by Jenn Stark
Stefan realized his mistake too late. They weren’t all rushing together. The Botticelli demon came in with a wail of fury, even with the slender-horned demon, but Belessunu and Rimush held back. Stefan brought his hands together in a mighty clap as the smaller demons attacked. Unfortunately, they were far different from the usual members of the horde that he faced. Their powers were deep and strong, and well honed through millennia of effort. It wasn’t a question of him dispatching them—of course he could and did—but the effort cost him more than he anticipated.
And then, even as they exploded into fire and tarry black goop, Rimush and Belessunu struck.
Pain exploded along Stefan’s right shoulder and left hip, so intense that he suspected Cressida either no longer was feeling the impact of the damage done to him or she was dead. Because he’d never felt pain like this in his entire immortal existence. Belessunu bathed him with fire as she turned, scorching his skin black, while Rimush somehow got his head down enough to gore Stefan’s side with a thick, razor-pointed horn. Stefan grappled for Rimush’s skull with his right arm, his blistered left arm flapping uselessly at his side, and managed to secure him well enough to ride him as Rimush bucked and jumped like a frenzied bull.
Meanwhile, Belessunu screeched at Rimush in a language Stefan hadn’t heard in far too long—the base language of demons, which was also the base language of humans before the Father had set their tongues alight with multiple languages to forestall their ambitious climb to heights they did not seek to understand, merely conquer. The famed Tower of Babel, in mortal myth. Too much knowledge too soon had caused the downfall of humans—and had brought about the demise of the Fallen as well. Because once the Fallen had become entangled with the humans, in far too many cases, they’d lost all sense of reason.
All sense of reason.
Belessunu bellowed another wave of fire, this one close enough to Stefan’s head that he felt his hair singeing. But it was Rimush beneath him who screamed, clearly feeling the heat of the close call as well and not liking it. It was obvious to Stefan that Belessunu no longer cared who she hurt in her attempt to take him down, and also that she preferred to do so from a distance. That was important too.
Rimush had figured out the same thing. He flung Stefan off him with a mighty roar, and Stefan hit the ground hard, scrambling up in a crouch. Then Rimush raced at Belessunu in a blind rage. Stefan, clamping his hand on his gored side and willing himself to heal, watched in a momentary daze. The sheer fury of Rimush’s attack gave him the few critical seconds he needed to blast himself back together again, and he drew in a shaky, cleansing breath.
But the bullheaded demon seemed to underestimate Belessunu’s sense of self-preservation as well. She didn’t even let him get within ten feet of her before opening her gaping jaws wide and unleashing a fiery blast that caught Rimush full in the face.
Only… the demon kept going. Stefan staggered to his feet, staring at the demon in shock as he windmilled his arms, the plate-metal thickness of his skull apparently more than enough to withstand the demoness’s raging fire. It was like watching a bull getting blasted by a fire hose of water, only the bull was gaining ground. When Belessunu’s spurt of flames petered out, Rimush roared his fury and crashed directly into her, the two of them tumbling end over end.
Stefan blew out another long breath, the extra moments of reprieve all he needed to restore himself more or less to full capacity, but he didn’t miss the irony of the carnage in front of him. This was the sort of demon-on-demon battle that Marcus and even Cressida had banked on when she’d chosen three demons to play their parts in her sham of a harem. Demons were undoubtedly the scourge of the universe, but seeing them set upon each other for strategic abuse didn’t sit well with him. Something to contemplate when all this was done and order had been restored to the universe once more—or at least his little corner of the universe.
Stefan straightened as Belessunu regained her feet first, and he braced himself for another rain of fire as the demoness returned to her scorched-earth attack—but the dragon surprised him once again. With a twisting wrench, she whipped her tail around and caught Rimush at the midsection, the whipping tail circling him once, twice, and then a third time. With the final coil, Rimush finally reacted, but the moment he put his hands around the tail—
It exploded, littering the clearing with Rimush parts.
“Holy shit!” Stefan barked, scrambling back a few steps. The gory stump of the tail whipped back around to the other side of Belessunu, where, even as he watched, it began regenerating, coil by mirror-bright coil. Meanwhile, Belessunu turned, finding Stefan quickly, and reared back—then roared all the endless years of pain, loss, hatred—and rage. It was a sound Stefan knew all too well.
He took off directly for her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cressida jerked back around, hearing the roar of the demons on the other side of the curtain of mist that Ahriman had dropped over them. It sounded as if a veritable army was engaged in battle, but with a deep bass that couldn’t be the same horde she’d already fought. She knew—knew that Stefan was in the thick of it too. She no longer felt the pain of his every wound, but she could feel the leaping rage of his energy, the delighted rush of his power as he threw himself into the fight.
But though she yearned to rush to Stefan’s aid, she was still collared by Marcus’s power. Marcus’s and the head lawgiver’s too.
She swept her gaze over the trees that ringed the sacred grove—the side of the grove she could see, anyway. They were all restored to their original form, reaching into the sky in a verdant mass of leaves and boughs, their rustling foliage creating a magic all their own. They were beautiful, but they were alone in their triumph, silhouetted against the bright lights of the city. There were no longer any spell casters remaining to share in their healing grace.
Cressida frowned, turning around further as the spell of healing still flowed from her lips, her cadence unbroken—and then she understood.
The other spell casters had been gathered into a small knot of humanity behind Marcus. And they were also kneeling now.
Anger surged within Cressida, and it was all she could do not to stop speaking her spell entirely. But she knew instinctively that her calm, flowing voice, dedicated to the healing of the earth, rendered her almost invisible to Marcus and Fraya. As long as she spoke, they believed she was totally focused on the task they had allotted her. And why would they think any differently? Since she’d been very small, she’d always striven to do whatever the head lawgiver had asked of her. She’d studied, she’d learned, she’d memorized, she’d deferred.
Mostly deferred, she realized now.
Despite her best efforts, her voice rose and grew more forceful, the leaves of the trees seeming to swell with the intensity of her emotion. She’d learned everything that Marcus had, except for the dark arts of spell casting. She’d grown up alongside him, reading the same books, researching the same history, absorbing the same lessons. Why shouldn’t she have gone on to become a master spell caster as well? Why had she been turned—and allowed herself to be turned—to the role of nurturer and empath and leader?
Leader. Cressida curled her lip. She was no leader. She was a puppet on strings carefully controlled not only by the woman who had apparently kidnapped her from the bosom of her family, a family Cressida suspected with chilling certainty had then passed on to the Goddess, but she’d also been manipulated by Marcus. Her dearest childhood friend.
How long had he been part of Fraya’s plan? She’d said he’d shown greater promise than Cressida had, more willingness to explore the darker paths that would be needed to engage with Ahriman. But those paths weren’t necessary. Not if they maintained their plan to destroy the archdemon.
Another arc of anger simmered through her, and once again, the trees she stood beneath responded. Their rush of rustling branches took on a melody as well, a melody that sounded almost like a thousand voices murmuring in th
e shadows—and then a dozen—and then one. Hers.
The sacred grove sang back to her the song of healing she’d given it, returning to Cressida the power she’d gladly shared…and something more as well.
Cover.
Cressida’s eyes flashed wide, and she took a long step backward, her arms still raised high, her hands outstretched. No one stepped into place behind her, to keep her at her task. Her voice still ran strong, but now it was mingled with the sound of the trees, the trees that were calling back to her, singing her song of healing. She began a new cycle of the spell, and then, abruptly, cut off her voice. Her lips still moved, but no sound came from her anymore. Instead, the voice of the sacred grove soared into the sky, matching her voice exactly.
Cressida pivoted in a dreamy, swaying motion, the picture of the healer witch in the thrall of her spell, and her gaze took in Marcus, the enormous creature before him, the kneeling, broken spell casters—and Fraya, who stood off to one side, her face alight with an almost feral joy. Not merely joy either. Pride. Satisfaction. Accomplishment.
The face of a woman who’d done what she’d been born on this earth to do.
Cressida could understand that feeling. It was swelling within her too—fueled by the song of the sacred grove, the fire of a demon’s love, and something far more than that, something that she had discounted and cast off, dismissed and ignored for most of her twenty-three years with the Scepter Coven…
It was fueled by herself. She was the generator for the energy that now crackled through her blood and along her skin. She was the one who could put fire into the ancient spells of the sacred grimoire.
She was the one who would fight Ahriman, and she would be enough.
“Ahriman!” she cried, her voice rising above the melodic healing music of the sacred grove. The enormous demon twisted toward her, searching at once for the irritant far below him who dared call his name. He roared in anger as he fixed on her, but Cressida kept going. “You are a demon summoned to obey the will of the Scepter Coven. You will bend to my command!”
Then she was off and running again.
What happened next seemed to progress almost in slow motion, at least in Cressida’s mind. She had the curious sensation of being able to leap forward when all around her could barely turn and gape, to strike before anyone could even draw breath.
This was the power that had been accorded her when she’d become high priestess of the Scepter Coven. This was the power to lead and to strike down her enemies. It was power that was rarely called upon, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She had learned it, she had mouthed all the spells, absorbed all the lessons—and now she would use it in a way the original writers of the grimoire had undoubtedly never intended.
Against her own consort.
Marcus recovered from his shock before the rest of the spell casters—even before the head lawgiver—and thrust out his hands as Cressida reached him. With the skill of a master spellcaster, he struck her with a flood of images that made her stagger back, horrifying in their truth—images playing in sharp relief of the earliest moments Cressida could remember, a loud, crashing hospital emergency room, shiny black shoes and a pretty dress—and more images too, impossible images, harrowing and awful—no, no, no!
She shoved his gut-wrenching spells of illusion away. He didn’t know that Fraya had already betrayed his secrets, and she had no patience for his petty tricks. Not now. The fate of her coven was in her hands, as well as the fate of witches everywhere. Ahriman was even now struggling against the combination of spells she’d thrown up at him, and that magic wouldn’t hold.
“Stand down, Cressida,” Marcus seethed, and then his mouth was working to speak the spells he’d learned not in the sacred grimoire they’d studied since their youth, but in the dark grimoire the head lawgiver had led him to. He was complicit in his crimes against the coven, she thought, but he wasn’t wholly to blame.
Then again, because of Marcus, witches had died. Because of Marcus, more were about to be sacrificed. All to ensure his vision of a greater glory, subjugating the world of witches and humans at Ahriman’s side.
It was not to be borne.
Cressida swept her hand forward, the arc of her fingers stopping three feet from Marcus’s body, just out of range of his own hands—but her fire extended well beyond her grasp. It sliced out in a sparking arc of red-and-purple fire, its edge honed to a razor-sharp tip, and slashed across Marcus’s throat so quickly, his eyes flew wide only after the deed had already been done.
Marcus’s spell stopped midbreath—because his voice stopped midbreath. His hands shot to his throat as he toppled forward, but his neck had not been severed…only his vocal cords. The betrayer of the Scepter Coven wouldn’t speak a new spell again, not if Cressida had anything to say about it.
Then she turned to Ahriman as he thrust his enormous arms wide. The impact of his energy staggered her, and she cried out in pain. The spell casters were thrown onto their backs, Marcus began scrabbling away on his knees, one hand on his throat, the other on the churned-up dirt and grass of the trampled grove. The curtain of mist between her and the rest of the grove fell away, and Cressida noticed with surprise that the trees were healthy and lush all around the grove, her spell extending far into the forest of Central Park. There were no spell casters at all on the far side of Marcus’s curtain, however, and Cressida blanched in sudden dread. Were so many already gone, burned to ashes with Ahriman’s arrival?
She searched the far side of the grove for a precious moment more, alarmed to see a fireball of energy twisting and writhing across the scarred ground, but very little else.
Then Ahriman struck, and the sky rained down fire.
Stefan sucked in a startled breath as he ran, realizing he could see all the way across the grove—which he was sure he would appreciate the moment after he pounded Belessunu into the ground. A moment later, he connected with the dragon-bodied demon, her wings spread wide as if she was batting back an unseen storm. Stefan was that storm, and he raged with all his might, combating Belessunu’s anger with his own deep stores of fury. The archangel wanted this creature sent back to the Father, and Stefan was more than willing to do the deed.
As he connected with the demon and the two exploded into a fiery conflagration, however, he learned something else from the ancient beast.
The true depths of Marcus’s betrayal.
Belessunu’s thoughts were an open book to him, and as he barreled into her, sending her sprawling, he took an equally harsh dive into her memories. And there he found Marcus, at almost the same time that Cressida had begun awakening to her own confused thoughts about her childhood friend. While Cressida had thought Marcus was forming a deeper attachment to her, he was actually beginning a dark and twisted affair with the demoness, summoned by his own hand. He cut his teeth against her scales, learning from her and subjugating her to his demands by turns. And Belessunu had returned to him willingly, again and again, ravenously and almost desperately in the end, as she sensed Cressida becoming a true threat…not for her lover’s heart, but to the position she felt Marcus truly deserved. The position of high priest by Ahriman’s side.
“You dare!” Belessunu screeched, whipping her snout around and blasting Stefan back with a swath of fire. As he tumbled, he saw Marcus scrabbling away from the battle between Ahriman and Cressida. The spell caster crawled on his knees, one hand pressed to his throat, the other bracing him as he fled, and then Stefan’s gaze lifted up—and up farther still—all the way to the roiling fury of the demon Ahriman—
Who Cressida now faced alone.
“Oh, for the love—Belessunu!” Stefan shouted, drawing the demoness’s attention as he flung out his right arm. “There’s your human now, beat to shit—you want me to save him from his own sorry end? Or do you want to do the honors?”
The dragon’s entire body bucked, her snout coming around again as her gaze followed Stefan’s gesture—and she saw Marcus on the grou
nd. She recognized immediately the witch’s distress, but she didn’t go to him. Instead, her eyes narrowed and she swung her head back to Stefan—
“Wrong answer,” Stefan growled. He honestly wasn’t sure what he would have done if Belessunu had chosen the human over her own killing rage, and it was just as well she didn’t force him to choose. Instead, he used the demoness’s momentary distraction against her and thrust his hands out, purple-red flame bursting from his fists as he clocked her snout in a two-handed punch. The demoness didn’t just fall back, she burst upward, her wings lifting her in a mighty rush to send her soaring into the sky—
Straight into a burst of fire emanating from the claws of Ahriman.
The explosion made Stefan flinch away, and he immediately sought out Cressida, who was also bent beneath those flames. Unlike Belessunu, however, Cressida had clearly been expecting the blast. She held her hands high, a shield of purple and red radiating from her palms, and Stefan felt great tides of his own energy leave him as she pulled his strength to her cause. He grinned, his heart swelling with triumph. She was doing it! She was using him exactly as her sacred grimoire had dictated, drawing on his power as her consort, channeling it—
Stefan saw the lurching rush of the head lawgiver from the corner of his eye, and panic leapt within him. He couldn’t take out the human himself, couldn’t touch a child of God, but how would he ever—
“No!”
It was another female whose scream filled the sky, another form that burst onto the battlefield, wielding a mighty spiked cross, and suddenly, the head lawgiver sprawled to the left, Cressida’s captain of the guard laying her flat. The head lawgiver struggled to rise again, and Dahlia didn’t hesitate, cracking her with a solid punch the second time, then balling up her fist and leaning forward in one of the most threatening poses Stefan had ever seen anyone, male or female, take against a fallen foe.