by Sarah Noffke
“It seems that many in the House of Seven have that mystery and secret cloaking them,” Plato stated.
“And the only way to find out the secrets Ian and Reese alluded to is to investigate,” Liv stated.
“So, do you think that Stefan is tied up in their deaths?” Plato asked.
“I’m not ruling anything out, but if he is, I’m going to shove Bellator straight down his throat and make him wish he’d never met Liv Beaufont.”
Plato smirked. “That should be your motto.”
“It totally should be,” she agreed. “I think most people wish they’d never met me, but that’s mostly because I’m sort of a pain in the ass.”
“Sort of?” Plato questioned.
“Watch it, lynx, or you’ll wish you’d never befriended me.”
He shook his head. “I never regret a decision. Call it my expert foresight.”
Liv regarded him with a curious stare. “Right. And how is it that you found me that one day on the streets five years ago? You’ve never mentioned it.”
“Haven’t I?” Plato countered, his eyes focusing up ahead. “Looks like Stefan is getting away. We should continue this later.”
“If I know you, that means ‘never.’” Liv doubled her pace before coming to a halt at the corner where Stefan had disappeared. The glow of the red lights reflected along the road there, giving a hint of what could be found around the bend. She didn’t know what she’d find Stefan doing, but she hoped it wasn’t visiting a brothel. Then again, that was more innocent than the other horrid possibilities going through her mind. Could he be behind the missing canisters of magic? Was he helping to cover up the secrets about the House of Seven? Did he know what happened to her parents? She had so many questions, and the only way she was going to get answers was to pursue every lead.
Peering around the corner, Liv found a row of shops, their ‘merchandise’ dancing in display windows. People strolled by on the sidewalk, but to her disappointment, Stefan wasn’t around. Damn it, did I let him get away? Liv wondered sourly.
Plato’s ear twitched to the side.
“You hear something?” she asked him, noticing the movement.
“I hear a lot of things, but there’s one sound in particular that I haven’t heard in quite some time.”
“Which way?” Liv inquired.
“Around the back of that shop.” Plato indicated the store in front of them.
Nodding, Liv edged along the wall, trying to not move too quickly but also not look like a sneak following a magician. It was a balancing act. Most of the people on the street at that hour didn’t seem to pay her much attention, too entranced in conversations with the person beside them or the moves of the women under the red lights.
Liv hurried through the alley between the shops, which was mostly in darkness. She negotiated around puddles and over anything that would make a noise and give away her presence. Then she heard it—the noise Plato must have picked up on. A slow screeching, like metal scraping against metal.
Liv slid up next to the wall, a violent shiver rippling down her back. She knew for a fact that whatever that noise was, it wasn’t as innocent as someone pushing a metal cart over a metal incline or whatever it was. In her core, she knew the noise was connected to evil and darkness the likes of which she’d never met.
“What is that?” she mouthed to Plato.
He blinked at her, seeming to deliberate. Pull out your sword, he answered in a voice she heard in her head, as if they’d suddenly forged a telepathic link.
Pulling Bellator from its sheath, Liv continued down the alley, the sound growing fainter as she neared it.
Ragged breaths that sounded like cardboard being sawed in half replaced the screeching. Liv halted at the corner, preparing herself, or at least attempting to do so. When she peered around the corner, she almost gasped, nearly exposing her presence.
Nothing in the world could have actually prepared her for what she saw.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Stefan never got used to the smell. How could anyone? It haunted him at night, lingering in his nostrils, reminding him of what he’d become if he didn’t find the cure to that which plagued him.
He’d kill himself first, though. He’d already made up his mind about that one. But he still had time. Not much, but hopefully enough.
The demon he’d clutched in his hand wasn’t the one who had bit him. Stefan knew that. It had the same red, slimy skin, veins running down the side of its face like its insides were on the outside. However, this demon had several horns around its cheekbones and many more on its head.
Sabatore, the demon who’d sunk his rows of razor-sharp teeth into Stefan’s arm, marking him with a curse, had two prominent curved horns mounted on his head and a silver ring through his nose.
“Tell me where I can find him?” Stefan urged in a tight whisper, holding the demon up higher on the wall and pressing the sword deeper into its torso.
The sound that spilled over the demon’s quivering lips was not intelligible.
“I know you speak English, you good-for-nothing piece of shit.” All the demons spoke every language—Stefan had learned that—although they preferred to communicate through howls and screeches that haunted mortals long into the night. These were the beasts who corrupted good people, filling them with greed and paranoia, making them commit horrible acts and perpetuating evil in the world. Yes, evil would exist without demons. It always had, but as they spread, so did hate so vicious it sought to take over the world.
Stefan knew it was about balance. And achieving that balance, helping maintain it, had been his job. Now his mission was personal: to hunt down the beast who had marked him, trying to make him just like Sabatore. The irony that the demon hunter might one day become the very thing he hated wasn’t lost on Stefan.
If Raina knew, she wouldn’t think it was ironic, though. His sister would be devastated if she knew he’d been bitten, which was why she didn’t know. Besides that, she might not be able to keep the news from the Council, and Stefan would be gone at once. That was the rule, and there were no exceptions. Those bitten were contaminated by evil, the venom surging through them, ready to take over at any point, the corruption starting from within.
I have more time, he told himself. I have to. The alternative was unfathomable, and yet, Stefan knew how demons spread, marking magicians or elves or giants, spreading their disease and the evil they symbolized.
For most of his career as a Warrior, he’d studied and trained for how best to track and kill demons. It wasn’t until it got personal that he began to research in the library how the virus was spread and how to stop it. He needed Sabatore’s blood. That was the only way to form the antidote. Hester had told him that much but hadn’t promised it would work. She’d given him one final warning before promising not to tell the Council.
“Your secret is safe with me for a little while,” the councilor had told him in an aching voice. “However, when the time comes, you won’t be able to fight it. The demon will take you over, and Stefan will be lost forever.”
He shook his head. “I won’t let that happen. I’ll end things first.”
With pain in her eyes, Hester looked away. “I’m sorry to say that many as strong as you, have had the same intention, but it was too late by that point. It happens fast, sometimes with no warning. One moment you’re you, and the next… Well, you’re changed forever and also gone forever. Once the demon takes over, there is no coming back.”
Stefan had realized what she’d meant when the voices started in his head; the echoes of the demon he would become. It wanted to swallow him whole, taking over his life and making him haunt this world for eternity. Stefan battled that demon presently in his head, shaking away the chanting that often woke him at night.
“Tell me where Sabatore is and your death will be swift,” Stefan threatened the demon he had pinned against the wall.
“You can’t kill me,” the demon said with a gurgled hiss.
/> Stefan laughed morbidly. “That’s what they all say.”
With one hand still on the hilt of his sword pinning the demon to the wall, its hands and legs restrained, Stefan pulled a red depour from inside his cape.
The demon began to squirm more furiously, thrashing its head forward, trying to impale Stefan. He held it steady, though, used to how they freaked at this stage of the game.
Pressing the sword more firmly into the demon, Stefan began to recite the magical text that released the demon from the Earth, but more importantly released that which was trapped within it. “Metuendas Dcemonis violentias, dimittere unam animam de amicae tuae involasti, permittens eos tandem.”
The words he spoke had a new meaning for Stefan now. A personal one: Demon, release the soul of the one you stole, allowing them to finally rest.
A scream that would haunt Stefan’s dreams spilled from the demon’s mouth, filling the night air with a sound most would dismiss or not hear at all. Metal on metal: that was how best it was described. A sharp noise that cut at the demon within Stefan, begging him not to continue. Not to murder the demon before him. He shook off the urge wrapping around his insides.
In one swift movement, Stefan pulled the sword from the demon, launching his other hand into the gaping wound, inserting the red depour, which was the size of a rose petal, into the demon.
“Ad infernum, a quo factum est tibi in sempiternum in ipse comburetis,” Stefan finished, dropping the demon and striding away.
As the words he’d spoken streaked across Stefan’s mind, the demon burst into flames, consumed by the fire that would finally end it: Return to hell, from which you came, where forever you shall burn.
Stefan turned when he was a safe distance from the demon, which was quickly reduced to ash. He pulled his handkerchief from his cape, wiping the blood from his hands first and then his sword.
At his back, he heard a noise and spun around at once, finding only shadows and darkness.
No, all was safe in Amsterdam for now, he told himself.
The sounds of life on the nearby streets were suddenly more peaceful, as if the knowledge of the demon’s death had spread at once through the city. However, no one knew when a demon was slain, only that their nightmares had been given a respite.
However, that wasn’t the case for Stefan Ludwig. His nightmare was only getting worse.
Chapter Twenty-Four
None of it made sense.
Liv tried dismissing what she’d seen in the back alleys of Amsterdam as purely House business, but it didn’t seem right to her. Plato had remained quiet for a long time, allowing her to talk things through as she tinkered with an alarm clock that should have been past repair. However, magic made many things possible, if she could just figure out all the things that were wrong with it. The clock was about like Stefan Ludwig. Liv couldn’t figure him out.
“Hunting demons is one thing, but interrogating them?” Liv said for what felt like the hundredth time.
Perched close by, Plato simply nodded again, still not offering any insights.
“Who is Sabatore, and why is Stefan looking for him?” she mused, turning the alarm clock over in her hands, not really looking at it, but rather, lost in thought. “And why question a demon? They aren’t trustworthy in the least. It’s like asking Adler Sinclair for advice. Whatever he says is total bullshit and probably only serves his greedy, mysterious agenda.”
“And here I thought you and Adler were starting to get along,” Plato joked.
Liv shook her head. “I just don’t get it. Sabatore. Have I heard that name before?”
“I don’t think so,” Plato stated with confidence.
Liv looked up. “How do you know?”
“I just know,” he said smugly.
“You’re not with me all the time. I do have a life away from you, you know?”
“Do you?” he challenged.
She shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right. I probably don’t. Even when I’m alone, I’m pretty certain you’re spying on me somehow.”
“Have you worked out the Latin he was speaking?” Plato asked.
She sighed. “You know I haven’t, not all the way. Are you ready to fill in the rest for me, or are you going to pretend that you have no idea?”
“How would you like me to proceed with this one? Give you hints? Tell you everything? Act like I don’t know?”
Liv couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, I know it was an incantation, but a bit more complex than the ones I’m used to.” She pointed to the book, Mysterious Creatures. “I can’t find anything like that in that book, but I’m going to search the library, too.”
“It’s a banishing spell,” Plato said with a yawn. “It’s meant to trap demons in the underworld where they supposedly came from.”
“I got that bit about hell when he mentioned infernum,” Liv said. “I just didn’t understand the first part. Shockingly, my Latin is a little rusty after five years of hardly using it while working in a repair shop.”
“Yes, I’m not sure I got the entirety of the message either,” Plato related.
“Well, tell me what you think you heard.”
“Something, something. People talking on the streets. Gurgling noise. Shallow breathing. A siren in the distance—”
“I meant the bit Stefan said,” Liv stated, interrupting Plato’s attempt at bad humor.
“Oh, that,” Plato said. “Roughly, I think he said, Demon, release the soul of the one you stole, allowing them to finally rest.”
Liv raised an eyebrow at the cat. “Oh, is that ‘roughly’ what you heard? Sounds pretty exact, and maybe a bit rehearsed.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? I used to know a demon hunter. The verse sort of came back to me.”
Liv gave him a conspiratorial look. “And this incantation…it’s used to kill the demon?”
Plato shook his head. “No, there are several ways to kill a demon. The way he did it was one of them, using fire. But the incantation is supposed to trap the demon, and more importantly, release the soul they leech onto.”
A shiver ran over Liv’s arms. “So demons are actually people?”
“Yes,” Plato affirmed. “Trapped souls are the vehicle the demons use.”
Liv sneered. “Like renting a car.”
“Yes, but there’s no steep insurance or new car smell,” Plato joked.
“That’s so sad,” she related. “I had no idea that demons were so awful. Just the look of that thing was enough to haunt my dreams forever.”
“Not to mention the smell,” Plato added.
“Yes, I’m guessing that demon hygiene is pretty awful. And I bet they never floss.”
Plato lowered himself to the workbench, making Liv look up at once. That was what he always did just before someone entered the shop, trying to make himself inconspicuous.
Liv pushed the alarm clock to the side, ready to greet the person who walked through the door, expecting one of her usual customers.
The person who staggered through the door wasn’t anyone she’d expected.
Liv bolted up, every inch of her body tense and ready to fight, but she didn’t know why.
The man who entered the shop didn’t have a familiar face, but there was definitely something about him. She couldn’t remember where she’d seen his long face or shifty eyes, but something told her that she had, and it wasn’t good. Plato had disappeared, which didn’t make her feel any better as she reached behind her on a nearby shelf for a screwdriver. It wasn’t Bellator, but it was going to have to do.
The man pretended to look over the contents on the front shelf, his eyes cutting over to Liv every several seconds. The more she studied him, the less certain she was that she actually knew him. Maybe she was being paranoid. There were tons of shifty characters in WeHo. That was actually part of the charm, she thought with a mental laugh.
“Can I help you find something?” Liv asked, noticing that he didn’t have an appliance in his hands, and therefore probably
didn’t need anything repaired.
The man shook his head roughly, his hands pressed into his jeans pockets.
She could have sworn she knew him, but where from? His head was bald, and…his ears. They flickered, like a picture on television.
She blinked, trying to decide what she’d just seen.
“The Santa Ana winds picking up out there?” Liv asked, trying to make conversation or do anything to reveal more clues.
The man shook his head, not giving anything away. He was wearing a loose-fitting t-shirt and knit pants with sneakers. There really wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about him. Holding the screwdriver behind her back, Liv tried to make sense of what she’d thought she’d seen. Had it been a figment of her imagination?
Barking from the back made both the man and Liv start. She spun around, momentarily putting her back to the man. John was here. Maybe that was a good thing. Then she’d snap out of all this pondering and actually get some work done. It was only making her crazy.
Feeling something stir behind her, Liv turned around to find the man closer than before, just on the other side of the workbench. She forced a smile, holding up the screwdriver. “Sure I can’t help you find something? What brings you in today?”
He sneered, showing a mouthful of yellow teeth. Instantly she was sure she’d seen this man before, but where?
“I don’t think you have what I’m looking for here,” the man said, his voice bringing with it familiarity.
“What are you looking for?” Liv asked, her fingers tightening on the screwdriver.
“It’s old,” the man answered, a haunting quality to his voice.
Liv searched the space around the man, taking in the obstacles between them in case a fight broke out. She wanted to be prepared for anything.
“Old? Like a vintage record player?” she asked.
He shook his head and again his ears flickered, for a second appearing much more pointy than they appeared most of the time.
He was an elf! She knew it at once.