He groped for the catch hidden by illusion. At any second, he expected the demon to rip him apart, to send bits of him flying through the air like the demon had done to the priests, only his body would explode into dust. Kilian’s fingers slid into a notch and closed around a metal ring. Kilian jerked on it and prayed that Silas would be his ally in this. “God, please,” Kilian was desperate, and that drove him to call to the God of his childhood for a little help. For once in his cursed life, he needed just a little help. He ripped open the trap door that concealed his sire’s hiding place.
Chapter Eighteen
Kilian sunk his talonsinto Silas’s leg, and he silently prayed for his mentor to wake. Kilian was afraid to even look at Stephen’s demon. He felt like a child afraid of a monster under the bed, certain that if he looked, the monster would eat him.
Despite Kilian’s prayer, Silas slept on. Without direction or even his permission, Kilian's hand reached for Silas’s chest. Kilian tried to retreat; proximity to the disk left fire eating at Kilian's flesh. Despite the pain, his hand continued its inexorable movement. Off to the side, a low chuckle distracted him. Stephen’s demon watched with an intensity that made the hair on the back of Kilian's neck stand up.
“Have you figured it out yet?” The demon asked. Kilian frowned, but he had no voice. The force that had captured his hand had locked him inside his body. That same force dragged him toward the sacred disc as inevitably as gravity pinned him to the earth.
Stephen leaned forward, his head cocked. “What a beautiful monster you are,” he said with such admiration that it soured Kilian's stomach. “How are you doing that? One must admire the ingenuity of a powerful witch.”
Kilian was unable to move.
The demon chuckled again. “I can see you don't understand. I gave Stephen such hints. I let him see the shadow in your soul. But perhaps he put his faith in your ridiculous military. Perhaps he believed that they were too ethical to allow their own to suffer. After all, the fools at your last base had every chance to save you before I fed you my blood.”
The demon rocked back on his heels, his beautiful wings spreading behind him. “But someone didn’t look very deep into your soul after that mission where you ate your friend, especially considering you had been battling a witch famous for being able to take possession of others. And after all, what is the most magical ingredient in the world?”
Kilian's memory flashed. The witch in the office building, her body riddled with bullets. She whispered her incantations even as air hissed through the hole in her chest. Her fingers were spread into the pool of her own blood that collected at her feet.
Kilian blinked and forced himself to focus on the current horror and not those old ones.
“You see it now, don't you?” The demon grinned maniacally, but Kilian couldn’t respond because his soul was on fire. His fingers closed around the disk that some ancient hand had lovingly carved from the wood that Christ's blood had soaked into, but Kilian felt no need to go to sleep like Silas had. His body was vibrating apart, like his molecules desired nothing more than to be as far away from one another as possible. He expected himself to explode into a storm of dust and ash. Yet he couldn’t let go.
“After all,” the demon said, “what is that fool known for? I told you. You asked me and I told you that his most important trait was resurrection.”
Kilian had disagreed, citing forgiveness. But the pain was so great that conscious thought slid away like a fish in a stream darting away from a clumsy hand. Kilian began to shake, the same preternatural spasms he'd witnessed in Stephen before the wings had erupted, only this time what erupted from Kilian's hand was another hand. This one was smaller with long, emaciated fingers and age spots. The second hand clutched the disk as it tried to pull itself out of Kilian's flesh. Kilian collapsed onto the floor next to the niche that held Silas’s body.
The demon crouched next to Kilian and repeated himself. “Where did you learn such a skill?” The demon tilted its head first one way and then the other as it studied Kilian. “What a beautiful little monster you are, witch. How do you manipulate flesh so skillfully?”
Kilian arched his back as another spasm shook his body. Pain was his only reality as molecules fought to rip themselves free of one another. The witch’s arm appeared from Kilian’s flesh. “What the fuck,” he gasped, his voice a rough whisper.
“If the pain weren't addling your brain, you could figure that out easily enough,” the demon said. “She was dying, so she hid herself in you until the opportunity presented itself in the form of that holy artifact. You say Christ is known for forgiveness, but I told you—his most important trait is resurrection. She is reborn using his power. But, of course, a vampire as young as you could never survive touching something so sacred; therefore, she has been weaving her spells to strengthen your body.” Stephen winked at Kilian. “I might have provided a small boost with my blood, but what's a little power between friends?”
Another spasm shook Kilian, and this time he screamed and writhed in pain, his body flopping until he slammed the back of his skull against the stone floor. The demon slipped his hand behind Kilian's head in an obscenely gentle gesture.
“I think she's earned her right to come back,” the demon said, “especially since she has made you so much stronger. No doubt she intends to kill you once she's ripped her way free, but she and I will have a discussion about that. You are too strong to sacrifice to the vindictive whims of a pathetic human, and that's all witches are. They are humans with the barest hint of talent at touching the power that underlies the universe. She will not touch you. And once she is gone, you and I can make of this world what we want.”
