“That might be a good idea,” Samantha said. Merrick couldn’t help much in his weakened state, and Samantha felt responsible for him now. “Ed, can you and Mike show him where your car is? Logan will lead me back once we check this place out.”
Mike immediately nodded, but Ed needed to be persuaded. He’d taken to Tain and wanted to help find him. When Ed started insisting he go with Samantha, however, Logan got in front of him and snarled, ears flat, muzzle pulling back from his teeth. The snarl wasn’t directed at Samantha, but she felt the power of it, the instant authority that told Samantha, more than Tain’s and Merrick’s speculations could, that Logan was high in his pack.
Ed only saw a giant snarling timber wolf a few feet from him. He swallowed and nodded.
Merrick sighed in relief and followed Mike down a path, Mike shining a lantern flashlight ahead of them. Ed came behind, his shotgun in his hands.
Samantha shouldered ropes and a pack of gear Logan had brought and looked around the canyon. The floor of it was strewn with enormous boulders and rock slabs, as though giants had cast them from a dice cup. Cliff dwellings were tucked on a shelf under an overhang high above Logan and Samantha, the native peoples having the wisdom to protect themselves both from above and below.
“Up there?” Samantha looked in dismay at the rough trail that led more or less upward. “Seriously?”
Logan growled. Samantha knew from experience that he was both impatient and amused.
Drawing a breath, Samantha began to climb, going carefully over the gravel which slid out from under her shoes. She was wearing slacks and nice loafers, clothes for an office, not for clambering around canyons. Her clothes would be in shreds by the time she found Tain—if he was even here.
Logan kept up with her, his huge paws finding purchases Samantha missed. Logan could also leap from ledge to ledge when Samantha couldn’t. Before long, she had to pull out the ropes and crampons, tying herself off and pulling herself upward. Logan helped, digging out handholds with his claws, anchoring Samantha with his strength when needed.
When she reached the bottom tier of the cliff dwellings, Samantha sat herself down on a ledge to rest and look around. Logan, after sniffing at her, satisfying himself she was all right, turned away and explored.
These cliff dwellings were crumbling and not well-preserved. Starlight flashed on a faded sign that said an archeology team from the University of Nevada was examining it. The sign looked so old, however, that it would soon be an archeological find itself.
Logan had his nose down as he moved around the bottom of the cliff dwellings. There were no openings here—most cliff dwellings were entered from the top, the ladders or ropes leading to the roofs drawn up for defense when needed.
Logan growled softly and reared onto his hind feet, scrabbling with his front feet on one corner of the rock wall. Samantha heaved herself up and walked carefully to him, shining a flashlight she’d retrieved from the pack into a dark hole that was about five feet high and a couple wide.
The flashlight’s faint light showed that the hole led into a cave, shallow, dusty, and empty. Samantha beamed the light around the best she could, stopping when the light landed on an image etched into the cave’s back wall. It was a precisely drawn ring of circles within circles, surrounded by square-shaped runes.
“I’m willing to bet that symbol isn’t Native American,” Samantha said, squeezing through the hole and into the cave. “It’s demon, but I can’t read it.” She moved the few feet to the wall, examining it without touching it. She heard grunting and huffing as Logan pushed himself into the hole. His warm fur touched her, his strength comforting, as he pressed his wolf nose to the wall beneath the image, sniffing hard.
“Do you think they’re behind there somewhere?” Samantha asked him.
Logan looked up at her, frustration in his tawny eyes.
Samantha sighed. “I know—you can’t tell me. I feel like I’m in an episode of Lassie.”
Logan growled, his eyes narrowing.
“Sorry,” Samantha said quickly, giving him a grin. She pressed her palms to the rock, careful not to touch the symbol. She sensed the chill behind the wall, similar to what she’d felt when Fulton had opened the way to the Lamiah clan’s death realm.
“If there’s something behind this, I have no clue how to get to it.”
Logan sat on his haunches and stared at the wall as though he could dissolve it by glaring at it hard enough. Samantha was tempted to ruffle his fur, but she knew Logan wasn’t the “ruffle the fur” kind of werewolf.
“I’ve never learned how to enter the death realms,” she said. “But we have a demon handy who might know how.”
Samantha ducked back out of the cave and gazed back down over the cliffs to the canyon floor. She didn’t relish the climb down and back up again, but she’d endure a little sweat and sore muscles if it would help her find Tain.
“Be right back,” she said to Logan, who’d come out behind her, and began the arduous descent.
“They are coming,” the matriarch said.
Tain barely heard her through the haze of his pain. His eye socket pounded in agony, blood clotting on his face. Bahkat, still the jeans-clad man with tatts, had taken Tain’s eye out, held it in his palm, and destroyed it with a single dart of fiery magic.
“All you have to do is kill the half demon,” Bahkat said, tossing Tain’s sword, blood-streaked now, and catching it by the hilt. “Sacrifice Samantha to me, and I will raise you up again, help you heal, set you at my right hand. You may have this female as your prize.” He gestured to the matriarch.
The matriarch didn’t seem to mind. She slid her hand around Bahkat’s muscled arm. “Join my master and me—we will raise all demons to their former glory. No more white picket fences in the suburbs, no more stock portfolios and business meetings.”
Tain said nothing. Even through the pain, he felt a grim joy. Kehksut had never touched Tain’s face when he’d tortured him, wanting Tain to always look whole and handsome. Now Tain would be scarred forever—even if he healed from this session, his face would bear lines and creases. He would no longer be the prize Kehksut had sought to keep beautiful. He would survive, kill Bahkat and the matriarch, and finally be free.
Tain smiled, the drying blood on his face cracking. “You forget,” he rumbled softly. “What I am.”
“An Immortal,” Bahkat said. “That means I can keep you alive while I torture you as much as I please.”
Tain laughed, a grating sound. “I mean I am a madman,” he said, his old Celtic lilt pronounced. “And you never know what a madman will do.”
Tain enjoyed the looks on Bahkat’s and the matriarch’s faces before he let his good eye roll back, and he reached for darkness and the incredible strength it gave him.
Merrick collapsed on the top of the cliff dwellings, panting and swearing. “I take it back,” he said, gasping for breath. “Your Immortal can have you. You’re one sadistic bitch, Samantha. To think, I used to think you were cute.”
“Save it, Merrick.” Samantha put her hands on her hips and took in the incredible view through the canyon and out of it. The desert beyond stretched forever, empty and pale in the moonlight, stark and breathtaking. “I wouldn’t have dragged you back here, but I can’t open the portal to the death realm. I don’t know how.”
“You need magic to do it,” Merrick said impatiently. “And if you haven’t noticed, the vortex thingee in this canyon sucks magic out of us.”
A shotgun landed on top of the rocks, and a grubby pair of hands followed it. Samantha hurried over and helped Ed the rest of the way up, until he lay on his stomach next to Merrick, also gasping. Mike followed more slowly, without breathing as hard, then sat down cross-legged against the rock wall, resting his shotgun across his lap.
“I’m not the most powerful demon in the world, you know,” Merrick said. “Good thing, or your Immortal boyfriend would have killed me by now.”
Ed sat up, carefully picked up his sho
tgun, and aimed it at Merrick. “Why don’t you do what the little lady says?”
“Oh, perfect,” Merrick said. “The demon matriarch and her redneck defender.”
“Now,” Ed said, and Logan growled in agreement.
Merrick snarled a little more but heaved himself to his feet, swearing again when he examined the ruined remains of his suit.
“Today, Merrick,” Samantha said. Her heart beat hard with impatience and worry as she slid her Glock from her holster.
She hadn’t taken it out to threaten Merrick, but Merrick eyed the gun in trepidation. “I still haven’t decided whether I love you or hate you, Sam, my dear. All right, let me take a look.”
Merrick ducked through the opening and stepped to the back of the cave. He pressed his palms to the smooth black rock, as Samantha had done, closing his eyes to concentrate.
“It’s an entrance to a death realm, all right,” Merrick said after a time. “But I don’t know if I can open the way. Depends on the demon clan whose death realm it is, and this one stinks of a lot of power.”
Merrick leaned his cheek against the wall, his dark brows drawing together in concentration. Disturbed pebbles trickled from his fingertips, and he frowned harder before sighing and stepping back. “Sorry, sweetheart, this place has drained me. You’re going to need a much stronger demon than me—”
He broke off as the wall in front of him dissolved, as did the rest of the shallow cave, and the chill of death magic poured out from a cavernous room beyond.
Merrick took a wide-eyed step back, and at the same time, Tain stepped out, his face and naked torso covered in blackened blood. He swung his bronze swords in strong hands and then brought them around to rest, crossed, on Merrick’s neck.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Samantha went rigid with shock. Tain was naked to the waist and barefoot, every inch of exposed skin slashed and covered with blood. His handsome face was ruined, his left eye a mass of blood, his right eye wide and dark with madness. The black tattoo on his cheek stood out amid the blood, almost glowing with light. Manacles encircled his wrists, the remains of chains dangling from them.
“Tain.” Samantha’s whisper was frozen.
He wouldn’t look at her. The muscles in his forearms bunched as he squeezed the swords into Merrick’s neck.
“Tain, no.” Samantha seized his arm, fingers sliding on his blood. Her heart beat rapidly in pain and desperation as she saw herself losing him again.
She felt a wash of death magic stronger than any since Kehksut, and a demon stepped out behind Tain—a tall man with an impossibly beautiful face, eyes that were pools of black, ancient demon runes tattooed on his arms. He was an Old One, and his death magic wove with that of the death realm behind him and blanketed the ledge.
The bubble of death magic would lend strength to the demon woman with him, but Samantha and Logan were sitting ducks. The Old One’s strength might also help Merrick, but whose side Merrick was on was still up in the air. Merrick was an opportunist, not a hero, and right now, his neck was in danger of being severed.
“Start with that one,” the demon woman said to Tain, pointing at Merrick. “I will give his heart in sacrifice. Then the humans and the werewolf. We’ll save dear Samantha for you.”
Logan snarled, fangs bared, saliva dripping from his mouth. Ed and Mike stood against the wall, white-faced, shotguns cradled in their big hands.
The Old One swept his dark gaze over Samantha, and everything in her went cold. Despair and hopelessness caught her in a wave, nearly sending her over the edge of the rocks into the canyon below.
“Tain serves me now,” the Old One said.
Samantha held on to her sanity by keeping her hands around Tain’s right arm. He might be bloody, but underneath he was warm, strong, powerful. He was Tain.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
“My name is Bahkat, and this is my realm.”
“I meant her,” Samantha said, gesturing with her chin to the demon woman. “Are you Ms. Townsend or the majordomo?”
The woman’s lip curled. “And you call yourself a detective. I am the matriarch of the Lamiah clan.”
“The matriarch is dead,” Samantha said in a hard voice.
The woman laughed. “That’s what your boyfriend said. It was easy to drug your coffee, pretend to be drugged myself, and transport you here for safekeeping.”
“Why?”
The matriarch sighed. “They always want to know why. They can’t simply obey.” She made a slashing gesture, and Samantha lost her hold on Tain and fell to her knees, rock cutting her through her thin pants. “Because having you is the best way of enslaving Tain,” the matriarch said. “I want vengeance for my lover Kehksut. Bahkat will provide that, since I am his.”
“Merrick was telling me what a demonwhore you were,” Samantha said, her voice steady to cover the shock. She shouldn’t be surprised this was really the matriarch, she supposed. The majordomo had been too perfectly efficient, too self-sacrificing to be believed.
“Excuse me,” Merrick broke in quickly. “Could you not piss her off? See the swords in my neck? The blood?”
“Tain is life magic,” Samantha said to the matriarch. “His magic can’t work in this vortex or amid so much death magic. You can’t use him to do anything right now.” She hoped.
“Tain doesn’t need his magic to cut off heads,” the matriarch said. “He just needs all that gleaming muscle.” She stepped to Tain and ran a finger down his bicep.
The demon in Samantha growled. Tain belonged to her.
“Tain has plenty of magic,” Bahkat interrupted. “He has given himself to me, and I make him strong.”
Bahkat stepped to Tain and licked his bare cheek. Tain did nothing, only remained rock-steady, his swords crossed over Merrick’s throat.
Logan abruptly leapt at the matriarch, a streak of snarling wolf fury, and latched on to her. She went down with a cry of surprise, which was cut off as blood spurted from her throat.
Bahkat gestured contemptuously, and Logan flew through the air, slamming hard against the rock wall then skittering to the edge of the cliff. He made no noise, paws scrabbling in a desperate attempt to save himself. Then he went over.
“You bastard,” Samantha yelled, drawing her pistol.
Ed cut off her words by bringing up his shotgun and firing straight at Bahkat. Bahkat twitched his fingers again and the gun swung wide, going off with a roar. The shot clicked against rock above them and pebbles rained down. Ed was lifted from his feet and slapped high on the wall of the cliff dwelling, then dropped. He groaned as he slid back to the ledge, the shotgun falling uselessly from his hands. Mike hurried to him and bent over his friend.
The matriarch climbed to her feet, but Samantha had her Glock in her hand, the familiar weight reassuring. She sighted and fired—one, two, three rounds into the demon woman’s body, bracing herself for the gun’s kick.
Samantha didn’t think the bullets would kill the matriarch, and they didn’t, but they did make her stumble. Samantha lunged for her, caught the woman around the waist, and threw her toward the edge of the cliff.
The matriarch stopped herself before she reached the edge and spun back to face Samantha. Her beautiful-woman glam fell away, and Samantha found herself looking at the grim, lined face of the woman she’d met as the matriarch’s majordomo.
“Don’t cross me.” The woman’s voice rasped. “I am your matriarch, and I command you.”
Bahkat watched them with emotionless dark eyes. “She was your matriarch,” he said, his voice chill and dark. “She was a good disciple and lover. Now that I have the Immortal I have no more need of her.”
He held his hand out toward the matriarch, and then closed his fist. The matriarch morphed back into the lush woman, staring at Bahkat with wide and anguished eyes. Then she screamed.
Her body began to compress, a hidden force crushing her. She fought it, crying out, but Bahkat simply held his hand in place. Blood burst fro
m the matriarch’s body, bones shattered with a cracking sound. After a few moments, her screams died to gurgles, and she fell into a broken pile of bones and flesh that dissolved slowly into dust.
Samantha stared, wide-eyed at the swirling sand that had been the matriarch, her hand still locked around her gun. She wanted to be sick but was too dazed and shocked to do much of anything.
Tain finally moved. He lifted his swords from Merrick and sent the demon flying backward on a wave of magic that bore the stink of death. Merrick crashed into the wall beside Ed and Mike and lay still, blood gushing from the wound on his neck.
Samantha looked at Tain and knew she’d lost him. His good eye was blank, the blue swallowed by black, and he regarded Samantha with no recognition.
Samantha loved him, had always loved him, and knew it for a futile, impossible love. Tain was an Immortal and half crazy at the best of times. His brothers might have healed him and helped him kill his enemy, but Tain’s mind had been taken long ago.
“Tain,” Samantha whispered. “I love you.”
Bahkat swung his full attention to Samantha. “That’s very sweet,” he said in his rumbling voice. “She’ll make a wonderful slave if she already loves you, my friend.”
Samantha knew she had no magic at all, no power to best an Old One, and her bullets would have no effect on him. She figured she could either throw herself over the ledge and try to run for it—if she survived—or stay here and brave it out.
“Why don’t you suck him off, my dear?” Bahkat went on. “I’d enjoy watching that.”
Samantha gave him a look of loathing. “Screw you,” she said. Then she fired.
The bullets stopped in front of the demon, as though they’d run into a transparent wall, and clinked harmlessly to the floor. Samantha had known shooting Bahkat wouldn’t work—Tain had a similar trick when he was being fired at—but it felt good to try. Bahkat flicked his fingers and the gun ripped from Samantha’s hand, her palm stinging.
Tain stepped to Samantha. A brush of Bahkat’s magic forced Samantha to her knees, and she found herself looking at the waistband of Tain’s jeans, the fabric spattered with blood. The jeans rode low on Tain’s hips, revealing smooth skin below his navel, a line of dark red hair that disappeared under his waistband. Tain smelled like blood, sweat, and death magic, but also of himself, the warmth of his skin, the strength of his body.
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