Dark Dance with the Demon Prince

Prologue

She snapped her fingers and suddenly I was upright and spinning around. Just like that, I was faced with the scene she didn’t want me to see too soon—in case I might overreact.

I took a single look, and screamed.

A scream that ravaged my throat and shredded my heart, but did nothing to block out the raving lunatic that used to be my mother.

“Once the gates are open,” she said as she moved around the edge of the pentagram, placing items where she needed them. “Hell will unleash on earth, and Lucifer has promised me that the first to die will be the Avos coven,” she gritted, her voice rotted with the same hatred she forced upon Abaddon.

And deep in Abaddon, we found ourselves in a large, bare, stone room. A massive black pentagram dominated the floor. At each end of the five-pointed star, there was a jar of black blood, severed wings, a desiccated heart, and a pair of golden eyes.

“My mother and the only family she ever fucking cared about will pay for killing my husband, snatching me from my daughter, and forcing me to give birth to a beast just to get away from their control.”

I don’t even think she was talking to me anymore, because I was fairly sure that last horrible comment was directed at the young woman lying still in the middle of the pentagram.

Dora.

“Dora,” I screamed uselessly. “Dora, it’s me! I’m here! Wake up! Please, wake up!”

She couldn’t hear me, of course. She probably wouldn’t have heard me even if I wasn’t spelled silent.

Dora looked exactly as she did the night she was taken.

The same dress. The same hairstyle. The same butterfly shoes.

The same bits of food on that dress, shoes, and on her hair from the last meal we shared together.

A meal that ended up all over her when the demons took her in the dining room.

It looked like she’d been immediately spelled into a coma, and left to rot for almost two months.

The two months she waited for me to come and rescue her.

“But you don’t need to be scared,” she told me.

“When hell is unleashed, we will be too. Together, we’ll leave this wretched place and be reunited with your father.

” She turned a sweet smile toward the ceiling.

“He’s in heaven of course, and unlike hell, heaven is not a prison.

Those who ascend can always return to a mortal life—albeit through reincarnation.

“But when your father sees that we’re together and walking the earth again, I know he’ll choose to be reincarnated, and I know he’ll choose me, even though I’m a demon now.

From there, it’s a simple matter to track down his new body and awaken the memories of his past life.

The Avos coven created the spell for that centuries ago, and I’ll teach it to you, baby girl.

” She smiled at me. “You’ll bring Daddy back, and just like that, we’ll be a family again. ”

“Insane.” My whole body trembled. “My gods, she’s insane.”

Maybe she read my lips, because she stepped over her gruesome altar of horrors and came over to pat my cheek.

“This is all a shock, I know. You came with such pure and kind intentions. You believed you were saving your sister, but now that you know the truth, you understand that between the three of us—you, me, and your father—being reunited, and the life of that creature, there is no contest. Of course I choose our family.”

“Dora is family!” I shrieked, and startled myself. “I can speak?” I said the words, and my ears heard it. “Finally, I can speak!”

Mom turned away.

“Hey, wait, Mom, stop!”

She moved over to a small table loaded down with items—some I recognized, and some I’d only seen in movies and Halloween stores.

“Mom!”

“She can’t hear you, darling.” Lucifer fell in beside me, chuckling over making me scream in surprise.

“Didn’t your vampire boyfriend tell you?

The price of stealing someone’s voice is losing your hearing for the same length of time.

A price your mother is happy to accept right now, I’m sure.

The last thing she wants to hear is what you think of her right now. ”

I shook with rage as that handsome, smirking, evil face came into full view.

“Tell me this is a trick,” I rasped. “This is an illusion. Tell me it is!”

“’Fraid not,” he sang, smiling away. “All true, darling. She really is my baby mama”—he pointed at Mom—“and sweet little Adora really is my baby.” He flapped a hand at my sleeping sister. “Beautiful, isn’t she?

“It’s truly a shame your mother loathes me so,” he mused. “She and I make cute kids.”

My thoughts spun into a frenzy. “Do something,” I cried. “Please, do something! You promised you would—”

“Ah-uh,” he tutted, wagging a finger at me. “I promised you nothing. Weren’t you listening? You and I never had a contract, darling. It was all a ruse.” Lucifer tossed me a jaunty wink. “They don’t call me the father of lies for nothing.”

“Then, let’s make a contract now! I’ll give you my soul now! Just save Dora. Get her out of here! That woman is crazy!”

“Hmm. Well, to be fair to her, one is allowed to go a little crazy when their own mother tells her she’s going to hunt her down, kill the man she loves, and rip her baby from her arms.” He shook his head like he actually disapproved of my grandmother’s actions.

“Renee Hunter’s been on a slow descent into hatred and madness since the day she got that phone call. ”

I sobbed. Loud, heart-wrenching cries that reached sleeping ears, deaf ears, and uncaring ones. “Please,” I begged. “Please, what is she going to do? Tell me she’s not going to hurt Dora.”

He pulled a face. “Wish I could tell you that, darling, but the spell your mother is about to perform requires some very specific ingredients. She’s opening a window three hundred years into the past, and using dark magic to do it—the price for that was always going to be greater than anyone wants to pay.

“First, massive amounts of concentrated hatred for power. Second, the sacrifice of four different and distinct species. Third, an Avos witch capable of casting the time bridge spell, and last, the blood and soul of a living Avos witch who will act as said bridge to her ancestors.

“Normally, you’d be all we needed in the blood-and-soul department, but your mother loves you. She refuses to kill you. So you”—he bopped me on the nose—“will be providing the blood, and Adora, who she hates, will be providing the soul.”

My jaw dropped. “You can’t let that happen! You’re Dora’s f-father, for heaven’s sake! Help her! Save her!”

He hummed. “Well, if you insist, I’ll try.” Lucifer cupped his hand around his mouth. “Renee, stop, no, let her go,” he mumbled. “Whoops. Seems she can’t hear me.”

“You bastard!”

Lucifer laughed himself sick. Seriously, tears leaked from his rotten, red eyes.

Picking up a large, ceremonial dagger, my mother moved out from behind the table.

“Okay, no, no, no,” I cried, desperation bleeding through my pores. “Tell her to take me. I’ll do it. I’ll give my blood and soul—willingly. Just make her leave Dora alone!”

Lucifer made no move as Mom closed the distance to Dora. “You and I both know she’ll never agree to that, even if you begged her on your knees,” he said. “You are everything to her. Adora is nothing to her. She will not choose her over you.”

I cried—slumping in the restraints like a puppet whose last string was cut. “Please,” I begged, sobbing my eyes dry. “Please, save my sister, please— Ahh!”

I was blubbering so hard, I didn’t see Mom step over Dora and cross to me.

She sliced my wrist, covering the blade in blood, then advanced on Dora.

“Wait, no! Don’t—!”

She didn’t pause. She didn’t consider. She didn’t spare a word or lingering glance for her youngest child. Kneeling beside Dora, she placed the blade to her chest, and plunged it in.

“Noooooooo—!”

Lucifer waved a hand, silencing the rest of my wailing sob. That was all the care he had for the tears shed for his daughter.

I lost my mind. Wordlessly screaming my grief, all I could do was cry as Mother stepped out of the pentagram, and Dora’s blood filled it.

Rushing to the table, Mother picked up a small crystal orb and chanted over it—slowly moving it up and down as she circled the pentagram. “Pontem ad praeterita aperi. Pontem ad praeterita aperi. Pontem ad praeterita aperi.”

On and on again she chanted as I screamed that I’d never forgive her. That she’d done the opposite of saving our family and bringing us together. She’d broken it forever.

But I couldn’t speak and she couldn’t hear, so the divide between us grew wider than the last four years life and death kept us apart.

Within the pentagram, Dora’s blood moved strangely. Rather than pooling, it spread out along the lines of the pentagram—greedily racing for the sacrifices. As soon as her blood touched them—

“Ah!” White, blinding light rushed into my raw, leaking eyes. It shocked me so much, it took me a second to realize I could speak again.

“I’ll let you keep your voice if I can get a bit of hush out of you.” The red-eyed fucker bopped me on the nose again. “’Cause this is the part where it gets really good.”

I winced, fighting to see through the beams of light shooting up from the tips of the pentagram.

Slowly, it dimmed, and in the middle of the five-point star, hovering above my sister was a—

Mirror? I squinted, confusion rattling my overwrought mind. No, not a mirror... A window.

“Gather ye round, sisters.” A voice rang out clear as day in the hushed, stone room. “There is naught time to dally.”

Mother snapped her fingers, and the words the voice just said, wrote itself in black, wispy letters above our heads—answering the question of how she was supposed to know what they were saying.

The strange, floating window was about my height but twice as wide.

Within it, I saw about a dozen women of all ethnicities, dressed in high-waisted, silk gowns with hooped skirts and tightly cinched bodices.

There could’ve been more than a dozen, but they were all moving in and out of frame too much for me to notice.