he came to human form with a shiver of his body to gather in his energy and shake off a feather or two, he stood in a dark graveyard packed with tombstones, mausoleums, crumbling stone crosses and moss-frosted angels. Fully clothed, a phenomenon beyond his explanation, he wore no trace of his previous form. He could smell the anomaly immediately and felt its presence as a tightening in his horn nubs. And the witch ward on his forearm burned as it had not previously in the alley.
When his eyes landed on the band of growling creatures—who were wrapped in shredded linens, some of their hair gone and skin indeed falling away from some of their bones—he heard his friend’s scream. And witnessed his destruction.
Laurent let out one agonizing shout at sight of Ed: “Les Douze!” Then his body was torn away at shoulders, hips and head. His remains did not immediately ash as with most demon deaths.
One of the hideous creatures sighted Ed. He reactively sent a stream of energy mined from his vita, his very life force, toward it, which manifested as black smoke, enforced with demonic magic. The force should knock it from its feet and slam it into the nearby tombstone, breaking its body and killing it. The current of black energy coiled about the creature. Instead of succumbing to defeat, the zombielike thing merely swayed as if an annoying breeze had washed over its decrepit structure.
The rest of the creatures spied Ed. The one next to the thing that had taken his energy zap as if a mosquito sting dropped Laurent’s disembodied arm and growled at him. One opened its mouth and the lower jaw unhinged.
“Didn’t think zombies existed,” he hissed.
Zombies were not tops on his list. He never watched the popular television show because they were so unbelievable. The dead did not come back to life. Right?
The group of things—whatever they were—groaned and stalked toward him.
Ed knew when he was overwhelmed, and he was going to count his lacking ability to put the one off its feet to lingering remnants of the sexy witch’s binding spell.
“Find your rest, Laurent!” he shouted, then shifted to a conspiracy and flew out of there and back to his home, where he landed on the rooftop, fell to his knees and caught his palms on the concrete surface.
It was raining harder, and he prayed no lightning snapped the sky. Lightning worked like an electrical jolt to his bones, no matter how distant the occurrence.
Shifting into and out of his humanlike demon form took a lot out of him. He rarely utilized the skill because he could generally get where he needed to go by car or on foot. He’d be exhausted for hours now. But he was safe at home. Safe from...
“What the hell killed my friend?”
Les Douze was French for The Twelve. And something about that moniker rang a bell in Ed’s memory. Perhaps he and Laurent had discussed it once? But why, and what did it mean?
After searching for hours through the database his office maintained—hacked from Hawkes Associates—Ed learned The Twelve had been a coven of witches from the eighteenth century who had been accused of witchcraft by the locals and burned to death in the Place de Grève, which was now the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, or city hall. A remarkable and grisly event that the human Parisians had talked about for decades and the real witches would never forget.
That verified what Ed suspected. He rubbed the small, solid black circle sigil on his forearm that had burned when he’d first landed in the cemetery. Indeed, those creatures had been witches. But what sort? Witches were generally alive. Not even generally, but rather, exclusively.
Those things after Laurent had been remarkably zombielike. With skin falling from their limbs, their only audible sounds had been grunts and groans. Strange, metallic gray stuff had oozed from their mouths. But really? Had dead witches killed Laurent?
“But Les Douze were burned,” he muttered, closing his laptop and leaning back in his office chair. “They were reduced to ashes. Things don’t come back from the dead. Not usually.”
He’d heard the rumor about a tribe of revenant vampires who had been resurrected from the dead. And sure, he guessed dark magic could bring anything back to life. A dark witch or warlock could conjure such a monstrosity. But it would be a real zombie. Zombies were shambling bone sacks. Their brains had to be degraded or completely gone. A revenant could not feasibly survive for long.
As far as he knew.
Ed wasn’t up on zombies and dead things. He didn’t want to be, either. But he had watched his friend get torn, literally, limb from limb. He couldn’t ignore that horrific incident. And no doubt, Laurent had tried to communicate something about Les Douze.
The office was quiet and vast. Black marble stretched the floor and up all the walls. It was peaceful here six floors above the big bustling city. Sometimes too peaceful. But then again, something always happened to shake him to the core and exercise his diplomacy and survival skills. Like impossible zombie witches killing his friend.
Thinking about witches made Ed shudder. Demons and witches had a strange and volatile relationship. Most witches could not control a demon unless they had originally summoned that demon. Likewise, demons hadn’t much control over witches. But the most powerful witches could control demons and use them for nefarious means. Every demon child was told scary tales at bedtime, and Ed’s mother had loved to frighten him with tales of wicked witches.
There’s nothing you can do to outrun them. He recalled the creepy, dramatic voice of his mother, Sophie, as she’d lean over the bed and speak to the sheet he’d pulled over his head in fright. If you ever see a witch, Edamite, run!
Of course, then his mother would laugh and leave him shivering in bed, wishing his father were actually married to his mother and living with them so he could run to him for a sympathetic hug. It hadn’t been that his mother was vindictive. Ed guessed she simply never realized how those tales had freaked out her son.
Unfortunately, such childhood frights had not completely warned him off witches. He’d dated two. Two too many.
The first had been flighty and fascinated by his demonic nature, yet had only lasted so long as he could endure her silly human propensity to gossip, shop and text, text and text some more. The second had tried to enslave him and had come so close that he’d felt her power strip him of his innate magical defenses. It had been three days of relentless torture he would never forget.
But he was a grown man now. He was a high-ranked demon in the city of Paris, thanks to his not showing fear in the face of challenge and his tendency to take charge and get things done. He was respected and revered by his kind. And witches should walk a wide circle around him.
Not kiss him.
You were the one who kissed her.
Funny thing, that. She must have used magic to get him to lock lips with her. Why she would do that was beyond him. Must have been a distraction so he wouldn’t strangle her in retaliation for the binding. Weird way to go about shifting the balance of power. And how had she, a witch, controlled him when she had not summoned him?
“She must have great power,” he muttered.
But did it matter? He should not give another moment’s consideration to a pretty witch with wide green eyes and soft lips, whose derriere had wiggled teasingly in her tight skirt. He’d learned his lesson. Witches could never be trusted.
There were more important things on the table now.
Some very powerful magic had been present in that cemetery. It had torn Laurent apart. As well, he’d felt the air crackle with the unseen magic. A force greater than the creatures he’d witnessed, perhaps? He wielded demonic magic, but if the tales of demon/witch relations were accurate, it was never effective against witches for long. And he suspected his ability to use magic against witches had irrevocably weakened, thanks to his ill-fated romance with Witch