Chapter 26

Chapter26

The portal was nothing more than a doorway. Whatever presence stripped me of my glamor and broke me down into my shedim form was gone. Whether it was an actual entity that lived within the rift that Maud dispensed with when she took control, or simply a magic alarm set by Calista, there was no trace of it now.

Thrilled as I was that I didn’t have to start this takedown battling an invisible force to remain in my default human skin, why weren’t Sachie and Darsh right behind me? Was I permitted through while they were caught up between realms, fighting for their lives? Or was it already too late for them?

My heart raced. Nothing was ever as simple as it seemed in the supernatural world. According to our timeline, Maud shouldn’t be here yet, but if she hadn’t prevented them from coming through, who had?

The portal here in the minuscule entryway vanished. I wrenched open the door to the main room and strode through, ready to insist to any Li’l Hellions barring my way that it was in their best interests to steer clear, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

The Copper Hell was completely empty, devoid of any signs of life.

I took a few tentative steps forward, the rumble of engines that once vibrated through the space replaced by the creaking of the ship and water slapping against the narrow dark windows. A haunting silence hung over the room like a heavy curtain, and I shuddered as I peered into the night sky and dark ocean, feeling the weight of the emptiness pressing down on me.

I walked farther into the abandoned casino with only the faint echoes of my own footsteps for company. At least this time, I wore shoes. Wow. My low bar was positively subterranean.

The chandeliers were turned off, and the honey-colored lights that spread across the ceiling were now dim and flickering, casting long shadows over the brushed steel walls along with a deep sense of foreboding.

Machines that formerly filled the area with clanking pachinko balls and the clackety-clack of roulette wheels stood silent and dark, their lifeless forms like monuments.

It was as if the place was frozen in time, waiting for someone to bring it back to life, except when I swiped my finger over the green felt of a poker table, it came away dust-free, and the metal slot machine handles gleamed.

Did Delacroix know Calista was dead and close the Hell in mourning? Could he not keep everything going without a Prime managing the business? Were both things true?

So much recently had defied expectation and appearance. Had I misjudged the shedim’s feelings for his missing partner? Were his complaints about handling the business while Calista was missing nothing more than a front? To shedim, emotions were things to be manipulated and exploited; Delacroix would never expose such a weakness in himself.

I hadn’t believed him capable of such feeling, but right now, I wasn’t sure what to think.

A waft of cigar smoke tinged the air, and I whipped around.

Delacroix stood there in his fisherman’s sweater and jeans, smirking. He held a half-full crystal highball glass in one hand and a lit cigar in the other, and his salt-and-pepper hair was more windswept than usual. It reminded me of a tangled fisherman’s net, like he’d stood at the prow of the yacht, eyes closed, with his face to the wind and his arms outstretched.

I almost snorted—and glanced out the window for icebergs. “Where are my friends?”

“Friends? This is a social call?” He made a big show of looking around. “Where’s the person who dared kidnap Calista? If you let them get away…” Water slapped against the yacht so hard it rang through the enormous space and the entire ship rocked sideways.

I grabbed on to a poker table for balance, the leather bumper bashing against my wrist.

The only silver lining was that he didn’t seem aware that Calista was dead.

“They’ll be here momentarily,” I said. “But I plan to arrest our suspect. You aren’t dishing out payback for your business partner.”

He puffed on his cigar and blew the smoke at me. “You think you can get to them first?”

I brushed my thumb over my Maccabee ring, calculating how I could physically hurt him enough to let the magic cocktail in the top compartment latch on and kill him. I didn’t have an answer yet, but I wasn’t leaving him alive.

“Calista.” Delacroix breathed out her name.

She’d staggered out of the foyer door, wearing the same shapeless dirty brown dress as when she’d been held captive, her strawberry-blond hair sticking up every which way.

Ezra didn’t kill her. The hope sent my pulse skyrocketing, but not even a Prime survived her head being torn off.

This was Maud in a stellar display of acting.

I started toward her, but Delacroix knocked me roughly aside and gathered her into an embrace.

His back was to me, so when his shoulders shook, I thought he was crying, but his laughter echoed through the casino.

Along with the sudden sizzle of flesh from his cigar on the fake vamp’s cheek.

Maud screeched and stumbled back. Her glamor was smeared, dripping off her real face like drops of water.

I jumped on Delacroix’s back and grabbed him in a chokehold.

Maud would pay for trying to kill me and for staking and abducting Calista, but her punishment would be determined by a court of law, not a demon.

“Off!” Delacroix accompanied his snarled command with a tentacle of water that slapped me into a pachinko machine halfway across the room.

The air was knocked from my lungs, and I crumpled in pain to the ground.

Delacroix studied Maud. He’d restrained her in a watery python hold—like he’d done to Ezra. “Why did you take Calista? Did you forfeit something you should never have bet?” he said in his gravelly voice. “Your magic? Your life? Go on. Hit me with your villain monologue. Maybe I’ll be entertained enough to kill you quickly instead of, well…” He gave an almost coy smile, then slowly crushed the entire crystal glass to dust in his hand.

Ice, amber liquid, and blood spilled onto the plush moss-colored carpet, creating an almost beautiful pattern of swirls.

I pushed to my knees, gritting my teeth against the blazing throb along my side. Delacroix’s first question should have been to find out where Calista was, not Maud’s motive.

The promise Ezra referred to before he killed Calista. The reason why he did it. The events of last night rearranged themselves with a sickening clarity.

“You made Ezra murder Calista,” I said. “Was that the price of letting him go that first night here at the Hell?”

Delacroix glanced over his shoulder at me. “Might be hope for that girl detective badge yet.”

You condescending douchebag. I can’t wait to annihilate you for everything you’ve done. I stood up. “Why kill her?”

Darsh was in favor of Calista’s death because of the revenge she’d take and the harm and chaos that would ensue, but Delacroix wouldn’t care about any of that.

“She let herself get caught.” The shedim sneered at Maud. “By a human. I expected better from a Prime. Calista was compromised. She became worthless.”

Ezra wasn’t worthless. Yes, he’d been caught and tortured, admittedly by another Prime—a high-level foe—yet he’d reforged himself. Ironic, of all the things for us to have in common. He was smart, and whatever his agenda, he was pursuing his goals with a single-minded ruthlessness, while still doing his best not to hurt those closest to him.

The memory of his regret before he tore the Prime’s head off made that clear, as did him simply accepting Darsh’s edict that Ezra was off the team and out of the Maccabees, instead of fighting back. He’d even given Sachie an apology scarf.

Delacroix, on the other hand, had lived in a world of forfeits for so long that the only value he recognized anymore was power and strength. His was a world of winners and losers, and when Calista fell hard from her lofty perch, she became a weakness to be exterminated.

The pungent sting of brine made my eyes water.

Maud’s black hair had turned crimson, and there was a dangerous glint in her eyes, which were now the exact shade of green as Cherry Bomb’s.

Delacroix’s face slackened in a way that would have been comical, were I not wearing the exact same expression. “You’re a…” he began. The restraints he’d created fell apart into a puddle on the floor.

Half shedim, I mentally finished. I’d never seen people like me in their demon form, and my shock that Maud and I were the same was tempered by fascinated curiosity.

Maud swiped a hand armored with green frosted scales across her face as if wiping away the last of her glamor to truly reveal herself, and notched her chin up with a defiant glare.

Holy shit. She had the same frosted scales.

Delacroix narrowed his eyes. “One of my bastard brats.”

My mouth fell open.

The shedim’s words hung in the air like the smoke drifting off from his cigar. Time suspended, and the air was still, suffocating, and stagnant.

Delacroix was my…

I shuddered, but I’d said it myself: it always came back to the mother. I just hadn’t understood how true that was.

The room was going around and around, spinning slowly at first and then picking up speed. It felt like a car that had lost its brakes and was heading toward a ditch.

“Changying Liu,” Maud said.

Her voice reached me as if through a long tunnel. I white-knuckled a chair, sweating and desperately trying to regain my equilibrium. I had a half sister?

“What about her?” Delacroix didn’t sound like he knew who Changying was.

Maud let out a strangled growl. “Hong Kong, twenty-eight years ago. You got her pregnant and disappeared.”

Demon sperm daddy was consistent. I’d give him that much.

Delacroix bound her up again, wagging a finger at her furious expression. “Give me a minute. I meet a lot of people.”

I couldn’t stop staring at Maud and cataloguing our similarities in shedim form, notably the crimson hair, frosted scales, and eye color. She didn’t have the extra muscle mass, but then again, her human body was slenderer than mine. She also didn’t have claws, but two bony horns peeked out of her hair. They were shorter than mine.

It had to work like human genetics, didn’t it? We shared these traits because Delacroix had them.

That might explain why Maud and I had Blue Flame magic; it corresponded most closely to Delacroix’s shedim powers. Ordinary human thirst for money or power might account for why people visited this yacht, but the cruelty of the forfeits was where Delacroix’s evil genius lay.

He didn’t incite Quentin to play dodgeball. Quentin wanted that all on his own. But look at what the man was willing to bet. What Delacroix’s magic made it possible to bet.

Maybe stepping through the portal was the demon’s first insidious attack on patrons to break them down and find all the little cracks—weaknesses—where he could slip in.

Take my mother’s uncharacteristic “bad girl” one-night stand. Michael was an exemplary Maccabee with a rigid moral code who happened to have a fondness for feminist lyrics involving modern ideals of love and sex. She’d had a couple casual relationships while I was growing up, but I’d also overheard her say to friends that she wasn’t all that interested in it. I pressed her when I was older, asking if she’d refrained from boyfriends or having lovers because of me? My mother laughed and assured me that I’d been out of the house for years. She could do what she pleased; she simply didn’t care about it.

Delacroix unearthed something Michael enjoyed and twisted it. It wasn’t bad that she uncharacteristically had sex with a stranger, but that she slipped up on the birth control. Maybe my arrival didn’t totally ruin her life, but it certainly negatively impacted it.

One “bastard brat” might be an accident. I studied Maud, steaming mad and waiting for Delacroix to remember her mother. Was two a pattern or a coincidence?

I had my opinions, but right now, I was more concerned with what Delacroix’s abilities meant for my initial visit to this yacht. I glared at the demon.

My weakness he exploited that night wasn’t my forfeits, it was the pain I’d suffered in the charade of being in debt to Ezra and not being certain how much of it was an act on my ex’s part. The plan was my idea, but in the same way I’d never ordinarily agree to forfeit my power for any amount of time, had that really been my only—or wisest—course of action?

“Changying.” Delacroix’s confused expression cleared. He sucked on his cigar. “Right. The nut who wouldn’t stop pestering Calista to see me. She’s lucky she only got blacklisted.”

I was lucky that I didn’t have Eeyore demon as a sperm daddy, but Delacroix’s true form was still a mystery that I suddenly badly wanted to unravel.

“Yeah, our lives were one stroke of luck after another,” Maud said bitterly, her eyes bleak. I wondered why her voice sounded different until I saw her mouth. She had fangs?!

“Fun as this little reunion has been”—Delacroix freed Maud with a flick of his fingers, only to batter her between two plumes of water—“I’ve wasted enough time chitchatting.”

I ran toward her, but a watery vine twined around my feet, tripping me.

Maud fell to the carpet, yellowish-black bruises blooming along one side of her throat under her torn collar. She ripped a metal wand from a thigh strap under her dress and pressed a button.

Flames shot out, engulfing Delacroix. He roared in pain, the stench of charred flesh filling my nostrils as his eyes shifted into toxic green beacons surrounded by fire.

Maud ran for the demon, jumping the line of fire snaking across the carpet. She raised her hand; something gold glinted.

A Maccabee ring. She was going to kill Delacroix.

I sprinted to Maud and knocked her aside before the magic in the ring could take hold.

The ring went flying.

“Stay out of this!” She grabbed me by the hair, trying to push me out of her way.

I snapped my forearms down on her elbows and broke her hold. “You can’t use that ring.” I started coughing from the noxious plumes of smoke fogging the air and threw an arm over my mouth and nose.

“Why?” she sneered. “I’m not good enough because I’m an infernal?”

“You didn’t take the oath, you idiot. Use it and you’ll die.”

She wrinkled her brow. “Why do you care?”

“I’m not adding to the body count on this case.” I had to yell over the crackling and snapping sounds of the growing fire.

I grabbed Maud and shackled her wrists with the magic-nulling cuffs I’d hung on my belt loop, then wiped sweaty soot off my face. “How do we get out of⁠—”

The narrow windows imploded.

I screamed and threw a hand up against the flying shards from the shattered windows. Cold gusts of air whistled through the casino and water splashed over the frames.

Delacroix was shifting, his thick scales snuffing out the flames, yet he hadn’t completely transformed from his human glamor. He was vulnerable enough that I didn’t need to beat him up. My magic ring would find and latch on to his kill spot during this transformation. I could take him down for good.

I closed my fingers into a fist, but I didn’t move.

Skin melted away from the shedim’s frame like water, and his limbs assimilated seamlessly into his new shape. There was a majesty in his thick serpent’s coil and a wild oceanic beauty to his silver scales. Ours were pale imitations of his armor, baby monsters trying to be scary.

Delacroix wasn’t trying. His demon form alluded to an ancient untamed world beyond our reach. Beyond our comprehension.

Heavy black horns curved upward off his head, his teeth were razor sharp, and crimson spikes protruded from his neck almost like a cape.

I ran a tongue over my flat human teeth and swallowed. My head was tipped practically all the way back, watching the demon grow and grow until his head brushed the top of the high ceiling and his coils pooled mere centimeters from my feet.

I’d lost my chance to use my ring. The magic would dissipate uselessly into the air now, and I didn’t have the physical strength. I’d have to outwit a demon and flee.