t want to hurt him,” she said. “I don’t want to be his weak link. I just want to get this over so I can go home and get back to my life.”
That earned her a sideways glance. She fought the deep ache the image of life without him brought with it. But she did want her family and friends safe. And she would give up Azrael, if that’s what it took.
The elevator opened on the same floor as the morgue. Rory stepped out so quickly she almost missed his words. “It’s too late for that now.”
He led her down the hall to another room and opened the door. She took a big breath and went inside. The door shut behind her with a vacuum-sealed thud, and she found herself sharing a concrete-walled room, no bigger than a closet, with Gregor.
The room was sparsely furnished: another door, a sink, and the plain army surplus cot with wool blankets that bore signs of recent use.
“The dancer,” Gregor purred, stalking across the room.
She dodged him, avoiding the sink next to the door opposite the one she had come in. Her attention went to the one-way mirror that filled the wall behind Gregor.
Beyond it, Azrael stood under hard, bright lighting, facing a man who had been chained by the wrists and suspended from the ceiling. Based on the limpness of his body and the lack of tension in his shoulders, they had been recently dislocated. The man was dressed in what had been a nice dress shirt and navy slacks. What was left of them were stained with blood and torn with holes. His head hung limp, chin sagging against his collarbones. Sweat and blood caked limp, graying hair.
In spite of the wreckage of his clothes, Isela noted that the skin beneath was unblemished. As she watched in horror, Azrael struck out with preternatural speed, his fist smashing into one of the man’s upper arms.
The man’s head flung back; the once-handsome face forming a mask of agony that made the blood freeze in her veins. She couldn’t hear the scream.
She staggered backward into Gregor’s chest and flung herself blindly to escape him. Her stomach clenched.
“Not again, dancer,” Gregor said calmly. “And certainly not for this filth. He’s hardly earned your empathy. Watch.”
Isela turned back, hand over her mouth. The arm that had at once swollen and purpled was rapidly returning to flesh color. His shoulders seemed to reattach themselves as she watched.
“What—” she managed, finding Gregor’s eyes in the dark.
He nodded at the window.
She looked back and now noted the floor was littered with human parts. His parts, she realized. But he had all his fingers and toes—and the nose and ears were also in their proper places.
“What the fuck?”
“Incubus,” Gregor said as if that explained everything.
“They’re immortal?” she said.
“Not quite.” He shook his head. “They draw power from sexuality. This one trafficked females. He sold them to the highest bidder, although he kept quite a harem for himself. Human women were a particular specialty. He’s quite old and has been gorged for some time. It’s taken days to wear him down to this point.”
Her mind stumbled over his words, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. Azrael didn’t move his gaze from his captive, but she felt his attention shift, as if he had looked at her. That didn’t stop him from what he did next.
An emerald blade materialized at his side, fisted in his hand. With a single stroke that was a blur to her eyes, the blade sliced up in an arc, severing the man’s arms below the wrists. The incubus collapsed to the floor in a boneless heap. She looked up at his clenched fists sticking out over the top of the manacles and fought back a scream.
On the floor, the handless man thrashed. There was
no blood. The heat of Azrael’s blades had cauterized the wound instantly. The man made the mistake of trying to brace himself on one stump and collapsed, rolling in agony. Azrael took him by the back of the neck, lifting him off the floor. She didn’t hear what he said, but in one smooth yank, he stripped the majority of the man’s spinal column from his body. He tossed the ribbon of bone and tendrils of nerves across the room and spat on the twitching mass on the floor.
Isela didn’t feel Gregor’s hand on her shoulder as she heaved into the waste bucket he held under her face.
“The man is a parasite,” he murmured. “He has no scruples and delivered anything for the right price. Worse, his own tastes had corrupted. Most incubi deliver pleasure as they take power. This one found pleasure only in inflicting pain.”
Isela stumbled backward and let Gregor guide her onto the edge of the cot. It smelled strongest of Azrael here, and she saw a few fine black hairs on the pillow. Had he been here the whole time, sleeping on a barren cot a few feet away from the monster on the other side of the glass? While she swam in the enormous bed and fractiously resisted his offer of protection against a world that included creatures like this.
“Knowing this, still you pity him,” Gregor said, interrupting her thoughts.
“I have never seen anyone tortured before.”
“You did not see the females in his possession,” he said. His voice held tension she had never heard before. “A quick death would have been a mercy he did not deserve.”
She froze at the emotion she’d never thought cold, calculating Gregor capable of: grief.
“He broke Azrael’s law,” Gregor said, crouching beside her. “The enslavement of humans and breaking of females has been outlawed since Azrael took this territory. What message would a quick death send to others of his kind? An example must be made.”
Isela shuddered, even as a righteous heat rose in her chest. The door to the inner room opened. She could not find the strength to look up, but Gregor stood and moved away immediately.
“Leave us,” Azrael rumbled.
She heard the door close, and they were alone. On the other side of the glass, the twitching had stopped. Azrael cleaned his hands thoroughly in the sink beside the door, moving around the small room with familiarity.
“Is he dead?”
“No,” Azrael said. “But it will cost him dearly to regenerate from this. And he will feel every bit of the pain.”
She took a deep, steadying breath and looked up at him, gripping the cot’s metal frame until her knuckles were white. She focused on the roughness of the blankets, the scent of him in the room, and refused to look through the glass again.
“Good,” she said, and an image of Evie, bouncing Thyme on her hip, flashed to mind.
He looked surprised for just a moment, and his eyes steeled as he crouched beside her. “You know of someone who was abused by a man like this.”
“You didn’t read my mind?” Her voice was a ghost of its former defiance.
“I’m learning to ask.”
“My oldest sister-in-law,” she said. “She had to do things to survive after her family was killed. Things a man like this took advantage of her for.”
He nodded solemnly. “Unfortunately, he is not unique. You see now why I bridled at the insinuation that I would have coerced you.”
“I’m sorry.”
She had the sense that the predator had been caged, but she trembled anyway.
Azrael rocked back on his heels. “You are frightened of me now.”
She met his eyes. “You just ripped out a man’s spine.”
“And I will do it again before this is through,” he said. “Perhaps next time you will wait, as I requested, instead of insisting to see me.”
“You need to talk to Rory about what a request sounds like.” Heat crept into her cheeks as she looked at her feet. “You have been avoiding me.”
He reached out to touch the hair that had come loose from her bun, caught himself, and withdrew. “It seemed best to let you focus on your dancing while you made up your mind.
“But I’m glad you are here.” He sighed. “I cannot protect you from this side of me. It is who I must be—to maintain that which I value in my territory.”
“What is that?”
“Civilization,” he said. “The world is a much more savage place than most humans would comprehend. I am the monster that keeps all others at bay. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Yet you are still frightened,” he said.
She drew a hard breath and met his eyes.
“What is the price you pay?” she asked. “For maintaining the illusion that it is only gods and necromancers we must fear.”
Again came that flare of surprise in his expression. He looked puzzled, and his eyes roved her face, searching for the answer to a question he didn’t know how to ask.
“You came to tell me something,” he said instead.
“The grimoire.” Isela drew a breath, exhaled slowly, and returned her attention to her purpose.
“He acquired it from a woman who came into his possession,” Azrael said, the word like a curse. “It was in her family for generations, but she did not know where it came from.”
“Is she—”
The flash of silver gave her the answer. “Gone. She would not be broken, so he destroyed her. I have tried to summon her but with no success. He kept nothing of hers.”
“How did it come to Havel?”
“Zeman was a well-known dealer,” Azrael said. “And he was unafraid to dirty his hands. After the book was sold, this scum found someone else was looking for it. She paid him a visit, he gave up Zeman, and she let him be.”
Isela turned the growing theory over in her mind one more time.
“What is it?”
“You said the grimoire was old,” she began. “And that makes it valuable. Why?”
“The first necromancers were like scientists, experimenting with their powers to find what they were capable of, and where the limits were. What went wrong killed us. What we survived, we wrote down.”
“The first grimoires,” she said.
He shook his head. “Witches invented grimoires. We may be more powerful outright, but our distrust of one another makes us solitary, and vulnerable. . . Witches’ strength is in numbers and sharing knowledge. We did not share as they did, but we learned from each other’s mistakes and compiled our spells in their fashion. Over time, many of the oldest spells were abandoned because they were too dangerous. Those are rare.”
“How many are there?” Isela demanded.
His brows rose in question.
“Spells so dangerous only a necromancer as powerful as she is would attempt to pull them off,” Isela said, pausing. “There can’t be many. Can there?”
Azrael rose with leonine grace, stalking back into the inner room. Gregor returned in time to catch her shoulders when she tried to follow Azrael inside. The door to the inner room swung open, and the broken incubus’s ragged breaths echoed against the walls.
The necromancer crouched beside him, gripping a handful of sweat-soaked hair in his fist.
“What did she say to you?” There was an electricity in his voice that made sparks fly from the overhead lighting.
Isela gasped at the ozone charge in the air, ignoring Gregor’s hands as she watched, transfixed. The apparently lifeless figure’s eyes rolled open. His mouth began to move, but no words came out at first. Azrael sent another surge that stiffened his limbs.
Words escaped this time, garbled on his broken tongue. Azrael jolted him again. The lights flickered.
He howled, gibbering, but Azrael held him firm. “The fury of wings! Wings. The fury of wings.”
He collapsed to the floor as the overhead lighting dimmed, then flared bright enough to shatter the bulbs and shower the room in sparks. In the darkness, Azrael swore and bit out a single word: “Goetia.” A ball of glowing emerald hovered like a ghost light, illuminating th
e room. It floated in front of Azrael, and Gregor yanked Isela out of the way as he strode back through the door and toward the Aedis.
In the hall, Azrael dismissed the light with a wave. “Gregor, secure him. We may need him again when he’s recovered.”
“Goetia,” Isela repeated, jogging after Azrael as he strode down the hall toward the elevator. Already dreading the answer, she asked, “What does that mean?”
“There are certain spells that are legend, even among necromancers,” he said. “Their power so great—so destructive—it’s a mercy they remain lost. This is one of them.”
“This one?” They exited on the main floor. “You understood that?”
The warmth of success flushed her cheeks. She’d been right. She took her first deep breath since she’d followed Rory down into the bowels of the castle.
His chin dipped once. “She’s going to summon an angel.”
They returned to the study, and Azrael immediately began pulling books from the shelves, levitating them to the enormous desk at the end of the room.
Isela quit gaping long enough to ask, “Aren’t angels the good guys?”
He spoke almost as an afterthought. “You’re thinking like a human.”
“I am human,” she challenged. “Educate me.”
“You’ve met demons,” he said. “Demons are the power of death in form. They can be summoned and sent against an enemy. Angels are the opposite: life in its purest form. And they cannot be summoned or directed.”
“I don’t see—”
“Pure life is chaos.” He interrupted. “Uncontrollable, transformative. The same chaos that started the universe in a bang and will contract it again into nothingness. The same chaos that brought oxygen and hydrogen together, that multiplied the first single-celled organisms. Death provides a balance, and between life and death, everything—order—is maintained.”
Isela leaned on the desk. The scent of old books coated her nostrils: paper bound in leather, pages like skin, scrolls of a linen so fine it was almost translucent.
She looked over his shoulder at the book open before him. It was a Bible but one larger than she had ever seen, open to Revelations.
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