AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“If the prophecy is correct, he can kill you.” I couldn’t stand the thought of Lee’s life ending so soon after his turn. Becoming a vampire—with king powers—hadn’t exactly fixed Lee’s recklessness. One of the reasons I wanted him here with me instead of on the Earth plane had been to keep him from trying to solve the problem on his own. “We need Dean alive and well, but I can’t stand the thought of what Lucifer is going to ask.”
“Then I steal it.” He said the words casually. No biggie. “I have the Mantle of Arthur in the bag of holding. I know we’re all worried that Lucifer will know when I take a feather, but that bag is damn fine at hiding what it holds. If we can’t get what we need through negotiation, I’ll take it, and when we leave his realm the bag will be in my pocket with him none the wiser.”
“I don’t think you understand how jealously Lucifer guards his body. All you’ve met is an aspect of him.” Gray’s fingers tapped along the desk as he spoke. “That aspect, while not physically real, can do a lot of damage. It isn’t vulnerable.”
I wasn’t quite getting it. “Okay. So we saw a projection of Lucifer?”
“In a way,” Gray allowed. “If you touch him, he feels real. He can do a lot of physical things like kill or fuck. What you have to understand is that Lucifer’s physical body is far too large to deal with. But he also guards it, hence sending out aspects of himself to deal with anything he needs. Long ago, he wasn’t as careful and pieces of himself were stolen. Weapons were created. Dangerous weapons.”
“Yeah, I got tagged with one,” Lee said with a huff. “I thought his wings were separate though.”
“His heavenly wings are,” Gray conceded. “He cut them off after he fell. He grew demonic wings that are still on his body, but that doesn’t mean he won’t guard the angelic ones. Having a piece of Lucifer means having a bit of power over him. He doesn’t like that. Not at all, and I worry what will happen if he catches you.”
“He won’t,” Lee promised. “I’ve checked and the Mantle of Arthur works here on the Hell plane. I’ve been skulking around a bit, and no one knew. Tix watches more than reality shows. The dude gets real spun up aboutOutlander. Oh, and if you don’t know, Liv and Casey are totally doing it again. I did not witness that with my eyes. I heard it as I was doing a sweep of the mansion with the mantle. Casey didn’t sense a thing.”
Well, he probably wouldn’t have stopped even if he had. I knew I should be pissed about it, but he’d had to test it sometime. “Have you followed Liv at all?”
Lee’s face went blank. “A bit. I wanted to make sure it was okay to have her around Dean. Most of the time someone’s with her, but when I find her alone, I do watch her. She’s struggling.” Lee turned toward the door. “Isn’t she, Casey?”
Sure enough, my academic friend stood in the doorway, a frown on his face. “Well, knowing you’re following her around won’t help. I suspect you know why she’s struggling. You know you really should run a plan by the elders.”
Lee’s lips curled slightly in an arrogant grin. “Plan? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
It was my turn to frown his way. “Yes, you do, and I suspect Evan does, too. What is the demon blood for? There’s no way Evan simply decided to give it to her so she could slow her transition. That demon blood should make Liv strong.”
“Only if you feed her the right blood,” Casey said, walking into the room. “It’s a trick I’ve learned Myrddin uses on his inner circle. I’d heard rumors about it before, but I had it confirmed a few hours ago. I asked Henri to test the blood we took from Liv right after we captured her. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t carrying anything that could hurt us, but looking at it again, he managed to ID the actual demonic blood that was in her veins after her last use.”
“And what did he find?” My heart ached for my friend. She was right there, but it felt like there was a wall between us.
“Myrddin has been feeding her the blood of what is essentially a worker-bee class of demons,” Casey said, his tone even, but I could tell from the hard set of his jaw that he was angry.
Gray’s eyes closed, and there was sympathy in his gaze when he opened them again. “Damn it. I know exactly what you’re talking about. They’re bred for being easy to work with. They don’t question orders or feel any need for physical autonomy. They’re naïve and trusting of their overseers, and loyalty is bred into them. If Liv has been on that blood for years, she hasn’t had much of a choice in what she did.”
“I suspect Myrddin’s been using her body,” Casey added. “She doesn’t remember things she should, or rather she remembers them completely different than what actually happened.”
“Okay, if that’s what this bee blood does, what would Eddie’s…” The revelation hit me, and I knew exactly why Liv was having trouble, why she’d started to have moments of clarity. “Satan blood. Eddie is a satan, and a satan must be ruled by reason and logic.”
“And that is why Rhys, Evan, and I came up with the idea to feed it to her. Don’t blame Eddie. We convinced him it was for your good, too, but we didn’t want to risk you saying no,” Lee admitted. “Although I will say Evan changed things up at the last minute. She was supposed to exchange it for Liv’s help with Dean.”
“I don’t think Liv could have helped more with Dean,” I replied.
“Still, I’m worried about my sister. She’s fighting the inevitable, and it’s going to bite us all in the ass.” Lee sat up. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you, Kelsey, but we’re used to being on our own and making hard calls without asking permission. I didn’t know if it would work, and I rather thought you and Casey wouldn’t want us experimenting on her.”
“I’ve known what you were doing since I figured out she was still getting dosed,” Casey said with a sigh. “I studied up on demon blood when I realized Liv was on it. I genuinely thought she was taking it to improve her powers. I never imagined he would use her like this. I feel sick.”
I did, too, and I had no idea how I was going to tell her. “How long does she have to be on the blood? Can we wean her off it?”
“We could take her off it today,” Lee explained. “It’s satan blood. It is not addictive. It is reason distilled. Addiction isn’t logical to a satan, as it would interfere with their duties, so it works like methadone. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t think it would work this way with Liv. I didn’t agree to the plan because I thought it would wake her up.”
“You didn’t think she was asleep at all.” I knew what Lee had thought, but he didn’t remember her the way I did. “You thought she’d turned on us.”
“We don’t know that she didn’t,” Lee countered. “But I’m willing to entertain the idea that she wasn’t always in control of her actions. If Myrddin really had her brainwashed like that, we have to think about the fact that she can be unbrainwashed.”
He wasn’t big on technical terms. “I think it’s going to be harder than that. Every time I think she’s starting to remember, she gets sick. I worry she’s going to get really sick. We’re sure she doesn’t have like a parasite or something that’s making her behave this way? Myrddin used thrall stones before.”
Casey shook his head. “We scanned her for magical parasites, including thrall stones. We never did it before because we had no idea they existed.”
“Thrall stones and the types of parasites you’re talking about are very, very rare.” Lee seemed to consider the problem. “From what I’ve gathered, the schools he set up to train witches were really about conditioning them. Liv ended up in one of the worst. It was for the more talented magic wielders. If you asked the witches, they would say it’s about battle magic and training, but from what I can tell from the ones who got away it was about beating down any and all resistance to Myrddin. Even then, only three were selected to be Profane, and they were the ones who gave up pieces of their souls. At the time we thought they did it in exchange for more power. Now I wonder.”
