A Demon's Dark Embrace

by Amelia Hutchins

  “Ristan,” Ryder’s deep rumble came from beside him and his heart stopped briefly because this was the second time he’d taken the king away from Faery.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he grumbled, but if he was honest, he was grateful. “It’s a Hag, probably one of three or more if she holds true to form.” He noticed the newly familiar face of Elijah with the group and nodded at him. “Don’t let one of these bitches near you, bad idea to do so; they only need a tiny prick of your skin to make you helpless,” he explained as he jerked his head in Aodhan’s direction as an example.

  “Elijah, sift Aodhan back to Eliran the moment we move this creature’s attention onto us,” Ryder said crisply, and Ristan turned his attention the half-Angel, Half-Fae.

  “What the fuck is he doing here anyway?” he snapped, watching his new brother suspiciously.

  “He’s here because he can fight like hell, and for reasons he has shared with me, he’s requested to join the Elite Guard, and needs to prove himself worthy,” Ryder growled as he turned his piercing golden eyes on Ristan. “Don’t question me,” he said firmly, warning Ristan that they weren’t alone and he was the king. Ristan hid the look of disbelief he was sure had flashed across his face. Less than a week ago, Elijah had been leading his own little group of outcasts and challenging Ryder for leadership of the Horde. Not like he would have been successful, but this was an interesting turn of events.

  “I think this is a diversion,” Ristan said smoothly, not missing a beat as he changed the subject back to the matter at hand. “Something is off about this. Hags don’t typically fuck with the Fae, but this one said Aodhan was her reward for luring us away,” he explained.

  “Why would they want to fuck with the Fae?” Synthia asked as she pushed Ryder aside from where he’d blocked her view. “I’m not helpless,” she scolded him.

  “You’re still learning your new powers,” he argued. “I need to be able to focus.”

  “Duly noted, Fairy,” she replied with a soft smirk. “Jesus, she’s ugly,” she whispered with a crinkle of her nose in distaste. “She also smells of death.”

  “She is dead, or, more to the point, undead,” Ristan explained as the Elite Guard worked to surround her as she moved in a hypnotic motion, trying to lure them closer to her claws.

  “She’s going to try and pierce their armor,” Elijah said as he nodded to the Hag, who was now lunging at the closest Elite Guard.

  “It’s bitch-proof armor,” Ristan laughed, even though he didn’t think the situation was remotely funny.

  “Someone should…” Elijah stalled his words as a gust of wind made his hair fly up.

  Ristan snorted as he watched the king of the Horde raise his hands. Her head contorted in a blur of movement and, before he could count to three, Ryder stood there with the Hag’s head in his hands as her body fell to the ground.

  “Kill her?” Ristan offered.

  Elijah turned to give Ristan a pointed look, as an ear-piercing shriek filled the dark alley around them. He barely had time to prepare for the attack as another Hag rushed them. He sidestepped easily away from the Hag’s claws. He rushed forward, taking the head from the Hag, and right when a third would have taken Elijah’s head, Ristan swung his blade at Elijah, instinctively knowing he’d duck in time.

  His blade met flesh, rotten flesh, the blade slicing through it like butter, ending the battle prematurely. Elijah stood and glared at Ristan, but the moment he turned to the headless body, he shook his head, and his hand lifted to his neck with the knowledge that he’d almost lost his own.

  “Get Aodhan to Eliran,” Ristan ordered as his armor shimmered back to his everyday clothes, and he sifted back to the doors of the bar. His heart was in his throat as he opened the doors, pushing aside bar patrons until he found the table where he’d left Olivia. Empty.

  He stopped one of the waitresses and asked about Olivia, only to be told that she’d left through the back exit with an older male fitting the description of Cyrus.

  “Ryder,” he said, knowing who was at his back.

  “She could have left willingly,” Ryder offered quietly even as Synthia glared up at him, not quite sharing his belief.

  Ristan paused, his mind warring with his emotions because he didn’t know for sure. He couldn’t believe that after the past few days together that she’d just leave, could she? He opened his mouth to accuse her, or to damn her to the winds, but nothing came out. He shook his head, and the soft hand that touched his made him pause.

  “Stop,” Synthia said softly; her halo of platinum hair looked as if she’d been zapped by electricity. “Don’t do that, come with me now,” she whispered and lifted her hands for his willingly placed his hands over hers.

  One moment they’d been in the crowded pub, and the next they were standing on a small island that was surrounded by the pounding surf of an oncoming storm. Waves crashed around them, the saltwater spraying high in the air and lightly wetting them.

  “What the hell, Flower? Why did you bring me here?” he whispered the questions as he looked at their surroundings.

  “Breathe, Ristan. Just breathe,” she urged, feeling his turbulent emotions.

  “How did you do this so soon?” he asked, his eyes watched her as if he expected her to turn into Danu. Synthia was her daughter, after all. Consciously he knew it was Synthia, but shit had been getting strange in his life, so he wasn’t surprised by much these days.

  “Magic,” she said with a slight smile. “Let’s talk it out before you jump to a conclusion which will end in you being an ass,” she finished.

  “She’s gone, and apparently she left with Elder Cyrus. Is it a coincidence that the man she left with fits the description of a man who tortured me?” he asked softly as pain lanced through his chest.

  “I’m taking us back now. No one will hear us or see us. Everyone in the pub will be frozen, so we can take a better look at the scene. We will see what the facts say, and let them speak to you, Demon. Sometimes things aren’t really how they first appear, and you have doubts. Let’s see where the facts lead us, shall we?”

  “This is stupid; we should be looking for her,” he growled.

  “Don’t you growl at me, Demon, I get enough of that from your brother. Look at the pub as if it is a crime scene, and not a place where Olivia left you to go off and do random acts of evil.” Her eyes searched his for a moment before she continued. “Alden has the children talking again. They finally opened up and they explained what they saw, and it was that mouse fighting to save their lives. She saved them, Ristan. She may have screwed up, but I don’t think she would do it again,” she said firmly. “I’ve allowed you time to do as you wished, but I think we need Olivia alive. So I need us to be on the same team again.”

  “Fine,” he said, even though the pulse in his jaw hammered wildly as different scenarios ran through his mind.

  They were back in the bar and other than the group of Fae males, Synthia had managed to freeze everyone in the pub. He looked around at the people who continued to look at something or other on their phones or frozen in mid-sentence or a laugh with their companions. The waitress who had given him Cyrus’s description looked at something as if she was unsure what to do about it, but then a young couple a few booths to her left were spilling a drink, so she’d probably decided to ignore what had her worried, and do what her job entailed. Ristan watched as Ryder and the rest of the Fae made their way to the table.

  “Blood,” Synthia said as she leaned over and looked at the table. “This is where you were, right?”

  “Yes,” he said as his heart flipped in his chest and skipped a beat.

  “Was she wounded before?”

  “No, I’d have noticed it. None of us were bleeding from any wounds,” he acknowledged.

  “In emergency training, if a Witch is in a difficult
situation and chooses to spare the lives of those around her, they’re instructed to leave a blood trail. So say if a Witch had been worried about protecting someone, the Witch would have gone willingly, but to signal that they were in danger, they’d leave a trail so their coven would know that they needed help.”

  He paused. “So she left me a sign?” he asked cautiously, as if he was afraid to believe it.

  “She not only did that, she left you a few,” Synthia said as she pointed at the frame of the rear door, which was also smeared with blood.

  “Unfreeze them, and let’s follow it,” he urged.

  “About that, I’m not so good with unfreezing people yet,” she admitted sheepishly.

  “What happens when you try?” he asked hesitantly.

  Ryder snorted and shrugged at Ristan’s curious look.

  “Well I haven’t blown anyone up yet, but I’m not ruling it out. One of the stones beside the Fairy pools blew up and almost took off my head last time I tried this.”

  “Shit,” he said as he looked past her to where his brothers waited, watching them. “Was that during the freeze, or when you tried to end it?”

  “When I tried to end it, of course,” she answered in mock horror. “You think I would try it on actual people for the first time? No, I tried it on some sheep that were close to the pools and it freaked me out a bit when the rock blew. This is my first actual attempt on people, and to be honest, I’m a little freaked out right now,” she laughed with a naughty twinkle in her eye.

  “How long does it last?” he asked worriedly as he looked around the room.

  “Cyrus won’t kill her,” she said comfortingly as she tried to evade his question. “Not until he gets what he wants from her, which, if everything Vlad and Adam have reported back with is true, he’s probably looking for the relic, too.”

  “Speaking of which, just how long have you had Adam spying on me?” he asked as he started for the exit, his brothers followed closely behind them as he guided Synthia along with them.

  “You think I wouldn’t keep track of you? Ristan, you kept me sane when I thought I would go crazy with everything happening to me. When you freed me from the mansion, it bonded us. It made us friends, and there’s a lot I owe my friend for. I needed to know you were okay, and while I promised to keep out of it, I also needed to know you didn’t cross a line with Olivia that you couldn’t come back from.”

  “Friends don’t spy on friends, Flower,” he said as he absorbed what she’d said.

  “When we found you in that room, you were gone. You scared the shit out of me, Demon. Ryder filled me in on some things, and for a while, I was really worried that you might not come back to us. You saved my babies, and I needed to know if we were going to have to save you, even if it meant saving you from yourself. Okay, so where is the relic?” she said, changing the subject with a dismissive hand.

  “Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, we think.”

  “I don’t think there are any catacombs below the cathedral where the Templars could hide it, so maybe one of the graves in the walls or the flooring?” she offered.

  “We talked it over, Olivia and I, and we think that there might be an entrance beneath the cathedral that was hidden. I know it says that when they built it, the water table was an issue, but how many times in the history of the Guild and the Freemasons have they made shit up to keep people from looking?” he stated.

  “That sounds about right, so why would Cyrus take Olivia? Would it be to get information on the Fae, or do you think he knows about the relics and wants her to take him to it?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered, and for a brief moment, he wondered if Olivia had reached out to Cyrus. It was strange, him appearing here out of the blue like this. Was the blood trail a signal for him, or another trap to lure him?

  “She hasn’t had any contact with the outside,” Synthia said, guessing his thoughts. “No access to a phone, and she doesn’t have the ability to communicate to anyone without one. Unless she isn’t a Witch, and in that case, we could have misjudged her again, but I don’t think we have. Think; does anyone know you found it?”

  “There were some people with Vlad; they came with the archives, but he trusted them. Adam knew, and Adrian,” he announced. “I guess it could have gotten out, but I doubt it. Vlad would kill anyone he thought betrayed him and they know it.”

  “Then I guess we better hope everyone unfreezes pretty quick here, so we can get you to a cathedral and save the damsel,” she said impishly.

  A guilty pang crossed his mind that Olivia was now a damsel that might not even be able to defend herself because of the torque he’d placed on her.

  “And if we’re wrong?” he asked.

  “If we are both wrong, then she must die. If she’s fooled us this much, she’s more dangerous than either of us thought and I’ll put her down myself. If we’re right, we’ll need her help.”

  The room came back to life with a deafening boom as everyone resumed what they’d been doing.

  “What if someone had walked in?” Ryder asked impatiently, cutting off a scathing glance from Synthia.

  “I would have frozen them, too,” she shrugged.

  “And if you accidently blew up an entire pub filled with people?” he asked. “I could live with it, but you?”

  “They didn’t blow up!” she growled.

  “You two need a room, or maybe a corner? Pressing matters here, no time for a timeout to fuck about it,” Ristan growled impatiently.

  “Next time, practice in a situation where I won’t have to give them a push back to life. Stick with the sheep for a bit, Pet,” Ryder said, as they continued to ignore Ristan with their personal matters.

  “I’m never going to learn if you keep undoing my mistakes,” she complained with her hands on her hips. She winked at Ristan and moved closer to Ryder, her king. “On to bigger problems, there’s a Guild Elder who has Olivia and we need to figure out what he’s doing here and what he really wants.”

  “Then let’s be smart about it, and make a plan,” Ryder said as he pulled Synthia closer to him and gave his brother a reassuring look. “Let’s go Witch hunting, brother.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Olivia was forced at knifepoint into a waiting van, and something was pressed against her face. The sickly-sweet scent made bile rush to the back of her throat, and blackness seemed to swallow her whole.

  When she awoke, it was because rough hands carried her into a darkened cathedral, and she was placed on a cold mosaic floor. She feigned sleep, listening to Cyrus as he gave instructions in a language she’d never heard before. The men with him left to do as he’d bid them, or at least she assumed they did, since her eyes remained closed.

  “You should have listened to me when I told you he was a monster,” Cyrus sneered and kicked Olivia in her abdomen, forcing her to give up the façade that she was still drugged.

  She cried out as the pain assaulted her, and then he kneeled beside her and turned her face towards himself in a punishing grip.

  “Stupid whore; I should have allowed them to kill you with the other worthless fucks in the Guild. Lucky for me you didn’t die in the chaos,” Cyrus said with his eyes drilling holes into her.

  She felt nausea swirling in her stomach, and an anger churning through her that wanted justice for all of the innocent blood he’d spilled.

  “You didn’t have to kill them,” she whispered through his hold on her chin.

  “Oh, but I did. You see, new Elders will soon replace those who follow the old rules and one by one, each Guild will be replaced with a new world order. Instead of protecting the Humans from the Fae, we will eradicate the Fae, and the Humans will buy anything we tell them. Simpleminded fucks, all of them. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he warned. “You know, the Guild actually thought it
could make a difference and the truth is, they never have. They thought to police the Fae, but they’re weak. We all have Fae in our genetics, but some of us have more magic than others. Witches and Warlocks are just watered down bloodlines. They are created from a stupid Human whore fucking one of the monsters and the spawn of that union reproduces again and again. Nothing like we have in our lines. We are stronger, faster, and more powerful than those of the Guild.”

  “You’re making no sense,” Olivia gritted out. “We have done nothing to you!”

  She knew now just how bad this monster was because there wasn’t just hatred in his eyes, there was madness. He smiled coldly, his mouth twisting coldly; the resulting smirk was full of hatred.

  “You have no idea what I am, and neither did the Guild. They don’t know just how far embedded we are into their ranks. Harold, the Elder who runs the Seattle Guild, he’s just like me, Olivia. We started with the New Orleans Guild last fall; it was so fucking easy to take it from within. How do you think I knew your lover couldn’t have been from there? Because I was down there for business at the beginning of November, and by December, all of the Elders of New Orleans were dead or under our control. One month is all it took to change the leadership of an entire Guild, and the others will fall in line just as easily.”

  Olivia quickly calculated the timing and grasped his meaning; for at least two weeks, Cyrus had known for sure that the requests from New Orleans Guild were false. No wonder he had been so meticulous in his monitoring of ‘Justin’s’ activities towards the end.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she whispered, buying time. She knew the answer. He didn’t plan to let her live long enough to tell another living soul that all of the Guilds were in danger of being compromised.