by Bella Klaus
I took off the helm and clutched it to my side. “Here I—”
Before I could even finish that sentence, November grabbed me by the back of my neck and pulled me into his chest. His warm breath fanned across my skin, filling my nostrils with the scent of putrid blood. “I ought to punish you for keeping me waiting.”
I winced, my insides squirming with a mix of revulsion and pain. November felt more like a corpse than a living creature, and the smoky magic wafting from him made me gag.
“What happened to regretting your actions and apologizing without reservation?” I forced out the words through clenched teeth.
November ran his cool fingers down my cheek. “How did my cousin manage to get such a creature to kneel before him?”
I shoved hard against his chest, but the vampire’s grip was as absolute as his father’s.
“Answer my question,” November snarled.
“He was gentle.”
The vampire loosened his grip. “What else?”
My muscles around my chest relaxed, allowing me to exhale. All wasn’t lost. If November was trying to make me submit, then he wasn’t harming Valentine. Even if he took me to New Mesopotamia, Valentine would rise and track me, just as he had when he’d spirited me from Beatrice’s apartment.
November’s thick brows rose. “I will not ask you again.”
I tightened my lips. The ancient asshole was angling for a blowjob. Since he was so easily distracted, I would play along. Lowering my lashes, I pressed a hand to the side of my face, pretending to conceal a blush. “Valentine used to let me…”
“Tell me,” November whispered.
I shook my head. “It’s too personal.”
A deep chortle reverberated through the ancient vampire’s chest, and his grip around my neck tightened in a warning of who was in charge. “There are no secrets between masters and slaves.”
“Alright.” I licked my dry lips, trying not to grimace as November’s red eyes tracked the movement. “Valentine let me touch him.”
The hand not holding me by the neck grabbed my ass, pulling me into the kind of hard, stubby knot trees made over broken branches. My stomach lurched. What the hell was this vampire keeping in his pants? I had to end this line of conversation before November escalated.
“Show me exactly how you touched my cousin,” he said between panting breaths.
“I usually started here.” I slid my hands over his biceps, to his shoulders, and then to his chest.
November’s heart thrummed against my palm, feeling like it was encased in stone. I sucked in a deep breath, gathering every ounce of magic into my heart chakra. All my anger, resentment, and fear coalesced in the center of my chest, spinning, boiling, accelerating until it was a ball of molten fury.
His hard lump pressed further into my belly. “What next?”
“Then things became hot.” I shoved the magic down my left arm and through my palm. The fabric beneath my hand evaporated, revealing flesh that heated and disintegrated under the intensity of my fire.
November screamed, the shrill sound ringing through my ears, and his hands fell loose from around my body.
I jumped back and shoved the Helm back onto my head.
“What did you—” Flames erupted from November’s mouth, cutting off his words.
“Never mess with a phoenix.” I stepped backward toward the mortuary cabinets, not letting the burning vampire out of sight, not even when he fell onto the ground, consumed by my fire.
“Nut?” I asked out loud. “Geb? Are you alive?”
Nobody answered. I swallowed hard. If they survived November, they would track me down to Logris. Right now, I needed to gather Valentine’s remains and get out of here before someone else came in and caused us trouble.
But when I returned to the mortuary cabinet, Valentine’s ashes were gone.
Chapter Five
I spun in a circle, looking across the slaughterhouse for signs of Valentine. Water dripped from the ceiling from where the icicles had mingled with smoke and melted, forming puddles across the floor. There was nothing between the row of cow carcasses and the stainless steel mortuary cabinets.
“Valentine?” My voice sounded hollow, muffled by the hanging corpses. “Nut? Geb?”
No answer.
My breaths quickened, shallowed, and barely grazed the tops of my lungs. This had to be like the time Coral’s brother knocked us off the side of a tall building, accidentally letting the invisible twins fall to their deaths. They were probably lying unconscious somewhere in the slaughterhouse, and I wouldn’t find them until they recovered and reported for duty.
A hand closed around my ankle, yanking me to the cold floor.
I landed flat on my back with a painful thud. “Damn it!”
November knelt over me, his crimson eyes incandescent with rage, his huge body eclipsing the light. He pinned my arms to the floor with his large hands, even though his gaze hovered a few inches above my eyes. “It’s time you learned your place.”
Rage and despair clashed through my insides, making every butterfly in my stomach rise up and revolt. I clenched my teeth, holding back a wave of nausea and biting back a sob. Valentine was missing, his remains likely scattered across every carcass within this gigantic corpse-filled room, and my demon bodyguards were either hurt or unconscious because of this power-hungry opportunist.
“Shove off.” I pressed my hand into his unearthly white face, clenching my teeth with satisfaction as his flesh sizzled against my flames.
With a pained roar, November released his grip and reared back, letting me scramble to my feet.
“What did you do with Valentine?” I screamed.
He knelt on the floor, howling and clutching at his charred face.
I drew back my foot and slammed it into the vampire’s gut, only for pain to ricochet across my toes. That would teach me to attack an ancient with physical force.
“You will pay for this,” he snarled from behind his hands.
“Did you blow Valentine’s ashes away?” My voice rose several octaves.
November rested his head to the floor and groaned.
“Answer me.” I reached into the pocket of my cloak and pulled out the mini scythe.
Black clouded the edges of my vision and the contents of my veins burned with molten rage. After everything Valentine and I had suffered—the curses, the loss of control, imprisonment, and persecution—I was about to put things right. But this wretched vampire just swooped in at the last minute to ruin our chance of happiness with his stupid ambition.
“If Valentine doesn’t return…” My words caught in the back of my throat. I couldn’t voice the possibility. The man I loved had survived death, dismemberment, and even decapitation. He couldn’t be gone.
Every shred of frustration and rage I’d felt since the incident on the palace steps rose from the pit of my belly and simmered. This wasn’t the end of Valentine—I wouldn’t allow it. My vitriol coalesced into a hot ball of magic that spun through my insides as though my every chakra had united to form a powerful mass. The energy wasn’t red or yellow or even blue but the darkest black. Black to match the depth of my rage.
November writhed on the floor, moaning out words that made no sense.
“Bring him back with your magic,” I snarled from between clenched teeth.
The ancient vampire stared out at me through his fingers, revealing a blackened face and an empty socket. “It wasn’t me.”
“Then who?” I yelled.
“Valentine must have stood up and left.”
“Impossible.”
My magic flared, stretching down my arms, my hands, and into the scythe. Instead of flames, its curved blade glowed the pale orange of molten metal. Without pausing to debate my actions, I swung its tip toward November’s belly, slicing into his flesh. In the blink of an eye, the vampire disappeared.
My senses went on full alert, and I spun in a circle, waiting for one of the carcasses to move aside so he
could retaliate. White flames crackled and burned in my hands and on my scythe. Right now, I had no idea if Hades’ Helm would conceal weapons, but I had to trust that something powerful enough to help ancient heroes defeat legendary monsters would keep every part of the wearer undetectable.
I stretched out my consciousness, listening for lurking vampires. By now, a cloud of smoke had spread across the ceiling, hanging over me like the onset of a thunderstorm. Light flashed from beyond a group of large carcasses, causing me to pivot.
Then the door opened, and heavy footsteps lumbered inside. “Todd?” bellowed the deep voice from before. “Are you in there?”
“Belamy?” yelled a tinny voice from within the cabinet.
The footsteps grew close, and I tiptoed through the curtain of corpses. If Valentine had resurrected, he would have taken over my fight with November. If the ancient vampire had spread his ashes across the room as I had suspected, there was no point in sticking around until I found a witch or wizard or even a wind mage to retrieve every speck of ash and place it into a vessel.
Belamy thundered through the slaughterhouse like a rampaging wildebeest. “Where are you?”
“Some dickhead threw me in a cabinet,” Todd said through chattering teeth.
I continued through rows and rows of carcasses until I reached the far wall, where the headless bloated corpse of a female bodybuilder lay on a metallic table. Both her legs were missing, presumably now residing within the metallic receptacle at the other end of the mincing machine’s chute.
My insides surged to the back of my throat, making me gag. I spun toward the door, where a pair of imps wearing chef whites stood in the hallway, wringing their hands. Between them sat a cat with orange-and-black tiger stripes.
She stared up at me through eyes as blue as the summer sky and meowed. I shook my head, even though I wasn’t certain she could see me.
One of the imps dropped his gaze to the cat. “What’s wrong, Damisa?”
I bit down on my bottom lip. Valentine had told me that was the name of Macavity’s little friend. I placed a finger on my lips, silently urging the cat to be quiet, but she continued staring at me through eyes that accused me of burning her benefactor.
“She’s hungry.” The second imp reached down and scooped up the cat.
I took that as my moment to escape through the open door, but not before Damisa wriggled out of the imp’s hand and batted at my arm with her paw.
As I jogged down a darkened hallway and toward a door that I hoped would lead to a set of stairs and possibly an exit, I sent the cat a silent apology for not stopping to say hello. My belly roiled hard enough to burn the back of my throat. Right now, I couldn’t tell if this was anxiety or the gut-wrenching fear that my quest to restore Valentine to his former self was going to take much longer than I had imagined.
It took an hour of climbing stairs, wandering hallways, and doubling back through dead ends to reach the restored coffee shop. I ducked behind a waiter carrying a pyramid of oversized bonbons on a silver tray and slipped into Koffiek’s public area, passing humans and demons and other kinds of supernaturals either oblivious to or not caring about the atrocities that took place beneath the establishment’s sleek exterior.
A mousy haired human woman rose from her seat with a handsome incubus whose strawberry blond mane stretched down his back. I slowed my steps, keeping pace behind them as they continued past the fountain toward the domed exit, where a pair of oversized security guards opened the door and inclined their heads.
I hurried after them over the moat, blinking at the onslaught of sunlight.
The couple turned left toward a silver Aston Martin, which I assumed belonged to the incubus. I continued down the cobbled street toward a black limousine with a woman sitting in the driver’s seat. The tightness in my chest loosened, and I jogged past the incubus and his prey toward the vehicle and rapped on its tinted window.
The driver’s head shot up, and her brow furrowed into a frown. I continued knocking until the window slid down with a whirr.
“Who’s there?” She squinted out into a point several feet behind where I stood. The visor of her cap blocked most of the sunlight, making me wonder if she had grown accustomed to the darkest lakes of Hell.
“It’s Mera Griffin,” I said. “You can’t see me because I’m wearing Hades’ Helm. Are you waiting for me?”
“My lord mentioned that you would need transportation back to his office,” she replied. “Would you like to come inside?”
“Actually, there’s something urgent I need to take care of before I meet with Hades,” I lied. The Demon King was the last person I wanted to know about my failure to save Valentine. Not when he had spies in Koffiek who might sabotage my attempt to find Valentine’s missing ashes.
“Where would you like me to take you?” asked the driver.
I licked my dry lips as I worked through my options. If I confided in Captain Zella, she would tell the Supernatural Council about Valentine’s predicament, which was as good as texting the news directly to the Fifth Faction of Hell. Lazarus barely tolerated me and he was too preoccupied with taking care of Beatrice to help. I wasn’t sure about Valentine’s other brothers—they would probably welcome the chance to restore Valentine, but my encounters with the others had been problematic.
My only choice remained Kain, who was currently confined to the palace until Prince Draconius forced him to become the Vampire King, so he could rule Logris for the next few centuries.
“Could you take me to the palace in Lamia, please?”
Inclining her head, the driver pressed a button that made the passenger door swing open. Part of me hoped that Nut and Geb were waiting for me inside the limousine, but that would have been impossible. The twins weren’t the type to leave a client to the mercy of anyone, and they certainly wouldn’t duck out of a fight.
I settled into the limousine’s leather seat, took off the Helm, and exhaled a long sigh. Eventually, Nut and Geb would return. November hadn’t made a noise while he’d dealt with them, which I hoped to mean he’d knocked them unconscious.
The ride back to Logris was mercifully short, and four bottles of bluecumber later, the limousine pulled up in the palace’s courtyard.
Now that I’d seen more of the world outside Logris, Valentine’s palace seemed cozy from the outside. Limestone steps led up to a vast porch supported by four columns and behind them stood a quartet of armed guards wearing black uniforms, obscuring the double doors. The next level up was a gallery supported by the same four columns, and above that, a triangular pediment that displayed the seven crowns of Logris and the Sargon crest—a winged sun with a four-sided star engraved in its center.
My throat spasmed, and I tried not to think of the last time I had ascended these steps. The pain and humiliation I’d felt back then had been engineered by Kresnik, who had attacked me with his shadow, wanting me apart from Valentine so I could develop my power without his attempts to suppress my magic.
“I’ll wait for you on the other side of the courtyard,” said the driver. “When you’ve finished, I will take you to my lord.”
“Right… Well I’ll leave the Helm with you for safekeeping,” I replied with a nervous chuckle. Every fiber of my being had no doubt that this ancient creature wearing the body of a young woman would lock me into the limousine if I objected to an assignation with Hades. “But I don’t know how long this urgent business in the palace might take.”
The driver twisted around in her seat, meeting my gaze with black eyes. “If necessary, I will wait an eternity.”
Suppressing a shudder at the truth in her words, I pulled up the hood of my cloak, and stepped out into the afternoon, inhaling the mingled scents of freshly mown lawn and chrysanthemums in bloom. Sunlight bathed the palace’s white exterior, making me sigh. The climate of Logris was always mild, regardless of the weather in the outside world.
On legs made of brittle clothes pegs, I took the first step up the stone staircase, g
ulping mouthfuls of air. I doubted that anyone wanted to see me after the way the Supernatural Council had framed my involvement in Valentine’s death and subsequent resurrection as a preternatural.
The palace loomed above me, bringing with it a stifling amount of smoky magic. I gulped. It now seemed far less welcoming than it had appeared from within the protection of the limousine. The four guards in black stood to attention, while another four emerged from behind the pillars, each clad in red jackets decorated with gold trim.
My lips tightened. Those guards worked for Prince Draconius. I hoped word hadn’t reached the palace about their master’s fiery end.
“May I help you?” A guard in black stared down at me with eyes as hard as flint.
“I’m here to see Kain.”
His gaze swept down my cloak. “The young heir is resting and cannot be disturbed.”
“Really,” I said, my voice flat. “May I speak to Caiman, then?”
The guard stared at me with a flare of magic that might have choked a Neutral, but I met his gaze, letting his power drift over me like mist. If he so much as pressed his magic into my mind, I would lash out with my fire.
“Very well.” He stepped back and swept his arm to the double doors.
“Thank you.” I pulled back my shoulders and straightened my spine. There was no need to congratulate myself for standing up to the doorman. I’d faced far worse and without an ounce of power, and at some point in the future I expected to encounter Kresnik.
At least this time, I had the magic to back up my display of confidence.
I stepped through the double doors and into a ten-foot-long vestibule filled with security magic that brushed against my skin. The scents of woodsmoke and musk filled my nostrils—scents of Valentine, scents of days when I visited the palace, dazzled by the handsome Vampire King who had plucked a Neutral from obscurity and made her his fiancée.
At the end of the vestibule was the entrance hall, a vast space that seemed more like a ballroom, except a burgundy rug the size of Koffiek’s main room took up its entire center. Servants dressed in black and white strolled behind marble columns that formed a border between the entrance hall and corridors that led to other parts of the palace. Their footsteps mingled with the soft ticking of a crystal wall clock that hung above a roaring fireplace on the right.
