by Jenn Stark
“Holkeri was still standing there as I came up upon him, standing and laughing in the fire. The entire village was now in flames. There was so much screaming all around, torment, pain. Fear. I’d brought that to the humans. That was my legacy. Not my truth, not my strength, not the art of war. But the utter despair of debilitating, paralyzing fear. I was damned before I reached Holkeri, smote down, becoming the creature the humans already believed I was. But if I was demonized for my rage, I was also born of it.” His lips twisted into a dark smile. “I was banished that very hour, but not before I held Holkeri beneath the fire long enough to sear his bones so deeply that no glamour he could ever effect would truly mask his monstrous form from his own kind.”
Maria opened her mouth to speak, then shut it.
“Serena was gone. And in a matter of minutes, I was wrenched away from Earth on the magic of humans who did not realize their own strength. It was a lesson I didn’t need to learn twice, but the damage, of course, had already been done. Still…” He tipped his glass to the stricken-looking Maria. “Holkeri saw me coming that first time. He hasn’t seen me coming in all the times since.”
“And tonight?” Maria managed.
“Tonight, he knows I’m here. Ordinarily, I would fear for the future of the man called Nico, if he in truth tried to lie to his master. Demons who have committed the sin of murder develop a taste for it. Holkeri certainly has. I haven’t.”
He grimaced. “But after this night, there won’t be enough of Holkeri to harm another child of God again.” He turned to regard Serena. She was surrounded by human men and women, a protective circle understood by no one as well as him. “And any who throw in their lot with him shall suffer the same.”
Chapter Eighteen
Maria didn’t opt for another hit of tequila and instead switched back to her flute of faux champagne, her eyes still on the door. “Holkeri hasn’t shown up, right?” she asked. “He’s not in some glamour I’m missing?”
Warrick stirred out of his unhappy trip down memory lane and leaned back in the banquette, scanning the room. “No. Other than Serena, there are humans and spawn, and—”
He frowned, going slightly still. “I thought you told Harris to place only a few operatives on-site. I count fully a dozen.”
Maria winced. The problem with demons, it seemed, was you couldn’t hide from them. “I think you’re overestimating the amount of influence I have in my job. I can make recommendations, even strong recommendations, but it’s not like I can tell the chief of police that a known drug kingpin is going to be making some kind of potentially lethal move in a public nightclub in the heart of his city and have him be all ‘you know, why don’t you handle this yourself.’”
“And he still let you come?”
“The man’s not an idiot.” Maria shrugged. “He came to the same conclusion you did. As far as bait goes, I’m the real deal.” She felt the cool eyes of the woman she now knew as Serena on her once again. “Speaking of, your ex-girlfriend is totally picking up on the chum in the waters. How is it she hasn’t figured out you’re sitting beside me?”
Maria didn’t miss how Warrick’s hands tightened on the tequila glass, but he didn’t grip it tight enough to shatter it. He was more or less under control, at least for the moment. “There are two possibilities. One is that my glamour is sufficient, or that my proximity to a warded human is enough distraction that the combination proves sufficient. The other is that she has long since forgotten me.”
Maria snorted. “I think we can safely rule out option two.” She searched her own emotions, assessing her reactions for weakness. She wasn’t exactly jealous of Serena, she decided. The woman had betrayed Warrick, and while he appeared still deeply in need of therapy over that betrayal, he also had the benefit of an entrenched hatred for Holkeri that was keeping him laser-focused. That was good.
Another flurry of activity at the front door had her going tense—and a quick glance showed her she wasn’t the only one. The operatives littered throughout the room straightened slightly in their lounging conversations, tilting glasses, chatting it up…all of them no doubt packing. Someone must have used an awful lot of influence to get the owners of Morpheus to put all their guests at risk.
Then again, this was LA. Some of the people on this floor would have gladly paid tens of thousands of dollars for the publicity that was going to ensue if anything interesting went down. Assuming they didn’t end up dead.
Her gaze swiveled to the front door. “Please tell me that those guys aren’t off-limits,” she said under her breath. “We’re going to have to give LAPD and the Feds something.”
“They’re human,” Warrick said. “Lieutenants of the La Noche operation, most of them already lit on some drug mix I can’t discern. Not enough to be noticeable but…enough to impair them as the night goes on.”
“Really.” Maria eyed the men. They didn’t look drugged. They looked like what they were: well-dressed thugs. Well-dressed thugs who were also packing, she was sure of it.
“Yes.” Warrick nodded. His voice was harsher now, and she glanced at his right hand, which had abandoned the glass and was now gripping the table. “Apparently, you’re not the night’s only distraction. If Holkeri puts up these men as a screen, human scum to be sacrificed but not by his hand, he could slip away.”
Then Warrick hissed out a word that was probably a curse, but not in any language Maria had ever heard. She waited a beat, then slid her own gaze to the doorway. The lieutenants had scattered in a loose circle, hands in pockets, stances easy, your basic group of guys looking to party. But there was no denying their focus on the man who’d just walked in the room. The man she’d only seen in grainy photographs, his face always turned away from the camera.
Or had it been turned away?
“Cameras? He seriously doesn’t care?”
“He doesn’t care. No camera can capture him, or any demon, not even with today’s technology. Holkeri doesn’t have to hide. His essential nature provides more than enough disguise for humans.”
Maria nodded, focusing again on Takio—or Holkeri, as Warrick knew him. She vividly remembered the way Cedo had described him, but this man was no hideous creature slinking into the room, a horror to everyone who gazed upon him. To her, Takio looked exactly like he sounded. A Eurasian male, middle height, middle weight, wearing an understated black suit that was no doubt insanely expensive. His face was startlingly attractive—with tawny skin stretched over high cheekbones, and flashing dark eyes that had a faint purple glow to them, now that she was looking for it. He glanced around the room with what seemed like sincere approval, but Maria was positioned too far away from the door for him to see her, she thought.
Had Cedo truly been that wrong about Takio? Or had he merely been able to see him through the eyes of a demon, the truth of Takio’s appearance something that could not be hidden anymore from his own kind?
Without another word, Warrick stood and left her table. She felt his loss as almost a visceral jolt, but she understood it. As powerful as his glamour was and regardless of how strong Maria’s ward seemed to be, Warrick couldn’t run the risk of being identified before he was ready to make his move. Instead, she studied Takio’s expression, seeing the steel beneath the easy smile. She had a feeling he was very much a shoot-first, ask-questions-later kind of guy.
Regardless, whatever he saw in the pulsing lights of Morpheus seemed to please him, and he proceeded to enter the room with a loose-limbed swagger. Two silver-clad waitresses greeted him inside the door, one with the martini glass filled with clear liquor, the other gesturing for him to accompany her forward, apparently to his table. As he moved through the room, there were the usual greetings and fawning, and Takio seemed to take it all in stride. He was a celebrity here, Maria realized. This wasn’t her turf, exactly, but the cops who patrolled the heart of the city weren’t idiots. How was it that, up till now, they had missed the preferred nightclub of one of the most notorious gang lords in LA?
&
nbsp; Her gaze swiveled back to the men now watching Takio. Plausible deniability was definitely in the guy’s favor. With Takio playing it so close to the vest, these cops couldn’t tie him to any specific crime. Takio might be a suspected drug lord, but nothing had ever stuck to him. He was a free man.
Finally, Takio reached the VIP sanctuary that was twin to the sea of glittering beauty where Maria currently claimed her very own island of solitude. Then, with a move of smooth, almost languorous grace, he turned and saw her…truly saw her.
In that moment, Maria understood what must have helped fuel the man’s unprecedented rise as a criminal kingpin—both now and in however many previous centuries he’d lived. The pull of his gaze was unlike anything she had ever experienced before, even with Warrick. Despite herself, Maria wanted to stand, to cross over to this man, to put her hand in his and see what he had to say to her. Not because she was eager to take him down either. But because she wanted him to notice her, wanted him to pay attention.
Unbidden, an image of her cousin sprang to mind. Beautiful, wild Cara, whose star had burned so fast and bright. Had she met Takio in the course of her work? Was he the reason she’d been recruited so easily into La Noche, willing to sacrifice her own body, selling herself as a mule to make this man richer?
Cara’s cross seemed to burn against Maria’s neck, and from sheer force of habit, she lifted her hand to grasp the small, slender icon.
Across the room, Takio smiled, nodded to her. He turned to one of the men standing beside him, issued instructions. Maria swallowed as the man turned her way, and suddenly, she wished she’d taken that last slug of tequila. This was what she’d been waiting for, though. She had to be pulled into Takio’s web, had to be placed squarely in danger. Until those two things had happened, Warrick couldn’t make his move. And until Warrick could make his move, everyone in this nightclub was at risk.
This would work, Maria thought. They’d nail Takio to the wall. And that made everything she’d endured—all her training, her waiting, her tracking, her pain…worth it.
None of this is worth it.
Warrick stood in the shadows of one of the ridiculous purple Christmas trees, glaring out as he saw one of Takio’s lieutenants approach Maria. She played her part to the tee, the perfect combination of delighted, favored human, with no indication of the steel of the cop beneath.
Maria stood and followed the lieutenant, but Warrick was sure her cover was already blown. Takio would have done his homework on her. Once he’d decided to look, it wouldn’t have taken him long to figure out who she really was, especially now that the Citadel had gone up in flames and his operation had been routed there. Maria would never be able to work in that neighborhood again as an undercover cop, but she’d done her job, and now Warrick would do his. The gangs would reform, a new leader would take hold, but it wouldn’t be Takio. And that was all he could do. Humans had to fight their own battles.
But this battle was his. Had been his since he’d been first condemned. Inevitably, he’d send Holkeri back beyond the veil a little more damaged than before, a little more desperate. Inevitably, Holkeri would come back.
Each new time Warrick would be summoned to rout the demon, he reminded himself that the rage that continued to burn within him still served a purpose. And that if he removed Holkeri from that equation completely, he risked the loss of that purifying rage. It had been rage that had condemned him, after all, but also rage that allowed him to become the best at what he did: leading the Syx.
And what was a twisted hero without the villain who drove him?
That was what he’d told himself, over all these long years. On some level, it was what he believed. But now, watching the human he’d come to prize more than anything else in all creation walk toward Holkeri with a fierce smile on her lips, a determined grace and strength to her stride, Warrick realized he’d been a fool. Far better for him to have lost his rage centuries ago than to allow Maria to spend even a moment at risk from this despicable excuse for a creature of God.
If anything happened to her, Warrick couldn’t survive it. Not anymore. It would break him far more deeply than his original damnation.
For his part, Takio seemed to understand that he was the center of the show. He watched Maria approach him with a feral, needy grin stretching across his mouth, a grin that went deeper than his glamour to paint itself onto the elongated, demonic form that hovered beneath the glittering illusion of his handsome, sculpted face, his elegant clothes. He was intent, far too intent, as if he was the one so close to a coveted prize, as if he was on the verge of claiming final victory.
Warrick was also concentrating so fiercely that the voice, when it came, was as shocking as a spear to the gut.
“He told me you would come here tonight. I didn’t believe him.”
Warrick turned and regarded Serena, seeing both the transcendently beautiful glamour she presented with barely a ripple of need, to the horrific, withered crone beneath. She had still appeared to be Fallen when he’d seen her last, by Holkeri’s side at the breaking of the world. She’d not yet been held accountable for the sin that would so damn her.
But when her condemnation had come, it’d been a doozy.
“So you do miss me.” She preened as he said nothing, but merely stared at her. “I didn’t believe Holkeri when he told me that either.”
Warrick blinked, gradually forcing his attention back, realizing almost too late that Serena didn’t fully understand the added benefit of his enforcer status. How could she, not being an enforcer herself? So she didn’t know that Warrick could pierce the glamour of any of his brethren as easily as he could see through a light mist. There were no secrets he didn’t have access to, not among his own kind. No demon could hide from him.
“I expected you to be more…surprised, though,” she said, when Warrick would have turned his gaze back to Takio and Maria. “Both now—and then.”
He refocused on her. “I didn’t realize you were no longer Fallen,” he said, his words low and harsh.
Serena’s laugh was equally grim. “That night? Neither did I. It was only after you were sent beyond the veil that I felt the change upon me, the fires twisting my limbs, scourging my skin. Then I too was caught up in the wailing lament of the humans.” She said this last with a sneer, the expression rendering even her impossibly beautiful glamour an ugly shroud. “I would have been thrust into the Nothing with you, were it not for Holkeri.”
Warrick scoffed a laugh. “Holkeri is the betrayer who got you into this mess.”
“No,” she said, and her words were emphatic—emphatic and not even the slightest bit desperate. This was not a creature struggling to believe the lies she told herself, Warrick realized. This was someone certain in her position, her strength. This was someone who knew she was right. “Holkeri showed me what you were not willing to accept. That the humans we’d been allowed to teach were graceless wretches unworthy of the love the Father had showered upon them. That even as they accepted our teaching, learned from us, grew and thrived and reached never before heights in their own abilities because of us, even then they were plotting to overthrow us, to shut us out. He showed me this, and I saw it with my own eyes. It was the truth.”
“Of course it was the truth,” Warrick snapped. As Serena’s brows shot up, he swiveled his gaze back toward the opposite side of the room, seeking out Maria. It was easy to do. Her light gleamed brightly beneath the strange glow of Morpheus’s décor, making her a beacon in the room. In contrast, Takio stood like a hunched-over troll beside her, little more than a lumpy smudge.
Warrick returned his gaze to Serena’s dark, fathomless eyes. “Humans are not pets or playthings, Serena. They think. They struggle. They aspire to greater things. It was only a matter of time before they acted against us—even if the Fallen weren’t their primary target.”
“They turned on their own gods,” she retorted, and in that word, Warrick wondered if she might have gone a little mad after all. “They had no righ
t.”
This was a lament as old as time itself, and one Warrick had no patience for. “Why did you listen to Holkeri? He was no friend to you.”
“He was my only friend,” she said, her voice taking on the mantle of indignation. “He was the one who came for me, when you had been thrust away in smoke and fire. I was being pulled away as well, to be banished, stuck into the Nothing, perhaps never to return, and what would my precious Fallen status do for me then? I would still have been lost. And so he pulled me back, and I let him pull me, helped him wreak his vengeance against the mortals who dared do this to us, steeping myself in their blood.”
Now it was Warrick’s turn to stare at her. “You weren’t there, though,” he insisted. “When I returned to avenge the humans that Holkeri was murdering, to stop him from killing more—you weren’t there.”
“I was there.” She fairly spat the words. “There to see you reemerge as the accursed sword of God, to watch you exact your vengeance and wallow in your rage. There to watch you take your wrath out on Holkeri, when you had no right—”
“And where did you go after that?” Warrick rumbled, cutting her off.
“I healed him,” she hissed. “Then and every time after. With the core of humans who still worshipped at my feet, I was there to guide them in summoning Holkeri from his prison, to gather up his broken body, heal him, and hear his spoken truth. That you had forgotten me. That you had never loved me, despite all your promises. Despite all I’d done for you.”
“You betrayed me.” Warrick couldn’t help it, he could feel the banked embers of his rage lighting anew. “You handed me over as a sacrifice to save your own sorry skin. I thought you’d been banished after that. I thought it was done. There is no way for me to find you beyond the veil, and that’s where I thought you had been sent.”