Brimstone Bride

by Barbara J. Hancock

  “I’m sorry, Kat. I’ll explain everything when I can,” Victoria said.

  “Tell her that Malachi has sealed his fate,” Adam said.

  “Who is that?” Katherine asked.

  “Adam Turov,” Victoria replied.

  “The wine guy?” Katherine guessed.

  “I’ll explain everything when I can,” Victoria repeated. “More than a wine guy. Much more.”

  She tabbed the end icon and pushed Grim away. The hellhound padded away with stiff legs and haunches high. He still didn’t trust the man whose Brimstone blood he could definitely detect. Nothing got past Grim. Least of all a whiff of damnation.

  “I might have let the monks go. It was fifty-fifty. I almost did,” Victoria said. “I would have released them and Malachi had already taken Michael.”

  Adam walked to her and stood behind her, as if he knew she needed her quivering spine propped up by his hard body. He placed his hands on her shoulders and held her tight until her shaking eased.

  “But you didn’t. You knew he couldn’t be trusted. There’s only one thing left to do,” Adam said.

  He let go of her shoulders and backed away toward the cottage door. She turned with a question on her lips, but he answered before she could express it.

  “There’s a journey I should have made long ago. One that might have prevented this from happening. I never wanted to return to those mountains. I never wanted to see that compound again. But if you hunt a wolf, you have to expect to follow it all the way to its lair,” Adam said.

  He turned to unlock and open the door and she saw his scars in the lamplight. Grim rumbled deep and low in his chest as if he reacted to the sight of them as well. She’d caressed them tonight. He was beautiful because of them, not in spite of them. He’d survived. And now he was willing to go back to that horrible place to help her son escape it.

  “This time you’ll have a nightingale with you,” she said. She was no warrior, but nothing would keep her from going to Michael. She would fight for him in the only ways she knew how.

  “It isn’t a place for songs,” Adam said. He sounded stark and empty, as if the decision to go back to the monk’s compound had drained him of emotion. Or maybe he needed to be cold to face his darkest memory. “There’s no singing there.”

  He spoke to the door without turning around. It was a warning, but he seemed to fear that he would succeed in scaring her away. He needed her. Her son needed her.

  “I could sing for my son anywhere, even with this new, damaged voice that I’ve found,” Victoria promised.

  “I can still smell the dungeons...and the blood. You’ve never been surrounded by the Order of Samuel. The very air is polluted with Malachi’s madness. He follows in Father Reynard’s footsteps,” Adam said.

  He turned to look at her. His fear was gone. He stood alone, as if he always had and always would. The very name of Reynard sent a shiver of revulsion down her spine and Grim growled again, as if the dead man who had founded the Order of Samuel could come back from annihilation. He’d killed Samuel. He’d killed Michael.

  But Katherine had killed him. She’d stabbed him through his putrid heart rather than let him burn in the opera house fire. It had been more mercy than he deserved and certainly more than he’d ever showed others.

  She shouldn’t be surprised that his horrible legacy lived on. Not when he had brooked nothing but blind devotion and frenzied belief from his followers.

  To think they’d hoped his death would finally mean freedom from the Order of Samuel. They should have known another zealot would rise to take his place.

  Victoria walked to Grim’s side and placed her hand on his smoky fur. She grabbed a handful of his ruff as much to root herself in the moment as to hold him. He was troubled. She could see him phasing in and out of solid existence. She could feel the trembling strength of him against her, but it came and went, as if he was having trouble staying with them when Michael was so far away. He’d come to alert her, but he was desperate to get back to his tiny master.

  “Take us to him, Grim,” she said. But the hellhound only whined. His body flickered between transparency and solidity. Her fingers held fur and then they held smoke. Again and again. Something was wrong. She realized the poor hellhound couldn’t obey her command.

  “It’s okay, Grim. Go. Go find him. We’ll follow as fast as we can,” Victoria promised.

  The hellhound disappeared in a sudden vacuum that sucked air from the room and from Victoria’s lungs. She stumbled backward gasping for air.

  “I have to arrange transportation. It will be a long journey. Wait here while I make preparations,” Adam said. He turned back to the door, but paused with his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll retrieve Michael. I swear it.”

  “I’ve fought the Order of Samuel my whole life. It’s time for me to fight them at the source,” Victoria insisted.

  Adam didn’t reply. He twisted the knob and pulled the door open with more force than necessary, but closed it quietly behind him. The snick of its closing seemed more final than it should have.

  Chapter 15

  Victoria had no idea what to pack to storm a castle. She pulled her laptop from her backpack and refilled the interior with a change of clothes and a few necessities. She didn’t own a battering ram or a Trojan horse. She had to hope Adam was handling that type of luggage. She probably was completely out of her depth when it came to a physical battle, but she couldn’t stay away. She had to go to Michael. She had to go with Adam. He needed her. Her affinity thrummed that truth in her heart with its every beat.

  She changed into dark jeans and a black T-shirt. She dug a belted leather blazer with utility pockets from the bottom of a suitcase Kat had filled with extraneous things she’d never need. She found a pair of boots and swapped them for her sneakers. She knotted her hair up tight in a thick bun.

  And then she paced.

  Her bulging little backpack mocked her from the chair where it waited.

  When she stepped onto a stage—well-rehearsed and gifted with the natural tool of voice she needed for whatever part she played—she was never afraid. This was so different she didn’t know how to handle the hyperventilation and fear except to move toward what she was most afraid of.

  She waited far longer than she should have. She should have known Adam Turov believed in sacrifice more than he believed in her.

  * * *

  Once Adam made the decision to go after Michael all the way to the Order’s compound in the mountains, his other decision was also made. Victoria D’Arcy could never be allowed to go there. The idea of her in that most corrupt of places was more than he could accept.

  Hell was a better alternative.

  In his rooms was a cold brazier he’d used sparingly in the past hundred years. He used it now. He inscribed the necessary words on parchment and held it over the brazier. He cut his palm deeply with a small ritual knife. When his blood dripped onto the page, smoke rose in acrid curls to creep around the room. The parchment didn’t burn, but the words blazed ember bright. Adam spoke the summoning aloud while his wrist cauterized itself.

  He called the daemon king.

  He called him by name.

  To protect Victoria D’Arcy and to lose her forever.

  * * *

  Victoria stopped in the middle of the cottage’s living room and gasped. She pressed her hands to her stomach, but the muscles there didn’t ground her. Her diaphragm didn’t tighten and respond. The hum that had hovered near her lips since her first kiss with Adam was gone.

  A more scorching burn had returned.

  “No,” Victoria protested. Sweat broke out on her forehead and trickled down her face. She tasted perspiration on her lips. “You don’t get to decide how best to save me,” she told Adam as if he could hear her.

  She stumbl
ed to the chair and picked up her backpack. She slung it over her shoulder and went for the door. She was not going to hide in hell while her child suffered in the hands of the Order of Samuel. And it was time to let two arrogant men know exactly what she thought of their making such a decision for her.

  Adam Turov might be damned, but he had no idea what hell he’d just unleashed.

  Chapter 16

  She’d felt the burn of the daemon king. She wasn’t surprised to find him in the great hall of the main house, but she was surprised to find him alone. She’d expected an army come to take her away.

  “Adam Turov called me,” Ezekiel said.

  “That was not his call to make,” Victoria said. “Malachi has taken Michael and I intend to go and get him back.”

  Ezekiel looked at her with ancient eyes.

  “I regret not doing the same. I allowed myself to be too distracted by war. I should have fought for you and your sister. I never should have abandoned you,” the daemon king said.

  “You were fighting for us. We just didn’t know. We felt more alone than we actually were,” Victoria said. She couldn’t help a glance at the grand staircase behind Ezekiel. Adam had to be on his way. She didn’t have much time to convince her daemon stepfather that she could take care of herself.

  “You are stronger than I ever imagined you would be. The song of your affinity is more powerful than you know. I am ancient. I am always. Yet it nearly brings me to my knees in your presence. Your lover doesn’t understand. He wants to protect you. As I want to protect you. But, I think, you need warriors by your side. Not as your keepers,” Ezekiel said.

  “I’ve been kept since I was born. The Order has owned me. I don’t want to be a possession,” Victoria said.

  The daemon king walked toward her and she braced herself. She had only her strength of will. She had no weapon other than her song and she didn’t know how to use it against him.

  But Ezekiel didn’t touch her or take her. He simply stopped a foot away and reached beneath the bronzed wings on his back. Lucifer’s wings gleamed in the lamplight. The knife he pulled from beneath them didn’t gleam. It was dull and black and its short blade had been forged in a graceful, but deadly curve. She could see its thin, sharp edge. Its hilt was black too, but beneath the iron-like metal from which it was made glowed a fluid that flowed like molten lava.

  “This is my blade. This is my blood. By rights, my blood should flow in your veins. I loved your mother. I couldn’t have her. I couldn’t save her. But I can give a part of myself to you in reparation for her sacrifice. This blade and my blood in exchange for my life. She gave a gift and nothing was returned. I would give this to you to seal the bargain that has remained open-ended for too long,” Ezekiel said.

  His words were formal. Victoria recognized the tone. This was a daemon deal. She should turn and run far away. The daemon king’s blood was a gift she should never, ever take. Yet when Adam came to the top of the stairs and started to descend, she reached for the dagger. When her fingers closed over the glowing handle, Adam paused. The whole universe paused. Her lungs stilled and dust motes hung suspended in the air. Adam was dressed in the same black tactical clothing she’d seen him in when she’d first arrived at Nightingale Vineyards. Like a dark ninja in a modern military-style uniform, his pause only allowed her to appreciate just what a threat he could be with a hundred years of experience in his muscles and his mind. Even a blade from the daemon king himself might not give her the leverage she needed to decide for herself how she would save her son if Adam decided to stand in her way. He wouldn’t hold her. She wouldn’t cut him. An impasse was possible.

  But the power of the daemon king’s knife certainly couldn’t fail to tip the scales slightly in her favor.

  “It is done. I am with you. Wherever you go, whatever threat you face, I am by your side. You’ll never be abandoned again,” Ezekiel proclaimed.

  Adam heard him. The pause was over and he made his way toward them with a storm-cloud brow and Brimstone eyes.

  “So you won’t take her to hell where she’ll be safe while I go to retrieve her son?” Adam asked.

  Ezekiel’s positioning changed in the blink of an eye. One second he was facing her, and the next he stood in front of the man who had summoned him. He began to circle as he spoke. Walking around Adam as Adam stood stiff and still.

  “My kingdom is hers whenever she wishes it. It will be her son’s when he comes of age. But it will be a gift, not a prison cell. You of all people should understand how I feel about prison cells, Adam Turov,” the daemon king said. “Of course, I shall be very persuasive when the time comes for my grandson to take his place on the throne.”

  Victoria carefully brought the wicked blade closer and tucked it into the outer pocket of her backpack as if she was pocketing a viper. Never trust a daemon. Especially a daemon bearing gifts. The blade was going to prove more trouble than it was worth, but she would worry about that when the trouble revealed itself. For now, she had a weapon and she had foiled Adam’s attempt to shelter her from the battle at hand.

  It didn’t matter that her heartbeat thumped in her ears when the hardened daemon king seemed to threaten Adam with his posture, with his harsh tone.

  “I’m ready to go. We’re wasting time,” Victoria said.

  She suddenly wanted Adam away from his daemon master. Ezekiel might claim to be her stepfather, but he was a being from a different realm. Daemons couldn’t be trusted. The daemon king wasn’t an exception to that rule. He proved it every time he drew breath. He ruled a whole hell dimension of beings who couldn’t be trusted. As their king, he could be trusted least of all.

  “You and I have an agreement, Adam Turov. It does not include standing in the way of Malachi’s demise. The opposite, in fact. I agreed to help you bring the Order of Samuel to justice. Victoria must go. This is what her affinity sings to me. And I listen,” Ezekiel said. “If you value your soul, you will help her. Not hinder her.”

  “Once you’re there, you’ll wish you had let me save you from it,” Adam said. He didn’t even acknowledge the powerful daemon who surveyed him so closely and carefully. He ignored Ezekiel. His focus was entirely on her.

  “I sang my baby a lullaby through the flames of a collapsing portal to hell,” Victoria said. “I’ve got this.”

  Adam tilted his head. It wasn’t a nod of agreement or acquiescence. It was only acknowledgment that he’d been outmaneuvered by a hundred-year-old daemon deal and a mother who refused to be kept from her son. If he’d compared the power of the two, the latter would have come out on top.

  He turned on his heel, never more removed from his peasant beginnings than now when he refused to bow before a daemon king in order to walk away with his shoulders squared and his head held high.

  “I have been his master for a hundred years and I give you this warning...he will put your safety above his soul. It is entirely up to you if you let him,” Ezekiel said.

  Things would never be easy between them. It wasn’t how to deal with Malachi or Ezekiel that came between them. It was the best and worst of Adam Turov himself. He wanted to protect and save. He wanted justice. But his desire to shield her threatened her worse than the Order of Samuel ever had because it warred with her desire for him to regain his soul from the daemon king’s clutches.

  “If it’s up to me, he’ll find himself in paradise one day. He’s certainly earned his wings,” Victoria said.

  “Heaven doesn’t require wings. Only complete subjugation,” Ezekiel said. His smile curved up slowly on one side. “I prefer to stand.”

  She blinked and he was back beside her. She tensed, but he only leaned over to place a kiss on her cheek. She swore she heard her skin sizzle, but there was no pain.

  “Take care, my love. You’re strong, but I fear your feelings for Adam Turov might be stronger. Don’t let them
sway you from your path,” Ezekiel said.

  He turned and walked away, gradually disintegrating from the top of his dark hair to his chest to his waist...until nothing was left but his booted feet and then they, too, disappeared.

  She imagined Adam Turov had done something in his rooms to undo his summoning of the daemon king, but leave it to Ezekiel to make it look casual and voluntary. She walked over to the hall mirror and looked beneath the hand she’d placed over her cheek. Only the slightest redness remained where the daemon king’s lips had brushed her skin.

  Why did she feel like she was marked for eternity as his?

  Chapter 17

  Adam upended the brazier into the sink. He turned the water on and washed the ashes from the burned incantation down the drain. The sooner he sent the daemon king back to hell, the better. Victoria needed no more encouragement to be reckless with her life. Her son was all the inspiration necessary.

  Could he blame her?

  He’d never had a child. He’d only been a child, but he knew firsthand that his mother would move heaven and Earth to help him. Why else would her spirit still linger at Nightingale Vineyards except to watch over him? It must be proving a long, lonely vigil indeed.

  “She’s determined to go. And now the only way I can stop her is by losing any chance of redeeming my soul,” Adam said to the empty room. He’d never seen his mother’s spirit here. She was strongest in her beloved sitting room where he’d gathered all her earthly treasures to try to help her find some measure of peace. He hated the idea of her wandering restlessly for eternity because of him.

  There was no reply. Of course. She never spoke. She rarely showed herself. He’d only seen glimpses since the one clear manifestation on the day of her death. She had appeared to him that day almost as solid as a living woman. As maternal as ever. As accepting of his damnation as ever. But also as full of hope as she’d ever been that, one day, he would see heaven.