“And my people never wanted their territory stolen,” Takoma shot back.
Fatima pressed hard against Spencer’s leg, growling low in her throat. Spencer took a step forward, edging in front of Takoma, and Fatima followed, ever faithful. “Who’d you sell your soul to for the Ouroboros Mirror?”
Caitlin’s laughter wasn’t the answer he expected. “The Ouroboros Mirror was always ours, the means to make it gifted to us by our Duke. Astaroth was always who our ancestor guided us to pray to. Emersyn was supposed to witness his return to us, but youtook her from me.”
“Your girlfriend was messing around with people’s souls on your orders. She was a dead woman walking whether you liked it or not.” Spencer tightened his fingers on the mageglobe, eyes on the swirling power of the demon. “I’m more curious about how you lost the Ouroboros Mirror to the government.”
“We didn’t lose it. The governmentstoleit.”
“A familiar refrain,” Takoma said.
“That’s the worst thing to have in common,” Spencer said.
Caitlin raised her arms over her head, fingers reaching for the Ouroboros Mirror. Her soul was the only one not choked down to nothing by a demon riding it, and Spencer wondered if she was meant to be a vessel for whatever Duke was twisting through the air, waiting on a sacrifice.
So focused on the demonic threat, Spencer never saw the poltergeist until it was too late. It slammed into them, throwing them both forward. Spencer crashed to his knees, looking over in horror at the swirl of nova-star brightness as it burrowed its way into the center of the void where Takoma’s soul used to reside.
Takoma’s mouth opened on a soundless scream, hands tearing at his chest as he writhed on the floor as if he were seizing. Spencer shoved himself to his feet, throwing his mageglobe forward with its cage readied when he was slammed back, away from the circle, by the swirling incorporeal form of Astaroth. Spencer hit the wall, head knocking back with a sharpness that made the world spin and grow dimmer. His teeth cut his tongue, flooding his mouth with blood.
Fatima threw herself in front of him, snarling at the Great Duke of Hell, her form hazy at the edges.You do not belong here!
Spencer watched in horror as the poltergeist anchored itself inside Takoma in a way not unlike possession and dragged him across the floor, over the pentagram, right to the heart of all that magic. “Takoma!”
Spencer ignored the pain in his head and the ache in his ribs as he stood. He conjured up another mageglobe, spinning the cage outward to line the gallery from the floor to the glass cupola above. He powered it with an unending flow of magic from the ley line that burned through his soul.
“You can’t stop us,” Caitlin said, wild-eyed in her belief of the atrocity she was committing. “We areowedthis.”
“You’re not owedshit,” Spencer snarled. “Let himgo.”
“I watched him kill my sons,” John Adler said, using Takoma’s mouth as the poltergeist jerked Takoma to a standing position like a broken doll.
“Theymurderedhis tribal members.”
“This monster told me there were worse things than death, and I am here to show him the folly of his actions.” He smiled, Takoma’s mouth twisted in a grotesque expression of glee. “He will pay for what was done to my family.”
The words were all wrong, the tone some mix of Takoma’s cadence and the poltergeist’s scraped-raw echo. With his sideways sight, Spencer could see the way the poltergeist burned inside the void that had always shadowed Takoma. It tore through the edges of that space, anchoring deep, creating a faux soul where one hadn’t resided since Takoma became a vampire. But vampires weren’t meant to carry souls—theirs or someone else’s—and the blood magic that sustained Takoma reacted badly to the unwanted presence.
But none of that mattered when a Great Duke of Hell possessed the poltergeist in Takoma’s body.
Astaroth’s presence contracted within Takoma’s body inside the casting circle, cleaving itself to what remained of John Adler’s soul. Spencer couldn’t hear himself screaming in defiance over the roar of the demon finding a foothold in the mortal world.
The darkness now residing in Takoma’s soul was hideouslywrong.
Spencer could see the lines drawn between the poltergeist and the demon, but there was nothing for him to grab hold of, nothing to break them free of because Takoma was soulless. He couldn’t remove a demon from a void.
He blinked his sight back to normal, reeling with the realization that it was Astaroth staring back at him, not Takoma. The demon smiled, twisting Takoma’s face into something ugly.
“My faithful have certainly fulfilled their promises,” Astaroth said, the demon’s voice echoing through Takoma’s. “Do you know how much they prayed for this?”
“I don’t care,” Spencer spat.
Astaroth’s focus moved past Spencer, a flicker of irritation crossing Takoma’s face. Spencer couldn’t afford to take his eyes off the demon, but judging by the sudden smell of smoke wafting his way, he knew what had caught Astaroth’s attention.
Spencer never looked away from the demon’s black eyes, trusting in the backup that Patrick had sent him. “Wade? Burn it to the ground.”
He needed to save his strength to exorcise a Duke of Hell. Dragons, in Spencer’s limited experience, didn’t get tired the way magic users did. And Wade? Well, he had no problem listening to Spencer’s order.
Dragon fire ripped through the air, burning through the casting circle and its barrier ward with ease to engulf the Ouroboros Mirror. The backlash was immediate, tearing through Caitlin and her coven on the casting circle, disrupting their magic. All that power had to go somewhere, and it burned through every single magic user in an instant.
