Familiar Stranger

by Michele Hauf

  The sword was heavy, and ridiculous. Jack tossed it to the bed, and with one step, fitted himself before Squire, lifting him by the front of his shirt. “You’re not going anywhere. Mersey’s in trouble. The demon Beryth has her.”

  “And you are?”

  “Jack Harris,” he said.

  “P-Cell?” he gasped. “How did you—?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I need to know where in this place a demon might take a hostage.”

  “Has it tapped her?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Blimey.” Squire released a miserable exhale. “Mersey doesn’t take to being tapped. Why didn’t you protect her?”

  “I…” Tried. It was a cop-out admittance. So he wouldn’t put it to words.

  “The demon was using influence. Listen, I don’t have time for chitchat. Do you know this place?”

  “I live here. You won’t get far though. As soon as I recite the code spell, security will pick you out and then there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “I don’t look like a faery to you?”

  “Should you?”

  So the glamour had depleted when Ophelia had put him here. Not that he needed it now.

  “I’m surprised the alarms aren’t sounding and the cavalry isn’t here already. Where is everyone? How can one of their own be literally kidnapped and no alarms, no one rushes to save her?”

  “Big meeting still going on. Talk about vampires and such. The ladies Maybank aren’t due out until later this evening. I’m pretty much the only one about. There was no breach. I don’t know how the demon got in.”

  Jack swiped a palm down his face. “It was me. I didn’t think of the demon when Mersey gave me the glamour.”

  “You brought Beryth in?”

  Jack slammed his palm against the man’s shoulder, pinning him to the wall and fixing him with a stare. “Squire, right?”

  The man nodded.

  “I love Mersey, and I have to find her. You willing to lead me about this place?”

  “You love her?” Squire gasped. “But, she…”

  Apparently this man had feelings for Mersey as well. “We’ll do the gauntlet over who wins the girl’s favor later. Think, Squire. Where would a pissed-off demon go in this place?”

  “The lab,” Squire decided resolutely. “It’s where we store his brethren.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Squire scampered down the hallway, and Jack marched along behind him. The halls grew narrower, and a chill, musty odor rose as they took a twisting stairway down to what Squire explained was the dungeon, or rather, the laboratory.

  “You don’t have a weapon that will destroy the demon,” Squire noted in huffing breaths as they bottomed the stairs. “How will you kill Beryth?”

  “Can’t kill it,” Jack said. Which is why he’d left the broadsword behind in Mersey’s bedroom. “It may have tapped Mersey.”

  “Bloody hell.” The man sank against the rough stone wall, his face going paler than his hair. “Then we’re out of luck.”

  “What about those fancy crystals Mersey uses?”

  “Crystallization?”

  “Can you do it?”

  Squire nodded. “But I’m only an apprentice. We need someone with the skill to capture the thing. I mean, I know the spell, but I don’t have that quintessence, you know? Like a certain innate power.”

  “The connection.” As Jack had witnessed Mersey do that first night in the warehouse. She’d thrust the crystal high, whispered a chant and had drawn the demon to her. “Like Mersey does with the ley lines and such?”

  “Exactly.”

  Jack reached into the leather pouch and produced the glass ball. “Think this’ll work?”

  Squire studied the ball, tapping it. “It’s crystal, it should.”

  “Crystal? It’s just glass.”

  “Glass doesn’t striate like this. But you don’t understand—”

  “You said you know the spell?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing, Callahan. I remember the invocation words Mersey used that first night we met.” Vividly. How could he forget a moment imprinted into his psyche by that magical surprise kiss in the warehouse? “If you can speak the spell, I can take out the demon.”

  “It’ll never work,” Squire insisted as Jack approached the door to the dungeon. “You’re not an adept!”

  Jack closed his eyes tightly. All his life he’d tried to run away from silly childhood belief. That he’d been responsible for losing his father. That he could be responsible for luring the demon to Monica. All that running had twisted him into a circle that had brought him right back into the thick of things.

  But the thing was, he did believe. Had he ever truly stopped believing? If not in any of the crazy things he’d witnessed over the past few months, he did believe in one thing—Mersey.

  Jack spun round and shoved the ball against Squire’s chest. “It will work, because I believe it will.”

  Chapter 29

  W earied and naked, Mersey tried to lift her head from the cobbled stone dungeon floor. Unsuccessful. Cold and must tainted the air along with a mixture of herbs used for healing and spellcraft. She shivered, her bare flesh riddled with goose bumps. She needed something to cover herself.

  And—she needed a hero.

  Where was Jack? He could save her. He was the one her mother had chosen. And she didn’t need a ring to know that. Jack Harris had fit himself into her heart the moment she’d met him.

  But he could be struggling himself. She had no doubt the instant Beryth separated her from Jack that he had been ousted from the Cadre. Glamour or not, the uninitiated were not able to remain on Cadre grounds without a guide. The supernatural barriers would have deported him.

  Which meant that Jack was outside the perimeter with no means to get inside. She hoped his glamour held. Disguised as a sidhe, he should have little trouble in the forest—or else, a whole lot of problems. Dash it all. What an afternoon. As far as dates went, this one chalked a mark in the swimmingly disastrous column.

  A tilt of her head spied a white lab coat fallen from a stool. She reached it and pulled it up an arm. Every part of her ached, yet the demon had done little more than transport her to the dungeon and throw her to the floor.

  Was Beryth influencing the pain to keep her subdued and unable to flee?

  The clack of crystals alerted her to the demon above her sorting through Squire’s library of stored demons. Ba’al Beryth. Minister of Devilish Pacts and Rituals. The very demon that had once tried to kill her mother—and Mersey; Mirabelle had been pregnant at the time. A war demon had killed her mother? Could she believe Beryth? She couldn’t see the demon, but the brimstone was pungent. If it wanted revenge against her mother and father, why go through the crystals? It would never get the stored demons out of the crystals without the proper spell. Only adepts mastered that skill. Even if it could find a way to release the stored demons, the dread demon had no power within this building. It was a literal prisoner. She touched her witch mark; it felt hot. Tapped. This was not good. Where was everyone? Weren’t the alarms on? Squire usually activated them as soon as he entered the lab. He was no fool. A cat could easily scamper out and seek help. Concentration determined that the energy required to shift was depleted. She couldn’t do it.

  “Oh, Jack.” Mersey eased a hand up her arm. Her skin was tender and bruised where Beryth had grabbed her.

  “How can I determine which demons are inside which crystals?” the demon hissed, impatience heightening its voice. “Bane?”

  She gave a withering nod and closed her eyes. Mersey passed out.

  The familiar served him little value, beyond anchoring him to this realm and providing another anchor to the Cadre. So Beryth would not release their bond. But her unconscious state left him to fend for himself, which he could muster. Though he didn’t want to release any of his kind that would not serve him well.

  The crystals were numbered, so there must be a storage log somew
here with corresponding information on the contents. He need only release a war demon or two, and his revenge against the Cadre could begin. They’d tear this castle down and devour the inhabitants.

  ’Course, Beryth would keep a few as slaves to release the remaining demons upon the world. Wouldn’t that be delicious joy? And perhaps, within the information and data, he’d find the location of that infernal Caractacus Bane, his jailer, his rival.

  Jack pushed open the huge iron-banded door to the dungeon.

  “Stay out here,” he whispered to Squire, “until I need you to chant the spell.”

  From behind cover of the door, he observed. Inside the dungeon a hightech lab had been trashed. Glass vials broken. Books shoved everywhere. Dozens of the storage crystals lay scattered across the stone floor. Each one pulsed with a dark shadow. Something was inside. Could Beryth release them?

  Jack didn’t spy Mersey, though he sensed her presence. And there, sorting through the shelves of crystals stood Beryth, wearing the costume of a dark-haired human and black fitted suit. His back to Jack, the demon worked frantically through the crystals. Lifting them, peering into them, shaking them near his ear and then tossing them over his shoulder.

  “Now or never.”

  Jack leaped inside the dungeon and stepped right into the lashing tongue that whipped toward him. He gripped the slimy appendage, struggling to hold it back, to keep the forked tip from touching any part of him. It was like holding a noodle.

  The thing narrowed and slid from his fingers.

  Ball of wonder clasped firmly, Jack raised it above himself and stood defiantly before the demon.

  Beryth reeled in his tongue with a spit-flying lash. He tilted his head with an insectile jerk and regarded what Jack displayed above his head.

  “I know I taunted you about it earlier, Jack boy, but you don’t believe that kiddie toy has any power over me?”

  “It sent you running before.”

  Beryth brushed nonexistent lint from his shoulder. “A lucky shot.”

  “Twice?” Jack made to toss the thing.

  “Wait!” Beryth stepped back and spread out his hands. Drawing in a breath, his chest puffed up unnaturally and it grew twice its size, taking on the red musculature that Jack preferred. Much easier to kill something that looked like a creature. “You need me, Jack.”

  Behind him he sensed Squire remained hidden. Good.

  “Where’s Mersey!” he demanded.

  A groan from behind the steel table answered Jack’s question. Beryth shifted to stand before the table as Jack stepped forward.

  “Think about it, Jack. Without me,” Beryth tried, “you cannot know your silly mortal love, because there would be no opposite in your heart.”

  “I’ve known sadness. And grief and pain. They are all opposite. Face it, Beryth, you need me. Without humans, demons have no purpose.”

  “You humans,” Beryth bellowed. “You are crueler to each other than we demons can be to you. We inhabit you. We coerce, we tempt, we plant lust and fear.” The demon gestured beyond Jack. It had seen Squire.

  “But you, you have free will. You can choose your actions. And what do you choose to do? Kill!”

  “Only those deserving,” Jack muttered.

  “Oh? Ah. Well then. And so I am deserving?”

  “You’re a murderer, Beryth, and you will not leave this realm unpunished.”

  “Punishment is something you’ve no expertise in, Jack boy. But these Cadre sorts?” The demon grasped a darkened crystal from the table.

  “An icy hell, Jack. I did nothing. I harmed none.”

  “I saw you! You would have killed Mersey’s mother!”

  “I would have never harmed Mirabelle. I loved her! But the Cadre believed her when she claimed much the same, that I would have murdered her had some idiot boy not frightened me off. And those Cadre bastards saw fit to put me in one of these.”

  “Cry me another one, Beryth. Your arse is mine.”

  “Serve me your best.” The demon bristled, drawing up to its full height, which was a good two feet higher than Jack. “Say, what if I could give her back to you, Jack? Your precious, unrequited Monica?”

  Sucking in a breath, Jack hardened his grip on the ball. He’d had enough. Glancing back to Squire, he gave the signal wink.

  Squire began to chant.

  “Jack!” groaned out from behind the table. A hand slapped the floor and he saw a tuft of black hair. Not a single protective ring on those fingers.

  Beryth drew his forked tongue across his lips and smacked them. A lift of brow and a bounce on his toes signaled his wicked delight.

  “She’ll never be yours,” Jack warned.

  “She already is. Just as her mother once was.”

  “So what—you once had a thing for Mirabelle Bane?”

  The demon bristled.

  “Get over it. Mersey is not her mother.”

  “She is that bastard Caractacus’s progeny. It was he who kept me from

  —”

  “Enslaving an innocent? I got your number, dread. You were in love, she chose another. Happens all the time. It’s called heartbreak. You don’t get to harm others because infatuation slapped you in the face. Now you may not have harmed Mirabelle, but you did murder an innocent human. Monica Price,” Jack announced. “Time to pay for that crime.”

  “I need more time!” Squire yelled, then fell back into the chant. Deep, bellicose laughter filled the room. The remaining glass vials on the table shattered. Beryth slashed out an arm, the length growing. Talons checked Jack’s coat of mail.

  “So you want a fight?” Jack asked. “Bring it.”

  Jack dropped the ball to the floor and came upright, charging for the demon. He head-butted the thing against the wall of crystals, which clattered down around them.

  The demon could not control Jack’s reflexes now he was not tapped.

  “You ready, Squire?”

  “Almost!”

  “Face it, Jack the Demon Frightener. You’ve lost another to your own dread.” The demon made a gesture with its arm.

  Behind him, Squire soared through the air and landed against the wall with a bone-crunching thud. He sputtered and muttered a few Latin words, determined but obviously injured.

  How to hold back the demon until the chant was complete? There was one way to enchant a demon, and that was to give it something to feed off—a mortal’s soul. Jack had been trained never to look a demon in the eye, for madness was guaranteed. But he would not rest until Mersey was free. He locked onto the demon’s yellow gaze with his own eyes.

  Beryth grinned and chuckled grandly. “Oh, the cleverness of you, Jack!

  Will you dare it? Enchant me into your eyes.”

  Jack planted his feet. The demon’s wide round yellow eyes opened into a vast and treacherous tunnel. Dry, itchy pain sizzled over Jack’s eyes. This was nothing. He could do this gaze.

  “Look deeper,” Beryth cooed. Its talons clacked against the chain mail. Squire’s confused chanting segued to a fuzzy fugue at the back of Jack’s brain. He thought Mersey screamed, but the buzzing of a thousand insects intensified in his ears.

  No longer were Beryth’s eyes yellow. Filled with red, crimson and scarlet. Very similar, the colors, but acutely different. The swirl of death, each shade representing a different life, a vile scream of lost breath. A stolen soul shattered in a sea of dread. With a toss of its head, the demon transformed. Blond ringlets bounced upon its shoulders. Red, pursed lips drew into a sexy smile. Monica winked at him, then she bellowed as her heart was ripped from her body.

  Biting down on his lip, Jack winced. The demon hadn’t changed. He saw it all in Beryth’s eyes. He thought to look away.

  Do not!

  He must hold the demon, keep it distracted from Mersey and Squire. Rationally, he knew the images were not real. And yet the ache of death held his limbs in a catatonic freeze. Buzzing entwined his veins. It stung, a thousand bees bombarding his soul. He could not shake it off
. Mersey’s smile brightened inside the demon’s eyes. She kissed him. A field of lemons caught his plunging, falling heart. Jack felt the fluttering warmth of her smile upon his mouth. Something else soaked his hands and chest. Mersey’s blood, crawling with bees, and there, amid a pool of glittering crimson, her head rolled at his feet.

  “No,” he moaned.

  He could not look at his mistakes. But he must.

  His father’s pale dead face replaced Mersey’s. His mother’s wails as she beat upon her husband’s deathbed. So many staring eyes as he’d walked the aftermath of bombs, raids and terrorist attacks.

  “Ready, Jack!” Squire mumbled.

  Fisting the air did not erase the horrors in the demon’s eyes. Heartbeats racing erratically, Jack wasn’t sure if they’d ever stop. He gulped for air.

  Ready? Right then. Time to do this. He leaned down to pick up the ball. Every tear he had never shed over his father’s death he grasped and shoved out through his being. “Te vincio!”

  He had not been to blame for wishing. He believed that. He could not change the past. Only, he would learn from it. Pray God, he could now save his future.

  Jack’s arm swung backward, as if he’d caught something in a mitt. Leaning forward, he caught his free hand on a knee and groaned against the ache that was his body. He shook the globe and it stirred with dark swirling mist. Beryth no longer stood in the room. Mersey crawled around the corner of the table. She shoved the hair from her eyes. Jack displayed the crystal ball before him, twisting it and proudly showing her what he had done.

  “I’m free.” Mersey sighed and smiled. “Good one, hotshot.”

  The buzz of a thousand bees overwhelmed Jack and dropped him to his knees.

  He scratched at the invisible torments. They dribbled from Mersey’s face like blood. Each red droplet sprouted pixie wings and buzzed back at his eyes, piercing the iris with a stinger.

  “Jack, I’m here.”

  He felt something touch his cheek. He slapped it away.

  “It’s the gaze,” she said. “Blimey, the demon gaze is dangerous. He’s gone mad.”

  No, not mad. He couldn’t be mad when he was aware of Mersey so close