by Michele Hauf
“It would be an interesting match. We are pleased Grief is gone. Whiny insolent. What prize are we promised for leading the vanguard?”
“Your return to Daemonia.”
War slapped his palms against the invisible barrier and bellowed, “I want the dark witch’s soul.”
“No deal.”
Vika turned and walked toward the kitchen. Only place to be away from the demon’s sight was in the bathroom. That would appear weak, like a female running to cry in the girls’ room. This was the only way to maintain the facade of power.
“Stop!”
She paused near the kitchen counter, tilting a hip against it but keeping her back to the demon. An inhale drew in courage.
“This imprisonment inside the dark witch has been worse than the mortal hell and Beneath combined. I have no freedom, save the darkness, and yet must battle the others for a few moments of control. I am made of the dark witch, and yet, it is a foul dwelling. In Daemonia, at the least, I will have my freedom.”
Excellent.
“The deal is you will slay the Night March and then vacate the dark witch’s soul,” Vika said, approaching the salt circle. “No amendments, no changes. And Pain must agree. I request to speak to that demon, as well.”
“War grants spoils,” the demon said darkly. “My spoil is a kiss from the red witch.”
Vika’s breath caught at the base of her throat. Seducing the want demon had been easy enough, but to allow this one to kiss her? She could sense CJ’s protests in the flinch of the demon’s hand. He would not wish her to agree. But had she any other choice? It would be as if kissing her lover. Only not.
“Agreed. Allow Pain to speak to me.”
With a cackling snicker, War bowed his head, and in the next breath, the demon slammed his body against the barrier. CJ fell backward, stumbling, and then made a run to the side. The demon slammed CJ’s body from side to side and back, and then smacked his face over and over until the flesh reddened.
“Pain, I presume,” Vika said over the childish antics. She must not wince or show sign of horror at the sight of her lover being mauled from within. “You heard my request. Will you work with War to vanquish the Night March?”
“Can I twist their heads from their bodies and chew their limbs to the bone?” the creature cackled. He dragged CJ’s fingernails down his chest, leaving red abrasions that drew up a macabre grin on his face.
“If it pleases you to do so.”
But imagining it happening while the demon occupied CJ hurt her heart. What was he sacrificing by allowing these demons to control him during the march? His sanity? His life? She hadn’t considered it.
Stop thinking, and do this!
“You may do whatever is necessary to stop the march from harming mortals. Not one mortal must be sacrificed, do you understand?”
The demon pressed its face hard against the barrier, distorting his nose and mouth as it asked, “Me kiss the red witch, too?”
Vika rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Very well. If you can manage a simple kiss without hurting me.”
“Where is the joy in that?”
“Then the dark witch refuses to allow your touch.”
“Wait! I can touch softly. But I do need to taste blood. It’ll be quick, I promise.”
Vika winced, tilting her head away so the demon could not see her reaction. “I want your promise you’ll agree to the terms of the pact. You’ll work with War to annihilate the Night March then submit to exorcism back to Daemonia.”
“Agreed. Me don’t like this realm. Mortals are too soft. Need the challenge of my own kind. And me no able to access this dark witch’s magic from inside. Want my own magic back!”
“Very well. We have a deal.” Vika pressed her palm to the barrier, and Pain gnashed his teeth at it. “Until tomorrow night, gentlemen.”
She flicked the switch on the remote. The chandeliers blasted on to full glow. Pain squealed and flung CJ’s body against the barrier. The dark witch fell through it and landed across the salt line, sprawled and groaning.
Vika knelt next to him and stroked her fingers over his bleeding cheek. “Success.”
“I heard,” he said on a breathless gasp. “And you promised yourself as spoils.”
“Just a kiss. And I know you will chaperone that.”
Certainly chuffed out a weak laugh. “As best I can, lover.”
“So, until tomorrow night?”
He nodded. “Eine Klene Nacht März?”
“Oh, that’s bad. You were not meant to make jokes.”
“Sorry, couldn’t resist. I, uh... There’s someone I need to go see today.”
“Stay here with me. Please?”
He kissed her, lingering at her mouth, tendering her softly in the wake of the vile interaction with the demons. “It won’t take long. It’s an idea for backup. Plan B, if you will.”
“But you’re going to keep me in the dark about it.”
He nodded. “You’ll be waiting for my return?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “That’s all I ever wanted to know. The feeling of someone waiting for me, wanting me to return to their arms.”
“It’s a hard thing to endure, the waiting. But I know you have to prepare. Will you at least tell me who you need to see today?”
He stroked her lips then bowed his head, unable to look at her. “Ian Grim.”
Chapter 22
I am made of the dark witch.
CJ could not stop replaying that statement War had made while contained within the salt circle. Grief had said much the same.
Did he carry these demons inside only because he possessed some element of them already? Of course he grieved, and didn’t every man possess a hint of menace? Lust, why yes. And even carrion he could justify, for though he practiced vegetarianism, his mouth still watered when passing cooked meat.
He wondered if Vika had caught on to that statement, and what she thought it meant.
But War? No.
Really?
You have been warring against Grim for decades.
Perhaps. And now, for the first time, he was considering asking the warlock for help.
He twisted around a corner deep in the seventh quarter that led toward Les Innocents and knelt on the cobbles, tugging a small vial from his pocket. Inside were a few strands of Ian Grim’s hair, collected decades ago when he’d had opportunity. Crushing one with the hilt of his athame and spitting upon it, he then recited the location spell. And waited.
Grim also had DNA from him, probably hair, and for sure the blood taken from the scene of the accident. They generally did not cloak themselves, because they liked the play of never knowing when the other would come looking for them. But CJ wasn’t cheating by cloaking since his return from Daemonia. This was a new twist to their decades-old game. And never before had he involved someone he cared about. New rules had been created. Besides, all was fair when dealing with a warlock.
A raven crowed and coasted down the narrow alley, swooping over CJ’s head. The sign he’d been waiting for. Tucking the vial in a pocket, he took off after the bird.
They skirted the park and wound down an industrial neighborhood that edged the fifteenth quarter. The air was heavy with gasoline fumes and the rush of traffic from the distant ring road. He tracked the raven to an abandoned building covered in graffiti, where he heard a man’s laughter echo out from the glassless windows.
Dropping his cloak would alert Grim immediately, unless the man was too focused on whatever was going on behind the closed door. Worth the risk. CJ whispered the cloak release, and he felt it shed from his body as if a sudden gush of rain falling over his shoulders and dropping at his feet in a splash, without the wet.
Inside, the laughter suddenly ceased—to be replaced with a female scream.
CJ kicked the rusted metal door open.
The female’s body fell backward, away from the man who stood over her. Her dripping
heart pulsed in his hand. She groped for her chest, but as she did so, her body ashed, and before flesh and bone hit the floor, it had shaped into an ashy female form and dispersed in a plume about Ian Grim’s feet.
The warlock, who held the heart to his mouth but apparently hadn’t drank or bitten into the heavy muscle, grinned at CJ and tossed the prize aside. It landed on the floor in a splatter of sticky ash and blood.
“Certainly Jones. It’s about fucking time.”
“How many vampire hearts do you consume in a century?” CJ asked, knowing he’d worded that one wrong. He should have been more precise, narrowing it down to a year, or even a month.
“As many as I can manage. A man has to stay vital to keep his partner alive.”
Yes, Grim’s strange woman who, rumors told, had once been beheaded during the French Revolution, only to be resurrected—her head sown upon a different body—and was now kept alive with blood transfusions.
Grim glanced to the ashy mess. “Damn it, now you’ve gone and spoiled my count. I may have to start over if I’m ever to get to Daemonia. How the fuck did you manage it?”
“I didn’t eat their hearts.” CJ wandered into the room, noticing two more piles of ash along the wall. A senseless waste. But who was he to judge? He’d made sacrifices to get to Daemonia.
He hadn’t seen Grim in ages, and the man was always different. Tall, yet short for his blocky build, he wore his blond hair in a military cut, which drew CJ’s observation to the man’s disturbing eyes. Green, yet gray. They changed like a cat’s eyes. Or a Fallen angel’s eyes.
Yet a constant was Grim’s self-important smirk.
“So you got it.” Grim paced before him, making an arc on the floor with his path, as both men were never keen to get too close to the other, wary of any possible magical retaliation. His fingers waggled near his thighs, as if a gunslinger judging when best to draw. “The Nacht März.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Wow, you’re trying an evasive tactic with me? I know you better than your own twin brother, Jones. I can feel your lies on my skin like faulty spellcraft missing its mark.”
Grim was confident of his skills, and smart. He could read CJ, as CJ could read the warlock’s nervousness in his pacing.
“As a matter of fact, I do have it. I’m enacting the march tomorrow evening.”
Grim’s expression was a treat. Rarely could he surprise the man. And then his surprise turned to fury. “That should be my call! I was the one to discover its existence.”
“Only because of my father.”
“Indeed. Following in Daddy’s footsteps, eh? You’ll be warlock soon enough.”
“Never.”
CJ dodged the incoming blast of air magic. A simple cast that further detailed Grim’s lack of confidence at this moment. He was grasping for whatever was to hand, not thinking.
“You wanted the damned thing? My snatch,” CJ said. Keeping his left hand open and ready to repulse retaliatory magic, he stood calmly. “It’s always been first come, first served with us, yes? You did take the Sidon’s Eye right out of my hands.”
“Your lover’s fickle hands, you mean.”
CJ sighed. The winter of 1936. Sidon’s Eye would have granted the holder great power to see beyond this mortal veil and into the Edge, a place much more interesting and far less explored than Daemonia. Unfortunately, Certainly’s lover’s greed had been more vast than his curiosity over the object. That had been the last time he’d trusted a woman, or had the time for one.
“I’d like to invite you to witness the March,” CJ said, putting up his palm to block, this time, an arrow of vampire ash stirred up from the floor and aimed for his eyes. The ash dispersed about his palm and went around his head on both sides. “That is, if you stop acting the child and accept the fact I won this round.”
“How did you do it? In order to gain entrance to Daemonia, a man must consume a vampire heart a day, increasing in succession daily for a month.” Grim glanced aside to the bloody heart, still pulsing on the floor. “I’ve not the stomach for it. And I’m only on day twelve.”
CJ shook his head. Not about to divulge how he’d achieved that one. His father’s grimoire had revealed a dangerous secret entrance. “Tomorrow at midnight in the C tunnel beyond Val de Seine. Come alone. You can claim the Night March after I’ve summoned it.”
“And why would you give me that control? You’re up to something.”
“I most likely am.”
And Certainly drew up the cloak once again, turned and walked out of the building, confident Grim could not see or sense his departure. He chuckled when the warlock let out a frustrated shout and kicked at the ash pile. He’d won this round.
Regrettably, he could take no pride in such an accomplishment because it had dragged the woman he loved into the center, and it now threatened her very soul.
* * *
Libby held the flashlight while Vika fastened the prism before the bulb. She’d removed the glass and, after trying string and cord, found wire worked best, along with a bit of solder.
“You think this is necessary?” Libby asked. “A backup plan? Don’t you trust CJ?”
“Of course I trust him.”
“But we found the ward.” Libby nodded to the open grimoire on the spell table. The ward could be placed on an individual, unknowing, and would protect the person from malefic magic.
“The ward is against Grim. I don’t know why he went to talk to the warlock, but for whatever reason, I want to have that tool to my arsenal should it become necessary to use. This—” she studied the completed flashlight “—is to keep me safe.”
Libby’s eyes teared. “This is too big for you, Vika.”
It was, but she didn’t want to admit it. If CJ could handle it, she could. She touched her sister’s cheek, catching the teardrop and feeling its sadness enter her pores.
“Remember what you told me about love,” Libby said. “Don’t get lost in it.”
She was already lost. And she liked being there.
“We both ignored that sage wisdom,” she said. “Have you any regrets?”
Libby shook her head and couldn’t stop her swooning grin.
* * *
From the sixth-floor window, Vika tracked CJ’s race home from the café at the end of the street. The sun had slipped behind the Louvre, and the sky was yet pale, but darkness clung to the recesses between buildings as if plaque in a demon’s teeth.
As he crossed the street below the building, she grabbed the remote and clicked the saving chandelier light back on, granting necessary solace.
“Two left,” she muttered as if the light fixtures cared. “And then my dark one needs to do some remodeling. Much as each of them are all gorgeous, this mass gathering of prismatic light is hideous.”
She did like the one with the black crystals and silver arabesques that soared six feet high. That one would look lovely over the gray couch.
What was she doing? If and when CJ no longer had need for the prismatic light, he may well want to keep the chandeliers.
Libby had foreseen she was hooking up with CJ to clean him. Her greatest cleaning project ever. But something had changed. While she still wanted his soul clean of demons, she didn’t need for him to change, to become less messy or to stop practicing dark magic. She liked him exactly as he was.
“Seems I don’t have a type after all,” she said with a smile. “Or maybe I’ve changed that type.”
Either way, she was satisfied with letting go the urge to change him. It slipped from her without so much as a goodbye, and she turned to greet her lover as he walked through the door and landed in her arms.
“Everything go as you had hoped?” she asked, nuzzling into his cedar and chartreuse embrace.
“I won’t know until tomorrow night. I needed to know where Grim was while I had the Nacht März uncloaked. What better way than to invite him to the party?”
“You’re not serious? You told the warlock where we’
ll be?”
He nodded then kissed her before she could object to his foolish actions. Falling into the depths of his claiming kiss, Vika abandoned protest. Seemed to be the way to manage this beautiful dark man.
“You straightened up around here,” he said.
“Made the bed and did a few dishes. It’s a compulsion, CJ. You have to accept that about me.”
“Okay, but I’ll have you know my compulsion is to mess up the bed again.” He lifted her into his arms and carried her over to the bed, tossing her to land on the clutter of pillows. Shirt stripped off before she could speak, he crawled across the bed toward her. “Let’s make sexmagic tonight.”
“To increase your magic for tomorrow?”
“No. Just for us.” He waggled the fingers of his tattooed hand. “Don’t you want me to master this magic?”
Vika settled against the pillows and tugged up her skirt, revealing her bare feet. “Let the mastery begin.”
* * *
Vika drew her fingers over her lover’s bared chest, tracing a few of the tattoos and marveling at their intricacy. The werewolf scythe gleamed silver with each flex of his muscles. “Didn’t that hurt to get the silver embedded in there?”
He slipped the dress from her shoulder and kissed her there. “Tattoos always hurt. But whiskey helps numb the pain.”
“I see.” She tapped a tiny design slightly left-center of his chest. “This looks like...is this a tiny battery?”
“It’s my kick-starter,” he said proudly.
“What?”
“Command central, if you will. You know how our bodies are ruled by the earth and electricity?”
“Of course. I sing the body electric,” she quoted Walt Whitman.
“Since I dabble in so many dangerous magics, Sayne suggested I have a kick-start in case, well, my heart ever needs it.”
“A little tattooed battery is going to give your unbeating heart enough juice to revive you?”
“With the correct connecting tat.” He displayed his left hand, and his pinkie fingertip was tattooed with what looked like electrical coding one might see on a building schematic. “I touch this to the battery, and bam!”