Demon Marked

“Let him go and I’ll cast whatever spell you want,” she said, the words alone enough to make her soul shrivel, even as the demonic hunger buzzed through her bones, sending messages of pleasure to some ancient part of her brain. It was like being overheated and freezing at the same time. Her nerves screamed in protest and her stomach heaved, but she forced herself to speak. “But you have to let him go first.”

“Hmm. Interesting offer.” Little Francis stood at the opposite end of the room, smiling like a butcher’s dog. “But you don’t even know what kind of spell we’re looking for.”

“I don’t care.” Emma’s eyes slid to Andre’s for a split second before she sucked in a deep breath and turned back to Francis.

She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t focus on how helpless he appeared, tied and gagged. She was going to lose it. She’d never felt so powerless, so at another’s mercy. Even the darkness inside her had never ruled her so completely. But the feelings she had for Andre ... they made her rib cage feel like it was about to implode. She would do whatever it took to gain his freedom, anything, even kill again, even risk becoming something less than human.

“Well, that will make things a lot easier.” Francis laughed. He wore nothing but a pair of gold and black striped boxer shorts and his Conti family watch, his rounded stomach out of place on his otherwise proportional body, his torso covered in enough hair to knit a small scarf. He should have been ridiculous, but the look in his eyes was too frightening. The man didn’t care whether Andre lived or died, but he knew that she did.

Maybe he’d had someone following them, reporting back on how close she and his cousin had grown in the past few hours, or maybe her emotions were still as pathetically obvious as they’d been all day. Maybe the fact that she loved Andre was etched on her face. Either way, Francis knew he held all the cards. She didn’t even have a place at the table.

“But I think we’re going to have to keep my cousin tied up for a little longer,” he said, strutting across the room on bare feet. Also hairy, she observed. She’d like to pull out every hair on his body until he bled and screamed. “We might need human blood to make that circle to cast the—”

“You don’t need human blood. Animal blood will work,” she said, deliberately keeping her tone low and even. She couldn’t let him know how much the thought of Andre being bled to create a circle for black magic terrified her. “Demon blood would be even better if you have it.”

“I don’t know.” Francis made a big show of pondering her words, but she could see the smile tugging at his lips. He was enjoying this, getting off on lording his power over her. “Douglas here was saying—”

“I have an undergraduate degree in demon studies.” Douglas—who was undressing down to his own boxers—paused to shoot her a nasty look. He crossed his arms and stuck out his hip. “And I’m the one who thought of having the Death Ministry guys kidnap Ginger to get all the party pooper Contis out of town.”

Douglas rolled his eyes. “Of course not. Duh. All those people are still in jail or too old to kidnap anybody. Reggie just had a couple of new recruits do the job and say they were cult members so no one would connect them to us if they were caught. They were going to earn their first kill scar for the job.”

“They’re not going to earn shit now,” muttered an older man whose face was a mass of ruined flesh, slashed with so many kill scars it was hard to guess at their number.

“Yeah.” Douglas winced. “Reggie is going to kill them for letting Ginger escape. I mean, we ended up with the book and you, and I say all’s well that end’s well, but ...” He shrugged and grinned at Reggie, not nearly as terrified of the other man as he should have been. To Douglas, this was just a big game.

Still, a part of Emma was relieved to hear the cult members weren’t really cult members. One less pile of shit to clean up.

It was also nice to think that there were at least a few Conti Bounty employees who hadn’t defected to the drug-running faction. It was still a nightmare, but not as horrible as she’d feared. Somewhere out there were people who would be working to stop Little Francis ... as soon as they found out what he was up to. Hopefully that would be before she was forced to work demon magic in order to save Andre’s life.

“Douglas has done some good work.” Francis smiled at Douglas, who beamed under the slight praise. “And he’s got a lot of good friends.”

“It was my second cousin on my mom’s side who blew up the family plane,” Douglas said. “He’s amazing with explosives.”

“And cheap. I never dreamed killing the old man would be so affordable.” Little Francis made the pronouncement without the slightest bit of shame, but Emma didn’t miss the impact his words had on several of the Conti men. Whether they agreed with Little Francis’s plans for the family or not, many weren’t happy that their patriarch was dead.

God. Uncle Francis was dead. Strangely, it made her want to cry. She’d never been that close to the man, but she’d seen how much Andre loved his uncle when she was sifting through his memories. This had to be tearing him up. She wished she could have spared him that pain, spared him all of this.

The door behind her opened. Emma spun in time to see James, one of the youngest Conti family bounty hunters, a kid who couldn’t be more than seventeen, bounding in the door, her purse in his hands.

“You ready for this?” James asked, shooting nervous looks around the room, as surprised by the underdressed state of the men as she’d been.

“Perfect timing. Bring it here and head back downstairs,” Little Francis said, holding out a hand in James’s direction. “We don’t need any virgins hanging around.”

“I told you, I’m not a virgin,” James mumbled as he handed over the purse amid low laughter from some of the Death Ministry members. Still, he didn’t seem too upset to be leaving the party.

“Yeah, right, and I’m not hairier than a fucking poodle,” Little Francis said. More laughter from the gang members. Who knew they had such healthy senses of humor? “Get out of here. We don’t need a cherry messing with the vibes.”

Jesus. H. Stupid. This was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever been a part of. Little Francis had no idea what he was doing. Virginity didn’t “mess with the vibes” any more than clothes did. It seemed like Douglas had latched on to every television cliché he’d seen on Demons of New York: Supernatural Victims Unit and run straight to Little Francis without bothering to employ anything he’d learned while earning that degree he was so proud of.

“Now, Miss Emma, we’re going to do two things at once here.” Francis nodded to Douglas, then motioned to Anthony—who was still fully clothed and had his gun aimed in her direction. “Anthony here is going to give you your spell book.”

The small man crossed to Andre and reached down beside his chair, pulling a pair of gold pellets from a small cooler Emma hadn’t noticed until now. A part of her knew what the pellets were and what Douglas intended to do with them, even before he tugged the gag from Andre’s mouth.

“Run, Emma! Get out of—” Andre’s words ended in a strangled sound as Douglas delivered a sharp karate chop to his throat. As Andre choked and gasped for air, Douglas shoved the two pellets into his mouth, then forced his jaw closed with surprising strength.

“Swallow the pellets, don’t bite, or that much Hamma will kill you.” Douglas hung on tight as Andre tossed his head back and forth, trying to throw off the man who held his jaw closed. But he couldn’t, not with the rest of his body tied to a chair.

“You’ll do the spell,” Francis said. “You’ll do it or we’ll tell Dr. Finch to keep the antivenom in the cooler downstairs. Those pellets were only wrapped with half the amount of cellophane we’re supposed to use.”

Emma’s eyes flew back to Andre. Douglas had covered his nose now. He couldn’t breathe. He was going to have to swallow the drugs or risk suffocation.

“They’re going to get down in his stomach and burst,” Francis said. “He’s got ten, maybe fifteen minutes, and I’ve got guards all over the first floor. If you try to work some other spell and screw us, there’s no chance of you walking out of—”

“No!” She had to get to Andre and find some way to get those drugs out of him. Emma made it three steps closer to the chair where he was bound before the sharp report of gunfire filled the small room. Only one shot was fired, but one was all it took.

Emma cried out and fell to the ground as the bullet burrowed deep into the muscle above her knee. Blood—hot and thick—flowed out to soak her jeans as she clutched at the area just above the wound, gasping as a fiery worm of pain squirmed through her flesh. Still, she was pushing back to a seated position, determined to reach Andre, by the time she heard him suck in a desperate breath.

Her eyes flew to his face, taking in his slightly parted lips and flushed cheeks. He’d swallowed the pellets. It was too late.

“Anthony, you son of a bitch. You shot her,” he mumbled, his words thin and breathy. “I’m going to kill you.”

“Fuck you. You’re a dead man.” Andre’s eyes found hers, taking what was left of her breath away. She’ d never dreamed a man would look at her that way, as if he saw all the way to the heart of her and wasn’t repulsed by what he saw. “Don’t do whatever they’re asking you to do. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said, fighting the urge to lunge for Douglas when he shoved the gag back into Andre’s mouth.

Already, the slightest hint of gold shone at his temples. The drugs were hitting his system. Fast. There was a very real chance she could lose him, that he’d die right in front of her while she struggled to perform whatever miracle these fools expected her to pull out of her ass. Even the thought of it was enough to make her feel the entire world was crumbling.

She didn’t realize the soft sobs filling the room were hers until Anthony knelt down beside her and laid her purse and a clean white handkerchief on the floor near her feet. At first she thought the handkerchief was to mop off her face, but then Anthony gestured toward her leg with the barrel of his gun. “Tie this above it,” he said, regret in his strange eyes. “It will help stop the bleeding.” He backed away quickly, as afraid of her as he’d been before, despite the fact that he’d shot her in the leg.

Emma snatched the handkerchief from the floor and tied it swiftly and efficiently around her thigh. Then she reached for her purse, digging through until she felt the familiar leather of the grimoire against her fingertips. She pulled it out, sparing only the slightest attention for the intricate etchings on the front. For the first time, the swirls of the demon runes didn’t affect her in the slightest. She didn’t feel tempted or frightened; she was too scared for Andre to feel anything but desperation.

“What spell do you want me to cast?” she asked, lifting impatient eyes to Little Francis when he hesitated for a second too long. “Hurry. It might take me longer than ten minutes to translate the words, and if Andre dies before I finish the translation you’ll have nothing left to bargain with. I don’t care if you kill me. You know that, right?”

“Kind of figured. You’re the depressed type,” Francis said. “I was going to threaten your roommate to make sure you played nice, but she escaped and Mikey got his do-gooder hands on her. But then Andre showed up and I had a feeling he liked you a lot.” He smiled, a canine baring of his yellowed teeth. “I didn’t realize you two were in loooove, but—”

“Tell me what you want,” she said, hating that Francis and the rest of these wastes had heard words she’d wanted to keep between her and Andre.

He’d become so incredibly important to her in such a short amount of time. She could feel the connection they’d forged humming in the air between them, knew that Andre was watching her, could feel how worried he was about her leg, how much he wanted her to do whatever it took to get herself to safety. Even if it meant leaving him behind. She hoped he could feel that leaving wasn’t an option for her. They were going to walk out of here together or not at all.

“We want the living-forever spell for everyone in the room,” Douglas said. “The one that will make us invulnerable to disease and death.”

“You want the immortal flesh spell.” Emma raised her eyebrows. “You’re sure about that? You want to live forever?”

“We figure ruling Manhattan will be a lot easier if we can’t get killed. And when you’re kings ... why not live forever?” Francis crossed his arms and stared at her, as if waiting for further argument.

He’d be waiting a long time. “Fine. No problem. Get whatever blood you’ve got ready and make a circle big enough for all of you to fit inside.”

The immortal flesh spell was one of the easier spells to translate, and did, if the writings were to be believed, make people invulnerable to disease and death. It didn’t, however, make them invulnerable to damage. If one of these men were shot or stabbed, the bullet holes and open wounds would never heal. And if someone were to sever their heads from their bodies or, say, blow them to bits in a massive explosion ... Well, their “immortality” might be a hell of a lot shorter than they were expecting.

They’re not going to let you walk out of here alive. Once you cast the spell, it’s over. They’ll shoot you and let Andre die.

“I want Dr. Finch up here with the antivenom,” Emma said as she watched Douglas finish up the circle, pouring red liquid from a gallon container out onto the carpet.

The cold, metallic smell of blood flooded the room, making her stomach ache and a primal breed of fear itch along her skin. The smell of blood had always terrified her. She wondered whether some part of her mind remembered the first time she’d smelled that smell, when it had been her own blood flowing out to coat an altar.

“Sorry, can’t do that,” Francis said, actually putting some effort into sounding “sorry.” “We need to make sure we get what we need before you get what you need. That’s just the way it works.”

“So I’m just supposed to take your good word that you won’t kill us both as soon as I give you what you want?” Or what you think you want, you sacks of shit.

Anger sparked in Little Francis’s eyes before he smiled. “Hey, I promised him I’d take care of things here while he was away. I never promised not to blow up his plane somewhere over Canada.” There was something reptilian in his face, something that assured her all her fears were founded.

“I won’t work the spell until I see Dr. Finch standing next to Andre’s chair with a needle full of real antivenom, not whatever shit you shot me up with earlier today.” Emma returned his smile, forcing herself not to look at Andre. If she saw his spark getting worse, she’d lose what was left of her ability to reason, and they’d both be screwed. “So you go work on getting that rounded up, and I’ll start working through the spell to make sure I’ve got the translation correct.”

“Neither are you.” Emma looked up from the book she’d been about to open. “You need to work harder at making me believe you’re going to save Andre’s life. A lot harder.”

Little Francis’s lips pressed together until they were nothing but a puckered white line at the bottom of his face. But finally, after a stare-down that lasted less than four or five seconds, he turned and gestured for Anthony. “Tony, go get the doc and the real antivenom. Get them back here in less than five.”

The panic coursing through Emma’s blood abated the slightest bit, just enough for her to feel how bad her leg hurt beneath her makeshift tourniquet. She cast a quick look down at where her jeans clung to the skin beneath, coated with her own blood. Thankfully, the flow seemed to be slowing. She wasn’t going to bleed out on the floor, but she’d have plenty of blood for casting if the immortal flesh spell required demon-marked blood. She’d have to look and see. It wasn’t a spell she’d paid particular attention to, and she couldn’t remember whether—

Emma’s fingers froze and cramped as she flipped open the book and stared down at its pages. They were blank. Every single one. Someone had glued the cover of the grimoire around a blue, lined notebook, one of the small ones like Father Paul had always carried in his front pocket to write down the names of the people he’d promised to pray for. Had it been Ginger? Had she suspected something fishy was going on and taken steps to protect the book she knew could be used as a tool for evil?

Emma tilted the book toward her, hiding the blank pages, struggling to keep the panic from her face. “In the circle. Everyone who wants to be transformed by the spell should stand inside the circle.”

“Be careful not to smear the lines,” Douglas added, scurrying around the edge of the circle. “And leave your boxers and briefs on the outside. We don’t—”

“Keep your pants on,” Emma said, grateful for the distraction Douglas provided. She slammed the book closed just as Little Francis took a step in her direction. “You don’t have to be naked. Nudity isn’t mentioned in any of the spells.”

“Of course it isn’t mentioned.” Douglas propped his hands on his hips and shot a glare in her direction. “It’s understood that clothing is removed before entering a magic circle. It’s like a microwave dinner. Everyone knows you take it out of the cardboard before you put it in the oven.”

“You’re an idiot,” Emma said, mentally scrambling for a plan B. She couldn’t tell Francis the book was empty. That would lead him right back to Ginger, the last person who’d laid hands on it. Francis would let Andre die and go after Ginger, knowing that Emma would work the spell to save her friend’s life. And Mikey would let Francis have her. Obviously he didn’t know that his uncle was dead, or the family business was falling apart.

The voice inside her head was her own, but the thrill zigzagging through her body was all darkness. Her mark wanted the lives of these men even more than she did. But why? She’d fed the aura-demon hunger more in the past day than she usually did in a month. Why did it want more? Why did it lust to hear the sounds of the demon’s lexicon spilling from her lips?

Better question: Did it matter? Andre was going to die if she didn’t get rid of these men and get him the antivenom he needed. She couldn’t let that happen, even if it meant becoming more of a monster than she was already.

“I have a college degree,” Douglas huffed. “You may be the demon girl, but I have dedicated hundreds of hours to study.”

“I’ve never seen anyone take their clothes off before a ritual.” Emma fingers grew cold as she mentally tracked her way through the words of the spell she’d once hoped would be her salvation. The irony that—only a few hours ago—she’d discovered a way to feed that would have eliminated the need to work demon spells was not lost on her.

But that was the story of her life: hope followed closely by disappointment, followed up with a healthy dose of horror.

You have no idea, little man. Beneath her skin, darkness bubbled and leapt, thrilling to the ancient words streaming through Emma’s mind, urging her to speak, to cast, to free the hunger to feed as it never had before.

“We’ll keep what we’ve got on,” Francis said, sounding frustrated. “Just get in the circle, Douglas, and bring Andre with you.”

“What?” Emma’s head snapped up. No. They couldn’t. If he was inside the circle, he’d suffer the effects of the spell along with the rest of them.

“No. Don’t!” Emma struggled to stand despite the agony pulsing in her right knee. “Don’t put him in the circle. He doesn’t want to be immortal.”

“How the fuck would you know?” Francis asked, losing patience with her, as well. “Who doesn’t want to live forever?”

“Lots of people. And I know Andre doesn’t.” She stood, wavering on one leg, desperately searching for something that might sway Francis. “He’s Catholic. We talked about it when we were at the church earlier. He—”

“I’m Catholic.” Francis laughed and gestured for the large Death Ministry man squatting by Andre’s chair to continue. “The good thing about being Catholic is that you can always ask for forgiveness later.”

“I don’t know how dumb you think I am, Emma, but I’m smarter than I look,” Francis said, his face utterly serious, not seeming to understand that he’d just insulted himself. “Whatever you do to us, you do to your new boyfriend. That way we can all be sure we’re getting what we asked for.”

Emma caught Andre’s eye as he was lifted and carried toward the circle. It was almost as if he knew that she didn’t have the spell book. His sad eyes told her he realized they were both out of options. His skin was growing golder with every passing minute, and she had no spells, nowhere to run, and a bullet above her knee that would ensure she didn’t get far even if she tried.

But Andre couldn’t know that she did have a spell up her sleeve, a spell that could have saved both of their lives if only she could have convinced Francis to—

Gunshots sounded outside the door, echoing down the hall, making everyone turn in their direction and draw the weapons stuffed in the backs of their boxer shorts. Francis was still outside the circle, but so were Andre and the guy charged with toting him over to join the rest of the men. Two big men against one wounded woman. Not great odds, but they were better than any other odds she was going to get. It was now or never.

Emma raised her hands and spoke, the guttural words of the demon language flowing from her tongue as if she’d been uttering them all her life. And maybe a part of her had, the part that belonged to the demon realm, that celebrated death and rejoiced in carnage.

As she finished the spell and the darkness came spilling out of her mouth like some biblical plague of locusts, Emma fisted her hands at her sides and fought to hold on to the other part of herself. The human Emma who could feel empathy and love, who had finally lost her heart to a man she would do anything to save.