by Jenn Stark
A new voice rang out behind them, rich with satisfaction. “Well, that’s maybe overstating it. No one brings Justice upon them. She goes wherever she wants.”
Cressida spun again to take in the demon lounging against the opening to the dressing room. “You know, it sort of defeats the purpose of having a private dressing room if you’re going to throw a party in here.”
Sara snorted beside her. “Get used to it. Demons are the worst at respecting personal space.”
“It’s one of our charms,” Stefan allowed. Still, he looked happier than Cressida had ever seen him, and she took a moment just to stare. He’d known she was about to face a challenge she’d never expected, and he was doing all he could to prepare her—from the outside in, and from the inside out. What had she ever done to deserve his help? She’d kidnapped him, insulted him, compelled him against his will—and then practically thrown herself at him. Why was he helping her?
It didn’t seem to matter why, though. Not to Stefan. He practically glowed with pleasure as he took in the Justice of the Arcana Council, the two of them squaring off like gunslingers of the Wild West. Or Wilde West, maybe…
“Justice,” Stefan said, his grave expression ruined by the tug of his smile.
“Demon.” Sara Wilde nodded back. “You owe me, by the way.”
He shrugged. “I owe you for a lot of things.”
“Truer words were never spoken.” Then the Justice of the Arcana Council shook out her hands—and they burst into blue-white flame.
Cressida jerked her own hands up, staring at the sudden flare of reddish-purple flame that twisted and roiled around her fingers. “What’s happening?” she whispered.
“More than anyone around you might be expecting, High Priestess, but that’s their problem, not yours,” Sara answered. “For the time being, let me teach you how to throw some fire.”
Chapter Nineteen
Stefan eased into position next to Jim Granger, unsure of whether to feel cocky, vindicated, or scared out of his mind. He suspected he wasn’t going to like the answer.
It’d been a full day since he and Cressida had completed their field trip outside the coven walls, and he hadn’t seen her once. She’d absorbed every lesson Sara Wilde had thrown at her, managed to craft a few credible fireballs of her own, and by the end of it, she’d walked out of the tony Fifth Avenue shop with an entirely new wardrobe and a clothier for life…at least, after they’d cleaned up all the fire damage.
But the future remained a little murky. Cressida now understood what she could technically pull off as a witch with a demon consort. But would she—could she—do it in front of her coven? Would she be willing to step out from the shadow of her own screwed-up beliefs regarding these people?
Stefan surveyed the chamber. They were in some sort of conference room for the damned, complete with a pentagram etched into the floor and walls with decoration that echoed early Medieval torture chamber—pikes, swords, whips, and even a few well-oiled chains. None of the pieces looked used, so they had to all be for effect. Clearly, Marcus must have been doing the decorating.
The exorcist glanced his way. “Wondered when you’d make an appearance,” Granger murmured. “You missed Marcus’s speech to the coven. He’s making Cressida out to be some kind of virgin sacrifice for the good of the people.”
Stefan smirked. “Well, close enough. I thought she’d be here by now.”
“Patience is a virtue. For a being who’s walked the earth as long as you have, I would have thought you’d have learned that by now.”
“Funny how that works.” At that moment, however, the crowd at the far end of the chamber began to stir and then actively start chattering. Stefan perked up, straining to see, but caught himself in time as Marcus turned sharply on the dais, his eyes seeking him out. It wouldn’t do to let wonderboy know he had anything to do with Cressida’s new look.
So he kept his face studiously neutral as the high priestess of the Scepter Coven swept into the room.
She was—incredible.
Cressida’s rich auburn hair still tumbled over her shoulders, but instead of her usual tunic and pants, she wore a gorgeous black cape lined in green silk, which flowed out around her shoulders to reveal a perfectly tailored black silk suit topping high-heeled leather boots. A choker of fiery emeralds graced her neck, the perfect match to her bright, alert eyes. Stefan wasn’t sure exactly what Marcus had told the crowd, but Cressida wasn’t looking like any virgin sacrifice.
What she did next, though, made his teeth grind.
After sweeping the room with an insolent, confident gaze, not hesitating a moment on him or Granger, she caught sight of Marcus. Her smile flashed wide, her hands went up, and she moved toward him, allowing him to sweep her into a full embrace.
The coven burst into heartfelt and sustained applause.
“What is that all about?” Stefan growled.
Granger hummed a short breath beside him. “Most likely, it’s about her putting up the appearances she must in order to convince the coven she’s going to be the leader they expect her to be.”
“She should find another way to do it, then. I don’t trust that asshat.”
“You don’t get a vote,” Jim Granger pointed out, less than helpfully.
“Yeah? Well, I should. This is bullshit, this little game she’s playing with this retinue. She’s not going to bang every one of us, I don’t care what fairy story she’s fed to her coven.”
Granger chuckled beneath his breath. “What makes you think she hasn’t already banged all of us, as you so colorfully put it, and merely spelled you into not knowing?”
Stefan wasn’t fully conscious of moving. He only knew that one moment he was sitting next to Granger at the edge of the chamber, waiting for foot soldiers to show up with the other two demons from their holding tank—and the next moment, he had Granger pinned to the back of his chair, his hand gripping the mortal’s throat and clamping down—
He flung himself backward before the instant could be completed, sprawling into his own seat once more. A few of the witches on the far side of the room glanced over, then went back to their own conversations.
“Dammit—dammit, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean to—are you okay? Are you—dammit!”
Stefan snarled as the wave of pain struck him. He grabbed his own head with his hands, his fingers tight on his temples. There was so much screaming in his mind that he could barely breathe. He’d lifted his hand against a child of God! Not merely lifted it, he’d attacked a human with the intention to do severe bodily harm, and had only brought himself back from the brink in the barest nick of time.
Beside him, Granger straightened in his chair, but Stefan couldn’t focus on him at first. The rules of being a Syx were inviolate and not all that dissimilar to the rules of being a Fallen. The first and most important being: you do not—ever—harm a child of God. Under no circumstances. They could be the vilest piece of filth that walked the planet; as a demon, it was not his place to send them to God’s judgment. Only they could make that decision—say, by attacking Stefan or one of his brothers outright. The Syx were allowed to defend themselves, but even in that defense, the likelihood was next to nothing that they would ever be forced to take a life.
And here he’d nearly choked the breath out of Granger because the man had made a joke?
Stefan went still, then pulled his hands away from his face, his gaze pinned on Granger again. The bastard was smiling. Grinning, actually. “That was a joke, right?”
Granger’s grin morphed into a darkly amused chuckle. “That was a joke.”
“You realize how close you came to dying just now?”
“About as close as I would any day walking down the street,” Granger countered. Stefan scowled, and Granger shook his head. “You are a dangerous being, Stefan, the iron fist of God, set against the damned. But you’re no danger to a human. Which is a pity, because humans were your undoing all those year
s ago, weren’t they?”
Stefan looked away, his heart still racing. “I don’t talk about that.”
“You don’t, but perhaps you should,” Granger said mildly. “I didn’t only serve as an exorcist, you know, when I wore the collar. I had my share of learning the worst that humankind had to offer, and finding ways for those who came to me to forgive themselves their sin.”
Stefan snorted. “I don’t think the problem is me forgiving myself.”
“Don’t you? Do you really believe that your beloved Father—”
“He’s not my beloved Father. Not anymore.”
Granger shrugged. “Fair enough. Then do you really believe the…” Granger broke off, his eyes going wide. “What am I asking? It’s not a question of belief for you, is it? It’s a knowing. You were there. You stood beside the Father as one of his most precious creations, perhaps listening to his very words as he spoke of the children he had set upon the earth below. Is that so?”
Stefan made a face. He avoided conversations with priests for exactly this reason. Sooner or later, they would ask some version of this question, and he never had a good answer for them. “Unfortunately, I can’t help you, padre. When I committed my sin, my memory of everything before that sin was wiped out, at least in terms of my time as an angel, Fallen or otherwise. I know the circumstances leading up to my sin so that I may never forget the acts that laid me low, and I know everything that happened after that sin. The passage of six millennia hasn’t dulled the memory of how I took my demonic form. But being an angel? Existing in the brightness of God’s glory? No. I don’t recall anything like that. I certainly don’t recall standing around chatting with God about how He did or didn’t forgive His children their transgressions.”
Granger took this information in stride. “So then call it a matter of belief, as I began. Do you really believe that the Father would keep a ledger of the sins of his creations? At least one more exacting than their own?”
“I…” Stefan frowned. It was never his place to question the decisions of the Father, though he certainly had seen the worst of what humanity had to offer. The atrocity that humans were capable of committing against one another, whether pitting the strong against the strong or, far more often, the strong against the weak and unprotected, had shaken all the members of the Syx at one time or another, perhaps none so much as Gregori. He didn’t know the big man’s sin, but with each new act of human depravity he was forced to witness, the giant seemed to withdraw more deeply into himself.
As for Stefan, he merely tried to avoid thinking about it. And fortunately, with the demands on the Syx, he didn’t have time to reflect too often.
Granger was still waiting for an answer, however, and Stefan tried to give him one. It was the least he could do after attempting to choke the man to death.
“The Father and His child together created their plan, long before that soul takes its place on the earth,” Stefan said, the words coming to him as if from a long-ago catechism he’d forgotten he’d ever learned. “Only the beginning is charted, and perhaps a few key points. The rest is up to the child to discern. Each would learn, each would do their best, each would, one day, return for an accounting.”
“An accounting,” mused Granger. “So a judgment.”
“Not judgment, not the way you’re thinking of it.” Stefan winced as a searing pain skated across his brain. “I think I need to stop talking about this. I don’t think I’m supposed to remember.”
“And yet you do remember,” Granger prodded. “You can.”
“Sure, I guess,” Stefan said, gritting his teeth now. The pain was building again in his mind, taking his breath away.
“That’s important,” Granger said, then clapped Stefan on his shoulder, the move so unexpected that Stefan once more focused fully on the ex-priest. The headache fled as quickly as it came, leaving him gasping in relief.
He stared at Granger. “Did you just do some mojo on me, old man? Because that is seriously not cool. And I didn’t think you could do that.”
“Demons,” snorted Granger. “Always so filled with hubris they can’t see the truth in front of their faces.”
“You know, you aren’t a consecrated exorcist anymore, and more to the point, I’m not inhabiting a human. You have no power over me.”
“Clearly untrue,” Granger mocked, though his tone remained light. “I nearly incited you to choke me to death, and that was with one tossed-off line. I’m not the only exorcist in existence either. There are some servants dedicated to the Father who don’t have the slightest bit of Connected ability beyond their own faith who could take you to your knees.”
“Doubtful.”
“And then there are the Dawn Children, descendants of the Fallen.”
“You know about those?”
“Any exorcist worth their holy water knows about them, for all that they’re nearly impossible to find,” Granger said. “Their ways have been written down often enough, surviving in myth and legend. And let’s not forget where we find ourselves at this moment, as a witch brings up two bound demons and you, a Syx, allow the indignity of being at least somewhat bound within her compulsion spell. A demon may be the first and best offense against another demon, but humans are not without their own tools.”
“Yeah, well, tell that to the humans who beg to be saved from demon kind. I think they’re more than happy for the help of the Syx.”
“As they should be. Like I said, the first offense is always the best, and you and your team are certainly that. And demons must always be acknowledged for their strength. It’s why I’m curious about the charade that’s about to go on here.”
Stefan looked around, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“This coven isn’t ready to go after Ahriman. They haven’t completed the required rituals. The grimoire was no longer complete, but the section on Ahriman remained intact, from what I could tell. There’s much Cressida and her Marcus have yet to do.”
“You don’t need to refer to him as ‘her Marcus.’ Marcus by itself is fine. Or better yet, dickhead. It suits him.”
Granger eyed him. “You do know that Marcus will make his play for Cressida before all this is done, and she no doubt believes she owes him her fealty. It will prove a difficult choice for her.”
Stefan’s mind shot instantly to the scene in Cressida’s apartment with Marcus, where she quite clearly demonstrated how difficult that choice would be for her. Only she was choosing the wrong guy. “I still can choke you to death, you know.”
“I’ll keep that under advisement. But the gathering of witches here is not of the coven’s strongest. Dahlia has shared enough of their customs to make that clear. Whatever is happening today, it isn’t the attack on Ahriman. So what is it?”
“Uh-huh. More to the point, what else, exactly, has Dahlia shared with you?”
To Stefan’s immense delight, Granger colored. “She serves the high priestess, to whom I am officially affianced.”
“You’re more than that, buddy,” Stefan observed drily. “Seems kind of a dumb move for Dahlia to…unless…wait a minute. She’s not allowed to consort with ordinary Muggles, is she?”
Granger sent him a questioning look. “With who?”
“Never mind. It’s all becoming clear to me.”
“Well, it’s not what you should be focusing on.” Granger pointed to the far group. “Those witches are warriors. They serve Dahlia and Marcus, both of whom are escorting the trapped demons here. Which will leave us with a major part of the coven’s security force in this room, yet no lawgivers or spell casters. Why?”
“Ummm…training?” Stefan hazarded.
“Training, or a test of Cressida of some sort,” Granger agreed. “A test they wanted to conduct out of view of the greater coven. I don’t like it.”
Stefan didn’t like it either. But at that moment, five figures emerged from the far corridor, and Stefan winced at the two in the center. The demons Bo
ltar and Zeneschiah had been enjoying themselves way too much on the coven’s dime. In the few short days since they’d arrived in Storm Court, their glamours had begun to wane, and glimpses of the creatures beneath showed through.
“That’s…interesting,” Granger murmured. “Is that supposed to happen?”
“That would be negative. Demons prefer to hold on to their glamours. It’s what we do.” Stefan narrowed his eyes as he took in the two demons, but neither Cressida, Marcus, nor Dahlia appeared to notice that anything was wrong with them. If anything, the three witches treated the demons as if they were about to spontaneously explode into a killing fury. These two didn’t look like they could explode into much more than a couple of cheese puffs. What had happened to them?
“Stefan of the Syx, Jim Granger.” Cressida’s voice carried over the open space, sort of an unofficial call to action. Stefan and Granger stood as the security force of the Scepter Coven spread out around them in a full circle, the two guards nearest to them reaching out their hands, clearly expecting Stefan and Granger to take them. A quick glance back at Marcus and Dahlia confirmed that their hands were firmly locked with the other two demons’ as well, while Cressida remained in the center. Stefan wasn’t sure he liked that setup.
“Are we going to play dodgeball?” he asked, his voice as loud as Cressida’s had been. What the chamber might be lacking in décor, it made up for in acoustics.
Cressida met his gaze, her eyes wide and intense as if she was desperately—and unsuccessfully—trying to mind-meld with him, but it was Marcus who spoke. “We need to know if we can channel your strength as the sacred grimoire demands. The strength of the demon combining with the strength of the witch.”
Stefan looked around the circle. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t what the grimoire had in mind.”
“We will drop the wards on this room. Per information provided by High Priestess Cressida and confirmed by my own troops, our enemies remain outside, circling. They’ll have their shot at us.”