“The salt,” I say, keeping a hold on the demon. Brock, blood pouring down his arm, fumbles when he gets up, knocking into the desk. The canister of salt falls and spills all over the floor. “Dammit,” I grumble and get up but get hit with that damn round ligament pain. I falter, and it’s all the time the demon needs to charge forward again, challenging my telekinetic hold.
“Filthy half-breed,” he growls, bringing his hands up and sending a wave of energy at me. It knocks me back, and I fall hard on the ground, twisting one of my wrists as I attempt to catch myself. The demon is over top of me in the blink of an eye, and blood drips down the demon’s face as he leans over me, grabbing both my wrists.
Freya gets into the room first and shadows in between the demon and me, breaking his hold. Lucas is there only a second later, grabbing Noah by the throat and shoving him against a shelf so hard several books come tumbling to the ground.
Fangs out, Lucas snarls. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t tear your heart right out of your chest.”
“He’ll just…he’ll find another body,” I pant. Alerted by Binx, Tabatha and Evander come running in. Evander goes to Brock, who’s still bleeding, and Tabatha rushes to me, but I direct her to Alyssa, unconscious on the floor.
Tell Kristy to get bandages, I mentally call to Pandora. Planting my hands on the couch beneath me, I slowly get up, bracing for pain that I’ll have to ignore. Come on, stupid half-human body. Deal with pregnancy a little better than this. On my feet, I conjure two bright blue energy balls and hold up my hands.
The demon, who’s fighting against Lucas’s hold but not using his powers, stops and looks at me, smirking once again.
“Then I’ll rip the heart out of that body as well,” Lucas threatens. “And every heart after that until he’s dead.”
“There he is,” the demon slowly draws out. “The big bad Lucas King. Though that wasn’t always what you called yourself, is it?” The demon laughs. “Tell me, does your precious witch know you? The one who killed for fun. The one who took lives and innocence abound just because he could? There were times the bloodshed even impressed us. Times when we watched from the shadows, chained to the darkness, and looked at you in envy.”
“Do yourself a favor and stop talking,” Lucas demands, but the demon continues. He eyes me, making sure I’m listening. Demons lie. All the damn time. You can’t trust them, yet lately, they’ve spoken the truth. But this demon…he’s telling lies about Lucas just to get under my skin.
“I remember the first time I watched you work. You’d been killing your way through a small village in Romania, and you became particularly fond of a young woman named Bogdana. She was so desperate to escape your clutches that she summoned me.” He laughs. “A demon sent to be the savior from the vampire.”
“You’re the one who had her turned,” Lucas says, voice void of emotion. The energy balls I’m holding start to fade. Everything the demon is saying is true.
“I am.” The demon grins, twisting poor Noah’s face into something sinister. “A vampire owed me a favor, and I thought it might level the playing field. You were centuries older than her from the start, so the fight wasn’t exactly fair. But she wasn’t as much fun to you when she couldn’t be controlled and fed off of, and you moved on only days later, leaving Bogdana behind. The blood lust was too much for her to handle, and she slaughtered what was left of the village, including her own mother and sisters.”
The demon coughs and fights against Lucas’s hand around his neck just so he can stare down Tabatha and Evander. “Do you still approve of the marriage now? What will be said by your precious Grand Coven when Bogdana tells her story? Will they be as eager to forgive as you hope when they find out you stood back and watched your most promising witch marry a monster?”
Suddenly, all of the fear I thought I buried comes rushing back. Excommunication from the coven isn’t that big of a threat for me, but it is for Tabatha and Evander. Their lives would be ruined, and they’d be lucky if they still had a life to ruin if the Grand Coven found out everything.
“Then again,” the demon mewls, “you’ve also been harboring a half-breed for years, keeping her under the same roof of impressionable students. Passing her off as your own.”
I blink and I’m back inside the research lab, cuddled up on a hard foam bed. The only blanket I have is a thin sheet, and the A/C has been turned down on purpose to see how I’d react. I’m holding a black stuffed cat against my chest, and it’s soaked from my tears. Then Elena flips around, foot pressing into my gut. The pain brings me back to reality, and it hits me that this is exactly what the demon wants: to use fear and hatred to drive a wedge between us all.