Page 2 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

Dissolution? I swallowed. How omnipotent was the sentience?

Because those cuffs had been the least of my problems. If Alastair missed the check-in with his vampire minions, they’d execute Secretary Pederson and frame my mother for it, along with her ordering Ezra to murder the operative Roman Whittaker.

All lies, but the photo Alastair had of my infernal form would convince Dmitri Kozlov that Michael would do anything to protect her own half-shedim abomination. She’d end up in Sector A, the top-secret maximum-security jail where people who colluded with demons or rogue vamps were sent.

Ezra would be hunted down, the investigation spreading to Silas’s escape and potentially dragging Sachie, Darsh, and the entire Vancouver Maccabee chapter into that terrifying prison alongside the director.

Meantime, I’d be left breathing just long enough to watch it all unfold.

I weighed all that against what could be done to me now for lying about my situation.

I had to come clean. “There’s no cell service in the Brink, but is there some way for Alastair to contact his people and give the order that Secretary Pederson is not to be touched?

That my mother is safe? I’ll exercise my true free will if he does that. ”

“After I have the Luce.” Alastair pronounced the word “lou-chay” like the Italian word for “light.”

I frowned. “Is that the power word?”

“It’s the name of the healing magic contained in it.

” Daphne placed her palm flat against the nearest wall, and a low, hungry rumble echoed through the room.

“When you arrived,” she said to Alastair, “you said ‘We’re here for the test.’ That makes both of you the petitioners and both of you subject to the Threshold Protocol.

” She patted the scary wall like it was a favored pet. “But it’s up to you.”

He made the call, which amazingly connected, even putting it on speaker so we could ascertain for ourselves that he’d called off the hit.

One terrifying situation mitigated, but I still had to stop Alastair once and for all.

“I’m exercising my free will,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “I want to take this test.”

Daphne crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “You swore the last time you showed up that you didn’t want the power word.” The charge, delivered in her Beastie Boys accent, would have been amusing if it didn’t also come with a menacing glower that made both me and Cherry flinch.

“It’s a woman’s prerogative…” I smiled with false bravado.

My hostess toyed with the trowel. Why was I surrounded by people with violent urges?

My inner demoness admired how the sharp edge caught the light. Never mind.

“You can’t refuse her.” Alastair snapped a leaf off the rubber plant.

“Touch my plant again and I’ll dig a hole where your dick should be and grow seedlings there instead,” Daphne said conversationally.

The dhampir dropped the leaf and glared at me.

I sent up a silent plea for Daphne to not make this harder on me.

No one had successfully acquired the power word since the early twentieth century. Failure meant joining the vibrant bone wall community with no sense of myself, and no purpose but a cautionary tale.

But not to be given a shot at all to change this incredibly shitty day and take power back for myself? To rescue people important to me? I pumped a fist. “Goooo test!”

“We’re wasting time.” Alastair busted out his fangs. The manic hostile energy rolling off him didn’t so much deter his commanding air as twist it into something feral.

Daphne pushed up her sleeve. Runes carved into her flesh glowed copper against her tanned skin. “You began this petition under murky conditions, so I’ll let you know what my boss and I decide when we decide it. Now shut up.”

I studied my abductor through slitted lids.

Alastair was the right-hand man in the most powerful vampire Mafia in existence, and no one, not even its leader, Natán Cardoso, had figured out he was only a halfie.

Any uptick in the Brit’s abilities, like siring an undead army, would convince everyone he was a Prime and confer scary levels of power upon him.

He might even be able to steal the Kosher Nostra’s command away from Natán.

I clenched my fists. The upheaval and damage he’d cause wouldn’t just affect vampires.

Not only that, but should Alastair discover my sister orchestrated events leading to his mother’s murder (with the killing blow dealt by Ezra, who would be absolutely healthy enough to defend himself when Alastair found out), then he’d target my sister and draw out her death, which would enrage Delacroix. Supernatural war would break out.

I gritted my teeth against the tingly feeling presaging my toxic green eyes. Not yet , Baroness.

Should Alastair be killed before the ritual happened, his minions would continue this mad quest to sire children, endlessly killing infernals to fuel a broken ritual.

Let the magic sentience that protected the power word dismantle every single vampire supplicant. I didn’t give a shit. The thing is, Alastair murdered six half shedim to get the blood necessary for this.

It had taken years to find his perfect victims, including a thirteen-year-old boy, Aleksander, Secretary Pederson’s nephew. Sadly, the one thing Alastair’s undead followers had plenty of was time.

My gaze shot to the canteen, and a muscle ticked in my jaw. Fuck me.

How did Alastair fit six bodies’ worth of blood into that? Was it TARDIS brand or had he magically concentrated the fluid down? I better not be expected to drink it or even touch it.

But what if that was my role as speaker of the power word? I could tell myself that I was giving those people’s brutal murders purpose, but the idea of literally having their blood on my hands—or worse—made me gag.

You’ll do this because you have to, mi cielo . Ezra’s voice filled my head.

For a brief, wonderful second, I thought he was somehow psychically communicating with me, but the continued silence bounced off the walls, mocking me.

Daphne was still communing with the magic sentience, her lids closed and a shivery dark aura surrounding her like a force field, while Alastair remained fixated on her, awaiting the decision.

For the safety of half shedim, I had to murder all hope that this ritual worked.

Think it through, Fleischer . My understanding of the order of events was: get the power word, speak it during a dark magic ritual that Alastair performed in conjunction with the blood, and watch him reap the rewards.

That word was the delivery system of the healing magic, while the ritual defined the parameters of what specifically was to be healed.

Well, one did not simply bounce out of a dark magic blood ritual ready to rock and roll.

I blinked. Was that the solution? Strike once the ritual was performed, but while Alastair still adjusted to his new super-vamp abilities?

I suspected I had a very small window of opportunity. Possibly seconds.

I’d have to phrase his murder afterward in such a way that the logical inference was the magic power word didn’t work as advertised and killed him.

His followers bought their leader’s bullshit that this ritual would work on all vampires versus one lucky recipient. Because they were desperate to believe. It sucked for them that they couldn’t differentiate between faith born of desperation and utter self-delusion.

Regardless, that faith would not be extended to me. My claim had to be irrefutable, and for that, I had to be able to beat him.

Alastair did the ritual and died . Stick me in front of a top Yellow Flame lie detector or a vampire, and neither would claim I lied.

All I had to do was get an impossible power word.

Daphne leveled a long, dubious look from me to Alastair and opened her mouth.

I stood up abruptly, every muscle tensed like a cornered animal. “I’m here of my own free will,” I repeated, my voice steadier than the rest of me. “Let me do this. Please.”

The word hung between us—“please”—a desperate prayer more than a polite request. Cherry rumbled in agreement, her presence coiling through me like smoke. We were in this together, the Baroness and I, about to face a test no one had survived in a century.

Daphne studied me, her eyes ancient and knowing beneath that ridiculous gardener’s hat. She must have seen something in my face—determination, resignation, or perhaps the perfect blend of fear and fury—because she finally nodded.

“As you wish,” she said. The words fell like a death sentence.

The air around us charged with electricity. The fortress walls seemed to breathe inward, the space contracting as the test prepared to consume another supplicant. Alastair’s fanged smile gleamed in my peripheral vision, but I thanked Daphne.

This was it. My shot. My last extraordinary chance to fix this doomed trajectory.

Too bad I was all out of miracles.