Page 4 of The Demon’s Due (Bedeviled #5)

“Yeah, I’m familiar with that last part.” It wasn’t always losers who paid. Sometimes winners like Quentin Baker ended up losing too. I sipped the strong alcohol slowly. The Copper Hell could rebrand with that idea. Play Now, Pay Later—Someone Always Does.

A silvery-blue gaze lit with amusement popped into my head.

I choked on the brandy.

Daphne leaned over and pounded me on the back. “It’s a lot to think about.”

And here I was trying not to think. At all. He’s okay . “Trust me, I’ve examined every angle of this. I’m going to succeed, and when this is all over, I’ll return with a bottle of my favorite Merlot.”

“You’ll raise a glass to me.” She sounded not sad exactly, more wistful.

“We’ll raise a glass together,” I promised her.

I was convinced I’d stay up worrying, but it was meat coma to the rescue. I slept like a baby.

When Daphne shook me awake, the sky was streaked with soft peach and orange. Storm clouds shaped like four-leaf clovers also rolled overhead, which was admittedly a mixed message, but I was in an optimistic mood.

Soon Alastair would be stopped for good, and I would be reunited with my boyfriend.

I shoved my bare feet into my ankle boots and followed Daphne in silence down to the basement, assessing every door for dungeon status.

She halted partway down the corridor in front of a large painting of a forest. “Good luck,” she said and hugged me tightly.

I hugged her back, but before I could thank her, she vanished along with all modern electricity.

And the fortress.

Pine trees pressed in from all sides, and weak sunshine filtered down through faraway top branches, barely providing enough light for me to pick my way over the uneven path made of decomposing pine needles.

Cherry sang “Barbie Girl” by Aqua, which put a spring in my step. We were on the same page that unless things went sideways, I’d remain fully human.

I pushed branches out of my way, tensing for the brush of cobwebs or nasty little beasts scuttling over my hand. This subdimension of the fortress was still in the Brink, so anything was possible, but the worst injury I suffered was a feathery branch thwacking me in the back of my head.

I’d been walking for about ten minutes when the stout branches of two trees crisscrossed, blocking the path. I wiped sweat off my forehead with my sleeve and kicked my way through.

A tiny house rose before me, squat and ancient.

Built into a hill, its limestone blocks furred with moss where water had seeped through the mortar over centuries.

Dead vines clutched at the corners like gnarled fingers, and the entrance gaped, a rough-cut empty doorway that drew in the forest’s shadows rather than dispelling them.

It had a certain je ne sais quoi. More so than the stretch of stagnant water reeking of bleach that led directly to it. It wasn’t a lake, more a pond with an overinflated sense of self. Stones coated in varying degrees of mud and moss were scattered throughout it.

Let’s save the broken ankle option for Plan B .

I tore off a branch and dunked it in the dark water to check the depth. Its needles hissed and bubbled, bouncing off the bark and along the pond’s surface. They bleached of all color and dissolved into tiny fragments that sank beneath the ripples.

The water returned to its placidity. Plan B it was.

I paced the shore, analyzing the safest route across.

Once I was confident that I’d picked the best contenders, I shook out my shoulders, jumped up and down, and exhaled hard a few times.

Arms outstretched, I stepped onto the first chosen rock—and immediately slid. I barely regained my balance in time.

Cherry launched into “Waterfalls” by TLC.

For an inner voice who was actually me, I could show myself more support in this situation.

The Baroness sang the chorus louder.

Sometimes the appropriate next rock was a small step away, sometimes it was a pulse-ratcheting stretch, and in one heart-lurching instance, a jump where my heel hit the water.

A sliver of rubber sizzled and crumbled.

I coasted on adrenaline over the remaining stones and leapt onto the rickety wood porch.

It was impossible to see through the shadows to inside, but I didn’t want to risk any escalation by letting Cherry free.

However, I wasn’t about to blithely traipse in, when I had no sense of what waited for me.

I hovered my scales under my skin, where they were easily accessible, and cautiously stepped through the doorway.

Sawdust scattered under my boots same as it had in Evelyn’s memory, each step a heavy thud on the worn stone.

Torches lit my way, the flames swaying to whispers that swept around me on an icy breeze.

I ignored them. Nothing was getting between me and that power word.

I stepped over a broken channel in the floor lined with gravel, listening to faint burbling from the corner. This was a repurposed spring house, albeit one that was much larger than normal, dug deep into the hillside.

The flames shifted, throwing a rough block of stone at the far end of the room into stark relief. A face was carved into it. My heartbeat stampeded at the mouth hanging open in an O, because interacting with it in Evelyn’s memory had been awful enough.

I looked around again. Okay, the place was rustic, but with a little work might prove quaint.

Today on Love It or List It: Occult Edition: “Mark and Susan are looking for a home with character, but this eight-hundred-year-old spring house might have a bit too much. Sure, it’s an age-old site of mystical power, but there’s no flow.

The stone face is giving real estate agent David fits about resale value, and designer Hilary is concerned that whispering shadows in the corner will possess new occupants.

Still, they’re excited to turn it from an interdimensional void of madness into an open-concept kitchen. ”

Forcing myself to uncurl my fingers and drop my hands, I strode forward.

The face’s dead stone eyes woke, flickering with cold purpose.

I froze, heart hammering against my ribs.

Back away now, and Alastair would unleash a deadly vengeance on people I cared about. More half shedim would die. Proceed, and I might be split between name maggot and bone wall.

“Screw it,” I whispered. If I was going down, it wouldn’t be cowering in fear.

Drawing a deep breath, I squared my shoulders and met those ancient stone eyes with defiance. My fingers trembled visibly—not from fear, I told myself, but from anticipation—as I deliberately extended my hand toward the gaping maw.

Visions of bloody stumps where my fingers used to be danced in my head.

Grimacing, I plunged my hand between its cold lips. “Bite me.”

Phrasing , Cherry cough-laughed.

I already know your taste . The stone’s voice filled the room. Mmmmmm .

I couldn’t help the shiver at its reminder that it had already taken my magic. That said, Evelyn had gotten a raspy tongue lick on her fingers and a lake full of maggots writhing in her head when the sentience spoke.

I got bupkis.

I shoved my hand in deeper. “Then you know that I’ve spent my life protecting people. I’m half-shedim and still, every single day I choose to fight for the continued safety of humans and for a world where my kind no longer has to hide.”

I took a breath, my chest rising and falling and my cheeks flushed, but the stone face didn’t jump in with any response.

“The mystic concept of neshamah, that divine spark connecting everything to the source of all life, lives inside me,” I said.

“Just as it lived inside the six half shedim that Alastair Walker murdered. I ask for this power word not out of pride or vengeance, nor even to give meaning to their deaths. I stand here because of the wisdom and sacrifice of many others who helped me understand what must be done.”

The face gave nothing away, like it was waiting for me to finish before it squished me like a wee little bug.

I held my free hand out, the gesture carrying all the weight of my final, desperate hope.

“Give me the power word, and I will speak it in a ritual combining its healing magic with their spilled blood. This will purge the stagnant energy within Walker and connect him to that divine spark, allowing him to fulfill his deepest desire: to create new life. And when he is made whole, when his corruption is cleansed, then I will end him. Find. Me. Worthy.”

The mouth’s smooth upper edge split into stone fangs that punched through my flesh.

I screamed, blood running off my wrist and onto the sawdust. I couldn’t pull free.

Cherry Bomb surged through my pain. Crimson hair burst from my scalp and armored scales exploded along my arms, my muscles swelling with demonic strength as short horns thrust from my temples.

I was trapped. Claws erupted from my fingers. I raked against the face.

Say your name and I shall pronounce judgment .

“I am Aviva Jacqueline Fleischer.” I ground the words out through teeth gritted in pain, tears streaming down my cheeks.

Some small, terrified part of me wondered if these would be the last words I ever spoke as myself—if my name would soon be forgotten, just another erased identity fed to the fortress.

Yet still, I said my name. Because it was mine to give, mine to risk, mine to lose.

The power word materialized like thorns of jagged ice forming one by one, each syllable a separate barb that lodged at the back of my throat.

Tendrils of frost spread through my body as the word crystallized, until the full weight of it was etched into the marrow of my bones, humming with dangerous potential.

“You have been found worthy,” the mouth intoned.

The torches blew out, leaving me alone with a word that could heal a monster—or end the world. In the perfect darkness, I savored my triumph where others had failed. They came for a cause. I came for an end.