Demonic Revenge continues:
Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven
Vasya
turned to Cindy, and his expression gentled. He touched her cheek and leaned in
to kiss her forehead. “We will continue this,” he murmured softly, and smiled
down at her.
Rémy’s low
growl was barely discernible, but clearly heard by the prince. He winked at
Cindy, then stepped back.
“Aimé, I
would like your help with a small project.”
Startled,
Aimé nodded.
“Do we
need to post a guard at Cindy’s door?” Rémy asked, his voice betraying the
seething anger that was still bubbling beneath his outward calm.
Matéo
spoke his name quietly, warning implicit, and the younger des Quatre-Frères
gave a curt nod of understanding.
“Try to
get some rest, bella,” Vasya
suggested after the brothers had filed into the next room. At her hesitant nod,
he paused and smiled. “All will be well again soon, cara mia,” he promised.
* * * * *
“I will
need Acacia and Asafoetida,” Vasya told Aimé once they were all seated. Rémy
had returned to his work on the sword, and it didn’t escape the ancient’s
notice that he handled the rapier with near reverence as he restored the blade
to working order. He was a gifted weapons master.
“Acacia
for protection and psychic powers, and Asafoetida for exorcism?” Aimé questioned.
“Asafoetida is also used as
protection, as well as exorcism and purification,” Vasya informed him, watching
as the meaning of his request was understood.
“You intend to take Cindy with us?” Matéo
voiced the question that wasn’t really a question at all.
“If we expect to save her, and get out
alive ourselves, we need her to cast the incantation to trap the demon,” Vasya
replied calmly.
Uneasiness settled over the room like a
mantle, and Vasya braced for a potential rebellion from the des Quatre-Frères. Aimé
rose and nodded. “I’ll find what you need.”
“Grazie,”
Vasya said as he rose from his chair. “I need fresh herbs, but only in a small
amount.”
Aimé nodded his understanding, and left the
room.
Matéo eyed him closely for several moments,
and Vasya withheld a scrutiny that would have made most look away.
“Why now?”
Vasya considered ignoring the query, then
chose to answer. “Change is coming, even in the hallowed history of Venice. We
need unity among the European Clans again,” he stated. “My brother, half-brother,” he corrected, “wants to
take control of things he does not understand. Were it up to me, I would still
be walking the plains of Siberia.”
“Will you
lead,” Matéo asked. “Or simply unite the Clans again?”
“If I am
to unite them, I must be prepared to lead them into a changing world,” Vasya
said with a heavy sigh. “A world I barely recognize myself.”
“Should
you need us, Clan des Quatre-Frères will stand with you, Viscount Petrova.”
Vasya held
the Alpha’s steady gaze, then bowed to him. “My gratitude to you, Lord Alpha,”
he said formally.
* * * * *
Morning
came much too quickly, and when Cindy entered the adjoining room of the suite
she was supposed to share with her friend, the four powerful males all rose.
Vasya stepped toward her first, and lifted her hand to kiss it.
“Let us
hope this days ends well, bella mia,”
he murmured. “So we can continue to get to know each other better.”
Cindy saw
Rémy’s scowl from the corner of her eye, but he said nothing. Vasya drew her
attention back to him when he pulled a pendant from the pocket of his dark silk
shirt. It hung on a long silver chain, and looked like a round locket. As he
placed it around her neck, he explained.
“The
incantation I taught you has been captured here,” he told her. “If you falter,
it will help you remember, to hear the words as I have spoken them to you.”
She nodded
and hugged him tight. Looking past him, she met the serious gazes of each of
the brothers, lingering longest on Rémy, who managed to appear both fierce and
lost.
“Where are
we going to do this?” Matéo asked.
“There is
a garden not far from here, just outside the hallowed grounds of the church we
visited when gathering what was needed to fight the demon. It is remote and
will serve us well,” Vasya decreed.
“Young
one,” he addressed Rémy, who glared at him. “The Aducător de moarte,
if you will?”
Rémy handed over the sword, once
again a weapon of rare beauty. The silvery steel gleamed in the light, the
runes appearing to shift in the heavy metal. Vasya tested the blade to find it
honed to a sharp, lethal edge. “You have done your work well,” he said. “Shall
we?” He indicated the door.
A short while after leaving the
hotel, they stood in a small circle, Cindy in the middle, surrounded by the
males. Vasya took out the wicked looking dagger, sliced it across his forearm,
and turned to allow his blood to anoint the ground where they stood.
“Always blood,” Cindy muttered.
Vasya actually smiled at her. “Blood
is life. Life is power.” Before she could reply, he began to speak the ancient
words of magic...
* * * * *
Denysé
shuddered when the suffocating heat was suddenly leeched from the room. She
scrambled to her feet and backed up a couple of paces, until she hit the wall
and for a moment was certain it wanted to suck her into itself. The heat
burned, and she started to look around, wondering where he’d appear from this
time.
“Well show
yourself, Asshole,” she shouted, after a few minutes. The cell was breathing,
she felt the air currents. It made her skin crawl with apprehension, and
terror.
A
claw-like nail skittered up her spine and she whirled around. He was once again
in black, looking deceptively human.
“They are
coming for you,” he informed her.
She stood
facing him, hands clenching into fists. “Then I guess I’ll be leaving soon,”
she snapped. It was bravado and they both knew it. Azazel laughed, his mirth
seemingly genuine.
“You might
have been amusing if you hadn’t been laying with dogs,” he noted.
“Fuck
you!”
He took a
step toward her, menace pouring off him as his urbane exterior gave way to his
true form. She was dead, and she knew it.
Closing
her eyes, she waited, and the roar that ripped through the air was picked up
and echoed over and over, shaking the ground she stood on. When she dared to
open her eyes, they were no longer in the cell, she was standing between two
lesser demons, and Azazel was leering down at her. A flick of his hand was all
it took, and the demons on either side of her chained her to the wall. Azazel
turned his back and waited, the rising screams reaching a deafening crescendo
before sudden silence enveloped them.
Stepping
out of thin air, the ancient and powerful wolf prince appeared first, and her
breath left her when she saw who was with him. A pale and freaked out Cindy,
and behind her, three of the des Quatre Frères. The Alpha, the shaman, and her
beloved Rémy. Hope screamed to life inside her, and terror ran on its heels.
* * * * *
“We meet
again, Hell-spawn,” Vasya said, moving to stand directly in front of the
towering demon. “You have something of mine, I want it back!”
Azazel’s
laughter boomed, and he gestured for the two demons on either side of his
prisoner to attack.
Vasya drew
the sword, and the brothers fanned out at his back. Cindy moved to one side,
and the moment the demons attacked, she began to do what she’d been instructed
to do.
Snarls of
rage filled the room as Matéo and Aimé and Rémy shifted and attacked in their
wolf form. Howls and barks of rage were unnerving. Cindy tried to block out the
battle as it raged so short a distance away from her, and began to chant the
incantation. She was having trouble remembering the Romanian spell. Shaking she
held the locket in both hands and concentrated, starting again. In her mind,
she heard Vasya’s voice, as though it whispered from inside the locket, and she
spoke the words as she had the previous day, reciting exactly what he taught
her. Once it had begun, she felt tingles of power, like small jolts of
electricity running along her nerve endings. She pulled the dagger and ran it
across her palm, wincing at the pain, but
determined to do as she’d been instructed.
Vasya let
the des Quatre-Fréres take care of the two lesser demons, and he continued his
assault on Azazel. Blow after blow rained down on the demon as he sliced into
demonic flesh, blood running in rivulets along the sticky blade of the sword.
Rémy had used the sacred holy water generously, and each time the blade made
contact with the demon, it cut and burned that much deeper. The sword hummed in
his grip, but he knew the power it should have was not present. Azazel found a
weakness and he sent the prince sprawling with a crushing backhanded blow.
Dazed, Vasya rolled away, his grip on the weapon still firm. Above the din, he
heard Cindy reciting the incantation for the second time, and knew the circle
had been drawn.
“Now!” he
ordered, and the brothers began to circle the demon, pushing him closer to the
circle that would allow them to destroy him. The three huge black wolves were
deadly, narrowing the distance quickly, working swiftly to keep Azazel off
balance. Vasya moved so fast he was a blur when the demon lord captured the
smallest of the wolves and began to choke the life from him. The lethal blade
sliced off the hand that held Aimé and the demon roared to shake the entire
area. As he fell, Aimé shifted back to human form, revulsion filling his
expression as he threw off the limb that moments before had almost killed him.
Azazel
turned on the other two des Quatre-Frères, but Rémy was already falling back to
make a full on attack. Vasya measured the distance and decided to take a risk.
He dropped the sword, and shifted. For the first time, his wolf form was seen
by everyone. He was almost as tall in his natural form as he was in his human
body, his coat deepest brown, with silver markings around onyx eyes. He
launched at the demon and threw him back into the circle as Cindy jumped clear.
Vasya tore into the demon’s throat, blood spraying from the gaping wound he’d
created.
Azazel’s
rage erupted, and he flung the prince aside, regaining his footing, then he began
to stalk in for the kill. Rémy leaped, his wolf form shifting even as he landed
near the sword and lifted it. He finished the graceful spin, throwing every
ounce of strength he had into the sweeping arc of the sword as he severed the
demon’s head from his body. The body fell back into the circle, and the sword
screamed with power as the body of Azazel exploded into flames...
Can't get enough? Meet the Brothers des Quatre-Frères HERE:
Book One: Hour of the Wolf (Matéo)
Book Two: Thrown to the Wolves (Sébastien)
Book Three: Cry Wolf (Aimé)
Book Four: Wolf at the Door (Rémy)
Coming Soon
Book One: Hour of the Wolf (Matéo)
Book Two: Thrown to the Wolves (Sébastien)
Book Three: Cry Wolf (Aimé)
Book Four: Wolf at the Door (Rémy)
Coming Soon
You kick ass, Denyse! Love ya!
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