Chapter 7
Demonic power surgedthrough Barquiel’s veins as he attempted to tear open the prison he was trapped in with his bare hands. It had been days since he’d smashed his broadsword to pieces attempting to shatter its walls.
The demon grunted, his claws scraping in vain against the solid blackness. An enraged sound finally left him. He shot back and glared at his cage, his chest heaving with his breaths and anger flushing through his body.
He couldn’t believe how weak he felt.
Mae Jin’s face rose before him. Barquiel gnashed his teeth.
It’s that damn bitch and her spell! I’m going to kill her when I get out of here!
Even the black magic Vedran had gifted him had been all but consumed by Reverse. In all his centuries as an Archduke of Hell, the demon had never felt as impotent as he did now.
No. He sagged, his talons sinking into his palms. There was another time when I was this helpless. Barquiel closed his eyes and shuddered. It was when I had to watch her die.
What the demon missed more than anything right now was not his freedom, nor the authority granted him by his title, nor even the monstrous army he had once commanded. Not being able to see the woman he loved was a far worse fate.
“Ran Soyun,” he whispered brokenly.
A cold sensation trickled down his spine. Barquiel stiffened.
Dread, a sensation that was alien to him, was filling his veins. Is it because I can no longer sense my troops?
It had been several days since he’d lost all trace of the demonic creatures he’d been gathering in the Underworld to do his bidding. He frowned.
Still, that is hardly a reason to be feeling such a cowardly emo?—
A sharp sensation pierced the demon’s body with his next breath. Barquiel clutched his stomach, startled. Something had just twisted deep inside him.
He gasped when it came again.
His body transformed into that of the human he had possessed before morphing back into his demonic appearance just as quickly.
Barquiel stared wide-eyed at his trembling fingers. What’s happening? Why am I losing control over my form?!
A voice sounded faintly in his ears. Barquiel twisted, his frantic gaze scanning his surroundings where he floated in the void.
“Who are you?” he barked after a moment. “Show yourself!”
The voice came again. It was followed by a heat that threatened to scorch his very being. Barquiel grunted and doubled over, stunned. He froze when the words dancing on the edge of his hearing finally became perceptible.
I’m coming for you, asshole! Rose Blake growled in his mind.
Barquiel recoiled. What?! But—how?! There shouldn’t be anything left of her consciousness!
Only a fragment of Rose Blake’s soul remained inside the body he had taken over. It should have been impossible for her mind to survive the destruction he had wreaked upon her consciousness.
The voice faded, along with the fire licking at his insides.
“Impossible,” Barquiel mumbled, his throat tight. “It—it must have been a figment of my imagination.”
But however much the demon tried to deny what he’d heard and felt, he wasn’t able to convince himself that it had been fake. Because there remained a lingering heat deep inside the body he had stolen and the taste of a fury that wasn’t his.
* * *
“This is creepy,”Roman said nervously.
Filomena clung to his shoulder and tested the air warily with her tongue.
“Nobody asked you to come, choirboy,” Nikolai said coldly.
“I wanted to see Mae’s workplace.” Roman scowled. “What’s it to you, douchebag?”
Vlad said something rude under his breath.
Mae gritted her teeth. “How about everyone shut up before security catches wind of us?”
Would you like me to teach them a lesson, my witch?Brimstone asked enthusiastically.
Mae rolled her eyes. Do I look like I want that kind of trouble right now?
Their footsteps echoed quietly on the linoleum floor inside the morgue at Grandview General. A body bag floated ahead within Levitate. It contained the remains of one of the Dark Council witches the New York coven had discovered the night before. Mae frowned.
Their mission to find Vedran had gotten even more urgent in the last couple of hours. Abraham had contacted Nikolai on their way to the hospital.
It wasn’t just Dark Council members who were going missing from every city they used to haunt. Witches and sorcerers belonging to smaller covens all around the world had vanished too, their disappearance only recently coming to light after the High Council issued an international announcement about their recent findings.
It’s like Philadelphia all over again.
Brimstone glanced at her. He already possesses the Book of Light. I hardly think he has the same use for them now as Barquiel and Oscar did at that time.
Mae feared what Vedran intended to do with the missing victims was far worse than having ghouls possess their mortal coil.
Pipes rattled overhead. Roman flinched.
Nikolai gave him a contemptuous look.
They had waited until after midnight to break into the hospital. To Mae’s utter lack of surprise, it had been child’s play to get in the basement.
Well, it isn’t as if this place is a bank vault.
Except for the dead people, Brimstone observed. There’s a lot you can do with magic and dead people. For example, you can?—
How about we change the subject.Mae shuddered. Maybe I should reinforce this place with some defensive spells.
She unlocked an autopsy lab with her passkey, crossed the office, and led the way into the inner room. The ventilation system hummed quietly in the cool darkness.
Mae flicked on the overhead lights and guided the body to an examination table. She was slipping on personal protective gear when she became aware of a battery of curious stares.
Mae lowered her face shield and eyed the three men watching her through the transparent, polycarbonate plate. “What?”
“It’s weird seeing you in work mode,” Vlad admitted.
Nikolai’s expression turned brooding. “That outfit looks good on you.”
Heat warmed Mae’s cheeks. Roman and Vlad curled a lip at the sorcerer.
“How about you keep your flirting to a minimum?” the incubus said icily.
A loud clatter made them jump.
Tarang blinked when he found himself the target of a score of spell bombs. His tail had brushed against an instrument tray on the counter and sent it crashing onto the floor while he’d been exploring the lab.
The tiger slinked over to Vlad and sat sheepishly beside him.
Mae eyed the door. “I hope no one heard that.”
“The dead did,” Roman said.
They fixed him with a leaden stare.
“Come on, I’m trying to lighten the mood,” he protested.
Mae sighed and opened the body bag.
The putrid smell of scorched, rotting flesh flooded the air. Roman gagged.
She narrowed her eyes when she got her first good look at the corpse. The black magic that had killed the woman had hastened the decomposition process by several days. The body was heavily bloated, livor mortis evident in the few patches of skin that had been spared by Vedran’s Hellfire Magic.
Roman turned slightly green when Mae picked up a scalpel and incised the victim’s chest with a practiced move.
It didn’t take her long to remove and examine the witch’s internal organs. They were free of disease and well preserved despite her charred remains. Even her coronary arteries looked perfect.
I wonder if she was a healer.
She cut open the witch’s skull next and extracted the brain. It too turned out to be a perfect specimen.
“Found anything?” Vlad said.
“Apart from the fact that she was as healthy as a horse, no.” Mae chewed her lip. “I’m going to examine her core.”
She placed her hand a couple of inches above the cadaver’s abdomen and focused. It took but a moment for the dead witch’s core to appear in her mind’s eye.
It was pitch black and shriveled.
A low growl left Brimstone at the sight shared through their bond.
Mae clenched her jaw. We were right.
“Mae?” Nikolai said warily.
She met the sorcerer’s gaze. “Her core has been sucked dry of magic, like we suspected. I’m going to use Soul Conjure and see if I can find a clue to where Vedran might be.”
Nikolai frowned.
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Vlad said tensely.
“We haven’t got anything else to go on right now.”
Mae silently incanted the spell.
Roman paled and stumbled back a step as the corpse shuddered and arched off the table. “What the?—?!”
His eyes bulged at the sight of the pale, flickering, distorted orb that drifted upward from the woman’s body.
“This your first time seeing Soul Conjure?” Vlad asked Roman.
The young man gulped. “Yeah.”
A tortured scream left the manifestation and reverberated across the autopsy lab. Mae flinched. Vlad and Nikolai unleashed their weapons. A sphere of sizzling Fire Magic blossomed in Roman’s right hand.
“It’s alright,” Mae reassured them hastily.
My witch, Brimstone warned, looming over her in his demonic nine-tailed-fox form.
“I’ll be careful. I promise.”
Her heart raced as she reached out and gently clasped the dead witch’s soul. She drew a sharp breath.
Images flashed across her vision, the witch’s memories playing before her mind’s eye like a flickering movie. She saw the woman as a child playing in a garden full of flowers, then as a weary, angry adult swearing her allegiance to the Sorcerer King, full of resentment for a world that had rejected her.
Mae’s stomach knotted when she witnessed the moment Vedran placed his dark spell inside the witch. It had slowly robbed her of all empathy and positive emotions, turning her into an unfeeling monster who did his evil bidding without batting an eyelid.
Is that why the Dark Council members all act the same? Because of their master’s black magic?She shuddered. It’s a miracle Nikolai managed to remain sound of mind with that inside him.
Na Ri hesitated. I believe his white magic protected him.
The witch’s final moments came to her. Skin and flesh consumed by the dark power seeded within her and the storm of Hellfire Magic that had engulfed her body, her shriek of agony and those of her dying companions echoed in a vast, shadowy place from which there would be no escape.
Mae was trying to make out details of the location through the flames and smoke when a voice sounded faintly in her mind.
Help…me…