Chapter 17
That evening, Doran had a meet for the Demons, as they didn’t care much to mingle with other species. Outside of Doran, Feldema, and me, there were a few Gremlins—whom the Demons insisted attend as witnesses—and our consorts and guardians.
Doran was trying to determine where the tricky beasts’ allegiances fell.
We filed into the room with the usual entourage and took our seats with the very small audience of Gremlins.
Doran then went to the center of the room and cast a circle, staying outside of it.
Then she uttered the chant to summon the first Demon.
The circle surged black and filled with smoke. In the smoke stood a huge, bat-winged creature that held the air of death around him. I felt it and shuddered. Tynan put his hand over mine for support. I should be used to all this spooky crap by now, but every now and then…
I glanced over to Feldema. She looked more bored than anything else.
The Demon greeted Doran and waited to be invited out of the circle.
At her request, he gave an oath to behave himself and stepped out before the circle filled with smoke again.
Before long, there were four of the most powerful Demons from other realms in the meet room.
They made the air heavy with death and magic.
Doran asked them her carefully planned questions and they answered, mostly with other questions.
It all seemed very futile to me. They were vague but polite, considering they were Demons.
When she finished, they moved around the room to greet and talk to the Gremlins.
I left Tynan talking to Doran and strolled to the nearest open window—the Demons’ presence was so stifling that I needed fresh, clean air.
Karackos, who was rumored to be an Atlantean Demon, came to my side. My skin crawled at his nearness. He looked back over his shoulder at Feldema, and I saw a wash of longing cross his face. Interesting.
In contrast, the look he gave me was one of pure disgust.
“Priestess, I have something you might want.” He was watching my expression. I tried to keep it blank. “Something you may want very much.”
“I have no need of anything you may wish to barter, Karackos.” Demons barter everything. It’s their very existence. Summon a Demon to do your dirty work, and you owed him something. If you didn’t negotiate the terms properly, that was your problem—possibly endangering your soul.
“I beg to differ with the lady. It has to do with your mother and your friends on Thule.”
I gaped at him.
Damn. I had shown a sign of interest. He wouldn’t let it go now.
He had turned to watch Feldema as she stood talking with a Gremlin. I could see the yearning in those disgusting eyes. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. I still tried to keep my face steady.
He brought his gaze back to me. “Can we talk alone?”
“Yes,” I said. And before I knew it, I was being drawn from the room and spinning into blackness.
Damn! I forgot to set the boundaries. I was in trouble again.
I was jarred from the darkness as I landed in an open wheat field. Off in the distance was an old southern antebellum home. The warmth that the bright sun should have provided wasn’t there. “Where are we?” I demanded.
“This place is an illusion for your benefit, since the actual place of my existence would be…uncomfortable for you.” He waddled rather than walked closer, huge wings stretched wide from his body.
They were the color of an old bruise, black and blue and yellowish, and his talons made those on the Slaugh look like thumbtacks.
With a face like old, loose leather hanging from his bones and red eyes, he was the stuff that childhood nightmares are made of.
It was hard not to step back from him or let him see how much he disgusted me.
“What do you have to barter, Karackos, and what do I have that you want?” I folded my arms and tried to look unimpressed. It was sickening to watch his loose skin swing from his chin as he talked.
He pointed a talon to the side and an image of Feldema shimmered into view. Somehow, I managed to keep the poker face. “I can’t trade you for my sister. She’s not mine to give.”
“I can help you get your father and that Imp off Thule.” He watched me carefully for a reaction.
I didn’t give him one. “They are both alive.” It was a token he offered, a gesture of good faith.
I knew bargaining with Demons was dangerous.
You had to be very specific or they would use any loophole you left them.
“Knowledge I already have.” I tried to sound bored again.
“Knowledge you suspected. I tell you it is true.” He was watching my face carefully.
“Fine. So what do you want with my sister? I’ve told you I have no right to pass her to you. What are you asking for?”
His face changed into what I suspected was his best attempt at a smile. “You are to kill her, are you not? You asked for vengeance for your Imp friend.”
He shouldn’t know that already. It wouldn’t be asked or granted publicly until the battle. How did he know so much? Keeping my poker face was getting harder by the minute.
“Killing my sister is far different from turning her over to be consort to the likes of you, Karackos.” I was guessing that was what he wanted, from the way he looked at Feldema. I was going to kill her whether I liked it or not. I had to. But turning her over to a Demon? That was something else.
“She would make that deal with me, would she not?” he spat.
He had a point. She’d trade me to the first Demon who asked—but I was not her.
I couldn’t do such a thing. He leaned in a little closer and I could smell the death.
“I do not need her as consort,” he said as he looked longingly at her image, still shimmering in the air.
“I wouldn’t deny her if that was what she wanted, of course, but my need of her is much different. ”
“Has she made such a deal with you? That she would turn me over to you if she gets the chance?”
He made the almost-smile again. “No, priestess, you are not to my taste. The smell of you…your honor. It reeks like that of your mother. I could hardly bear you as a familiar.” His face changed to obvious disgust.
“Familiar?”
“Yes, red Witch. You are too noble for me to be around for too long. But the white Witch is much more appealing…”
“Like to like, evil to evil. I get it.”
“I cannot get my powers from the earth as you can, red Witch. I have to gather energy from the ley lines that exist throughout the realms. I need the filter of a familiar to channel and strengthen that power. A Witch of Feldema’s ability would be very valuable to me.
” I could swear he was about to start drooling.
“But I’m still not able to give her over to you. And what would you have that is so valuable I would even consider it?” I was really doing a good job of appearing as though having a conversation about turning my sister into a battery charger for a Demon was no big deal. Who’d have thought?
“I know how to kill the Fallen Angel.”
He said it softly, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear. I lost my poker face.
“That’s right, red Witch. Think on that. Two birds with one stone. Your tormentor dead, and your father and the Imp returned.”
“Karackos”—I raised my eyebrows mockingly— “that’s information I might figure out on my own. The price is too high. If you think I’m so noble, then you know I wouldn’t trade a life for it—even Feldema’s.” I had regained some composure.
But even I wasn’t sure if I wouldn’t trade her over for that information. I guessed I was about to find out.
“I thought you might feel that way, red Witch, so I offer you this. At the moment you are about to kill her, summon me. I will give her the choice of death or life as my familiar.”
I turned away from him to think. The deal would help me with my plans to rescue Abbey and Coyle and I wouldn’t have to kill Feldema. She would still pay for her treachery by spending the rest of her life as a Demon’s familiar. Hmmm.
I turned back to him and tried to study his face. There was nothing there. “May I question the details?” He nodded his head. “Why would I give her the opportunity to bind herself to you so she can gain your powers and use them against me later?”
He straightened his torso a bit and tilted his head. “You have my word that while she is bound to me, she will have no power to hurt you or yours.” He wrapped his big, yucky wings around his body and crouched, waiting for the next question. He looked like he was squatting to pee.
“And if I’m unsuccessful on Thule or in the fight with her, and I die, then you get what, Karackos?”
He actually laughed. A booming, eerie laugh that echoed through the realm. “You are your mother’s daughter, Keena, Priestess of the Wild. You have missed little.” He stood and waddled close to me again. “Then I have underestimated you, and I have made a bad deal.”
“That’s it? No ‘I own your soul’? No ‘you will spend eternity in servitude to me’? Nothing?”
“I simply ask that if you are victorious, you offer the white Witch the choice. Your soul will remain clean and your conscience may remain clear.” His chin wiggled at me.
I didn’t trust him as far as I could launch his massive, disgusting body. “I don’t know.”
He moved around me and past Feldema’s image, lingering to take a long look at it. “Nessum tortured your mother for months trying to find you. Doing unimaginable things.”
He was trying to play on my emotions—and fuck, it was working. I saw her from the vision, tenderly taking the drops of blood from our feet and then gently kissing each little wound.
“She was brave and took it well, even as he had her for himself time and time again.” I was grinding my teeth, hard. “She never divulged to him where she hid you. The Dark Angel killed her himself when he thought her useless.”
That did it. The rage was too great. The pictures I’d created in my head as he spoke were too much to bear.
I would have vengeance for my mother as well.
“Remove your garment, Karackos,” I said without emotion.