by Michele Hauf
“I don’t have it. Not anymore. I was going to give it to her to—”
Tuesday filled in the words he probably couldn’t bring himself to say—to win her love. Was the vampiress the one creature from whom Gazariel could not be loved?
“No.” The demon stomped a foot. “I’m not going to utter a single word about that...bitch of a vampire.” Gazariel lifted his head from the glinting cove of wings. His jaw was tight. He’d felt that pain from the cage bars, Tuesday knew. “Serve me your worst, Ethan Pierce.”
“Very well.” Ethan stepped back and gestured for Savin Thorne to step forward. The man tossed his hat aside, and shrugged up his shoulders, as if preparing to step into a boxing ring.
“Who is this mortal you’ve put before me?” Gazariel asked. “He may look imposing but I can feel no power within him.”
The reckoner chuckled and rubbed his palms together before his face. When he spread his hands to face toward the cage, the wards on his palms took to flame. “I am Savin Thorne,” he said to the demon. “I’m here to reckon you to Daemonia.”
* * *
Ethan stepped aside to give the reckoner room to work. Tuesday stood just behind him. He could sense her in him. Because she was in him. And he didn’t feel fear in her, but rather, indifference and a righteous anger. She hated this demon and wanted him gone. But he also knew they could not send him off to Daemonia until they’d gotten the information they needed from him. Nor could they actually send him away without also sending Tuesday along with him.
Thorne knew that as well.
The reckoner clapped his hands together over his head and began to chant something that sounded like a Polynesian tribal rite. It had a beat and a low, bellowing caw that sent chills up Ethan’s spine.
Inside the cage the demon narrowed his gaze on the reckoner. With a shrewd sneer, he folded back his wings. He wasn’t standing so tall and proud anymore. And it wasn’t curiosity that bent him forward to better hear the reckoner’s deep and loud voice. It had to be a nervous fear.
To Ethan’s right stood CJ. The dark witch had crossed himself and touched some of the tattoos on his hand the moment the reckoner had started to chant. Ethan wasn’t aware of any protections he needed against a reckoner. He’d worked with Savin twice before and had witnessed the man send a demon off to Daemonia in a cloud of black smoke. It had taken but ten minutes of chanting.
And they were nearing that mark now.
“All right!” the demon suddenly shouted, yet the reckoner kept up his wicked chant. “Make him cease and I will tell you where it is.”
“Savin,” Ethan said.
The reckoner silenced, closed his eyes and thrust his hands above his head again, but this time only touching together his forefingers, as if to pause something he could then continue when required. With a nod, he stepped back beside CJ.
Ethan stepped up to the cage. “Tell me.”
Gazariel peered past him to Tuesday. “I will only tell my witch.”
“That’s not going to happen. She’s not involved in this interrogation.”
“I won’t do anything to her. These damn wards have drained me already. And that bloody chanting. Ugh. I could almost see the gates to Daemonia. She knows she’ll be safe. Yes?”
Behind him, Ethan felt Tuesday’s nod more than saw it. He’d promised to protect her, and he did trust the efficacy of the wards in the room. And she was warded fully as well. He turned to look at her and without so much as a flinch, her confident posture conveyed to him that she was ready.
The woman was brave and strong. Of course she could handle this. Ethan nodded once, and Tuesday stepped forward.
Chapter 21
The leering look of satisfaction on Gazariel’s face was slightly challenged by the fact that he was subdued, unable to reach through the bars and grab for Tuesday, as she knew he wished to do. So she walked up and stood but inches from those bars, and he did the same. She could feel him inside her. Feel his haughty vanity and his complex anger at the imprisonment.
And she well understood his pride in knowing that he had control over her, no matter the safeguards and wards. Because she would never have freedom so long as she wore his sigil.
And a larger part of her than she was comfortable with...wanted him. Close to her. Inside her. A part of her, as the sigil’s burning caress promised.
“Where is it?” she asked, curling her fingers about the alicorn and athame. “Come on, it’s late and I need to go home and wash my hair.”
“Snark does not suit you, witch. I prefer those times when you are raging in your dark beauty, calling down the rains to chase away the dust storms, or sending out an army of gargoyles to defeat a band of marauders. Or what about that time you burned out a lecher’s tongue for harming a child? You think I haven’t watched you over the centuries?”
Behind her, Ethan cleared his throat. He wanted her to get on with it, but she couldn’t force the demon when grandstanding was obviously his thing.
“I’ve never sensed your presence,” she offered honestly. A creepy discomfort kept her from prompting for the details.
“I’m sure the sigil did. But you were focused. Honed to a precise and elegant weapon. And now look at you. Being led on a leash by an insignificant vampire and his band of not-so-merry men.”
“The reckoner fucked with your sense of safety,” she observed. “If sent to Daemonia you wouldn’t last a day. And how long is a day in that place? Decades? Oh, the fun they’d have with such a pretty, spoiled Fallen brat such as you.”
The demon reached to grab at her but recoiled when his fingers connected with the electrical field. “Bitch.”
“Actually, it’s witch. Get it right.”
Gazariel chuckled. “I like your moxie, my witch. Despite your reliance on that silly plaything. An alicorn? Really? It’s been tainted by vampire blood. It will no longer serve you in any significant manner.”
She looked at the pearlescent twist of horn. It did seem a bit duller than when she’d first claimed it. But she wouldn’t set it aside. That’s what the demon wanted her to do.
Gazariel bowed his head toward her. “We might have made an interesting pair.”
“Seriously? Nope. I prefer my men with balls.”
The demon gripped his crotch defiantly, gnashing his teeth as he did so. “Words—”
“Do seem to bother you. But now let’s get this done with, shall we? The sooner you tell me where the book is, the faster me and the band of merry men will let you go.”
“You don’t actually think they’ll release me, do you? The reckoner stands greedily waiting. I can see the lust for revenge in his eyes.”
“Revenge? You’ve done nothing to him.”
“It is revenge for all of our kind. A secret he holds so tightly it keeps him from his true powers.” The demon’s eyes glinted as he met gazes with the reckoner.
“I was promised you would be released as soon as the book with the code is handed over,” Tuesday said, not wanting to get into whatever issues the reckoner had with demons right now. “I won’t allow them to go back on their word to me. I do have your word, yes, Ethan Pierce?” she said loudly.
“You do,” Ethan said. “He gives us the location of the book. We retrieve it, verify it’s intact. We let him go. Simple as that.”
Gazariel considered it for a moment, his eyes flicking from red to the brilliant azure that must have lured thousands of women to their knees before him. So damn pretty.
But also a Richard.
And it was only with that thought Tuesday was able to keep it together and not attempt to reach for his chiseled abs.
“As the mean vampire guessed, I gave it to my girlfriend,” he said quietly. Tuesday suspected none could hear but her, though the vampire should be able to with his heightened senses.
“She didn’t love you,” Tuesday
said, trying out her earlier suspicion. “You thought by giving her the book you could win her love.”
Gazariel lifted his chin imperiously.
“There was actually one creature in this realm who did not fall on her knees in adoration before you,” she declared. “Must have been tough for a poseur like you.”
“Enough!”
“Apparently, you were not enough for Anyx.”
“I care little about that somber, death-obsessed vampiress. Besides, we broke up recently.”
“Let me guess. Just before you were whisked away to this cage? I saw the claw marks,” Tuesday said. “And you bleed black blood. No angel left in you, Beautiful One.”
Gazariel’s upper lip flinched.
“Why that book and that particular vampiress?”
“I had no idea, when first we met, that she had a disturbingly dark obsession.”
“So I’ve been told.” Tuesday kept herself from glancing Ethan’s way. The vampiress did not sound like the sort any man could love. She must have some serious skills when it came to pleasuring them. “So you gave her a book with a code that could end the world as a sort of...love token?”
“I gave it to her days ago. She thanked me, but...she didn’t say she loved me. Can you believe that?”
“Shocking,” Tuesday said with all the snark exploding in that one utterance.
“I thought she would merely add it to her collection,” Gazariel explained. “She collects death. Remnants from the Titanic. The leather straps from an electric chair that ended the lives of so many. A charm to give the bearer instant necrosis. Et cetera. So a code that could enact the end of the world? She was excited. It was the most powerful item she’d ever heard of. She was thrilled to have it. Little did I know she was using me to get what she wanted.” He looked aside, and for a moment Tuesday almost saw regret cross his perfectly symmetrical face. “She’s a bigger bitch than you are. Good riddance, I say.”
“Along with the means to end the world? Gazariel, please.”
He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath through his nose. “I do love it when you speak my name. It shivers through me like a teasing yet unrequited orgasm. Always promising yet never fulfilling.”
Now she was ready to poke him in the eye with the alicorn, but Tuesday knew the wards worked on both sides of the cage bars.
“If you two are on the outs, then why the hell won’t you give her up to us?” she asked. “Why not get the ultimate revenge against the one person who doesn’t love you by sending us after her to claim the book?”
“Do you love me, Tuesday Knightsbridge?”
Pressing her lips together, Tuesday prevented an oath, but oh, did it tangle with her tongue for release. She needed to play nice with the demon, or they would never get anywhere with him. She pressed a palm over the sigil and said what she knew to be partially true, and what she hoped wasn’t deeply true. “I do love you, Gazariel. You are beautiful. I adore you.”
“Of course you do.” Another deep inhale of satisfaction and he opened his eyes to beam a soft blue gaze upon her. She almost thought to see compassion in his irises. “I gave you freedom from death. And from love.”
“Yeah, well... I would like to know love,” she admitted.
“It is exquisite. I have it all the time. You are missing so much.”
She tilted her head and couldn’t stop the truth from spilling out. “I don’t think what you believe to be love is really quite the thing. You are adored and worshipped. But that’s not love. Love is...something different. It comes from the soul. It connects two people not out of desperation, or a worshipful lusting desire, but here.” She beat her chest with a fist. “Deeply and to the bone. It is blood, bone and spirit.”
The demon sniffed. “You think to know so much?”
“I know a lot, but certainly not everything. What I do know is that the manner in which I love you is not abiding or deep. It is only surface. You will only ever have surface love, Gazariel. And that makes you a sad, pitiful, impotent demon.”
This time Gazariel’s hand plunged through the cage bars, and even as he screamed at the pain of the wards burning his skin, he managed to grasp her throat.
Tuesday’s body was pulled away from the weak attack, and she turned to shove Ethan away. “I’m fine. Just let me do this. I’ve got him. I do.”
Ethan nodded. “You do. But I’m close.”
Stepping back up to the bars, Tuesday waited for the demon to stop groaning and look up from his burned hand. The angry red skin smoldered, but they both watched as it healed, forming new, pale flesh and reshaping his broken fingers into long, elegant appendages.
“Admit you did a bad thing,” she said to him. “Your ex-girlfriend has something that no one should be allowed to touch. And really? If she does manage to activate the code and brings down all the angels from Above, they’ll smother you, too.”
Shaking out his newly healed hand, Gazariel lifted his chin with a haughty thrust. “Assuming I remain on this mortal realm.”
Tuesday crossed her arms, and stated flatly, “You can’t go back to Beneath. Or even Above. You’re stuck here.” It was a guess, but she figured it was a good one.
Yet Gazariel looked down his nose at her. “It is as simple as going belowground. The angels won’t fall through the earth. Not too far, anyway. Their wings will burn up the surface and the bodies of all those walking this earth. But Paris is a virtual maze of passages and tunnels beneath the manmade clutter.”
Tuesday glanced to Ethan, who was hearing all of this. He didn’t make a move or give her a sign that he understood what the demon was talking about.
“You think you’ll be safe when your bitch of a girlfriend releases Above’s angels as long as you’re underground?”
“The catacombs are where Anyx said she intended to be when she set off the spell.” Gazariel hung his head. “I thought she’d put it on the shelf next to her other collectibles.”
“No, you didn’t. You’re not that much of an idiot.”
The man sucked in his lower lip. The move reduced him to such a human thing. Truly, an impotent loveless creature. She was right; he had not known true, soul-deep love. And she knew that because she was exactly the same as him.
“Maybe you are an idiot,” she said quietly. “Love dumb?”
“If you wish me to continue speaking to you so openly you should try a little kindness, my witch. I happen to know you and that vampire are currently engaged in a frenzied affair. Does he know the other way to break your curse? The one that doesn’t involve my ripping out your heart?”
Tuesday closed her eyes and sensed that Ethan was listening, carefully. He didn’t say anything. And she could not allow him to learn the truth.
“It’s not something that’s ever going to come to fruition,” she said quietly. “And if I could rip out my heart and give it to you without dying, believe me, I would.”
“I do tire of so much love some days.”
“You’ve never been lovable a day in your pitiful life.”
“I am an extremely lovable demon. Adored. Worshipped. Ugh. It can get tiresome, let me tell you.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“No, you would not.” The demon glanced to Ethan. “But...you could.”
Enough of the sly entendres about her love life.
“Come on. Where is Anyx and what sort of booby traps do we have to wend through to get to her?”
“She intends to enact the code under the full moon.”
“That’s tonight.”
“I believe so. At the stroke of midnight.” Gazariel rubbed his knuckles against his bare chest and blew on them. Casual. Just playing for time, now that he realized he might have the upper hand.
“Thorne,” Ethan said from behind them.
The reckoner clapped his hands loudly and again set into his
chant.
“Guess your time is up,” Tuesday said, as calmly as she could manage. But really? She wasn’t in any mood to get transported to Daemonia with this vain angel-turned-demon-turned-love-sick idiot.
“What do you want from me!” Gazariel shouted.
“Where is she?” Ethan demanded.
The reckoner’s voice rose. The cage bars began to shudder.
“Fine! She’s beneath the Temple of Reason.”
Tuesday turned to face the men behind her, and as one they said, “Notre Dame.”
Chapter 22
Outside in the hallway the crew gathered to discuss their next move. They needed to find Anyx STAT. Since she’d only had the book a few days, Ethan wondered if the vampiress had figured out the code. Gazariel hadn’t known. They convened outside the clean room, leaving Gazariel inside the cage after he’d given them Anyx’s address.
“Now what?” Savin asked.
“I’m routing the containment team to the address I just got for Anyx, but I suspect we won’t find her there,” Ethan said. “The demon is telling the truth. We need to go below Notre Dame.”
CJ whistled. “Beneath holy ground?”
“This adventure gets more fun by the minute,” Tuesday said with little sincerity.
“Isn’t it old Roman remains below the church?” Savin asked.
“That’s the public level,” CJ explained. “There are tunnels beneath the church that snake down much deeper, perhaps five or six stories. We might have to do some spelunking.”
“I know a guy who’ll grant us access through the church. Want me to call him?” Savin asked.
“If you can get him here immediately,” Ethan said.
Savin tugged out a cell phone. “I’ll go along, but only if you need me. Or do you want me to hang around here? Babysit the demon?”
“We need to take Gazariel along,” Tuesday said.
“No.” Ethan shook his head. “We can’t risk it.”