Brimstone Bride

by Barbara J. Hancock

  They were daemons. Lucifer’s Army had risen up beneath the catacombs of the Order of Samuel.

  Grim and the children had disappeared out of sight. They would be clear of the compound soon.

  Michael stopped humming. He wiggled to turn his head beneath her hand. She hoped the smoke disguised the blood and destruction.

  “Go?” he asked.

  “As quick as we can,” Victoria answered.

  And that’s when she saw Adam at the edge of the fissure. Smoke swirled around his tall form as if it framed his strength and purpose. He had also turned to look at her and, even though she’d paused in her singing, he of all the men in the courtyard had still not looked away.

  But their connection had never been safe or easy.

  As their gazes locked across the battlefield of the courtyard, Malachi ran toward Adam from behind. She gestured. Too far away to do anything more. It was enough. Adam turned with the sudden burst of speed she’d seen him use before. He raised his own sword to stop the blade that Malachi had raised against him.

  The two were locked in a standoff of blade against blade. Adam was taller. Malachi was broader. Both had been trained to kill. The balance shifted. Malachi pushed Adam to the edge of the fissure. After all, Malachi enjoyed killing. The crack in the earth had been widening with every rumbling shudder. Adam’s feet slid on loosened earth and rocks. Victoria cried out. Michael squeezed her tighter and buried his face back in her neck. Did she detect a slight rise in his temperature? She closed her lips against her distress. She began to hum again, patting her son’s back to soothe him.

  But she also moved toward the stairs.

  She wasn’t a warrior, but she did have the daemon king’s blade in her bag. She also had to make her way down before the stairs deteriorated to the point that they weren’t passable, pushing into the flow of monks as they fled from the upper stories. She tried to shelter Michael against her body. Lucifer’s Army was coming for the Order in spite of the crumbling castle. Fights occurred all around. Several times daemons interceded with monks who threatened her passage. Halfway down the stairs she realized that the flow of monks had been parted by Lucifer’s Army like the Red Sea to allow her to pass. She continued to sing even though her throat was raw. Michael hummed again. Quietly. His body was limp. His skin was cool. She thought his hum was slow and a little off-key. At the bottom of the stairs, she looked down to see his eyes closed and his breathing deep and regular.

  Her half daemon prince had fallen asleep as the walls came down, as the Order of Samuel fell, as Adam...

  Through the clash of violent bodies and the smoke, she could see Adam and Malachi fighting at the edge of the fissure. Adam wasn’t giving his full concentration to the evil monk. He searched for her even as he fought. She stepped into the courtyard, hoping the swirling smoke would allow him to see she was okay so he could shift his attention back to defeating Malachi and regaining his soul.

  But Adam froze when he saw her.

  And Malachi slammed into him.

  It took a thousand years for the monk and the damned man to fall over the edge of the fissure. Victoria received flash burns from Michael as she screamed and he woke with his Brimstone flaring in an instinctive response to a threat he couldn’t understand.

  She ran onto the battlefield. She dodged dead bodies on the ground and daemons and monks alike as they continued to fight each other. The daemons were winning. She could see that. There were more monks on the ground than there were daemons. Ezekiel would be triumphant. But that hardly mattered as her heart continued to scream. Outside, she had calmed herself for Michael. He was awake now, but he was so young. Surely he wouldn’t be able to process all he saw around them. Thankfully, the smoke was thick. Much of the battlefield was cloaked.

  When she came to the edge of the fissure, the ground was shaking hard enough to cause her to carefully place her feet. Finally, she was close enough to peer into the earth. She’d expected an empty black hole. Instead, she saw Adam stretched out on his stomach across one of the craggy boulders that protruded from the earth, several yards down from the fissure’s edge. He held Malachi’s arm. The monk’s body dangled over a black abyss that stretched down, down, down as far as she could see. Deeper than the tunnel she’d crawled through in the catacombs. If hell had been a place at the center of the molten earth, that’s where it seemed the crater reached.

  Of course, she knew that wasn’t where Lucifer’s Army had come from. Hell was a different dimension. The fissure had opened a portal that allowed them to invade the monastery. At the height of his Burn, Michael must have shrieked an invitation to his grandfather, or an order to Grim.

  “Gim!” Michael shouted in her ear.

  Victoria looked in the direction that her son strained and saw the great guardian hellhound springing from rock to rock to reach their position. He was solid as he landed. When he leaped, he turned to amorphous shadow in the air. Wisps of smoke curled around him, darker than the smoke that rose from the fissure.

  The hellhound landed near them and pressed against her legs, as if to keep her from falling into the crater at her feet.

  “Grim, did you do this? Did you show Lucifer’s Army the way so that they would save your master?” Victoria asked.

  The hellhound’s eyes glowed and he pressed even harder against her, as if to say, it will all be for nothing if you don’t leave. Now.

  “You have to take Michael to safety. Do you understand? You have to get him out of here,” Victoria told the hell-spawned hound.

  Michael eagerly held on to his ferocious best friend when Victoria placed him on Grim’s back. The daemon dog immediately moved to distance his rider from the quaking fissure. If Malachi hadn’t kidnapped Michael, Victoria was suddenly sure that his bond with the ugly hellhound would have helped him through the Burn. He was completely cool to the touch when she felt his forehead and placed a kiss on his temple.

  “The way is blocked. I can’t get him out on my own. You have to do it, Grim. Take him home through the paths only you can find,” Victoria said. Her throat closed as she said it. Her eyes burned. Without Michael’s Brimstone burn evaporating them, her tears threatened to fall.

  Grim whined. He stepped toward her as if to urge her to come along too. But she stepped back toward the fissure.

  “Go. Now. Before it’s too late,” she said.

  The hellhound turned away. His stiff-legged walk turned into a lope that turned into a run before he and his rider faded into the smoke and shadows. Michael’s laugh floated back to her as he disappeared.

  The separation tore something inside her. Michael and Grim were traveling in between this world and countless others. He was gone. She pressed her hands against her stomach and closed her eyes. Her body swayed, but then she firmed her spine.

  Adam.

  He was forfeiting his soul.

  Ezekiel wouldn’t accept that the Order had fallen if Malachi survived. It wasn’t the compound that was evil. It was the man in charge of corrupting everything he touched. Reynard’s man. His protégé risen to power now that his master was gone.

  Victoria stepped to the edge again and looked down to see Adam still holding Malachi in his viselike grip. He wouldn’t let the monk fall into the abyss. The tumble down to the rock ledge that now supported him had shredded Adam’s tactical fatigues. She could see a glimpse of the scars on his back. The horrible deep ridges had somehow become beautiful wings on him. Fitting wings for a damned man. Adam was trying to save Malachi even though the monk had kidnapped him and tortured him.

  Ezekiel might hold his soul ransom, but Adam Turov was already redeemed. With every Esther and Gideon he saved, he had built a new soul with his own actions. He was no angel. He would never be. He would carry the darkness he’d survived in his heart forever.

  But that’s why he made her sing. No Brimstone necessary at al
l. Because he still believed in saving others.

  With superhuman effort, Adam lifted the big-boned monk with one arm. His muscles bulged and his own body slid toward the edge of the ledge he lay across, but he didn’t let go. He pulled. He strained. Inch by inch, he brought the evil monk up to the ledge.

  Victoria felt the presence of Brimstone around her even though her affinity was fried from Michael’s Burn. She looked away from Adam long enough to see that the edge of the fissure was ringed on either side of her with daemons. Lucifer’s Army had come to watch their greatest enemy fall. They stood motionless as Adam saved him.

  But as Adam dragged Malachi onto the ledge, a movement from deep in the crater caught her eye. The constant movement of the earthquake crumbling the castle stilled as the daemons around her came to life with mutters and murmurings she couldn’t translate. Then, as one, they all fell to their left knees and hundreds of heads bowed. The noise of the movement was audible. Adam looked up. Malachi rolled to his back and placed his arm over his eyes.

  Ezekiel rose from the pit. Lucifer’s bronzed wings were stiff on his back. They could no longer be used for flight in any discernible way and yet the daemon king rose from the fissure as if he flew. He also glowed brighter with Brimstone anger than she’d ever seen. His eyes. His ears. His nose. His mouth. All allowed the glow to beam out from his body. Malachi protected his eyes from the glare. She didn’t have to. Even in anger, Ezekiel thought of her and shifted his body to shield her.

  Adam wasn’t so lucky. He rose to his feet and turned his face away to avoid the glare as Ezekiel floated to the ledge. Victoria started to protest. She feared that her stepfather would punish Adam for not killing Malachi. But she discovered that the daemon king knew better how to manipulate bargains than that.

  “Thank you for delivering my enemy to my feet, Adam Turov. You have served me well,” Ezekiel said.

  In a blur of movement, the daemon king’s arm shot out and he grasped Malachi by the neck, but as he sprang up, Ezekiel’s speed decreased. He moved as if in slow motion. The Loyalists around her raised their heads to watch Malachi lifted up and over their ranks, but they continued to kneel in the presence of their king.

  Victoria didn’t kneel. She watched as Adam made his way across the rocky ledge to the fissure’s wall. The muscles in his arms bunched and strained as he climbed up to her. When he’d leveraged himself up on the edge to stand beside her, she turned to face Ezekiel.

  “This man has been a faithful servant of the enemy we have fought for millennia, though only a short time has passed for him on Earth,” the daemon king said. “The Order of Samuel has fed the Rogue daemon army with blood and the corruption of countless innocent human souls.”

  The Loyalist daemons still knelt on one knee, ringing the abyss. Smoke still rolled. The mountain had begun to shake again and loosened stone continued to fall. Ezekiel spoke over it all as if it was inconsequential. Behind him and the evil monk he seemed to hold easily with one ancient hand, the polished dirt field of the courtyard ran with bright rivers of crimson blood and black streams of charcoal-tainted corruption. Hundreds of monks lay dead or dying. Only the young had been allowed to flee.

  “Rise and witness as judgment opens its gaping maw to swallow this tainted human whole,” Ezekiel said. His voice wasn’t a bellow, but it rang out all the same. It carried over the sound of grumbling earth and crumbling castle keep.

  Lucifer’s Army rose to their feet around her and Adam. As one, they turned to stand at stiff attention at the bidding of their king. Ezekiel lowered Malachi to the ground near Victoria, but instead of crumpling in a heap, the evil monk also stood straight and tall. He endured the righteous gazes, but it was as if he walked across glowing coals. Sweat trickled down his brow and he looked no one directly in the eye.

  “Victoria D’Arcy. It is your right to cleanse the earth of this stain. He took your son without bargain and without permission. He almost allowed the Burn to immolate the grandson of Anne D’Arcy, who would have been my queen. Her blood runs in your veins. It is fitting that you plunge the daemon blade I’ve given you into his black heart,” Ezekiel said. His hand was still gripped on the nape of Malachi’s neck. With this hold, he presented the evil monk to his stepdaughter.

  Adam stiffened beside her.

  “No. She shouldn’t carry the burden of his death on her shoulders the rest of her life,” Adam protested. He stepped forward toward the daemon king and his prisoner. His fists were clenched. Blood from scrapes and cuts ran freely down his face and hands. His shredded clothes stuck to his body where more serious wounds bled. But he stood between her and the daemon king as if he would shield her from the pain she’d carried with her since she’d been born.

  She’d been born different. Her affinity had seemed a curse for most of her life. But it had turned out to be a blessing. She might never have braved the connection she shared with Adam if her gift hadn’t brought them together, even while they tried to remain apart. Her affinity had helped her to save Michael and reclaim a new voice after she’d suffered tragedy and loss.

  Malachi would never stop. He had been raised and trained by a monster. He would never rest until Michael—a boy with affinity and Brimstone blood—was under his control. She couldn’t allow that. Ezekiel was right. Not that it was a privilege to send Malachi to the same place Reynard had been sent, to face whatever punishment waited on the other side of death, but he was right that it was her responsibility.

  Adam’s focus was on the daemon king he stood against. He didn’t notice as she reached under her robes, shifting her backpack to the side so she could retrieve the daemon king’s blade. Only when she stepped past him did he realize she intended to do what Ezekiel had ordered.

  “No,” Adam said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Someone does. This compound is only a place. What does it matter if this castle falls? He will only rise to build another and another. Michael will never know peace. He’ll never be free,” Victoria said. “And neither will you.”

  “You don’t have to give me peace with your blade, Vic. You have given me peace with your song,” Adam said.

  But the temporary stay of Malachi’s execution that their words had given him also gave the evil monk an opportunity to break free of the daemon king’s grasp. His robe tore as he jerked away and Ezekiel was left with drab material in his hand as Malachi leaped toward Victoria. His body slammed into her with such force that they both fell to the ground. The air was knocked from her lungs by the landing and the weight of the big-boned monk on top of her. The blade she’d clenched in one hand flew from her stunned fingers as she coughed and choked and tried to suck in air.

  Malachi’s hands closed around her throat, making the urgency for oxygen even greater. She bucked. She punched and kicked. But her vision blurred and her muscles weakened. Malachi squeezed tighter and tighter. The reddened face above her was contorted with madness. The rest of the world was hazy and indistinct.

  But as haze began to turn to black around the edges, Malachi’s hands jerked and relaxed. His whole body stiffened, and he cried out as blood bubbled from his lips to trickle down his chin. Victoria gasped for air and reached for her crushed throat while Malachi tumbled to the side. He landed facedown. The daemon king’s blade protruded from his back. It was buried to the hilt. Only seconds had passed, but it seemed an eternity.

  “I give you peace, Victoria D’Arcy. I hope you’ll give me your heart in return,” Adam Turov said. He had retrieved the daemon king’s blade from the ground and he’d plunged it with such force into Malachi’s back that he’d instantly stopped the monk’s heart.

  But as her vision cleared, Victoria could see that something was wrong. Adam swayed on his feet. Blood burgeoned across his chest, soaking his shredded shirt in a sudden deep red flow. There was no sizzle. There was no smoke. She struggled to her feet and scrambled to reach him, but when sh
e reached to take his arms he fell to his knees, taking her to the ground with him. They faced each other knee to knee and he reached for her face as she tried to keep him from slumping to the side.

  “What is it? What happened?” Victoria asked. Her voice was a hoarse scream.

  “One of my men loosed an arrow when Adam jumped to help you. He thought to protect me. He didn’t realize Turov was trying to save you—my precious daughter.” The daemon king had come to stand beside them. He towered over them, an ancient, dangerous creature who loved her and her son.

  But his love often brought death.

  “The Brimstone. It can save him. It’s saved him so many times before,” Victoria said. She wouldn’t cry for Adam because there was no need. The burn behind her eyes was unnecessary. She blinked against it. And blinked and blinked. Because Adam’s hands had slipped from her face to hang limply by his sides, and he finally slumped to the ground. She wasn’t strong enough to keep him upright. She looked up at the daemon king. He was diamond-faceted and her face was wet with tears. No. No. No. There was no reason to cry.

  “Victoria, he has no Brimstone in his blood. The requirements of our bargain were met when he delivered Malachi into my hands. I gave him back his soul. He is no longer bound to me,” Ezekiel said.

  “He’s dying,” Victoria said.

  Her gut clenched in worse pain than her throat, as if merciless hands she couldn’t see squeezed the life from her with Adam’s every wheezing breath. She could see the arrow now. Daemon arrows had iron shafts and gleaming black feathers that looked like they came from raven’s wings.

  “Allow Michael to come to me once a year until he reaches the age of majority. At that time, he will be free to choose to inherit my throne or follow another path. It will be left to him. Allow this and I will save Adam Turov,” Ezekiel proclaimed.

  The earth stilled. Smoke slowed to a stop above them, hanging in the air like suspended sooty clouds.