Chapter 5

In a flash, everyone was up and moving. Trent, Maggie, and Lacey tended to the tiger, while Gwen and Britt stayed with their grandma. Abbie, Levi, and Magnus advanced to the doorway.

I went with them, though I couldn't do shit other than punch someone unconscious.

"Talk to me, Trent," Abbie said. White magic flickered in her hands, same as her uncle's, while Levi had a dozen darkfire stakes waiting to be thrown.

"He didn't see what attacked him," Trent said, his voice shaking. "It came from behind. He just knows it was one of the creatures that escaped the dungeon."

"Damn it," Abbie muttered.

I glanced back and saw Lacey press her hand to the tiger's bloody back and heal him. The other animals stayed with Belinda, Gwen, and Britt, as if they all needed to protect grandma.

Levi, Abbie, and Magnus walked into the hallway. I stood under the archway, on the lookout as they spread out and searched for whatever was outside.

Five minutes later, they came back.

"Whatever it was, it's hidden again," Abbie said.

We walked into the dining room. Maggie hugged Trent.

Lacey finished. "He'll be fine," she said. "But he needs lots of rest."

Trent let out a long sigh and leaned down to hug the tiger.

"We tried being patient with these creatures, but they are testing us," Abbie said. "We should hunt them."

Magnus nodded. "Agreed."

"Myg, see that Grandma, Trent, Britt, and Gwen make it safely to Grandma's room," Abbie ordered.

The goblin nodded and started for Grandma.

"I want to help!" protested Gwen.

"Me too!" Britt wailed.

"This is not open for discussion," Abbie said. "Go with Grandma, and Trent, take the animals with you, and protect them all. Understood?"

They mumbled yes and exited through the back with Myg—Grandma holding tight to the girls' arms as she couldn't see.

"Should we divide into groups?" Lacey asked.

"I'll go with you," Maggie said. They had a similar demeanor and seemed close. Now looking at them side by side, I would guess that Maggie was nineteen years old, like Lacey.

"I'll go by myself," Magnus said, marching out of the dining room.

Abbie let out a breath and looked at me. "Sorry about him. He helps us a lot, but he's a pain in the ass to deal with."

Maggie snorted. "You can say that again."

"Anyway, Levi and I are the strongest, so it's best if we're separated," Abbie said. "I'll go by myself."

Levi looked at me, his blue eyes dark. "You should go to your room."

I placed my hands on my waist. "Why? Because I don't have my magic. Give me a goddamn sword and I can fight."

"I can get you a sword," Abbie said.

Levi groaned. "You should go with Abbie, then."

I glared at him.

"No." Abbie pointed to Levi and me. "Whatever is going on there, I want no part in it. I'll go by myself, and you two go together." She shoved her hand inside the pocket of her dress and pulled out a handful of pink stones. "Here. Send your magic to the stone if you're in trouble. It'll alert the others and guide you to them."

She handed us the stones. Levi took ours.

"What happens after?" Maggie asked. We all looked at her. "Will we spend the entire night searching? What if we don't find them all? Will we take a break? Or what if we get them all in the next two hours?"

Abbie snapped her fingers and the stones glowed green. "All right, now send your magic and your intention to the stones. Help for help, and I'm done for when you're tired or you got a dozen creatures. Otherwise, I plan on going until I get them all."

"Sounds good," Lacey said.

"Can we go now?" Maggie asked.

Abbie nodded. As they left, she said, "Levi, you know where the armory is. Take Ariella there, please." She turned to me. "You can choose any weapon in there."

"Thanks," I said.

She nodded again and left the room.

Then it was Levi and me.

He watched me, his eyes intense. "How do I convince you to go to your bedroom?"

"I think you know me better than that."

He groaned. "Come on."

I followed him out of the dining room, down the hallway, and through several turns. All the while, Levi stopped at every corner as if the creatures would be waiting on the other side.

I would probably have done the same thing if I was the one leading this party.

We entered a smaller hallway—small compared to the others, because it was still wider and taller than any residential hallway I had ever seen—and he stopped at the second door to the left. Beside it was a keypad. He entered some numbers and the door slid open.

Frowning, I watched as he entered the room and wondered how exactly that battle had gone that the witches had given him the pin number of the secure rooms in their house.

I stepped inside, intent on questioning him, but cut short when I looked around at the large room filled with weapons. Swords, daggers, throwing stars, bows and arrows, bo staffs, handguns, rifles, and even grenades.

"Wow," I whispered.

"I know. Too much for those witches."

Which brought me back to my question. "You tricked them too, right? You tried, at least. You fought your father, not because it was the noble thing to do, but because you wanted the Scarlet Hex Blade for yourself."

His jaw ticked. "I don't have to explain myself to you."

"Because I'm right." Half of my brain told me to stop talking, to go through the motions and get this night over with, but the other half couldn't contain itself. The latter won. "And they think you're this angelic demon, who came to their rescue."

He groaned. "No, I didn't come for the dagger. I didn't even know about the dagger until then, sweetheart. But I did come for something else. And Abbie knows why. She gave it to me after I saved them."

I stared at him incredulously. So, he had had an ulterior motive. "What did you get?"

He clenched his jaw and I thought he wouldn't answer. "I knew they had the Book of Wishes. I thought that if I could get to the book, I could wish my parents dead. Abbie let me use the book after the battle. I made my wish." I sucked in a breath. "But it backfired. The book doesn't deal with death, so it punished me. It bound itself to me, making me a wish-granting demon."

"That's how …"

He nodded. "When someone makes a wish and I close my eyes, I'm communicating with the book. It sends me whatever the wisher wants, or if it can't give it to me right away, it shows me the way to get it."

"The book showed you where my wings were."

"The spell around your wings was too great. The book couldn't get it. So, it showed me their location."

I let that sink in for a little. He had come with an ulterior motive, but he had helped the witches, and when he went for his reward, he had been punished.

"It sounds like you don't like being a wish-granting demon."

"Do you think it's nice to have stupid supernaturals ask stupid things of you, sweetheart?"

I got it. I wouldn't like that either. "And the price? Is that you, or the book?"

"The book always has a price."

"You asked me for my soul. Did the book ask for it? What would the book want with my soul?"

"What is this? An interrogation?"

"Just answer the question!"

Levi worked his jaw. "The book had requested a drop of your blood. The soul was me playing with you." I stared at him, eyes wide. "Because I knew you would refuse. Remember, I had a plan?"

"Oh, I remember." And I was so done with this conversation. No matter what he did, his actions were laced with bad intentions.

I walked up to the wall displaying dozens of swords and picked up one that seemed the size of my old Celestial Blade, though it definitely weighed more.

It was okay, though. I could fight like this.

I headed to the door. "You don't need to babysit me. I can go by myself."

"And get lost in this place?" He followed me out and when I didn't stop, he dashed forward and stepped in my way, making me stop. "Stop being childish."

I flinched. "I'm not being?—!"

He gave me a look and I shut my mouth. Perhaps I was being childish, but I was being childish because he irritated me in a way nothing else had ever done before.

No, I was better than this. I was a freaking angel!

I inhaled deeply and nodded. "All right. Lead the way."

With a smug twist of his lips, Levi continued down the hallway, and it was all I could do not to kick his ass and curse his existence.

No, Ariella, think happy thoughts! Forget about the trickster demon in front of you.

It was hard to forget about him when he covered my entire sight with his tall frame and wide shoulders. A perfect frame that I had seen naked, that I had touched, and relished.

By the light, had it gotten hot in here?

Levi groaned.

What was his problem?

I shook my head, pushing those thoughts away. Now was not the time to think about that. Even though it had been a delicious night. Damn, I hadn't really allowed myself to think about that night, but now, with the subject of the story right in front of me, it was hard not to.

It had been sex, but it had been so, so good. I hadn't had a lot of experience before, but I was sure Levi's performance could be considered one of the best, if there was a rank for such a thing.

It was a shame we hated each other; otherwise, we could repeat the?—

Levi spun suddenly, and I almost bumped into him. He loomed over me, glowering. "Sweetheart, can you …" His words faded and he looked over my shoulder, his eyes going wide for half a second, then narrowing. "Turn very slowly," he whispered.

Oh, shit. I turned on my heels, slowly like Levi had asked, and inhaled deeply when I saw a handful of glowing eyes in the darkness of the hallway behind us.

"What are they?" I asked, just as low.

"Imps."

The candles along the hallway flickered on, their light dim as if to not startle the little demons, but enough for us to see there were more than a handful, all of them along the walls, watching us with curious, hungry eyes.

They were all waist height, gray-skinned, with bared pointy teeth, and huge yellow catlike eyes.

I held tighter to the sword's hilt, and beside me Levi called his darkfire.

Together, the little imps let out a skin-crawling snarl and hopped toward us on their large feet.

Levi let out several darkfire bolts, and I swung my sword. The weight felt strange in my hands, but after a few strikes, I got used to it. The imps were easy to kill, but there were too many, and when we got one down, two skipped to us in its place.

"We can't kill them all," Levi said, as he started aiming at the imps' legs and arms, to injure them instead of killing.

"Easier said than done." I groaned as three came at me at the same time. I spun out of range of one, swung my sword upward, slashing the side of another, and kicked the third one in the head, making it crash into the wall.

The vines knotted along the walls reached out and wrapped around it, keeping it in place.

"Thanks," I said to the vines, amused. One, that was so cool. Two, why didn't the hall do that with all of them?

Before I could dwell on that question, another imp jumped on my back and bit my injured shoulder. I screamed, reached up, picked the damn thing by its pointy ears, and threw it at the wall.

Once more, the vines enveloped the creature.

Groaning, I switched my sword to my left hand. Thank goodness I had been trained in both, but of course, one was always better than the other, and it wasn't my left side.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" Levi asked. He had created a pen of shadows and was corralling the imps inside, while still fending off the ones that escaped him.

"Just …" I touched my shoulder and my fingertips came back bloody. "Shit."

He glanced at me. "What is it?"

Was that worry in his voice? Nah, I was too wound up to hear or think clearly.

I tried maiming the next imp who came for me, but the little thing moved fast, and I ended up stabbing him through the chest instead of slicing his side, as I first planned.

Damn it.

A sudden force on my back made me fall to my knees and lose the grip on my sword. I twisted and slapped one of the three imps that had jumped on my back before he took a bite out of my chin. Then a fourth one appeared, a bigger one, at least a head taller than the others, and a lot stronger.

It stepped on my belly, taking my breath away.

I jerked, got rid of one imp, but the other two held my arms to the sides, while the bigger one sat on my stomach, as if this was a show. I reached for my sword, but it was just out of reach.

With a scream, I was able to fling my arm hard enough to jostle the imp holding it and stretch my arm a little more. I touched the sword, closed my hand around the hilt, and brought it down on the closest imp. I immediately swung to the other one and slashed it in half. Then I aimed at the bigger one?—

A darkfire bolt hit the demon square in the chest and it flew back several yards.

I sat up and glared at Levi. "I had it!"

"Of course you did, sweetheart." He moved his hands and shadows wrapped around the bigger imp, lifting it up and holding it in place.

Levi got the mirror from his pocket and pointed first at that bigger imp. It was sucked into the mirror in less than three seconds. Then he turned the mirror to the eight imps he had corralled and sucked them in too.

I pushed to my feet, wobbled, and placed a hand on the wall vines to steady myself.

When all the creatures were gone, Levi pocketed the mirror and faced me. His eyes narrowed. "When will you not get hurt, sweetheart?"

"When I have my magic back," I snapped.

He looked me up and down. "Ready for more?"

No, I wasn't. I was tired, breathing hard, the wound was shallow but throbbed, the sword was the wrong one for me, and I was upset about all of this. If only I had my damn magic …

But I wouldn't stop, not now.

I inhaled deeply to steady my racing heart, stood taller, and nodded. "Ready."