by J. R. Thorn
“Aren’t you angry that I slept with Jeffery?” The evidence of our lust was all over my face. I’d accepted the permanent blush that wouldn’t go away. “Aren’t you angry that I want Edwin, just as much as I want you?” I wasn’t going to deny the connection. After sleeping with Jeffery, it’d only gotten stronger. A tangible thread snapped into existence and bound me to a vampire. There were two more threads that ghosted against my heart and every inch of me cried out to complete the trio.
Impatient with me, Devon breached the layer of ice and it melted under his feet. I winced as the raw heat of his touch ran around my wrist and pulled me to him until I pressed against his chest. It was like being embraced by flames. “It would offend me if you denied your connection to all of us. That would mean you would deny who and what you are.” His touch ran up the small of my back and I arched for him, my eyelids fluttering in the pain and pleasure of his heat against my ice that continued to crawl across the apartment. Steam sizzled at our feet. “I am hellfire, darling. I am shadows and secrets. I’ll awaken something new in you.” He grinned when I licked my lips. “But first, we have some demons to catch.”
Hunting demons with Devon wasn’t how I’d imagined our first date. I should have known better than to have any expectations about him, because one sly look and he made my world crash around me.
“This is going to be all you,” he promised as he lingered by my side. “You should be able to sense them. After I’m done with you, you’ll be able to send them straight to hell.”
I chewed on my lower lip and my boots thumped against the sidewalk with their familiar heavy weight. The tight leather wrapped around my ankles and by now, was the only thing that was holding me upright. “If we’re hunting demons, why are you taking me to my mother’s shop?”
Morning crested over the lopsided buildings that lined the span of Fortune Street. The typical lurkers shuffled down the sidewalk hitting all the shops for herbs, prayers, and everything the superstitious needed to start their day.
I stopped when we reached Chasing Fate, my mother’s shop. I smirked, realizing that she’d named it that on purpose.
The wistfulness faded with an icy breeze that brought the unmistakable stench of death. My nose wrinkled and Devon sniffed the air. “Caught the scent. Good.”
An eerie invasion ran over my arms like invisible fingers reaching into my chest. “It’s not just a scent,” I said.
Devon’s eyebrows drew together and his shadow fell over my face as he leaned over me. He didn’t have to kiss me for me to feel the warmth of his lips. I opened my eyes to see the hint of flames rolling over my skin, melting the ice that threatened to freeze me solid. I moved to close the short distance between us, but he pulled away. “Soon,” he promised, not hiding the fiery desire in his gaze. “First, work.”
I smirked, because Devon was the last person I thought would ever put work first. “Is that so?” I teased as I played a finger over the ridge of his collarbone and ghosted a touch up his neck. I wanted to curl my fingers through the silky midnight strands that cascaded over his eyes.
He allowed my touch and leaned into it. “You’ve locked onto them,” he said, his voice low and husky in spite of his attempt at authority. “Now focus.”
He shifted away, leaving the shadows to engulf me until I thought I might drown. With no choice but to do as he commanded, I cut through the darkness and sensed my targets lingering in a building just a few shops down from Chasing Fate. “There are really demons on this street?” I marveled.
“Of course,” he said. “Demons are attracted to places like this. It’s easy to possess humans enough to cause a breach and let the foul things through.”
I shivered. “Aren’t you a demon?”
Devon grinned and the gesture never failed to make my heart jump. “I’m an angel of hell, but I haven’t actually fallen.” He took my hand and guided me down the street. The blazing heat of his touch told me where his heat came from… hellfire was a scourge powerful enough to overcome death itself. “I stand guard over those who’ve lost their wings… lost their way. The duties of a Keymaster are to keep balance between the worlds. That’s why you need to help me send these demons back where they came from.” He stopped and his gaze went skyward. The sharp angles of his cheekbones stood out against the harsh cutting rays of the sun. “I’m a jailer, Ren. There’s no mercy in me, only punishment. This is all I have to teach you, and as hard a skill as it is, you need to learn it.”
I swallowed hard, wondering in what ways Devon was going to punish me.
There wasn’t time to fantasize as ice constricted around my chest and growls sounded in the distance. The demons knew we were here.
Devon kept close and the comforting graze of his fingers along mine branded me with his heat. I wanted him to touch so much more of me, but he was right. I wasn’t ready to be burned—not yet.
I’d only just awakened my powers. Vampires understood death better than any other creature and I felt what Jeffery had unlocked in me like a champagne bottle popped free. Life and magic bubbled out of me and the worlds that had been hidden from me responded in kind. Death itself watched me and its looming weight cascaded over the horizon. It was a fate none could outrun… but that’s exactly what I was going to do. Such an overwhelming task could crush me, but as I glanced at Devon, I realized that’s why I had help. My role as a Keymaster meant embracing every corner of the magical realms. I understood death, its cold embrace and its finality, and now it was time to face hell itself.
As we stalked closer to the source of wrongness that sent my nose wrinkling, I realized that demons were decay and hell was the cleansing fires meant to punish and cleanse. “Are they dead?” I asked. “How are they different than vampires?”
Devon kept me close as we walked. “Demons are perversions of death. They are immortal creatures not meant to experience it, yet they’ve embraced the cold eternal darkness as their source of power. If we let demons run free, they’d corrupt everything until death was all we knew. There must maintain a balance, and its demons like this that bring about the thousand-year calamity that could take us all under.”
I found myself looking up at the sky again as if I could see the tidal wave of darkness ready to descend on us. It’s what my mother fought a thousand years ago, and it’s a force I’d have to find the strength to overcome. I shivered, not sure how to even begin with such an undertaking.
As if reading my thoughts, Devon grabbed my wrist, sending scalding heat up my arm. “You don’t fight death,” he said. Embers burned in his gaze and held me captive. “You avoid it. You burn it. You outrun it until it can’t catch you. Death isn’t something that can be tamed, but if you pay attention to what I can teach you, it can be dealt with.”
I swallowed and nodded. “Then teach me,” I said. “Tell me how you became a jailer.”
He smirked. “That’s a story for another day,” he whispered behind me and the kiss of his heat licked at my back. “Enough talk. Show me what you can do.”
I trusted Devon, which made his presence behind me comforting and allowed me to focus on the task ahead. I curled my fingers into fists and sent my ice crawling through the streets searching for my target. An occult shop two stores down from mine emanated the worst of the stench. I’d never been inside that place. It always felt wrong and my skin crawled when I ventured too close.
When I’d asked my mother about it, she’d tell me that there were three kinds of magic in the world. It wasn’t just good and bad. There was grace. There was judgment. And then there was death. I’d never understood how death could be a force of magic, but now I understood. These creatures that were demons focused on death, twisting it and manipulating its raw form in ways that weren’t supposed to be possible. That kind of perverseness would turn an angel, melt their wings and send them straight to hell.
I didn’t have justice mastered yet. I knew without a doubt that justice was Edwin’s strength. It rivaled punishment in the sheer weight of power
to deny a soul peace. Punishment could have an end, but justice was final.
I wasn’t ready for justice. I couldn’t see within a soul and know its morality, or where it belonged. But that was the beauty of punishment. I didn’t have to decide when it came to angels this far gone. I could just scourge everything away until it was reduced to ash.
This was Devon’s power. It was when forgiveness wasn’t an option, when there wasn’t time for more talk or deliberation. There was only action. He was an executioner, and I was his blade.
I bounced off the arch of my feet and the air popped as I moved. Ice crinkled under my shoes as I accessed vampiric speed. A wild grin spread across my face as the world around me blurred.
The occult shop reeked of burnt metal and decay the closer I came, and pressed me with a compulsion to leave that I’d always listened to. Not today. Determination swept through me and I grabbed onto the handle. I winced at the absolute cold of it as if death itself lingered on the other side… and in a way, I knew that it did.
I yanked the door open and ice snatched at the hinges. Red eyes met mine and cut through the shadows that billowed from the shop.
Demons.
Teeth bared and flashed white, but they couldn’t move as fast as me. I’d unlocked one of the vampire skills that Jeffery had gifted me by uniting our connection. Now I needed Devon to unlock the power to send demons back to hell.
He appeared at my side on cue, nodding at me as flames licked over his fingers and shadows billowed at his feet. He peeled his leather jacket off and gave me a wink. Then flames engulfed his chest and defined the hard lines of his abs. He wasn’t going to destroy the clothes I’d gotten for him. He looked so damn hot that I had to remind myself not to drool.
A demon burst from the shadows, reminding me that this wasn’t a night on the town. Crystals hanging from the ceiling reflected the spectrum of red that glowed from a hundred watching eyes. Claws came through the smoke, and fear threatened to root me to the spot.
Devon’s hand shot out and flames scourged a barrier between me and the demon, but it only served to make it all the more terrifying. Every inch of gruesome decay gleamed with sickly dampness in the blast of Devon’s hellfire. Shadows curled over the flames, dousing the room in darkness once again.
Devon’s help gave the demon enough hesitation for me to move. I banked around the side of the shop and crossed over a shelf of voodoo dolls with needles pinned to their eyes. A scream sounded when I stepped on one.
“They have a hostage!” Devon said, his voice carrying through the thick weight of shadows in the room.
Wincing with guilt, I lifted my foot from the largest doll and the whimpering eased, but I’d heard the source. I bolted towards the far corner of the room and found a woman clutching at an arm bent at the wrong angle.
“Don’t come any closer!” she shrieked.
I looked back for Devon, but only spotted the telltale glimmer of flames. A shifting of boots against the gravelly floor of the shop sounded, followed by the thud of a fist slamming into decayed flesh. “Devon?” I called.
“I’m—” thud, “fine! Get the hostage!”
Rolling my eyes, I turned back to the woman whose eyes were so big, I thought she might have a heart attack on the spot, or bolt like a frightened deer. Then I spotted the heavy chain wrapped around her ankle. I knelt and offered her the best smile I could manage, but the hint of flames uncurled from my fingers. I hadn’t yet bonded with Devon, leaving me lacking when it came to his unique gifts, but I still sensed the flames uncurling inside of me. The desire to purge and purify sent flames licking across my tongue and burned at my insides, wanting to come out. A demon must be closer.
“I’m here to help you,” I told the woman as I tried to ignore the overwhelming urge to shoot flames from my fingertips. “Can you stand?”
She shook her head as tears glittered in her eyes. She motioned to her arm. “It hurts.”
I produced a Tarot card from the inside of my jacket. My mother never went anywhere without them… until the night of her death when she’d left them in the shop for me to find. I’d thought it a memento. Now I knew it was her not-so-subtle way of passing her powers onto me. I wasn’t just the Keymaster. Magic ran in my blood, I’d just denied it all my life as impossible long enough to make it true. Now, though, as flames licked around my wrists and an angel of hell fought demons in the shadows, I knew I couldn’t deny that part of myself any longer.
I produced the sun card and light immediately gleamed from my touch, illuminating across the glossy card and giving me a better view of the woman who was broken and bruise… but something was off about her. Her gaze, it was too wild.
I reached for her in an attempt to try and heal her broken arm with my magic, but she shrieked before I could even touch her as if I was peeling away the skin from her body. “Witch!” she cried.
“No, I—” Before I could tell her that if I was a witch, it was a good one, it became clear that this woman wasn’t so human herself. The heavy chain at her ankle jerked as something on the other end moved…
She wasn’t a prisoner. The real prisoner was trapped on the other end of that chain.
A demon uncurled from behind her like a loyal Labrador, even if half its flesh had been eaten away. From the looks of it, the witch had established a parasitic relationship with the creature. Her arm snapped and she shrieked as bones crunched and it forced itself back into a normal position. Shadows burned a glittering, sleek blackness up the chains as she drew magic from the creature.
The demon didn’t seem to notice. It grew until skeletal muscles with flimsy sinew gleamed and it stretched at the way to the ceiling. It snarled at me, as if I was the one responsible for disturbing its sleep.
“Devon,” I tried calling his name. The thuds had stopped, but there wasn’t a response. “I could use some help here!”
“No one is coming to help you, pathetic little witch,” the woman snarled. She tested her arm’s functionality by bending it and winced. A pop sounded and then she flexed her fingers. Shadows twirled across black-painted nails. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
Devon appeared at my side as if on cue. “I don’t think I like how you’re talking to the Keymaster.”
Her eyes went wide. “Keymaster?”
He grinned, and this time the level of wicked was through the roof. “That’s right, so back off. We have some demons to send to hell and if you don’t want to be given a one-way ticket to inferno-land, I recommend getting out of our way.”
Instead of being terrified like she was supposed to be, her eyes rolled in the back of her head and a low hum bellowed from her throat.
Devon gripped my wrist and cursed, but it was too late, the demon screeched as it shattered into a thousand pieces and the witch devoured its power. Shadows swirled in the occult shop and the demons Devon had missed came into the open. Their teeth flashed and their ruby eyes gleamed. The scent of decay and a pinch of sulfur made my stomach lurch.
“You hold onto me,” Devon commanded. I’d never heard him sound afraid, but the tremor in his voice had me utterly terrified.
If Devon was worried, then all hell was about to break loose.
I was not disappointed. Swirls of flames opened up across the floor, making it look like a speckled hell-colored polkadot blanket. Devon pulled me along with him as a fiery circle opened up on the spot I’d just been standing.
Demons snarled and lashed out just when we’d found our footing, forcing Devon to yank me along to another corner of the shop until we were running out of options. Either we were going to get burned, get devoured by a demon, or brave the shadows and try to find our way back out of the shop.
It was no wonder my mother had never brought me here. This place sucked.
“We have to find the contract she’s made,” he shouted as he continued to yank me from spot to spot.
“Contract?” I cried. How were we supposed to find a piece of paper in this kind of situation?
&
nbsp; Devon jumped, making my arm which was already sore twist painfully as he rounded a demon that lashed out at us. Razor sharp claws grazed along my thigh and a cry escaped me as burning pain sliced up my leg.
“Damnit!” Devon snapped. He thrust out a hand, sending flames to engulf the demon and it shrieked as it melted into the floor. “Fucking bastards. There’re too many of them. We have to close the portal she’s opened.” He ran his free hand across a shelf we’d stumbled upon, sending collections of charms cascading to the ground. Whatever magic had once been in them was now sucked dry. They fell to the ground with soft chimes of metal on wood, taunting me that my magic was next on the menu if I didn’t think fast.
Devon growled and tossed another fireball, but he was trying to fight this like he would his regular demons. This was a witch problem—the kind of problem my mother would have known how to deal with.
I wasn’t my mother. No matter how much I was trying to fill her shoes, I already knew I was making a shit Keymaster. She’d left me her Tarot cards and I could have used them earlier to know that this was a trap. I could have understood why Jeffery had sacrificed himself and become a vampire in order to help me save the world. If I’d embraced what I was before any of that had happened, perhaps I could have done something to prevent it. I wouldn’t have had to live all those years thinking he was dead. Maybe my mother wouldn’t have had to die if I’d accepted what I was sooner. Maybe it was my denial that tempted death too much until it finally caught up to her.
Anger unfurled in me and I released a low growl. There was a forbidden Tarot card I could play… but not now, not here.
Instead of calling upon the one card that would give me a trump, I plucked out the sun card again. It was intended to heal, giving warmth where there was a need for healing. It was like when the body sought to fix itself by having a fever. Heat healed, but it also burned.
It was the closest thing I had to Devon’s hellfire, yet my intent wasn’t to extinguish the occult shop in flames. It was to cut through the shadow and reveal the one thing this witch wanted to remain hidden.
