Page 31 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

“You’ve done far too much to benefit this organization and the world,” Michael said.

“Without you, we’d still believe we killed shedim.

Alastair would have gotten the power word one way or another, but without you seeing that amplification rune, we’d have no idea why vampires were suffering.

You saved operatives from demons, and you came up with our first viable idea to stop the Luce.

You’re a valuable asset, Operative Fleischer, and I made damn sure they knew that. ”

“I appreciate it, but someone doesn’t agree because they ratted me out.” Seriously, could this mystery colleague have run blabbing any faster?

She flashed a coy smile. “ I told them how we’d been rolling out this reveal on a need-to-know basis, not trusting it to any lines of communication, including those with Authority members.

We had grave concerns that the dhampir stalking you would get wind of your heritage and use it to his own advantage.

Which, we’ve ascertained, is exactly what happened and the reason behind the abduction. ”

Control the narrative. Of course she had.

I teased out her story. “Alastair used half-shedim blood in the ritual and made the leap that a half shedim was key to obtaining the power word.”

“So deluded,” Michael said sadly. “I’m currently hard at work plugging that leak so no other personal information about my operatives can ever be wielded against them.”

Only time would tell if that mitigated my punishment, but I wasn’t going to sit around worrying.

I had a magic fire management strategy to nail down.

“What about your transgressions?” I clasped her hand. “Having me, hiding me?”

“I made it extremely clear that they created those conditions and I would not go down for them.” She paused. “We are not powerless, Aviva. I only wish we’d understood that sooner.”

Should the Authority come after me—after my mother—we wouldn’t go down without a fight. This time, we’d stand as one.

A weight I’d carried since birth began to crack and crumble. I let out a slow breath and straightened up.

“There she is,” Michael said with a smile.

“Here’s something else to cheer you up.” She shared how excited other Maccabees were to be part of the task force, how every single one was running with my proposed idea, using the most advanced tech with the help of Eishei Kodesh climate scientists to run simulations and brainstorm solutions.

They’d even broken into subgroups based on flame type to come up with specific strategies.

“Did you replace me?”

“The backfire was your idea,” she said, “and everyone wants you on the task force, but with the speed the Luce is advancing, you’ve simply missed too much to have a leadership role. Ha-joon is overseeing all Blue Flames.”

My life had been a long-term campaign to be accepted, and it had led me to feel like I had to do everything on my own. I’d shed that belief. I was firmly part of a group, part of a team, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Good choice, but I still need to find Ezra.”

After I texted him to reply stat, I tapped my finger against the phone. Put it away, Fleischer . No good will come of checking — My jaw dropped. Twenty-five thousand new followers? I’d had only one hundred and four to begin with.

I checked the comments on a photo of me and a s’mores mishap while camping last summer.

OMG, love that treat !

Team Burned Marshmallow all the way.

There’s no way Ezra would want to wake up to this gold-digging hag .

I made my profile private.

Ezra had uncoupled himself from me and bolted. Intellectually, I understood why, and strangers’ opinions of us shouldn’t matter, but the totality of it left me feeling scraped raw.

I’d spent my life presenting myself in a favorable light, and the idea of a groundswell of hate against me—not even because of Cherry but because I was someone’s girlfriend—made our reconnection vital.

Still radio silence from my boyfriend. “Permission to track him down.”

Michael agreed, provided I was back by 4PM for the next task force meeting with operatives from around the world.

That gave me plenty of time.

Sachie waited for me outside the treatment room with crossed arms. “There’s no rewards card. This isn’t a ‘visit ten times and get a free coffee on the eleventh.’”

I smacked my forehead. “Shit. I got it mixed up with the café across the street.”

“Well, get it right next time because I almost had to tell Mom to bust out the muffins again.”

“We don’t want that,” I said somberly.

She snorted. “Did you have fun killing the shedim?”

“Yes, actually.” I considered it. “That was probably the least stressful part of the last I don’t know how many hours.”

“And the super-special cameo appearance went well?” She mimed horns. Her tone was flippant, but she intensely scrutinized my expression.

“So far so good. Time will tell if there is any fallout from that particular bomb. Everything okay with you?”

“Just tired.”

I squeezed her shoulder, grabbed some food and a coffee to go from HQ kitchen, and drove to the Jolly Hellhound.

I’d been braced to enter the foyer of the megayacht—and cut a swath through vampires to get to Ezra’s private quarters if I had to—but I stepped into his living room.

He may have broken our thrall, but he hadn’t changed the portal settings on me.

The Prime-sized knot in my chest unraveled like a fist slowly unclenching after being held tight for too long.

A crystal glass with crimson dregs sat next to an open bottle wafting blood and alcohol fumes on the coffee table.

Ezra was in his bedroom, leaning against his headboard with his legs splayed on the mattress.

His shoulders slumped like a marionette with cut strings, his red-rimmed eyes staring at nothing.

He hadn’t even bothered to take off his shoes, the blankets twisted around his legs like he’d lost the will to move halfway through getting comfortable.

I’d seen broken bottles that looked less shattered than he did.

I crawled onto the bed next to him and tugged his hand into my lap, willing to ride this hollow silence.

“The women in Operation Inferno,” he said gruffly.

“What about them?” I kept my voice and grip on his hand steady, a buffer against the dread rising inside me.

“Very few of them made it to term. The shedim would have shut down the program even if Maccabees hadn’t busted them, but…” He cleared his throat. “They kept the sperm.”

I furrowed my brow. “The demons kept their own sperm? That’s kind of weird. They could always, you know, make more of it.”

“Not the demons.”

“Fuuuuuck.”

“No,” Ezra said, his expression bleak, “but you could achieve the same result with artificial insemination if you wished. If you were someone hoping to have a child. At a fertility clinic.”

Bile burned at the back of my throat. “No…they…no.”

We were the good guys. We wouldn’t betray our own values. Yet as my claws shredded the bedding, I confronted the uncomfortable truth that wearing the Maccabee ring meant inheriting their legacy, with the blood, moral morass, and outright violations of those who came before me.

Ezra placed a hand against my cheek, but dropped it immediately into his lap, the effort beyond him.

“The Maccabees didn’t want half-demon babies.

The plan was to implant Eishei Kodesh women to study the effects of shedim magic in human hosts.

To find a more efficient way to fight what they were effectively treating as demon parasites,” he added bitterly.

“If the pregnancies progressed beyond the first term, Maccabees could always arrange a medical miscarriage.”

“They’d use us to make better weapons and then they’d abort us.” Toxic green scales striped across my skin, Cherry’s roar thundering inside my skull.

I pressed my hands against my ribs, hoping to guide air back into my lungs.

I’d dedicated my life to proving myself to this organization.

I’d swallowed their disgust like bitter medicine— after all, we were the children of evil creatures.

But this wasn’t just revulsion; it was seeing us as raw material to be exploited and discarded.

Next to me, the man I was falling in love with didn’t move to comfort me.

My heart stuttered as the implications of that silence sank in, because for Ezra to hold himself back now meant there was worse to come.

I twisted to face him. “Your mom.”

Ezra’s mouth worked but no sound came out.

“Zee,” I pleaded. “Tell me, sweetheart.” I could put most of it together, but he had to say it aloud to lance this wound.

“Mamá wanted a baby so badly.” His voice wavered but he notched his chin up, even if he couldn’t look at me during this tale.

“The rabbi approved the IVF treatments and the facility was under the aegis of Seaside, which had a solid reputation. Her miscarriage devastated her, but she’d had the best care.

It was just a horrible tragedy.” His lips twisted into a bitter sneer as he drawled those last words.

“Except it wasn’t. My father,” he spat the term, “wasn’t seeking power.

He wasn’t even part of the Authority, simply the leader of the team that stopped Operation Inferno.

What a mensch.” His expression twisted. “So passionate about fighting for humanity that he was willing to sacrifice his own wife on the battlefield.”

I rested my hand on his leg, my stomach in knots. “Was it really a miscarriage?”

Ezra slowly nodded. “When Mamá got to her second trimester, Natán convinced them to let it go a bit longer. Then it was her third, and the fetus was still thriving. If she carried to term, they intended to take the baby away to study it, but she didn’t.

” He sounded robotic. “She almost died. Natán got spooked so badly by the idea of losing her that he threatened to go public unless they shut the program down for good.”

“Did they?”

“Yes. Pederson, who wasn’t on the Authority yet, was the most resentful about it because she’d been in charge of my mother’s care.

She was a doctor and giddy about all the breakthroughs this could lead to.

Apparently, she was the sole survivor of a shedim ambush early in her career and wanted stronger weapons than the magic cocktail. ”

“So much for do no harm.” A surge of hatred welled up inside me, despite the woman’s tragic past. “How soon after that was she promoted?”

“A couple years. My mother was pregnant again with me. It had happened naturally, and both my parents considered it a miracle, so when Natán learned Pederson intended to start the program up again—and silence any protests from him—he had to protect his family. He… He…” Ezra swayed forward as if to give himself momentum to continue.

“He left a vamp alive on some job in exchange for turning him and my mother.” For the first time, he met my eyes, his gaze broken and haunted.

“Then he promised Pederson that if I was born a Prime, she could study me.”

“But she didn’t.”

“He went back on his word after I was born,” Ezra said dully. “I was a tool.”

“He wanted his son,” I insisted.

Ezra picked at the hole I’d made in his covers. “Pederson’s hands were tied because my family was too high profile among the Maccabee community. Too many operatives had rallied around them.” He drew his knees to his chest. “Five years later, Mamá got a call from someone telling her everything.”

“From Pederson?”

“The secretary wouldn’t admit to that,” Ezra said.

“But my father believed it. Why he waited years to send an assassin, I have no idea. Maybe he meant to be set up in Babel first, powerful and untouchable from any repercussions. Maybe I was supposed to turn out differently and be the hand of his eventual revenge. Whatever it was, he didn’t trust me to kill a Maccabee.

The Crimson Prince had a pesky moral line.

” He dropped his head back against the headboard with a soft thud.

Was this fight worth the cost to all the innocents? It was one thing for operatives to pay with our blood, even our lives, but we chose this.

Did you? Cherry whispered. Hiding in plain sight, remember?

That was part of it, but my mother was a Maccabee, and I’d gone down this road because I admired her. I had agency and choice.

Something that Eva, who was also an operative, had been denied.

I wanted to judge her because even if she couldn’t live with the knowledge of what her husband did, what she’d been used to do, how could she still walk into the sun, right in front of her only living child?

But I wouldn’t.

It was easy to say she should have left her marriage or reached out for help when I’d never been a mother. There was no way possible for me to understand the staggering depths of the hell she’d endured.

Whether the truth shattered her mind or her guilt at failing two children crushed her spirit, the end result was the same.

A woman so broken she chose to burn.

I hugged Ezra, holding him tight until his resistance crumbled like a dam breaking, his sobs tearing through him with the force of floodwater, each ragged breath carrying decades of buried grief.

He stayed in my arms long past that dam being emptied, leaning into me like I was his only source of strength. Finally, he pulled away, roughly rubbing a hand over his disheveled curls. “It was a lot for one day.”

“I know the feeling,” I said wryly. “Honestly, I’m surprised Pederson came clean.”

“It was because of her nephew, Aleksander,” Ezra said.

Alastair’s youngest half-shedim victim. “I don’t know if her much younger sister got pregnant on her own or…

” He waved a hand. “Pederson documented Aleksander’s magic as he grew up, but she also loved him.

She confessed, claiming it was a relief, then she resigned from the Authority, and is now under house arrest.”

“Were any of the rest of them complicit in this?”

“No. She and my father were the only ones left of that original team. Thank Burning Eddie for that.” Ezra’s mouth hardened into a line. “I know what Natán is after. His endgame isn’t consolidating power, that’s just a means to his true goal.” He paused. “Revenge.”