by Michele Hauf
His eyes glowed red and he growled at her through tight jaws. “Witch!”
Chapter 2
Edamite Thrash had been minding his own business, racing against the rain to get home, when he collided with a deliciously scented female with skin like ivory, hair the color of silvered snow and wide green eyes. It was as if entering another realm when he’d touched her and she had surrounded him with citrus, sensuality and softness, and then—
Damn it. He couldn’t move his limbs. And his veins felt as if ice flowed through them. The chill was moving down his thighs and toward his calves. Every muscle strung tightly. The witch had bound him.
“Get this...off me,” he hissed, thankful he could still speak. Though he clenched his jaw tighter. And his body leaned against the wall. How soon before his boots would slide on the wet pavement and he toppled? “Damn you! Witch!”
“Oh my goddess, it really worked!” she said with more enthusiasm than he thought appropriate.
The witch peered into his eyes as if looking for something she’d lost. Even in the darkness her giddy thrill showed in the gemstone gleam of her gaze. Stepping back, she looked him up and down. From the top of his slicked-back black hair, down his black suit and trousers, to his leather boots. Ed had never felt more humiliated. So inadequate. If he could lift a hand he would make her regret it. In his trouser pocket he felt his mobile phone vibrate. No one would call him at his private number unless it was important.
“I’ve always wanted to bind a demon,” she offered with a gleeful clasp of hands before her. Many crystal rings flashed in the moonlight and he noted the small tattoos on the midjoints of each of her fingers. Sigils of some sort. Nasty witch business, no doubt. “And I did it!”
“Against my will,” he snarled. “Take this binding...off me, or...” To make the sounds leave his mouth was a monumental task. “I will kill you, witch!”
Her happiness flattened to curious concern as she tilted her head and tapped her lower lip. A plump pink lip that looked all too tempting even in his bound, defenseless state.
What was he thinking? Witches were disgusting.
“You actually think that threatening to kill me will convince me to release you?” she prompted.
Probably not. But he’d been speaking reactively not rationally.
“Fine. Please, witch—” Oh, how he hated to condescend to her sort.
“My name is Tamatha.” She offered her hand to shake, and when he could but look at it, a pitiful statue tilted against the wall, she dropped her hand. “Sorry. My bad. I learned the demon binding spell this evening. Must be the full moon. It’s magical, isn’t it?”
Ed inhaled a deep breath to calm his anger. He had to do something if he was going to talk his way out of this one. “How about I promise not to harm a hair on your witchy head if you remove the binding? I mean, what are you going to do with a stiff demon anyway?”
Her lips curled to an expectant smirk, and her eyes brightened as they strolled down the front of his torso to just there.
And Ed realized what he’d said. Really? Her mind went there? Well, he could entertain a few lascivious thoughts about those lips— No! This situation was embarrassing and ridiculous. And never would he entertain anything with a witch. Been there, done that. Learned his lesson well.
“Please, Tamatha?” Right, appeal to her personally. Befriend the enemy.
“Before I release the binding, tell me your name,” she entreated, “and what breed of demon you are. I’m studying diabology. I’m very interested in your species.”
Yikes. The woman was some kind of fangirl. That creeped him out. Just his luck with women, though. They either wanted to marvel over his oddities or run screaming from them.
“If I give you my name, you’ve control over me,” he said tightly. His jaw muscles felt like stretched iron. “Not going to happen.”
“Oh, but I— Oh, yes, I see what you mean. Witches can control demons with their full names. Could you maybe tell me what kind of demon you are? I’ll release you then. Cross my heart.”
The gesture of crossing her heart disturbed Ed. He would have flinched if he wasn’t bound. He’d once been told about the witch’s crossed heart but couldn’t recall what it meant. A wicked gesture with malefic intent?
He didn’t want to give her anything, but her knowing his breed wasn’t going to hurt him any more than this wicked chill icing his veins. “Corax demon,” he said. And then, to keep it light and perhaps her mood light as well, he offered, “Such fortune that I run into a witch who is practicing her spells this ugly moonlit night.”
“Oh, it’s not ugly out. You think it is? Rain is cleansing and it washes away the icky city smells.”
“What I think is that we are done conversing. The cold.” It took all his effort to curl his fingers upward into an ineffectual claw. “It’s icing in my veins.”
“Oh! Really? That must be a side effect of the spell. Yes, I think I recall the binding, if left on too long, will paralyze. There was also the side effect of chilblains, headaches and possible extended, er—” Her eyes dropped to his crotch again.
Ed gritted his jaws. Really? His cock was hard, now he noticed. Even more humiliation. Gorgeous as she was, this chick was one wacky witch. Who smelled like something he wanted to bury his nose in and suck down whole—damn it!
“Vold, demonicis, scaratus,” she recited.
With but a sweep of her hand before his chest, the chill exited Ed’s veins downward, seeming to sluice out the soles of his boots. His shoulders relaxed, as did his legs. He started to go down. The witch reached to help him, and in her sudden panic, she grabbed him by the head. Her palms slapped warmly against his temples. The horn nubs that jutted up but millimeters through his hair heated and glowed beneath her touch.
He never let anyone touch his horns. Mercy, but that felt too good. The contact provided enough energy transfer to allow him to straighten his legs and catch himself before sprawling on the ground.
Coming upright before her, he matched her height, which was a surprise, but then he decided she must have been wearing high heels. Excellent. That would make it difficult for her to run when he strangled her.
Ed gripped her by the neck, squeezing as hard as his anger would allow him to squeeze, and—
* * *
The demon kissed her.
When Tamatha had expected him to hit her, to bruise her with his terrible clutch about her neck in retaliation for the binding she’d put on him, he instead...kissed her.
And he was still kissing her.
Her pink leather shoe heels backed up against the brick wall and she wobbled, but he caught her about the waist with a sure and guiding hand, not breaking the incredible, shockingly hot kiss.
This kiss was the furthest thing from retaliation. So she surrendered to the weird moment and even forgot about the rain spell, reveling in the spill of warm summer rain down her neck and cheeks.
This man kissed her as if he knew her. Had tasted her lips before. His mouth was firm and demanding, intent. Nothing about him being a demon repelled her. Everything about him made her want to get closer, dive deeper and seek his insides. To study him for more reason than that he was demon. If she could run her hands over his skin, she would. She must.
She dropped her shoulder bag and pushed her hands over his shoulders and teased the short, dark hair at the back of his neck, gripping it to hold him at her mouth. And then she glided up the back of his scalp and forward. Her forefingers glanced over the adamant growths at his temples she suspected were horns. Interesting. And he answered her greedy coax by dashing his tongue against hers and daring her to meet him as he deepened the kiss. Which she did.
The sulfur she’d originally scented was no longer noticeable. The crisp, cool tang of his aftershave filled her senses with ice and cedar. She would never
forget this man’s scent.
What was his name? Sure, she could control him with his name, but she wouldn’t. Maybe. The binding had been an unintended reaction. But what joy that it had worked! Of course, then he had called her a witch with such vitriol she had tasted his hatred for her as if it were acid on her tongue.
If he would stop kissing her she could step back and be wary.
On the other hand, right now, lack of wariness suited her fine.
He muttered an appreciative moan against her mouth, and then as suddenly as he’d kissed her, he pulled away and wiped his lips. “Wha—?” He winced and shook his head. “What the hell? Why did I...? I did not just kiss a witch.”
“Uh, yes, you did. And it was awesome.”
“Not awesome. No! Witches are...vile.” Again he wiped his lips, and Tamatha cringed. He admonished her with a wagging finger before her face. “You made me do that.”
“No, I—”
He snapped his fingers, abruptly cutting her off as if she were a child being scolded by a rude teacher. “If you want to keep breathing, stay away from me, witch.”
And he stalked off, glancing over his shoulder at her once. He slapped his hand against a thigh, tugging a phone out of his pocket, and stomped away.
Tamatha offered a wave. Silly. And stupid. He’d been offended by kissing her? She hadn’t made him do a thing. He’d wanted to kiss her.
Vile?
“Not so pleased about kissing you, either,” she muttered.
But she couldn’t quite bring herself to wipe off his kiss. Instead, she tapped her mouth and decided to stick with the good memory of his demanding and sensual lips against hers.
“I kissed a demon,” she said in wonder. And for as much as he had been repulsed, she could not summon a tendril of disgust. A smile curled her rain-sprinkled lips. “And I liked it.”
* * *
He clicked to answer the ringing cell phone as he stalked away from the repulsive witch. She had tasted—well, not vile, but rather sweet. Though he’d not admit that out loud.
“Thrash! You gotta help. They’re getting closer. I can’t get out of here!”
It was his friend Laurent LaVolliere, a fellow demon whom he considered family, for their grand-relations had once formed the Libre denizen centuries earlier here in the very heart of Paris. Laurent sounded out of breath and frightened. The man was a strife demon; it took a lot to frighten him.
“Tell me where you are, Laurent.”
“The Montparnasse!”
“Where in...the cemetery?”
“Their skin... Ed, it’s falling from their faces. And...stuff is oozing from their mouths. There’s so many of them. I can feel their dark magic. So...powerful. I can’t move!”
The terror in his friend’s voice sent a shiver down his spine. “I’ll be right there. Hold on.”
Ed shoved the phone into his pocket. Yet something compelled him to glance over his shoulder. The witch was nowhere to be seen. Talk about tormenting demons under the full moon.
But he couldn’t bother with a silly witch and that ridiculously hot kiss. Laurent was in trouble.
He spread back his arms and tilted back his head. The sensation of feathered barbs piercing his flesh always hurt like a mother. The price he had to pay for shifting. His molecules rearranged and did their own thing and his form separated into dozens of soot-winged ravens. As one entity the conspiracy of ravens swooped upward and soared in the direction of the cemetery. Beyond a vast city garden, the graveyard marked a dark blot amid the roofed and pavement-tangled city.
When he came to human form with a shiver of his body to gather in his energy and shake off a feather or two, he stood in a dark graveyard packed with tombstones, mausoleums, crumbling stone crosses and moss-frosted angels. Fully clothed, a phenomenon beyond his explanation, he wore no trace of his previous form. He could smell the anomaly immediately and felt its presence as a tightening in his horn nubs. And the witch ward on his forearm burned as it had not previously in the alley.
When his eyes landed on the band of growling creatures—who were wrapped in shredded linens, some of their hair gone and skin indeed falling away from some of their bones—he heard his friend’s scream. And witnessed his destruction.
Laurent let out one agonizing shout at sight of Ed: “Les Douze!” Then his body was torn away at shoulders, hips and head. His remains did not immediately ash as with most demon deaths.
One of the hideous creatures sighted Ed. He reactively sent a stream of energy mined from his vita, his very life force, toward it, which manifested as black smoke, enforced with demonic magic. The force should knock it from its feet and slam it into the nearby tombstone, breaking its body and killing it. The current of black energy coiled about the creature. Instead of succumbing to defeat, the zombielike thing merely swayed as if an annoying breeze had washed over its decrepit structure.
The rest of the creatures spied Ed. The one next to the thing that had taken his energy zap as if a mosquito sting dropped Laurent’s disembodied arm and growled at him. One opened its mouth and the lower jaw unhinged.
“Didn’t think zombies existed,” he hissed.
Zombies were not tops on his list. He never watched the popular television show because they were so unbelievable. The dead did not come back to life. Right?
The group of things—whatever they were—groaned and stalked toward him.
Ed knew when he was overwhelmed, and he was going to count his lacking ability to put the one off its feet to lingering remnants of the sexy witch’s binding spell.
“Find your rest, Laurent!” he shouted, then shifted to a conspiracy and flew out of there and back to his home, where he landed on the rooftop, fell to his knees and caught his palms on the concrete surface.
It was raining harder, and he prayed no lightning snapped the sky. Lightning worked like an electrical jolt to his bones, no matter how distant the occurrence.
Shifting into and out of his humanlike demon form took a lot out of him. He rarely utilized the skill because he could generally get where he needed to go by car or on foot. He’d be exhausted for hours now. But he was safe at home. Safe from...
“What the hell killed my friend?”
Chapter 3
Les Douze was French for The Twelve. And something about that moniker rang a bell in Ed’s memory. Perhaps he and Laurent had discussed it once? But why, and what did it mean?
After searching for hours through the database his office maintained—hacked from Hawkes Associates—Ed learned The Twelve had been a coven of witches from the eighteenth century who had been accused of witchcraft by the locals and burned to death in the Place de Grève, which was now the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, or city hall. A remarkable and grisly event that the human Parisians had talked about for decades and the real witches would never forget.
That verified what Ed suspected. He rubbed the small, solid black circle sigil on his forearm that had burned when he’d first landed in the cemetery. Indeed, those creatures had been witches. But what sort? Witches were generally alive. Not even generally, but rather, exclusively.
Those things after Laurent had been remarkably zombielike. With skin falling from their limbs, their only audible sounds had been grunts and groans. Strange, metallic gray stuff had oozed from their mouths. But really? Had dead witches killed Laurent?
“But Les Douze were burned,” he muttered, closing his laptop and leaning back in his office chair. “They were reduced to ashes. Things don’t come back from the dead. Not usually.”
He’d heard the rumor about a tribe of revenant vampires who had been resurrected from the dead. And sure, he guessed dark magic could bring anything back to life. A dark witch or warlock could conjure such a monstrosity. But it would be a real zombie. Zombies were shambling bone sacks. Their brains had to b
e degraded or completely gone. A revenant could not feasibly survive for long.
As far as he knew.
Ed wasn’t up on zombies and dead things. He didn’t want to be, either. But he had watched his friend get torn, literally, limb from limb. He couldn’t ignore that horrific incident. And no doubt, Laurent had tried to communicate something about Les Douze.
The office was quiet and vast. Black marble stretched the floor and up all the walls. It was peaceful here six floors above the big bustling city. Sometimes too peaceful. But then again, something always happened to shake him to the core and exercise his diplomacy and survival skills. Like impossible zombie witches killing his friend.
Thinking about witches made Ed shudder. Demons and witches had a strange and volatile relationship. Most witches could not control a demon unless they had originally summoned that demon. Likewise, demons hadn’t much control over witches. But the most powerful witches could control demons and use them for nefarious means. Every demon child was told scary tales at bedtime, and Ed’s mother had loved to frighten him with tales of wicked witches.
There’s nothing you can do to outrun them. He recalled the creepy, dramatic voice of his mother, Sophie, as she’d lean over the bed and speak to the sheet he’d pulled over his head in fright. If you ever see a witch, Edamite, run!
Of course, then his mother would laugh and leave him shivering in bed, wishing his father were actually married to his mother and living with them so he could run to him for a sympathetic hug. It hadn’t been that his mother was vindictive. Ed guessed she simply never realized how those tales had freaked out her son.
Unfortunately, such childhood frights had not completely warned him off witches. He’d dated two. Two too many.
