Chapter 4
WITCH HUNT
MURMUR, AKA THE NECROMANCER, CAUGHT THE INGREDIENT as she slumped into his arms, unconscious.
Finally.
He’d been playing this game of cat and mouse long enough, slinking around street corners, lurking in the night like a wayward shadow.
Despite coming to Earth to stalk her at every available opportunity, the acquisition had taken longer than he’d hoped.
Efforts with his spell required constant attention, and he needed to keep a watchful eye on his territory.
He couldn’t simply disappear indefinitely.
While the hunt had actually been mildly entertaining, he detested taking human form, and he’d been forced to do it whenever he was here.
He despised humans in general. He hated their stumpy, fleshy fingertips, flat teeth, finite lifespans, and easily breakable bones.
He hated Earth too, and he hated that he’d had to spend time here, but it had taken weeks to find the perfect moment.
He needed the witch—Suyin, she was called—to vanish without a hint as to where she’d gone.
Because of her friendship with the blue-haired twin, if there was any trace of demonic involvement linked to her disappearance, Murmur risked Belial and his “brothers” coming after him.
In their latest bargain, Murmur had sworn to keep silent and leave Belial and those he cared about to live peacefully on Earth. In exchange, Belial owed him a second open-ended favor—Murmur still hadn’t cashed in the first favor from a previous arrangement.
Belial hadn’t specified Suyin as being under his protection, and therefore, Murmur’s actions were not in violation of their terms. But he wasn’t sure Belial would see it that way.
Better he not know at all.
That was why he hadn’t grabbed her at the bar. Once he’d realized the other witch was with her, he’d decided against it. He’d hoped to retreat without drawing attention to himself, but Suyin had ruined that plan by coming after him.
He hadn’t expected that. What kind of person ran toward someone they believed to be a dangerous stalker? It seemed she lacked basic survival instincts.
Despite his failure at the bar, he’d salvage the excursion by returning to her apartment building and breaking into her garage, forcing the door open with brute strength.
He’d gotten an idea of her habits in the time he’d been watching her, and he’d hoped she would choose to go for a ride on her motorcycle.
Suyin had, obviously, come and gone many times from this garage in recent weeks, but Murmur hadn’t been able to be here all the time. In his absence, he’d enlisted his souls to watch her so that he was always aware of her movements.
Their surveillance had informed him that she was almost as paranoid as he was, which was really saying something.
If she wasn’t at home, she was at her coven’s lair.
She rarely went anywhere else, and never anywhere away from other humans.
Both the store and her apartment were heavily warded, and the quality of her castings was admittedly admirable.
Sure, he could have broken them if he’d wanted, but it would have left remnants of his energy behind—something he couldn’t allow, given his leave-no-trace abduction policy.
But here he was. Successful at last, the final missing piece of his years of experimentation limp in his grasp. Good things came to those who waited—wasn’t that what the humans said?
He looked at the diminutive form in his arms. She weighed next to nothing. He’d shifted back to demon form to use his tail venom to incapacitate her, and their size difference was even greater now.
Her hair was a sleek black curtain with a sharp fringe cut straight across the middle of her forehead.
Her skin was a light olive shade, her eyes painted with dark makeup, and her lips colored with blood-red lipstick.
She wore clunky combat boots with a thick platform that did little to increase her paltry height, and her jeans and leather jacket were both black.
She had strong features, with a perpetually scowling mouth. But there was something … soft about her as well. Delicate. If he were to simply flex his grip, he could snap her bones like twigs.
Murmur concluded his appraisal with a frown.
He finally had his most valuable ingredient, but her frailty made her a liability.
He needed to get her back to his lair as soon as possible.
He’d lock her up tighter than the archangel in his dungeon.
There would be no escaping him until she had fulfilled her purpose. Until the end.
Either of him, or his plan.
He focused on the next step: Return to the hellgate.
Focus. A challenge for him lately. The constant screams of the enslaved souls at his command clouded his mind, and trying to decipher the many tangents of his own thoughts was like trying to peer into a murky pool. The bottom was somewhere, but there was far too much sediment in the way.
Witch. In my arms. Still in demon form.
Right. He should shift before he went outside. He did so, losing about a foot of height and all the features that made him appear formidable—horns, teeth, claws, and tail. Since he wore a wyrm-leather coat and pants, his clothing shrank with him.
He made a face. Really, he was lucky he’d remembered to wear clothes at all. It was yet another sign of his deteriorating mental faculties that he—
Shut up. Focus. Witch. Hellgate.
He secured the witch, cradling her carefully in his arms. Not because he was concerned for her wellbeing, but because he didn’t want to damage his ingredient. And because anyone he encountered needed to assume he was carrying a willing participant and not abducting an unconscious woman.
Stepping out of the garage, he flipped off the light and closed the door. He stroked his ingredient’s long hair, drawing the silky curtain over her face so that any passersby wouldn’t notice her closed eyes and slackened features.
Then he strode down the alley toward the street.
The sidewalks were empty for the most part, and luckily, his destination wasn’t far. You chose it precisely for that reason, so there’s really no luck about it.
Quiet, he told his disorderly thoughts. Not that they ever listened.
Someone rounded the corner ahead. He approached them with his head high, daring them to question him. They didn’t. They didn’t even glance over. In fact, no one gave Murmur a second glance the entire way. The ease of his success both thrilled him and made him despise humanity all the more.
He was the villain here. He was the evil that was supposed to be stopped by the ultimate good of humankind. Instead, he was carrying an unconscious woman down the street toward a terrible fate, and not one person made a move to stop him.
Finally, he reached a shop-lined street, but instead of turning down the sidewalk, he ducked down another side alley.
With a quick glance around for nearby humans, he shifted back to demon form and unfurled his wings.
He generally preferred to keep them hidden, finding their weight cumbersome when he was working in his library, but nothing beat the convenience of flight.
With several strong pumps of the leathery appendages, he flew up to the third-floor balcony of an empty apartment building at the end of the alley and climbed through one of the smashed-out windows. Once inside, he dragged the plywood that had once been nailed to the frame back into place.
He disappeared his wings again since the tiny human dwelling had not been fashioned for a being his size.
Stooping so his horns wouldn’t scrape the ceiling, he tightened his grip on the witch and stepped over the rubble in the stripped-bare kitchen.
On the floor in the dusty living area was a series of chalk-drawn symbols enclosed in a circle—a hellgate.
He’d been using this one to come and go, waiting for this moment.
A hellgate functioned by linking with another gate in one’s desired destination. Murmur kept one in his study, which he had left open in anticipation of his return. Whenever he was back in his lair, he rendered the gate inert by smudging the outer line, preventing any unwelcome visitors.
He looked down at the witch in his arms. Still unconscious. Inconvenient, but easily remedied. Unconscious people could not travel by hellgate.
Dead people could. A dead body was like any other inanimate piece of luggage one might choose to travel with. But an unconscious person had a functioning brain, and it had to be emitting the proper electrical signals for the hellgate’s magic to operate.
He used his free hand to lightly slap her cheek, careful not to gouge her eyes with his claws. Her face was so tiny, if he spread his fingers, he could cover it entirely with one hand.
In anticipation of this moment, he hadn’t given her much venom, and he knew it wouldn’t take her long to awaken.
Sure enough, after several moments, her eyes began to move beneath their lids, and she groaned softly.
“Wakey wakey,” he said.
Her body tensed and her breathing changed, and then her eyes opened wide. She took one look at him and inhaled a sharp breath, possibly to scream, though from what he’d learned about her, she was more likely to hurl threats. But before she could—
He stepped into the hellgate.
The world spun violently, and he was briefly disoriented before arriving safely in his lair in Hell. Hellgate travel was far from pleasant, but one grew accustomed, and he barely noticed it now.
He looked around his familiar library and then at the bundle in his arms, who was momentarily stunned from the hellgate. He smiled. Mine at last. She was here, in his lair, where he controlled everything, and she would not escape. She would serve her purpose, exactly as he’d planned.
Everything was finally falling into place, and he allowed himself a moment to savor his victory.