Chapter 32
I looked at the ground, my shoulders hunched. Cherry scratched at me under my skin, howling at me to show that bitch the truth, but I remained abashed. “You—you’re the one Chandra worked with?”
“Return the brain!” Shadow exploded into a flurry of wraiths, all whipping toward Rukhsana.
Her fiery snake tattoo spun like a tornado, capturing and squeezing the life out of them.
Shadow shriveled up and vanished.
I swallowed hard—not an act.
Dumbo and Eyz looked at each other in some silent communication.
Rukhsana sauntered toward me and Jordy. I shielded him with my body, and the shedim laughed. “Such a savior complex.”
“Di-did you kill Troy?” I trembled. (Mostly an act.)
“Yeah, she did,” Jordy said, beaming at her. “And she was fucking glorious.” He tore the metal case from my grip and tossed it to Rukhsana. “Sorry, Avi, but you were suckered.”
“Et tu, Jordy?” I said sadly.
“She’s going to make me an infernal.” He bounced on his toes, a look of awe on his deluded face. “She picked me, a Trad, for this honor.”
I pressed my lips together, blinking away moisture at this incredible betrayal. Not Jordy to me, but the lie Rukhsana had fed him.
Suddenly, the door from the employee-only area shattered. Ezra, Silas, and Nasir poured into the main gallery, startling the shedim and giving me an opportunity.
Jordy was stronger than me, though I had training and experience on my side. However, I had to remove him from the game board before Rukhsana sacrificed her human pawn. And I had to do it safely.
There was really only one option.
I busted out my bulked-up shedim body with my frosted scaley armor, crimson hair, and horns, and lobbed Jordy out the door into the street.
He hit the concrete with a curse, rolled onto his back, and lay there, moaning, with his hand to his head.
Nasir blurred outside, flung Jordy over his shoulder, and sped the Trad into Michael’s care.
It was such a demon free-for-all in here that no one noticed.
Ezra and Silas were battling the shedim, including Rukhsana. The briefcase had been knocked to the ground, and every time one of the shedim went for it, a vamp was on them.
I ducked behind a pillar as a stray burst of black light, courtesy of Dumbo, scorched the wall beside me.
Nasir rejoined the fight. Even so, my team would have been overpowered by Rukhsana’s stupid snake, were it not for the fact that she was also using it to fend off attacks from Eyz and Dumbo.
I crept from the pillar to behind an overturned table with a view of the employee-only area.
Michael and Keira were escorting Mois and Linda out the back door.
Silas roared in pain and fury as Dumbo’s tusks raked across his chest.
I descended into an ocean of calm, watching the proceedings with a detachment that spurred me into motion. I sprinted for the metal case, sliding the last few feet. My claws closed on the handle, but I was yanked backward by my hair.
“Oh, chère,” Rukhsana said, raking a slow gaze over my half-shedim form. “You should have led with this.”
You forfeited an hour of your magic . The sentience from the fortress in the Brink spoke directly in my head. I have come to collect .
The words slithered through my skull like ice water, pooling at the base of my spine. My magic writhed under my skin, trying to burrow deeper, to hide.
That fucker had let me ask it for the supplicant’s name, then given me a maggot and a memory that almost killed me. Wasn’t that enough?
“Please no,” I whispered. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but my legs wouldn’t move, and my heart hammered against my ribs like a bunny rabbit in a trap. I swear it was making the amulet bounce.
Any second now Rukhsana would see it under my shirt, tear it off, and sense the true depths of my fear.
She dragged me all the way back into the kitchen, tearing off the mezuzahs on the two doors along the way. They burned her hands with a sizzle, but her skin was already so scarred, she barely flinched.
It is time , the fortress fucker psychically said.
A sharp jab pinged through my body, and I deflated in Rukhsana’s hold, my shedim armor suddenly gone. My connection to Cherry was gone, along with all my Eishei Kodesh magic. I shivered, feeling as vulnerable as a newborn babe. For the next sixty minutes, I had no way to defend myself.
Rukhsana mock-frowned at me. “Scared, are we?”
All the sound beyond the kitchen abruptly cut off.
Act like the Maccabee you are , I admonished myself. I kicked the shedim sideways in the knee and tore free with a wince.
With one eye on the demon, I took a centering breath. Think. What had that forfeit been? One hour of my blue flame magic. I’d learned a thing or two about magic wagers, and I’d learned not to bet everything at once.
Which meant this forfeit was merely a signal disrupter to my shedim side, not a total blackout.
I cast my awareness deep inside myself, rewarded with Cherry scraping at my mind like a kitten trapped on the wrong side of a door. Now to kick that door down.
Rukhsana’s snake whirred toward me, bobbing and hissing in front of my face. It was only a demon’s tattoo, not even the demon herself, yet it pulsed with a malevolence that was overwhelming.
Even if I had magic, Rukhsana was out of my league.
That didn’t mean I wouldn’t go down fighting. I imagined smashing my way through to Cherry.
Ezra helped Nasir kill Eyz, then sprinted for me, but he bounced off an invisible barrier in the doorway.
Rukhsana glanced over her shoulder at my boyfriend, who bellowed in rage, though I couldn’t hear it. “It’ll be a shame to destroy the Crimson Prince. We could have had such fun.” She plucked the metal case away from me.
“Did you care about Jordy at all?”
Rukhsana laughed, a chilling sound that echoed inside this bubble she’d created for the two of us. “Spend centuries trapped in unending darkness and pain, and then tell me if you care about anyone other than yourself.”
The fucking fire snake feinted left.
I flinched, but my anger at being toyed with put a crack in the metaphoric glass blocking Cherry from me. While I worked on that, I shoved an actual chair between me and the snake, gripping the plastic tightly. “Did you have fun messing with Roger?”
“Look at you, knowing all about me before I showed my hand. Très bien, Maccabee.”
“And Troy?”
She gave a very Gallic shrug. “He knew too much. I should thank you for him, really. You made my job so much easier.”
I pushed the guilt aside, focused on connecting with Cherry. “At least give me the villain monologue, Rukhsana. Let me put the pieces in place before I die.”
She laughed again. “Why not? You’ve been amusing enough over our acquaintanceship to earn that. I was part of the team that created those lock cells. And my reward was to be imprisoned in one. When I finally escaped?—”
“How?”
Outside the bubble, Silas tore Dumbo in half and Nasir decapitated him. The shedim was dead. They ran for Ezra, who threw himself against the magic barrier to no avail.
There was nothing here to defend myself with. The vamps had to break through before Rukhsana got bored of talking.
She wagged a finger at me. “I must reserve some secrets, chère. Suffice it to say, I was weak when I escaped, stuck here for decades trying to heal.”
“Freeing other demons helped that?”
“Not physically no, but revenge can be a tonic. It is always such a delight to hurt those who hurt me.”
The snake flared in extension of her rage, hissing fire.
I shrank back, not taking my eyes off it. This chair wasn’t going to cut it as a shield. I shifted my weight—barely a step —in the direction of the kitchen door. “Why not release all the prisoners at once?”
“There’s a very small window after Maccabees send the shedim into the cells where I can find them. Très difficile. If I don’t, they’re imprisoned for eternity.”
No wonder Bratwurst Demon healed so quickly. She’d barely been incarcerated for any time at all. “What about Quentin Baker?” The man who’d staked Calista. “You let me believe he physically abused you.”
“Blame your savior complex. He was my shot at regaining my strength.”
I edged closer to the doorway. I could feel Cherry again, which was a huge relief, but I still couldn’t access that magic. “The game of dodgeball, all that destruction and misery, it was your idea.”
Ezra locked eyes with me, devastation writ large on his face, and flung himself against the magic barrier.
“Every step engineered by me,” Rukhsana said. “I couldn’t go into the Copper Hell myself, Calista would have detected me, but Quentin was so controllable. That game almost fully restored me.”
The fire snake twined around my legs and I froze, breathing shallowly.
Rukhsana kept it from outright burning me, going for a constant wire-thin feed of pain. “You can’t escape unless I allow it,” she said. “Your turn to answer a question.” She narrowed her eyes. “It was so clever of that vampire bartender at the Hell to use Quentin to get to Calista. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it until Delacroix paraded his daughter around and made me doubt the story. Funny how similar her infernal form is to yours.”
“I don’t hear a question, but if it’s whether Delacroix will hunt you down if you hurt me, the answer is a vehement yes.”
“I doubt that, since he kept you a secret. Same as you’ve kept your shedim side your entire life. You may not believe me, but my respect for you has actually gone up.”
“Considering how little you thought of me before, that’s hardly some high bar.” There was a tiny click between the Brimstone Baroness and me, like we’d touched pinkies. It wasn’t enough.
“True, but now I’m considering you as an asset.” She gnawed on her thumbnail. “What if I let you live in exchange for helping me find that brain?”
“For helping you free all the prisoners.”
Her dreamy expression was unnerving against all her vicious scars. “That would be fun, but non. We destroy the locks, purge them from the face of the earth. With that one fell stroke?” She sliced a hand through the air. “We decimate the shedim who’ve been leaching off that power for themselves. They’ve depended on that boost for so long that their normal magic has withered. You send in your vampires to take them out, et voilà.”
“Such a nice, tidy offer.” I did a hopping dance to get away from the damn snake slithering around my feet. “Is that where you step into the void?”
She gave me a coy smile.
“Forget it. I might have a savior complex but I’m not a total idiot. You’d never hold up your end of the deal.”
“I would if we magically sealed the oath.”
“What’s the catch? The oath makes me your slave?”
“So dramatic, Aviva. It’s nothing so drastic. You simply leave the Maccabees. For good.” She held out her arm and the fire snake reared up to lick her palm. “I never toyed with you out of contempt. You always fascinated me. Now more than ever. You may not be a full shedim, but I am curious to see what you would become without that Maccabee yoke around your neck.”
“I’d be me. But jobless.”
“You’d land on your feet. Think about what I’m offering. Earth without all those demons or those cells. The good to humanity. Nothing else about your life would have to change.”
“I’m a Maccabee. Pretty big change.” I flexed my left hand and a single claw appeared.
Yesssss , Cherry exalted.
Less than a heartbeat later, that magic vanished again.
My shoulders sagged, exhaustion washing through my fear.
Rukhsana jabbed a finger at me with a sneer. “Your group couldn’t even see they were playing into shedim hands for hundreds of years. That’s who you want to remain loyal to? Don’t you want a chance to find yourself without trying to please some flawed ideal?”
I rubbed my bare right index finger. I’d already taken off my ring—shedding my Maccabee identity wouldn’t change who I was. This deal, if it was legit, would let me enact more change than via my current career plans. I intended to steal the brain away from Delacroix anyway. Why not do it with Rukhsana’s help?
The air around me shivered. Ezra’s fist punched through the bubble, bringing with it his roared fury. Silas and Nasir hacked away at the air, helping to open the breach.
I didn’t even have to answer. I could just stand here, let Ezra rescue me, and keep my beliefs intact that I wouldn’t join Rukhsana, not for any reason.
The snake rose up, poised to strike.
I stared into the flickering slits of its eyes, a helpless human whose vamp boyfriend remained out of reach.
It was make the deal or die.