A Demon in Dallas (11 page)

“Silvia,” he greeted dispassionately.

It was only after he’d spoken that the seated witch opened her eyes and turned towards him. Her expression was the complete opposite of Silvia’s. Her smile was bright, substantiating the impression I’d received from Oliver about the nature of their relationship, past or present. Oliver returned her smile warmly. Crossing the room, he bent and took her hand with a surprising tenderness and placed a kiss on the back.

“Cassandra.” His voice was as smooth and sweet as acacia honey. “Always a pleasure.”

Her tingling peal of laughter was practically melodic. “And you are always the charmer. It’s lovely to see you again, Oliver. How have you been?”

Connor stood back and watched their conversation with detached indifference while Oliver’s betas paced the perimeter of the large space talking between themselves. After the pleasantries were over, Silvia placed the incense on a folding table that had been set up against a wall on the far side of the room. She pulled the loose cotton covering off a wooden crate under the table then slid open the lock and reached inside, pulling out a live, squawking chicken.

“Jesus Christ!” Connor exclaimed, staring at the black bundle in Silvia’s arms in utter dismay. “What the hell are you going to do with
that
?”

“Kill it,” Cassandra replied without any trace of emotion. “What do you think we’re going to do with it?”

“They have to sacrifice the chicken as part of the spell to locate the demon,” I explained. I’d seen it done a couple of times in the past, although the spells I’d watched had been to locate humans—I hadn’t known you could find demons in the same way.

“Right, of course you are,” Connor quipped. “How dumb of me.”

“Are you a witch?” Silvia asked, eyeing me curiously. She placed the chicken on an altar that had been set up near Cassandra. She held it still and closed her eyes, muttering something under her breath.

“She’s a hunter,” Oliver answered in my place. “Likes to kill things. Isn’t that right, Raven?”

“Not really,” I disagreed. “Just doing my job.”

“But you like your job, right?”

I did. But for whatever reason I didn’t want to admit that to Oliver. “How long had the grimoire been in your coven’s possession?” I asked instead.

“For ten generations,” Cassandra replied proudly. “It has been handed down from mother to daughter for over two hundred years.”

“If it’s been in your coven for so long, how did the demon find out about the book?” Connor enquired.

“We suspect he performed some sort of summoning spell to locate it.”

I frowned. “Wasn’t it cloaked?”

Cassandra averted her gaze and mumbled. “I’d been using the book. We can read from it at any time, but if we perform any spells from it we have to remove the cloak or the spells won’t work. I forgot to conceal it again when I was finished with it.”

“Using it?” Connor questioned. “I thought the grimoire was full of black magic.”

“Not all of them are dark magic!” Cassandra replied hotly.

So it was her fault that the demon had the grimoire. That explained why she was so eager to help us locate the demon and get the book back. But she had to know that, when the book had been found, it could not be returned to her coven. It was far too dangerous to remain in the witches’ possession, even if they had managed to keep it safe for over two hundred years. The angels would take possession of the book as soon as we were able to get it from Barbatos, whatever Cassandra or the rest of her coven might desire.

“We’re ready to begin,” Silvia informed us. “Cassandra, you’ll need the chalice and the knife.”

Cassandra repeated the incantation several times while Silvia handled the unenviable task of killing the chicken. She was quick and proficient so that the bird didn’t suffer. Silvia drained the blood into a wooden chalice with the precision of someone that had performed the task a myriad of times. I stopped paying attention after the first five minutes, but Connor seemed fascinated by what was going on—unlike me, he’d never witnessed anything like it before.

Held aloft, the blood-filled chalice was offered to the Spirit then placed on the makeshift altar along with the bloodstained knife and the chicken’s head. Although Cassandra did most of the work, it was Silvia who was in control. On several occasions Cassandra looked to her for advice, and each time the older witch instructed her on what she had to do next. I wondered what position she held in the coven—it had to be one of importance because she knew exactly what she was doing, but to ask I would have had to interrupt the incantation. The spell was far too important to result in failure. We couldn’t afford the loss of any more precious hours. We only had one shot to locate the demon, so we had to make it count.

I hadn’t realised that Silvia was circling the room with the incense pot again until the thick, heavy smoke caught in my throat and made me cough. The air was filled with it, so much so that it was difficult to see what Cassandra was doing as she knelt in front of the altar, her chanting increasing in both volume and intensity. The rhythmic sound of it filled the warehouse as easily as if Cassandra was using a microphone and speakers. As I looked on, the whites of her eyes began to bleed into the iris until there was no colour left and her face contorted so much I thought I had to be seeing things. I looked to Connor to check if he’d witnessed it too, and if his expression hadn’t been enough to confirm I wasn’t hallucinating, his expletive of “
What the fuck
?” would have done the trick.

“What the hell happened to her eyes?” Oliver took a step forward, but Silvia grabbed his arm and yanked him back.

“You cannot interrupt,” she chastised. “Cassandra is in danger while the demon remains inside her. Let the spell take its course and she’ll be perfectly safe.”

I suspected Silvia’s and my idea of ‘perfectly safe’ differed quite considerably, but I kept my opinion to myself and continued to watch Cassandra’s face contort. Her head rolled around limply on her shoulders like she were a ragdoll being shaken violently by a cantankerous child. Connor was watching in open-mouthed astonishment. Even I was surprised by what I was witnessing. None of the summoning spells I’d watched in the past had turned out anything like this.

Cassandra’s face was twisted with ugliness—no, with evil. She threw her head back and laughed riotously, but the voice that came out of her mouth wasn’t her own. It was low and unnatural—chilling. I felt like I was watching a scene from
The Exorcist
. If her head began to spin on her shoulders or she started to walk on the ceiling like a crab, I would be out of the door quicker than you could say possession. A shiver ran down my spine and goosebumps rose on my arms. Even Oliver’s two henchmen were shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably, reaching inside their jackets for their respective weapons. They took a step forward, looking to Oliver for direction.

“No,” Silvia hissed. “This is normal. Stay away from her!”

Connor leaned in close and whispered in my ear, “I hate to break it to her, but this is anything but normal.”

I’d have laughed if I wasn’t shaking in my shoes. I’d seen some things in my time as a hunter, but this topped them all. The laughing stopped abruptly to be replaced with an eerie silence. Then the moaning began, or was it whining? The second time that goosebumps rose on my arms it was for a different reason entirely.

The tone of voice I recognised instantly because it belonged to my partner, Matt.

“Help me,” Cassandra moaned in Matt’s deep voice. “Help me, Raven, please.”

I pulled my eyebrows together in a frown. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that’s really Matt?”

I knew better than to ask questions, especially if Cassandra really was channelling a demon because they rarely told the truth, but hearing Matt’s voice had made me damn well angry. I wanted to believe that this was all part of some elaborate plan by Oliver and Cassandra, that he’d told her about my partner, but I couldn’t fool myself on that score. There had been no mistaking Matt’s voice and neither Cassandra nor Oliver would know how he sounded.

Cassandra let out another creepy sounding laugh then stared at me with those unblinking, colourless eyes. “We have Matt,” she croaked.

“You’re lying.”

Another laugh. “Believe what you want, hunter.”

“Where is Barbatos?” Connor asked. At least someone had remembered why we were there. It was a good thing Connor had come along because I was evidently not firing on all cylinders. I needed to concentrate or I would be in no position to help.

“This is getting boring,” I remarked around a loud yawn. “Come on, Connor, let’s go. This was obviously a waste of our time. There’s no demon here.”

“You’ll leave over my dead and rotting body!” Cassandra screeched.

I began walking towards the exit, tugging Connor along behind me.

“No!” Cassandra shouted again in that low, unnatural voice that was anything but human. “Nooooooo!”

She fainted.

Silvia ran to her and knelt down at her side. Her face was filled with alarm. She checked Cassandra for a pulse and spoke to her in hushed tones, as though she could coax her back to consciousness with encouraging words alone.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

Silvia nodded. “She’ll be fine.”

Connor and I shared a dubious glance. She didn’t look fine.

A short while later, a small moan escaped her lips and her eyes fluttered open. It took a moment for the evident grogginess to dissipate then she sat up and stared at each of us in turn, her eyes wide and unblinking.

“I know where the demon is hiding,” she said. “Club Majick. You’ll find him at Club Majick.”

Cassandra had barely finished the sentence before she passed out again.

Chapter Ten

“Huh?” Connor looked from Oliver to me and back again while Silvia fussed around Cassandra’s prone form. “Club
Majick
? What the hell is that?”

“It’s a club,” Oliver replied dryly. “You know, people go to them to drink, to dance, to have a good time?” He looked at Connor expectantly then shook his head and addressed his next comment to me. “Life with him must be a laugh a minute, huh?”

Connor stepped forward until he and Oliver were nose to nose. “I could do
something
that would guarantee I’d have a good time, but it would involve spilling blood and none of it would be mine.”

Oliver’s mouth curved up into what could only be described as a sneer. “Really? Why don’t you put that theory to the test?” he goaded. “And we’ll see whose blood is spilled because I assure you that
my
bite is every bit as ferocious as my bark.”

“Christ, give it a rest, will you?” I snapped, losing my patience with the both of them. We were there to find the demon, not argue amongst ourselves. “Silvia, is Cassandra okay?”

She studied the young witch for a moment before replying, “She will be.”

“Do you know where Club Majick is?”

“It’s downtown,” she said over her shoulder while she undid the top button on Cassandra’s shirt. “A couple of warlocks own the place.”

“Warlocks?” I groaned inwardly. Our situation was getting worse by the minute. Warlocks were only a step up from demons. They loved to cause trouble—particularly with humans—and were always right in the thick of it. It made sense that Barbatos would hide out there. Maybe he was working with them in some way. I hoped that wouldn’t turn out to be the case. Warlocks were incredibly powerful and the demon was going to be difficult enough to get to without him having extra magical aid.

“Is it a supe-only club?”

When she’d finished adjusting Cassandra’s clothes, Silvia turned and met my gaze. “No. It’s mixed. The clientele are mostly humans, but a few supes go there too. It’s kind of a supernatural theme bar.”

I frowned. “A
theme
bar?”

She nodded. “You know, painted in black, fake cobwebs, filled with Edward Cullen wannabes. It’s mostly students, but a few goths and emos show up. It’s popular with the younger crowd.”

It sounded like my idea of hell.

“Can you tell us where to find it?” Connor asked.

“Sure, but you won’t find anyone there yet. It doesn’t open until six, stays open until the early hours.” She checked her watch. “Just closed in fact.”

For an older woman, Silvia seemed to know a lot about a club that was popular with the ‘younger crowd’.

“Do you go there?” I asked.

Her eyes widened. “Heavens no. But some of the younger witches in my coven do. They told me about the place.”

I nodded to Cassandra, who was still out cold on the floor and made no sign of moving. “Does she go there?”

Silvia shrugged. “I guess so—from time to time, sure.”

I looked at Connor and smirked. “Well, well. What do you know?”

“You think that’s how the demon really found out about the book?” he asked.

“I’m thinking she
gave
him the book.”

“No,” Silvia interjected. “No way. Cassandra wouldn’t do that. She told you how she lost the book. She wouldn’t lie to me.” Her brow creased and she looked down at the witch as if she was wondering that very thing.

“Do you know where the warlocks who run Club Majick live?”

“No, but I know where the warlock headquarters are. The building is close to my coven.”

While we’d been talking to Silvia, Oliver had crossed to the far side of the room to talk quietly with his betas. They kept their voices low so that neither I nor Connor with his highly sensitive wolf hearing could hear what they were saying. When they’d finished talking, Oliver headed towards the exit.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you get to that book before me,” he said as he pulled open the warehouse door. Turning to his betas, he nodded. “You know what to do. Kill them all.”

Connor growled. “You two-faced, goddamn son of a—”

“There’ll be time for insults later,” I chastised, watching the betas advance.

He turned to watch the two men cross the room and winced. “Great.”

“Yeah, that about sums it up.”

Oliver was still chuckling as he slipped out the door, letting it slam shut behind him.