My head turned in the direction he indicated, and I watched as Risk’s ex-lover stood up from her seat and walked forward. Her eyes were bright, and her steps were light, despite her large, round belly. “It’s so safe that, today, we will be performing the ritual on councilwoman Cainson, who just so happens to be pregnant.”
No. What if this hurt Risk’s child?
My eyes burned as fear and disgust rolled around in my gut. How could they do this? How could they perform such a dangerous ritual when there was a baby involved? Risk’s eyes were locked on the woman, his gaze so cold and soulless that it gave me the chills. I could feel his fury like it was a palpable thing.
Ignoring Risk completely, Miss Cainson went up beside Collector at the podium and smiled at everyone, like she was a politician’s wife, winning votes with lies and a flirtatious grin. On the ground, Risk pulled and fought against his restraints. Smoke and ash burned through the chains, making them burn red, but they didn’t break. The circle was restraining his powers too.
“We will now be exorcising some of the high level demon’s essence and putting it into Miss Cainson,” Collector explained. Risk looked like he wanted to rip him apart.
The hooded man came forward again, this time walking into Risk’s circle. With deft movements, he ran a blade against Risk’s forearm. His blood spilled onto the floor in an erratic spray, but my demon didn’t even flinch. His eyes held the fires of hell as he watched Collector. There was no doubt in my mind that if Risk could get free, he would annihilate the entire room in a heartbeat.
Collector cleared his throat, keeping his eyes averted from the fuming demon. “Have a seat, darling,” he said to Miss Cainson, indicating a cushioned chair just on the edge of Risk’s demon circle. The woman stepped inside and sat down primly, folding her hands in her lap patiently like she was in a doctor’s office waiting for her name to be called.
“You’ve all signed the disclosure agreements that prohibit you from speaking about Spector’s rituals and functions, but I think you’ll understand the importance of our discretion once you see this. After all, this kind of power is not for the masses. This is for you. The elite,” Collector said, his pompous ass stroking the egos in the room. “The elite that will now have the opportunity to become more powerful than ever. We can take new territories, win wars, rise above humans or even our fellow supes. With this, we will attain a new level of influence.”
His words were like a drug to the room, making council members and prominent supes nod their heads with new urgency, the promise of power sinking into their pores and getting them high off the rush. They would use these demons so that they could hold the rest of the supernatural and human communities under their thumbs. It was a grim future of disputes and wars and maybe even genocide.
“Let’s begin.”
Those two words were like a gavel striking down, calling forth dread to rule my body.
“Stay in your seats, please,” Collector said. “And be advised, this will be...violent.”
Eerie chants began to sound in the room as a group of twelve shadowed figures surrounded Risk’s circle. I watched helplessly as he struggled against the bindings once more, but the strange chanting grew louder, and the chalked demon circle began to sizzle and spit with acrid smoke. I half expected the world to open up and for evil to spill through the floorboards, coating us all in vengeful hellfire.
Risk’s body began to jerk unnaturally. The haunting chanting drowned out all other sounds. I couldn’t even hear my own breath. My demon let out a raspy, agonized scream that seemed to shoot straight to my heart. Tears dripped out of my eyes as his body was pulled taut against the chains, as if an invisible force was trying to yank him in all different directions at once.
“Stop, stop, stop, STOP!” I screamed, but no one listened. No one could even hear me over the chants or the unnatural wind that had come up or the smoke that still crackled or the blistering yells that were now tearing from Risk’s throat in endless streams. My throat was raw. My soul was chained. My heart thudded with pain for my mate.
The whole room started to shake. Sharp, piercing cries littered the audience, but no one dared move. They were like statues in their seats, looking on with wide eyes as hell rose up to meet them.
Miss Cainson seemed wary, but her mask of confidence was still capriciously fixed on her face. The only slip in her façade was the way her bony fingers gripped the armrests.
Then all hell broke loose.
Literally.
A surge of power unlike anything I’d ever felt before came up from the ground. My face was blasted with sweltering heat as unnaturally red flames erupted along the lines of the circle surrounding Risk and Miss Cainson. They were five feet tall, ten, twenty, fifty. They licked the ceiling in the auditorium, running into some sort of invisible barrier that the elementals must have put up. I searched the dancing, roaring flames with intensity, seeking between the gaps in the menacing fire for glimpses of my mate, but I could barely see him.
Thick black smoke clogged the room, but it wasn’t natural smoke. This smoke moved with faces of the damned, skeletal beings with eyeless sockets and mouths open in a scream. It was like the ground birthed unnatural beings. Neither dead nor demon, supe nor human. These were otherworldly, terrifying souls scraping the corners of existence.
And then Risk’s body began to glow.
Like metal being heated over a fire, his skin lit up in reds and oranges that gave off even more light than the fiery flames. And then his demon’s essence started to yank out of his body.
Collector was right. It was violent.
His body
