“Aye, Drustan,” said Semiazaz. “Bring her out so we can meet her.”
“No,” Drustan said just as evenly. He might not know exactly what to do with Anna Pemberlin, but he did know she would suffer in Semiazaz’s hands.
“Why do you need a woman when you have me?” Bast hissed.
Daria, a thin, dark fairy hovered closer. “Because despite your undulating, you cannot touch him for more than a second.”
“I certainly can,” Bast shrieked.
“He won’t let you take over human bodies to please him,” Daria said and maneuvered around Bast to get a better look at the house.
Bast huffed, creating a tight-fitting velvet gown around her body. She topped the look off with a sparkling circle of diamonds in her dark hair. “But when I’m alive again, I will be his queen.”
“No matter how often you say it, Drustan has never asked you to be his queen.” The words came as a snarl from Gehenna, another female demon who sported curled horns protruding from her long red hair.
Bast laughed bubbles of disdain. “You can’t even wear a crown.” Her eyes slid over Gehenna’s horns and Megaira’s snaking tresses.
Semiazaz rolled his eyes. “Desist,” he said. They quieted but continued to shoot jealous glares at one another.
All the female demons had made plays to attract Drustan’s attention during his life, Bast being the most obvious. Luckily Semiazaz had forbidden their advances when he had been a young boy, but since he’d become a man, his father had resigned his position as protector.
“Stupid jealous females,” said Troglodytarum. The short, hunched demon was another who would like to become Drustan’s mate. Not so much now that he was fully grown, but as a boy, the troll had been sneaky and persistent in his advances until Drustan had unleashed his magic to deter him.
“You’re just pouting because he doesn’t have a child for you to torture,” Daria said beneath her breath. A low hum of squabbling ensued. Tedious.
“Enough.” Semiazaz’s image grew to block the others. His massive eye centered on Drustan, black and bulbous in its shiny emptiness.
“Is it she? The one from your dreams?” he asked. Drustan hesitated a mere second, but it was all Semiazaz needed to decipher an answer. “Where did you find her?”
“I didn’t. She found me.”
“And you can touch her without her sickening?”
Drustan nodded.
“She is dangerous, son,” the demon leader said. “I have seen your downfall at her hands.”
“So you’ve said, though you won’t explain how,” Drustan said.
Behind Semiazaz’s large face, demons growled and cursed, whipping wind around to tussle the warlock’s white hair. It was nearly comical. Semiazaz’s eye twitched in annoyance as Bechard roared like deep thunder. Semiazaz sighed and shrank down to the same size as the others.
“You leave us out when this woman has as much to do with us as it does with him,” Bechard bellowed. The tempest demon yelled everything, but like the rest, he was almost beyond control when Semiazaz used one of his tricks.
“I was but looking closer through the window at the girl. She is lovely. Perhaps Drustan has decided on a human queen.”
Bast shrieked into the night sky. If the stars could shatter, stardust would be raining down upon them. “I will kill her.”
Drustan pierced the cursing feline with a focused glare. “You will stay away from her or I will see you dead and gone to hell one second after your body is restored.”
Bechard fumed, kicking up the wind to make more acorns shoot down, ricocheting off the hard planks covering the house’s roof. “She is an outsider and Semiazaz says the prophecy foretells our failure with her presence in the stones.”
“Not all of the outcomes,” Drustan reminded them. “There are many with the woman in it that show us gaining control of the threads.”
“There she is,” called Trill, a great horned beast who liked to portray the biblical Satan with his flaming eyes and spikey beard. He pointed a cloven hoof toward the window. “Come out here,” he beckoned, changing his voice to sound like Drustan.
The door opened. Now was not the time for Anna Pemberlin to do what he ordered. Drustan cursed under his breath. Before he could push her back inside, the demons crowded in, hurtling acorns and leaves, making her shield her face. Her body seemed tugged by the wind, but the demons couldn’t take her from the heavily warded deck.
She should die, Semiazaz spoke into his mind. It will secure your rule.
“You don’t know that for certain,” Drustan yelled. “Leave her.”
Rocks rose from the forest floor to the edge of the rail, hovering in the air. One flew, crashing into the side of the door, inches from where Anna stood. Another hit the window by her head, cracking the glass pane. A tree branch broke free above and toppled through the trees to fall past the house, tearing a scream from Anna.
They were trying to kill her, right before his eyes, when he’d only just found her. Even with a thousand chances of success, half of which had her in his life, Semiazaz wouldn’t risk a single chance at failure for Drustan’s happiness. Would not even consider it. What father would not consider his son’s happiness?
As if sliding open hundreds of intricate locks on a door in simultaneous precision, Drustan opened the gate sealing in his massive power, allowing the inferno of magic to emerge. He raised his hands and lightning shot high in the air, cracking out into the midst of the flickering demons. With a quick twist of his hands and a simple focus on the demonic particles of energy, he twisted the pack of thirteen into a funnel cloud. Doubt about his father and the sting of possible betrayal fed his fury.
“You will not touch what is mine!” His voice boomed across the brutal chaos, churning the air with waves of sound, throwing leaves and acorns and the demons’ own rocks back into the molten stew of their bitterness.
He blocked their high pitched curses from his mind and sent his firm message back, touching each individual consciousness. You will not touch Anna Pemberlin or you will suffer more than you have in four thousand years.
He loosed his power to scatter their energies for a long moment before lowering his arms. As they dropped, so did the wind and bits of forest-supplied ammunition. The bound demons re-sorted themselves on the forest floor. Drustan grimaced as he saw Anna peek out from the window, having run back inside. He cradled the back of his neck where the muscles tightened. How much had she seen of his evil?
Drustan focused on sealing his magic back into the fiery rock in his chest. He leaned over the rail. Semiazaz nodded to him from the ground. Had the dark wizard planned to expose him all along? Scare Anna out of his life?
Semiazaz moved his lips as if talking, but no sound came out. Drustan opened his mind to him. She cannot love you, son. You are a curse and draw only fear and hatred from others. They see you only as a monster. But you are a king to us.
Drustan felt a squeeze in his chest. He recognized it as regret, the same he’d felt each time one of his caretakers had died. “Go away now,” he said, knowing they could hear him. “Find my sisters and bring them here.” Drustan was tired of the promises and threats and prophecies. The final battle must occur soon. It was time to finish what had been started four thousand years ago.
When the other demons started to argue, Semiazaz held up a hand. “If you plan to keep her, my king, make sure not to get her with child.”
“Then he surely can’t make her his queen,” Bast pointed out. “Queens have children.”
“And you wish to bear his litter,” Daria said, a smirk evident.
Bast hissed and Daria stretched her black, leathery wings as if coiling for an attack.
Drustan pivoted toward his door. With child? After displaying his magic in all its horrible glory, he doubted Anna Pemberlin would remain long in the same room with him, let alone let him…He banished the thought of her naked, her perfect body moving against his.
“Go. Now,” he said, whispering
the words into each demon’s essence. Behind him, he felt the wind rush and slowly ebb.
Drustan pushed against the door, but the door pressed back, barred. He’d never installed a lock. Anna must have moved something against it. With a slight thought, he heard the heavy wooden chest in the entryway scrape across the floor.
“They are gone,” he called as he slid through. He lit more gas lamps with his magic. “You are safe.”
“Highly debatable since you are still here.” Anna’s voice came from the back room where he’d created a library.
He took a moment to dust the bits of tree off his tunic and dark pants. He loosened his shoulders. Hell. Here he was, possessor of ever-damnable power, and yet he worried over what she thought of him. He’d stopped caring long ago after the nuns’ multitude of exorcisms. But she was different. He could touch her.
Drustan strode across the main room that held his entryway, kitchen, and leather sofa before one of his hearths. He rounded the complexly beautiful spiral staircase made of cleaved logs for steps, and entered the study. Night glossed the wall of windows that reflected back the flames in the fireplace built opposite. Anna sat on a leather ottoman staring into the hearth, thin shoulders erect and stiff.
He let his eyes feast on the sight of her tawny hair, unpinned and resting in waves over her shoulders like a luxurious cape. She perched with her knees bent, legs tucked back along the side of the ottoman to rest her booted toes on the Egyptian rug covering the shined floorboards. Her hands rested in her lap.
Drustan didn’t know what to expect when he felt the door barred. Perhaps a trembling girl crumpled and hiding in a corner. But Anna Pemberlin was not that woman. He’d seen the fear in her face before and yet she sat calmly, awaiting her fate.
“Such courage,” he said, his low voice still seeming too loud in the silent room, broken only by the ticking of a clock and the crackle of peat and wet wood in the fire.
“A woman can possess as much courage as a man, sir.”
He walked closer until he could see her profile, her skin bathed in warm light. Such a lovely mix of features, tapered nose, long sooty lashes, feminine chin, curved cheekbones. He knew every line.
“Certainly,” he replied and walked closer. “But I had not thought even a man could be so calm after witnessing the dreadfulness of that group.”
She turned her face to his and he stilled his breath. Her green eyes glittered with the flame light as if moisture sat in them. Did she fight off tears? The thought bored through his gut.
“A dreadful group that you apparently rule. What then does that make you? Are you a demon?”
“I am human.” At least he still thought he was. “I was born from a woman, sired by a mortal man.”
“You are like no human I have ever known,” she said, studying him.
What did she see? Did she see a monster before her? Bast said he was handsome, but the she-demon desired desperately to be queen and she lied when it benefitted her cause. Despite his obvious magical power, Drustan trained with the swords of the Highlanders, building bodily strength the same as he built mental strength with books and ancient texts.
“You…move things,” she continued. “You kept those things, those demons from coming in here. How?”
He sat down slowly in the winged-back chair next to Anna. “I was born with certain unnatural abilities. I can move things by focusing on the particles that make up their whole.” He let his gaze move from her to the fire. “I can move myself as well, levitate. I can speak into minds.”
“But you can’t speak into mine,” she said, her voice tiny.
“No human without magic has ever been able to block me.” He leaned forward to prop his chin in his hand balanced on his knee, studying her. “Are you human, Anna Pemberlin? Do you possess magic?”
She blinked several times, and he wondered if he’d pushed her over the edge of a balanced sanity so that she’d jump up and start screaming. Instead, she parted her lovely, full lips. “I have always been human and have never known magic before today. But I’ve also thought demons to be merely tales to scare Christians. That magic was nothing but an illusion.”
He sat straight and nodded sagely. “Everything you’ve thought has been turned upside down. I am sorry for that. You must be in shock.”
More blinking. “Yes, I believe I must.” She placed her hand flat on her chest as if to feel her heart. “My pulse is extremely high, and I can’t seem to…” She sucked in air through her nose and forced a long steady exhale. She gasped softly and caught her chin and mouth in one delicate hand.
Drustan grabbed a wool blanket from the back of the library sofa. He draped it around her straight shoulders. “I will make you tea then. The nuns used to give persons in shock tea. They forced many cups on me.”
She looked at him. “The nuns you…killed?”
He hesitated. “’Twas not by choice that they died.” He rubbed a hand over his dry lips. “My touch…to all other humans is poison. As I grew from baby to child, this side effect of my dark soul became more potent. The nuns responsible for my care were slowly poisoned. The first, Sister Elizabeth who cared for me as an infant, she lasted three years. But then, the rest just two years each until the last. Sister Josephine lived only eleven months. After her, no one risked touching me further.”
“You’ve touched me,” Anna said.
“And you alone are unaffected. None of my powers seem to work when I touch you, the beneficial and the horrible.”
“Why is that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He moved slowly so as not to scare her further and placed one finger on the back of her hand. Closing his eyes, he tried to funnel his magic into her, to assess her physical condition. But the stone that lived forever in his chest was gone, dissolved and leaked away like water through sand. He felt a lightness akin to relief, like cool water after a burn.
Drustan took her small fist into his open palm and turned his attention to an open shadow box with pinned native insects that he’d been compiling. He tried to lift the golden-ringed dragonfly from the box, focusing on the metal pin that held its large, winged body to the green wool beneath it. Yet it was like insubstantial wishing. Same with the little orange ladybug pinned beside it. Drustan poured his focus over all the little bugs in the open box, but none of them budged.
“Now what if…?” Anna lifted her fist from his palm.
Drustan felt a slam of power surge out from his mind, directed toward the box. Pins and insects shot up through the air, the pinheads stabbing into the wooden rafter above, the bugs still attached and quivering from the impact.
Anna rested her hand on the slender column of her throat as she tipped back to see the ceiling impaled with silver pins and dangling insects. “Good lord,” she murmured.
Drustan stood and held the empty box toward the bugs and used his magic to wiggle them free. They tapped down one by one onto the green wool liner.
Her face swiveled back to his. “You could skewer people just as easily, couldn’t you?”
“Yes, but I don’t.” He indicated the sword over the mantel. “I use a sword if I want to skewer a man. A sword and my own muscle.”
Her gaze moved to his arm, and her lips parted before she jerked her attention back to the bugs and then the room, her gaze roaming over the floor-to-ceiling rows of book spines. “You collect insects? And books.” She shook her head, a thin bubble of humor in her tone as if she weren’t sure if this was real or if she’d truly gone mad. “You are a…complex man.”
Drustan stared at her, her words swirling around in his head. No one had ever called him anything close. A complex man, not a demon, not a monster, not a king. Anna Pemberlin was not only beautiful and brave; she was kind.
He heard a small grumble from her direction and her hand rested on her stomach. “Complex and a good cook,” he said. “The necessary is through that small door.” He pointed to the corner. “I will concoct something for us, to go with that tea.” He strode
back into the front of his house where he lit a small coal oven with his mind. He had mixed up bannocks to fry earlier and yanked out some root vegetables from a covered basket near the west window. They would soften in the oven.
“I need to leave,” she said, making him jerk upright, energy shooting through his body.
He’d never been surprised before. He hid the unpleasant reaction easily and tossed the seasoned vegetables into the oven. “Demons and wolves hunt more at night.”
She hesitated, her face turned to the dark window. “I’ll take my chances. The Macleans are probably out scouring the forest for me.”
He leaned against the polished stone he used as a cooking counter and crossed his arms. “I am not letting you leave here, Anna…tonight anyway. You would surely die out there.”
She stared at him for a long moment, glanced at the cracked window and then back at him. “You will take me to Kylkern Castle in the morning, then?” she asked.
He laid two thin slices of salt pork on the iron griddle over his stove and tossed on some coarse salt and rosemary. Should he lie until he could figure out a way to keep her? Deception was part of Drustan’s everyday life. He was an expert, taught by thirteen deceitful beings. Yet the lie lay across his tongue, flat and bitter. Anna was the opposite of his brethren. The idea of lying to her was like hurling a rotten tomato at a Renoir.
“Tomorrow,” she persisted. “At dawn. My sister must know that I am unharmed.”
He flipped the salt pork, the aroma filling the room. “I will send her word.”
“You will send her me,” Anna retorted. Her eyes narrowed, her slender fingers clasping her skirt on each side. Bloody hell, she was glorious. The woman, if anything like those he met briefly along his travels, should have been sitting obediently, perhaps sniffing back tears of fear, or hiding away from him in the necessary. But not his Anna. She looked ready for war, her sharpened talons straining to tear into his eyes.
“I will do what I believe is safest for you. Semiazaz’s coven knows you exist. Away from me, you will be without protection.”
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