Chapter 35 Katarina
My heart sank at the same time it danced around in my chest. With my jaw hanging wide open, I stared at Blaise and slowly shook my head. “No,” I finally whispered.
“What do you mean?” he snapped, seemingly unaware of how much he was frightening me right now. “It’s your grandmother, not Satan.”
Not quite sure how to respond to that, I swallowed the lump in my throat and stomped toward him. “We don’t summon demons in this house!”
His red eyes studied my face for a few seconds before he let out a cruel laugh. “You have no idea what we do in this house, Katarina.”
With anger surging in my bones, I took the last few steps I needed to reach his side and, more importantly, that dark, black book.
Before he could stop me, I bent over the desk and slammed it closed.
But just as my fingers grazed the rough leather cover, a jolt of energy shot through my hand and made me cry out in surprise.
It didn’t hurt too bad and felt more like being shocked by an electric fence.
But the fact that a book just did this to me had me swallowing down my fear.
“What the hell?” I muttered to myself, shaking my hand and squeezing my wrist to ensure those electrical currents couldn’t seep further up my arm.
Blaise was still staring at me, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to yell at me or comfort me. I didn’t like the way his body towered over mine right now, so I took a few steps away and glared back at him. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that summoning demons was a bad idea?”
A faint smile danced across his lips that he quickly pushed away when he saw my angry eyes. “Remember that time I told you I was a professor?”
Tilting my head to the side, I glared at him some more. “Yes, Blaise. That was only a few hours ago.”
“Well, then you also must remember me telling you that demons don’t usually like to be seen on our side,” he continued as though he wasn’t being super condescending.
“The fact that your demon grandmother popped over for a visit, and to help you no less, leads me to believe she would do it again if you needed her.”
“That’s just a theory,” I said.
“It’s my hypothesis, and I am going to test it.”
“Are you always like this?” I snapped and when he tore his attention from the book and glanced up at me, I continued. “So…overbearing?”
“If you meant to say confident, then yes, Katarina. I’ve been studying the dark arts for centuries. I am confident that your grandmother…what’s her name?”
“Farah,” I whispered, hating how much I liked that confidence oozing off Blaise and how it made my body tingle in places that shouldn’t be tingling right now.
“I am confident that I can get Farah here so that she can help teach you how to tap into your power that will release my dragon.”
I didn’t miss the smirk in the corner of his mouth or the flare of his nostrils as his gaze slowly traveled up and down my body.
Grim let out a groan from the other side of the room, reminding me of our psychic connection and how he didn’t appreciate being an audience to my own sexual desires.
Sorry Grim, I said in my mind as I closed my eyes and tried to rid my head of any plans but those directly in front of us.
And really, that was all it took. Roman, Dorian, and Aiden were sitting in a jail cell somewhere right now, most likely angry and scared, and Blaise was right in saying that we needed to do everything we could to turn this whole mess around.
“What happens if you can shift?” I asked Blaise as he continued to flip through the creepy black book in reverse.
He paused where his finger ran over some text and looked up at me. “What do you mean?”
Stepping closer to the desk again, I leaned against the side and crossed my arms like it could protect me from whatever dark magic was seeping into the room. “No one has ever seen a dragon. I mean, no one alive today anyway. What would the humans do to you?”
Blaise pressed his lips together in thought and unraveled himself until he was at his full height. Jesus, he was a tall one. Tall, dark, broody, sexy as hell, and…Grim growled at me. Sorry.
“I don’t care what they would do to me, Katarina,” he finally said, after studying me way too long again with that intense stare of his. “Roman needs me and there’s only so much I can do without the magic of my animal.”
“So, what then? You’re going to shift into a dragon for the first time and burn down the coven?”
He smiled, and it frightened me. “Along with a few others.”
“Blaise,” I sighed, shaking my head. “What do you think those reporters out there would do if they realized that all their nightmares were true? Do you really think a giant dragon flying over the city and killing anything in its sight would really help the guys?”
He bent back over the desk and continued searching for the summoning spell. “We do what we must do to survive, Katarina. You should know that better than anyone.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I barked, tired of his condescending attitude.
Blaise rolled his head to the side, cracked his neck, and then loosed a deep breath as he ran his hands over his head.
“Nothing bad,” he finally said. “I just meant that you’ve been in situations where you did whatever you could to make it to the next day, right?
” He waited for me to nod before continuing.
“This is just another one of those situations where we should use all the tools at our disposal to help Roman, Aiden, and Dorian in any way that we can.
Well, when he said it like that…
“Fine”, I muttered. “See if you can summon Farah.” Tempted to slap the smirk off his face, I turned my back to him and walked over to Grim on the other side of the room.
He’d almost finished eating that giant rib bone, and I wondered if I should take it away from him before he choked on the little pieces.
Grim’s whole body rumbled in a low growl.
As I sat, I let out a small laugh. “Fine, buddy. Just don’t choke.” He huffed his annoyed response.
“I think I found it,” Blaise suddenly said, lifting the book and holding it closer to his face. Did he need glasses? “Huh. It’s actually pretty simple. I just need a candle, some chalk, and a fresh human sacrifice.”
“What?” I shouted, jumping to my feet.
Blaise laughed and set the book back down. “Kidding.”
“You are such an ass!”
He was still laughing while he cleared a large spot on the floor, just like people do in the movies.
I watched him shove the furniture against the walls, leaving only the desk near his new workspace.
He kept lifting the book and reading a line from it before setting it back on the desk and moving himself in a counterclockwise circle.
Grim had stopped chewing on his bone, and we both watched in fascination as Blaise did some type of choreographed summoning spell.
After he spoke to all four corners of the room, too quiet for me to hear what he was saying, he set the book down and clapped his hands together three times.
I did my best to stifle my giggle because, at this very moment, he reminded me of a cheerleader.
I also didn’t miss the quick glare I got from his red eyes.
“Guess we should be quiet,” I whispered to Grim.
Blaise continued his little ritual where he spoke in a foreign language to the four corners and then clapped his hands three times slowly before repeating the same thing again.
I didn’t count how many times he did this before I quietly pushed to my feet and tried to decide if I should stop him. Nothing was happening and—
The air in the room suddenly exploded. I was knocked back into the bookshelf, nearly falling on Grim in the process.
The books still lying on the large desk flew off in the opposite direction, and Blaise stumbled backward until he fell on his ass.
It would have amused me to see his smug attitude getting knocked to the ground, but when a black smoke suddenly appeared in the middle of the cleared floor, I lost all sense of humor.
Like a miniature tornado, the smoke danced in a circle around itself for several moments until the wispy haze started to dissipate.
As each tendril of smoke became more transparent, the silhouette of a human began to form inside.
No, not a human.
A demon.
My grandmother’s petite form started to take shape, and I covered my mouth in surprise as she became clearer.
Unlike the time I met her in my dreams, where she was wearing a chaste white nightgown and her long, dark hair flowed naturally down her back, this time she looked like the succubus she was.
With her most intimate parts barely covered, she stood in the center of the library in nothing more than several pieces of black leather straps wrapping across her body.
Every part of her oozed sex, and I can admit how jealous I felt looking at her perfectly fit, tight, and well-toned body.
Her legs were covered below the knee in a pair of black boots with heels high enough to give her an extra six inches of height.
She was carrying some sort of whip in her hand, and her ebony hair had been slicked back into a bun that sat low against her long neck.
I couldn’t see her face since she was staring directly at Blaise, but I had a feeling she’d also dressed herself up in dark, seductive makeup.
“You!” she screamed at Blaise, the whip in her hand moving on its own and completely unnerving me. “Who the fuck do you think you are summoning me here? No one summons demons!”
I wanted to say I told you so to Blaise but couldn’t manage to get the words to leave my mouth. Besides, he looked properly terrified of my grandmother right now, and with how wide his eyes were, I knew he was second-guessing this decision.
“I should bring you back with me and let the lesser demons have their way with you!”
Farah was pissed.
And that was scary.
Blaise held out his hand to keep her back as he pushed up to his feet. “Farah, please. She—”
“How do you know my name?” she interrupted him with a growl.
Blaise made eye contact with me from across the room and it didn’t go unnoticed.
My grandmother whipped her head around so fast it made me dizzy.
She glared in my direction until the realization of who I was seemed to take hold.
Her bright red lips and darkly lined eyes lessened in their hatred as she recognized me. “Katarina?”
Somehow, I managed a small nod. But as soon as she saw that, she snapped her head back around toward Blaise. “How did you summon me?”
Blaise, arrogance wiped away for the first time since I’d known him, pointed a shaky finger at the ancient black book now resting just below his feet.
Farah snarled like an animal and jumped forward to pick up the tome. “Where did you get this?”
“The Vatican,” Blaise answered, properly cowed.
Farah let out an amused huff and focused on me again. “And you asked him to do this?”
I held up my hands. “No. I told him not to.”
Blaise narrowed his eyes at me, and I shrugged. I wasn’t about to lie to a demon, especially if she was my grandmother.
“Farah,” Blaise started, swallowing loudly when she snapped her head around and glared at him again. “We need you. Katarina needs you.”
Farah let out a long sigh and walked closer to Blaise.
With her whip out in front of her, she ran the handle down his chest in a very intimate way.
Despite him being nearly twice her size, she absolutely dominated everything in this room right now.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it is rude to pull a demon from the middle of her… task?”
Blaise shook his head.
“In all your years of studying, really? Not even those pricks at the Vatican warned you?”
“They told us to never summon a demon.”
“Exactly,” Farah hissed, her hand moving to Blaise’s cheek and grabbing a hold of it tight enough to make his skin turn white.
I didn’t know if I should stop her. “I really should throw you in Hell for a few days to think about what you’ve done.
But…” Her eyes found mine, and she smiled.
“I suppose I could hear what my granddaughter has to say first. Katarina?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“She needs to know how to use her magic to help me. Ah—”
Farah’s tiny hand was suddenly wrapped tightly around Blaise’s throat, and he gasped for air. “Let her speak for herself, half-breed,” she growled at him while still looking at me.
“Farah, please don’t hurt Blaise. He was only trying to help.”
“Help you with what?”
“Help me save my men,” I whispered, ashamed of the tears that started to fill my eyes.
Still squeezing Blaise’s throat, her look softened a little. “You’ve bonded with them all?” I didn’t miss the tilt of her head toward Blaise. She was asking if Blaise and I had had sex yet, I just knew it.
I quickly shook my head. “Not all.”
She dropped her hand, and Blaise hunched over as he tried to steady his breath again. Her gaze traveled between the two of us for several minutes, the silence thickening the room as I feared she would disappear without helping me figure out how to use my magic.
“Your bond will bring out his beast,” she finally said.
“You mean sex?” I asked, hating how my voice cracked and hoping Blaise hadn’t noticed.
Farah shook her head and took a few steps closer to me, still keeping Blaise easily within her reach. “It’s going to be more than that with this one. He’s deeply wounded and will need to relinquish all his control in order to let you in.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Blaise, though, made a low sound in the back of his throat.
“You understand, don’t you, half-breed.”
“Stop calling him that,” I demanded a little louder while putting some anger in my words. I didn’t like people calling him that for some reason. Or at least people outside of my home.
Farah smiled, a wicked grin that barely touched her eyes, yet let me know she completely understood what I was feeling for this man.
“It’s okay, Katarina,” Blaise finally said.
“Oh, aren’t you two so sweet.” Farah beckoned both of us to her, and without really having any control over my body, I took the several steps needed to reach her side.
When I was close enough, she grabbed my wrist and narrowed her very black and very scary eyes at me.
“He’s got a dark soul, Katarina. Are you sure you want to push your way inside? ”
I glanced over her head toward Blaise, who was standing near enough for Farah to hold on to him as well. Not able to interpret the look he was giving me, I knew, in my heart, that we could do this…whatever this was. I nodded my affirmation to my grandmother.
“Very well,” she said with a sigh. Then she leaned backward until she could see Grim sitting in the corner behind me. He whimpered when he saw her watching. “But I’m going to borrow him for a while.”
“What? No!”
I didn’t get to voice any more of my objection before the whole room spun and everything around us disappeared.