CHAPTER 1
News of a mage going mad and
lashing out with magic would typically raise alarms, but today, yet another
such report in his hands was the least of Alasdair Blakesley’s worries.
A bigger problem had just
walked into his office.
His long-time personal
assistant, Agnes. She entered laden with a tray. Presumably his lunch.
“Thai today,” she sang out.
He had no idea what alerted him that
something was seriously wrong. The tone of her voice probably. Serious,
semi-snappy Agnes did not use
a singsongy voice. Ever.
Nearing her late
sixties—though she refused to retire, informing him that he’d be a pathetic
mess without her, which was true—Agnes wore her steel-gray hair severely scraped
back from her face, never a strand out of place. Like her hair, she was scarily
efficient at her job, and as abrasive as a Brillo pad when she deemed it
necessary.
A voice like a sweet little
mouse was not in her repertoire.
In fact, having to order him
lunch because, as often happened, he’d let his job distract him from the time,
would irritate her. As the head of the Covens Syndicate—the body of witches and
warlocks who monitored, policed, protected, and ruled the established covens of
magi throughout the world—he found his focus on the needs of his people
overruled eating. Brillo voice would be more likely right now.
He watched her closely as she
set the tray down on the round table in the corner. Made of petrified wood, the
table stood out like a sore thumb from the rest of his ultra-modern office,
which was all glass, black leather, and chrome. With a cheerfulness also
nothing like his Agnes, she arranged the plates to her liking, then glanced up.
And blinked. Because Alasdair had
taken her distraction as an opportunity to move to the door, which he shut with
a quiet snick.
“Can I get you anything else, sir?”
Sir? Alasdair reached for his
power, allowing the magic to flow through like electric current over a wire,
his fingertips buzzing with it.
“Yes,” he said in a quiet voice any friend, and most enemies,
would recognize meant he was holding back rage. “You can tell me what you’ve
done with Agnes.”
The imposter tipped her head
to the side, doing a fantastic imitation of a confused frown. “I don’t understand,
sir. Of course it’s me—”
With a single thought, a
slithering line of electricity shot from his fingers, aimed at the fake in
front of him.
She dropped all pretense of
misunderstanding, and, with a snarl that raised the hairs on the back of his neck,
jumped out of the way, only to land lightly on her feet, straightening from his
assistant’s customary slightly hunched posture, eyes and mouth turned the color
of gangrene, the color leaching into the surrounding skin, as though evidence
of an infection of the soul.
At least Alasdair knew what
he was dealing with.
Demon.
Which meant he couldn’t kill
it. He’d learned that the hard way a long time ago. Demons possessed human
bodies, their corporeal forms too noticeable in the human realm to be used. If he
killed the demon, he killed the vessel, and he couldn’t do that to Agnes. Which
meant he’d need to bind it.
Please let this be a lower level demon.
Alasdair raised his hands in
the air, calling on his magic. Immediately, a violent wind slashed through the
office and tore at his immaculate suit jacket. The demon didn’t even sway with
the impact. A glass statue in one corner wobbled and fell with a crash,
shattering into a million shards, which Alasdair immediately summoned, using
his magic to hurl at the demon.
With a swipe of its arm, the
thing inside Agnes diverted the shards around its body. They embedded in the
wall, sounding like a thousand tiny bullets hitting their mark with sharp,
popping thuds.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” the demon sneered, its
deep, scratchy voice at odds with Agnes’s body.
It lunged, streaking with
inhuman speed across the room at him. The winds he’d summoned had reached
hurricane force but might not as well have been blowing for all the detriment
they posed. Alasdair held still, waiting for the right movement to strike.
Waiting for its sickly sweet breath to hit his face before he struck.
The words of his spell
punched through his mind, and, in an instant, a length of cord materialized in
his hands, glowing bright white with energy. At his will, it shot forward to
wrap around the demon charging him.
The thing was fast, and damn
strong, and Alasdair didn’t time it exactly right, the cord missing one of the
thing’s arms. Not that it mattered. The creature screamed with agony as the
holy bondage that Alasdair had summoned from his childhood home where it had
been hidden for ages set the demon’s skin sizzling everywhere the rope touched.
Still, the demon wasn’t going
down without a fight. Agnes’s neatly manicured nails turned to onyx claws, and
it slashed at him, even as it fell to the ground, held secure by his bonds.
Alasdair wasn’t quite fast
enough to get out of its way. Jagged pain burned through his skin as dark red
patches bloomed slick and wet against the pristine white of his button-down
shirt.
He disregarded the wounds,
following the demon to the ground. The rope was ancient and would hold it for
only so long.
Bringing all his weight to
bear, he knelt on the demon’s free arm and placed a hand to its forehead,
positioned to avoid now-razor-sharp, snapping teeth. Closing his eyes, Alasdair
whispered the words that would bind the demon physically as well as making sure
it didn’t escape to another body.
Agnes would hate being
trapped inside her own hell, her magic trapped with her, and he didn’t blame
her for that. But until Alasdair could summon one of the mages who specialized
in demon extraction, he had no choice.
With the last uttered
incantation, the possessed creature went still and quiet, arms and legs
straight out, face frozen in a grotesque grimace, as though petrified. Slowly,
Alasdair rose to his feet. Keeping careful watch on the thing, he moved behind
his desk and picked up the phone.
“Help me.”
Every muscle in his body
tensed to the point of cramping at the sound of Agnes’s true voice. The black
void of her eyes turned brown and human again. “Help me,” she croaked.
Mother goddess.
Anyone with a heart would be
tempted to go to her, but what he knew of demons held him still.
“He’s going to kill me.” She sounded so desperate, helpless.
The tension in him eased a fraction.
Nope. Not Agnes. She would know better, and she would never beg. The real her would be
swearing a blue streak about now, and probably even shock the doomed soul
inhabiting her body.
Ignoring the creature, he
dialed the number that would get him what he needed. Within moments, a team of
witches and warlocks trained for battle, trained to protect, invaded his
office. As soon as he knew they had Agnes and her current parasitic invader in
hand, Alasdair snatched his phone from a drawer and strode from the room.
Suddenly all the reports of
inexplicable crazed bouts among his people made sense. They weren’t crazed…they
were fucking possessed.
If anyone had a reason to
fear demon possession, he did. But the world, most of whom didn’t know magic
truly did exist, would come to live in terror of them if they took over enough
mages.
“Don’t leave me with him inside me!” Agnes screamed, her pleading
voice following him out of the room.
Leashing a flinch, he stopped
at the elevator where the leader of the team, Micah Aluron, joined him, sharp
eye taking in the scene with unsmiling purpose. “Orders, sir?”
“Hold that thing until I get back. Gag her if you have to.”
“Get back?” Micah asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be having dinner
with your sister tonight?”
Dammit, he’d forgotten all
about Hestia and Christmas Eve. “I can’t. This needs to be addressed
immediately.”
Micah gave a quick nod.
“Where are you going?”
Had this been anyone other
than his old friend, Alasdair wouldn’t have bothered to answer. Only, this was
Micah, a man who’d saved his ass on at least three different occasions. The
time in Barcelona didn’t count, of course. Alasdair had returned the favor even
more times than that. A situation that meant they trusted each other.
Implicitly.
“We have a demon problem,” he said, and couldn’t control the fury
that turned his voice dark. “This isn’t a singular incident. It’s one of many.”
“Shit.” Even Micah turned ashy at that. “You think all the other
reports are possessions?”
Alastair nodded.
Micah seemed to be of the
same mind. “It takes a hell of a lot of magic to exorcise a single demon.”
And they were looking at more
than one. A horde maybe, hopefully not a legion. Alasdair’s own power didn’t
stretch that far, and even the entire Syndicate working together might not be
enough. He refused to kill those afflicted unless he had to.
“Magic may not be able to fix this, but I know a…person who might
be able to help.”
The enigmatic woman who’d been a
burr under his metaphorical saddle since he met her. He would much rather have gone begging for a
place in her bed to exorcise the spell she’d cast that seemed to grip him
harder with every encounter they had.
Having to grovel for help, on
the other hand, was the last thing he’d pictured himself ever having to do.
He should have known better.
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