The Devil You Know

by Jena Gregoire

  Throughout the apartment were knickknack shelves, each containing various baubles, bottles, and small, carved wooden boxes. The bottles each held a supply of different herbs with labels bearing the name of each inscribed in tiny gold letters. Caraway, angelica root, Spanish moss, mandrake root, and ginger were a few Dez noticed right away.

  “Damiana?” she whispered to herself. Damiana was usually found in the cabinet of a witch who would sell seduction spells. Although it wasn't against coven law, it was certainly frowned upon. Anything with the power to tamper with free will was taboo.

  “It's not what you think.” Lucas's voice startled her as he stepped up alongside her. “Natalia wasn’t like that.”

  “What was it for then?" She didn’t mean to sound so judgmental, but there it was.

  “She got it shortly after we started sleeping together.” As soon as he started to reply, a smile laced with sadness lightly crept across his face, and his eyes stared off as he half lost himself in memory. He was quiet for a moment and then he turned to Deziree and the focus returned to his eyes. “Sex is absolutely incredible on damiana. Not that we needed it, but we occasionally would smoke it blended with tobacco right before we—”

  “Okay,” Dez interrupted, eyes shut and shaking her head, “stop. Please, just stop before I end up with a head full of images I’m unable to scrub out.”

  “You asked,” he said with a sly smile.

  “You could have just said she used it for recreational purposes.”

  She turned the brass knob unlocking the window and stepped out onto the balcony for some fresh air. Lucas followed. Black metal baskets hung from all three sides of the small terrace, each one overflowing with thick green leaves and blossoms. The flowers had vivid burgundy petals fading into a white center and gave off a light scent, pleasant, not too strong.

  “It's beautiful here, isn't it?" he said, taking in a lung full of cool air. “She loved flowers." He took a blossom in his fingers. "Stargazer lilies were her favorite but growing them would have taken too much time and effort. She chose the Madagascar periwinkle because it basically takes care of itself.” He stared off into the distance. He huffed. “Being here is even harder than I thought it would be. It still doesn't feel like it's real, you know? I keep expecting her to come strolling out of her bedroom, holding a pen with her teeth, throwing her hair up into a ponytail, getting ready to sit down and dive into one tome or another for the day.” He clenched his jaw and subtly shook his head. His eyes glistened with unshed tears. “We need to figure out a way to stop all of this. I wouldn’t wish this feeling upon my worst enemy.”

  Dez did her best to force down the lump forming in her throat, grasping for some words that would help ease her friend's pain. She knew deep down that nothing she said or did was going to make him feel any better. Instead of words, she looped her arms around his and leaned her head on his shoulder. He placed a kiss on the top of her head and released a deep sigh.

  “Thanks, Dez,” he said, his voice quivering. He cleared his throat and continued, “We should see if Michael has dug anything up.” She released his arm and the two turned and stepped back inside the apartment. Deziree walked to the library doors and peered inside. Vegas was crouched down looking through the pile of books strewn all over the floor.

  “Wow,” Dez muttered. “I assumed they would have collected these by now.”

  “That's part of the reason I wanted to get over here as soon as possible,” Vegas explained. “If they take it all away, there's no way to know what's missing. I'm willing to bet the demon might have left a clue to his whereabouts.”

  Deziree studied the room, stopping next to the visitor chair in front of Natalia's large, wooden desk. Black and gray ash stains riddled the chair and the two square feet of carpet before it, indicating where Natalia's body had been. Deziree knelt down. There was ash, lots of it, but neither the floor nor the chair had been burned. Deziree touched the ashen spot on the floor. The moment her fingers made contact, her back arched and her skin burned. She felt as though her body were being continually rocked by invisible tendrils of electricity whipping through every cell of her body in a wild frenzy

  She could hear Vegas shouting her name but he sounded so far away, as though he were yelling to her through a long, stone tunnel. Her vision went completely black and she could no longer see the room around her. Suddenly, she was assaulted with a barrage of pictures and flashes of images, each slamming into her with another jolt of pain.

  Then the pain fell away, the sounds of her own screams growing distant. The air around her suddenly felt wrong. It was thick and suffocating. Shapes began to form out of the blackness surrounding her, and her vision swam as she tried to focus. A hallway came into view, the hallway outside of Natalia’s apartment. How the hell did I get out here? she thought. She tried to call out to Vegas first, then Lucas, but no sound came out. No matter how hard she tried to stop herself, she just kept moving forward. That’s when she realized she wasn’t the one running the show.

  Thoughts that weren’t her own flitted through her mind. Vicious thoughts laced with horrific images. Someone or something screaming out in a type of agony she’d never heard before as they collapsed in a burning heap. No one thought told her it was hellfire. She just knew. Call it instinct, call it second nature. Whatever it was, it felt like knowledge ingrained in her from birth.

  She watched helplessly as she stopped in front of Natalia’s door, and a man's hand reached up in front of her and knocked. She half expected to see Lucas or Vegas answer the door. Instead, the door swung open and Natalia's face appeared, instantly shifting from a pleasant greeting to utterly terrified as she stumbled backward into her apartment. Dez felt an unexpected rush of pleasure the moment Natalia's eyes filled with fear and recognition.

  Oh I really don’t want to watch this, she thought as realized what she was seeing. She had no idea how it happened, but she was watching Natalia’s final moments through the eyes of her killer. Her heart plummeted. An overwhelming rush of anticipation flooded her thoughts. The thrill of the hunt. He didn’t need her for anything, not really. He just wanted to play with her a bit. Dez tried to close her eyes, to somehow not see the scene playing out before her, but it was no use.

  The man picked Natalia up from the floor and shoved her over the desk, maliciously using her unconscious body. Her legs were twisted at awkward angles. He held her arms behind her back, arresting her movement with his hands so she couldn't move. He backhanded her with a tight fist when she began to regain consciousness, unrelenting in his abuse of her body until he'd quenched his demonic lust. Deziree felt the burning, intense arousal after each violent action.

  He checked to see if the girl was still alive and then bound her to a chair before turning his attention to the library shelves. She could feel his frustration building with every book that yielded no results. Demanding information from the girl was answered with utter defiance as she spat ‘Fuck you!’ at him. He hit her again for her insolence, then returned to his search. Satisfaction washed over Dez when he finally found what he was looking for.

  Deziree watched from the demon’s eyes as he picked up and opened another ancient-looking book. The brown leather cover was so worn, the gold-embossed letters nearly flat and colorless with use, she couldn't make out the title. Tucked between brittle pages, toward the back, was a list. The unassuming little piece of yellowed notebook paper held the names of the Guardians and each of their locations.

  Deziree watched as he took the list and examined it, then felt a wicked smile creeping across his face. She heard Natalia choke back a quiet sob and Deziree looked on as he turned back to her. Blind and broken, Natalia was his to do with as he pleased. Deziree could feel the anticipation and, again, wanting in the pureblood’s thoughts. He toyed with her, putting a droplet of his own blood on each of her eyelids. Deziree couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The blood had done something to her, making the poor girl’s battered face return to normal as if the damage was
running in reverse. She had been beautiful, Deziree thought. Not in a way that required cosmetics, but a purely natural beauty. Deziree could see why Lucas had fallen so hard for this girl, and her heart broke for him.

  If she had mistaken his repair of Natalia’s broken face as an act of kindness on the demon’s behalf, it was quickly rectified in the next image she saw. She watched in mute horror as Natalia’s body started to writhe in agony and then, in a flash, burst into flames.

  The images finally ceased and as her own vision returned to her, the echoes of Natalia’s terrified screams and the demon’s maniacal laughter boomed in her head. She slumped and she fell over. She expected to hit the floor, but Vegas’s warm hands caught her instead.

  “Dez!” he exclaimed, worry saturating his tone. “Hey! Dez! Are you alright?”

  She coughed, her throat hot and dry as though she'd be breathing arid desert air for days.

  Vegas barked a demand for water, never taking his eyes off her. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, not entirely convinced she was telling him the truth. She was still coughing and struggling to catch her breath when Lucas returned with a bottle of water. Deziree opened the bottle and took several long gulps, cooling her throat. She closed her eyes, desperately wishing she could unsee it. All of it. She inhaled and exhaled slowly to calm the spasms racking her lungs. When she thought she'd regained most of her control, she opened her eyes to see Vegas crouched in front of her. She opened her mouth to speak and instantly regretted it. The smell of sulfur overwhelmed her senses, and bile rose in her throat. She jumped to her feet, running for the window. As her gag reflex caused her throat to constrict, she realized she wasn't going to make it. She grabbed the little black metal trash can next to Natalia's desk and emptied the contents of her stomach. As the heaves came to a stop, Dez threw the window open, desperately gasping for fresh air. She breathed long and hard to clear her lungs. Just as quickly as the sulfur smell appeared, it was gone.

  “Dez, what the hell just happened?” She stared out the window as glimpses of what she had just seen flashed through her mind. Her brow furrowed as the memory of the pain and torture the demon had inflicted lingered in her mind.

  Finally, she met Vegas's eyes. “I saw the whole thing.”

  “Tell me what you saw,” Lucas said with urgency.

  Deziree turned sad eyes to both vampires. “I saw everything. It ... hurt her but she never broke.” Her stomach turned again as she paraphrased. "She wasn't awake for the worst of what he did. Despite the horrible way she died, it was over quick." Lucas frowned, his brow bending over his eyes as they clouded with tears and anger. He didn't pry for further details. "I’m so sorry," she whispered.

  A tear rolled down Lucas's cheek.

  “Wait. You said you saw everything. What does that mean?”

  “Is I don't know an acceptable response? Because that’s all I’ve got. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. Something happened when I touched the ashes. One minute I was me and the next minute, I was him. The demon. It was like I was inside his head. I saw everything he saw. But I didn't just see what he saw. I felt his emotions. Anger. Hatred.” She glanced at Lucas, who had moved to a window to stare at the Grand Canal. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Pleasure. It was sickening. I couldn't exactly hear his thoughts, but I felt them as if they were my own.”

  “Like a psychic link.”

  “I think it was memories, his memories, of that night. It was like I was him.”

  “Did you happen to catch anything about which gateway he's going to try to open?”

  “No,” Deziree responded, “it wasn’t exactly like I could ask. He was looking for the Guardians, I know that. I saw the list, and I know where they were.”

  “That could be helpful,” Lucas added. He had apparently collected himself enough to rejoin the conversation.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you did it here, we could go where the Guardians were murdered, and you can do your witchy-demon woo woo there too. His focus would have shifted to finding the stone and opening the gateway. Maybe we can find out his plans through these memories.”

  “Provided it works again,” Vegas added, not sounding too confident. Dez couldn’t blame him. It may have been a fluke. She’d never heard of a witch gleaning memories from ashes before, but there had also never been a witch like her before. “Do you think you can handle going through this again?”

  "Yeah. It didn't kill me, so it’s worth going there to see if I can do it again."

  “What made you so sick?” Lucas asked.

  “Sulphur. Some vampires you are.” Her lungs spasmed again without warning, launching her into another coughing fit. She caught her breath enough to guzzle down the rest of the bottle of water. When she could breathe again, she added, “You’re both blessed with supernatural senses and you somehow missed the smell of rotten eggs.”

  The two vampires exchanged confused glances, then eyed her curiously.

  “What?”

  “We didn't smell anything,” Vegas replied.

  “Really?”

  “Maybe the smell was part of the memory,” Lucas suggested.

  “I guess,” Dez replied, thought for a moment, then added, “I could do without the scratch and sniff portion of the evening.”

  “Now that we know this is possible, we should move,” Vegas said, all business. “Where were the Guardians hiding out?”

  “St. Tropez, London, Rome, Savannah, and New York.”

  “That makes things tougher. I thought the Guardians were all together. I know they were at one point.”

  “Apparently they split up,” Dez said with a shrug. “It makes sense. That would be a good way to keep the stone hidden.”

  “It would make it really easy on us if you remembered the addresses,” Lucas said, running his fingers through his hair.

  “Are you kidding? I couldn't forget what I saw if I tried. I remember every detail with perfect clarity. The problem is knowing which one to go to first.” Five locations meant they ran a serious risk of choosing the wrong one and not finding the demon in time. If it reached the gateway before they found the right location, none of this would matter.

  "Is there anything else you think we need to know?" Vegas asked.

  “No,” she responded with certainty. “He didn't go after anything else here. Once he found the list, he finished up with Natalia, then left. I'm sure he didn't even spare a backward glance.” He nodded but didn’t say anything. She could practically hear the gears turning in his head. “How are we going to do this? We can't be in five places at once.”

  “You’re right, we can't. It’ll take some creative logistics, but I’ve got an idea. Are you alright to move?”

  “Yeah, I'm good now.”

  "I'm going to make a call. We can't do this alone," Vegas said, pulling out his phone. Then he turned to Lucas. “I’m really sorry to rush you, but we’re kind of on a clock here. Are you ready to leave or would you like another minute?”

  Lucas was standing behind Natalia's desk fidgeting with a shiny object in his hand. He held up the object for the two of them to see and they realized it was a silver ring.

  “I bought this for her from one of those little street vendors.” He was staring at the ring with a far-off look in his eyes. “I bought the wrong size and it was too big so she wore it on her thumb. She only ever took it off when she was cataloging. She'd set it right here next to her laptop. This design is said to protect the wearer. Maybe if she'd been wearing the ring ...” His voice faded. He sighed and slid it onto his left ring finger. The hand balled into a tight fist.

  “Let's go. She's not here anymore, and I've got a demon to thank in person for that.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Michael

  Michael and Deziree stood on the Ponte delgi Scalzi looking out over the Grand Canal. The sound of the water flowing below was peaceful. Boats traveled the canal in their usual fashion, gliding through the water, whic
h glowed amber in the lamplight. If it weren't for the reason behind their visit to the bridge, it could have been a romantic moment for them. He took Deziree's hand, entwining his fingers with hers. “When this is all over, we'll definitely have to take our vacation.”

  She nodded. "I'll be holding you to that.” They shared a lingering kiss. So often, lately, someone would pull them away from each other. This time it was Kade, clearing his throat to break into their interlude.

  “Sorry to interrupt you two lovebirds,” Kade said with a wry smile.

  “Hey, thanks for coming,” Michael said, reaching a hand out and pulling his old friend into a brief hug.

  “Never a problem, you know that,” Kade replied, stepping back. “Deziree." He leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “You know, we don't need to travel all the way to Italy for the three of us catch up. I do live right on the other side of Manhattan.”

  “I know,” Michael responded apologetically. “Lately, we haven't gotten together nearly as often as I’d like. When this is all over, you'll have to come by Onyx for a drink with us.”

  “Yes,” Dez added with a smile. “Maybe we will shut the place down for a night and throw a big private party.” With a wink, she added, “I know the owner, so I bet I could make it happen.”

  “Okay,” Kade said with a grin, “it's a plan then. In the meantime, what can I help you with? When you called and asked to meet alone, I was under the assumption that meant something was wrong.”

  Michael peered around to make sure they were safe to speak where they were. When he was sure the coast was clear, he looked at Kade and asked, “You trust your people, right?”

  “Of course, with my life,” Kade responded simply. “Why do you ask?”