Fiends and Familiars

by Dunbar, Debra

  What was I talking about? At this point I’d welcome a zombie. He could take the damned flag tied to my underwear as long as he showed me how to get out of this maze.

  The corn parted and I saw him—a dark shadowy figure that seemed to have horns, his eyes glowing like hot coals in the dark. Fear—and lust—shivered down my back, and just like in my dream, I turned and ran a few steps, then stopped.

  “Fuck you,” I spun around to face the demon. “He’s not here with me, and I’ve warded my house so tight that Satan himself couldn’t get in.”

  Hopefully. I wasn’t as good at wards as Bronwyn was, but a little bluffing never hurt anyone.

  “I’m not here for Faust, I’m here for you,” the demon growled as he took a step toward me.

  I planted my hands on my hips. “Well, you definitely can’t have me—not after the shit you pulled last night and at Cassie’s office. Get lost, Ty. We’re over. Get out of here and leave me alone.”

  I’ll admit my voice shook a bit as I told the demon I was half—no, more than half—in love with to get lost. But it didn’t matter how involved my hormones were in all this, I wasn’t going to get all soppy and continue to have sex with someone who’d used me like he had.

  “I’m not Ty.” The demon took another step toward me.

  Wait. Hopefully this actually was a demon, otherwise I’d just embarrassed the heck out of myself in front of one of the costumed guests at this party. No, I’d rather be embarrassed than have an actual demon after me. Ty I felt I could somewhat handle, but this guy…

  Shit. The voice. The feel of him. The way his horns curved and his snout turned up. This wasn’t Ty. And it wasn’t some dude in a costume either.

  I turned and ran. And this time I kept running. Just like I had in my dream, but this wasn’t a dream and I wasn’t completely powerless.

  Reaching out with my awareness I found dozens of mice. I found snakes. I found a very pissed off fox, annoyed at us for disturbing his hunting ground like this.

  Fox, which way is out? Show me the way out.

  I heard his silent “yes,” felt his presence as he left the den and moved through the rows of corn. I couldn’t see shit, but I trusted that a fox wouldn’t lead me astray. I left the path and ran, finally hearing the happy screams and shouts of the partygoers as well as the mock moans of the “zombies.” What I didn’t hear was the growl of the demon or the sound of him close behind me. Had it been my imagination? The beer, the dream, the darkness and the adrenaline of the game…had they all combined to make me see things that weren’t here?

  Either way, I was following this fox and getting the heck out of this maze.

  I ran for what felt like hours, the corn stalks catching on my hair and clothes. A light glimmered off to my right and I hesitated, not sure whether to follow the fox’s presence or head to the light. In a split second decision, I turned toward the light.

  As I fought my way through the corn I heard someone coming toward me. Spinning around, I saw the demon once more. The light, I ran toward it, hoping that the demon wouldn’t try to grab me once I was out among a group of humans. Common sense told me there was safety in numbers, but was there? Would a demon really give two shits about snatching me in front of witnesses? Would he care whether he hurt the humans or not? Could Babylon and I manage to fight him off before he did hurt someone?

  Screw it. I’d rather face this guy out in the open than here in a corn maze. I took off, plowing through stalks in as straight of a line as I could toward the light. A shadow appeared in front of me, and before I could swerve or put on the breaks I slammed into him.

  We went down. Flesh and blood. Arms went around me, and I looked up into his face in the dim moonlight.

  Ty. My body reacted as if I had suddenly landed the starring role in a porno. I caught my breath and one of his hands drifted lower to grip my ass.

  Then I got a grip on my hormones and remembered I was pissed at this demon. Although, there was another demon after me, and if I had to pick between the two, I’d pick Ty. At least I knew deep down in my heart that he wouldn’t harm me. He might kill my squirrel, but he wouldn’t harm me.

  Still I scrambled to my feet, making sure I rubbed up against Ty a little on the way up. “There’s a demon after me,” I told him, figuring he’d do the chivalrous thing.

  “Who?” he snarled, leaping to his feet.

  “A dude with horns?” How the fuck was I supposed to know who he was? It’s not like he had a nametag on or something.

  “Abraxas,” he spat out.

  I’d been on the verge of running away, but that stopped me dead in my tracks. The horns didn’t ID the demon. They all had horns. Ty knew who was following me. He knew this demon was after me.

  Which made me even more pissed off at him. Damn it. He could have warned me when we were in Cassie’s office. Although to be fair, we’d been too busy arguing for him to probably get a word in edgewise about there being a price on my head. Did Lucien know about this? Because Cassie was going to chop off his balls once I told her.

  Something crashed through the corn. I didn’t have time to see what it was or even run before Ty had shoved me out of the way and slammed into whatever it was. I landed hard, knocking the wind out of my lungs. I’d broken a few cornstalks in my fall and those suckers were sharp. That’s how I knew the wet feeling on my shoulders and arms was blood. But all that seemed of minor importance compared to the epic battle going on not ten feet away from me.

  Two demons fighting was like watching National Geographic alpine ram edition. They slammed into each other, horns locked, curls of sulfur-smelling smoke puffing from their nostrils and mouths.

  “She’s mine,” Ty roared. Claws extended from his hands and he raked bloody furrows along the other demon’s chest.

  “If you’re too weak to make her give up Faust, then I’ll do it,” the other demon snapped. I noticed that although he too had claws on his hands, he didn’t seem to be causing quite as much damage as Ty was.

  Wait, was I rooting for Ty? Yes, I was. Damn it. I was pissed off at the guy, but I still lov…liked him. Kinda.

  The demon I kinda sorta liked head butted the other one, then punched him hard enough to send him into the corn. Ty wheeled around and grabbed me, pulling me up by my arm and dragging me down a path.

  “No! There. The exit.” I pointed toward the light only to have Ty haul me off in the opposite direction.

  “That’s not the exit, it’s just a big spotlight at the edge of the field.”

  “Then where’s the exit?” I snapped as I spun around, yanking away from Ty.

  “I’m taking you there.” Mumbling a curse, he grabbed me, slung me over his shoulder and took off at a dead run. Demons could really haul ass, evidently. We were out of the corn maze in no time, with me breathless and dizzy, my face pressed up against Ty’s back.

  “Addy! You’ve still got your flag…oh.”

  Ty slid me off his shoulder and sat me on my feet, his arm around my shoulder to hold me steady. I blinked a few times at Babylon, not sure what to say.

  “That’s not Derrick,” she accused, as if she’d discovered me cheating on the guy I’d just met an hour ago, and was most definitely not interested in dating.

  “No. This is Ty.” I patted the demon’s shoulder.

  “Ty?” Her eyes narrowed. “The one who used you to get to your squirrel? Who had sex with you as a pretense to get into your house and steal your squirrel? The one who doesn’t care about anything but that damned squirrel?”

  “That’s not true.” Ty glared at my sister. “None of it. Well, maybe at first it was true, but once your sister seduced me in her dream, I’ve been completely under her spell.”

  “I didn’t seduce you or enchant you,” I snapped back, irritated that we were having the same argument over and over again.

  Babylon suddenly grinned. “How about you both agree that you seduced each other? That’s one argument out of the way.”

  “Which leaves
the squirrel.” I took a step away from Ty. “If I sleep with you again, don’t think that means I’m going to hand him over.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, the fate of Faust’s soul rests in the hands of the lawyers, and they’ve said—wait…” He caught his breath and looked at me wide-eyed. “You’re going to sleep with me again? Does that involve sex, or just sleeping, because I’ve learned that the language of the agreement needs to be absolutely clear.”

  “I’ll sleep with you again if I feel like it.” I sniffed. “And it might include sex if I feel like it.”

  He took a step toward me. “So…tonight…are you feeling like it.”

  I bit back a grin of my own. “Maybe.”

  “Awesome.” Babylon clapped her hands together. “Now that Addy has a boyfriend—but only when she feels like it—let’s all go over and see who else came through the maze with their flags still attached.”

  Maze. Shit.

  “Wait!” I reached out and grabbed Lonnie’s arm. “There was another demon in the corn maze who was trying to grab me and…I don’t know, abduct me and hold me ransom for my squirrel or something.”

  “He’d have done worse than that.” Ty’s scowled.

  “He might still be in there.” I glanced back at the maze. Suddenly the screams and shrieks coming from the rustling corn took on a note of actual terror. A zombie ran from the exit, shouting “monster,” and I instantly knew it wasn’t an act.

  The corn started to topple, and not one, but three demons crashed out of the maze. They were over seven feet tall, red skin stretched over muscles a professional weightlifter would envy, huge ebony horns curling up from their foreheads.

  Ty planted his feet. “Stay back,” he commanded.

  I wasn’t sure if he was including me in that edict, but it didn’t matter because I’d never been a witch to avoid a fight—or obey orders. Once more I reached out my awareness, calling all the field mice, the fox, a raccoon who was raiding a nearby garbage can, and about a thousand beetles.

  The beetles got there first, swarming up the legs of the demons, biting and pinching. The demons ignored the attack, grabbing at the humans. One picked up a picnic table and tossed it into the bonfire, scattering burning logs and embers all over the ground.

  The whole place was going to catch on fire. I hesitated, unsure whether I should continue to concentrate on my animal attacks that seemed to be ineffectual, or should find a fire extinguisher.

  The ground rumbled beneath my feet and I fell to my knees, suddenly afraid that more demons were going to erupt from the bowels of the earth. What emerged from the dirt wasn’t demons, though, it was the dead.

  Or undead, rather. Babylon stood with her head thrown back and arms outstretched. Her bright red hair whipped around her face in some wind none of the rest of us felt. Bones rose from the ground, connecting and assembling into skeletons of the animals they once were. I shivered, somewhat unnerved by my sister’s very creepy power. Bone birds took to the air, bone rats joining my mice in attacking the demons’ legs. My skin crawled as I saw actual zombies, far from shambling, join the fray. I briefly wondered how the owners felt about having their ancestors brought up from the family graveyard.

  Ty was battling one of the demons. Fire rose from their skin, leaving trails of burning grass and corn stalks as they grappled and rolled. Their horns were locked, their bellows shaking the ground. Each swipe of their clawed hands left huge furrows that burned with flame rather than bled. Ty seemed to be getting the upper hand, but that still left two demons for Lonnie and me to manage with our magic.

  “You take the one on the right and I’ll focus on the demon to the left,” she shouted to me. I watched as her zombies and skeletons swarmed the one demon. He tore them apart, but as soon as the parts hit the ground, they reassembled and renewed their attack.

  Damn, my sister was scary.

  Determined to be just as formidable, I pushed my awareness out as far as I could, bringing even more animals to the fight. The beetles completely covered the demon. Flame licked out from the wounds their bites caused, but none of the beetles seemed injured by the fire. The mice swarmed, biting and darting away before the fire could get them. Flocks of birds answered my renewed call—everything from barn swallows and mockingbirds to hawks and eagles. They swooped in, tearing into the demon with talons and beaks, swiftly evading his flailing, clawed hands. The demon stumbled around, blinded by the birds, overwhelmed by the other animals attacking him. With a roar he vanished and the beetles and mice fell to the ground.

  I spun around, expecting to see the demon appear somewhere else and renew his attack. When I didn’t see him, I sent my animals over to help Lonnie. No sooner had they begun to crawl up the demon’s legs, than he vanished as well. I turned to Ty and saw him standing with empty arms, a perplexed expression on his face.

  I ran to him and asked, “Where did they go?” reluctant to send my animal army away until I was sure the attackers weren’t about to jump us from another angle.

  Ty’s eyes glowed like coals as he scanned the field and barnyard. “They’re gone. They’ve returned to hell.”

  “Then we won!” I did a fist-pump, adrenaline still racing through my veins. I’d never battled demons before, and knowing that I’d helped defeat three of them gave me a heady feeling of power.

  “We didn’t win.” He scowled. “They left.”

  I eyed him, confused. “Yeah. They left because we won.”

  He shook his head. “We were holding our own, but the fight was still balanced and could have gone either way. There was no reason for them to leave.”

  “Unless.” My heart stuttered. “Unless they were here to just distract us. Maybe that Abraxas wasn’t trying to capture me after all.”

  “He was.” Ty growled. “But Abraxas wasn’t one of the three demons fighting us here in the open. He’d tried to grab you in the corn maze, and when that didn’t work, he went with a plan B.”

  I stared at him in horror, having a good suspicion what that plan B was.

  “Come on.” Ty grabbed my hand and started to haul me toward the cars.

  “Wait.” I yanked my hand free, looked around, and saw that Babylon was helping the others put out the fires. “Lonnie! I have to go home. Ty’s taking me.”

  “Be safe,” she called out.

  Rita was next to her, spraying a fire extinguisher. She paused and raised a hand to wave to me. “Best, most realistic zombie chase ever!” she called out. “I think you may have won. I’ll send your prize home with Lonnie.”

  I waved back, then ran to keep up with Ty. It was so weird that the humans still thought this was all an elaborate production, with the pyrotechnics getting a little out of hand. But nothing about humans should surprise me.

  But there was no time to wonder about humans or the fire or if Lonnie returned the zombies to their graves. I was pretty sure my house was under attack, and I didn’t know if even my best wards would manage to hold off Abraxas.

  Chapter 15

  Typhon

  I drove as fast as the car could go, using my demon powers to get us around corners and across intersections without crashing. If only I could teleport Addy with me, but that would involve taking her on a brief detour through hell that wouldn’t save us all that much time and would probably freak her out enough to smash whatever tentative relationship we’d managed to knit together.

  Someday I’d show her my home, but not now.

  I’d considered leaving her at the party and teleporting to face Abraxas myself, but I knew that too would damage what tonight had healed between us. Addy was the sort of witch who needed to fight by my side, and she wouldn’t like being left behind to catch a ride with her sister. Plus I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t blame the whole thing on me if she didn’t see me confronting Abraxas with her own eyes.

  I had no doubt what he was doing. He’d intended to capture and torture her until she gave Faust up, but I’d made it quite clear in that corn maze that Addy was mine, an
d under my protection. I’d planned to finesse my way around Addy’s wards, but Abraxas wouldn’t care about that. If he had enough time, he’d possibly be able to smash his way through them and grab his prey.

  Those three demons he’d sent after us might have given him enough time. Actually, I was pretty sure they had, and that Abraxas had called them off once he had Faust. It was why they’d scurried back to hell in the middle of the fight.

  Abraxas would defy Lucien, confident that Satan himself would back him up if he delivered Faust’s soul to hell. We were demons and the ends most definitely justified the means with us. Satan gave Lucien a lot of authority, but he still was the one in charge, and he wouldn’t understand his son’s need to keep his witch lover happy.

  I understood, I thought as I glanced over at Addy. It was why I’d backed down and decided to honor her eldest sister’s interpretation of the contract Faust had signed. It was why I’d followed her to that party, practically combusting with jealousy as I watched her talk to that attractive human man. It was humiliating to admit that I was basically stalking her like a lovesick fool, but I was glad I was there when Abraxas had tried to snatch her out of that cornfield.

  Fire burned beneath my skin at the thought of what he would have done to her. I would have killed him. I would have ordered my hounds to rip him apart then accepted whatever punishment Satan dealt to me for killing one of his favorite demons. I wouldn’t let any demon lay a hand on my Addy, not while I still had horns on my head.

  I glanced over at her again, feeling that alarming sensation in my midsection, as if worms were crawling through my insides, turning what had been fire into a river of molten lava. Shit. No wonder Yeth was such a puppy dog when it came to Addy. I was the same.

  And as embarrassing as it was, I didn’t want to be any other way. Her touch, her glance, her smile, did things to me. Painful, and yet pleasurable things. I liked it. I loved it. I loved her.

  Which was why I was doing one-fifty through the city streets, racing toward her home, plotting the murder of one of Satan’s favorites. Would Addy wait for me? I’d probably suffer for thousands of years for what I was about to do. Would she live long enough for me to return to her once Satan was done taking his displeasure out on my body? Could I find her soul if she died in the meantime? If she was in heaven, could I beg to just have a glimpse of her now and then?