The Demon's Due E-Book

Deborah Wilde

• Herausgeber: Te Da Media
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

Magic has a price, and Aviva’s running out of ways to pay.
When an ancient healing ritual goes nuclear and vampires start short-circuiting, the supernatural world begins unraveling faster than you can say “apocalypse now.” Aviva isn’t just investigating a disaster—she’s living in the blast zone.
Meantime, with demon magic threatening her boyfriend’s life, Aviva makes a desperate choice: she forges a magic bond with him. Nice idea. Too bad it complicates everything. Now tethered to each other and racing against time, they must find a way to contain the chaos unleashed by the ritual—assuming their connection doesn't destroy them first.
Time to fight fire with fire. Literally.
To save the world, Aviva must embrace both sides of herself: the dedicated operative and the demon who's done playing nice.
Enter Cherry Bomb. The world better brace for impact.
Featuring a smart, determined heroine, a banter-fueled vampire romance, and high-stakes supernatural intrigue, the final chapter of this wickedly addictive urban fantasy will keep you reading way past bedtime.
Read the complete series now.

Leseprobe

THE DEMON’S DUE

Bedevilled AF, #5

DEBORAH WILDE

Contents

Don’t Just Read It—Be Part of It!

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Sneak Peek of The Unlikeable Demon Hunter

About the Author

Don’t Just Read It—Be Part of It!

Bestselling author Deborah Wilde presents a gloriously funny, wickedly sexy urban fantasy packed with:

• A half-demon with dangerous secrets and an attitude to match.

• A charming vampire whose cryptic agendas are only outdone by his infuriatingly irresistible allure.

• A loyal crew tackling fascinating magical crimes with plenty of sparks (and chaos) along the way.

THE DEMON’S DUE is the fifth book in the Bedeviled AF series.

Deborah has a chatty newsletter where she shares what’s warming her cold, dead heart, gives sneak peeks and insider information, and holds giveaways.

Join the Wilde Ones today!

Chapter1

The Brink tasted like ozone and fear, but I swallowed both as Alastair’s fingers dug into my arm. While I might be done hiding my shedim side, I wasn’t done being hunted.

I picked my way over patches of ice that bloomed into carpets of tiny flowers with sharp crystalline petals, a lifetime of running over uneven terrain saving me a twisted ankle on the slick ground. Crunching a lopsided carnation—Mother Nature’s gas station flower—under my boot, I wondered whether Alastair’s head would make that same satisfying noise when I killed him for good.

Operative Fleischer, champion of justice, had vanished the second the bloodsucking parasite blackmailed me into leaving⁠—

I dropped my gaze from the mud-brown sky to the fortress looming ahead of us. The weathered gray stone walls were lined with crenellations and guard towers, while bushes with oversized thorns grew wild in the dry moat. Their barbs coiled like hungry serpents, waiting for unwary flesh to pierce.

Annoyingly, my eyes stung from the stench of pine cleaner that had followed us for the past half hour. The reek made as much sense as the floating reefs of bone-white coral resembling teeth we’d navigated in eerie silence.

Usually, trips to the Brink were anything but quick. Count on Alastair to have some dumb artifact that could whisk us from the rift through the Brink to the fortress like an overeager puppy with a full bladder bounding to its favorite tree.

Though even one second spent in his charming presence was an eternity too long. He’d forsaken any pretense of civility, exposing a man-shaped reservoir of spite and brutishness.

The handcuffs bit painfully into my wrists as he hauled me forward by the chain, his casual flick sending me lurching behind him. My stomach churned with revulsion at being reduced to a prisoner, a possession, while the weight of his control over me made me want to scream with rage, but I refused to give him the satisfaction.

Alastair didn’t know it, but the restraints were overkill, given that the very sentience he was frog-marching me toward had already stripped me of my Eishei Kodesh abilities and left my connection to Cherry Bomb on the fritz.

Yes, I’d forfeited my blue flame magic for an hour, but I’d expected the pay up to happen either when I first wagered it days ago or at some random innocuous time. Not that some asshole magic guardian would stalk me and find the exact worst moment to snatch my abilities away.

My captor pounded on the fortress’s metal-reinforced wooden gate with an expression of savage triumph, and that old adage about not counting chickens flitted through my head.

I still had a shot. One requiring extraordinary luck, insanely perfect timing, and possibly a minor miracle, but technically, still a shot.

But with my shedim side fading in and out, my Eishei Kodesh magic in absentia, and the nulling cuffs squashing the hope that I’d be able to do anything even if I got my powers back, I was swimming in a catastrophe cocktail. My brain had locked up completely, like a computer with too many fatal errors. No reboot and no strategic thinking.

Sensing my distress, the Brimstone Baroness tore through the staticky barrier separating us. Our link clicked into place like a dislocated joint popping back to where it belonged.

Cherry itched to tear that British bastard limb from limb for orchestrating horrors from his comfortable shadows. I forced the sudden toxic green of my eyes back to their regular light brown and ordered her to shove her hate down, because my jaw still throbbed from Alastair’s backhanded blow when I’d attempted to bond over deadbeat supernatural parents.

Who could have guessed that while Calista had hidden her dhampir son, she’d also protected him, visiting as often as she could to not only train him with valuable survival skills, but simply spend time with him.

Alastair had stoked his hatred for the parties he believed responsible for his mother’s death like precious glowing coals. To be fair, he had plenty of that emotion to go around, along with a list of every vampire who’d ever dissed or underestimated him.

“They’ll get theirs when I have the power of a Prime and they don’t,” he’d said darkly.

Alastair’s hand now flitted to a green camo canteen worn on a canvas shoulder strap, the uncharacteristic accessory first revealed when he lost his wool coat back in the bone reefs. BYOB? Supplies for a tailgate party? Picky about his food? In any case, he hadn’t touched it yet, so perchance it was a boutique hemoglobin to be savored in celebration.

So long as he didn’t try snacking on me.

With a shuddery creak, the gate opened into a courtyard. There was no one to greet us, which meant that either Daphne was out on sentience-related business or unavailable. Small things like being polite didn’t bother Alastair anymore, so he walked right in.

I barely had one last glimpse of the giant bone wall stretching out in the distance before the gate slammed shut with a thud that made me jump. How was Shiny Jimmy doing? If I got the chance to see him on this visit from hell, I’d have to tell⁠—

I swallowed. Ezra was a Prime. Even infected by whatever weird magic had spread from Rukhsana into him, he’d be healed by now.

“Move it.” Alastair’s broad British accent had a bladed edge. He pushed me past a clump of cacti and over a small arched bridge whose reflecting pool boasted lazily floating lotuses.

It was sunny in the courtyard, but I couldn’t even enjoy a moment of warmth because while the sky was blue, it throbbed with malevolent mud-brown threads that sent shivers down my spine.

The sound of snipping grew louder, rhythmic and hungry like the clicking of a predator’s teeth, its source revealed when we rounded a massive tangled rosebush.

Daphne, gatekeeper and arbiter of magic-seekers’ fates, tipped up the brim of her straw gardener’s hat with her gloved hand to coolly survey us. “How dumpster-chic,” she said in her Brooklyn drawl and cut away some dead branches.

I didn’t care about my disheveled, sweaty self. What did cleanliness matter when I planned to add bloodstains to the mix?

Alastair ran a hand over his once-beautifully tailored shirt that was now dirty and crumpled. A smear of grease marred his black stubbled jaw, but his undead fashionista self was visible in the quality of the torn cotton and the remaining misaligned pearl buttons.

He pushed me forward. “We’re here for the test.”

A muscle ticked in Daphne’s jaw, but she yanked off her gloves, dropped the pruning shears, and stood up. Her ivory V-neck sweater and tailored slacks were spotless. Now, that was a magic feat. “Are you now?”

“After he removes these nulling cuffs,” I said. There. Step one of a strategy.

Alastair hesitated.

The smile Daphne unfurled was venom wrapped in spun sugar. “I’ve never had someone bring a hostage cheerleader, but then again, there’s a first time for everything.” She shook her fists like pom-poms. “Do you require her to spell out your name letter by letter or will general encouragements suffice?”

The dhampir yanked the key out of his pocket.

My wrists burned even more as the metal fell away, though the numbness in my hands was a pleasant counterpart to that.

Better still, my Eishei Kodesh magic came flooding back.

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth despite everything. My hour forfeit was up, and the gameboard had just shifted. I stepped through the doorway with renewed purpose.

“Shoes off,” our hostess commanded.

I toed out of my ankle boots and settled myself on a comfy sofa under a bright tapestry of a hunting scene, letting my magic settle itself. Books overflowed their shelves, a fire crackled cheerily, and lush plants and wildflowers gave the air an earthy, humid tinge.

Daphne switched her gardening clogs for marabou feather slippers with satin-covered kitten heels. The hostess with the mostess.

Alastair positioned himself next to a tall rubber plant, wrapping the scrap of grimy fabric that had once been his tie around his knuckles and then sliding it off again. As if trying to reclaim some dignity after being reduced to socked feet.

White filmy curtains billowed out the open glass door behind him.

I longed to probe the dhampir with my synesthete vision in case I could see his weaknesses or any previous injuries that would give me an advantage, but I didn’t dare.

Not because I didn’t have his consent, but because I got the sense that fairness was important to the magic guardian, and as I was the supplicant, I would do nothing to cause offense and risk my shot at passing the test—i.e. the aforementioned minor miracle.

I pushed away the memory of the wriggling maggot that had been the last supplicant’s name.

Daphne leaned against a long wooden table. When I’d been here last, it held a tea set, but it was currently covered with a soil-splattered plastic tarp, a preposterously sharp trowel that Sachie would demand buying info for, and seedling pots. “You can leave if you want, Aviva.”

I rubbed my fingers, waking the numbness into such a searing pins-and-needles sensation that my breath hitched. “I wish to try for the power word.”

Daphne blinked at me. “Really.”

“Yup,” I said.

“When you’re still recovering from your forfeited Eishei Kodesh magic.”

She knew that, huh?

“No time like the present.” I swept a lank strand of hair out of my eyes.

“You were forcibly brought here.” Daphne shook her head. “As outlined in Statute 7.B of the Threshold Protocols, ‘No supplicant may petition for a power word under duress or constraint, physical or magical. The seeking must stem from genuine desire, freely formed and freely acted upon. Violation renders the test void and the petitioner subject to immediate expulsion—or, in cases of willful deception, permanent dissolution.’”

Dissolution? I swallowed. How omnipotent was the sentience? Because those cuffs had been the least of my problems. If Alastair missed the check-in with his vampire minions, they’d execute Secretary Pederson and frame my mother for it, along with her ordering Ezra to murder the operative Roman Whittaker.

All lies, but the photo Alastair had of my infernal form would convince Dmitri Kozlov that Michael would do anything to protect her own half-shedim abomination. She’d end up in Sector A, the top-secret maximum-security jail where people who colluded with demons or rogue vamps were sent.

Ezra would be hunted down, the investigation spreading to Silas’s escape and potentially dragging Sachie, Darsh, and the entire Vancouver Maccabee chapter into that terrifying prison alongside the director.

Meantime, I’d be left breathing just long enough to watch it all unfold.

I weighed all that against what could be done to me now for lying about my situation. I had to come clean. “There’s no cell service in the Brink, but is there some way for Alastair to contact his people and give the order that Secretary Pederson is not to be touched? That my mother is safe? I’ll exercise my true free will if he does that.”

“After I have the Luce.” Alastair pronounced the word “lou-chay” like the Italian word for “light.”

I frowned. “Is that the power word?”

“It’s the name of the healing magic contained in it.” Daphne placed her palm flat against the nearest wall, and a low, hungry rumble echoed through the room. “When you arrived,” she said to Alastair, “you said ‘We’re here for the test.’ That makes both of you the petitioners and both of you subject to the Threshold Protocol.” She patted the scary wall like it was a favored pet. “But it’s up to you.”

He made the call, which amazingly connected, even putting it on speaker so we could ascertain for ourselves that he’d called off the hit.

One terrifying situation mitigated, but I still had to stop Alastair once and for all.

“I’m exercising my free will,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “I want to take this test.”

Daphne crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “You swore the last time you showed up that you didn’t want the power word.” The charge, delivered in her Beastie Boys accent, would have been amusing if it didn’t also come with a menacing glower that made both me and Cherry flinch.

“It’s a woman’s prerogative…” I smiled with false bravado.

My hostess toyed with the trowel. Why was I surrounded by people with violent urges?

My inner demoness admired how the sharp edge caught the light. Never mind.

“You can’t refuse her.” Alastair snapped a leaf off the rubber plant.

“Touch my plant again and I’ll dig a hole where your dick should be and grow seedlings there instead,” Daphne said conversationally.

The dhampir dropped the leaf and glared at me.

I sent up a silent plea for Daphne to not make this harder on me.

No one had successfully acquired the power word since the early twentieth century. Failure meant joining the vibrant bone wall community with no sense of myself, and no purpose but a cautionary tale.

But not to be given a shot at all to change this incredibly shitty day and take power back for myself? To rescue people important to me? I pumped a fist. “Goooo test!”

“We’re wasting time.” Alastair busted out his fangs. The manic hostile energy rolling off him didn’t so much deter his commanding air as twist it into something feral.

Daphne pushed up her sleeve. Runes carved into her flesh glowed copper against her tanned skin. “You began this petition under murky conditions, so I’ll let you know what my boss and I decide when we decide it. Now shut up.”

I studied my abductor through slitted lids.

Alastair was the right-hand man in the most powerful vampire Mafia in existence, and no one, not even its leader, Natán Cardoso, had figured out he was only a halfie. Any uptick in the Brit’s abilities, like siring an undead army, would convince everyone he was a Prime and confer scary levels of power upon him. He might even be able to steal the Kosher Nostra’s command away from Natán.

I clenched my fists. The upheaval and damage he’d cause wouldn’t just affect vampires.

Not only that, but should Alastair discover my sister orchestrated events leading to his mother’s murder (with the killing blow dealt by Ezra, who would be absolutely healthy enough to defend himself when Alastair found out), then he’d target my sister and draw out her death, which would enrage Delacroix. Supernatural war would break out.

I gritted my teeth against the tingly feeling presaging my toxic green eyes. Not yet, Baroness.

Should Alastair be killed before the ritual happened, his minions would continue this mad quest to sire children, endlessly killing infernals to fuel a broken ritual.

Let the magic sentience that protected the power word dismantle every single vampire supplicant. I didn’t give a shit. The thing is, Alastair murdered six half shedim to get the blood necessary for this.

It had taken years to find his perfect victims, including a thirteen-year-old boy, Aleksander, Secretary Pederson’s nephew. Sadly, the one thing Alastair’s undead followers had plenty of was time.

My gaze shot to the canteen, and a muscle ticked in my jaw. Fuck me.

How did Alastair fit six bodies’ worth of blood into that? Was it TARDIS brand or had he magically concentrated the fluid down? I better not be expected to drink it or even touch it.

But what if that was my role as speaker of the power word? I could tell myself that I was giving those people’s brutal murders purpose, but the idea of literally having their blood on my hands—or worse—made me gag.

You’ll do this because you have to, mi cielo. Ezra’s voice filled my head.

For a brief, wonderful second, I thought he was somehow psychically communicating with me, but the continued silence bounced off the walls, mocking me.

Daphne was still communing with the magic sentience, her lids closed and a shivery dark aura surrounding her like a force field, while Alastair remained fixated on her, awaiting the decision.

For the safety of half shedim, I had to murder all hope that this ritual worked.

Think it through, Fleischer. My understanding of the order of events was: get the power word, speak it during a dark magic ritual that Alastair performed in conjunction with the blood, and watch him reap the rewards.

That word was the delivery system of the healing magic, while the ritual defined the parameters of what specifically was to be healed.

Well, one did not simply bounce out of a dark magic blood ritual ready to rock and roll.

I blinked. Was that the solution? Strike once the ritual was performed, but while Alastair still adjusted to his new super-vamp abilities?

I suspected I had a very small window of opportunity. Possibly seconds.

I’d have to phrase his murder afterward in such a way that the logical inference was the magic power word didn’t work as advertised and killed him.

His followers bought their leader’s bullshit that this ritual would work on all vampires versus one lucky recipient. Because they were desperate to believe. It sucked for them that they couldn’t differentiate between faith born of desperation and utter self-delusion.

Regardless, that faith would not be extended to me. My claim had to be irrefutable, and for that, I had to be able to beat him.

Alastair did the ritual and died. Stick me in front of a top Yellow Flame lie detector or a vampire, and neither would claim I lied.

All I had to do was get an impossible power word.

Daphne leveled a long, dubious look from me to Alastair and opened her mouth.

I stood up abruptly, every muscle tensed like a cornered animal. “I’m here of my own free will,” I repeated, my voice steadier than the rest of me. “Let me do this. Please.”

The word hung between us—“please”—a desperate prayer more than a polite request. Cherry rumbled in agreement, her presence coiling through me like smoke. We were in this together, the Baroness and I, about to face a test no one had survived in a century.

Daphne studied me, her eyes ancient and knowing beneath that ridiculous gardener’s hat. She must have seen something in my face—determination, resignation, or perhaps the perfect blend of fear and fury—because she finally nodded.

“As you wish,” she said. The words fell like a death sentence.

The air around us charged with electricity. The fortress walls seemed to breathe inward, the space contracting as the test prepared to consume another supplicant. Alastair’s fanged smile gleamed in my peripheral vision, but I thanked Daphne.

This was it. My shot. My last extraordinary chance to fix this doomed trajectory.

Too bad I was all out of miracles.

Chapter2

Daphne proceeded to inform us that supplicants had to perform certain steps before undertaking the test: a cleansing bath (pre-death spa day), a hearty meal (noshes before nothingness), and a sound rest (dreams for the doomed).

A muscle twitched violently in Alastair’s cheek as he swallowed whatever protests had risen to his lips, his eyes fixed on Daphne with barely contained hatred.

“Get comfortable. We’ll be a while.” She arched an eyebrow at him, letting the silence draw out until he sat down, his jaw tight.

“Is this really standard operating procedure?” I said, following her through the courtyard.

“It’s not not standard.” She sniffed primly. “Some people need to cool their jets and recognize they aren’t in charge.”

We stepped inside a small hut, which was taken up by a hot spring. Electric tealights were set around the edge, and the air smelled of cedar and eucalyptus, not sulphur. It was soothing, but so was the last spa I’d visited. Had I never known a staked Prime was fished out of the bathwater, I would have booked a deluxe treatment.

Honestly, it wasn’t off the table.

I peered through the steam into the dark pool with a grimace. “Is this where you keep your name maggots?”

“Please, doll. That skin exfoliation treatment is for VIP supplicants only.”

I couldn’t tell if she was kidding.

“Ditch the dirty duds.” She laid a folded cloth bundle on a low bench. “And soak as long as you want. When you’ve changed, ring this…” She removed a small silver bell from her pocket and set it on the clean clothing. “I’ll come get you. Don’t leave this room without me.”

I waved a hand in thanks, turning from the slash of daylight as she exited. Once disrobed, I stepped into the steaming water with a medley of swears and wince-breaths but was finally submerged up to my shoulders.

Cherry settled in for a nap. Being patient had worn her out. I promised her that she’d shortly have the best treat ever.

I scrubbed my face and hair clean, then lay back against the cedar planking, stretching out my arms and legs, but I was restless, my thoughts consumed with the test. I got out of the water and threw on the homespun pullover shirt and cropped pants. There were no socks, just slippers. My ruined pedicure would have to stand. I rang the bell.

Daphne led me down corridors lined with vibrant art and past rooms with glass-covered exhibits of weapons. There were cabinets of curiosities and mismatched arrangements of furniture, like the Queen Anne chair cozied up to the 1950s chrome diner table and the wardrobe that the Narnia kids might still be inside grouped with an IKEA dresser.

However, the fortress experience wasn’t all awe and a childlike sense of wonder.

There was a room of ice, its crystalline walls glowing with an inner blue light that cast fractured reflections across the floor. Something moved in the depths of that frozen chamber—something large and patient that left no footprints on the gleaming surface.

I sped up, past a doorway that opened into a room of shadows so dense they absorbed all surrounding light. Occasional flickers of movement disrupted the perfect blackness, like creatures swimming through ink. The darkness reached toward me, tendrils of shadow stretching beyond the threshold before reluctantly retreating.

Some of the doors were padlocked with heavy rusted locks or warded with writhing runes. I didn’t ask what was behind them.

Then there was a small chamber with no door—just an opening in the wall barely wider than my shoulders. No light illuminated its interior, yet I could see every detail with unnatural clarity. The walls pulsed gently, like the inside of something living, and whispers emanated from within, overlapping voices speaking in languages I both recognized and didn’t. Some sounded like pleas, others like threats, all of them somehow directed at me specifically.

I hurried past it, eyes averted, but not before catching a glimpse of handprints pressed into the fleshy walls.

Daphne flung open a pair of French doors. A mahogany dining table dominated the room, its polished surface reflecting crystal chandeliers above. High-backed chairs upholstered in burgundy silk lined both sides, and the deep emerald fabric of heavy damask curtains pooled on marble floors. A sideboard displayed delicate cut-glass decanters under carved cherubs peering down from ceiling medallions.

The sheer amount of dinnerware made my head spin.

I sighed, my shoulders sagging, and followed her to my seat at the far end, my slippers making soft slapping noises. My dinners generally involved a fork, knife, and plate. Not even that on taco night. There’d be two glasses if I was being fancy. I glanced at a plate setting. What meal needed four spoons?

I scraped the floor when I pulled my chair out and grimaced. “This isn’t part of the test, is it? Pass some Good Housekeeping seal of approval?”

Daphne dropped into her chair with fluid grace. “Last chance to back out, Aviva.”

“Not going to happen.” I looked from one of my three forks down the length of the table. “Is there a butler or will food just⁠—”

She slammed her hand on her placemat. “I liked you.”

I made a snarky face. “Not loving the past tense.”

She jabbed a fork at me, and I flinched. “You know how many threats I deal with from these shmoes seeking healing magic? The sob stories? My gawd. ‘Three years and millions of dollars of tests and my medical start-up has nothing. Help me find the cure for blah blah blah, insert disease of choice.’”

“Medical breakthroughs sound kind of worthy,” I said tentatively.

Wine appeared on the table—just out of my reach.

“I’m sure the investors agreed. The test thought otherwise. I had one dude whining about how every time he was about to get intimate, his ex’s voice started narrating in his head like a nature documentary.” She poured herself a glass.

I tried not to make puppy dog eyes at the booze. “That’s oddly specific. What happened?”

“Do I look like a therapist? I told him to tell it to the test.”

“The last person who was found worthy, what did they come for?”

“Stop gas poisoning orphans during World War II?” She scrunched up her face. “Maybe they had gout. It all blends together.”

“It’s not cause dependent.”

“Nope.” That was good.

“There are a lot of failed supplicants in that bone wall.” I peeled my shoulders off the now-damp chair silk. “How did they all find out about this place? It wasn’t advertised. Not even on the dark web.”

“Be here since time immemorial and word gets around.” She sipped her wine. “But you know how infrequently I get a calm request to take the test without any drama? Without oversharing? Fuhgeddaboudit. You were the only one who didn’t want the word. Then you showed up with Sir Bangs-A-Lot, disturbing my plants.”

“More like the Mayor of Poundtown—and nope. That’s not better.”

Daphne waved a hand at my plate, the fight gone out of her. “Eat.”

A fat, juicy cheeseburger oozing melted cheddar appeared on my plate. My mouth watered, but I hesitated. “Uh…this is treyf. Bad Jew food,” I clarified at her confused expression.

“It was pulled from your brain as your favorite.” She daintily cut into her golden-brown puff pastry and a rich gravy spilled out.

“True, but…” I looked around and lowered my voice. “Will that be an issue with…” I jerked my chin to the room at large.

“Nah.”

I tucked my napkin onto my lap. “Then can I get bacon? Extra crispy.” The strips appeared immediately, both improving my burger and, more importantly, confirming my hypothesis.

This power word test had a single component: prove your worthiness in its specific instance. I’d experienced the memory of the last supplicant, Evelyn. The vampire didn’t have to demonstrate strength or intelligence or even a strong moral character.

Because the test was deceptively simple. Emphasis on deceptive.

Here’s the trouble: Evelyn lied. The poor woman didn’t even realize it. She had a personal and valid reason to believe herself worthy in this particular situation, but she parroted the info Alastair fed her—that the word would be used to restore procreation for all vampires.

Error or not, she lied to that magic force when she claimed she’d reignite the spark of life for all vamps.

She probably wasn’t read the Threshold Protocol—the silver lining in Alastair’s abduction.

As Daphne had told me on my previous visit to this fortress: healing is healing. It wasn’t good or bad, simply released in a ritual of the supplicant’s choosing. The magic guardian didn’t give a shit that six people had died to get Alastair to this point. That cockamamie sentience was as reprehensible as an arms dealer determining who received his weapons then washing his hands of any responsibility.

I licked grease off my fingers and snagged a fry from the crisp pile glistening with salt crystals that I hadn’t even made a dent in. Did this feel like the Last Supper? Yup. Was this affecting my hunger at all? Nope. I shoveled two more fries into my mouth.

With every fiber of my being, I wanted the healing magic for Alastair, and I would do anything to achieve that.

I’d also kill him after he enjoyed a single glorious moment of the fruit of his labors. It didn’t make me any less worthy; quite the opposite in fact. My argument was laid out and ready for the judge.

After I’d stuffed my face with four different courses, using only a fraction of my allotted cutlery, Daphne poured us both a brandy.

She swirled the amber liquid in the snifter. “Magic comes with a price, Aviva, and it always collects its debt. It doesn’t care who pays the cost—or when.”

“Yeah, I’m familiar with that last part.” It wasn’t always losers who paid. Sometimes winners like Quentin Baker ended up losing too. I sipped the strong alcohol slowly. The Copper Hell could rebrand with that idea. Play Now, Pay Later—Someone Always Does.

A silvery-blue gaze lit with amusement popped into my head.

I choked on the brandy.

Daphne leaned over and pounded me on the back. “It’s a lot to think about.”

And here I was trying not to think. At all. He’s okay. “Trust me, I’ve examined every angle of this. I’m going to succeed, and when this is all over, I’ll return with a bottle of my favorite Merlot.”

“You’ll raise a glass to me.” She sounded not sad exactly, more wistful.

“We’ll raise a glass together,” I promised her.

I was convinced I’d stay up worrying, but it was meat coma to the rescue. I slept like a baby.

When Daphne shook me awake, the sky was streaked with soft peach and orange. Storm clouds shaped like four-leaf clovers also rolled overhead, which was admittedly a mixed message, but I was in an optimistic mood.

Soon Alastair would be stopped for good, and I would be reunited with my boyfriend.

I shoved my bare feet into my ankle boots and followed Daphne in silence down to the basement, assessing every door for dungeon status.

She halted partway down the corridor in front of a large painting of a forest. “Good luck,” she said and hugged me tightly.

I hugged her back, but before I could thank her, she vanished along with all modern electricity.

And the fortress.

Pine trees pressed in from all sides, and weak sunshine filtered down through faraway top branches, barely providing enough light for me to pick my way over the uneven path made of decomposing pine needles.

Cherry sang “Barbie Girl” by Aqua, which put a spring in my step. We were on the same page that unless things went sideways, I’d remain fully human.

I pushed branches out of my way, tensing for the brush of cobwebs or nasty little beasts scuttling over my hand. This subdimension of the fortress was still in the Brink, so anything was possible, but the worst injury I suffered was a feathery branch thwacking me in the back of my head.

I’d been walking for about ten minutes when the stout branches of two trees crisscrossed, blocking the path. I wiped sweat off my forehead with my sleeve and kicked my way through.

A tiny house rose before me, squat and ancient. Built into a hill, its limestone blocks furred with moss where water had seeped through the mortar over centuries. Dead vines clutched at the corners like gnarled fingers, and the entrance gaped, a rough-cut empty doorway that drew in the forest’s shadows rather than dispelling them.

It had a certain je ne sais quoi. More so than the stretch of stagnant water reeking of bleach that led directly to it. It wasn’t a lake, more a pond with an overinflated sense of self. Stones coated in varying degrees of mud and moss were scattered throughout it.

Let’s save the broken ankle option for Plan B.

I tore off a branch and dunked it in the dark water to check the depth. Its needles hissed and bubbled, bouncing off the bark and along the pond’s surface. They bleached of all color and dissolved into tiny fragments that sank beneath the ripples.

The water returned to its placidity. Plan B it was.

I paced the shore, analyzing the safest route across. Once I was confident that I’d picked the best contenders, I shook out my shoulders, jumped up and down, and exhaled hard a few times. Arms outstretched, I stepped onto the first chosen rock—and immediately slid. I barely regained my balance in time.

Cherry launched into “Waterfalls” by TLC.

For an inner voice who was actually me, I could show myself more support in this situation.

The Baroness sang the chorus louder.

Sometimes the appropriate next rock was a small step away, sometimes it was a pulse-ratcheting stretch, and in one heart-lurching instance, a jump where my heel hit the water.

A sliver of rubber sizzled and crumbled.

I coasted on adrenaline over the remaining stones and leapt onto the rickety wood porch. It was impossible to see through the shadows to inside, but I didn’t want to risk any escalation by letting Cherry free. However, I wasn’t about to blithely traipse in, when I had no sense of what waited for me. I hovered my scales under my skin, where they were easily accessible, and cautiously stepped through the doorway.

Sawdust scattered under my boots same as it had in Evelyn’s memory, each step a heavy thud on the worn stone.

Torches lit my way, the flames swaying to whispers that swept around me on an icy breeze.

I ignored them. Nothing was getting between me and that power word.

I stepped over a broken channel in the floor lined with gravel, listening to faint burbling from the corner. This was a repurposed spring house, albeit one that was much larger than normal, dug deep into the hillside.

The flames shifted, throwing a rough block of stone at the far end of the room into stark relief. A face was carved into it. My heartbeat stampeded at the mouth hanging open in an O, because interacting with it in Evelyn’s memory had been awful enough.

I looked around again. Okay, the place was rustic, but with a little work might prove quaint.

Today onLove It or List It: Occult Edition:“Mark and Susan are looking for a home with character, but this eight-hundred-year-old spring house might have a bit too much. Sure, it’s an age-old site of mystical power, but there’s no flow. The stone face is giving real estate agent David fits about resale value, and designer Hilary is concerned that whispering shadows in the corner will possess new occupants. Still, they’re excited to turn it from an interdimensional void of madness into an open-concept kitchen.”

Forcing myself to uncurl my fingers and drop my hands, I strode forward.

The face’s dead stone eyes woke, flickering with cold purpose.

I froze, heart hammering against my ribs.

Back away now, and Alastair would unleash a deadly vengeance on people I cared about. More half shedim would die. Proceed, and I might be split between name maggot and bone wall.

“Screw it,” I whispered. If I was going down, it wouldn’t be cowering in fear.

Drawing a deep breath, I squared my shoulders and met those ancient stone eyes with defiance. My fingers trembled visibly—not from fear, I told myself, but from anticipation—as I deliberately extended my hand toward the gaping maw.

Visions of bloody stumps where my fingers used to be danced in my head.

Grimacing, I plunged my hand between its cold lips. “Bite me.”

Phrasing, Cherry cough-laughed.

I already know your taste. The stone’s voice filled the room. Mmmmmm.

I couldn’t help the shiver at its reminder that it had already taken my magic. That said, Evelyn had gotten a raspy tongue lick on her fingers and a lake full of maggots writhing in her head when the sentience spoke.

I got bupkis.

I shoved my hand in deeper. “Then you know that I’ve spent my life protecting people. I’m half-shedim and still, every single day I choose to fight for the continued safety of humans and for a world where my kind no longer has to hide.”

I took a breath, my chest rising and falling and my cheeks flushed, but the stone face didn’t jump in with any response.

“The mystic concept of neshamah, that divine spark connecting everything to the source of all life, lives inside me,” I said. “Just as it lived inside the six half shedim that Alastair Walker murdered. I ask for this power word not out of pride or vengeance, nor even to give meaning to their deaths. I stand here because of the wisdom and sacrifice of many others who helped me understand what must be done.”

The face gave nothing away, like it was waiting for me to finish before it squished me like a wee little bug.

I held my free hand out, the gesture carrying all the weight of my final, desperate hope. “Give me the power word, and I will speak it in a ritual combining its healing magic with their spilled blood. This will purge the stagnant energy within Walker and connect him to that divine spark, allowing him to fulfill his deepest desire: to create new life. And when he is made whole, when his corruption is cleansed, then I will end him. Find. Me. Worthy.”

The mouth’s smooth upper edge split into stone fangs that punched through my flesh.

I screamed, blood running off my wrist and onto the sawdust. I couldn’t pull free.

Cherry Bomb surged through my pain. Crimson hair burst from my scalp and armored scales exploded along my arms, my muscles swelling with demonic strength as short horns thrust from my temples.

I was trapped. Claws erupted from my fingers. I raked against the face.

Say your name and I shall pronounce judgment.

“I am Aviva Jacqueline Fleischer.” I ground the words out through teeth gritted in pain, tears streaming down my cheeks. Some small, terrified part of me wondered if these would be the last words I ever spoke as myself—if my name would soon be forgotten, just another erased identity fed to the fortress.

Yet still, I said my name. Because it was mine to give, mine to risk, mine to lose.

The power word materialized like thorns of jagged ice forming one by one, each syllable a separate barb that lodged at the back of my throat. Tendrils of frost spread through my body as the word crystallized, until the full weight of it was etched into the marrow of my bones, humming with dangerous potential.

“You have been found worthy,” the mouth intoned.

The torches blew out, leaving me alone with a word that could heal a monster—or end the world. In the perfect darkness, I savored my triumph where others had failed. They came for a cause. I came for an end.

Chapter3

That would have been an awesome place for the final credits to roll on this adventure, but alas, I still had the worst task ahead. I had to help Alastair perform the ritual—then kill the son of a bitch at the right moment.

A woman’s work…

The lights flicked back on, revealing I was in the fortress basement hallway again. There was no sign of Daphne or Alastair, who had probably blown a gasket waiting all this time.

Heh.

For magic lodged at the back of my throat, it was surprisingly noninvasive. I mean, it pulsed through every inch of me, but it didn’t make me gag like Daniel Suarez’s dick during my ill-fated first blow job.

“Sorry about the teeth, Dan!” Okay, I could speak normally without the power word being uttered. Good to know.

Back in human form, I was poking my head into rooms on the main floor to find Daphne, when a door blew off its hinges, whistling past me to smash against the wall. I jumped backward, arms up, protecting my face from splintered wood. My skull bounced off a tapestry that did little to soften the impact.

“Did you get it?” Alastair’s feverishly intense eyes peered into mine.

“Yes.”

His fingers dug into my shoulders. “We’re doing the ritual.”

“Obvious—”

He grabbed my arm and hauled me into the room he’d just exited.

Oh, you meant this second.

The spartan space contained a perfect circle scratched into the floor. Next to it was a small round table with a half-melted candle, a cheap lighter, and a switchblade.

I sighed. I’d been kidnapped and traumatized, did we really need to throw stabbing into the mix?

Daphne sat in a threadbare brocade chair, the only other piece of furniture. “I’m looking forward to that Merlot,” she said, looking up from a tattered Salman Rushdie novel.

“You and me both,” I said, allowing myself a moment to imagine life beyond an endless string of dangers. “First round’s on me.”

Alastair lit the candle. “I called off my people before, now make her swear not to attack me while I’m vulnerable. Neither of us gets an advantage.”

I curled my fingers into fists. That was exactly when I had to attack him. He had to die before his vampness got cranked to eleven. While he wouldn’t be as strong as a Prime, I couldn’t say how powerful he’d end up once the Luce settled.

Daphne nodded. “That’s fair.”

“Well?” Alastair flicked the blade open and sterilized it in the flame.

We can still take him, Cherry insisted. Trust me.

“Fine,” I said.

Alastair gave a mean little smile like he was looking forward to kicking my ass. Knife in hand, he stepped into the circle and pushed up his sleeve. The blade moved with inhuman precision as he carved, his jaw clenched against pain that he couldn’t ignore, yet he didn’t bleed.

That wasn’t even the strangest part.

His design defied geometry, the rune’s angles bending in ways that made my vision blur when I tried to follow them. It wasn’t so much carved into his skin as carved through it, as if it continued somewhere beneath reality. It looked less like a symbol and more like a wound in the shape of the world.

Alastair studied the rune with glassy eyes, sweat beading on his forehead. He carved one more flourish, then dropped the blade in favor of drinking from the canteen.

Every drop that slid down his chin made me itch to wrap my hands around his throat. Six lives. Six futures destroyed, and he gulped their blood like a frat boy crushing beer cans for Instagram likes.

I, however, saw the faces of the dead in every splash that hit the ground. My jaw clenched, but I forced myself to bear witness. Someone had to remember the cost.

He closed his eyes.

Guess that was my cue.

I didn’t so much speak the power word as envision it freed like a bird from a cage. The noise I made didn’t correspond to any language I’d ever heard. It was a combination of thunder trapped underwater and whale song.

All memory of its shape and sound vanished, but its release shattered something inside me. My Eishei Kodesh magic erupted, splitting my skin with cracks of blue light. The world contracted to a pinhole, sound fading to distant snaps like someone trying to wake me from a dream.

A wash of dazzling blue light stormed my vision, obscuring everything else. I felt disconnected to my body, suddenly unable to tell where my arms and legs were. No sight, no proprioception; my heartbeat spiked.

Cherry’s voice in my head was white noise, but she was helping to keep me on my feet. I had to remain upright and not show weakness. I’d sworn not to attack Alastair when he was vulnerable; he’d done no such thing in return.

Was he even still in the grips of the healing ritual? Would his fangs tear through my throat or his hands rip out my heart any moment now?

A light touch penetrated my haze and I jumped.

“My bad.” Daphne spoke calmly, but she sounded like she was speaking to me down a staticky phone line. “No need for claws. I’ve got you.”

I calmed somewhat at the feel of a chair under my butt. Synesthete overload—my vision had exploded with so many layers of blue auras that I couldn’t distinguish one object from another. The world had become a kaleidoscope of azure, cerulean, and cobalt, all of them crashing together in a blinding tidal wave of information that my brain couldn’t process.

Every Eishei Kodesh was susceptible to overload, and it manifested differently for every type of flame, but I’d never experienced it before.

Slowly, my vision cleared, sound resumed normally, and my sense of self centered in my body once more. I sucked in a shaky breath and pried my fingers off the armrest.

The air crackled with an electric bite, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I could feel Alastair’s molecules rearranging, his athletic build swelling into something that would make peak Arnold Schwarzenegger look wimpy.

His shirt shredded as muscles surged beneath skin mapped with dark veins, his flesh taking on an unnatural luminescence. He laughed with pure joy, fangs flashing, and his head thrown back in triumph like a god accepting worship.

I wasn’t about to check out his junk with my magic sight to see if he could procreate, but it was pretty fucking safe to say that the ritual worked. Looking at the raw power radiating from him, I felt dread pool in my stomach. How could I possibly defeat that?

What had I done? I could almost hear a doomsday clock ticking down, the faces of everyone who’d suffer flashing before my eyes as nausea rose in my throat. I’d given a monster exactly what he wanted and now everyone would pay the price.

Daphne watched him with the impassiveness of one who’d seen it all.

The room stilled into the unnatural silence of the eye of a hurricane. A single perfect moment of calm, marred only by the disquieting certainty that even if I survived, I had to ride out the other side of the storm.

Alastair cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and shot me an ugly leer.

I dropped into a fighter stance.

He stepped forward, then stumbled, his foot suddenly grotesquely distorted.

It was like the first domino falling in a chain that would bring down an empire.

The ground bucked, and a roar built like a thousand angry hornets trapped in steel drums.

Run, Cherry said.

Alastair slapped at a pulpy lump swimming through his veins, his muscles growing bigger and ropier and bulging out as if trying to escape his body. “Stop this!”

I grabbed for the table as the overhead light exploded, raining glass and plaster. The fortress walls shuddered with the sound of ancient stone giving up its fight against time, tremors rolling underfoot.

Alastair pleaded with whatever god or devil would listen. The thing in his veins puffed up, tearing his skin with wet, meaty pops.

We both screamed.

All his teeth elongated into fangs too large for his mouth, his face distorting and stretching until he began to vibrate, his form becoming the blur of a bad video effect.

“Help!” he begged.

Massive chunks of the ceiling crashed around me, my heart trying to punch through my ribs.

Get out! The Baroness clawed at the inside of my skull to get me to move.

“Daphne!” I spun around, and the sound that left me was pure animal fear.

She was collapsing in on herself, withering like time-lapse footage of decay. The runes etched in her flesh dimmed and faded.

I scrambled across the broken stones to reach her. “Stop this! Help yourself!”

“I can’t.” Her expression held the peace of the already dead, but her voice was the rasp of sandpaper on bone.

The power word was supposed to heal Alastair. How had things gone so wrong? Was it because the ritual was performed here in the fortress? Had Alastair lost control of whatever magic was in his rune?

I shook Daphne, as if I could shake sense into this nightmare. “Why didn’t you stop us from doing the ritual here?”

“Not my place.” She patted my arm with a hand missing most of its fingers, her reassuring smile revealing a mouth full of dust. “He actually set me free.” Her voice quivered with wonder.

The rapturous light in her eyes turned blank, and her skin crumbled away. Suddenly she collapsed, her yellowed bones clattering to the ground.

Daphne—the seemingly immortal gatekeeper—was gone in seconds. Yet somehow, impossibly, I was still standing. The unfairness of her end struck me with unexpected force, a hollowness opening in my chest for someone I barely knew but had grown to respect, perhaps even admire, in our brief, fraught encounters.

A violent rumble beneath my feet pulled me back to my immediate predicament. The fortress was tearing itself apart and Alastair…

I caught one last glimpse of terror in his eyes before his body shattered into a storm of ash.

Aviva! Cherry’s scream jolted me into motion. I was the only one left alive, and I intended to stay that way. I ran for the door, dodging falling stones, choking on centuries of disturbed dust, my ears ringing from the fortress’s death rattle.

I made it as far as the courtyard before the world turned white. The light engulfed me, and I was blasted backward. Then there was nothing but the sensation of falling, tumbling through empty space.

The Brink, that impossible realm of chaos magic, was collapsing like a house of cards—and I was caught in its freefall.