In the Company of Witches

“How is it you’re even alive?” Raina asked. “I thought the Dark Guardians had kicked your asses centuries ago.”



“Lucifer felt we’d overstepped our bounds as a race. It was genocide.” Erica turned away from a cauldron, where it appeared she was cooking up something especially nasty. Her lip curled back in a sneer, her eyes fierce. “I escaped the slaughter.”



She shrugged. “In truth, I don’t miss the rest of my kind. We never cared much for one another, anyhow. More power for me now, right? Lucifer sent the Dark Guardians to wipe us out back in…” She paused, appearing to count it out on her taloned fingers. “Oh, heavens, back in 800 AD sometime. Time does fly. Mikhael wasn’t even a Dark Guardian then. Barely a hundred. Bet he was a cute, delicious little baby. Like chicken fried on a stick. Anyhow, I saw the writing on the wall. Put myself down here in a dormant state. Erased my life existence from the cosmic map. There’s a price for that kind of magic, of course. Always is. Had to be cognizant of everything, even though I was completely frozen, inert, a part of these walls. Broke free about fifty years ago and I’ve been learning, staying low. Accumulating assets. World has changed a lot, physically at least.”



Erica cocked a brow at Raina. “You think if you keep me talking, you’ll gain an advantage. Not that I want to crush that hope right away; it’s so much more fun to destroy it in various little ways over time, but I don’t want to deal with a tiresome resistance.”



The demoness pulled a hot iron from the fire, twirling it like a baton. Raina steeled herself, refusing to cringe back, forcing herself to mark what Erica was saying and not lose herself in that dull orange glow or the image of her flesh being burned by it.



“Mikhael never saw me coming,” the she-demon said. “I knocked him out with that fountain. With you gone, he won’t know I’m a phase demon. He’ll pin it on some rogue demon element, one I’ll throw in his way with your scent, your blood, and the pursuit will stop there. I feel sorry for that scapegoat. You’re a very choice piece of pussy. Mikhael will make the poor thing suffer.



“In the meantime, I’ll continue to be a shadow in the night, able to do as I wish. Especially with a soulkeeper in my possession, thanks to Isaac’s help.” Erica paused at the wall, reached out to touch the silver flute. It looked like what the Pied Piper of Hamelin would use to call children away with him. “Tally that up with an accomplished witch who also has the power of a succubus, and I scored big this week.



“Oh, and in case you’re thinking the puppies will figure it out for him, they couldn’t see me, any of us.” She glanced at her minions. “All they saw was you out there, talking to yourself and standing over his body. You should be glad of that, because otherwise I would have turned your place into a slaughterhouse. Perhaps in time we’ll go back for them, add them to my little cache. A girl can never have too many weapons, and a small army of sex demons…priceless.”



Raina closed her fingers on the bars. Erica’s eyes followed their emergence from the cage like a snake about to strike. “Why is it the villain always wants to ramble on about her plans and how clever she is?” Raina asked pleasantly. “Is it to torture her victims further? Or to prop herself up with a sense that she’s more than an evil, crazy psycho that no one really wants around?”



Erica jammed the iron through the bars, against Raina’s right breast. She screamed, no help for that, but it was a scream of rage. Those bars were her anchor point, her grip on them like the edge of a cliff. She wouldn’t fall, no matter what. The gaze she kept locked on Erica was filled with hatred and the promise of retribution, not fear. No room for fear.



She was prepared for cruel and evil; she’d been through that. The fear she’d had then, that had consumed her for so long, was eventually replaced by fury, and that had helped her break out. Rage and power had joined with her succubus blood, and she’d been willing to dive as deeply into darkness as Elceus himself to take him down.



That experience had given her the ability to understand what Mikhael meant, about the darkness in his heart being something that could be used for good. But it didn’t stop it from being darkness.



She convulsed against the bars as Erica kept the iron pressed against her. Her lips curled back, fangs showing, and she snarled at the she-demon. The pain was excruciating, eating away at everything that was keeping that fear at bay, so she fought it harder. Shoving herself against the brand, she reached through the bars and closed her hand over the iron, holding it even when Erica tried to jerk it back.



“You…can’t make me…do anything,” Raina said. “You might as well…kill me now.”



Erica finally yanked the iron away and it clattered to the floor. She stared at Raina, who was panting, her burned breast pressed against the cage. “Elceus taught me everything about enduring pain.” Raina spat through the bars, and the demoness, not expecting it, got hit with the spittle. Score one for her, though she was aware of Isaac shaking his head, trying frantically to dissuade her from poking the tiger with a stick. It didn’t matter, not when the tiger already had you in her sights. At that point, it was all about who backed down first.



“I may not be able to teach you about pain, succubus.” Erica picked up the iron and considered it, her eyes running down Raina’s body with malevolent promise. “But I know, no matter how you resist the pain, you can’t resist hunger. Eventually, you will drain Isaac.”



“Not happening. The hunger doesn’t override my will. Not ever.”



“You’re lying. Even if you aren’t, he’ll beg you to do it.” Erica slapped the iron back into the brazier and met Raina’s gaze. “Because until you feed on him, I’m going to have more fun with you, and my demons are going to have more fun with him. I absolutely love having more than one toy to play with.”



MIKHAEL DRIFTED INTO CONSCIOUSNESS, A HAZY SORT of fur over his memory, such that he came awake without opening his eyes, getting his bearings. He was in Raina’s front yard, surrounded by what smelled like torn-up grass and broken concrete. Derek was there, kneeling beside him. Some others were there…the incubi and succubi, probably up on the porch, along with Ruby and Ramona. No Raina. Her scent lingered…her blood.



His gaze snapped open and he surged up. He didn’t contain his instinctive reaction, but fortunately Derek did, grounding the electrical energy that shot off him and struck the ground in four places, lightning smoking off the grass. One of Raina’s rosebushes disintegrated into a pile of ash. Shit. She was going to nail him for that one.



“Where is she?”



“I’m going to lift the veil on your memory now. I didn’t want you coming up thinking you were still in the midst of a fight. Mikhael, look at me. Tell me you understand.”



He shook the clouds out of his head, and they stubbornly stayed fixed there. He focused on Derek, whose mouth was tight and eyes dead serious. Something bad had happened. Very bad. And Raina wasn’t here.



“Get your shit out of my head before I rip off your arms.”



“Good enough.” Derek nodded. It was like a breeze going through his mind, an easy removal. Any other time he would have been impressed with the Light Guardian’s command of mind magic, since exercising it on a Dark Guardian, even an unconscious one, wasn’t the easiest task. But what filled his mind was enough to eradicate any desire but one.



He’d been on his way to her porch. He was going to walk up those stairs, kick in the door, sling her over his shoulder and take her somewhere they could talk this out, once and for all. He was going to lay it all out for her, whether or not it scared the shit out of her. And him. He had time; he could wait her out until she believed him. Until he got more steady with it himself.



A power surge, coming from behind him. He tried to turn, but the percussion had already hit, the fountain exploding, and then…nothing.



Nothing. A scent he remembered vaguely, putrid, decaying…



“What did you see?” His gaze speared the sex demons on the porch. Li was paler than usual, probably because Mikhael sounded like he was going to eviscerate anyone who didn’t give him the right answer. Which was probably why Derek answered, and Ruby stepped in front of Raina’s charges, though her expression held a disturbing compassion. As well as a great deal of worry for her friend.



“He said Raina was standing over you, protecting you from something. Something he couldn’t see, but she was talking to it. It didn’t stay long, and Li only had one side of the conversation.” Derek shared the details of it with him, a comment about a soap opera, nothing useful. Raina obviously hadn’t known they couldn’t hear or see her opponent, else she would have given them more. “Then she vanished.”



“How did you get here?”



“Cathair.” Derek’s jaw tightened. “She always said she’d never call on me for anything, so when he came looking for me, instead of Ruby, I knew it wasn’t good. He kicked the ass of an eagle to get to us, and he’s hurt bad. Very bad, I’m sorry to say. Ramona is tending him, since she’s better at that than this kind of thing. Cathair couldn’t see who Raina was facing, either, but he picked up from her mind that it was the female demon you expected. Isaac’s gone, too.”



“Nothing should have gotten through that perimeter undetected.”



“I walked it while you were healing, and I got nothing, except the tracks of four low-level demons, thugs she probably compelled to help her. Once she got in, neutralized you, she had them cross those warding lines. They all disappeared in the same spot. No trail. What did that demon take that would make her want Raina as well?”



“She took a soulkeeper.”



Derek considered that. “To use that, the user would need to be able to detect the moment a soul is about to be released.”



“A sex demon can detect that. She took Isaac.”



“But with Raina, she gets that, plus a powerful magic user.” Ruby spoke from the porch. She’d put her arm around a white-faced Gina to reassure her, but her next words were less than reassuring. “More powerful than she seems, which is already formidable.”