by Jenn Stark
“Long enough. You really think this douche nozzle is your ticket to eternal power in the coven? Because I gotta tell you, I don’t like your odds.”
She pushed her hands through her hair. “Fortunately, I don’t have to pay attention to your opinions. You’re here as a battery, Stefan. The sooner you realize that, the better.”
He raised one sardonic eyebrow. “Well, that’s good, since it seems to me you didn’t mind me going—and going—and going.”
“Stop it,” she snapped, her voice breaking a little, and she suddenly seemed on the verge of tears.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He lifted his hands. “I come in peace. Well, I came in peace. I hung around because your little powwow with the magic midget proved too interesting to leave.”
“And I can send you back to your room this instant should I so choose. I may not be enough to send you myself—” She broke off, her lips twisting in a wry grimace. “Then again, now, maybe I am.”
He shrugged, lowering his hands again. He liked the spark he was seeing in Cressida, but it seemed blocked by a heaviness he couldn’t understand. So he pushed more. “You could, and then I could find a way around it, like I did with Mighty Mouse’s attempt. Again. It’s become my second-favorite pastime.”
“And why do I get the feeling you’re dying to tell me what your first-favorite pastime is? Please don’t make me regret asking.”
“Not at all, princess.” Stefan grinned, watching her closely. She was trying to keep up her edge, even her anger, but there was something vulnerable underneath that façade, something important. Something he wanted to let blossom in his protective embrace. “I’d like to show you that, actually—assuming you don’t have a hot date with Boltar or Zeneschiah?”
“I—” It was clear she was about to snarl something cutting at him, but Cressida abruptly stopped. Her shoulders slumped, and Stefan knew he’d won.
So why did he feel like he’d lost?
She sighed. “There will be no Boltar or Zeneschiah.”
Cressida’s words were so soft, Stefan didn’t know if he’d heard them correctly. “And that means exactly what?”
She gestured with a weariness completely out of place on a human so young and full of potential. “They’re loathsome beasts, and they’ve killed or tormented more humans than I can count. I make no apologies for using them for the coven’s aims, for our crusade against demon kind. They deserve to be judged, and they will be judged. By the Goddess, not me. But I won’t continue to keep them trapped in my retinue, slowly drained of their power, the way the lawgivers want me to do. The lawgivers and Marcus too.”
“Okay,” Stefan said in the ensuing silence. This was why humans were so complicated. Cressida was happy to blast any demons off the map who were a direct threat, but faced with torturing one to advance her cause…she couldn’t. Or she wouldn’t. “Seems like a shame to waste all that demon mojo, though, now that you’ve got it trapped.”
Cressida’s mouth lifted in a half smile. “Perhaps you had the way of it from the beginning. Perhaps I’m not a good fit—for the coven or for the role of high priestess.”
“Wrong.” Stefan’s response was immediate and visceral, and the sharp rebuke vibrated between them, causing Cressida to shoot her gaze at him in surprise. “I appreciate your decision not to hook up with Z and B, more than you know. I even appreciate your noble reasoning, though, let’s face it, princess, you’re not doing it because of some misplaced appreciation for their deeply buried and fucked-up souls.”
Stefan’s pulse jacked as he spoke, the underlying truth in his words turning on him in scathing rebuke, but he too had a job to do here. Rout Ahriman and protect the coven. He couldn’t do either if Cressida faltered, yet what had he done since the moment he’d shown up on her doorstep? Challenge her. Test her. Make her doubt herself.
He was getting the impression she’d been dealing with that her whole life. There probably wasn’t a single person in the Scepter Coven she could call her friend except Dahlia—and Dahlia wasn’t enough to stand against the strength of all those allied against her.
It was time Cressida understood exactly what she faced—inside and outside the coven. He’d begun worrying about it with the onset of the hellspawn attack, but he’d not known the extent of the powers arraying against the high priestess until he’d been left alone in his rooms by Marcus and his goons. Then, he’d promptly left on a scouting mission outside this little witch fortress…a scouting mission he needed to take Cressida on too.
“Tell me something, Cressida. Other than this latest attack by the demons on your Serbian sisters, how much do the various covens keep track of the activities of demons?”
She frowned, seeming genuinely surprised by his question. That didn’t surprise him, given what he’d seen building on the streets of the Big Apple. “You mean, demons all over the world?”
“Aa-yup.”
“We don’t keep track of them. We keep to ourselves—each coven its own force, separate and distinct. We don’t meddle in the affairs of demons except to pull one or two into our midst, as needed.”
“And they’ve left you alone.”
“By and large…” Cressida’s eyes were sharp on him as Stefan began walking around the room. This apartment. This building. This city. Layers of protection that kept the witches removed from the outside world… Why hadn’t he seen this before?
Probably for the same reason Cressida hadn’t. He hadn’t wanted to.
“What are you getting at, demon?” she pressed him.
“Because you’re pretty cut off in here, wouldn’t you say? No one knows you’re in the city, human or demon. That’s always the plan, isn’t it? Get in, get out, sneak a few demons into your pentagrams, then poof. You’re back in the wind.”
“Well…” Cressida paused, considering. “We’ve maintained secrecy for a reason. Witches are easy to persecute. Staying hidden has allowed us to survive.”
“And when you hit demons, it’s always in ones and twos, you say. Not whole swaths of the horde.”
“Of course not,” she said firmly. That tracked too. Despite their strength, the witches of the Scepter Coven knew they needed to be careful around the horde. “That would draw too much attention.”
“Aa-yup. Sort of like what you’re doing now. Drawing attention, I mean.”
“What are you talking about?” Cressida snapped. “No one knows we’re here, no one knows we’re gearing up to confront Ahriman.”
“No one,” Stefan drawled, “except the dozen or so witches of East Side who are gathering in Central Park for your throw down under the full moon. Except the hundred or so demons you pulled in for a danceathon a couple of days ago, which resulted in a fair number of them getting sent to their great reward, while the others wondered what the hell’d happened.”
She stiffened. “You did that. Not us.”
“Well, sure. But you provided the barrel, the fish, and the big flashing arrow. Something like that…it could be noticed.”
“Noticed? You’re saying we’re in danger. How?”
He held out a hand. “Much easier to show you than to bore you with the details, princess. Trust me.”
Squaring her shoulders, Cressida strode the few steps needed to reach him, then put her delicate hand into his. As always, Stefan felt the jolt of her touch all the way to his toes, and as always, it disturbed him. He’d been no stranger to female companionship since he’d become a demon, and certainly not in the time before, when his role as a Fallen angel had given him the means and opportunity to become intimately familiar with women from every walk of life without any fear marring their enjoyment of his touch. Never once had a woman affected him the way Cressida did. She wasn’t trying to seduce him. Far from it. She wasn’t even trying to control him, not anymore. He’d probably made a mistake letting her see how ineffective that compulsion spell was unless she threw everything behind it, but he didn’t care. There was something she needed to s
ee. Something the entire coven seemed to be missing—or deliberately ignoring. He didn’t know which was worse.
He dissolved them both into smoke.
A moment later, they reappeared on a New York City sidewalk, Cressida gasping by his side. It was early evening, and the weather was brisk and windy, but Stefan barely felt the breeze, and he suspected Cressida didn’t either. One of the advantages of traveling demon class, you had a ready-made heat source whenever you needed it.
Instead, he curled her arm into his and started up the brightly lit street. They were in the shopping district of Manhattan, the tony shops of this area catering to the superrich as well as to the ogling tourists who swarmed the window displays hoping for a glimpse of the superrich. As it turned out, they were bound to be disappointed. The wealthiest of these shops’ clients either sent their minions to do their buying for them or shopped in exclusive appointments after hours. They couldn’t be bothered to deal with the madding horde.
The horde itself, however, was a different issue altogether.
“Do you see what I see?” Stefan asked conversationally as they strolled up the wide boulevard.
“I’d first like to know how you were able to escape the bonds of the coven so easily,” Cressida said tartly. “There’s no way you should be outside the compound. The pentagram has been drawn.”
“The pentagram has been broken, princess,” Stefan said. “In three places, only two of which were my doing. The first break looked like it’d been scuffed out by somebody who knew what he was doing too. It wasn’t a mistake. That little bug problem we had last night? Not a mistake, and not the horde getting lucky. It was planned. I don’t know why yet, but it was planned.”
She glanced at him hard. “Who would do that?”
“Most likely? A witch or witches who wanted to use the power of the pentagram for themselves. You take the existing pentagram with its highly specific containment spells, break it, and you can still use those spells to augment a larger pentagram for your own purposes. Whoever set up a secondary pentagram probably did so after you set up your little wedding party, or you would’ve noticed. I couldn’t find any trace of a wider pentagram, but the fact that the smaller one hadn’t been quite shattered I found…troubling. Someone went to some effort not to be caught.”
“That’s why you were able to move about freely.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but it certainly didn’t help keep me in my place. Sooner or later, somebody else would’ve discovered it. You got enough juice to keep Zeneschiah and Boltar tied down, but that has more to do with the drugs you’re pumping into their systems than any true magic you’ve got rocking. You really want to keep us under your collective wings, you’re going to have to do a better job with housekeeping.”
Cressida nodded. “Fair enough. But why did you bring me outside the compound? They’ll know immediately that I’m gone.”
“They will,” he agreed, “and they’ll also know that you’re with me. In fact, it can be easily spun as you taking me out for a stroll to deal with the newest problem that’s confronting your coven. A problem no one seems to be paying attention to, I might add.”
“And that is?”
“Look around, princess. Tell me what you see.”
Her nerves showing a little more obviously, Cressida did as he asked. She took in the crowded street with all its tourists mixed in with some of the businesspeople of the area. It was past the end of the workday, and traffic was thick and slow. The crush of people did nothing to diminish the energy buzzing along the streets of the city, however. It jumped and rattled and spun, seeming to gain in frenetic leaps by the moment.
“I see—sense—the energy, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “It’s like an electric current snaking through the city.”
“Not the whole city, not exactly,” Stefan said. “In fact, it’s a very narrow circuit surrounding a select few buildings on the west side of the city as well as a fair portion of Central Park. Not a closed circuit, but an open, spiraling one. If you were feeling a little cynical, you might call it a beacon. Or a target.”
“What are you—”
“You’re a witch of the Scepter Coven,” Stefan said, cutting her off. “Demons are your playthings. You mean to tell me you don’t feel them here, right now?”
Stefan watched as Cressida stiffened, then glanced around sharply. He could tell the moment she saw the truth about the people around them. Holding her tight the way he was, his glamour provided an impenetrable psychic barrier surrounding her. They couldn’t see her, not who she really was, and they certainly couldn’t tell he was a Syx. To the demons crowding the sidewalk, they were just two additional New York pedestrians, out enjoying a lovely evening stroll.
“There are so many of them,” she murmured. “That can’t be normal.”
“It isn’t normal, even for New York, and believe me, this place is a hotspot for freaks. Half the publishing professionals in the city are possessed by demons. But this? No. This is all about the Scepter Coven’s little field trip to the big city.”
“The summons to Storm Court?”
“Maybe to start, but that doesn’t explain the continued pull,” Stefan said. “There’s a pretty big disturbance in the Force, and it’s centering here. It’s strong enough to serve as a beacon to a pretty high level of demon too. That’s what’s surprising me. This isn’t your usual riffraff sniffing around for trouble. These demons are players, the kind who go where the action is. Apparently, the action is here. I find that very interesting.”
“I find that borderline terrifying,” Cressida replied drily. “We don’t have the numbers to combat this number of demons, not with our strongest spell casters needed for Ahriman. And I wouldn’t trust bringing new ones in.”
“Agreed,” Stefan said. “They’d have to cross the demon moat, and that wouldn’t make anyone comfortable. So maybe now’s a good time for you to tell me a little bit about the enemies you’ve built up over the years.”
She slanted him a startled look. “Enemies? The Scepter Coven doesn’t have enemies.”
“Annnnd I’m thinking that’s bullshit, based on the number of demons we see here. Because either you’ve got trouble in the ranks or an ineptitude that goes beyond a broken pentagram or two, or you’ve got an outside force who’s deliberately stirring up the horde.”
Suddenly, she got it. “Because of the mass summons,” she said. “That’s never been done before. And demons died.”
“Bingo. It’s one thing for demons to run riot on a coven. Boys will be boys, and all. But a coven suddenly blasting a big chunk of the horde into goop? That’s different. That’s new. And that’s dangerous. Add to that even a single ripple that the coven’s thinking about taking out Ahriman, the closest thing we’ve got to a superhero? Well, there’s a lot of hands in the horde looking for a crank to turn. You just gave them one.”
She twisted her hands, once more betraying her nerves. “I need to prove my worthiness for the role of high priestess. I can’t fail in my attempt to overcome Ahriman—or be attacked by the horde before I even get the chance. I’ve worked my whole life to claim this position. I owe them my life and all my strength.”
“Yeah, about that.” Stefan pounced on the opening she gave him. “You sure you’re remembering your time here with the coven correctly? Because no offense, but they don’t seem to have your back.”
“They’ve always had my back.”
“Except for the hellspawn attack. And the dynamic duo of demons who are hella stronger than you guys needed to score, if your plan was to have three weak demons to satisfy the demands of your grimoire. And, oh yeah, except for Marcus dicking you over by not dicking you over. You’re right. They seem like a great group, and I just met them. I can’t imagine they’ve only recently started their shit.”
“They’ve always protected me, and I can prove it.” She glared at him. “As well you know. You can read my thoughts, my memories with a sin
gle touch, were I to let you. Shall I let you? Do you dare see what I can show you?”
Stefan didn’t hesitate. He felt Cressida’s guard slipping even as she rolled the idea around in her mind. He knew once she considered the full ramifications of what she was offering—letting a demon plumb her memories—she’d withdraw from his touch immediately. So he didn’t give her the chance.
They were walking past a narrow alley fronted by two ornate statues, relics of a bygone era. By some miracle of recent street cleaning, the alley was pristine and untouched. Stefan turned sharply into the shadows and pressed Cressida up against the wall. A heartbeat later, his lips covered hers. Her mind burst open to him, and he plundered it.
And immediately saw that Cressida hadn’t been lying—or being dramatic. He raced back through her memories as far as he could go, memories she herself didn’t fully understand, he suspected, as she’d been barely more than a toddler when they were formed. She’d been found in what looked like a small-town hospital waiting room, though there were no specters of Child Services adults lurking in the background that he could see, nobody at all paying much attention to Cressida in the rush and screaming of a waiting room overcome with some kind of terrible accident. There was only a toddler girl dressed in a pink dress and black shoes, sitting quietly on the bench. The shoes took up most of her attention. They were black and shiny and they pinched her feet, but she already knew enough not to cry. Knew enough not to make a sound. When she looked up and saw an old woman standing in front of her, gray haired and gray eyed, she didn’t cry either. The woman reached out, and Cressida lifted her arms, and no one paid them any attention.
Something about the scene nagged at Stefan’s mind, something that seemed wrong, out of place, but Cressida’s thoughts were unspooling too quickly for him to linger.
The witch who’d picked her up was the head lawgiver, the one Cressida called Fraya. She became a constant fixture in Cressida’s mind, and shortly after, a young boy joined their small makeshift family. Marcus, Stefan assumed. All well and good—and then came the promises.