My Demon Warlord

by Carolyn Jewel

  “Yes.”

  Nikodemus disconnected the call.

  “Something happened,” Carson said. “That’s all we know.”

  The reactions cycling through him because of Maddy’s broken oath had him compensating to keep the borders of his territory intact. His enemies were going to notice that. Within hours, he’d have six warlords eager to test him, and every mage or witch who thought he ought to be dead was going to try to make that happen, too.

  And then it got worse. Unimaginably worse.

  “Kynan is gone.”

  Carson had her phone out, ready to group text. She looked up, ashen. “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Only Durian on this one.” He nodded at her phone.

  She returned her attention to her phone, fingers flying over the screen. “Okay.” Her phone made a whooshing sound. “Request sent.” She looked up and took a shaky breath. “Nikodemus. What the hell?”

  “I don’t think he’s dead, but he’s gone.” He paced the length of the living room where he and Carson had been working though the ramifications of an attack by magehelds linked to Neda Sessani. He called Telos next. “I want full info on Neda Sessani. Now. Where she’s been and when, anytime in the last year. Hack whatever needs to be hacked. The minute you have anything, let me know.”

  “We don’t know what happened there,” she said. “We don’t know for sure.”

  He loved that Carson was an optimist, but he’d stayed alive this long by being a pessimist about humans who weren’t sworn to him, and Maddy Winters was no longer his sworn.

  He made another call. “Sheth.” There was need in his pronouncement of the name. Fucking need. Sheth would react accordingly.

  “Warlord.” Sheth had a winged form and more than enough power for what Nikodemus needed him to do.

  “Get to Kensington. I want to know if there’s any sign of an attack on Maddy’s house after one-thirty. Kynan took my car. The Mercedes. If her car or mine is still there, you let me know. Call the minute you get there. No one sees you in or out. Nobody knows you were there.” He warned Sheth about the layering trick and told him what to look for. The other demon stayed silent through the rest of Nikodemus’s instructions.

  “Call me when you know.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  Done. He’d have some kind of an answer from Sheth in about half an hour—in less time than that, he hoped. He disconnected the call and scrubbed his fingers through his hair, phone gripped in his other hand. The minute he tracked this down to that Sessani witch, she was dead. If it was Maddy, she was dead, too. His fear had always been that Kynan would crack, not Maddy. If she was still alive, retribution would be swift and severe.

  “Is this going to be okay?” Carson asked. Not really a question.

  “I don’t know.” He kept pacing. “All I know is her oath of fealty broke, Kynan closed bonds he was blood-bound not to close, yet was still mine when I lost him. He didn’t break fealty, Carson. Maddy did.” He met Carson’s gaze. “I know you and Maddy are friends, but this isn’t looking good for her.”

  “He could have been trying to kill her.”

  “Carson.” He stepped up to her and put his hands on either side of his face, hurting for her almost as she was for her friend. “Sweetheart. If Kynan had tried to kill her, his oath to me would have broken.”

  She put her hands over his. “We have to consider all the possibilities.”

  “True. But not just the ones that mean you two get to stay friends.” If Maddy was even alive.

  Tau became an immediate presence. One minute he was nowhere near the house, and the next, he strode into the room. With the first two fingers of his right hand, the demon touched the outside corner of his left eye, the mark of respect used between the Basotho demons of Southern Africa. “Warlord.”

  He got to the point. “Were Kynan and Maddy alive and well when you left Kensington?”

  “They were.” His eyebrows quirked.

  “Nothing made you think something was wrong? They had their situation handled?”

  Tau scratched the back of his neck. “Warlord. There is often tension between them. But yes, they had handled their situation.”

  “Something different than usual?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “What happened while you were there? From the time you got there until you left. Highlights unless I ask for more.”

  The corner of Tau’s mouth curved up. Nikodemus listened without interrupting. Nothing sounded out of the ordinary considering the state of affairs right now. That layering trick had Neda Sessani all over it. He happened to know she’d made a specialty of it in Persia. In those days, he’d been happy to leave the magekind alone. This was the first time he’d heard of it being used since he’d left the Middle East to bang around the rest of the world.

  His phone rang, and Nikodemus lifted a hand while he took the call from Sheth. “Talk to me.”

  “Maddy’s car is in the garage. I found where the Mercedes was. It’s not there now. If it’s still here, I don’t know where. Parts of the house are destroyed. All the wards are blown. One dead human. Too damaged to say much about why she’s dead. I don’t think it’s Maddy.”

  “What the hell?”

  “She doesn’t have a face, but I think this is a white girl. I found part of the arm missing from the body. It’s hard to tell. Someone’s been careful about covering their tracks. Tau was here. Two mages. Two witches. The usual for Maddy, I’d say, except for the human. I found the layering Kynan called you about. I confirm Sessani was there. The tracks say the warlord and Maddy left in the Mercedes.”

  He didn’t like this at all, the way Sheth was being so careful. “What else?”

  “No layering. I double-checked everything.” There was a brief silence. “There’s an empty vial here. She touched it, and Kynan had a buzz cut when he left.” Sheth wasn’t the sentimental type, which was part of the reason Nikodemus had sent him. “If you ask me, Kynan was her mageheld.”

  His heart clenched, and he made sure he wasn’t looking at Carson. “Check one more time. Call me if you find something else. Otherwise, you’re back here.”

  “Warlord.”

  When he had his reaction to Sheth’s news under control, Nikodemus looked at Carson, grim. “Durian’s on his way?”

  She nodded.

  “If he gets here before I’m done talking with Tau, tell him to wait until I call him. Same for Sheth.”

  “Will do.” Her fingers flew over her phone’s screen while she spoke. “What you’re thinking, hon, that’s not possible. Maddy wouldn’t do something like that. She wouldn’t.”

  “Those two have issues.”

  His wife cupped the side of his face just long enough to make him nervous. “Every couple has issues.”

  “Those two are not a couple. They aren’t even close to being a couple. And their issues have been fucking with them for years.”

  “I refuse to believe it of her. I won’t.”

  Had to love her loyalty. He hoped she was right. He gave her palm a quick kiss, and a couple seconds later his chest vibrated with the sensation that meant Durian was close. He took out his phone and messaged him a request to wait. “Did she find a way to take Kynan? I don’t know. I know her oath is broken, and Kynan isn’t on the radar. I know I’m fucking pissed that I have no idea what’s going on. For all we know, Sessani and her people could have gotten to her. Look what happened to Kessler when he got involved with Magellan and dit Menart.”

  Christophe dit Menart was a mage, now dead, who had worked with Rasmus Kessler, presumably unaware that Kessler had been slowly losing control of his will to an insane demon. Now no one was sure how much of what Kessler had done, which was some plenty bad shit, was due to that longstanding indwell. Nikodemus had been around long enough to have concluded that some individuals, be they kin, vanilla human, or magekind, were just plain evil.

  “Come on,” Carson said. “We’d know if that had happened.”
r />   “Maybe. Maybe not.” He looked across the room to where Tau stood patiently. “Can you get to Kynan?”

  “I no longer feel him.” Tau was calmer than the demons he was used to. Nikodemus hadn’t been anywhere near Southern Africa for something like a thousand years, maybe they were all like Tau now. One thing he was sure of; Tau was a leader, not a follower. Leaders who fell apart in a crisis didn’t lead for very long. “I would not know how to find him even if I thought it was safe.”

  “Would it be?”

  “With that one? No.”

  “What about Maddy?” He really wanted that to be the answer. If Tau could get to Maddy directly, that would be the shortcut he was looking for. Carson grabbed his hand and squeezed.

  “Apologies, warlord. But her dreams belong to Kynan Aijan. That path is not a safe one to travel on.”

  “Not the answer I wanted.”

  “It is the only answer I have for you.”

  He knew when he was bumping up against someone used to making unquestioned decisions. Right now, Tau’s fealty to him through Addison might be the only thing that kept rival warlords from taking a crack at him. He’d lost Maddy, and that had a definite impact. At this point the only bright spot was that he could not definitely say Kynan was lost to him. Not yet. He would have felt Kynan’s oath break. He would have felt Kynan being ended.

  “Understood.” He nodded curtly. “You’re free to go, Tau. Addison is the only one you tell about this conversation.”

  Tau touched the side of his left eye once more and vanished. Nikodemus texted Durian, and, a few minutes later, his go-to assassin walked in.

  CHAPTER 7

  Maddy bent, hands on her knees, struggling against nausea that threatened to turn her inside out. Kynan’s indwell was over, but her brains were still scrambled, and her sense of him was out of balance. She could see his lower legs from her stooped position, and that seemed like a good thing to concentrate on. Per usual, he’d manifested leather flip-flops and grungy jeans. Of course he had beautiful feet.

  How could she not laugh at noticing such an out-of-place, ludicrous thing as the beauty of his feet? This was nothing more or less than what his magic made him when he took human form. Her mirth ended in a dry heave.

  “I can help with that,” he said. Whatever else was wrong with her was affecting her hearing because his voice fell on her ears as if the sound were made of warm, golden silk.

  She lifted a hand without looking at him. Stories about the dangers of an indwell were legion. Post-indwell dangers were no less real or severe. According to lore, once a demon had obtained or been given that access, you were vulnerable to him forever. Back doors got created, suggestions were left behind in a mind more susceptible than before. No one who survived an indwell was ever really the same, so they said. According to Nikodemus, all of those effects were possible, which was why indwells were forbidden, often even when consent was fully informed. The point being that a human was unlikely to understand the permanent and dangerous consequences. There were no do-overs.

  At the side of the room, Vahid remained encased in the hardened air. She remembered the magic that had created that, the exhilaration of shaping matter to her will—Kynan’s will—their will.

  She shuddered again and forced herself to breathe slowly while she took stock. She was alive. Good.

  Kynan was alive. Also good.

  Their bonds were closed. Bad.

  She wasn’t his thrall, at least she didn’t think she was. Very good.

  Physically, her bones ached, and needle pricks of pain skittered up and down the muscles of her back. Everything was tender and hypersensitive. Her head hurt, and she wasn’t seeing too well. All that was true, yet the aftereffects of his indwell were the least of her problems.

  She felt like shit, and here Kynan looked the same as always. Too young, gorgeous. Confident. Per usual, he was wearing a plain T-shirt to complete the grunge look, and, per usual, he was sexy as hell, but nothing else about him was familiar. Not even his eyes. They weren’t human, and she didn’t have a name for their brilliant yellow-gold. Kynan echoed back magic that had no end, and his sworn whispered and hummed and entwined with his power in a way she’d never felt from him before.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. His voice slid around her, a rich, gilt-edged tenor.

  “I think so.” Her right hand twitched with the urge to press her fingers to her bowed head. She made a fist and managed to look up. “You?”

  “I’m good.” He smiled then said slowly and in a lower voice, “Thank you for that.”

  “Same to you?” She laughed to herself. “Knowing you’d, you’d have survived anyway.”

  “Maybe.”

  An unwelcome shiver raised the hair on the back of her neck. Without their shared fealty to Nikodemus, the connection between them was down to those three bonds, each one a facet of his magic, and each one now incandescently vibrant. For a deathless moment they stared at each other, and the new shape and resonance of her bonds with him continued to alter her. A part of Kynan Aijan was alive in her, and fear crawled through her. She tried to speak and didn’t because putting her fear into words might make it real.

  “I had orders to keep you alive.” Specks of color flashed in his eyes. “I still do.”

  She took in the destruction around them. During the mayhem of dealing with Vahid, Kynan had prevented more of his wards from going off. That clearheaded thinking had probably saved her life when her oath to Nikodemus broke. She remembered the soul-searing pain of her broken oath. She remembered her heart stopping. He wasn’t lying. If he hadn’t closed their bonds, she would have died. “We wrecked the place.”

  “True.”

  Kynan was an inferno to her, overwhelming. Demanding her acknowledgment of him just by standing there. Her chest hurt deep inside, a weight shifting, pressing in on her the way her bonds with Kynan always did right before she ended up a basket case. Except now she couldn’t shove her awareness of their connection into a corner.

  The thousands of kin who lived in him called for vengeance, softly now, but a constant whispered reminder of the evil the magekind had done despite professing the most noble intentions. They recognized her and underneath their shifting pulse was a sibilant refrain of you are his, his, his.

  Ashley’s body lay twisted at his feet, her blood-smeared skull turned at an impossible angle. Most of her body was badly burned, but the corpse pulsed with the fading magic that had disguised the indwelling mageheld and had given Ashley magic that wasn’t hers. “She’s dead because of me.”

  “She’s dead because someone ordered that one over there”—he jerked a finger in Vahid’s direction—“to indwell. You aren’t the one who used magic on her without caring that it would kill her no matter what happened here. She was dead twice over before she walked in here.” He knelt beside Ashley’s body and, with an ease that took her breath, seared away all the remaining magic. Evil, she thought. Pure evil, what had been done to Ashley.

  “She must’ve been in agony,” she said.

  “They had her loaded up on drugs. Enough copa to juice up what they were feeding her. I doubt she felt much of anything toward the end.”

  Whoever did this had woven magic into Ashley’s heart and bones because there hadn’t been even latent magic to use as an anchor. From that moment forward, Ashley’s life had been measured in days, not years. The ache in her chest eased, but not enough. “This is a declaration of war.”

  “Like it wasn’t before.” He stood with fluid grace, continuing to take up more of her awareness than she was accustomed to. He crossed his arms over his chest, quiet. Impossible to read. He might be calm on the surface, but she heard the whispering voices he lived with. Their refrain of his, his, his scraped away at her. He shrugged, unconcerned. He was always either hot or cold. Never anything in between. She’d always found that infuriating. Now it was frightening. This was Kynan Aijan, the real Kynan, a demon people had whispered about for centuries. Legendary.
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  “Mages came to my house. They hurt my people. They sent Ashley here and murdered her when she couldn’t have done anything to them. She wasn’t capable.” She gestured in futile anger. “No normal human stands a chance against magekind who’ve forgotten their purpose is to protect and do no harm.”

  “They forget a lot of things.” Kynan’s curt reply reverberated with memories she wouldn’t wish on anyone.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does. Once Nikodemus finds out what happened, he will act.” She walked away from him, hands on her head, like that would help her think faster and smarter. Thoughts whipped through her at hurricane force, too fast to catch. From the other side of the room, she faced Kynan. She shot a look at the woman who’d paid with her life. “What I do here, that made it easy to get her in here.”

  “Going outside makes you a target.” Kynan’s voice was flat. Enough of her unusual link with him blanked out that she dreaded the blowback of separation heading for her if he kept it up. She was a mass of paradoxes, wasn’t she? Terrified of the new, changed connection between them. Terrified it might go away. Terrified it might not. “Nobody thinks you should lock yourself away instead.”

  “They’ll figure out what went wrong. They might already have improved the process they used on Ashley. They’ll do this again. If they haven’t already.”

  Kynan waved a hand. “They got her in here because we didn’t know what to look for. We accepted the promises your misfits make—”

  “They’re not misfits.” She was struck anew with the deception involved with his human form. Behind that facade of youthful masculinity was a demon thousands of years old. A demon whose name was still whispered with awe.

  “—and said okay, no need to look closer. Now we know we need to look deeper, and we know what to look for. From now on, we do a different assessment. I’ll adjust the warding to take this sort of thing into account. No big deal, Winters.”

  For once she was in complete agreement with the voices of Kynan’s sworn. Vengeance. She hadn’t wanted revenge this badly for years. She was shaking with fury. From somewhere in the wreckage of her living room, a phone trilled. She didn’t recognize the ringtone. “Is that yours?”