Dancing With the Devil (2 page)

“Luc?” I called into the hole.

An unholy silence met my ears.

I stood on shaky legs and waved a hand through the smoke,
coughing as it stole into my non-breathing lungs. The Mark of Cain no longer
burned, but I scrubbed at it anyway. “Lucifer! Answer me.”

 The only answer came from my cat, Cain, who mewed as he
sauntered into the living room and over to the hole. The smoke was thickest
there, churning and spinning like I’d stuck a blender in it. He sniffed and
mewed again, giving me a look that demanded I bring back his favorite person in
the whole world.

“Shit, shit, shit.” I scooped up my clothes and pulled them
on, then drew Cain away from the smoking pit. I continued calling Luc’s name
even though dread sat like an elephant in my chest. Surely, I hadn’t
really
killed him.

I reached for my stash of Dove chocolates. Ripped the
wrappers off two and ate them like candy. Okay, they were candy. And maybe it
was more like six pieces.

A minute later, when Cephiel picked up his phone at
Immaculate Conception, I blurted, “I killed the Devil. I killed him!”

The chocolate had hit my nervous system, and instead of
calming me, it had added to my hysteria.

There was a pause. “While that would make my job of guarding
you incredibly easy,” —his voice was unconcerned— “that’s simply not possible.”

“This is your fault. You had God put this stupid sigil on me
and now Lucifer’s dead.”

“The Mark zapped him? What were you doing? Wait. Scratch
that. I prefer not to know. Did I not warn you about your iniquities?”

I paced the kitchen. “I’m a bad witch. What do you expect?”

“You’re not bad. Just…confused.”

“Yeah? How will you like it when this
confused
witch
hexes your holy ass back to Heaven? I did it to Gabriel. I can do it to you.”

He sighed, long-suffering. “Would you like me to come over?”

Yes. No. “You’re damn right I want you to come over. Come
over and get this thing off my forehead and bring my boyfriend back.”

I punched the end button, fingers shaking. Luc was more than
my boyfriend. So much more. The word
boyfriend,
in fact, couldn’t begin
to encompass everything he was to me. For good or bad, better or worse, we were
inextricably tied together.

“Please don’t be dead,” I whispered to the empty room as I
resumed pacing. “Please don’t be dead.”

Cain looked up from grooming his leg, which was apparently
filthy by the way he’d been licking at it. Either that, or he’d found some of
the catnip Emilia had brought over again. His big green eyes stared at me,
condemnation evident. He’d always favored Luc. More than me.

Traitor.

“I know, I know.” Bending over, I stroked his head and scratched
behind his ears. “I screwed up again.”

A young female voice came from down below. “Amy? Are you
okay?”

I stepped to the edge of the hole and peered into the smoke.
I couldn’t see a thing. “Mikayla?”

“Um, little problem down here.” Mikayla was my newest
employee, and at eighteen years old, my youngest. She was also a witch, but
just coming into her powers. I’d left her to close up the ice cream shop after
our day of inventory. “More like a
big
problem.”

The way she drew out the word “big” made my body tense. “This
hole goes all the way through to the shop?”

Below, she yelped. I heard something crash and a man’s voice
yelling for her to get down. There was a hissing noise and the sound of
shattering glass.

“Demons!” Mikayla yelled up to me. “Lots and lots of demons!”

Demons. Back in the summer, Lilith had sent three demon
assassins to kill me. One of them had burned down my apartment, nearly killing
my cats and destroying my extensive Dolce and Gabbana shoe collection. No way
I’d stand by and let more of their kind hurt Mikayla or damage my shop. I
didn’t know why they were there or what Lilith was cooking up this time, but it
didn’t matter.

The Mark came to life.

The shop was chaos. A hole that matched the one in my
apartment was burned into the floor, a tall column of smoke connecting it to my
living room. The smoke swirled and churned and I could have sworn I saw skulls
and demonic faces inside it. The entire place smelled familiar. Fire. Brimstone.
Sulfur. Yep, it smelled like Hell.

A three-headed demon with a Hulk-like body and a long
reptilian tail crouched over a man with long copper-colored hair. The man was
muscular and swinging a sword. The sword’s blade glowed with a bright light,
highlighting his hair until it, too, seemed to glow.

The demon bellowed and took a swing at him. In response, he dodged
out of the demon’s reach and parried. The blade speared the demon’s thigh, causing
him to bellow again loud enough to rattle the napkin dispensers on the tables.

There were other monsters. Some looked human, but the dozen
or so I counted were far from it.

“Mikayla. Where are you?”

“Over here!”

Night had fallen and she’d drawn the blinds over the plate
glass windows, so at least Eden’s residents were missing the Rocky Mountain Demon
Picture Show. As I scooted around overturned chairs and broken glass to find
her, a yellow-eyed demon attacked me, his slimy hands—all six of them—grabbing
parts of my body he had no right to.

I yelped, much like Mikayla had done, and jumped out of his
way. “You could at least buy me dinner first.”

Even though he was smaller than the three-headed Hulk, he
towered over me, baring his teeth in a disgusting grin. Air puffed from his
open mouth, blowing rotten-smelling breath in my face. My magic hissed like I’d
poked it with a branding iron. Words came out of the demon’s mouth, but either
he was drunk or speaking a foreign language because they made no sense.

My magic, though, responded as if it
did
understand
him and the first lines of a hex came to me.

Take this beast from Hell’s depths untamed.

Trap it and return it from whence it…

No
. I shut down the hex. Even though magic came easy,
I’d been in stickier situations and not relied on it. That was the whole point
of Witches Anonymous. It was easy to be good when things were happy and
peaceful. The true tests came when things got ugly. Like now at the monster
ball.

Resolved to take care of the demon without compromising my
oath, I wiggled my fingers at him. I didn’t need magic to fight this guy. God
would do it for me.

Opening his mouth wide, he lunged, ready to have me for a
late night snack. My forehead burned, the Mark flashed and…

Bam
. Mr. Slimy Hands turned to ash at my feet.

Satisfaction surged in my chest. I’d killed a demon without
using magic. Again. That made three for four on the demon-killing score sheet
I’d kept since my trip to Hell. Not too bad.

I whirled around to see what else wanted a piece of me,
hoping against hope Lucifer might be in the mix. No Luc, but the Mark’s lethal
light had gotten everyone’s attention. All fighting stopped, every eye in the
place, human and demon, landing on me.

Mikayla stood up from behind the counter and let out a whoop.
The man fighting the big demon grinned and gave me a nod as if he approved.

His eyes
. I sucked in my breath. They were the same
ice blue color as mine.

Until my trip to Hell, I’d had brown eyes. In the pit,
they’d changed. Gabriel said it was because I fought Lilith and won. Cephiel
believed their color was tied to the Mark of Cain. Either way, I constantly startled
myself in the mirror when I saw them. They were scary pale and unnatural
looking and colored contacts had become my new best friend. You can’t run a
successful business if you scare off the clientele. Plus, freaky eyes unnerve
even your closest friends. The only person they didn’t seem to bother was Luc.

The three-headed demon made a loud, long screeching noise
and shifted his reptilian tail to knock the man off his feet. This seemed to be
the signal to resume fighting. The man jumped the tail and sunk his sword into
the base of the demon’s spine.

Not bad. While part of me was still freaking out that there
were demons inside my shop, the other part was riding high on adrenaline. “Who’s
next?” I called to the milling crowd of freaks. “Show me what you’ve got.”

As the next demon attacked, a human-looking man jumped the
counter and tackled Mikayla. Dispatching three more demons to dust as I headed
for her, I sprinted around tables and jumped the counter myself.

Mikayla lay on the floor, the man on top of her. His face
was buried in her neck and her wide eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling.

“Get off,” I yelled, grabbing him by his ratty T-shirt and
trying to drag him backwards.

He was attached to her like a leach. When I lifted him, she
came with him.

Vampire
, my magic said, wiggling inside my chest.

Really? A vampire? I knew they existed, but I’d never seen
one.

Didn’t matter. Vamp or demon, I kicked, pommeled, and pulled
his hair. Anything to get him away from Mikayla. None of it worked.

If I could just get him to attack me instead…

A giant crash cut across the other sounds of fighting. The noise
distinctive of splintering glass. I looked up, and there was my front
window…gone.

The three-headed demon lay half in, half out of my shop, the
man with the sword standing over him and breathing hard. Or should I say, there
laid the demon’s two halves. The man and his sword had apparently cut the
monster right down the center.

Cold, winter air whooshed in from outside as black goo oozed
from the demon’s open wounds. Shards of glass lay everywhere, but the bulk of glass
had gone outside onto the snowy sidewalk. Unfortunately, the white snow melted
fast under the black demon blood. But it was ten o’clock on a winter night in a
small Illinois town. There was no one around to see the giant demon with three
heads and a lizard’s tail decorating the shop and sidewalk.

Pissed that my front window was gone and my employee was
being mauled by a vampire, I grabbed a large, heavy-duty stainless steel ice
cream scoop and whacked the vamp on the back of the head. The whack was hard
enough to break his hold on Mikayla and his head shot around, blood covering
his lips and chin as he glared at me. His eyes were red.

Not good.

I hit him again, as much out of fear as protection. The
force of the hit sent him crashing into my new gelato cooler.

Since joining Witches Anonymous and suppressing my magic,
I’ve had increased strength, especially under stress. The vampire shook his
head and blinked a couple of times before he stood on wobbly legs and made a
break for it. He ran past the man with the sword, jumped the halved giant demon,
and disappeared into the night.

The last remaining demons and another vampire took that as
their cue to exit stage left. Giving me a wide berth, some ran up walls, others
jumped over tables and a couple spread their wings as they headed for the open
window. I tried to grab a few as they scooted by, as did sword guy, but they
were too fast for me. He managed to take down three, slicing them in neat
pieces, but the others escaped.

Mikayla coughed and gingerly touched her neck. I helped her
sit up. Her voice came out raspy. “Who was that guy? The one that bit me?”

The man with the sword strolled over. He wore a white tunic
that was now splattered with the thick, inky demon blood. A gold belt encircled
his waist and the tunic showed off his muscled arms and thighs. His sword was
no longer glowing, but his skin and hair were. “Latimer. An ancient vampire.
Yours is the first blood he’s had in a couple hundred years.”

Mikayla’s mouth dropped open. Even though I’d never seen a
vampire before, my magic had called it right.

That satisfaction was short lived when the man added, “He’ll
be back for more.”

Mikayla’s eyes went wide and she pinned me with a
questioning gaze.

Like
I
had an answer? I might have been to Hell, but
this was new territory even for me.

“Why?” I asked the sword-wielding man as I helped her to her
feet and guided her to a chair. Slime dripped off my hands and I snagged a
towel from behind the counter. I handed her a second towel for the blood
dripping down her neck. “How did this happen?”

Sword guy ran a hand through his long locks.
Angel
,
my magic said. His ice-blue eyes met mine as if he’d heard my mental pronouncement.
A sense of foreboding, dark and ominous, made me shiver. “The first meal after
two hundred years will be the sweetest he’s ever had. Nothing and no one will
compare to our fair Mikayla here. He’ll be back for her.”

Just what I needed. Another angel in my hair and a vampire
stalking my friend. Not to mention demons running amok in town.

I fingered the ice cream scoop, a renewed sense of justice
taking hold. “Let him come. I’ll turn him to dust like the others.”

The three of us looked out over my destroyed shop and the piles
of ashes on the floor. The man righted a stool and set it next to the counter.
Swinging a leg over it, he used napkins to wipe spatters of demon blood from
his face. “There will be more. Many more.”

Great. “More demons? More vampires? What?”

He examined his sword, picked up the towel with Mikayla’s
blood on it and wiped the blade clean. “You opened the gate to purgatory.”

“Excuse me?”

Using the sword, he pointed at the smoke. “Purgatory. The
first level of Hell.” He waved the sword at the halved demon in the window and
the dust heaps. “That’s where all these things came from.”

Mikayla touched her neck again. “I thought purgatory was a
punishment for humans.”

“Purgatory is for anyone in need of redemption. And the
demons living there dole out the punishment.”

Tossing the towel on the counter, I blew out a sigh. I knew
better than to ask, but did so anyway. “And where exactly did
you
come
from?”

His eyes met mine, a raw, aching hunger darkening them. “Let’s
just say Latimer’s not the only one who hasn’t eaten in a while.”