The Shadows and Sorcery Collection

by Heather Marie Adkins

  “You’ve told me a lot more than Yulian has since I came here,” I said.

  “Yulian has many responsibilities on his shoulders. He’s been burned before, by people he trusted. Give him time.”

  Before I had a chance to ask if she meant me, a door opened in the front of the townhouse, and Zia perked up. “That would be my husband home from work. He’s an employee of Yulian’s workshop, where the amulets are made and tested.”

  I wanted to ask her more about that, dig deeper into this world Yulian had created.

  But a tall, burly man with curly red hair and a thick auburn beard appeared in the doorway. “We have company!”

  Zia’s welcoming smile could have illuminated the entire underground. “Nikolas, this is Gadreel, Yulian’s nephew.”

  The man draped his bag on a hook, his eyebrows furrowing. “Yulian’s nephew. The one who disowned him?”

  Instead of letting my anger take hold of my tongue, I took a deep breath and let it out through my nose.

  Zia glared at her husband. “You disowned your sister when you were twelve because she stole your favorite toy soldier.”

  Nikolas guffawed. “I forgave her, didn’t I? My wife speaks the truth. As usual. You are welcome in our home, Gadreel the fallen angel.”

  I relaxed as we shook hands. There was nothing but kindness in the gesture: no overly strong grip, no strange eye contact. Just a witch welcoming an ex-angel into his home.

  Nikolas kissed his wife, a short but entirely intimate embrace of lips and eyes, and then tickled his daughter’s toes. “You’ll ruin her supper with all those cookies.”

  Zia picked up a fresh cookie and offered it to her husband. “You should ruin your supper with us.”

  Nikolas stuffed the cookie into his mouth and went to the sink to wash his hands.

  “Not all witches hate angels,” Zia said seriously. “Please don’t think so. Be patient with our kind. Time has been hard on us, and that kind of hardship makes it difficult to trust again. Even for good people.” Her eyes lingered lovingly on her husband’s back as he scrubbed his hands in the sink.

  The pain in my chest had grown with every gesture between the two of them. It had been easier to ignore when it was only Zia and Svetlana. But Nikolas was living my life, the life I had loved for years. He had a wife and a daughter, and a happiness that couldn’t be duplicated.

  Not when you’ve already lost it once.

  “I have to get back,” I said, standing abruptly. The burning in my chest made it hard to breathe, hard to think. I knocked over my empty mug in my haste and fumbled to right it. “Yulian will be missing me.”

  “Oh, okay.” Zia blinked, her confusion evident in her pale eyes. “Well, thank you for the conversation. I hope whatever brought you to us brings you the assistance you seek.”

  I thanked her and shook Nikolas’s hand once more. I knew my actions were barely short of rude, and certainly perplexing to the kindhearted couple.

  But if I didn’t get the hell out of that small, warm house, the envy curse would destroy me from the inside out.

  12

  By the time I found my way back to Yulian’s nondescript cabin, the pain in my chest had eased—but barely. I wouldn’t die today, though I couldn’t make any promises for the future if life didn’t stop trying to break me.

  It had taken years of careful schooling to fight back my emotions after losing Catie and Gretchen. I learned if I disconnected from others and minimized my interactions with the outside world, I could keep the curse at bay. I focused on my grief and anger, which had the sobering effect of extinguishing any envy I might feel.

  A hint of envy, and the rift curse could boil a man alive.

  Dom opened the door to Yulian’s cabin before I’d finished knocking on the rough-hewn wood.

  She propped a hip on the doorframe, chewing her bottom lip. “Is running away your answer to everything?”

  The combination of that deep, accented purr with the lazy way she slumped against the doorframe appealed to my baser instincts. She had that confidence specific to girls who knew they carried their sexuality in their hands. Dom could likely manipulate anything male in her sphere. Her words, however, negated the sexiness and just fucking irritated me.

  “Is resorting to violence your answer to everything?” I retorted.

  She grinned and stepped aside to let me pass, bowing like an irreverent gatekeeper.

  Yulian stood in the hallway behind her, his hands tucked into the pockets of his green robe. He peered at me over the top of his spectacles. “Are you done?”

  I sighed, feeling like a petulant child beneath his mild-mannered gaze. “I am if she is.”

  “Good. Come. Both of you.” Yulian turned on his boot heel and disappeared into the living room.

  Dom punched my shoulder. “Don’t run away again, pretty boy. It’s not safe for an angel down here. Got it?”

  “I may be pretty, but I can take care of myself.”

  Dom threw me another million-watt grin. “We should start a club. How to be pretty and badass.”

  Despite myself, I laughed. She had more moods than Jupiter had moons.

  Yulian already sat in a chair by the fire when Dom and I entered the cozy living room. Dom chose the matching paisley armchair to his right, leaving me to sink onto the well-worn couch before them.

  Yulian tossed a new log into the fire and used the poker to shift it around. Illuminated by the flames, he looked old and tired. His pale blue eyes—which had been clear and bright in my hospital room—had grown cloudy. An impossible transformation in such a short time.

  “I have been in conversation with the ancestors,” Yulian said as he returned the cast-iron poker to its carousel. “The cipher is indeed ancient, but not so ancient they were unable to decode the message.”

  I slid forward in my seat, heartened to hear this. If Yulian had cracked the cipher and found us the answer to defeating Belias, then the last week of my life would have been worth every near-death experience.

  “This will not be easy,” Yulian went on. “This kind of arcane spell… It is complicated, and the amount of power necessary to complete it could be dangerous for all of us.”

  “Living in Kremlin Circle is dangerous enough that I think I’ll risk it,” I said.

  Dom’s lips quirked into a smile. “He has a point, Father. Just tell us what we’re up against. What do we do?”

  Yulian cleared his throat. “We must carve a dagger from the bone of a holy man, then anoint it with the blood of six pure humans and the blood of six pure witches. Then I must cast an antiquated spell upon the weapon. This dagger, plunged into the heart of the demon queen, will kill her.”

  For a long moment, neither Dom nor I spoke. The silence was broken only by the crackle of flames.

  Steal a bone from a dead man, cover it in the blood of twelve living people, and use it to kill Belias.

  Totally doable.

  “Oh. That’s all?” I quipped to lighten the mood.

  Dom glared at me, but addressed her question to her father. “Is this even possible?”

  “Anything is possible, my dear.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking.”

  Yulian sighed. I had a feeling Dom had been a handful from the moment she shadowed his doorstep. “It is possible, I believe. That does not mean easy,” he added before his daughter could speak. “But possible. With one exception.”

  Dom waved him on.

  “Forty years ago, Belias’s demons stole all the spellbooks they could get their hands on, in an effort to extinguish the practice of magic. It was about that time the last of us shifted underground to protect ourselves and our magical tools.”

  “You still have your spellbook,” Dom pointed out. “I don’t see the exception.”

  “I have a spellbook. One I have painstakingly recreated from memory in the years since. But my ancestral spellbook, the one written and embellished over generations in my family, was stolen during this purge of magical too
ls.”

  My heart sank. “The spell we need was in that book?”

  Yulian nodded gravely.

  “And nobody else would have this spell?” Dom asked. “What about Ludwig? Or Hilda?”

  “We can surely ask, but I am not hopeful. They are both much younger than me.”

  “Their family lines are long,” Dom insisted.

  “Memory is much shorter, Dominika.” Yulian gave her a pointed look over the top of his half-moon glasses.

  I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my thighs and my head in my hands. “If the spell doesn’t exist anywhere else, are we just fucked? Belias destroyed it, so we’re out of luck?”

  Yulian lifted a finger. “Ah, but she did not destroy those books. The demon queen is smarter than that.”

  “So where are they?” Dom asked.

  Stroking his beard, Yulian sucked in air between his teeth before he responded. “In a vault at the watchtower, I would imagine.”

  “Guarded by nymfa,” Dom added, dropping her head in her hands. Her long black hair slid forward like a curtain.

  I clapped my hands on my knees. “So! No biggie. We dig up a priest, steal blood from twelve people— Oh, but they have to be pure. Then we ransack the Kremlin, hope we come out alive and undetected, cast the spell, and then go back into the Kremlin to fight Belias.”

  “I see us dying at some point in that narrative,” Dom observed from inside her hair tent.

  “Just add it to the to-do list,” I agreed.

  “That is a rather accurate, albeit existentialist, interpretation,” Yulian said dryly. “Though if we’re going to focus on the obstacles, we shouldn’t forget an important detail.”

  “What is that, pray tell?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

  “Kremlin Watchtower is spelled so that magic cannot pass through its doors. Which means I shall not be able to retrieve the book.”

  Dom stood up, shaking her head so hard her hair whipped in an arc around her. “Uh-uh. No way. Go in without the cover of magic? That’s a death sentence and you know it.”

  “We don’t exactly have a choice,” I pointed out.

  “You may not, but we do,” Dom snapped. “Can we choose to keep working with the Invidia for a way to defeat Belias?”

  “We have accomplished much with the Invidia,” Yulian agreed. “But ‘much’ is not enough, my dear.”

  “Who are the Invidia?” I cut in.

  “They are father’s closest cohorts,” Dom explained. “They are the witches and humans who work with us in his workshop to create and distribute the rift curse amulets, as well as to help research methods to defeat the demon queen.”

  Nikolas, Zia’s husband. He was Invidia, though she hadn’t used the title to describe him as such.

  “You make us sound so much more than a ragtag band of do-gooders,” Yulian said fondly.

  “Father, we have climbed mountains in the Invidia. We will climb many more.”

  “Humans?” I asked, latching on to the one detail that seemed out of place.

  “There are humans who live down here among us,” Dom answered. “Like me. We work as ambassadors, getting supplies and news from the world above.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t believe this has been happening for so long, and I haven’t heard a word.”

  “When your very life depends on maintaining secrecy, even the vilest of witches will keep their mouths shut.”

  “Like Aldric?”

  Dom groaned. “Don’t say that name.”

  Yulian’s eyes sparkled at his daughter. “The old boyfriend? What did he do now?”

  “Yul!” Dom stretched out his name in irritation. “You promised you’d never bring that up again.”

  I gawked at Dom. “You dated that asshat?”

  “For like five minutes a hundred years ago.” Dom glared Yulian into bemused silence, and then turned her glare on me. “We don’t talk about it.”

  “I thought better of you.”

  “Bite me.”

  Yulian held up a hand. “All right. That’s enough. Let’s get back on track. Gadreel, we have been working closely with the Invidia to come up with a permanent way to fix the curse and get rid of Belias for good. However,” he added loudly, cutting off Dom before she could interrupt, “demon blood has become much harder to come by in recent years.”

  “Demon blood?”

  “The amulets contain demon and witch blood,” Dom explained.

  “I thought they were just magic?”

  Dom scoffed. “Don’t be an idiot, Gad. Where do you think hard magic comes from? It isn’t all parlor tricks.”

  I remembered Zia using that exact term only an hour earlier, as she’d referred to her magic as parlor tricks. “There’s a difference in magic? Amulets versus waving your hands and making things happen?”

  Yulian chuckled good-naturedly, countering his daughter’s eye roll. “Yes, there is a difference. Anything that manipulates time, space, or matter requires much more than brain power. Blood is the strongest force we have, and demon blood allows us to target the curse.”

  “Surely we’re going to beat the curse if we just keep at it?” Dom insisted.

  Yulian clucked, his gaze turning to the fire. “The ancestors did not seem to think so.”

  “They’re not always right.”

  “They are always right, child.”

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “We take this journey one step at a time,” Yulian said simply. “Our first step is to forge a weapon made from the bone of a man of faith.”

  “Are we going to kill a man of faith?” Dom asked. Any other woman would have asked such a question with a note of disgust in her voice. Dom’s level voice reminded me of warriors taking orders from their captain.

  “There are no men of faith left in Kremlin Circle. They were among the first to be killed,” I told her, pleased I could mimic her know-it-all voice. But I couldn’t help but remember my priest from before the curse: the smiling, soft-spoken man who had married me and Catie, who had baptized our child, who had brought joy and faith to us every Sunday.

  The day he died, the demons burned our church to the ground.

  To her credit, Dom looked sad. “They killed all the priests?”

  I nodded, unable to put to words the grief I still held for that man. “They destroyed anything that brought faith to the people of Kremlin.”

  “When people have faith, the demons cannot win,” Yulian added softly.

  I shivered despite the warmth of the fire. “Take the faith away, and the people cannot win.”

  13

  “If there are no clergy left in Kremlin Circle, where will we find a man of faith?” Dom asked.

  “Funny you’re hung up on finding a living man,” I told her. “You realize bones are on the inside?”

  Dom opened her mouth to snap, but Yulian cut her off.

  “We won’t find a living man.” He straightened and pulled his pipe from inside his robes. He lit it with only the tip of his finger, conjuring a tiny, perfect flame on his fingernail, and then puffed. “We’ll find the bones of a dead man.”

  “Where?” I asked. “The demons burned the bodies.”

  “Not all of the bodies. And not all of the houses of faith, either.” He leveled a knowing gaze on me.

  My skin prickled. “St. Basil’s.”

  Yulian’s cloudy eyes sparkled. “You’ve always been an intelligent young man.”

  “I’m older than you.”

  Yulian grinned around his pipe, teeth tobacco-stained in the firelight. “But I’m prettier.”

  “St. Basil’s,” Dom interrupted our banter. “The St. Basil’s directly across the Square from Belias’s demon watchtower. Are you mad?”

  “He has a point.” Excitement flowed through me, along with a sense of expectation. “The crypts of St. Basil’s.”

  “St. Basil’s doesn’t have crypts,” Dom argued. “Vasily the Fool was removed from his resting place during the rift.”r />
  “Vasily wasn’t the only man of faith buried there.” I gained more confidence as I spoke, excited that my arcane, heavenly facts could help. “Crypts deep beneath the foundation have been hidden there since time immemorial. Only the clergy knew of them—and only the clergy buried their dead there.”

  “In a last, desperate act to hold on to their faith,” Yulian added. “God bless them.”

  Dom shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. We can’t be that close to Belias. She’ll know you’re there, and she’ll come for you.”

  “My child, I would thank you to remember that I have lived much, much longer than the years I’ve lived with you.” Yulian looked at her pointedly. “I am capable of hiding my magic from a foolish demon queen.”

  Dom flushed, a surprisingly childlike look that softened her hard edges. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “So. We’re breaking into the old cathedral?” I grinned. For the first time since Raphael showed up unannounced and unwelcome in my life, I felt like we had a plan. And to be honest, I was more than a little excited about it.

  Yulian held up a hand as if to silence us. “I’ve yet to tell you the hardest part of this.”

  “Harder than breaking into the watchtower under Belias’s nose?” Dom cackled madly. I thought I heard undertones of hysteria.

  Not that I could blame her. It was already a suicide mission. But then again, what was one more obstacle in a laundry list of them?

  The old man sat forward to stoke the fire, speaking into the flames. “My dear, if you focus only on the difficulties that lie ahead, you’ll never take another step.”

  Dom nodded, lowering her gaze to the flaring embers. “Of course, Father. You are right.”

  Hell, even I was emboldened by the statement. “I’ve spent fifty years unable to look past the obstacles. I could use a change of pace.”

  Yulian sheathed the fireplace poker in its stand and grinned. “There’s my nephew.”

  His words sent warmth through me that had nothing to do with the fire. So much time had passed since I last felt like part of a family. The sensation seemed almost alien.

  “So what is this final obstacle?” Dom asked, steering us back on topic.