“Sorry,” Jim said, scrambling off where one of the demons had tossed him on top of me. “Thanks for breaking my fall, though.”
“You are not welcome,” I said, rubbing my belly where the bulk of the dog’s weight had landed.
“Where are we?” Ysolde got to her feet and brushed herself off, looking around the small cell. “Is this Abaddon?”
“Yes.” Aoife glanced around us. “I recognize it from the time I was here. I think this was our cell, wasn’t it, Jim?”
“Could be.”
“I’ve never been here,” Ysolde said, making a face at the dirt that rubbed off the stone wall when she touched it.
“I have,” Aisling said with a sigh. She slumped against the wall and waved a hand in a vague gesture. “Jim, I don’t suppose there’s any chance of us opening up a tear and getting all of us out of here?”
“You could, but not the others, not without making a deal you probably don’t want to make.”
“Ugh,” Aisling said, wrapping her arms protectively around herself. “I think we’ll avoid anything that involves making deals.”
“What are we going to do?” Aoife asked, pacing the width of the cell. Ysolde sat down next to Aisling and started speaking softly to her.
“Wait?” I suggested.
“For what? For you to figure out how to use the ring to rescue us?” Aoife made a disgusted noise and turned back to try the door.
I got to my feet, my anger getting the best of me. “You annoying little shit!”
Aoife turned back to me, her mouth an O of surprise.
“Word,” Jim said, nodding his head.
Aoife shot him a wicked look before narrowing her eyes on me. “What did you call me?”
“You heard me.” I stalked forward, past Ysolde and Aisling, and stopped when I was toe-to-toe with my little sister. “You just got done telling me that you didn’t really want the ring, and gave it back to me. Well, I’m sick and tired of this attitude of yours, and frankly, I’ve decided I’m not going to take it anymore.”
Her jaw dropped for a second before it snapped close, and she jabbed a finger into my upper arm. “I am not the one who had my sister condemned to a loony bin for two years. You don’t have the right to be tired of my attitude!”
“I have explained to you why I had to do that and also apologized that they did not treat you as Rowan and I were told you would be treated. I’m sorry, Aoife, I’m really sorry about what happened. I wish I could have explained to you what was going on, but you were in so much danger… and it had only been a few years since Mom and Dad died, and the thought of losing you was just more than I could stand. I know you won’t forgive me, but I truly did what I had to do in order to save you.”
She looked taken aback now, blinking rapidly before saying, “I don’t think I was in that much danger.”
“That’s because the Otherworld hadn’t really touched you yet.” I was suddenly tired, exhaustion pulling at me and making me want to curl into a little ball and ignore the world. “And frankly, I’m grateful for that. But let me reassure you that while you were tucked away safely—if uncomfortably—the rest of us in the Otherworld were trying to stay alive. It wasn’t just dragons who suffered from the curse, you know—lots of others got in the way of the demons and were cut down just like Jovana and Guillaume.”
Tears sprang to Aoife’s eyes, and she turned away from me. My heart hurt as I added, “The Otherworld isn’t a magical place of sexy men who just happen to also be dragons—there is blood and death and suffering here because of some very dangerous individuals. Can you blame me for wanting to keep my baby sister away from it all?”
She choked, and shook her head, her eyes closed. Tears burned behind my own as I hugged her, wishing with all that I had that I could keep her away from the pain that I knew must follow. After a moment, she hugged me back, causing Jim to say, “Awww. Sisterly love. The only way that could be better is if they mud-wrestled out their issues first.”
I laughed shakily, sniffing and wiping my eyes, releasing Aoife to face the two other women. “I’m sorry you had to witness our family squabbling.”
“Not at all,” Ysolde said, giving us both curious looks. “I suspect it’s been a long time coming.”
She and Aisling returned to their discussion.
Aoife wiped her eyes with the edge of her sleeves, giving me a rueful smile. “I didn’t realize… I mean, I know that you did what you thought was best, but I was just so angry about being stuffed into the loony bin that I didn’t consider what everyone else was going through.”
“It’s understandable you feel that way,” I said, my shoulders drooping. I wondered if my relationship with my sister would ever be mended. I hoped fervently that it would. “It can’t have been easy for you.”
“No.” Her lips twisted wryly. “But I don’t suppose you were out having oodles of fun.”
“Far from it.” I rubbed my face, wondering how long we’d be held before Constantine and the others managed to free us. “I just hope that someday you can forgive me.”
She was silent for longer than I was comfortable with, but eventually she nodded. “I think I have. It doesn’t mean I would have done what you did if I had been in your shoes, but I am willing to accept that you acted in what you thought was for my best.”
“You had the ring,” I said, brushing a strand of her hair back from where it clung to her tear-stained cheek. “I didn’t want you to die for that quirk of fate.”
“Are you going to be able to use it to get us out of here?” she asked.
Ysolde and Aisling paused their conversation to look expectantly at me.
I shook my head. “I’m a Charmer. I’m a whiz at working maze puzzles and I can unmake curses, but I can’t break out of anywhere, let alone hell.”
“Abaddon,” Jim and Aoife said at the same time.
“We’re just going to have to wait for the men to realize we’ve been taken by Asmodeus. I have no idea how long that will be, but I’m—”
The door was wrenched open at that moment, the passageway beyond it filled with demons.
“Come,” the one nearest the door said, gesturing abruptly. “The master wishes to treat with you.”
“Asmodeus is willing to bargain for the ring?” Aisling said, getting to her feet with a hand from Ysolde. It struck me at that moment that she was pregnant, not far gone, but enough that she was no doubt very concerned about the welfare of her unborn child. It made me resolve to do whatever it took to get the others out of Abaddon before I dealt with Asmodeus.
“She’s got it on her finger,” Aoife said, leaving the cell with a nod at me. “He can’t take it off her with force.”
“Huh. You learn something new every day,” Aisling said, filing out behind us.
We were escorted to the room where Constantine and I had faced Asmodeus before, and sure enough, as soon as we were herded into the center of it, a door at the far end of the room opened and the dark figure of Asmodeus strolled in. He looked more preoccupied than before, although I did notice he was looking pointedly at my hand when he stopped in front of me.
Even darkened as it was, it clearly still held some power that attracted him. He gave the others a quick look before addressing me. “What do you ask of me for the ring?”
I lifted my chin a little, not enough to express arrogance (which would not be tolerated by a demon lord) but just a smidgen to give him the idea that I wasn’t a pushover.
“An interesting question,” I said, stalling for time. “One that I haven’t thought much about. I will put my mind to it momentarily, but first you must set the others free.”
“Why?” he asked. “Do they mean much to you?”
“They’re my friends, yes,” I said, showing a bit of exasperation in my eyes. “Of course they mean something to me. And no, torturing them won’t get me to cooperate. Far from it, it will force me to use the ring to protect them and me.”
He was silent for a moment, which mean
t my shot in the dark had found its mark. He snapped his fingers, and two wrath demons marched past us and took up spots in front of Asmodeus. I risked a glance behind us, and was interested to see that all nine wrath demons were present, along with a handful of lesser demons.
“Very well,” Asmodeus said after a few minutes of speaking with the two demons. They took up a position on his right side. “I will exchange your friends’ lives for the ring.”
“Hold on now,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s not what I said, and you know it. The conditions for me to open up negotiations for the ring are that you release everyone first. Let them go, and then we’ll talk.”
He gave me a look of pure loathing that probably took a good seven years off my life. I was braced and ready for him to consign me to the most miserable of all his cells when a commotion became audible from outside the room.
Ysolde cocked her head for a moment, then smiled. “The cavalry is here,” she said with a little smile.
Seventeen
The hellish nightmare began as one of the green dragons who’d just arrived in Paris stumbled through the door of Drake’s home and informed the group that Aisling and some other women had been abducted by demons.
“Oh noes!” Gary said from where he was practicing wheelies. He zoomed through the open door before Constantine could stop him, yelling, “Come on, Connie! Let’s go rescue Bee!”
“I told you sending them out of the room like they were truculent children was a bad idea!” Constantine snarled at Drake before running off to catch Gary.
“Let’s go!” Gary demanded when Constantine picked up his truck. “What are you doing? You’re going the wrong way.”
“If they were taken by demons, running after them will do no good,” Constantine said grimly. “We must have a plan.”
“But the demons—”
“They will pay, as will their master.” Constantine’s voice was as hard as his heart at that moment. He didn’t even have to make a mental promise to exact revenge for whoever was responsible for the abduction of the mates—it was as natural to him as breathing.
And judging by the faces of the other wyverns, they felt the same. In short time, Drake organized his green dragons into monitoring the known entrances to Abaddon, picking the likeliest one to storm.
“We will need weapons,” Constantine told him, feeling calm despite the desperate need to know that Bee was safe.
“My armory is at our disposal,” Drake answered, and opened the door to a walk-in closet that would have filled the heart of a medievalist with ecstasy. In it were swords of all makes and sizes, various morningstars and maces, daggers, and an array of firearms that all the dragons ignored. Guns tended to attract attention from the mortal world and weren’t nearly as effective on an immortal as a blade was.
“Oooh,” Gary said, following them into the closet. “Can I have a gun?”
“No. You might shoot yourself in the eye.”
“I wouldn’t! Promise!”
Constantine hesitated, then pulled from the wall three small daggers that in his youth would have been used to eat with, and strapped them in a fan display to the front of Gary’s car. He claimed for himself a longsword, the style of which had been his favorite in centuries past.
“You will leave to me whichever demon lord is responsible for this attack,” Constantine declared a half hour later as they exited from the cars that dropped them off at the entrance to Abaddon they’d chosen. In addition to the wyverns and their respective guards, there were five green dragons, all equally armed. “I do not tolerate anyone stealing Bee from me.”
“On the contrary, it is my mate who was stolen, and she is in a delicate state of health. It is for me to avenge this act,” Drake said in a low, ugly voice.
“Are you implying that Ysolde is not the most important thing in the world to me?” Baltic asked, bristling. “I died rather than live without her! The honor is mine to destroy whoever dared touch my mate.”
“Aoife is the newest wyvern’s mate,” Kostya argued, swinging his morningstar in a manner that almost took off Baltic’s head. “Therefore, she is dearer to me than your mates are to you. It is I who should take the life of the demon lord, be it Asmodeus, Bael, or some other prince of Abaddon.”
The bickering that followed lasted long enough for Constantine to pick up Gary in his truck and charge into the building that housed the opening to Abaddon.
“Hey!” Kostya called out. “He’s going without us!”
The dragons gathered behind him, and by the time he kicked open the door, smote the demon standing guard, and strode into the part of Abaddon that coincided with that section of Paris, he had Kostya on one side, Baltic on the other, and Drake beyond him. The other dragons streamed behind them, presenting a solid wedge that simply overwhelmed any resistance. They marched forward, swords singing as they went into action, Kostya’s morningstar taking down even the most stubborn of demons.
“Whoohoo! Here we go!” Gary cheered, and immediately burst into “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
Constantine made a mental note to get Gary a music player of his own at the same time he separated an oncoming demon from his head and, on the backswing, parted another from his sword arm.
“Who has taken the wyverns’ mates?” he bellowed when they reached a central square. He leaped up on a small cart and waved his sword in the air, sending black demon blood flying. “Who dares touch that which belongs to dragonkin? You!”
The demon who had come running in response to an alarm call skidded to a stop at the sight of all the dragons filling the square, and would have turned and run had Kostya not grabbed him by the back of his collar, dragging him forward.
“Who dares declare war on us?” Constantine demanded to know.
The demon, in the form of a smallish man with gold-rimmed glasses, squeaked incomprehensibly until Drake picked him up by one arm and shook him. “Where is my mate?” Drake growled, fire pouring down his body, stretching out into all points of the compass.
“I don’t know! I swear to you, I don’t know—”
The buildings were now all alight. Drake tossed the demon to Baltic, saying, “You are the best at torturing. Slice off bits of him until he sees fit to tell us what we want to know.”
“Asmodeus!” the demon began to babble, his eyes wild as he watched the flames lick up the buildings surrounding the square. “Asmodeus sent his demons out to search for the ring because he heard Lord Bael was back. That’s all I know, I swear to you upon his unholy soul—”
There was another squeak, a crash of glass, and then another cheer from Gary. “Right through the window! A fiery bull’s-eye, Baltic. That’s got to be worth twenty points, don’t you think?”
Constantine leaped down from the cart and with the other dragons proceeded to cut their way through the attackers until they were at the gate of Asmodeus’s palace. The guards at his door were easily dealt with. By the time Constantine led the way to the ballroom where he had been taken before, all the dragons were singing along with Gary.
Constantine had a moment of feeling kinship, a warm fuzzy emotion that he hadn’t ever expected to feel again since he had been demoted to the role of simply a sept member, rather than its wyvern.
“This reminds me of that time when we were young in Ankara. Do you remember?” he said to Baltic. “We went up against that Mongol warlord who’d made a deal with one of the demon lords.”
Baltic stopped singing long enough to smile in reminiscence. “We destroyed many demons that day. It was one of the finest battles we ever fought.”
“You almost lost your right leg,” Constantine pointed out.
“And as I recall, you did lose a good part of your scalp.”
Constantine touched his hair with a hand black with the blood of the demons who had tried to stop them. “My part has never been the same since. Ah. There he is.”
His voice turned cold with fury when they entered the room that now held Bee and the other women, as wel
l as Asmodeus and a number of wrath demons. Constantine strode forward, the other wyverns falling into formation alongside him.
“There, you see? I told you they were here.” Ysolde smiled at Baltic, a fact that Constantine didn’t particularly mind. His eyes were on Bee, checking first her face, then the rest of her to make sure she hadn’t been harmed. His heart had leaped at the sight of her, giving him an odd feeling of both contentment and arousal.
The wrath demons instantly surrounded the women, but at a command from Asmodeus, they left them to form a protective circle around the demon lord.
“Are you injured?” Constantine asked, approaching Bee. Just the sight of her made his spirits lighten. “Have you been harmed in any way?”
“Hi, Bee! Look at the cool battle armor Connie made for my truck! I’ve run into ever so many demon ankles.” Gary zipped past them to make a sweeping circle.
“Not harmed,” Bee said, her eyes glowing with an inner light. “But we do have to talk.”
He thought to himself just how expressive her face was—it was as if he was seeing into her soul. Her light and joy shone like a beacon that drew him with silken bonds. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to scoop her up in his arms and find the nearest bed where he could pleasure her to the tips of her adorable pink toes, but first, he had to attend to the man who had tried to steal her from him.
He turned to face Asmodeus, aware of Bee as she pressed up to his side. “Asmodeus.”
The demon lord, barely visible in the circle of wrath demons, all of whom were armed with swords, watched the dragons with a blank expression. “Why do you invade my palace, dragons? What right do you have to slay my legions?”
As he was about to answer, he felt Bee take his hand, but rather than twining her fingers through his, she slid the ring onto his smallest finger.
He turned to glance down at her.
“We have to get the others out of here,” she said softly, her fingers holding tight on to his hand. “Aisling is pregnant, and there’s no reason they should suffer because of our actions.”