by Larissa Ione
Her haughty sniff announced her irritation. “My parents didn’t fill our heads with ridiculous fables—”
“They’re not all fables. Definitely not this one.” He tightened his grip on her arm and made a beeline for the exit. “Lothar is known as the Prince of Riches. A sacrifice to him gets you everything you want, and since you are one of the guests of honor...” He trailed off, letting her finish the thought. At her sharp inhale, he knew she’d pieced it together.
“I’m either part of the plan to get the riches...or I’m a sacrifice.”
“Exactly.”
“Well then,” she said crisply, “I don’t see why I need to hang around.” Clever, how she made it sound like leaving had been her idea.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” he ground out.
They’d nearly made it to the main doorway when a big blond male blocked their escape route. The dark energy emanating from him marked him as a fallen angel, which meant this could only be Shrike, the fallen angel who’d put this whole thing together.
“Leaving so soon?” His smile, showing way too many teeth and far too much of his gums, was as greasy as his slicked-back hair.
Razr was about to tell the guy to fuck off when Jedda offered an apologetic smile. “I have a family matter to attend to, Mr. Shrike,” she said, inching closer to Razr. “And Razr kindly offered to escort me home.”
Razr had to give her points for diplomacy, but Shrike didn’t bite. “Unfortunately, I can’t let you do that,” he said. “The festivities are about to start, and I haven’t had a chance to speak to you about my proposal.”
“Yes, well, this is a bit of an emergency.” Jedda adjusted her sparkly shoulder bag with an impatient tug. “Why don’t we set up an appointment at my office for sometime this week?”
The smile on Shrike’s face turned predatory, and Razr cursed inwardly. This was about to go south, and the bitch of it was that with Razr’s angelic abilities bound, Shrike was a fuckton more powerful than Razr. Any negotiations would be all about Razr’s ability to bluff his way through shit.
“As I said,” Shrike practically purred, “the festivities are about to begin.”
Suddenly, the lights shut off, leaving the space lit only by the flickering flames from the candles and torch sconces on the walls.
Yeah. Real south.
Speculative murmurs rose up, and unholy excitement charged the air.
“I don’t like this,” Jedda whispered, and Razr experienced the oddest desire to comfort her. To protect her. And not just because she was in possession of his gem. Heck, she might be responsible for stealing it and killing the humans who had been protecting it.
If so, he’d deal with it. But right now his only goal was to keep her safe.
And to get out of this alive.
Chapter Five
Jedda had been in a lot of uncomfortable and downright dangerous situations before, but something about this one made the others, even the battles, seem tame.
Shrike wasn’t your average Big Evil. He was Bigger Evil with an attitude. She had no idea what fallen angels were capable of, but it was probably safe to assume that they could make most demons look like kittens.
Razr, on the other hand... She wasn’t sure what to think about him. He was smoking hot, for sure. She’d always been a sucker for dark hair and dark eyes, and she’d bet her life-stone that beneath his exquisitely tailored suit was the body of an athlete. He probably had amazing wings, too.
But there was also a familiarity between them that didn’t make sense. She would have remembered meeting him, and yet she swore she felt a connection, as if their pulses were synced. And if that was true, then his pulse was pounding as hard as hers as she watched a bunch of blunt-snouted, horned dudes with wicked blades on the ends of long poles advance toward the center of the room. She thought the weapons were called halberds, but she supposed their name wasn’t important. The fact that they could cleave a body in half was.
Razr moved close, and while Jedda was capable of taking care of herself in most circumstances, she had to admit to being grateful that he was, at least for now, her ally.
“Shrike,” Razr growled. “What’s going on—”
He broke off as, in a single, coordinated move, the halberd guys swung their blades so suddenly and so fast that she didn’t have time to scream before a dozen heads plunked to the floor. Their owners’ decapitated bodies collapsed next to them with wet, obscene thuds.
“Lexi!” A roar of rage tore from Razr’s throat as a female in a crimson evening gown hit the tile, blood spurting from her headless neck.
Nausea and horror rolled through Jedda, and she stumbled backward as the shock wore off the crowd. Some people screamed, some cried, but most laughed.
Razr launched in a blur of fury. His fist slammed into Shrike’s jaw, knocking him into a wall. Before Shrike could recover, Razr had Shrike by the throat and pinned, their faces nose to nose. “You killed her! What the fuck?”
“This is a demon dinner party,” Shrike growled through bloodied lips. “What did you expect?” He smiled, one Jedda assumed was intended to be comforting but only came off as terrifying. “Besides, wasn’t Lexi cursed with a bunch of lives and deaths? She’ll pop up again somewhere.” His eyes lit up with a malevolent crimson light, and little bursts of lightning sizzled at the tips of his fingers as he raised his hand toward the back of Razr’s head. “But you won’t.”
“No!” Jedda shouted. “Don’t do it, Shrike. He’s with me, and if you kill him, I swear that whatever ‘proposal’ you have for me is going to die with him. I will never work with you.”
Shrike snorted, but he dropped his hand to his side again. “I think you will. But I’ll let him live. For now.”
The crowd began to chant a bunch of mumbo-jumbo Jedda didn’t recognize, but she did understand one word: Lothar. Her gut churned again.
“Fuck you.” Razr shoved Shrike hard enough to make his skull crack against the wall. “Let us leave, you piece of shit. The ceremony is over.”
One of Shrike’s hooded goons spotted his boss’s predicament and headed their way, the edge of his blade dripping with blood. Jedda forced her wobbly legs to move closer to Razr so she could tap him on the shoulder and impress upon him the urgency of their situation. Shrike might have shelved his homicidal urges for the moment, but he seemed like the kind of psycho who could change his mind in an instant. “Hey, maybe you should back off a little...”
“You really have no choice but to release me.” Shrike’s deceptively calm voice wigged Jedda out. In her experience, hotheads were far better to deal with than people whose emotions ran cold. Both could be dangerous, but hotheads were more predictable and easier to manipulate. Shrike didn’t strike her as either of those things. He gestured toward a closed door nearby. “Why don’t we go someplace quieter to talk?”
Razr hesitated. He was going to refuse and get them both killed, wasn’t he? Man, she’d been sealed inside collapsed diamond mines and had never felt this trapped. Finally, just as she was counting the number of goons between her and the nearest door, Razr cursed and backed off. What he didn’t do was stop glaring daggers at the other fallen angel. Not even while Shrike led them to a grand library full of literary classics, modern fiction, and a sprinkling of demonic tomes.
Seething at Shrike’s trickery and betrayal, and still hopped up on an adrenaline dump, she rounded on the bastard as soon as the door closed. “What is it you want, Mr. Shrike? And why didn’t you simply make an appointment instead of inviting me here for this...this...spectacle?”
She looked over at Razr, who stood a couple of feet away, his fists clenched at his sides and his dark eyes smoldering. Hatred practically seeped from his pores, and she swore she could feel it in a wave of acid heat washing over her skin.
Shrike walked around the desk and sank into the leather chair behind it. He gestured for both her and Razr to take seats in the two chairs across from him. She accepted, but Razr shot the ot
her fallen angel the bird and remained standing, his gaze sharp, his stance deceptively relaxed. Jedda got the impression that inside he was coiled like a snake and ready to strike.
Shrike shot Razr an annoyed glance but then focused on Jedda. “I invited you here because the things I’m going to ask you for aren’t going to be easy to find. Hence, the sacrifice. It’s important that its energy envelops you.”
Evil bastard. Jedda didn’t have a whole lot of room to lecture anyone on the subject of ethics, but she’d never tricked anyone into attending a murder-themed dinner party.
No, but you’ve killed too.
Dammit, no she hadn’t. Not intentionally.
But she’d benefited from the death, hadn’t she?
Shoving her errant thoughts back into the deepest recesses of her mind where they belonged, she looked Shrike in his steel-gray eyes. “I don’t appreciate the deception,” she said in her brisk business voice, the one she used when dealing with deplorable people like Tom from the Taaffeite mine. “And I definitely don’t appreciate being enveloped in some strange spell. So I don’t think I’ll be doing business with you.” She started to stand, but lightning fast, his big hand clamped around her wrist.
A snarl rang out, freezing her in her seat more effectively than Shrike’s grip ever could.
“Release her.” Razr’s eyes glittered with the threat of violence. It made her wonder what fallen angels were capable of. And it was a little bit of a turn-on.
Shrike grinned, a smile so cold she shivered. “As long as she promises to hear me out.”
Shit. She didn’t want to hear another word from this bin of burning rubbish, but she also didn’t have a death wish, nor did she want to see Razr flopping around on the floor next to his head.
“Of course,” she agreed with forced calm, hoping to alleviate the tension and get this meeting over with. “I suppose it can’t hurt.”
“Good.” Shrike released her, and she resisted the urge to rub her wrist, where her skin burned as if his fingers had been sticks of fire. “Now, here’s the deal. What I want will be a challenge, but I know you’ll come through for me.”
“Just tell me what it is, and I’ll tell you if I think it’s possible.”
For some reason, he looked amused, and she didn’t like that one bit. “You are, of course, familiar with the famous crystal skulls of Mesoamerica.”
She couldn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. Not only was every one of them almost certainly fake, but if he wanted one he could easily hire any competent dealer in antiquities. He didn’t need her for that. “Of course. But—”
“Are you also familiar with the crystal devil’s horns?”
She sucked in a startled breath. The existence of the crystal devil’s horns wasn’t common knowledge. Even most of those who were familiar with the legends didn’t believe they existed.
“I’m sorry,” Razr said, “but what the fuck is a crystal devil’s horn?”
Shrike sat back, the smug look on his face so obnoxious she wanted to slap it off. “Not long after the first crystal skulls came onto the scene, a human archaeologist digging in Mexico discovered a curved crystal horn, much like a ram’s horn. It was perfectly seamless, with no flaws.”
Jedda leaned forward eagerly, unable to contain her excitement. She loved mysteries that surrounded the elements of the earth. “It was found deep inside a cave full of human skeletons, and it was reportedly hot to the touch. The man who found it went insane shortly afterward, and the horn was lost to the ages. But then, in 1938, Adolf Hitler sent a team to the same cave in search of more treasures. They found another horn, and they assumed that it, along with the first one, belonged to a crystal skull. But no skull that matched the horns was ever found.”
Shrike shook his head. “A skull was found.” He dug into his desk drawer and pulled out a black and white photo of what she could only describe as a crystal skull. A crystal demon skull.
“That’s incredible,” she murmured. “All the other skulls are human, or at least primate in nature. But this looks like something you’d find in a demon graveyard.” Its long, pointed chin and sharp teeth gave it a monstrous profile, and two perfectly round indentions at the temples appeared to be the perfect resting places for horns.
Razr strode over and pulled the photo to the edge of the desk. “Where is it now?”
“According to my sources, Satan himself owns it.” At Razr’s snort, Shrike took insult, his mouth tightening in a grim line. “You have something to add?”
“No,” Razr said, the odd note in his voice making Jedda suspect he knew something pertinent to this conversation. “It’s just that Satan hasn’t been seen in a while.”
Shrike tapped his long fingers on the desktop. “So you believe the rumors that he’s been usurped?”
Usurped? Jedda hadn’t heard that. But then, she’d never, not in her hundred and forty years of life, been interested in the politics of the Heavenly, human, or demonic realms unless they affected her directly. Heck, she was barely interested in her own species’ politics.
At Razr’s casual shrug, she sighed. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to do about this. You’d be better off hiring someone who locates antiquities. I’m a gemologist. I specialize in finding gems that are still rough in the earth or that have been enhanced with supernatural abilities.”
“Don’t toy with me, sweetheart. I know you deal in all gems. And the devil’s horn is one of the most precious.”
Shit. How could she get out of this without revealing the truth—that certain types of crystal were beyond her ability to sense? Not only that, but quartz crystal, like that associated with the skulls and the horns, might as well be her kryptonite? She’d learned that in the most embarrassing way imaginable.
“Mr. Shrike, only two horns are believed to exist. I’m not sure I can find either one of them.” She cleared her throat. “And I’m certain that I won’t find them if you call me sweetheart again.”
He laughed, but she’d expected no less. “I have faith in you. But I’m not finished.” He braced his forearms on the desk and leaned forward. “There’s something else I want.”
Of course there was.
“Have you heard of the Gems of Enoch?”
Her heart stopped. Just...stopped. Her chest tightened, her breath burned, and her stomach dropped to her feet. Beneath her skin, she felt her panic response rise up, and she had to force herself to calm the hell down.
And was it her imagination or did she see Razr tense up out of the corner of her eye? Had to be her imagination. Unless he sensed the sudden, cold terror inside her?
She hid her anxiety behind a forced laugh. “Mr. Shrike. Surely you don’t believe that silly legend.”
“It’s no legend.” Shrike’s brows slammed down in annoyance. “Three gemstones made of angel blood and tears. Each was rumored to possess different powers, and each was placed in an angel’s care. These gemstones, when activated together, formed powerful magic. But around a century ago, three extraordinarily powerful demons defeated the angels and stole the gems.”
He was right about the stones, but he’d gotten the story wrong. Very wrong. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m not wasting my time on a silly goose chase.”
“It’s true,” Razr chimed in, not helping her at all. “At least, the existence of the stones is reality.” He wandered around the library, his gaze seeming to take in everything at once, and Jedda got the feeling he was committing every tome and every artifact on display to memory. “Shrike fucked up the story though.”
“Really.” Shrike glared. “Maybe you could tell me where I went wrong and how you know this?”
“The exploits of the angels who used the gems in battle are well-recorded in Heaven’s Akashic Library, and I like to read.” Razr ran his hand over a pile of books on the table near the window. “According to several accounts, demons didn’t defeat the angels. Demons murdered the humans who were the custodians of the gems.”
Well,
that was a little closer to the truth, she supposed. But only one human had been killed, and the guilt weighed on her like a two-ton boulder.
Shrike gave a skeptical snort. “Why would angels need human custodians?”
“Because the power contained in the stones needs a conduit.” Jedda immediately cursed her loose lips. “At least, that’s according to the legends,” she added quickly.
Storm clouds gathered in Shrike’s eyes and his fingernails dug into the desktop. “It appears that my source hasn’t been entirely forthcoming with information,” he ground out, and man, she wouldn’t want to be that source. Then, just as quickly as the storm came in, it passed, and Shrike looked between Razr and Jedda. “If humans hold the gemstones, how do the angels draw on the power?”
“I don’t know,” Razr replied as he flipped through a book about carnivorous vegetation in the demon realm. “I didn’t get that far in my reading.”
Jedda knew the answer to Shrike’s question, but she didn’t feel like sharing. Hell, she didn’t feel like remembering that the angels wore special jewelry made from their corresponding gemstone. The angel who had murdered Jedda’s sister had worn an amethyst charm around his neck that matched the stone Manda possessed.
“This,” Ebel said as he rubbed his finger across his necklace’s pendant, “allows me to tap into the power of the gem I know is in your possession.”
He looked at Jedda, Manda, and Reina in turn, his icy gaze sending a tingle of dread skittering up Jedda’s spine. He’d caught them in the house they’d shared, a sprawling seventeenth century French manor that had belonged to their deceased parents.
“Where is it? Where are all three of them?” He moved toward Manda as she cowered in the corner, his booted foot coming down in the puddles of blood and gems spilled all over the floor. “I sense mine. You reek of it. I want it back.”
“She can’t give it to you!” Reina screamed. “It’s impossible.”