Page 15 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

Ezra’s portal to England worked like a mesh dream. He created it perfectly on his first try, we stepped through, and wham, instant time change and zero sticky hug sensation.

Props for the thrall working in Ezra’s favor. Well, on his magic. He hadn’t fully healed from Rukhsana’s attack yet. Would I have to thrall him a third time?

An owl hooted, bringing me back to my surroundings.

Hedgerows and ancient stone walls divided the fields into a patchwork that stretched toward the lights of the nearest village, while bare oak trees stood sentinel against the winter night sky.

Cold starlight speared through gaps in the drifting clouds. They softened the appearance of the weathered stone of the old farmhouse that was our destination.

Ezra melted into the shadows with a whispered “Good luck.”

Sachie and I hopscotched between the dirt driveway and a scrubby faint trail in the grass, my friend navigating the landmarks such as a gnarled tree or rusted-out pickup as safe passage through the boobytraps.

Correction. I hopscotched, Sach swaggered, her thumbs hooked into her belt loops and her cowboy hat worn at a jaunty angle. The cream Stetson looked incongruent on my willowy friend with her pink-tipped hair, but she’d insisted it would be rude to leave it at home.

Frost had begun to crystallize on the paddock gates, and somewhere in the darkness, the wind carried the distant sound of hooves shifting against stable bedding.

There was no sense of being watched. Was Burning Eddie tucked in for the night?

“Hello, the house!” Sach broadly waved her arms, stopping well before we reached the front door. She turned in a slow circle, peering into the darkness.

I resisted the urge to do the same, convinced I’d give away Ezra’s presence. He was keeping pace within thrall-approved range because my awareness of him over to my right hummed under my skin, but not in an unpleasant way.

Sachie’s fingers twitched but she didn’t unearth a weapon. “The door should have creaked open by now.”

“He just lets people in?”

“Sure, if they’ve made it this far.” She trotted toward the house. “Why should he have to come outside to kill them?”

“The fact that you find that logical scares me.”

She grinned, her teeth flashing white in the darkness, and tipped the hat back. “Ready?”

I drew the Zen Zapper from my holster belt.

The prototype, which combined electroshock technology with white flame calming magic, had been destroyed, but over the past couple months, R&D pushed through production of this weapon.

It wouldn’t kill a shedim, but could it help chill one the fuck out? I’d know soon enough. “Ready.”

The door was unlocked. I braced myself for rat taxidermy—or people taxidermy—but found hand-knitted blankets in muted greens and browns draped over well-worn leather chairs.

The wide windowsills held rosemary, their ceramic pots painted with delicate wildflower patterns that echoed the faded florals of the open linen curtains.

Sachie headed upstairs, making a lot of noise and calling Eddie’s name, but we reconvened in the kitchen without finding him.

I poked one of the copper saucepans hanging from a beam above the old Aga stove. This cottagecore vibe was a trap, right? Those small fragrant bundles of herbs were poison? The mismatched teacups lining open wooden shelves hid demon rodents or something?

Nope. Everything was as benign as it appeared.

I looked up—the thing people never did in horror movies—in case Sach had learned her wall-climbing gecko moves from Eddie, but he wasn’t poised and ready to drop down on our heads.

“Was this what it looked like when you were here before?” I said.

Sachie shook her head, jerking a thumb at the jars of homemade preserves. “He hadn’t started making jam yet.”

Uh-huh. “I didn’t see a library.”

She fired finger guns at the door set between the fridge and the sink, the metal around the knob grooved with scratches. “We gotta be moseying on down to the dungeons,” she drawled in a Southern accent.

I crossed my arms, still clutching the Zen Zapper. “Do you have that out of your system now?”

“I reckon that might be it.” She dipped her chin at me. “Ma’am.”

Laughing, I pushed her toward the door.

It was thoughtful of Eddie to install modern electricity to illuminate the creaking stairs and dirty walls. Or it was fiendishly clever, as the glare made the bloodstains and unidentifiable glossy smears look like a Tarantino film.

The basement was a windowless labyrinth and there was no cell service down here.

My bones were starting to itch again, but I did my best to keep my anxiety tamped down so Ezra didn’t feel it and freak out.

I wish you were here .

Should I come in?

Hearing his voice in my head made me crack my noggin on a low bulkhead. I swore, rubbing the goose egg.

Sachie glanced over her shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Ezra and I weren’t really psychically linked, were we? That was not… I mean, I didn’t want… Did I?

Zee?

No response.

Sachie picked something up off the floor and sighed. “Eddie never took this off.”

The bolo tie was torn and filthy, either from a struggle or because he always wore it.

My friend readied a stake and a dagger. She eyed the Zen Zapper. “Non-lethal may not be the best move anymore.”

“Yup.” I tucked the Zapper into my belt.

The claws on my fingers stuttered before snapping into place, the toxic green scales unfurling across my skin like the slow dissolution of ink-clouded water, rather than a blink-of-the-eye transformation.

Ezra was magically knitting light, and I was working harder to settle into my armor and bulked-up shedim body. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I gagged, assaulted by a stench of death and decay that hadn’t been noticeable in my human form. Gee thanks, Cherry. Breathing shallowly through my nose, I marched forward. “Follow me.”

I led Sachie through a few more twists and turns, the basement’s shadows seeming to pulse with each rapid beat of my heart, before I stopped in front of an unassuming metal door.

It was cracked open, a slash of light from the hallway falling into the dense shadows inside.

“Eddie?” I mouthed.

Sach shook her head. “Too obvious,” she mouthed back.

We did rock, paper, scissors to see who’d traipse into the trap first.

“What’s in here?” Sachie said loudly and stepped through the door with me on her heels.

A vampire exploded from the dark corner with the intensity of a starved predator and grabbed Sach, fangs extended.

She staked him before he broke skin.

Two more vamps came at me, all desperation and no technique.

I slid into my blue flame sight.

Their previous injuries were helpfully laid out in blue pulsing dots. Finally! One crumb of coolness for moi!

Now that’s more like it . I snapped into a crystalline state of perfect focus, my movements sharp and precise.

I caught the first one with an elbow to the throat, using his own momentum to slam him into the concrete wall. Before he’d dazedly bounced off it, I’d torn his head off, flinging it into a corner by my claws.

I hadn’t finished dusting ash off my hands before the second vampire grazed my arm with his fangs. I drove my knee up into his solar plexus, following through with a strike to the temple that dropped him. Then I stomped him into oblivion.

Cherry provided a lively soundtrack with Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.”

More shapes moved in the darkness. These vampires were weak and uncoordinated in their starvation, but they made up for it with feral abandon.

I fended them off like they were puppies, though one got close enough that his fangs ghosted along my neck before I took him down for good.

Barely winded, I bounced on the balls of my feet, seeking out more opponents, but the vampires were done and dusted.

Ezra and Sachie stood in the doorway with their mouths hanging open and the flashlights on their phones trained on me like spotlights.

“You’ve got a little…” Ezra stepped toward me with his hand up, then stopped. “May I?” He gestured to my cheek.

I wiped the blood off with the side of my ashy hand. “Why are you acting so weird?”

“Your eyes are red, Crimson Princess,” he replied.

His weaknesses were still illumination-proof. Pity.

“And you were cackling like a crazy person while you killed those vampires,” Sachie said. “Single-handedly. With no stake.”

I held out my hands. Ignore the blood and ash and they didn’t look any different from their usual demon form.

Except I could now kill vampires with my bare hands and use my synesthete vision to see injuries on all non-Prime vampires. Sure, I could do the injury-spotting thing in Babel, but Burning Eddie’s home was firmly on earth.

“Did the thrall benefits finally kick in or did I unlock a new ability?” I said.

Cherry didn’t know, and sadly, neither did Ezra.

Something cold settled in my stomach. I wanted these new powers to be earned through my own strength and struggles, not handed to me as some magical side effect.

Changed your tune, did you, Fleischer?

It was worse, though, if they were suddenly present because Ezra had somehow boosted my magic so I could play protector.

I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

I looked at the other two. “Did I freak you out?”

“It was exhilarating,” Sachie said. “Like a good ringside fight.”

Ezra grimaced.

I let my features slide back to human. “What?”

“I felt your bloodlust.”

“Oh. Okay, well, yes, that’s a bit weird.”

“You were really into it,” he said. “Reeeeaaaally.”

“Best birthday present really?” Sachie asked. “Or orgasm really?”

My boyfriend pointed at her. “That one.”

Frowning, I picked up the Zen Zapper that had fallen during the fight. “I did not have an orgasm fighting vampires.”

“Well, you’d know best,” Ezra said with an unconvincing smile.

I tried one more time to illuminate his weaknesses.

“Can we do something useful like find Eddie or the library?” I said.

Sachie shone the flashlight into every corner of the large stone chamber. Metal hooks protruded from the walls, dark stains marked the floor, and ancient manacles hung at intervals, their chains trailing like dead vines.

Scattered across a rusted metal table were implements whose purposes I didn’t want to contemplate, while drainage channels were carved into the floor, all leading to a central grate.

“This is where Eddie tortured vampires who came in challenge.” Ezra toed at an open handcuff. “Where is he?”

“Dead.” Sachie showed him the bolo tie.

“That’s not conclusive proof,” Ezra said.

“Maybe not. But this is.” She kicked a bloody calf with a mangled foot that had only three toes. “There’s more of him over here,” she said in a dull voice, turning away from the grisly remains. “The vamps really feasted.”

Ezra paced the perimeter of the wall, stopping in front of a small upended bucket. A trail of dried blood led from it to the floor drain. “The vamps got free and swarmed Eddie. Got the jump on him.”

“He’s a demon,” I pointed out. “He didn’t sense them?”

Sachie headed back into the hallway. “He’d suffered a lot of concussions fighting vampires for centuries. Hate and rage were the only things holding his mushy brains together.”

“Lovely.” I added my phone’s light to theirs. “And yet you two managed to form the supernatural equivalent of a buddy comedy despite his scrambled neurons.”

Sachie snorted.

We searched the basement for the library in silence, splitting up to cover more ground.

Zee? You there? Had his voice in my head been real before or just wishful thinking?

I’m here. Everything okay?

I resorted to poking promising stones in hopes of a secret passage. Well, we’re chatting psychically when we haven’t even had a second date, so you tell me.

His bark of laughter boomed through the basement.

“Found it!” Sachie called out landmarks like “Take a left at the wall of definitely not-cursed jewelry,” “Avoid the creepy statue that moves when it thinks you’re not looking,” and my least favorite, “You’ll have to jump the ritual circle with the yellow skid marks.”

Gross.

The library was crammed into what might have once been a large storage room, with books stacked in precarious towers.

Ancient tomes shared space with paperback romances, grimoires were wedged between manga volumes, and scrolls stuck haphazardly out of filing cabinets.

Narrow paths wound between the stacks, some dead-ending in cluttered reading nooks where mismatched armchairs nestled under strings of old Moroccan lamps, tangled with charging cables that snaked their way to an overloaded power strip.

Every horizontal surface hosted either more books or half-empty coffee mugs with suspicious growths.

A battered desk barely visible under layers of Post-it notes and opened references served as some kind of command center, with a mini fridge humming away beside it.

The whole space smelled of old paper, coffee grounds, and something vaguely mystical—possibly incense, possibly just very old carpet.

I pointed at a handful of items scattered around the room: a skull, a stuffed turtle, and an egg bejeweled with leering demon faces that was totally purchased at the Dante’s Inferno gift shop. “There’s shedim magic on all of those. I can sense them even though I’m wearing my Maccabee ring.”

There was no nausea either. I put aside any unease. It didn’t matter why this was happening, the timing was fortuitous.

“Can you use your Spidey-sense to find books with demon magic on them?” Sachie said. “We’ll check those first for answers.”

Ezra followed me, collecting the ones I pointed out, and dumping them in a stack on the desk.

We divvied up the pile and got researching. Somewhere in these yellowed pages lurked our answers. I just hoped they didn’t also spell our doom.