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“Victoria still throws a Halloween party every year,” she said. “I remember you came to a couple.”
No one who’d been to a Hadleigh party could ever forget it. I’d attended the first one when I was thirteen. The Hadleighs’ massive house would fill with people, drinks would flow, drugs would be passed around. In crowds like that, it was easy to make someone disappear.
“They always claim their parents go out of town,” Everly said. “But they don’t. Kent will be there to keep an eye on things, especially if they’re going to try to take Raelynn. And I think they will. She has no family in the state. She has a close friend, who isn’t involved with the Libiri, but that doesn’t offer her much protection.” She chewed her thumbnail, obvious worry on her face. I sighed.
“I’ll try to keep her away from them,” I said. “IfI see her. But I’m not going out of my way to do it.”
Everly smiled in relief, nodding her head. “Thank you. Trust me, the party will be a good opportunity for you. If you can find Kent, he’ll likely be alone. It’ll be noisy, everyone will be drunk.”
“No one will notice a few gunshots,” I said.
“Exactly. And another thing.” She paused in the middle of the hall, her eyes narrowed in thought. “If there’s one thing Kent is paranoid about, it's demons. Keeping Leon made him nervous — he always suspected the demon would try to kill him at the slightest opportunity. He was right, of course. But Leon ended up going after Jeremiah, since he couldn’t get at Kent.”
“So Kent is protected somehow,” I said. “Will Zane be able to get near him?”
“Kent carries an amulet that prevents most paranormal entities from harming him,” she said. “But if you can get the amulet off him, your demon won’t have a problem. Kent has other artifacts too, old ones his grandfather brought out of the mine nearly a century ago, and things my mother gave him too. I don’t know what most of them do, and I don’t think Kent does either. The family has a lot of magic at their disposal, if they figure out how to use it.”
“Got it. So we go to the party, prevent human sacrifice, kill Kent. Sounds like a good night.”
“Once my father is dead, the Libiri will be left scrambling. They’ll be vulnerable.” She paused, and I wondered if it felt strange for her to talk about killing her own father. She didn’t speak about the man with any affection, but still. She blinked rapidly, and turned away from me to look back down the hall. “Don’t be afraid. Callum is coming.”
30
“Where did you take her? Where did youfucking take her?”
The Archdemon narrowed his eyes at me from the doorway. Black eyes, as dark as the empty expanses of the night sky. He picked a claw between his long teeth, as if he was already bored with the sight of me.
“Don’t growl at me, hellion. It’s rude.”
“Rude? Fucking rude?You took my human!”
Usually, I could reach out my mind and feel Juniper’s presence: like reaching toward a fire and feeling its warmth. Her soul’s tie to me was a silver thread when I closed my eyes, the brightest of all the threads from every soul I’d collected. But I couldn’t feel her here. It was like everything was muted; her soul hidden from me.
The realization was nothing short of terrifying. I wasn’t used to feeling out of control, to feeling so ripped by emotions that I couldn’t even think straight. But they’d taken her. They’d fuckingtaken her.
I thrashed against the chains he’d used to bind me to the floor, but they didn’t budge. The room was cold, with stone walls and a carved stone floor. The carvings were huge, but easily recognizable as a summoning circle. It was a powerful one, the kind of thing that would require a massive outpouring of magic to use.
The kind of magic that could summon an Archdemon.
Creatures like him had been alive so long and claimed so many souls that they had risen through all of Hell’s ranks to achieve something near royalty. Hell’s council was made up of Archdemons, but there were hundreds, if not thousands of them in existence.
They were rarely seen, let alone on Earth.
We were in deep fucking shit.
“I swear to Lucifer, if you hurt her —” I strained against the chains again, my veins bulging and blackening as I tried to break them. The damn things were ancient, the manacles worn smooth by time. They wouldn’t budge, they wouldn’t even bend. Whatever magic infused them was beyond my strength. “If she comes back with a single fucking scratch on her —”
The Archdemon crossed the room in a blink. He crouched over me, chin resting on his palm. “I hit her head so hard she fell unconscious,” he said coldly. “And I’d do it again if my lady wishes it. I’ll make you watch me tear her apart, piece by piece, if my lady wishes it.”
I wasn’t good at being at another creature’s mercy. I was a significant if not deadly threat to most things I met, so having the tables turned was nothing short of maddening. All the threats that wanted to spill out of me were useless. The more I sat there yelling at him, the more energy I expended that I should have been focusing toward healing the injuries he’d caused me.
I’d thought I was going to die. Istillthought I was going to die. But fuck, the least I could do was hold out hope that this bastard’s “lady” wasn’t as merciless as he was. Relying on a witch to spare my life — and Juniper’s life — was a miserable predicament, but I wasn’t seeing another way out of this.
I sat back, letting the manacles fall limp, and the Archdemon grinned. “There’s a good boy. I really would’vehatedto have to restrain you further.” He paused for a moment, and snapped his fingers as if he’d suddenly remembered something important. “Ah, wait, no, I really wouldn’t have hated that. It’s so much more entertaining when you fight. Then I get to watch you fail again...and again...and again.”
Don’t take the bait, don’t fucking take the bait.He was tapping his claws impatiently on the floor, watching me with such hyper-focused, pent-up energy I was surprised he wasn’t literally vibrating. I sighed heavily.
“Just don’t hurt her,” I said. “Tell your lady...whoever the hell she is...not to hurt her.”
