Page 1 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

The Brink tasted like ozone and fear, but I swallowed both as Alastair’s fingers dug into my arm. While I might be done hiding my shedim side, I wasn’t done being hunted.

I picked my way over patches of ice that bloomed into carpets of tiny flowers with sharp crystalline petals, a lifetime of running over uneven terrain saving me a twisted ankle on the slick ground.

Crunching a lopsided carnation—Mother Nature’s gas station flower—under my boot, I wondered whether Alastair’s head would make that same satisfying noise when I killed him for good.

Operative Fleischer, champion of justice, had vanished the second the bloodsucking parasite blackmailed me into leaving?—

I dropped my gaze from the mud-brown sky to the fortress looming ahead of us. The weathered gray stone walls were lined with crenellations and guard towers, while bushes with oversized thorns grew wild in the dry moat. Their barbs coiled like hungry serpents, waiting for unwary flesh to pierce.

Annoyingly, my eyes stung from the stench of pine cleaner that had followed us for the past half hour. The reek made as much sense as the floating reefs of bone-white coral resembling teeth we’d navigated in eerie silence.

Usually, trips to the Brink were anything but quick. Count on Alastair to have some dumb artifact that could whisk us from the rift through the Brink to the fortress like an overeager puppy with a full bladder bounding to its favorite tree.

Though even one second spent in his charming presence was an eternity too long. He’d forsaken any pretense of civility, exposing a man-shaped reservoir of spite and brutishness.

The handcuffs bit painfully into my wrists as he hauled me forward by the chain, his casual flick sending me lurching behind him.

My stomach churned with revulsion at being reduced to a prisoner, a possession, while the weight of his control over me made me want to scream with rage, but I refused to give him the satisfaction.

Alastair didn’t know it, but the restraints were overkill, given that the very sentience he was frog-marching me toward had already stripped me of my Eishei Kodesh abilities and left my connection to Cherry Bomb on the fritz.

Yes, I’d forfeited my blue flame magic for an hour, but I’d expected the pay up to happen either when I first wagered it days ago or at some random innocuous time. Not that some asshole magic guardian would stalk me and find the exact worst moment to snatch my abilities away.

My captor pounded on the fortress’s metal-reinforced wooden gate with an expression of savage triumph, and that old adage about not counting chickens flitted through my head.

I still had a shot. One requiring extraordinary luck, insanely perfect timing, and possibly a minor miracle, but technically, still a shot.

But with my shedim side fading in and out, my Eishei Kodesh magic in absentia, and the nulling cuffs squashing the hope that I’d be able to do anything even if I got my powers back, I was swimming in a catastrophe cocktail.

My brain had locked up completely, like a computer with too many fatal errors. No reboot and no strategic thinking.

Sensing my distress, the Brimstone Baroness tore through the staticky barrier separating us. Our link clicked into place like a dislocated joint popping back to where it belonged.

Cherry itched to tear that British bastard limb from limb for orchestrating horrors from his comfortable shadows.

I forced the sudden toxic green of my eyes back to their regular light brown and ordered her to shove her hate down, because my jaw still throbbed from Alastair’s backhanded blow when I’d attempted to bond over deadbeat supernatural parents.

Who could have guessed that while Calista had hidden her dhampir son, she’d also protected him, visiting as often as she could to not only train him with valuable survival skills, but simply spend time with him.

Alastair had stoked his hatred for the parties he believed responsible for his mother’s death like precious glowing coals. To be fair, he had plenty of that emotion to go around, along with a list of every vampire who’d ever dissed or underestimated him.

“They’ll get theirs when I have the power of a Prime and they don’t,” he’d said darkly.

Alastair’s hand now flitted to a green camo canteen worn on a canvas shoulder strap, the uncharacteristic accessory first revealed when he lost his wool coat back in the bone reefs.

BYOB? Supplies for a tailgate party? Picky about his food?

In any case, he hadn’t touched it yet, so perchance it was a boutique hemoglobin to be savored in celebration.

So long as he didn’t try snacking on me.

With a shuddery creak, the gate opened into a courtyard. There was no one to greet us, which meant that either Daphne was out on sentience-related business or unavailable. Small things like being polite didn’t bother Alastair anymore, so he walked right in.

I barely had one last glimpse of the giant bone wall stretching out in the distance before the gate slammed shut with a thud that made me jump. How was Shiny Jimmy doing? If I got the chance to see him on this visit from hell, I’d have to tell?—

I swallowed. Ezra was a Prime. Even infected by whatever weird magic had spread from Rukhsana into him, he’d be healed by now.

“Move it.” Alastair’s broad British accent had a bladed edge. He pushed me past a clump of cacti and over a small arched bridge whose reflecting pool boasted lazily floating lotuses.

It was sunny in the courtyard, but I couldn’t even enjoy a moment of warmth because while the sky was blue, it throbbed with malevolent mud-brown threads that sent shivers down my spine.

The sound of snipping grew louder, rhythmic and hungry like the clicking of a predator’s teeth, its source revealed when we rounded a massive tangled rosebush.

Daphne, gatekeeper and arbiter of magic-seekers’ fates, tipped up the brim of her straw gardener’s hat with her gloved hand to coolly survey us. “How dumpster-chic,” she said in her Brooklyn drawl and cut away some dead branches.

I didn’t care about my disheveled, sweaty self. What did cleanliness matter when I planned to add bloodstains to the mix?

Alastair ran a hand over his once-beautifully tailored shirt that was now dirty and crumpled. A smear of grease marred his black stubbled jaw, but his undead fashionista self was visible in the quality of the torn cotton and the remaining misaligned pearl buttons.

He pushed me forward. “We’re here for the test.”

A muscle ticked in Daphne’s jaw, but she yanked off her gloves, dropped the pruning shears, and stood up. Her ivory V-neck sweater and tailored slacks were spotless. Now, that was a magic feat. “Are you now?”

“After he removes these nulling cuffs,” I said. There. Step one of a strategy.

Alastair hesitated.

The smile Daphne unfurled was venom wrapped in spun sugar.

“I’ve never had someone bring a hostage cheerleader, but then again, there’s a first time for everything.

” She shook her fists like pom-poms. “Do you require her to spell out your name letter by letter or will general encouragements suffice?”

The dhampir yanked the key out of his pocket.

My wrists burned even more as the metal fell away, though the numbness in my hands was a pleasant counterpart to that.

Better still, my Eishei Kodesh magic came flooding back.

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth despite everything. My hour forfeit was up, and the gameboard had just shifted. I stepped through the doorway with renewed purpose.

“Shoes off,” our hostess commanded.

I toed out of my ankle boots and settled myself on a comfy sofa under a bright tapestry of a hunting scene, letting my magic settle itself. Books overflowed their shelves, a fire crackled cheerily, and lush plants and wildflowers gave the air an earthy, humid tinge.

Daphne switched her gardening clogs for marabou feather slippers with satin-covered kitten heels. The hostess with the mostess.

Alastair positioned himself next to a tall rubber plant, wrapping the scrap of grimy fabric that had once been his tie around his knuckles and then sliding it off again. As if trying to reclaim some dignity after being reduced to socked feet.

White filmy curtains billowed out the open glass door behind him.

I longed to probe the dhampir with my synesthete vision in case I could see his weaknesses or any previous injuries that would give me an advantage, but I didn’t dare.

Not because I didn’t have his consent, but because I got the sense that fairness was important to the magic guardian, and as I was the supplicant, I would do nothing to cause offense and risk my shot at passing the test—i.e. the aforementioned minor miracle.

I pushed away the memory of the wriggling maggot that had been the last supplicant’s name.

Daphne leaned against a long wooden table. When I’d been here last, it held a tea set, but it was currently covered with a soil-splattered plastic tarp, a preposterously sharp trowel that Sachie would demand buying info for, and seedling pots. “You can leave if you want, Aviva.”

I rubbed my fingers, waking the numbness into such a searing pins-and-needles sensation that my breath hitched. “I wish to try for the power word.”

Daphne blinked at me. “Really.”

“Yup,” I said.

“When you’re still recovering from your forfeited Eishei Kodesh magic.”

She knew that, huh?

“No time like the present.” I swept a lank strand of hair out of my eyes.

“You were forcibly brought here.” Daphne shook her head.

“As outlined in Statute 7.B of the Threshold Protocols, ‘No supplicant may petition for a power word under duress or constraint, physical or magical. The seeking must stem from genuine desire, freely formed and freely acted upon. Violation renders the test void and the petitioner subject to immediate expulsion—or, in cases of willful deception, permanent dissolution.’”