Getting Familiar with Your Demon: That Old Black Magic, Book 4

by Jodi Redford

  The hands gripping Marabella lifted her before upending her over her captor’s shoulder. She opened her mouth, attempting to produce enough noise to alert Cass, but nothing came out. Her head feeling impossibly heavy, she closed her eyes. She struggled to fix the image of Sam in her brain. Their already-weakened link sputtered and dimmed. A moment later, unconsciousness claimed her.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sam bypassed the alley filled with raucous hellhounds engaged in a rowdy game of poker. A howl of triumph bayed from one of the cigar-chewing players, followed by the loud chorus of groans from his comrades. Sam took note of the street number so he’d remember not to pass this way on his return trip. If there was one thing he didn’t need, it was the wicked snap of a hellhound’s teeth chomping at his ass. Even out of their hound form, those badass motherfuckers weren’t something you wanted to tangle with.

  Keeping well out of the steam-powered floodlight’s phosphorescent glow, he made his way to the outskirts of sector nine. Avoiding the heavily armed checkpoint, he waited for the passing patrol to move farther down the lane before scaling the perimeter wall and dropping to the other side. His avenue of entry might have been an inconvenient ball breaker, but it was more prudent than going through security and being under their radar.

  The shadowed warrens providing some obscurity from the ever-vigilant cameras and guards, he skulked along the rows of resident housing. Thank the devil no direct camera surveillance was trained on the entrances in this section. The high-ranking level of the sequestered souls in sector nine guaranteed them luxuries most of the other residents of the Death Wards were unable to obtain—privacy being foremost.

  He located Aster Batticus’s address on one of the signposts and strode toward the surprisingly modest cottage situated at the end of the lane. Apparently Aster wasn’t one of those pretentious assholes who liked to live the highlife in his afterlife. Sam eyed the exterior, debating which point of entry would be the easiest to break into.

  Before he settled on a choice, the front door swung open and a stooped figure hobbled onto the porch. Wizened, ancient eyes peered at Sam. “You planning to stand there all damn day or come inside?”

  Before Sam could untie his tongue, the warlock rapped his long staff on the porch floor. “I’m dead and could probably still move faster than you.” Aster suddenly vanished from the porch and reappeared directly in front of Sam. “Makes me wonder how you managed to make it past security with that slow brain of yours.”

  Sam had been insulted by plenty of souls in his life, but he’d never met one quite as cantankerous as Aster. Time to put the ornery son of a bitch in his place. “Listen, old man, you’re coming with me if you like it or not. Whether I make the trip pleasant for you depends on precisely how much you piss me off. I advise you to keep it to a minimum.”

  Aster cocked his head to the side as he apparently mulled Sam’s threat. Finally he shrugged. “What the hell? Not like I’ve got anything better to do. Especially since the only thing on the telly these days is reruns of Days of Our Death. Don’t know why I even popped for cable. Damn waste of money.” He glared at Sam like he was somehow personally responsible for the Death Wards lousy choice in television programming. “All right, let’s do this.”

  “We’re going to have to hoof it. My gun’s locked in security.”

  “Walk? You’ve got to be shitting me. Do you have any idea how that’s going to affect my gout?” Aster snorted. “Security. What kind of damn soul collector are you anyway? A crappy one, that’s what. In my day, I probably coulda busted out a thousand souls at one time, minimum. Blindfolded, with my hands tied behind my back while walking uphill in a blizzard. Without any shoes on. Because we didn’t even have shoes back in those days.”

  Sam’s head began to throb. This was going to be the longest fucking walk of his life.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Her wrists chafing from the ropes binding them, Marabella gathered every ounce of her strength to lift her head and peer around at her surroundings. A stark white wall sat opposite her chair. She gasped when she noticed Cass’s slumped figure tied onto a chair identical to hers.

  “Don’t worry, she’s not dead. But apparently she has a lower tolerance for chloral hydrate than you do.”

  Marabella jerked her gaze in the direction of the snide female voice. The dark-haired woman from earlier sat perched on the edge of a desk, her legs crossed in a businesslike pose. Pricilla, she presumed.

  “Did you enjoy your nap?”

  Marabella ignored the question. “Let me go.”

  “I’m afraid not. You’re entirely too valuable. Not to mention the key to my plan.” Pricilla uncrossed her legs and stood. She waved to the pile of syringes resting on the desk.

  Marabella stared at the needles and swallowed the lump of dread forming in her throat. “What are you planning to do? Drug me again?”

  “No. There’s nothing in these vials. Yet. But soon they’ll be filled with your blood. Exactly enough of it for each member of the council I plan to weaken and ultimately destroy.” Pricilla picked up the largest of the syringes and stroked its barrel lovingly. “But this one is reserved special for Marcus. An extra helping of your blood…not even an immortal demon will be able to fight off its corruptive powers.”

  “W-why would you think my blood will corrupt him? Or any of them?”

  “A demon’s seal is impenetrable, yet you somehow managed to break Samael’s. I saw the evidence of that with my own eyes. Now I intend to use it to my advantage.”

  Self-preservation once again broke through her panic. “But…Sam’s seal wasn’t broken through my blood.”

  “I know. You fucked him. You human whores—always so eager to spread your legs for a big cock.” Cold disdain flashed in Pricilla’s black eyes. “Obviously I can’t have you fuck Marcus and every member of the council, so your blood will just have to do.”

  “It won’t work.”

  Pricilla stepped forward and wrenched Marabella’s chin up. “You better pray it does. It’s my rightful destiny to kill Marcus and his precious council. If you screw that up for me, the pain you’ll suffer will make you beg me for death.”

  Fear threatened to overtake Marabella, but she beat it back. “Sam will never let you get away with this. H-he’ll come for me.”

  Pricilla’s icy laugh lashed across Marabella’s face. “You foolish girl. Do you think he gives a damn about you? He’d save his own ass before protecting yours. And since I ensured he’d be kept busy keeping that ass of his from being shot at in the Death Wards, he won’t be going anywhere soon, believe me.”

  She gaped at Pricilla. “H-how…?”

  Smugness danced across Pricilla’s cold, perfect features. “You think I didn’t know your plans to ship him to the Death Wards? Who do you think planted the seed of that particular idea into your tiny brains in the first place?”

  Her mind raced to Cass and Sam’s conversation regarding Pricilla’s attempts to broker a deal with the reapers. “You really had no intention of hiring a reaper to go after Aster, did you? It was a decoy.”

  “I have no need of Aster now. Acquiring your blood is far easier and less time-consuming than convincing Aster to break Marcus’s immortality spell.” The cunningness in Pricilla’s smile amped up several notches. “It’s a simple matter, getting people to do exactly what you want. Particularly when those in question are so predictable. I knew if I made enough of a show of sniffing around, Samael and his cousins would find a way to rebrand him so they could defeat me.” She gave a scornful snort. “Like that’s remotely possible. But here’s where the brilliance of my plan really comes in—to rebrand him, they needed a witch. Presumably you. In essence, I killed two birds with one stone. I set into motion Samael being apprehended on the Death Wards, and his cousin led me straight to you.”

  Pricilla clucked her tongue when Marabella remained silent. “Fortunately, there aren’t that many occult shops in the state of Georgia. Otherwise my stash of spie
s would have been spread rather thin.”

  So that was how Pricilla was able to find her. Someone must have followed Nikki when she’d left Charmed Moon yesterday.

  Pricilla’s fingers dug deeper into Marabella’s skin. “You’re going to save me a lot of extra work in the end. It almost makes up for being deprived the pleasure of torturing and killing Samael firsthand.”

  A spike of fear and anger speared through Marabella. Her already low regard for Pricilla plummeted by several notches. In the eyes of most, any demon was inherently evil and despicable, but thanks to Sam, she knew that wasn’t always the case. There were probably plenty more like him in the demon realm who still retained some degree of conscience that made them redeemable. Pricilla wasn’t one of them. If she did manage to kill Marcus and the council, no doubt her reign would be a vicious plague upon the earth. Marabella intended to do everything in her power to keep that from happening. But she couldn’t do it on her own. Superpowers or not, she needed reinforcements.

  She needed Sam.

  “Do you ever stop bitching?” Sam slid an irritated glance in Aster’s direction and for the millionth time, resisted the urge to strangle the spirit. It was getting damn hard to remind himself of the importance of keeping the warlock’s soul in one piece.

  “What do you expect? You picked the longest possible route.”

  He’d already explained to Aster the reasoning for it—that they bloody well couldn’t stroll through the middle of the Death Wards and not raise an alarm—but Aster remained stubbornly obtuse. Sam was beginning to think the warlock just liked to complain. A lot.

  With a great deal more bitching on Aster’s part, they managed to scale the perimeter wall and leave sector nine behind. From here on out, they’d have to be on high alert and out of reach of the heightened surveillance. He said as much to Aster and received a long diatribe regarding his dubious abilities as a soul collector. He debated shoving Aster’s staff into an available electrical socket and over-amping the warlock’s magnetic field enough to knock him out for a while, but that might be more trouble than it was worth.

  “Your hair is too long,” Aster muttered. “You look like a damn hippy.”

  Then again…

  A shiver of sensation shuttled across Sam’s nerve synapses, putting a skidding halt on his disgruntled musings. Finally, a transmission signal.

  “Sam, I need you. Pricilla. Blood…”

  The faint ripple of Marabella’s voice in his head startled him as much as her cryptic words. He hadn’t been expecting a telepathic link yet. Those took longer to develop. “Bella?”

  “Who the hell is Bella?”

  “I’m not talking to you, old man.”

  Aster scowled. “Then who are you talking to? Yourself?”

  Sam growled. “Do I look like my damn name would be Bella?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe your mama’s one of them weird artsy types.”

  He struggled to tune out Aster and reestablish the link with Marabella. This time he decided to go strictly with telepathic communication in order to keep the nosy warlock out of the conversation. “Bella, talk to me.”

  “Sam, she has me.”

  He remembered her previous mention of Pricilla, and a spike of icy foreboding shot down his spine. “How? Where the hell is Cass?” Damn it, his cousin was supposed to be watching over Marabella.

  “Pricilla tricked us. Not safe. Hurry.”

  A jolt tripped through him as the threads of their link suddenly snapped. “Bella!” He didn’t even realize he’d roared her name out loud until a tug on his shirt whipped his gaze to Aster.

  The warlock sent him a dark scowl. “Are you nuts? Keep yelling like that and you’ll have this entire place on top of us before you can get your head out of your ass.”

  Even as Aster’s recriminating words hung in the air, the sound of distant, excited howls split the continuous night. Oh. Shit.

  He and Aster stared at each other before they both took off running. Thankfully in the same direction. His pounding footsteps and Aster’s silent spirit ones marked a path through the twisting warrens that snaked across the central quadrant of the Death Wards. Aster yelled yet another disparaging remark about Sam’s abilities before demanding why they were now taking the most direct—and dangerous—route.

  If not for the necessity of reaching the main gate before the pack of hellhounds descended on it first, Sam would have said fuck it, they were sticking to the shadows. “Save your breath, old man. And keep your ass moving.”

  “Old? I’ll show you old. I can smoke you any day.” A cackle tumbled from Aster as he bulleted forward. “Eat my dust, you pansy hippy.”

  The baying of the hellhounds grew louder. Sam risked a glance over his shoulder and spotted the rapidly approaching mass of smoking black fur and glowing red eyes.

  “Fuuuuuck.” Jerking his attention ahead of him again, he ratcheted up his pace. A pair of oblivious guards crossed his path, and he plowed through them, knocking them aside like a couple of bowling pins. He barreled down the lane, his damn heart and lungs competing for prime real estate in his throat. The mental line between him and Marabella was good as dead, but it didn’t stop him from scrambling to find a dial tone. When that proved useless, he resorted to verbal communication. Not bloody likely she’d hear him from this buttfuck dimension, but apparently desperation made him stupid. No newsflash there. “Bella…if you…can hear me…get that damn line…ready,” he got out between heaving gasps. Shit, he was out of shape. This is what he got for not at least doing some pushups during his six months of imprisonment.

  The imposing main wall loomed ahead—a promising beacon. A wailing siren went off, mocking his foolish hope of reaching the gate with only the hellhounds in hot pursuit. He and Aster broke past the last row of residential housing. In his peripheral vision, Sam caught flashes of movement. Excited shouts verified that the infantry had been summoned and were closing in for the capture.

  There was no shittin’ way he wasn’t getting off this damn rock. Calling on the last reserves of his energy, he ran like the hounds of hell were tailing his ass. There’s fucking irony for you. Animalistic grunts and gasps bellowed from his chest. For the first time in decades, the desire to not get himself killed outweighed all else.

  Beneath his feet, the ground rumbled and shook. The pack of hellhounds had morphed into a legion. The acrid scent of fire and brimstone plumed in the air. Sam lengthened his strides, practically flying now. The sound of grunts and screams drew his attention over his shoulder again. Hellhounds were knocking guards aside left and right. Those who didn’t move out of the beasts’ way were galloped into the ground.

  “Bella, damn it, where are you?” He didn’t even want to ponder the possibilities of why she wasn’t answering him. If Pricilla…

  No, don’t go there.

  He closed the distance between him and the exterior wall. Twenty feet, tops. Shit, he could do this. The door to the main gatehouse swung open, and the guard who’d admitted him earlier stepped out. The kid took one look at the approaching hellhounds and scrambled to duck back inside. Sam leapt forward and wrenched the door from the guard’s hands.

  Something massive, hairy and smelling suspiciously like burning ash plowed into Sam, sending him flying through the doorway. A heavy metal clank banged behind him, but he barely registered the slamming of the door as he collided with the registration desk. Its growl menacing, the hellhound bit into the leg of his jeans and dragged him sideways before ramming him into the wall.

  Not about to willingly give himself over as the hound’s chew toy, Sam kicked the beast in the head. The hellhound issued an enraged snarl, but it didn’t release him. Its thick, wiry hair bristling and smoking, the hound towed him toward the door. From the corner of his eye, Sam spotted Aster hovering near the desk. The guard was nowhere to be seen.

  Sam’s growl nearly matched that of the hellhound. “Some damn help here would be nice.”

  “Why? You look like you’ve got thin
gs under control.”

  Sam kicked at the hound again, and it responded with a wrenching tug that came dangerously close to tearing Sam’s leg from its hip socket. Knowing he likely only had seconds before either this son of a bitch or its furry friends pawing at the door made a meal out of him, Sam tried a desperate lunge for the desk again. His fingers fumbled over its surface and knocked into Lucy. She slid sideways, and for one terrifying moment he thought his grip on her was lost. But then he latched onto her handle, the well-worn grooves a familiar embrace.

  The hellhound flipped him onto his back. Foam dripping from its muzzle, the beast charged at him. Sam swung Lucy in a wide arc, taking aim. “Sorry, Fido. No demon snack for you.” He pulled the trigger, and the beast went down.

  “See? You handled that no problem. Still, you could have been faster with it. When I was your age, I would have been able to take on an entire pack of those hairy bastards. One-handed and blindfolded…”

  Sam was too exhausted—mentally and physically—to do anything more than tune out Aster. He rested his head on the leg of the desk and closed his eyes. The persistent whining and howls from the other hellhounds outside the door filled the silence.

  A tingle coursed over his skin. “Sam…hurry.”

  He snapped his eyes open and frantically sought for the link. It was the merest wisp of a thread. “Bella.”

  Like an elusive flicker of flame refusing to ignite, the link sputtered and vanished.

  The phantom of his own words chose that black moment to mock him. The only way to make it in this world is to rip off those rosy blinders and face the ugly reality, Bella. Otherwise it’ll kill you before you’ve even gasped your first breath.

  It was past time to listen to his own advice. He was the damn reason she couldn’t establish the link. Cass was right—his fears and doubts amounted to so much baggage, they’d built a towering wall of resistance between him and Marabella that was taller and more impenetrable than the one outside those doors the hellhounds were scratching and snuffing at. He’d denied his ability to find happiness, to experience love, because it’d been easier than wanting those things and waiting for the day they’d be ripped away from him. But in the end, that only made him a coward—one who stood a good chance of dying with a mountain of regrets on this devil-forsaken rock. His biggest regret being Marabella and how he’d let her down.