Jovienne Read online

  The changeling yanked the dagger free and threw it at her.

  She called the quickening a third time to slow things down. She plucked the dagger from the air even as she accelerated forward. The demon made a half-turn away by the time she kicked it in the small of the back.

  A shock of pain shot through her hip. Stupid, stupid, stupid. No more quickening. She released the speedy aspect again and cried out as she crumbled to the floor. Her attack succeeded in knocking the demon down, its arms flailing. Its chin scraped along the floor.

  Climbing to her feet, jolts of pain arced down her hip and leg. Her body felt leaden. The gladius weighed a ton and the dagger nearly as much. Confusion crept over her again. She wanted to be rid of these heavy weights. She dropped the smaller blade.

  No! I needed that.

  But why was unclear.

  The demon roared and Jovienne’s puzzlement dwindled. The enemy was trying to get up, clutching at the small of its back.

  Kill it before it kills me.

  Using two aching hands to hold the sword, she limped toward the demon. Straddling the thing’s heaving shoulders, she swung weakly and severed the new arms.

  The demon bellowed in agony. Magma spilled to the floor and pooled around its head.

  She dropped, pinning its regular arms with her knees. Pain shot through her hip again. With great effort, she dragged the sword tip along the floor so the edge near the hilt touched the demon’s neck. Where the blade touched, its skin sizzled. The demon screamed.

  Jovienne let the sword rest there. That would keep it still. She needed a moment. Her strength would return. Then, she’d be able to lift this heavy weight and take the head.

  Instantaneously, the thing shifted underneath her. It switched to face her and when the alteration completed, this demon wore a little girl’s face. A perfect, petite, and pale doll face crowned with golden ringlets and a neck too slender to touch the angled blade.

  “Cali?”

  This was the flawless child that Jovienne’s father preferred. The beautiful and bright Calienne, antithesis of dark, ‘psycho’ Jovienne who favored their mother.

  “Jovie. Jovie, please. Let me up. You’re scaring me!” The blue eyes filled with tears.

  Confusion enveloped her again. I’m killing Cali? I can’t kill Cali. Not again. Memory rushed in: the backseat of the family van, sneakily hitting Cali’s seatbelt release. It was an attempt to get her little sister in trouble, but the timing couldn’t have been more critical.

  The little mouth twisted. “Jovie, you bitch. You killed me. You unbuckled me, you stupid, stupid bitch!”

  Jovienne was shocked silent.

  “I would have survived if not for you. And you knew it, too, you freak! I never believed all that bullshit you said about Gramma, but when I hit the windshield I fucking believed!”

  “Cali. Cali, I’m so—” Sweat beaded upon her brow. The mental fog thickened. She exhaled slow, imagining a windstorm blowing the confusion away. This can’t be real.

  “I hate you even more, now. It’s your fault you stupid, jealous bitch!”

  This was not her sister, but a vile, transfigured fraud. Anger billowed inside her stronger and faster than her earlier fear. This rage, the rage of her father, was as cruel as it was empowering. With it, she would make this demon show its true form before she cleaved its head.

  Unable to reach the water-welled dagger, she jerked the lapel dagger from the jeweled sheath. She thrust this little weapon behind her and poked the demon’s stomach with it. “Change back.”

  The demon-Cali shrieked, exposing a mismatched set of permanent and baby teeth. Jovienne pushed the little blade deep into its skin. Although screaming and kicking, the Class Three maintained Cali’s image.

  She sliced the blade across the demon’s stomach. The torso she sat on lowered as viscera leaked through the deep incision. “Change back!”

  Jovienne brought the little lapel dagger to the front to menace the demon’s false-face. It was covered with blood.

  Blood.

  Not magma.

  She stared at the blade. Horror and doubt closed in on her troubled mind.

  Beyond that red-smeared dagger, the demon’s form changed again. But not like she wanted.

  Rage waned. Ice replaced it. Words formed and collided until she couldn’t think anymore. Instincts warred within her. Her fingers yearned to abandon the weapons. To wipe the sweat-drenched strands from her face. To straighten her clothes. To re-arrange her torn shirt modestly.

  Staring into that lovely Hawaiian face she whispered, “Mother?” Her voice was that of a frightened child.

  “Jovie, why did you hurt your sister? Why are you hurting me?” It whispered, breathless, as if dying.

  Her heart wanted to believe, but even in her fatigue and confusion she knew her mother was dead. Nothing could make her forget that aching truth.

  She clung to that scrap of clarity.

  “Change back.” The words crawled between clenched teeth, yet her tone lacked conviction.

  “How could you?”

  Geist closed in, taxing her already overloaded system.

  “Change back,” she shouted into the demon’s masked face. “Damn you!”

  The demon began to cry.

  She’d made ordinary crows seem dangerous. Contrarily, the demon was making itself seem like a dream come true.

  This was a thousand times worse than looking like Cali.

  This was evil.

  This was her test and the single question was: could she destroy evil?

  She jerked the thick blade away from her mother’s neck and plunged the tip deep into the chest beneath her. Jovienne’s wail of torment matched her mother’s dying scream.

  FATIGUE SATURATED JOVIENNE’S every muscle, sinew, and bone. Darkness wavered at the edges of her vision. She wished the black void would engulf her like the pills her father used to make her take. But there would be no such release.

  She had slain her mother. Her eyes saw her mother. Her ears heard her mother’s screams. The sensory memories told one story. Only her reason told another.

  She had known for years that she would have to prove herself competent with all Andrei had taught her. She always thought proving it to whoever judged her would leave her feeling inspired. But now, the test—the lethal task required of her—was complete and she felt anything but encouraged. A cold shame emptied her soul, leaving her hollow and weak against the crushing weight of compunction.

  The body began to liquefy.

  “Damn you,” she whimpered, scooting away as her fingers uncurled from the hilt of the sword with its tip now embedded in the floor. While the demon’s disintegration proved the demon’s ruse, she couldn’t watch her mother’s beautiful face dissolve into black goo.

  Shoulders slumping, she fell back on her haunches and covered her face.

  God authorized this test.

  The physical challenge of her exam paled in comparison to the actual question that propelled it. Her mastery of weapons and years of training meant nothing. This test wasn’t meant to assess her skills. This was the crudest kind of self-evaluation, and passing revealed an innate kind of fortitude she never wanted to possess… but did nonetheless.

  She hadn’t just faced a monster. She’d proven she was one.

  The geist faded and either winked out or misted away. A few crows fluttered at the ceiling, cawing as if inviting her to come with them. She wished she could.

  Instead, she climbed to her feet and stood shaking, arms limp at her sides, wondering what she was supposed to do now. All she wanted to do was leave, so she collected pieces of her bootlaces and tied them through the eyelets. It was shoddy, but it secured the boots to her feet.

  Trudging toward the doors, she retrieved stars from the floor and returned them to her pocket. Not far from the gladius’s sheath, she found the dagger. Opening it, she drank the hallowed water. The liquid put her fatigue farther away, but she’d need to eat meat and sleep to start recov
ering from her extended use of quintanumin.

  She tugged the gladius from the floor and wiped the flat side across her jeans. She sheathed it with a gruff shove and fastened it on her back, wishing her iniquity would wipe away as easily.

  Quiet footfalls stepped close. She reached for the hilt.

  A warm hand covered hers, the skin calloused, but the grip loose. She smelled alcohol and leather.

  Andrei.

  He released her as she spun. “You did it.” His head bobbed in satisfied little jerks.

  She had accomplished the goal but what she’d learned in the process humiliated her. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “That would have defeated the purpose.”

  Her jaw clamped and her chin lowered in acknowledgment. Once upon a time, she’d planned a poetic speech for this moment, but those words went unspoken. Even if it would have made a difference, she couldn’t speak of love when she hated herself for what she’d just done.

  “I knew you’d win.” His fingertip lifted her chin. The pride and approval in his eyes blunted her self-loathing. With painstaking slowness, he bent and covered her lips with his own.

  She allowed it, surprised and disbelieving, but wanting it all the same. She’d imagined her success chiseling away his stony exterior and finding a man beneath whose desire was as strong as her own.

  Her heart fluttered.

  He stepped closer, bringing their bodies together and his hands strayed down her backside.

  The feel and taste of him—gripped by a flashback of the demon’s tongue slipping into her mouth and her biting him—made her turn away from this kiss. Tears slipped from her eyes. “Andrei.”

  He nuzzled her hair. His hands slid to the small of her back. “What?”

  A sigh escaped her lips. “I’ve dreamed of your kiss.” She caressed his cheek and felt the prickly stubble, and then leaned back to better look at him. “I want this, but I need time.”

  “Time?” His face wrinkled angrily, then softened. He ran a hand over her head. “We’ve waited so long.”

  “With what I just did…please understand.”

  His hand slid toward her bruised breast.

  She restrained his hand, glad she had zipped up her jacket to conceal her torn shirt. She wanted him to hold her and comfort her, not grope her. I was almost raped. Shame kept her from saying those words. “I almost died.”

  “But you didn’t,” he grinned. “You’re victorious!”

  “Barely!” She hesitated, wondering how much she should tell him. Letting him know the demon had used her family should make him realize why she wasn’t exactly receptive. “It morphed into my father, then my sister. She said such horrible things. At the last it became my mother. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  He wrapped her in his arms, and for a split second, she relaxed and held him back. This was what she wanted. A measure of solace.

  Then he lifted her and twirled her around. “You did it, Jovie! You did it.” He let her slide lower against his torso until her feet were on the ground. “We must celebrate.”

  Why couldn’t he understand? “Andrei, I—”

  Wait…Jovie? He just called me Jovie?

  I didn’t cleave its head.

  Oh, damn.

  “What is it?”

  Was this Andrei in front of her? She met his gaze. It was his face, his eyes. His gray-streaked hair. But the demon had worn Cali’s face. Her father’s face. Her mother’s. Andrei never called her Jovie.

  I didn’t hear him come up the steps. Her open, empty, weaponless hands clenched into fists behind him.

  Andrei shifted his stance. “What?”

  He’s been stealing little touches from my bare skin since I realized he was here; a changeling would keep making contact to pull at my thoughts.

  He moved in for another kiss.

  Jovienne blocked him with a forceful hand on his shirt, not bare skin. “No.” Before it kissed her and made contact that might reveal her doubts, she needed to convince it she was still fooled. She’d only get one shot.

  She blurted, “I love you. I always have. But you’re being insensitive. I just went through Hell.”

  “You need to forget.” He jerked her close. “Forget that it used your family, forget what it made Cali say, and forget that you killed your mother. I can help you forget.” He crushed her against him and covered her lips with his own.

  With horrible new memories forced upon her, she selfishly decided to fetch a single good memory. For a moment, she indulged and kissed the demon with Andrei’s face.

  But he’d never acted like this. He wouldn’t gloss over her use of the “L” word. And most of all, she’d never spoken the names of her family to him.

  Still kissing him, she fingered the lapel of her jacket while her other hand strayed into his hair. In an instant, she drew that two-inch, fat little blade disguised as a jeweled pin, and pressed it against the flesh of his throat even as she gripped a handful of his hair.

  He froze. “What are you doing?”

  “I never told you my sister’s name.”

  Andrei blinked. His hands lifted outward to either side in a show of innocence. “Remember the cemetery, Jovie? I went back there without you, honey. I read her name on the headstone.”

  That could be true.

  Jovienne swallowed hard. She kept the blade at his throat.

  What if I’m wrong? This felt like a trap. The consequences either way could be devastating.

  “Jovie. Jovie, honey, I’ve been drinking. Just to work up the courage to let you know how I feel. Don’t do this.”

  She jerked his head back and poked the dagger point against his neck. “Andrei would never kiss me. That would be sick.”

  Time slowed to a crawl as she released his hair and reached for the sword. Her foot slid into position as the gladius slid from the sheath like silk. Her arm flexed. The blade sank into his neck.

  His knees buckled.

  Dropping the lapel dagger, she added her left hand to the hilt, jerked the weapon free in a squirt of blood and hacked a second time at the meaty throat before severing the head.

  FIVE

  Somewhere Outside of Miami, Florida

  THE CAR’S ENGINE growled as it raced along a trail that could barely be called a road. This sleek vehicle, Bugatti Veyron, was meant for smooth streets. This overgrown path was an assault.

  Entering the intersection, Araxiel slammed the brakes and cut the wheel. As the car spun, it marked a dark circle with fresh-turned earth. He shifted into reverse and rolled out with the last bit of momentum.

  Unconcerned that anyone would be around this middle-of-nowhere location at nearly three AM, he stepped from the car and disrobed. After placing a towel over the driver’s door and three bottles of water on the roof, he checked the sky. The moon wouldn’t technically be full for another ten hours, but this enterprise required darkness.

  Whispering, he pulled a long weapon from behind the seat.

  Naked, whispering, he unsheathed the dagger. The grip felt good in his hand. The finish on the blade was dull and non-reflective, but he didn’t doubt the edge. He’d sharpened it himself.

  One-handed, he opened a compartment behind the driver door and in front of the rear tire. The young goat crammed into the space bleated a protest when he jerked it from the confines by its head. He carried the kicking animal into the intersection, his whisper escalating into a raspy and hateful chant.

  Araxiel sliced the goat’s neck and dropped the dagger to grasp a hind leg. Lifting the animal high, its blood drained across his face and flowed down his body.

  He chanted until the goat’s heart stopped, then he cast the carcass away and fell to his hands and knees. Lips wet with the death of his sacrifice, he kissed the dirt and projected his consciousness to an audience with Lucifer.

  Falling beneath the surface, plunging through soil and stone, passing from crust to cavern and into the entrails of the lowest earth, his spirit fell like a corporeal being
upon the scoriaceous shore. It was time to check in with the molten ocean that was his Master.

  His dog-like haunches bent until he sat. All four of his arms stretched outward as his torso laid down submissively. “I have come, my Master.”

  Lava crawled and ebbed before him, but there came no answer. The only sound was the thousand-degree hum of heat. Not a good sign.

  Better to face it head on. He firmed his voice so the tone wouldn’t waver. “Have I displeased you, Master?”

  Like a hiss of steam, the answer came. “Yes.”

  He swallowed hard. “How have I displeased you, Master?”

  Silence.

  “I beseech you, tell me so that I may atone for my errors.”

  Bubbles pushed up through the orange and black ocean, bringing a voice burbling and seething as it percolated through lava. “You have forgotten the life you escaped.”

  “Master, be assured I have not. I work very hard to nurture the body I claimed, to honor You and remember Your sacrifice—”

  “Too long you have kept that body. Too long you have lived with free will.”

  “I have used this host to become a major figure in one of the largest crime syndicates.”

  “You extort and launder currency.”

  “I create greed and fund lechery—”

  “Among mortals who already answer to you!” Something twisted within the thick fluid; the surface rippled and splashed. “You hide behind your white-collar paper crime. Your long union with the soul of your host has tainted you. You have forgotten what it is to be damned. You have grown soft.”

  “If I dare too much, I risk the gaze of the abhadhim.”

  “If you dare too little you risk My wrath.” Lucifer paused. “Perhaps you squander opportunities because remaining above is your motivation. Perhaps you decline in your loyalty.”

  “Master, I admit to my craving for more power, but that does not mean I am not loyal. I am preparing another body to take. Do you not see that—”

  Araxiel did not finish. Revealing ambition was a tricky topic. Aim too high and the Master grew distrustful. Aim too low and He became displeased. Neither ended pleasantly.