by Michele Hauf
“I don’t. But I’m willing to take the chance,” he said. “For you. Both of you. I have to do this. Much as it kills me, and marks my soul blacker than it is now, I have to break the promise I made to you. If...you will allow it.”
Vika’s heart melted into a big mushy puddle. This man was willing to go to a literal hell and make a bargain with an unreliable demon to procure something that may have little value to the one person who could restore her soul. Because he loved her.
“I love you,” she whispered, feeling a hot teardrop splash her nose. “You stupid, impractical, reckless, dark and dangerous witch, you.”
“Sweet words like that are what make me love you so much. Can you give me permission?”
“To break your promise? Yes. Because you do it with a true heart. For actually going to Daemonia again? I think it’s going to take some time to forgive you for that.”
“I’m not actually going there. My doppelgänger will. It’s hard to explain. You’ll see what we’ve cooked up. Now, TJ is waiting. And I don’t want Lucian to lose his courage.”
“How is the vampire involved?”
“Vika, I told you there were things I had to do to go to Daemonia. Sacrifices I made.” He glanced to the vampire, and she understood.
Vampire blood was commonly used in witchs’ spells. Their hearts were the catalyst to the witch gaining another century of immortality. Powerful magic that. She could guess a vampire sacrifice could serve a catalyst to entrance into Daemonia. Surely, he had made many.
“That explains all the vampire deaths we’ve been called to clean up lately. Ian Grim?”
Certainly nodded. “I suspect he was trying to get to Daemonia even knowing I’d already been there. I’ve a carte blanche to entrance now, but will need blood to reopen the doors. Lucian has offered to assist. But we have to get rolling. There’s a window we have.”
She gripped his shirt. “What if you don’t come back?”
He squeezed her hand. “I’m not leaving this realm. If all goes well, I’ll be safe in the circle, and my doppelgänger will trek through Daemonia. TJ is going to hold me here. It’ll work. I promise.”
Vika sighed. It sounded reasonable. And not. Anytime a man—of any breed—involved himself in the workings of Daemonia, it could not end well. She gripped his hand as if to squeeze it tight enough would hold him to her.
“I love you,” he whispered. “Your love will keep me here. I know it.”
She nodded. “You have to do what feels right. But I’m staying here. I’ll sit on the couch and stay out of your way. Libby will, too. You can’t ask us to leave.”
The brothers exchanged glances. Lucian shrugged, leaving the decision up to the witch in charge.
“Fine.” CJ kissed her quickly. “But stay out of the way, witch, or I will spank you. And on second thought, Libby, you might want to keep an eye on Lucian. No matter what occurs, trust he will be fine. But take a look at him after his part is done, will you?”
Libby exchanged nervous gazes with the vampire, and nodded silently.
“Let’s do this,” TJ rallied.
Chapter 28
A circle has no beginning and no end. There is, theoretically, no way in and no way out. The perfect means for protecting magic—and containing the vilest of evils.
It was amazing to watch the brothers work in tandem. Two masters of dark spellcraft who barely had to speak to one another and easily found a deep, harmonizing rhythm to their spell chant. CJ, stripped to but tattered jeans, stood barefoot in the center of the circle, the white-bone Nacht März in hand. He chanted low and bass to his brother’s matching bellow.
Thoroughly Jones, clad in black and wearing a top hat that emphasized his darkness with a steampunkish touch of mischief, walked the circle with a bended knee and a spring to his step, almost as if an Indian fancy dance. He recited a spell Vika was not familiar with, but she understood they were summoning a doppelganger for CJ, a double who would emulate him in flesh, blood and even soul and who would remain connected to CJ via a fine astral cord that should run between them. An invisible cord of life—CJ’s aura, if you will.
Vika had never seen the ceremony performed before, and she sat forward beside her sister, her elbows on her knees, fingers clutching the jade beads.
TJ nodded to Lucian, who had removed his shirt and wielded the steel pipe. Vika didn’t want to imagine its use, but she had a good idea. Blood from the vampire’s heart was the important ingredient.
“The things I do for friends.” Lucian offered the sisters a smirk.
Stepping inside the salt circle, the vampire handed the pipe to CJ, and without a second thought or a verbal warning, CJ jammed the pipe into his best friend’s chest.
Libby let out a chirp. They clasped hands, and Vika’s shiver joined her sister’s shaking. It wasn’t like her to get frightened during spellcraft. They pulled one another into a hug.
Blood poured out the end of the pipe, over CJ’s hands and onto his bare feet. The vampire braced himself against his friend’s shoulders, wincing yet otherwise appearing to take the intrusion as nothing more than a prick from a pin. CJ, using his left hand, traced over the spell tattooed above his heart, leaving a pentacle drawn in blood dripping down his skin. He then touched his forehead, his eyelids and chin, marking the spell.
“Out of the circle, Lucian!” TJ commanded.
The vampire nodded to CJ, who gripped the steel rod, and then he jerked his chest away from the weapon and stepped backward, watching his steps so as not to muss the salt circle. Once outside, he staggered and dropped to his knees. CJ tossed the bloody pipe out behind him.
“That’s my cue,” Libby whispered. She scampered over to the vampire’s side, catching him as he fell forward into her clutches.
Suddenly TJ shouted, “Harrahya!” and reached over the salt line to clasp his brother’s right hand firmly. The brothers raised their hands high. The room grew ominously shadowed, and outside lightning flashed.
The air electrified, lifting the hairs on Vika’s skin in a prickling tingle and bringing the various oils used in the spell to a heady perfume. Earthy vetiver filled the space, lemony sweet. Cinnamon and frankincense to access the psychic realm. Clary sage would attract and secure the doppelganger.
Inside the circle, CJ’s body went stiff, his eyes closed and his jaw clamped tightly shut, as if he was being pierced through with a shock of electricity. He’d dragged his bloody hands over his abdomen, leaving a tribal marking down the side of his torso.
Vika crept forward on the couch, feeling the urge to rush in and help. But she would only destroy the spell. She must be patient and trust the Jones brothers knew what they were doing.
Libby cradled Lucian’s head and shoulders in her lap, but the vampire observed the spell with keen eyes. He would be fine, the narrow pipe not wide enough to have made his heart burst. His healing should be complete within moments.
The brothers’ chants rose in a bellowing wave and knocked at the veil between the realms. Baritone rhythms mastered the atmosphere. Vika felt their voices upon her skin, permeating, exploring, laying claim. With a tribal yell, CJ’s body stiffened with a hand up in a triumphant clasp with his brother’s hand.
A chill swept about Vika’s shoulders as the claiming touch receded and she decided Daemonia had been breeched. CJ’s torso arched forward, while his head and feet remained back. He looked as though he were being tugged by a rope about his waist. The fingers of the hand he clasped within TJ’s stiffened, and she could see the struggle to unloose himself from the firm hold. Jaw tight, CJ fought against something.
When in Daemonia, Vika knew, the moments became days and hours turned to weeks or months. If the spell lasted only minutes on this side of the veil, CJ could well endure a week in the place of all demons.
She didn’t want that for him. Why had she let him go through with this? What sort of man would return, should he return? He would be changed, altered, perhaps even inhabited with more demons. Could the dop
pelgänger bring back demons to CJ’s soul?
Squeezing a pillow on her lap, she realized in her apprehension she’d torn the seam to expose the stuffing.
A glance to Libby found her sister riveted to the center of the circle, along with the vampire, who held a palm over his wounded chest.
TJ turned, twisting at the waist, and tugged at CJ’s hand, as if pulling on a tug-of-war rope. “He’s struggling,” he said to Vika.
“What can I do?”
The witch shook his head, dismissing her to focus his concentration on the task. He resumed chanting, deeply, rhythmically.
Standing, Vika spread out her fingers, but she had no magic to hand for she had no idea what her lover needed. She felt out of control, helpless. Her lover’s body was beginning to arch backward, his head tilted over his shoulders and his chest lifted. He stood on his tiptoes, an impossible feat. Yet he remained in that position, despite his brother struggling to maintain hold on his hand.
“Please let the war demon stand good on the bargain,” she whispered, and closed her eyes, whispering the same thing over and over as she began to mark out each bead on the strand of jade. Repetitive chanting would enforce the energies required to bolster the spell. The beads would keep her focused.
“He’s pulling me in,” TJ gasped. “I’m not sure I can hold him.”
“Let me help!” Lucian shouted.
TJ shook his head negatively. Any interference now from a nonwitch would deplete the spell’s strength.
She could see TJ’s body sliding toward the salt line. The moment his boot cut through the line, the consequences could prove disastrous. He had to remain outside the circle to keep hold of the spell.
Clasping the nail necklace, Vika winced. Just as the brothers’ hands separated, she leaped toward the circle, straddling it with one foot. Dropping the beads, she slid her hand into CJ’s and at the same time gripped TJ’s hand. “I can be an extension.”
“Yes, good.” TJ’s grip was sure in her hand. “So powerful,” he noted with a look of surprise. And then he switched to business mode. “Hold him, Vika. Don’t let him go!”
“Never.”
But her lover’s hand was hard and cold as ice, and it felt as if she’d laid her bare flesh against a frozen steel pole. The chill of Daemonia trickled through her veins, and she gasped in the incensed and blood-tainted air. She could feel his heartbeat, her lover’s galloping rhythm of life, and she would not give it up.
Tugged abruptly, her other foot lost hold and she lifted it as it entered the circle. CJ grasped her across the back. Face-to-face, they held one another, while TJ maintained his grip on her hand. She wasn’t sure if CJ was aware, conscious of what he was doing on this side of the connection, but she held his gaze in an attempt to keep him here. His clutch on her was strong, crushing out her breath.
“Libby, help!” she cried.
Libby dashed to her side yet remained outside the circle.
“Let her take CJ’s hand,” Vika called to his brother. “Our magic combined can hold him here.”
With a nod, TJ grabbed Libby’s hand and made the switch. Her sister grabbed CJ’s other hand, then took hold of TJ’s hand as he anchored himself, one leg bent and leaning forward to hold Libby to the safe side of the circle.
“Damn, your sister’s powers are strong,” TJ hissed. He tucked his head and focused.
Grandmother St. Charles’s power focused between the two of them. Normally it took three from the family—Vika, Libby and their sister, Eternitie—to invoke such power, but combined with TJ’s magic, it seemed to be doing the trick.
Vika felt the chill of Daemonia trickle through her veins, as if sluicing out to drip from her fingertips. The air grew humid, brewing up the cinnamon and frankincense. Blood cloyed at the back of her throat.
CJ’s body went lax, falling out of her and Libby’s grasps, and he collapsed on the floor, sprawled across the salt circle.
Vika teetered but did not fall, and she managed to stumble outside the circle. TJ caught Libby before she crashed in a sprawl on the floor.
Vika looked to TJ, who pointed to his brother’s hand, the one lying out of the circle.
In it glowed a bright blue halo.
Chapter 29
“You did it!” Vika straddled CJ’s inert body and bracketed his face. He didn’t smile up at her or even move. “CJ?”
“What is it?” TJ asked from over her shoulder.
She pressed her fingers to his neck, over the vein. “No.” Crawling down, she put her ear to his chest. His heart didn’t beat.
“He’s not breathing,” TJ noted, and shoved her roughly aside. “He needs CPR!”
As TJ lifted his fisted hands above his brother’s chest, Vika’s world wavered to a blurry muddle of confusion. He couldn’t be dead. He...loved her. She loved him. They were going to be together if she ever got her soul back. They’d share magic and make love every day. He couldn’t be...
The thud of TJ attempting to revive CJ brought Vika back to the moment. And she remembered.
“No!” She shoved TJ away and grabbed CJ’s hand from the floor, the one that didn’t hold the halo. “Command central.”
“What?” Lucian asked, as he’d joined them now.
“He needs a kick-start!”
“Yes,” Lucian muttered, and he slapped TJ across the back. “You know about that?”
“He told me, but I’m not—”
“It’s this hand.” Vika dragged her lover’s hand up to his chest. He was covered in the vampire’s blood, and it was difficult to find the tiny battery tattoo. She wiped away the blood as best she could, then pulled up his little finger and placed it over the battery.
CJ’s chest pulsed upward, his body flopping lifelessly.
“Do it again,” TJ coached. “Hold it there.”
She pressed his finger over the battery, having no idea how the ink magic worked but having faith it would. Again, his body pulsed upward, and again, he remained lifeless.
“No, this has to work,” she cried, and spat frantically onto his chest to smear away more of the blood. “I need to clean the area. Hurry!”
A bottle of whiskey was slapped into her hand. Vika poured the alcohol over CJ’s chest, and then she rubbed the small tattoo dry with the hem of her sleeve. With a glance to Libby, who held vigil with hands clasped to her mouth, Vika nodded once, then again placed the man’s finger to the tattoo on his chest.
This time when his chest rose, he cried out and kicked the air, tumbling Vika from his chest.
* * *
As CJ lay prone, Vika straddled him and pushed the hair from his face to kiss him. Her mouth was warm against his, giving so much. She kissed his eyelids and smoothed her lips along his cheek. Nothing felt more welcomed, so warm. He had landed home.
Though his body had remained within the circle, he’d experienced it all. The trip to Daemonia had taken a week, surely, though he’d known before going it would register only a short time in this realm. The landscape had been vicious. Razor winds, agonizing heat, combined with brutal cold and rivers of blood and souls. It was the closest he ever wanted to get to Beneath.
Surprisingly, War had stood good on his word. But the moment the demon had granted CJ the soul bringer’s halo, the entirety of Daemonia had lifted their heads and sniffed out the intruder. He’d battled against claws, talons, fangs and bladed wings. Blood had run from his doppelgänger, and bones had cracked. He’d felt every break, every slashed muscle, every bite to tender flesh, and all the anger and relentless hatred that brewed the place of all demons to the nightmare it was.
And the whole time? He’d felt Vika’s hand in his. Along with TJ’s hand—and then suddenly Libby’s hand. CJ had felt a connection to the people who meant the most to him. So he’d fought and withstood the masses of demons determined to claim a strip of his flesh as prize.
And he’d survived to return. Without any passengers. He felt nothing had hitched a ride in his soul. He hoped that was so.
>
Setting aside the horror of the past week—or more likely, minutes—CJ fell into the warm, lush strength of Viktorie St. Charles’s kiss. He wrapped his arms about her sleek body and pulled her onto his, connecting at hips, stomach, chest and mouth, reassuring she was real and he was alive and back. In her arms.
Never again would he lose days in the archives because it was important to fill his cranium with as much spellcraft as he could possibly fit in there. There were better things in life, such as smiling at a beautiful woman, gazing into her green eyes, kissing her soft mouth and holding her perfect body against his.
He would never let her go. And while his skin burned from the touch of the nail at his throat, he thanked her grandmother for the power that enabled Vika to love him.
Perhaps it had been the kick-start as well that made his flesh feel as though he’d been jolted with a few hundred thousand volts. Good girl that she’d remembered about the spell.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she whispered and kissed his cheek. “I thought I’d lost you.”
He kissed her back. “Never. You’d come after me though, right? Catch my corpse light and keep me?”
“Don’t say that. I want you whole and in my arms, dark one.”
A man cleared his throat, and CJ remembered it had also been his brother’s presence that had been with him for the entire journey through Daemonia.
Vika sat up beside him, and he missed her warmth like that. He pushed up, and before he could pull her back to him, he noticed for the first time he held a halo in one hand. He turned it before him, and he and Vika looked it over. It was a thin piece of dull metal, looking beaten down by the elements over the years. It appeared easily bendable, but when he gave the thin circlet a try, he found it adamant.
“Doesn’t look like much,” she said. “That’s the soul bringer’s halo? His soul is contained within?”
“I guess so.” He rapped it on the hardwood floor, producing a dull, most unangelic clunk. “Thanks, TJ. We did it.”