House of Ash & Brimstone Page 2

  And then he sobered, fury burning in the depths of his eyes. “Well, you sssu-ure do know how to put on a s-sshow,” he said, arms swept out wide as he gestured to the chaos Gisele had caused.

  “Happy to oblige,” she scoffed, and surely would’ve crammed her foot further into her mouth if the fire breather hadn’t chosen that moment to spew a mushroom cloud of death at her face. With a yelp, Gisele dove back toward the center of the stage, ribs throbbing, heart thumping as she stood on shaky feet.

  Considering she was up against thirty-some Curators, the others could have rushed her. Instead, they retreated warily, giving her a wide berth.

  Good. Let them cower. Let them see what they were up against—a girl with a banged-up sword who had held her own against a monstrous minotaur.

  It was almost laughable. Except that she could feel her own violence like a dark aura, swelling within her.

  The minotaur bellowed again, but in pain rather than anger. His thick fingers tore at his pelted chest, now misted with blood. Gisele cringed, hating that he was hurting because of her, that he might soon be recaptured by the Curators working to surround him. Mardoll or not, now was the time when she should probably run like Hell. But she needed the payoff from this contract job if she was ever going to strike out on her own. And she was just battered and ticked off enough to want some revenge—for the both of them. Oh yeah, she was going to make these dill-weeds regret ever tangling with her.

  “You have what I came for.” Gisele raised her sword at the ringmaster. “I want it back.”

  “Hate to sssa-ay, little s-sstealer. But the head don’t belong to you.” Canaan spat at their feet, and the dirt began to sizzle and melt as his saliva ate a shallow hole into the ground. He patted the left breast pocket of his tattered jacket. “I’ll keep it ss-safe right here.”

  Okay, so his spit was corrosive. That wasn’t great. But he still had the curio on him. And that was.

  “I’m not going to ask again.” She closed the distance between them as the minotaur lunged for the ringmaster from behind.

  Canaan sidestepped the beast easily, fluid as a dancer. Gisele kicked hard at his crotch, but he saw it coming and twisted, taking the blow in his thigh. He spat at her, and she screamed as his saliva seared through her once-white T-shirt and into her left shoulder. Then he grabbed her by the throat, and she reacted on autopilot from years of self-defense training, swinging her elbow into his jaw with as much force as she could muster. The impact knocked him backward, and she was free.

  The minotaur used the opportunity to grab Canaan around the shoulders, a meaty arm encircling his neck as he dragged the ringmaster around to face Gisele again. Canaan struggled and cursed, but the minotaur held him firm, an expectant look on his dark, cow-like features. His eyes flicked to the sword in her hand.

  The beast flexed his arm, squeezing Canaan’s neck until the man’s sallow face turned bright red.

  Gisele had never killed anyone before and wasn’t keen to start now, though if anyone deserved it, it might be the ringmaster. She had, however, beaten a bloody life lesson into more than one street punk in her line of work and had no qualms about dishing out some punishment in order to get the curio. The minotaur would just have to settle on some broken bones for his revenge.

  Surging adrenaline drowned out the pain in her body. She inhaled deeply as her cracked ribs began to mend, hurting worse than the initial injury. With a grimace, she threw her whole body into a kick to Canaan’s knee that cracked the joint with a sickening pop. His ensuing wail was music to her ears.

  “That’s for tossing me in a fighting pit,” she said. “And this is for the minotaur.”

  She snapped the heel of her hand up into Canaan’s crooked nose.

  Hot blood gushed onto her palm, scorching the skin. She wiped her blistered palm on the leg of her jeans, cursing. Even his blood was venomous to the touch. No wonder he looked like his skin was flooded with bile.

  “Holy Hell-balls,” she breathed, but neither Canaan nor the minotaur seemed to hear her. One of them was laughing again, and the other braying, cradling his arm where it had been sprayed by the ringmaster’s blood.

  A gust of fire blasted past her shoulder, narrowly missing the edge of her hair. The strongman closed in, grabbing for the minotaur’s half-cut horn.

  Her plan was rapidly unraveling…for the second time in one night. She needed to wrap this up and get the hell out of Dodge with the curio safely under her arm.

  Or at least, that was the idea. She found herself having second thoughts when Canaan speared up and then up again, much taller than he’d been before. He swung side to side, arms dangling, the movement hypnotic. And then he rose even higher, straightening to look down on her with spittle-flecked lips split in a sneer.

  “Sss-surely that iss-sn’t all you’ves-s got,” he taunted, eyes flashing murder.

  The words slurred out slower around two new bone-white fangs. As thick and long as her forefingers, they curved over his jaw, downright wicked looking. The demon had begun to shed his human appearance in favor of his true, more lethal form.

  He snickered, darting a fat, forked tongue to lap the drying blood from his upper lip. “S-shall I introdussshe you to my widowmakers-ss?”

  2

  It wasn’t the first time Gisele had seen a demon change shape, but the sheer violence of the ringmaster’s transformation daunted her.

  The trunk of Canaan’s body hardened into solid muscle. His legs knitted together as his lower body shifted into a single, massive tail, the length of it protruding from beneath his gray-plaid kilt, coiled across the stage and covered in tan scales.

  Where before he’d been an intimidating six feet and change, he now towered over her, a good eight feet tall. Bands of flesh bulged under his armpits and tapered over his ribs, visible beneath the torn jacket. They flared around his upper torso like a cobra’s hood, framing his gangly arms.

  The serpent tattoo had disappeared from his head and neck, leaving a pallid, bald expanse. His face had elongated and looked…wrong. Like his jaw was broken or unhinged. His cheeks were gaunt, and his eyes sat too wide and high for his face. The irises and sclera had darkened to a slate brown, the color of a moth’s wing. Large, round pupils bored into her, so black she could see a tiny version of herself reflected in their depths.

  Gisele was staring into the eyes of a nargaya demon. An apex predator.

  She stumbled a step back.

  Canaan swiveled back and forth over the floor, an agitated movement that was followed by a deep-chested hiss. And then he struck, thrusting at her.

  Through sheer reflex, she brought up the sword, blocking and swiping at him until he drew back. He circled, sliding the length of his body around her, grabbing and clawing, gnashing and biting, jerking back and slithering around again, while she attacked with the flat of the cleaver, hesitant to draw more of his blood. The minotaur charged, and they became a tangle of limbs and teeth and tails. Dodging backward to avoid a deadly bite, the minotaur lost his footing. Hooves flailing, he tumbled from the stage, taking an entire metal support beam down with him.

  Row after row of amber lights winked out, darkening the stage like a storm rolling in. A quarter of the tent wilted as the support scaffolding collapsed, thick green-and-gold sheeting sinking inward like a deflating balloon.

  The minotaur bellowed and thundered, but the strongman and the fire breather worked to trap him between the stage and the stands. There was nothing he could do.

  It was just her against the nargaya demon.

  So like any good little half-demon would…she tucked tail and ran.

  Heart thrumming, she sprinted while Canaan slithered after her, shouting, “My venom’s-s gonna burn you fhrom the insshide out.”

  “Bite me,” Gisele shot back, instantly regretting her choice of words.

  Problem: He was gaining on her, faster and stronger in this form.

  She just needed a smarter plan of attack. That was all. Instead, she tripped a
nd landed painfully, clacking her chin against the mud-smeared stage.

  Oh, sweet Lucifer. She was so dead, she was—

  The loud FWUMP-CLICK of a heavy switch being flipped shattered the night air, bathing the two of them in a spotlight. Canaan reeled back, shielding his dilated eyes as he cowered in the white, hot radiance. He slashed and swiped wildly for her in the air. “Twat bitch-ssh. Rot in Hell.”

  Squinting against the unexpected brightness, Gisele glimpsed someone in the lighting stand at the back of the tent. She could just make out the shadowy, lean-muscled silhouette of a man—a demon with massive, bat-like wings.

  Why would one of Canaan’s…?

  She knew what she needed to do. Before whatever Curator up there realized their mistake and killed the lights. Surging to her feet, she stabbed for Canaan’s eyes with the cleaver. Blood sprayed, biting at her face, and Canaan screamed.

  Hope you like fighting blind.

  Gisele had seen her fair share of bloodied noses and broken bones in her delinquent days, but this was the most she’d ever hurt another creature, demon or otherwise. She grabbed for the shrunken-head doll in Canaan’s jacket pocket, desperate to nab what she’d come for and escape, but his hand covered her own, crushing her fingers where they gripped the curio’s snarled, bristly hair.

  “I’ll kill you!” he roared. “I’ll murder you, ss-stealersss, every lasssht one of you-ss!”

  Wresting the Mardoll from her hands, he smeared it in the bloody gouge where his eyes used to be.

  “No!” He was going to destroy it. Everything she’d gone through, everything she’d risked, it would all be for nothing.

  Gisele screamed for the minotaur, but the sword swallower, strongman, and fire breather had surrounded him, hemming him in. A blond tightrope walker who’d danced on razor wire was using a length as a garrote on him. A juggler flipped bejeweled daggers at the minotaur’s feet.

  No, no, no! She’d already lost the Mardoll. If the minotaur lost his freedom, next up would be her life. She had to stop them, she had to—

  Howling, Canaan thrust the curio high into the air. She’d expected his blood to eat through the shriveled, little shrunken head. But the thing was pulsing with power in his hand, the face bloodied and stretched as the eyes—eyes that she’d thought were sewn shut—began to slit open.

  From the way the Mardoll was glowering, whatever was going to happen once they opened all the way wouldn’t be good.

  The fortune-teller cried, “Canaan, it’ll kill you. Could kill us all.”

  “Don’t you dare!” the tightrope walker screamed.

  In the distraction, the minotaur caught the fire breather and cracked the juggler’s leg under his heavy hoof. The strongman fled, full sprint.

  Gisele should cut and run. She should probably, definitely cut and run. The Hell with this contract job.

  But if she bailed now, what would happen to the minotaur? He’d helped her out of the pit, because she’d promised freedom in return.

  Gisele gripped the cleaver with both hands and swung it overhead, putting all of her strength into the wide diagonal arc, aiming for the hand that gripped the curio. The blade connected with bone and stuck. Then it cleaved through, coated in blood and bile.

  Saints alive, she’d cut his hand off.

  She lunged for the shrunken head, intending to bat it away. But instead she grabbed it and its power tore through her like a thousand knives. The pain was unspeakable, but she couldn’t let go. The eyes were still opening. And she didn’t know how to stop it or what it was going to do.

  Canaan writhed at her feet, gripping the blood-spewing stump of his wrist, yowling profanities and threats. And then he uncoiled, coming for the curio.

  The fighting pit. She couldn’t throw the head—she could barely lift her arm—but there had to be something she could do. Painstakingly, she crawled toward the edge of the pit to drop it in. But by the time she got there, the eyes had almost opened, and she could feel it tearing the last of her strength from deep within her.

  The raw energy was devouring her, pounding against her skin, and her vision swam red. Maybe she was hallucinating, too, because her nails looked long and black, gleaming like talons on the ends of her fingers.

  Canaan loomed over her, barely visible through the red haze, grabbing blindly for her with his good hand, his stump spraying blood. The minotaur had broken free of the crowd and was barreling down on both of them, head tucked and horns out. The remaining Curators were running away, fleeing both the minotaur and the fallout from the Mardoll’s use. But none of that mattered now.

  There was no time left.

  The curio’s eyes snapped wide, and she tipped the head over the edge and into the pit. But her fingers refused to uncurl from the brittle, straw-like hair, and the Mardoll stuck in her hand. The black hair tangled around her knuckles, slimed by Canaan’s sweat, his acidic blood eating at her palm.

  “Gisele, let it go!” A familiar, far-away voice shouted her name—surely a misfire from a short-circuiting synapse.

  Ah, to think of him in the split-second before her impending death. How annoying.

  A searing violet light shot from the open irises. The beams scorched laser-like across the mud. Then the eerie light spread to encompass the width of the fighting pit. An acrid smell hit the air, like burning ozone. Or ash and brimstone.

  Her whole body seized. Her bones vibrated. The pain rattled and burned in her lungs.

  Time slowed.

  The sound of wings fluttering overhead lulled her. They rippled a rhythmic beat, like the ruffling of wind through her hair. It reminded her of clouds skimming cold kisses over her cheeks. Made her feel safe.

  She sucked in a shaky, shallow breath.

  There was a final burst of blinding light, and then the beams were gone, leaving a shimmering layer of purplish energy where the floor had been. Gisele could almost see through it to the other side, could almost make out shapes and silhouettes in the distance.

  She knew what she was looking at. After all, she’d been through one before. It was a door, a gateway straight to Hell.

  What had they done?

  “It’s a Hellmouth,” she tried to warn the minotaur—just as a terrifying bellow broke the air behind her. Canaan’s blood sprayed her back, droplets scorching her skin.

  Muscles screaming, body throbbing, she twisted on her elbows in time to see the minotaur’s horn withdraw from Canaan’s pale belly as the snake demon lurched forward, shuddering in slow motion as he pitched into the pit.

  His tail twisted in the air. And then he was gone.

  They’d just thrown a Curator of the Cursed straight into the depths of Hell.

  The Hellmouth popped and zipped, wobbling wildly, until with a snap, it disappeared.

  The last of her energy drained with it, and everything went black.

  Gisele whimpered when she came to. Her whole body hurt. She was lying on her back, someone cradling her head, a strong hand on the nape of her neck. A thumb brushed her cheek, and warm, calloused fingers tipped her head back. The world careened beneath her, and she swallowed against a surge of rising bile.

  “Wake up, Gigi. Please, you have to wake up.” He murmured the words over and over, his voice shattered, raw—and so pulse-flutteringly familiar.

  For a second, it triggered a half-formed memory from her childhood, warm and happy—a memory of another’s hand in her hair, brushing aside dirt and weeds, of a boy laughing and whispering against her ear. But then the image flared and died.

  It was a lie. She’d had no happy childhood. And Shade couldn’t have possibly been there. Just like he couldn’t be here now.

  “Come on, Gigi. Open your eyes. I need you to look at me.”

  She blinked up, and her coworker’s annoyingly handsome face blurred into focus.

  Except he looked different, less abrasive. His slate-gray eyes, wide and clouded with concern, searched hers in silent questioning. His mouth was a taut line, and his dark brows were furrow
ed, but relief softened his usual grim expression.

  He was shirtless, his bare chest sheened with sweat. His ash-brown hair had slicked across his forehead, and a peculiar urge to brush the damp strands aside twisted in her belly. She must’ve fried her brain, because it looked as if large, black wings curved high off his back.

  Just like the demon from the lighting stand.

  Ah, so she’d gone full-on Dorothy of Oz, blending traumatic happenings into a whirlwind of a dream. And you were there…and you…

  “Christ, Gigi, what were you thinking? I thought it’d killed you.” Shade pressed his forehead to hers, breath catching. When he pulled back, his gaze slid to the curio in her hand, then lingered, intent. The hand cupping her face slipped away.

  No.

  “Don’t.” Sick and weak, she closed her eyes, clutching the shrunken head to her chest. When she opened her eyes again, he was gone.

  She’d hallucinated the whole thing.

  Sweating and swearing and muscles quivering, she struggled to her feet. A glance into the pit confirmed it was empty and still. The Hellmouth had vanished. The shrunken head’s eyes closed once more. The small, mummified lids looked glued shut, as if they hadn’t opened in over a thousand years.

  They were incredibly lucky the Hellmouth had closed without anything coming through to their end.

  “Devil damn me, has this night ever gotten out of hand.” Gingerly, she rotated one shoulder, stretching its range of movement as her body healed.

  The circus arena was quiet now. The troupe had fled, leaving only a handful of Curators passed out or bleeding on the floor. The tent was dark and smelled like spent magic and gore.

  And a minotaur waited for her, expectant.

  3

  “Stupid Half-blood. Nearly slaughtered like calf.” Deep and craggy, the minotaur’s voice cracked through the night like a mountain splitting under its own weight. “Must have half brain.” He snorted with amusement.