Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
L ucifer stared at Bianca. He had to have heard her wrong. There was no possible way she’d said what he thought she’d said. “I beg your pardon?”
“The…er…amulet.” Her already pale face went even whiter. A faint collection of freckles stood out over the bridge of her nose. “There’s something wrong with the amulet.”
“And?” A full-blown tempest was building inside him. He’d better be misunderstanding the ramifications of her statement, or the storms would rip free and take everything with it. “Release my power.”
Swallowing, she squared her shoulders and met his gaze. “I can’t.”
“No.” His voice took on a disconcertingly hysterical edge. “You can. I am positive that you can. Do it now.”
She took a big step away from him. “The amulet is not responding.”
“Release my power,” he bellowed. The wine glasses shattered.
“I can’t,” she whispered and bent to pick up broken glass. Then she added, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry.” The wave of his temper broke over him. Wind whipped her hair around her head. Bested by a mere fucking human. The sofa flipped over, and the coffee table crashed into the wall and shattered. Of course a miserable earth crawler had fucked this up. This is why they should never have been given summoning magic—any magic. “I don’t have time for this.” His voice ricocheted around the cozy cabin. Glass shattered in the windows.
“Hey.” Her finger shook at the broken windows. Leaves and dust from outside whirled into the cabin. “You need to fix that.”
The gall of her nearly ended her life. “I need my power!”
“Breaking my house isn’t going to get it back,” she yelled at him. “Calm down and stop breaking shit. And anyway, you have enough power to wreck stuff.”
He glared.
She smiled back, keeping it perky. She’d stood up to him. Weirdly enough, the anomaly of that did calm him down.
“Now.” She picked up a cushion and dusted it. “We can figure this out.” She stared from her cushion to the upturned sofa and sighed. “I’ll call a coven meeting. Like I said, we create these amulets, and someone must know how to fix this, or the grimoire has to have information that will help.”
Needing to work off some frustration, he righted the sofa for her.
She stared at it.
He pushed it back into place. “If you bring that Weasel-adjacent shit stain anywhere near me, I will end him.”
Pointing at the broken coffee table, she said, “Blood vow.”
“You broke it,” he thundered. And then knit the broken table back together. Then the windows.
“Not yet, I haven’t. I’ll call Patty.” Bianca edged past him, stopped and motioned the mess of glass and wine. “If you could just…”
“Haglette.” He growled. She had zero sense of self preservation, zero.
“All right, all right.” She held her hands out as if placating a rabid dog. “But it could be worse. At least you have control of your body back.” She flapped her hand at the living room. “And you managed to do all this and then fix it.”
“I. WANT. MY. POWER.” He breathed deep. “All of it, and not merely the ability to perform parlor tricks.”
She dived for her bag and hauled out her cell phone. “Understood.”
Lucifer repaired the glasses and cleaned up the wine spill.
“The important thing is not to overreact.” Bianca’s hands shook as she worked her phone. “Patty’s our most senior member. She’ll know what to do.”
He stalked closer to her. She needed to understand that she had to fix this and fix it now. He was done playing games with her. He was Lucifer, hell prince of pride, and nobody defied him.
Except, apparently, her. He glanced at the repaired cabin and mentally shook his head at himself.
Her call connected, and the other side rang once before it was picked up. “Bianca,” Patty said.
“Hi, Patty.” Bianca gave him a sickly smile.
Normally, Lucifer enjoyed tormenting impertinent witches who summoned him, but he could safely say that he was not having a good time. Not even a bit.
Bianca had gone still and was frowning. “Slow down, Patty. I can’t understand what you’re saying.” She listened and then gasped. “What? No!”
He couldn’t give a shit about her crisis. He was right in the middle of his own, and his took precedence. “Ask her about the amulet.”
Leafrot could have disappeared by now with the information Lucifer needed. Once he found Ashe—and he would—he needed all his power to make the fucker sorry. And he would.
Bianca had the temerity to wave her hand at him to silence him. “How long ago?”
“Did you shush me?” Nobody shushed him. Not a being in this universe. Particularly not one who was clinging to life by the strength of a forced blood oath from him.
“I’m on my way.” Bianca hung up and shoved her phone in her bag. She ducked past him and picked up a running shoe. “I need to go.”
Go? Go! She’d dismissed him and the amulet. He was momentarily paralyzed by the audacity.
Bianca laced her shoe and slipped the other one on. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.” She frowned at him and waved at the kitchen. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge.”
Not a fucking chance. Lucifer latched on to the back of her T-shirt and brought her to an abrupt halt. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“I need to go.” She whirled on him and slapped his restraining hand. “Another of my witches has disappeared, and this one has children.”
He tightened his grip. “I don’t care.”
“And I don’t care about your fucking power right now.” She shoved both hands into his chest. “Lives are on the line. Children’s lives. My witch’s life.” Her purple eyes flashed at him, and her jaw settled into an uncompromising line. She was going to be stubborn about this.
“I’ll come with you.” He wasn’t a complete shit. He didn’t want the children to die. Also, if he went with her, he could get the answers to his predicament firsthand. After they’d dealt with the missing witch and her offspring.
She whipped around and ran for the door, snatching her car keys out of her bag.
Lucifer almost baulked when he saw her car. Dear hell, he would not demean himself by occupying such a vehicle. A late model Toyota Corolla.
Bianca opened the driver’s door and tossed her bag over the seat into the back. “If you’re coming, get in.”
“I am not?—”
“Fine. You can stay here.” She cranked the engine and threw the car into reverse.
He barely got his ass on the passenger seat before she was gunning her car down the drive.
The soft chirp of the seat belt warning chimed at him to buckle up.
Bianca swung a hard left onto the road, jamming his shoulder against the door.
All things considered, buckling up sounded like a great idea.
As they drove, Bianca kept her gaze fixed on the dark road ahead of them. Her set expression was partially illuminated by the dashboard lights.
As he was along for the ride, he may as well gather intel. “What happened?”
She started and stared at him, as if she’d forgotten he was there.
Well, that didn’t happen often, and never before with a human.
“After we were sure our witches were disappearing, we set wards around everyone’s houses,” she said.
The steadily climbing speedometer made his palms sweat. Normally, he loved speed, but not under the questionable control of an overwrought human. Forest blurred past the window.
“Leona’s wards were triggered about half an hour ago,” she said. “Christen was the closest and went to investigate.”
The idea of Weaz-adj being useful made him snort.
She barely slowed for a stop street before taking another hard left.
Lucifer took back his uncharitable thoughts about the Corolla. The car was handling this bat out of hell shit like it was glued to the road. This side trip might turn out to be useful. If whoever had taken this Leona was connected to Ashe, this trip might even work in his favor. “So Weaz-adj investigated?” he prompted.
Bianca shot him a glance before—blessedly—returning her attention to the road.
“Leona was gone, but her children were still there,” she said. Her determined facade buckled, and she pounded the steering wheel with her palm. “Fuck! They’re so young. They need their mother.”
Lucifer was not usually in the business of reassuring humans. Mostly, it was humans who needed reassurance because of him, but Bianca’s obvious upset pinged a trace of empathy, so he said, “We’ll find her.”
“You don’t know that.” Bianca swiped angrily at a tear. “Don’t say shit that you can’t back up. Nobody needs lies and platitudes. Believing that bullshit only ends up hurting more in the end.”
He smelled a story. His interest surprised him.
“Eight witches have gone missing from our coven,” she said. “And we haven’t found one of them.” She shook her head. “Nine now.”
That was a lot of missing witches, and she was right about platitudes. But she was wrong about him. He never made promises he couldn’t follow through on. Her missing witches had just become his mission.
Ashe and his fucking cohorts had been draining Eddie to death when Shade and Sophia had rescued her. Eddie was his niece, and despite what Wrath believed, Lucifer did care for her. The amulets had been used against his family, and that made them his problem. If, as Bianca suspected, her missing witches were creating those amulets, they were in more trouble than he had the heart to tell her about. “How old are they? The children.”
“What do you care?” She shot him a glare.
If he had to deal with humans, he’d much rather deal with children. “How old?”
Bianca drew a juddering breath. “The oldest, Emma, is eight. Her brother, Ethan, is only five.
“That’s young.” Young enough for other humans not to have twisted them and for life to have destroyed their innocence. Despite himself, that stirring of empathy deepened. “I’ll help in whatever way I can.”
“You have to help,” she snapped. “Blood oath, remember?”
“Hell prince, remember?” She didn’t seem to get that and what it meant. “And I’ll help because I choose to, not because of some ridiculous blood oath.”
“Oh.” Her shoulders eased a touch. “Thank you.”
“After which, you will fix the amulet issue and restore my power.” He hardened his voice. No need for her to think he’d grown soft.
Her lips twitched. “Of course.”
“Good.”
She nodded. “Good.”
After about ten minutes of hurtling through the small town of Clayton, Bianca jerked to a stop outside an old brick farmhouse.
Several other cars were parked in the driveway.
The door opened, and a male figure stood in the entrance, backlit by the lights from the house.
Bianca took a deep breath. “Let’s hear what Christen has to say.”
“How thrilling,” he drawled as he followed her up the path dissecting the tiny front garden. Herbs spilled out of an eclectic collection of flowerpots. Crystals lay scattered between the pots. All the garden was missing was a black cat.
“Bianca.” Weaz-adj folded his arms and flexed his pectorals. “I have no idea why Patty called you. I have everything under control.”
A muscular wasting disease would be just the thing for Weaz-adj, but Lucifer didn’t have time to play with his paper ego and stood chest to chest with him. “Move.”
Weaz-adj leapt out of the way with gratifying alacrity. At least someone understood who they were dealing with. Even if it was that pathetic specimen.
Wool tucked under one arm, knitting needles churning, Patty bustled down the hallway. “Emma and Ethan were asleep when it happened.” She caught him staring and shrugged. “I stress knit.”
Turning back to Bianca, Patty continued. “Ethan is still asleep, but Emma woke when Christen broke down the door.”
“It was necessary.” Christen flexed and preened. “An emergency.”
“You scared the poor little souls half to death.” Patty jabbed him in the shoulder with a bright purple knitting needle.
Christen tried to fend her off. “I had to.”
“Stop speaking.” Lucifer stared him down. “And go away.”
Bianca gave him a grateful smile that pleased him. The fact that it did please him pissed him off and he scowled back.
“I made Emma some hot chocolate.” Patty led the way down a cramped hallway. Family photos covered the peeling, yellowed walls. “But she’s asking for her mother.”
Bianca straightened her shoulders like she was buckling into her armor. “I’ll speak to her.”
This seemed like a job for him, however. When he bothered to use it, humans responded well to his charm. There was a reason humans continued to write him into books, make movies and television shows about him. Putting a hand on Bianca’s shoulder to stop her, he said, “I’ll talk to her.”
“Really?” She eyed him suspiciously. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
He gifted her his legendary smile. “Trust me.”
Bianca snorted.
Clearly, the haglette was deranged, because his best smile didn’t work on her. He kind of appreciated that. Not enough to not punish her when this was all over, but he might go a bit easier on her. “Well, you can trust me with this.” He grinned. “Don’t you read all that’s been written about me. I’m a charmer.”
Before she could gather further objections, he slipped into the shabby little kitchen.
A small human sat on a stool at the red Formica countertop. Her dark eyes took him in. “Who are you?”
“Lucifer,” he said and took the remaining stool beside her. Great deceiver he may be, but lying to children wasn’t part of that.
She crinkled her button nose at him. “That’s a weird name.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “But I have relations called Belphegor and Mammon, so I didn’t do too badly. You’re Emma, right?”
Her gaze sharpened. “How do you know that?”
“Bianca told me.” He gestured to a hovering Bianca in the doorway.
Emma gave Bianca a weary smile. “Hi, Bianca.”
“Hi, Em.” Bianca’s features softened.
“Where’s my mom, Bianca?” Emma’s voice quavered.
Lucifer took Bianca’s slight pause. “Emma, we have something difficult to tell you.”
Big earnest eyes fastened on him, Emma’s fear a palpable force.
“Your mom seems to be missing.” He laid his hand palm up on the counter, inviting her to put her hand in his.
Emma’s tiny hand slid into his and Lucifer gently squeezed her fingers. Little humans were so fragile.
“We’re not sure where she is.” He lowered his head until they were eye to eye. “But I think you’ve heard my name before.”
She nodded.
“And you know I can do things normal people can’t.”
She nodded again.
“And I’m going to do everything I can to find your mother.”
“Promise?” Emma whispered.
“I vow it.” And this small, pure soul didn’t need a blood oath to bind him. “And a vow is like a promise, only stronger.”
“Then you have to do what you said,” Emma said. Magic surged through the kitchen—strong, potent, wild.
Lucifer glanced at Bianca for verification, and she nodded. In all the witches he’d encountered over the ages, he’d never felt such raw power as he had in Emma. Her magic had reached out and bound him to his vow.
His gut clenched. If Ashe was looking for witches, then a witch this strong would be next on the procurement list. And that made his decision for him. “Tell me, Emma, would you and your brother like to meet an archangel?”