by Stark, Jenn
I lifted my brows. “Why? Why would it be any more concerning there than it would if they were holing up in the US or South America?”
Armaeus’s jaw tightened. “To answer that would require us to go back through centuries of racism and treachery, colonialism and murder. The Shadow Court used the Connecteds of the Arabian Peninsula ruthlessly in the past, taking their treasure and plundering their arcane secrets, but they consider them far substandard to any of their contemporaries. You can be certain that, if they have struck up relationships there now, it is not with the oldest families who were the victims of their treachery, but with those that have made their fortune in oil, who perhaps do not have memories quite so long. Even then…”
He shook his head. “It is a concerning development. There is great power, without question, but it comes at a tremendous risk. The magic of the Arabian Peninsula is darker, deeper than most mortals fully understand. For the Shadow Court to be willing to engage with it implies that great swaths of the world are in danger.”
I flapped my hand in a “get on with it, already” gesture. “English, maybe?”
His mouth twitched with amusement as he continued. “Put more succinctly, the Shadow Court likely no longer cares who remains standing when the dust clears after this latest power grab. Only that they and their allies are left with a world they can rule without restriction.” He said this last with a distant resonance to his voice, almost as if he was repeating it from something he’d read long ago.
I sighed. None of that sounded like a lot of fun, but I couldn’t say I was surprised. The Shadow Court clearly was escalating their game. “Okay, so what do we do now? There has to be some way to stop them for good, right? We can’t just keep cutting the head off the hydra and waiting for it to regrow somewhere else. Too many people will die.”
“Agreed, but they have been very careful. They have not acted yet other than to incite the locals, causing harm in a way that we cannot truly address as a full Council. We need more. And so tomorrow you will go visit this Sheikh Ahmad and attempt once more to blunt the edge of the Shadow Court’s swords.”
I made a face. “Can’t we do more than that? Can’t we blast them off the face of the planet and be done with it? These are really bad guys, Armaeus. Like, they seriously suck.”
“That isn’t the purpose of Council,” he reminded me, but there was a new edge to his voice as he turned to regard me with his dark eyes.
“And yet, you’re not the head of the Council anymore,” I pointed out, holding his gaze. “Maybe we should ask the new guy and see if he has a better answer.”
Armaeus only shook his head. “Kreios, for all his personal preferences, is well aware of the purpose and position of the Council in this world. He is not quite the rogue you suppose him to be.”
“Uh-huh.” I had a sinking suspicion Armaeus was right, but still, a girl could dream. I mean, the guy was the Devil. If anyone would make a snap decision not to play by the rules, it would be him. Armaeus, after all, had decided not to play by the rules. He’d stepped away from leading the Council and now…now he was closer to being a rogue than any of them. That said, I didn’t want to put Armaeus at risk. He’d done enough to keep me safe, at great personal harm to himself. It was time the Council stepped up and started being the Big Swinging Deities they always acted like they were.
Armaeus had turned more fully to study me, and I sensed the shift in his intensity, a gleam in his eye that wasn’t there before. Had he just read my mind? I needed to be more careful about protecting my thoughts around him, and yet—I didn’t necessarily want to anymore. Did that mean I trusted him more? Or mistrusted myself less?
“A curious question, Miss Wilde,” Armaeus murmured, his dark eyes now glittering as I felt his gentle touch slide across my mind, rippling through my thoughts like a breeze over still water. At the last second, I tucked away Mrs. French’s information about the night witch. That issue was the province of Justice, not the Magician. I needed to track it down myself.
Armaeus lifted his brows, but if he noticed my subterfuge, he didn’t seem too bothered by it. “And in all truth, there is nothing we can do at this exact moment. Except, perhaps, enjoy the time that we have been given this night.”
He turned toward me more fully, his gaze never leaving mine. The energy between us crackled as he took me into his arms—but there was more than simple sensual interest fueling his movements, I thought. I couldn’t shake my suspicion that something was off.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You know…you’ve been acting a little weird tonight.”
“Weird?” he murmured as he gazed down at me. “That’s an interesting word.”
I edged back, searching his face. “Yeah, like the kind of weird where someone really wants me to figure something out, but doesn’t know how to tell me. If you were any other guy, I’d say you were trying to dump me.”
He chuckled. “Never that.” He tilted forward to brush his lips over my brow. There was no denying the surge of pleasure that leapt within me, quick and hot, and I somehow didn’t care so much anymore about his motivations. It was enough that he was here, and I was here, and that—for once—we had time.
“Well, good,” I muttered, my breath catching a little as Armaeus’s mouth drifted down my temple, his lips trailing kisses to my ear, and then along my neck. I shifted back farther, giving him more access, not missing how my heart shivered at the soft touch, or quailed at the mere idea of the Magician no longer being the central focus of my world. He had come to fill my every moment. As constant as the stars hanging in the sky, whether or not I could see them, there would always be the Magician there. I couldn’t imagine a world without him, not anymore.
“So what is it you’re not telling me?” I managed, as Armaeus edged closer, his mouth drifting across my collarbone.
“Do you really think conversation is what I am most interested in right now?” he asked, his tone only slightly exasperated as he lifted his head until his mouth was even with mine. “In the slightest?”
I sighed and pressed against him. “No,” I whispered. I touched my lips to his. “You just need to never die. That’s not going to be too much of a problem, is it?”
“I won’t,” he said immediately, then he stiffened, his eyes flaring slightly before he tilted his head, studying me with surprise. “For anyone else, that would be a promise I could never make. What you do to me, Miss Wilde…”
He leaned forward and kissed me in earnest, then, the pressure of his mouth stirring the excitement in the pit of my belly. My blood rushed through my veins, and my heart started to pound. There was something about the Magician that, no matter how long we’d been apart from each other, no matter the fact he couldn’t even remember anything that had happened between us before a few months earlier, it all fell away when our lips touched, when our bodies twined together like two branches of the same tree.
Armaeus turned me. A breeze whispered through the completely enclosed room, setting the curtains to fluttering, making the walls of his skylit aerie look like flowing water. With a murmured spell, stars appeared inside the room, spinning as we turned. The effect should have been disorienting, but instead, it seemed to contribute to the haze of surreal joy that billowed through me. I reached for his shirt, pulling it free from his pants, knowing he could whisk both our clothes away with the barest spell.
He didn’t, though. Instead, he watched me with heavy eyes as I unbuttoned the luxurious, silky cloth of his shirt, spreading the material wide to reveal the hard swells of his chest and abs. I flattened my fingers on his warm skin, feeling the whoosh of his blood beneath my palms, the thud of his heart. His breath hissed out, warm and eager, and I skimmed my hands over him, sliding them down to his waistband.
“My God, you have got to be one of the most beautifully made men who ever walked the earth,” I murmured, my gaze following the greedy trail of my fingertips as I twisted them into his belt loop, tugging it free.
“And I will never tire
of—ah!”
Armaeus’s head snapped back as if he’d been struck, and then again, his chin jerking sharply to the side this time, his arms dropping mine to spread wide, as if to steady himself.
“What is it?” I gasped as I pushed back from him. My heart kicked up with a flare of panicked beats as he grimaced with real pain.
“No,” he breathed. “Not that, no.”
His eyes were wide, unfocused, and when he jerked his head back to me, I could tell he wasn’t really seeing me. His eyes focused on something far darker, something that made his gorgeous bronzed skin go pale, his expression turn haggard. The stars winked out around us, and the fluttering curtains went still.
“What is it?” I demanded again. He shook himself hard, refocusing on me. His face looked positively gray, real fear tightening his jaw. “Armaeus, tell me. What happened, who—”
“Sariah,” he managed. “She’s—no!”
Then he yanked me close against him and whisked us both away in a rush of smoke.
9
We rematerialized in front of a boutique hotel and casino on the shores of Lake Mead that would have made a stunning silhouette against the night sky on any day, but this night it most especially did, given the raging fire that had exploded one side of the building.
I looked from the casino to the lake stretching behind it, its smooth surface reflecting the dancing flames, and suddenly, it came together for me. An attack. There’d been an attack.
“This is where Sariah and Brody were,” Armaeus said tightly, his words low and fast. “There was a rush of magic—ancient magic. I couldn’t trace the source, sensed only that it was building in the distance, then it shot straight up like a dust devil and struck. I braced the wards of Prime Luxe, but it wasn’t attacking us—it never even angled toward Vegas, but beyond it. Here. I felt the impact, but it was—”
At that moment, the doors of the building burst open and firefighters rushed out with multiple gurneys and spinal boards, hauling people free of the still-burning building. I heard a familiar but raspy voice, and I surged forward.
“Brody.”
The man in the scorched gray suit wheeled around toward me, and his eyes welled.
“Sara!” he gasped. “They came for her. They thought she was you, I think that—that had to be it. There was nothing—less than nothing. A slight breeze over the water, an almost warm, smoky smell. Campfire. Like a campfire, that’s it. Nothing more than that. A fucking campfire.”
He was shaking now, and I clamped his upper arms with my hands, so shocked, I couldn’t at first form words. Brody looked like absolute hell, his face blackened with smoke, his light blue eyes now a watery gray and wide—too wide. They stared at me like I was a ghost. He shuddered, swaying toward me.
“What happened after you smelled the fire, Brody?” I asked, keeping my words low, easy. Around us, more firefighters swarmed, but the fire was already out, and Armaeus had left my side. I was sure the two were connected, but I kept my gaze steady on Brody. Armaeus would find Sariah, but I needed answers. “What happ—”
“There were so many of them,” he whispered, refocusing on me with his wide, watering eyes. “Birds—bats. I don’t know what they were. Demons—but not demons. Not like…” He shook his head, shuddering. “Not like that. These were more like a swarm of some kind. They rushed us from the lake and came at us, wings and claws and beaks. People went down screaming, but they didn’t stop. They didn’t stop…”
He blinked again. His mouth kept moving, but no sound came out. He suddenly stopped shaking, went stone-cold still, his arms icy beneath my hands.
“What happened after that, Brody?” I asked again, more softly this time.
He was staring now, but no longer at me. “I pulled my gun. I did. But it was too late. They took her even before the fire. The fire—the explosion. It was too late.”
Wait, what? A darkness slid through me. “What do you mean they took her? Who? The bat creatures?” I could picture them, squalling in the night. Were they the same ones I’d sent to Gamon, coming for revenge? Was that possible?
“I don’t know,” Brody whispered, and it was a testament to his shock that he kept shaking his head, his mouth working for several seconds before more words would come out. When they did, they were barely a whisper. “She wasn’t surprised, Sara. She wasn’t surprised. She was expecting them.”
The darkness expanded, leaching out from my spine to flood my torso, my legs. “What are you talking about?”
A flare of irritation spiked across Brody’s face, and with it, some color. “Oh, come on, Sara,” he snapped, sounding almost normal. “She was dressed like you, she looked like you. I thought it was weird, but she just laughed it off. Assured me she wasn’t trying to fuck with me, and she sure as hell wasn’t hero-worshiping you, but she had a theory…a theory. That’s what she said.” He shifted a little, glancing out over the water. “We laughed, we talked. About nothing. Stupid shit. Then she smelled the fire, and everything shifted. She…fuck me, Sara. She was scared. She knew what those fuckers were.”
He started trembling again, and I clamped my fingers down harder over his arms. Where was Armaeus? He should be out of the firebombed hotel by now, carrying Sariah. Healing her. I needed Brody to hold it together long enough to understand what had happened here. “And what—”
“They called her Sariah. Oh my God,” Brody whispered. “They said they were taking her home. Her true home, her only home.”
He was back to rocking again.
“Home?” I stared at him, noting the sweat beading on his pale skin, his glazed, unfocused eyes. “Brody, what are you talking about?”
Armaeus chose that moment to rematerialize beside me, and I turned on him. No Sariah. “What the fuck is going on here?” I demanded. “Where is Sariah?”
Armaeus merely turned in a tight circle, lifting his hands as if he were taking a sample of the air around him. When he spoke, his voice was cold and toneless. “Hellspawn, called from the pits of that dark place specifically because they know the path back. They’ve taken Sariah with them.”
His cold eyes settled on me. “She won’t survive there. As strong as she is, she cannot survive a return to Hell.”
“Well, fuck that,” I shoved Brody toward Armaeus, the darkness now blanketing me from forehead to toes. “I’m going after her.”
“No.” Armaeus’s eyes flared. “You can’t. You’re immortal. You’re not allowed to enter Hell.”
He was right. I knew he was right. That didn’t change the facts. “They took her there.”
“I know they took her. We cannot choose this path to get her back, however. There are some doorways you cannot go through and expect to emerge unscathed, Miss Wilde. This is one of them.”
“Watch me,” I shot back, a burst of fury erupting inside me. “Those rules were made before I was ever born.”
Squeezing my eyes tight, I burst into flame.
It’d been well over a year since I’d gone to Hell and back, but I remembered well the place where I’d found Sariah, the dark and twisting corridors filled with false hope and deception. I remembered even more the worst and best moments of those deceptions, when I’d thought Armaeus and I had found a place to live and grow old together, time out of time. The visceral horror of that moment washed over and through me, and I saw—saw it like it was my own bedroom. Felt the walls around me, lived the aching betrayal as Sariah had laughed with rich, delicious satisfaction—
When I crackled back into existence, I couldn’t breathe. The smoke and flames were so thick all around me, it was as if I’d been cast into the heart of an inferno. While I may have remembered this place from another time, the decor had definitely changed. Hell was no longer quite so eager to receive me. Was that because I’d become immortal? I didn’t know.
But Sariah was my sister. She was more than that—she was me. For better, for worse, forever. She was my beginning, and I was her end, and round and round we would forever go. I would find
her.
With a roar of pain, I flailed out, immediately coming into contact with a stone wall. I bounced off that and into another one, this one giving way in a rush of liquid fire. I screamed and crashed through it, landing hard on a pile of sticks scattered over a stone floor. Not sticks, I saw immediately—bones. Were there bones in Hell? Why?
My thoughts flying wild, I scrambled off the pile, trying to get my bearings. I had first met Sariah in a series of interconnecting corridors in Hell, and sure enough, there were several exits from this central room, each one blazing with fire.
“Sariah!” I shouted, dashing toward the first exit, but as I passed beneath its archway, an unseen force pushed me back. I shifted directions and tried another doorway, with the same result.
“What the fuck is this?” I demanded. I didn’t have time to screw around here. I didn’t have—
“Sara…” The word was a barely fractured whisper. I couldn’t place its location, but—
“Sara,” Another voice cut in, loud and authoritative, the same voice that the demon from the hall of the Palazzo Hotel had used. This time, the connection apparently was stronger, and I recognized it immediately. Jarvis Fuggeren, the head of the Shadow Court, his heavy European accent overlaying centuries of entitlement. He laughed, the sound rich with deep, rolling satisfaction. Then he kept going.
“Who would’ve thought you could break into Hell? Are you a god, Sara, not merely immortal? Not a human at all, anymore? Here we’ve set the trap for the High Priestess…but was it you we should have caught?”
I looked around frantically, but there was no way Jarvis could see me, no way he could be here. There was no amount of magic that could make him that strong, right?