Vengeance: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 3 (20 page)

“You watched over him.” Emotion forced me to clear my throat before going on. “Why? What was he to you?”

“Nothing and no one, Maddy. Just a child in need—one who couldn’t defend himself. He was too proud to accept my offer of protection, so I situated myself near enough, often enough, to allow him time to trust me. It formed the foundation of a lifelong friendship.” In an entirely human gesture, Darius tugged at his collar as I scrutinized him. He scowled, a low rumble emanated from his chest.

He wasn’t fooling me, though. With or without a pulse, the vampire had a heart.

Leaning over, I laid a hand on his cheek and kissed him gently and quickly, the offer not romantic but instead a gesture of sincere gratitude. “Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you for helping him become who he is.”

Darius’s eyes bored into my own, and he took a single breath. “You’re welcome.” A devilish grin stole over his face and he smiled wide enough to reveal a single dimple I’d never before noticed. “Had I known it would earn me your affection, I’d have likely done more.”

I snorted and shook my head. A flurry of movement near the servants’ side door of the house caught my attention. Standing slowly, I couldn’t help but gasp. Hellion and a band of half a dozen coven members were coming toward us. Those that had remained outside were standing at attention, watching their Coven Master approach.

Power roiled around him, pushing at the air with such force it felt as if it coiled in cognizant, ropey strands, slithering around and over bodies at the will of the man who commanded it. I’d never seen him like this—black leather pants, black boots, bare torso, hair pulled back tight, sword and gun at his side, power whipping about like it was alive—and it startled me. His eyes had gone completely black, the irises consuming the whites until that deep darkness gazed back. When he stopped in front of me and held his hand out, I stepped back without thinking.

Hellion’s eyes partially closed and the winds stilled. “Do you fear me?” His voice resonated with an unusual timbre.

“Do I need to?”

“You needn’t ask that, Madeleine Niteclif.” He spoke my name formally, almost as if it was unfamiliar to him. Hellion turned toward the circle.
 

I leapt forward, grabbing his hand and situating myself to walk with him. The jolt of power raced up my arm like an electrical shock. Instinct told me to let go. Instead, I tightened my grip.

He looked down with a small smile. “You’ll want to be careful touching me unless I’m aware of it and you’ve been invited,
mo duine dorcha
.”
 

I was comforted by the familiarity in his words, though not by the subterranean tone.

He grasped my hand tightly, moving toward the circle.

It startled me when the first tremor shook him. I began to wonder. The second tremor confirmed what I’d already guessed—that his composure was a façade. I wouldn’t call him on it in front of the coven, and there wasn’t time to discuss it privately.

Ready or not, we were about to have a visitor.

Torches around the perimeter cast the runnels in the ground in sharp relief. There were two circles, one surrounding the other. The space between the outer and inner rings was about nine feet across, outer edge to inner rim. This was the space I’d been pushed out of earlier, so I knew it comprised the safety circle for the participants. The inner circle had a diameter of about fifteen feet. The ground was uneven, shredded by the shovel Hellion had wielded. Inside this smaller circle, a hexagram had been scraped into the dirt. Hellion took the pile of loose stones and, murmuring unintelligibly, placed one stone within each of the hexagram’s triangles. Next he took the blood red candles and passed them to five of the coven members. They stood around the inner circle, each body aligned with one of the hexagram points. Darius had situated himself at the point to the right of the southern tip and accepted a white candle without comment. On the ground beside him, one candle lay on its side, unclaimed. Those with candles removed penknives and began to carve the demon’s sigil into the candle wall at Hellion’s directive.
 

I craned my neck, trying to see what it looked like. No luck.

Hellion took the bag of salt and scattered the contents along the mark of the inner circle. His shoulders swelled as he took a deep breath and closed the circle. He looked at me long and hard before shaking his head finitely as if in warning before moving to a goat I hadn’t noticed tethered well outside the circle. Speaking to the animal, he stroked its shoulder then rubbed its chin before grasping it and slicing through its neck in a single clean movement. With the same blade, he scored his palm deeply in the next heartbeat of time.
 

I involuntarily jerked. The sense of clinical observation I’d hidden behind was blown apart with the taking of life and shedding of blood, and this whole moment became grounded in reality. I wanted to take back my suggestion. I wanted to shout, “Stop!” My mouth felt as if it was filled with sand.

Hefting the twitching animal over his shoulder, Hellion stepped into the safe zone between circles, held the snout and directed the draining blood, uninterrupted, around the turned earth so that it defined the outer circle. Finished, he tossed the carcass, seemingly indifferent to the blood covering him. I couldn’t control the shudder that raced through me, head to toe, but I managed to remain silent. After all, this had been my idea. I’d kick my own ass thoroughly when the summoning was over.

Darius and the others stood silent, focused on Hellion’s movements and motions. The warlock—for he was no magus in this moment—turned to the vampire and inclined his head fractionally. With a soft voice, Darius began to chant. The candle bearers backed away from the hexagram. When they reached the outermost ring of the circle, they set their carved candles down and stepped back a pace, taking up the chant.
 

Deep, guttural and unidentifiable despite my developing skill with languages, the cadence sounded like it was related to Latin, but the words made my teeth hurt. Age colored the words in darkness, and I knew the invocation was older than time.

Coven members prayed outside the larger circle, their mouths moving quickly as they beseeched their gods for everything from protection to triumph. The sound created a low-level hum like a human white noise machine.

In the flickering firelight, blood danced red to black and back, an irreverent nod to the impact of light on color and violence done in the dark. Hellion stepped up to each man and murmured a few words before marking the party’s forehead in blood and swooping low to light his candle. He’d then hand it to him and move on. The chanting never faltered. When he finished with the men, Hellion returned to Darius’s side, went to one knee and inscribed the sigil on the black candle.

My hands fisted at my sides, nails digging bloody crescents into my palms. It felt suddenly as if the chant piped directly to my mind and drowned out everything else. It was so quiet beneath the chanting it was like someone had unplugged all other sound from the world but those six intense voices that I knew with certainty called to them Death.

My belly cramped as my adrenaline spiked. Willing myself still, I breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth.

Hellion rose slowly and made eye contact with the coven member at each of the five hexagram points. When he spoke, his voice echoed in my skull. “Circle of darkness I command you. Circle of darkness I confine you. Salted Earth I call to you, imprison that which is summoned to this place. Blood-bound protection I grant you, that none shall pass beyond. I call from the air a doorway to the Planes of Destitution. Deliver to me the Dominae, Agares, that he might be mine to command for the hours one, times two, times three. I offer you my blood as recompense.” Hellion sliced his forearm open, the shallow wound bleeding freely. He dropped blood on the wick of his candle. The flame sparked and rose several feet straight into the air. The other candles followed, counterclockwise.

Stars winked out. Flames outside the circle died and left only the practitioners’ candles to light the night.

Fear’s grasp bound my chest. Air. I couldn’t get enough air.

Invisible steel scraping and screeching against its equally invisible counterpart ripped through the air. The smell of brimstone, like sulfurous, rotten eggs, billowed out the invisible window in noxious waves. The ground shook. The outer circle rose up several inches at the same time the inner circle sank in equal measure. The earth swallowed the gemstones as sacrifices to her scarred surface.
 

Without warning, screams tore through the night air and everyone jumped. The tortured and the damned pled for salvation that they—and we—knew would never be found. Micah knelt at the edge of the circle and wept. It was the first I’d seen of him since we arrived, but I spared him only a fleeting glance. All around the circle people looked back and forth, shifting on their feet, unable to stay still as nerves gave way to fear.

Smoke joined the smell of brimstone, pumping through a dark smudge on the air. The sound of gagging made my stomach pitch, but I held. Hellion stood firm, his eyes focused on the growing rip in the atmospheric plane.

An arm punched through the fissure, followed by a leg bared to the hip. Agares folded himself through the opening a bit at a time until he stood within the circle, temporarily free of Hell. He looked like he had at our first meeting—very sexy, self-assured and in command. The biggest differences were that it was night, the time in which he was allegedly most powerful, and the Dominae wasn’t wearing any clothes. Not a stitch.

“Missed me did you, boy?” His eyes never left Hellion. With more than three dozen people watching, the Dominae began to rub his flaccid penis and lick his lips seductively. His dark hair was mussed, as if our call had woken him.
 

Under his attentions, his shaft grew long and thick, his hand working himself as he sought release. All the while, he stared at Hellion.

Hellion’s face paled. His dark blond hair ran wild after losing the thong that held it in place and his shoulders were so heavy with muscle that I thought he must have grown another six inches out, if not also up.
 

I wanted to go to him. Emotion clogged my throat and I couldn’t breathe or talk…or scream. And I definitely wanted to scream. All of the point men stood in solidarity, holding their position but never taking their eyes off of Hellion. They were clearly aware of Agares, but it wasn’t his command they followed. But their show of loyalty wasn’t enough—not for me.

I wanted to put myself in Agares’s line of site and protect Hellion from this vile creature. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to—

The idea hit me so hard I sucked in a deep breath and choked on the smell.
 

Agares spared me the briefest of glances before returning his gaze to my lover. “We’ve some unfinished business, you and I. Did you decide to take me up on my offer? Because I’d love nothing more than to follow through on my original promise, Hellion, Son of Markalon, and make you mine for eternity. One night with you wasn’t enough. I remember your sweet, virgin flesh, the taste of your arousal and, by the night, your cries.” A look of unadulterated longing passed over Agares’s face, tightening his eyes and pulling the corners of his mouth down. “I’ve never forgotten you, never stopped wanting you.”

Hellion’s shoulders curled forward.

Oh
hell
no. This wasn’t happening. I pulled my gun out of the waistband of my pants and, keeping it behind me, began to inch around the outer circle. A shot to the head wouldn’t kill him any more than it had killed his brethren in the alleyway, but it would shut him up. And God alone knew how much I wanted to shut him up. As I moved, the only member of the crowd who paid me any mind was Darius. I tried to focus my thoughts toward him.

I’m going around behind Agares. I want you to knock everyone down that you can on the off chance I miss.
I moved my gun hand to the side.

Darius’s eyes widened slightly before he blinked once, long and slow. He was listening.

I can’t let this get out of hand. I have to stop it.

Darius blinked once more, and I picked up my pace. I probably should have waited to see if there was a second blink, but sometimes…sometimes you do what you have to do.

Consequence be damned.

I crept along behind the coven members, my movements exaggerated and slow. They never noticed. Every eye focused on what was happening near the heart of the circle between Agares and Hellion.

Unfettered rage bit along my skin as Hellion struggled to keep control of the situation. Tremors wracked his body. My own rage responded in kind, and my finger twitched on the trigger guard of my gun. The urge to caress the trigger to action was so strong…

Agares caught my movement and, this time, turned toward me, a grin on his face and a significant happy in his lap. “I’ve been waiting for you, Niteclif.” He grinned lewdly, waving his hips at me so that I couldn’t help but glance at the engorged member that sprang from a hairless groin.
 

The coven members I’d used to shield my movement stepped aside to give the demon and I a more direct path of communication. I’d thank them for the courtesy later
.

Looking him over from head to foot, I made sure to stop clearly on his arousal. I cocked my head to one side and tapped my chin with a finger. “Yeah? Still looks like you’ve got a hell of a long wait in front of you if you think to best Hellion as my lover.” Insult to injury—I snorted and rolled my eyes.