Agave Kiss

Angling my head, I peered beneath the table. Bingo. There were four gems inset into the stone, reminiscent of the soulstones that powered the gate between earth and Sheol. Hoping they weren’t full of somebody’s spirit, I took a deep breath and grabbed the one closest to me. Pain howled through me like a banshee’s wail, hot and cold at once, so my palm felt as if it was simultaneously smoldering and flash freezing. My nerve endings couldn’t process the overwhelming stimuli, so they shut down, leaving me with a numb right hand —and the jewel didn’t budge. I pulled with dead fingers, agony driving up my forearm toward my elbow. Only death and demon magick tended to be that strong. Please don’t let these be soulstones. If the paralysis reached my lungs, my heart, my brain, well, it was over. But I’d already started, so there was no way out but through. I wouldn’t let Kel down.

Maybe there’s a trick to it. I pushed and pulled, twisted, until I heard a click, and the crystal dropped into my hand. Inert. With trembling fingers, I set it down. Three more to go. Maybe setting a circle for protection would’ve helped, but I didn’t have witch magick, and the touch hadn’t responded; there was no emotional charge in these gems, just pure, crackling power. It’s too late to draw a demon magick circle.

I knee-walked to the second spot. Booke was cursing, so I guessed the fight was back on; Ahadiel had chosen to disbelieve the truth, but the demon-drain spell was making it hard for him to melee. And that gave Booke a fighting chance—strategy, not brute strength, would carry the day.

This time, I knew how to remove the gem, and my hand was already dead, so I didn’t feel much new pain, though the old anguish was busy chewing my biceps, up toward my shoulder. It felt as if there were tiny teeth savaging their way through tendon and muscle. Pretty soon, my arm would hang limp at my side, and I’d be unable to use it, except as a club.

Two more.

I couldn’t manipulate my right hand well enough to remove the jewel so I used my left, and the pain came at me fresh. This time, I wasn’t strong enough to stop the scream. It bubbled up from my throat, past my lips, into a pathetic sound that roused an answering howl from Butch, who was still cowering in my bag. The sounds echoed in the chamber, ringing off the walls. No hope he didn’t hear.

“Is someone else here?” Ahadiel demanded.

“No,” Booke said quickly. “Let’s finish this.”

“I heard a woman. Where is she?” He didn’t wait for a reply.

Instead I heard footsteps cracking closer and closer to where I fumbled with the third stone. As Ahadiel peered under the table, it dropped into my hand, and a shot rang out. The half demon toppled forward, cracking his head on the rock. The back of his head oozed blood, then Booke limped into sight. His cheekbone was bruised, his lip split and puffy, and I could see the marks from where he’d been throttled. The demon-drain spell must’ve worn off, giving Ahadiel the opportunity to fight.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“He very nearly stabbed me in the kidney. Bloody fast, that one. But I dropped a spell just in time. Are you almost done?”

“Almost,” I said.

Only one left.

Booke bent to investigate the body. “He’s not dead, just incapacitated.”

“I’ll hurry.”

My left hand was clumsy, fingers numb, but I forced them to fasten around the final gem. It took me four tries to manage the special push and twist to disengage the connection. The pain in my right side had reached the juncture between neck and shoulder; on my left, it was at my elbow. I didn’t have long left. Moments, maybe just seconds. Breath felt more labored each time I pulled it into my sluggish lungs.

“The bindings have dissipated. He’s not responding, though. We’ll have to—” His words choked off, presumably because Kel had his hands on Booke’s throat.

Crawling out from under the stone table took all my coordination, given that I could hardly feel my arms, and I had pain shooting into my spine. My voice came out hoarse. “Kel, we’re here to help. Let go.”

His icy eyes opened and cut to me. On waking to find himself freed, he’d lashed out at his tormenters instinctively; I had some experience with his tendency to do that. He breathed once, twice, and then opened his hands. I put my dead fingers over his, hoping it was a comforting touch, as I couldn’t feel it. So much of my body was numb at the moment. That couldn’t be good.

Booke staggered back a few steps. Another wave of agony pulsed through me, and my vision darkened at the edges. It was all I could do to gasp, “Can you remove a . . . curse? If not . . . I think I might . . . die.”

His mouth dropped open, but he didn’t ask questions. Booke dug into his coat as I reeled backward. Kel’s hands steadied me against the stone table. He was horribly wounded yet he could still manage to be gentle; I felt it in the careful press of his palms to the small of my back, one of the few spots on my body that retained any feeling. Booke crushed the statuette at my feet, and I received immediate relief. As the attacking magick drained away, I regained more motor control.

“What happened?” he demanded, once he could see I was breathing easier.

“I think it was some kind of magickal trap. Like a poison, kind of. There’s one that shuts down your bodily systems one by one, inducing paralysis until your lungs don’t work anymore.” I shrugged. “That’s what it felt like anyway.”

Booke glared at me with startling ferocity, the first time I’d ever seen him angry. “Corine, that’s absurd. You shouldn’t have continued. I could’ve—”

“How many curse removals did you have in your bag?”

He paused. “Just the one.”

“Exactly. So once I started, if I didn’t finish, we couldn’t have freed Kel without one of us dying. I had to gamble.”

“You should not have taken such a risk for me,” Kel said softly.

He wore his sorrow and disillusionment nakedly, as visible as his tattoos. Though he was still big and powerful-looking, he also carried despair with him, worn like a dark cloak. His eyes gleamed with powerful regret, a millennia of misdeeds weighing on him like gravestones. Now he must live with the knowledge that he’d done everything for Barachiel’s agenda, not a higher power.

“You’re my friend. Of course I should.”

He shook his head. “When I confronted Barachiel with the truth, he laughed, Corine. He laughed. I tried to fight him . . . and could not. I am bound to serve him, bound to suffer his punishments, for no purpose greater than his whim. And I begin to think he is truly mad.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” I said.

Barachiel hadn’t struck me as possessing an excess of sanity anyway. Plus, power had a track record of sending people around the bend. The more they had, the more they wanted, until they reached critical mass, where nothing in the world could content them. I feared Barachiel had long since reached that tipping point.

The half demon stirred at our feet. A bullet in the brain had only slowed him down, not neutralized him. Given what I’d seen my friend endure, I had no idea how to take this monster out. To make matters worse, I felt sorry for Ahadiel, as he was trapped, just like Kel. If only there was some way to break Barachiel’s hold . . .

Kel’s features hardened. “Take his head. It’s the only way.”

I didn’t blame him for that response. The wounds Ahadiel had inflicted were still raw and numerous, and since they had been carved with one of those special silver knives, they took longer to heal. The agony must be excruciating.

But Booke paled, his face going green at the prospect of decapitating a humanoid. I guessed it was different with hellhounds. And I didn’t look forward to doing that job either. Kel seemed to read our reluctance.

“Help me up. If you cannot, I will. It must be done.”

I offered him my hand, as did Booke, and together we towed him to his feet. He rocked a little but got his balance, and then he took the knife from the other half demon. I could see it required all his energy, but he bent to do the job. He sawed through the neck while the half demon squirmed on the ground, moaning. Butch whimpered inside my bag. Poor dog. I know just how you feel.

When I realized how Kel intended to finish the job, I grimaced and turned my face away. But I still heard the