I hoped that after ten years it was still intact, though I had my doubts.
Shuffling the girl to one side, I leaned against the door and used the side of my hand to turn the knob. The door opened with an eerie creak.
The blinds were closed, and the generator wasn’t on yet, but just from what little light came through the doorway, I could make out the living area. A couch and two oversized armchairs sat on top of an antique rug. A chipped coffee table rested in the middle.
I stepped inside, noting how it was all there, the same way we’d left it.
It was the only thing that was the same a decade later.
“Where are we?” Nathalie asked, coming up behind me.
“My family’s cabin.”
I laid the girl down on the couch and walked around the back of it. A small dining area with a circular wooden table and four chairs sat in front of the sliding back door. I pushed the thick drapes aside, letting the afternoon sun shine through.
While everything was covered in an inch of dust, it was completely undisturbed.
“There’s no food here,” Nathalie said from the kitchen. She had all the cabinets open and was peering into one when I looked over at her.
“Even if there was, it wouldn’t be good by now. We’ll make do with what I brought.”
She sighed, closing up the cabinets. “Is there a bathroom here?”
“Straight down the hall,” I said without turning. “You’ll want to run the tap for a few minutes to clear the pipes. And don’t drink it. It’s well water, but who knows what’s in it now.”
When the bathroom door clicked shut, I opened the back door and stepped outside. Following the porch around to the side, I knelt in front of the generator, hoping it still worked. The fuel valve turned on without an issue, but the choke rod was stiff. After a few attempts, I got it. The silence in the wintry forest started to creep in as the branches rustled.
So quiet . . .
It was unsettling how the lack of noise snuck beneath the skin, like an itch that couldn’t be scratched. Or really, noise operated as a distraction. Without it, there was a void where uncertainty and fear could slink in.
I glanced out at the forest, but there was nothing there. Nothing but dried leaves and barren branches. The sun filtered through the trees, casting long shadows that were growing longer by the minute. I shook my head and turned back to the generator, flipping the ignition switch on. I pulled the recoil cord, and it emitted a loud hum. It was a softer sound than a car engine, but still loud in the dead of winter.
I moved the choke to run and waited a moment to make sure nothing funny happened. When the hum continued, I got to my feet and dusted myself off. A cold wind blew by, whipping my braid across my face. I flicked it back and went inside.
“We need to talk,” Nathalie said, as I closed the sliding door behind me.
I strode past her, over to the fireplace. The red bricks were smudged black with soot, and the metal rods inside that held the wood up were rusted. “About?” I asked, peering inside and up the chimney.
“Why are we here?” she asked. I squinted past my reflex to sneeze. A faint light shone from the top, which meant it was unblocked. Good. It was fucking freezing.
“In case you haven’t noticed, my apartment door was blown off by assassins,” I said, lowering my head again to pull myself out of the chimney.
Nathalie grumbled something under her breath before saying, “I’m aware of the assassins. Why are we here?”
“Because it’s safe.”
“It’s in the middle of nowhere. Assuming no one followed us or can track us, which is a terrible assumption by the way, there’s not enough food in the duffel bag to last us more than three days. I know because I checked. And before you say, ‘well I can hunt,’ I don’t want to live off of squirrel for the winter—”
“For one, I can’t hunt. I was born and raised in New Chicago. While my family came out here for a couple of weeks every summer, we weren’t survivalists. We were—” I broke off and let out a tight breath. “It doesn’t matter. The point is this is temporary. We’re only going to be here for the night. I needed somewhere I could keep her while I dealt with my old boss. We’ll be gone in the morning. So get comfortable. I’m going to chop us some wood.”
“You’re going to deal with your boss?”
“I don’t have a choice,” I replied.
“There’s always a choice,” she said.
“Dealing with him or dying. I’ve still got things to take care of, so dying isn’t an option.”
“You could run,” she suggested.
I shook my head. “He’d find me no matter where I went, and he won’t give up. Not when he thinks I betrayed him. I have to face this.”
She didn’t respond immediately, and I took that as my cue to start for the back door again.
“Piper?” Nathalie said, before I could leave.
“What?”
“I’m sorry about your sister,” she said softly.
My head whipped back, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the sleeping woman on the couch.
I wasn’t sure how she put it together, but I didn’t ask. It didn’t really matter because it was the truth.
“Her name was—is . . . Bree.”
I opened the back door and stepped outside into the cold.
Nathalie didn’t follow.
It was after dark when I returned.
The light on the back porch flickered in and out, the yellow luminescence calling me back. I reached for the backdoor handle, noticing then how white my fingers were. Red blotches stained my hands. If I had a mirror, I’d bet my cheeks were also the same ruddy shade after hours outside chopping wood. The two logs I carried under my arm were just a small amount compared to the pile I’d left in the woods.
The back door opened with a shrill squeal.
I frowned when I saw Nathalie standing on the opposite side of the kitchen with her arms crossed over her chest. A white paper plate with a sandwich sat in the middle of the table. I wasn’t sure if this was her idea of bargaining power or a truce.
I shut the sliding door behind me, cutting off the worst of the screaming winds.
“You were out for quite a while,” she said, her eyes dropping to the two logs.
“Needed time to think,” I said, striding past the table toward the fireplace. She stepped in front of me and extended both hands.
“Let me. You go eat.”
I lifted an eyebrow and handed her the wood. She shooed me toward the table with a look. As I took a seat at one of the rickety wooden chairs, sweat started to practically pour off of me. I grimaced, pulling at the turtleneck.
“So,” Nathalie started nonchalantly. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“You didn’t have to do all this to ask me that,” I said, taking a bite of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
She grunted as she finished maneuvering the logs and then looked up and wiped a stray brown lock from her forehead. “I made you a sandwich,” she said skeptically. “Also, you aren’t exactly the most forthcoming with information. You wouldn’t even tell me where we were going until we got here.” She motioned to the cabin.
I nodded while I chewed. “If we didn’t make it out of the city, I didn’t want the information tortured out of you.”
To her credit, she didn’t pale or even outwardly react as she set to work with the can of lighter fluid and match sticks. It took her three attempts to get it, but when she was done, an orange fire glowed, casting the room in warm shadows. “Why can you tell me your plans now, then?” she said. She got up and came to sit in the chair across from me.
“Knowledge is power. If you’re planning to come with me tomorrow, which I assume you are, then you need to know what you’re up against. Ignorance could get us both killed.” I set half of my sandwich down and leaned back to read her face.
She was grinning.
I frowned.
“You’ve decided to trus
t me.”
“I’ve decided to not kill you,” I corrected.
Nathalie snorted. “Whatever you need to tell yourself, Piper. I know the truth.”
My chest squeezed a little bit because I knew the truth too—and she wasn’t far off. A decade of life lessons told me I was stupid. That this decision was going to get me, and by extension my sister, killed. All my training, all those years, every single thing said I was going to regret this.
Except one.
My gut.
It was telling me a different story. Given Nathalie hadn’t tried to kill me yet, I was trusting it. For now.
“My old boss is very powerful. He’ll have bounty hunters all over the city looking for us. We’ll have to be careful.”
“Anders isn’t your boss?” she asked, kicking her feet up on the wooden chair opposite of her. I shot her a look, and she immediately lowered them, grinning sheepishly.
“No,” I rolled my eyes. “He was just the middleman. Hiring hunters is beneath my actual boss. Anders was his paper pusher, and he handled the shit my boss deemed not worth his time.”
Nathalie leaned forward, resting her elbows on the chipped wooden tabletop. She looked me square in the eye as she asked, “So who is your boss?”
“Lucifer.”
Her brown eyes turned a slight shade of amber as she slumped back. “Lucifer?” she repeated. “He’s your boss?” I nodded, and she let out a curse. “Well shit, no wonder I couldn’t figure out who’d employed you after you left human patrol. With your hatred of magic, I never would have thought—”
“I never met him. It was only ever Anders I dealt with, but Lucifer paid twice as good as human patrol with half the rules. I got to choose who I hunted and how I brought them in.” I shrugged, having lost my appetite to finish the sandwich despite chopping wood for hours. “The gig was good.”
“Until now.”
I nodded. “Until now.”
She mulled that over for a moment before saying, “I didn’t know he was in New Chicago.”
“Most people don’t,” I shrugged. “I don’t even know for certain he’s here now, but I suspect he is.”
“Why is that?”
“Two reasons.” I held up one finger. “Paranoia.” I held up the second. “Technology. Those two go hand in hand for a demon. He’ll be paranoid about anything he deems as his, and he’ll want to oversee it himself to some degree, and he likely won’t trust technology one bit. He’s also cunning. He wouldn’t want people to know he’s here. For one as old as him to have never been caught, and still be ruling after all this time, he’s gotta be in New Chicago more often than not. I suspect Anders reports to him personally.”
“And if he’s not?” she asked skeptically.
“We cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Nathalie released a breath. “No wonder you were paranoid I was an assassin sent to kill you. You must have really wanted that information from the demon to be willing to gamble like this.” It was subtle. A sly attempt at nudging the conversation that way. My lips tightened around one corner of my mouth.
“I do, yes.”
Silence passed between us. Her gaze trying to prompt me to tell her, and my own flinty stare telling her not to go there.
“But it’s not the most pressing issue right now,” I added. “We need to take out Lucifer. Permanently.”
Her eyebrows inched up her forehead. “How exactly do you plan to do that?”
“We’re going to kidnap Anders and get his whereabouts from him,” I said.
It was her turn to frown. “That’s it?” she asked. “That’s your plan?”
“Anders isn’t the only one who knows how to track. I followed him home a few times. I know where he lives. We can get the drop on him undetected and then find Lucifer.”
Nathalie put her hands up and then pressed her palms into her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered to herself. She dropped her hands and gave me a serious look. “First, you’re assuming Anders knows his location. He might, but that’s a big if. Are you sure you want to bet on that?”
“I don’t have a better plan to find him,” I said. “It’s not like there’s a phone number I can look up to call and book an appointment. This guy is a demon, and he’s a secretive one at that.”
“Okay, assuming that Anders does know—which is an assumption, and not a good one—how do you plan to kill him? Do you even know how to kill a demon?”
I pressed my lips together.
“Oh my god. You don’t know how to, do you?”
“I was planning to figure that out once I found him,” I said in a tight voice.
“You can’t just figure that out,” she argued.
“Sure you can,” I said, pulling one of my pistols from the holster at my hip to place it on the table. “He wouldn’t be the first supe I’ve hunted without knowing how to kill them. I’ve figured it out with all the ones in the past. I can do it again.”
“This isn’t just a normal supe,” Nathalie continued. “Demons don’t even come from earth.”
“I’m aware,” I snapped.
“But you don’t know how to kill him.”
“I’ll figure it out,” I repeated in a hard voice. Part of the problem was that I did have a plan, or rather, a solution. I already knew bullets didn’t work, but bullets weren’t the only weapon in my arsenal. The white fire I created while in my other form would destroy pretty much anything. Except Ronan. I pushed that thought aside. Even Ronan said it could destroy almost anything. I had a feeling Lucifer counted.
But I wasn’t planning on telling Nathalie that just yet.
“I vote we come up with a new plan,” she said.
“You don’t get a vote.”
“Sure I do,” she said dismissively. “We’re both going to die when this fails, so we both get a vote. I vote to come up with another plan. A better one, where we don’t die.”
“You said yourself that you’ll live as long as you stick with me.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m testing it,” she said, throwing her hands up.
“Could have fooled me,” I muttered, pushing away from the table.
“Where are you going?” she demanded as I got to my feet.
I motioned to myself. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m sweating my ass off right now. I need a shower.”
Nathalie got to her feet to follow me. “Your shower can wait. We need a plan.”
“We have a plan,” I groaned. Talking to her was like talking to a brick wall.
“A new plan,” she corrected.
“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “We have two objectives. Two. Find Lucifer. Kill Lucifer. The only contact I even have that might be in touch with him is Anders. It’s a start. If it doesn’t work, we come up with another plan and another plan and another plan—until it does.”
“Lucifer isn’t the only demon in the city,” she said.
I stopped mid-step down the hall and turned to look at her.
“What?”
“I know you heard me. You hear better than any human. Lucifer isn’t the only demon in the city—and he isn’t the only demon after you. We can use that.”
My tongue traced the edge of my teeth as I debated. Nathalie stood at the end of the hall, arms crossed and hip cocked. She leaned against the wall and tilted her head, a curtain of warm brown hair spilling over one shoulder.
“I’m listening.”
She flashed me a Cheshire smile.
My heart dropped. I had a feeling that whatever plan she was concocting was going to make mine seem sane.
“One demon wants to kill you. The other has a vested interest in keeping you alive.” She looked me up and down once as she said it.
“We don’t know that,” I said, the tone of my voice warning her.
Too bad she wasn’t going to listen.
“Oh no,” she laughed as she said the words. “Neither of us is stupid, Piper. You were alone in that room for ten minutes wit
h him, and not a scratch was on you when Barry and I got you out. He might be hunting you, but he doesn’t want you dead.” She gave me a pointed look, and I rolled my eyes, trying to dismiss it even as my heart started to beat erratically.
“Maybe,” I said apathetically, shrugging one shoulder.
“It doesn’t matter why he wants you, but he does. Probably as much as the other one wants you dead. I vote we use that. Use him. Who better to kill a demon than another demon?”
The shit-eating grin on her face said she was pretty damn proud of herself.
I pressed my lips together, not wanting to praise her further . . . because it was a good plan. Or at least the makings of one.
Instead, I took a step toward her, and motioned vaguely with one hand. “So tell me, how would we go about using one demon to kill the other?”
As impossible as it should have been, her smile widened.
My heart thumped again. Dread thickened in my gut.
“By doing what you do best,” she said. I lifted a brow in question. “We lay a trap to lure our prey using just the right bait.”
The look she gave me made her intention clear.
Me. I was the bait.
Goddamnit.
16
It was late by the time we finished hatching our plan, and by the end, it was good.
This was going to work.
It had to.
At least that’s what I told myself as I laid down in the musty, old twin bed that smelled of cedar balls and cinnamon apples. I pulled the sheet up around my breasts and turned, flicking my wet hair behind me as I tried to get comfortable.
Despite the restlessness inside me, sleep wasn’t hard to come by.
I knew it had come when I saw the flickering candlelight of a chandelier.
Church pews surrounded me, pushed to the side. A circle was drawn, and blood ran around the edges, but where it came from wasn’t clear. There were no hooded figures this time. No athames. No chanting. If anything, it was eerily silent.
Touched by Fire: Magic Wars (Demons of New Chicago Book 1) Page 11