Page 20 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

With a bellow of rage, Ezra grabbed Delacroix and dragged him out of his chair halfway across the room. He slammed the shedim so hard into the wall that the plaster cracked, photographs crashing to the ground in a chorus of broken glass.

Delacroix was already changing, deadly curved horns bursting out of his crown, his body thickening to become coils, and his skin turning to silver scales.

Ezra jammed his fingers so hard into the demon’s right side that he tore flesh. “Bust out one more scale and I’ll end you.” My boyfriend’s eyes blazed such a bright green that it hurt to look at them, and his fangs were larger than I’d ever seen them.

“You don’t know my weak spot,” Delacroix charged, but he also held himself as still as death.

“See if I’m bluffing.” Ezra gouged his fingers in deeper. “I’d love nothing better than to end you for putting Aviva in Alastair’s path.”

You really know it? I said through our psychic connection.

Not for certain but I’ve watched him for a while now.

Tempting, but…

“Ezra.” I waved my arms to get his attention. “We need him alive for answers.”

I was annoyed for wanting my father’s continued existence for personal reasons as well as practical ones. Why couldn’t I want him dead without any other emotions weighing in on the matter?

“You screwed over your own kid for nothing, Delacroix,” I said. “Alastair took the test, not me. He’s the one who got the power word while I was an innocent bystander who almost died in the Brink because of you.”

“I don’t belie?—”

Ezra pressed a finger against the shedim’s lips. “I’d be very careful about spreading lies. If Aviva says she had nothing to do with it, then she didn’t.”

Delacroix shot him a hate-fueled glare. “How would I have known you took some test to learn about the supplicant?” he said to me. “You never tell your own father anything.”

“I asked you for their name,” I said. “Which meant I’d been to the fortress. What exactly did you do?”

“Back off,” he spat at Ezra, “or I’ll pull my magic from the yacht. What’ll happen to your precious vampire staff then?”

“You’re not withdrawing your magic because there’s nowhere else safe enough for you to fall back to,” Ezra countered.

“Try me.”

The Prime flexed his grip, his eyes sparking with a manic glee.

Let him go. Please.

Ezra didn’t immediately comply—not until I reminded him through our psychic connection several times that I was safe. That Delacroix would pay for what he’d done, but now wasn’t the time.

The demon sagged against the wall when he was released, morphing back to his human glamor.

“Evelyn Rue,” I growled.

Delacroix rolled his eyes. “I paid Daphne a visit. We made a deal based on her telling me about when you two met.” Delacroix sat down gingerly, protecting his side.

“You know, the vamps here have to sign NDAs, but I like the fortress’s employment requirements better.

It’s clear what staff can and can’t do, and the immediate consequences for transgressions are astoundingly efficient. ”

I white-knuckled the top of a chair. “Daphne wasn’t talking about Alastair when she said, ‘He actually set me free.’ She meant you. She knew how this would play out if we did the ritual in the Brink with that rune.” My voice cracked. “You killed her.”

“It was her choice,” Delacroix said. He slid a cigarette out of the crumpled pack on the side table next to him. “I didn’t kill her, just like I didn’t kill that idiot dhampir. I told him that if he used the rune in his ritual, there was a good chance he’d actually become a Prime.”

Ezra snorted.

“The rune amplified the power word with shedim magic,” Delacroix said. “It wasn’t an impossible outcome.”

“Just a fantastically improbable one. You manipulated him,” I said.

“It was his choice,” the demon reiterated. “People forget magic isn’t free. It’s not even credit. It’s a loan shark with brass knuckles.” He lit his cigarette. “I didn’t even need to encourage Alastair to do the ritual right away in the Brink. He was more than eager to get ’er done.”

“So that it would roll on through to earth,” Ezra said in disgust.

“So that he could return as quickly as possible, ready to sire his baby army. He was ready to kill you, too, Cardoso, to get back at your father. You’re welcome.”

I massaged a temple. “You said you didn’t want to free the demon prisoners. You required that magic boost to stage a demon coup. You lied to me.”

It shouldn’t have hurt that much. After all, he was a demon, and while being my father never stopped him from physically hurting me, there was a strange code of honor that Delacroix followed in his dealings with me. In terms of the truth, at least.

“I need bodies, not more magic.” He tapped his cigarette against the edge of the dirty ashtray next to him. “And I didn’t say anything about freeing the shedim. You did. You’ve made a lot of assumptions about my motives.”

“Evaded with questions,” I said dully. I drummed my fingers on his humidor—a new addition. The glass door showcased two shelves of cigars, and there wasn’t anywhere to hide the brain.

Delacroix watched me, betraying his feigned disinterest when I circled the back of the cigar case with a tightening of his lips.

Hel-lo. Was there something special hidden inside?

“Pay better attention next time, girl detective.” My father gestured from me to the sofa. “And sit down already or get out.”

Did he have an alternate-reality hidey-hole?

I took a seat, where I was greeted with a smoke ring of secondhand death.

“Good thing you had no part in releasing the Luce,” he said nastily. “You’d be so broken up over it, if you had.”

“How could you sell out your own daughter to that fucker?” Ezra spoke quietly.

I’d been so caught up in my heated exchange with Delacroix and wondering where the brain was that I’d missed the fact my boyfriend had systematically dismantled the doors to the cabinet, reducing the thick wood to slender curls on the floor.

It wasn’t exactly the way I’d have ascertained what was inside, but whatever worked. Delacroix had used the cabinet as an oversized junk drawer, tossing in half-opened packs of cigarettes, a hammer, a couple pairs of shoes, and those damned brass scales, the source of the blue synesthete light.

“I got him out of your way,” Delacroix said.

“I would have killed Alastair without your help,” I snarled. “Go ahead and burn the demon realm to flames in your coup and I’ll dance through the ashes, but you’ve endangered my world. How do we stop the Luce?”

“It’s not reversible. That genie is out of the bottle and it’s not going back in.”

Not reversible didn’t equate to couldn’t be stopped. My father had been right: I hadn’t paid proper attention to what he said. To be fair, his words were more slippery than his serpent’s coils, but he had every ounce of my focus now.

However, like the brain’s location, he wasn’t about to help me solve the problem of the healing magic.

“It’s my turn now,” Delacroix said. “You blood bonded, didn’t you?

Sentimental nonsense.” He smoothed a hand over his shirt.

“I’m hurt you didn’t ask for my blessing.

Aviva’s own father, and I had to find out about it through the surge shoring up the security system.

” He smirked. “Good to see Cardoso stepped up his game in the face of everything going on.”

We’d strengthened Delacroix’s position? I bit back a groan. “We didn’t blood bond,” I countered. “So don’t get too comfortable hiding behind this increased security. It’s a thrall and could fade away at any moment.”

Counterthreat delivered.

Delacroix’s eyes darkened and the air around him thickened, charged with palpable malice.

His human body remained unchanged, yet his presence expanded, pushing against the walls of reality itself.

When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of centuries, soft yet vibrating through bone and soul: “You dare demean me?”

I fought the urge to take a very large step backward against an anger that made no sense. “What’s your problem? A second ago you were gloating over how it benefited you.”

“I could forgive you tying yourself to Cardoso with a blood bond, but you’ve reduced yourself to a battery.

You’re so desperate to turn your shedim heritage into something palatable for those around you,” he hissed.

“The blood of kings runs through your veins, but you see it as filth to be squandered or transformed through needy human acts of goodness.”

His fury chilled me, a winter storm trapped in human shape. The temperature of the room dropped with each syllable he spat.

I clasped my trembling hands behind my back. “I accept what I am.”

“Accept?” He gave a low, sarcastic bow. “How generous. And you don’t. You keep it at arm’s length and call it by some pithy insulting nickname. Cherry Bomb.” He sneered. “Your sister is worth a million of you.”

“Why?” The whining note in my voice filled me with self-loathing. “Maud’s not marching in demon pride parades either.”

“She’s not hung up on how much humanity she has.” My father mimed crying. “She doesn’t play games to trick herself into ‘accepting’ who and what she is. The world will never see you as human, Aviva. Grow up and stop deluding yourself.”

I clenched my fists, my jaw just as tight, but Delacroix’s words pierced me like shards of ice, each one finding the exact spot where my doubts made me vulnerable.

A hollow ache spread through my chest, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe—not from anger, but from the terrible suspicion that he might be right.

That everything I’d worked so hard to achieve might be for naught.

Ezra stepped up beside me. “Aviva isn’t the one deluding herself.

You are if you believe I’ll keep my Prime magic in place protecting you while you amass a demon army.

” The smile he trained on Delacroix was so cold and sharp that I shivered.

“The three shedim who came to the Lions Gallery were very interested in where the brain was. Their partners will be delighted to learn you stole it. I’ll broadcast your whereabouts and that you have the brain. ”

“My death is the last thing you want.”

“I dunno,” I said tightly. “It’s sounding better and better all the time.”

Delacroix flicked glowing ash at me. “Guess again. My being in charge is the only thing keeping a lid on utter chaos.”

I slapped at a spark on my pants, imagining it was my father’s head.

Ezra crossed his arms. “Do tell.”

“My loyal shedim are in place, ready to gather the locks before their magic fails and remove them to a safe spot.” He put out his cigarette.

“Take a message back to the Maccabees, daughter. Leave me alone and stay out of my way. That includes hands off the locks. Or I’ll sit back and watch those freaked-out escapees tear a swath of death and destruction across the world. ”

“There’s no fucking way they’ll agree to that,” I said.

Ezra moved to the window, staring out over the dark ocean.

“Make them or I’ll turn earth into my personal battleground.” Delacroix stood up, vibrating with barely contained power. His scales rippled beneath his skin as ancient magic thrummed through the air. “You wanted me to work with the Authority? Well, this is what it looks like.”

I swallowed.

Ezra spared the shedim the briefest pensive glance before tracking a drop of condensation snaking down the window with his finger. “Down, boy,” he said mildly.

What was going through his head? Right now, it sucked that our thrall wasn’t a two-way street in terms of me feeling his emotions.

There was a rap on the door, one of the Li’l Hellions informing Delacroix that there was an issue with the Bilge.

Ezra hastily took a step back as if scared he’d be forced to pump that demon’s stomachs again.

“Alas, our visit has come to an end.” Delacroix shooed Ezra and me out the door.

“I was disappointed that I didn’t get to raise you, Aviva, but I’ll concede that in this one instance and one instance only, your pathetic do-gooder impulses worked out in my favor.

” He ruffled my hair, and I flinched. “In the end, you were the spark who made my dreams of reclaiming my throne a blazing reality.”

I hungered to tear that smug satisfaction off his face, his pride more devastating than any curse he could have thrown.

He shut the door with a muffled click, the sound of a trap snapping closed.

Ezra motioned me over to the deck railing, waiting until Delacroix and the Hellion were out of sight and earshot before speaking. “Don’t listen to him.”

I wasn’t. Delacroix had knocked me down, but he wasn’t keeping me there. I hadn’t dedicated my life to protecting humanity as a needy, desperate bid to be accepted.

Well, not entirely , Cherry said.

Whose side are you on?

“All of Delacroix’s recent plays have been in pursuit of one goal: a coup in the demon realm,” I said.

“True, he gave Alastair the rune, not Natán, but that doesn’t change what my father is up to,” Ezra insisted. “Or preclude them working together to fuck us both over.”

I smacked the metal. “Now’s not the time to give a shit about your father!”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Says the woman who just got screwed over by not paying attention to hers.”

“Don’t you dare belittle me,” I said. “And I’m paying very close attention to how the second Delacroix launches his coup, and all those legions of demons come after him, the Hell’s security system isn’t going to keep him safe.

They won’t stop with him or his buddies.

They’ll hunt down anyone who’s helped him.

Like the two of us. Inadvertent or not won’t matter to them. ”

Ezra closed his hand around the railing, leaving finger indentations in the metal. “I’m sorry. You’re right about what’s most urgent right now.”

“For what it’s worth, Delacroix is too selfish to team up with your dad.

You heard his derision for the vampires seeking sanctuary on the yacht.

Whereas I do believe Natán cares what happens to them, but we’ll deal with him in due time.

Right now, we’re going to hit my bastard of a father where it hurts. ”

“How?”

“We’re going to stop his coup before it begins.”