Dance with the Demon by Stacia Stark

7

Danica

Iwoke up angry. This wasn’t uncommon for me– I typically harnessed a healthy amount of rage just to get through my day. But the fury that swept through me warned me that I wasn’t going to be happy when I opened my eyes.

The heady scent of cedar and citrus was my second clue. I opened my eyes and sat up. Once again, my knives were on the table next to Samael’s bed.

I stared at him. One second to reach across and grab a throwing knife, another to aim… I could have it buried in Samael’s throat in less than three seconds.

“So what, you put me in your bed and then watch me sleep like a creepy creeper?”

His lips twitched. He was sitting a few feet from the bed, his legs stretched out in front of him as his eyes scanned the book in his lap.

“Tell me that isn’t the McCormick coven’s grimoire.”

He looked up and gave me a wicked smile. “I’m not in the habit of lying to you.”

I wrestled with that. I hadn’t wanted the grimoire to fall into the wrong hands, but that didn’t mean that Samael’s hands were the right ones.

“What are you going to do with that?”

He was silent and I cursed. I knew what he’d do with it. Anything he damn pleased.

“You snore.”

“Do not.”

I sure did. My nose was broken a few years ago, the cartilage turned to mush. I hadn’t been able to afford an experienced healer, and he’d described the cartilage in the tip of my nose as a ‘mosaic’. While he’d managed to straighten it on the outside, he’d warned me that things were ‘a little fucked up,’ on the inside.

And now I snored.

“What time is it?” I was so mad I couldn’t even look at him.

“Three pm. Your body wanted to sleep for longer, however I knew you would want to get to work so I lifted my compulsion.”

“That’s real fucking good of you.”

I threw his blankets off me. If I wasn’t so furious, I’d be fighting the urge to roll over and go back to sleep.

“Vassago located the cameras close to your gnome friend’s store. Steve is working on them now.”

I almost stumbled. “Thank you.”

He was silent while I pulled on my jeans. I didn’t even care that I was standing in my underwear and a t-shirt. When he spoke again, his voice was very quiet.

“I don’t like it when you’re displeased with me.”

He said it in a tone that suggested I get over my displeasure real quick. I scowled over my shoulder at him. “Displeased? Try fucking furious.”

His nostrils flared. “I’m not used to taking others’ emotions into account. I see a problem and I fix it.”

I had a feeling that was the closest Samael ever came to an apology. In his mind, the problem was me. I was tired. So he fixed it. I could see the twisted demon logic even if I couldn’t get past the missing piece of autonomy.

I shook my head. If Samael had his way, this would be my life. Always falling in line with whatever he decided was the correct choice for me.

I slid my Mark II into my spine sheath and strapped it on. “Every time you do something like this, it makes me loathe you. You realize that, right?”

A hand clamped down on my shoulder, turning me in place. Samael’s expression was hard, and a muscle twitched in his cheek.

“I have lost everyone who ever mattered to me,” he hissed. “I won’t lose you too.”

I opened my mouth, but his power was already slamming into me, crushing my shield as if it was made of paper. The world around me disappeared. The only thing I could feel was his hand on me.

I stared up at my father who had turned a sickly white. “Your grandfather is dead,” he said. “Our enemies have conspired all these years, chipping away at his power and turning those closest to him.”

I didn’t understand. How could grandfather be dead? He ruled the underworld.

I twitched, raising my hands to Samael’s chest. His hand clamped down harder on my shoulder.

Outside, the sound of screams assaulted our ears. My father pulled me toward a window. “Look,” he ordered. “Look at what he has done.”

Our palace was surrounded. Someone was using their power to keep my grandfather’s body high in the air, a gruesome display for all to see. His throat was cut, his eyes missing. He was old enough and strong enough that, given a chance, he could heal such injuries, but the crowd would behead him long before that happened.

Who could be powerful enough to kill him? I began to shake.

“They will do the same to me, Samael.”

“But why, father?”

“Because our enemies wish to have no challenge when they take your grandfather’s throne.” He suddenly grabbed me. “Look away.”

It was too late. My mother’s body had been raised next to my grandfather’s. My gentle mother, who tickled me, told me stories, and whispered that she loved me more than life itself.

“Take your sister.” My father pressed her into my arms. Alette was only one. She didn’t know what was happening, but even she knew it was bad. She began to cry, and my father sent her to sleep.

“You will run, Samael. You will run, and you will grow up, and when you return, you will kill your enemies and take your grandfather’s place on his throne.”

“But–”

“Look after your sister. You know where to go.”

I did. Recently, my father had begun running drills, timing me as I ran through the hidden passages within our home.

“Get to the River Styx. The ferryman will take you to Hades. He knows where to hide you.”

“Come with us.”

My father was already drawing away, his face hard. He had loved my mother more than life itself, and I knew these would be some of the last words he ever spoke. He pushed my bed to the side and opened the hidden latch, revealing the passageway. He took Alette from my arms, watched me climb down the short ladder, and then pressed a kiss to her sleeping face.

He handed her to me and began to gather his power.

“Go, Samael. And remember, you will lay waste to our enemies.”

I stared at him. “I will,” I promised. “Goodbye, father.”

“Goodbye, son.”

I ran and ran, holding my sister tightly in my arms. Alette was small but heavy, and I panted, sobbing for my mother. Long minutes later, I forced myself to wipe my tears as I cracked open the door to the dungeon, tiptoeing through the silent cell and outside.

“What did I say? I told you he’d be here.”

Hands grabbed me, ripping Alette from my arms.

“Your father truly thought you could escape? His arrogance knows no bounds.” Niyax, my grandfather’s second. He’d betrayed him.

Niyax smiled at me, pulling me toward the crowd. Soldiers surround me on all sides, hundreds, thousands of them.

I screamed, reaching for my sister. He waved a hand and one of his men dropped her on the cold ground. He lifted his sword, impaling Alette’s tiny body.

I roared, drowning in agony. My sister loved me. I told her stories, cuddled her when she was sad, promised to teach her everything I knew about the secret passageways in our home.

She was supposed to grow up. We were meant to be siblings for the rest of our lives.

Alette was the baby. Loved and doted on by all who knew her.

I was supposed to protect her.

The demon in front of me lifted his own sword. “Goodbye, Samael.”

My power engulfed me. It tore through my body like wildfire. Too soon. I wasn’t supposed to come into my power yet. I was too young. It would rip me apart.

But it would also rip these demons apart. I would be with my family. But first, I would make these men suffer.

Demon fire streamed from me, and the men around me began to scream. My body shook with the overload of power, but it spread, destroying everything in its path.

Moments later, I was alone. The men who had killed my family were nothing but ash, floating on the breeze. The taste of it filled my mouth, got stuck in my nostrils and I choked on it as I gasped, falling to my knees.

I crawled to my sister, blood pouring from my mouth and nose. I took her tiny body in my arms and lay down, waiting to die.

Long moments later, a face appeared above me.

“Time to go, Samael.”

The ferryman.

“No. Let me die.”

He laughed, the sound hoarse, and reached into my pocket, withdrawing a coin. “I made a deal with your father. Besides, you’re not going to die. You’re much too powerful for that.” He gently took my sister from my arms, ignoring my attempts to hold her.

I tried not to glance back, but I couldn’t help myself. My father’s body had joined my mother and grandfather, his mouth still frozen in a snarl.

“We’ll bury them somewhere pretty,” he promised. “Now let’s go.”

The memory faded. I stared at Samael, my chest so tight I could barely get the words out. “Your family.”

“I apologize,” he said, his face turning blank as he stepped away.

“No. It’s okay.” I raised my hand toward his face, let it hang awkwardly in the air, and then dropped it. “I’m sorry. How old were you?”

“Eight of your years.”

“What happened to the people who did it?”

“I killed most of them. But not enough. One of them took my grandfather’s throne, and he sits on it still.”

“Your grandfather was the ruler of the underworld?”

A sharp nod. I studied his face. At eight, the amount of power he’d used had been unimaginable. If I hadn’t seen it through his eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’d thought him powerful when I watched him destroy the witches, but compared to turning an army to ash as a child, killing the coven was likely as mundane to him as washing his hands.

Samael had been tasked with protecting his sister, and he’d failed. Bile crept up my throat at the memory of her tiny, fragile body. It had happened centuries ago, but Samael’s memory was crystal clear.

I wanted to discuss this more. To ask who had raised him. I was suddenly desperate to know what else had shaped him into the man he was today.

“You wish to get back to work,” he said. “Go.”

“Samael.”

He turned away, but I didn’t miss the tiny hint of vulnerability in his eyes. The stiffness of his shoulders. He was sad. And I was about to do something stupid.

I followed him, and he turned back to me, any hint of feeling gone from his blank face.

I slid my hand up his chest and marveled at the ridges of his muscles. My hand seemed to have a mind of its own, sliding up to his neck. Both of us barely breathed. Finally, he stiffened, his eyes burning.

“Don’t pity me, bounty hunter.”

“I don’t.”

He glowered at me, and I shook my head. “It’s not pity. It’s sympathy.”

I rose onto my tiptoes and pressed a kiss against his chin. And another against the corner of his mouth. He lowered his head, and I brushed my lips against his. To date, our kisses had been full of lust and frustration. This was… gentle. Samael went exceedingly still… as if I was a wild animal he didn’t want to startle. His lips softened against mine, and his hands fisted by his sides, as if he was barely restraining himself.

I stepped back. “I’d better get back to work.”

He gazed at me, and I was pretty sure the demon saw more than I wanted him to see.

“Steve’s office is located on the third floor.”

“Thanks.”

My mind whirled as I stepped into the elevator. My last sight of Samael was him standing in front of the window, his legs spread as he stared down at his territory. Alone.

Steve raised his gaze from his work as I walked into his office. “You look… rested.”

“Shut it. What have you got for me?”

“We have three shots of the suspect in the cloak. They’re not great. Gary’s cameras seem to have mostly been for decoration.

Goddamn it, Gary.

“Any of them give you anything good?”

“The tattoo parlor had a functioning camera.”

Steve pressed a few buttons, and I leaned closer as the video began to play. “He’s got his hood up.”

“Yeah. Smart guy. See how he’s hunching his shoulder and turning his face away here? He knows exactly where the cameras are.”

I watched the video, but it didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t known. The asshole who’d hurt Gary came from the west. He walked quickly but not overly suspiciously. Steve pulled up the three still shots from the video and I studied them. The cloak shifted slightly as the guy turned toward Gary’s store and I squinted. “There’s something about him that seems familiar.”

Steve raised one eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I shook my head. I couldn’t place it. “Can you print these out for me?”

“Already have.”

“Thanks.”

Steve gave me a sympathetic look. “Good luck.”

I left Steve attempting to clean up the pictures and drove to Selina’s, my mind replaying the memories Samael had shown me.

He’d been so young to witness such horror. To lose his entire family. And then he’d come into such a terrible power, right when he’d had vengeance on his mind. What did that do to a kid?

When I was sent the pictures of my mom’s body, sprawled on the street as if she was trash… my world had stopped turning. I suddenly had no goals, no plans, nothing except the need to find whoever had killed her and make them pay.

Something told me Samael was the same.

Selina lived on the outskirts of Trinity Park, close to West Club Boulevard, which separated Trinity Park from Walltown. She’d added several squat pots of flowers on either side of the steps to her porch, and bright pink flowers spilled out of them— the pots already struggling to contain them. Her lawn was still as green and lush as ever. I had a feeling that Selina’s lawn stayed perfect year-round.

She opened the door as I got out of my car, beaming at me.

“Danica. I was just thinking about you.”

I couldn’t help but smile. There was something disarming about Selina’s friendliness. I relaxed fully in her presence, which was something I didn’t do around most people.

“How do you look so good all the time?” I asked. She was wearing a turquoise dress with purple flowers dotted across it, dangly earrings which almost brushed her shoulders, and her hair was in a simple messy bun. Her dark skin glowed, and her feet were bare— toenails painted a bright coral.

She reached out to hug me as I made it to her front door. “I’ll take the compliment. Come in.”

Selina turned and gestured for me to follow her inside. She bypassed the stairs and instead chose the kitchen. I took a seat at the counter and frowned. Selina hadn’t just been thinking of me, she’d obviously known I was coming.

She poured me a glass of sweet tea and offered me a plate. “Help yourself.”

“You didn’t need to do this.”

“Something told me you hadn’t eaten lunch.” She took her own plate and we both loaded up on fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans.

“You need my help.”

I gave her a hard stare. “You know it’s really annoying when you do that.”

She burst out laughing. “Give a witch some credit. You look exhausted, and you’re attacking that food like you’ve never eaten before. You have a grim look about you, Danica. What happened?”

I filled her in, starting with the way I’d threatened Gary. She waved her hand. “He obviously forgave you if he asked you to take care of his boys.”

I shook my head, reaching for my tea. “He had no choice.”

“He could’ve asked you to take them somewhere else. The very power that scared him also gave him the certainty that you’d keep his children safe.”

“Mmmm.”

Selina shook her head at me, her long earrings dancing. “You’re having control issues.”

“Yeah. When I first realized I had this power, I didn’t want it. As soon as I find whoever killed my mom, I’m out of here, and this amount of power is wasted on me, you know? And then I realized I could use it to help me search, and to protect me along the way, and I started thinking ‘hey, maybe it’s not that bad after all.’” I used my finger to draw a star on the condensation forming on my glass. “But I don’t want to be this person.”

“You don’t want to be feared for your power.”

I nodded.

“When I was a kid, no one knew I had any power,” she said.

I angled my head. “I can believe that.” Even now, Selina kept her power tucked away so tightly that I couldn’t sense if she was a gray witch, or wholly white. I occasionally got a glimpse of a deep well of power, but only if I was paying attention.

“My power manifested young, but it wasn’t celebrated. My mother had fallen in love with my father at a young age. She was black, he was white. She was a witch, he was a human. Their differences were stark, but they had a deep love for each other. Unfortunately, while I still have a deep respect for my father, I can recognize that his ignorance around power did no one any good.

“He’d insisted that my mother break from her coven. We weren’t living with them, but he didn’t approve of her visiting, even weekly. Once she left, he made it clear that he was completely disgusted by magic. Any urge she had to use her power was met with disdain and revulsion.”

“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”

Selina nodded. “My mother was a powerful witch. To her, using that power was as natural as breathing. When I was born, she couldn’t feel any spark of power within me. For a while she mourned, wondering if her insistence on never using magic while she was pregnant had magically crippled me. After a few years, she had decided it was a gift. She had moved far from her coven, and we lived in a human neighborhood, close to where my father worked. Everything was great. For a while.”

Selina swallowed, briefly closing her eyes. “My mother was a smart woman, but she was young. Her parents had been abusive— her father an alcoholic, and when she met my father, she’d fallen so deeply in love that she’d lost all reason. When he decided I would be sent to a human school, she didn’t object. After all, it seemed likely that I had no power.”

My lips went numb. “But you did.”

“Yes. I was small, shy, and one of the few mixed kids in my neighborhood. I was confused, torn between different worlds— my father was a human, my mother was a witch. My father was white, my mother was black. Every question I had about magic went unanswered. Every concern I had was swept under the rug. By the time I went to school, I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere.”

“Let me guess, the little psychopaths made it worse.”

She laughed. “Kids can be cruel. I was bullied. One girl liked to put paint in my hair, and she would whisper in my ear that her mother had told her my mother was a witch, and I was going to hell. It didn’t take long before I was going home crying each day, begging my parents to let me homeschool. Unfortunately, they both agreed that I needed to learn to solve my problems and not run from them. One day, this little girl decided to get physical. She pushed me off the swing and called me a filthy word. I snapped.”

Selina sighed, pushing her plate away.

I leaned one elbow on the counter. “Did you kill her?”

“No. But almost. My power was uncontrollable. My mother was called, and she arrived to find that I’d wrapped the swing around the little girl and was hoisting it higher and higher in the air as it tightened. I had created a ward, and none of the human teachers could get through to stop me. By the time my mother managed to pull me from my frenzy, I’d broken several of the girl’s bones.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. That was the end of human school for me, for which I was grateful. But my mother realized I needed to be trained. By then, she was so used to suppressing her own magic that she needed her coven’s help. My father threatened to leave. She took me anyway. They divorced a few months later.”

“She should’ve taught you how to use your power.”

“Yes. And you need to be taught the same. I was a child with witch power. You are something more. But without training, the result is the same. You can’t expect to be able to control something that has been suppressed all these years. The only differences between you and the seven-year-old me are your age and the amount of power you wield.”

I picked at my cuticle while I thought it through. Attempting to ignore my power hadn’t worked. “You think you can teach me how to avoid scaring the crap out of people unintentionally?”

“I can teach you what I was taught. Your power is different, but the underlying rules should be the same.”

I took a sip of my iced tea and squared my shoulders. “Okay. Let’s do it.”